itaysk

Zoho is an online document editing and collaboration suite. Today they have released a SharePoint integration, which integrates Zoho’s web based document editors directly into SharePoint (using Microsoft Office formats), integrating into SharePoint UI, and the best feature by far: simultaneous collaboration on a single document by multiple users.

Check out this brief, and Zoho’s site for more info:

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Here’s a quick one:

If you want to import excel file to SharePoint (create->import spreadsheet), you have to have a site collection provisioned in the root managed path in order to connect via excel. If not, you will get “Method ‘Activate’ of object ‘_Worksheet’ failed” error.
In example, if you are working in the site : http://server/sites/itaysk, you must have a site in http://server/ for the import to work.

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint consultant --

הנכם מוזמנים להדרכה בנושא SharePoint Designer 2007 שתערך בתאריך ה 28.7.09 במשרדי מיקרוסופט ברעננה.

להרשמה לחצו כאן

בקצרה, זאת הדרכה עבור לקוחות אשר אינם מכירים או שהיו רוצים להכיר יותר טוב את SharePoint Designer ואת כל הדברים שאפשר לעשות איתו.

תוכן ההדרכה:

הדרכת SharePoint Designer - איך לגרום לאתרים שלך לשיר
Microsoft SharePoint Designer הוא יישום הניתן להורדה חופשית מהאתר של מיקרוסופט. היישום מספק יכולות עיצוב מתקדמות ל – SharePoint ומאפשר למשתמש המתקדם לבנות ולעצב יישומים ללא קוד. במהלך ההדרכה נלמד על יכולות ה- SharePoint Designer ונצפה בדוגמאות רבות הממחישות את עושר הכלים שבאמצעותן נרחיב את יכולות ה – SharePoint שלנו בארגון.
ההדרכה תועבר ע"י איתי שקורי , יועץ SharePoint בחברת SRL. 
נושאי ההדרכה:
1. שדרוג חווית המשתמש באמצעות כלי עיצוב מתקדמים.
SharePoint Designer נותן לכם שליטה מלאה על מבנה הדף ועל עיצובו. למדו כיצד לעצב את האתר שלכם בדיוק כפי שרציתם.
2. הפיכת תהליכים ידניים לאוטומאטיים ללא פיתוח.
גלו כיצד להשתמש בכלים מובנים על מנת ליצור זרימות עבודה מותאמות אישית, אשר יעזרו לכם לבצע משימות בקלות ובמהירות.
3. אינטגרציה עם בסיסי נתונים מתוך סביבת העבודה הקיימת.
הפכו מידע קיים לזמין ונגיש ע"י שילוב מידע מתוך מערכות אחרות בארגון, וכל זאת ללא פיתוח.
4. חשיפת החידושים בתחום ניהול הביצועים העסקיים ב - SharePoint 2007.

ההדרכה תועבר בבית מיקרוסופט - רחוב הפנינה 2, רעננה בתאריך 28.7.09 , בין השעות 08:30- 12:00.
ההשתתפות באירוע אינה כרוכה בתשלום, אך מצריכה הרשמה מראש.

להרשמה.

You want to show some data from SQL server in your SharePoint site. It's a very common requirement since the core purpose of portals is to be the single place to look for information and data, no matter where it comes from.

In this post I will try to list all of your options. I hope I got them all.. If you think I'm missing something, please write a comment.

Data View Web Part
Data View Web Part (DVWP) allows us to display data from different data sources in any form we want. It can work with any data source that’s available in SharePoint Designer, like SQL Server, XML files, Lists, and more.
It can format the data in virtually any way you want it, since it uses XSL transformation for formatting the data. 
It is available to use only from SharePoint Designer.
This will be my preferred option in most cases.
Pros – Very Flexible, No development required, Easy to customize, Out of the box.
Cons - Advanced formatting might require knowledge in XSL, authentication options limited.

