Asif's Blog

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!!

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.

Get access to pre-built demos using SharePoint Designer 2010 and InfoPath 2010

May 03

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Conferences, Videos No Comments

Don’t you just hate it when you see a powerful demonstration of some functionality at a conference or in a class, and then you try to replicate what the presenter did back in your own environment and it doesn’t work? That’s pretty frustrating to most people. My solution to that has been to point people to a recorded demo of the presentation at our SharePoint-Videos site since then you can pause the video as you follow along in your own environment which works out great! In addition to that, I have something more to share with you now. Read on for the information on how you can access it right away.

One of the roadblocks that many people have when trying to develop or play with new functionality is that they don’t have an environment where they can safely experiment. To build such an environment takes a fairly long time, requires special hardware and software licenses and could be cumbersome overall. Most developers have an environment (a sandbox) already built, but what about the rest of us who still create powerful SharePoint solutions using either just the browser or various no-code applications like SharePoint Designer and InfoPath? Well, now there is a solution and it’s called CloudShare!

Virtual Machine ‘in the Cloud’
CloudShare provides a means of having a virtual environment ‘in the cloud’. You can access this environment just like you were accessing your physical desktop. Since everything is running remotely, you don’t have to worry about any requirements accept an internet browser to connect with.

What I am providing
I have a pre-built virtual machine that I would like to share with you. It has all the bells and whistles already running within it:

• SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• Microsoft Office 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, InfoPath, Project, Access and more)
• SharePoint Designer 2010
• SharePoint Workspace 2010
• Visual Studio 2010
• and more…

In this virtual machine, I have built four of the demos that I do which have been fairly popular. They are as follows:

• Customizing SharePoint List Forms using SharePoint Designer and InfoPath
• Automating Business Processes using Visio and SharePoint Designer for Workflows and InfoPath for Forms
• Using XSLT List View and Data View web parts to get access to your SharePoint List data and external Database data
• Building Business Connectivity Services components using SharePoint Designer

How does this work?
You can start by going directly to my pre-built virtual machine environment page. You will only be asked for your name and email address to register. Then you will be provided access to my virtual machine directly through the browser. It will look like the image below:

You will have complete access to all the pre-built demos which are implemented in subsites of this site collection and also links to related videos for each demo on SharePoint-Videos. There is no cost to access this environment for 14 days.

So what’s the catch?
Yes, you would be giving your email address to the CloudShare folks, but there is no other catch. To me, if you use this environment and get benefit out of it, I will be satisfied that I was able to help. If you like this environment and find it as valuable as I certainly do in my day to day work, you can subscribe to the CloudShare service and keep access to this environment.

The subscription cost to the CloudShare service is $49 per month if you decide to keep it after 14 days trial. If you do try the service, let me know about your experience and any feedback.

Help spread the word if you can by sending a link to this blog entry onwards to other folks who can benefit from this environment.

Spotlight on SharePoint Video Tutorial DVDs

Apr 29

Asif RehmaniInfoPath, SharePoint, SharePoint Designer InfoPath 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer, SharePoint Videos 3 Comments

Do you learn best by watching examples/demonstrations? Do you want the ability to be able to watch the videos anywhere you are regardless of presence of an internet connection? If the answers to these are yes and yes then you might find that our DVD-ROM based video tutorials are just what you need! We are dedicating this newsletter to highlight our top DVDs and provide you with some more information on what you should expect to find inside of each video tutorial package.
 
SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is one of the Most powerful features in SharePoint 2010. You can use BCS to easily integrate data from your external systems into your SharePoint environment. The videos in this tutorial show you how to take advantage of this functionality in your SharePoint environment. Create lists in SharePoint which show your line of business application data (such as from custom databases, SAP, PeopleSoft and more) or show that information using pre-built BCS web parts. You will also learn about how to make BCS associations to relate two different connections. All of this and a whole lot more is all taught in this video tutorial package.
 
Reporting Services using SharePoint 2010
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 way to create powerful reports for your business needs. These video tutorials show you how to take advantage of Report Builder’s design concepts to create reusable datasets and report parts from multiple sources. Also, easily create visualizations of your data such as sparklines, databars, charts, indicators and more. The end result is transformation of live data from multiple sources into powerful and meaningful reports inserted right within your SharePoint sites.
 
