Bamboo Nation

Announcing the SharePoint 2010 Blog

John Anderson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:00:00 GMT

When Microsoft makes the public Beta of SharePoint 2010 available, Bamboo Nation will be on the scene to provide you with everything you need to know about what's new, what's different, and what those changes might mean for you. Representatives of virtually every discipline at Bamboo will be contributing to our SharePoint 2010 coverage, so whether you're an administrator, end user, engineer, project manager, or CIO/CEO, our team will have you and your team covered.

Anticipation of the release of the public Beta of SharePoint 2010 runs high, but speculation is all that's available regarding the release date, as Microsoft hasn't yet announced their timeline. The earliest expected release that seems reasonable would have the Beta dropping around the time of the SharePoint Conference taking place in Las Vegas in October, but until Microsoft announces their plans, speculation is all that we can offer.

While eagerly awaiting the public Beta, we realized that there would be value in launching our dedicated SharePoint 2010 area sooner than later, by primarily leveraging SharePoint Daily to aggregate the best coverage of what we're calling "the road to SharePoint 2010." We've compiled individual pages for both press coverage and blog reactions to SharePoint 2010-related stories, and we'll be maintaining those pages daily at least until the public Beta occurs.

If you're interested in "SharePoint vNext," our goal is to provide you with a one-stop shop to keep abreast of the latest news, blog coverage, rumors, and more. While you're visiting the SharePoint 2010 area, why not take our poll on your plans for adoption, ask a question or begin a discussion in the SharePoint 2010 forum, or even consider contributing a guest blog by sending me an email with your proposed topic at john.anderson@bamboosolutions.com.

As mentioned, once the public Beta is available, you can expect a wealth of original content and analysis from Bamboo staffers as well as guest contributors. We've been working closely with Microsoft in early reviews of the next version of SharePoint in order to help ensure a smooth transition for our existing products, and to continue providing innovative products to complete your SharePoint experience. In addition to editorial offerings, SharePoint 2010-ready Beta builds of many of our products will be made available to complement the public Beta of SharePoint 2010.

That's all in the future though, so for the time being, we invite you to check out the offerings in our newest feature area, SharePoint 2010. And please don't be shy about letting us know what you think!

Need Help With Your Bamboo Download? Try a Bamboo 101 Webinar

Angela — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:57:00 GMT

If all else fails...

Purchased any products that required assembly lately?

If yes, chances are that product came with a set of detailed instructions on how to put your product together with minimal fuss, just like Bamboo's lovingly crafted Application Notes that are available online for every product.

Now, tell me honestly, did you read the directions before you started putting pieces together?

Let's face it. For many of us (and yes, I'm definitely among the guilty), reading the instruction manual before being required to do so by necessity... well, it's just not done. We want to get straight in there and get our hands dirty. We don't have time to read directions. But... as liberating as the "trial and error" approach can be (and truly great for the ego when it yields success)... there can be a downside.

You know what I'm talking about... when you find you need to go back and undo a portion of your work because your intuition and confidence took you to places that you shouldn't have gone without at least a cursory glance at the instructions.

It reminds me of something my Grandpa used to say, "When working toward a solution, it always helps if you know the answer."

With that in mind, Bamboo 101 is here for you. This new webinar series will give you a visual introduction to some of our most popular Web Parts and bolster your faith in your intuitive abilities. Sit back with a beverage, put your feet up, and watch while we walk you through installation, configuration, and show you how to make the most of Bamboo in your SharePoint environment.

Coming up this July, we'll be looking at Bamboo's Calendar Plus & List Rollup, Task Master, and Chart Plus, and watch out in August when we'll introduce the Filters Collection and take a good look at List Integrity.

June e-news from Bamboo

Lily — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:16:00 GMT

Get up to date news and information about our our latest products and what's coming soon from Bamboo. Find out where you can meet up with our team and talk to us in person. Read the hotest blog posts from our online community and learn more about our partners. All delivered to your inbox, each month. How convenient is that?

What's that? You don't get our monthly e-news? Well, be sure to sign up here.

Branding Office 2010 Apps, Windows 7 Beta Shutdowns Start, Is a Browser a Search Engine?

SharePoint Daily — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:34:00 GMT

Top News Stories
Using Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Lists for Information Management (InformIT)
Ishai Sagi, author of SharePoint 2007 How-To, argues for an evolutionary approach to information management (using SharePoint and Microsoft Office in particular): Let users define and build what they need, and then get an expert to tweak it.

Google Wave Emulates Trends of Changing World (Windows IT Pro)
I've been thinking about Google Wave and its potential. To some, Google Wave is an integrated email, instant messaging, and collaboration platform that will mostly be used in the consumer space to make keeping in touch with friends and family easier. To others, Google Wave is a potential SharePoint competitor, offering real-time file collaboration for marketers writing a memo or programmers writing code. And of course, there are some individuals who go way overboard and say that Google Wave will radically change the way individuals communicate and view the world.

Branding Office 2010 Web Applications (Softpedia)
Microsoft is currently hard at work cooking the next iteration of the Office System. Back in October 2008, the Redmond company pointed out that customers would be getting the Office 2010 products come 2010 and that it was extending the suite into the Cloud. At that time, Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division, confirmed that users would be able to take advantage of Office web applications designed to complement the Office 2010 desktop product. Now the software giant is reportedly looking for the brand that will bring Office web apps to the public.

Microsoft Bing Dings Google, Searches Twitter Tweets (eWeek)
Microsoft adds real-time search capabilities to its Bing search engine as it seeks to knock Google from its search perch. Now users can use Bing to find the latest Twitter tweets from celebrities and other persons of note, including high-tech journalists. The move comes as startups CrowdEye, Collecta and others are propagating the Web with real-time search.

Mulling the Mystery of Microsoft's BI Market Share (Intelligent Enterprise)
How do you gauge Microsoft's business intelligence market share when it gives BI functionality away for free? That was a bit of a puzzle even before Microsoft's January announcement that it would end development of the PerformancePoint Server, the one and only entirely BI-focused product the company had. As part of that move, Microsoft now bundles what it calls "PerformancePoint Services" -- dashboarding, scorecarding and analytic capabilities -- into the enterprise edition of SharePoint. That's bundled as in free, just as Reporting Services and Analysis Services have long been bundled with Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft's BI front end is Excel, the general-purpose spreadsheet tool that's part of the Office suite -- seldom purchased separately or used exclusively for BI.

Windows 7 Build 7264 Leaked and Available for Download (Softpedia)
Just when you think that all went quiet on the Windows 7 front in preparation for the RTM, a new leaked development milestone of the operating system makes its way into the wild. Windows 7 Build 7264 from the RTM branch is now available for download through various illegal third-party sources including torrent trackers and warez websites. With the start of July, Microsoft has entered the final month of Windows' development process. In the second half of July 2009 the Redmond company will release the successor of Windows Vista to manufacturing, aiming to meet the global October 22, 2009 availability deadline.

Windows 7 Beta Set to Start Shutdowns Tonight (PC Pro)
Windows 7 beta users will start to be plagued by bi-hourly shutdowns from midnight tonight. The automatic shutdowns are Microsoft's attempt to wean people off the Beta, and move them on to the free Release Candidate software. The Beta software will stop working completely on 1 August.

Microsoft to Push IE8 at Businesses Next Month (Network World)
Microsoft will begin pushing Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) to enterprises next month, the company announced this week. The decision to turn on IE8 updates will set businesses scrambling to either test the new browser or block the update, which replaces older editions such as IE6 and IE7 that many companies now require.

A Browser is a Search Engine? (CMS Watch)
In a clip on YouTube, an interviewer asks passersby in Times Square what a browser is. The surprising result: many think it's a search engine. Of course, the video has been produced by the Google Creative Lab so you could expect it to promote search engines. However, students in Rotterdam repeated the question -- and got people answering mostly the same things.

Around the Blogosphere
Global SharePoint Survey: Win a Pass to the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas
This is an independent survey being conducted to get a glimpse into the adoption and usage of Microsoft Office SharePoint products and technologies worldwide. The survey has been designed to ensure we are respectful of your time, no questions are mandatory, the majority of the questions are multiple choice, and the path of questions is customized based on your responses. In total there are fifteen questions.

SharePoint Worst Practices: 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid (MeetDux)
In my post "Mr. Miyagi is Not a Direct Descendant of Superman" I mentioned that along with my colleague Mike Taylor, we presented: "SharePoint Worst Practices: Five Common Mistakes to Avoid" at the recently concluded SharePoint Technology Conference in Cambridge, MA.

The June Cumulative Update for WSS V3 and MOSS 2007 has Been Released Yesterday (Stefan Goßner)
As discussed by the Office Sustained Engineering group cumulative updates for all Office Products including WSS 3.0 and SharePoint 2007 will be released every second month. Yesterday we released the so called June Cumulative Update. The so called "Uber" packages for MOSS will be released in a couple of days. Currently you can download the individual global and localized fixes for your specific language packs.

SPTDD: SharePoint and Test Driven Development, Part Two (Binary Wave)
Since I released Part One of this series into the wild there have been many heated discussions around SharePoint and Test Driven Development. As always, Andrew Woodward has a great deal to say on the subject; in fact, we recorded a SharePoint Podshow on this very subject at the European Best Practices conference (and traded a few well-meaning jabs during his presentation). During the discussion we came to the conclusion that there are some fundamental software development processes lacking in most custom development projects and that TDD, while we may disagree on its overall value within the quality assurance lifecycle, plays an important role in helping to improve the overall quality of custom software.

Retrieve XML from List and View (Liam Cleary [SharePoint MVP])
Recently I was asked if there was a way to retrieve and present XML from a list. This of course is very straight forward but the complication here was that it needed to be available to an anonymous user who would consume the XML stream. After a little thought I decided that we could use the "owssvr.dll" method. For those that have not used this before it is very simple. You make a call to the following URL:

Time Zones in SharePoint and Date Time Stamp Format (Sharing The Point (SharePoint))
So 7 readers, does anyone have the time? I often answer SharePoint questions via email, and got a great question today that I thought was worth providing here are Sharing The Point. This user had a SharePoint application with users in the United States and in the United Kingdom. However, they were having a hard time determining the timestamps on their documents based on their different time zones (and to make it worse 12hr vs. 24 hr). No worries!

Item Expiration (End User SharePoint)
This article comes about from a question from illegal operation in Stump the Panel. He writes: I’ve been experimenting with workflows, and have one almost working the way I want. Basically what I want to do is this. The list in question has these fields: Staff Contact, Renewal Date.

Around Bamboo Nation
How to Create a SharePoint Blog (SharePoint Blank)
I've written previously about the joy of blogging in SharePoint, about how to publish a SharePoint blog directly from Word, even the organization of blog categories, and most recently, how to enable anonymous comments in a SharePoint blog, but somehow I've managed to skip the documenting of how to create a blog in SharePoint. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!

SharePoint Job Listings**
Software Engineer - SharePoint / MOSS
Dedicated SharePoint resource to pilot and design a production environment for SharePoint. Experience with MOSS 2007 setup and administration. Day to day administration of the server farm, troubleshooting, installing add-ins and patches and adjusting configurations to optimize the environment. Send resume to nick.mangano@rht.com

SharePoint Developer
Software Architect for the Application Development and Integration (ADI) division of Insource will work either on-site at client locations or on projects at the office. They will work closely with clients to understand their business needs; will use substantial knowledge of software technologies and former solutions to create a strategy for moving forward with judicious use of technology to solve real world problems.

SharePoint Software Developer
Omni is looking for a qualified candidate to provide day-to-day support of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a highly collaborative team environment. The candidate for this position must provide technical input to assist in development of project plans through detail work breakdown structures and timeline estimations. The qualified candidate must interface well with IT and user management, in-house team members and 3rd party systems.

Microsoft Updates
No item exists at http://SERVER/SITE/mypage.aspx?ID=1. It may have been deleted or renamed by another user (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
Consider the following scenario: We have custom pages using the Data Form Web Part to display information. The main information is stored in a SharePoint custom list and a SharePoint custom document library. All of the data and the pages exist in the same sub-site.

Demo: Tour a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site (Windows SharePoint Services)
Successful projects are often founded on good teamwork — and good teamwork relies on excellent communication. Watch this demo to see how a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site can be your team's communication center. See how you can use documents, lists, wikis, and blogs to track, store, and share information. Take a look at how search capabilities, multiple navigation options, and RSS make it a snap to find what you're looking for, and how version control and document recovery help ensure that team members stay on top of their information. A Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site can be your key to communication, teamwork, and success!

Copying or moving SharePoint document libraries (Windows SharePoint Services)
From time to time, you might need to copy or move the contents of document libraries from one site based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to another. For example, you might want to copy a snapshot of a document library to another site to archive the information, or you might want to move documents that you own from one site to another as you change workgroups. Use the steps described in this article to move or copy a document library from your current SharePoint site (the source site) to another SharePoint site (the destination site).

Roadmap to using SharePoint Server 2007 (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
Are you new to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? Or do you use a SharePoint site to store documents, but now you're curious about workspaces, blogs, and wikis? Or do you want to dig deeper and share business data more efficiently by using reports, dashboards, and key performance indicators (KPIs) (key performance indicator (KPI): A predefined measure that is used to track performance against a strategic goal, objective, plan, initiative, or business process. A visual cue is often used to communicate the performance against the measure.)?

Create a workflow initiation form (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
You may want your workflow to collect information from the person who starts it, and then reference this information later in the workflow. For example, imagine that you are designing a workflow that assigns a document review task. In some workflows of this kind, it might make sense to always automatically assign the review task to the same participant and to always use the same formula for calculating the due date. But in your workflow, you want the person who manually starts the workflow to specify both the reviewer and the due date. You can set this up by adding custom fields to the workflow initiation form and requiring that the workflow be started manually.

Bamboo Partner Events*
July 11, Toronto, Ontario, SharePoint Saturday - SharePoint Buzz
July 16, Online, Free webinar: Make your Microsoft CRM reports ROCK in SharePoint: Understand how to write dash boards and generate reports from MS CRM to SharePoint - InterDyn AKA
July 17, Online, InterDyn presents: Project Management 2.0 using SharePoint 2007 - InterDyn AKA
July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday
July 25, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint Saturday

August 8, Sydney, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 13, Online, Business process automation from SharePoint to GP: Workflow, e-forms, budgets. Avoid the BIG PAPER chase - InterDyn AKA
August 15, Adelaide, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 22, Copenhagen, Denmark, SharePoint Saturday
August 24-26, Washington, DC, Best Practices Conference - Mindsharp

August 8, Sydney, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 13, Online, Business process automation from SharePoint to GP: Workflow, e-forms, budgets. Avoid the BIG PAPER chase
August 15, Adelaide, Australia, SharePoint Saturday
August 22, Copenhagen, Denmark, SharePoint Saturday
August 24-26, Washington, DC, Best Practices Conference

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

How to Create a SharePoint Blog

John Anderson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:50:00 GMT

I've written previously about the joy of blogging in SharePoint, about how to publish a SharePoint blog directly from Word, even the organization of blog categories, and most recently, how to enable anonymous comments in a SharePoint blog, but somehow I've managed to skip the documenting of how to create a blog in SharePoint. Talk about putting the cart before the horse!

