Asif's Blog

Free Webinar on 7/15 – “Getting started with your SharePoint 2010 Team Site – Best Practices”

Jul 13

Asif RehmaniEvents, SharePoint Webinar No Comments

This webinar will be held on July 15, 2010 at 2 – 3pm Eastern.

Applies to SharePoint Foundation 2010

So you got your SharePoint 2010 Team Site… now what? How should you proceed to set it up? What should be the things to look out for and to not do? Join us in this session to learn some best practices on how to start up with your team site. You will learn the best practices about setting up your quick launch, top link bar, company/department logo, creating and setting up lists and libraries and more (as the time allows).

In addition, we will set aside the last 20 minutes to answer your questions.

If you would like to join us, register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/404190368

SharePoint 2010 Fundamentals DVD released!

Jul 08

Asif RehmaniSharePoint InfoPath 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

The SharePoint 2010 Fundamentals DVD was released today. It’s packed with the core knowledge needed to start out successfully with SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint topics covered include:

• Creating SharePoint sites
• Customizing site structure
• Customizing navigation components
• Setting up site security
• Making use of the built in Lists
• Creating custom lists
• Understanding the document management options
• Understanding Site Columns and Content Types
• and more..

There is also now a complete DVD bundle available for SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and InfoPath 2010.

Our SharePoint Videos on TechNet

Jul 02

Asif RehmaniSharePoint, SharePoint Designer Training No Comments

A couple of months ago, some of our videos were contributed to the TechNet site. One of them is currently highlighted on TechNet’s home page:

The remaining can be found when you go to the SharePoint Server 2010 section of the TechNet library:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262880.aspx

These are all free of course so check them out!

Licensing requirements for InfoPath forms on SharePoint

Jun 29

Asif RehmaniInfoPath InfoPath 2010 4 Comments

I have been asked enough times now about the licensing requirements of SharePoint to be able to show InfoPath forms in the browser that I’m finally putting together this blog entry about it . With InfoPath 2010, you can create SharePoint Form Library Forms, SharePoint List Forms and SharePoint Workflow Forms. Let me try to break down each of these briefly and talk about the licensing requirements.

SharePoint Form Library Forms

InfoPath’s ability to create form templates that can be posted to a form library in SharePoint dates back to to 2003 when InfoPath 2003 first came out. Once the form is published to that library, your users can click on the New Document link/button and that will open up the form. This form can only be opened in the browser if you have SharePoint Enterprise license. No exceptions here. If you don’t have enterprise licensing on your server then your users will require at least the InfoPath filler application (or InfoPath Designer application) on their machine to open up the form. If that’s not the case either, they will get an error saying that no compatible application can be found to open up the form (just like the error you would get if you didn’t have MS Word installed and you tried to open up a .doc document).

SharePoint List Forms

This functionality is new in 2010 products. SharePoint lists (such as Tasks, Announcements, Links etc.) come out of the box with ASP.NET forms that let you take actions on the list (viewing a list item, editing an item, creating a new item). You can see these forms in the browser or through SharePoint Designer 2010. If your SharePoint server has SharePoint Enterprise license, you can modify these out of the box forms or create new forms (recommended) using InfoPath 2010. If you don’t have enterprise licensing, you can still customize or create new list forms without code. However, you will need to use SharePoint Designer 2010 to do that and the resulting forms will be ASP.NET forms as well.

SharePoint Workflow Forms

This functionality is also new in 2010 products. When you create a workflow using SharePoint Designer 2010, it creates forms that users interact with as needed (for example task forms, initiation forms, association forms, forms to collect data from users etc.). If your SharePoint server has SharePoint Enterprise or Standard license applied to it, you can use InfoPath 2010 to modify these forms. If you are instead running SharePoint Foundation, you can still modify these forms, but that would have to be done using SharePoint Designer 2010 and the forms will be ASP.NET forms.

I hope this breakdown eliminates some confusion. InfoPath 2010 is an Awesome product! If you have the proper licensing, I would definitely recommend using it!

