Eli Robillard's World of Blog.

How to Build a SharePoint 2010 Development Machine (Part I)

2009-10-29T12:46:00Z

I was going to hold off on posting this until the public beta drops, but anyone preparing for the drop will want to get the right hardware, OS and optionally virtualization in place now. Then when the beta drops I'll write more about specific steps to get SQL, SharePoint and your development tools installed. Hardware and Operating System The "official" hardware or virtualization requirements for running either SharePoint Server 2010 or WSS 4.0 are: a 64-bit dual-core 3 GHz CPU , 4 GB of RAM , an...(read more)

Tonight: First looks at SharePoint 2010

2009-10-28T16:33:00Z

First Looks at Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 Presented by Savash Alic , Principal Specialist – SharePoint TSP, Microsoft Canada Join us for a special live meeting on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 where Microsoft Canada’s Savash Alic will present Canada’s first look at Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010. Savash is a loyalist of SharePoint who has been dedicated to the product since its’ very early days in 2001 implementing solutions. Savash has been selling Microsoft SharePoint in a technical...(read more)

SharePoint Testing Strategies

2009-10-24T19:14:00Z

Someone recently asked about test plans and how to test components during development so you can be comfortable they'll perform well when hosted on large farms. The short answer is that you want to create the best simulation you can, and that means creating a test farm as close to production as possible, and testing scenarios with patterns and data as close to production as possible. With mission-critical apps the test environment should be identical with production, but in most cases it won’t be...(read more)

Controlling SharePoint 2010 Deployment in VS 2010

2009-10-21T23:36:00Z

The default experience when you press F5 in Visual Studio 2010 is to Create, Build, Package and Deploy your solution, all at once, automagically, pretty cool. As long as you don't want to control that process. But wait, you can do that too. You can customize exactly what happens when you press F5 to meet your own needs. From copying things into specific locations, to retracting or installing solutions, to calling MS-Build to do something special, to resetting the Application Pool, to stopping and...(read more)

Extending SharePoint 2010 tooling in Visual Studio 2010

2009-10-21T22:00:00Z

Extensibility points Already had: Macros, add-ins and packages New extensions based on MEF VSIX model simplifies distribution and deployment VSIX Package A zip package Contains am .XML manifest Install by double-clicking Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Part of .NET 4.0 An extensible app "imports" functionality An extensible componet "exports" its functionality An application catalog tracks instances of imported component An application is composed by dynamically loading components SharePoint...(read more)

Announcing the Mississauga SharePoint User Group

2009-10-21T00:05:00Z

Look out TSPUG, there's a new user group in town! Led by Ray Outair, all the pieces are finally in place and the first meeting is: This Monday from 6 to 8:30 at Microsoft Canada's Mississauga office ! An Overview of SharePoint 2010 Presented by Rob Windsor ( ObjectSharp ) SharePoint 2010 is being unveiled this week at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. This session will provide an overview of the product with a particular focus on what’s new for developers. The tools included in Visual Studio 2010...(read more)

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Content Management

2009-10-20T17:33:00Z

There are three scenarios or scopes that the team designed for - the library, the document repository and then large scale repositories. The third isn't covered specifically here, but it's basically an architectural strategy that uses many components (e.g. Content Organizer and FAST) to manage millions of files across sites. Other highlights are described in sections below. Team Library A list template Typically 100 to 200 files Used for small projects and teams Performance much improved and few...(read more)

Sandboxed Solutions and Security in WSS 4.0

2009-10-19T22:06:00Z

Partial trust or "Sandboxed" solutions Runs in a separate process Everything in the WSP is deployed to a special repository managed by Central Administration. There is a new compilation model to support this repository (that you thankfully don't need to learn about, it "just works", though when the decks are released you'll see all the excellent secure detail). PTS should be the preferred method of provisioning solutions Sandboxed solutions are restricted by CAS and the API subset Fully supported...(read more)

At the SharePoint Conference! (includes keynote announcements)

2009-10-19T16:03:00Z

I'm in Las Vegas this week for the SharePoint Conference , where today marks a new era for everything SharePoint. And with the fantastic rate of growth in the use of SharePoint, that means that today thousands of people will start thinking of new ways to do business . Through the MVP program the Product Team has been exceptionally generous by sharing their vision, listening to our feedback, and using that feedback to build an even better product. This week you'll be hearing about visual Studio 2010...(read more)

Eli's SharePoint 2010 Resources

2009-10-19T15:32:00Z

SharePoint 2010 Resources: The Beta Version Bookmark this page! Today we're still in "pre-release" mode, some come back and watch us grow. Between the SharePoint Conference 2009 and the public beta in November, this site will provide links to all the information you need to prepare for SharePoint Server 2010 and WSS 4.0. To have your posts and articles included, just contact me through the links at the side of this page. See you in SharePoint! What's Here This is a hub for SharePoint Server 2010...(read more)

Upcoming SharePoint events and conferences

2009-09-30T22:04:00Z

Thanks to everyone in the terrific crowd at my TechDays session in Toronto, and to everyone who stopped by to chat throughout the day. While attendees will be able to get the deck, the source code and a recording of the presentation in a few weeks (steps to connect will be sent to you by e-mail), earlier versions of both the source ( CodePlex:WSPSolution ) and the deck (originally developed by fellow MVP Rob Bogue ) are out there already. In November and December TechDays Canada continues with stops...(read more)

SharePoint Web Part Error: "Could not load the required type"

2009-08-26T22:08:00Z

Solution: Declare the class public. I mean seriously, you missed that? More surprising than not getting any hits for this message on Bing or Google is not catching the problem myself for the past [insert embarrassing amount of time here]. Serves me right for going manual and ignoring my own project templates. Even better, I hand-coded my own .webpart file so the WP only broke when I added it to the page. My first clue should have been when it didn't appear on the Web Part Gallery's New page (where...(read more)

Building and Packaging SharePoint Solutions

2009-07-31T03:25:00Z

In my last post I described a strategy for: Planning SharePoint Solution Packages . In this post we'll construct a sample solution template, use that template to construct a real solution, package this as a WSP, and finally (once you have many WSPs) wrap the entire process with a routine to automate the build. You can download the sample code from the WSPSolution project on CodePlex. Let's get started. The strategy uses Visual Studio 2008 to build the assemblies and WSPBuilder to generate SharePoint...(read more)

Toronto SharePoint User Group Wednesday, July 15: Feature Sets and Alerts

2009-07-14T15:05:00Z

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso...(read more)

Toronto SharePoint Saturday coming up July 11, 2009

2009-07-08T17:25:00Z

If you haven’t registered yet for Toronto SharePoint Saturday then you ONLY have a couple days left until the event. The schedule has been posted on the site and can be downloaded directly: SPS TO Schedule . Join SharePoint architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Toronto's SharePoint Saturday , on July 11, 2009 at Microsoft Canada on 1950 Meadowvale Blvd in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada . SharePoint Saturday will be an educational...(read more)