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Feb
08
Published: February 08, 2010 17:02 PM by
Kathy Hughes
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Presenting at Sydney (Australia) SharePoint User Group, Tuesday 16th February, 2010, from 5:30pm onwards.
Come along to discover the capabilities of how to work with data sources and discover some tips and tricks on how to make your SharePoint sites come alive and for some REST'ful insights!
Jan
26
Published: January 26, 2010 19:01 PM by
Todd Bleeker
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 This rocks! Microsoft has released a SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 evaluation VHD complete with everything including Visual Studio 2010 and Office 2010 installed and ready to go. Download this excellent developer resource here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c51819b-3d40-435c-a103-a5481fe0a0d2 However, the post says that you'll need 50GB to install the two Hyper-V VMs. 50GB, Yikes! That said, my developer VM running Windows 7, SPF 2010 only, non-domain, non-standalone on top of a full SQL Server 2008 install is nearly 30GB. Thank God for large external 2.5" drives. <Todd />
Jan
26
Published: January 26, 2010 15:01 PM by
Paul Schaeflein
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While I wish that I needed to circle the globe to do so, I am presenting for the Global SharePoint Users Group next week. This is a virtual group, organized by Eric Harlan (@ericharlan) when he is not planning ski trips. I will talking about Powershell for the SharePoint Developer. While Powershell is not new, it is new to most SharePoint folks. Registration is required to get the Live Meeting information.
Jan
25
Published: January 25, 2010 14:01 PM by
Bill English
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Registrations for the SharePoint Best Practices Conference will open on March 1 at www.sharepointbestpractices.com. This event will be help August 24-26 with a post conference on Friday, the 27th. We'll be updating the web site and getting going on lining up speakers and topics for this conference. Be sure to include the SharePoint Best Practices conference in your line up of educational events this year. It will be held at the Reston Hyatt, outside of Washington, DC.
More details will follow as they become available.
Bill English, MVP
Jan
21
Published: January 21, 2010 09:01 AM by
Paul Papanek Stork
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In a post entitled “Time for a Change” a few weeks ago I announced my decision to leave Mindsharp and return to the world of fulltime consulting. At the time I hadn’t decided whether that meant a fulltime position with a consulting firm or restarting my own company called Don’t Pa..Panic Software. I’ve spent the last month talking to a number of companies and I’m happy to announce that I have accepted a position as a Senior SharePoint Architect/Lead Consultant with ShareSquared. 
I’m really excited to be joining the ShareSquared staff. It means that I’ll continue to work with some of the best and brightest talent in the SharePoint community, just like I did at Mindsharp. I’ll be working with people like fellow SharePoint MVPs Maurice Prather and Gary Lapointe and other SharePoint notables like Keith Richie. I’m honored to be invited to join such a talent pool. So, if you are you looking for a team of SharePoint experts, then ShareSquared can help ... drop us a note.
Jan
16
Published: January 16, 2010 08:01 AM by
Mike Walsh
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Note: All of the addresses of the KB / Articles - 2007 Products / MS / Non-MS Articles below were valid at the time I added them to the WSS FAQ site and to this file. I can't guarantee that they still are.
(Items are added to the WSS FAQ throughout the week so you will find new items more quickly by checking at www.wssfaq.com (wssv3faq.mindsharp.com) daily.)
From 10th - 16th January 2010
NOTE: Amendments to KB articles are now only listed when a version is x.0. MS no longer change the dates of KB articles when version changes are minor.
I.1 2007 KB Articles
New
ZIP files do not appear in the Upload Multiple Files on Vista (ver 7.0)
11th January 2010
Modifed
None
I.b Forefront KB Articles
New or Modified
None
I.c InfoPath 2007 KB Articles
New and Modified
None
I.d SPD 2007 KB Articles
New or Modified
None
II. Articles - 2007 Products
New
A. Office 2007 Server Products
TechNet Misinformation: How NOT to use Kerberos for SharePoint Authentication (Spencer Harbar, Consultant)
12th January 2010
B. Other Office 2007 products
Microsoft Forefront Server Security for SharePoint 10.x Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 (ver 6.0.5000.0)
14th January 2010
C. Other relevant products
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition VHD (ver 2.0)
14th January 2010
Modified
None
III WebCasts (+ PodCasts, On-Line courses) for 2007 Products
None
IV WSS v3 FAQ
New and Modified
None
V WSSv2 KB Articles (plus SPS 2003 Hot fixes)
New or Modified
None
Jan
11
Published: January 11, 2010 08:01 AM by
Penny Coventry
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Cross posted from: http://www.sharepointdesignerstepbystep.com/Blog/
I'm presenting a session this Thursday, 14th January 2010 at Intelligent Decisioning Ltd Offices at Nottingham. The session is on "Branding SharePoint Sites: Using the browser and SharePoint Designer 2007/2010". The first session will cover what's possible in 2007 and then after the break I'll briefly cover what's happened to branding in 2010. After which, there will then be some 'tales from the trenches' from Sam Dolan, aka @PinkPetrol, on SharePoint Designs and Nikki Ashington on Accessibility.