The absence of such a post came as both a surprise and a hindrance as I was working on the blog about anonymous comments the other day. I was clicking around trying to figure out which link on the Settings page I needed to click in order to create a blog, and thought that I might be able to quickly find the answer by searching my own blog. When those search results didn't include the desired information, I found myself thinking, "is it somehow possible that I haven't documented how one goes about creating a SharePoint blog??!" As it turned out, not only was it possible but, in the words of the Magic 8-Ball, "it is decidedly so."

And while this fact would seem to indicate that I have never actually created a SharePoint blog, I was at least pleased to have correctly recalled that the process of creating a blog is remarkably similar to how you create a wiki in SharePoint. Since I wanted to create a test blog to test the anonymous comments Web Part on, and since I realized that others may benefit from a post dedicated to the blog creation process, I'm dedicating today's blog to just that.

From the Site Actions button, select Site Settings from the drop down menu. On the resulting Site Settings page, click the Sites and workspaces hyperlink under the Site Administration heading. On the resulting Sites and Workspaces page, you'll see a list of the existing sites and workspaces within the site in question (if any), and you'll also see a Create icon and hyperlink in the toolbar area:

Clicking Create will open the New SharePoint Site page. Since the options on this page are exactly as shown and described in my previous how to create a wiki post (save for the final selection), I'll ask your indulgence in referring to that earlier post for a detailed (and illustrated) explanation of the information required on this form. The only step which differs from that of the wiki creation process is that, under the Collaboration tab in your Template Selection, rather than selecting Wiki Site, you will naturally be choosing Blog instead:

With that selection made, and the remaining information filled out (Title, URL name, Permissions, etc.), upon clicking the Create button at the bottom of the form you'll be greeted with your new blog (yes, it's really that easy):

As you can see from the image above, with the creation of your new blog, you'll find a "Welcome" message and a series of Admin Links including: Create a post, Manage posts, Manage comments, All content, Set blog permissions, and Launch blog program to post. In other words, these links provide all the tools you need to become a SharePoint blogger.

And speaking for myself, I just realized while writing that last paragraph that all of those links (and the forms attached to each of them) represent the content of my next blog entry, so look for that when I return from the upcoming long (holiday) weekend. To my fellow Americans out there, have a happy Independence Day!

Microsoft Office 2010: First Look, The Box.net vs. SharePoint, Free Netbooks for TechEd Australia

SharePoint Daily — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:52:00 GMT

Top News Stories
The Gloves Come Off in The Box.net vs. SharePoint Challenge (Read Write Web)
Plenty of enterprise 2.0 companies have set their sights on replacing SharePoint. But so far, not one has shown the gumption of Box.net, the filesharing and collaboration service which has launched the Box.net vs. SharePoint challenge.

First Look: Microsoft Office 2010 (ComputerWorld)
Call it serendipity. As I was working through my review of OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker Office 2008, an early version of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Office 2010 was conveniently leaked to the Internet. Sporting mostly incremental improvements, Office 2010 serves to bridge the gap between the Vista and Windows 7 eras by streamlining the product's controversial Ribbon-based user interface and extending it to encompass the full range of Office applications.

Microsoft Seeks a Name for Its New Office Web Apps Suite (ZDNet)
Microsoft is surveying potential customers as to what it should name its forthcoming Office Web Applications suite. As LiveSide.Net is reporting, among the handful of Office Web Apps brand names under consideration are Microsoft Ensemble, Microsoft Optro, Microsoft ArcLight, Microsoft Offsite and Microsoft Equipt. (Yes, they are in the midst of killing off the current Equipt subscription service. But why let an already trademarked name go to waste?)

Targeting Azure Storage (Visual Studio Magazine)
The collective storm swirling around the nascent cloud computing market shows no signs of letting up. Google the phrase "cloud computing" and the search returns more than 34 million hits. Cloud computing's claim to developer mindshare is the promise of an Internet-accessible virtual computing and storage environment hosted on connected servers in third-party data centers. Cloud infrastructure services can help enterprises bypass the capital expense of on-site hardware, software licenses, networking and data storage with a pay-for-usage model-per hour or gigabyte-for off-site resources.

Cisco Cuddles All Clouds But One (The Register)
Well, it's the end of June, and Cisco Systems' "California" Unified Computing System blade boxes and related networking is supposed to be shipping. In a webcast today with analysts, partners, and press that's part of a two-day analyst event called Cisco Live, representatives ignored two questions from El Reg about whether or not the California boxes were still shipping, but they did want to talk about cloud computing and how California, WebEx, and networking in general fit into the company's cloud strategy.

Microsoft to Give Tech-Ed (Australia) Attendees HP Netbook with Ethical Choice Attached (IT Wire)
When paying around $2,000 for a technical conference you expect some good swag to take away. Microsoft's annual Tech-Ed event ups the ante this year with attendees receiving a free HP Netbook with Windows 7. There is a small catch however with an ethical choice being attached.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 2 Released (Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine)
Microsoft last week announced the availability of beta 2 of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. The toolkit is part of Microsoft's "Solution Accelerators" series of free tools for customers and partners deploying Microsoft products. The beta can be downloaded from the Microsoft Connect site, but it requires signup for a free Windows Live account first.

Microsoft Antivirus Software: Like Fox Guarding Hen House (PC World)
I wish I could say I made it into the first round of the beta but Microsoft cut off downloads of Microsoft Security Essentials beta software after 700,000 in the first 24 hours. So, while I haven't had a chance to look at the beta software, it's interesting to see the reaction from the market. One of the most common threads you hear are calls that antivirus software from Microsoft is like the fox watching the hen house. Because of Microsoft's track record with viruses and vulnerabilities, users can't trust anti-virus software from Microsoft to protect their own stuff.

Review: Firefox 3.5 Makes Browsing Faster, Easier and More Fun (Network World)
The just-released version 3.5 of Firefox is a winner, offering significantly faster Web browsing, better tab handling, a host of interface tweaks and, like just about every other browser on the planet, a "porn mode." If you already use Firefox you'll want to upgrade right away. If you're not a Firefox user, this version represents a very good opportunity to give the browser a test run.

Around the Blogosphere
Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 (Owen Allen - The MOSS Garden)
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 is coming up quickly – July 13th – July 16th, in New Orleans! This is going to be a great event. We are expecting more than 5,000 Partner Attendees! What a great opportunity to hand out business cards and to talk about SharePoint! Let me know if you are attending and would like to find a time to meet!

Bamboo Solutions PM Central Integration (IntelliGantt)
Bamboo Solutions recently invited us to kick the tires on their PM Central solution. Since IntelliGantt already integrates with their Task Master and Project Portfolio Dashboard, it seemed like a natural. Thankfully, the PM Central solution packages the Task Master and Dashboard into well planned and visually rich SharePoint templates geared toward the project manager and team.

How to Upload Files to SharePoint Server 2007 from ASP.NET Web Applications (Erika Ehrli)
Some time ago I blogged about How to: Uploading a File to a SharePoint Library Site from a Local Folder and How to: Magic with SharePoint 2003, uploading files using a Web service. Some people found these samples useful and some people asked if I could provide sample code that works with SharePoint Server 2007. For some time I asked around and realized that there are multiple possible ways to accomplish this task in SharePoint 2007. Here are some popular approaches I’ve learned about and some great possibilities and drawbacks for each:

SharePoint Development Weekly Roundup (30Jun) (Made 4 the .NET)
Think this is the biggest week yet! Please support my efforts to compile this by tweeting the link! Development Environment, WCM / UI, Testing, SharePoint 2010, Agile, Mobile, Infopath and Admin.

Around Bamboo Nation
Running Windows SharePoint Services on Linux (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Did I get your attention ;) Why is this "impossible"...? WSS is an (ASP).NET application and you can run ASP.NET on Linux using Mono and with Apache and something like mod_mono you get ASP.NET support. So it should be possible to port this to Linux right?

This Week in Bamboo (June 21 - June 27th, 2009) (The Bamboo Team Blog)
For this week at Bamboo, we released the patches for the following 3 products: User Profile Plus Web Part, Stock Quote Web Part and Group Email Web Part. See more details below.

SharePoint Job Listings**
SharePoint Software Developer
Omni is looking for a qualified candidate to provide day-to-day support of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a highly collaborative team environment. The candidate for this position must provide technical input to assist in development of project plans through detail work breakdown structures and timeline estimations. The qualified candidate must interface well with IT and user management, in-house team members and 3rd party systems.

SHAREPOINT DEVELOPER/C#/.NET/SQL/IIS/WEB
Researches, designs, develops, configures, integrates, tests and maintains existing and new business applications and/or information systems solutions including databases through integration of technical and business requirements. Applications and infrastructure solutions include both 3rd party software and internally developed applications and infrastructure. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, analysis of business requirements, coding of modifications or new program, creation of documentation, testing and maintenance of applications, infrastructure, and information systems including database management systems. Works within the Information Technology function, obtaining resources and working in support of objectives and strategies. Provides required documentation and participates in architecture reviews to ensure that the solutions comply with standards and use approved technologies.

Microsoft Updates
By default, if you use the CONTAINS Predicate, the search terms in the CONTAINS predicate are hit-highlighted (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
If you use the CONTAINS Predicate, the search terms in the CONTAINS predicate are hit-highlighted. This is by default.

What's new in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Help and How-to)
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 helps teams to stay connected and productive by providing easy access to the people, documents, and information that they need to make well-informed decisions and get work done.

About views (Windows SharePoint Services)
Views make it quick and easy to see information in a variety of ways. You can use views in list (list: A Web site component that stores and displays information that users can add to by using their browsers. Requires a Web server that is running Windows SharePoint Services.) (such as Announcements, Contacts, and so on), and you can also use them in libraries, surveys, and discussion boards. When you create a view, a hyperlink to the view is added to the view bar on the page that displays the list. An indicator marks the active view, as shown:

Search for items or files in a SharePoint list or library (Microsoft Office Outlook)
After you connect a SharePoint list or library to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can search for list items or files, such as your Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents. You search the content on your SharePoint site similar to the way that you search an e-mail message or other items that you create in Outlook.

Troubleshoot workflow errors (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is one of the tools among SharePoint Products and Technologies that you can use to create workflows. One of the unique features of creating workflows in Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is that you can check the workflow for errors as you design it.

SharePoint Events**
July 1, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
July 1, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
July 1, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
July 1, Online, Project Management Using SharePoint Webinar
July 2, Online, Project Management Using SharePoint Webinar
July 2, Online, What's New from Bamboo? Webinar
July 2-3, Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference
July 8, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
July 8, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
July 8, Online, Project Management Using SharePoint Webinar
July 8, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
July 9, Online, Bamboo 101 - Calendar Plus and List Roll-up Webinar
July 11, Toronto, Ontario, SharePoint Saturday
July 13-16, New Orleans, Louisiana, Worldwide Partner Conference 2009
July 16, Online, Free webinar: Make your Microsoft CRM reports ROCK in SharePoint: Understand how to write dash boards and generate reports from MS CRM to SharePoint
July 17, Online, InterDyn presents: Project Management 2.0 using SharePoint 2007
July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday
July 20-24, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
July 25, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint Saturday

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

Running Windows SharePoint Services on Linux

Jonas Nilsson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:36:55 GMT

Did I get your attention ;)

Why is this "impossible"...? WSS is an (ASP).NET application and you can run ASP.NET on Linux using Mono and with Apache and something like mod_mono you get ASP.NET support.

So it should be possible to port this to Linux right?

The reason this is "impossible" is that the gut of WSS is implemented in unmanaged code (good old C++). If you have ever used reflector to look at what is going on you "always" end up with a call to the SPRequest class. Hristo Pavlov has a great post about the internals of SPRequest. This transition to unmanaged code is the reason we have to call Dispose on our SPSite and SPWeb instances.

So remember; the gut of WSS and thus MOSS is "good old" COM hosted in owssrv.dll and written in C++

Happy 4th of July!

This Week in Bamboo (June 21 - June 27th, 2009)

Bamboo PM Girl — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:48:00 GMT

For this week at Bamboo, we released the patches for the following 3 products: User Profile Plus Web Part, Stock Quote Web Part and Group Email Web Part. See more details below.

User Profile Plus Web Part (HW29 R1.1.45) -

New Feature:
Checking if users belong to Active Directory Security Groups when they are added to SP Groups to grant access to SharePoint Data.

Bugs Fixed:

Reverse Proxy related issues.

Always show the scroll bar in the Web Part's tab.

Show the wrong Department view in the French Site Collection.

Stock Quote Web Part (HW52 R1.1.24) -

Bugs Fixed:

Error viewing News url.

OnChartTimePeriodClick: Input string was not in a correct format.

Group Email Web Part (HW14 R1.4.33) -

Bug Fixed:

Fixed check to see if users belong to groups specified in the tool pane. Removed AD user account in the tool pane for SharePoint Mode. There is no need for it any more.

The True Cost of SharePoint, Free Windows 7 Upgrade Limits, Will the Success of SharePoint 2007 Hurt 2010?

SharePoint Daily — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:29:00 GMT

Top News Stories
How to Determine the True Cost of Microsoft SharePoint (ComputerWorld)
SharePoint has unquestionably garnered a lot of attention from business users and IT. Toby Bell, Gartner Inc.'s research vice president, calls SharePoint 2007 "nothing short of a phenomenon." He says the growing number of searches for SharePoint on Gartner.com indicates high interest in the product and some confusion about its value.

Will the Success of SharePoint 2007 Keep 2010 from Leaving the Station? (CMS Watch)
Those who have studied physics might be familiar with the "story" of the penny and train. The story goes that if you place a single penny under each wheel of a train, you'll prevent it from moving forward. Essentially, the collective resistance from each penny prevents the train moving forward because it's the same as having the train try to overcome a single column of pennies equivalent to all of the pennies stacked.

