Remember Sammy Jankis

SharePoint 2010 - Overview of Social Computing session presentation

2010-05-24T17:28:00Z

Hi, Another week, another SharePoint 2010 session! This time we've talked about the fascinating world of social computing in the enterprise and the benefits of using SharePoint 2010 to empower you inner networking in the organization. For those of you that missed it (and the others that wants to remember) – I'm posting here the presentations of the session: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/637129/download.aspx More information on this subject and many other capabilities of SharePoint 2010 in the upcoming Virtual Event of SharePoint 2010 Launch – Save The Date! Bye, Adir Ron.

Content Management in SharePoint 2010 – Session Presentations

2010-04-11T18:00:46Z

Hi,

Haven't written in while since we had some holidays here in Israel but I'm back and I'm bearing gifts!

Earlier this month, we had a session about Content Management in SharePoint 2010. It was five hours packed with a very deep into the new & exciting features, capabilities and methodologies in the new release. It took a while but I've compiled a PDF version of the presentations & demoes from the various sessions available for you here:

New ERA in Content Management:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/adir_ron/entry579941.aspx

ECM Deep Dive in SharePoint 2010:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/adir_ron/entry579943.aspx

I highly recommend downloading them. This is a very complicated issue in this version and I think it will help you make some sense and find yourself in the huge world for Enterprise Content Management.

Bye,

Adir.

SharePoint 2010 Overview & Introduction to SharePoint 2010 Service Architecture – Session Slides

2010-02-09T16:28:48Z

Hey,

First of all, many thanx to those of you who attended my SharePoint 2010 sessions in Microsoft. This was the first session we've made publicly available to customers and it really kicked off the launch of SharePoint 2010 events scheduled all through the coming months. Hope you all got a glimpse of the SharePoint capabilities and I promise further drill down on the large topics in future events.

Attached here are the slides for both of my presentations. The Overview session mainly discussed the Information Worker features and was aimed for the end users. The SharePoint 2010 Service Architecture session was designed to introduce some of the new & improved extricating services in this release for the IT & Developer such as Search, BI, Business Connectivity and more.

SharePoint 2010 Overview slides:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/515584/download.aspx

Introduction to SharePoint 2010 Service Architecture slides:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/515588/download.aspx

I'll be more than happy to hear your thoughts and requests for the future. Please comment by mail for fast response: adir@advantech.co.il

Have a nice day,

Adir Ron

SharePoint 2010 Search Overview – Session Slides

2010-01-21T20:19:56Z

Hey All,

Two days ago, we dedicated a day in Microsoft headquarters in Ra'anana to the fascination world of Search in SharePoint & FAST 2010. The agenda was to demonstrate new solutions based on Wave 14 technologies such as SharePoint 2010 and FAST for SharePoint that scale up your SharePoint project. This great workshop hosted 2 wonderful FAST specialists that joined Microsoft with the FAST acquisition: Paolo Pulcini & Stefano Valenzi.

My session gave a fairly comprehensive lap around SharePoint 2010 search and the differences from the previous versions. For those of you that missed it and for the attendants that wanted to have a look in my session's slides – I'm attaching them to this blog post:

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/files/folders/504737/download.aspx or http://www2.zippyshare.com/v/25221189/file.html

I urge you to subscribe the MS Events since the following months will be filled with many workshops and open days around those new technologies and I'll be happy to see you all in the audience!

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/default.aspx?culture=he-IL

Bye,

Adir Ron.

SharePoint 2010 - The Beta, The RTM and the Migration Path

2010-01-12T02:12:00Z

Hey,

It's been a long time since i posted something in here - SharePoint 2007 became a bit boring to blog about :-) Now, with SharePoint 2010 just around the corner, it looks like it's a good time for a comeback.

In the next few posts, I will discuss many of the new features and tweaks of SharePoint 2010 and the entire 14 Wave planned to be released in March. I guess many of you already downloaded the beta and stated doing some coding/customizations around it. That's cool and all but from my talks with many SharePoint guys, I noticed that a little fact slipped through the radar: There will be NO migration path between the Beta and the RTM!

Unlike SharePoint 2007 (B2 and B2TR), this time you won't be able to upgrade servers directly from the Beta to RTM version of the server. This migration path was the cause of countless problems in 2007 and MS has decided that this time, you will have to make it a clean install and recompile/republish everything you did in the Beta. You may even have to rewrite some of the code that is subjected to changes between Beta and RTM. By the way, if you're in SharePoint TAP program - you will be able to migrate directly (with support of MS guys) but for the common mass this option will not be available!

