7 Techniques for Customizing SharePoint 2010
Another of my articles is currently being featured on SharePointBriefing.com. The article (titled "7 Techniques for Customzing SharePoint 2010") explains at a high level some of the more popular techniques for customizing SharePoint 2010.
Articles Featured on SharePointBriefing.com
Around the middle of 2010, I decided it was the right time to take the next step in expanding one of my favorite passions: writing. My family is tired of hearing the story about how I always thought I would be a journalist when I grew up, but ultimately decided to go into technology. Little did I know then that one day the Web would allow me to do both! I have been blogging for a few years now and I still very much enjoy it. Late last year I contributed to some SharePoint learning resources -- an invaluable experience where I got to meet some great people and learn more about writing from a gifted publisher. Early this year I started contributing to SharePointBriefing.com. Tonight as I checked out the home page, I was excited to learn that my three of my SharePoint 2010 articles are featured 1, 2, and 3 on the five feature caurosel on the home page. What an honor!
Of course, work comes first. My SharePoint and .NET development projects are keeping me more than busy, but as time allows I will continue to follow my passion for writing and sharing with others. Hopefully soon you will see some of my work show up in some additional SharePoint publications -- one in particular I will be especially proud of. Stay tuned...
Thoughts on the Cloud
Tonight I jokingly tweeted a prediction for the future of cloud computing:
It will happen. They should call it “Funnel Cloud”…since it brings all your cloud stuff together into one place. Never mind. I was contemplating the notion that things could definitely get out of control with all this cloud stuff. There are so many services available already, and so many more in the works. I can imagine scenarios down the road, in large organizations, where one department may have apps and data hosted at one provider while another department uses another provider and so on. You think governance is painstaking on your intranet? Imagine governance in the cloud? Thank goodness the internet just ran out of IP addresses, right? Just kidding.
So what is this cloud stuff? The cloud has gone mainstream. It is no longer a question of “will it happen?” or “when will it happen?” It has happened…and without my permission. Several weeks ago I would have told you “it will never fly.” Now I’m amazed at the possibilities. Although some pretty large enterprises are partaking in the cloud, I think its greatest potential still lies with the small businesses. In fact, it is a great equalizer that way. Small businesses can run the software they need to operate without having to invest in the infrastructure to do so.
It’s exciting to read about Azure, Amazon Web Services, Office365, etc. I’m particularly excited for software developers and the opportunities that the cloud presents to us. Of course, most of all, I’m excited about what it means for SharePoint. There are some great SharePoint hosts around already. With Office365, SharePoint will become more mainstream (it’s been a household name at the Wilson residence for about 6 years now). So I’ve been focusing a lot on Sandboxed Solutions and will continue to do so. It’s also a good time to jump more into Silverlight and buy a WP7 phone. It’s going to be an exciting turn of events.
I recently got a new follower on Twitter: @CloudShare. Hadn’t heard of them beforehand, but after looking just briefly at their site I am definitely intrigued. What cloud services are intriguing to you? What impact will the cloud have on your business? And what will it take for you to decide to do more business in the cloud?
Year-Round SharePoint at Vincennes University
I often say that I have the two best jobs imaginable. By day, I am a software consultant for an employee-owned Microsoft Gold Partner. I cannot imagine working for a better company or having better clients. By night, I am an adjunct instructor for Vincennes University – Indiana’s “First College.” I find my instructor job to be fulfilling as well. When I think of the impact my college instructors had on my early career development, it makes me want to impact future generations in the same way.
My two favorite courses to teach at VU have been Systems Analysis and Design, and Portals and Collaboration. In Portals and Collaboration each Fall semester, we explore content management, workflow, search, collaboration and search engine optimization using SharePoint as a basis. In the Fall of 2010, the students each built a fictitious company Web site on SharePoint 2010, complete with an employee intranet. The focus of the intranet was a Human Resources Department portal – including document management, forms and approval workflows. For the text, we use a study guide and labs I developed based on my own experience with SharePoint over the last few years. If the right textbook surfaces, I will happily adopt it.