I have some SWAG that I've brought back from TechEd 2009, North America, to give away, so make sure you attend.
Sign up at http://suguk.org/forums/thread/21839.aspx
Location:
Intelligent Decisioning Ltd Offices
Strelley Hall,
Nottingham,
NG8 6PE
For full directions please see the following link http://www.id-live.com/ (and click 'Contact Us')
And as usual, there will be a SharePint event event afterwards, at the Broad Oak pub, down the road in Strelley Village, where everyone is welcome.
Arrive around 6 pm for a 6:30 pm start.
[Update: 19/01/2010: Link to write up of meeting together with links to slide decks and other information http://macraem.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/suguk-nottingham-14th-january-2010/]
Dec
23
Published: December 23, 2009 12:12 PM by
Christina Wheeler
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Since the official release of Internet Explorer 8 many people are having problems with their custom branding for their SharePoint sites. The way IE8 decides its rendering engine is based on certain criteria in your code or Master Page. IE8 will attempt to render a site as follows: If it sees a valid DocType declared it will attempt to render the site in IE8 Standards Mode If it doesn’t see a DocType it will attempt to render the site in quirks mode (otherwise known as pre IE7 rendering mode) To correct this problem there are two different meta tag options: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" /> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" /> The first meta tag (IE=7) will force a page to render in IE7 mode no matter what. The second meta tag (IE=EmulateIE7) will force the page to render as IE7 would have rendered it historically. The difference between the two is that the EmulateIE7 meta tag will force the browser to look for a DocType before rendering in IE7 mode and if it doesn’t find one it will render in Quirks Mode. If adding the meta tag to your Master Page make sure it is added first in the <head> before the CSS. META Tags and Locking in Future Compatibility
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc817574.aspx
Dec
20
Published: December 20, 2009 10:12 AM by
Corro'll Driskell
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Corro'll Driskell December 20, 2009 Happy holidays to all, I am Corro’ll (Corel) Driskell, a SharePoint Architect on the SharePoint platforms. As many of you know I do many things around the SharePoint platforms and found it difficult to pick a starting place since my involvement on the TAP program. So, I wanted to kick off my blogs, referencing the SharePoint 2010 platform and its tools, with SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta). I will post a number of blogs, as a part of this blog series, referencing the many features of SharePoint Designer 2010, such as, the new User Interface (UI), the ribbon, and a number of other features. Bottom line, this blog provides an overview focusing on the UI of SharePoint Designer 2010. This is not a deep dive into the capabilities of SharePoint Designer 2010 (BETA). Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) allows Designers – non-programmers - and, encourages, Developers, and I mean encourage, to build web based applications on SharePoint’s latest platforms (SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010). To start, you must locate SharePoint Designer 2010 in the Microsoft Office application group – its default location. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 1 One of the great things about the, new, SharePoint Designer 2010 experience is the initial start. Immediately, the user (Designers and Developers) is provided visual feedback upon the start of the application. It is my experience that the loading is rather quick versus the experience with the previous version, SharePoint Designer 2007. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 2 After SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) initially starts, you will notice that there are two primary focuses. The user has the option to Open a SharePoint Site or Create a New SharePoint Site. The new initial UI is a far step from the traditional experience of SharePoint Designer 2007. In fact, the user does not need to browse around the interface attempting to introduce them to the application. It is all there front and center. In contrast, the fact that there is an option to use SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) on the My Site is discouraging. In another blog posting we will discuss the new features available on the, new, SharePoint 2010 platforms that afford the SharePoint administrators and Site Collection Administrator better control now is not the time to dive into those features, also, we will focus on the various options in more detail in a future blog as a part of this series. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 3 After, either, Opening the Site or Creating a New Site, the user is presented with the Site Setting information page. Of course, the most notable change, in the SharePoint Designer 2010 UI, is the presentation of the, new, Ribbon. Again, I will dive deeper in the various features afforded by the Ribbon in a later blog as a part of this series. The Settings Page provides a significant amount of information , such as, the Site Information, Permissions, SubSites, also known as Webs, Settings and Customization. The fact that this Designer Dashboard, yes, I called it a dashboard, and no it isn’t Microsoft’s official terminology, is forthcoming with quite a bit of information. This information was, either, lacking or wasn’t as easy to obtain in SharePoint Designer 2007. Again, we will dive deeper into many of the features during this series in a future blog. Although the tab interface is not new to SharePoint Designer 2007, I find the tab interface in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) a bit more inviting and user friendly. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 4 Lists and Libraries are nested in a simple view in SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta). It is more similar to a report versus a hierarchical structure, as leveraged in SharePoint Designer 2007. Also, I want to encourage you to focus on the changes in the context of the Ribbon’s interface as we navigate from the Site Settings page. Of course, we can witness a heavy use of the bread crumbs in the SharePoint Designer 2010’s interface. The bread crumb was presented as a simple navigation control in the SharePoint Designer 2007 interface. Again, there was an emphasis on the hierarchical structure. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 5 Workflows are also presented in a report form. The Workflows’ report provides summary information referencing workflows leveraged by the site or web. In the SharePoint Designer 2007 interface, Workflows were presented nested in a Workflow library or folder, depends on whom you ask. Again, there is an emphasis on the actual artifacts’ hosted on the SharePoint 2010 platform. Of course, there is a significant amount of new features for SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) and its capabilities to build flexible workflows. Again, we will dive deeper into those capabilities through-out this blog series. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 6 The Site Pages provides summary information about located in the Sites Pages Library. The Site Pages Library is used to create and store pages for a specific Site or Web. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 7 The Site Assets provides a reports view of files that are included on the pages of a Site or Web. In the SharePoint Designer 2007 UI, the storage locations for files included on the pages were stored in a number of locations, such as, the images folder. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 8 The Content Types page provided a summary report about the various collection of content types, leveraged by the Site or Web, to establish consistent management of content. Immediately, you will find information, such as, Group, Parent, Source and Description. Most importantly, the UI provides quick access to manage the various content types. SharePoint Designer 2007 did not afford users this type of reporting feature. We will explore this new feature further as a part of this blog series. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 9 The Site Columns UI provides a summary report referencing a collection of columns available to Lists, which includes, Column Name, Type, Group and Source. In the SharePoint Designer 2007 UI we did not have a central presentation of the linked columns for a Site or Web. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 10 The External Content Types summary reports provides information, such as, Display Name, Name, External System, Type and Namespace, about External Lists, also known as SharePoint Lists, that exposes data from various back-end repositories – databases, web services and other Line-of-Business applications. The beauty of it all is that this feature is provided in the SharePoint Designer 2010 UI. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 11 The Data Sources summary report provides information, Name, Type and Description, about the various data sources available to the Site or Web. The report is categorized based on type, for instance, Lists and Libraries. Again, this is a great presentation in the UI so that users are not required to leverage the hierarchical structure to obtain the information similar to the SharePoint Designer 2007 UI. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 12 The Master Pages summary report provides information, Name, Title, Content Type, Size, Modified Date, Modified By and Comments, about all of the artifacts, Master Pages, Page Layouts, images and xml files, found in the Master Page Gallery. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 13 The Site Groups summary report provides some information, Group Name and Description, about the various Groups with, some level, of access to the Site or Web. You have to ask yourself, where are the contributor settings. Again, we will dive deeper into the many changes in a later blog. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 14 The SubSites summary reports provide a list of the Sites or Webs within the hierarchical structure. The report provides information, such as, Site Name, URL and Modified Date. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 15 Finally, the All Files provides a summary report of all content for a Site or Web, which includes the SubSites. The information provided includes, Name, Title, Size, Type, Modified Date, Modified By and Comments. The significance here is users have a more efficient way to ascertain the information about the artifacts that make up SharePoint 2010 sites. 