This means a couple of things:

Don't run SharePoint 2010 on production server just yet. The RTW will be online on march so you don't have to wait to much
You should consider this in the time tables that you plan for SharePoint 2010 solutions.

The migration to RTM will require re-installing everything. That's it for Now. Next time, I will share some better news! That's a promise :-)

Bye,

Adir Ron

My Silverlight & MOSS Session – Download the Presentations

2009-02-05T20:34:00Z

Hi,

I got a lot of requests for posting my Silverlight & MOSS presentations from the session we had last month. I've added some more info in the slides so that you can go even deeper (especially the .Net developers) when you go over them now.

Well, what are you waiting? Go and Light up the MOSS!!!

Links:

Bye,

Adir Ron.

P.S. – All of the demos are already published in Codeplex so you can view the full source code at you spear time. If you never browsed Codeplex and you need me to point you in the right direction, feel free to email me (details in the ppt's).

Light up The MOSS: Silverlight and SharePoint

2008-12-30T21:40:00Z

How To: SharePoint API on Non SharePoint machine

2008-12-08T10:54:00Z

Hi,

Yesterday, I had a customer that queried me about using the SharePoint API from a non-SharePoint machine. A fairly legitimate question. From the developer's perspective, SharePoint contains many capabilities and libraries that could be used in applications outside the SharePoint world. In our scenario, the customer created a Silverlight application on a different web server and wanted to retrieve personal user data stored in one of the HR MOSS Lists.

The solution in this case is very straight forward: SOA. Instead of copying DLL's like crazy (won't work by the way), you should definitely consider SharePoint's Web Services.

Remember: when we want to perform remote operations on your MOSS Farm or retrieve any information from it, this should probably be our first choice. Obviously, we can create our own web services and deploy it to the SharePoint server but in most cases, there will be no need for this. SharePoint provides more than 10 Out-Of-the-Box web services that are used to accomplish various requirements and data retrieval without any additional coding necessary.

I'm not talking about the famous ones (Search anyone?). I'd rather write about the least common ones. The following list is of my favorite hidden OOTB Web Services of MOSS with a small explanation about their functionalities:

http://server:AdminPort/_vti_adm/Admin.asmx - Administrative methods such as creating and deleting sites
http://server/_vti_bin/Alerts.asmx - Methods for working with alerts
http://server/_vti_bin/DspSts.asmx - Methods for retrieving schemas and data
http://server/_vti_bin/DWS.asmx - Methods for working with Document Workspaces
http://server/_vti_bin/Forms.asmx - Methods for working with user interface forms
http://server/_vti_bin/Imaging.asmx - Methods for working with picture libraries
http://server/_vti_bin/Lists.asmx - Methods for working with lists
http://server/_vti_bin/Meetings.asmx - Methods for working with Meeting Workspaces
http://server/_vti_bin/Permissions.asmx - Methods for working with SharePoint Services security
http://server/_vti_bin/SiteData.asmx - Methods used by Windows SharePoint Portal Server
http://server/_vti_bin/Sites.asmx - Contains a single method to retrieve site templates
http://server/_vti_bin/UserGroup.asmx - Methods for working with users and groups
http://server/_vti_bin/versions.asmx - Methods for working with file versions
http://server/_vti_bin/Views.asmx - Methods for working with views of lists
http://server/_vti_bin/WebPartPages.asmx - Methods for working with Web Parts
http://server/_vti_bin/Webs.asmx - Methods for working with sites and sub sites

Those are some powerful web services. Keep them in mind. It could provide a very elegant way to code against SharePoint from a non-SharePoint machine and for a non-SharePoint application.

Bye,

Adir Ron.

My Upgrade Solutions using MOSS 2007 Enhancements Session

2008-12-01T15:24:00Z

Hi,

Just finished the Session of using MOSS 2007 Enhancements Session. This session covered most of the Codeplex/Microsoft solutions dedicated to the MOSS 2007 enviroment.

