Asif's Blog

My Presentations at SharePoint Conference 2011

Aug 04

Asif RehmaniEvents Conferences, InfoPath 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 4 Comments

I’ll be presenting two sessions at SharePoint Conference 2011. Looking forward to seeing lots of old friends and acquaintances and making some new ones there . Here are my sessions:

Title

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

Abstract

Forms are used everywhere in SharePoint Online (Office 365) – 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. We offer a comprehensive InfoPath training 2010 instructional video curriculum on this topic.

Title

SharePoint Designer 2010- A Tool for End Users?

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.

Access Data from a variety of sources using SharePoint Designer 2010

Apr 05

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Designer Data View, SharePoint Designer 2010, Videos 2 Comments

One of the main things that many of us ‘SharePoint people’ are responsible for is to display and manipulate data on SharePoint pages, right? All sorts of data – not just data from within SharePoint such as List and Library data, but data from databases, through web services, xml files and all other sorts of places.

So how are you currently providing access to data to your end users? or I guess the better question to ask is ‘Are you the one doing this?’. Usually the answer is: ‘Our developers are taking care of it. It is not something that I do’. This answer will not work for very long. These types of tasks are soon to become a responsibility for many of us.

The Age of the Citizen Developer

I have been developing applications for many years now. However, I have not touched Visual Studio for quite a few years. How is that possible you ask… well, the term developer is not the same as it used to be when I used to actively program using Visual Studio back in 2005. This term is evolving to mean you build applications for consumption by other users either with programming or with other composition tools. There is a term that Gartner has come up with to describe the no-code developers like myself called ‘Citizen Developer’. Gartner claims that at least 25 percent of new business applications will be built by citizen developers by 2014. I believe it!

As far as developing on SharePoint is concerned, my tools of choice usually are SharePoint Designer and InfoPath. Both of these extremely powerful tools let you make robust solutions on top of SharePoint without writing a line of code! The focus of this short article is on working with SharePoint data and external data in SharePoint using SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD) so let me get right to it. In a separate article, I’ll talk about InfoPath’s inherent functionality to let you create and modify powerful electronic forms in SharePoint.

XSLT Web Parts in SharePoint 2010

There are two main web parts that let you display and manipulate data in SharePoint:

• XSLT List View Web Part (XLV)
• XSLT Data Form Web Part (DVWP)

The XLV lets you display data from lists and libraries while DVWP lets you show data from literally anywhere. The shortcoming (in my opinion) of DVWP is that there is no easy way to customize this web part in the browser and it can only be manipulated effectively using SPD 2010. While the XLV can be customized using the browser, the real power for this web part is also realized when manipulated using SPD.

These web parts work by consuming data in XML format and then letting us manipulate it by using XSLT. Sounds complicated? I assure you that it’s not. Everything is very visual in nature. All you are doing is customizing and configuring the web parts to make them behave the way you need them. It’s truly as simple as that once you get used to doing it. The results are extremely robust data driven solutions that you can present on any SharePoint page. The average developer accustomed to programming in a traditional development environment and unaware of these methods will think that you spent hours or days creating these solutions when in reality, it will only take you a few minutes once you are proficient at it.

Alright, enough talking. Let’s get to showing you some of these things to make you a believer too. There are two videos that I would recommend you check out right now to prove to yourself the power of XSLT web parts:

Create Custom List Form pages using SharePoint Designer 2010

Report on data from your Database using XSLT Data View web part

If these videos have intrigued your curiosity, I would suggest continuing your XSLT web part exploration using the following resources.

Additional SharePoint Designer XSLT Web Part Resources

There are a variety of scenarios that can be accomplished with XSLT web parts using SharePoint Designer 2010. The following links will provide you with the resources you need to continue your journey.

· Articles and Videos about Data Views at Office.com – http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/CH010373543.aspx

· Book – Beginning SharePoint Designer 2010 (Chapter

· Video Tutorials – SharePoint Designer – XSLT web part videos

Join Andrew Connell and me (Asif Rehmani) in Seattle for some SharePoint fun!

Dec 06

Asif RehmaniEvents SharePoint Designer 2010 2 Comments

AC and I will be teaching our classes adjacent to each other in Redmond, WA on Jan 31 to Feb 4. AC is a master in SharePoint development and recognized worldwide for his expertise and willingness to share his knowledge in all sorts of ways. My focus has been on SharePoint Designer for many years and I’ll be teaching the class that I wrote and have been teaching with Critical Path Training for almost a year now. You are free to mix and match and attend the portions of the classes that are most beneficial to you. Check out more information about this combined package.