SharePoint Designer 2010 (Beta) UI 16 The overarching selling point is that SharePoint Designer 2010 encourages rapid building and deployment of, web-based, solutions that meet business needs, leveraging the various features – lists, content types, workflows and a number of other features – of an organization. Here is the catcher, there is no-coding. Included in this blog series, I will work to cover the various use cases and features.
Dec
08
Published: December 08, 2009 13:12 PM by
Kim Lund
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Depending on who you are in your organization, you may either LOVE SharePoint or HATE it. There are many promises on what SharePoint will deliver; however, have those promises become a reality in your organization? The answer may be the key to why your colleagues, employees, and end users use SharePoint or create work-arounds to avoid taking the time to understand it.
If you find that user adoption of SharePoint is avoided or slower than anticipated in your working environment, you are not alone. Many students that I have trained, consulted and listened to have expressed their pain points for SharePoint adoption. As I am blessed to work with and interact with many SharePoint users I have discovered and witnessed what works and what doesn't for successfully increasing people's use, acceptance, knowledge and confidence of SharePoint.
Pain Points
Some of the Pain Points I've heard expressed as it relates to slow user adoption are:
- Employees Unaware of Powerful SharePoint Features
- SharePoint Deployed Without Governance
- User Community Not Involved in Planning SharePoint Site Use
- End Users Expected to Create or Manage SharePoint Sites
- Inefficient Use of Document Management Features
- Uncertainty that Confidential Information is Secure
- Added Training Needs Burden Staff
- SharePoint Training Not Based on End User Needs
- Help Desk Unable to Answer SharePoint Questions
- Change in Organizational Culture Required for SharePoint to Be Accepted
How to
The key to overcoming these pain points and increasing end user adoption of SharePoint and achieving better buy-in from users at large is to develop a plan that includes:
-
Governance planning that includes:
- Key members from various business units - not just IT
- Focus on the vision and long-range goals
- Ability to adapt to changes in requirements
- Relevancy to needs of the organization
-
Taxonomy planning that includes:
- Governance team that will own and manage the taxonomy
- Classification of information according to categories
- Focus on the business, not on SharePoint
-
Communication plan that includes:
- What SharePoint is
- Governance and taxonomies for use in SharePoint
- Building excitement for what SharePoint will be able to do in their environment
- How it fits into the existing ecosystem of technologies
- What it might be replacing
- Discovering and building SharePoint advocates
-
A training plan that provides succinct training that:
- Focuses on the needs of individual users
- Available when needed
- Holds users accountable
- Teaches the technical "how-to" about SharePoint
- Shares the reasons and best practices for using SharePoint
- Incentivizes employees
- Provides key competency certifications that encourage and build confidence when key concepts are mastered
If any of these important steps are missing in a SharePoint adoption plan, you will find that the effectiveness of the other steps will be less. For example, if you have not provided governance and have a poor taxonomy plan, use of SharePoint will be inconsistent. When this occurs, even if users receive useful training, there will be confusion about the proper use of SharePoint features. Even if governance and taxonomy planning has been completed but this information is not communicated to employees, there will still be confusion and inconsistency with the use of SharePoint. Lastly, if you have planned for proper governance and taxonomy, communicated to your employees that SharePoint is coming, but then fail to train employees, end users will not know how to utilize the new features provided by SharePoint.
For this reason, in order to receive the anticipated return on investment (ROI) of a SharePoint deployment, the key for success in usability and user adoption is tied closely to implementing a plan that includes governance and taxonomy, communication to employees, and relevant training.
First Get Help!
If you think the suggestions included in the previous section are a tall order, you are right. You are probably not staffed to handle all of the steps that are recommended and you likely do not have the SharePoint expertise in-house to accomplish this plan. Mindsharp has the expertise, services, and products to help you implement all four key areas mentioned above. The biggest struggle for any company is a well thought out, effective training plan that meets the needs of the end user population.
That is why we developed UserVersity to deliver an end-to-end turnkey SharePoint communication and training program. We work with your staff to compliment the talent you have in-house, and then provide expertise in areas you may not have. UserVersity provides communication tools and a variety of training tools including:
- Adoption Manager
- E-learning
- Online or in person instructor-led training
- Quizzes
- Certifications
- Incentives and motivation for employees you would like to target
We are excited to be the first to offer such a flexible solution that encompasses all of your needs and provides a customized approach to training.
