SharePoint

In the Can

David Gerhardt — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:54:51 GMT

No, I am not in the bathroom (or potty, as my kids like to say). The book that Kevin Martin and I have been working on, Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint 2007, is in the can (i.e., it shipped yesterday). So, if you have ever created or thought about creating document-centric SharePoint solutions, you might want to add this book to your holiday shopping list. If anything, it should be a great bedtime read for young ones. :-)

I am grateful to everyone who helped or offered to help with this project. I especially want to thank Jen Blaney (our editorial assistant at Charles River Media), Marta Justak (our project editor), and Stacia Misner (our technical editor). Without them, none of this would have been possible.

SharePoint Connections Session Code

David Gerhardt — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:03:45 GMT

Thanks to all who attended my sessions last week at SharePoint Connections. I was especially pleased with the attendance of my last session (Developing InfoPath Browser Forms for SharePoint). Asking people to get up for a session at 8am on the last day of a conference in Las Vegas can be a challenge, but the turnout was still high, and there was no shortage of good questions.

As I promised, the code from my two InfoPath sessions is available for download here. I could not include the form templates used for the demos, as they are owned by a third party, but the code snippets are there and can be included in your Visual Studio solutions. You will just need to modify the code to fit your form data source.

Update on the Content Types Book

David Gerhardt — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:29:24 GMT

Last month I provided a teaser about the book I am writing with Kevin Martin (a 3Sharp colleague) titled Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint 2007. We are in the final editing stages now and should be completely done in the next few weeks. If all goes well, I will have a flier to pass out at SharePoint Connections for those interested. The chapter titles (which may be subject to change) are as follows:

What Is a Content Type?
Included Content Types
Site Columns
Document Template
Document Information Panel
Workflows
Information Management Policies and Document Conversions
Out-of-the-Box Solution Walkthrough
Automating the Performance Appraisal Solution
Completing and Deploying the Appraisal Process

The last mile is always the most difficult...

Integrating Lotus Notes with the 2007 Release

David Gerhardt — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:58:08 GMT

Last year we worked with Gary Devendorf to create a two-day training course about 2007 Microsoft Office system interoperability with Lotus Notes 7. The course was geared toward Notes developers and had sessions about Visual Studio 2005 and Domino Web services, ASP.NET, the Open XML Formats, InfoPath, Access, and Excel, to name a few.

For the next month or so we will be working with Gary again to upgrade the materials. The new training course will still use Lotus Notes 7, but we will convert the Visual Studio 2005 projects to Visual Studio 2008 and add new content for subjects such as the Business Data Catalog, InfoPath Forms Services, custom workflows, and mobile development activities. Gary will be providing training updates on his blog. For more interoperability information, check out the InteropTips Community Site for developers of .NET and Lotus Notes applications.

SharePoint Connections Fall 2008

David Gerhardt — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:42:33 GMT

The fall event for SharePoint Connections 2008 is a little more than a month away from now (November 10–13 in Las Vegas). Once again, I am lucky enough to be one of the speakers, and my sessions are as follows:

Developing InfoPath Client-Only Forms for SharePoint — This session explores many of the form designer capabilities for InfoPath client-only solutions.
Developing InfoPath Browser Forms for SharePoint — This session explains some of the limitations in working with InfoPath Forms Services and discusses ways to optimize browser forms using out-of-the-box and managed code techniques.
Adding Codeless Workflows to InfoPath Form Solutions — This session identifies how you can integrate codeless workflows into SharePoint form solutions.

It should be a great event, and I look forward to meeting many of you there.

Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint

David Gerhardt — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:20:00 GMT

For the past few months Kevin Martin (a 3Sharp colleague) and I have been writing a book titled Building Content Type Solutions in SharePoint 2007. The book is a step-by-step walkthrough for building a performance appraisal solution with a SharePoint content type. It takes an approach similar to the one I used last year when writing about the time-off request solution, but with much more detail and a couple of chapters devoted to programmatic enhancements. The book is scheduled to be published later this year by Charles River Media. I will be providing more details on this site in the next month or so as we put the finishing touches on the book. Stay tuned...

Deploying InfoPath Templates to a Production Environment

David Gerhardt — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:22:44 GMT

Microsoft just published another one of my technical articles: Best Practices for Deploying InfoPath 2007 Form Templates to a Production Environment. This article shows some best practices for moving form templates from a development environment to a production environment and includes steps for adding a debug view. The article also describes some techniques for optimizing browser form scenarios.

Let the Podcasting Begin

David Gerhardt — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:19:37 GMT

The 3Sharp development team has been heads down the last few months working on the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS), which debuted this morning on CodePlex. This is an exciting package built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that takes YouTube's approach to knowledge-sharing and applies structure to fit your needs.

Our implementation of the PKS is coming soon. I will be converting some of my previous blog posts and other works to videos and posting them on our new site. My colleagues will be doing the same, and you will be able to search content easily by author, technology, technical level, and other filters. We will do our best to "train" you on Microsoft technologies while also bolstering interest in the PKS itself.

Creating Custom Workflows with SharePoint Designer 2007

David Gerhardt — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:11:30 GMT

Microsoft just published another Visual How To, Creating a Custom Approval Workflow for SharePoint Server 2007 Using SharePoint Designer 2007, written by yours truly. This Visual How To explains how to build a SharePoint Designer approval workflow for the sample expense report form template that comes with InfoPath 2007. The article and video show how to modify and then publish the form template to a SharePoint document library, define a new workflow and attach it to that document library, and add conditional logic within the workflow designer. This codeless approach to building an expense report workflow is an alternative to working in Visual Studio 2008, which fellow 3Sharp developer Mike Rand describes in the Visual How To titled Building an Expense Report Approval Workflow for SharePoint Server 2007 Using Visual Studio 2008.

Supporting Digital Signatures in Browser Forms

David Gerhardt — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:50:30 GMT

Digital signatures can be used in Office InfoPath 2007 browser forms to sign sections of data. However, the certificate that you use must be installed on both the client and SharePoint server machines...