Archives
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External Data & InfoPath: Server Upgrade and Migration Tool
Getting external data into an InfoPath form is extremely easy and creating rich electronic forms is easy as well, so lots of power users and developers are using InfoPath to capture structured data. Publishing those forms is also very easy: in the InfoPath client, just click the Publish menu item and go through the wizard. Et voila, the form is ready to be filled out in a SharePoint document library by the end users. The fun starts when those power users or developers are not allowed to deploy directly to the production SharePoint servers: probably the locations of the external data is different on your development/test server than on the production machine (especially if you automatically submit data). In InfoPath 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007) this can be solved by using Universal Data Connection (UDC) files. The InfoPath knows where to find the UDC file (relatively to the location of the form) and the UDC file tells InfoPath where to data is located. So the location of the data is not stored anymore in InfoPath, but it's stored in the UDC file. The result: you can change the location without having to change the InfoPath form.
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Cool SharePoint Tool: SharePoint Inspector
[Via Renaud Comte, aka CAML Boy] I haven't tried this tool myself but it looks like a potential must-have-tool for every SharePoint developer's/administrator's toolbox: SharePoint Inspector [download here].
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Where are the Document-Level Templates in VSTO 2005 SE?
Once in a while I get the remark that there are no document-level templates available in Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 SE (VSTO 2005 SE). Typically people that used to work with Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 are worried since they can't find their beloved templates for creating Word documents, Word templates and so on in Visual Studio. Actually the download page for VSTO 2005 SE gives the answer/solution:
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SmartPart Featured on CMS Wire
Brice Dunwoodie has written a nice article on CMS Wire about the latest release of the SmartPart (aka the Return of the SmartPart).
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OpenOffice Will Support Microsoft's Office Open XML format
[Via ZDNet Belgium] Novell is going to include Microsoft's Office Open XML Format in OpenOffice! Read the full press release in Novell's Press Room.
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Announcing the Return of the SmartPart
Finally the latest version of the SmartPart is here: the Return of the SmartPart, also know as SmartPart v3, also know as SmartPart for SharePoint 2007. For those of you who are new to the SmartPart: the SmartPart is an open source web part that can host any ASP.NET Web User Control. What is the advantage of creating web parts by making use of the SmartPart? Well if you are familiar with the "traditional" web part development technique you probably know that you have to write lots of code, there is no designer support in Visual Studio. The SmartPart allows you to create a Web User Control (ASCX) in Visual Studio by making use of the designer, and deploy it to a SharePoint site. This release of the SmartPart is targetted for SharePoint 2007, both Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSSv3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Since the initial release almost 40.000 SharePoint developers have downloaded the SmartPart, get your copy today (for free of course) from the GotDotNet Workspace (in the releases section)! For those of you who have attended my session about web part development on TechEd: Developers in Barcelona, this is the version that I showed over there.
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Deploying the Return of the SmartPart
To deploy the Return of the SmartPart to your SharePoint 2007 environment, you have two possibilities:
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Virtual PC 2007 Beta: Keyboard Problems (repeating keys)
Last weekend I took the challenge of installing Windows Vista and Office 2007 on my main laptop (Toshiba Tecra M4 Tablet). The installation of Windows Vista went quite smooth, the only problem that I had was an issue with my wireless network at home. I'm using a Belkin router which has a setting called "Turbo Mode" and it seems that Vista doesn't like that one. Luckily I also had a wired connection because it took a while before I figured that one out. :-)
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U2U Goes/Went Africa!
Due to a funny coincidence Patrick and I were both in Africa last week! Patrick did a SharePoint course in South Africa and I was in Tanzania, also for a SharePoint course. Btw, did you know that the photo on top of my blog was taken in the famous Kruger National Park last year (original picture can be seen here)?
