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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.
June 2008 - Posts
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First a confession: I'm going to be almost entirely enveloped in the SharePoint for Project Managers, um, project that I mentioned in my last post for all of this week and into the next. As you may have gathered from my last post, I'm already a good ways down the rabbit hole and, as a result, what passes for "the norm" ‘round these parts may be M.I.A. for the next little while. I'll still be coming at you daily, but don't be surprised if the standard "here's what I learned" tends to be almost entirely project management-centric for a bit.
To start the week, however, we'll begin with something that started as research in the project management space, led to a reminder to follow up on something I first heard about at TechEd, and and ended in the post you're now reading. Yes, this means that as an added bonus for all of you who may be clamoring to go "behind the scenes," this post will also serve as an example of how a SharePoint Blank post comes to be. So buckle up and enjoy the ride!
While reading meetdux.com, a recently launched SharePoint blog featuring a post entitled 5 Essential Tools for Project Management (in other words, a title that was like catnip to me given my current focus), I also checked into another entry on SharePoint Hacks End Users Love. Hey, I'm an end user, and I love hacks, especially if I sense that they might be blog-worthy, so naturally I checked that post out too. As it turns out, one of the "hacks" that Dux recommends is what Microsoft calls "the Fantastic 40."
I first heard that phrase during Tom Rizzo's Intro to SharePoint session at TechEd earlier this month and, comic book geek that I am, my ears immediately perked up. OK, granted, the subject matter has nothing to do with Marvel's "first family," the Fantastic 4, but I'd be willing to place a gentleman's bet that those heroes were the inspiration for the name of this suite of SharePoint application templates that Microsoft offers for free.
With this reminder, I diligently went in search of more information on the fantastic 40, and what did I discover? Well, I discovered that these 40 templates are available for download individually, or in your choice of two packages (of 20 tempates each). The packages are broken into Site Admin Templates and Server Admin Templates. Translation: At first glance, these appear to be way over my head given my current stage of SharePoint learning. I'll have to take a closer look at some point when time permits but, for now, consider this my passing on the knowledge of the existence of these (free!) templates that Microsoft makes available to users of WSS 3.0 and up.
As a final note, Dux also helpfully points out that over at Techblog, you can see screenshots of what (most of) the Fantastic 40 templates look like once they're installed. In truth, based on the screenshots, they don't look scary, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised when I have the time to investigate further. Until then, however, I invite you to perform your own investigations and, by all means, feel free report back here!
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I'm in a bit of a pickle today. See, I can't honestly claim to have acquired any new SharePoint knowledge yesterday. Well, nothing new that struck me as being particularly blog-worthy anyway. So what's a poor SharePoint blogger to do in such a situation? Well, that's the very dilemma I've been wrestling with, and I've come up with what I hope may be a mutually agreeable solution for today's post.
Blogging is just one of my job responsibilities here at Bamboo, and the time I would have normally spent on learning some new (blog-worthy) SharePoint tricks yesterday was lost to concentrating on other responsibilities. One of those responsibilities has to do with the creation of new, robust topic areas for Bamboo Nation (a la the MashPoint area that we launched earlier this month). For our next dedicated topic area, I'm currently doing research on managing projects in SharePoint. Since I'm still in the content- and facts-gathering stage, it just occurred to me that we may have a few project managers out there reading SharePoint Blank. And, since we at Bamboo take great pride in our community-driven development, I thought we might try an experiment in community-driven content here. So, with that in mind, I'd like to ask what would you like to see in a topic area dedicated entirely to Project Management in SharePoint?
Our very own Bamboo PM Girl blogged about project managing in SharePoint over on the Team Blog a couple of months ago, and that post generated some excellent discussion. Based on that post, the resulting comments, and my own research, I've already got some ideas, but I'm hopeful that I might be able to tap into the talented project managers out there and find out what you would most like to see in a Project Management-dedicated topic area in Bamboo Nation. After all, we're building the area as a resource for you, so we'd love to hear what you'd like to see.
