Archive for August, 2006

Last week I confessed my admiration of Chris Capossela and I linked to an interview where he details his career path.  This week, Shane pointed me to a podcast he participated in that is hosted on the IW Center site (which looks like a great resource for information too).

Shane and I were also discussing last week how cool it would be if Capossela had a blog.  Even if he posted once a month – I suspect it would be quite interesting.

Shane posted on this last week but it really is blowing my mind that so many good resources exist already for SharePoint 2007 compared to when we first started working on 2003 (and let’s not even go 2001).  Man those were some hard times.  I remember having to create EVERYTHING from scratch.  From the sales process to the development, deployment and training stages - there was absolutely nothing to go on except what we made ourselves. I swear I spent my first 12 months documenting and creating templates.  Some of which I still use so I guess it was a decent investment of effort.

When I first started with 2007, I admit I was a little thrown off by just how much new functionality existed.  I started wondering if there was anyway I’d ever master it all to the degree I did in 2003.  However between official Microsoft material supplied both as part of TAP and directly to the community and then the MASSIVE amount of awesome resources being provided BY the community – I have made some pretty awesome progress.  I really couldn’t be more excited.  The amount of knowledge sharing and enthusiasm over this new version of the product only reinforces for me what an excellent choice it has been to focus on this platform professionally. 

Here are some great listings of resources if you are just getting started yourself. 

Andrew’s Extensive WCM Resource List

Arno’s Listing of Records and Document Management Resources

Arpan’s Listing of SharePoint 2007 Training Steps and Resources

Heather’s SharePoint 2007 Resource Listing

Jan’s Series on New Features Available in SharePoint 2007

Joel’s List of SharePoint Planning, Configuration and Deployment Resources

Joris’s Massive WSS and MOSS Resource Listing Page

Liam’s Plethora of In-Depth Posts on Various Functions of SharePoint 2007

Mark’s MOSS 2007 Resource List

Shane’s Tips and Hidden Gems Postings on SharePoint Customization

Ted Pattison’s Screencast Series (Awesome Starting Point)

Technet’s Office System Webcast Series

Seriously can you believe that I can actually refer to THAT many awesome resource listings for a product that isn’t even released?  And that is just a drop in the bucket based on a quick reference to a listing I have stored on my personal MOSS site.

So in summary – keep up the great work everyone! 

SharePoint 123! Level 200
August 30th at 3:30PM EST

Join us for our next exciting INETA Live! Webcast event on August 30th at 3:30PM EST for the level 200 content from the SharePoint 123 Training Series!

SharePoint 1, 2, 3! is a new concept in community-based training being offered to the development community by the development community. SharePoint 1, 2, 3! offers six sessions designed to train developers to install, use, and develop custom software for Microsoft’s Windows SharePoint Services. SharePoint 1, 2, 3! is designed to be a start to finish training session that has a 100 level course, a 200 level course, and a 300 level course to get into all aspects of SharePoint. A few months back we delivered the first session (level 100), which was a gentle introduction to SharePoint – what it is and how to use it effectively. You can view that presentation via our webcast archives available at http://live.ineta.org.

The second session (level 200) will be presented tomorrow on Wednesday, August 30th at 3:30PM EST and will be aimed squarely at developers and will focus on customizing SharePoint sites, developing and using web parts, and deploying SharePoint sites.  Sign up here!

The final session (level 300) will dive deep into advanced topics such as connected web parts and the SharePoint Object Model and will be coming up later this fall.

I noticed from the Xbox team blog today that there have been a load of new games added to the supported by Xbox 360 list.  This is great news as my gen 1 games list is pretty massive but I haven’t been playing them at all since I got my 360.  In fact my old Xbox has been nothing more than a bedroom DVD player. 

My favorite new edition to this list is Links 2004 as I really loved that game and have not been a big fan of the Tiger Woods series over the past couple of years.  Arnold will be impressed that Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart has made the list. 

See the list of updated backwards compatible games here.

I have been running Vista on my personal computer for a couple of weeks now.  I really love the interface and behaviour of the operating system.  It’s fun to play with a new interface and get used to all the hidden gems.  I really love what they have done with the network settings as the experience of sharing files with other computers on my network has vastly improved.

