Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Man, I feel like a small child, I'm getting so excited!! Anyway, download the beta here:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

At the time of writing the Beta 2 bits of 2007 Microsoft Office System are not yet available for download, but on the Microsoft download center you can already find some 2007 Office System related stuff:

• 2007 Office System Beta 2 Administrative Templates (ADM)
• 2007 Office System: How Do I ScreenCasts
• Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Update: InfoPath 2007 Beta Support
• 2007 Office System Document: UI Style Guide for Solutions and Add Ins
• 2007 Office System Document: Lists of Control IDs
• 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta: Send a Smile to Office Feedback Tool
• Project 2007: Software Development Kit

[Via Patrick] The release of Beta2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System seems to be imminent. The SDK's for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) are ready to download.

• Windows SharePoint Services V3: Software Development Kit
  The Windows SharePoint Services V3 (Beta) SDK is a preliminary release for solution providers, independent software vendors, value-added resellers, and other developers to learn about the new Windows SharePoint Services platform. It features conceptual and "How to" articles, sample code, and preliminary programming references. The Windows SharePoint Services V3 (Beta) SDK will be updated for the released version of Windows SharePoint Services V3.
• SharePoint Server 2007: Software Development Kit
  The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Beta) SDK is a preliminary release for solution providers, independent software vendors, value-added resellers, and other developers to learn about the new SharePoint Server 2007 enterprise application and platform. It features conceptual and "How to" articles, sample code, and preliminary programming references. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Beta) SDK will be updated for the released version of SharePoint Server 2007.

I love reading SmartPart success stories! Matt Ranlett has a nice one: "So I've just wrapped up a quick little demo of how easy it is to code for SharePoint. Since the focus is on easy, and they're not yet 100% sure if we'd be using SharePoint vs a make-your-own ASP.Net 2.0 site, I decided the best way to go is to use the SmartPart and show off how you can write normal old ASP.Net code and still get it to show up in SharePoint. Since we're thinking about an ASP.NET 2.0 site and everyone wants to write ASP.NET 2.0 code, I really had to use the Son of SmartPart, which includes the ability to display 2.0 User Controls and 2.0 Web Parts in SharePoint.  Since this is only a demo, I knocked up a quick little user control that replicates a report we have here.  To get SoSmartPart to "see" a user control, all you have to do is drop the .ascx into a UserControl directory on your SharePoint server.  I did that and PRESTO!  My control shows up in the list of available user controls in the SmartPart toolbox area.  I select the desired control and hit Apply.  BAM - error.

It turns out that you can't use the easy drag/drop data access components in a UC and get it to show up in SharePoint - maybe it has something to do with how the page gets rendered.  Whatever.  Change all those components to ones created dynamically in code (what's that, 5 lines?) and everything started working.  I showed this off to my demo audience and everyone is deeply impressed with how easy everything is.

Then I tell them that we can use ASP Web Parts in SharePoint - which gives us the flexibility to move to a ASP.NET 2.0 site if SharePoint gives us unexpected trouble.  And that the next version of SharePoint will be able to use ASP Web Parts natively without this SmartPart layer...  They love it.  I guess development will start soon."

Thanks Matt! A tip when you use the drag/drop data access controls and components: probably the connection string was will be saved in the web.config. You need to add it manually to the web.config of the SharePoint site. Let me know if you have any problems.

Next month I will present a session on Office 2007 Client Programmability. Registration is free, so register yourself at the MSDN Belux site!

MSDN Evening on Office 2007 Client Programmability
There is a lot of talk about the new user experience available with the forthcoming Office 2007 client products.  But this is not the only innovation in Office 2007. Office 2007 introduces a whole set of new extensibility scenarios for both power users as well as for professional .NET developers.

Join this session to get a 2-hour overview of the most important techniques. We will start with the innovations at the level of the file format. Storing our documents as ZIP/XML-based files will enable plenty of new business scenarios. Then we will show you the new ways of storing XML data into Word documents and use the new content controls to bind to this data. Visual Studio Tools for Office 3.0 is the environment for .NET developers for extending Office 2007 clients both at the document-level as for the application-level. We will cover the building of smart documents for Word and Excel and the creation of (cross) application-level add-ins extending the user experience with custom ribbons and custom task panes. To conclude, an overview on the new ways of extending Outlook 2007 is on the agenda covering the consolidated object model and extensions via form regions.