Windows 7 Application Compatibility Resources Available (Softpedia)
Microsoft is pressing onward with efforts designed to drive Windows 7 compatibility, even though the gold build of the operating system is scheduled to launch only in four months. In this regard, the company is providing developers with the necessary tools to ensure that their applications are tailored to the next iteration of the Windows client before the platform ships, but also with additional resources designed to streamline their work. New downloads are available for Windows 7 Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5, from Microsoft, live on the Download Center since last week: the ACT 5.5 Handout Card and the Getting Started with Windows 7 Application Compatibility Handout documents.

Windows 7 Already Looks a Winner (CIO)
With its recent pricing announcement on Windows 7, Microsoft appears to have followed the old American formula of swapping a dollar sign for a pound symbol but that shouldn't prevent the operating system from being a solid success among UK enterprises.

Microsoft Limits Free Windows 7 Upgrades (Network Computing)
In a blow to businesses that need to purchase more than a handful of new computers between now and Windows 7's October 22 release date, Microsoft has limited the number of machines that can be upgraded to its new operating system for free to 25. Microsoft has made little mention about the limit, which is drawing heat from some notable industry watchers. Gartner analyst Michael Silver recently published a research note provocatively titled, "Enterprises Should Demand Windows Upgrade Option."

New IE8 RTW Downloads (Softpedia)
Three months after the RTW of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft continues to make available releases of the browser. At the end of the past week, the company started serving five additional localized versions of IE8 with support for the following languages: Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi (India), Kannada, and Bengali (India). Vishwac Sena Kannan, international program manager, Internet Explorer, explained that the five new languages for Internet Explorer 8 RTW had been announced since the start of June 2009.

Are We Mis-selling 'Open Source'? (ComputerWorld)
I am currently re-reading an oldish book on post-Piagetian child brain development. It has proved to be a real thought provoker, ironically for me not so much about young children but about the way adults think when you get the communication wrong. Hence the title of the article.

Cloud Computing and Your Career (InfoWorld)
Most IT pros I know think cloud computing is a joke. There are some good reasons for that. But lately I've noticed the laughter is ringing a little hollow, as if tempered by a secret fear: Is it possible the business side might go behind my back and replace chunks of IT at lower cost? Or maybe get some big projects done faster than I can?

Platform Computing: Herding Clouds (ZDNet)
After the post Platform Computing Announces Infrastructure Sharing Services appeared on ZDNet, I had the opportunity to speak with Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing. Although the plans were for me to speak with Platform prior to the post going live, scheduling problems made that impossible. So, the focus of our conversation moved from the announcement of Platform’s new product to a more general, philosophical review of the industry march towards the adoption of cloud computing in some form.

Around the Blogosphere
3 Minute Screencast: Create Support Links in a SharePoint WSS Dashboard (End User SharePoint)
One of the recommendations I give in all of my SharePoint Site Administration Workshops is for every site to have contact information for the site manager in the top, right corner of the entrance page to every site. In this screencast, I show how to use LyteBox functionality to open a support contact page without losing the context of the underlying page.

SharePoint Site Collections Read Only during STSADM Scheduled Backups (Brain Litter)
This was an interesting discovery, as I try not to work after 10pm (when my automated, scripted Site Collections are due to run). When I tried to save a document to a document library, I was greeted with the following two issues: When saving to a document library, I got...

Around Bamboo Nation
Success with Anonymous Comments in SharePoint Blogs! (SharePoint Blank)
Such was my determination to get the Custom Comments Web Part installed today that I ended up pestering no fewer than three colleagues in order to achieve a successful install. The third time charm required the assistance of our Admin, Brett, who made short work of successfully installing the Web Part to my team's test area. It seems that there's a permissions issue on the server in question which was the reason the rest of us met with failure in our attempts, and that (provided proper permissions are in place) installing the Web Part really is as simple as clicking the install file and providing the URL of the site on which it should be installed.

Bamboo Welcomes Aztec Systems to the Partner Advantage Program! (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Aztec Systems offers Managed Services from three core practice areas: Business Solutions, Infrastructure, and Innovation (software development). By combining customer's needs with their experienced team of experts and proven methodologies, they deliver a total solution approach.

SharePoint Job Listings**
SharePoint/.Net Developer
This position designs and develops Microsoft web and desktop-based applications to support the business needs of our client. The software developer will work with the other key design positions – such as architecture and business analysts - to ensure that the application solutions effectively support the business. In addition to designing, constructing and testing solutions, the candidate will work with the business analysts and validate requirements necessary for the needed solution. The candidate is expected to maintain their technical skill set by utilizing available training resources, researching and implementing new approaches to web services, middleware and applications, and keeping their development plan up to date. Key technologies are C#, SOA, Web Services, SQL, .NET, ASP, HTML, XML, UML, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS).

.NET Developer with SharePoint
We are currently looking for an experience .NET Developer to maintain and support web based solutions as well as other Microsoft environment projects ( SharePoint ). We are currently looking for candidate with a minimum of five of proven experience in .Net development with at least three years of experience developing Intranets, data warehouse and web service solutions with SQL Server.

Microsoft Updates
Error message when you use the location option to filter the custom audit reports in Office SharePoint Server 2007: "Report contains no data" (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
Consider the following scenario: In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you try to filter the custom audit reports by using the location option on the _layouts/Reporting.aspx page. You specify a list name on the location option on the custom report. In this scenario, the report does not show any event that is related to permission modifications. Additionally, you receive the following error message: Report contains no data.

Enable and configure versioning for a list or library (Windows SharePoint Services)
When you track versions of files or list items, each version is numbered and saved as part of a version history. People in your organization can view the version history and recover earlier versions if needed. You can configure several settings that affect versioning, including which type and how many versions to retain. You can also configure settings that interact with versioning, such as requiring content to be approved or files to be checked out.

About connecting Web Parts (Windows SharePoint Services)
You can connect Web Parts together by passing data, such as a row or filter, from one Web Part to change the display of the other Web Part's data. By connecting Web Parts, you can synchronize their behavior and manage data in dynamic and interesting ways. Traditionally, the chore of connecting sets of data from different data sources has not been easy and has often required programming skills. But with Web Parts, making data connections is as simple as using menu commands. By connecting Web Parts, you can, for example, present data from two Web Parts in alternate views, perform related calculations between two Web Parts, and filter a Web Part using values from another Web Part — all on one Web Part Page.

Track updates to a SharePoint site (Microsoft Office Outlook)
You can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to track updates and manage notifications from a SharePoint site. Note: The features described in this article work with SharePoint sites that are running Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. If you are not sure which versions of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies are running on the server, ask the server administrator.

Add a SharePoint list toolbar to a Data View (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
If your Data View uses a list or library as its data source, you can add the SharePoint list toolbar to the Data View so that you can work more effectively with the underlying list or library. The SharePoint list toolbar is the menu bar at the top of a list or library that provides various options to work with that list or library.

SharePoint Events**
June 30, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar

July 2-3, Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference
July 11, Toronto, Ontario, SharePoint Saturday
July 13-16, New Orleans, Louisiana, Worldwide Partner Conference 2009
July 16, Online, Free webinar: Make your Microsoft CRM reports ROCK in SharePoint: Understand how to write dash boards and generate reports from MS CRM to SharePoint
July 17, Online, InterDyn presents: Project Management 2.0 using SharePoint 2007
July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday
July 20-24, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
July 25, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint Saturday

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

Success with Anonymous Comments in SharePoint Blogs!

John Anderson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Such was my determination to get the Custom Comments Web Part installed today that I ended up pestering no fewer than three colleagues in order to achieve a successful install. The third time charm required the assistance of our Admin, Brett, who made short work of successfully installing the Web Part to my team's test area. It seems that there's a permissions issue on the server in question which was the reason the rest of us met with failure in our attempts, and that (provided proper permissions are in place) installing the Web Part really is as simple as clicking the install file and providing the URL of the site on which it should be installed.

Sure enough, once Brett told me the install was complete, there it was in the Web Parts gallery:

Adding the Web Part to my blog page and expecting it to magically replace the out-of-the-box Comments Web Part, however, was where things (again) got complicated. Oh, I was able to add the Custom Comments Web Part to the page with no trouble:

But it just got added as an additional Comments Web Part on the page, albeit one with the Post Anonymously checkbox option present (and enabled by default). Attempting to add a comment by using this Web Part, however, generated the cryptic error message: Blog ID is missing. Initially thinking that I'd need to make a change in the Custom Settings of the Web Part's tool pane, I took a look there but didn't see anything that looked like a promising avenue:

(Note: In the Blog Replacement Script available via the Editor button in the image above, you may also manually edit the JavaScript to replace the word "Anonymous" with whatever you prefer as the identifier of the commenter. Instructions appear in the supporting documentation available at CodePlex.)

My next thought was that maybe the URL of the blog itself would be required in order to associate the new Custom Comments Web Part with the blog, so I pasted that URL into the (previously empty) title field in the Advanced settings of the Web Part's tool pane. Doing so merely resulted in the same cryptic error message though.

It was at this point that I figured, hey, I can't be the first person this has ever happened to, so I hustled back to Lawrence Liu's blog announcing the Custom Comments Web Part and cruised through the comments. Sure enough, there was someone reporting the same error message ... and hot on the heels of that comment was someone else providing the solution. You've just got to love the wisdom of crowds, don't you?

What I learned was that there are two key bits of information (missing from the provided documentation, I might add ... yes, I also read the "owner's manual" at some point in my search for a solution), and the first of them is that you can't add the Custom Comments Web Part to the main blog page, but you must add it to the page of an individual blog post. The second bit of useful information is that the Custom Comment Web Part doesn't automatically overwrite the existing out-of-the-box Comments Web Part, but you must manually delete the out-of-the-box instance and manually replace it by dragging and dropping the Custom Comments Web Part (while in Edit Mode) into the same real estate. Once complete, you should be good to go.

I had posted a test comment using the out-of-the-box Comment Web Part prior to doing the above, and after completing the Web Part Replacement surgery, I added a new test comment using the Custom Comment Web Part. I mention that by way of explaining why you see my name present on the first test comment in the image below, and (yay!) Anonymous as the commenter in the case of the second test comment:

Bamboo Welcomes Aztec Systems to the Partner Advantage Program!

JanetG — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:22:00 GMT

Aztec Systems offers Managed Services from three core practice areas: Business Solutions, Infrastructure, and Innovation (software development). By combining customer's needs with their experienced team of experts and proven methodologies, they deliver a total solution approach.

They help clients increase application flexibility, lower Total Cost of Ownership, deliver on objectives to improve ROI, and have developed custom applications as needed. Aztec is continuously striving to bring innovative ideas to their customers to help them realize the maximum return from their IT investments.

For more information about this Texas-based Microsoft Gold Partner, contact salesinfo@aztecsystems.com.

Ballmer to Keynote SharePoint Conference 2009, Exploring Windows 7 Versions, Windows on a USB Drive?

SharePoint Daily — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Top News Stories
Steve Ballmer to Keynote SharePoint Conference 2009 (SharePoint Conference)
Steve Ballmer is Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation. Ballmer is focused on continuing Microsoft's innovation and leadership across the company's core businesses to provide an integrated platform to enable a seamless experience across a wide range of computing and non-PC devices and services. Variously described as ebullient, focused, funny, passionate, sincere, hard-charging and dynamic, Ballmer has infused Microsoft with his own brand of energetic leadership, vision and spirit over the years.

No Vertically-focused Microsoft Office on the Docket (For Now) (ZDNet)
A report in Advertising Age earlier this week, entitled “Microsoft to Create ‘Office Suite’ for Advertising,” had me wondering whether Microsoft had decided to pursue a strategy I first heard about years ago: Creating customized versions of Office for specific vertical markets.

Microsoft to Put Windows 7 on USB Sticks (The Inquirer)
RUMOURS HAVE IT that Microsoft will offer Windows 7 on USB thumb drives. The report surfaced at CNET, which heard the news from one of its sources close to the Vole, apparently, who may or may not have heard it from a bloke down the pub.

Windows 7: Home Premium vs. Professional vs. Ultimate (Softpedia)
It was bound that with Microsoft having made public the pricing details on the next iteration of the Windows client, the company would also introduce initiatives designed to help consumers decide on the Windows 7 edition best suited for them. And what better way than an operating system editions measuring contest? The software giant and partners have already started accepting pre-orders for Windows 7, which is scheduled to launch officially on October 22, 2009.

Microsoft Taking No Chances, Cuts Price Of Windows 7 (eWeek)
Microsoft plans price cuts, free upgrades and other incentives to spread Windows 7 to as many users as possible once the operating system becomes available to the public in October.

Microsoft Focuses on 'Pragmatic Interoperability' (SD Times)
Microsoft receives feedback through many channels, but it chose to place itself in the hot seat in May at a closed-door meeting of its Interoperability Customer Executive Council (ICEC). The feedback that it received helped Microsoft form a more pragmatic approach to interoperability that focused on customer scenarios, two executives said, but critics maintain that Microsoft is not entirely sincere in its efforts.

The 6 Worst Cloud Security Mistakes (Network Computing)
Unless you've been snoozing under an old mainframe in your data center, the pressure to push some of your IT operations off-site and into a service provider's ‘cloud’ is probably weighing heavily on your mind as you face shrinking IT and security budgets and increasing compliance requirements. Let's face it: Everyone is under pressure to make do with less while providing more accountability for securing their data, especially small and midsize businesses. In some cases, that may mean outsourcing some of your IT operations as money and manpower gradually dwindle.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Impressions (ZDNet)
I’m in seat 14c on a Virgin America flight back from Boston to San Francisco after an exhilarating Enterprise 2.0 Conference. There’s a lot of similarities between this airline and the Enterprise 2.0 movement. The plane has wifi and a good modern user experience but essentially hooks into and relies on a large amount of legacy infrastructure: the airport and runway I just took off from isn’t changing anytime soon and serves a broad variety of other aircraft transporting people and materials.

Around the Blogosphere
SharePoint IA: Store Information Close to the Point of Ownership (Mastering SharePoint Community)
When it's all said and done, users of a document management system typically have many places they can contribute content. In many implementations, these points of contribution can be so scattered it promotes confusion and future administration/maintenance problems. For the purposes of this article, I want to focus on the Business Operations Content. This is typically the content that is important to the day-to-day operations of a business, content lifecycle is managed and user interaction is governed. Meaning, the intent is to provide a structured approach to the contribution and management of content so we can produce a level of trustability and findability.

Evolution (Essential SharePoint)
As SharePoint 2010 looms in to view, it's not a bad idea to look back at the incredible distance we have come in the SharePoint world. I'm not talking about the platform, I'm talking about us. For example, back in 2003 almost no one had a staging server -- development was frequently done directly in production in a site collection named /sites/test or something similar. Today, three-stage development is standard practice: development > staging > production. Some shops add a fourth or fifth level to the deployment process.