My only issue holding me back from installing on other pcs within our home network is a bug that I have had very little success in finding other information online about.  So maybe it only happens to a limited few.  But as I load up Vista after a restart or turn it on…I log onto the machine and then it hangs for about 15-20 minutes on the “Preparing Your Desktop…” screen.  Then finally as if it pops out of a long daydream…we are back in business.

Anyone else have this?

Shane and I had a great time last night camping.  We went to Fitzgerald’s Pond Park near Dunville, which was my first time there in about 20 years.  That park is actually about 20 minutes from where I grew up.  Good clear night and we had a perfect evening kicked back by the fire.

Today we went fishing with my family in Long Harbour (which actually IS where I grew up) and it was an awesome day.  The water could not have been more beautiful.  The fish were plentiful…well at least plentiful enough for our 2 boats to get our daily quota for the recreational fishery.  However the day wasn’t even so much about the fish as it was the good time with family and amazing experience of being on the water and taking in the beautiful sights around me. 

One of the day’s highlights was that we were joined by my nephew Arnold for his first time in a boat (other than a Ferry) on the water.  As you can see from the picture below he was pretty excited.

Of course fishing is hard work so he had to recharge a bit part ways through the morning by taking a quick nap at the front of the boat. 

But at the end of the day, he acheived every man’s goal which is to catch a cod fish that is almost as tall as him.  A note here is that he actually did catch the fish on the line.  I was holding the pole for the longest while with no action whatsoever…I called to Arnold to give me a hand and as soon as his little hands grabbed the pole…a fish was on.  Pretty impressive!

Anyhow all and all it was a great 24 hours and I feel much better equipped to handle the pile of work that stands in front of me now.

It has been a LONG week!  My head is complete mush from many late nights and even longer days.  So while I had hoped to end the week off with a very cool and inspiring post…it just ain’t gonna happen. 

Instead Shane and I have the car packed up and we are heading camping for the night.  Tomorrow I hope to go fishing with my dad and big bro (weather permitting) and then I shall get back to being productive tomorrow evening.

Just a reminder that today is the last day for the free download of the full version of Texas Hold’Em from Xbox Live Marketplace.  I downloaded it yesterday and had a quick game of single player today…not bad.  I am more interested in the Xbox Live portion however.  Especially if I can convince my brother to get an Xbox 360.  =-)

I got an email from Shane earlier today with this link about how the pricing for Office 2007 should be available in November of this year.  This apparently also means that the product release is not too far behind.  Great news to my ears!!  Why you might ask? Well for starters:

1. I am working on active projects related to the platform which means that things are stabilizing and we are rocking out and ready for launch.  In fact, I am very much impressed at how much we are able to accomplish with working on a mere Beta 2 release of the product. 
2. The release of official pricing information and an official launch date is something I can share with customers.  I did a webcast today where one of the first questions was related to…when is 2007 coming and what are the licensing implications.  I love my customers and therefore look forward to a time when I am adequately able to answer their questions on such things.  Something feels false about saying…well by the way things are looking now…
3. I can start transitioning into 100% demos and projects on new platform.  I’m sorry but I love new technology and WSSv3 / MOSS 2007 is a dream to work with.  So you cannot blame me for wanting to move 100% into fulfulling it’s demand.  I loved v2 / 2003 (note: see the first 3 years of posts on this blog if you have any doubt) but I want to move ahead to the next version now.

The other cool thing about this post was the reference to Chris Capossela.  This is a man I have much respect for.  Not because he is the VP of a major business group within Microsoft and grand pubba of all that is information worker.  But what I appreciate the most is that he does his own demos of the applications he represents.  I have always been a believer in the Lead by Example practice and I think this is a perfect showcase. 

It is one thing for someone to say they believe in a set of applications that empower the information worker force.  It is a completely other thing to stand in front of thousands of people (see Tech Ed 2006) and conduct your own demonstrations because you have taken the time to learn the applications yourself and recognize how they benefit the real people they were intended for. 

My 2 biggest beefs come from those that a) consider themselves too technical to learn how to use the tools that enable us all to work together and communicate more efficiently and b) those that consider themselves too important to learn how to share information. 

Capossela obviously brought his ticket for the IW train and I am definitely onboard!  PS… the IW train comes approximately 5 minutes before the cluetrain at most major stations.  In case you were wondering…

Update: Here is an interesting 60 minute video on Capossela and his career path through Microsoft – very cool guy!

