Asif's Blog

Reporting Services using SharePoint 2010 and Report Builder 3.0 – video tutorials DVD

Jul 20

Asif RehmaniSharePoint DVD No Comments

A common challenge for most businesses today is to convert raw data into meaningful information.  Data is often stored in a number of different systems and the management of consolidated reports can be very complicated and time consuming.

The introduction of Reporting Services 2008 R2 using the SharePoint 2010 add-in with the free Report Builder 3.0 authoring tool provides an excellent and easy to use “No Programming” solution for your business reporting needs.

The Reporting Services and Report Builder with SharePoint 2010 DVD  demonstrates the essentials of building the next-generation of meaningful, interactive, flexible reports that are easily managed and rendered in your SharePoint 2010 environment. The topics covered provide you with the essential skills required to unlock your data and facilitate sharing valuable information with your end-users.

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.

Some of the key topics include:

• Setting up your Reporting Environment
• Basic Design Concepts Including Reusable Data Sources and Data Sets
• Building Reusable Report Parts to Facilitate Assembling New Reports
• Introduction to the New Tablix Data Regions
• Using Sparklines and Databars to Display Small Trend Charts within Existing Reports
• Leverage Gauges and Indicators to Effectively Visualize Trends
• Use Report Parameters and Expressions to Build Flexible and End-user Interactive Reports
• Create Drill-Down, Drill-Through and Sub-reports to Give the End-user Additional Detailed Information
• Visualize Data using Report Charts
• Use Report Maps to Display Your Business Data on a Geographical Background
• Plus more ..

So go ahead and check out the Reporting Services DVD. Let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Fab 40 Application Templates for SharePoint 2010

Jul 07

Asif RehmaniSharePoint SharePoint 2010 No Comments

In the SharePoint 2007 days, Microsoft published 40 SharePoint ‘Applications’ (basically templates and site definitions) that can be utilized for a variety of purposes:

• Board of Directors meeting site
• Vacation Scheduling
• Classroom Management
• and a whole lot more..

Many companies ended up using these templates for their needs. Unfortunately, Microsoft decided to not upgrade these templates for SharePoint 2010. However… Khalil from TechSol decided to upgrade them himself. The upgraded application templates can be found here:

http://techsolutions.net/Blog/tabid/65/EntryId/17/Fab-40-Templates-for-MOSS-2010.aspx

July 4th Sale on all Single User License DVDs

Jun 30

Asif RehmaniGeneral Videos No Comments

We have not held a sales event on the single user DVDs for many months now. So we have decided to commemorate the July 4th weekend by holding a sale on All of our single user DVD-ROMs (SharePoint 2007 and 2010) listed here:

http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/products/

This includes titles such as SharePoint Fundamentals, SharePoint Designer Workflows, Business Connectivity Services, Reporting Services and more. Once you own the DVD, you can play it on multiple computers, but it is for a single user’s usage. Let us know if you need a multi user license for the videos.

When checking out using the shopping cart, use the code SPD2010DVD (Please don’t forget to click the Apply button for the discount to apply before completing the transaction).

The sale will terminate at the end of the day on July 5th.

This deal applies to all whether you are in USA or not. Happy Independence Day everyone!

Office 365 Explained

Jun 30

Asif RehmaniSharePoint SharePoint 2010 No Comments

Office 365 is a pretty unique name for a product by Microsoft. The story behind it is that Microsoft will be behind your business 24/7/365 when you need it! And if you experience down time with this product, Microsoft will actually reimburse you in cash for that time (99.9% uptime guarantee!). The Office part of the name is obvious: The main product by Microsoft is still Microsoft Office and is widely used by people all over the world.

Note: This article is to give you a conversational perspective of this product. It is not intended to tell you every single detail about it. Microsoft does a fine job of it on their sites and I’ll provide the links to those resources on the web.

Webinar on 7/7/2011 – We are conducting a webinar on Office 365. Here is the link to register if you would like: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/772152905

What does Office 365 consist of?

Think of what you need to run your business usually: Email, Messaging, ways to create and manage documents and other information for your business, Intranet (or some place where employees can share the info), an external web site. Sounds about right? Well, Office 365 provides you with the following:

1. Exchange Online – Each employee in your organization gets a 25GB email inbox. They can use the web browser or the Microsoft Outlook client to manage emails. Very convenient!
2. Microsoft Office Professional Plus applications – Most of the Office 365 plans offer the employees to be able to download the office applications to your desktop/laptop as part of the subscription. That’s a huge deal I think because the Office suites by themselves are not cheap. In addition, each person can also work with their documents online using Office Web Apps functionality.
3. SharePoint Online – This is my favorite part of it! An almost full fledged SharePoint 2010 experience. More on this a bit later.
4. Lync Online – Think of Office Live Messenger or Office Communication Services. If you are familiar with any of these, you have seen parts of what Lync can offer. Instant messaging and live meetings are a snap with Lync.

