Office 2010 Public Beta as early as next week?

I also was very excited as soon as I heard that news to, while it is not set in stone. Some CTP participants for the Office 2010 have received an email that hints to something like that.

If you would like to see more details about that email it can be found at this link:

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/11/09/offcie-2010-public-beta-to-begin-next-week

What to expect with SharePoint 2010

The details regarding SharePoint 2010 have long been awaited and while many have listed or blogged about it, this a compilation of many of these changes and enhancements.

While it is not in depth, it can be expanded with your comments and suggestions; feel free to leave comments so that we can improve upon this list.

• Exclusive for 64 Bit Operating Systems
• If you thought that MOSS 2007 was big SharePoint Server 2010 is huge!
• No backward compatibility

• In case you wanted to use SharePoint Designer 2010 to modify SharePoint 2007 sites; it is not possible
• User Interface is Ribbon based
  • It is all over the place and a major and welcome improvement
• Composites
  • A nice word to describe applications that have been created by the use of InfoPath, Designer, BCS, Web Parts, etc.
• Improved and Enhanced Lists and Document Libraries
• These can go easily into the millions!
• External Lists – residing outside of SharePoint
• More Event Receivers!
• Editions
  • MOSS no more - It is SharePoint Server 2010
  • WSS - Now SharePoint Foundation
• Services
  • PerformancePoint – Improved Business Intelligence
  • Visio
  • Project Gemini – An attempt to simplify BI for everyone
  • Access
• Business Connectivity Services – New naming for what Business Data Catalog
• Enhancements to the API
• Online Services
  • Standard
  • Dedicated
  • Multi-Tenancy
• Search
  • Improved and faster responses
  • Ability to deploy with FAST Technology
• Social Computing Integration
• SilverLight Integration
  • Through out of the box Web Part
• SharePoint Designer 2010
  • Reusable Workflows – Same workflow can be used on multiple Lists in different Sites
• New Theming Model
  • Ability to deploy themes from within Microsoft Office
• Content Types
• Can be shared to other Site Collections
• Improved Management
• No longer tied to Windows Server Operating Systems
• You can install on Windows 7
• Shared Services Providers are no longer used
• Visual Studio 2010 Integration
• Interface for Web Part Development – Finally!
• SandBoxed Solutions
• Method to restrict Object Model and Resources based on a point based system, when a Solution reaches it it can be shutdown
• Support for REST, LINQ
• Office 2010 Integration
• Workspace
• Ability to customize the Forms for entering Data into Lists or Document Libraries

SharePoint 2010

Like with any new product there are new naming conventions, terms and concepts that emerge along with the product itself. Yes; there are many of those being brought to the light with the launch of SharePoint 2010.

Does that mean that everything has changed? Yes and No, some concepts and terms have remained the same although they have been improved upon. While others, are completely new and certainly deserve a detailed overview for a good understanding on how they can be applied and used in the real world.

In future blog postings we will be taking a look at all these new functionalities that will be part of the SharePoint 2010 Platform.

Stay tuned!

SharePoint 2010 Public Beta

The public beta will be available in November 2009.

Managing Techniques for Site Columns and Content Types

Thank you for attending the presentation at the Rocky Mountain SharePoint User Group, as promised enclosed you will find the slides and the sample code.

Managing Techniques for Site Columns and Content Types - Slides

Managing Techniques for Site Columns and Content Types - Code

New blog in town!

Yes! There is a new blog in which I have already subscribed to, it is located at:
http://www.sharepointmonk.com

The blog belongs to an extremely talented SharePoint Architect that has decided to join the blogging world: Joshua Hicks. Personally, I am looking forward to reading his blog posts.

Microsoft Security Essentials is no longer in Beta!

Almost everyone nowadays has or should have an Antivirus on their computer. The available choices usually come in the form of: free or purchased. While most of the time the free versions would not be as great as the purchased ones, a new contender is now available and no longer in Beta from Microsoft, this new product is named: “Microsoft Security Essentials”.

The purpose of Microsoft Security Essentials is to protect against:

• Viruses
• Spyware
• Trojans
• Rootkits

So far it is very impressive, quick and simplifies the whole process; not to mention that it even has some nice videos available for: installing, scanning and fixing problems.

How to resolve the message: “The Web site wants to run the following add-on: 'Name ActiveX Control' from 'Microsoft Corporation'. If you trust the Web site and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here...”

Recently, I was asked if I had an idea of how to resolve this problem; the most common and easiest solution to fixing this problem is to add the site to the Trusted Sites in Internet Explorer; while this is the easiest way to fix the problem, some of the users might not like the fact that they will have to do this the first time they access the site.

The second method to fix this problem is more involved and requires the modification of the master page, the steps for achieving this are listed in great detail in the following article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/931509

Spending to much time reading blog postings?

If your list of blog feeds is growing out of control, try taking a look at Google Labs Fast Flip; it really does make it fast and easy to catch up with the news very quickly.