There seems to be some confusion on the difference between site collections and sites in MOSS2007.  Almost everyone I speak to that has experience with SPS 2003 stumble with this when they first start working with SharePoint 2007.  So for that reason…I shall write a quick post about it.

In SharePoint Portal Server 2003, whenever you went to the sites directory and clicked the Create Site link under the Actions menu, you were creating a site collection.  Every site collection has a top level site where things such as site templates, list templates, and cross site groups existed.  Within a site collection, additional sites could be created that would share certain things (such as the template galleries and potentially permissions) with the top level site.  In essence the site collection was it’s own unique hierarchy of SharePoint sites and for the most part completely independant of other site collections.  In a stand alone installation of WSS there was typically only one site collection.  In SPS, there could be hundreds which is why organizing them effectively in the Sites Directory and Areas (via listings) was very important and crucial.  In fact, the primary role of SharePoint Portal Server aside from the additional functionality it provided in enterprise features such as search, audiences and personal sites – was the ability to organize the massive amounts of data that exists across multiple site collections better. 

By default in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (if you are using the Corporate Intranet Portal template as your default site) when you go to the “Sites” link and click the Create site button…you are instead creating a site that is a member of the site collection your portal is in.  So instead of having a portal layer and then a large number of unique collaborative collections below – everything now exists in a single site collection by default.  This is great if within your organization, you want to “easily” share things such as templates, site columns, content types and navigational elements. Plus security and user management is much easier using this approach.

However some organizations will still require unique site collections since their business units are very unique and very little sharing is anticipated between groups. If that is the case, then you may instead wish to create site collections from the sites directory. To do this, you need to:

• Enable Self Service Site Creation in the Central Administration (Steps Below)
• Change the configuration settings under the Sites Directory (Steps Below)

So in essense, the new way is really much better since we no longer have to manage two completely separate levels however if you liked the old way better and want more unique site collections for your collaborative areas, you can have that too.

Enabling Self Service Site Creation

1. Log into the Central Administration Site (Note this is a unique site collection as well and if you have it located on a funny port number, it is usually a good idea to add it to your My Links)
2. Click Application Management
3. Click Self-service site management
4. Select the correct web application (that step is easy to miss) and select On for Enable Self-Service Site Creation
5. Click OK

Enable the creation of Site Collections in Sites Directory

1. From the portal, use the Site Actions menu, select Modify All Site Settings. If you are not on top level site you will need to go to Top Level Site Settings.
2. Under site collection administration, select Site Directory Settings.
3. Select the checkbox to create new site collections from sites directory.

If you are like me and work with clients from various cultures or who have requirements for multi-lingual environments, then you will welcome the information posted on the SharePoint team blog regarding the planned availability for Language Packs for both MOSS 2007 and WSSv3. 

Unfortunately I misread the chart when I first saw the article and thought the language pack for French was coming with the Beta 2 TR.  Our team has been looking for that one as we do quite a bit of work with clients who require both French and English.  But at least I can see that it will be available upon release which eases my mind a bit.

Now if only we could only get more detailed documentation on the use of resources and variations for creating multilingual environments with SharePoint 2007.

Also mega props to the SharePoint team for keeping their weblog up to date with regular and interesting posts on the new release.  It’s not an easy thing to do when struggling with bug fixes, documentation and major releases and it’s very much appreciated by those of us that eagerly watch for new information to be released as we continue to work our way through pre-release development projects.

What is Team Tools - EasyForms?

SharePoint lists are a great place for creating quick and easy to use data stores for information. They are easy to create and can store a variety of types of information such as tasks, issues, requests, ideas, contacts etc… Creating lists is easy and a huge part of how SharePoint is used.

In many organizations, lists are created throughout portal areas, site collections and workspaces for teams to collect information and collaborate with each other.

EasyForms is a web part for SharePoint that allows you to connect customizable forms to SharePoint lists and then place those forms on any page. This means we can have a single list hosted on a SharePoint site but it can be fed from a variety of locations through EasyForms.

Example #1: The IS team in your organization collect service requests from all departments in the organization so they have a list on SharePoint for tracking these requests. Rather than having users log into the IS team’s SharePoint site to post issues, you can instead drop an EasyForms web part on each divisional site and connect it to the IS team site. Users can post directly to a single centralized list without leaving their own site.