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TechEd Photos Uploaded
Just like Patrick and Joris, I’ve upload my TechEd photos to my Flickr account, you can find them in this set. Btw, I’m really a big Flickr fan (I’ve got a Pro account) and the recently added geotagging features very cool. The thing that makes Flickr my preferred choice above SmugMug and others is that fact that they have an API. There’s even a .NET wrapper which I recently used to create a mash-up with Flickr and Microsoft Virtual Earth (more on that later if I can find some time to finish this pet project). Anyway, here are some of my favorites:
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Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Ready to Download!
Thursday, November 16, 2006. Remember this day as the day that SharePoint 2007 was released! You can download Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 (WSSv3) from the Microsoft Download site (for free of course).
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Office 2007 Client Applications Available on MSDN
I just got back from an extended week in Barcelona, so I don’t know how long this thing is already available but you can download the Office 2007 Client Applications from the MSDN Subscribers Downloads!
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Seriously Cool Stuff: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WSS v3
I just got back from a really cool Tech Ed session: OFF205 Office Developer 101: How to get started building Office 2007 solutions. Although the name doesn’t give it away, it also covered some SharePoint stuff. The first part of the session discussed some basic Office client development topics (Hello World ribbon buttons and custom Task Panes) but the interesting stuff was in the second part: Alexander Malek talked about the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services v3. It was released earlier today, see Alexanders post, and Joris’ (aka Jopx) post (he was sitting next to me in this session and told me it works for B2TR). (download link).
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Nice Timing: 2007 Microsoft Office System Is Golden
Perfect in line with the start of Tech Ed: Developers in Barcelona Spain: 2007 Microsoft Office System Is Golden. So the long awaited RTM versions should hit the MS Download site really soon now… :-)
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TechEd 2006 Live Coverage: Patrick and Ted on Stage
I’m sitting here in room 119 were Patrick and Ted are doing the first part of their WSS Pre Conference session. So far Ted has been doing the speaking and Patrick has played the demo monkey (he’s really good at it!). Here are some pictures and a small movie of their performance.
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Custom Edit Forms for SharePoint 2007 Lists
What a coincidence: last week a student asked a question that I couldn’t answer straight away and probably at the same time somebody posted a blog post solving the question! The question was how to customize the edit form that you get when you create or edit a list item in a SharePoint 2007 list (EditForm.aspx). In SharePoint 2003 you could do this trick by editing the page in FrontPage 2003, when your right clicked on the control on the page you could actually break the control into different controls. Optimistically I tried to do the same thing in the SharePoint Designer, although the right click menu didn’t show to option that I was looking for (there went my street credibility for that course :-) ). Kristian Kalsing explains it on this blog post how this works in the 2007 world:
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MOSS 2007 Training @ Lisbon, Portugal Pictures
Last week I did a Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 Course at the Microsoft Portugal Campus in Lisbon. The training room was pretty crowded: more than 30 enthusiastic students! Even though it was a public holiday on Wednesday in Portugal (and in Belgium) everybody showed up, thanks everybody! Anyway there were some avid readers (even some fans!) of my blog that asked to post some pictures of the course. So here they are! Kudos go to everybody that was involved: it was a great week!
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Tech Ed: Developers, I’m there!
Yesterday evening I arrived with my pal Patrick in the beautiful city of Barcelona for Microsoft Tech Ed: Developers. The complete U2U team will be present and we will have a boot as well. Make sure to drop by to say hi, and maybe get one of the beloved U2U goodies (say that Jan sent you).
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Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System RTM!?
Could it be that the first (to my knowledge) download has been made available for the 2007 Microsoft Office System? The download page doesn’t talk about beta so this could be the real thing!
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my.Blog.Restart();
Wow, it has been a long time since my last blog post! For those of you wondering: your browser is not broken since my blog displayed the same page for more than 2 months, I’m still alive and kicking, I’m not stuck in China and I’m still knee-deep in Information Worker technologies at U2U. Those guys have kept my really busy the last couple of months and made it possible to travel to lots of great cities to “evangelize” the 2007 Microsoft Office System: Zurich, Dubai, Jeddah, Lisbon, … Thanks for all the people attending the gigs, it was great to show you around in Office 2007!
