Mart Muller's Weblog

In my search for information about language packs and it's availability for MOSS 2007, I came across the SharePoint team blog posting about this subject... I've somehow missed it before... :)

Anyway, very useful information for some of our customers that are going to be dependant on (Dutch) language packs. From the article:

"Language packs are available to install on WSS only, MOSS, MOSS for Search, Office Forms Server, and Project Server installations. For MOSS, MOSS for Search, Forms Server, and Project Server installations, the Office server products Language Pack (a.k.a. ServerLanguagePack) needs to be installed; this will take care of all sites. The WSS Language Packs (a.k.a. SharePointLanguagePack) are for WSS stand-alone installations.

Microsoft’s 2007 Office server products are localized into languages in two different ways: 1) fully translated SKUs and 2) Language Packs. A language-specific SKU delivers the respective Office server product localized into a given language. A Language Pack may be applied to an installed Office server product to create sites or site collections in other languages. Application of a Language Pack will not change the language of the installed Office server product SKU.

To download the Language Packs for Beta 2 or very soon for Beta 2 TR, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/download/en/default.mspx.

See Deploy Language Packs in Office SharePoint Server 2007 for more information on how to install the language packs.

NOTE: The English Language Pack will not be available as a single language pack. You may install the English Language Pack when the Multiple Languages Language Pack (which includes all languages) ships."

Read the full article about which language packs for what version are available.

Now available on download.microsoft.com:

Outlook 2007 Add-Ins: RulesAddin, TravelAgencyAddin, and PrepareMeAddin

The Outlook 2007 Sample Add-Ins are a learning tool that will help you understand some of the important new features in the Outlook 2007 object model. They provide coverage of the following important new areas:

• Using the Rules object model, which allows you to programmatically create or access most rules supported by the Outlook Rules Wizard (Rules sample)
• Implementing a form region for an Outlook contact item (Travel Agency sample)
• Adding a custom task pane to an Outlook AppointmentItem (Prepare Me sample)

Download here

For the last few months we've been 'MOSS-ing' a lot with beta 2. For us and our customers an exciting time has come and we're doing a lot of PoC's lately and some projects based on MOSS 2007. Great stuff!

One of the problems we run into however is that we sell MOSS, but don't know anything official about the pricing and licensing. There is some information (obviously) about the different editions on the web, but this is not good enough to do a realistic cost prediction.

MS can't give exact numbers in a beta phase I know, but somehow we and many other implementation partners are ready to sell and build on beta 2! :) Of course we've heard 'rumors' about prices, but isn't it time for official numbers and facts?...

Darren tells us that Office 2007 is added to the November pricelist, which means the release is still on schedule. Exact dates to be announced...

"An internal email from Chris Capposela (head of IW) to field sales confirms that 2007 will get added to the price list in November.  This is excellent news and a strong indicator of our confidence.  That said, usual caveats apply about how product performance and quality will ultimately dictate availability.

Our development schedule remains on track to deliver the 2007 Microsoft Office system by the end of 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007.  Feedback on quality and performance will determine the exact dates."

I want one of those! :)

"Here's the deal. You missed your first shot. And we know we said something about the world ending if you didn't sign up for MSDN Webcasts and Virtual Labs, but fortunately for ALL LIVING THINGS, we've decided to give you another chance. Do the world a favor, and don't blow it this time, eh?

Plus, if you don't attend at least two live MSDN Webcasts or Virtual Labs per month, from June through September, you won't get to collect the Source Fource action figures. And then where will you be?

Everyone else in your office will be playing with their Source Fource action figures at lunch, and you'll have to paint a potato red and blue and squint your eyes. Oh, sure, everyone will pretend to play along as you run through the room, holding your potato over your head and making "whoosh" noises.

Scared? Good. Here's the skinny: From June through September 2006, a different super dude or dudette will be offered each month and will be sent to developers who get their act together and attend at least two live MSDN Webcasts or two MSDN Virtual Labs, or one of each, in a given month. Oh, and hey, not so fast... In order to confirm your shipping address and receive credit for attendance, you must complete an evaluation at the end of each webcast or virtual lab.

Any questions? Uh...okay, you, in the back. With the mullet."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/sfdetails/

Olaf has posted some information about the Technical Refresh of Office 2007 Beta 2:

"Das TR wird am 12.9.06 erscheinen. Das TR wird über 6400 Fixes enthalten, es hat sich also eine Menge getan."

September 12th, more then 6400 bugfixes...

Andrew Connell posted some tips to speed up your SharePoint development:

• Tip #1: Add Command Line Shortcut to "12 Hive"
• Tip #2: Access STSADM.EXE From any Directory in a Command Prompt
• Tip #3: Recycle Application Pools, not IIS

Read his full post why and how!

Want to sit back and relax while learning Office 2007 things?

• Creating and Customizing Site Pages with SharePoint Designer 2007 - Understand the difference between page templates and page instances and then learn how to customize your pages.
• Creating and Testing Features with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Step through the process of using Visual Studio to create a custom feature and an associated assembly DLL.
• Creating and Using Event Handlers in Windows SharePoint Services V3 - Create a list item receiver class to handle both synchronous events as well as asynchronous events.
• Creating Custom Workflows with the SharePoint Designer 2007 - Build a custom workflow using the wizard provided by SharePoint Designer 2007.
• Customizing the Ribbon with Visual Studio Tools for Office "v3" June CTP - Create an add-in for PowerPoint 2007 to customize and modify the ribbon.
• Extending the Office 2007 User Interface with a Custom Task Pane - Create a shared add-in with Visual Studio 2005 that extends the new user interface with a custom task pane.
• Generating Office Documents using the New XML Open File Formats - Generate, read and modify documents without going through the object model of the hosting Office application.

Don't forget the popcorn and coke...

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).

Ever had to wait a long time before a SharePoint page loads the first time during a demo? You really want to have the pages load fast if you click through a SharePoint demo! Joel posted the scripts to warm up your servers and preloads the most common pages in SharePoint.

Download here

"warmupserver.zip contains the following 3 files:

Startup.bat - Calls the warmupserver.cmd script and passes in the servername parameter (modify this to fit the hostname of your server)

Warmupserver.cmd - checks for servername parameter then leverages the HttpRequest.vbs script to hit the relevant admin pages (change the pages and ports to the relevant ones)

HTTPRequest.vbs - This script executes an HTTP query using the XMLHTTP object"

One of the big issues we've ran into several times is the authentication restriction of SharePoint 2003. Basically all of the users that must be identified on WSS 2 should be in the Active Directory. Managing (a lot) of these accounts is an issue for a lot of customers. Besides that, not all system administrators are happy with the idea that all external users that have to work with the WSS site, should be in the active directory.

Here at Tam Tam, we have chosen to store all those (customer) accounts in our AD, which results in thousands of entries, and a loss of control. We cannot make sure each account is still active or still belongs to that customer.

There are some tools to manage that (here, here and many other), but there definitely is a need for other authentication providers such as form based authentication.

Microsoft has solved this problem in SharePoint 2007. In the new version different authentication providers are supported. In fact, different providers can be used together for the same site! A major improvement which will make a lot of people very happy.

The SharePoint Team Blog has dedicated an article about this and how to configure multiple authentication providers for SharePoint 2007. A very into depth story which shows one of the big improvements of SharePoint 2007.

"Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) V3 contains several new features around authentication and authorization that make it easier to develop and deploy solutions in Internet facing environments, especially extranets. In the previous version of WSS, all security principals needed to resolve at some point to a Windows identity – either a user account or group.

WSS V3 is built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework, which allows the use of forms-based authentication (FBA) to authenticate users into the system. By riding on top of ASP.NET 2.0’s pluggable authentication provider model, you can now support users stored in Active Directory as well as SQL Server, an LDAP directory, or any other directory that has an ASP.NET 2.0 Membership provider.

Although WSS V3 will not ship with any Membership providers, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 will include an LDAP V3 Membership provider, and ASP.NET 2.0 includes a SQL Server provider. But if you want to use a directory and can’t find a Membership provider for it, you can write your own! This is a key technology enabler for heterogeneous environments."

UPDATE: Just read a very cool article by Liam about LDAP Authentication in MOSS 2007. Check it out here!

The Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 HTML and CSS Validator tool helps you to validate HTML and CSS grammar using some of the most popular Web developing tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Expression Web Designer 2007, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.

Two versions of this tool are available for download. WordMailSupport.msi provides a Microsoft-compatible version of the Validator Tool for use with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Expression Web Designer 2007, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. WordMailSupportMacromedia.msi provides a Macromedia-compatible version of the Validator Tool for use with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.

These articles and accompanying tools are provided for your use and can help you better understand the new capabilities offered with the switch to the Word 2007 HTML parsing and rendering engine. This information should help you with the generation of e-mail newsletters or other complex HTML documents.

Download here

Related Resources

1. MSDN Article: Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007 (Part 1 of 2)
2. MSDN Article: Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007 (Part 2 of 2)
3. Microsoft Office Developer Center
4. Microsoft Office Online

SharePoint development and debugging has always been a bit inefficient because of the deployment of the compiled DLL in the SharePoint environment. For deploying in the bin directory, we could simple change the output path in VS 2003 to the bin directory. Each build will automatically be placed in this bin directory.

For GAC deployment we had to drag and drop the DLL in the GAC and do an IISRESET before the new build could be tested. In VS 2005 there is an option to de pre en post build events. This mechanism can be used to easily deploy a DLL into the GAC:

1) go to the project properties in VS 2005 and click the Build Events tab.