SharePoint 2010 Fundamentals
If you need to start out with the basics of SharePoint, this is the video tutorial to pick up. However, even if you are an intermediate SharePoint user already, you are guaranteed to pick up other tricks and tips along the way. It covers topics such as customizing sites, navigation, document management, list management and more.
 
SharePoint Designer 2010 Fundamentals
Once you have mastered the fundamentals of SharePoint 2010, it’s time to dive into this video tutorial which will present you with all of the opportunities you have to create no-code customizations and solutions on top of SharePoint using SharePoint Designer 2010 (a free product). SharePoint Designer lets you create views of your data (fetched from lists, libraries, databases, web services and more) directly on any page within your site. In addition, you can automate processes using workflows, customize site metadata, security, list/library schema and a whole lot more.
 
SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflows
Ready to dive deeper into all that SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow capability has to offer? Pick up this DVD for demonstrations of various opportunities you have to produce workflows in SharePoint Designer. Learn how to create list based, reusable or site workflows and what the difference is between the three. Also, you will see how to package these workflows and transport them from one site collection to another when needed.
 
InfoPath 2010 Fundamentals
InfoPath is ‘the recommended tool’ to create and modify forms in SharePoint. Learn how to create form library, list and workflow forms using InfoPath designer. Already have forms created using Microsoft Word or Excel? The videos in this DVD will guide you on how to migrate those forms into InfoPath. You will also see how easy it is to fetch information from your data repositories like lists, libraries and even databases into your InfoPath forms to present to your users.
 
Check out our complete collection of video tutorials on DVDs. Have an idea on a subject area we should consider for our next batch of DVDs? Just comments on this post or fill out our contact form to let us know and we’ll definitely consider it!

Review for book ‘Beginning SharePoint 2010’ by Wrox

Mar 10

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Books, SharePoint 2010 No Comments

Just starting out with SharePoint 2010 or even SharePoint in general? The book ‘Beginning SharePoint 2010 – Building Business Solutions with SharePoint’ is an Awesome resource to get your hands on to get you up and running quickly!

First of all, this book is written by veterans (Amanda Perran, Shane Perran, Jennifer Mason, Laura Rogers) in the SharePoint community and not just from an outsider’s perspective which helps tremendously since it has been my personal experience (teaching on SharePoint for 6 years now) that it is not the easiest thing to teach effectively.

This book starts directly by hitting on the major areas of SharePoint that a beginner should understand real well to make good use of this platform. Topics like Sites, Workspaces, Lists, Libraries, Workflows, Site Columns, Content Types, Branding and more are discussed in detail. Not only how to use these things, but in which scenarios would you want to utilize each. The business reasoning for using, for example, a particular site or list template is extremely important for the long term success of your SharePoint deployment.

Another really good thing about this book is that it can be used just as well by people who already understand the fundamentals and now want to dive deeper into advanced topics like Records Management, Business Connectivity Services, Forms Server, Search management and of course the understanding of implementing a plan for governing the whole thing. Once you go through these topics in this book, then you get a better understanding for how these pieces all fit together on the platform. However, if you do want a deeper dive on each of these topics, I would recommend picking up a book which covers just that subject.

One more thing I would like to mention is the inclusion of exercises in this book – a great idea in my mind for folks who learn kinesthetically (like myself). Following these exercises, you can actually experience the beauty (as well as the gotchas) of SharePoint.

My recommendation: Buy it for yourself or your end users. It’s worth the price!

Business Connectivity Services–Surface data in Outlook

Jan 27

Asif RehmaniSharePoint BCS No Comments

I wrote a short article for SharePointProConnections magazine on how to surface Business Connectivity Services (BCS) data in Microsoft Outlook. It has been published now and is available in electronic format here:

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/556a09e7#/556a09e7/68

Free Webinar on Business Connectivity Services by Raymond Mitchell – 1/27/2011

Jan 24

Asif RehmaniSharePoint BCS No Comments

One of the biggest pieces of SharePoint 2010 that has taken the industry by storm is its ability to display data from external systems. And not just display the data, but letting you interact with it, changing the views of the data and also modifying the backend data directly from SharePoint’s presentation layer. All this power comes packaged within Business Connectivity Services (BCS).
 