I already got a lot of requests so I'm attaching it to this blog. Can also be downloaded here if you can't download it form the blog itself. Use it wisely J

Bye,

Adir

Light Up The MOSS: My Silverlight and SharePoint session

2008-11-27T09:56:00Z

Hi,

Yesterday, I gave a session in the Israeli Office User Group about Silverlight & SharePoint integration. I have to say that the feedback was AMAZING. I'm attaching the Session's presentation: "Light Up The MOSS" so you can download and go over the links.

By the way: A full day about Silverlight & MOSS is planned for January. It'll be very comprehensive and much more low level than the User Group. It'll be on the Events section of Microsoft very soon but for now just SAVE THE DATE: 21/1/09.

Bye,

Adir Ron

P.S - I understood that some of you can't see the file so I also uploaded it into a free Rapidshare server. Here's the link

MOSS Full Template Code for Content Migration (and a word about Language limitations)

2008-11-23T10:53:00Z

Hi,

Just a little something that can help the poor guys that had to use Export/Import or Content Migration methods instead of the straight-forward and hassle-free Backup/Restore.

As you may have noticed, Content Migration features around WSS Sites some major limitations. The two large one you should remember are that Content Migration an only import data from sites that consist of the same language as the entire target site collection and are using the same site template.

That means that even if you have the English Language pack on you MOSS Installation and you created an English WSS Site to host the imported data, you still can't import anything if the entire Site Collection is not in English (Hebrew for example). Sounds awfully problematic but that's just the way it is and there is no supported way around it. The Cmp file (Content Migration Package) that stores the exported data contains definitions about the parent site collection's language so Language Pack are pretty useless at this point. You'd better off creating the structure of the site and migrate the lists one by one...

Another limitation is the Site Template of the targeted site. You can only import data to a web site of the same template. Well, that would actually sound fair if the stsadm (or any other tool that user Content Migration API) would have been kind enough to hint us about the requested template of the CMP package that we want to import. Instead, you get the Site Template Code that are used internally by Microsoft and try to figure out what is the need template. Well, you can imagine that codes like SRCHCEN#0 or OSRV#0 can be a handful to understand.

Well, at least in this matter – I can help. After wasting a bit of time around it, I managed to compile a full list of Templates and their codes. That means that next time you'll see an error code with yet another mysterious Template Code, you should have no problem deciphering it using this table.

GLOBAL#0 = Global template (1033)

STS#0 = Team Site (1033)

STS#1 = Blank Site (1033)

STS#2 = Document Workspace (1033)

MPS#0 = Basic Meeting Workspace (1033)

MPS#1 = Blank Meeting Workspace (1033)

MPS#2 = Decision Meeting Workspace (1033)

MPS#3 = Social Meeting Workspace (1033)

MPS#4 = Multipage Meeting Workspace (1033)

CENTRALADMIN#0 = Central Admin Site (1033)

WIKI#0 = Wiki Site (1033)

BLOG#0 = Blog (1033)

BDR#0 = Document Center (1033)

OFFILE#0 = Records Center (1033)

OFFILE#1 = Records Center (1033)

OSRV#0 = Shared Services Administration Site (1033)

SPS#0 = SharePoint Portal Server Site (1033)

SPSPERS#0 = SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space (1033)

SPSMSITE#0 = Personalization Site (1033)

SPSTOC#0 = Contents area Template (1033)

SPSTOPIC#0 = Topic area template (1033)

SPSNEWS#0 = News Site (1033)

CMSPUBLISHING#0 = Publishing Site (1033)

BLANKINTERNET#0 = Publishing Site (1033)

BLANKINTERNET#1 = Press Releases Site (1033)

BLANKINTERNET#2 = Publishing Site with Workflow (1033)

SPSNHOME#0 = News Site (1033)

SPSSITES#0 = Site Directory (1033)

SPSCOMMU#0 = Community area template (1033)

SPSREPORTCENTER#0 = Report Center (1033)

SPSPORTAL#0 = Collaboration Portal (1033)

SRCHCEN#0 = Search Center with Tabs (1033)

PROFILES#0 = Profiles (1033)

BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 = Publishing Portal (1033)

SPSMSITEHOST#0 = My Site Host (1033)

SRCHCENTERLITE#0 = Search Center (1033)

SRCHCENTERLITE#1 = Search Center (1033)

SPSBWEB#0 = SharePoint Portal Server BucketWeb Template (1033)

Hope this helps…

Bye,

Adir Ron

Integration with SharePoint help – Can we do it?