On a final note, I'll be taking the day off tomorrow, so look for SharePoint Blank to return on Monday. Until then, happy SharePointing!
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Piece by piece, I'm sprucing up the look of my My Site.
Let's pause briefly to acknowledge how very awkward the phraseology is when one must refer to "my My Site." Microsoft didn't do writers any favors when they named the My Site feature thusly. What's that? You don't think that potential sentence construction was high on the list of concerns when they christened the My Site feature? OK, yeah, you're probably right. Moving on...
 Emboldened by my successful configuration (not once but twice!) of a Colleague Tracker Web Part, I moved on yesterday to setting up a shared calendar Web Part. To do this for yourself, while editing your My Site, simply choose the "Add a Web Part" option, and scroll (way) down until you see the Outlook Web Access section. The My Calendar Web Part is the first option in the Outlook Web Access section, so go ahead and select it and add the Web Part to your page.
Once you've successfully added the Web Part to your page, configuring it is a breeze.
Well, I take that back, configuring the Web Part is a breeze if you don't misremember your username ... but we won't go into that here. In order to configure your My Calendar Web Part, you need: to be using Outlook Calendar; to know your webmail URL; your email address; and the username and password you use to access webmail. Just plug in your webmail URL and email address into the appropriate fields on the configuration form to get started. Once you've done this, you will be prompted to authenticate, so you can expect to see the typical challenge requesting your username and password. Just enter this information as prompted, and you're all set with the basic / default calendar display.
Additional configuration options available include: the ability to choose the view to display (daily or weekly); appearance options (such as size and chrome state); layout (positioning of the Web Part on your page); and advanced configuration options (many choices here, including a variety of "allow" decisions, export choices, and more).
Yes, believe it or not, it really is that easy to configure so, if you have the means, I highly recommend setting up a shared calendar on your own My Site today.
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I mentioned yesterday that I learned a few things while watching the "Get to know My Sites" screencast over at SharePoint-Screencasts. One of the things I learned was that My Site is a MOSS-only feature, which I don't think I'd realized previously. For those who are unfamiliar with My Sites, you can think of them as souped up "about me" pages. I say "souped up" because not only is there space for a user profile but, this being SharePoint, there are plenty of options to share documents, pictures, lists, discussions, and more. As well, each My Site end user has the ability to designate specific content areas on their page as being either public or private.
Inspired by the My Sites tutorial, I decided it was time I spent some time cultivating my own My Site garden. Regular readers may recall that the last time I spruced up my My Site joint was when I added and configured a List Rotator Web Part to display on the site. Hitting my My Site page on our internal portal again, I was greeted with a module called "Colleague Tracker" that was just sitting there patiently waiting to be configured. So I jumped right in and configured that sucker to display on the page.
 Turns out the Colleague Tracker Web Part (which is just what you would think it is based on the name, by the way) is a breeze to configure from scratch, which I gave myself the opportunity to prove after I had mine all set up ... and then accidentally deleted the Web Part from the page entirely. Oops. Adding it back in simply required editing the page, choosing the "Add a Web Part" option, selecting the Colleague Tracker from the Web Part menu, and choosing my configuration options.
During configuration, you'll be prompted to allow the Web Part to access your Outlook address book in order to generate your Colleague Tracker list automatically. I did this and, presto, I've now got the module in place (again) on my My Site. The Web Part display will be familiar to any user of Office Communicator, right down to the inclusion of the green/yellow/red lights designating a user's status. Here again, with the Colleague Tracker Web Part, we've got yet another example of a handy integration between Microsoft products -- in this case, leveraging the combined functionality of Communicator, Outlook, and SharePoint together to provide a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" experience for the end user.
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At one point last week, my manager stopped by and handed me a bookmark-sized slip of paper that had been handed to him on the Expo floor at TechEd. He proceeded to ask me to look into the advertised product, the enticingly named SharePoint-screencasts.com, which promised "SharePoint Video Tutorials without the fluff." Oh, and there's one more word in the minimalist pitch: "Free."