If you would like to learn more about this you can also attend a free 30 minute webinar about Increasing End User Adoption and about our UserVersity program. Please check out our website at http://www.mindsharp.com/Default.aspx?top=TRAINING&left=END_USER_ADOPTION
The following chart summarizes how Mindsharp and UserVersity can assist organizations when dealing with one or many of the pain points highlighted in this paper.
|
Pain Point |
How Mindsharp Can Help |
|
Pain Point 1: Employees Unaware of Powerful SharePoint Features |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides a communication plan that informs users about the key SharePoint features. Our communication plan includes e-mail templates, posters, and additional resources as requested. |
|
Pain Point 2: SharePoint Deployed Without Governance |
Mindsharp has SharePoint experts that can guide your governance and taxonomy planning or provide you with resources to assist your team in planning these important components. |
|
Pain Point 3: User Community Not Involved in Planning SharePoint Site Use |
Mindsharp can help obtain feedback about who should be part of the team that develops your SharePoint governance and taxonomy plans. |
|
Pain Point 4: End Users Expected to Create or Manage SharePoint Sites |
Mindsharp's UserVersity includes training in various formats that provides end users with the information they need to create and manage sites. |
|
Pain Point 5: Inefficient Use of Document Management Features |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides training on correct document management including topics such as:
- Creating and saving documents
- Adding metadata
- Searching
- Collaborating
- Using check in and check out
- Version history
Users can choose training that meets their needs and fits into their busy schedule. |
|
Pain Point 6: Uncertainty that Confidential Information is Secure |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides training for end users on the topic of security. We provide thorough coverage on how SharePoint security works, as well as how to add or remove users from the SharePoint groups and permission levels. Users will gain confidence that they are securing their content appropriately. |
|
Pain Point 7: Added Training Needs Burden Staff |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides an adoption manager that guides you through the program so you can make training decisions confidently. The advantage is that you are working with a SharePoint expert with years of training experience. |
|
Pain Point 8: SharePoint Training Not Based on End User Needs |
Mindsharp's UserVersity is structured to provide specific training for every role and function in your organization to ensure competency in appropriate SharePoint functionality. UserVersity provides over 90 different lessons that simplify SharePoint by breaking training into six key functional competencies. This allows end users to focus on the aspects of SharePoint that relate to them currently, and then grow into other areas as their use and knowledge of SharePoint expands. Training can be repeated when knowledge of a skill needs to be refreshed or reinforced. |
|
Pain Point 9: Help Desk Unable to Answer SharePoint Questions |
Mindsharp's UserVersity provides multiple ways to assist your Help Desk including:
- Mindsharp has the leading SharePoint experts on staff who can answer questions from your Help Desk employees.
- UserVersity has help desk crash courses to provide your IT and Help Desk staff with a thorough understanding of SharePoint.
- The Help Desk can refer employees to specific computer-based training modules that address the user's problem. This is another way to provide the needed help without the Help Desk employee guiding users through each step.
|
|
Pain Point 10: Change in Organizational Culture Required for SharePoint to Be Accepted |
Training with Mindsharp's UserVersity helps users understand the value of using SharePoint functionality. It goes beyond showing the "how" to teach the best practices and answer the "whys" in SharePoint. This approach helps increase end-user adoption and satisfaction. |
Summary
SharePoint is one of the fastest growing corporate technologies on the market today. In fact, SharePoint has surpassed anticipated sales within Microsoft but has the frequency of its use in your organization surpassed expectations? Just because your organization has deployed SharePoint does not mean it is being used successfully.
I have identified some of the reasons end user adoption of SharePoint is slow in companies and offered ways to change that slow adoption. If companies create a SharePoint adoption plan that meets end user needs, SharePoint will be a tool they depend on to work smarter and faster.
