Oscar Medina

Microsoft continues to improve the Mac client experience on hosted Exchange/SharePoint

Oscar — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:57:00 +0100

If you’ve ever experienced the SharePoint/Exchange hosted services with Outlook 2007, you would know that there is a plug-in that is needed to provide a Single Sign-on experience for the end users. This same experience will be available for Mac users soon! You can read more on this article Microsoft beefs up its hosted Exchange/SharePoint suite

Recently I published a quick overview of what the Mac User Experience is like within the Enterprise, obviously assuming all server products are internally hosted. You can read it at Exchange and Mac User Experience – A quick overview

It is great to know that Microsoft continues to further enhance the Mac client experience.

Oscar

SharePoint Calculated Column – Calculate Business Days Only, exclude weekends!

Oscar — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:14:18 +0100

A while back, I talked about only taking into account business days on any SharePoint Designer workflow or SharePoint List calculated column. It seems to be a very popular post to date (based on Google Analytics Reports), and I thought it would be great to point people to it today!

In case you missed it: http://blogs.sharepointace.com/post/SharePoint-List-Calculated-Column-Calculate-Business-Days.aspx

Regards,
Oscar

SharePointAce Consulting Group is now being aggregated on Planet SharePoint!

Oscar — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:19:00 +0100

We at SharePointAce Consulting Group are delighted to be part of the vast amount of SharePoint blogs that are being aggregated by Planet SharePoint and look forward to continuing contributing our experience. You can view our profile here

Enterprise SharePoint/Exchange and Mac User Experience – A quick overview

Oscar — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:51:56 +0100

[UPDATE] – Michael Gannotti has a nice video on other tips here. He talks about many challenges.

First let me say, I myself am a big Mac OS X user. I have developed iPhone Apps and use the platform on a regular basis, have my iPhone working with my Exchange 2007 account etc. So I definitely know of some of the challenges using SharePoint on the platform as I have experienced them first-hand. One of the most important facts is that ActiveX Controls only exist in IE. That said, we must understand how a Mac User can still work with SharePoint/Exchange, let me point you to things that have been enhanced.

On this post, I wanted to simply highlight some of the recent improvements that Microsoft and Apple have both come up with.

Recent Improvements for the SharePoint User Experience

There are a few recent updates that one can immediately benefit from if he/she is a Mac User:

Microsoft Office 2008
Document Connection Add-On
Snow Leopard – Tight integration with Exchange 2007

The nice thing about the Document Connection add-on is that one can browse documents very much like the Web Folders on Vista. In addition, some of the things one can do using this add-on are:

Check-in/out
Work on documents offline
Add documents to Favorites
Track SharePoint multiple Sites you work with including Workspaces
Track your Drafts, much like the SharePoint Drafts folder on your Vista machine

FIGURE 1 – Shows the Document Connection Add-On browsing a SharePoint Site

FIGURE 2 – Add a document to Favorites context menu

FIGURE 3 – Shows documents that you have added to your Favorites

If you are trying to access a site which is using Forms Based Authentication (FBA) or non NTLM, you will get a credentials box as shown below.

FIGURE 4 – Authentication box when you try and access a SharePoint site not using NTLM

Snow Leopard – Exchange 2007 tight integration

Leave it to Apple to take the lead in making sure they continue enticing users who obviously use their Macs for more than just home. Apple now has captured the attention of the Enterprise User by not only having Exchange 2007 account setup on the iPhone, but now full integration on their latest OS X, Snow Leopard.

With said integration you now have the following:

Exchange Contacts synched in the Address Book
Mail Program (mostly better than Entourage and an awesome alternative now in my mind)
NOTE: It seems that Microsoft is looking to replace Entourage with the release of an Outlook for the Mac version, checkout this post
iCal – your Exchange calendar is synched with iCal
Notes are also synched!
Tasks – These are shown as “To-Do’s” on the Mac!

I patched my Exchange 2007 server, then configured the Address Book and Mail Program, they worked flawlessly!

