SharePoint Information Workers Conference 2008

This past January we hosted the first-ever SharePoint Information Workers Conference in Orlando, Florida. Our team attends and speaks at numerous conferences each year, but, in general, they are all pretty technical in nature. So, after three years of teaching various training classes targeted at non-technical Information Workers, we decided it was high time that someone showed this group of SharePoint devotees a little love!

The conference in January was a great success. We had a sellout crowd, great speakers and top-notch exhibitors. We had many attendees from Europe and beyond.

We are definitely going to host this conference again in early 2008 (January or February). We've been working for several weeks to nail down a venue and final dates and hope to be able to announce the details by July 1.

If you would like to be notified via email when we have the location and dates for the 2008 conference finalized, go here and fill out the notification request form.

SharePoint Server 2007 VHD image

Microsoft has made available a SharePoint server 2007 vhd image at the following site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=67f93dcb-ada8-4db5-a47b-df17e14b2c74&DisplayLang=en

Why does it matter to you? Well, you can use this virtual machine image to create a SharePoint Proof of Concept for your use case scenarios (among other uses).

Enjoy!

The Three-State Workflow - The Forgotten Out-Of-The-Box Workflow for Both WSS and MOSS

Many people believe that MOSS comes with only four out-of-the-box workflows (Approval, Collect Feedback, Collect Signatures, and Disposition Approval), and that WSS v3 doesn't come with any out-of-the-box workflows. In actuality, there is another work flow that is available out-of-the-box to both WSS v3 and MOSS—it's called the Three-state workflow.The reason that even many seasoned SharePoint professionals don't know much about the Three-state workflow is because the feature isn't activated by default—you will have to go into the Site collection features, and activate it.





Once you have activated the Three-state workflow feature, it will be available as a workflow template to all your lists, libraries, and content types.



The Three-state workflow allows you to track the status of an item between three states. This is very useful when tracking issues, project tasks, leads, or other similar items.
I won't bore you with details on how to use it; Microsoft has already done an excellent job of explaining how to use the Three-state Workflow. My mission here is just to let you know that it exists. I will leave you with one small screenshot though, just to whet your appetite. Look at all the options you have for the task and email details for each transition step.

Enjoy!

TechEd Buzz, SharePoint Governance and Site Provisioning Assistant

One of the most prevalent buzzwords floating around TechEd last week was “SharePoint Governance”. By Microsoft TechNet’s definition, the term SharePoint Governance is:

“… the set of roles, responsibilities, and processes that you put in place in an enterprise to guide the development and use of a solution based on SharePoint Products and Technologies.”

Is SharePoint Governance on your mind? If so, we believe that our new Site Provisioning Assistant product for SharePoint 2007 may help you to get a bit more sleep at night. Just as SharePoint MVP Shane Young and Microsoft’s Joel Oleson were quick to point out upon viewing a demonstration of SPA from our TechEd booth, Site Provisioning Assistant provides key features to assist in your SharePoint Governance strategy.

In a recent blog Post, Joel Oleson identifies a key component to SharePoint Governance as:

“… Self Service approach to deployment (bottoms up) - how can I keep Help desk from being a bottleneck to information worker productivity.”

We couldn’t agree more, and that is exactly why we developed the SPA add-on for WSS v3 and MOSS 2007. With Site Provisioning Assistant, you can automate the process of handling requests for new WSS v3.0 and MOSS 2007 sites. As a SharePoint administrator, SPA provides you with a solution to these key questions:

• How can I enable our users to have the SharePoint sites they need in a timely manner, but maintain the integrity of our organization's taxonomy?
• How can I give my users an easy to use, consistent interface for requesting new SharePoint sites?
• How can I automate my organization's approval process for requesting new SharePoint sites?

For more information or to download an evaluation copy of SPA, visit the Site Provisioning Assistant Product home page.

