SharePoint Daily for December 22, 2008

Top News Stories
Create Better Workflows in SharePoint Designer (CMSWire)
Yes, you can create workflows for SharePoint lists in SharePoint Designer, but they aren't the most robust workflows you may need for your organization. Instead of hiring developers to build the workflows you need, why not try the new Workflow Essentials solution from SharePoint Solutions. The suite of workflow activities and conditions enable you to create the business processes you need for your SharePoint content within the Designer interface.

Google Apps Still Trying to Win Over Corporate Users (Info World)
While Google is often cited as having a golden touch, the company's productivity application suite is still a mere bronze competitor to Microsoft's Office and collaboration tools despite upgrades over the past year that focused on evolving and securing the online tools for corporate users. Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE), the vendor's $50 per user productivity suite targeted at businesses, has proven worthy in certain situations, most involving universities or small and midsize businesses (SMB) looking to cut costs.

MashPoint API Provides REST Interface to MOSS (CMSWire)
Bamboo Solutions provides a number of web parts and applications for the SharePoint platform. One that is particularly interesting is their MashPoint solution - a free version of the MOSS Business Data Catalog. Now that solution proves even more enticing as Bamboo announces a MashPoint API which serves to offer a REST-based interface to not only MashPoint, but to SharePoint itself.

Look Beyond SharePoint When Considering Collaboration (Search VOIP)
When it comes to departmental file sharing or collaborative workspaces, Microsoft's SharePoint has legions of fans in midsized companies. But for those not interested in paying for SharePoint (the basic version is free), or who find some features immature in the latest version, there are SharePoint alternatives.

Online Info for SharePoint Users (On Windows)
Jupitermedia has launched a new content and community Web site that provides articles, tutorials, and hands-on information related to using, customising, and extending Microsoft’s SharePoint technologies including Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server.

That Windows 7 Bootleg is a Ticking Time Bomb (ZDNet)
Judging by my inbox, lots of you downloaded a bootleg copy of Windows 7 build 6956 from BitTorrent, and now you have it running. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t update its built-in copy of Internet Explorer 8 with this week’s extremely critical out-of-band security update, which Microsoft turned around in record time.

Has Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Got Us Anywhere? (InformationWeek)
As we noted earlier this week, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) learned of a vulnerability in IE 7 on “Patch Tuesday” December 9, and had a fix published for download eight days later. Now, Microsoft’s Michael Howard, from the security engineering team, takes an interesting look at the lessons learned.

Which Sites Will Make the IE8 Compatibility Hall of Shame? (ZDNet)
According to Microsoft, a release candidate of Internet Explorer 8 is just around the corner, and with it comes an urgent call to web designers to get their act together and tweak their sites so they’ll render properly under the new browser.

Windows XP Lives! Again! (Technologizer)
Windows XP was theoretically replaced by Windows Vista almost two years ago now. But many, many people still prefer to buy computers loaded with XP than with Vista. That’s surely not a reality that Microsoft is very happy with, but it’s one that it has to deal with. And so the company keeps giving XP brief new leases on life, to the point where many users will be able to segue directly from XP to Windows 7 and pretend that Vista never existed.

Around the Blogosphere
SPNavigationNode Issue (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
While working on some enhancements for the Site Configurator Feature we just released to CodePlex, I was struggling with an unexpected behavior when trying to add create SPNavigationNodes programmatically for quick launch and top navigation links. There are two constructors to select from: public SPNavigationNode(string title, string url), public SPNavigationNode(string title, string url, bool isExternal).

SharePoint Best Practices Offers Free Pre-Registration (Bill English)
At our SharePoint Best Practices Conference last Fall, we experienced a rush of people who wanted to register and attend at the last minute. So for the February, 2009 event in San Diego, we're going to try to help those who can't register until after January 1 ensure that they can place a tentative reservation on their seat now.

Leveraging SharePoint as a Document Management System (SharePoint Briefing)
Due to the tremendous popularity of leveraging the SharePoint platform for basic document management (DM) and the ease with which it can be set up, many organizations embark on their SharePoint journey without much advance planning or foresight. This inevitably leads to implementation issues that arise at various time intervals after the site goes live. After encountering enough of these implementation issues, organizations often enlist professional help. This article describes three of the most common scenarios that may when using SharePoint as a document management solution, and how you can avoid them.

“VMware Tools is Not Supported on this Guest OS” Error Message When Trying to Install VMware Tools on Window Server 2008 (Muhanad Omar)
So I decided to give VMware Server 2.0 a try today and I already got my first error.. woohoo! Here’s how my current setup looks like: Host OS: Windows Vista 64-bit, VMware: VMware Server 2.0, Guest OS: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 32-bit.

Data Connection Error Because of Too Many Site Collection References (Michael Lotter)
This week has been one crazy week for me because Christmas is next week and I’m technically on vacation now for the next 3 weeks.  Just like almost everyone else I've been scrambling to get as much work finished before leaving and I had several projects at once pushing for everything to be released by today (Friday).  This unfortunately caused for some oversight on my part and caused a lot of little interesting problems to pop-up.  One problem that I had was with InfoPath and Data Connections.  During the course of my current project the SharePoint Site Collection where the forms were being deployed and Data Connection files being published changed because of Information Architecture had been modified to include "Forms Centeral" and yesterday I ran into this nice error.

Around Bamboo Nation
Creating a Project Schedule With Dependencies Using SharePoint Task Master with an Existing SharePoint Task List (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Whether you manage a small project or multiple complex projects or a PMO, a project manager needs to be able to identify the impact of delays to the overall project schedule and communicates the information in a collaborative world. In my last announcement blog of the release of SharePoint Task Master, I mentioned the following features: drag and drop Gantt bar interface to move tasks from one parent task to another, assign Finish-to-Start dependencies between tasks, show Work Break Down structure of project tasks, zoom in or out on the Gantt timeline to see more or less tasks in the Gantt chart.

Microsoft Updates
Error message when you try to save a site as a template in SharePoint Server 2007: "Failure decompressing data from a cabinet file" (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - KB Alertz)
This error can occur even though the template file (*.stp) is smaller than the value that was specified in the Stsadm.exe command. For example, this error can occur if the .stp file is smaller than 500 MB.

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Coreserver.msp): December 16, 2008 (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - KB Alertz)
This article describes the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 issues that are fixed in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package that is dated December 16, 2008.

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package (MOSS server-package): December 16, 2008 (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - KB Alertz)
Cumulative update packages for SharePoint Server 2007 contain hotfixes for the SharePoint Server 2007 issues that have been fixed since the release of SharePoint Server 2007. Note This build of the cumulative update package is also known as build 12.0.6335.5000.

SharePoint Events
December 24, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group
December 30, Online, What's New from Bamboo
December 30, Online, Create a Master Calendar in SharePoint

January 7, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 7, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 10, Virginia Beach, Virginia, SharePoint Saturday
January 14, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Project Management Webinar
January 14, Online, Bamboo SharePoint Administration Webinar
January 15, Online, What's New from Bamboo
January 21, New York, New York, 2009 IMAGINE Event -- SharePoint in the Real World
January 27-29, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon

February 2-4, San Diego, California, SharePoint Best Practices Conference
February 7, Kansas City, Kansas, SharePoint Saturday
February 21, New York, New York, SharePoint Saturday

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

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