Eli Robillard's World of Blog.

ASPInsider Eric J. Smith has kept busy over the past several months working on a major upgrade to his CodeSmith toolset and released version 3.0 on May 16. While you'll be happy to learn that version 2.6 will continue to be available for free, both versions of 3.0 (Standard and Professional) are now paid products. I think this is a great move for both Eric and developers by helping ensure continued development of the tools, and the prices remain a bargain. I've been on two projects now where we saved literally weeks of development time by customizing CodeSmith's out-of-box scripts to generate our Data Access Layer's stored procedures and C# object code.

The revamped CodeSmith Studio is a wonderful environment. Where earlier versions were basically attractive text editors, this is a fully-featured, VS-like IDE for CodeSmith complete with debugging and Intellisense. It's a dream to use, I know I won't miss using TextPad for template development.

If you haven't looked into code generation for .NET yet, now is a great time. Go ahead and start with the free version to get an idea of what a time saver this can be, and check out the CodeSmtih Forums to see the cool stuff produced by this active, creative community.

Rod Da Silva is launching a BizTalk User Group in Toronto on Tuesday night. Rod is the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Practice Lead here at Eidenai Innovations, and his skill and experience are part of the reason I decided to come work at Eidenai. This should be a great group, come check it out.

The BizTalk User Group is meeting downtown at the Cambridge Suites Hotel and there will be two presentations at this inaugural meeting. The first, "Understanding the Trend Toward Service Oriented Architectures," is a great overview of what's been going on in the industry over the past year or so. If you haven't heard the buzz around SOA, this is a great opportunity to learn what the advantages actually are.

The second presentation will then build on this by discussing "Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 – An Overview & Demo from an SOA Perspective." If you haven't learned how BizTalk fits into the enterprise, come check it out.

Note that if you'd like to start a BizTalk User Group in your own area, Rod is designing the btug.biz website so that he can host information for all BTUGs. Drop him a line if you'd like to get involved.

A piece of a current project is to build an InfoPath form that will be published to a website rather than a SharePoint library. The developer on the project configured NTFS and the Web Application to post to the folder, and made sure Front Page Server Extensions (FPSE) were enabled. But, he still couldn't publish. I figured it was a WebDAV thing since this is now the "preferred" way to publish over HTTP and sure enough, this led to the solution. I found a great article on enabling WebDAV for IIS, now we're off.

Along the way I found a decent page from the InfoPath help which describes best practices for publishing forms. Thanks to the thinking-out-loud blog for writing something that turned up in a search.

Today while building out some demo sites for Eidenai I went hunting for SharePoint Site Definitions and found that in the real world people happily still think in terms of scenarios rather than execution.

The first find was Mart Muller's Tam Tam WikiSharePoint. This is a Wiki implemented a a collection of WebParts. The Tam Tam WikiSharePoint web part  is an entry point which creates the list (a thesaurus) and displays results. The Search WikiSharePoint web part provides a search box, and Tam Tam WikiSharePoint TreeView displays the thesaurus as a tree. All pretty cool.

The next find was the Collutions CBlog for SharePoint available on GotDotNet. The nifty part here is that Jim Duncan used the app to produce his own blog. I also see Bill Simser on the project members list. I had the chance to finally meet up with Bill and chat about SharePoint over lunch in Calgary last week, it was a fun conversation.

Also, just yesterday at the TSPUG meeting someone asked about setting up Forms Authentication for SharePoint sites and unfortunately not much has been written on the topic. Then today I see a new entry on GotDotNet entitled "Forms Based Authentication on SharePoint Technology Sites Using ISA Server." There's some good timing.

Speaking of Site Definitions, I was going to provide links to a couple previous examples including the Sarbanes-Oxley Accelerator which installs to SharePoint. Unfortunately it no longer appears on microsoft.com (though the marketing remains), and apparently lives on a GotDotNet project site instead. Which would be fine if it didn't require membership to see what's going on or grab bits. Last year at TechEd we were told "not only will work continue for SOX Accelerator, in fact we're planning future versions of it." I guess the speaker didn't know back then that he would be expected to write that next version in his spare time.

I'd take this as a sign that you should probably grab the Business Scorecards Accelerator while it lasts. The other accelerators are pretty handy too, and I've heard good things about the Sales Proposal Acelerator, though it isn't a SharePoint component. Enjoy.  

I'm pleased to announce that I've started into a new role as SharePoint Practice Lead with a company called Eidenai Innovations. Eidenai is a Microsoft Certified Gold, Managed, and Integration Partner and in 2003 became Microsoft Canada's #2 subcontracted development partner. The team here is absolutely first class. Right back to our initial meetings it was clear that this is a company with strong vision and unmatched skills, and it's an honour to be in their ranks.

My role in a broad sense is to lead the Enterprise Knowledge Management practice with a focus on SharePoint Products and Technologies (SPT). Integration is a key theme of SPT, and much of my work at Eidenai will be to architect, implement and refine best practices for SharePoint not just as a product in itself, but as a single interface for people to access and collaborate on knowledge anywhere in the enterprise. It's an interesting, challenging road ahead and an ideal place to continue the arc I've taken over the past 20 years. Here's to it.

The next TSPUG meeting is tomorrow at 6:00pm, and I'm really looking forward to this one. Michael Herman of Parallelspace will be presenting the most common pain points and solutions for SharePoint. Michael is one of the few people -- not just in Canada but anywhere -- with knowledge this deep and I'm sure it will be a great experience.

One of the things that people enjoyed about the first meeting was the chance to kick off with a group Q&A. This is sort of like what used to happen at old-school user group meetings, where the point of the thing was to share our experiences and learn from each other. We're going to keep it as part of the routine, so bring your questions.

[Click to create your RSVP Request for the May 18 TSPUG Meeting.]

Feedback received from our launch last month will really drive the topics over the next few months. Current topics for upcoming meetings include workflow tools, backup & restore scenarios, and the SharePoint job market. If you'd like to present a case study or another topic based on your own experience, drop me a line!  

I'd also like to thank CDI Education and APress in advance. CDI is our headline sponsor and generously provides facilities and catering, and APress has donated a number of great books and t-shirts for our prize drawing.

[Visit the TSPUG site to see the upcoming schedule, obtain directions, grab past slide decks, or to register for the next meeting.]