Archives
-
U2U Email Snippets for Outlook 2007 and SharePoint 2007
My colleagues at U2U have been busy writing a really nice OBA (Office Business Application) allowing information workers to reuse text snippets in email messages. Download and more info here. Great work guys and girls!
-
TechEd Barcelona was great!
Two weeks ago I spent a lovely week in Barcelona together with the complete U2U gang, to attend TechEd. It was great to see lots of old friends, students and other familiar faces! Together with my buddy Patrick I had a session about integrating SharePoint with ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight, I'll dump my demo code on this blog in the next couple of days. For some great pictures check Leon Zandman's Flickr set, he even has some shots of me and Patrick on stage. Below you can find a slideshow of my pictures of that week.
-
Tool of the Day: WSPBuilder for SharePoint
What a coincidence: this week I'm in Aarhus, Denmark for a SharePoint 2007 Development Training, and I've stumbled upon a very nice SharePoint tool, created by a Danish guy: Carsten Keutmann. The tool is named WSPBuilder and can be downloaded from the CodePlex site. Basically this tool can build a SharePoint solution file (WSP) in minutes. You just have to copy the contents for the WSP to a corresponding structure (e.g. 12\template\layouts, 12\template\features\yourfeature), run the tool and you've got yourself a splendid SharePoint solution!
-
Adding Breadcrumb Navigation for SharePoint Application Pages
UPDATE: Also read my follow-up post: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2008/04/16/adding-breadcrumb-navigation-to-sharepoint-application-pages-the-easy-way.aspx
-
My DevDays Sessions on MSDN Showtime!
[Thanks Yves for the tip!] Last summer I delivered two presentations on the Dutch Developer Days in Amsterdam. You can see both sessions from the MSDN's Showtime site:
-
SharePoint Feature: Add Column from Existing Site Columns menu item
Question: what is the easiest way to add a column to a list or document library in SharePoint 2007?
Answer: navigate to the list, from the Settings menu, choose Create Column.Question: how do you add an existing Site Column to a list or document library?
Answer: navigate to the list, from the Settings menu, choose List/Document Library Settings, scroll down to the Columns section and click Add from existing site columns.In the beta versions of SharePoint 2007 there was an easier way to add an existing Site Column to a list or document library because there was another menu item in the Settings menu: Add column from existing site columns. For those of you who are nostalgic about the beta's of Office 12, and want to have the menu item back: I've created simple feature to add the menu item:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction
Id="{F32CD702-0391-4b55-A8D6-7653650DEF95}"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
GroupId="SettingsMenu"
RegistrationType="List"
Sequence="0"
ImageUrl="_layouts/images/menuaddcolumn.gif"
Title="Add column from existing site columns"
Description="Add an existing site column to store additional information about each item."
Rights="ManageLists"
>
<UrlAction
Url="javascript:window.location= '{SiteUrl}/_layouts/AddFieldFromTemplate.aspx?List={ListId}&Source=' + window.location"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>The feature uses the Javascript tric which I explained yesterday (this feature was actually the reason for it). If you want to download the complete feature, packaged in a nice SharePoint Solution (WSP); just click here!
Here's a screenshot of the result:
-
Developing SharePoint 2007 Web Parts - Book Excerpt
The nice guys over at WROX have published an excerpt of my web part chapter from the Real World SharePoint 2007 book. It's only a small piece of the complete chapter, discussing the basic web part development stuff.
-
Using the Current Page URL in the UrlAction of a SharePoint Feature
With the introduction of the feature framework in SharePoint 2007, developers have some great opportunities to customize and enhance nearly everything in SharePoint. One of the things that's quite easy to do with the help of a feature, is to add and/or replace functionality in the web user interface of SharePoint site. This was typically very hard to do (in a nice way) for the previous version of SharePoint (remember having to edit a javascript file to add a menu item in the ECB?).
-
The Book: Real World SharePoint 2007
Two weeks ago the book Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs became available, I had the honour to work with a bunch of really smart guys and girls to create this book. There are 16 chapters in this book, all written by a SharePoint MVP based on his/her personal experiences and expertise. My chapter dives into web part development, the basics of web part development are covered as well as advanced scenarios like connectable web parts and the SmartPart.
-
Let's get started again!
Wow, it has been a long time since my last post, five months to be precise! So it's about time to get started again... my colleagues have been bugging me a lot lately.
-
Welcome Fran!
