We’re back again with another free webinar. A few weeks ago at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, I presented a session on SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflows which have been vastly improved in this release of SharePoint. In addition to talking about SPD Workflows, I will show the integration points with Visio and InfoPath. I’ll be presenting this session in a webinar format to be held this Thursday, Dec 3rd.

For this webinar, fundamental SharePoint (2007 or 2010) knowledge is assumed. Webinar will be held on Dec 3rd at 12:00pm Eastern time. You can get more information and register for this webinar here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/333716056

With so much information coming out now about SharePoint 2010 and related technologies, I’m sure many are wondering how they can get their hands on the actual software. Well, the public beta is scheduled for this month (November 2009). However, this does not mean that you will automatically be able to download it. You need to pre-register first to participate in the beta. Here is the page where you can pre-register: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/try-it/Pages/Trial.aspx.

Before you go to pre-register however, you should also consider the hardware requirements for installing SharePoint 2010. If you plan to run it on a physical server, make sure it’s a 64bit machine. On the other hand, if you want to play with it in a virtual environment, then here are your options:

• Hyper-V
• Mount the vhd using Windows 7 and boot directly into it
• VMWare technologies

I used to have many virtual machines for SharePoint 2007 (in fact I still do) which were created in Virtual PC 2007. Virtual PC does not support 64-bit so that’s out of the question now

At the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, I had the distinct pleasure to present the Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010 session. The early estimates are that over 1000 people attended that session. I personally had a real good time talking about SharePoint Designer since, aside from the facts that it’s my favorite tool to customize SharePoint and that I co-authored the book on SharePoint Designer 2007, so many enhancements have been made to this product that I didn’t have to use the “maybe this feature will be included in the next version” answer even once in the session Q&A! Awesome! .

As they say, best things in life are Free

First, let’s talk about the price of SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD 2010)… well, or the lack of a price tag. Just like SPD 2007, SPD 2010 will also be a free product. Once it’s available (it will be released with SharePoint 2010 itself which is going to be sometime in the first half of 2010), it will be available at the following site: http://www.microsoft.com/spd. The question that might come to mind is “does this mean that Microsoft will not be further enhancing the product or supporting it fully since it has gone down the free route”. The answer I can confidentially say is Absolutely Not! The product is and will be supported as part of your SharePoint deployment. The reason Microsoft has decided to make the product free is because they did not want the price point of the product to be the barrier in trying to customize and extend SharePoint to its full potential (before jumping into code). You can only do so much within the web browser window. To take ultimate advantage of your SharePoint deployment, it is almost (dare I say) a necessity to use either SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio.

What’s in a Name anyway

The last word in the name of this product confuses many people who first hear about it (IMHO). SharePoint Designer to them insinuates that it must be a product for people who need to do branding or styling in SharePoint. While it’s true that SPD is really good at letting you apply style sheets to your sites, modify existing SharePoint themes, alter or create new Master Pages etc, this is only one part of its functionality. In my own case, for example, I use SPD for all the non-branding reasons. I use it to create end to end solutions on top of SharePoint using functionality such as the Data View web part, Workflow designer, manipulating web part zones, creating page layouts, using the built in reports etc. just to name a few. I truly believe and always mention to my customers to very seriously consider using SharePoint Designer in their environment to take full advantage of their SharePoint investment.

The bells and whistles of SharePoint Designer 2010

In my session at SPC, I presented 10 features of SharePoint Designer 2010. I also did plenty of demos related to these features. Whether you attended the conference or not, you can find the video demos for all of them at the SharePoint-Videos.com site here: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/free-sharepoint-sharepoint-designer-and-infopath-2010-videos/. The features that I highlighted are listed below. Keep in mind, that there are more great things about SPD 2010 then are listed below. Also, not all of them are new, but they are all very useful. This is just to give you a taste of the power of SPD.

1. New User Experience with Summary Pages, Ribbon and Quick Launch navigation
   

   Just like the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, SPD also now has a Ribbon on top that changes depending on the object (site, list, workflow etc) you are focused on. Of course there is a learning curve if you are not comfortable with ribbons yet, however, once you do get comfortable with it, it makes you Really productive and efficient! The Summary Pages show you the settings and summary of an object that you are currently viewing. For example, if you are focused on a list, it will show you the name, description, views, forms etc for the list. The Quick Launch navigation on the side gives you a quick way to get to different categories of objects within the site (lists, workflows, site pages etc.). Overall, it’s easier to navigate a SharePoint site using this new user experience.