Top 6 reasons for taking advantage of this training package:

• If you want to learn SharePoint development, AC is The Man to teach you!
• The SharePoint Designer 2010 class that I wrote and teach was the first ever SPD 2010 class in the world and is full of lots of examples of what you can do with that product.
• Students will receive a copy of Real World SharePoint 2010 book which AC and I both have contributed to.
• Students will receive a copy of SharePoint Designer 2010 book that I co-authored.
• You will receive the materials for both classes when you take advantage of this offer.
• You will have the opportunity to sit into both classes for the topics important to You!

Hope to see you there!

The SharePoint Designer 2010 Book with all the answers

Nov 03

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Designer SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

Well… hopefully all the answers . Our SharePoint Designer 2010 book went on sale a couple of days ago. It’s been awesome to work with Woody, Bryan and Marcy to write this book.

Only time will tell how good it does in the market. However, in my humble opinion, I think everyone who is using or planning to use SharePoint Designer 2010 should pick up a copy (and I’m honestly not saying this because 0.0001% of the book proceeds will come my way ).

Anyway, the chapters that I contributed to the book dealt with the following subjects:

• Workflows (fundamentals and advanced functionality – 2 chapters)
• XSLT List and Data Views
• InfoPath

Even though the book is called ‘Beginning’ SharePoint Designer 2010, it honestly is not only for beginners. If you are looking to start from scratch or you already have been using SPD 2007 or SPD 2010 for a while, either way it will help for sure! There is a lot of good content that we have all tried to put in this book. Some of it is not available anywhere else on the web (that I was able to find at least).

If you do happen to pick up a copy, I would like to request that if you get a chance, please write a review of it on Amazon. Appreciate it! Happy reading!

Free SharePoint Designer 2010 videos at Office.com

Oct 20

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Designer SharePoint Designer 2010, Videos 1 Comment

SharePoint-Videos.com has contributed 5 videos to the SharePoint Designer 2010 section at Office.com. You can watch them for free by clicking on the ‘Videos’ link at the SharePoint Designer help page here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/

There are 10 free videos on this page. The first 5 have been created by the SharePoint Designer team at Microsoft. The last 5 are contributed by SharePoint-Videos.com. Here are the topics for the last 5:

• Create Web Part connections using SharePoint Designer 2010
• Get to data using Web Services in SharePoint Designer 2010
• Configure site security using SharePoint Designer 2010
• Customize workflow forms using InfoPath 2010
• Publish globally reusable workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010

Presenting on 8/11/2010 at #BASPUG Boston SharePoint User Group

Aug 09

Asif RehmaniEvents SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

I’ll be presenting a SharePoint Designer Workflow session at the Boston SharePoint User Group this Wednesday evening (8/11/2010). Hoping to meet a lot of new people there.

http://www.bostonsharepointug.org/

SharePoint 2010 Fundamentals DVD released!

Jul 08

Asif RehmaniSharePoint InfoPath 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

The SharePoint 2010 Fundamentals DVD was released today. It’s packed with the core knowledge needed to start out successfully with SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint topics covered include:

• Creating SharePoint sites
• Customizing site structure
• Customizing navigation components
• Setting up site security
• Making use of the built in Lists
• Creating custom lists
• Understanding the document management options
• Understanding Site Columns and Content Types
• and more..

There is also now a complete DVD bundle available for SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and InfoPath 2010.

SharePoint Designer 2010 Online Course

May 17

Asif RehmaniEvents SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

I’ll be teaching the SharePoint Designer 2010 course again online next week. It’s a 5 day online course packed with info on SPD 2010. Hope you can join me. Check out this page for more info:

http://www.criticalpathtraining.com/Schedule/Pages/SharePoint2010SharePointDesigner-Webcast;May2010.aspx

SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Designer 2010 downloads

Apr 22

Asif RehmaniSharePoint SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

Are you ready? Well, I hope so… because the downloads are ready now. Download them, install them and Enjoy! Not much else to say about this

SharePoint Designer 2010:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=d88a1505-849b-4587-b854-a7054ee28d66

SharePoint Foundation:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595

Conditional Formatting of XSLT List View and Data View web parts

Apr 12

Asif RehmaniSharePoint Designer SharePoint Designer 2010 No Comments

In SharePoint Designer 2010, conditional formatting is one of those ‘got to know’ features that you should get familiar with. Back in SPD 2007, you could apply conditional formatting only to XSLT Data View web parts. However, now that all of the List View web parts are XSLT enabled, you can apply the same type of conditional criteria to format your data to any list or library view data. Not just formatting, but you can also conditionally show or hide your data. Want to see it in action? Watch the following video (available for free for a limited time):

Create List View pages with conditionally formatted data

update: this video is no longer available as a free video

This video shows how to conditionally format information in a List View page using the XSLT List View web part. The scenario starts off by importing information from a spreadsheet to make a list. Then a new List View page is created on the list which automatically comes with the XSLT List View web part showing the information in the list. Conditional Formatting is then used to highlight some content and also hide other content based on certain conditions.