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Bamboo Solutions is a leading provider of Web Parts and Solution Accelerators for Microsoft SharePoint. In SharePoint Blank, a new employee (and a blank slate with regards to SharePoint) candidly blogs his day-to-day SharePoint learning, sharing his trials and triumphs.
May 2008 - Posts
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How did it get to be Friday already? Oh, right, Monday was a holiday, so it was a short week. Even so, this week seemed to travel at warp speed ‘round here, especially with Bamboo Nation traffic taking off like a rocket in the wake of 1) software architect Jonas Nilsson blogging his "little hack" which enables WSS and MOSS to run on Vista (which may sound like gobbledygook to some of you but, trust me, that news is truly cause for celebration among SharePoint developers, and 2) the much-anticipated launch of our forums, headed up by my estimable colleague, Chris Dooley.
Amidst all of the week's activity, my SharePoint learning has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride (a trend which is I expect is likely to continue, so please bear with me). In truth, I didn't have time to make any progress yesterday, but I didn't have the heart to show up empty-handed in a week-ending post, so I dedicated a little time this morning to that end. Yes, this means that I may find myself in the very same position come Monday, but I'm prepared to roll the dice on that action.
I alluded yesterday to the fact that the need to incorporate yet another group's calendar into my team's calendar on our portal may arrive sooner than later. In fact, I already knew that I was on the hook to accomplish that very task, so that's what I spent some time working on this morning. How'd I do? Well, I experienced a bittersweet level of ... partial success.
I was able to successfully pull the data from the correct (new) group calendar into the Web Parts page I described yesterday (the page where the "background" elements that power and populate our team's editorial calendar on the portal live), and display the new calendar's list of tasks.
Hats off to me, right?
Alas, not quite. While I was able to successfully pull in the desired data, I wasn't able to figure out how to get that new data to display within the rolled up data view. What is to say that I still have to figure out how to get the new data to be consumed by the rolled up data view ... which will, in turn, allow it to be displayed on our team's editorial calendar.
Will I have time to tackle that today? Tune in Monday for our next exciting episode where the answer shall be revealed!
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Observant readers will have noticed that yesterday's entry essentially amounted to the blogging equivalent of tap dancing. I'm not going to lie to you ... I will, of necessity, have to resort to such behavior from time to time hereabouts. If I haven't learned any new blog-worthy SharePoint skills in a given day (or if I've only made a small amount of progress), you may notice me slipping on my dancing shoes in an attempt to distract you from that fact, but at the same time, I'll also do my best to entertain you while staying on-topic.
With the understanding, of course, that the definition of "on-topic" shall remain a work-in-progress, allowing for a fair amount of wiggle room should circumstances warrant.
Fair enough? Cool. Onward!
We left off with Steve having succeeded in importing the contents of another team's calendar list into our own team's calendar. Buoyed by his success, Steve boldly decided to press his luck by moving on to creating our own custom team calendar list to surface within this new, combined, calendar view. Alas, much like Icarus, Steve soon found himself no longer held aloft on the wings of his SharePoint success, and came tumbling back down to earth. And, hey, I'm certainly familiar enough with these ups and downs in the SharePoint learning curve to say that it happens to the best of us.
Us newbies, that is.
It was at this point that I was directed to secure that elusive audience with Jeff from our Solutions team. And secure it I did ... and I bring glad tidings as a result! Glad tiding the first is that Jeff helpfully walked me through the process of accomplishing the task from soup to nuts. While doing so, he also provided a running commentary of useful tips and information nuggets. One such tip included: Rather than cluttering up your page with multiple hidden Web Parts, create a single "Web Parts" page as a document library to house the background objects which populate your calendar, then simply reference the URL of that Web Parts page in the "data source" field to import the content. One example of a useful info nugget is that when setting up your list, you can't name a field "Type," because type is a reserved name in SharePoint.
I scribbled two pages of notes during Jeff's tutorial, and will certainly be employing them when the time comes to add another calendar list to our team calendar (and that time may come very soon), but I'm happy to report that adding a new calendar item to the custom list is a breeze once that list has been created and properly configured. Naturally, when you have the benefit of a Solutions expert helping you with the creation and configuration, that part is a breeze too.
But what if you don't have the benefit of such access to an expert?
