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11/7/2009

I've been hearing the buzz and reading posts about SharePoint Saturdays for months, and I've finally had the chance to attend one in person with today's SharePoint Saturday Redmond.

What's a SharePoint Saturday? It's a forum for training and connecting with the SharePoint community, with venues in many U.S. and some worldwide cities. Make sure to check out the schedule for a city that might be near you.

In fact, there are three SharePoint Saturdays (Raleigh, Philadelphia, and Redmond) today, plus the SharePoint 2010 RoadShow in Chicago. Plus, SharePoint Saturdays are coming to six more U.S. locations and one Australia location later this month.

You can check out live feeds for today's events at EndUserSharePoint.com, as well as a SharePoint Saturday Redmond event page on FaceBook. If you have other links related for today's events, feel free to let us know in the comments.

It's amazing to see the energy from all the planners, sponsors, speakers, and participants of these events. For example, the Puget Sound SharePoint Users group has been collaborating on this event for several weeks, not to mention the efforts of people around the world who make events like this happen. If you've ever planned events, you know there are dozens of details to coordinate.

It's also impressive to see the dedication of the participants who overcame the inertia of a soggier-than-usual fall day in the Pacific Northwest. Today's weather is more naturally suited for a warm fire, a good novel, and hot tea, but the great content and energy in the 19 sessions are worth donning the raingear.

So far, I've caught the SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 overviews. They've provided a great flavor of the upcoming releases, ranging from tags to visual workflows to enhanced editing and customization.

I heard the SharePoint Administration session next door included a wake-up SharePoint dance, as well as insight on governance and server health features.

In the next few days on Get the Point, we'll be providing more details about the specific sessions. Meanwhile, if you'd like to learn more about SharePoint while connecting with others, check out the upcoming SharePoint Saturday dates and locations.

Cheers,

Toni

SharePoint Content Team

Posted at 12:58 PM by | Category: SharePoint 2010; Search ; Rich Media; Business Processes | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

11/6/2009

Speed dating and gambling on an otherwise quiet week - Friday Cool Content

We've been kinda quiet on the blog since the flurry of activity during the SharePoint Conference, and while we worked on some content deadlines around the office.

We'll try to make up for that in the coming weeks. Until then, I have two articles to share with you, both thought-provoking, but for different reasons.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em when it comes to deciding how and when to customize your SharePoint sites. Those are wise words from Lori Gowin, a SharePoint administrator who knows. My favorite part is her description of a common pitfall of out-of-the-box customization. "Despite how many times you repeat 'don’t click the X, that only closes the web part, it does not delete it from your page,' users will still do this," she says. Check it out.

On the more lighthearted side, Speed dating with SharePoint 2010 gives an account of a social computing presentation given by Christian Finn and Alina Fu at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week in San Francisco. Sounds like fun. Wish I were there to see that.

That's all for now. See you next week.

Matt Evans

SharePoint End-User Content Team

Posted at 8:31 PM by | Category: Branding; Cool Content; Social Networking | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/30/2009

Friday's Cool Content: SharePoint 2010 -- videos, videos, videos

On the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site, 10 new videos have been posted that cover various aspects of SharePoint 2010 products.

Enterprise Search

This video will demonstrate some of the new search features and functionality that make this release of SharePoint the best yet!

ent search

SharePoint Partners

Kathleen Winder talks about the upcoming release of SharePoint 2010 and the opportunity for partners.

partners

Sites

In this video, we explain how SharePoint 2010 empowers users to increase productivity through information management.

sites

2010 for IT Pros

We provide an overview of major SharePoint 2010 investment areas for IT professionals.

itpros

Insights

In this brief video, you’ll see a glimpse of some key features in SharePoint 2010 that can help your users make more informed decisions with better insights!

insight

2010 for Developers

Watch Paul Andrew demonstrate new features in SharePoint 2010 that can help developers be more productive and take advantage of rich platform services.

for dev

Composites

J.R. Arredondo talks about a few of the new capabilities in SharePoint Composites that help organizations rapidly respond to business needs with the power of the SharePoint platform.

comp

Communities

In this video, Jacqueline Russell demonstrates SharePoint features to provide a broad range of capabilities for collaboration and social computing.