How much does it cost?

There are a variety of ‘flavors’ that Office 365 offers. The plans are referred to as P1, P2 (for Professionals and Small Businesses) and then E1, E2, E3, E4 (for Enterprise customers). The pricing starts at $6/user/month (isn’t that amazing!). The highest price that I have seen is for E4 which is still only $27/user/month (which is still incredible because this option can help you provide Enterprise voice capability and easily replace your entire PBX system).

How is SharePoint Online different from SharePoint 2010 on-premise?

SharePoint Online provides many of the same SharePoint Server 2010 on-premise Enterprise features. For example, InfoPath Forms Services is included so you can show your InfoPath forms (workflow, form library and list forms) directly in the browser, enterprise search gives you robust search results, My Sites features are also present in SharePoint Online. One notably missing feature from this first release is Business Connectivity Services (BCS). Not to worry! It is in the plans to introduce that soon enough in one of the subsequent releases of Office 365 and since there is no upgrade necessary on your part, it will just magically appear one day and you will be notified about it as a customer.

The main difference you have to keep in mind is that you do not have access to the Central Administration site for SharePoint Online in Office 365. Also, you cannot access the web server files. So basically the SharePoint Server administration is offloaded to Microsoft.

Now here’s a difference you are going to like: In Office 365, you can easily invite others outside your organization to collaborate with you within your site collection. That’s a Big benefit in my mind!

How will I build solutions on top of SharePoint Online?

If you buy into Office 365, SharePoint Designer 2010 is about to become your best friend . That’s the main application for making customizations to your SharePoint Online environment. Most of what you can do with SharePoint Designer 2010 in a regular on-premise SharePoint 2010 environment is available with SharePoint Online as well. That’s great news because that provides you tons of customization opportunities.

You will not have access to create farm level solutions using Visual Studio 2010 (VS).  VS can still be used by programmers to develop the following types of solutions on top of SharePoint Online:

• Sandboxed Solutions (scoped to a Site Collection)
• Programming against the Client Object Model
• Silverlight and ECMA Script

Check out the SharePoint Online Developers Resource Center to get a better idea of programming opportunities in SharePoint Online.

How do I get started?

That’s the easiest part. It costs nothing to join the trial program. Start here and you will have a fully functional Office 365 deployment within minutes! Choose the E3 plan if you are a large enterprise (or want to pretend to be to see how it works ) or choose P1 for small businesses. Then you can manage your licenses by inviting your personnel to join you in the environment and start using it right away. Once your trial is about to expire, you can decide to keep the environment and start paying for it or let it go.

Also note that if you are already a BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services – the older and far less powerful version of Office 365) customer, Microsoft will guide you to transition your content and people to Office 365.

Additional Material/Info on Office 365

Here’s some additional information to keep in mind and get involved. I’ll send more material on it in the future once ready.

Social Media: Check out the Office 365 Blog, Office 365 Facebook page, and Twitter account to connect directly to the team working on this offering.

Video Tutorials: We are looking to create video tutorials on Office 365 within the next couple of months. Look out for that on the SharePoint-Videos site.

Upcoming Article: I have written a MSDN whitepaper on Customizing SharePoint Online using SharePoint Designer 2010. Hopefully, it should be published soon. I’ll send out a link to it through this newsletter once it’s out on the site.

Webinar on Office 365 (7/7/2011)–What you need to know!

Jun 29

Asif RehmaniEvents Webinar 2 Comments

Presenters:
Mark Kashman – PM at Microsoft focused on Office 365 – http://www.office365.com
Asif Rehmani – http://www.sharepoint-videos.com

Office 365 is the way to provide messaging, collaboration, web conferencing, document sharing and more to your organization – large and small. Simply put, it’s SharePoint 2010 in the cloud. Office 365 went Live on June 28th.

This webinar is sponsored by SharePoint-Videos and will be focused on providing you information you need (as are all of our webinars) and not a sales pitch. We’ll use this webinar to display the functionality and the administrative capabilities of Office 365. Then discuss the customization opportunities on top of it.

This webinar will show live demos of the functionality and we’ll take your questions along the way to make this a truly interactive experience.

Audience: Developers, Power Users, SharePoint Site Owners, Small Business Owners
Title:     Office 365: What you need to know and how it can help you!
Date:     Thursday, July 7, 2011
Time:     1:00 PM – 2:15 PM EDT

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/772152905

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

SharePoint MVP Chat-6/22 at 9am PDT

Jun 17

Asif RehmaniEvents SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 No Comments

Reposted from SharePoint Team Blog-
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=982

“Do you have tough technical questions regarding SharePoint for which you’re seeking answers? Do you want to tap into the deep knowledge of the talented Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals?  The SharePoint MVPs are the same people you see in the technical community as authors, speakers, user group leaders and answerers in the MSDN and TechNet forums.

