Nov 30
SharePoint SharePoint 2010 No Comments
SharePoint-Videos.com is listed at SharePointReviews.com now. If the videos have been helpful to you in any way and you have a couple of minutes to spare, I would Love to see some comments out there. Thanks in advance!
Nov 29
Events SharePoint 2010 No Comments
I have written and been teaching the SharePoint Designer 2010 course with Critical Path Training for about 2 years now. The next one is coming up the week of Dec 5th in Dallas. If you are interested in joining me there, please use the code ‘HOLIDAY’ when checking out to save 20% off the price of the course. The week after (Dec 12th week), I’ll be teaching the same class in webcast format. You can use the same code to get 20% off the price for that as well. Hope to see you there!
Sep 16
General 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:
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!!
Sep 08
General 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
Aug 19
Events, SharePoint SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 No Comments
Register for this Free Q&A panel with SharePoint experts from SharePoint-Videos.com being held on Thursday, Aug 25, 2011 from 11:30am to 12:30pm Eastern time.
The focus of this Question and Answer session is to help You! Ever wish you could query a panel of SharePoint experts? Well, now is your chance! Submit an initial SharePoint question with registration and bring the balance of your questions to query our SharePoint experts at SharePoint-Videos.com. We’ll answer your questions and get you moving in the right direction. Just want to listen in? Not a problem. That’s perfectly alright as well.
When signing up for this session/webinar, we recommend that you use the ‘Questions and Comments’ field in the form below to provide us your question(s) in advance of the webinar.
The SharePoint panel is comprised of the following experts who encompass a wide range of SharePoint skills:
Richard Wixom
Eric Eaton
Russell Wright
Asif Rehmani
Read up on their background and expertise here:
http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/about/
Title: Q&A Panel with SharePoint Experts
Date: Thursday, August 25, 2011
Time: 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EDT
Audience: SharePoint End Users Power Users, Site Owners, Server Admins, Developers, Small Business Owners
Pre-requisites: None
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/442560409
Need Quick and Effective Remote Consulting by SharePoint Experts?
We provide hourly remote consulting to help you with your needs when You need it! You can read up on our services here:
http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/remote-consulting/
Contact Us to get started.
Aug 17
SharePoint SharePoint 2010 No Comments
SharePoint Adoption, End Users and Best Practices
SharePoint adoption has always been a Big challenge in many companies. We at SharePoint-Videos.com help mitigate this problem with our corporate licensing of video tutorials. Microsoft has launched a website called iusesharepoint.com to inspire everyday business users to do more with SharePoint by demonstrating how it can help make the work day just a little smoother.
You might have heard of the saying "Just because you Can do something, doesn’t mean you Should". Very true for how SharePoint functions. Check out the new Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint and learn how to keep your SharePoint Server 2010 environment available and performing well by following best practices based on real-world experience.
SharePoint related updates – for SharePoint Server Admins
Hopefully, your company has already installed the newest SharePoint updates by now. If not, Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download. Service Pack 1 includes stability, performance, and security enhancements that are a direct result of customer feedback. Also, the SP 1 provides the long awaited Site Recycle Bin (Finally!)
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=984
Right after installing SP1, you will want to install the June 2011 cumulative updates right away.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2011/06/30/april-2011-cu-for-sharepoint-2007-and-2010-has-been-released-on-tuesday.aspx
Information regarding Office 365
Don’t know what Office 365 is? Watch the 12 mins walkthrough of the Office 365 environment (no boring PowerPoint stuff here). Then read the introduction for Office 365 administrators http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/office365-enterprises/gg524291.aspx and check out the Office 365 online administration resource center.
Intrigued by what Office 365 has to offer and want to try it out yourself? You got it! Check out the 30 day trial for Office 365.
Upcoming Microsoft SharePoint Conferences
For United States – Microsoft SharePoint Conference on Oct 3 to 6, 2011 in Anaheim California. I’ll be presenting a couple of sessions at this conference as well and hope to see You there!
For Europe – European SharePoint Conference is being held in Berlin this year from Oct 17 to 20.
Aug 17
SharePoint Designer Office 365, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Online No Comments
The much anticipated Office 365 was finally made available at the end of June 2011. It provides a great turn-key solution for organizations to provide all sorts of services like messaging, collaboration, online conferencing and document management to their personnel at an amazingly low price. Take a quick tour around the Office 365 interfaces by watching this video.
The collaboration piece of the Office 365 pie is SharePoint Online. It’s basically SharePoint 2010 trimmed down to run ‘in the cloud’. Within your SharePoint Online environment, you can create multiple site collections for projects, departments, regions, business units or areas delegated for external sharing. A company’s SharePoint Online Administrator can delegate ownership of a site collection to a separate Site Collection Owner, who can then further create subsites and delegate ownership to a Site Owner. SharePoint Online is highly customizable and you can mold the environment to suit your needs as you see fit. Just like SharePoint 2010 on-premise, SharePoint Online is meant to be a platform on which to build business applications.
Customization Opportunities in SharePoint Online
Once you get a handle on what you have with SharePoint Online, the question becomes: How can I modify it/enhance it to suit my needs? That’s what I would like to address in this brief article.
The first level of customization is the kind of configuration you can achieve via the internet browser. Site owners and designers of a site can accomplish tasks such as creating subsites, managing site security, adding and customizing default Web Parts, creating and managing lists/libraries and more with ease. A lot can be done with the browser actually, but of course, you can only go so far with it. For example, if you wanted to get to and modify the underlying list and library forms or let’s say implement a multi-step approval process for documents in a document library, you’ll need to look beyond the browser. You’ll end up looking into creating solutions using either SharePoint Designer 2010 or programming them with Visual Studio 2010.
