SharePoint 2010 development random links

Mental note – need to check links listed below about SharePoint 2010 – some interesting stuff in there. Probably something to do during the summer holidays…

• Getting started with the SharePoint 2010 packaging designers in Visual Studio 2010
• SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series – Part 1 – Introduction to the new list view
• SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series – Part 2 – Using the new SharePoint Lists
• SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series – Part 3 – List view architecture
• SharePoint 2010 Content Iterator class
• Using JQuery and SPServices to display List Items
• An unexpected error has occurred – providing your own custom error pages in SharePoint 2010
• MSDN Webcasts about SharePoint Server 2010
• Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Developer Tools Import Templates
• Creating Custom SharePoint Server 2010 Field Types and Field controls with Visual Studio 2010 
• SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Kit 
• SharePoint 2010 Activity Feed – Enterprise twitter
• SharePoint 2010 with filestream RBS provider
• Visualizing data using XSLT: Following up on SPC 2009 session on Building SharePoint mashups with SPD, Bing MAPS and REST Services
• Debugging event receivers in SharePoint 2010 !!!
• Codeplex Project for Word Automation Services
• MSDN Webcast – SharePoint Server 2010 (Part 2 of 8) : Developing rich solutions in Silverlight (level 400)
• Getting started with Business Intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010
• Extending the Outlook 2010 social connector 
• SharePoint 2010 Presentations – Developer conference session files
• Publishing Silverlight applications in SharePoint 2010
• Integrating Silverlight BING maps with SharePoint 2010

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,silverlight,visualstudio2010,sharepoint+server+2010,sps2010,development,microsoft

Download links for SharePoint Foundation 2010 (WSS 4.0) and SharePoint Designer 2010

Did you know that there’s a great way to learn to work with the SharePoint 2010 platform. Just download SharePoint Foundation 2010 - if you would follow the logic of naming from the previous versions, this would have been Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 – together with SharePoint Designer 2010. These tools do not have any additional license cost. So why not try them out…

• SharePoint Foundation 2010
• SharePoint Designer 2010 (32-bit)
• SharePoint Designer 2010 (64-bit) – Note: This is the 64-bit version of SharePoint Designer. SharePoint Designer 2010 only connects to SharePoint 2010. To connect to SharePoint 2007 and earlier sites you must continue to use SharePoint Designer 2007. If you elect to install both applications side-by-side, you must download the 32-bit version of SharePoint Designer 2010, and install it after installing SharePoint Designer 2007. Please also note that 64 bit Office applications will not run if SharePoint Designer 2007 is installed; 64-bit Office 2010 applications should only be used if not connecting to SharePoint 2007 servers.
• Search Server 2010 Express -If you’re using SharePoint Foundation, you can easily add search capabilities to your collaboration environment across SharePoint sites, file shares, web sites, Exchange Public Folders, and third party repositories using Microsoft Search Server 2010 Express

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+foundation,spf2010,spd2010,sharepoint+designer2010,sharepoint,microsoft

WP7 Need for list with integrated search

A lot of time since my last post, but it's a really busy period. This is a small "inconvenient" when you own a small and have a lot of projects. I would love to have more time for blogging. This will be a small post...

Maybe you've already read about this on other blogs, but seem that there are some lucky developers that can already develop/test/debug on a real device.

First of all ... I WANT ONE TOO :) Maybe we will get lucky and the guys XDA (especially
DA_G) will be able to port the leaked Mondrian ROM to other devices. It would be even nicer to have a developer device directly from Microsoft given/sold to developers registered on Windows Marketplace (I am not one of them yet). It will have to be a NoBrand device for development purpose which will have access to the beta versions of the WP7 OS (something like Apple does now) ?

But let me get to the post. When I watched the video posted with Windows Phone 7 startup/setup there are 2 aspects that I didn't like and I've already talked about both of them in my previous posts.

• The first aspect is the "ugly" buttons that are a little too small for my taste.
• The second one is the list where you have to choose the Time Zone. It's not
  practical and the user is very very slow to find/select what it needs (it's true that you won't set the Time Zone every day, but it's about the speed of finding what you need in a list with many items). Why not just put an embedded search option? It could be implemented on the properties of the ItemsSource. Wouldn't be easier to just pop up the keyboard and write +01 to filter the list to all items on GMT +01, or Rom and have Rome directly? Sure the developer could implement this functionality but I would love to have it already there and to have the possibility to enable/disable. They need to put this functionality on the Application list also otherwise the user will get "nuts" trying to find an application.

Microsoft Help Us to Help You

Namaste!

PowerPivot is the analysts/managers killer app

I did some demos recently at a SharePoint event @RealDolmen last week and one of the things I demoed was PowerPivot – a technology not specifically linked to SharePoint but it can be integrated.  So here goes my PowerPivot elevator pitch:

PowerPivot is a separate add-in for Excel which adds an in-memory cube which allows you import enormous quantities of data with incredible speed into Excel from different data sources.  You can define relationships between these data sources and parse through this data using pivot tables, pivot charts or using the new Data Analysis Expressions (DAX).