Example #2: The HR Division has created a feedback list for all employees to fill out whenever they want to voice their opinion on topics. The posted information is considered to be highly confidential and should only be viewed by a select group of users. To accomplish this, they create a list on their private team site and place an EasyForms web part on an area of their portal that is visited by all users. The form submits the information directly to the SharePoint site using impersonation.

Example #3: You want to have a single calendar on your portal that displays every member of your company that is out of the office on a given day. Not every user will feel like navigating to this list every time they need to book time off. Instead they would prefer to submit the information from their MySite since that is the site that is set to be their home page. To facilitate this, you create a custom list with a variety of custom views. You then drop an EasyForms web part on the shared view of each user’s My Site to make it easy for all users to post to a central list without having to visit the area of the portal that the list is hosted on.

Example #4: You want to collect information from a group of users and have the data selected back to a private team site.  You create a basic web part page and drop EasyForms onto the page and use its impersonation capabilities to post to the private site without requiring the individual users to have access directly.  This is something I do on a regular basis for INETA using my user group site to collect registrations for our webcast series.  See a live example here.

In short, the number of ways this web part can be used is unending. We have been using a previous version of this web part in our company for the last 3 years. We are excited to finally have the opportunity to share it with the rest of you.

Key Features:
Tool Pane Form Management featuring:

• Automatically populated drop-down containing all sub-sites/webs of the current site/web. (Or you can specify your own URL)
• Automatically populated drop-downs of all lists available for the selected site/web.
• On-screen display of all columns (fields) in the list allowing you to show/hide them from the form’s view.
• Style-sheet (CSS) editor
• Display a custom introduction message
• Ability to hyperlink to the associated list
• Redirect to another page after form submission
• Display a custom message after form submission
• Place your form on ANY page. Unlike the default behavior you can place your form on any page simply by dragging the web part onto the page.
• Customizable Per Instance. You can customize each form individually even if they are on the same page.

Screenshots:

The Form Manager (Web Part Properties/Tool-Pane)

The Stylesheet Editor

The Form/Web Part as it looks in use

You can download a 30 day trial of Team Tools – EasyForms from our website.

Note this post has been edited from it’s original form (which was a request for beta participants) to account for the release of the product.

I am looking for a website where someone could browse for apartments or rental homes for London, England.  I tried googling for it but haven’t found much in the reliable or relevant category.  Does anyone know of a good one?  Unfortunately most of what I am familiar with is only relevant to US / Canada.

Just played my first game of UNO…ever!  I played a tonne of card and board games growing up but never knew what the heck UNO was.  I’d see it around but never actually played it or never saw anyone play.  After listening to a recent Major Nelson podcast on the success of Xbox Live Marketplace and Arcade…I decided to check it out since apparently it was a massive success and broke records for the number of people that purchased it.

After playing it for about 20 minutes, I have to say its a cute and simple game that I could see filling small voids of time and is fun for just about any age.  I like those games because I love when I have things I can play with my niece and nephew.  Though to be fair…my niece can kick my butt in just about any genre of a game so I guess I should instead focus that statement on my nephew.  =-)

Anyhow I recommend it for some mindless fun – it has Xbox Live support and costs a mere 400 points.

Shane has been writing about quite a few tips and “hidden gems” over on his blog for the past couple of months.  What is really fun though is working with him on a shared server and discovering all his little “hidden gems” that he leaves behind.

He has always complained about how when a site is deleted, you have nowhere to go – so he went ahead and modified the file to provide a link.  Funny!

Between goofy customizations and dancing aliens (apparently he didn’t like the animated gif for creating site collections either) – it’s always entertaining at least. 

I downloaded and have been trying out the beta for Windows Live Writer.  I have to say it’s pretty neat and I think I will continue to use it for a while.  In fact since I have switched my blog platform to WordPress, I really have not been enjoying the editing experience.  Maybe that is why I haven’t been posting…sorry lame excuse. 

I have also been testing out the blogging capabilities of Word and have to say I like that as well.  Eventually I will pick a favorite and roll with it I guess.  Anyone else have suggestions on good client tools for blogging?  It would probably make sense for me to use an Office app since that is what I have open 90% of the time.

All this beta software…

I have been struggling with maintaining a reasonably stable working environment over the past month and have officially resigned to a dual boot system running WinXP, Office2003, IE6, with absolutely no beta software and Vista, Office 2007, IE7 (obviously) and fun applications like this that I download on a whim. 