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Leaving for China - OOF till August 15th
Finally my holidays have arrived! After a great week in Barcelona (SharePoint 2007 Bootcamp) I’m leaving today for a trip trough China. Until August 15th I will have very limited email access, and don’t expect to see any blog posts. Enjoy your summer holidays!
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Workflow Developer Starter Kit for WSS v3 + More
Fresh new goodies on the Microsoft Download site:
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Try Office 2007 Online: Beta 2 Test Drive
Sure the 2007 Microsoft Office System looks very sexy, but I know lots of people who are quite hesitant to install it on the machine that they use during their everyday life (and they are probably right). So you’d like to try out the beta bits without messing up your main operating system and without the hassle to install and configure the server components, this is for you:
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YASR: Editable List/Document Library Pages
One of the more common things to customize in SharePoint 2003 (both WSS and SPS) are the pages that display lists or document libraries. Users end up on those pages when they click on the list/document library in the Quick Launch, or on the web part title that’s displaying the list/document library data. Those pages can be customized but you need to build your own site definition or you need to use FrontPage.
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Vista Look for Office 2007 in Windows XP
I’ve been running Beta 2 of the 2007 Microsoft Office System on my main laptop for a couple of weeks. At first I was a little bit hesitant to install the Beta of my main machine since I actually need to get some real work done as well (sometimes I feel like a real Information Worker!). But so far I only experienced some minor glitches, so I can uninstall the old, trustworthy Office 2003 bits from my machine (I went for the side-by-side installation of Office 2007). Some of my colleagues are running Vista Beta2 as their main operating system but I didn’t dare to do that yet. But those guys have the really slick looking black/gray UI in Office 2007, old-fashioned people (like me) have the blue UI.
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Office 2007 Train-the-Trainers Course at Brussels
This week we had the pleasure to organize a first Train-the-Trainers (TTT) course on the 2007 Microsoft Office System at U2U in Brussels. It was a very international group; 18 passionate trainers coming from all over the world: Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Chechia, Russia, Litva, Marocco. Of course we took the opportunity to show them the touristic side of Brussels as well and let them enjoy some Belgian beers. You can see some pictures over here (scroll down to "Office Development and SharePoint 2007 Train-The-Trainer at U2U"). It was great teaching you guys, and I want to wish you all the luck for your trainings!
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YASR: User Account Look-Ups in SharePoint 2007
Sometimes a very small feature in SharePoint 2007 can mean a big relief for SharePoint users. Do you know the “pain” to add a user to a SharePoint site for example: you need to know the exact account name or the email address. One small typing mistakes will result in an unrecognized user. In the next version of SharePoint this scenario is drastically improved, and resembles a lot the experience that you get in Outlook.
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YASR: Alerts in SharePoint 2007
One of the more popular quirk in SharePoint 2003 (remember the YASQ’s?) was the alerting mechanism. The alerts in SharePoint 2003 are OK at first sight: you can create an alert for a complete list or document library, or just for one item. The problem is that you can only create an alert for yourself. This makes sense if you think of alerts as ‘RSS-avant-la-lettre’. But lots of people would like to create alerts for other users as well. Unfortunately this was not available out-of-the-box, although you could customize SharePoint by installing various (free) web parts to overcome this issue.
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Blogging from Word 2007 to weblogs.asp.net
Probably you already know that you can write/manage blog posts from within Word 2007, when the feature was announced it was all over the blogosphere. Indeed, it’s quite cool! If your blog host is webhost.asp.net and you’d like to blog from Word 2007, this is what you need to do:
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Reducing Fan Noise on my Tecra M4
Since a month or so I’m using a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc as my main laptop (replacing my ‘old’ HP NX9110). At first sight I was quite pleased with the machine: nice big screen with a high resolution, good CPU power and not too heavy. Since this is my first tablet, this ‘coolness’ factor is of course also playing a role! Later on I got to know the not-so-nice features of this machine: battery life is not that great (2h) and sometimes it seems that the machine is going to take off. When the CPU usage bumps (even very short) the fan reacts immediately causing some very loud noise. When you’re in a VPC the noise is almost always there.