Well, I'm glad you asked, because the second glad tiding I have to share -and the one that is far more likely to be directly beneficial to you- is that Jeff plans to craft one of his patented "how to" blog entries on how to use the List Rollup Web Part (which is the Web Part which makes all of this souped-up calendar action possible) in the near future. Yup, that's right, just keep an eye on the Bamboo Team Blog, and you'll be getting an expert tutorial of your very own soon ... and you won't even have to take notes!
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Amidst a day filled with Bamboo Nation-related tasks yesterday, I unfortunately missed my window of opportunity for an audience with Jeff (wherein I had planned to seek his counsel regarding my multi-calendar-mash-up quandary). My continued inability to gain measurable traction on this task led to my boss trying his own hand at it last night, and damned if he didn't show me up by powering through and successfully displaying the contents of one calendar inside another calendar on our team portal.
Of course, it must be noted that Steve has a nine week jump on me with SharePoint knowledge, so I'm able to cling to that fact as I attempt to minister to my fragile, fragile male ego.
I am pleased, however, that from the ashes of my defeat, Steve was able to rise up phoenix-like and advance the ball down the field (If you'll kindly permit me an aside: Not being a sports guy, I will rarely employ sports metaphors here, but sometimes a sports metaphor just plain works, even amidst a high wire act such as the mash-up of the mixed metaphor variety such as I just employed, mixing the mythological -the legend of the phoenix- with the mundane -that would be the ball/field- and I would strongly advise against attempting such a high wire act at home, as it is highly dangerous and best left to trained professionals), while at the same time increasing his own SharePoint expertise ... even if his own newfound knowledge came at the price of a lost learning opportunity for me.
Or did it?
Since I'm living in the future as I type these words, let's just say that I can promise you a much more substantive report on my own SharePoint learning progress in this space tomorrow.
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In our last episode, we left off with my being told that pulling the contents from one calendar and displaying them within another calendar (on the same site) might not be possible. Well, I went to Jeff the All-Knowing on Friday morning for a definitive answer, and I'm happy to report that it is indeed possible.
As I understand it, this is another request that's not an out-of-the-box option with SharePoint but, per Jeff, since both calendars exist on the same SharePoint environment, accomplishing the task is a simple two-step process. Jeff says that all I need to do is use List Rollup to combine both calendars into a single view, then use the Calendar Plus Web Part to consume that rolled up view. I thanked Jeff for the good news, and I also warned him that I would likely have follow-up questions for him. I then dutifully began my patented newbie fumbling around in an attempt to get it working on my own.
It was around this time that the word came down from on high that Friday was to be the indoctrination of the newbies into another aspect of Bamboo culture: We were going to Eden Center for lunch. What is Eden Center, you may ask? Well, Eden center is a wondrous oasis in northern Virginia for lovers of Vietnamese cuisine, of which I am most definitely one. So when your COO generously invites you to lunch at Eden Center, and upon arrival commences to order (in Vietnamese, natch) for the entire group, well, let's just say that Team Bamboo ate very well on Friday afternoon. (Next time though, we certainly hope Lam won't have to excuse himself to join a conference call almost immediately after placing the food order!)
Glorious as it is, however, a group lunch at Eden Center does tend to take a rather sizable bite out of the work day, and I was left with limited time to continue my wrangling with SharePoint upon our return. In the time I had available, I was able to add the List Rollup to our portal though, and also managed to successfully import the task list I needed from the second calendar (with thanks to Bamboo PM Girl for helpfully pointing out exactly which list it was that I needed) ... but then I somehow managed to lose all of that work when I thought I was saving it. Argh.
Unfortunately, it's with that tale of woe that I'm afraid we must end today's episode. Stay tuned for the results of the predicted (predictable?) follow-up with Jeff, as I will be soliciting some hands-on instruction in the art of configuring a SharePoint environment.
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Let's try something a little bit different today and start at the end of the work day, then jump back in time to the start. In the meantime, we'll let the middle kind of sort itself out.
At the end of the day yesterday, while lamenting my failure to get the contents of a calendar on our portal to roll up to a different calendar (on the same site), I was told there may be a very good reason for my lack of success: it may not be possible. Which, on the one hand, was a cheery thought since it would somewhat absolve me of my feelings of newbie inadequacy over not being able to make it happen. On the other hand, however, not being able to do so would only serve to present a major hassle going forward what with the need to manually monitor and sync the contents of more than one calendar. Can it really be possible that the answer is that this isn't possible, if not in SharePoint proper, then via a Web Part?