I enjoy working in the Beta environment more from a UI and functionality perspective.  But it does have it’s performance set backs when something decides to crash and I have no idea which beta app is causing it.  Originally the non-beta environment was for work and the beta was for home.  However ironically now-a-days we seem to be doing more SharePoint and InfoPath 2007 related work so I find myself switching around a lot.  Good complaint really as I am so uber pumped on the new platform and all its goodness.

OK final comment that I have to share…I just used spellcheck and it works nicely except “SharePoint” was detected as spelled incorrectly and “harpoon” was offered as a suggestion.  InfoPath triggered “Infonaut” as an alternative.  Very interesting!!

For some people, the transition of MCMS into the SharePoint platform is a positive move but also one that requires a fair amount of adjustment.

First and foremost, there is a significant change in terminology and features even though much of the functionality is the same (though improved).

There are two great sources that I recommend to those looking to get a handle on what some of the differences might be:

1. This MSDN Article targetted specifically at the MCMS2002 developer.
2. Andrew Connell’s MSDN webcast

Both of these have been around for a few months but chances are, still haven’t been found by those only beginning their journey to SharePoint 2007 so I shall point to them anyhow.

I just read on the gamerscore blog that Texas Hold’Em will be released for Xbox 360 next Wednesday and will be free for 2 whole days.  What this means I assume is that you can download the full unlocked version of the game for those 2 days.  Nice!

Because I love these promos but constantly forget about them when the time comes – I have created an Outlook alert to remind us of it.  No applause necessary – thank you!

Download Appointment Here

It would be cool if they do more stuff like this and maybe offer free downloads of content for those that have uber high gamerscores.  Like for example offer a full download of a game for several days to all members that have a 10000+ gamerscore.  Granted my pathetic score would never see any free stuff but I think it would be cool to offer extra incentives to those that have obviously gone the extra mile with gaming on the platform.

When you are in a relationship with someone for a long time (like 8 or 9 years), then sometimes you have to make promises to the other person to ensure you hold up your part of the bargain related to a certain task.

So as a result I found myself making a promise to Shane tonight that I am hoping I can keep up.  I have to make 1 post a day on my blog for the next 3 weeks.  Yep that’s it.  Geek relationships are funny aren’t they.  But I’ve slacked off on blogging lately and since I guilted him into starting a couple of years back – it’s only right that he give me a kick in the butt when I slack off. 

Usually when I stop posting for a while it is hard for me to get back into the swing of things but once I start up again I can’t stop.  Given that there is so much stuff in this little head of mine these days related to SharePoint, InfoPath and all other beta goodness – it’s about time I start to share.

So starting tomorrow (I guess this counts tho too eh?) I will pick back up on my posting and I have promised not to stop for another 3 weeks.  Wish me luck! 

So as some of you may know 2 of my many passions relate to SharePoint and User Groups / Communities.  Therefore it should come as no surprise that I would be working on some things that might benefit and affect SharePoint User Groups and Communities. 

I know there has been a fantastic community building up out there over the past few years and now I want to get to meet more of you so I can identify better ways of supporting and delivering information to you.

So if you are a member or leader of a SharePoint related user group - please either drop me an email or leave a comment here.  I would really love to hear from you.  Also if you are interested in starting a user group or joining one but don’t know where to get started – let me know and I will do my best to help you out.

Andrew Connell, CMS expert and totally awesome guy, has compiled a list of web content management resources that will prove extremely helpful for those getting their feet wet in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. 

Please go check it out and leave him a comment and what a great job he is doing as we certainly want him to feel lotsa love for this. 

Well technically I am staying in Redmond but I liked that title so we shall roll with it.  So after a LONG day of travel (9+ hours of flying gah), I have officially arrived here on the West Coast.  I am super excited to be here since I have never been out this way before and have been wanting to for quite a while.  Between the opportunity to finally visit the Microsoft campus and the opportunity to drink an espresso directly from the source of my favorite roaster…I’m going to have a good week. 

This city is sooo beautiful.  I got a shuttle from the airport with Shuttle Express (nice service) and got to see a bit of the city.  Plus the view when we were coming in for a landing was quite impressive.  I am looking forward to seeing some more of it tomorrow when I don’t feel so sleepy.  

It’s 7:30PM here now but midnight in Amandaland so I will be heading to bed soon.  The beauty of the 4.5 hour timezone difference is that I can 5am in the morning and it will feel like I have slept in.