 My investigations (read: time spent on the site) have revealed that SharePoint-Screencasts is a division of SharePoint-eLearning, which is the brainchild of SharePoint MVP and MCP, Asif Rehmani, and MCP, Wendy Henry. Both Rehmani and Henry are published authors in addition to being certified trainers and, in Rehmani's case, a conference speaker in the bargain. Between them, they boast over 15 years of training experience, and over 22 years of IT industry experience.
All of which is why it's most commendable that they're sharing their expertise online, making screencasts of SharePoint tutorials freely available to all at their company site. In-person training sessions are also available but, needless to say, you're going to have to pony up some cash for the personal touch. I'm here to tell you about the screencasts though, and you're in luck because not only are they free, but based on the ones that I've sampled, they're also extremely useful ... especially if you're new to SharePoint.
Make no mistake, however, these Flash-based how-to screencasts aren't just for newbies. The topics are divided by experience level : Beginner (9 tutorials); Intermediate (15); and Advanced ( 8), and cover an impressive range of tasks. I've watched three of the screencasts so far: two beginner-level entries ("What is SharePoint?", and "Adding Web Parts to a Site"), and one intermediate ("Get to know My Sites"). Two of these were conducted by Henry, and one by Rehmani. Ranging in duration from 5 to 12 minutes, all three were very well done -- clearly presented, and with an amount of information perfectly suited to (but never overwhelming) the experience level at hand.
As a newbie to SharePoint myself (with all of five weeks under my belt), I'm pleased to note that there wasn't any new information for me in the two beginner-level screencasts, but I did learn a few tricks from the intermediate-level My Sites tutorial. You can count on reading more in this space soon regarding my having put that newfound knowledge into action.
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Let's just go ahead and make this topic a trilogy, shall we?
After learning (and writing) more about the SharePoint integration with Outlook yesterday, I was interested in doing a little more investigation. Having uploaded a MashPoint demo to YouTube earlier in the day, I still had the YouTube tab open in my browser, so I figured I'd see what a search there might turn up.
(If you'll pardon a brief aside, it just occurred to me that I haven't yet mentioned MashPoint by name in this space. In brief, we released MashPoint, Bamboo's revolutionary new data integration platform, at the start of TechEd. Readying the MashPoint topic area for release was the project on which I was working feverishly in the run-up to TechEd. If you haven't already seen what MashPoint can do for you, I strongly encourage you to check it out. Here endeth the plug.)
We now return to my YouTube search, already in progress. What turned up was a video featuring a nice little overview of the integration points, Linking SharePoint 2007 with Outlook 2007, which was created by Saturn Alliance, an Australian company. In the nine-minute video, the capabilities of integrating SharePoint document libraries, calendars, and RSS feeds are demonstrated. I learned that there are a couple of really nifty integration points with the calendar (notably, drag-and-drop and overlay features) but, rather than have me explain them, why not see them in action for yourself?
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Yesterday's entry discussed my initial reactions to having sampled the integration of SharePoint lists with Outlook. I'd like to revisit that same topic today with a follow-up.
Prior to writing my post yesterday, I had shown a fellow new-to-SharePoint colleague the Outlook integration functionality and, after he had imported a list, I noticed that no items appeared highlighted for him within Outlook. This came as a surprise since I'd seen past-due tasks assigned to me appear in red automatically, but none of the tasks assigned to him appeared highlighted in his Outlook. This will bear further investigation, but I wanted to point out that the color-coding feature may not be quite as smart as I'd initially assumed. (It is also worth noting, however, that he had no past-due items assigned to him, so I'm not yet able to comment on any seeming universality of that particular functionality.) Needless to say, if anyone has more experience with this aspect of the SharePoint/Outlook integration, please feel free to share with the class.
On a brighter integration note, my colleague was able to confirm another suspicion I had regarding the functionality. I had assumed, but had not yet tested for myself, that updates to a SharePoint list that had been imported to Outlook would automatically sync up with Outlook when updates to the SharePoint list are made. As it turns out, this is indeed what happens, albeit with a fairly inconsequential time lag of a minute or two.