In the upcoming 2011 Spring semester, I will be teaching the Systems Analysis and Design course. Typically, in this course the students design and develop a business system using the programming language of their choice. The requirements document must include a database design, screen mockups and other documentation such as sequence diagrams, use case diagrams or ERDs. Some choose to write a Web-based application while others prefer to stick with a Windows application. This semester I am going to mix it up a bit and require both. While I will still require the students to develop a managed client application against a relational database, they will also work with content from their SharePoint portals via the REST API or the Client Object Model. In my opinion, the more a student can learn about SharePoint the better. This will give them year-round exposure the fastest-selling product in the history of Microsoft (at least before Kinect, right?).
How about you? Do you teach SharePoint courses at an accredited university? Leave a comment and tell me about it (textbook, topics covered, student testimonials).
Bypassing the SharePoint Dialog on Form Views
One of the great new features of SharePoint 2010 is the Dialog Framework. I like how the modal dialog appears when uploading a document to a document library, displaying an error message from an event handler, and so on. Sometimes, however, the forms can be a little busy and you may prefer to see your add or edit forms in “full screen.” Take the Task List below, for example.
There is a lesser known setting in the list settings that will take care of this for you. When looking at your list, go to List Settings –> Advanced Settings. At the very bottom of the page, the last settings is Dialogs.
Change the Launch forms in a dialog? setting to No. Now when you add a new item to the Task List, the add form will be displayed in the primary browser window rather than in a dialog.
2010: A Year of Foundations
I decided I was not going to recap 2010 in a blog post, but I changed my mind. This has been a very, very active year for me. It all happened fast, and I think the fruits of it are yet to come. That is why I say it was a year of foundations -- on many levels.
Professionally
I got a little more out of my comfort zone this year. I started the year out speaking at a SharePoint Saturday event in Indianapolis. It was by far the largest professional group I have spoken to until then. Although I have played guitar for and spoken to much larger congregations, this made me a little more nervous. It was an unfamiliar audience with a very broad degree of experience. In August, the jitters went to a whole new level when I spoke to a breakout audience more than twice the size at devLINK (with a major head cold) immediately following Tim Huckaby's keynote address. In addition to getting more comfortable with speaking to larger professional audiences, I gained some great experience in how to prepare presentations and engage audiences.
In the second quarter of 2010, I was awarded the INETA Community Champions award for my work in the Microsoft community. My focus is on SharePoint, but I work with other products as well. My community work this year included leading the Evansville SharePoint Users Group, hosting a local SharePoint 2010 launch, speaking to other user groups in the mid-west, and speaking at the two regional conferences listed above. Online I was active in the Microsoft TechNet forums and the SharePoint Overflow forums. I taught classes, beta tested products, beta tested exams, earned new certifications, and even did a little writing (which you will learn more about in the future).
Our company grew. Our clients (the best clients in the world) seemed to have a productive year. We reaped a lot of fruit from our hard work, but again, I think most of the fruit remains to be seen. Much of 2010 was laying the foundation for great things in 2011. I'm looking forward to a great year professionally -- more stretching and getting out of the comfort zone.
Personally
Personally, I could go on for days. I love my family. My wife is a rock -- one of the pretty kinds. Karen is such a hard-worker and so supportive of her family. My kids are starting to come to their own. Jaelyn is on the student council and got some great roles at the community theatre. She started playing tennis in addition to soccer and has taken a real liking to it -- she'll be a force to be reckoned with. She still has one of the most beautiful voices I've heard, and she never misses a beat on the piano while she's singing. Jenna made the cheerleading squad and is having a blast with it. She's a power forward on her school's basketball team and plays on a great traveling team. She loves hanging out with her friends and enjoying a good laugh. I don't think I've ever seen a kid catch on to things so quickly -- from technology to board games to sports. She even caught on to math a little better this year. I've much to be proud of as a husband and father. We had a couple of great road trips -- hiking at Shawnee and kicking back at Cedar Point, Marblehead and the Kalahari in northern Ohio.
