Mart Muller's Weblog

Last week Patrick from U2U gave a bootcamp here at Tam Tam for both SharePoint as MCMS developers. Basically Tam Tam delivers two kind of projects: Marketing Communication Sites (MarCom) and Information Worker Solutions (IWS). MarCom develops a lot of content management solutions based on MCMS and MediaSurface. IWS is more SharePoint/Office and custom solutions minded.

Funny enough to see that both of the groups are involved when looking at SharePoint 2007. A lot of things change for both and the borders are becoming blurry...

During the bootcamp, the interest for all of the SharePoint 2007 features are there at both groups. IWS however is focused at the impact for information workers and MarCom more at WCM.

In the Netherlands there are some guidelines that describe how websites should be built to be accessible for blind people. A good thing, but a huge impact for WCM sites. One thing, for example, is prohibited use tables in HTML. We are (were) quite sceptic about using the SharePoint controls such as menu's in WCM sites using SharePoint 2007: the menu's are table based.

A challenge, which we've dealt with during the bootcamp. Patrick tipped us about the CSS friendly ASP.Net 2.0 control adapters download.  Frank got it working in SharePoint 2007 (on his new blog. Keep up the good blogging Frank! :)).

In SharePoint 2007, our WCM menu's are now div' ed based instead of tables!

If you're looking for a good overview with which things you have to deal as a MCMS 2002 developer when you want to start developing with SharePoint 2007, the following article is a must read!

SharePoint Server 2007 for MCMS 2002 Developers
Explore Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, which merges functionality of Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with new functionality to create one integrated set of technologies built on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (version 3).

Arpan Shah wrote an article about the next version of CMS, what the changes are and where it is going to with WSS3 and Office 12. I think this article gives a good overview for people looking for the furture of CMS in the huge information wave about Offce 12 lately.

“Based on feedback from you, partners and analysts, we are building CMS functionality on top of Wndows SharePoint Services (WSS) "v3". CMS and SPS, along with a lot of other great functionality, will be one integrated set of technologies built on top of WSS "v3". The Office Server investments built on top of WSS "v3" are codenamed Office "12" SharePoint Servers. The broad investment areas include ECM, Search, Portal, Collab, BI and Forms. We're careful not to say SPS "12" or CMS 2007, because packaging and licensing decisions have not been made. While these technologies will be technically integrated (same development, deployment and end-user experience), we have not made decisions on how these will be packaged. As a current customer, rest assured that you will get what you have today.

I'd like to expand on what this specifically means for CMS 2002 customers. (Keep in mind, this is a subset of the ECM investments we are making in Office "12" SharePoint Servers.) You will no longer have to deploy two different WSS and CMS solutions; CMS functionality will be built on top of WSS allowing you to deploy a single WCM and Collaborative solution. Also, you gain a lot of other benefits b/c it's built on WSS: Web Parts, Lists, Document Libraries, Templates, Workflow , RSS, et cetera.“

Read the complete posting

Lim Mei Ying, Stefan Gosner, Andrew Connell and Angus Logan did a great job on their new MCMS book “Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development”

Patrick mentions that chapter five (Searching MCMS with SharePoint) is free to download. A great chapter and a trigger to order the whole book!

MCMS 2002 SP2 is ready for download.

Download here