Connect.Collaborate.SharePoint
Mar
25

Not only is it expensive

(If only I was Geoff Payne...)

It doesn't even support HTTPS or VPN access. Zero use for a business traveller. Just as well I only signed up for a ½ hour.

If I was in the USA this would be free or at most $10 for the entire stay.

Categories:

 
Mar
23

First off, Silverlight 2.0 is still beta so you should not install it on a production server, but for those who want to throw caution into the wind (it will be blown back in your face like me), here are the steps I went through for a non-development environment (i.e. no Visual Studio 2008 installed).

If you have tried to get this working before reading this post and just got a blank web part then step 5 is probably the solution.

If you just install the Silverlight BluePrint samples onto a SharePoint Server, they will not work because the following dependencies must be installed:

  1. Install .Net 3.5 framework http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=333325fd-ae52-4e35-b531-508d977d32a6&DisplayLang=en
  2. Silverlight plugin (yes, this must be installed on the server)
    http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/installationFiles.aspx?v=2.0
  3. Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK
    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=4e03409a-77f3-413f-b108-1243c243c4fe&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f4%2f1%2fb%2f41b00352-1a7f-48bb-be51-b9cef025ca11%2fsilverlight_sdk.exe
  4. Copy the System.Web.Silverlight.dll from C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Server to c:\windows\assembly
  5. Check the /ClientBin/ directory of you SharePoint site for the existence (and correct version) of Silverlight.js (if missing, copy it from C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Tools)
  6. On W2K8 grant Machine\Users Read/Execute, Read and  List Folder Contents to the ClientBin directory otherwise you get 403 error when the SilverLightPart web part properties tries to browse to the .XAML and .JS files.
  7. Register the MIME type for file extension .XAP in IIS (the W2K8 registraion is not correct for SL2B1)

Perform an IISReset and you should now be able to add the SilverlightPart (1st demo from http://www.ssblueprints.net/sharepoint/) to a page. If you get a blank web part, step 5 above fixed this for me, if not it appears the only option is to recompile the web parts in VS 2008 (a bit tricky if you don't have such a development server).

Sample page hosting a Silverlight 1.0 Hello World XAML demo http://www.wssdemo.com/pages/silverlight2.aspx?PageView=Shared

The other samples require AJAX support so you will have to install ASP.Net 3.5 make major changes to your web.config file. I'll post steps for doing this on a non-developer SharePoint platform soon.


 
Mar
23

While SharePoint delivers a lot of out of the box functionality, it is also a great platform on which to build the enterprise user presentation layer to connect users with relevant line of business information in context with the other less structured information.

Some organisations may have invested in an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) like BizTalk + Patterns & Practices ESB Guidance or other vendor solutions, but how often do you actually see these platforms deliver agility? They often get bogged down in change control, limited technical resources, politics etc. That is why point solutions keep popping up all over the place.

If you do need a quick solution to integrate LOB data into SharePoint then you might want to consider the BizTalk Adapter Pack (BAP) – a set of three adapters (SAP, Siebel and Oracle DB) based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) LOB Adapters SDK that Microsoft released about 6 months ago. The adapter pack provides WCF based connectivity to the LOBs and the primary intent is for use from within BizTalk but it can also be used directly from SharePoint so the portal architects can possibly bypass the ESB gatekeepers ;-).

Microsoft wants to work with organizations to validate their SharePoint LOB integration scenarios, please visit the following site and complete a short survey if you are interested in developing this sort of solution.

There is also a very good blog from the adapter team that you should check out. http://blogs.msdn.com/adapters/

Categories:

 
Mar
18

Hmmm, I've been so busy the last month that I had forgotten the password for my new server hosted at Intergen. I could access the Hyper-v virtual machines via HTTP (via RRAS port reverse mapping) but I have to RDP onto the host to then RDP onto the guests to do anything more than just use the SharePoint web UI.

I even tried standing in front of the physical server to see if that would jog my memory which it didn't. I can tell you that http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm#1 worked on W2K8 64Bit to set the local admin account password to blank.