Follow up:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA100948041033.aspx

Performance Point
Microsoft Performance Point Server (PPS) is a BI product included with MOSS Enterprise. With it you can create advanced dashboards and connect to different data sources. One of the data sources available from PPS, is SharePoint List.
Basically you can create a SharePoint List data source, and then create any kind of KPI, report, chart or whatever PPS has to offer with really minimum effort.
This will be my preferred option in most cases.
Pros – Easy to design, looks good, provides the richest result.
Cons – Requires Enterprise license for MOSS , requires PPS installed, and some knowledge with PPS.

Follow up:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/HA102408421033.aspx

Excel Services
Excel Service (ES) is a feature of MOSS 2007 Enterprise that introduces server side to excel and includes web services and Excel rendering engine. This basically means that you can open up Excel, use it's powerful tools and wizards to connect to the data and design it. once you are done with that, just put result online and MOSS will render the XLSX file to standard HTML.
Pros – Can take advantage of Excel features, No development required, Easy to customize, Out of the box.
Cons - Requires Enterprise license for MOSS, designing and displaying options can be limiting, only pivot table supported.

Follow up:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA100137751033.aspx

Business Data Catalog
Business Data Catalog (BDC) allows MOSS to connect to other systems you already have, and work with them in various ways. A developer creates an XML file that describes the data structure and loads it into MOSS. Once you have a BDC application setup, you can use the built in BDC web parts to query, analyze, and display the data.
Pros - Powerful solution, provides a lot more that just displaying the data, deeply integrated into SharePoint.
Cons - Hard to develop, might be "Overkill".

More on this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546541.aspx

InfoPath Forms services
Actually I was thinking whether this option is suitable here.. I decided to let you be the judge. InfoPath allows us to create data driven electronic forms that may be consumed via browser when using Forms Services. InfoPath can consume SQL data with use of "Data Connections" and even base the form main data source on SQL tables. It provides rich UI with built in controls made specifically for collecting and presenting data. You can design a form that is based on SQL data source, and then display in in browser using Forms Services.
Pros - No development required, Easy to customize, Out of the box, can take advantage of other InfoPath features.
Cons - Requires InfoPath 2007 for designing, requires Enterprise license for MOSS, not the right choice for just displaying data.

Follow up:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath/HP100866391033.aspx

Reporting Services
Reporting Services (SSRS) has been around for a long time now. Starting SQL 2005 SP2, You can have SSRS to work in SharePoint integration mode. You can use Report Viewer Web Part to view SSRS reports inside SharePoint.
Pros – Powerful platform 
Cons - Requires knowledge of SSRS, Requires installing SSRS on your SQL Server, and the web parts on SharePoint server.

Follow up:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb522800.aspx

Custom Web Part that directly query the SQL server
Obviosly, You can develop your own Web Part to do the job.
Pros - Very flexible (You designed it...)
Cons - Why Develop a custom web part when you have built in alternative specified above.

Conclusion

In this post I have presented different methods for showing data from SQL server inside SharePoint Site. My preferred options are Performance Point if available, or DataViewWebPart, if not. Let me know if you liked it or if you think I have missed something.

-- My Name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

It’s Tech-Ed time at LA, and there’s some pretty interesting stuff going on there..

You can watch the Keynote here: (it’s about 2 hours long!)
http://www.msteched.com/online/channels.aspx?cname=track&channel=Keynote

The News:

First and foremost - You can now sign up (or at least request) for Office 2010 Technical Preview! (about 16 minutes into the keynote)
Office is opening a TP program in July. Everyone can request an invitation, but not everyone will be answered.
Signing is through a new site that includes a cool Office 2010 promo:
http://www.office2010themovie.com/

Some more interesting stuff:

• There were some short demos of Office 2010. (Outlook gets a ribbon:-) ) (about 33 minutes into the keynote, and again at 100 minutes)
• Win2008 R2 has built in OCR! I wonder how that’s integrating with SharePoint 2010. (about 93 minutes into the keynote)
• File classification Infrastructure – I haven't completely got the concept of it, but it seems useful. (about 90 minutes into the keynote)

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Ever wondered why SharePoint 2007 has a built in content type called “Dublin Core”?