2) at the post event box type in:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\gacutil.exe" /i "$(TargetPath)"

IISRESET

3) click ok, and build!

We (Tam Tam) are doing a MOSS 2007 training given by Patrick Tisseghem last week and this week. During the sessions we've discussed the new Office File format and the way we can generate them on the server.

It is the solution for many document generations problems we've had in the past. Struggling with RTF or PDF generators is something of the past :)

There is however one problem: compatibility. Documents generated in the new file format cannot be viewed or opened by older Office versions by default. This problem is solved with Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

"Microsoft has added new file formats to the 2007 Microsoft Office system to reduce file sizes, improve the recovery of corrupt or damaged files, and improve integration with external sources. To help ensure that you can exchange documents between Office releases, Microsoft has developed a Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. The Compatibility Pack (Beta 2) is available for Microsoft Office XP and Office 2003.

By updating Microsoft Office XP and Office 2003 with the Compatibility Pack (Beta 2), you can create new documents, open and edit documents, and save documents using the 2007 Microsoft Office system file formats."

Download here

We've been struggling a lot with installing MOSS 2007 on a single (DC) server. Glad to hear that Joris has found this download:

"There is a patch available for installing MOSS 2007 on a domain controller in standalone mode (If you don't patch it, you will get a "trial period for this period has expired"). You can download it here."

via James O'Neill

"Times move on. The Office 2007 team wanted 500,000 downloads of office. They didn't turn the tap off. They kept going. They got 3 Million downloads - that's about one Peta-byte of transfers, which takes serious hosting and bandwidth. Did they stop then ? No, they said for a nominal charge people can still download it. And people complained. Next time guys, turn the tap off.

But here's a promise, if anyone can give me valid reasons why

1. They should have a beta of office, but
2. They have neither TechNet or MSDN and
3. They didn't manage to be in first 3 million downloaders and
4. $1.50 is not a reasonable charge.

Then I'll get them a copy, and I'll give £1 (near $2 than $1.50) to our charity. Any takers ?"

I've been making blog posts for a while now with BlogJet, a very easy to use posting application. I've been very satisfied with it for over a year now.

So, a while ago, the many Office blogs announced the blogging support for Office 2007, which is, in my opinion, a very cool feature! There was no dasBlog support yet in beta 2, so I have to wait a little longer...

But today I read via the Windows Live Writer team blog the introduction of a very cool application called Windows Live Writer! Windows Live Writer is a blogging application that supports many blog API's (including dasBlog). There are very cool features like photo publishing, map publishing and a Writer SDK to write your own plug ins.

I'm trying it out right now (in fact, this posting was made via Live Writer). It's still in beta, but looks great so far!

Download it here

I’ve spend a lot of time the last few months just installing MOSS 2007. Sometimes it runs with just a few clicks, other times it takes a day to get the server up and running. It’s beta, I know, but the following pages might help troubleshooting MOSS 2007, Office System 2007 and WSS 3.0 beta. With thanks to Jopx for metioning!

• Office 2007 clients - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517941033.aspx
• 2007 Microsoft Office Server - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517541033.aspx
• Windows SharePoint Services - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517981033.aspx

I ran into a very nice article about record management and things like document conversion written by liam. Part I and II give a great overview about the things new and how to deal with it.

“There always seemed to be good high end solutions for Record Management but not that many that were really good for the small, medium solutions. Well all that can change now with the Records Management features of MOSS2007.

So what are the features?

There are quite a few features that have been added, such as:

1.       Document Conversion

2.       Document Policies

3.       Retention Policies

4.       Document Security – Individual Item

5.       Records Repository Team Sites

This functionality enables you to create “Record Management” polices.  Policies are created at the “Site Collection” level and then applied at the “Document Library” level. To create “Site Collection” policies open up the Portal and select the “Site Actions”, “Site Setting” and then “Modify All Site Settings”.  Within the “Site Collection Administration” section you will need to access the “Site Collection Policies” option.”

 

Sometimes, there are questions about how to change the order of lists in the quicklaunch navigation in WSS 2 sites. Somehow, people would like to do that very often and don’t know how to achieve that without using tools as FrontPage.

Well, the solution (workaround) is very simple. For each list, change the settings and turn off the view in quick launch option. Once you’ve done that, simple enable them again in the order you like.

That’s it!

Via GotDotNet:

“As you know there is a very simple admin. interface for viewing and deleting user’s alerts in WSS and nothing at all in SPS. AlertLib compensates this shortage.
All alerts from all sites/areas are implemented as library items, folders correspond to sites/areas. You can view a list of all alerts for given user(s) on all subsites/areas, filter, sort alerts, do multiple delete in Datasheet view, etc. (almost all operation as in usual SharePoint library). “

Download here

For dasBlog users that want to use Word 2007 for posting to their blog there is good news. According to the Blog Word Help page, dasBlog will be supported in the future (TR??)!