When & Where  
• Thursday, June 22, 2006 from 18.00 till 20.30
• Registration starts at 17.30
• Lamot Congres- en Erfgoedcentrum, Mechelen

[Via Mike Diehl] Hehehe, I like this one! But it's also very true: think about your schema's, get people involved and get them to think about the schema's as well. This will save a lot of time (trust me: been there, dont that).

BizBalk is what Biztalk developers do when someone proposes a change to the schemas.

Thanks to Maurice we know that WSSv3 has been signed off Beta 2 last Monday. Also the last few days quite some Microsoft guys and girls have been raving about the fact that Word 2007 Beta 2 can be used to create blog posts. So the whole SharePoint and Office community is holding their breath for the moment Beta 2 will be available to download. Officially there is no fixed date but Don (another MS employee) gives us another hint (and I quote): "This is in Beta 2 which will be available externally in the next week or two". Let's hope this information is accurate! :-)

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] One of the pain points of SharePoint 2003 (especially Windows SharePoint Services), is the lack of navigation possibilities. It’s quite hard to find out which sub sites are created under a WSS site. Also when you’re on a WSS site, you don’t have any clue or way to navigate to the parent site hierarchy. With a small amount of customization however, it’s possible to solve these issues. In my SharePoint classes I always show how to create a breadcrumbs web part and drop-down navigation web part. For a pre-fabricated solution, check out Tom’s tree navigation web part. In SharePoint 2007 these web parts become obsolete, navigation is available everywhere. First of all, breadcrumbs are everywhere! Take a look at the screenshot below; it’s displaying a Contact list on a site. Notice the breadcrumbs to navigate back to the site.

When we drill down to the list item itself and edit the list item, the breadcrumbs will allow the user to navigate back the list item, the list and the site! I’m not going to display all the places where you can find those breadcrumbs, but they are really everywhere!

On site level there are also a couple of new options. First of all you can specify if you want to show the quick launch on the left hand side of the site’s home page. Additionally you can enable a tree view.

When you enable this tree view, it will show all document libraries and lists of the current site. The screen shot below is taken from a sub folder in a document library; notice that the sub folder item is bold in the tree view.

This is the first part of the navigation features in SharePoint 2007, in the next part I will focus on navigation between sites. So for now, navigation in SharePoint 2007 yet another SharePoint relief!

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] Document Libraries in SharePoint are great for doing document management. Once of they key concepts in document management is the ability to check out documents while editing the document. This will prevent other users from making changes at the same time. Check out functionality is available out-of-the-box in SharePoint 2003 Document Libraries. The only problem is that users are not forced to check out a document when making changes. There is however a workaround, but it involves editing the ows.js JavaScript file. (for more information see the MSD2D tip).

In SharePoint 2007 by default a Document Library doesn’t force checking out the document either. When you click on a document, you’ll get a pop-up asking if you want to open the document in read-only mode, or if you want to make changes.

But the good news is that you can make the check-out required before being able to edit a document. It’s very easy to do so, just navigate to the versioning settings page of the document library and set Require Check Out property to Yes.

When a user now clicks on a document, another pop-up will show where can be specified to open the document in read-only mode or to check out and edit. When the user chooses to edit the document, optionally he can specify to make the document available offline.

From the dropdown attached to a document, the user can also choose to edit in Word …

… which will bring the following pop up. So; forced check out: yet another SharePoint relief!

Last month I spent some time with a customer discussing their SharePoint implementation, during these sessions they brought the following product to my attention: 80-20 Retention Server. It has been available for a couple of months (I know I’m a little bit behind compared to my fellow bloggers Mark and the other Mark, but it’s interesting enough to mention once again. Basically 80-20 Retention Server is a product that handles the life cycle of documents stored in SharePoint 2003. 2007 Microsoft Office System is still quite far on the horizon, so this product nicely fills up the gap. I haven't got any hands-on experience, but it looks very promising!

From their site:
For organizations using Microsoft SharePoint that need to manage the retention lifecycle of electronic documents and email, 80-20 Retention Server is a free enterprise software solution that automates the retention process by applying information retention policies as part of everyday business processes. 80-20 Retention Server enables organizations to index, link, store, search, access and ultimately disposes of records stored in SharePoint over their complete lifecycle.

What is Retention and who needs it anyway?
Records Management or retention is just a way of describing the process of managing the storage and eventual disposal of business records. A business record is evidence of what the business does. Many of the documents in SharePoint Team Sites are likely to be business records: Things like Project Plans, Purchase Orders, Financial Statements and Personnel Files are all records. Most businesses are now required to keep business records for defined time periods and be able to produce them on request to a regulator or a Court.