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This is one of the most advanced sessions that I have been to.  Basically the Visual Studio team at Microsoft has made it extremely easy to create add-ins in Visual Studio 2010 using MEF (The Managed Extensibility Framework).  While it is not a day to day operation that most people are going to do, it enables a huge amount of flexibility.

One of the presenters in the session already showed off a list designer feature that he will be making available, so that we won’t have to hand edit the list definition xml any longer.

Another scenario where you might want to build a custom extension is if you regularly create a project that has the same items in to for a site solution that cannot be setup to be configurable.  This would give you the flexibility to have a starting place with a number of items already defined.

This is definitely 400 level material, but it is awesome that Microsoft is giving us the flexibility to customize visual studio.

This session was originally titled REST and LINQ in 2010 and they basically rebuilt the presented to cover all data access methods in 2010. 

The ways to access data in SharePoint 2010 are

Client Object Model, Server Object Model, REST , LINQ

SharePoint now allows you to link lists together via a lookup column to define a relationship between the lists.  You can restrict deleting a parent with children or cascade deleting the children.

LINQ for SharePoint and REST (WCF Services) allow you to query and return all parent and children data at the same time.

You can define the queries in such a way that you only return the columns that you need.

SharePoint now only returns the actual rows that you request and not the full set of data and then apply the filter.  One more reason to upgrade, performance. J

So once again Microsoft has listened to the users and made it easier to customize the SharePoint UI.  When upgrading from SharePoint 2007 or WSS 3.0 the new UI can be turned on at will and there for allows you to upgrade the infrastructure first and get those benefits before deciding to change the UI.

All ribbon components are customizable and can be turned on or off as needed.

There is a clear Status Area and Notification area to update users on the progress of your actions.

I think that everyone should be advised to brush up on your JavaScript because here as well as with the Visio Services visual stuff it requires JavaScript.

Microsoft has made many changes to load on demand so that the UI is snappier for the user.  There is both compressed JavaScript for the actual running code and debug versions so that you can actually read the code.

Master pages can now be customized for all pages in the site including the application pages so that you can have a consistent look and feel for the WHOLE site.

The themes support has been greatly improved and you can actually create a SharePoint theme from a PowerPoint presentation.

There are new dialogs that allow you to edit items and make the UI more consistent with a rich UI.  You can design an edit page for an item that behaves as a separate page and then also can appear in a dialog without all the chrome with the simple use of some style sheets.

This is an awesome feature set that is going to allow companies with the SharePoint server enterprise license to create some extremely interactive dashboards and “smashups”.  Imagine a page that has a Visio diagram on it with a map of the US and all of your company’s manufacturing plants on it   As you click on one of the plant’s you drill into an expanded view of the plant and the products it creates.  By clicking on the product the rest of the web page is updated with sales and other information for that product including but not limited to charts of sales performance, current status of the manufacturing line etc.  This is going to enable some really cool scenarios.  The code for this functionality is in JavaScript.

Visio Services also allows you to create custom data providers so that if your data is not in SQL server or one of the supported data sources, you can create your own.  This would enable you to talk to existing web service and display get information about the current status of the manufacturing processes in the scenario described above.

Finally Visio Services allows you to build custom graphics for shape items in your diagram.  So in the scenario above you could create a graphic that showed the exact status of the production line and if there was a problem, in what area the problem exists.

Microsoft has really listened and given the users, administrators and developers a lot more capability in this release, RTM cannot come soon enough.

               So when I decided to attend this session I wasn’t quite sure how it would apply to our day to day solutions that we offer to customers.  Once I saw the first demo I knew that this would be a huge feature.  Imagine that you have a company that sells high end products and services where a sales organization is involved in creating quotes for customers.  The marketing department in the company is probably very concerned with maintaining a clear message with customers.  An add-in could be created for Microsoft Word that would allow the salesperson to select and insert the proper marketing collateral for the products and/or services that they are trying to pitch.  By feeding the add-in from a SharePoint list or library the Marketing team would have the capability to maintain the information and keep it secure.  In addition, workflows could be applied to any new information that needed to be added to the library.

Once again I have found something that I cannot wait to get my hands on.

               Microsoft has created a SharePoint client object model to allow applications that run on the desktop to talk directly to a limited set of the full SharePoint object model.  There are actually 3 separate object model references for Silverlight, JavaScript and .NET.  This functionality will allow rich client applications to be created that enable users to get a full desktop experience.  In addition, this will enable 3^rd parties to create add-ons for the Microsoft Office products that enable new features.  Currently you must talk to the server through web services which is significantly more complex.

               The client object model will enable me to migrate the DocMover utility that I have created for uploading documents into SharePoint and applying metadata so that the user can perform the entire operation and not be dependent on the Farm Administrator to run the actual migration.

               With the Silverlight version of the object model, you will be able to create applications that run both in the browser in the SharePoint site, however, you will also be able to run the application in an out of browser experience.  This enables you to build and deploy the applications they way that you want to.

               While most of the features that were demoed here are available in SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0, it was good to see them demoed and to see that Microsoft is committed to extending the functionality.  The word features for the SDK are pretty much the same as what is available in the current CTP of the OpenXML SDK.  The SDK now includes more hooks to manipulate Excel files as well as word files.

               Word Automation Services – This is a new feature of SharePoint 2010 that allows you  to programmatically convert a document from a binary (DOC) or open xml (DOCX) file into a PDF or XPS file.  This will allow custom solutions to automatically secure generated documents by converting to a PDF file.

               Co – Authoring – Office / SharePoint 2010 support multiple users authoring a document at the same time.  This includes the automation components.  So you can continually update a document with data and charting.

The OpenXML and Office automation solutions enable infinite possibilities with the generation of collateral material from just about any data source.  Just think of the things you could build with this and Business Connectivity services.

SharePoint 2009 Conference Day One

Well yesterday was the beginning of the SharePoint 2009 conference and 7399 of my closest friends and I starting meeting at the Mandalay Bay convention center in Las Vegas to learn the details of SharePoint 2010.

               Steve Ballmer gave the opening keynote and was excited about telling us about SP 2010 as well he should be given the revenue model for the MOSS product line that has now been re-branded to just SharePoint Server 2010.  Windows SharePoint Services has now been rebranded to SharePoint Foundation Server 2010.  It seems as though they are breaking WSS away from Windows Server as the products are now shipping on different schedules.  Steve was also very about their cloud services option called SharePoint Online, most likely because it will mean a consistent revenue stream for companies that subscribe to the service.  Steve said that there are currently over a million registered users of SP Online and I am sure that number will explode with SP 2010 and the new options for hosting customization that it allows.

Here are a few of the big changes in each category,  I will talk more about each of these as I go through the sessions this week.

·        End Users

o   New Web 2.0 AJAX interface that does not require a page reload when making changes to a page

o   The Office Ribbon is now used through SharePoint with a more context sensitive ui that the present SP interface.

o   Parent / Child relationships between lists so that you can link 2 lists together with pseudo referential integrity.  You can set it to not allow the deletion of child items if a parent item exists or to delete the child items when deleting the parent.

o   Business Connectivity Services – this allows easy integration of existing line of business data in SharePoint with full CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) support to enable you to update information as needed.

o   Sandbox Solutions – while this is actually a developer item, it belongs in the end user section as well because of the situations that it will enable.  Sandbox solutions will make it easy to find hosting providers that will allow you to customize a SharePoint site in the cloud and enable scenarios for small to medium size companies that before they could not afford.  It will also make it easier for large enterprises to manage business need for SharePoint solutions while maintaining the stability of their SharePoint environments.

·        Developers

o   New Visual Studio Tools – I was privileged to be able to attend a 2010 class a few weeks ago as a Microsoft Partner and I am happy to say that the Visual Studio SharePoint tools finally work.  In the past their always seemed to be hoops to jump through that made it so frustrating that it was easier to build solutions with WSP Builder and things like the  STSDEV mods.  They really listened to the feedback and there is only one area that the tools fall short and that is that they only work with SharePoint 2010 and not 2007.

o   Sandbox Solutions - While some developers may think of this as being handcuffed to a limited set of APIs, it really is a bonus for developers since that IT people will be more likely to allow you to deploy your solution and ultimately lead to better code, since we will get caught on our code that causes issues.  Basically the sandbox is a place where SharePoint code runs and is monitored.  If the code causes an issue that makes it go over the allowed daily “points” for the application, SharePoint will shutdown the solution so that it doesn’t de-stabilize the farm.  Since the IT department and hosting providers know that you can’t mess up the environment with a sandbox solution, they are going to more willing to allow the deployment of customizations.  It is clear that the Microsoft SharePoint Online service intends to allow the deployment of sandbox solutions.

o   Developer Dashboard – There is now a developer dashboard available to enable on just about any SharePoint page that will allow you to interrogate the page load and see what is causing site slowness.  The dashboard is not a developer only feature, if end users are seeing slowness we can ask them to enable the dashboard to troubleshoot issues.  This is going to be a huge feature.

·        Administrators

o   Service Applications –   There is no more Share Service Provider in SharePoint Server.  Each service runs separately and can configure to run only against the web applications that need it.  Some service applications can be setup to run against multiple farms.  Most SharePoint Services applications will be built using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and will allow the Service to run outside of the current network.  For example a company could subscribe to a live stock quote service that is provided without the 15 minute delay stock quotes are usually put through and give its workers the information that it needs.

o   New Central Administration Interface – The central administration site has been completely re-worked and will take some getting use to, however, it is clear that it will be easier to use.

o   Sandbox Solutions – These solutions will enable the IT Pro to deploy customizations in their environment that will not endanger the stability of the farm.  It will also be able to only allow users to apply specific sandboxed solutions.

o   Powershell – Virtually all SharePoint configurations and monitoring can be done via Powershell now so it will be dramatically easier to script against SharePoint whether large or small.

While many of these changes are evolutionary, the combined feature set is truly revolutionary.  It is abundantly clear that Microsoft listened to our feedback and took at is a call to action to improve the products that we have come to know and love.  As the week continues I will continue to update you with more information about the new and improved features in SharePoint 2010.

Here is the Document Generation Sample as promised from the Atlanta SharePoint users group meeting last night.  For those of you who attended it turned out not to be the code but the presenter that was the issue.  I think I clicked on an older version of the document and that is why the field that I added did not show up in the document.

Here is the code:  http://www.sharepointinfo.net/files/DocGen.zip

Remember that you will need the following installed to work with the solution.

OpenXML SDK 2.0     http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C6E744E5-36E9-45F5-8D8C-331DF206E0D0&displaylang=en                 

Word Content Control Toolkit       http://www.codeplex.com/dbe

WSPBuilder         http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/

I will get the Screen Cast of the presentation created sometime later this week and post it here as well.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks,

John

Thanks to everyone who came out last night for the user group meeting.  I am going to correct the feature code and create the screencast and it should be posted by the end of this week.  I am going to post here and annouce on twitter when it is up.    You can follow me on twitter at

http://www.twitter.com/johnram

Thanks,

John