Well, like I said, it was at the end of the work day yesterday that I had the word laid on me that it may very well not be possible, so I'm afraid I'll have to keep you in suspense over the (long) weekend to find out what my further investigations turned up today. Or perhaps a helpful reader might spare the suspense and (potential spoiler alert!) reveal the senses-shattering climax to our tale ... or at least a definitive answer as to whether or not it's possible to accomplish this feat.
Jumping back to the beginning of the day –a day which was almost entirely dedicated to laying the groundwork for providing a fitting launching pad for the major new product we'll be announcing during Tech Ed– I'm afraid that my actual hands-on SharePoint progress took a bit of a nosedive. At one morning meeting while thinking about social media constructs we haven't (yet) leveraged in Bamboo Nation, however, I found myself wondering what, if any, undiscovered (by me anyway) SharePoint-related treasure might be lurking on YouTube.
And so, while wishing Bamboo Nation a happy Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. (happy Friday everywhere else), and without making any claims as to its relative merit –while at the same time absolutely standing by a "you have to see it to believe it" pronouncement– without further ado, I give you the single most popular result from a YouTube search on "SharePoint":
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My friends, I had such plans for the blog-worthy learning I was going to accomplish yesterday ... and yet here I stand before you, hat in hand, shuffling my feet, tugging my forelock, and sheepishly avoiding eye contact, for I fear those grand plans went awry and the day simply got away from me before I was able to deliver the goods.
And to think the day started with such hope and optimism, as I made good on my promise to not ask a SharePoint-related question until I'd spent some time trying to figure out the answer on my own. It was in this spirit that I spent a good little while attempting to figure out how to get the contents of one calendar on our corporate portal to roll up to another calendar on the portal and, while I made (what I thought at the time were) some promising inroads, in the end, my efforts came to naught. Since accomplishing this feat is a deadline-based task, however, it looks like I'm going to have to take a shortcut on this one, suck it up, and ask a knowledgeable colleague for some pointers on how to make it happen. Sigh.
In other news, while writing yesterday's blog entry, I realized that a SharePoint cheat sheet would be helpful to me in keeping the alphabet soup straight (WSS, MOSS, SPS, etc.), which led to the realization that if it would be helpful to me, it would likely be helpful to other SharePoint newbies out there as well. So off to work I went, dutifully embarking on a fact-finding mission, and thinking that with Google on my side, I could probably locate everything I needed to assemble my cheat sheet in very little time.
Had everything gone as planned, right about now you'd be reading a nice, easy to digest list of definitions (with context and history helpfully provided) for the primary SharePoint-related acronyms and terms. Since you're most definitely not reading what I've just described, needless to say, everything did not go as planned.
Did Google fail me? On the contrary, I found plenty of information, and much of it was directly relevant to my quest, but it quickly became apparent that almost every answer led to another question, and I soon found myself with a monster on my hands and not enough time to wrestle the beast to the ground. I promise that you will read that post in this space, and hopefully sooner than later, but first I'm going to have to find the time to complete my research, digest the results, and then synthesize those results into a digestible blog entry.
Well, unless somebody drops a comment saying, "dude, you know that so-and-so already did that ... haven't you seen EverythingYouEverWantedToKnowAboutSharePointInBite-SizeChunks.com?"
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Previously on SharePoint Blank: Our intrepid hero was engaged in a discussion regarding Alerts functionality with his (SharePoint Product Manager) wife, who had expressed jealousy at our hero's ability to generate Alerts which allow for specifying the distribution group and choosing the manner of delivery.
Picking up where we left off yesterday, and with thanks to Mark from EndUserSharePoint.com for contributing to the discourse, and for gently pointing out that I'd have lost money in the wager I'd pondered regarding the ability to set up such an Alert out-of-the-box in SharePoint 2007 (a.k.a., Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, or MOSS).
As you can see from the chart below, MOSS does indeed allow for the generation of such Alerts:
That said, however, since the cost of upgrading from SharePoint 2003 (a.k.a., SharePoint Server 2003, or SPS 2003) to MOSS is, well, astronomical, that's not always going to be an option for the user ... and isn't currently on the table as an option for my wife. Which is where Web Parts such as Alerts Plus come in, as they provide an a la carte solution and feature-set at a fraction (of a fraction) of the cost of upgrading to MOSS. And I trust you'll have also noticed that the vast majority of the features of the Bamboo Alerts Plus Web Part listed above aren't available even in MOSS.
