SharePoint Daily for August 28, 2008

Top News Stories
Portal Vendors Putting Up a Fight Against MOSS (CMS Wire)
CMS Watch has come out with its Enterprise Portals Report 2009 and it appears like Microsoft SharePoint may be splitting the vendors into camps — those that have been able to rise above and those that have risen to challenge MOSS. It’s interesting to see who shows up where.

Knowledge Work and Micro-processes (FASTforward)
Recently, I sat through a presentation about a Sharepoint-based intranet project to improve processes within the HR group of a medium-sized organization. The process in question was one of collecting annual performance reviews throughout the organization. Using Sharepoint, the HR group and their consultants replaced Word documents, spreadsheets, and email with Infopath forms and programmatic workflows. The client was happy and the consultants had a nice demo they could show to their prospects. Nonetheless, I found myself dissatisfied.

Microsoft SharePoint's Rise Splits Enterprise Portal Marketplace (PR Web)
The rise of SharePoint as the predominant departmental portal solution has led to two divergent reactions among traditional enterprise portal suppliers, with IBM, Oracle, and SAP now dividing up the top tier of the marketplace while a plethora of open source alternatives are expanding rapidly to compete directly with SharePoint, according to research undertaken by CMS Watch, a vendor-independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies.

SSWUG Readers, Office and SQL Server - Great Feedback (SSWUG)
The SQL Server, Business Intelligence, SharePoint and .NET Developers vConferences are just around the corner - be sure to get registered to save your spot and stay up to date as we work to build out these great online resources.

Universities UK Relaunches Website to Celebrate 90th Year (PublicTechnology)
Universities UK, the major representative body and membership organisation for the higher education sector, has relaunched its website with a host of new features. The redesigned website offers dynamic content, improved navigation and greater accessibility, along with a wealth of new information.

Cloud Computing: 12 Signs that Your Company is Already in the Cloud (Sys-Con Media)
What are the telltale signs that your company is already Computing in the Cloud? Is it when the CIO makes a big announcement at the monthly IT meeting? Is it when the IT newsletter drops a reference to pilot testing of some ‘web based’ software? Or, is it when the secretary whips out the boss’s Corporate Credit Card and signs up to a Cloud Service? Here are 12 indicators that your company is *already* part of the Cloud:

Around the Blogosphere
Selling SharePoint - "The Unpredictable End User" (Andy Dale officetalk)
The start of a new football season is always a time for optimism and nothing increases this more than an opening day victory. So as a Villa fan the second Saturday of the season started with dreams of singing ‘We are top of the league, we are top of the league’ come 5pm. Unfortunately then along came Stoke City and Rory Delap’s two mile long throw-ins (slight exaggeration).
So what has this got to do with SharePoint and End Users?

How To: Hide the Title Column from Sharepoint Lists (Ferrara Data Consulting)
A frequent request from end-users is the ability to remove the “title” column from Sharepoint lists and document libraries. You can rename this column to something else, but I do not recommend this for various reasons. “Title” is a reserved Sharepoint word and renaming it has been known to break things. Generally this only occurs if you change it in the Site Content Type Gallery, but I tend to err on the side of caution here. You can read about that particular limitation here.

Announcing the “How to Get the Most Value From Social Computing for Business with Microsoft” White Paper (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)
I'm very proud to announce that the "How to get the Most Value from Social Computing for Business with Microsoft" white paper is now available for public download here. Over the past 12 months, I’ve met with many customers and received numerous escalations from our field about how social computing capabilities can be used to solve real business problems. This white paper was developed primarily to answer those questions.

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Issue on Windows SharePoint Services v2.0 (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)
In case you have installed .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 on a machine which hosts Windows SharePoint Services v2.0 website running on .Net Framework 2.0, you will notice the following problems. Windows SharePoint Services v3 is not affected by the update.

Patterns & Practices SharePoint Guidance and a TypeMock Video (21 apps | and the point is?)
The Patterns & Practices group are looking at Guidance on SharePoint and are making regular code drops to the CodePlex project. They have done research and the customers have ranked the requirements in order of importance.

IE 8 Beta 2 Available for Download (Michael O'Donovan's SharePoint and Stuff)
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has just been released and is now available to download. If you are in anyway involved in hosting, developing or managing a web site, you probably want to download this and make sure that your web site is compatible. In other words, get your web site ready before it ships!

LinkedIn integration with SharePoint (Mart Muller's Sharepoint Weblog)
I've been playing around a while with the option to integrate the LinkedIn social network with SharePoint. A while ago LinkedIn announced they were working on a API to communicate with other applications. I contacted them about the options and plans I had with SharePoint, but no response so far.