How to Build a Change Control System in SharePoint (meetdux)
Have you ever experienced ... Customers adding scope halfway through the project? Management cutting your project budget? Project resources performing unplanned project tasks because the customer says so?

SharePoint Security - Wimbledon, Strawberries and a Scotsman (Andy Dale SharePoint Blog)
This week I am going to talk about the tricky topic of Managing SharePoint Security. Three words that can bring many an IT Manager out in a sweat. Similar to when the Air-Con stops working in the Server Room.

SharePoint Best Practices Conference (Arpan Shah's Blog)
I’m going to be keynoting at the upcoming SharePoint Best Practices Conference in DC on August 24th. It’s a great conference with high quality content where you can learn real best practices from experts in the field. It has a very strong speaker line-up and this year it also includes a SQL track! I’m really looking forward to this conference & hope to see many of you there!

SPTech Conference Recap (Mauro Cardarelli)
I spent a few days this week at the SPTech Conference in Boston, doing a session on requirements gathering for SharePoint and working the Nintex booth with Mike Fitzmaurice. First, some observations…

Around Bamboo Nation
Enable Anonymous Comments in SharePoint Blogs? Check! (SharePoint Blank)
As promised, it's (past) time to dive back into the SharePoint Blank Mailbag, and today's victim winner is a Program Manager who asks about the availability of a nifty bit of functionality (which hadn't yet occurred to me) which would support anonymous comments on a blog within a SharePoint portal: I would like to set up a SharePoint-based "suggestion box" so that people around the company can make comments and suggestions about our program. However, for this to work the way I want, people need to have the ability to offer ANONYMOUS comments. And of course no one can access our SharePoint portal unless they are logged in.

The Road to SharePoint 2010: News Coverage (SharePoint 2010)
Fresh from the pages of SharePoint Daily, your one-stop-shop for SharePoint news and comment, The Road to SharePoint 2010 is packaged exclusively for readers interested in tracking the path towards the release of Office 2010 in general, and SharePoint 2010 in particular. This page of news coverage will be maintained until the public beta. Found a story that we missed? Send it along for our consideration!

The Road to SharePoint 2010: Blog Coverage (SharePoint 2010)
Fresh from the pages of SharePoint Daily, your one-stop-shop for SharePoint news and comment, The Road to SharePoint 2010 is packaged exclusively for readers interested in tracking the path towards the release of Office 2010 in general, and SharePoint 2010 in particular. This page of blog reactions will be maintained until the public beta. Found a story that we missed? Send it along for our consideration!

SharePoint Job Listings**
MOSS Developer - SharePoint Developer - SharePoint
MOSS Developer - SharePoint Developer - SharePoint MOSS Developer - SharePoint Developer - SharePoint - Applications Developer - Skills Required - SharePoint, MOSS Developer, SharePoint Developer, MOSS, .NET, SQL Server, SSAS, SSIS, BI, Business Intelligence, C# MOSS Developer - SharePoint Developer - SharePoint - Applications Developer If you are a SharePoint Developer with C# and .NET experience, please read on! What you need for this position: - Extensive experience developing in the MS Office SharePoint Server framework with knowledge of document management/workflow service - Must have SharePoint administrator capabilities and have a strong knowledge of the Microsoft SharePoint platform.

Network Engineer (SharePoint/Citrix)
SR Network Engineer - SQL Server, SharePoint, Citrix, Client Server. Responsible for designing and implementing enterprise networks and related hardware/software. Design, document and implement systems/network architecture. Perform assessments on existing technologies to determine performance and capacity gaps. Assist, test, develop and implementation Server requirements for DR, Citrix, SharePoint, and Exchange. provide recommendations to optimize Windows Application Delivery infrastructure. Test and tune Windows apps server devices and systems. Manage Citrix and SharePoint services from planning phase through implementation. Solid knowledge of Windows Apps, Servers, routing protocols, Citrix, network hardware and software, security technologies and network infrastructure is required. Must have 6 years of prior experience with Citrix and SharePoint technologies. Preferred Windows server knowledge with proven Citrix and SharePoint expertise.

Sales/Systems Engineer - SharePoint, MOSS, MCSE
Sales/Systems Engineer - SharePoint, MOSS, MCSE Sales/Systems Engineer - SharePoint, MOSS, MCSE, Windows 2000/2003, IIS, SQL Server, RDBMS, TCP/IP - Skills Required - Sales Engineer, Systems Engineer, MOSS, MCSE, Microsoft SharePoint, SQL Server, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, IIS Websites, RDBMS, PCPIP, virtualization, Citrix Sales/Systems Engineer - MOSS, SharePoint, Windows 2000/2003, IIS, SQL Server, RDBMS | TCP/IP, Virtualization, Citrix Do you have 2 years of experience as a Sales/Systems Engineer? Do you have experience working with Microsoft SharePoint solutions, Windows, IIS and SQL Server?

Microsoft Updates
The System.IO.PathTooLong exception occurs when you issue a public "DataSet QueryEx(string queryXml)" method that includes "HitHighlightedSummary" in your Windows SharePoint 3.0-based application (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
When you issue a public DataSet QueryEx(string queryXml) method that includes HitHighlightedSummary in your Windows SharePoint 3.0-based application, the System.IO.PathTooLong exception occurs.

Create or change a view (Windows SharePoint Services)
You can use views to see the items in a list or library that are most important to you or that best fit a purpose. For example, you can create views of the files that were created most recently, of the list items that apply to a specific department, or of the files created by one person. After you create a view, it is always available when you look at a list or library.

Modify Web Parts (Windows SharePoint Services)
You can modify attributes of a Web Part by assigning values to its Web Part properties. All Web Parts share a set of common properties that allow you to specify attributes for the appearance, layout, and other additional information. A Web Part can also have custom properties that apply only to that Web Part.

Open, edit, and update files from a SharePoint site (Microsoft Office Outlook)
You can connect to a library on a SharePoint site by using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and browse, edit, and even search the files. After you connect your SharePoint library to Outlook, you can work with the files on your hard disk, even when you are away from the office.

Send e-mail in a workflow (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
You may want your workflow to send an e-mail message for any of a wide variety of purposes. For example, you might want the workflow to send you a notification each time that it begins to run.

SharePoint Events**
June 30, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

The Road to SharePoint 2010: News Coverage

John Anderson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:18:00 GMT

Fresh from the pages of SharePoint Daily, your one-stop-shop for SharePoint news and comment, The Road to SharePoint 2010 is packaged exclusively for readers interested in tracking the path towards the release of Office 2010 in general, and SharePoint 2010 in particular. This page of news coverage will be maintained until the public beta. Found a story that we missed? Send it along for our consideration!

