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Andrew Woodward Profile |
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Call for common code – Can we unit test it
Andrew Woodward
One of the challenges with unit testing SharePoint projects is the need to fake the calls into SharePoint. If you are a regular reader of my blog you will have seen examples of how I have been doing this using Typemock Isolator.Â
Microsoft have their own isolation framework called moles. A more accurate descripition would be isolation through detours and stubs. Moles was developed to support Pex white box testing and one interesting development from within the team has been Behaviours. [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 15th '10 |
Live meeting connection issues with Microsoft Online
Andrew Woodward
If you have signed up to the Microsoft Online services and have included Live Meeting in your subscription you may have problems connecting to other live meetings organised outside of the Microsoft Online servers (e.g. meetings with Microsoft).
The problem as I understand it is that the single sign-on client sets some default account and server options that direct the live meeting client to the Microsoft Online servers, and these prevent pass through or redirect to the hosting server.
The prob [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 26th '10 |
Setting up SharePoint 2010 CI process with Team City
Andrew Woodward
In this article and screen cast we will discuss the idea behind the CI process and focus on the technical tricks that we need to make in order to get this working for a SharePoint 2010 project using Team City and Subversion.
One of the first things that you will want to do for any development project is setup your Continuous Integrationprocess. The value of having a server automatically monitor your source code repository for changes and validating they work is immense
Its worth mentioning t [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 22nd '10 |
SharePoint Memory Leaks
Andrew Woodward
Normally I refrain for doing simple reposts of other people blogs, however having read the post SharePoint’s Sasquatch Memory Leak by Todd Carter I just had to help get the information out to as many people as possible.
We are all being good developers and running SPDisposeCheck regularly on our code to make sure we don’t leak memory, however for some we still experience spiralling memory leaks that seem untraceable. until Todd’s post that is.
Rather than hang [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 8th '10 |
Namespace not updated in SharePoint SPIs
Andrew Woodward
Firstly what is a SharePoint SPI?
No it’s not another new version, it’s a generic term that is used to describe a SharePoint Project Item within the context of a Visual Studio project.
Visual Studio 2010 has introduced a lot of great SharePoint specific features making it significantly easier to get started with SharePoint development. This post however is not about the tools, it is intended to point out one little bit of the hidden functionality that unfortunately didn’t get c [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 30th '10 |
SUGUK London Review
Andrew Woodward
On Thursday, 28th Jan 2010, I made my way down to the London SUGUK event. I’ve been supporting the regional events and been unable to get down to London for a number of months.  The number of attendees was amazing – I didn’t count be I guess we have over 150 people and filled the room at Microsoft.
I did know quite a few regulars to the event, but the great news again is the number of new faces. SharePoint is really growing fast and wide and the need for information [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 30th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 – Health Analyzer is awesome
Andrew Woodward
Being mainly focused on development aspects of SharePoint 2010 I haven’t spent as much time as I perhaps should have looking at the new features that have been added to make Administrators lives easier. Having just upgraded one on my development machines from SharePoint 2010 Foundation to SharePoint 2010 Server for Internet Sites, which on a single box installation with AD and SQL local went without a hitch, I thought it worth looking at what the Health Analyzer was telling me.
As you [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 10th '10 |
Migration to BPOS – Initial thoughts
Andrew Woodward
Having completed the migration to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) on Christmas Eve, I thought it would be useful to post a few comments on how it has worked out in the first few weeks. I’ll start with a few of the disappointments first and then move on to the things that I have liked.
Disappointments
My biggest disappointment has to be with Office Communicator 2007 R2.
Unable to do Video or Voice calls
With Office Communicator you cannot do Voice or Video calls unless [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 2nd '10 |
SharePoint 2010 – Have to Extend to have Multiple URLs
Andrew Woodward
I think this was a best practice in SharePoint 2007, but was one that you could get away with. You have internal and external URLs that will be used to access the same web application.  Internally for historical or vanity reasons this is set as something like http://companyname, externally you provide access, often via a proxy like ISA Server, via https://extranet.companyname.com – and you do SSL termination at the ISA server as well.