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.NET 3.0 = WinFX !?
Mmm, now that everybody is used to the (pretty cool) WinFX name, we have to learn to say the .NET Framework 3.0. One of the reasons for this name change that's mentioned is to avoid confusion... Now I'm confused! Will there be a new .NET CLR as well, or is the CLR of .NET 3.0 the same as .NET 2.0? Read the details at Somasegar's blog:
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The Future of Visual Studio Tools for Office: Cypress
There's a cool video on Channel 9, covering VSTO for Office 2007:
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YASR: RSS In SharePoint 2007
RSS feeds are great to keep you up to date without the hassle to go and look if information is updated; the new/updated stuff is pushed towards you. In the previous version of SharePoint, there was no support for RSS feeds out of the box. Although it’s possible to add RSS functionality to SharePoint 2003 by installing add-ons, it’s not very straight forward. Luckily in the new SharePoint 2007 RSS feeds are available, and the good news is: it’s enabled by default! When you navigate to a list or document library, you can select the View RSS Feed item from the Actions menu.
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Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 Beta 2 Trial Period Expired
I noticed that I get lots of hits on my blog from people that are receiveing the message "Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 Beta 2 Trial Period Expired" when they install MOSS 2007 on a domain controller. I know the solution has been blogged by other persons, but for the people that ended up on my blog (like you?): you need to download and install the following file:
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Tracking In BizTalk Server 2006
The Health and Activity Tracking tool (HAT) has lost quite some functionality in BizTalk Server 2006 compared to the 2004 version. Actually that's not a bad thing since all the lost functionality has been ported to the BizTalk Server Administration tool. Some time ago I was looking how to enable tracking for a specific message property in BTS 2006, it's not happening in HAT anymore, but in the Server Administration tool! [Source, plus more intresting FAQs]
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U2U Training for Windows Vista
Man, I wish I could follow this training myself! I've seen Peter playing with all the cool stuff: WCF, WF, WPF, ... so much content. Maybe he's also doing some evening sessions for his colleagues. :-)
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Contributor Settings in SharePoint Designer
When you install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), out-of-the box the Contributor Settings will be enabled on your site(s). You will notice this in the SharePoint Designer task pane. By default your account will (probably?) be in the Content Authors group, wich may “restrict the use of some features” as the task pane mentions.
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Where did Workflow go In SharePoint Designer Beta2?
If you have installed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) in the “Beta-2-has-been-released-yeah!” rush and didn’t read any documentation or didn’t watch any webcast, you’ll probably notice that some items have moved compared to Beta 1 and Beta 1TR. I “lost” the menu item in the SharePoint Designer that opened the wizard to create a new workflow. After a couple of minutes I discovered the new location, so let me share that with you. First of all: open the site on which you’d like to create to workflow in SharePoint Designer (File menu, Open Site). Next, in the File menu, click New and select Workflow. Tadaaa!
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2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2 Ready to Download!
Man, I feel like a small child, I'm getting so excited!! Anyway, download the beta here:
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Lots of 2007 Office System Downloads Available
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:
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SharePoint 2007 Beta2 SDK's Available
[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.
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SharePoint Lifesaver
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.
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MSDN Evening on Office 2007 Client Programmability (Mechelen, BE)
Next month I will present a session on Office 2007 Client Programmability. Registration is free, so register yourself at the MSDN Belux site!
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Keep your BizTalk Schema's Static, otherwise ... BizBalk
[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).
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2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2 available "in the next week or two"
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! :-)
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YASR: Navigation in SharePoint 2007, Part One
[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.
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YASR: Forcing Check Out in SharePoint Document Libraries
[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).
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Free Records Management for SharePoint 2003: 80-20 Retention Server
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!
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Offline Support in InfoPath: InfoPathHelper 1.1
Jelle has released the long awaited version 1.1 of his InfoPathHelper component! This version fixes a nasty bug that appears when caching data from a web service. Check his latest post for the download and the source code.