At the same time, the old server which is still running wssdemo.com had shut down all by itself. Turns out that an automatic update that required a reboot;

- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - March 2008 (KB890830) or
- Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB948496)

had failed to restart. I have also heard of other servers suffering the same problem so keep an eye out if you are going to apply these in a lights out environments (wssdemo.com was down all day Sunday through to 8am Monday morning).

Categories:

 
Mar
14

[Updated farm install issue] There are a couple of common problems that people have experienced when installing the portal version of the training kits so I thought I would cover off a few of the expectations and known problems with SharePoint environments.

The training kits are based on the SharePoint Learning Kit which is an application in its own right that exposes management, configuration and user interaction through SharePoint pages. See http://www.codeplex.com/slk

Download locations for the training kits are:

The setup for either assumes that you will follow every step in the setup guide to the letter and that the SharePoint farm has been installed according to best practices.

  1. The setup assumes SharePoint and SQL are being used in Integrated Security mode.
  2. The Central Admin web application credentials (Farm Account) are a Domain Account that also has Local Admin or DB Create rights on the SQL Server.
  3. The default zone is using NTLM.
  4. The Application Pool hosting the Site Collection that the training site is in is NOT running under the same credentials as the Central Admin App Pool (If this is you, I hope this is not your production MOSS farm).
  5. If you don't deploy the solution to all applications then it must be deployed to the Central Admin web application & the web application that will host the training site (e.g. not required on the SSP application)
  6. When configuring the Training solution from Central Admin, must select the correct Site Collection which can't be the Central Admin site collection.
  7. The Training site is in a sub site based on the Collaboration Template and can't be the top site in a site collection. i.e.
    1. can't be http://server/sites/training
    2. can be http://server/training
    3. can be http://server/sites/training/enduser but only if step 5 selected http://sserver/sites/training )

If you have any issues with central admin setup of the training or setting permissions on the database (as per the instructions) then I'll bet you have made one of the mistakes above.

The installation has not been tested with SSL, FBA or languages other than English-USA so your milage may vary in these environments.

There is one other error that can happen even if you have done everything right. There is no content listed in the learning site. This seems to happen if you have more than one server in the farm. You should run setup and configuration from a single web front end. If there are other WFE's you may have to dissable them during the install. Microsoft are working on a solution to this and will update the documentation shortly. 

[Update: New farm install ducumantation http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/9/7/897e9f84-2e78-4158-abc3-237b6801ce53/Office%20SharePoint%20Server%202007%20Training%20Farm%20Install%20Guide.docx ]

You can upload the content zip files manually into folders in the Training Administrator site as you would upload any other files into a SharePoint library. You will find the files in a Content folder in the same location you ran the original install.bat file from. Then set all the metadata for each file and check them in, but this is a ½ hour job (I know).

If you already have the End User training installed and just want to add the SharePoint Designer training, don't run the install bat file, just create a new folder in the existing training library and upload the zip files as can be seen in Topic 8 below.

Happy learning...

P.S. I had a blast at SPC2008 but have been flat out since returning so sorry if I have been slow to respond to your questions and comments.

Categories:SharePoint

 
Mar
6

The Community Kit for SharePoint: Enhanced Blog Edition 2.0 (CKS:EBE) was released at the SharePoint Conference today. Rather than going out tonight and trying to compete with Bob (the last man standing, not counting the teetotalers;-) Fox, I decided to upgrade, downgrade, regrade and eventually reinstall the new version.

There is not a problem with the upgrade script so long as the beta to install worked 100% for you. Mine didn't and I had hacked away doing everything manually to get it to work so I wasn't surprised that it took me a few goes to get it working.

The BIGEST improvement for me was the limit now applied to the number of posts returned in the RSS feed. Feedburner had given up syndicating my feed because it exceed their size limit so you are now getting a string of posts showing up in your reader.

