In our day-to-day client work, we recently stumbled upon a web service that is installed with SharePoint, but honestly we had never implemented. In fact, the web service is not listed on either MSDN page for SharePoint 2007 or 2010. However, we have now tested this web service, so I wanted to share our findings with the community.

As we mentioned in a previous post, SharePoint 2010 uses a client dialog framework for elegantly showing forms in a dialog box without having to leave the current page. In this same post, we also mentioned the IsDlg URL parameter, and how it can be added to nearly any page to prepare it for showing in a dialog (essentially a 'quick-n-dirty' way of removing the navigation, quick launch, etc.). Armed with this knowledge, we assumed that we could use the IsDlg feature for a recent project, which required a specific page on SharePoint to be shown without any 'standard' UI components (navigation, title bars, ribbon, quick launch, etc.).

In this blog post, we focus on searching SharePoint from within Windows. We've included plenty of screenshots and detailed instructions to walk you through downloading the search connector, installing the connector, and using it in Windows 7.

If you have spent any amount of time with SharePoint 2010, you have seen the “lightbox” feature which allows the SharePoint user to remain on the same page, providing a pop-up dialog box, while dimming the background – very Web 2.0!

This “lightbox” dialog can be enabled/disabled within any list in the Advanced Settings.

Although the idea of user adoption is not a new idea, we consistently find our clients asking for more ways or better ways to get users to “use the system.”  Depending on the scope of the project, we always recommend some level of governance and training for our clients to get the most from their implementation.  These are critical pieces of the overall solution that we feel play a significant role in whether or not the product is accepted or rejected by the users.

In addition, with the recent release of SharePoint 2010, this topic has once again become a priority for many of our clients looking to implement this new version.  While superior to the previous version in far too many ways to mention here, the user interface has been completely enhanced with the “Ribbon” interface first seen Office 2007.  For users of SharePoint 2007, this will be a slight learning curve to use the new interface, but as with Office 2007, once learned the productivity and efficiency will increase exponentially.

I wanted to pass-along a special promotion that Bamboo Solutions has going on…

For a limited time, when you purchase the SharePoint Video Library from Bamboo Solutions, you'll receive a free FLIP Video UltraHD Camera valued at $260.00 (see details below).

There’s no catch, no tricks; just a simple, great offer. Purchase the SharePoint Video Library for $500, and Bamboo Solutions will ship you the Flip Video UltraHD so you can start filling your video library with fun and useful video content.

I wanted to let all of our readers know about a cloud computing event that will be held in 4 cities along the East coast.  I admit, it is my company that is hosting the “4-City Tour” but this really is a going to be a good way to see many cloud platforms at work.

Highlights:

    Parallel sessions on Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, SharePoint, and Unified Communications
    Integration luncheon showing a live demo of integration between CRM, SharePoint, and UC
    Exclusive research on the top cloud challenges from CFOs and CIOs
    Exclusive demos of SharePoint 2010
    Exclusive session showing Microsoft CRM and Salesforce.com in a live side-by-side comparison

Cities:

    May 4 – Charlotte, NC
    May 6 – Washington, DC
    May 11 – Raleigh, NC
    May 13 – Atlanta, GA

Our team recently finished a significant enterprise MOSS farm migration from a  single-server installation to a multi-server farm topology.  Once the new farm was architected and constructed, the migration went as smoothly as it could have, with no major obstacles.  However, as a day or two passed, a few of the end users began to notice a strange occurrence.

This particular client is a heavy user of the My Sites and My Links functionality.  During the migration, we used the User Profile Replication Engine, which is just one component of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit.  This allowed us to migrate user profiles, and more importantly, specific user profile properties.  The primary reason for this was to avoid an SSP migration, which is where the actual “My Links” are stored. 

Recently, we deployed a large project for a multinational corporation and an interesting situation arose during the process.  The SharePoint portal for this particular client was accessible externally (outside of their corporate network).  This allowed users to access the sites worldwide without having to use a VPN to connect to the corporate network.  This is not uncommon in the SharePoint world, and we have implemented and configured a fair number of Extranet portals over the years.

