July 2007 - Posts

Last Saturday's - Developing SharePoint Solutions and Office Business Applications (OBA) Using .Net

First I would like to thank all that attended the session last Saturday 28th of July at Microsoft CPT, and we will keep on bringing more sessions to reward you back for such great attendance and support.

Also many thanks go to SADeveloper Leads for organizing the event:  Angela (Please get better, I hope you get out of the hospital soon), Ernst and Hilton and the rest of the SA developer crew, you guys were great.

Thanks also go to our sponsors:

Microsoft (for the venue)

Business Connexion (food)

3fifteen (great prizes)

And last, but not least, my friend and colleague Schalk Van Wyk for co-presenting with me.

There were a lot of requests and questions around SharePoint and SharePoint Development in general that many of you have mailed to me over the period of past month and I've been very busy, so I never had time to put some of these responses on my blog (although I responded already, directly to your emails), I will do so slowly in the next couple of days.

Also, I apologise for my personal site http://www.zlatandzinic.com/ being currently offline. I've had issues for a while with the service provider, and I'm currently looking for a new one, as soon as it's up again, I'll let you know, and I'll use it more to post all this code/presentation stuff as well.

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Wiki and SharePoint 2007

If you have SharePoint 2007 Server running in your organization I really suggest that you should consider using Wikis. They're great fun once you start to get them going and it provides a knowledge bridge not only between peers and colleagues, but also between different departments, even organizations.

Once in SharePoint 2007, if you go to "Create a Site" you can choose to create a Wiki site under Collaboration templates. Once you give it a name and create (by clicking on "Create") voila! much like many other things in MOSS 2007 your Wiki site is created and ready to be used.  Once you're in your Wiki site look up "How to use this Wiki Site", fro comprehensive information on how to, in fact, use it.

Wikiwiki means quick in Hawaiian. A wiki site is a Web site in which users can easily edit any page. The site grows organically by linking existing pages together or by creating links to new pages. If a user finds a link to an uncreated page, he or she can follow the link and create the page.

Look at this promotional video that Microsoft released about Blogs Wikis and RSS in WSS 3.0, prior to releasing MOSS 2007, you can download it here.

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What really motivates us?

This is a very good article, funny and enjoyable, regarding what motivates programmers (or as I would like to say - developers).

The blog post raises some good points and a lot of people are joining in discussion, I also dropped in my 5 cents (more like 55 cents).

See it here:

http://blog.assembleron.com/2007/07/11/what-motivates-programmers/

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Interoperability with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Ever wanted to know more about Interoperability with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? This Microsoft TechNet article gives a good overview on the resources as well as valuable links to further resources you might require.

Learn more about the following concepts in MOSS2007:

Single Sign-on

Business Data Catalog

WSRP and iView business data Web Parts

IFilters for Search

Protocol handlers

Custom Development

BizTalk Server and Host Integration Server

Click on the link below:

Resources for Interoperability with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

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MOSS 2007 Recommended Books

I see now that I'm getting quite a lot of questions regarding the SharePoint 2007 Development books/resources.

I'm gonna copy/paste what I told Willie Roberts to pre-empt further copy pasting :)

Most of the books really suck, but these will help:

"Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System", from APRESS, authored by David Mann (ISBN: 978-1-59059-700-2).

http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470117567.html

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-SharePoint-2007-Development-Unleashed/dp/0672329034

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-SharePoint-Administrators-Companion/dp/0735622825/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/105-4189294-4809210

(Use the Administrator's one just for general knowledge around MOSS 2007).

I personally taught myself how to develop by either scouring the internet and blog sites for specific problems that I had with the WSS 3.0 Object Model or by directly asking my contacts at Microsoft (Services).

Please feel free to contact me should you have any specific queries.

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Developing SharePoint Solutions and Office Business Applications (OBA) Using .Net

I will be presenting at the following event. Come and join us!!!!!!! Official Invitation as follows:

Office Business Applications are a new breed of application that help businesses unlock the value of their line-of-business (LOB) systems and turn document-based business processes into real applications. OBAs leverage the client, server, services and technologies of the 2007 Microsoft Office system to solve business problems. Applications and documents can be extended to add enterprise-specific features, and LOB systems can be seamlessly integrated using SOA principles with the Microsoft Office system to make the LOB system much more accessible.