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YASR: SharePoint 2007 Versioning
[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] In SharePoint 2003 you can enable versioning for a Document Library, so SharePoint will store for each document in that library previous versions when the document gets edited. That’s nice, but that’s about it what you get out-of-the-box. Since each version of the document is in fact a complete document (it’s not the delta that’s stored for a version) big documents can take up more space than desired. Just imagine that you have a 1MB Word document for which you have 15 versions, the total size that the document item will use, is 15 MB (15 times 1 MB). So a very common request is to limit the number of versions that is stored in a document library. In SharePoint 2003 there is no out-of-the-box functionality to do that, although it’s quite easy to write a Document Library Event Handler to accomplish this, but you do need to write some code and deploy the solution.
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YASR: SharePoint 2007 Site Columns
[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] If you know a little bit about SharePoint 2003 you probably are aware of the fact that you can add custom columns to a SharePoint List or a Document Library. For example you can add an Importance column to a Document Library so each document in that library can have an Importance value. Probably if you want to do this nicely, you create Choice column so users can select the value for the Importance field from a couple of predefined values (e.g. Important, Very Important …). So far so good, this works fine in SharePoint 2003. But suppose you would like to have this Importance column also in another Document Library or in another List. The only option that you have in SharePoint 2003 is to repeat the creation of the field for the other Lists or Libraries (including defining all the different Importance values). In SharePoint 2007 you can avoid this repetitive work by using a new feature called Site columns. When you navigate to the Site Settings of a site, you’ll see a link called Site columns.
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SharePoint 2007 Goodies: the YASR Series
If you have been working with SharePoint 2003 you probably know the abbreviation YASQ which stands for yet another SharePoint quirk. Those quirks seem to be insignificant at first sight, but they are so important to be aware of if you don’t want to run into serious problems. Just imagine that you (or your sales person) have sold document level security in a content management system built on top of SharePoint 2003. :-)
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Know the SmartPart and Looking for a Job?
Now it’s getting really funny: head hunters are looking for SharePoint Consultants who know how to use the SmartPart. So if you know the SmartPart, and if you’re looking for a new job the following ad.
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SharePoint 2007 Upgrade Scenarios
When talking to customers about the new version of SharePoint, a lot of questions I get are related to moving the existing infrastructure and data to the new version of SharePoint once it gets released. For now there wasn't a lot of (public) information available, but now Joel Oleson has written a nice post about the topic. There are actually three scenarios:
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Where Did My HAT Functionality Go in BizTalk 2006?
Since the last couple of weeks I’m spending again some time with BizTalk. Although there is no official training material for BizTalk Server 2006 available yet, U2U is already offering BizTalk 2006 training. So it was about time to upgrade my BizTalk Server 2004 skills!
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SharePoint 2007 on Mobile Devices
A feature very high on a lot of request lists: Mobile Views in SharePoint 2007. Read more about them on Martin's blog.
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5-day bootcamp on Microsoft SharePoint 2007 @ U2U
Woehoe, finally there are some SharePoint 2007 courses available at U2U! If you are intrested in this exciting new technology: see you @ U2U... Btw, this is also an excellent opportunity to get yourself one of those SharePoint 2007 t-shirts. :-) So, see you at a SharePoint 2007 training at U2U!
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Access SharePoint 2003 Data Offline, For Free!
Last week Colligo Networks has released beta 3 of a cool product called Colligo for SharePoint (see Anthony's post). Basically it allows you to take SharePoint data offline (just like you will be able to do in Outlook 2007).
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Scoble's Personal SharePoint BI Site
SharePoint is a great technology to display Business Intelligence (BI) data in an easy, customizable way. For example Robert Scoble uses it to display the KPI's related to his blog. More information at The Dashboard Spy.
