Month: September 2007 (Page 2 of 4)

I love mashups and this one is defintely my current favorite!

They’ve equipped 5 of the riders in the race with a GPS tracker, heart monitor, bicycle computer and a radio that continuously transmits readings to the sportsdirector car which then relays the information to some server somewhere. The data is then overlayed a Google Map.

I absolutely love computers!!!!!!!!!!!!

Check it out: http://www.ubilabs.net/tourdefrance/

From Ted Pattison:

I’m thrilled to announce the first course that focuses specifically on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Web Content Management (WCM). That’s right… no general Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 development topics, minimal admin topics, no other MOSS 2007 topics (Excel Services, BDC, Search, etc)… just four days of 100% WCM for developers! Roll up your sleeves, open Visual Studio 2005 & SharePoint Designer 2007, and great ready to sling some Publishing sites out!

I’m delivering this four-day, hands-on, developer focused course through the Ted Pattison Group starting in early July 2007. The course includes twelve (12) modules and assumes that the student has some developer knowledge of WSS v3… but those new to SharePoint are also welcome. What will you get in four days? The course will cover roughly three modules per day:

Schedule of Lectures

1. WSS Development Primer
2. Web Content Management Architecture
3. Authentication & Authorization
4. Master Pages & Navigation
5. Creating Custom Page Layouts
6. Extending the Out-Of-The-Box Authoring Experience
7. Leveraging WCM Web Parts
8. Custom Field Types & Controls
9. Performance Tuning Publishing Sites
10. Creating Custom Workflow
11. Content Deployment
12. Variations

WSS Development Primer

• Overview of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS)
• WSS Capabilities
• Working with Visual Studio 2005 and the WSS object model
• Working with WSS features & the WSS solution package framework

Web Content Management Architecture

• Overview of MOSS 2007: added value on top of WSS
• Overview of Web Content Management (WCM) and Publishing sites
• Creating Publishing sites
• Working with the Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing namespace

Authentication & Authorization

• Additional SharePoint groups and permission levels in MOSS Publishing sites
• Managing permissions
• Pluggable authentication
• Alternative Access Mappings & Zones
• Utilizing multiple authentication models

Master Pages & Navigation

• Creating & editing master pages using Office SharePoint Designer 2007
• Implications of customized & uncustomized master pages (unghosted & ghosted)
• Managing & deploying Master Pages using the structured development approach
• Navigation provider model and SharePoint’s site map data sources
• Customizing the out-of-the-box navigation controls and site map data sources

Creating Custom Page Layouts

• Creating & editing page layouts using Office SharePoint Designer 2007
• Adding and editing field controls and Web Part zones on Page Layouts
• Managing & deploying page layouts using the structured development approach
• Incorporating 3rd party components (including your custom components)

Extending the Out-Of-The-Box Authoring Experience

• Customizing and extending the SharePoint Rich HTML Editor
• Incorporating the telerik r.a.d.editor for Office SharePoint 2007
• Effectively using the edit mode panel
• Customizing and extending the Page Editing Toolbar

Leveraging WCM Web Parts

• Implementing the Table of Contents Web Part
• Implementing the Summary Links Web Part
• Implementing the Content Query Web Part
• Customizing the rendered output of Publishing Web Parts
• Creating and deploying custom Web Parts

Custom Field Types & Field Controls

• Creating custom field types
• Creating custom field controls
• Incorporating custom field controls and types into page layouts
• Deploying custom field types and field controls

Performance Tuning Publishing Sites

• Overview of MOSS WCM performance enhancements
• Implementing and customizing page output caching
• Implementing and customizing disk-based object caching
• Performance techniques when working with the object model

Creating Custom Workflows

• Creating & editing workflows using Office SharePoint Designer 2007
• Creating template sequential and state machine workflows using Visual Studio 2005
• Integrating Office InfoPath 2007 forms into Visual Studio 2005 authored workflows
• Deploying workflows created using Visual Studio 2005

Content Deployment

• Overview of MOSS content deployment
• Publishing content from one environment to another
• Configuring Content Deployment via the browser-based user interface
• Working with Content Deployment using the SharePoint object model

Variations

• Overview of Web Content Management multilingual enhancements and capabilities
• Implementing variations and labels
• Using variations to implement multilingual and multidevice sites

This course is available in both as an open enrollment offering as well as private engagements. The first date the course will be offered is July 9-12 in Tampa, FL. For more information on scheduling, dates offered, and registration, please refer to the official course page & schedule page.