I started playing guitar again after a several month hiatus. I play frequently with a group of great musicians at Bethel Memorial Church in Princeton. I organized and coached our community's first girls junior high tennis team. It was a foundational year there, too. Many of our girls learned to play tennis for the first time, and next year they'll be very competitive. I started coaching basketball at the grade school again -- this time as assistant for a good friend. I love working with the fifth graders and seeing how much better they are at the end of the season compared to when they started. In addition to the above, I somehow became president of the Junior Titan Soccer Club. I'm honored to do it. There are big shoes to fill there, but we have a great soccer community and my kiddos love the game.
My incredibly gifted and hard-working brother-in-law Darvin (affectionately known as "Durr") retired from the Army just days ago after 20+ years of loyal service. Darvin has sacrificed for his country -- home and abroad -- including several tours to Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. I appreciate the sacrifices Darvin and his family have made, and I wish him a blessed retirement/next chapter of his life. I'm also proud of my little sister Lana who decided to go back and get her teaching degree. She aced college and her student-teaching assignments. She's going to be an amazing teacher!
Conclusion
I honestly don't know how we squeezed it all in. My head was swimming at times for sure. Time off at the end of 2010 has been great for clearing my mind and renewing focus. Even by my own standards I've taken on too much, but I'm not willing to give any of it up at this point. I'm blessed to be a part of all of it.
Looking forward to a great and ambitious 2011! It's going to be exciting right out of the gate. Hope your 2011 is blessed and productive as well!
Is SharePoint Slow? I Don’t Think So…
At last count, I've deployed SharePoint at over 40 companies. Maybe closer to 50 at this point...I really should update the list. One thing I don't think I have ever heard is "why is SharePont so slow?" Ok, maybe on the first one or two, but that was SharePoint Services 2.0.
The question was asked recently at SPOverflow. I chimed in with some things to consider. Some other veterans added to the list. As a result, we have a pretty healthy checklist of considerations to optimize SharePoint performance in your environment. I emphasize in your environment because out of the box, SharePoint performs. Period. To be fair, I don't install SharePoint on undersized hardware and I build out the farm with multiple Web Front End servers when the situation calls for it. But if bandwidth is a problem in your environment, for example, you may have issues. That is not a SharePoint problem, that is a bandwidth problem. You get the idea. There are many helps on TechNet for helping you plan out your farm. Be sure to check them out.
I’m a SharePoint Overflow “Fanatic”
This weekend I apparently became the first person ever to earn a Gold badge on SharePointOverflow.com when I earned the "Fanatic" badge. The badge does not really speak to my participation or problem-solving abilities (the reputation metric does that), but it does speak to my consistency in visiting the site.
I mistakenly reported on Twitter that I had earned the "Enthusiast" badge, but that was weeks ago. James Love jumped in quickly to set me straight on the badge name.
If I ever make it to the UK, I hope to meet "Jimmy" in person. We have tag-teamed a few answers in the forums together...the guy knows his stuff. You talk about a "Fanatic" -- the guy has earned an incredible reputation on the forum seemingly overnight. He darted up to the top 4 in reputation in record time. That, my friends, is a "Fanatic." Still, I'm honored to be in such good company.
I thought it would be a good time to follow up on my July post on Comparing SharePoint Forums. I'm obviously enthusiastic and even fanatical about SharePoint Overflow. I have visited it every day for over a hundred days -- both answering questions and asking questions. One of my questions was recently answered by a newbie on SharePoint Overflow for which I am grateful. A more difficult question about Excel Services has been posted since August 20 and has no solution (although apparently information I included in my question was able to help another reader). The question has had 291 views on SharePoint Overflow in just over two months. I posted the same question on the Microsoft SharePoint forums on the same day. It has had 674 views there and, although one thoughtful person tried to help, still no resolution. I would have thought it would have fared better on the Microsoft forums since the product teams are said to monitor those forums as well.
