Asif's Blog

Free Webinar on 10/19/2011 at 2pm Eastern – Using SharePoint Designer in the ‘Real World’

Oct 14

Asif RehmaniEvents Webinar No Comments

We’re back with another webinar (and of course as always, there is no cost to attend the webinar. All we ask is that you provide feedback at the end that can help us improve).

Presenter:
Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT – http://www.SharePoint-Videos.com

Level of presentation: 200

Session Abstract:

"My IT department says we are not allowed to use SharePoint Designer."  This phrase is fairly common when the topic of SharePoint Designer comes up in a training, conference setting or a consulting engagement. IT departments have concerns around deploying SharePoint Designer to end users. This session provides real world use cases and guidance that covers when it is safe to let your site administrators use SharePoint Designer 2010 (and also when it’s not safe). In addition, we will discuss the different level of privileges that should be granted to different groups of people in your organization.

This webinar is sponsored by SharePoint-Videos.com. During and after the webinar, we’ll take your questions and try to answer them to the best of our ability.

Audience: Designers, Subsite owners, Site Collection Administrators, Developers, IT Professionals and Power Users

Title:  Using SharePoint Designer 2010 in the ‘Real World’
Date:  Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Time:  2:00 PM – 3:15 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/669199656

SharePoint Connections Amsterdam Nov 22 to 23, 2011

Oct 07

Asif RehmaniEvents Conferences No Comments

SharePoint Connections conference is coming back to Amsterdam once again. Register before Oct 14 to save 100 Euros. Also, there is a special 50% discount offered for students.

http://www.nccomms-events.com/sharepointconnections

I’m honored to be presenting the following sessions at the conference:

Using SharePoint Designer 2010 in the ‘Real World’

SharePoint Designer is an Awesome product. However, do you know how to use it to the best of its capability? I’ll be happy to show it to you in this session.

Create SharePoint Library Forms Using InfoPath 2010

The Form Library in SharePoint is there to host InfoPath forms much like the Document Library holds regular documents. Using InfoPath forms, you can create amazingly powerful forms with logic and data connections to various sources. That’s going to be the main focus of this session.

Office 365: Customize SharePoint Online with SharePoint Designer 2010

Want to know what you can (and cannot) do in SharePoint Online? Especially regarding SharePoint Designer. Can you use it fully to customize SharePoint Online? Come to this session to find out.

Create Reusable and Transportable Workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010

Workflows in SharePoint Designer are one of the most powerful feature. Reusable workflows can be published globally or even transported between environments. I’ll show you how to make it possible and what to watch out for.

SharePoint-Videos.com presence at SharePoint Conference 2011

Sep 29

Asif RehmaniEvents Conferences No Comments

SharePoint turns 10 years old. Are you coming to celebrate at the SharePoint Conference?

SharePoint Conference (SPC) has been taking place every couple of years. This year’s conference officially kicks off on October 3rd. Are you going to be there?

At SPC 2009, I remember hearing that about 8,000 attendees were present (not counting the vendors and staff). This year’s show seems to be garnering similar type of attention and they’re looking forward to a Huge turnout again! [or maybe it's partially because of the proximity to Disneyland ]. Aside from the abundance of knowledge transfer that undoubtedly will take place during the breakout sessions at the conference, there are some really nice activities planned for the attendees.

SharePoint-Videos.com (SPVideos) is planning to have a good presence at the conference including the following:

• Every conference attendee will find an informational flyer with our information and offering in their conference bags
• We’ll be bringing 500 video tutorial DVDs (shown below) to be passed out at the conference. The videos cover several topics covered on the video tutorial DVDs we have on the site. If you would like a copy, we’ll have them available at the Wrox Publishing booth. I will also be personally passing out many of them during my sessions at SPC .
• I’ll be available at either of the following booths: Critical Path Training, Microsoft Composites, Microsoft SharePoint Online. Come on by for a chat if you have time.

DVD we are passing out at SPC -

Front cover	Back cover

Hope to see you there!

My sessions at the SharePoint Conference

Sep 29

Asif RehmaniEvents Conferences No Comments

Looking forward to the upcoming Microsoft SharePoint Conference next week! I’ll be presenting the following sessions there:

SPC239 – InfoPath + SharePoint Designer + Office 365 = Forms in the Cloud!