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"WebForm_PostBackOptions is undefined" and Son of SmartPart
I haven't experienced this problem myself, but there seem to be some people get this exception when they use Son of SmartPart to load ASP.NET 2.0 user controls in combination with the Web Deployment Projects add-in. Steve Hartzog blogged about the solution for this problem: add the WebResource.axd to the excluded paths in SharePoint Central Administration. If you want to know how and why, check one of my previous posts. If you just want to get it fixed, below is the summary. I'm going to include this step in the Installation Guide of the Son of SmartPart, once again thanks Steve for bringing this to my attention!
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Visual Studio Tools For Office "v3" - March Community Technology Preview (CTP)
Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2e85132b-7370-4137-a19a-15752ea83952&displaylang=en
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SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Performance Tip: Use SQL Server 2005
[Via Martin] Do you want to increase the performance of your SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Server farm up to 59%? Just switch from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005! More information and test details over here: SQL Server Performance Test Results.
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Roll Up Web Parts in Office SharePoint Server 2007
The SharePoint team blog keeps posting cool stuff: Rolling up information in SharePoint Sites. There will be two web parts to roll up information:
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Free SharePoint 2007 T-Shirts at DevDays BE + NL!
No more t-shirts today!!
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Of SharePoint Nightmares and Dreams...
Oh I love to read this kind of stuff. :-) Check out Steve Hartzog's rave about the SmartPart (see his complete post for the 'nightmares' part):
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WSCF for VS 2005: Schema-Based Contract-First Web Services
I've been using the VS.NET 2003 version of this fantastic tool and now there's a VS 2005 version available! Great work by thinktecture. Get it for free: http://www.thinktecture.com/wscf.
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Windows Live Messenger Invites, Anyone?
If there are still some people who are looking for Windows Live Messenger invites, drop a comment at the bottom of this post. I've got 8 of them, so please don't ask for an invite if you are not one of the first 8 requestors (FIFO), better luck next time!
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Origami Project Revealed
[Via David] It seems that the marketing firm gave away the suprise, since http://www.origamiproject.com isn't telling anything at this point. Bink has some more info. It seems that Origami is some sort of mobile device that can act as a:
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Feedback Requested: SmartPart v2 Breaking Changes
Son of SmartPart version 1.0 has been out there for quite some time now, so it’s time for an update. Since the last release I got tons of questions, feedback and requests, unfortunately they I haven’t been able to answer them all (they keep me very, very busy at U2U). Before I’m going to release the next update, I’d love to get some feedback of the SmartPart community. Let me know if you like or dislike the proposed changes or maybe you’ve got another request?
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VSTO, VSTA and MAF Explained
Do you know the difference between VSTO and VSTA? Did you already hear about MAF? Check out Andrew's latest post! Synopsis:
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How-to: Remove Managed Code Extensions (VSTO) from Documents
This week one of my students asked how he could remove the VSTO extensions of a specific Word document. I never thought about it, but if you give it a little thought, it's quite useful. Just imagine that you have a VSTO Word template solution that allows you to create a document very easily (for example with some custom task panes). Once you're done building the document you may want to save it, and give users that don't have VSTO runtime installed (or don't have access to the extenions) the possibility to open the document (without any warnings). It turns out that's not that difficult, it's even documented on the MSDN site:
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VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects & the SmartPart Sample: Site Collection Search
Last week Patrick already pointed to a nice web part: Site Collection Search for Son of SmartPart. Basically this web part allows you to search through all the sites of a site collection in SharePoint. Typically this feature is only available in SharePoint Portal Server search.
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FlexListViewer: Display Contents of a SharePoint List From Another Site
Almost two years ago (wow, time flies when you're having fun!) I wrote a small article about how you could reproduce contents from a SharePoint list or document library on a site, when the actual list is stored on another site. The trick that I explained was to use FrontPage to handle all the dirty work, but of course the consequence is that you end up with an unghosted page. Now Robert te Kaat, has written a nice web part that can do the same thing: FlexListViewer-webpart is able to display any type of list and can be easily configured, just by configuring the address of a view of the list.
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Web Part Platforms and Development Techniques
Web parts are everywhere today! You can use them today on diverse platforms and you can create them with various tools. The goal of this post is to give a clear overview of the different platforms and development techniques that are available.
