Mart Muller's Weblog

Being a good SharePoint developer or consultant consists of many parts. Understanding the platform and the way it can be used to solve business cases is one of those parts. Another part is to be aware of the ideas, problems and solutions that live in the online SharePoint community. Sometimes I'm asked about how do I keep up with all these new things. Well I can tell you it is simple... really simple.

I start my working day (ok I admit, weekends too sometimes) with reading blogs which I aggregate using RSS in outlook. RSS is THE way for me to keep up to date with a lot of things, especially SharePoint. It takes about 15 minutes of my day, but it's worth every minute! So where do you start?

My blog list (about 400+ subscriptions at the moment) is built during the years I've been working with SharePoint. A little while ago, Joel Oleson published the top 100 of SharePoint blogs (based on Technorati/Google stats). When you want to keep up to date with SharePoint I would suggest subscribing to all those blogs and read them regularly.

Nice post on the Bamboo team blog about installing WSS on a Vista machine. They released a helper application to make it all work, including a manual which steps to take.

Check it out here.

I received a question from one of our customers about their SharePoint extranet security. Because they are publishing important documents on the SharePoint environment, the question raised if they could use RSA tokens to make it even more secure, combined with Forms Based Authentication (FBA).

We are using ISA server in this case and I found the question interesting to investigate and see what to options are.

So first of all, I did run into a interesting blog posting by Pranab Paul about a step by step example: SharePoint 2007 (MOSS/WSS) FBA and RSA. Also check out the posting about the HTTP Module. The challenge seems to be how to pass the credentials to SharePoint, which are entered during the RSA login.

Secondly, Pranab is also referring to ISA configuration articles for RSA:

• Walk-through for RSA SecurID Authentication for ISA Server 2006 Part 1: RSA Authentication Manager Server Configuration
• Walk-through for RSA SecurID Authentication for ISA Server 2006 Part 2: ISA Array Members Preparation

I would suggest doing a small proof of concept using the RSA technology with SharePoint. Is it working correctly, what are the security risks, etc. It seems that there are no best practices about this topic.

Does any of you have experience on this topic? Anyway, I'll keep you posted about it!

On the PDC08 web site is announced that Ray Ozzie will take care of the keynote. During PDC in 2005 there were a lot of sessions about SharePoint 2007. It was the first time that we actually saw thing working in action there.

So, what's in it for SharePoint developers during the PDC08?

Looking at the sessions, I see two interesting words that trigger me: 'The Cloud' and 'Live Platform'. Connected, I read: SharePoint As A Service. Is PDC the place where we will see interesting things about Office '14'? It's interesting for sure...

Anyway, more to come I guess :) I recommend to subscribe to the RSS feed.

My colleague Wouter just came up with a solution for some issues we were dealing with here at Tam Tam.

Using window.onload = function() ... in javascript breaks SharePoint's own system of getting functions run when the page is loaded. Two problems that I've seen as a result:

• menus not folding out
• Explorer view not working

This is how the SharePoint "on load" system works:

the body tag has this onload attribute:

onload="javascript:if (typeof(_spBodyOnLoadWrapper) != 'undefined') _spBodyOnLoadWrapper();",

meaning: if "_spBodyOnLoadWrapper" exists, run it.

"_spBodyOnLoadWrapper" will execute all functions in the array "_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames"
this array gets filled like this: _spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push("ExpGroupOnPageLoad");

When you use window.onload = function() ... for instance in core.js, it will replace the onload of the body, so "_spBodyOnLoadWrapper" will not be run. This means all the functions SharePoint wants to run on load are not run, which can cause various problems.

Solution:

Instead of using something like this:

window.onload = function() {

      randomizePicture();

      delayMenu();

}

use this:

_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('randomizePicture');

_spBodyOnLoadFunctionNames.push('delayMenu');

Collaboration and email for students. Check out http://get.liveatedu.com/Education/Connect/

From the press release:

Microsoft Corp. is adding no-cost Microsoft Exchange Labs e-mail for students and alumni to its Live@edu online communication and collaboration applications tailored for educational institutions. Live@edu with Exchange Labs gives students and alumni access to a reliable and security-enhanced e-mail experience similar to what they may use in the workplace, while university IT administrators can benefit from additional security features and simplified deployment. By bringing proven technologies to current education systems, Microsoft is helping IT administrators build closely connected infrastructures and create exceptional experiences for students and educators.

Microsoft Exchange Labs Benefits IT Administrators, Students and Alumni Alike

Live@edu now offers institutions the option of giving their students and alumni an Exchange Labs inbox. Live@edu offers the following benefits to universities and students:

• Reliable communications. Universities can provide students with hosted e-mail, featuring up to 10 GB inboxes and 20 MB attachments. Students can also access their e-mail, contacts and calendar from Outlook Web Access and Microsoft Office Outlook, as well as from Web-enabled mobile phones, similar to what they may experience in the work force.

• Building blocks for collaboration. Additional Live@edu services that can be used for on-campus collaboration include shared calendars with free/busy lookup between students, student directories with administrative control to create distribution lists, and the ability to add faculty and staff who are using Exchange on-premise to student directories.

• Additional security. Live@edu with Exchange Labs also now allows message tracking to confirm urgent e-mail was delivered, and content filtering, which gives administrators the ability to block e-mail with objectionable content.

• Institution identity. Schools can deepen the relationship with students and alumni through an e-mail inbox with the school’s logo, a custom theme created by the institution and a school-branded e-mail address that students can keep after they graduate.

Just for the record to share with you:

Office SharePoint Server 2007 with SP1 (32 bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2E6E5A9C-EBF6-4F7F-8467-F4DE6BD6B831&displaylang=en

Office SharePoint Server 2007 with SP1 (64 bit)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3015FDE4-85F6-4CBC-812D-55701FBFB563&displaylang=en

Note: You'll notice two executables: OfficeServer.exe 295.0 MB and OfficeServerwithSP1.exe 409.2 MB.  The OfficeServer.exe is the full RTM version.  The OfficeServerwithSp1.exe is the new special slipstreamed version which is RTM plus the SP1 (slipstreamed).
These bits can be used as trial to activate standard or enterprise edition.  Note these should not be installed on existing SharePoint Server 2007.  The separate stand alone SP1 should be used in cases of existing installations.

I've been on holidays for the last two weeks to the beautiful island called Samos in Greece. I would recommend it if you like beautiful nature, good food, sun and beaches!

Some pictures to share:

 
Samos is the island of Pythagoras (a2 + b2 = c2)

 
The Greece flag

 
The pirates of ... Samos

 
Nice heh? :)

Good to hear that Office 2007 SP2, which is on the calendar for the first half of 2009, will support the Open Document Format (ODF, 1.1). There is a lot of discussion going on about the support for ODF or OpenXML, especially for governmental use.

From the press release:

"The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1. "

I just got an invitation from my colleague Wouter, giving me a link to download Xobni, a very useful Outlook add in for managing emails, contacts, etc.

"After a quick install, you'll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook - and suddenly information will become much easier to find. When a new email arrives, the sender's full communication history appears in the Xobni sidebar, including past conversations, attachments and contact details. Xobni also includes a blazing fast email search tool."

You can download the add in for free.