communities

Content

This sneak peek video provides an opportunity to see some of the features in SharePoint 2010 to deliver on our vision of content management for the masses.

content

SharePoint Foundation

Windows SharePoint Services is now Microsoft SharePoint Foundation! Learn about this exciting change and the improvements made for SharePoint Foundation 2010.

foundation

Posted at 5:15 PM by | Category: SharePoint 2010 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/26/2009

Access Web Databases and The Access Show

There are a couple big announcements happening today for the Access community. In partnership with Channel 9 we are launching a new show called The Access Show. It will feature Ryan McMinn, myself and others from the team. We will talk in-depth about what is new in Access 2010 and share feedback from the community. Additionally, at the SharePoint Developers Conference we are disclosing more details about Access Services. Access Services is a new SharePoint 2010 feature that allows users to create web databases in Access, host them on SharePoint, and available through a browser.

Here is the inaugural episode and one of the first public demos of an Access Services application running in the browser.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Access/Microsoft-Access-2010-Demo/

Enjoy!

Clint Covington, Program Manager, Access Team

Posted at 1:40 PM by | Category: SharePoint 2010; Building Solutions | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/23/2009

Friday's Cool Content: Recap on the SharePoint 2010 Conference in Las Vegas

What happens in Vegas, doesn't stay in Vegas.

Sandra and Denise, who were in Vegas for the convention, published several blog posts that shared some of the new features in SharePoint 2010 and also shared their thoughts and experiences of what was going on at the conference. Here is a recap of their posts in case you want to check them out.

Check out the videos while your at it. They highlight several new SharePoint 2010 feature areas introduced at the conference.

Enjoy!

Sessions on Content Management

Ryan Duguid on SharePoint 2010 Content

Sessions on Business Intelligence

Pej Javaheri on SharePoint 2010 Insights

Sessions on Search in SharePoint 2010

Search Quality and Relevance in SharePoint 2010

Posted at 2:19 PM by | Category: SharePoint 2010 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/21/2009

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Conference Live: Content Types in SharePoint 2010

Day 3 of the SharePoint Conference 2009 has so far been full of many more details about how to congifure many of the new features within SharePoint 2010. I have good news and bad news about Content Types. I will start with the good.

Content Types with its columns and policies are now available not only across a site collection, but also across multiple site collections, web applications, and farms.

No longer do you need to recall what is in your site columns, SharePoint now has 'Suggestions.' You can enter any term and SharePoint brings back possible matches for you to select from. If needed, you can configure whether to only allow users to select the existing available options, or create a new one.

The bad news is that Content Types have become even more complex than ever before. As I left this morning's session, I realized I was walking out with far more questions than answers. As I uncover and learn the answers to these questions, I will continue sharing.

Sandra Tersteeg

Technology Business Consultant

Allyis, Inc. | www.allyis.com

Posted at 2:48 PM by | Category: SharePoint 2010 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Conference Live: Search Quality and Relevance in SharePoint 2010

Hello from the final session from Day 2 of the SharePoint Conference 2009! For this session, we are talking about search relevance. First off, defining the quality of a search results in how relevant the results are to the user's query. Two enterprise-level search products are available from Microsoft: SharePoint Server 2010 and FAST. FAST implements more visual and contextualized Best Bets.

The ideal is to provide a conversational user experience that helps the user achieve fast and high-quality task completion. When running the query, analyze and drill-down into the result set and adapting it based on the user interaction.

SharePoint 2010 allows users to browse through the multiple slides in a PowerPoint file to investigate if it is useful to their task without requiring them to open it. As well as the ability to refine their result set through sorting categories along the left such as result type, author, site, etc.

Contextual Promotions is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 which utilize Best Bets, Visual Best Bets, Site Promotions. By taking advantage of the properties in the user profile such as Title, Function, or Department, Contextual Promotions is able to build a result set that is most relevant to the user. For example. Someone who is a sales manager verses a developer would have interests in different types of files. It's great to see this level of intelligence configurable to search!

Applying refiners to Results page is done through a Web Part with further customizations done by editing the XML. There are additional configurations that can be customized through development tools, however, the web part and XML allows a great deal of capability without requiring code. Yay!