Forms are used everywhere in SharePoint Online: Form Libraries, Document Libraries, Lists, Workflows and more. You can use these forms to create great looking layouts, implement conditional formatting and retrieve data from a variety of sources. Come see this session to learn the best ways to use InfoPath generated forms in the cloud. This session will demonstrate the similarities and differences between  InfoPath forms within SharePoint Online as compared to SharePoint on-premises. .

Start time: 10/4/2011  9:00:00 AM

SPC272  – SharePoint Designer 2010- A Tool for End Users?

"My IT department says we are not allowed to use SharePoint Designer."  This phrase is fairly common when the topic of SharePoint Designer comes up in a training, conference setting or a consulting engagement. IT departments have concerns around deploying SharePoint Designer to end users. This session provides real world use cases and guidance that covers when it is safe to let your site administrators use SharePoint Designer 2010 (and also when it’s not safe). In addition, we will discuss the different level of privileges that should be granted to different groups of people in your organization.

Start time: 10/5/2011  9:00:00 AM

Make your data come alive: 3 creative ways to visualize your data

A short 20 minutes session discussing 3 different ways to make your data come alive:

1. Make Chart web part your friend and chart List, Library, BCS and other types of data using just the browser
2. Use Excel Services to publish your existing Charts and Graphs from your Excel spreadsheets
3. Conditionally format your data using List and Data View web parts – using SharePoint Designer 2010

Start Time: 10/5/2011  12:00:00 PM

Setting up Site Collection Administrators

Sep 28

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Tricks and Tips No Comments

The tip that I would like to share with you today is regarding Setting up Site Collection Administrators. Here’s a video you can watch on how to make it happen and explaining the authority of site collection admins.

For some of you, this information might not be that useful since you do this stuff day in and day out as SharePoint server admins. However, my hope is that everyone gets some new information out of it.

Being a site collection administrator is a super important role in organizations. You are not the SharePoint server admin with all the powers over the server, but neither are you a subsite owner or end user. This means that you are probably what I refer to as a Power User. An extremely important role within governing and administering SharePoint sites.

One of the misunderstandings that I have seen people have is that if you are a top level site owner in a site collection, you must be a site collection owner as well. Not true. A site owner (or sometimes refer to as subsite owner) has admin privileges on a site (which very well could be the top level site), but if you go to the Site Settings page and don’t see ‘Site Collection Administration’ section, you are not the site collection administrator.

In my personal opinion, all SharePoint server admins should be very careful whom they appoint as the site collection admins since that’s a pretty heavy responsibility that should not be taken lightly. You cannot take this person’s rights away from seeing All of the information in the site collection. The site owner might go ahead and remove all security groups from a site, but this person will still have access to all data (and that’s a feature by the way, not a bug ).

Check out the video on setting up site collection administrators to see how it’s done in action and some tips, tricks and best practices along the way.

Critical Path Training @ SharePoint Conference 2011

Sep 27

Asif RehmaniEvents Conferences No Comments

Repost from AC’s blog: Next week brings the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 in CA. The instructors at Critical Path Training will be in full force as we’re presenting over 14 sessions all week.

We are also giving away over 120 SharePoint books at our booth with hourly book drawings and eight book signings throughout the week!!!

But wait, that’s not all… we’re also giving away over $25,000 in SharePoint training to lucky winners throughout the week.

Where can you get more info? Check out our October community page on our website: http://www.criticalpathtraining.com/Community/Pages/October.aspx

Looking forward to seeing everyone… make sure you come to the ESPNZone on Wednesday night for SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night!

SharePoint 2010 Posters / Technical Diagrams

Sep 16

Asif RehmaniGeneral SharePoint 2010 No Comments

Have you seen the SharePoint 2010 posters by Microsoft? They are especially helpful if you are in one of the following roles:

• SharePoint Administrator
• SharePoint Developer
• SharePoint Governance Guru (or a Governance team member)
• A Business User (asked/forced to act like a SharePoint Expert in the company)
• “The SharePoint Guy/Gal” at your company

Imagine having a bunch of reference charts you can put up in your office or cubicle that guide you with a specific need or role like Governance, Services available in SharePoint, Authentication models, Farm Topologies, Search mechanisms, SharePoint Databases and more. Of course, they are all available from Microsoft at no-cost.

Here they are:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx

These are a result of Microsoft folks like my good friends Dan Evers, Tom Werner, Cathy Brennan, Susan Potter and their teams who are determined to boost SharePoint adoption in organizations around the world. Great job all and keep up the great work. We all appreciate it very much!!