Hey, this is starting to sound like a sales pitch, which wasn't my intent at all. I just wanted to share an amusingly topical anecdote. But you know what? As a result of all of this, I learned more about the differences between SPS and MOSS (though looking at the above chart, sorting out just how the two versions of WSS fits into all of this is going to have to be a topic for a future blog entry since the extent of my understanding at present is that MOSS runs on top off WSS), and about their interrelationship with Web Parts and, much like the hokey pokey, "that's what it's all about"!
Oh man, did I really just write that? A "Hokey Pokey" reference? Really? Let's make a pact to never speak of this again. Moving on...
Yesterday's learning also included some hands-on SharePoint action ("as you like it!") in the form of a demo that Emily provided for me and a couple of my fellow Bamboo newbies. Emily walked us through the installation and configuration of a List Rotator Web Part, then sent us off to recreate the magic in our own sandboxes. This, in turn, led to my discovering that I lacked full control in my own training area. (Full control, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the SharePoint equivalent of an all access pass.) D'oh! I'm not even trusted to not wreak havoc even within the confines of my own sandbox? That's harsh.
Turns out it was merely an oversight, and Emily had me hooked up with full control in short order. And, I'm very pleased to report that in similarly short order, I had added, configured, and was smoothly running the List Rotator Web Part in my sandbox.
Alas, I can't show you my very own rotating list because my testing area is behind our firewall (so you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that it's poetry in motion) but, speaking of Emily, it just so happens that she blogged about our newly deployed live demo feature, and List Rotator is one of the products already up and running with a live demo, so if you'd care to see it in action, check out the demo.
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Hey, I raised my profile yesterday!
Well, OK, if you're a stickler for accuracy and precision in language, what I really did was spend some time cultivating the profile area of "My Site" on the Bamboo portal. In other words, I spent some time communing with SharePoint, updating lists and uploading a document on our corporate portal. That doesn't sound very sexy though, does it? Can you blame me for leading with, "I raised my profile!"?
Great news for fellow end users: These sorts of modifications in SharePoint are a breeze to accomplish. Options are presented via a highly intuitive user interface which boasts seamless editing and uploading capabilities. Needless to say, this is a Very Good Thing.
But wait, updating "My Site" wasn't all the profile raising I did yesterday ... I also set up my profile page on the Tech Ed site in preparation for some pre-conference networking. Granted, the Tech Ed profile creation wasn't accomplished in SharePoint, but seeing as my attendance at Tech Ed will ultimately lead to what I expect will be a rather massive upgrade in my SharePoint knowledge base, I figure it kind of counts. Work with me here, please.
Wanna know what else I did yesterday? I posted my first-ever comment to a (non-Bamboo) SharePoint blog. Not only that, but in said comment, I spoke with no small amount of confidence. Impressive, no? It's true, I spoke from experience, and -if I may be so bold-from a position of some authority, wading into an ongoing discussion without any hesitation whatsoever.
The topic under discussion? Oh, I'm sorry, did I lead you to believe it was a SharePoint topic? My bad. It was a SharePoint blog though, and (to refer back to a question I posed yesterday), one which blogs with end users in mind. If you're so inclined (and/or suitably curious), I encourage you to check out the post in question, read my comment, and even join the discussion yourself over at EndUserSharePoint.com.
Before you do that though, I've got one final item to share today. Yesterday evening, my wife (who, some may recall, is a SharePoint product manager for another company), having read an earlier entry here, mentioned that she had another reason to be jealous that we're running the latest version of SharePoint at Bamboo.
By the way, I swear I am not making this up.
Why was she jealous? Well, because she apparently gets asked "all the time" if she can provide the ability to manage alerts so that someone (a manager, say) could create an alert, designate to whom it would apply, and select the medium of delivery (e-mail, for example).
Since I'm starting to catch on here, I immediately suspected that our ability to manage alerts in this manner at Bamboo likely has nothing to do with the fact that we're running SharePoint 2007, but rather -and if I had to place a bet, I'd have put my money here- that it's one of our very own Web Parts which provides that sweet, sweet functionality.
And on that note, I'm going to leave you with our first SharePoint Blank cliffhanger. For the exciting conclusion of today's episode, you'll have to tune in tomorrow ... same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
Well, same Bat-channel anyway, and something resembling the same Bat-time.
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Welcome to week two of the continuing adventures of a SharePoint newbie. Are we having fun yet? I know I am, and I hope you are as well.