If you would like to learn more about this you can also attend a free 30 minute webinar about Increasing End User Adoption and about our UserVersity program. Please check out our website at http://www.mindsharp.com/Default.aspx?top=TRAINING&left=END_USER_ADOPTION
Dec
04
Published: December 04, 2009 15:12 PM by
Daniel Galant
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
So, like many other folks out there I’ve been playing with the new SharePoint Designer 2010 public beta, and also like many of you, I’ve been liking a lot of what I’m seeing. Still, I keep running across issues that I really hope get fixed before the release. This one has been plaguing the product since the early betas and I really hope it gets addressed before final release. As of now, SharePoint Designer cannot connect to a SharePoint site if you have any additional host headers attached to the site. For many organizations I would say this is a big limitation. As an example, say you have created your portal application at the following address, portal.acmeman.net. Now, for the sake of your internal users you decide to add the header of simply portal, so that your users don’t have to enter the entire FQDN when accessing the site. Your IIS would look something like this, 
Unfortunately, now when you try and open the site from Designer you’ll get the following error, 
Clicking OK will then present you with this, 
The fix is to simply remove the offending additional header and the site will once again become accessible. Again, I will point out that this is still a Beta product and I have every confidence that Microsoft will have this working by release. None the less, I wanted to put this out there and raise some awareness of the issue amongst the Designer community.
Nov
15
Published: November 15, 2009 12:11 PM by
Ben Curry
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The topics are:
| Session 1 |
Installing SharePoint Server 2010 |
| Topic Description |
Much has changed from the 2007 version of SharePoint. I'll be discussing a server farm installation of SharePoint Server 2010 to include the new Shared Services model (service applications), how those will upgrade, and limitations of 2007 and 2010 integration. Just for fun, I'll also give you a quick demonstration of building service applications and configuration using Central Administration and PowerShell! |
| Session 2 |
Enterprise Content Management Upgrades in SharePoint Server 2010 |
| Topic Description |
Wow! We have some really cool features that are new to SharePoint Server 2010 - DocumentIDs, robust Information Management Policies, and Document Sets. BUT, one of the most anticipated features is the centralized taxonomy and content type hub. Come see a live demonstration and early best practices for creating a content type hub and managed metadata service. |
My apologies for posting this late. I hope to see you there!
Ben Curry
Oct
19
Published: October 19, 2009 17:10 PM by
James Curry
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
But for DBAs, you will have to set configure it. So no worries about SharePoint doing SP evilness.
Oct
19
Published: October 19, 2009 11:10 AM by
Rick Taylor
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My first session at SPC09 is now done. It was Part 1 of 2, "Upgrading to SharePoint 2010".
At first I was worried, because I was competing with breakfast being served at the same time. With 1 minute to go, there was one person in a seat. Bill English said, "Preach and they will come." He was right. I started talking to one person and 5 minutes later, the chairs were all full.
Part 2 will be tomorrow at 12:30pm. Need to make sure my demos work!
Jul
15
Published: July 15, 2009 13:07 PM by
Dave Pileggi
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
The first few minutes of my presentation, I will be doing at the Best Practice Conference. Trust me, it gets even better, but you have to attend to get the rest! 
Back in the day, a literary Labyrinth was called a Choose your Own Adventure Book. I actually have somewhere in my parents house the very same book that is pictured above. Reading these was an adventure. Did you choose the right path? Putting your finger(s) in multiple pages, just in case you did not choose the right path. Planning your SharePoint environment is very much the same way, there can be multiple out comes, with lots of twists and turns along the way, and depending on the choices you made earlier, could force the outcome later. Page 1 & 2 |  Your company hears about this SharePoint “thing.” It sounds like a good idea. You and a bunch of co-workers are standing around the water cooler talking about it. “Hey Sarcastic Sally, how is the paper your working on?” “As good as an ulcer,” Sally retorted. | “Did you hear about that program called SharePoint?”
”Stop smiling, the light shinning off your teeth is going to blind me. Yeah, it sounds cool.”
”Maybe we should look at the business problems it could solve before we move forward with it?” you ask yourself out loud.
Sarcastic Sally Scoffs. “It’s a cool application, let’s just move forward. You are such a worry wart.”
Go to page 21 if you agree with Sally
Go to page 37 if you want to follow your own idea | Sally scares me, I think we better listen to her. However, I am not sure if this is the right way, so lets put our finger in here JUST IN CASE. Page 21 & 22 | 
| Your SharePoint environment is installed and takes a life of its own, causing chaos and mayhem everywhere in your company. You are blamed for the IT nightmare and sent to a small town in Idaho to flip burgers.