From Wikipedia:

“The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is an organization providing an open forum for the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models…  The Dublin Core metadata element set is a standard for cross-domain information resource description. It provides a simple and standardised set of conventions for describing things online in ways that make them easier to find” 
”The Simple Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) consists of 15 metadata elements:

1. Title
2. Creator
3. Subject
4. Description
5. Publisher
6. Contributor
7. Date
8. Type
9. Format
10. Identifier
11. Source
12. Language
13. Relation
14. Coverage
15. Rights ”

Actually I was already familiar with DCMI, but I thought it would be a nice fact to know about.
For more info on that subject visit: http://dublincore.org/

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Today the SharePoint Team has announced that IE6 will no longer be supported in SharePoint 2010!

A bit about IE6’s bad reputation:

IE6 has always been the most hated piece of software around. It has lots of bugs, security issues, instability issues, doesn’t fully support modern web standards and the list goes on.
There was even some campaigns out there trying to get people not to use IE6 (stopIE6, bringDownIE6).

Despite all of the above IE6 still enjoys a fair market share even today when there are already 2 newer versions of it.
The problem goes deeper in businesses and organizations when IE6 is mandatory, most likely due to legacy web apps that doesn’t play well with modern browsers.

Since SharePoint is at the heart of many organizations, and business needs, I think this announcement has marked the end of IE6.

The announcement address other browsers, and said that are working to increase the level of compatibility with them. This makes sense especially after they hinted about XHTML support, but I don’t think that ActiveX control are to be replaced anytime soon.

Check out the announcement:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Here’s the complete lists of fixes\changes in SP2 in downloadable Excel format.
Recommending everyone who works with SharePoint to browse the lists. I have learned about some fixes to interesting problems, and anyway, it’s good to know what problems you can face on pre SP2 farms. (I found the ones regarding SharePoint Designer to be the most interesting ones)

WSS:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/A/3/7A3E2E01-5454-4427-95CB-28CE84523B0A/Windows%20SharePoint%20Services%203.0%20Service%20Pack%202%20Changes.xlsx

MOSS:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/1/F/41F3A698-55E8-40B4-A306-AD6CF1F95394/2007%20Office%20Servers%20Service%20Pack%202%20Changes.xlsx

Office:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/2/C/C2C36159-600C-4EEA-B80A-F988EE7A418F/2007%20Office%20Service%20Pack%202%20Changes.xlsx

-- My name is Itay Shakury, and I’m a SharePoint consultant --

SharePoint SP2 is here, and with it, the pre upgrade checker.
This is a tool that scans your SharePoint farm, and produce a report with all the issues that might be problematic when upgrading to SharePoint 2010\WSS4.

This is very interesting.. Think about it.. this tool “knows” what’s in the next version of SharePoint, and checks if your farm suits with it.

So I ran the tests to see what’s it gonna say. Well, it was mainly informative stuff.. just to remind you what’s in your farm. But still, there were a few points worth mentioning (I kept the best one to the end):

Supported upgrade types

“The current farm supports the following upgrade types:

• Inplace Upgrade
• Content Database Attach”

I don’t see anything about “gradual upgrade” that we know from current version.

Lists and Libraries

From KB 956201:
”The LargeLists rule in Pre-Upgrade Checker will provide information about lists that exceed the default threshold for large lists in the next version release of Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.”

Apparently there is a default threshold for list size in the next version.

Customized field types that will not be upgraded.