If you are a programmer and comfortable with code, you can use Visual Studio 2010 (VS 2010) to create custom applications that run on SharePoint Online. The following developer features form the foundation of developing for SharePoint Online:
SharePoint Online provides both server and client object models for developers. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 provides a range of specialized templates for creating sandboxed solutions that contain a variety of SharePoint items, such as site and list definitions, workflows, Web Parts, event receivers, and content types, to include in your SharePoint solutions. You can check out the SharePoint Online Developer Resource Center to discover more about solutions created using Visual Studio.
If you are not a programmer or even if you are, but want to understand all the things you can accomplish in SharePoint Online with SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD 2010) before jumping into code, continue reading. There is no way possible that I can list All of the customizations you can perform using SPD 2010, but the following information will give you a good idea of what’s available. You can pick up our SharePoint Designer 2010 book and be assured that most of the functionality explained in the book applies to SharePoint Online. Also, especially check out the related resources and video links listed in the paragraphs below to see for yourself the amazing things you can accomplish with this tool within the SharePoint Online space.
The Magic of SharePoint Designer 2010
With the release of Office 365, SharePoint Designer 2010 becomes more of an integral part of the SharePoint story. Why? Well, because almost all of your customizations in SharePoint Online will be at the site collection level – the space that SPD 2010 dominates!
The tasks you perform in SPD 2010 are generally referred to as customizations instead of development because tasks performed in SPD 2010 require you to edit SharePoint items declaratively, instead of using server side code. When you are using SPD 2010, you are going directly against the selected SharePoint Online site. This differs from SharePoint solution development in VS 2010, where you create and debug your solution on a local SharePoint installation, and then deploy the completed solution to the solution gallery in SharePoint Online.
Once you create a site collection using the SharePoint Online administrative interface, you are ready to crank up SPD 2010 and open the top level site of that site collection. Creating subsites and customizing metadata are very simple tasks to perform using SPD 2010. See for yourself how you can manage site components. Also, new in SPD 2010 is the ability to configure your SharePoint site security. The same functionality that will take you numerous clicks and lots of waiting to accomplish using the browser, you can perform easily using SPD 2010 in a matter of seconds. Especially if you are an admin of multiple SharePoint sites, this would be a most welcomed functionality.
Managing your site content types and metadata definitions (using mainly site columns) should be an integral activity for every site admin. Site columns and content types are declared at the site level, they work exactly the same within the SharePoint Online environment as they would with an on-premise installation. Generally, you would declare most site columns and content types at the top level site of your site collection in SharePoint Online so it would guarantee the availability of it throughout the site collection. Creating and editing site columns and content types for a site is simple enough to do in SPD 2010. If you want to see how it’s done, watch it in action here.
The core functionality of SharePoint sites is considered to be lists (and libraries which are essentially lists as well). All data is ultimately stored within a visible or hidden list or library. Using SPD 2010, you can make basic changes such as changing the name and description of the list, or edit the list columns (metadata) which is commonly one of the first things you need to attend to after creating a list. The content types attached to this list are also displayed in the Content Types section and can be managed directly from there. Customizations of list views and forms is key to really enhancing the functionality (and the look and feel) the way your organization needs it to be. You will find that there is a Lot more you can accomplish in this space using SPD 2010 compared to the browser. For example, watch how easy it is to create custom list form pages using SPD 2010.
One of the most robust and powerful features in SPD 2010 is the ability to create declarative sequential workflows. Sequential workflows are those that follow a prescribed path with a definite beginning and end with a set of conditions and actions. The workflow designer in SharePoint Designer 2010 lets you create three different types of workflows: List, Reusable and Site Workflows. All of them are available to use in their full capacity within SharePoint Online. If you have not seen the amazing possibilities of declarative workflows, I Highly recommend watching this demonstration of how you can model workflows in Visio, configure them in SharePoint Designer and then modify the workflow forms using InfoPath – all within a matter of minutes!
One of the most common requests that are received about customizing SharePoint sites is to change the look and feel of the site. You will at least want to change the logo, site colors and perhaps the font for the site – thus lightly designing and branding the site to match your corporate color scheme. You can also modify the look and feel of site pages using SPD 2010. It is all do-able in SharePoint Online with assistance from SPD 2010. If you are serious about branding your sites, pick up this book on branding SharePoint.
While working in the SharePoint Online environment, chances are that most of the times you will be utilizing the Team Site template to create your sites. In addition to the collaboration features, there also exists functionality in SharePoint called Web Content Management (WCM) – also known as the publishing infrastructure.
By enabling WCM features in a site, you can enable content authors to create and manage new page content in a consistent manner based upon the available page layouts. The functions that enable WCM in SharePoint are called publishing features. The designer of the page layout decides how to lay out the components on the page at design time using SPD 2010. Doing this controls the placement of content on a publishing page created by a contributor. Not only that, but the designer can also place restrictions on the type of content that can exist in every region of the page. For example, the designer can create a page layout which dictates that an image should be placed at the top right hand corner of the page and that a content region exists at the bottom left of the page which allows only plain text. Creating a page layout in SPD 2010 is a fairly complex, but a very powerful functionality.
Summing Up
Office 365 is targeted for all types of businesses. SharePoint Online within Office 365 starts a new chapter in SharePoint’s legacy. Now more than ever, it becomes a necessity to find out exactly how far you can take this product using the no-code customizations to quickly create business solutions. SharePoint Designer 2010 plays a major part in the customization story of SharePoint Online. It is essential that site owners, designers, power users and developers acquire a thorough understanding of what the right tools are to implement the necessary business experiences on SharePoint Online before they start building their solutions.
Jul 07
SharePoint 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:
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
Jun 30
SharePoint 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:
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:
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.
Jun 17
Events 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”
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