THE END | Oh no! I like burgers, but not that much. What happened! In reality, this is a very common mistake. More companies than not introduce a application into their environment without understanding the problems they are targeting to solve. This can be fatal to the success of releasing the application, especially if it is SharePoint. You have to understand the new workforce you are dealing with is Generation X, Generation Y, and the Lost Generations who have had Internet for the better part of their lives. They are the My Space, Facebook, iGoogle, My Yahoo, My MSN, instant messaging, tweeting generations. They know how to use we based applications very well. SharePoint being a web based application will be instantly second nature to them to use. That being said, if you do not know what business problems SharePoint is going to solve for your company, they will make those choices for you. There is a LOT of power with just out of the box features and web parts that they can take advantage of. At first glance this may sound like a good thing, however, there is one caveat. If you have legacy applications or applications that are not as intuitive to use, user friendly or “cool” to look at this new workforce can and will use SharePoint to replace those applications. This will then spread your information over multiple systems causing search ability issues and segmented data. This is not the desired effects SharePoint should have. SharePoint is extremely powerful, and I will dare say more powerful then Microsoft even realizes. This is a good thing, but has to be managed properly. In time those legacy applications may very well be absorbed by SharePoint based applications, but you want to keep it under control. Spotting the business problems SharePoint is designated to solve is the first step in a healthy deployment. Good thing we put our finger in the page. Lets go back and try the other path… That's, page… 37. Lets go! Page 37 & 38 | 
You shoot back, “No, I think it will be a good idea to figure out the business problems we want to solve for the company.” “Like what?” asks Jeff from accounting. Sally and you watch him drain half the water cooler bottle of its contents into his water bottle. “Well, Sally already gave us one. She is having trouble collaborating with her team. The paper they are working on isn’t as easy as it should be. So collaboration is a big one I would think.” “Oh, sorry to hear that Sally, but we have our own problems,” Jeff informed us. “How so?” Sally inquired. | “Well, we have all of these reports we are forced to do, but they are so time consuming, I don’t have time to do what I am supposed to do.” Jeff wrinkled his nose. “The enterprise version of SharePoint has Excel Services and BI capabilities,” I offered. “That could be another business problem we could solve initially.” “Do you have an executive sponsor?” Jeff wondered. “We are IT, why would we need that?” Sarcastic Sally snapped. “To get funding and support.” Jeff said defending himself. Go to Page 13 if you want to get an executive sponsor.
Go to Page 25 if you agree with Sally | I say we go with Sally, she still scares me. Lets go to page 25, but I am going to put my finger here again, JUST IN CASE! Page 25 & 26 | 
| Oh no, SharePoint has been considered a rogue project. Lack of funding has landed us in trouble. We are forced to use an old Commodore 64 and two TRS 80’s to try and build the environment. The project and idea has died before it could even go forward. A walk to the water cooler for you and Sally is now known as the Walk of Shame. THE END | Sally did it to us again! What happened?! Find out at the SharePoint Best Practices conference. If you want more information about the Best Practices Conference click on the banner below. Hope to see you there, as the line up of speakers is UNBELIEVABLE! Two of which are the authors of the book that inspired this entire event. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Best Practices published by Microsoft Press. 
May
22
Published: May 22, 2009 05:05 AM by
Enrique Lima
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Something has just come to light, here is an extract of the posting found on the SharePoint Team Blog ...
"During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users." Jeff Teper/Microsoft Corporate VP/SharePoint.
Here is the link to the full text on plans to resolve and manual resolution of the issue.
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx
Mar
04
Published: March 04, 2009 22:03 PM by
Tami Bolton
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
Folders can be used for large list support.
But...
01. Folders organize content when a item is saved, rather than when it is displayed
02. Folders/subfolders make finding an item difficult
03. A folder obscures the number of items it contains until the Folder is opened
04. Sort, filter, group, and paginate can only be applied to items within one folder at a time or to the entire list
05. It is more difficult to move an item between two folders than to change the value of a property
06. A single list item can have multiple properties but cannot be presented in two folders
07. A list item can have a required property but a folder can never be required
08. The browser URL is limited to 255 characters; nested folders make the URL unnecessarily long
09. Properties on a folder cannot be used to sort, filter, group, or paginate list items within that folder
10. New columns are added to the list items within the folder but not the folder itself
Jan
23
Published: January 23, 2009 10:01 AM by
Daniel Webster
Powered by: Mindsharp and Summit 7
There are many manual methods for making a central search center available across your SharePoint implementation:
· Adding to either Global (Top Nav Bar) or Local (Quick Launch) navigation in each site collection and/or site.