While we're on the subject, I'm going to skip ahead to real-time learning rather than save this for an update tomorrow. Michael from the Michael Sampson Company was good enough to comment on yesterday's post, and politely pointed out that the SharePoint/Outlook integration might not be as "seamless" as my newbie/end user status would have me believe. Michael mentioned the availability of a free summary of a SharePoint white paper he authored, and I've just read that summary. Michael's is an independently produced study on the collaborative properties of SharePoint, presented as "an objective, facts-based analysis of [SharePoint] capability." In his summary document, Michael includes one complete section from the full white paper, and that section relates to calendaring in SharePoint. In that section, Michael specifically calls out some of the weaknesses in the Outlook integration of the SharePoint calendar, including a particularly unfortunate one regarding the inability to see in Outlook changes to recurring meetings in the SharePoint calendar.
Hmm, I wonder if Bamboo's Calendar Plus Web Part addresses that particular shortcomings of the out-of-the-box calendar? If not (and assuming that Web Parts can even talk to Outlook, which they very well may not -- I'm just thinking out loud here), it sounds like Michael may have just identified an area where our fine engineering team can offer a valuable product enhancement ... which would make for a great example of community-based development in action!
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As I sit down to write today's blog entry, I'm fully aware that my output this week may start to sound like a SharePoint pep rally but, what can I say, I call ‘em as I see ‘em. Anyway, at risk of proving that I have drank the SharePoint Kool-Aid, as I mentioned in my coverage of Tom Rizzo's Intro to SharePoint session at TechEd, I think the integration of SharePoint with Outlook is a genuinely cool feature.
As with the decision to make (for all intents and purposes) the Word toolbar available for SharePoint blogs, making SharePoint lists and document libraries available in Outlook may be kind of a no-brainer for Microsoft, but that doesn't make these features any less praiseworthy. And the fact that the Outlook integration is available for WSS 3.0 users as well as MOSS users is equally commendable (the only catch is that Outlook 2007 is required in both cases).
 The supported integration includes synchronization of both SharePoint lists and document libraries with Outlook, and I finally found time to take the feature out for a test drive yesterday. My initial reactions are all positive, with the integration being not only seamless, but an absolute breeze to set up. All you need to do is, for example, select the "Actions" tab on the page of the SharePoint list you want to import, choose the "Connect to Outlook" option, and follow the prompts from there.
Once you've approved your selections, Outlook immediately and automatically imports the list into an "Other Tasks" area within your existing "Tasks" menu in Outlook. For the list I imported (a team to-do list), I appreciated seeing that completed tasks appear with a strikethrough, and tasks assigned to me appeared highlighted in color. Un/fortunately, however, Outlook appears to be smart enough to determine that the deadlines on two of these still-in-progress tasks of mine have already passed, and the font color in question is a rather distressing, albeit appropriate, shade of red.
As a final note, it's also worth mentioning that once they're imported to Outlook, these SharePoint list items are now available for your offline reference, which is just one more sweet benefit of this feature.
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Yesterday marked a new SharePoint first for me in that I wrote and posted my first blog entry using SharePoint. The post in question was for the internal blog on our company portal, so I'm not able to share the contents, but it's the plain fact that I blogged in SharePoint that's the subject of today's entry.
Needless to say, we're running MOSS on our company portal, which is one of the versions of SharePoint that provides the embedded social networking functionality (such as blogs, wikis, etc.). These nifty Web 2.0 features aren't available to users of WSS 2.0, but they are available in WSS 3.0, and as such they provide one of the strongest incentives to upgrade to the latest version.
It's worth noting that in the past I've blogged using WordPress, Blogsmith, and Community Server (which is the plays-nice-with-SharePoint blogging software that hosts Bamboo Nation), and there are things to love and things to hate about all three. To my mind, one of the key features, if not the key feature, of blogging software is the range of options provided in the WYSIWIG editor. With that in mind, I give extremely high marks to the blogging capabilities which are native to the latest versions of SharePoint (WSS 3.0 and MOSS).