Top 10 Data Organizational Tips

10. Avoid mixing multilingual metadata, text and message files.

9. Annotate text regions with their language

8. Group by language where possible, then by subject

7. Encourage natural hierarchies

6. Use natural language for metadata

5. Supply copious metadata such as author, dates, titles, and tags

4. Encourage population of My Sites and Profiles - it helps people search

3. Encourage application social tags

2. Reserve areas for your premium content - ensure it is hosted on reliable fast servers.

1. Encourage archiving obsolete data

That wraps-up today, but tune in for more tomorrow. On my agenda is content types (my favorite topic) and Excel Services in SharePoint 2010.

Cheers,

Sandra Tersteeg

Technology Business Consultant

Allyis, Inc | www.allyis.com

Posted at 7:57 AM by | Category: Search ; SharePoint 2010 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

10/20/2009

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Conference Live: Co-Authoring in Office 2010

OneNote

When changes have been made by one author, another author is able to view it within seconds afterwards.
It's highlighted in green and the page title is bold, just like Outlook bolds an unread email.
Even when multiple authors make changes to the same area such as adding a new row, merging takes care of integrating the changes appropriately.
You can search for changes based on a particular author.
Page versioning is supported and by turning it on, right-side tabs will display allowing you to step through the history allowing you to right-click and restore to a previous version.
Much easier to create a new notebook in a SharePoint site by utilizing previously accessed sites.
Simultaneous editing occurs the same between editing in OneNote and editing in the SharePoint site web application.

Word

Rich view of the document in the SharePoint web application without opening in the Word client, as well as the ability to edit.
When changes occur from another author, a bubble notification pops up alerting you of that and an icon in the status bar at the bottom appears allowing you to click on it and see the user and their profile details.
The paragraph being edited will show-up within the paragraph being edited with the user's name to the left. If you try to modify the same text, Word won't allow you to until the other user moves on.
Also along the bottom status, "Updates Available" will appear letting you know there are changes that have been made. By saving, the changes come through and are highlights so you know exactly what the changes are.
In the document Navigation (know as Document Map in 2007), the section that is being modified by another author will pop-up with their name.
Automatically populates with recent SharePoint sites to allow much more efficient saving of the document.

PowerPoint

Same as Word above, with the exception of editing which requires the client.
When modifications are made to the same item in a slide, users receive a notification alerting them of the conflict and allows them to review the changes. They can then decide to accept or reject.
Publish the slides to a presentation with a link so that people can view directly from the slideshow and not the edit mode.

Excel

Same as Word, including the ability to open and edit within the SharePoint web application, including tabbed spreadsheets.
A row of data entered by one user, other columns can be updated by another user.

Under the hood, a file is broken out into incremental units so when a change occurs, it is small enough to maintain high server performance as opposed to passing the entire file.

Sandra Tersteeg

Technolgy Business Consultant

Allyis, Inc. | www.allyis.com

Posted at 4:16 PM by | Category: Productivity; SharePoint 2010 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Advanced Reporting Design Techniques and Capabilities

Hello, I'm Denise, a writer for PerformancePoint, and I'm posting from the SharePoint Conference 2010 in Las Vegas. Today I attended a session on "Advanced Reporting Design Techniques and Capabilities."

This session covered how to create advanced reports by using SQL Server 2008 R2. Advanced reports are highly customizable views that enable report authors to deliver information to users they way they want to see it. Using SQL Server 2008 Report Builder, can create all kinds of advanced reports, such as:

Sparkline graphs
Line and bar charts
Pyramid charts
Radar maps
Gauges
Maps, such as geographical maps
Donut graphs
Tables
and many more.

Report Builder is one of many tools that you can use to create reports for dashboards or for sharing with users.

You can create a Chart Web Part by using edit mode in a SharePoint site, or by using SharePoint Designer.
You can create highly interactive analytic charts and grids, scorecards, strategy maps, and many other reports by using Dashboard Designer.
You can create many different kinds of reports by using Microsoft Excel 2010, and then publish those reports to Excel Services.