7/1/09 - Branding Office 2010 Web Applications (Softpedia)
Microsoft is currently hard at work cooking the next iteration of the Office System. Back in October 2008, the Redmond company pointed out that customers would be getting the Office 2010 products come 2010 and that it was extending the suite into the Cloud. At that time, Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division, confirmed that users would be able to take advantage of Office web applications designed to complement the Office 2010 desktop product. Now the software giant is reportedly looking for the brand that will bring Office web apps to the public.
6/29/09 - Will the Success of SharePoint 2007 Keep 2010 from Leaving the Station? (CMS Watch)
Those who have studied physics might be familiar with the "story" of the penny and train. The story goes that if you place a single penny under each wheel of a train, you'll prevent it from moving forward. Essentially, the collective resistance from each penny prevents the train moving forward because it's the same as having the train try to overcome a single column of pennies equivalent to all of the pennies stacked.
6/25/09 - Microsoft Hits Back at Outlook 2010 Rendering Protests (CBR)
Microsoft is defending itself against the complaints and is sticking to its plans to use the Word rendering engine in its mail client for the 2010 edition. A campaign was started after many Outlook users protested that Microsoft is once again using Word to render HTML emails in their upcoming Office 2010 software. The campaign website Fixoutlook.org is being supported by the Email Standards Project. The campaign has more than 19,000 participants.
6/24/09 - Get a Free Copy of Office 2010 and Laptop From Microsoft (Tech Fragments)
Microsoft is looking for people to participate in their "real life stories" campaign so that you can share your story about Office 2010 with the world. As part of the program, Microsoft will give you a laptop for at least six months and you will receive a free copy of the final Office 2010 suite when it is released. Of course, the laptop will only be loaned to you, for at least six months though.
6/19/09 - Microsoft's Office 2010 Pro Plus: What's Inside? (ZDNet)
A month ago, Microsoft officials acknowledged the name and one feature of the company's forthcoming Office 2010 Pro Plus SKU. Thanks to a new slide from an alleged Microsoft presentation, now we know a bit more about what's likely to debut in that version.
6/17/09 - Microsoft Posts Teaser for Office 2010 (CNET)
Much like studios do with movies that are still months from hitting the theaters, Microsoft is looking to generate some advance buzz for the next version of Office. The company has posted a movie trailer that teases Office 2010 and last week added a "behind the scenes" video that pokes fun at recent leaks of the product onto the Internet (and the fact that some leaked versions also came with a virus).
6/10/09 - What's Coming in SharePoint Server 2010 (Search Win IT)
For IT managers who lived through the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 to 2007 overhaul, the thought of migrating to the software's next iteration might be daunting. But one expert says they shouldn't worry so much. SharePoint Server 2010 undoubtedly will involve some technical changes -- Microsoft has said that it will be 64-bit only and require 64-bit Windows Server and SQL Server versions, for example - but it won't come with the architectural upheaval that 2007 did, said Susan Hanley, an independent consultant and author of Essential SharePoint 2007.
6/10/09 - Exchange Server 2010 Beta Modular SDKs (Softpedia)
Microsoft has taken a new modular approach to delivering development technologies tailored to the next iteration of its Exchange Server offerings. As an integral part of the Office 2010 wave, the Redmond company released in mid-April the first public Beta of Exchange Server 2010. Following the release of the Beta build, the software giant offered the software development kit for the successor of Exchange Server 2008. However, while for past releases of Exchange Microsoft delivered a single SDK, for Exchange 2010 this is no longer the case. The Redmond company has produced no less than three SDKs, each tailored to its respective technology area of Exchange Server 2010.
5/29/09 - Apply to Test the Office 2010 Beta (Ars Technica)
Microsoft is making sure that Office 2010 will be available via a familiar experience across the PC, phone, and browser. One of the ways to do that is to have a beta program with dedicated testers who will give product feedback across the family of Office client and server products. Earlier this month we detailed one of the ways to get into the beta (Technical Preview Registration) and today we're letting our readers know of a second way: a Microsoft Connect survey titled "Microsoft Office Technical Beta Nomination." The page says "Space is very limited, and all nominations will be evaluated on a first come, first served basis," so hurry up!
5/20/09 - Office 2010 Images Leaked: So, What's New? (Crank)
So, as for most of Windows 7 unofficial builds, the Office 2010 Technical Preview has leaked through the web and hit several BitTorrent sites; available for the first time in x86 and x64 platforms.
5/19/09 - Leaked Office 2010 Technical Preview Infected Just as Windows 7 RC (Softpedia)
Microsoft has warned testers that have or are looking to jump the gun and grab the bits for Office 2010 Technology Preview before they are released through the company's official channels that the leaked CTP builds come with an inherent threat of getting infected with malicious code. There are similarities between the development processes of Windows 7 and that of Office 2010, formerly codenamed Office 14, in more aspects than one. Both of Microsoft's cash cows have been leaked and offered for download through illegal third-party sources, including torrent trackers. And both Windows 7 and Office 2010 are used by malware authors as incentives to spread and get users infected with malicious code.
5/17/09 - Microsoft Readies SharePoint Server 2010 Beta (PC World)
Microsoft will launch an invitation-only SharePoint Server 2010 beta test in July with a select group of customers and then follow the program up with a public testing phase ahead of the Office 2010 release in the first half of next year. Earlier this week at its annual TechEd conference, Microsoft said the Office 2010 beta slated for July will not include the SharePoint Server 2010 beta.
5/16/09 - New Microsoft Office 2010 Test Build Leaks (ZDNet)
Microsoft officials said last week that the company would release a new test build of its Office 2010 suite in July. But it looks like some testers got it at the end of this week and subsequently leaked it to the Web.
5/16/09 - Screenshots: Office 2010 Technical Preview (ZDNet)
The next generation of Microsoft Office, currently in technical preview, has leaked to the web in an unsurprising move, as Redmond still struggles against the vigilante work of the renegade leaker. As the so-called "plumber" is making is rounds across campus, he continues to leave leaks throughout the teams, with Windows 7 being the most problematic.
5/15/09 - Microsoft to Rename Groove as SharePoint Workspace (CMS Wire)
Is Microsoft loosing its Groove? No, but they are changing the name of it. Microsoft Groove 2007 - the collaboration and document sharing software for small teams working online and offline - is getting a new name. The new name? Why it will become Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010.
5/15/09 - Microsoft Set to Deliver Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (eWeek)
Microsoft is set to deliver the first beta of the next major version of its flagship tools suite, Visual Studio 2010. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 will be available to core application developer customers on May 18.
5/14/09 - Want an early review copy of Office 2010? Let Microsoft know (ITbusiness.ca)
Microsoft has omitted a general beta of Office 2010, but come July will start shipping early copies of the new productivity suite to "invite-only" users. Here's how you let Redmond know you're interested.
5/12/09 - New Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Details Start to Emerge (ZDNet)
The few bits I've managed to glean about Office 2010 so far have made it seem that SharePoint 2010 is the family member most likely to be tweaked the most. (The rest of the Office 2010 ("Office 14″) suite sounds like it will be getting relatively minor updates.)
5/12/09 - SharePoint 2010 will Require 64-bit SQL Server (Computer World)
SharePoint 2010 will require a 64-bit version of SQL Server and it will not support Internet Explorer 6, according to Microsoft. At the company's annual TechEd conference, Microsoft also revealed that SharePoint 2010 will not be available with the Office 2010 beta that it plans to ship in July.
5/12/09 - Office 2010 Will Run on XP SP3, Vista, and Windows 7 (Softpedia)
Microsoft is currently hard at work building the next iteration of the Office System. Labeled Office 2010 and formerly codenamed Office 14, the successor of Office 2007 will be designed to play nice not only with the next version of the Windows client, but also with its precursors, namely Windows Vista and Windows XP (Service Pack 3), reveals Reed Shaffner, Office TPM. At the same time, Office 2010 will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, set up to adapt to the respective architecture of the underlying Windows platform. One important aspect worth noting is that Microsoft has striven to fit Office 2010 on the same hardware as Office 2007, and in this respect save customers the cost of a computer upgrade.
5/11/09 - Office 2010 Technical Preview in July 2009, Sign Up Now (Ars Technica)
In addition to learning that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be ready by the end of this year, TechEd 2009 attendees have also been automatically placed in the invitation-only Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview program, which will be available in July 2009. If you're interested in testing the next release of Office, you can register for the program as well, over at the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview Registration page. One of the ways that Microsoft is promoting Office 2010 is via a Office 2010 The Movie webpage, which features a rather uninformative trailer (Silverlight required). There's even a TechNet blog apparently set up by the cast.
5/4/09 - SharePoint Service Pack 2 - Helping Prepare for SharePoint 2010 (CMS Wire)
Just like they said, Microsoft released the Office Service Pack 2 on April 28. In that service pack are a number of improvements and bug fixes for both SharePoint Server 2007 (news, site) and WSS. We offered the highlights earlier, now we look a little deeper. Service Pack 2 contains all the hotfixes, cumulative updates, security updates and public updates put out since the last service pack up until February of this year. In addition to being a rollup of all these updates, there are also a number of new fixes and improvements.
4/30/09 - MailTips in Outlook 2010 and Exchange 2010 (Softpedia)
The next iteration of Microsoft's email client and messaging and collaboration server under the Office 2010 brand umbrella will bring to the table a new feature dubbed MailTips. Designed to deliver information to end users about the recipients of their messages even before they start writing the emails, MailTips is set up to increase workflow, and avoid common faux pas scenarios. According to Microsoft, MailTips will be available to users of Office 2010, Outlook Web Access and Exchange 2010. The Redmond company underlined that the feature would not be tweaked to offer backward compatibility, and as such legacy Outlook/OWA releases would not be supported.
4/27/09 - Office 2010 Screenshots Emerge (Neowin)
Office 2010, the next version of Microsoft's successful office programs suite, has been in closed testing for a while now. With a public beta expected later in the year, development is stepping up before the program, previously dubbed Office 14, is finally let out into the wild. Earlier this year we posted some screenshots of alpha builds of Word and Excel, and just over a week ago Zack Whittaker posted some new screenshots on his iGeneration blog.
4/24/09 - SharePoint 2010: Still Confused? (Intelligent Enterprise)
Microsoft has recently announced that the new SharePoint version will be called "Microsoft SharePoint 2010." The announcement had lots of other goodies in it, but I was particularly interested in the name change. Microsoft will often change product names from version to version; clearly to create distinction in the market, but occasionally as the result of moving products from one Microsoft team to another (as happened with SharePoint).
4/22/09 - Office 2010 Gets a Redesigned Logo (Softpedia)
On April 15, 2009, Microsoft confirmed officially that the next iteration of the Office System, codenamed Office 14, would be branded as Office 2010. The Redmond company is in the early stages of development, but it has already delivered an Alpha version of Office 2010 to selected testers. Subsequently, screenshots of Office 14 were leaked into the wild, and you can get a taste of what the successor of Office 2007 will have to offer via the images included with this article (courtesy of iGeneration).
4/21/09 - Can You Find the Enhancements in Exchange 2010? (Info World)
Last week, Microsoft released the first Beta of Exchange 2010 and in the InfoWorld Test Center's first look at Exchange 2010, Martin Heller wrote that it marked a "major step up from Exchange Server 2007." This week, let's dig a bit deeper into this beta release and see what true enhancements are coming our way with Exchange 2010.
4/21/09 - Microsoft Exchange 2010 Offers Up Great Web Mail Option (IT Business)
In the latest version of Microsoft's popular enterprise e-mail management software, solid Web mail support is added. Similar in function to Gmail, this feature pushes an end-user e-mail client into the cloud.
4/21/09 - Microsoft Bob Rides Again (PC Magazine)
Some people actually refused to upgrade to Office 2007. They'll be even more turned off by Office 14, the next iteration of the Suite. And Windows 7's new UI? Forget it!
4/14/09 - Microsoft Plans Simultaneous Next-Gen Exchange, ForeFront Launch (Channel Insider)
When Microsoft launches the next version of Exchange later this year, it will release a complementary email security module of the ForeFront Sterling suite. Additional ForeFront modules for SharePoint, gateway security and identity management will follow in stages in 2010. Microsoft will also launch a cloud-based ForeFront offering.
4/14/09 - Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta (PC World)
Microsoft will release a beta of Exchange Server 2010 on Wednesday, the first product that enterprise customers will see from the next version of Office. Microsoft is also going public with the official branding of its next productivity suite -- Office 2010. Until now Microsoft had been referring to it as Office 14, but the new name had been widely expected.
4/9/09 Online Office Gives Microsoft Open Web Religion (CNET)
Despite the fact that Microsoft has competing products of its own, some influential folks within the company have seen some merits of "Open Web" technology that's a standard part of browsers. The interesting case in point is Microsoft Office 14, the upcoming version of one of the company's core products and profit engines. The software, due in beta form in 2009, is of Microsoft's highest profile efforts to bring its desktop software power to the Web.
4/9/09 - Office 14 to Become Microsoft Office 2010 (ZDNet)
An email from an anonymous source within Microsoft's corporation network tipped me off to the new name of their Microsoft Office suite. With my previous articles on Office "14″ The codename, "Office 14″, which my colleague Mary-Jo Foley has covered extensively, skipped the "13″ because Microsoft were supposedly suspicious and equally superstitious around the connotations associated with the number.
4/8/09 - Microsoft Office for iPhone? (IT Wire)
A wave of reports were triggered by a recent hint by Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division, that a version of Office is on the way to the iPhone. But exactly what was he talking about?
4/7/09 - Office 14 Web Apps: Microsoft Takes on Google Docs and Netbooks (CIO)
The next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office 14, will include lightweight but fully-functional versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that can run in a browser. Called Office Web Applications, the service will be in beta later this year, according to Microsoft, but the final versions of the Office Web apps won't come until the desktop version of Office 14 is also done. Steve Ballmer announced in February that this won't happen until 2010.
3/26/09 - Office 14 Milestones via Leaked Product Maps (Softpedia)
Just as it was the case with Windows releases, including Window Vista SP1 and SP2, not to mention Windows 7, as well as Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is completely mute when it comes down to the development process of Office 14. The successor of the Office 2007 System is indeed cooking over at Microsoft, with an Alpha preview already shipped to select testers, and confirmed officially by the Redmond company, and with the first Beta on the way. However, the software giant is keeping a tight lid over the Office 14 upcoming milestones, sharing insights on the building of the productivity suite only with close partners. Still, with the Office 14 plans shared out of Redmond, the milestones for the next iteration of Office have also been leaked to the public.
3/20/09 - Next Office Version to Ship in 32-bit and 64-bit Versions (ZDNet)
You learn the most interesting things when you poke around in some of the arcane files that are included with Windows 7 beta releases. In the most recent build of Windows 7 that I've been able to examine, I've confirmed that Microsoft plans to release its next version of Office in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. That's a detail that my colleague Mary Jo Foley didn't discover in her December 2008 rundown of what we know about Office 14.
3/6/09 - Microsoft Wants Office 14 to Get on With Rivals (ZDNet)
The next version of Office will natively support the OpenDocument format (as will the next service pack for Office 2007). As it is developing the next Office, Microsoft is also documenting every change it is making as part of its commitment to documenting all of Office's various formats and protocols. "We often talk about the changing needs of the customers and our industry," said Antoine Leblond, who leads the Office engineering effort. "The one thing we don't talk about is how those needs have changed our engineering process."
3/4/09 - Office 14 Crawls Toward Beta (CNET)
Just because Office 14 won't be fully released until next year doesn't mean consumers will have to wait that long to try out the products. In an interview this week Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that Microsoft will offer more details on the beta "relatively soon," noting that Office has traditionally made its products available to millions of testers well before the final version ships.
3/3/09 - Microsoft: You Can Absolutely Run Office 14 On Windows XP (MSFT) (Silicon Alley Insider)
By and large, big business has shunned Windows Vista, and the big question for Microsoft (MSFT) over the next year is: Will the enterprise upgrade to (and buy hundreds of thousands of licenses for) Windows 7, or will they stick it out with XP for years to come?
3/3/09 - Microsoft's Office 14 to Make Better Use of Online Document Sharing, Editing (DailyTech)
One of Microsoft's most dominant products is its Office suite. For over a decade Microsoft has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on office processing software. Yet today, it finds itself facing surprising new competition from new competitors, some of whom are offering free software like Google's free online Office Suite. Google predicted that online clients were the future of office software, not Microsoft's traditional desktop installations.
3/3/09 - Which Part of Office 14 Will be Ad-supported? Web Apps (ZDNet)
Some company watchers are scratching their heads over a Microsoft exec's claim that part of Office 14 will be ad-supported. Psst. Hey guys... Microsoft told us last fall: The consumer versions of Office 14 Web apps will be ad-funded. The latest pronouncement about Microsoft's Business Division's ad-funded intentions came on March 3 during the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, where Division President Stephen Elop keynoted. Silicon Alley Insider reported Elop's comments on the Office team's plans for "ad-supported revenue streams."
2/25/09 - Office 14: Worth a Wait? (CNET)
Among the many tidbits in Steve Ballmer's talk to financial analysts Tuesday was the fact that folks should not expect the next version of Office, code-named Office 14, to come out this year. "From a strategy perspective, the next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release, which will not be this year," Ballmer told the Wall Street crowd. "There's a version of SharePoint. There's a version of Exchange. There's a new version of Office Live."
2/24/09 - Office 14 Delayed Until 2010, 'Netbook' Server Planned (PC Magazine)
Microsoft will not release its next-generation Office 14 suite in 2009, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer confirmed during a Tuesday "strategy update" Webcast. A "netbook"-like version of Windows Server is also planned. Ballmer offered little explanation or context for the Office 14 delay, although he did say that the free OpenOffice suite had caused the company to lower the worldwide price of the suite.
2/10/09 - Microsoft to Upgrade SharePoint with Enterprise Search When Office 14 Ships (ComputerWorld)
Microsoft Corp. said today that it plans to formally integrate enterprise search technology from its $1.2 billion acquisition of Fast Search and Transfer (FAST) a year ago into its popular SharePoint content management platform. However, the long-anticipated new product, called FAST Search for SharePoint, won't ship until the next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office 14, does, said Jared Andersen, a senior product manager for enterprise search at Microsoft.
1/16/09 - Office 14 Starts Alpha Test but When is it Due? (Datamation)
Microsoft officials acknowledged this week that Office 14, the next major version of its suite of productivity applications, has entered alpha testing. Also sometimes referred to as a "pre-beta," the release is going out to a "select" group of testers, according to a brief Microsoft statement. "Microsoft has provided a select group of customers early access to an alpha version of Office server technologies. However, Microsoft is not disclosing information about the timing for a Beta version at this time," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com.
1/15/09 - Leaked: First Office 14 Screenshots (Ars Technica)
It didn't take long this time, either. Earlier this week, testers received alpha builds of Office 14, the codename for the successor to Office 2007. A reader wrote in to tell us that a tester from Russian site wzor.net has now leaked the screenshots of the applications included in the productivity suite.
1/14/09 - Office 14 Beta Starts, Sort Of (Windows IT Pro)
Microsoft has begun a very limited test of the server-based parts of its Microsoft Office "14" product wave, kicking off what's expected to be about a year of pre-release milestones. What's not being tested, right now at least, is the best-selling Office productivity suite. Instead, Microsoft is focusing first on the Office server products and the previously announced Office Web Applications.
1/11/09 - First Office 14 Screenshot Unveiled? (Neowin)
Microsoft enthusiast and blogger Stephen Chapman sends word that he has discovered an early concept Office 14 screenshot from a PowerPoint presentation hosted on Microsoft.com.
12/9/2008 - Microsoft Office to Debut Online (BBC News)
In 2009 web versions of Word, Excel and other programs in the Microsoft Office suite plus Exchange and Sharepoint will go online. Users will be able to get at the programs via a web browser rather than install them on a PC.
10/31/2008 - Office 14: The Horror Sequel Coming to a Browser Near You (CIO)
Windows 7. Office 14. Microsoft should start doing all its product launches on Halloween, because they're starting sound an awful lot like horror movie sequels.
8/18/2008 - Office 14: Alpha Testing to Begin Before Year-end (ZDNet)
While Microsoft has made a few public and well-calculated moves to prepare the way for Windows 7, the company has said almost nothing (at least intentionally) about Office 14.

The Road to SharePoint 2010: Blog Coverage

John Anderson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:17:00 GMT

Fresh from the pages of SharePoint Daily, your one-stop-shop for SharePoint news and comment, The Road to SharePoint 2010 is packaged exclusively for readers interested in tracking the path towards the release of Office 2010 in general, and SharePoint 2010 in particular. This page of blog reactions will be maintained until the public beta. Found a story that we missed? Send it along for our consideration!