I haven't blogged a lot since two weeks, but this time there's a reason: last week I became the very proud father (1st time!) of our beautiful daughter Fran. Last week was very hectic but now everything is stabilizing (at least that's what I hope); she is getting to know us and we are getting to know her habits. Everything they say about having children is true: it changes your life ... instantaneously and dramatically. But she is so beautiful, for more pictures check her "blog" (created in WSS v3 of course), it's in Dutch only.
-
Belgian Developer & IT-Pro Days
Next week the Belgian Developer and IT-Pro Days will take place in Ghent. It's one of the most important Belgian Microsoft events and this year the opening keynote will be presented by David Chappell; one of my favorite speakers! You can still register, so don't hesitate to get two (or three) days full of technical sessions!
-
Wow, I'm a BV (... in the Belgian blogosphere)!
I would like to thank the Academy, the audience and ... :-)
-
Event Handlers in SharePoint 2007
Brian Wilson has started a nice series on event handlers in SharePoint 2007, first episode: Everything you need to know about MOSS Event Handlers.
-
Kevin Starts a Blog!
Pfew, I took me months to get him convinced, but finally it happened: another U2U colleague has started to blog: Kevin DeRudder! Kevin is working on ASP.NET, AJAX, ... and recently was rehabilitated to the SharePoint religion as well!
-
Using the AJAX Control Toolkit in SharePoint
To get started with the ASP.NET AJAX extensions in SharePoint 2007, check out my previous posts:
-
New version of SmartPart, now with "AJAX Connections"
As you may know, last week I released a version (still in beta) of the SmartPart which supports the ASP.NET AJAX extensions. For more information about this version of the SmartPart, see my previous blog post.
-
SmartPart for SharePoint - ASP.NET AJAX Support
There has been a lot of buzz around SharePoint support for ASP.NET AJAX the last couple of days, resulting in some nice posts, even from the Microsoft guys. If you are new to the topic; some required reading:
-
More on SharePoint 2007 and ASP.NET AJAX
Mike Ammerlaan (PM for WSS) stepped up and posted a detailed article about the integration of ASP.NET AJAX and SharePoint.
-
SQL Server 2005 SP2 RTM
Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 2005 has RTM-ed! Why do you read SQL related stuff on my blog? Well this service pack includes the long awaited Reporting Services web parts for SharePoint 2007 (WSS v3 and MOSS 2007). From the what's new page:
-
Virtual PC 2007 RTM
I just noticed that Virtual PC 2007 is now available! Get it from the MS download site (free!).
-
Create UDC Files with InfoPath
This is cool and funny, it's like a wizard to generate a wizard! Nick Dallet has posted an InfoPath form which can generate a UDC file. More details and download on the InfoPath team blog:
-
Photowalking in Brussels (Belgium)
Robert Scoble and Thomas Hawk (famous photographer) introduced the concept of "photowalking". From Wikipedia's definition of photowalking:
-
The U2U SharePoint Team in South Africa!
It's not the first time that both Patrick and myself are in Africa at the same time, but it's the first time that we are at the same time in the same country: South Africa! This week Patrick is in Cape Town for the MS EMEA SharePoint 2007 Tour and I'm doing the same thing in Johannesburg.
-
Scott Guthrie: "ASP.NET AJAX support in SharePoint 2007 coming later this year"
Yesterday I attended one of the sessions Scott Guthrie presented at the VISUG event in Mechelen (Belgium). In this session Scott covered some of his ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX tips and tricks: cool stuff. When started talking about ASP.NET AJAX the audience (+300 people!) started asking some questions, in my turn I asked Scott about using ASP.NET AJAX in SharePoint 2007. Scott confirmed Daniel's statements (not supported, only use the the client side scripts, server-side controls don't work, etc), but more interesting; he told the audience that ASP.NET AJAX will be supported in SharePoint 2007. How is Microsoft going to pull off this trick? <quote>ASP.NET Ajax will be supported in SharePoint when we release a service pack for SharePoint, we will ship it later this year.</quote> Great!!
-
Forms Based Authentication in SharePoint: Web Administration Tool
One of the big new things (among tons of others of course) in SharePoint 2007 (both WSS v3 and MOSS 2007) is the fact that SharePoint now uses the authentication provider model of ASP.NET 2.0. This means that you have store the user accounts and passwords in another data source than Active Directory (the only option in SharePoint 2003), for example a SQL Server database. The good news is that SharePoint is relying on ASP.NET 2.0 for this, so if you know how to enable Forms Based Authentication in ASP.NET 2.0 sites, you also know how to enable it in SharePoint 2007! Enabling it is one thing, adding users to the database that stores the user accounts is another thing. Techies probably know lots of ways to create user accounts: stored procedures, sql statements, Visual Studio's Administration Site, ... But out-of-the-box there is no UI available to actually do that in ASP.NET 2.0/SharePoint 2007.
