Session Abstract

In enterprise application deployments to SharePoint, there are generally farms, or web applications that host specific applications for specific groups, rather than having just an all-in-one deployment. Often times, you do not have access to these other environments, and will need to pass the deployment baton off to the system administrators of those farms.

This session will walk you through how you can deploy your applications, without needing to have the administrator who will be deploying the application, have to do much more than type a few keys into the SharePoint Administration Console and press enter – and having full configuration and deployment of your custom SharePoint applications to other environments.

Meeting Location

Eaton Richmond Center, Room 122 at Daniel Webster College, Nashua, NH

Meeting Time

6P – 8P

Meeting Registration

Click here to register: http://granitestatesharepoint.eventbrite.com/?ref=ebtn

User Group Information

For more information on the Granite State SharePoint Users Group, visit them at: http://www.granitestatesharepoint.org

Hope to see you there!

Information on the event and the sessions I will be presenting is below. I hope to see you there! San Francisco is a beautiful place, and I cannot wait to get back down (and over… diagonally really) there.

Event Description

SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference – is the largest independent SharePoint conference in the world – for IT professionals, business managers, analysts, and developers. Choose from more than 90 Classes and Workshops!!! Learn from the brightest minds in the SharePoint universe – more than 40 Expert Speakers and Microsoft MVPs! There’s a shortage of SharePoint experts! Develop your skills, and improve your own professional standing! "I would recommend SPTechCon to SharePoint admins and developers. By far the best Tech Event I have attended." Venki Oruganti , Software Developer – Pitney Bowes

Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010

Monday, March 4 – 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM

Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities, and this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010.
We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world and discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy. We will also walk through configuring Forms-Based Authentication, Claims-Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 to authenticate and manage our external users. Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.

Level: Advanced
Topic Area: IT Pro Essentials

Automating Your Enterprise Application Deployments With PowerShell

Tuesday, March 5 – 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM

In enterprise application deployments to SharePoint, there are generally farms or Web applications that host specific applications for specific groups, rather than having just an all-in-one deployment. Oftentimes, you do not have access to these other environments, and will need to pass the deployment baton off to the system administrators of those farms.
This class will walk you through how you can deploy your applications—without needing to have the administrator who will be deploying the application—have to do much more than type a few keys into the SharePoint Administration Console and press enter, and having full configuration and deployment of your custom SharePoint applications to other environments.

Level: Advanced
Topic Area: IT Pro Essentials

I have the honor of speaking at the SharePoint group with by far the best acronym, SPUGME. Makes me wish I put more effort into the BASPUG acronym!

I will be up there on December 11, 2012, and presenting The Ribbon UI and Custom Actions in SharePoint 2010.

I am excited to speak at this (fairly new) group, and, to meet some more of the New England SharePoint Community.

For more information on the group, and, for the event itself, please visit: http://www.sharepointmaine.com

Jason Himmelstein will be presenting "ITPro’s taking the SharePoint 2013 Red Pill"

Session Abstract

With every new version of SharePoint come changes that either rock our world or make us scratch our heads and say "WHAT THE WHAT?!?"

If you are bold enough to want to adventure past the surface and are ready for the good, the bad, the great & the somewhat scary, join us as we deep dive into the rabbit hole of ITPro changes that are coming with SharePoint 2013.

Come on this journey as we:

• explore changes to the service applications (including search)
• what is new for visual upgrade
• how SQL 2012 changes the storage scenario
• take a look at the maturity of the Office Web Apps
• examine how the new App Model will impact us
• discuss the new workflow model
• discuss what the "Claims First" model is going to do to our world.

By the end of this session you should be as excited for SharePoint 2013, but as to keep in mind twisted take on what Morpheus said: "Unfortunately, no one can just be told what the SharePoint 2013 is. You have to see it for yourself."​

About the Speaker

​Jason Himmelstein, MCTS, MCITP, is the SharePoint Practice Director for Sentri, Inc. and has been working with Microsoft Server technologies since 1998 when he was supporting Motorola in Austin, TX.​ He went to work for the University of Texas for 5 years where he developed expertise in Active Directory and Exchange. He left UT to go on the road doing work for Dell in a partnership with Microsoft doing architecture, design and implementation of Active Directory and Exchange. He started working with SharePoint in 2007 as an Enterprise Architect for Raytheon Company.