· Adding Links to pages
· Teaching Users to add to My Links list
In this post, I would like to suggest three methods of automating the publication of centralized search center access without having to touch individual SharePoint sites. The first two preferably use Active Directory group policies but are achievable for users on machines that are not members of your domain.
Add as Search Provider for Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer now supports multiple Search Providers for its built-in search box as shown in the figure below.
Your users can use the built-in tools to create a search provider for your central search center or you can provide a file which they can use to place the correct settings in their local registry.
To create this file, place the following test in Notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\{1EF4B245-681F-493C-9EF7-7AAE8262CC81}]
"DisplayName"="Portal"
"URL"="http://moss01/search/Pages/Results.aspx?k={searchTerms}&s=All%20Sites"
"Codepage"=dword:0000fde9
Replace “Portal” with the name you want displayed. Quotes are required.
In the URL, replace http://moss01/search/Pages/results.aspx with the location of your search results page. You could also change or remove the default scope (&s=All%20Sites).
The save the file with a .REG extension.
To share the file via email or in a document library, you may need to save the file with a .TXT extension and instruct your users how to download the file, change the extension back to .REG and import into their registry.
Add to Internet Explorer Links Toolbar
Although some users do not like to give up the space occupied by Internet Explorer’s Links toolbar, I am addicted to it for the sites that I use frequently. Also, it can quickly be activated / deactivated from the Tools menu as needed as well as collapsed / expanded.
Like most configurations of Internet Explorer, the contents of the Links toolbar can be pushed out to members of the domain using group policies. I find the easiest method of creating this policy is to configure IE in the desired format on a machine from which I can open the domain (or OU) group policy. Then I can simply import the local settings into the group policy and tweak them within the policy.
However, for those users whose machines are not members of your domain, the links shortcuts are contained in a folder in their favorites (C:\Documents and Settings\username\Favorites\Links). So your options are to train them how to go to the site and create the shortcut on the links toolbar or save as a Favorite in the Links folder. I suppose that zipping a links folder and sending out to users to place in the Favorites folder but that would probably be harder to teach them than saving as a favorite.
Add Link to Site Actions
Making the link to the site available to all users globally across your SharePoint farm is relatively easy even for administrators who do not normally write code.
Additions to the Site Actions menu are deployed as features. For the non-programmers, do not stop reading at this point. We are just going to do some simple cut and paste.
As long as we understand the basic components of a feature and have the basic code for two XML files, we can easily modify the menu.
A feature requires a folder containing two files, Elements.xml and Feature.xml. The folder should have a name that identifies the feature to administrators and must be unique within the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder. In my example, the folder (and feature) is named EntSearch for Enterprise Search.
The contents of the Elements.xml file are:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<CustomAction Id="CustomWebManagementPage"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
GroupId="SiteActions"
ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/search.gif"
Sequence="1000"
Title="Enterprise Search Site"
Description="Use this site for Enterprise and Internet Searches.">
<UrlAction Url="HTTP://moss01/search"/>
</CustomAction>
</Elements>
The Sequence entry controls the placement of the link on the menu list.
The Title controls the menu item name and the Description text appears below the menu item name as shown in the figure below.
The UrlAction Url is the link that is opened when the menu item is selected.
The contents of the Feature.xml are:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Feature xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" Id="BEA70765-63BB-4bd1-927C-E72C3559D07D" Title="Enterprise Search Site" Description="This site is customized for Enterprise and Internet Searches." Scope="Farm">
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location="Elements.xml" />
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>
The crucial line in this file is the Feature xmlns= line. In this line the Id must be a unique guid. Since we are not developers and probably do not have Visual Studio installed, we can use http://createguid.com/ to generate a new guid. The Title and Description need to be identical to those in the Elements.xml. for this feature, we want the scope to be Farm so that it does not need to be activated at lower levels. Farm level features are automatically activated.
Place the folder containing your two modified files in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES folder. The feature is then deployed with the following command line:
"c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm.exe" -o installfeature -name "EntSearch" –force
Now across all sites and pages in your farm, your Site Actions menu contains an item as shown below:
Remember that a Site Actions menu does not appear unless a user has access to a link in the menu due to security trimming. So, for many of your users this may be the first time they have seen this item.
Hopefully, this post will at least cause you to think about some options for making your central search center more accessible for all your users.
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