Great new SharePoint book by Ted and Dan, see you at TechEd

Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The SharePoint book that I have been waiting for the most has finally arrived. It seems like Clinton was still president when I ordered it :), but this book was well worth the wait. Back when I first heard that Ted Pattision and Daniel Larson were teaming up to write a SharePoint book, I got pretty excited. I knew these guys would have a knock-out book for SharePoint developers, and I'm happy to say I was right.

With this book, you will learn how to:

• Build application pages and site pages
• Develop and deploy reusable Web parts to enable customization and personalization
• Exploit Windows SharePoint APIs to deploy Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX components
• Use XML and Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) to create provisioning components
• Design and implement custom document libraries
• Use Windows Workflow Foundation to create applications that automate business process
• Create Site Definitions to aggregate components and package them for deployment
• Implement Code Access Security, Trust Levels, authentication, and authorization

Do yourself a huge favor, and go spend five minutes on Amazon ordering yourself a copy.

I hope that I get a chance to run into Ted and Daniel next week at TechEd in Orlando, to compliment them on the outstanding book. Are you going to TechEd? If so, please stop by our SharePoint Solutions booth and say hi. We'll be happy to demo our software add-ons for SharePoint, show you our training materials, talk about consulting, or just shoot the breeze. Our booth number in #254.

Need expert InfoPath knowledge?

There are lots of people who use and develop with InfoPath and many of them post tips, tricks, etc. to their blogs.

One that stands out, in my mind, is actually an entire company that is devoted 100% to InfoPath consulting and solutions. InfoPath is ALL they do.

The company is Qdabra Software and they share their expert InfoPath knowledge on a public site they host named InfoPathDev.com. On this site, there are well over 100 "How-to" articles, tips and tricks. And, they don't write articles about "101" InfoPath topics. They write about the difficult issues that we all face when we try to implement an InfoPath solution in the real world.

There is a reason that Qdabra has all of this deep InfoPath knowledge. The company was founded and is owned by Patrick Halstead, one of the original development managers at Microsoft on the development of InfoPath v1. Also, Patrick is the author of the best advanced-level book on InfoPath 2003, Developing Solutions with Microsoft InfoPath. (If you follow this link to Amazon, you will find that the book has a rating of three-stars out of five. Don't be fooled by that. I've read the entire book from cover to cover and have used it extensively to develop InfoPath-based applications. It is not perfect, but it is by far the best text out there on advanced usage of InfoPath 2003).

So, while there still is a real shortage of expert-led classroom-style InfoPath training, there are some very good resources available on the Internet and InfoPathDev.com is one of the best.

(If you go to their site, you will see that a lot of the most recent tips are written in Japanese. If that is not your preferred language, keep searching their site because the tips in English still far outnumber the Japanese ones. The reason they are posting a lot of new tips in both Japanese and English is because InfoPath is BOOMING in Japan. :))

Branding SharePoint

There are lots of articles and tips for branding SharePoint 2007 and customizing the look and feel. Just do a Google search or hunt down the bloggers that specialize in this area.

But what if you are under the gun to do a SharePoint branding/customization job and you really need to absorb all of the details fast and get the job finished as soon as possible?

In my mind, you can't find a better solution than our Extreme Makeover SharePoint 2007 Edition course. It's a three-day class and will cost you roughly $2000, but you will leave with a thorough understanding of how to do this type of work and will have worked through numerous hands-on labs practicing the art.

Since this course is all about the visual aspects of SharePoint 2007, maybe the best way to sell you on it is to show a before and after image of the kind of thing you will do in the class:

Before:



After:





Here's another one:





Here is a quick and dirty list of some of the topics that the course covers:

• The SharePoint 2007 CSS files and architecture
• Master Pages
• Page Layouts
• Site Definitions
• List Definitions
• Themes
• SharePoint Designer Customization of navigation and the UI
• The "Features" feature