How does this grab you? The toolbar in the WYSIWIG blog editor in SharePoint gives you just about the entire range of text and photo options that you're already familiar with from Word:
Quite simply, that is the finest, and most powerful WYSIWIG blogging toolbar I've ever seen. Beyond the toolbar, the out-of-the-box blog options are limited to selecting a category for a given post, and a scheduler for future publishing but, oh, how I would love to have access to that sweet, sweet toolbar in Community Server.
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...and we're back!
 Last week, your favorite mild-mannered rookie SharePoint blogger was called up to the Big Show, covering the SharePoint beat at TechEd in Orlando. For my flurry of detailed on-scene reports, head on over to the Bamboo Team Blog where I wrote up just about every session I attended, ranging from an introductory SharePoint overview, to a double-header advanced session on administrative architecture, deployment, and operations fundantals, to a Birds of a Feather session on data migration in SharePoint (hosted by Bamboo's own Julie Auletta), and more. (In between sessions, I was able to spend some time at our booth meeting users (and prospective users) of our Web Parts, and also managed to run our Bamboo Nation promotion, giving away an iPod Shuffle to one lucky winner each day of the show.)
Does it sound like this SharePoint newbie might have been in a little over his head? Well, in truth, I was, but I like to think that my newbie status afforded us the ability to provide a rather unique perspective in our coverage. And, as I'd hoped, the learning-via-osmosis effect was definitely working for me, as I walked out of the convention center on Thursday evening feeling like I'd hung in there with the big dogs. More importantly, I left Orlando with a far greater understanding of the larger SharePoint ecosystem.
Did I understand everything I saw and heard? Heck, no! But everything somehow coalesced into a greater understanding nonetheless, and what more could I ask, right? Also, proving that I certainly did something right, I was inordinately proud to have impressed a database administrator who quoted and linked to one of my blog entries (even if they did misattribute the author of the piece as by "4Rx.com" ... huh?).
Of course, the big question from the perspective of this blog is how much of my newfound higher-level understanding of SharePoint will directly translate to an increase in my day-to-day SharePoint proficiency?
Well, I'm pleased to report that having returned to the office on Friday with a head full of SharePoint, I confidently stepped right up when a (fellow newbie) colleague asked for some help with a SharePoint issue that was vexing him. He had added a list item to our team portal and wanted to delete it, but wasn't having any luck. Using my (limited, but growing!) knowledge of SharePoint UI, I was able to successfully delete the list. Yay! The solution ended up being slightly counterintuitive in that it was necessary to first edit the list page itself, deleting the object there, and then it was necessary to also delete the list item on the "All Site Content" page in order to remove the list from the site entirely.
Watch out, SharePoint, I'm starting to figure out how you "think"!
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Stemming from my not-at-all scientific survey of three friends this week, I'd like to share a few quick SharePoint-related thoughts to close out the week. By way of background, all that you need to know is that two of the friends in question work for universities, and the third works for a publicly traded company.
One of the university-based friends started using SharePoint this week since it was just installed at her office. Early review: "It's like crack." Um, I should probably clarify here that this comment was meant as a compliment, referring to the addictive nature of SharePoint features. Which suggests to me that said friend is enjoying one of the beefy MOSS versions of the platform, with its attendant toolbox full of social media goodies. I didn't confirm this, but I feel utterly confident in that believing my suspicion to be correct.
The other university-based friend mentioned that they're not using SharePoint yet, but that it's coming to their workplace soon.
The non-university-based friend works at a public company that's been running WSS for a while now. What I found most interesting though, is that almost no one in their office is even aware that they're running SharePoint. Why? Because the company assigned their own "codename" to SharePoint. Odd, no? Sure seems odd to me, but maybe this is a common practice?
Anyway, all of the above led me to start thinking ... it's entirely possible that we are very near the tipping point for SharePoint. It seems to me that the majority of the "general business public" (for lack of a better term) is still unaware of SharePoint, but I have a sneaking suspicion that those scores could really change over the coming months, given the sense that widespread adoption of SharePoint seems to be really beginning to take off. Agree? Disagree?