So I have been staying active on both forums still -- and there are still things I like about both of them. However, I find that I do gravitate to SharePoint Overflow on a daily basis, so if I had to choose a favorite it must be my favorite. I still appreciate the fact that SharePoint Overflow has only one forum for all questions, and I still cringe every time a moderator on the Microsoft forums moves a question to a different category or spends more energy correcting a user on the proper way to post a question than on providing a solution (although they are necessary evils considering the current taxonomy). On the other hand, I hope that more people will start participating on SharePoint Overflow by posting questions/answers and by voting for questions/answers they found helpful.
Ironically, I may be the only one who even cares about comparing the two forums, and I really do like them both. So that really makes this whole exercise a little futile. I wish I could say I only brought it up because I was bored, but it has been at least a decade or two since I have had time to be bored. I guess I must have a little OCD in me after all!
The Six Pillars of SharePoint 2010
I recently completed a seven part blog series on the "Six Pillars of SharePoint" on our SharePoint Team Blog at Keller Schroeder. If you are new to SharePoint, or even new to SharePoint 2010, then this would be a good series for you.
Next Thursday, September 30, I will be presenting at the Evansville SharePoint Users Group on "SharePoint 2010 Editions Comparison." I will cover the similarities and differences among SharePoint 2010 Foundation, SharePoint 2010 Standard Edition and SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition.
I also wanted to take time to point out our company blog at Keller Schroeder. You can keep up on what is happening with SharePoint at Keller Schroeder, or you can see news related to all of Keller Schroeder's products, services and events.
Recap from devLINK 2010 in Nashville
devLINK 2010 ended today, and I've got to tell you that was one excellent conference. John Kellar and his leadership team obviously work really hard. This year the conference sold out with around 900 attendees. There were around 150 breakout sessions and opening/closing keynotes. Tim Huckaby pulled off an amazing keynote to kick the conference off. As fate would have it, he mentioned some of the cool things his company has done with WPF and SharePoint just minutes before I was to deliver the first SharePoint development session of the conference. So I was caught a little off guard when 120-130 filled the room -- me, on the third day of antibiotics and antihistamine battling a terrible sinus infection.
Thanks to the adrenaline rush from Tim's keynote (did I mention he was amazing?), I was able to pick up some steam. I only had 45 minutes to deliver a 75 minute presentation. Even after running over by five minutes, I was still not able to completely finish. I will post the code on my blog soon -- on a new page I added just for code. The reviews of the session were mostly good. Despite stating in the session description that my objective was to guide .NET developers when to develop on the SharePoint platform and introduce them to the SharePoint Object model, and my verbal disclaimer at the beginning that it wouldn't be a code-filled session, there were a handful of people who still expressed their desire to see more code. After all, this was devLINK -- where code rules and slide decks drool. So it was my first time there...give me a break! Call it a rookie mistake. Let me come back next year and I'll "code the far outta ya." Here is the slide deck for the "Intro to SharePoint Development" session.
The audience for the InfoPath session was a bit smaller as anticipated. We demonstrated how InfoPath can be used to replace paper forms and automate common business processes. We developed a simple workflow using a custom SharePoint list and a workflow developed in SharePoint Designer 2010. Then we demonstrated how to streamline that workflow using InfoPath. Using codeless rules and actions, we can show users only the views of a form that they should see and use buttons on the forms to move the workflow along with a minimal amount of clicks. The slide deck is below. A complete walk-thru will also be added to my labs page. The room came up with some great ideas for the InfoPath product team -- including the ability to share data connections and rules across forms, and the desire to inherit forms (instead of using lackluster form parts).