By popular demand, we have brought these experts together as a collective group to answer your questions live.  So please join us and bring on the questions! This chat will cover WSS 3.0, MOSS, SharePoint Foundation 2010 and the SharePoint Server 2010. Topics include setup and administration, design, development and general question.

Please join us on Wednesday June 22nd at 9am PDT to chat with MVPs from around the world. Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/events/aa497438.aspx”

Webinar by Andrew Connell (5/18) – Creating SharePoint Designer Workflow Activities with Visual Studio

May 16

Asif RehmaniEvents, SharePoint Webinar No Comments

Usually, our webinars are 100% no-code. However, this will be a slight exception. The reason: it’s necessary for all of us to know the next step if we are unable to accomplish a task without programming.

This webinar shows what you do when the out of the box workflow activities provided by SharePoint Designer just don’t cut it. The next step is to create the activity using Visual Studio and deploy it to SharePoint so it appears in SharePoint Designer next time. Here are the details of the webinar:

Webinar Title:

Augmenting SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflows with Visual Studio 2010

Presenter:

Andrew Connell – http://www.criticalpathtraining.com, http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/

Description:

Generally the best story for creating custom workflows in SharePoint 2010 is to stick with the declarative and most productive option: use SharePoint Designer 2010. However there are situations when SharePoint Designer cannot achieve some business requirements. One common example is when you need to implement some sort of a loop. In this session, you’ll see what’s involved in creating a custom activity (action) in Visual Studio 2010 and deploy it to SharePoint so it can be used in SharePoint Designer based workflows.

Andrew Connell (also known by many of us as AC) is an exceptionally talented and well respected SharePoint professional within the SharePoint community. He’s my colleague (and my boss – although he doesn’t like to be called that ) at Critical Path Training (CPT). CPT offers expert level SharePoint training by trainers whose career focus is solely around SharePoint technologies. All of the instructors speak, write, train, consult, breathe and sleep SharePoint. Check out the upcoming training schedule at CPT.

We are holding this webinar on Wednesday, 5/18/2011 at 2pm Eastern. This webinar will be hosted by SharePoint-Videos.com. You can see all the information about the webinar and sign up for it here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/870672600

Hope to ‘see’ you at the webinar!

SharePoint Branding and Customization Options – Office 365 and SharePoint 2010

May 10

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Branding No Comments

Want to learn about your branding choices in SharePoint 2010 and Office 365? Check out the following blog entry by my buddy Tom Werner at Microsoft:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=472

Tom has spent quite a long time really hashing out the things you need to know about SharePoint branding options in this blog post. He also points to other resources (articles, books etc) that will help you continue your journey into customizing SharePoint. Great job Tom!!

SharePoint Easy Start – An easy way for anyone to start or continue their SharePoint Journey

May 05

Asif RehmaniGeneral SharePoint Videos, Training, Videos 1 Comment

Check out the SharePoint Easy Start page!
 
After years of teaching, consulting, writing and speaking on SharePoint, I realize that each of us is still learning and discovering the power of all you can do with SharePoint. You might be a beginner or have been using SharePoint for a number of years. You might be using SharePoint 2007 or maybe you were one of the first to jump on SharePoint 2010. In any case, we are all still continuing on our SharePoint journey and it is important for us all to understand how the different pieces on the SharePoint platform fit together.
 
Since each of us has a different need and a starting point, I created the SharePoint Easy Start page to make it easy for everyone to dive right in. Just pick the version of SharePoint you are using (either 2007 or 2010) and we will guide you on your SharePoint journey. If you have any feedback about the page, we would love to hear it. Thanks!

Train your users on SharePoint 2007 functionality

May 04

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Videos No Comments

Now that SharePoint 2010 is out in the market, most of the companies (including ours) are very much focused on providing training on that product. However, what about the companies that are using SharePoint 2007 and are not planning on migrating to the next version anytime soon? Look around and what you are sure to find is that there is not much ‘quality’ training available on that product anymore. Being in the training industry for a long time now, I know this for a fact that expert trainers usually move on quickly to the latest and greatest because that’s where most of the training opportunities and interests are.
 
So what do we do if our company plans to remain on SharePoint 2007 for the foreseeable future?
We might be able to help with your training needs! We have a robust library of 100 SharePoint 2007 related videos. They are fully narrated and are anywhere from 6 minutes to 45 minutes in length each. These videos are for all levels of SharePoint users (end users, power users, site administrators, site collection administrators, IT professionals and developers). Many companies have used our videos to provide their employees with on-demand training as they need it.
 
What about when we upgrade to SharePoint 2010?
No worries. When you are ready to upgrade to SharePoint 2010, there is a significant discount offered on the pricing of our SharePoint 2010 video packages to our existing customers.
 
How do I get more information about your offerings?
Fill out the form on our site to get started. Provide us with some information about your need in the ‘Description’ field of the form. We can then discuss via phone or email the various options we have to offer and will tailor them to your needs.