If you want to learn more about PowerPivot definitely take a look at PowerPivot Component Architecture which is an excerpt from the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot Planning and Deployment technical white paper.

Technorati Tags: powerpivot,business+intelligence,excel,microsoft,office

Business intelligence in SharePoint 2010

As I already mentioned in one of the SharePoint 2010 practice sessions here at RealDolmen – Business Intelligence on the Microsoft platform is a great value proposition. With SharePoint as front end visualization plaform you can create amazing looking dashboards – here are a collection of links which came through in the RSS feeds I follow but I’m still surprised by how people still seem to ignore this great feature set.

• PowerPivot/Excel/SharePoint and SSRS – should they merge?
• Thoughts on how PowerPivot and SSAS could work together
• Comparing Analysis Services and PowerPivot
• PowerPivot Component Architecture 
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developers Training Kit (April 2010 edition)
• Time Intelligence functions in DAX
• Demystified – BI in SharePoint 2010

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft,sql+server,powerpivot,sqlserver2008r2,analysis+services,SSAS,SSRS,excel

Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2010 and FAST Search 2010

Here’s a collection of links which will help you get started with Enterprise Search on the 2010 platform. With the addition of Fast  to the Microsoft Enterprise gamma the functional spectrum which is covered has broadened enormously. Have fun …

Starting points:

Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products Visio schema 

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Evaluation Guide

SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Search Evaluation Guide

Getting started with Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010

Guide for IT Pros for Microsoft Search Server 2010 Beta

Learning material:

Microsoft Partner Training – Developer training – Advanced Fast Search for Developers

Microsoft Partner Training – IT Pro Training – Advanced Fast Search for IT Pros 

Technical articles:

• Fast Enterprise Search and Bing Services – Part 2: Bing geo-coding structured/unstructured text for search
• The search developer story in SharePoint 2010 – Query interfaces 
• Adding search refinements in SharePoint 2010 
• Query integration in Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (Beta)
• Optimize search relevance with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (Beta) 

Background info:

• Enterprise Search Summit 2010 summary – day 1
• Enterprise Search Summit 2010 summary – day 2

Technorati Tags: enterprise+search,enterprisesearch,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,sharepoint,fast,fast2010,fastsearch2010,microsoft

Microsoft free e-books – Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2

• Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 : The book is not a language primer, a language reference, or a single technology book. It’s a book that will help professional developers move from previous versions of Visual Studio (starting with 2003 and on up). It will cover the features of Visual Studio 2010 through an application. It will go through a lot of the exciting new language features and new versions of the most popular technologies without putting the emphasis on the technologies themselves. It will instead put the emphasis on how you would get to those new tools and features from Visual Studio 2010
• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 : Part I, “Database Administration,” is written with the DBA in mind and introduces
  readers to the numerous innovations in SQL Server 2008 R2. In Part II, “Business Intelligence Development,” readers discover components new to the SQL Server data platform, as well as significant enhancements to the reporting component.

Technorati Tags: visualstudio2010,vs2010,sql+server,sql2008r2,ebook,free,microsoft,mspress

SharePoint Snacks – Episode 2 – Multi user co-authoring

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,office,office2010,sharepoint+snacks,microsoft,coauthoring

SharePoint Snacks – Episode 1 – Office 2010 integration with the backstage view

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,office+2010,office,microsoft,backstage,sharepoint+snacks

People you know and things you can do….

Excellent blogpost  - No man is an island – truer today than ever with a reference to this interesting survey – Informal networks linked to success of change initiatives.

The answer to the question about whether networking makes a difference: yes! The study showed a significant relationship between the success of a change initiative and the strength of the personal networks of the leader(s) managing the initiative.

93% of completely successful change initiatives were led by leaders with very strong or strong personal networks. Not one change initiatives described as less successful was led by leader(s) with strong or very strong personal networks.

On the other hand, the majority of less successful change initiatives (73%) were led by people described as having moderate or weak personal networks.

Technorati Tags: HR,networking,change+management

WP7 Memory Requirements

Finally some time for blogging. Let's go to the subject...

The new "unlocked" image gives the possibility to do some tests of how much memory does WP7 eat as OS and also how much memory the developed apps occupy.

The emulator starts with 77 MB occupied. To understand how much that changed in comparison to previous versions I started all the other emulators I have installed on my development system and this is the result:

Not so bad... The memory requirement only doubled (the same happened when they passed from PPC2003 to WM5).

As the apps don't offer the option to exit them programmatically I've started launching all included applications. Arriving at 160 MB of memory occupied the emulator doesn't work correctly anymore and you will get screens like these ones:

This may be a bug of the RC emulator image, but I still prefer a GOOD OLD EXIT function for my apps.
I than run some tests to see how much memory a simple application occupies. The "empty" application generated by VS 2010 started with the debugging option occupies around 8 MB of memory and without debugging 6MB. I did the same test on Win32 and NET CF and grouped the results in a chart:

Let's say that an empty app that does nothing and occupies 6MB means that the framework is not yet optimized. It would be interesting to see how much memory requires a more complex application. Looking at this chart I think Microsoft should offer the possibility to develop natively or using NETCF on the WP7 platform.