   

2. Creating SharePoint Content structure
   

   Once you start out with working in a SharePoint site collection, the types of things you will need to create will consist of subsites, lists for content, and pages to display the information among other things. While creating these objects, you will need to manipulate their name, description, schema and other settings as needed. You can do all of this in the browser or you can do it in SPD. My reason for doing this in SPD is that it’s much faster and efficient than going to the web browser and waiting for each page to load after clicking on a link to, let’s say, change the title and description of the site. The web browser is much slower than using the SPD client application. That’s a fact!

   

3. Configure Site Security
   

   Until SharePoint 2007, you had to go through the browser to configure the security for your site. It didn’t matter what your credentials were. You could be the SharePoint server admin, but still you had to resort through using the browser. Not anymore! You can configure security directly in SPD now. Creating new SharePoint groups, associating them to the appropriate permission levels and adding users to the groups is all built into the environment now.

   
   

4. Create Content Types and attach to Lists directly
   

   Having a good solid content type design in your SharePoint deployment is always a good idea. It is basically how you are telling SharePoint what types of content you will be generating in your environment. If you have not looked into content types, I advise that you read up on it. Using SPD 2010, you can now create your content types hierarchy without going to the browser. Adding site columns (or creating new ones) to content types is also pretty simple to do within SPD.

   

5. Create Site Assets for your site
   

   There is a new type of library now included in SharePoint 2010 called Site Assets. The objective of this library is to store the files that are used as resources for the site such as style sheets, JavaScript files, xml files and even images which need to be served up on site pages. You can create these resource files in site assets library directly through SPD. Since SPD supports intellisense for JavaScript, style sheets, and also xml, it is a much more conducive environment in which to author these files.

   

6. Use XSLT List View web parts to show dynamic views of your data
   

   In SharePoint 2007, we had List View web parts (LVWP) to show our list or library content in a page on the site. They worked fine, however, they were not very extensible. Meaning, if you wanted to manipulate their look and feel, you could only get as far as using the pre-built styles and layouts either through the browser or through SPD. On the other hand, we had the XSLT Data View web part (DVWP) which you could configure visually using only SharePoint Designer. That web part lets us manipulate any data points at a very granular level since all data was fetched as XML and manipulated using XSLT which is a very flexible way of transforming and presenting your data. The problem with this approach was that once the web part is deployed, it could not be easily changed or manipulated using the web browser. Enters XSLT List View web part! It gives us the best of both worlds. All lists and libraries are now deployed on pages as XSLT LVWP which can be easily configured using SPD and also extended further as needed using the browser.

   

7. Connect to Data Sources outside of SharePoint
   

   More often than not, you will need to display data on SharePoint pages that’s coming from outside of SharePoint. SPD provides an easy to use interface to make a connection to a data source that you have access to. It’s a fairly simple wizard driven process to connect to external data sources such as databases, xml files, server side scripts (including RSS feeds), and web services (also included in this release is the support for connecting to REST web services). The best part about this functionality is that you can link the data sources together and then show a unified view of the data. So for example, let’s say you’re in a retail business… your category information could be in a xml file, while your subcategories could be accessible through a vendor’s web service and then your actual products information is in your database. You can first create the connections to your data sources and then connect all of this information together to display a combined view of the data for your users. End users don’t need to know where the actual data is coming from as long as it all just works together ‘automagically’.

   

8. Create External Content Types using Business Connectivity Services
   

   SharePoint 2007 introduced a new functionality called Business Data Catalog. That functionality has now been renamed Business Connectivity Services. The idea behind this functionality is to expose Line of Business data from your back end services (such as People Soft, SAP, custom databases etc.) to business analysts so they can use them within SharePoint. Each piece of information (for example a table in a database that has your Customers information) can be exposed as an External Content Type (ECT) by an IT professional or a developer using SharePoint Designer. Then a business analyst can use SharePoint through the web browser to make an External List which uses this ECT. The result will be that they have a list now showing information straight from the Customers table in the database (following the example from earlier). When anyone (who has permission of course) manipulates the information in that External List, it will actually be written back to that table in the database.

   

9. Create Powerful Reusable Workflows
   

   SharePoint Designer 20007 came with a very versatile platform to make really powerful Workflows. These were rule based workflows and utilized the ‘Activities’ already deployed at the server level. Aside from all the good stuff that these workflows provide, there was one big problem… You could not copy these workflows from one list to another or one site to another site. That quickly became a big problem if you had invested hours or days in making the workflow and then found out you couldn’t replicate it anywhere else. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create reusable workflows! These workflows can then be attached to lists, libraries or even content types. Not only that, but you can even package your workflows as a .wsp (solution file) and extend it further using Visual Studio! In addition to the reusable workflows, you can also create workflows which are specific to a site so there is no need to attach to a list or library at all (called Site Workflows). Oh, did I mention that workflows can now be modeled in Visio 2010 and then exported to SharePoint Designer? There are so many improvements in SPD workflows that it will take a separate blog post to dig into it all.