-
Joel on Site Collection Sizing
Mister "SharePoint Administration" himself, Joel Oleson, has written a nice post about Site Collection sizing in SharePoint 2007.
-
Web Based Workflow Designer for SharePoint by Nintex
[Via Angus Logan] Nintex, famous for their workflow solutions for SharePoint 2003, announced Nintex Workflow 2007. If the screenshots are for real: very impressive!
-
Nifty InfoPath 2007/SharePoint 2007 Feature
Every once in a while you bump into a new feature in the 2007 Microsoft Office System and you think "hey! this is really cool!". This happened to me last week when I was playing around with InfoPath 2007. To be able to share with you my little aha erlibnis (credit for this term goes to my former math teacher), let's assume you've got following InfoPath form: the U2U Course Order form. A very basic form with Customer, Email, Course and Date fields, and a repeating table with student name and email fields.
-
ASP.NET AJAX and SharePoint 2007: SharePoint AJAX Toolkit
ASP.NET AJAX has just RTM-ed, cool! Even cooler: Daniel Larson has released the SharePoint AJAX Toolkit on CodePlex, which uses the ASP.NET AJAX framework. This sounds very promising!
-
WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 SDKs Available (RTM)
[Via Bill Simser] Required for every SharePoint developer:
-
SmugMug goes Ajax: Interesting Pitfalls
[Via Thomas Hawk, Techcrunch] (Why do photo sharing sites need to have weird names: Flickr, SmugMug, Zooomr?) People who know me a little bit probably know that I love to take photographs, lots of photographs. My inner geek of course wants to do geeky stuff with all those pictures, so every picture gets: a) tagged and described (metadata stored in the picture itself so you never ever have to type descriptions, tags again) b) geo-tagged (store the coordinates where the picture was taken in the metadata) c) stored for eternity (I have a pro Flickr account, allowing unlimited upload and storage, it's my off-site backup). Why do I use Flickr, instead of other photo sharing/storing sites? Well when I started (a little over one year ago), Flickr was the only big one that exposed an API. So as a developer I could see my Flickr account as my "picture data store", accessible via a Services Interface; this means you are never "locked in", if a feature is not available you can write your own solution (eg batch download). Flickr has a very large community in general, but also a very large developer community: their API even has a .NET wrapper (kudos to the people who maintain this!) and the amount of tools is incredible.
-
Scott Guthrie @ VISUG Belgium
(It's all over the Belgian blogosphere, but I wanted to mention it as well!) If you want to see one of the "big shots" in the Microsoft .NET team, who happens to be an excellent speaker, you should come and visit the next VISUG meeting with Scott Guthrie! Visit the VISUG site for full details and registration (it's free!). Scott will present two sessions:
-
How to get a List of Web Parts on a Page
Recently I got a question from a student how to get a list of all the web parts (in code) that are displayed on a specific SharePoint Web Part Page. This could be useful if you would like to close all the web parts at once, add web parts programmatically etc. By using the SharePoint object model this is pretty easy, especially if you want to retrieve that list with code running in a web part. The WebPartManager property of the WebPart base class, gives you access to a collection of all the WebPartZones available on the page. Once you've got the zones, you can get the web part instances by using the WebParts property. The following web part code will display a small list of all the web parts found on the page, including the name of the web part class and the web parts zone.
-
Visual Studio Template for SharePoint Solution Packages (WSP)
[Via Mark] Every SharePoint developer knows that creating SharePoint Solution Packages (WSP files) for deploying your web parts, event handlers, features, ... is the way to go: it allows the SharePoint administrators to easily deploy the customizations, even scheduled deployments and multi front-end-webserver deployments are supported. But every SharePoint developer also knows that creating Sharepoint Solutions Packages is ... wel, let's put it nicely: not a lot of fun to do. :-)
-
How-to Enable Scheduled Publishing in a MOSS Collaboration Portal
Today I got an interesting question in the U2U Sharepoint 2007 DevCamp in Copenhagen which I couldn't answer straight away (this happens more than I'd like it to happen). After some searching and with the help of one of the attendees we finally managed to answer the question!