DATE

Wednesday Nov 28, 2012.

TIME

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM.

LOCATION

Robert Half Technology
125 High Street, 20th Floor
Boston, MA 02110

Photo ID and registration are required!!

MEETING SPONSOR – K2

​K2® offers three software products to help you increase business efficiency and simplify work. K2′s visual tools allow people of various technical and non-technical backgrounds to create applications that automate processes and streamline operations. And when something in the business changes, modifying the applications to keep up is easy.

K2 tools are built on Microsoft technology and because K2 users actually complete work in the Microsoft programs they already know — like SharePoint and Visual Studio — little training is required and user buy-in is quick. In fact, K2 provides more Microsoft integration points than any other software product in the space.

SUSTENANCE

​Food and beverages will be provided at the meeting free of charge from our meeting sponsor.

RAFFLE PRIZES

​We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.

• Black Blade Associates will be raffling off a license, valued at $2000 for their Workspaces Anywhere for SharePoint product.
• Lightning Tools will also be raffling off a license for their BCS MetaMan (or other) product
• We also have books and more!

Joining some friends and some new faces on the list, I am honored to be on it!

Basically, using 3 lines of PowerShell (which can be turned really into one if needed), to extract a SharePoint Solution Package (WSP) from the Farm Solutions collection.

From his post:

$farm = Get-SPFarm

$file = $farm.Solutions.Item("extendeddiagnosticproviders.wsp").SolutionFile

$file.SaveAs("c:\temp\extendeddiagnosticproviders.wsp")

As awesome as it is easy.

Here is the information on tonight’s meeting:

Speaker: Talbott Crowell, Microsoft MVP

Bio:

Talbott Crowell, a Microsoft MVP, is a partner and founder of Third Millennium, Inc. (ThirdM), a custom software solution provider and a Microsoft Partner. Talbott has worked with many companies large and small to help leverage technology to solve their business problems. Talbott is a frequent speaker on Microsoft technologies including SharePoint, PowerShell, F#, and C# development and is the co-founder of two Boston user groups: The New England F# User Group (FSUG) and the Boston Area SharePoint User Group (BASPUG). Talbott and ThirdM hosted every SharePoint Saturday Boston (SPS Boston) since it was first launched 2009.

Talk:

PowerShell and SharePoint, the Dynamic Duo

PowerShell is a powerful scripting environment and language for developers and administrators. SharePoint 2010 has built in PowerShell administration commandlets, but you can use this powerful scripting language with any version of SharePoint. Using PowerShell, Talbott will demonstrate how you can build and deploy SharePoint sites for development, testing, proof of concepts, and production. Using an agile methodology, you will learn how to leverage PowerShell scripts for your planning and development process.

Location Directions

Location: Providence College Moore Hall Room 1

Directions to campus are available here: http://www.providence.edu/visit/maps/Pages/default.aspx.
Moore Hall is #16 on the map. Please enter via the Huxley Avenue gate, you will be directed to visitor parking next to that gate. Moore hall is a short walk up the street to your right, and then your first left after the Dominican Cemetery. Moore hall is the first building on the left. If you have any questions or problems getting to campus, please contact Dan Demmons at 401-865-1755.

Food

Pizza and soda will be served.

SharePint (After the Meeting)

There will be a sponsored SharePint after the RISPUG meeting (location TBD).

For more information and to register, visit: http://www.meetup.com/RISPUG/

PRESENTER
The presenter for our next meeting is Christian Buckley, a SharePoint MVP and Director of Product Evangelism for Axceler. He will be presenting "Building End User Productivity into your SharePoint Planning".

Session Abstract
SharePoint Myth #1 is that out of the box will give you everything your teams need to be productive. SharePoint Myth #2 is that you need to customize to make your teams productive. But how can this be? While these things may sound mutually exclusive, the real problem is your approach to solving your business problems. Far too many SharePoint plans begin with a specific outcome in mind (deploy SharePoint) rather than a clear picture of the business problems to be solved. When you understand the business problems, you can begin to plan out your solutions. This session will outline some of the leading productivity solutions in SharePoint 2010 (with a peek into 2013) and cover some planning best practices to help your team get more out of SharePoint – more quickly.

About Christian
Christian Buckley is Director of Product Evangelism for Axceler, where he drives partner and community development. Christian previously worked at Microsoft as a Senior Program Manager on the enterprise hosted SharePoint platform team (now part of BPOS), and also managed an engineering team in advertising operations. Prior to Microsoft, Christian was managing director of a regional consulting firm in the San Francisco East Bay, participated in several startups, and worked with IBM, HP, Cisco, Matsushita, Solectron, Seagate and other large hi-tech and manufacturing firms to deploy collaboration and supply chain solutions. He is co-author of three books on IBM Rational Software configuration management and defect tracking solutions, and can be found online at www.buckleyplanet.net and www.twitter.com/buckleyplanet

MEETING SPONSOR – K2
K2® offers three software products to help you increase business efficiency and simplify work. K2′s visual tools allow people of various technical and non-technical backgrounds to create applications that automate processes and streamline operations. And when something in the business changes, modifying the applications to keep up is easy.

K2 tools are built on Microsoft technology and because K2 users actually complete work in the Microsoft programs they already know — like SharePoint and Visual Studio — little training is required and user buy-in is quick. In fact, K2 provides more Microsoft integration points than any other software product in the space.

SUSTENANCE
Food and beverages will be provided at the event. Pizza generally arrives 15 minutes before the start of the meeting.

RAFFLE PRIZES
We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.

• Black Blade Associates will be raffling off a license, valued at $2000 for their SharePoint Zip product.

• Lightning Tools will also be raffling off a license for their BCS MetaMan (or other) product

• We also have books and more!

LOCATION
We will be meeting at the Microsoft New England Research and Development center at One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA.

LINKED IN
Join our group on LinkedIn today to connect with the rest of the BASPUG members, and spread the word!

FACEBOOK
We are also on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Boston-Area-SharePoint-User-Group/113652405354617

TWITTER
Follow news about the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group on twitter by following us @BASPUG, and by using the hashtag #BASPUG

WEB
Visit the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group website at http://www.bostonsharepointug.org

ORGANIZERS
Event meetings are organized by Geoff Varosky of Jornata, Eugene Rosenfeld of Black Blade Associates, Dan Diachenko of Baufest, and Talbott Crowell of Third Millenium

The​ Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (BASPUG) was founded to bring together like minds to network and share their experiences, triumphs, and tribulations around Microsoft SharePoint, to provide a community platform for Boston area SharePoint users, administrators, developers, architects, of all experience levels, even brand new to SharePoint, to share their knowledge with the community. We meet on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at either the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA, or at the Microsoft office in Waltham on Jones Road.

Meeting Information

ABSTRACT

The SharePoint Technology Conference is back in town, and we will once again be co-hosting our meeting with them and the Granite State SharePoint Users Group at the conference.

This process involves two registrations – one here through EventBrite so that we can track how many people are planning to attend, as well as registration with SPTechCon.

To be able to attend, you MUST register through the SPTechCon site here:
https://www.cvent.com/events/sptechcon-boston-2012/registration-814c3acf95db4758b4b7fd5d51734b1a.aspx

And you must select EXHIBIT HALL ADMISSION ONLY through that link. This will be a free registration. If you do not do this, the SPTechCon staff WILL turn you away.

PRESENTERS

We will have a panel of speakers on general SharePoint topics. We will update the list on our site as the event draws closer.

MEETING SPONSOR – The SharePoint Technology Conference (SPTechCon) www.sptechcon.com

The SharePoint Technology Conference, July 22-25 in Boston, is the world’s premier independent event for Microsoft Office SharePoint. The format includes 90+ technical classes, workshops and breakout classes with content geared to IT professionals, business managers and developers. It features top Microsoft MVPs, dozens of expert MS speakers and solutions from 50+ exhibitors (exhibits admission is FREE!). Boston SPUG members and newsletter subscribers can receive a $200 discount off either the 4-day or 3-day pass by inserting the code SPUG when prompted on the eRegistration page linked from www.sptechcon.com.

SUSTENANCE

Join the conference at 5:15PM on July 24th for free food and drinks at the SPTechCon attendee exhibit reception.

MEETING TIME

The BASPUG panel will be from 7PM to 9PM in the Staffordshire room.

RAFFLE PRIZES

We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.

• Black Blade Associates will be raffling off a license, valued at $2000 for their SharePoint Zip product.

• Lightning Tools will also be raffling off a license for their BCS MetaMan (or other) product.

• We also have books, T-Shirts, and more!

LOCATION

We will be meeting at the The Westin Copley Place Hotel, located at 10 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA. For more information on the facility, as well as directions, please visit here: http://www.sptechcon.com/Boston2012/hotelandtravel.html

LINKED IN

Join our group on LinkedIn today to connect with the rest of the BASPUG members, and spread the word!

FACEBOOK

We are also on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Boston-Area-SharePoint-User-Group/113652405354617

TWITTER

Follow news about the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group on twitter by following us @BASPUG, and by using the hashtag #BASPUG

WEB

Visit the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group website at http://www.bostonsharepointug.org

ORGANIZERS

Event meetings are organized by Geoff Varosky of Jornata, Eugene Rosenfeld of Black Blade Associates, Talbott Crowell of Third Millenium, and Dan Diachenko of Baufest.

First things first – SharePoint went Metro. Sure it is not all tiles, but the theme definitely went that direction. The CA quick launch menu and action groups are exactly the same as SharePoint 2010 – so no new big changes there.

The Ribbon got a minor cosmetic facelift, with fancy drop-in and out effects, but, not too much different there as well.

Some bigger changes however right off the bat… are the links and new icons available in the upper-right hand corner.

Newsfeed

The Newsfeed takes you to your profile page newsfeed. SharePoint 2013 definitely has a lot more “social” functionality to it, such as following people, sites, documents, and tags.

SkyDrive

The SkyDrive link, basically is your documents from your My Site. My guess here is that this can be synced to a Windows Live SkyDrive, because they are using the same naming convention.

One thing to note however… is the ability to drag files right onto the UI, without needing to any additional work. I see that has a huge timesaver, and painkiller for a lot of users.

When you drag a file in, it brings up a drop-zone which you can easily add files to the library:

What would SharePoint be without an error though?

Much prettier than the BIG BLANK WHITE SCREEN OF ERROR in SharePoint 2010, and definitely better than 2007.

Welcome Menu

Next is the welcome menu… blah blah blah…

what I find more interesting is what comes next.

The settings wheel/cog thingy

Edit Page – simple and easy enough. Does not appear much has changed there.

Add an app -  great! We now have apps… in SharePoint. Yay.

View Site Contents and Site Settings – Finally, they have been able to simplify the menus down to 1! Only took a few versions of the product for this to happen! Those are exactly what they were in 2010. Except for this… that nice grid view we had in 2010, 2007, 2003… is now… tiles.

Not that psyched about it. I loved the breakdown by list/library type. Now they are all just different “apps”.

Clicking on Add an app (great icon, I am puzzled too why they went with “apps” – oh right! buzzword! Worked for that company that is the name of a tasty fruit….)

Give you a long list of tiles again… I liked where Microsoft went with the Silverlight controls in 2010 for adding lists/libraries, searching, filtering… but, am not impressed by the tile view… makes creating lists and libraries more difficult and less user friendly IMHO… but that’s just me.

and once we are in there… I noticed one other thing… The SharePoint Store!

Seems they need to work on this… could just be the preview, or the preconfigured image I am using… but, it appears broken, but, there is a 2010 logo on there

Senor Smiley

The smiley face, that’s for sending feedback on the beta. I plan to use that. a lot.

Sharing is caring, and also a headache for administrators

Our next icon to poke at is the Share icon. This allows you to invite people to content, sites, etc. Now. This is a good thing – allows you to easily share content with others. This is also a bad thing. I am guessing you (hopefully – oh please god say its so) need proper permissions to give access… and if that is the case, that is great. But, if not, and anyone with contribute permissions can invite everyone to everything – permission management will become a nightmare. We’ll see how that pans out…

Focus Danielson… Focus

This hides the quick launch. ‘Nuff said.

Until next time… when I get a chance to show off some more stuff….