6/25/09 - MSDN Office Developer Center - Pre Office/SharePoint 2010 Update (Erika Ehrli)
MSDN Developer Centers pull together content and resources around specific products and technologies. They connect developers with code samples, community sites, technical articles and documentation, upcoming events, and much more. The MSDN Office Developer Center (ODC) provides a developer roadmap to understand and work with Office System programs, servers, services, tools and technologies. As we prepare for our next product release (Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010), we worked on a set of site updates to improve navigation, increase discoverability of content, and add more community content and features.
6/25/09 - Service Pack 2 Update (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)
The public update for the Service Pack 2 expiration date issue is now available for download. The update can be applied before or after Service Pack 2 installation. If the update is applied prior to installing Service Pack 2 it will prevent the expiration date from being improperly activated during installation of Service Pack 2, if it is applied after Service Pack 2 it will remove the expiration date incorrectly set during installation of Service Pack 2.
6/24/09 - Preparing for Upgrade to 2010 Today - Part 1 Preupgradecheck ( SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land)
I've been pretty upgrade focused lately. I was presenting to the Puget Sound User Group this last week and polled the audience and asked how many had installed SP2. A lot of hands went up. I asked how many had run the preupgradecheck and all hands went down. I've been thinking what could people do today with the knowledge of what the upgrade check provides.
5/19/09 - Leaked Build and Staying Safe (The Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog)
I wanted to post quickly to acknowledge the information that you have seen today around bits of Office 2010 being leaked. While all of us here are happy to see the incredible excitement and engagement (and are absolutely chomping at the bit to reach the July milestone) we aren't quite ready to release the technical preview bits. I would encourage all of you to wait until the official bits are available to ensure the best possible experience and not miss out on anything we may include.
4/28/09 - SharePoint 2010: What We Know and What We Want (Ferrara Data Consulting)
Since the announcing of SharePoint 2010 this month, the community has been buzzing with what we know about '10 and what we are still speculating about '10. There isn't a whole lot of concrete information out there yet, but I've compiled a list below of what I've seen so far. I've also started listing some of the pressing things that we, the SharePoint community, would like to see in '10.
2/11/09 - FAST-forward Your SharePoint Search (Real SharePoint)
Microsoft just announced (yesterday) that they are finally solidifying plans of integrating FAST (Fast Search and Transfer) enterprise search technology into SharePoint. You might recall that Microsoft had spent $1.2 billion on acquiring this Norwegian company just a little over a year ago. It's great to finally hear from Microsoft how they plan on leveraging this asset to improve the overall search platform within SharePoint. Yes, this is not gonna be fully integrated into SharePoint until the official release of the next version of SharePoint, but it's definitely something, along with all the additional Office 14 enhancements, that we are all looking forward to.
1/7/09 - Will Office 14 be Ready for Release in 2009? (Ars Technica)
In late July it was suggested that Office 14, the codename for the successor to Office 2007, would be released in either late 2009 or early 2010. This led to speculation that the next version of Office would be simultaneously released with Windows 7, much like Office 2007 and Vista were. Blogger Stephen Chapman recently posted a screenshot he obtained in July 2008, suggesting that Office 2009 would indeed be released this year:
10/28/2008 - Office 14 and Office 14 Web Applications on SharePoint! (SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land)
Thanks Takeshi, great Office 14 demos. During PDC what we saw... Three Platforms for Office 14: 1) Client 2) Mobile 3) Web

Enable Anonymous Comments in SharePoint Blogs? Check!

John Anderson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:57:00 GMT

As promised, it's (past) time to dive back into the SharePoint Blank Mailbag, and today's victim winner is a Program Manager who asks about the availability of a nifty bit of functionality (which hadn't yet occurred to me) which would support anonymous comments on a blog within a SharePoint portal:

I would like to set up a SharePoint-based "suggestion box" so that people around the company can make comments and suggestions about our program. However, for this to work the way I want, people need to have the ability to offer ANONYMOUS comments. And of course no one can access our SharePoint portal unless they are logged in.

Though this is not functionality that's available out-of-the-box (and nor is it an area to which Bamboo has dedicated resources), a bit of searching turned up the happy discovery that not only does such a product exist, but it was developed as a Web Part by Microsoft's own IT Group in response to a business request. But wait, there's more: not only was the custom Web Part developed by Microsoft, but it's available as a free CodePlex download! How cool is that?

As you will see, once installed, the Web Part replaces the out-of-the-box Comments Web Part with a custom version which includes a checkbox to Post Anonymously. The Post Anonymously checkbox is enabled by default, though individual users may choose to deselect the checkbox if they don't wish their comment to be posted anonymously.

Check out Lawrence Liu's post announcing the availability of the Web Part for more details or, should you possess the requisite permissions, do not pass go, and head directly to the dedicated CodePlex download page. Fortune favors the bold!

(Full disclosure: While demonstrating boldness, my own attempt at trying to install the Web Part on a test server resulted in, well, less than optimal results. I didn't break anything, mind you, but neither did I manage to successfully install the Web Part. I blame myself, as my experience with installing Web Parts has thus far been limited to working with .DSP files, and this particular install requires interacting with a command line interface ... which proved to be my undoing. Perhaps I shall take another run at it --possibly including looking to a colleague for pointers-- and report back.)

Update: I did indeed take another run at it, and I've even got the screenshots to prove the happy results!

Arpan Shah to Keynote Best Practices Conference, Windows 7 Pricing Announced, Microsoft Defends Outlook 2010 Rendering Engine

SharePoint Daily — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:29:00 GMT

Top News Stories
SharePoint Director Remains Bloodied but Unbowed (Fierce Content Management)
This week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, I met with Christian Finn, director of SharePoint, the often-maligned content management tool from Microsoft. For all the criticism, Microsoft claims 100 million licenses, but even if that number is exaggerated, they have a lot of people using the SharePoint product. Finn admits the product isn't perfect, but he believes it stands up, in many instances, to just about anyone out there, and in cases where it doesn't, third party partners fill in the gaps. He used the word "coopetition" a couple of times to describe companies that might compete with SharePoint on some level, yet still provide ways to use their products inside of SharePoint.

Keep Your Spreadsheets Off My SharePoint; Make Your Own Database in Minutes (IT Wire)
Hey you! Stop loading spreadsheets into Microsoft SharePoint. Excel may be simple to set up but you can do things differently for better results. You won’t have problems with concurrent edits and you won’t be dragging files across a WAN. Make your own SharePoint database in a couple of minutes.

Microsoft Hits Back at Outlook 2010 Rendering Protests (CBR)
Microsoft is defending itself against the complaints and is sticking to its plans to use the Word rendering engine in its mail client for the 2010 edition. A campaign was started after many Outlook users protested that Microsoft is once again using Word to render HTML emails in their upcoming Office 2010 software. The campaign website Fixoutlook.org is being supported by the Email Standards Project. The campaign has more than 19,000 participants.

Microsoft's Windows 7 Pricing: Too High, Too Low, or Just Right? (ZDNet)
On June 25, Microsoft took the wraps off its Windows 7 retail pricing. Bottom line: If you preorder (U.S., Canada and Japan only for now), you can save more than 50 percent over what comparable Vista versions cost. If you don’t, you’ll pay roughly the same for Windows 7 as you paid for Vista at retail.

Is The Price Right For Windows 7? (Channel Web)
Microsoft Thursday revealed pricing for upgrades and retail editions of Windows 7, but while many Microsoft partners told ChannelWeb they thought the Windows 7 pricing was a little steep. And one analyst suggested upgrade prices were not only high but "way too much." Is Windows 7 going to burn a whole in your wallet? Depends on who you ask, and how you ask it.

Is the Horizon Lined With Specialty Clouds? (Data Center Knowledge)
Will specialized cloud platforms emerge to offer services customized around the needs of a particular industry vertical? Or does too much specialization de-cloudify the whole endeavor? That was the focus of a session at GigaOm’s Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, where panelists agreed that specialization will become more prominent as the cloud matures.

Ellison: Oracle Plans To Be No. 1 In On-Demand Software (Network Computing)
Oracle's goal is to one day become the No. 1 supplier of on-demand software, CEO Larry Ellison said in a quarterly conference call with analysts Tuesday. Still, Ellison acknowledged that Oracle isn't a big player in cloud computing, and quarterly earnings show the company still highly reliant on the fees it collects from software Oracle customers purchase and install on their own premises.

Around the Blogosphere
Mr. Miyagi is Not a Direct Descendant of Superman (meetdux)
I just got back from Boston where I presented at the SharePoint Technology Conference. I had a great time meeting a lot of new friends and reconnecting with old buddies. To get a glimpse of what happened during the conference, here are the #sptechcon tweets. In the session that I presented with Mike Taylor entitled: "SharePoint Worst Practices: Five Common Mistakes to Avoid", one of the common mistake in implementing SharePoint we discussed is unrealistically staffing SharePoint deployments.

SharePoint Book for Non-technical Project Managers (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
Many companies have deployed SharePoint and made it available for their users. SharePoint is a great tool, but if you're not familiar with it you may ask: Where do I start?. The book “SharePoint for Project Managers” is a good introduction to how you can use SharePoint for your project. It is written for people with little or no knowledge to SharePoint and for the scenario Project management. It takes you through, step-by-step, how you build up your site and how you should use it. Among the topics is supporting team collaboration, Project tracking and project reporting.

Service Pack 2 Update (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)
The public update for the Service Pack 2 expiration date issue is now available for download. The update can be applied before or after Service Pack 2 installation. If the update is applied prior to installing Service Pack 2 it will prevent the expiration date from being improperly activated during installation of Service Pack 2, if it is applied after Service Pack 2 it will remove the expiration date incorrectly set during installation of Service Pack 2.

MSDN Office Developer Center – Pre Office/SharePoint 2010 Update (Erika Ehrli)
MSDN Developer Centers pull together content and resources around specific products and technologies. They connect developers with code samples, community sites, technical articles and documentation, upcoming events, and much more. The MSDN Office Developer Center (ODC) provides a developer roadmap to understand and work with Office System programs, servers, services, tools and technologies. As we prepare for our next product release (Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010), we worked on a set of site updates to improve navigation, increase discoverability of content, and add more community content and features.

Hotfix for SP2 Issue that Reverts SharePoint Products to Trial Version has been Released (Liam Cleary [SharePoint MVP])
In case you have not seen this already, a hot fix has been released to fix the Service Pack 2 issue of setting your license key to a trial one. Here is the original post from Stefan. Microsoft has released a fix for the SP2 problem that reverts the license into a Trial version after installing Service Pack 2. More details can be found in the following KB article:

SharePoint BDC Part 1: Getting Started with the Business Data Catalog (Tobias Zimmergren's thoughts on development)
In this article I will guide you through the very basics of getting started with Business Data Catalog, BDC: Install the AdventureWorks 2008 Sample Databases: We will use this database as our example for retrieving data using the BDC.

Create a Dashboard in WSS: High Priority Indicator (End User SharePoint)
One of the big limitations in analyzing data within a SharePoint site is the apparent inability to create dashboards from data within a site. In this screencast, I demonstrate how calculated columns might be used to present information in a graphical format without the need for third party web parts.

SharePoint Farm Configuring and Deployment Part 6 - Post Deployment (SharePoint Magazine)
Post Deployment. Manage all SharePoint ports: There are about 20 different ports SharePoint use and they need to be open across firewalls. Refer to “Planning an Extranet Environment for Office SharePoint Server” document for more details. It can be easier to have firewall disabled when configuring SharePoint, and then close all non-SharePoint ports when configuration is done.

Around Bamboo Nation
Arpan Shah to Keynote Best Practices Conference in D.C. (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Here at Bamboo HQ, we were excited to get the advance word a few days ago, but we can now reveal publicly that Arpan Shah will keynote the Best Practices Conference this August in D.C. Arpan Shah is a Director at Microsoft who owns Technical Product Management for SharePoint Products and Technologies, and whose responsibilities include driving technical readiness and evangelism for SharePoint. Securing Arpan Shah as keynote speaker is not only a coup for the Conference but, following upon Tom Rizzo's keynote at the Conference in D.C. last September, continues a winning tradition of securing some of the best and the brightest from the SharePoint team to keynote the Conference in our nation's capital.

Guest Blog by Kanwal Khipple - SharePoint Saturday Toronto: Registration is Now OPEN! (The Bamboo Team Blog)
If you are not familiar with SharePoint Saturday events, they are free, community-focused SharePoint events dedicated to educating and engaging members of the local technical community. We are excited to announce that the first-ever SharePoint Saturday Toronto event is being held in Toronto on July 11th, 2009.

SharePoint Job Listings**
SharePoint Project Manager
Manage the day-to-day operational and tactical aspects of the global SharePoint project through its full software development lifecycle. Manage multiple simultaneous large scale projects comprising various SharePoint components, including portal, collaboration, Web 2.0, enterprise search, document management and records management. More...

SharePoint Developer
Mid to senior level, at least 5 years experience in software development, engineering, or architecting, 5 years of current/most recent SharePoint development or architecting experience, familiar with web based applications, familiarity with CMMi processes or SDLC models, Java, J2EE, .NET, ASP, C#, C++, or other languages a plus, and TS/SCI based on full scope polygraph. Specific knowledge of US Intelligence community mission, CIA, from a software development perspective required.

Administrative Associate with SharePoint Experience
Essential Job Functions: Post items and maintain currency of the Unit's SharePoint Calendar, Post and track tasks on SharePoint, Create slides in PowerPoint and type notes, Become familiar with CSC policies and act as local are HR representative, Monitor employee time entry, more...

Microsoft Updates
The thesaurus is not applied when you perform a search after you type text in the "All of these words" text box or in the "The exact phrase" text box in SharePoint Server 2007 (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
In the Advanced Search page of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you enter text in the All of these words text box or in the The exact phrase text box. When you perform the search, thesaurus is not applied in the search.

Introduction to versioning (Windows SharePoint Services)
When versions are tracked for lists or libraries, revisions to the items or files and their properties are stored. This enables you to better manage content as it is revised and even to restore a previous version — for example, if you make a mistake in the current version. Versioning is especially helpful when several people work together on projects, or when information goes through several stages of development and review.

Working with SharePoint picture libraries (Windows SharePoint Services)
This tutorial teaches you how to work with picture libraries in a Web site based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Picture libraries provide a simple way to share and organize digital pictures in a team Web site. For example, an organization could create a picture library for marketing graphics — providing a single location for team members to view, share, edit, and download corporate logos or other marketing materials.

Example Solution Architecture: Twynham School Learning Gateway (TechNet)
On the south coast of the United Kingdom, a small IT team is making a big splash with their Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 solution for schools. Starting with their own school, Twynham, Dave Coleman and his team of two Web developers, Chris McKinley and Darren White, and in partnership with Assistant Headteacher, Mike Herrity, designed a solution that was eagerly adopted by students, staff, and parents. The team followed this success by adding hosted sites for four additional schools. Then they hit the road to show the 63+ secondary schools in the area how to get up and running quickly with Office SharePoint Server.

Change the number of records displayed in a Data View (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
You can change the number of records that a Data View displays in the browser. For example, you can have the Data View display all items or only a certain number of total items. You can also set up paging so that the Data View displays items in sets of a certain number. If you add paging to the Data View, you can navigate between pages in the browser.

SharePoint Events**
June 26-27, Dulles, Virginia, Regional SharePoint Users Conference 2009
June 30, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

Guest Blog by Kanwal Khipple - SharePoint Saturday Toronto: Registration is Now OPEN!

Kanwal Khipple — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:00:00 GMT

If you are not familiar with SharePoint Saturday events, they are free, community-focused SharePoint events dedicated to educating and engaging members of the local technical community.

We are excited to announce that the first-ever SharePoint Saturday Toronto event is being held in Toronto on July 11th, 2009.

We are requesting that everyone interested in attending register now!

Join SharePoint architects, developers, and other professionals that work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for ‘SharePoint Saturday’, on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at the Microsoft Canada Conference Centre located at 1950 Meadowvale Blvd in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. SharePoint Saturday will be an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & Microsoft MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-oriented topics. SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint! The day starts at 9:00 AM with a short introductory keynote and ends at 4:30 PM. Lunch will be provided and there will be numerous giveaways throughout the day.