I confessed last week that I was woefully uninformed as to the specifics of most of our Bamboo Web Parts, and yes, granted it was only my fourth day on the job, but even so, y'know? Well, when I wrote those words, I knew that in my very near future (now my past) was to be the first in a series of guided tours of our Web Parts, cordially hosted by Dani from our fabulous Products team. The meeting took place on Friday afternoon, and I'm happy to report that, as a result, my ignorance index (with regards to our product line anyway) has now been reduced by a remarkable degree. As an added bonus, included in the presentation was an extremely helpful explanation of which features offered in a given Web Part were lacking in the-out-of-the-box SharePoint experience. Oh, and guess what? Turns out I was right last week when I suspected that it was indeed our very own Calendar Plus Web Part that I was using on our portal (and have used several times since).
I also spent some time bopping around in the SharePoint blogosphere. Man, some of the MVPs (an acronym which, when used here, means Microsoft-certified Most Valuable Professionals -- in other words, SharePoint gurus) are positively intimidating with their wealth of SharePoint knowledge. Question: Do any MVPs blog with the end user in mind? So far, I've only tripped across blogs that assume a level of SharePoint expertise that's, shall we say, somewhat daunting to the newbie. If you know of any MVPs blogging for non-techies, I'd surely appreciate it if you'd be so kind as to leave a comment pointing me in their direction. Cheers.
Speaking of incredibly technical SharePoint content, I also put in some time looking over the SharePoint-related offerings at the Tech Ed IT professionals conference. Why was I looking at Tech Ed programming information, you ask? Well, would you believe me if I told you that I'll be among the Bamboo staff attending Tech Ed next month? Yup, it's true...they're sending the new guy down to Orlando in a few weeks and throwing him into the deep end of the SharePoint pool. I did notice a few sessions labeled as "Introduction to..." but, hey, if you see me at Tech Ed and it looks like I'm drowning in an overly technical panel, be a pal and throw me a life preserver, will you?
 Seriously though, I was a developer in a former life (or at least I played one at work for a number of years), but that was some time ago now, so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to immerse myself in the (offline) SharePoint community, and am planning to absorb as much knowledge as I can possibly soak in while meeting as many players in the space as I'm able. Needless to say, you can expect me to be blogging the conference daily, as I'll be there representing Bamboo Nation.
Speaking of Bamboo Nation, check out the spiffy "I am Bamboo Nation" sticker we've designed for Tech Ed! I've been given permission to publicly debut the image which will be on the stickers we'll be giving away at the Bamboo booth throughout Tech Ed. If you're attending the conference, by all means, stop by our booth, grab a sticker, register for Bamboo Nation (if you haven't already), and you may just find yourself the winner of a daily giveaway that we'll be (randomly) awarding to a lucky attendee bearing our sticker. What are we giving away? Come on now, that would be telling.
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Well, it's a good thing I was able to rock out on the SharePoint learning in yesterday's post, because four hours of meetings plus a couple hours of SEO-related blog activities wasn't exactly conducive to allowing for a similarly active entry today.
Having said that, however, one of those meetings involved my participating in testing the capacities of the hosted server used in the Bamboo Workshop, and since the method of testing involved going through one of the lessons from the workshop online, I was able to perform the testing while gaining some valuable SharePoint experience which, in turn, provides fodder for the blog ... et voila, the circle is complete!
Working my way through the lesson proved to be a(nother) humbling SharePoint experience, and I ended up getting wrapped around the axle before completing the lesson but in the process of doing so, I learned something that has brought me one (small) step closer to conquering the displaying-data-from-one-Web-Part-in-another beast that I described having wrestled with yesterday.
What did I learn? Well, it's a small but crucial piece of the puzzle in my quest to get my recent blog entries to display in the desired Web Part on my My Site page, and that piece is how to unhide a hidden Web Part. (For any other newbies reading this who are curious, you just select "edit" on the hidden object --> Modify Shared Web Part --> in the edit pane, expand Layout options --> uncheck "Hidden," then click "Apply.")
Unfortunately, making this change did not magically cause my data to switch from displaying in the undesired Web Part over to the desired Web Part, but I'm one step closer to becoming master of my (My Site) domain, and there is honor in that.
Have a great weekend, Bamboo Nation!
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I'm happy to report that I took a few more (halting) steps on the path towards SharePoint enlightenment yesterday. Granted, they were end user baby steps, to be sure, but we're still in early days here, and progress is progress, right?