2008-09-23T16:49:27Z

Hi,

It's been a while since I posted. As you may imagine, August/September are not popular months to spend in the office (or in the Office Server). However, I'm back and packed with loads of new information. This post will address a very hot issue in MOSS – how to customize the SharePoint Help?

When you think about it, everything else in SharePoint is fully customizable. It would be fair to assume that a customized portal needs many changes in the Help section to document the branded features for the users. Well, tough luck. No tool can provide a nice and supported way to do it (not even SharePoint Designer). This post will try to describe the things you can do…

My first hunch was to leverage the amazing Sandcastle tool to support MOSS. If you never heard of it - Sandcastle is Microsoft's tool for creating MSDN-style documentation from .NET assemblies and their associated XML comments files. Oh, and did I mention that it's free? (if you want to check it out: http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB).

After going around it for a while, I realized this is not the thing I'm looking for. For a start, the output's template is not what SharePoint Help requires. The SharePoint Help Collection requires a manifest.xml that acts as a 'help-map' file and meta-data xml's for each Help item along side with the help items themselves (HTML files, images, Help categories, Help topics etc). This collection should be CAB'd and installed with SharePoint's HCInstall.exe utility and all of those capabilities are not in Sandcastle. To make a long story short: Damm…

This looked very weird for me that no real solution exists so I went to the Product Team for answers. The feedback that I got from them is that this is a known issue but unfortunately tools for creating custom SharePoint Help will not be available until further notice (possibly for O14 as they so eloquently hinted).

Well, I guess this nice article in CodePlex is our best of bread for now. It's not much but it's the best place you can start if you need to customize those pages and have some free time in your hands: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/CustomHelpPages_SP2007.aspx

Bye,

Adir Ron.

Convert Word to PDF inside a MOSS Workflow

2008-08-27T05:59:00Z

Hi,

MOSS Workflows are great for Document Management process. There are many OOTB DMS templates in MOSS and you could leverage those activities with SharePoint Designer. I had a customer that wanted a process that used the Docx file format for authoring/approving the document and convert it to PDF file format before sending outside of the organization. My first idea was to use the Office 2007 capabilities in converting Word to PDF. You can do it easily in the Save As dialog so coding this shouldn't be a problem.

However, this will require installing Office client on the MOSS Server and this is not supported and not recommended. In my early 2003 days, I've tried to use the Word Spell Checker in ASP.Net Server and found it to be a very bad performance idea (and don't forget the many ghost WinWord.exe processes that you find in the task manager's memory) that was quickly replaced with a 3^rd party solution.

So nothing in life is free – but what about licensed solutions. I would recommend checking out ActivePDF tools. ActivePDF is the leading provider of PDF generation, conversion and development tools and they provide many tools and SDK for server Word to PDF conversion. You could easily wrap the conversion process (which is very easy once you have the SDK) inside a WF Activity and allow reusing it in many places around your Document Management System.

Find it here:

http://www.activepdf.com

Bye,

Adir Ron.

Using InfoPath Browser forms as a Development Platform – Best Practices and Recommendations

2008-08-20T05:33:00Z

Hi,

It's been a while since I posted. As you may imagine, July wasn't the most popular month to spend in the office (or in the Office Server). However, I'm back and packed with loads of new information so it's sharing time! The main topic of this post will be InfoPath Development. Recently, I've been dealing a lot with InfoPath's browser forms with one of our customers (Shlomy, Sveta and Tal from the IDC – this post is dedicated to you) and while working I got the notion that many times developers tend to dismiss the fact that InfoPath is actually a full development platform and should definitely be treated as one. This is even especially important once you decided to add managed code and combine it with Visual Studio 2005/2008. Given concepts and best practices that we use in every development process are totally overlooked when you use InfoPath – and we're talking about important and time saving things like naming convections, data access layers etc.