There will be three primary content tracks, and each track will consist of five presentations lasting approximately one hour, and ranging from introductory, 100-level content to highly technical, 400-level "expert" sessions. Speakers will represent a broad cross-section of the community and will offer a variety of different perspectives and points of view.

SharePoint Saturday Toronto is a great opportunity to learn, share and network. Please join us on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 for a full day of education and excitement. A full session schedule will be posted soon. We look forward to seeing you there!

For more information, please visit www.sharepointsaturday.org/toronto.

Arpan Shah to Keynote Best Practices Conference in D.C.

John Anderson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Here at Bamboo HQ, we were excited to get the advance word a few days ago, but we can now reveal publicly that Arpan Shah will keynote the Best Practices Conference this August in D.C. Arpan Shah is a Director at Microsoft who owns Technical Product Management for SharePoint Products and Technologies, and whose responsibilities include driving technical readiness and evangelism for SharePoint. Securing Arpan Shah as keynote speaker is not only a coup for the Conference but, following upon Tom Rizzo's keynote at the Conference in D.C. last September, continues a winning tradition of securing some of the best and the brightest from the SharePoint team to keynote the Conference in our nation's capital.

With the addition of Arpan Shah to an already compelling lineup of speakers at the Best Practices Conference, if you're a SharPoint proffessional, and you can be anywhere in the world this August 24-26, make it Washington, D.C.

Free Office 2010 & Laptop from Microsoft, Balancing SharePoint Governance, Microsoft's Hohm Cuts Utility Spending

SharePoint Daily — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:10:00 GMT

Top News Stories
Balancing SharePoint Governance (Search Win IT)
Think of SharePoint Server as plastic. If you have a vision for what you want SharePoint to become and you carefully define that mold based on features in the product, then you can mold SharePoint into virtually anything you want. But what happens if you don't have a mold? It turns into goo.

Enterprise 2.0: Spotlighting SharePoint's Wide Reach (Information Week)
While it's no secret that Microsoft's SharePoint is increasingly being used for social networking applications, its wide range of uses -- from education and research to military and gaming -- is surprising, a presentation at Enterprise 2.0 revealed.

Get a Free Copy of Office 2010 and Laptop From Microsoft (Tech Fragments)
Microsoft is looking for people to participate in their "real life stories" campaign so that you can share your story about Office 2010 with the world. As part of the program, Microsoft will give you a laptop for at least six months and you will receive a free copy of the final Office 2010 suite when it is released. Of course, the laptop will only be loaned to you, for at least six months though.

Microsoft's Hohm Will Help Trim Your Utility Costs (Sci-Tech Today)
Microsoft has released a beta of Hohm, a free application to help consumers save on energy costs at utilities who use Microsoft's software development kit. Hohm will provide recommendations tailored to a user's home. Microsoft is releasing Hohm four months after rival Google released its PowerMeter home energy-saving program.

Microsoft's Free Security Beta Fills Up (CNET)
A day after making available a free beta of its Microsoft Security Essentials software, Microsoft has stopped offering new downloads, saying it has reached the number of participants it was looking for, at least here in the U.S. The software maker had said it was only looking to initially have about 75,000 downloads of the product, formerly code-named Morro.

Microsoft Calls Omission of IE8 CSS Rendering in Office 2010 a 'Powerful' Feature (Beta News)
In a marketing driven response that looks a lot more like the old Microsoft than the new Microsoft in terms of explaining away its design decisions, a Microsoft corporate vice president characterized Outlook 2010's reliance upon Word instead of Internet Explorer 8 for rendering HTML text symbolic of what he called "The Power of Word."

Microsoft: Outlook's Not Broken and We Aren't 'Fixing' It (ZDNet)
Microsoft’s decision to change the rendering engine in its Outlook mail client from HTML to the Word rendering engine back in 2007 wasn’t one of its most popular moves. In fact, there are still more than a few Outlook users who are hoping against hope that an online campaign might result in Microsoft backtracking with Outlook 2010 and going back to HTML rendering.

Microsoft Defends Its Empire (Business Week)
When a Microsoft salesman dropped by IT consultant Westcon Group's Tarrytown (N.Y.) headquarters for a round of negotiations in late 2008, Westcon's chief information officer, William Hurley, decided he had had enough. "I'm sick of this," he said to the sales rep, complaining of the high costs of buying and maintaining Microsoft's broad portfolio of business software. "I don't want to do this anymore."

No-cost Help on Virtualization and Green IT (Info World)
I'm spending the week at TechMentor Orlando 2009, and the primary focus is divided into "Managing Your IT Environment" and "Virtualizing Your IT Environment." As usual, I'm giving several sessions on Exchange virtualization, PowerShell, and architecture (which are the subjects I frequently write about in Enterprise Windows). However, I'm visiting other sessions to see what the main focus or key interest subjects are. Logically, virtualization via Hyper-V is a big topic, as are SharePoint and System Center tools. But I noticed that just about every session highlighted free tools. In our current economy, a low-cost (or free) solution is a golden nugget to an IT administrator.

Enterprise 2.0 2009 Conference: Aggregate and Organize (ZDNet)
I finally made it to Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 conference with my record intact. That record would be that I have NEVER in 15 years of flying to Boston a hundred times, NEVER, repeat again, NEVER been on time both ways. This one was resolved quickly because my flight to Boston was over an hour late on United. I once thought I would get out on time about 10 years ago and 11 minutes before we were to board, a luggage belt in the terminal I was in caught on fire and we had to evacuate the terminal. The gods spoke loud and clear and continue to, for some reason, yell at me for coming to Boston.

Around the Blogosphere
Preparing for Upgrade to 2010 Today - Part 1 Preupgradecheck ( SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land)
I’ve been pretty upgrade focused lately. I was presenting to the Puget Sound User Group this last week and polled the audience and asked how many had installed SP2. A lot of hands went up. I asked how many had run the preupgradecheck and all hands went down. I’ve been thinking what could people do today with the knowledge of what the upgrade check provides.

O’Reilly Webcast: Build a PM Dashboard with SharePoint (What Project Management...)
Microsoft SharePoint technologies provide a collaborative framework to enhance project management processes, team collaboration, and information management. The primary audience for this workshop includes project managers, project teams and executives whose organizations have already adopted SharePoint for project management and would want to enhance its project reporting capabilities.

New Resources are Available About Social Computing and Collaboration (Get the Point)
Some new resources are available about social computing and collaboration for SharePoint Server. The SharePoint Social Computing site launched this week, and it provides case studies, white papers, a demo, and other resources. To keep up with Microsoft news and views on related subjects, you can read the Enterprise Social Computing Blog.

Around Bamboo Nation
Creating a SharePoint Document Workspace via Word 2007 (Part 7): Service Options Regarding Updates (SharePoint Blank)
The time has come to draw the curtain on my epic-length look at the integration points between SharePoint Document Workspaces and Word 2007. Before the curtain comes down, however, let's take a look at the customization options available with regard to managing updates when you're interacting between Word and a Document Workspace.

Bamboo Welcomes SharePoint Authority SharePoint 911 to the Partner Advantage Program! (The Bamboo Team Blog)
I caught up with SharePoint 911 at SPTechCon today and had an opportunity to meet with (L to R) Shane Young, Jennifer Mason, Randy Drisgill and Ryan Keller to talk about their company's value proposition by getting a story about a specific use case. As it turns out, SharePoint 911 just finished a client engagement with Boulder Valley School District to help them deploy their SharePoint site to the school community. (Check out Bamboo Mini-Calendar on the front page of their site!) The school district wanted to roll up multiple calendars from each school into one master calendar and SharePoint out of the box wasn't enough to support all of the functionality the school district wanted. With Bamboo List Rollup, Calendar Plus and some consulting and training from SharePoint 911, the district was on its' way to earning an 'A' in SharePoint deployment.

SharePoint Task Master: My Web Part Misses its Cache, and I Want to Help (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Planning: This is typically where "good intentions" becomes a support nightmare. Oftentimes I feel like I'm doing the right thing when I plan for capacity significantly greater than expected. Of course this is usually within budget constraints and the product of a certain amount of common sense, however, the downfall comes when attempting to push the limits of a server to the maximum. Common sense would say the best way to maximize a server's potential is to utilize memory and processor resources in parallel, thus, if I wanted to serve up pages from IIS as fast as possible I would need to remove bottlenecks and wait states to the greatest possible extent from a hardware perspective. The plan is simple - run IIS processes in parallel while allowing each to use the most memory before recycling. In theory, this approach will allow data to be stored in highly available RAM, allow multiple requests to be fulfilled at the same time, and each process will use my multiple processors more effectively.

SharePoint Job Listings**
SharePoint Developer
Mid to senior level, at least 5 years experience in software development, engineering, or architecting, 5 years of current/most recent SharePoint development or architecting experience, familiar with web based applications, familiarity with CMMi processes or SDLC models, Java, J2EE, .NET, ASP, C#, C++, or other languages a plus, and TS/SCI based on full scope polygraph. Specific knowledge of US Intelligence community mission, CIA, from a software development perspective required.

Software Development Engineer - SharePoint Developer/Designer
In the role of SharePoint Developer/Designer; you will be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing high-quality dynamic websites and internal applications for Amazon’s knowledge workers. Your role will include working with customers and project management to gather requirements, understand business objectives and determine system requirements. You will coordinate enhancements and maintenance of web systems and sites.

SharePoint Designer
Company located in Lakewood, Colorado is seeking a SharePoint Web Master for a contract position. This position will report to the Software Development Manager and be a sole contributor, interfacing with technical staff and other departments. Responsibilities will include: (1) changing the look and feel (rebranding) of an Intranet site currently in use; (2) educating / training internal employees with regard to using and benefiting from the use of SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007; (3) replacing and implementing an external facing website using SharePoint 2007.

Microsoft Updates
A discussion board item does not index when a crawl is run against the site if the subject contains a period (.) (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
If the subject of a discussion board item contains a period (.), the item does not index when a crawl is run against the site. The following error message appears in the crawl log: Content for this URL is excluded by the server because of a no-index attribute.

Configure permissions for a blog (Windows SharePoint Services)
Configuring permissions and other settings for a blog is similar to configuring other types of sites. When you configure permissions for your blog, you can also configure permissions for posts, comments, lists, and libraries associated with your blog.

About Web Part galleries (Windows SharePoint Services)
A Web Part gallery is a central warehouse of Web Parts that you can use to locate a specific Web Part when you are creating a Web Part Page. Depending on how your site administrator has configured your site, you may have up to four different Web Part galleries available to you. If you have the appropriate permissions, you can access the available Web Part galleries at your site by clicking either Browse or Search from the Web Part Page menu. Once you locate the Web Part you want, you typically drag it to your Web Part Page.

Demo: Make better business decisions with reports and dashboards (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
Business intelligence (BI) is the process of aggregating, storing, analyzing, and reporting on business data in order to support informed business decisions. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a number of tools that can help you extract data from a variety of sources and present that data in ways that facilitate analysis and decision making. In this demo, you'll see how employees at a fictitious company called Adventure Works use a Report Center site to create and manage reports, dashboards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Filter, sort, or group a Data View in the browser (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
You can add a toolbar to a Data View so that users can filter, sort, or group data in the Data View by using the toolbar in the browser. You can also turn on filtering and sorting on column headers in a Data View, so that users can filter or sort the data by clicking the column headers, just like a list view.

SharePoint Events**
June 26-27, Dulles, Virginia, Regional SharePoint Users Conference 2009
June 30, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

Creating a SharePoint Document Workspace via Word 2007 (Part 7): Service Options Regarding Updates

John Anderson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:30:00 GMT

The time has come to draw the curtain on my epic-length look at the integration points between SharePoint Document Workspaces and Word 2007. Before the curtain comes down, however, let's take a look at the customization options available with regard to managing updates when you're interacting between Word and a Document Workspace.

When the Document Workspace version and your local version are in sync, opening the Word version will trigger a popup warning/reminder that the document is stored in a Document Workspace. Additionally, this warning will helpfully offer you the ability to check the workspace periodically for updates of the document and the Document Management task pane ... while you work:

As you can see in the image above, in addition to the three buttons (Don't Ask Again, Get Updates, and Don't Update), there's also an Options hyperlink. (Note: The same Options hyperlink is also present in the Document Management pane, next to the Get Updates button, and behaves just as does this one.) Clicking that link to see what your available options are will spawn a Service Options popup, with a number of configurable settings related to both the Document Management pane and Shared Workspace updates:

The wealth of configurable options offered in the Service Options popup include two choices as to when you would prefer that the Document Management pane be automatically surfaced at startup (when the document is part of a workspace or SharePoint site, and/or when there is important status information regarding the document). Both of these startup options are turned off by default.

The options involving Shared Workspace updates are even more plentiful, and include the ability to choose between Always, Sometimes, and Never as regards getting updates when opening a document. By default, Sometimes is enabled, which means you're prompted when opening a document, and asked if you want to get updates. These same three choices are available upon closing a document and, again, the Sometimes option is enabled by default. In addition, you're able to specify how frequently you get updates of the document and the workspace (default duration is every 10 minutes), and whether or not to show document update Desktop Alerts (turned on by default).

If you chose the Don't Update option in the initial popup (as shown in the first image in this post), when you're working on your document in Word and you save changes, you'll receive a popup reminder notifying you that a copy is stored in a Document Workspace, and asking if you'd like to Update Workspace Copy (or not) to reflect your latest changes:

And with that, I've reached the end of my longer-than-anticipated journey of discovery regarding the care and feeding of a Document Workspace which has been created via Word 2007.

Tune in next time when I expect to be dipping back into the SharePoint Blank Mailbag, which has been unfairly neglected while I've been on my walkabout with Document Workspaces.

Read the entire Creating a Document Workspace via Word 2007 series:

Bamboo Welcomes SharePoint Authority SharePoint 911 to the Partner Advantage Program!

JanetG — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:30:00 GMT

I caught up with SharePoint 911 at SPTechCon today and had an opportunity to meet with (L to R) Shane Young, Jennifer Mason, Randy Drisgill and Ryan Keller to talk about their company's value proposition by getting a story about a specific use case.

As it turns out, SharePoint 911 just finished a client engagement with Boulder Valley School District to help them deploy their SharePoint site to the school community. (Check out Bamboo Mini-Calendar on the front page of their site!) The school district wanted to roll up multiple calendars from each school into one master calendar and SharePoint out of the box wasn't enough to support all of the functionality the school district wanted. With Bamboo List Rollup, Calendar Plus and some consulting and training from SharePoint 911, the district was on its' way to earning an 'A' in SharePoint deployment.