(Baby) step one involved calendaring. Which is to say that I added an entry to the SharePoint calendar on our Bamboo portal, noting that I'll be out of the office on the afternoon of the previously mentioned Workshop. This was easy because it turns out that a calendar in SharePoint behaves much like any other online calendar, and we've all used them before. I'm assuming that, this being the Bamboo portal and all, it's our own Calendar Plus Web Part that I've now used, but having never seen an out-of-the-box SharePoint calendar before, let's just call it a safe assumption and move on.
(Baby) step two involved editing a task list in our Online Operations team portal, changing the status of my assigned task to "Kickoff SharePoint Newbie Blog" from "Not Started" to "Completed." Eagle-eyed readers will realize that I changed that status a day later than when I'd actually completed the task. Oops. Again, this was a painless, easy-to-use SharePoint app. (And, again, I suspect it may be a Bamboo Web Part, specifically the List Search Simples one). Hey, this SharePoint stuff is easy!
Not so fast, buckaroo. (Baby) step three involved my attempt to set up an RSS feed of recent posts from this blog on my "My Site" SharePoint page. There was already a (blank) placeholder "RSS Viewer" Web Part on the page, as well as a placeholder "(Hidden) Recent Blog Posts" Web Part, so, emboldened by how easily I'd navigated the abovementioned SharePoint experiences, I approached this one thinking something akin to, "this'll be a hoot!" Well, it didn't take long before my newbie chutzpah reared up and gave me a good kicking. After an embarrassingly lengthy amount of trial-and-error, however, I had succeeded in achieving my goal.
Sort of.
I was able to get my recent blog posts (all two of them!) to populate, but my intent had been for them to render in the "(Hidden) Recent Blog Posts" section. Where did they render? In the "RSS Viewer" section. I'd read that data could be shared between different Web Parts simply via editing the (baked-in) connections options, which is a pretty nifty feature of SharePoint. And while I don't doubt that it's true that this is easily accomplished, I'm afraid it was beyond my newbie capabilities. We shall revisit this issue, my friends. Oh yes, we will.
(Baby) step four doesn't technically qualify in and of itself as having increased my SharePoint knowledge, but I can't imagine that it won't lead to just that, so it bears a mention here. I joined the community over at SharePointU, which is a forum for SharePoint users, and which also aggregates SharePoint-related blogs. Heads up, denizens of SharePointU - there's a newbie (lurking) in your midst!
Four steps in one day? I'll take it!
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Alas and alack, I'm afraid I must confess to only having gained a miniscule amount of concrete SharePoint knowledge during my second day. Which is not to say that the day wasn't action-packed, what with an informative "history of Bamboo" meeting with CEO, Mike Tanner; a flurry of "new hire" administrative tasks; brainstorming proposed internal training initiatives; registering for an upcoming Bamboo Workshop (expect a full report on 6/4); and last but not least, coming up with a name for, finishing my first post, and launching this very blog.
By the way, I should mention that the blog –and our nascent Bamboo community area– is being built on Community Server, which I'm told integrates quite well with SharePoint. I imagine we'll be testing the limits of that supposition somewhat sooner than later. Near day's end yesterday, however, when I was planning on beginning writing this post, I found myself down the Community Server rabbit hole once I realized that the name of this blog –and, for that matter, the name of our Team Blog– is not appearing above the blog entries. (And, since you may not have caught the name as a result, I've christened this little endeavor: SharePoint Blank.)
Where was I? Oh, right, down the rabbit hole trying to figure out how to get the blog's name to appear at the top of the blog entries. I spent some time in the community forums on the Community Server site, and I'm pretty sure I found the solution (eventually), but it looks like it's going to require a code change, so it's not something I can just fix myself. Argh.
But that's quite enough about Community Server (for now), we're here to talk SharePoint ... so what did I learn on day two? Well, upon telling my manager that I was planning on spending some time playing in my sandbox, I was instead encouraged to dive right into the deep end of the pool and begin playing in our newly created (internal, and somewhat hidden at the moment, but still very much live on production) team portal. Damn the torpedoes, and consequences be damned!
Hey, fortune favors the bold, right?