Give it a try at: Google Fastflip

Want to learn more about Office 2010 ?

If you are itching to know more about Office 2010, below you will find two links will be very useful:

1- Office 2010 Home
2- Introduction Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview

Updating the Templates contained in the Document Libraries of the Case Management Site Template of the Fabulous 40

Recently I was asked an excellent question:

“How do you update the templates contained in the Document Libraries of the ‘Case Management’ Site Template?”

It is a great and common question, the quick technical answer is:

“Update the document in which the Content Type of the Document Library is derived from”

Instead of keeping the answer technical thought a quick Hands on Lab would easily illustrate and answer much easily, with that in mind what you will need to complete this quick lab is:

Requirements

· A site based on the “CaseManagement.stp”

· Office 2007 as the default Office Suite

· Around fifteen minutes to complete this lab

· For the purposes of this lab we will use:

o Document Library: Case Documents

o Document: Expense Report.xls

o Content Type: Expense Report

Steps

1. Ensure enough permissions to modify the Case Documents Document Library, administrator permissions should work fine

2. Navigate to the Case Management Site

3. Navigate to the Case Documents Document Library in which you wish to change the template

4. Click on the Expense Report WorkSheet

5. Select the Edit Radio Button

6. Click the OK Button

7. Modify the Expense Report Worksheet to match your needs

8. Save it to the Desktop or a location of your choice

9. Click the Settings Link of the Document Library

10. Click the Document Library Settings Link from the list of choices of the DropDown

11. Under the Content Types section click the Expense Report Content Type

12. Click the Advanced settings link under the Settings section

13. Select the Upload a new document template Radio Button

14. Click the Browse… Button

15. Locate the recently modified Expense Report Worksheet

16. Click the OK Button

17. Navigate to the Case Documents Library

18. Click the New Link

19. Click the Expense Report Link from the choices in the DropDown

20. Click the OK Button

21. The updated template is now displayed

22. Congratulate yourself, you did a great job!

Conclusion
After you complete the lab, you might be wondering:

“Do I have to repeat these steps for all the templates I wish to update?”

The answer is:

“Yes”

You might also end up wondering why so much complexity has been added to a simple process, the reason for this is because it does add tremendous flexibility when sharing this same template across your entire Site Collection.

Imagine that this template will be used all across the entire Site Collection which encompasses 50 Sites and dozens of Document Libraries, making a modification to a centric Site Content Type does simplify the entire process of maintenance. Mostly, because you make the modification and it will replicate across the entire Site Collection. One thing to keep in mind is that it will modify all those new documents based on the recently updated template only, in other words it is not a retroactive process; previously created documents will not updated the change.

Enjoy updated the templates!

Custom Workflow Tutorials

In case you are looking into an introduction about how to create workflows and wondering how or where to start; I will save you a few searches and let you know that the following two hyperlinks are great resources for an introduction for building custom workflows and for building one.

It is a two part series from a great blogger: Robert Shelton. Below are the hyperlinks to the postings and materials, they are very complete.

1. http://rshelton.com/archive/2007/10/08/free-workflow-part-1---introduction-to-building-workflows-with.aspx
2. http://rshelton.com/archive/2007/10/08/free-workflow-part-2---building-custom-workflow-activities-with.aspx

Enjoy!

Windows 7 Upgrade

You have probably heard all the buzz and excitement about Windows 7 RTM being released last week. Was feeling a bit adventurous and thought I would go ahead and install it on a couple of machines that I do rely upon heavily.

The results were quite impressive:

• The upgrade from Vista 64 Ultimate bit towards Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit went as smooth as it could no problem that I could find at all!
• An upgrade from Windows 7 RC was not possible, but a clean install did proceed smoothly
• All in all, the elapsed time was around 2 and 3 hours

Since the upgrade I have been working flawlessly, all applications upgraded without having to be re-installed or activated again.

In case you are wondering the upgrade path this article has great details about it:
Windows 7 Upgrade Path

Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview disponible!

Este pasado fin de semana recibi la noticia de la disponibilidad de Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview. Ciertamente, esto me inclino a empezar a descargarlo e instalarlo. Procedi a remover Office 2007 para prevenir cualquier error de instalacion. A pesar de esto, no pude instalarlo directamente; intente hacer un upgrade y tampoco funciono.

Despues de varias horas de intentar hacer la instalacion, recurri a re-instalar Office 2007.

A pesar de estos problemas, estoy esperando la resolucion a este problema para poder hacer pruebas.

Microsoft Office 2010 Tecnical Preview released!

Received the news that Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview this past weekend. This was certainly a cause for some excitement, proceeded to remove Office 2007 to prevent any installation failures. Unfortunately, the installation did not succeed; since a clean install did not work attempted an upgrade which also failed.

After a few hours of trying to make it work, recurred to move back to Office 2007.

In spite of these problems, still looking forward to installing and working with it as soon as this problem is fixed.