SharePoint-Videos.com YouTube Channel

Jun 29

Asif RehmaniSharePoint SharePoint Videos No Comments

Have you checked out our videos presenting no-code solutions on SharePoint, SharePoint Designer and InfoPath at YouTube? If not, here is the URL to it. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/asifrehmani.

Video on RepliWeb Operations Suite for SharePoint

Jun 25

Asif RehmaniSharePoint No Comments

I had the pleasure of meeting the folks from RepliWeb early this year. They gave me a tour of their application (RepliWeb Operations Suites for SharePoint – ROSS) and I thought it was Fantastic! So I decided to create a video explaining its functionality briefly and how it can help You in your business! Hope you love it as much as I did.

Here’s the story about ROSS – When using SharePoint as a Development Platform for intranet, extranet, and internet sites, organizations are encouraged to stand up a multi-stage topology (example: Development, Staging, Production). This multi-stage architecture can present challenges when managing updates within the Content & Application Lifecycle. This video reviews a 3rd party solution called ‘ROSS’ by RepliWeb which is built to streamline the deployment/replication of content, solutions, and other functional artifacts across SharePoint Farms. Check out the short video demonstration of the product here: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/repliweb-operations-suite-for-sharepoint/.

If you need to get connected to the RepliWeb folks, let me know and I can make the introductions.

InfoPath 2010 Training DVD

Jun 25

Asif RehmaniInfoPath DVD, InfoPath 2010 No Comments

The InfoPath 2010 video tutorials DVD contains all of our video tutorials on InfoPath 2010. This DVD contains demonstrations showing you exactly how you can build form solutions using InfoPath 2010 by itself or on SharePoint 2010… without using any programming! Here are some of the topics you will learn by watching the videos on this DVD:

• Introduction to InfoPath 2010
• Convert Word and Excel forms to InfoPath
• Enhance forms using Validation and Formatting
• Fetch data from SharePoint Lists and Databases into your forms
• Publish form templates to form library
• Publish forms using content type
• Create SharePoint list forms using InfoPath
• and more…

Note: Just in case there is any confusion – this is a DVD to be played on a computer and not your DVD player.

You can use the following coupon code to get 10% off the price of the single user license DVD: SPVideos10.

The complete list of all videos and purchase information are available on the site: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/products/

Webinar on User Interfaces of SharePoint 2010

Jun 22

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Webinar No Comments

Our next webinar is on Thursday, June 24th from 2 to 3 pm Eastern. Here’s more detail about the webinar:

User Interfaces of SharePoint 2010

Skill Level – 100 (Beginner)

SharePoint 2010 ships with a variety of functionality waiting to be discovered. You can easily build your collaboration based solutions directly on top of this platform without the need for any programming. You need just the browser to create your robust solutions with lists, libraries and other site components. But how do you know where to get started? This session will dive into the user interfaces of SharePoint 2010 to show you how easy it is to get started.

This is an interactive webinar so bring your questions with you. I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. If you would like to join me, here is the link to sign up:
Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/850656289

Videos from Critical Path Training on setting up SharePoint 2010 virtual machine

Jun 22

Asif RehmaniSharePoint SharePoint 2010 No Comments

There are several good reasons for setting up SharePoint 2010 virtual machine:

• Proof of Concept
• Development environment
• Demo machine (for presenters)

Whatever your reasons are, if you need to get this done, my recommendation would be to check out the Critical Path Training channel on YouTube for the exact steps to make it happen. Each step is depicted in an easy to follow along video.

Video on Using Content Types in SharePoint

Jun 21

Asif RehmaniSharePoint No Comments

It is surprising to me how many companies are still not utilizing the powerful capability of content types in SharePoint. Just like every other capability in SharePoint, I believe in showing the power of it rather than just talking about it. So to that end, I have made the understanding and using Content Types video (created by Wendy Henry) available free on the site (it will be free until the end of this month). This video is for SharePoint 2007, but the concepts apply equally well in SharePoint 2010. Hope this helps.