Getting my feet wet as an end user, I've been using our team discussion list on the portal (i.e., eschewing e-mail in favor of using SharePoint for internal team discussions) but, to my shame, I have to kick myself for having missed a perfect self-learning opportunity yesterday. I posed a question to my teammates asking if it might be possible to set up alerts to automatically let each of us know when a new subject and/or reply has been posted to the team discussion. Shortly thereafter, I got an alert via e-mail notifying me that a new entry had been added to the team discussion ... which, as it turned out, announced that my manager had set up e-mail alerts using the built-in "actions" options on the site.
Note to self: Next time a SharePoint learning opportunity presents itself, recognize it for what it is, and rather than pose a question for others to answer, spend some time seeking out the answer yourself. After all, wouldn't that be the thinking man's approach?
And thus, with that important lesson learned, we close having learned something after all. I love it when a plan comes together.
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Hi, I'm John Anderson, and it is my hope to (regularly) entertain and (occasionally) inform you with this, an ongoing live-blogging of the education of a SharePoint newbie, quite literally from day one. Having just joined the Bamboo Solutions team as Manager of Content & Syndication, one of my responsibilities is to oversee our little corner of the blogosphere. This being the case, my manager Steve Gaitten and I thought that there would be value in documenting the SharePoint learning curve in a real-time, day-to-day fashion.
As such, it is my plan to share the challenges encountered, the bonehead mistakes perpetrated, the lessons learned, the "eureka!" moments, and (in time) tips and tricks as I become a more seasoned SharePoint user. I'll be blogging all of this in as forthright a manner as I'm able, and my aim is for this process to be fun as well as educational. Given that I find both learning and writing to be fun, the value proposition for me is an easy one; what I'd appreciate from you is to let me know how I'm doing. And yes, poking fun at the newbie absolutely counts as letting me know how I'm doing!
As a company, Bamboo Solutions believes in transparency, so while there may be the occasional "off limits" area regarding company strategies about which I'm unable to blog, I think such instances will be rare. So, in the spirit of transparency and forthrightness, I'm obligated to confess that, prior to joining Bamboo, the only reason I'd ever even heard of SharePoint was due to the fact that my wife is a Product Manager for the Corporate Executive Board and the product she owns happens to be, you guessed it, SharePoint. Having said that, however, it's not as if she regularly (read: ever) came home after a hard day of work and regaled me with tales of the wonders of SharePoint over the dinner table, so you can trust me when I tell you that I am indeed a SharePoint newbie.
In the further interest of transparency, and by way of providing a bit of background info, I should mention that I come to Bamboo having recently departed AOL, where I worked for 12 years. The majority of my time at AOL was spent as a developer, but my final –and, ultimately, most rewarding– role at the company was as a Programming Manager on the Social Media team. In that capacity, I served as the editorial lead for the company's niche communities initiative, fostering the creation of a variety of niche community sites, the nearest and dearest to my heart being the (sadly, now defunct) comic book blog, Comics Alliance. As it happens, the co-creator of Comics Alliance was my friend and colleague, Chris Dooley, who –not at all coincidentally, given that my boss here at Bamboo was also formerly of the Social Media group at AOL– also just started work here at Bamboo as Community Manager. From time to time, you may be hearing from Dooley hereabouts, as he, too, is completely new to SharePoint.
But that's enough about my past, we're here to talk about what's happening right now, and I wrote my first draft of this entry at the the end of my first day on the job. That was yesterday, and the day –as first days are wont to be– was largely about orientation, strategy discussions, and sorting out our roles and responsibilities within the Online Operations team. As part of the orientation, Emily Bien was good enough to provide me and Dooley with an overview of SharePoint and its capabilities, along with some of Bamboo's own products, all within the framework of the Bamboo portal.
I was also given my own SharePoint "sandbox" for testing purposes, so as to not break the company portal while I'm learning my way around the SharePoint 'hood. More on my (mis)adventures in that sandbox to come. Here's hoping it's bomb proof, as I'd hate for anybody else to suffer from flying shrapnel once I start blowing things up in there!
I'm happy to report that my first impression of SharePoint is that, given the online community-building mandate that is my primary role at Bamboo, it appears to be a pretty great platform with which to build community. After all, given that (as I understand it, anyway), SharePoint's raison d'etre is as a collaboration engine, what better tool to marry with online community-building? It sure seems to me that SharePoint and online community are a match made in social media heaven, and I'm very much looking forward to melding the two alongside my new colleagues here at Bamboo ... and to both learning from and sharing my discoveries with you, my fellow residents of Bamboo Nation!
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