   

10. Restrict SharePoint Designer usage as needed
    

    SharePoint Designer 2010 is a powerful application. The usage of this application can be controlled at the Web Application and at the Site Collection level. A Site Collection admin, for example, can decide if she wants her Site admins to be able to utilize SPD at all. Not just that, but various functions within SPD can also be restricted. An example of that is creation and management of Master Pages and Page Layouts. Another facet that can be restricted is customization of pages and detaching them from the site definition.

    

     

    As you can tell, this is a very exciting new release of SharePoint Designer and it will change the way we manage, customize and configure our SharePoint environments. Each of these 10 things I mentioned above (and more that I did not get a chance to mention), deserve their own separate blog posts. Over time, I will be digging deeper into each of these things to provide you more perspective of how you can best utilize the features to your advantage. For now, I would recommend checking out our free 2010 videos that highlight many of the features listed above and more.

It is now official. I have joined Critical Path Training as an instructor. Critical Path Training (formerly known as Ted Pattison Group) is a widely renowned leader in the SharePoint training space. I’m honored to be part of the team and looking forward to working together and bringing world class SharePoint 2010 training to the market.

I’m currently working on the course Creating No-Code SharePoint Designer Solutions for SharePoint 2010 which will cover SharePoint Designer, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace. We’ll start offering this class in early 2010 in both the instructor led and hands on format and online.

Asif Rehmani presented this session at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 during the week of Oct 19, 2009.

SharePoint Designer 2010, a free application, is “The Preferred” tool to design powerful no-code solutions and applications in SharePoint 2010. In this session you will get a broad overview of the capabilities of the tool, from site customizations such as modifying Site Metadata, managing Site Security, or creating Site Content, to building List or Site based Workflows and connecting to a variety of Data Sources. You will also learn about the new ribbon interface of SharePoint Designer 2010 and shows how best to take advantage of this application by showing the new bells and whistles that come with this product.

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/994486001

With so much new information on the SharePoint 2010 Products and Technologies, it’s hard to talk about all of it using just words or screenshots. To that end, I have produced several videos showing demonstrations of the new functionality, which I covered at my sessions at SPC, on the following page:

http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/free-sharepoint-sharepoint-designer-and-infopath-2010-videos/

More videos soon! Enjoy!

We are back once again with another free webinar. This one is going to be all about using Data Views in SharePoint Designer to get to… well Data of course . This presentation will focus on how you can get access to SharePoint List data and then manipulate it as needed. However, keep in mind that Data Views can be used to get to any type of external data as well (web services, databases, xml files, rss feeds and more..).

The webinar is scheduled for 10/1 at 1pm Eastern. Come join us if you got time: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/983842921

We are back with another free webinar. Wendy Henry from SharePoint-Videos.com will be presenting this webinar along with host Asif Rehmani. The webinar will expose the secrets of choosing and growing an appropriate storage platform for your SharePoint environment.  

This webinar is scheduled for 11am Eastern time on 9/18/09. Seats are limited so please register soon if you will be attending.

To get more information and to register, visit the following page:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/775306281

Following are the new videos we posted this week for our site Subscribers:

• SharePoint Architecture Planning
  

  This video presents and talks through the architecture, pre-requisites and preparation required to plan for a WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 installation. It shows the supporting services required for the installation and also how to plan for the OS, IIS, and other requirements that serve as the necessity for planning a successful SharePoint deployment.
  

• Installing SharePoint
  

  This video demonstrates the process of installing WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 as a single server install. Then it shows how to setup some of the global settings that need to be immediately configured after the install. The video also examines how to assign server roles in a SharePoint server farm.
  

• Initial Configuration of a new SharePoint Installation
  

  This video shows the process of setting up initial configuration settings that need to be made on a new SharePoint installation. Administration tasks such as setting up services across multiple servers is also shown. Incoming and outgoing mail settings are demonstrated. Also, the installation of pdf ifilter is demonstrated so that pdf files can be indexed and searched by SharePoint.
  

More coming up next week. 

We are eagerly awaiting the time when we can show you SharePoint 2010 information. We have already started creating videos on it. It’s going to be super exciting stuff!

Thanks to all 240+ people who attended the webinar last Friday. Sorry for the last minute notice. This time I’m providing a 24 hours + notice so hopefully I won’t receive as much “feedback” as last time .

The free InfoPath 2007 webinar is going to be held on 8/26/2009 at 10am CDT. The webinar is titled: Create Powerful Electronic Forms using InfoPath 2007… No Code Required!

More information on the webinar is available here:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/242447105