Attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 for Free!

ShareSquared, Inc. and Kodak just announced a contest where you can win a free pass to the 2009 SharePoint Conference and four nights stay at Mandalay Bay in Vegas! You can also win some free consulting or a Kodak scanner! Visit http://www.sharepointgiveaway.com/ for more information and to enter to win - good luck!

Free Virtual Expo on SharePoint – June 10

Quest Software's Virtual Expo 2009 for SharePoint

Registration Information…

Wednesday June 10

"During this free online event, you can interact with our SharePoint experts and partners to learn how best to migrate to -- and manage -- this essential collaboration platform.  Join us for live webcasts on topics such as governance and recovery, and visit the booths to download white papers, gather product information or chat with a technology specialist. This event is accessible via any web-connected computer."

8 a.m. to 4 p.m. EDT

7am – 3pm CDT

6am – 2pm MDT

5am – 1pm PDT

Very decent times across Europe

1PM London, England

3PM Bucharest, Romania

Live webcasts:

• SharePoint Governance: 10 Steps to Successful Deployments
• Leveraging SharePoint and Performance Point as a Business Intelligence Platform
• Ask the Experts: Live SharePoint Q&A
• A Simple Game Plan to Master SharePoint Recovery

Plus, by attending you can:

· Enter to win prizes given away throughout the day including SharePoint books, gift cards and more!

· Interactive"Networking Lounge" with SharePoint experts

View on-demand webcasts

• Migration tools and best practices
• Administration and auditing
• Recovery from your existing backups
• Developing robust applications on SharePoint with no coding
• Managing SQL Server

Register Now…

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, v1.3 - Feb 2009 CTP

A new version of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 arrived.

New features in version 1.3 include:

• Can be installed on x64 Server OS machines running SharePoint x64. Previously only x86 Server OS could be used
• Separate build commands for package, deploy and retract are added as Visual Studio menu items
• WSP View improvements for consistency of deleting feature elements, merging features and adding event receivers to features
• Command line build, package and retract commands are included enabling continuous integration and build servers. Previously command line build of SharePoint projects was very difficult
• Refactoring support for renaming of Web Parts. Previously renaming a web part required changes in several files in the project
• Solution Generator can now generate solutions from publishing sites. Previously only regular sites could be generated
• Allowing partial trust BIN deployments of web parts
• New project item template for SharePoint RootFiles items
• Deployment will now optionally remove conflicting existing features on the development server prior to redeployment. Previously any feature name conflicts would result in an error
• Ancillary assemblies such as for business logic can now be added to the SharePoint Solution WSP
• Hidden features related to Site Definition projects are now shown in WSP View. They are no longer hidden
• For advanced users a fast deploy is included to update only the compiled assembly on the SharePoint development installation
• Deployment step logging is included
• The List Definition from Content Type template now allows for the creation of a List Definition Event Receiver
• The User Guide is now installed with the extensions instead of being a separate download

You can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B2C0B628-5CAB-48C1-8CAE-C34C1CCBDC0A&displaylang=en

More information you can find here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/kirke/SharePoint-for-Developers-Part-1-Introducing-VSeWSS-13/

A Remote Content Editor Web Part in your SharePoint applications

A very interesting article was written by Christophe (or better known as PathToSharePoint) about a nice creative idea: How to control the home page (or any page) from your every SharePoint web on your every SharePoint SiteCollection on your every SharePoint Application. Christophe found (and implement) the idea to control those pages with the help of the Control Editor Web Part. This control will be connected to a shared file (over the entire SharePoint farm) and just execute the script from that file in your browser, so you can send mass messages to users, you can customize the page remotely (adding links, removing things from it), you can implement a custom security (or logging) mechanism with it etc.

The next step with this control is to create an administrative tool to manage the content of that file (not all users have JavaScript, HTML, CSS and SharePoint skills) and to integrate with your solutions, so your power users will have real time control over it. 

Indeed, a very interesting idea.

You can find more about this, on his blog here.

Feed your CAML some IntelliSense

Do you have problems in remembering all the key words and formats in CAML? Now this isn't a problem anymore! Thanks to John Holiday and his CAML.NET IntelliSense project. You can find more information about this on his blog: http://johnholliday.net/post/2009/01/18/Feed-your-CAML-some-IntelliSense-so-it-doesnt-bite-you-in-the-you-know-what!.aspx

To download the installer for the project follow this link: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/camlintellisense/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2212

Free MOSS 2007 WCM Learning Resources

Microsoft post a few free learning resources for those of you wanting to pickup MOSS 2007 WCM sites. 

These training modules provide architects with information about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management (WCM). The modules and accompanying videos explain the role of WCM architecture, building content management for your Web site, and server infrastructure and deployment. The modules also cover WCM design, security, and optimization.

You can download them from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b2c7980-b604-493f-b5ee-52c562458e34&displaylang=en

Announcing the WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint

The WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) Toolkit for SharePoint provides sample code for producing WSRP conformant data from SharePoint lists and libraries.  External portal platforms (e.g. BEA AquaLogic Portal, IBM WebSphere Portal, SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal etc.) can then render SharePoint data natively through their WSRP consumer portlets.  The Toolkit is available now for download from the MSDN Code Gallery.

The Toolkit demonstrates two possible methods of exposing SharePoint data through the WSRP interface and is intended to provide a starting point for customers who are interested in surfacing SharePoint data in non Microsoft portal environments.  The first method focuses on maintaining high fidelity with the SharePoint user interface and the second method focuses on providing flexibility and control over the rendered output.

Of course WSRP is just one of many options available to support portal interoperability and Microsoft continues to invest in open standards for interoperability including XML based web services, CMIS, Office Open XML, RSS and REST.  Microsoft is also investing heavily in Silverlight, designed to deliver rich user experiences and applications across multiple platforms.  For more details on the SharePoint interoperability story, visit the TechNet Office SharePoint Server Interoperability TechCenter.

A more in depth presentation about this tool will be shown here in my blog in the following few days.

European SharePoint Best Practices Conference

In 6-8 April 2009 is the first European SharePoint Best Practices Conference. This is sure to be the best SharePoint related Conference in Europe, this year. It already has an amazing speaker line up. This conference was just announced this week! Check out the killer line up of the SharePoint greats: Steve Smith MVP, Spence MVP, Mike Watson (X MSFT), Todd Bleeker MVP, Andrew Connell MVP, Penny Coventry MVP, Bob Fox MVP, Andrew Woodward MVP, Natalya Voskresenskaya MVP (Blogger think Squirrel). More information you could find at http://www.sharepointbestpractices.co.uk/.
See you there!

SharePoint Best Practices Conference

In 2-4 february 2009 is the second SharePoint Best Practices Conference (the first SharePoint Best PracticesTM Conference in Washington, DC in September, 2008 was an overwhelming success). This conference will have place in San Diego (USA, CA). More information you could find at http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/. The agenda for this event is here: http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/agenda.
The first 250 people who register for the Best Practices SharePoint Conference in February will be given a free copy of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices by Microsoft Press.

Free MSDN Webcasts & HOLs for MOSS 2007 WCM Development

Microsoft is pushing out a new series of webcasts and hands-on labs around the area of building MOSS 2007 WCM Publishing sites. The series, SharePoint Products & Technologies for Internet Site Development, starts on December 2, 2008 and runs through January 6, 2009. Everything is completely free!
In time, all the materials, as well as the sample site, will be available for download.

Here's a list of the webcasts, the topics and the dates with registration links:

• Tues, Dec 2, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Getting Started
• Thurs, Dec 4, 2008 : 2p-3p ->.COM Branding
• Tues, Dec 9, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Custom Fields, Web Parts & Lists
• Thurs, Dec 11, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Authentication
• Tues, Dec 16, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Web Interoperability
• Thurs, Dec 18, 2008 : 2-3p -> Search
• Tues, Jan 6, 2009 : 2-3p -> Content Deployment
  

Unit testing Microsoft SharePoint

Typemock announce the Isolator for sharepoint. It is almost the same as Typemock Isolator, but will only work on APIs that are directly connected with sharepoint’s API. That means that if you only need to test sharepoint stuff, you can get a powerful product, for a much cheaper price than the full Isolator (you can always upgrade later if you need to isolate more APIs).

How to get a free licence:
Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.
The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.

Enjoy it!

Silverlight 2 Blueprint for SharePoint

You can get Silverlight 2 Blueprint for SharePoint from here:
http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP
Now it's reach the Beta 2 version. Enjoy it!

SharePoint Guidance - November 2008

A new version of SharePoint Guidance is avaiable here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C3722DBA-6EE7-4E0E-82B5-FDAF3C5EC927&displaylang=en

This guidance helps architects and developers build SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation (RI) demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development and lifecycle management challenges.This guidance discusses the following:

• Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring and packaging.
• Design tradeoffs for common decisions many developers encounter.
• Implementation examples demonstrated in the RI and in the QuickStarts.
• How to design for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration.
• Set up of development, build, test, staging, and production environments.
• Managing the application life cycle including upgrade.
• Team-based intranet application development.
  

The following areas are not discussed in this version of the guidance:

• Content-oriented sites that use Web content management
• Internet and enterprise-scale SharePoint applications
• Multilingual SharePoint applications
• Scale or security testing of SharePoint applications

More information about this you can find here: http://www.codeplex.com/spg/