And with those thoughts, I'll close with a reminder that I'll be heading to Orlando on Monday for Tech Ed where, along with many of my colleagues, I'll be representing Bamboo (and Bamboo Nation, natch) since Bamboo is an exhibitor at the conference. I can guarantee you that I'll be making up for the brevity of my posts this week during Tech Ed next week. Having said that, however, I should note that most of my Tech Ed posts will be over in the Bamboo Team Blog so, if things are unusually quiet in the SharePoint Blank ‘hood next week, why not have a look over in the Team Blog and see what's doing there?
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In what is rapidly becoming the theme of the week here at SharePoint Blank, yesterday was again consumed almost entirely by my part in the efforts towards providing a launching pad befitting our imminent Bamboo release. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I again have little to report in a "new SharePoint learning" capacity today.
Since I've still got deadlines nipping at my heels, I'll be (uncharacteristically) brief again today. You may have noticed that the appearance of yesterday's entry set a new record for lateness regarding the hour of posting. You may have also heard about the (uncharacteristic) tornado activity in northern Virginia yesterday. Guess what? Our offices are in Reston, which is in northern Virginia ... and we lost power mid-afternoon, along with seemingly all of Reston and the surrounding areas.
Lest there be any doubt, a loss of power is not conducive to meeting deadlines in the IT industry.
Worse still with regards to the timing of the power outage, we had just welcomed to Bamboo HQ members of our staff from the Vietnam office (in leis above), who are visiting the U.S. to attend Tech Ed next week. We assured them that such power outages are uncommon here and, as such outages are apparently extremely common in their Ho Chi Minh City office, I'm not entirely sure they believed us. We were told that power outages in Vietnam are seen as a sign of good luck though, and that's the kind of silver-lining-seeking I can get behind, so I was glad to hear it.
Of course, I would have been gladder still if I didn't have a pack of snarling deadlines at my heels.
Before the power went out, however, I was able to take a little time to set up a new blog in Bamboo Nation, Bamboo Guru Blogs, which is comprised of mirrored blogs authored by members of the Bamboo Technical Advisory Board. I look forward to the opportunity to spend more quality time with them myself but, in the meantime, I encourage you to check them out and see what solo blogs written by actual SharePoint experts are like. Since reading the Guru Blogs, now conveniently mirrored in Bamboo Nation, will most certainly contribute to my future SharePoint learning, let's pretend we're trading in the futures market today and call that my SharePoint learning for the day, shall we?
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Friends, I'm sorry to have to report that it's going to be a light entry on the learning front today. The reasons for this sad fact are many and varied, but the primary culprit is deadlines associated with the revolutionary new SharePoint data integration product that Bamboo will be announcing in a few short days. It's true that as a result of performing those selfsame duties, I have learned some tasty new tidbits about this SharePoint thing of ours, but I'm not yet at liberty to disclose the specifics of that learning since they're embedded in the research and writings I've been doing surrounding the new product announcement.
Aside from that "top secret" learning, well ... let's see. I spent a little time poking around the Tech Ed Connect site again yesterday, joining a couple of groups there in advance of decamping to Orlando for the conference next week. I joined a group for SharePoint professionals (I figure so long as nobody rats me out on this score, everything will be fine), and one for Tech Ed first-timers. Ah, the beauty of groups -- there's almost always somebody else in the same boat as you are in the crowd, and conference features such as Tech Ed Connect are extremely handy for making those connections.
I also spent some time (OK, all of maybe 5 minutes since that's all that my deadlines allowed, but still...) attempting to kick-start my Virtual PC and advance in the quest to run my own instance of WSS there but, alas, I can't say I made any significant progress in that time. I did manage to at least log in successfully before encountering a speed bump ... but it was right around that time I could hear the Siren-like call of my deadlines again, so we'll have to return to the Virtual PC-related learnings another day.
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Yesterday marked an historic occasion in my ongoing journey towards attaining SharePoint enlightenment: I took my first steps towards running my very own instance of SharePoint on my very own Virtual PC!