So heaps of kudos to the team who worked on this solution and there is no better way to show your appreciation than to go and install it ASAP.
https://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=CKS&ReleaseId=5134

Categories:

 
Mar
5
Someone asked this in the comments of a very only post and I can't see their email address so hopefully they see this answer.
I know the cause but I don't know why. The list of contacts is provided by a Data View web part which contains the following...
<ParameterBinding Name="SearchQS" Location="QueryString(Search)" DefaultValue="r"/>
 
Editing the page with SharePoint Designer and changing the default value to something like ! will result in no contacts being displayed when the page is first loaded.
 
Categories:SharePoint

 
Mar
5

The web link provided in the previous post doesn't provide an easy way to view the results in any order due to the group by view so a quick export to Excel gives us a top 10.

Code

Track

Session

Presenter

Content

Relevance

delivery

depth

Expectations

Overall

ECMS 302

Enterprise Content Management and Search

Structured Approach to Building MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites

Andrew Connell

8.48

8.19

8.68

8.26

8.13

8.35

ECMS 204

Enterprise Content Management and Search

Chesapeake Energy: Making Information So Easy to Find, it's Impossible NOT to Use It!

Lori Garcia

8.45

8.50

8.65

7.90

8.20

8.34

ECMS 301

Enterprise Content Management and Search

Using MOSS 2007 to Create Content-Centric Internet Facing Publishing Sites Using Web Content Management

Andrew Connell

8.26

8.28

8.45

8.07

8.12

8.23

AG 200

Administration and Governance

From Chaos to Corporate Governance, 10 Steps for Success with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies

Joel Oleson; Brian Cook

8.13

8.42

8.21

8.12

8.25

8.23

AG 313

Administration and Governance

Microsoft Product Support Best Practices for Deploying Hotfixes, Public Updates, and Service Packs for WSS and MOSS

Dan Winter

8.05

8.16

8.18

8.08

8.21

8.14

BAS 308

Business Applications and Solutions

Creating Solutions with the Business Data Catalog

Todd Baginski

8.22

7.89

8.22

8.00

7.89

8.04

AG 202

Administration and Governance

MOSS 2007: Fundamentals of Administrative Architecture, Deployment, and Operations

Shane Young

8.02

8.04

8.10

7.96

8.08

8.04

IBP 400

Interoperability and Business Process

Migrating a SharePoint Designer Workflow to Visual Studio .NET

Todd Bleeker

8.10

8.00

7.92

8.02

8.12

8.03

ECMS 209

Enterprise Content Management and Search

Visioneer OneTouch Scanning Link to SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007

John Dexter

8.10

7.40

8.20

7.80

8.60

8.02

AG 304

Administration and Governance

Enforce Governance by Provisioning Sites with Workflows

Ed Hild

8.10

8.02

8.06

7.79

7.79

7.95

I'm glad I attended #1 J. I'll refresh this tomorrow and probably put the full list into Excel Services (Woody may be cursing me right now...)

Categories:SPC2008

 
Mar
5
battery seems to be flat so they can't call its number to find me. Email me if it is yours...
I went to hand it in but there is no lost and found service. I'll try and charge the phone so you can call it later.
Categories:Personal, SPC2008

 
Mar
1

I should be packing for my trip to Seattle tomorrow (22 hours of travel) for the SharePoint Conference but I just had to try out this new training content. It is based on the SLK, just like the end user version.

The Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Training (Portal Edition) leads the learner step-by-step through SharePoint Designer features using easy to understand videos. Built with the SharePoint platform integration in mind and engineered to work efficiently with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Designer will help you customize your SharePoint sites to make it an even more powerful tool for productivity. SharePoint Designer is the ideal tool for Information Workers to build composite applications, design and customize workflows and tailor SharePoint sites to their branding needs.

You can easily add or remove training videos in this Training to fit your business needs. The Training also includes a reporting function that allows an administrator/trainer to track learners' completed training topics. You can customize the Training to fit the look and feel of your own Office SharePoint Server site.

Because I already had the end user version installed, I just uploaded the content zip files into a new folder in the existing training site. You can see the 20 SPD modules here http://www.wssdemo.com/training

Download links for both the portal and standalone install are also on this page.

Categories: