Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Firestarter Event in Waltham, MA.

November 23, 2010 Leave a comment

image

I was at a “User Group for User Groups” (VERY simplified version – more on that to come soon!), and found out from our local Microsoft Evangelists, Chris Bowen and Dan Stolts, that there are some great local Firestarter events. These are described, on the site, as “Heat up your skills with the all-new Firestarter event series. Each day tackles a single Microsoft technology, including free sessions presented live by Microsoft developer and IT pro evangelists and technology specialists – with special appearances from community luminaries. Attend in person, via live meeting or download the webcast at your convenience.”

I am always interested into attending and participating in any event around SharePoint, especially if they are local, so, I wanted to help spread the word about this particular one. There are Firestarter events for Azure, Windows 7, ASP.NET, Windows Phone 7, and Silverlight. Basically, all of the new good things that have come out from Microsoft recently.

So, head on over to http://www.msdnevents.com/firestarter/ for more information and to register. And, if you are not in the Boston Area, they are happening elsewhere too. If you are in the Boston area, well then maybe I will see you there! Oh, and it takes place on December 2nd at the Microsoft Waltham office.

Filed under Events, Microsoft Tagged with , , ,

Registration open for Boston Area SharePoint Users Group on 12/8/10

November 22, 2010 Leave a comment

BASPUG_100square_initialsRegistration is now open for the December 8th, 2010 meeting of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group, back again on our home turf at the Microsoft NERD center in Cambridge, MA.

 

PRESENTER

Our presenter for our next meeting Is Marc Anderson, President and Founder of Sympraxis Consulting. He will be presenting "Developing in SharePoint’s Middle Tier".

SESSION ABSTRACT

While most of the market focus in SharePoint development lies with .NET skills and techniques, there is a rich middle ground which has been rapidly gathering a following. Developing in the Middle Tier with SharePoint Designer, Data View Web Parts (DVWPs), jQuery, and the SharePoint Web Services using SPServices, you can build rich solutions with no risk of deploying managed code to your SharePoint servers. 

In this session, Marc will show examples of Middle Tier development techniques and answer your questions about when Middle Tier development may prove to be a highly viable alternative to traditional .NET development.

About Marc

Marc is the Co-Founder and President of Sympraxis Consulting LLC, located in the Boston suburb of Newton, Mass. He has more than 25 years of experience in technology, professional services, and software development. Marc is the developer of the jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (aka SPServices) and a faculty member at the USPJ Academy focused on Middle Tier Development with SharePoint. Read Marc’s blog at http://sympmarc.com.


MEETING SPONSOR
TBA

SUSTENANCE
Food and beverages will be provided at the event.

RAFFLE PRIZES

We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meeting for the following items.

LOCATION
We will be meeting at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, located in Cambridge, MA. For more information on the facility, as well as directions, please visit here: http://www.microsoftcambridge.com

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 Grace-Hunt, Eugene Rosenfeld of Black Blade Associates, Ryan Tacy of HP, and Talbott Crowell of Third Millenium.

Filed under BASPUG, Events Tagged with , , , ,

iPad – thoughts after a week of ownership…

November 18, 2010 Leave a comment

So, I did it. I was out to dinner with a great client of mine, and some friends from Rackspace, Jeff DeVerter (@jdeverter) and Matt Lathrop (@MatthewRAX), to talk some shop. After dinner, the plaza we were in had an Apple store, and I casually mentioned to Jeff as we were walking by, that I was seriously on the fence about getting an iPad. He then proceeded to tell me how much he loves it.

I was in need of a new Mac, since my mini died over a year ago, I needed something with a full-fledged Safari browser (on a Mac, the Windows port is not even close!) We then went in, and less than 20 minutes later, peppering the poor soul who just happened to talk to me that works there with hundreds of questions, I walked out with a 16GB 3G iPad. I might soon regret not going bigger, but, I’ll deal with that down the road.

Now, I am an Android fan, I’ve had a Motorola Droid since April, and I love it. But the iPad… wow, I love this thing. Sure, it’s a bit less “geek friendly”, as I really want to have access to more, but, the Exchange integration is great (Calendar and Contacts apps are a phenomenal UI design), I have DocsToGo, which I can rip through Excel sheets quickly on the road, use tech books via the Kindle app, and be able to read more than a sentence without scrolling the screen. The battery life is great, and I can tweet to my hearts content via TweetDeck.

I’ve also had a netbook for quite some time now, and, well, they’re cumbersome, somewhat cheaply built, but, great if you like to be able to have USB connections, etc., but, I’m not running any demo images on it any time soon. The iPad was the perfect replacement. I’ve actually been more productive since I got it (I was able to pull off the road, review estimates for a client that were legible – and I could see the entire sheet – a feat which cannot be done on an Android, iPhone, or anything of the sort, have a call about them, and get back on the road with the surprisingly reliable AT&T network), and without having to boot up a netbook to get this done.

I’ve also been working on some branding for a client, and simultaneously when I am on-site, be viewing it in IE and Firefox on my laptop, and checking my changes for compatibility in Safari on the iPad.

Another huge thing, is that I can log into SharePoint via Windows Authentication. Something that I cannot do on my Android, and something I need when on the road, since, after all, I am a SharePoint consultant.

I also do love the contextual keyboard layouts, which change from app to app, giving me colons and parenthesis when I am in the browser, and hiding them when I am not in the browser, replacing them with other frequently used keys.

All-in-all, I think it’s great. I’ve even attended a GoToMeeting presentation on it, and have RDP’ed with great resolution into a terminal server at the office to fix an issue.

So, with that, all I can say, is that I heart my iPad. And my son cannot get enough of the HD version of Angry Birds… but neither can I 🙂

Filed under Gadgets, General Tagged with

“All People” view in SharePoint 2010

November 11, 2010 13 Comments

One thing we have seemed to have lost is the “All People” link when managing users and groups from SharePoint 2007 in 2010, as shown below from a 2007 site.

image

However, in SharePoint 2010, this link does not exist… Have no fear however. If you have copy & paste skills, you can get back there. It still exists. Just copy the URL from your 2007 site

http://my2007site.sharepointyankee.com/_layouts/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0&FilterField1=ContentType&FilterValue1=Person

And drop the protocol, port, and host sections of the URL out, and use that with the protocol, host, and port of your 2010 site, and you are good to go.

http://my2010site.sharepointyankee.com/_layouts/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0&FilterField1=ContentType&FilterValue1=Person

Simple and easy way to get back to that view. Then just add this as a favorite, or, even better yet, create a CustomAction to add it into the toolbar, or site settings page in 2010.

Filed under SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

“Fab 40” Templates for SharePoint 2010

November 10, 2010 Leave a comment

While I have not tested these out as of yet, I did want to share the link I came across from the Bamboo Solutions SharePoint Daily. This is a current topic for me, as it came up in a discussion with a prospective client on Monday. Khalil @ TechSol has either re-created or converted 32 out of the “Fab 40” templates released by Microsoft for SharePoint 2007. Nice work!

http://techsolutions.net/Blog/tabid/65/EntryId/17/Fab-40-Templates-for-MOSS-2010.aspx

Filed under SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Using PowerShell (and SQL) to Copy Users from SharePoint 2007 to 2010

November 9, 2010 5 Comments

imagePowerShell is a neat tool. There. I said it. What, you already knew that? Oh well… I still think it’s cool. You may have guessed, that due to recent posts (and a few yet to be posted), focused around PowerShell, I’ve been using it quite a bit. Today’s post is on how to get users out of your 2007 environment, and into 2010, specifically around FBA users.

I’ve been working with a new client recently, and we are migrating a 2007 based internet site to a 2010 based internet site, which has lots of FBA users. Now, I will not name the tool directly, but, with a certain migration tool, I spent the past week jumping through a lot of hoops to migrate the users over to 2010. A LOT of hoops. And no matter what we attempted to do, we just couldn’t get the users populated into the new 2010 site.

So, I rolled up my sleeves today and managed to complete the task in a short while… here’s what I did.

First, on the 2007 server, let’s call it SQL07.company.com, I went into SQL, and performed the following query to get the list of site collections within the content database of the web application in question. Luckily, there was only one site collection, so there was not much of a list here, but, I did need to get the GUID of the site collection, so, I did this:

image

Now that I had the site collection GUID, it was time to extract the users so we could add them to our 2010 server, which was some simple SQL code to build up the strings necessary. Now, I could have written more complex code, but, this just needed to get done (the select query is wrapped to display it all here).

   1: SELECT 'New-SPUser -UserAlias "' 

   2:     + REPLACE(tp_Login, 'acaspnetsqlmembershipprovider:', 'i:0#.f|sql-membershipprovider|') 

   3:     + '" -Web http://internet -DisplayName "' 

   4:     + tp_Title + '" -Email "' 

   5:     + tp_Email + '"'

   6: FROM UserInfo 

   7: WHERE tp_SiteID = 'CB14D956-9DE3-4A32-BD0A-155E93A663AA'

   8: AND tp_Login LIKE 'acaspnetsqlmembershipprovider%'

More information on the New-SPUser cmdlet in SharePoint 2010 can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607868.aspx

And I switched the results view to Text in the query window in SQL, copied and pasted that into a text file, with a .ps1 extension, and called it from my SharePoint 2010 Administration Console (PowerShell), and off went the quick addition of thousands of FBA users into our new environment!

Now, what you will see here is a simple replace mechanism as well, for swapping all acaspnetsqlmembershipprovider: prefixed FBA users, to the new claims based format in 2010, i:0#.f|sql-membershipprovider|. The AND clause in the above SQL statement also only searches for FBA users, and not users out of the AD domain.

If you need to figure out what your prefix should be, add an FBA user to your site, and have a look at their profile page, it should list a funky username, that looks like the above: i:0#.f|membershipprovidername|.

Simple. Easy. And extremely effective.

Filed under PowerShell, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Errors when writing applications for SharePoint 2010

November 7, 2010 Leave a comment

So, you’ve opened Visual Studio 2010, say, for instance, a console application to start pecking away at writing some simple application via the API. Nothing major, maybe in fact you are just re-using code from 2007 you’ve written, but, you just want to play with the API, after you’ve finished drooling over the new UI. Great! So, you’ve written your code, you press F5 to debug run your program, and [insert failure sound from The Price is Right here] – you get an error. The error makes no sense? FileNotFoundException? You’re using the IW image from Microsoft. You know for a fact the site exists – its open in your browser on your other monitor?! And more importantly, you know this code words. You’ve muttered it out from your fingertips hundreds of times (or, have it pasted in through a code snippet – why re-invent the SPRequest object reference wheel?)

image

No need to worry – after you’ve no doubt put your hand through your nice looking but poorly made substitute-for-a-punching-bag IKEA Imon desk (its ok, they’re made that way so you don’t injure yourself! A few layers of wood putty will fix it up even better than before. Now your desk looks more “arty”. You’re hip now!), it is a simple fix. A console application by default in VS 2010 sets the platform target as x86. Not x64, not Any CPU, but x86. Which will NOT work with the 64-bit only SharePoint 2010. Set this back to Any CPU, or x64 if needed, and hit F5 again.

image

Now your cookin’ with gas! Simple, eh? A quick helpful hint – the Community Kit for SharePoint: Development Tools (CKS:DEV) project contains a project type called “SharePoint Console Application”, which sets all of this up for you, right off the bat.

Filed under SharePoint 2010, Visual Studio 2010 Tagged with , , ,

SharePoint Saturday Boston #3 Webinar Series Recordings

November 7, 2010 Leave a comment

altGood evening! We announced this on Friday during Richard Harbridge’s webinar on Friday, and I also wanted to push this out here. We have been recording the webinar series, and are now posting the recorded videos of the presentations by our great presenters, at the SharePoint Saturday Boston webinar series page here: http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/boston/Pages/SPSBos3WebinarSeries.aspx

Within a week after each session, barring any unforeseen obstacles (acts of god, clients, etc.), I will get these up and posted for everyone.

Please, also, let us know what you think of the webinar series! Either in my blog here, via e-mail at SPSBoston@live.com, or, on Twitter – use hashtag #SPSBos or tweet us directly @SPSBoston

Thank you!

Filed under Events, SharePoint Saturday Tagged with , , , , ,

Remote Desktop Connection Manager

November 3, 2010 Leave a comment

imageIf you are not aware of this, and you are consistently connecting from server to server to server to server to server to server… (you get the point). Well then, consider this making you aware of it, as before today, I had completely forgotten about it entirely!

I was aware of its existence, and, I apparently even had it installed already today, when I downloaded it and went to install it again, as it asked me to repair or remove it. What is it? Well, think of it as RDP, but, with a sprinkling of awesome.

The description from Microsoft: “RDCMan manages multiple remote desktop connections. It is useful for managing server labs where you need regular access to each machine such as automated checkin systems and data centers. It is similar to the built-in MMC Remote Desktops snap-in, but more flexible.”

Where to download it: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4603c621-6de7-4ccb-9f51-d53dc7e48047

A screenshot from the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog

And their great blog post about it: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/06/11/455115.aspx

This blog entry image at the top with the “Double Facepalm”, not only from FunnyMotivationalPosters.info, but, discovered and brought to my attention by none other than Mark Rackley, who implanted this in our ‘Just Freakin’ Work! Overcoming Hurdles and Avoiding Pain’ session we co-present on. Thanks Mark – works perfect to convey my sentiments today about this…

Filed under General Tagged with , , , ,

Listing all available PowerShell commands in SharePoint 2010

November 3, 2010 7 Comments

Wanted to share this with my handful of readers, as it is a reference I use often, and also what comes back first in a search. The following blog has two commands for listing out all SharePoint-related PowerShell commands in 2010. In an effort not to steal his thunder, I’ll just post the link here so you can go get those commands.

http://sptwentyten.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/list-all-sharepoint-2010-powershell-commands/

Filed under PowerShell, SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →