SharePoint Beacon is the new home for my blog regarding SharePoint

I am excited to announce that my new blog home, which is called SharePoint Beacon, will now be at: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/SharePointBeacon/archive/2009/06/23/EBE%20on%20SharePoint.Microsoft.com.aspx. The new home is leveraging the SharePoint platform using the Enhanced Blog Edition which is part of the Community Kit for SharePoint. Over the next few weeks I will be migrating the blogs and comments to my new site and removing them from this site. Once the conversion is complete all the SharePoint post will be removed from this blog.

No fear, this blog is not going away!

Moving forward this blog will become…

Wait for it… MindMatters

This is where I will discuss various business topics along with a mixture of some fun topics that catch my interest.

Catch my first post, with the new material, in the next few weeks.

Testing EBE sent trackback to: http://www.hezser.de/blog/archive/2007/03/01/remove-server-from-farm-1.aspx

Community Involvement – What’s in it for me?

Microsoft is running a contest on the MSDN SharePoint Developer Forum where they will be awarding prizes to the top contributors in the forum for each month.

The MSDN SharePoint Developer forum is also a great place for customers to get their questions answered by the community.

Monthly prizes include Xbox 360 Arcade, a Zune 120Gb and 3x 7” Digital Photo Frames.

More details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2009/02/27/microsoft-sharepoint-developer-forum-challenge-march-april-and-may-2009.aspx

What are the benefits of getting involved in the community – “What’s in it for me?”

·         By putting your knowledge to the test in the community you learn develop from the experts themselves

·         Access to a network of other community leaders.

·         Recognition by peers as an expert in the technology you choose to evangelize.

·         Role model for others aspiring to learn in your field

·         Boost your career development

·         Community involvement is a step in the right direction for awards such as the Microsoft Valued Professional (MVP)

SharePoint 2007 Site Administrator’s Handbook by Yvonne M. Harryman

SharePoint Book

The early access edition of my upcoming SharePoint book is now available at http://www.manning.com/harryman/. If you have enjoyed reading my blog you are going to love this book. The focus is not on the “hardcore” developer type but more so the business user which is sometimes termed as a “power user”. It is essentially a no code approach to building powerful sites if you were a site owner.  Chapter 1 is available for free. Check it out and please post any feedback you have on the author forum at: http://www.manning-sandbox.com/forum.jspa?forumID=458 .

Thanks!

Unified Communications and the Devil Wears Prada!?!?

It is rare to find a techie video geared toward women so I had to highlight it.

This spoof on the Devil Wears Prada demonstrates different unified communications tools provided by Microsoft such as:

·         Microsoft Office Communicator

·         Exchange Unified Messaging

·         Click to Call Functionality

·         Round Table

Click here to watch the video!

SharePoint Learning Resources

As many of you are probably aware there is an immense amount of material on SharePoint and it is hard to filter through all the content available. A readiness tool is now available at the SharePoint Learning Resources Site:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/readiness/Pages/alllearningresources.aspx?Filter=1&View={00A8D85C-A12E-4283-B10E-DC51641C716B}

This link will direct you to a list of readiness resources that you can filter down by product type (e.g. MOSS or WSS v3), resource type (reading or webcast), content level (100 or 400) and target audience (IT professional or developer). So get out there and start learning J

Displaying users as System Accounts

The steps below will walk you through modifications in the Central Admin properties in SharePoint to display certain users as System Account. I have found this to be helpful when doing migrations and for screen shots when I prefer the sign-in to display System Account as in the screen shot below:

 

Steps:

Under Central Administration > Application Management > Policy for Web Application in the Application Security section > Go to Add or Edit Users. There you will find an option to select Account operates as System under Choose System Settings.

Enhanced Blog Edition 2.0 Release

The Enhanced Blog Edition 2.0 for SharePoint has been released! More information about this release can be found on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/03/05/announcing-the-community-kit-for-sharepoint-enhanced-blog-edition-2-0-cks-ebe-final-release.aspx

The documentation and source code can be found at:

http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Enhanced%20Blog%20Edition&referringTitle=Home 

One of my favorite aspects of this release is the new themes that have been included. You can view them at the demo site:

http://cks.wssblogs.com/Home.aspx

Updated 10/5

The EBE 2.5 release is about to go live. This link may not work in the future I am just doing a test to validate that Trackbacks are working: http://ebe25.wssblogs.com/archive/2009/10/04/still-active.aspx

Overview of Excel Services

I have put together the following overview of Excel Services to help users understand what it can and cannot do. 

What is Excel Services? Excel Services is part of enterprise version of MOSS 2007. It can read and display data from Excel workbooks stored in trusted locations such as a document library, UNC path or a HTTP site. It enables calculation to be done server side in an Excel workbook and rendered in a DHTML format through Excel Web Access. While SharePoint offers web parts to work with the data in Excel Services the user interface can be anything that can integrate with web services. 

Unsupported features of Excel Services

•  Active X controls
• AutoShapes, Clip or word art
•  Embedded pictures or backgrounds
•  Information Rights Management
• Linked Spreadsheets
• Smart documents or tags
•  Macros, forms or toolbox controls
• PivotTables using multiple consolidation ranges
• Data Validation
• Spreadsheets with protection enabled
• Organization charts and diagrams

For updates or a full list of items go to: http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/12/01/499206.aspx 

Examples of what you can use Excel Services for can be found at:

• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/DisplayingCharts.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/11/21/495454.aspx
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546696.aspx

Other recommended resources for Excel Services

• http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/11/17/493962.aspx

Exporting and Importing a Web Part through the SharePoint UI

I have recently been asked how to use a custom search web part that I had created on another site. Instead of walking the user though the steps for configuring it I showed them how to export my web part and import it to their site through the SharePoint interface. I figured I would share this short lesson with my blog readers also…

• Go to the web part that you would like to export
• Select Site Actions > Edit Page
• Navigate to the Web Part and in title bar select edit > Export and save the dwp to a location on your computer.

Screen Shot: Export

• Go to the Site where you would like to add this same web part
• Select Site Actions > Edit Page
• Select Add a Web Part in the desired Zone
• The Add Web Parts Dialog will appear select the “Select Advanced Web Part gallery and options” at the bottom of the page
• Here you will see the Web Part Gallary. In the upper right hand corner there will be a Browse drop down 

Screen Shot: Import 

• Select Import
• Browse to the location of the saved dwp file you created in step 3 and upload
• You can now drag the web part to the web part zone for use on your site

Shared Blogging

Other then keeping up with my own blog I like to read other SharePoint blogs. If you would like to get a list of the SharePoint blog entries that I recommend reading you can view them through my shared items on Google Reader:

View my shared items

Subscribe to a feed of my shared items  

Enjoy and Happy Blogging!