The full course description and outline is available here.
On top of all this, the course was written and is taught by a true expert in SharePoint branding and customization. You won't often hear his name tossed around in the SharePoint Community, but he has as much, if not more, experience branding SharePoint as anybody out there.
His name is Kevin Pine and he has a background as a professional web site developer. For the past three years, he has been devoted full-time to SharePoint branding here at SharePoint Solutions. He wrote our Extreme Makeover 2003 course that was very successful and popular during 2003 - 2006. He has also done numerous SharePoint branding projects for our consulting clients including BP, Central Michigan University, Sarah Cannon Cancer Research Institute, and many others.
On top of all this, Kevin is an outstanding classroom teacher.
So, if you need to come up to speed quickly on all of the details and nuances of SharePoint 2007 branding and customization, in my opinion you can't find a faster and better way to do this than come take Kevin's class.

MSDN: Team-Based Development in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Eric Charran of Microsoft recently published a MSDN article covering team-based development on the SharePoint 2007 platform. Eric begins by delineating the roles of artifact development and assembly development, discussing environmental and procedural similarities and dissimilarities. Eric’s article then covers integration builds and deployment processes, with the aid of some well-designed illustrations. Overall, Eric’s article is informative, and should be read by anyone seeking a high-level understanding of team software development on SharePoint.
For a few years now, our software engineering team here at SharePoint Solutions has been using a development environment similar to what Eric describes. Because we are geographically distributed, we rely on local virtual development environments (robust Dell laptops running Virtual Server 2005 RC2), that connect to Team Foundation Server over VPN. Prior to TFS and VPN, we used Visual Source Safe with SourceGearSourceOffSite and CruiseControl.NET. SourceOffSite was (barely) a workable solution, but now seems like the dark ages in comparison to Team Foundation Server. As for the source code vault itself, we take the approach of using a common mainline for team builds, with each of us working in isolated virtual build labs for incremental building and testing. We merge from our independent VBLs to the common Mainline, and kick off team builds for testing and release.
We are primarily focused on producing software solutions for redistribution, so every artifact and assembly we create must be packaged for deployment. In Visual Studio, our solutions are comprised of modified C# class library projects which have been customized to output SharePoint deployment packages (.wsp). Although the VSeWSS toolset has some nice conveniences, it just doesn’t provide us with the granularity we need for packaging commercial applications. A simple example of how we structure a project can be found in my October 2006 post Anatomy of a SharePoint WSS v3 Feature Project in Visual Studio 2005.
Finally, we depend on the WiX toolset for creating Windows Installer packages to distribute our software products. Here too, we use modified C# class library projects which have been customized to output MSI setup packages. The last step of our team build process zips up the appropriate outputs, then places them in a staging area where they await manual release to web (RTW).

Extranet Collaboration Manager - Standard Edition 1.0.0 Final has been Released to Web (RTW)

This morning our software developement team released Extranet Collaboration Manager - Standard Edition 1.0.0 Final for download and purchase.

I wanted to thank the literally hundreds of SharePoint Solutions software customers who have helped us with Beta testing ExCM - SE over the past few months. Your input and assistance have been invaluable in helping us to release another quality add-on product for SharePoint 2007.

For full details on the features and functionality of ExCM - SE 1.0.0, please visit its product home page.

Latest Release of ExCM - SE for SharePoint 2007 Adds User Profile Management

Last night we released an updated version of our ExCM - Standard Edition for SharePoint 2007 product. The new package can be downloaded from our SharePoint Solutions Software site's Releases and Downloads page.

Many of our software customers have been asking for us to add user profile management capabilities to the ExCM - SE product. As a result, with this latest release you can now define custom user profile properties of text, date and yes/no data types. You are further able to configure user profile fields as required or optional for users to complete when registering for access to your site. As well, you can apply a custom validator to your user profile properties, requiring data to be input in a specific format. From your users' perspective, you can now enable them to manage their own profile properties by selecting a menu item on SharePoint 2007's Welcome menu.


Adding functionality such as user profile management in ExCM - SE illustrates that we appreciate the feedback we receive from our software customers, and we will continue to take you seriously when we make design decisions for our products.