“A field type using custom Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) in itsRenderPattern element will not be upgraded as an XSLT-based field type. Fields based on this custom field type will be rendered without any custom formatting in Windows SharePoint Services 4.0. The following field types will not be upgraded:

• HoldsField($Resources:fldtypes_holds_name)
• HoldStatusField($Resources:fldtypes_holdstatus_name)
• HTML(Publishing HTML)
• Image(Publishing Image)
• Link(Publishing Hyperlink)
• SummaryLinks(SummaryLinks)
• LayoutVariationsField(Variations)
• ContentTypeIdFieldType(Content Type ID)
• BusinessData(Business data)
• TargetTo(Audience Targeting)

It is highly recommended that you manually upgrade all custom field types to the new XSLT-based field types in order to have full rendering and customization support. For more information about this rule, see KB article 956451 in the rule article list at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=120257.”

This is the most interesting rule, since it gives us a real insight about a new WSS 4 feature: XSLT-based field types.

Apparently, custom field types will no longer base on CAML markup for rendering inside list views, but on a new XSLT based rendering instead.

This might suggest that the entire list view web part will no longer base on CAML, and will be replaced by something more like the XSLT Data View that we already know.

Mysteriously, the KB article 956451 is not found anywhere, but some early posters seem to have got a glimpse of it. Searching KBAlertz suggests that it was recalled by Microsoft…?

Anyway.. That’s what got my interest about pre upgrade checker.. hope to hear more about the next version soon.

-- My name is Itay Shakury, and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Yesterday Microsoft has officially addressed the next wave of Office System products.
As there isn’t much information yet, This post is just my opinions and takeaway from the announcements.

The original announcements:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/04/14/microsoft-sharepoint-14-is-now-microsoft-sharepoint-2010.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Apr09/04-15Office2010.mspx

The Name

The fist thing that pops into sight is the name of the product.
Looks like Microsoft isn’t quit decisive about how to position SharePoint Server among it’s product lines.
We started with SharePoint Portal Server (SPS). Than, SharePoint was welcomed to the Office family, and therefore was rebranded as Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). And now we are settling for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
Microsoft no longer wants the Office as a client apps suite to be associated with SharePoint.
By the way, WSS stays for WSS 4.0.

Features

Don’t expect to see a list of new features.. Those are secretly kept at an early stage like this. Still, here is a list of general subjects, that was mentioned in the announcements.

The next version of SharePoint will:

• Have better support for browsers and mobile phones.
• Present a different (better?) licensing model.
• Have improved management options for administrators.
• Support industry standards.
• Have open APIs (what does that means?)
• Provide better tools for developers.

Support for Industry  Standards (HTML wise), and have better support for browsers

SharePoint 2007 isn’t quite aware of accessibility or browser support. the master page, the web parts, the whole deal was very sluggish. This is very bad considering MOSS is being sold as an internet facing web sites platform (CMS and publishing features) and as such it must be very standards aware.
AKS (Accessibility Kit for SharePoint) does put you in the right direction, but requires a lot of work. As IE8 is released with full compliance for industry standards it’s inevitable SharePoint will have to align also.

Support for mobile phones

We see this trend everywhere now. Mobile devices are taken more seriously these days. We already know that Office Web Applications supports mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone. I hope to see the same with SharePoint.

Better Documentations

It’s about time.. You see, SharePoint is a development platform, and as such it has to have not only good, but great documentation. In reality the SharePoint SDK on it’s own is not sufficient for learning the technology, and only thanks to bloggers, the community, and some reverse engineering, the darker sides of the products are unveiled. In fact some areas of the product are not documented at all even today.
I’m glad to hear that this issue is being considered.

Office Live Applications Integration

We already know that Office Live Applications will integrate into SharePoint 2010. What I expect it the same type of integration made with Excel Services in MOSS2007, but now with support for editing, and more file formats.

Different deployment options

The announcements further emphasizes that companies can choose between deploying SharePoint on-premises or hosted as a service. This aligns with what we already know about SharePoint in Azure.