Around Bamboo Nation
The Humble yet Mighty SharePoint Recycle Bin (SharePoint Blank)
You may recall that I blogged about my happy discovery of the Restore Selection feature of the SharePoint recycle bin earlier this month.  I ended that post by cautioning users that, "per the instructions, you can ‘Use this page to restore items that users have deleted from this site or to empty deleted items. Items that were deleted more than 30 day(s) ago will be automatically emptied.'"

SharePoint Sales, Learning, and Cocoa Puffs (The Bamboo Team Blog)
As a recently hired member of the sales department here at Bamboo, one of the interesting things I've noticed is how often my outgoing phone calls are greeted with elation to be hearing from Bamboo. People are always excited to bend my ear and tell me how their trials are going with the Web Part they downloaded to make their SharePoint site better. It's always "fun" to talk with our customers, as most of them are IT and IS type personalities and they tend to make the assumption that I have a MOSS certification as well. This has led to some interesting exchanges.

Random Free Comparison of the iPhone and SharePoint (The Bamboo Team Blog)
As a tech gadget geek it seems like I switch phones every six months (it is usually every 8-12 though). I have ordered phones from Hong Kong just to get the most recent phone.  This was surprisingly an easy feat.  I used to gloat over how my phones are cooler and have more features than others at work.  I have had phones that looked like cameras and still functioned well as a cellular device.  I was even on the Nextel bandwagon in the early days, just to have the cool Direct Connect feature.  I tried to stay away from the iPhone, due to my familiarity with Windows Mobile, but I kept running into people with them.   I ended up drinking the Kool-Aid and am glad to say it tastes pretty good.

SharePoint Events
August 25-29, Sydney, Australia, SharePoint August Training Summit
August 28, Phoenix, Arizona, Arizona SharePoint Pros
August 28, Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland SharePoint User Group

September 1-3, Auckland City, New Zealand, TechEd New Zealand
September 2, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Microsoft SharePoint Business Strategies Group
September 2, Grand Rapids, Michigan, West Michigan SharePoint User Group
September 3, New York, New York, NYC SharePoint User Group
September 3-5, San Francisco, California, Office2.0 Conference
September 4, Washington, DC, Federal & Military SharePoint Users Group of Washington D.C.
September 4, Kansas City, Office Developer User Group of Kansas City
September 8-9, Stockholm, Sweden, SharePoint & Exchange Forum
September 9, Chicago Illinois, The Chicago Microsoft SharePoint Business Strategies Group September Meetup
September 9, Wayne, Pennsylvania, Philly Office Geeks
September 10, Bloomington, Minnesota, Minnesota SharePoint User Group
September 11, San Francisco, California, San Francisco SharePoint Users Group
September 11, Bellevue, WA, Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group
September 11, Reston, Virginia, SharePoint User Group of Washington, DC
September 11, Brookfield, Wisconsin, SharePoint: What Can I Do With It?
September 12, Brisbane, Australia, Brisbane SharePoint Usergroup
September 15-17, Washington, DC (McLean, Virginia), Best Practices SharePoint Conference
September 16, Sydney, Australia, Sydney SharePoint User Group
September 17, Iselin, New Jersey, NJ SharePoint User Group
September 18, Columbus, Ohio, Central Ohio SharePoint User Group
September 18, Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville Office Geeks
September 18, Louisville, Kentucky, Kentucky Sharepoint Users Group
September 20, Baltimore Maryland, Baltimore SharePoint Usersgroup
September 20/21, Waltham, Massachusetts, New England Code Camp 10
September 23, Franklin, Tennessee, Nashville SharePoint Users Group
September 24, Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland SharePoint User Group
September 24, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group
September 24, Roanoke, Virginia, Roanoke Valley SharePoint Users Group
September 25, Phoenix, Arizona, Arizona SharePoint Professionals Group

October 9-10, Tulsa Oklahoma, Tulsa TechFest
October 21, Tampa, Florida, Tampa Office Geeks Association
October 25-26, Los Angeles, California, SoCal Code Camp
October 27-30, Los Angeles, California, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference

November 3-7 and 10-14, Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft TechEd
November 10-13, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Connections Conference

January 26-28, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon

* Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event in our listing.

Microsoft Updates
Search for Items or Files in a SharePoint List or Library (Microsoft)
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.

Open, Edit, and Update Files From a SharePoint Site (Microsoft)
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.

Track Updates to a SharePoint Site (Microsoft)
You can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to track updates and manage notifications from a SharePoint site.

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