We are holding a webinar on this Thursday, 1/27/2011 at 2pm Eastern to show you exactly how this functionality works. If you have attended any of our previous webinars, you know that we dive straight into the subject to ‘show’ you how it’s done and not just talk through PowePoint slides. This webinar will be no different. You can see all the information about the webinar and sign up for it here:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/270194368
 
This webinar will be presented by Raymond Mitchell and hosted by SharePoint-Videos.com. Raymond is an excellent speaker who has presented at many conferences and has also written the BCS chapters in the following book: SharePoint 2010 Six in One.  In addition to this, we also recently launched a video tutorial DVD-ROM for BCS authored by Raymond. It is currently available on the site at the pre-release price. The DVD will be officially released on Feb 1st. 
 
Here are a few words by Raymond himself on BCS and his video tutorials:
 
"Most of you have probably heard of the Business Data Catalog (BDC) that shipped with SharePoint 2007; it is a component that allows you to use external data inside of SharePoint.  What you may not know is that in SharePoint 2010, the BDC got a new name: Business Connectivity Services (BCS).  They changed more than just the name in 2010 though:

• While the BDC was only available to customers with the Enterprise license of SharePoint 2007, the BCS is available to all versions of SharePoint 2010, including SharePoint Foundation!
• The BDC only let you read data from your external systems but the BCS allows you to both read from and write data back to your external systems!
• The BDC allowed you to surface your external data in SharePoint but the BCS allows you to surface your external data in SharePoint AND inside of Office applications, meaning your data is that much more accessible!
• One of the big stumbling blocks in getting started with the BDC was the lack of tooling support from Microsoft.  With the BCS both SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 have first-class support for building solutions with the BCS.  What’s even better, many common scenarios can be handled with just SharePoint Designer 2010, without needing a developer or Visual Studio

All of this means that it is that much easier to get started with the BCS.  These videos give you the introduction you need to Business Connectivity Services to allow you to hit the ground running and quickly begin building solutions using SharePoint Designer 2010.

In addition to these videos, I also contributed two chapters on Business Connectivity Services to a newly released book: SharePoint Six-in-One.  These videos compliment the background provided in the book and show additional examples and walkthroughs on topics such as:

• Creating External Content Types that allow reading and writing back to your external systems
• Building External Lists that surface external data as if it was a SharePoint List
• Adding Business Data Columns to your existing SharePoint Lists and Libraries
• And more…

Hope to see you at the webinar. Once again, here is the link to sign up for the webinar:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/270194368

Review of Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration

Nov 29

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Books No Comments

Review of Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration book by Wrox publishing.

Authors: Todd Klindt, Shane Young, and Steve Caravajal

Short review:

If you are or will be in charge of administering SharePoint 2010, please don’t think twice and pick up this book. You’ll definitely need it!

Longer review:

A very critical message that unfortunately many people miss about SharePoint is that it is truly a ‘platform’. Many of the solutions that you will need on this platform are already created for you such as Sites as containers for content, Lists and Libraries, Security framework, Enterprise Search capability, Business Process management, Forms management and more. No need to recreate the wheel by creating any of these components using code. Rather ‘enhance’ what’s already there by administering and configuring it properly. This is where this book comes in. Todd, Shane and Steve do an Awesome job at hitting on all the major areas that you will need to consider when rolling out SharePoint 2010 in your organization. Use it to plan, install, configure and then maintain SharePoint 2010. 

Important areas that the book covers -

• Architecture planning before even thinking about installation
• Upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to 2010
• Installation and configuration of SharePoint 2010
• Securing SharePoint (including usage of the new Claims based authentication) and its content at various levels
• Tour around the Central Administration
• The backup and restore capabilities
• Configuring Service Applications (Managed Metadata, User Profiles, Business Connectivity Services, PerformancePoint Services, and more)
• Branding in SharePoint

I would definitely recommend buying this book. You will not regret it. Guaranteed!

Also, if you are looking for video instruction on how to accomplish many of the tasks and configuration steps in SharePoint 2010, check out SharePoint 2010 Fundamentals DVD. Let me know if you have questions.

Video on using Developer Dashboard to analyze SharePoint page performance

Sep 02

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Videos No Comments

A feature in SharePoint 2010 called Developer Dashboard lets you analyze performance of your SharePoint pages. It is not only useful for developers, as the name suggests, but can also be used by IT professionals and site administrators to monitor how their site is performing and analyze for bottlenecks.

*Applies to SharePoint 2010

Watch the video on Developer Dashboard that explains this functionality.

This video is available for free until 9/6/2010 then it will be returned to subscribers only area.