TimeLine

SharePoint 2010 will enter a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

That’s about it.. I expect some more leaking of information as we will enter technical preview.

--My name is Itay Shakury, and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

This post is a summery of what is currently known about Office Web Applications 2010.

Announced at the last PDC, Microsoft Office Web Applications is basically a lightweight version of Office for the web. It has web versions for all the major Office client applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Even OneNote (Finally a web based one note).

The applications will be provided for a regular consumers via Office Live, and for businesses as part of SharePoint 2010. For the regular consumer, it will probably be free (as-supported), or paid (subscription).

Office Web Apps will work on all major browsers and operating systems, but what I find more interesting is that they have mobile versions too! Including for iPhone!! That’s really great news.

Office Web Apps will not require Silverlight, but will support it for enhanced experience.

Office Web Apps (and Office in general) will support real time collaboration, meaning several people can work simultaneously on the same document.

You can see a short demo at channel 9 (the first link in the list below).

Resources:

• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/PDCNews/First-Look-Office-14-for-Web/
• http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2008/oct08/10-28PDCOffice.mspx
• http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/Microsoft-Office-Web-Applications-Your-Burning-Questions-Answered/

-- My name is Itay Shakuey and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Office System Products was just announced (not released). So far the announcement contains a limited list of features that was compiled by asking “the individual teams in Office to come up with a list of changes that they were most proud of and felt would be most beneficial”.
Apparently we will get more info on April 28th.

Read the announcement:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/04/15/service-pack-2-for-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-due-to-ship-april-28th.aspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/16/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-due-to-ship-april-28th.aspx
  

After reading the list of changes, I can’t spot any new interesting feature or drastic change, but reliability, compatibility, and performance improvements mainly. Anyway, here is the partial list of SharePoint related changes:

InfoPath

• Increased compatibility between InfoPath forms and other Microsoft products, such as Groove and Outlook.

OneNote

• SharePoint synchronization has been improved which helps reduce the load on SharePoint servers and produce fewer errors

SharePoint

• An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.

• SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.

• Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

• Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.

• A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services

• SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.

• Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.

• Some display issues have been addressed.

• Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Forms Server

• Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.

• Browser rendering of various controls, such as the 'cannot be blank' asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

Search Server

• Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.

• Backup-restore has been improved.

• A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.

• Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

Stay tuned on the 28th…

-- My name is Itay Shakury, and I’m a SharePoint consultant --

The “Contains” operator was removed from Advanced Search UI, by KB950437, and all hotfixes and updates to follow.

You can restore the original behavior by setting <Option Name=”AllowOpContains” Value=”True”/> in the properties definition XML.

More info and a step by step guide here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mmcintyr/archive/2008/09/29/hotfix-for-advanced-search-issue-in-moss-950437.aspx

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Microsoft has decided to make SharePoint Designer a free product. it can be downloaded for free from it’s product page at Microsoft.com: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163419.aspx

The announcement states that future versions of SharePoint Designer will also be free.

Customers that have already purchased SharePoint Designer 2007, and are in SA agreement will get Expression Web license in addition.
This part is actually very interesting, because as of now, Expression Web have very little to do with SharePoint. This will probably change in later versions (as stated in the announcement FAQ, and in the interview with Tom Rizzo).

For more info: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA103607621033.aspx

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

Problem + Steps to reproduce:

Take a folder (SPFolder object) in a SharePoint list (or Document library). Make a copy of the folder in any of the following methods:

• Explorer view.
• SharePoint Designer.
• Code: SPFolder.CopyTo(string path).

Start an incremental crawl to index that folder. The folder will not get indexed.
Even if you add new items (or documents) to the copied folder, it will not get indexed with incremental crawl.

Workaround:

If you want to make sure it is being indexed, start a full crawl, and it will get indexed as expected.

The issue was reported to Microsoft and may be addressed in the next cumulative update.

-- My name is Itay Shakury, and I’m a SharePoint consultant --