Some of you may be wondering what exactly this means. In a nutshell, I've now got a SimpleTech external hard drive connected to my laptop and, instead of using it as a simple data backup device (which is pretty much all I thought external hard drives were used for), I've got it set it up as a virtual PC. Setting it up was even a relatively painless process, employing the (free) Virtual PC download from Microsoft. Having done so will now allow me, once I've undertaken the next step in the process, to install and run my own virtual image of WSS v3.
In case you're wondering, yes, in fact I do feel very grown up saying that.
In other news, a friend recently sent me a SharePoint-related article that I read yesterday morning. The thoughtfulness of my friend was much appreciated in that the article included what may be the best distillation of the answer to the question, "what the heck is SharePoint?" that I've come across so far. It was an article by Michael Sebastian from Ragan.com, a site which specializes in "news, ideas & conversations for communicators worldwide" and, much as I'd like to link directly to it, unfortunately it's a piece that requires paid site membership to access.
The article is geared towards extolling to end users the particular out-of-the-box virtues of MOSS, emphasizing just how many powerful features are available and ready-to-use that don't require an assist from your company's IT department. Included with the article is a sidebar entitled "What's SharePoint?", which reads:
Don't know anything about SharePoint? It is, as one MyRagan member said, "a Microsoft platform that allows the easy publication of news and content across an entire organization."
There are two forms of SharePoint 2007: the free one that comes with Microsoft 2007, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and the enterprise version Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).
MOSS, or what we'll simply call SharePoint 2007, is a toy chest of social media platforms. There are blogs and wikis, messages boards and social networks, plus the ability to easily create intranet pages for a project, department-you name it.
I thought that description rather nicely boiled down not only the essence of SharePoint, but also the key difference(s) between WSS and MOSS, and so I wanted to share it with fellow end users who might also appreciate it. Props to Ragan.com for that encapsulation of SharePoint, and to my friend Bill M. for his good looking out in sending along the article.
Update: An eagle-eyed reader has pointed out a typo in the original article quoted above. A corrected version of the second paragraph would read: "There are two forms of SharePoint 2007: the free one that comes with Microsoft Windows 2003, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and the enterprise version Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)."
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When we last spoke, I was fretting over not having managed to successfully get the contents of a new list to be rolled into an existing rolled up data view for display on our team calendar.
I should note, by the way, that unless I specify otherwise, when I'm feeling my way around SharePoint in these early days, I'm doing so without consulting documentation. I'm doing this intentionally as a means of testing SharePoint's (or Web Parts', as the case may be) user interface from the perspective of a newbie.
I just wanted to mention my testing methods since it had occurred to me that some of you might've thought I'm a bit dim to have not picked some of this stuff up more quickly. Of course, some of you may still think that but, hey, whaddayougonnado, right?
Speaking of the "unless I specify otherwise" exception, in order to gain traction with my calendar woes, I opted for another consultation with Jeff, as this was a task that came with an attached deadline. As it turns out, my mistake was in adding the new calendar's task list as a new template. What I should have done was select the already existing template (for our rolled up calendar display) and added the specifications of the new task list to that already existing list. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, makes perfect sense, and which had me thinking of myself as being a bit dim for not having worked that one out on my own.
As it turned out, I was even able to provide a bit of (unintended) Quality Assurance assistance as, during the process of walking me through the set up of the multi-calendar rollup, Jeff encountered a bug with List Rollup that hadn't been previously surfaced. Needless to say, that bug will be fixed in the next patch release.
I also picked up a nifty tidbit from Steve on Friday, and it was a tidbit which I was pleased to discover related to out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality. That tidbit had to do with a recent discovery of Steve's, which he was happy to share, and it is that SharePoint allows us to do conditional sorting within a task list, and will display the filtered results accordingly. Which is to say that if you're looking (as we were) at a team to-do list and, for example, you don't want already completed items to appear in your display, you can easily tell SharePoint to only show a task if it is less than 100% complete. Simplicity itself.
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