Donate to Help End Global Poverty

Sep 14

Asif RehmaniGeneral No Comments

The usual use of this blog is for SharePoint related news, tips etc. However, once in a while, I blog about things that I really care about like the Haiti relief effort and the flood relief effort in Pakistan.

This blog entry is related to a Walk that I participate in together with my family every year: PartnershipsInAction Walk.

PartnershipsInAction is an initiative of Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A. and its network of volunteers across the United States. 100% of all funds raised for Partnership Walk go directly to projects in the developing world (hard to believe I know, but it’s true! I have personally checked it out)

Partnership Walk is a public event to raise awareness about how people can make a difference in ending global poverty. It promotes partnerships among Americans and people in the developing world. Since 1995, 53 Partnership Walks have been held in U.S., attracting thousands of participants and bringing a spark of hope to vulnerable families in Africa and Asia.

This Walk is set to take place this Sunday on September 18, 2011 at Millennium park in Chicago.

I encourage all to donate to this effort if you can!

One Year Access to All Videos on SharePoint-Videos.com

Sep 13

Asif RehmaniGeneral, SharePoint SharePoint Videos No Comments

The Offer

Access to All of our SharePoint Videos (current and the ones that are added regularly to the site) for 1 full year for $179.55. After the year is over, the access is automatically terminated and there is no recurring charge.

Here is the link:
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=E3B7E8B5-AFFB-470E-8E74-F741CA168A51&pid=c36e3c7b07f346538b103f76408d8808

You can use the above link and then use the following coupon code:
sp10disc (please be sure to click Apply button after entering the coupon code)

That will give you a 10% discount on the regular price of $199.50 making the total to $179.55.

The membership will start automatically right after the payment is made.

(Note: This membership is not available through our site. The one on the site is the yearly recurring membership for $199.50/year)

Details about the Videos

• Current video count: 271 (More videos are constantly being added every other week)
• Video tutorials are created by experts in the SharePoint field – http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/about/
• Video length is from 5 minutes to 30 minutes each video. Almost all of the videos are entirely demonstration to show you how to do tasks and create your solutions on top of SharePoint. PowerPoint is minimized as much as possible
• Videos are categorized, tagged, compiled in courses and also easily searchable – http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/video-categories/
• Videos work on all platforms: PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, iPods, Android phones etc.

Sample the Videos before making the decision

Lots of our videos are available here to be watched at no cost: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/all-free-videos/

SharePoint Resources – September 2011

Sep 08

Asif RehmaniGeneral SharePoint 2010 No Comments

Guidance and Best Practices

Data Storage Changes for SharePoint 2010
With the release of SharePoint 2010 SP1 and some new guidance Microsoft is changing the supported data size limits for SharePoint content databases. Prior to SP1 the content database limit was 200 GB for collaboration and 1 TB for document archive. The content database size includes both metadata and BLOBs regardless of where the BLOBs are located and use of RBS does not bypass or increase these limits.
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=988

Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint Online in Office 365
Learn how project managers can collaborate with teams to share schedule details quickly with Project Professional 2010 and SharePoint Online task list synchronization.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project/archive/2011/06/29/microsoft-project-professional-2010-and-sharepoint-online-in-office-365.aspx

White Papers and Articles

Security in Office 365 white paper
This white paper provides an overview of the security practices and technology that support enterprise-grade security in Office 365 for businesses of all sizes.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26552

Customizing SharePoint Online with SharePoint Designer 2010
This is a whitepaper I (Asif Rehmani) wrote for MSDN. It was released in August 2011.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh428136.aspx

Managing multi-terabyte content databases with SharePoint 2010
This white paper provides guidance about capacity management, performance, and data protection for SharePoint environments that have large content databases.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=26700

Webcasts and Videos

TechNet Webcast Recording: Talk TechNet with Keith Combs and Matt Hester – Episode 47: SharePoint with Jason Kaczor (Level 200)
orginally held on 8/3/2011 9:00 AM Time zone: (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Jason is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP focused on architecture, implementations, governance, and best practices. He has been providing technical solutions to business problems for over 18 years; covering nearly all industry sectors
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032490784&culture=en-US

Database attach upgrade videos on-demand
These two videos demonstrate how to use a database attach upgrade method with read-only databases to upgrade from SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh315922.aspx

Info on SharePoint Service Pack 1 and Hotfixes

Description of the SharePoint Designer 2010 hotfix package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2536592

Technical details about the SharePoint 2010 and Office Server 2010 SP1 releases
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2532120

List of all SharePoint 2010 and Office Server 2010 SP1 packages
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510766