This particular project was very document-centric (as are many in SharePoint), with multiple workflows for approval, updating, publishing, etc.  Because of this, the Microsoft Word client was heavily used in the application, and seamless client integration was a critical important requirement. 

 During beta testing, we discovered two strange occurrences:

1) Emails generated by the automated task creation (for document approval) had a mixture of URLs with http and https.

2) When opening a document for editing/approval, the user sometimes received an error that he/she could not approve or edit the task associated with the document.

The October Cumulative Update (CU) for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 was released on October 27th.

Every two months, Microsoft tries to release updates to the Office product line, including WSS and MOSS.  The latest release addresses various issues across the board.  Microsoft and the SharePoint product team does a good job with communicating the changes, so I have included the links to “what has been fixed” as well as a post by Joerg Sinemus detailing the installation procedure for the October CU.

I wanted to write a quick note to let everyone know that StreamLogic will be partnering with Customer Connect to present a FREE, live event this Thursday, October 29, 2009, at the Microsoft campus in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Event Details:

When? Thursday, October 29th, 8:45 AM -  1:30 PM
Attend all day, or just choose the sessions that apply to you
Where? Microsoft Campus - Charlotte, NC

Today was the fourth and final day for the exceptional 2009 SharePoint Conference.  Today was a deviation from the norm, in that we did not spend the day in the typical SharePoint 2010 sessions.  We actually spent the day with the Microsoft Partner Team, attending back-to-back sessions learning how we, as partners, can leverage the SharePoint 2010 platform to create even more value for our clients. 

Anyone that knows me knows that our clients are more than just “customers.”  I firmly believe in aligning with our clients, understanding their business, understanding what pains they are feeling, and creating long-lasting, trust-based relationships with them – they are my friends.  So, when I have the opportunity to learn ways that we can add even more value than we already do, I am definitely on-board...

Today started with a very good session on Governance.  This session was not only applicable to SharePoint 2010, but also to MOSS 2007. 

A few good takeaways from this session were:

• Users find workarounds to SharePoint, so it must be easy and your users must be trained
• Start with the intended business outcome and let that drive your governance plan
• The SharePoint culture needs to be evangelized ‘top-down’ in the organization
• One size does not fit all - governance plans should be tailored and can contain multiple levels

 Day 2 started with a session on xRM and SharePoint.  It was somewhat ironic that this session was very similar, in terms of content, to the session we do at live events and in our webinars at Success Accelerators.  There were a few custom tools that I had not seen before, but overall this was a good session for anyone looking to determine if they can leverage CRM with SharePoint.  We work closely with Customer Connect in this area, and have done quite a few integration and xRM implementations, so this is all exciting stuff, and goes back to our motto of ‘SharePoint as a platform.’

Here are a few more highlights from Day 2:

• SharePoint Server 2010 is now better equipped to handle multi-tenancy
• Service Applications (formerly SSP) can now be grouped and multiple (many) can co-exist

We are at the Worldwide SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas this week, and all I can really say at this point is “WOW!”  The talented team at StreamLogic works with our clients on SharePoint implementations every day, so we definitely understand its popularity and what a great tool it is.  But walking into the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, I was overwhelmed and surprised; my thought…SharePoint is HUGE!

Day 1 started with keynote speeches from Steve Ballmer, Jeff Teper and Tom Rizzo.  Honestly, I would call this a pep-rally rather than a keynote address, as it had more of a ‘rock concert’ feel than a technology conference.  Overall, I sensed an emphasis on the concept of SharePoint as a ‘platform’, which is a concept we have been promoting for quite some time to our clients and via our live and web events.  This really hit-home when I attended the first ‘developer’ session of the day and there were over 3,000 (I assume developers) attending this one session!  In fact, one of the first demos that Tom Rizzo showed in the keynote was a more technical demo using the BCS (Business Connectivity Services – currently BDC in MOSS 2007) and web part development.

Well, we’re now only 3 days away and I know everyone is excited about SPC 2009. Looks like it is completely sold out, which is fantastic:



Straight from the SPC 2009 site, here are just a few of the ‘sneak peek’ sessions that we will be attending:

• SharePoint 2010 Overview and What's New
• Upgrading to SharePoint 2010