Then there is the whole Running,Paused,Suspended,Resume mechanism that doesn't convince me 100%. If the OS decides when to suspend(kill) an application why doesn't the OS automatically save the state of the suspended application and then when the app resumes the OS could automatically reload the last state? The OS has access to the File System which is faster than IsolatedStorage accessible to the user. Personally I prefer the "old" way to work with the apps not this one that seems copied from the iPhone OS. In fact the whole OS looks like is developed taking iPhone as a model and not looking at what was good in the old OS. They erased not only what was bad but also what was good like the possibility to group the applications in folders which was implemented since Pocket PC , that misses in WP7 and which will be implemented in iPhone OS4.

In hope I will find more time for blogging.
In the meanwhile NAMASTE!

Getting Office 2010 to work on a single box SharePoint 2010 demo environment

Last week I finished installing a new SharePoint 2010 demo environment. As it is a demo environment I installed everything on one server – so Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008, SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010 on one single machine. Unfortunately when I tried the “Edit in word” option in SharePoint 2010 it gave me an error “Word has encountered an error”. Same if I tried the “New document” option in a SharePoint 2010 document library.

Thanks to Steven for providing the solution – go to File Options> Trust Center. Next click the Trust Center Settings button. On the new screen which pops up – go to the Protected View and unselect all the tree protected view options displayed on the top of this settings page

Close your Office 2010  and try the “Edit in word” option again – you will notice that it works like a charm.

Technorati Tags: office+2010,sharepoint+2010,office,sps2010,sharepoint,microsoft

Troubleshooting UserProfile import in SharePoint 2010

If you need to configure user profile synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010 – you definitely need to check out the Microsoft Technet Documentation on SharePoint Server 2010 – Manage Profile Synchronization – configure user profile synchronization.

There is one thing however which helped me out which isn’t mentionned in the documentation – when trying to start the user profile synchronization service it failed – after restarting the SharePoint timer service it started successfully.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,sps2010,microsoft,administration,userprofile

Solving could not load type error with ListData.svc in SharePoint 2010 RTM

If you encounter the following error when you access the listdata.svc service in SharePoint Server 2010 RTM -

Could not load type 'System.Data.Services.Providers.IDataServiceUpdateProvider' from assembly 'System.Data.Services, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'

you are probably missing the latest update of ADO.NET Data Services for .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. There are two versions -

• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
• ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Apparently this is not picked up by the prerequisites installer.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,sharepoint+2010,listdata.svc,adonetdataservices,astoria,odata,microsoft,development

Don’t forget to start the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service …

When you want to use sandboxed solutions in SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 you have to check that the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service is started. If it is not you will see the following errors:

• You will be able to upload sandboxed solutions to the solutions gallery but the Activate solution button will remain greyed out.
• When you try to deploy a sandboxed solution from within Visual Studio 2010 you will get the following error: Error occurred in deployment step 'Activate Features': Cannot start service SPUserCodeV4 on computer ''

To start it go to SharePoint 2010 Central Admin and select Manage services on server.


On the application page make sure that the Sandboxed Code Service is started.

Technorati Tags: sharepoint+2010,sharepoint,sandboxed+solutions,sharepoint+foundation,administration

Which Visio version to install?

There’s a great blog post on the Visio team blog – Visio 2010 versions overview which describes the differences between the standard, professional and premium edition. For integration with SharePoint and the new Visio Services you will at least need Visio Professional 2010. If you also want to design SharePoint workflows in Visio, you will need Visio Premium 2010.

Technorati Tags: visio,visio+2010,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,visio+services,workflow

SharePoint 2010 Tools Extensibility

Visual Studio 2010 allows you to extend the SharePoint 2010 tool support by creating custom extensions, this way you can for example create custom SharePoint Project Items (SPI’s) which are not available out of the box.

There are already some interesting examples out there of theses extensions and what’s all possible

• Extend the functionality available on the SharePoint Explorer nodes and the available menus – Imtech Get SPMetal Definition extension – there’s a complete list of Imtech Visual Studio Extensions available on Visual Studio Gallery
• Create new SharePoint Project Templates – SharePoint 2010 Extensibility Projects with Silverlight and SharePoint project template, SharePoint Ribbon project template and OBA deployment project template.
• Extend the Visual Studio context menu’s for standard and custom SharePoint Project Items (SPIs)
• Provide extensibility enable access to the SharePoint Server API from within Visual Studio

A number of extensions are also grouped within the CKS:Development Tools Edition on Codeplex (Source code available on Codeplex) – these are currently being rewritten to work with Visual Studio 2010 RTM.

If you have some other interesting extensions – please add a comment.

Technorati Tags: vs2010,visualstudio2010,sharepoint,sharepoint+2010,microsoft,development