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Press Release: Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Expression Web Designer
REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 15, 2006 – As the Internet becomes an increasingly valuable environment for individuals and organizations to share information, collaborate and carry out tasks, the people tasked with building Web sites to support these activities need increasingly powerful and versatile tools to accomplish their goals.
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Press Release: Microsoft Office 2007: Better Solutions, More Options
REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 15, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the lineup of its upcoming 2007 Microsoft® Office system products, previously code-named Microsoft Office “12,” including new and improved suites, applications, servers and services to be available by the end of 2006. The 2007 release is designed to increase individual impact, simplify collaboration, streamline business processes and content management, and improve business insight. The product and packaging lineup is grounded in a deep understanding of how customers’ needs intersect with trends in the workplace. Microsoft will make available both enhanced and new packaging options to make it easier for customers to purchase the solutions that best meet their unique business needs. Read the full press release over here
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Office "12" TAP Training Pictures (Vedbaek, Denmark)
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Ready for my first Office 12 Training
Ok, I’m ready to leave for Denmark (Copenhagen) where I’ll be presenting my first Office “12” training! Or should I say Office 2007? Anyway I’m looking forward to deliver 4 days packed with new features, improvements, … My pal Patrick will be doing the same in Italy this week, so I think U2U is getting at cruising speed for the Office 12 wave!
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SharePoint Web Part Code Snippets for VS 2005
When you want to develop web parts for SharePoint the “traditional” way, it’s good idea to use the Web Part Templates for Visual Studio .NET. These templates will give you a start class to quickly build web parts. Unfortunately these templates are not (yet?) available for Visual Studio 2005. Since Windows SharePoint Services SP2 you can run your WSS sites on .NET 2.0, so you can build your SharePoint web parts with Visual Studio 2005. Given that copy/pasting code is rather cumbersome I’ve create a couple of code snippets for Visual Studio 2005 that will generate code for a SharePoint Web Part. Currently I’ve got code snippets to create:
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SharePoint Web Part Oscars 2005
The Oscar for the best web part goes to ...
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DIWUG: Dutch Information Worker User Group
[Via Mart] Here’s some news for all my Dutch readers (I do have some, right?): there is an equivalent of the BIWUG (Belgian Information Worker User Group) in the
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VSTO 2005 Redistributable Package
Another intresting download: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System (VSTO 2005) Redistributable Package (x86)
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Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide
There's a new version of the Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide available for download (since 1/20/2006). Download here.
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Speaking at Developer Days in Belgium and The Netherlands!
Ladies and gentlemen (living in or near Belgium and the Netherlands): mark your agendas!
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SharePoint Team Blog
Hey, I just noticed that the SharePoint team now has a blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint. Subscribed. Let’s hope the public beta of Office “12” will be coming really soon so normal earthlings can blog about the latest and greatest as well!
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Installing Office "12" Server on a Single Machine
For all the Office "12" Beta testers out there who want to build a nice demo VPC image to show off all the new features: Martin has written a nice step-by-step guide.
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Windows Live Messenger Invites Available
If you are interested to test drive the new Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger 8.0, lots of info on the team blog), drop your email address in the comments of this post. The first three comments with an email address in it will receive an invite. The only thing that I'm really excited about is the fact that you can make phone calls to normal telephone lines (VOIP). My first tests are quite positive, the sounds quality is comparable to Skype (maybe even better). It's not that I don't like Skype, but I want to keep my task bar clean. :-) The only reason that I'm not uninstalling Skype already is that fact that Skype runs perfectly behind almost any firewall (a must-have-feature if you want to phone home from a hotel room). Next week I'll be in Porto for a VS 2005 Touchdown Training, so it will be a nice test!
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Lots of Microsoft/MCE news from CES 2006
If you have some spare time I recommend to watch the keynote of Bill Gates at the CES 2006; quite entertaining if you are interested to know how our digital life will evolve in the digital decade. The most humoristic part was were Bill Gates knocked out Steve Ballmer in a boxing game! (view that part only over here)