 

Full Event Details:

 

Date :    28th July  2007

Venue:  Microsoft Cape Town

Time :   9-00  for 9-30am   till 1pm

Audience : .Net Developers and Business Analysts

Speakers:            Zlatan Dzinic (http://dotnet.org.za/zlatan)

                                Schalk van Wyk

 

Agenda:

                9-00      Welcoming / Coffee

9-30      Session 1

10-30    Questions/Toilet Break

11-00    Brunch

11-45    Session 2

12:45    Closing

 

 

Please RSVP on the thread at http://sadeveloper.net/forums/thread/6095.aspx (preferably) or by mail. Please feel free to invite others, but SPACE IS LIMITED, SO PLEASE RSVP and please also let us know if this changes and you can no longer make it.

 

ALSO, PLEASE NOTE: Aside from this event, we've got a social coming up as well: Details are as follows:

 

Date :    18th July  2007

Venue:  Cubana, Greenpoint

Time :  After Dark ;)

 

So come along and let's kick back and talk tech, complain about bugs, bosses and clients.

Getting started with Event Handlers in Sharepoint 2007

Maybe you were tasked to provide certain functionality for your SharePoint 2007 instance? Maybe windows workflow foundation doesn't cut it? Or you just need a simpler solution?

Event Handlers might be an answer that you're looking for!

For those of you that don't know what an Event Handler is here's the Wikipedia Definition:

"In computer programming, an event handler is an asynchronous callback subroutine that handles inputs received in a program. Each event is a piece of application-level information from the underlying framework, typically the GUI toolkit. GUI events include key presses, mouse movement, action selections, and timers expiring. On a lower level, events can represent availability of new data for reading a file or network stream. Event handlers are a central concept in event-driven programming.

The events are created by the framework based on interpreting lower-level inputs, which may be lower-level events themselves. For example, mouse movements and clicks are interpreted as menu selections. The events initially originate from actions on the operating system level, such as interrupts generated by hardware devices, software interrupt instructions, or state changes in polling. On this level, interrupt handlers and signal handlers correspond to event handlers.

Created events are first processed by an event dispatcher within the framework. It typically manages the associations between events and event handlers, and may queue event handlers or events for later processing. Event dispatchers may call event handlers directly, or wait for events to be dequeued with information about the handler to be executed."

In case of dealing with WSS 3.0 Event Handlers all you need is the following:

1.            Brian Wilson's EventHandlerSolutionStarterKit, is a great template solution that you can use to build all your own event handlers, and is a must whether you're a n00b (beginner) or well experienced, well I still use it. Brian coupled his solution with the Sharepoint packaging solution from http://blog.thekid.me.uk so that you can build and deploy .wsp files straight away.

2.            Once you code your event handler you should then proceed to get (again Brian's) SPSCustomAdmin to make the deployment of your event handler far less painful that it should be.

3.            If you're still stuck on coding than maybe you should check out some common and simple coding tasks from Ishai Sagi.

4.            Remember that you're dealing with synchronous and asynchronous events. The ones that end with "ed" like Added are asynchronous and they happen after the event and the ones that end with "ing" Adding are synchronous and they happen when the event happens and should be a bit lighter on the resources (take this one from me).

5.            If you're dealing with synchronous events bear in mind this article, again from Ishai Sagi (follow the links for further explanation).

Make yourself very familiar with the WSS 3.0 Object Model and the world is your oyster when it comes to SharePoint Event Handlers.

This is all you need, but if you need any further help please don't hesitate to contact me.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD available free for download

Microsoft has released a VHD on 20 of July 2007 containing MOSS 2007 and MOSS Product Evaluation Guide which is configured to take you through the whole SharePoint 2007 experience.

You can download it here.

Posted by Zlatan | 4 comment(s)
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An article about the Evolution of MS Office

A good friend and a colleague (thanks Christiaan) sent me a link to this excellent article - Realizing the Integration Promise of Office 2007, which is actually an interview with Lee Nicholls, global solutions director at Getronics.

It basically explains how Microsoft's Office (business) offer now differs from the previous one and what the significance of it all is.

I personally love how he explains metaphorically that if you imagine business to be a solar system then SharePoint is the SUN with all the applications and content revolving around it.

One thing though is that I don't like his arrogant view of Gmail and Google and how he underestimates it.

People and companies offering SharePoint and Microsoft solutions should be more open minded when offering solutions to the client and looking into the future, and look past Microsoft technologies alone and Microsoft partners but rather identify industry visionaries and leaders. Only that will keep Microsoft as a market leader going into the future.

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