The school district itself was a Web application, and each school was a site collection. Then within each school, each teacher is using a calendar to communicate events and activities in a form that will allow that information to be rolled up and synched with what the other teachers in the district are doing. Parents and community members are allowed different levels of access to the calendars, and some calendars are restricted to internal use only.

Just another great example of a partner putting Bamboo in their solution!

Please contact nicola@sharepoint911.com for more information.

SharePoint Task Master: My Web Part Misses its Cache, and I Want to Help

Joe Csernik — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Planning

This is typically where "good intentions" becomes a support nightmare. Oftentimes I feel like I'm doing the right thing when I plan for capacity significantly greater than expected. Of course this is usually within budget constraints and the product of a certain amount of common sense, however, the downfall comes when attempting to push the limits of a server to the maximum. Common sense would say the best way to maximize a server's potential is to utilize memory and processor resources in parallel, thus, if I wanted to serve up pages from IIS as fast as possible I would need to remove bottlenecks and wait states to the greatest possible extent from a hardware perspective. The plan is simple - run IIS processes in parallel while allowing each to use the most memory before recycling. In theory, this approach will allow data to be stored in highly available RAM, allow multiple requests to be fulfilled at the same time, and each process will use my multiple processors more effectively.

Reality

While results vary (especially true on 32-bit platforms), the reflexive plan described above can actually cause more problems than it solves. Web Gardens cause situations where only one process can access the output cache and BLOB cache. Content served up out of the other processes may be missing information, not retain session state properly, or show error messages. We see this very well in SharePoint Task Master where we see the Cache Miss error, and Chart Plus where we see the Red 'X' instead of a nice chart.

The recommendation is to use one worker process in each IIS Application Pool and do any of the following to increase capacity: divide webs into separate SharePoint Web Applications (which also has the benefit of allowing separate backups in the same way MOSS SSP benefits from having its own Web Application); increase the number of Web Front-End servers in an intelligent traffic-based load balanced configuration (which, yes, incurs additional cost, but is an overall better return on investment when also considering up-time and other factors); use x64 architecture with more RAM to minimize Application Pool recycling. Multiple processor servers which are almost exclusively in use will still see the benefits as IIS worker processes spawn threads to complete tasks, and these threads will be load-balanced across the available processors.

Short version

Microsoft and others state pretty clearly that using a Web Garden for SharePoint is not recommended. More RAM, x64 technology, and more servers are the best ways to serve up those pages as quickly and accurately as possible. Some references that can be used are: Microsoft Technet, Eli Robillard's blog on asp.net, and the Joel Oleson blog referenced in the previous link.

Microsoft's Cloud Computing Strategy, Windows 7 Upgrade Tools, Is the OS Irrelevant?

SharePoint Daily — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:14:00 GMT

Top News Stories
Book Review: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Inside Out (IT Wire)
Despite the seeming ubiquity of SharePoint Server its administration and maintenance can, at times, be cryptic and seemingly impenetrable. This Microsoft Press book gives a deep explanation of how to master the beast.

Webcast: Demystifying Azure and Microsoft's Cloud Computing Strategy (ZDNet)
A lot of Azure is very conceptual and confusing, but it’s significant because it helps us sort out how the world’s largest software company plans to adapt to a world where a lot more applications will be delivered over the Internet. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley (right) is going to help sort out what Azure is (and what it isn’t) in a live Webcast on Wednesday, June 24 at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT / 5:00 PM GMT. This is a good opportunity to get up to speed on Azure before Microsoft launches it later this year.

What You Need to Know About Windows Server 2008 R2 RC (Windows IT Pro)
Windows Server 2008 R2 RC is a signal from Microsoft that Server 2008 R2 has hit the home stretch. "It's time to kick tires and evaluate it," Microsoft group product manager Ward Ralston told me during a recent briefing. Microsoft is ready to talk performance, and although the number of performance comparisons I was shown is small, more are on the way. Here's what you need to know about Windows Server 2008 R2 RC.

Microsoft Debuts Free Antivirus Software Beta (The Washington Post)
Microsoft on Tuesday released a beta version of its new free anti-virus offering, Microsoft Security Essentials (a.k.a "Morro"). My review, in short: the program is a fast, easy to use and unobtrusive new addition to the stable of free anti-virus options available today.

Microsoft Offers Tool To Decide on Windows 7 Upgrades (Top Tech News)
As Microsoft prepares to launch Windows 7, it has released a beta version of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP), which offers hardware-compatibility analysis and other tools to let enterprises know if they should upgrade to Windows 7. Microsoft's careful Windows 7 launch and good buzz may stimulate an upgrade cycle.

How the Windows 7 Free Upgrade Option Program Works (Softpedia)
“Here’s how it works:” is a line from official Microsoft resources designed to provide information on the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program. The Redmond-based company is, of course, continuing to keep mum on the matter of free Windows Vista to Windows 7 upgrades as far as the general public is concerned, but the same is not valid for its OEM partners. Moreover, the software giant is already detailing the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program to original equipment manufacturers, as an integral part of the efforts designed to help company partners fuel computer sales pre-installed with Windows Vista ahead of the Windows 7 launch. Although not confirmed by the maker, the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program offering free upgrades to the next iteration of the Windows client for new OEM Vista PCs is scheduled to debut in just three days.

Redmond's Latest Woe: OS Irrelevance (Server Watch)
There's an old joke about the classic 19th century novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: It's a book everyone wishes they'd read but nobody actually wants to read. It's heavy going, in other words, but well worth it in the end. Microsoft must be wishing that enterprises felt the same way about its latest grand oeuvre: Windows 7. It seems to be a work that right now almost nobody wants to implement, and nobody wishes they already had.

How Far Will Microsoft Go with Cloud? (InfoWorld)
As the Enterprise 2.0 conference unfolds in Boston this week, the whole software industry will be observing Microsoft's shift to online services, as it responds to the cloud computing model championed by competitors like Salesforce.com, Google and start-up social software vendors.

Managing the Mass of Clouds (Channel Insider)
Solution providers are getting nervous about their future in a world dominated by cloud computing services that, in many cases, won’t need a middleman. Perhaps the opportunity for solution providers isn’t in selling the cloud, but rather managing the mass of clouds on clients’ behalf.

Tech Buzz Brings Android News to Your Home Screen (CNET)
Not only did the recent Android 1.5 "cupcake" update add many new components that allow users to customize the look of their phones, but it also included a widget API for developers to create their own widgets. In the short time this feature has been available, over 200 widgets have appeared in the Android Market.

Around the Blogosphere
Social Computing Using SharePoint (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
Do you have an interest in the enterprise social computing as many other? Microsoft has launched a new site at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/social. Here you will find feature content especially for and about enterprise social computing—why customers should plan for it, what Microsoft offers, and why they should consider Microsoft as their social platform of choice. And in the blog section you will find a new whitepaper worth reading.

Microsoft Case Studies: Coca-Cola Enterprises and Microsoft Online Services (Bill Baer)
Recently posted: A Microsoft Case Study examining Microsoft Online Services and Coca-Cola Enterprises. Read more about this Microsoft Case Study here: Coca-Cola Enterprises Tackles Competition with Microsoft Online Services.

TDD and SharePoint is it Worth Doing? (Andrew Woodward MVP)
Just read a post by Sahil Malik where he gives his reasons for saying "TDD + SharePoint 2007? Well - screw it! Not worth it IMO." The reason for his statement is that he sees the actual C# code developed as being a very small % of the total SharePoint project and the effort to do this as not worth the return when you consider the project costs overall.

SharePoint Governance: Putting Business Back in Control (End User SharePoint)
Increasingly companies have adopted Governance as a way to control the roll out of SharePoint in their organisation. This has resulted in SharePoint Governance taking on a life of its own; with a proliferation of white papers, blogs posts, conference sessions, consultancy engagements and even training workshops dedicated to the subject. Ask yourself, do you have a Governance Plan? How many meetings have you attended where a Governance Plan has been discussed?

SharePoint Development Weekly Roundup (23 Jun) (Made 4 the .NET)
It seems every week more and more great content appears! These could almost become daily Coffee break posts!

Around Bamboo Nation
Guest Blog by HiSoftware's Founder Robert Yonaitis - Preventing Compliance Errors Before They Happen for the Web Content Scenario in MOSS (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Compliance is an important aspect of both Intranet and Internet content management. Ensuring that your Web content conforms to regulatory and standards-based compliance requirements is an important factor in creating a stable and trustworthy Web-based experience for your site users. For those that use the Web Content Management Scenarios in MOSS, this document will provide you with complete examples on how to implement content compliance for the following areas: Markup Validation, Brand Management and Bad Words List.

Governance Mentoring Workshop in D.C. Proposed by SharePoint Mystery Men (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Who are the SharePoint Mystery Men? Paul Culmsee outed himself yesterday as Dr. Wicked, and revealed the secret identities of his teammates Agile Boy (Andrew Woodward), Magneto (Ruven Gotz), and Mr. Myagi (Dux Raymond Sy) in his Who wants to spend 3 days with me and the gang? post at Clever Workarounds yesterday.

This Week in Bamboo (June 14th - June 20th, 2009) (The Bamboo Team Blog)
If you love our free Web Part, World Clock and Weather Web Part, check out some new features related to this product from this blog and try it out for free. The detail related to the patch for Mini Calendar Web Part is also posted here.

SharePoint Job Listings**
Business Analyst - MS SharePoint
Our Minneapolis client is looking for a contractor with experience in implementing MS SharePoint in a finance department. Must have implementation, roll out and training experience. Only those candidates with prior experience with MS SharePoint implementation experience need apply.

Senior Microsoft SharePoint Systems Engineer
The candidate will act as a senior Microsoft SharePoint systems engineer leading the technical stream of a new enterprise wide SharePoint implementation. The candidate will work under general direction of Global Head, Intranet Hosting and Platform Services within Enterprise Web Services (EWS), Novartis Pharma IT.

Microsoft SharePoint Program Manager
The candidate will act as the SharePoint Program Manager responsible for leading the delivery of enterprise wide SharePoint services within Novartis. The candidate must have strong leadership, hands-on technical, project management and analytical skills. The candidate will work under general direction of Global Head, Intranet Hosting and Platform Services within Enterprise Web Services (EWS).

Microsoft Updates
Office SharePoint Server 2007 cannot index Office SharePoint Server 2003 portal listings (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
Office SharePoint Server 2007 cannot index Office SharePoint Server 2003 portal listings.

Watch this: Manage site navigation settings (Windows SharePoint Services)
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides navigation that helps you to see where you are on a Web site relative to other sites or subsites. Site administrators can customize the navigation components of sites to provide flexibility for teams.

Manage site templates (Windows SharePoint Services)
Members of the Administrator and Web Designer site groups can customize a site and save the customized site as a site template, so that other users in the site collection can create similar sites later. Administrators of a site collection can also import a site template created by another user or software vendor and add the new template to the available site templates in the site collection.

Introduction to Excel Services and Excel Web Access (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS))
Excel Services is a Microsoft Office SharePoint technology that makes it simple to use, share, secure, and manage Microsoft Office Excel 2007 workbooks (.xslx, xslb) as interactive reports in a consistent way throughout the enterprise.

Create a secondary workflow (Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer)
When a workflow that runs on one list adds or changes an item in a second list, you can create a second workflow that is triggered by that addition or change. This secondary workflow can manage the added or changed item, or take any other workflow action — including adding, changing, and deleting other items in any list.

Bamboo Partner Events*
June 22-24, Boston, Massachusetts, SPTechCon - Innovative-e

July 11, Toronto, Ontario, SharePoint Saturday
July 16, Online, Free webinar: Make your Microsoft CRM reports ROCK in SharePoint: Understand how to write dash boards and generate reports from MS CRM to SharePoint - InterDyn AKA
July 17, Online, InterDyn presents: Project Management 2.0 using SharePoint 2007 - InterDyn AKA
July 18, Harrison, Arkansas, SharePoint Saturday
July 25, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint Saturday

SharePoint Events**
June 22-24, Boston, Massachusetts, SPTechCon
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 24, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
June 26-27, Dulles, Virginia, Regional SharePoint Users Conference 2009
June 30, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Central Webinar

September 21-25, Chicago, Illinois, SharePoint Branding Bootcamp
September 21-24, Germany, ShareConnect

October 19-22, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Conference 2009

* If you are a Bamboo Partner please contact Janet Goda (janet.goda@bamboosolutions.com) to have your event included in the Bamboo Partner Events.

** Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event or job listing in SharePoint Daily.

Now you can have SharePoint Daily delivered to your email inbox every morning.

Governance Mentoring Workshop in D.C. Proposed by SharePoint Mystery Men

John Anderson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:37:00 GMT

Who are the SharePoint Mystery Men? Paul Culmsee outed himself yesterday as Dr. Wicked, and revealed the secret identities of his teammates Agile Boy (Andrew Woodward), Magneto (Ruven Gotz), and Mr. Myagi (Dux Raymond Sy) in his Who wants to spend 3 days with me and the gang? post at Clever Workarounds yesterday.

These four globe-spanning SharePoint superheroes each possess their own distinct SharePoint super power, and are planning to join forces and convene a Governance Mentoring Workshop in D.C. this August. All four will be in town to speak at the Best Practices Conference, and are currently gauging the level of interest in such a Governance Mentoring Workshop to precede the Conference. The Workshop would occur August 19-21, just prior to the Best Practices Conference (August 24-26), and the cost of attendance would be $1,750 per attendee.

Please visit Clever Workarounds for more details on the proposed workshop and, if you think you might be interested in attending, please let your voice be heard by registering your interest at Dux's site. Tell 'em Bamboo Nation sent you!

This Week in Bamboo (June 14th - June 20th, 2009)

Bamboo PM Girl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:02:00 GMT

If you love our free Web Part, World Clock and Weather Web Part, check out some new features related to this product from this blog and try it out for free. The detail related to the patch for Mini Calendar Web Part is also posted here.

World Clock and Weather Web Part (HW17 R2.1) -

Known Issues:
• Opera Brower: Cannot show Analog/Digital Clock when using Silverlight option.
• Firefox or Opera Brower : Unable to display raining special effect. Unable to use slider control in the tool part to change special effect density.

New Features:
• Check MSN web service asynchronous. Set time out in 10 seconds.
• Provide more date time format in the tool pane.

Bug Fixed:
Changed locale, the time is off.

Mini Calendar Web Part (HW22 R2.4.64) -

Bugs Fixed:
• Error Message "RenderCalendar::::Object reference not set to an instance of an object." when using a list rollup dataview of more than 4 calendar lists.
• Cannot control CSS for date associated to an event.