Well, I decided to try and provide the basic Best Practices that you need to use with InfoPath forms. I believe this will add some sense into the development process and help you make the most of your time (and for other developers to maintain and debug your InfoPath forms):

Coding Naming conventions for InfoPath:

Controls are Controls even if you design them in InfoPath. I'd recommend following Brad Abrams' C# style guidelines here: http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/articles/361363.aspx
FxCop 1.35 is always a great recommendation and especially in InfoPath. I'd suggest using this as early in your coding cycle as possible: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/codeanalysis/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=553

Data Access Layer in InfoPath:

If you want to query data from a SQL database in InfoPath Forms Services - this great resource is a must to design a good approach for your DAL: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HP100928231033.aspx?pid=CH100598301033
Important Notion - If you design your form template based on the SQL database then InfoPath will generate queryFields whose values may be used to constrain the query. If you use a secondary data connection to the SQL database, then you'd have to use custom code to constrain the SQL query based on the form's current state.
Complex Data Connections should also be managed somehow just like every other development project. You'll definitely need to look at the new Data Connection Library (DCL) support for InfoPath data connections. If you never heard of it or want to read more about it - see these superb articles for more details:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb267335.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/10/02/Data-Connections-in-Browser-Forms.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/10/30/the-anatomy-of-a-udc-file.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/10/05/Where-do-UDC-files-come-from_3F00_.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/06/14/advanced-server-side-authentication-for-data-connections-part-1.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/06/27/advanced-server-side-authentication-for-data-connections-part-2.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2006/07/03/655611.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA100929071033.aspx

Digital Signatures for InfoPath:

Support matrix (signing is only supported in IE, but all browsers can view previously created signatures). More data in here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HA102040851033.aspx#5
Signing is performed using an ActiveX control. In a Production environment, you should secure the connection via SSL in order to ensure the security of the signed data.

General Links:

Team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath
Office Online help: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/FX100647031033.aspx?CTT=96&Origin=CL100607051033
MSDN InfoPath developer resource: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905443.aspx
My previous post about InfoPath that is loaded with awesome links for InfoPath: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/adir_ron/archive/2007/05/22/Huge-list-of-InfoPath-2007-Resources_2C00_-Links_2C00_-HOL_1920_s-and-mo.aspx

Oh, and before we set off – another link you should be aware of. Check out this great post that compare InfoPath rich client to InfoPath Forms Services. It covers all of the main differences and should be used before you decide on a complex form's platform:

http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2007/02/16/all-you-wanted-to-know-about-browser-compatibility.aspx

That's it for now. See you soon…

Adir Ron.

How To: Export SharePoint list to SQL Server

2008-06-03T19:18:52Z

Hi,

Recently, I've been hearing more and more requests for a utility that takes SharePoint lists and creates a SQL Server database to represent it. Usually, the desire is for a tool that would export the data from one repository to the other without having to deal with conflict resolution or updating. Sounds like a legit need, isn't it? Well, guess what - you already have a utility for doing this. Even two to be exact. Both of them reside well within the Office 2007/MOSS 2007 synergy:

Data Sheet View – A very handy view that MOSS/WSS supports which basically uses familiar Excel look & feel to edit and view List data. Once the list is opened in this manner, you can perform all sorts of little tricks such as multiple updates or multi selecting rows (Oh, and of course you can open the data in Excel itself and do some harder magic). The major advantage of this view is that SQL Server Tables/Views comes with full support for copying data while maintain the correct structure from datasheets such as Excel (or Excel view in our case). This gives us a very quick solution for the Export problem – just open the list in "Edit Data sheet view" and do copy and paste directly in SQL Server. Nice and Slick and you're done. However, this is mainly for a one time deal since doing it over and over can be a bit of a hassle? Need something more Nice & Slick – skip to the next bullet…
Access 2007 - MOSS is widely known for the Word and Excel integration but I feel not enough is said about the fantastic Access 2007 integration. You may not know that Access 2007 supports opening WSS Lists as Generic Access Tables with full support to everything Access can do to manipulate and display data/reports. This is HUGE guys since this feature supports many capabilities that you'll fail to find in the Excel 2007 synergy (For Example: Read/Write synchronization to all of the WSS Lists data). Now, for the export to work, we can use another cool feature of Access having to do with creating a Linked Table. Linked Tables can use SQL query to read data from one table and insert into linked table in the Access Database. When you combine WSS Integration with Linked Tables in the same DB file – you can create a very powerful tool for continuous synchronization between SQL tables and WSS Lists (that we're opened as Access Tables). A utility that was created by Access 2007 – no single line of code needed. Oh,and if you're on the way - be sure to check all the other amazing stuff you can do with Access as your front end and WSS as your data repository. Think of it as a brand new Access Server or Access Services – hell, if Excel got a sexy name for his server features, why not Access?

Bye,

Adir Ron.