Exchange Tasks on iCal

On Mail, the Exchange Tasks are called To Do. You can see them FIGURE 5 how this looks on Mail vs Exchange (FIGURE 6)

FIGURE 5 – An Exchange Task is shown on the Mail program on the Mac

FIGURE 6 – An Exchange Task (Mac To Do) on Outlook Web Access

Exchange Notes on the iCal

When you browse the iCal, you will see on the left navigation a list of both, Exchange and local (Mac) Notes. iCal groups them, in my case they are under SharePointAce Consulting Group, LLC To Do.

FIGURE 7 – Exchange Notes using iCal Notes

FIGURE 8 – Outlook Web Access shows same Note as iCal

RSS Feeds

Since RSS is a big part of SharePoint (see chapter 6 on the book I contributed to Social Computing with SharePoint 2007), it makes sense to also include such capability on the Document Connection add-on. Figure 7 shows the RSS subscription I am using. Great for keeping track of all SharePoint data!

Well, I hope this makes sense to you and helps you understand a little detail on how the Exchange and SharePoint User experience looks.

-Oscar

Static WebPart in Master Page – yes you can!

Oscar — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:22:00 +0100

If you have a .NET background, you are bound to have many questions as to how things can be done on SharePoint. Given the fact that SharePoint 2007 is written on top of .NET 2.0, anything and almost everything you can think of, can be accomplished using the .NET web app typical techniques.

Recently, I ran into a scenario where my client had completely scratched the “look n feel” of SharePoint. One of the requirements was to have a custom navigation WebPart available on all pages. What to do?

Well, I added the custom WebPart to the Master Page! Easy!

FIGURE 1 – declare the custom WebPart DLL on Master Page

FIGURE 2 – Code on the Master Page that places the custom WebPart

Programmatically add a CSS link on your WebPart

Oscar — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:17:00 +0100

So, you have a WebPart you have developed and you are deploying it as part of a Solution (at least you should be). Your WSP includes CSS, Images and other artifacts that are dropped into the _layouts folder when your featureis activated.

Now you need a way to ensure that the CSS Classes you are referencing on your WebPart code are available to the WebPart, BUT you do not want the person deploying the WebPart to modify the Master Page. In other words, your WebPart should not have any dependencies outside of your Solution.

There is a way to simply add a CSS link within code. You can use the Class available on the Object Model

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.CssLink cssLink = new Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.CssLink();
cssLink.DefaultUrl = "/_layouts/MyAppFolder/CSS/tabBasic.css";

this.Page.Header.Controls.Add(cssLink);

more code………

Simple yet effective!

-Oscar

Did someone say branding???

oscar — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:53:30 +0100

SharePointAce LLC is going through a transformation right now. We are expanding! I have been practicing what I preach, meaning I will run my public site on MOSS 2007!

So, what does that look like? Take a look!

I did this in a day! A Master Page and a Publishing Layout Page!

Going live soon…

-Oscar

CQWP Recurring Calendar Events – New Version coming soon!

oscar — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:55:06 +0100

My friend and SharePoint MVP Brendon Schwartzand I are working hard to get an online store live by end of this month!

The vision is to have an online store where other SharePoint Developers and companies can sell and promote their products. This store will offer a turnkey solution for anyone that wishes to sell their SharePoint custom components.

Among the first products we will sell is an entirely enhanced version of the CQWPRCE WebPart currently available on CodePlex at http://cqwprce.codeplex.com/ One of the features that makes this new version of the WebPart so much more desirable is the fact that it will show the recurring rolled up events in a calendar view, just like the out of the box views! It will also show events that span (see figure 1)

FIGURE 1 – CQWPRCE shows an event that spans across several days using an out of the box calendar view.

In addition, we will offer support for our products and professional services around SharePoint.

We both are very excited and look forward to our grand opening!

Oscar

Building Dashboards Using SharePoint Designer 2007 – Techniques using Linked Data Sources

oscar — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:53:13 +0100

Today I am going to show you the different built-in technologies you may take for granted, always have been curious about or simply do not know about. My scenario in this case is building a dashboard using the SharePoint Designer 2007.

Our end result will look something like what you see in Figure 1. It is a DataViewWebPart created using the SharePoint Designer 2007

Use of Linked Data Sources in SPD 2007 to form a relationship between two SharePoint Lists (you can use this method to form a relationship with any other Data Source type)
Custom XSL to render the conditional image using XSL as well as importing your own XSL templates for reusability of those.

Figure 1 – The end result of our scenario shows Courses with related Tasks. The indicator image is determined by calculating how many tasks are either past due (red) or are due within a week (yellow)

Linked Data Sources

Linked Data Sources are very powerful, on code these are called Aggregate Data Sources. As an example you may have the following hierarchical relationship in order to display your data using XSL.

As you can see on Figure 2, each Course has many Events, and each Event has many Tasks associated with it. The Task List has a Lookup column to the Event List, and the Event List has a Lookup Column to the Courses List. Both Course and Event Tasks are stored on the same List.

Figure 2 – shows SharePoint List relationships

In order to display this on a DataViewWebPart, here are the steps you may take:

Drag the Course List on to the page, modify the columns as you wish
Select a row on that table, right click and insert a row below (this will make room for the Events table)
Create a Linked Data Source called it Events and Associated Tasks, it links the Events and Tasks as the name implies. Add the Events List and the Event Task List to this Data Source. So now your Data Source properties should look something like Figure 3 below.
Create another Linked Data Source, I called it Courses and Tasks plus Event Tasks, this Data Source will contain our first Data Source, so go ahead and click on Configure Data Source button, and add the first the Events and Associated Tasks Data Source. Now your properties should look like Figure 4

Figure 3 – Event and Tasks Data Source Properties

Figure 4 – Shows the Courses and Tasks plus Events Task Data Source with a nested Linked Data Source (Events and Associated Tasks – an SQL Data Source)

If you view Data Source Details on the right of the Designer screen, you should see the relational data, much like what Figure 5 shows.

At this point, it is easy to drag data and make it look pretty with XSL. Your end result is what you see in Figure 1 above.

The related Data Sources could have been say an SQL Data Source linked to a SharePoint List Data Source for when you need to show related data from a database that matches your SharePoint List data. The possibilities are endless! You can link almost any type of Data Source such as BDC, SQL, and Web Service so long as you have a field that relates the two Data Sources.

XSL Fun!

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy the challenge of pushing the limits with XSL and XSLT, this technology is extremely versatile and powerful. With a little work, you can create complex rendering tables that show your data in pretty much any way you want (almost all the time, there are exceptions)

On this dashboard project I previously worked on, there was a requirement to show “KPI” images based on some business rules. Now you may ask; why not use the out of the box KPI WebParts?

For this particular project there were many date calculations that determined the image to display. For example, if any tasks for a given Event where past due, show red image. For any tasks that are due in 5 days, show yellow image.

FIGURE 5 – Shows you the XSLT expressions I used

FIGURE 5 – Shows the output of my XSLT expressions shown on FIGURE 6

Reusing your own custom XSL Templates

What if you are an XSL enthusiast and over time have created some utility XSL Templates and maybe even Functions that you would like to use on a SharePoint DataFormView WebPart?

You can! All you need to do is import the XSL file and call your Templates. I used this technique recently to do data comparison calculations

FIGURE 7 – Shows you how to import your custom XSL templates file

FIGURE 8 – Shows how to call the custom Template and save result in a variable and hen use that variable to display my images.

Well, I hope you found this article useful and can make use of the information on your existing or future projects. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact me.

Oscar

SharePint knows no geographical boundaries

oscar — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:38:47 +0100

Below is the equivalent of the US SharePint event for Mexico :)

{the following is taken directly from Ricardo Munoz’s blog}

SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night 22 y 23 de Abril MEXICO 2009

Luego del Segundo Simposio Latinoamericano de Sharepoint a realizarse en mexico este 23 de abril (increible ya solo faltan 10 dias) estaremos realizando una gran costumbre en estos eventos que es el sharepint by nigth en la cual estaremos compartiendo con todos los expositores del evento (entre ellos joel olsen y mis amigos Hector,Luis, Vladimir y Rodrigo) y las personas que nos quieran acompanar (estoy moviendo cielo y tierra para poder estar presente en el evento).
La idea de esta actividad Postevento es llegar a conocer un poco mas a las personas que trabajan con Sharepoint en un ambiente mas cordional y tranquilo

Just another reason why I love SharePoint…

-O.