SharePoint 2007 Flash Animation Web Part – The Code Project – SharePoint Server

A while ago JSJR did a cool demo of integrating Flash with lists in WSS3.0. Getting the SWF to load was a pain, so here’s a Flash Web Part instead:

Here’s a description of howto create template for pretty printing contents from a list in Sharepoint. This is highly recommended reading:

Easily print SharePoint lists using your own template

And there’s an online demonstration of the functionality.

With the different authentication provider support for MOSS, there are more and more free applications that will provide user management tools integrated in the SharePoint environment.

One very good example is the Forms Based User Administration Feature, which can be downloaded from codeplex.

Featurelist:

• The Feature includes an Administrator web part to view/edit/delete and add users to the data store by an administrator.
• Self registration page for users to request access to the site.
• New functionality for self registration
• Password retrieval via email
• CAPTCHA validation on self registration
• UI Enhancements

Forms Based User Administration Feature Release Beta 1.0
Mart Muller
Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:26:14 GMT

It seems like they have released a professional and developer version of the BDC metadata manager for MOSS 2007! Great work!

“BDC Meta Man makes generating Application Definitions easy due to the many features it offers.

• Easy to use Windows application
• Ability to connect to and browse multiple data sources
• No need to know how to write XML or SQL
• Integrated Shared Service Provider Administration Web Site
• Inspect your application definition and edit any part of it
• Saves enormous amounts of time and effort”

For a full overview of features per version, check out this document.

BDC Meta Manager Professional and Developer released
Mart Muller
Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:16:28 GMT

Via Lars Fastrup, I ran into the SharePoint Solution Installer for SharePoint 2007.

The SharePoint Solution Installer includes the following features:

• Support for all relevant operations:
  • Add solution to the SharePoint solution store.
  • Deploy solution to one or more web applications.
  • Upgrade solution.
  • Retract and remove solution.
• Pre-install system check for the following conditions:
  • WSS V3 is installed.
  • MOSS 2007 is installed (This check can be disabled in config file),
  • User has permission to install solutions.
  • SharePoint database is online.
  • WSS Administration service is started.
  • WSS Timer service is started.
• Implements a work around for the following error conditions:
  • Another solution deployment job never finished and is now blocking for the creation of a new job. Work-around: Delete old job from the list of Timer job defnitions.
  • Timer service is not started: An attempt is made to start it (please note that timer services on other front ends will not be started).
  • Database is offline, which will yield an ugly NullreferenceException from SharePoint offering little clue to the root cause of the problem. Work around: Detect NullreferenceException and display nice error message.
• Display EULA. (Can be disabled in config file). 
• Web application list where user can select the web apps. to deploy the solution to.
• Rollback after installation errors.
• Configurable Product Title.
• Configurable banner image.
• Configurable logo image.

SharePoint Solution Installer
Mart Muller
Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:39:43 GMT

SharePoint Solutions Software has released ‘Extranet Collaboration Manager’ for SharePOint 2007, a product for administrating extranet users in SharePoint. They have two versions:

ExCM – Standard Edition provides you with a suite of tools to Simplify SharePoint 2007 extranet user access and management. See the ExCM product page for more details.

ExCM – Enterprise Edition allows your users to submit a request when he or she would like to have a new SharePoint 2007 site provisioned. You can easily associate custom workflows with the new site requests, asking for approval prior to site creation. Once a site request is approved, ExCM – EE will automatically provision the site for you using any SharePoint 2007 site definition you have specified.”

Extranet Collaboration Manager by SharePoint Solutions is a complete solution that will:

• Simplify the provisioning and maintenance of external resources for use with your business partners
• Enable you to automate site provisioning requests through workflows
• Delegate user management tasks to your business partners
• Provide you with the capability to audit the provisioning and user maintenance activities within your collaborative environment.

Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2007
Mart Muller
Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:31:23 GMT

Via Tom Short :

“To help with all the MOSS Architecture diagrams I do, I have put together this fancy  Visio stencil for MOSS architecture diagrams . The Visio stencil includes the following shapes.

Thanks to Colin B for his Graphics handy work and Matt Groves for making the files available online.”

MOSS Architecture Diagrams – Visio Server Stencils
Mart Muller
Tue, 27 Mar 2007 06:33:41 GMT

Just found the Dubbelbock tool.

It implements a feature, that tools like Subversion offers today and we dind’t have. The possibility to do all source control action just right away out of the Windows Explorer. This means CheckOut, CheckIn, Version compare… is available from Windows Explorer Right Click menu. Excactly this features are now also available for TFS:

In the picture above you can see the whole functionality and it is really super easy to use. Commands like CheckIn use normal Dialogs with all TFS funcionality.