However, Report Builder offers you the ability to create highly customizable, advanced reports that you cannot easily create by using SharePoint applications, such as Dashboard Designer or SharePoint Designer. But you can use the reports that you create by using Report Builder in your dashboards, because SQL Server 2008 integrates closely with SharePoint Server 2010.

For example, using Report Builder, you can create a highly interactive geographical map that shows which regions are performing well, and which ones aren’t at a glance. In that map, you can drill down to see the underlying data. Using Dashboard Designer, you cannot create an interactive geographical map as a primary report type, but you can create a PerformancePoint Web Part to display that map in your dashboard.

As another example, using Report Builder, you can create a tabular report and then embed interactive charts in one or more cells. You can customize chart legends and format each chart or table to look just the way you want it to (or just the way report users requested it to display). You can also take pieces and parts of reports that you create by using Report Builder and create other reports (this is called this “Grab & Go reporting”).

SQL Server 2008 R2 nicely complements the business intelligence functionality that you get with SharePoint Server 2010 and its services, including PerformancePoint Services and Excel Services.

-- Denise

Posted at 4:15 PM by | Category: Business Intelligence | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Conference Live: New Word Automation Services and Open XML SDK

Today with MOSS 2007:

Application object model was not designed for bulk automation or server scenarios
Does not scale
Dialog boxes stop automation
Reboot application on server every x hours

New with SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010

Open XML File Formats
Default for 2007 & 2010
Open XML is an ISO standard

File Container for Developer (.ZIP)

Document properties
Comments
WordML
Custom defined XML
Images, video, sound
Styles
Charts

Open XML SDK

Allows you to create and modify Open XML docs
Based on .NET, compatible with LINQ
Consistent client and server solutions
Open XML SDK extends reach of Excel Services
Integrating Word Automation Services and Excel Services
Rich end-to-end solution with Office Services and Open XML SDK
SDK does NOT(accomplished with Office Services)
Replace Office app object models
Perform layout and recalculation tasks (TOC & formulas in a workbook)
Perform file conversions to other formats (PDF & XPS)
Version 2.0 of the SDK release around same time as Office 2010 (April 2010)
SDK is very fast
Easy to merge multiple Open XML docs
Easy to integrate with SharePoint and Document Sets
1:1 mapping

Example: Integrate the following and publish into a single Word document

Document Sets - related document or binder of related docs
Utilizing Content Controls to define schematics within the doc
Smart Art graphic from a PowerPoint
Charts in Excel workbooks with substantial data

Word Automation Services

100% fidelity, server side rendering
File > Save As on the server
High volume through-put with scalability
Printing on the server through PDF

Performance:

Word Automated Services 20-30 pages per second where as competitor .333 or Word 2007 5-7 pages. Per hour, 7200 pages with Word Automated Services verses 900 with Word 2007.

Example: Word Automation Services to Publish to PDF

Select a bunch of documents in a library and convert to PDF through a web part that asks which documents to convert and which library to post to. You can control server resources and configure when to start and which servers to utilize to perform the conversion.

Sever ready version of Word
100% fidelity with client
Maintains layout, export to fixed format, file conversion, and handles complex field calculations
Open XML SDK and Word Automated Services very complementary to one another.
Server side Word doc solutions without client
Dealing with legacy binary formats, no problem converting back from binary

Example: Publish Monthly Invoices

Choose month for invoices and click on Create Invoices. Utilizing Word Automated Services, takes the data and creates 100s of invoices within seconds to both Word and PDF.

Integrating Excel Services to query Word documents

Highlight content with a specification document as an ISSUE style and then utilize Word Automation Services and Open XML SDK to publish data to a chart that takes the highlighted issues, count each and generate a graph.

SDK reads the data in the Word documents and pump them into Excel as numerical counts based on who the author is, what stage it is in and how many issues. Then take that and create a new chart based on the data within the files.

New file I/O SharePoint 2010 Integrates Co-Authoring with Word Automated Services

When authoring your document, a region with a dotted line will appear in the Word document when another user is modifying the document. When you hit Save, Word brings in the modifications and integrates them into your active document. "Updates Available" will appear on the bottom taskbar. The ability to manipulate the file while it is being edited now exists. More to come on this later today...

Real User Value