You create the web application using the internal [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 31st '09 |
SharePoint CEWP – source includes dynamic content
Andrew Woodward
Many people have used the the Content Editor WebPart to provide an easy way to inject some JavaScript into a web page to do things like hide the left navigation or show snowflakes.Â
In SharePoint 2010 the good old Content Editor WebPart is still around and even has some nice new features like format as XHTML, however I discovered one feature that I suspect is more of a bug – or perhaps an undocumented feature
Scenario
You have used the content editor web part to put some placeholders [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 31st '09 |
BPOS – Single sign-on for the Mac
Andrew Woodward
Microsoft really do appear the be much better at supporting alternative platforms, the most obvious being the Mac. As part of the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) they have recently released a single sign on application that will work with Mac OS.
More details and download from Microsoft.
The Microsoft Online Services Team Blog has some information showing how the application works and some limitations. The most notable limitations are
- SSO only works with Safari 4 b [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 29th '09 |
SPC09 is go! Conference Keynote
Andrew Woodward
The build up to this event has been growing, it sold out with over 7400 people attending, making this probably the biggest Microsoft Conference ever!
This is probably the best social networking conference, with the biggest beach party in Mandalay Bay hotel on Tuesday night.. with room for dancing (or to quote Tom Rizzo) to sway!
7.5 miles of network cabling to support the Wireless network
Steve Balmer takes to the stage in his usual enthusiastic st [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 19th '09 |
TDD Kata – By Example video
Andrew Woodward
Since attending Roy Osherove’s TDD Master Class I have been doing my daily TDD Kata, I will admit I have missed some days but generally I have been keeping up with it and really seeing the benefit.
Here I talked about what a Kata is and how it compares to Kumon Maths and I also took the opportunity to practice my reviewing techniques by looking at the best and reviewing Uncle Bobs prime factors TDD Kata.
I had promised to provide a web cast of the TDD SharePoint session that I did at the B [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 12th '09 |
Which Build Servers in SharePoint – The Results
Andrew Woodward
The numbers are in and I think this small sample really gives a good view as to the way people are approaching their SharePoint development projects.
Numbers taken from a one week poll asking people which build servers they used on their SharePoint projects.
It’s very clear from this that people are in one of 3 camps of almost identical size
Those using Team Foundation Server
Those that user another non Microsoft tool
Those that don’t do anything
Team Foundation Server
Installing [read].
Posted: Sun, Oct 11th '09 |
Which build server are you using?
Andrew Woodward
I am looking to provide some guidance on doing Continuous Integration (CI) on SharePoint projects, looking at the concepts behind CI but also looking to provide examples that can help people get the most out of CI on a SharePoint project.  Having used a number of technologies in the past I thought it would be useful to get an idea of the which technologies people are using, if any.Â
Please take a few seconds to tell me what you have used, and have a look at what others are doing. Â
Vi [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 6th '09 |
TDD Master Class – with Roy Osherove
Andrew Woodward
For almost my entire career I have been involved in software development, and probably uniquely more often than not in an environment or role where I have needed to look at process improvement. This started with my first role where I had to ensure development adhered to ISO9001 standards, through to today where I work with teams to help them adopt agile techniques and continuous improvement.
Along the way almost everyone I talked to understands the basic idea that the earlier in the cycle you fi [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 29th '09 |
Comparing myself to Uncle Bob Martin
Andrew Woodward
Before last week, I attended Roy Osherove’s TDD Masterclass, I do not think I would have had the “you know what’s” to be able to put up an alternative solution to one of Uncle Bobs (aka Robert Martin) examples of doing Test Driven Development, but here I am publishing the the solution I arrived at and suggesting that my solution better servers the values of Readability, Maintainability and trustworthiness.
In Uncle Bobs defence his post is dated Apr 2006 and the art o [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 27th '09 |
Daily TDD Kata - now I’m doing what Jack does
Andrew Woodward
Last week I had the pleasure of attending Roy Osherove’s Test Driven Development Masterclass, I will post in a few days more on this but can say this is one of the best training courses I have ever attended.
During the course I got to learn about the Kata technique, something I had heard about but had never investigated.
Kata is a Japanese word describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. most commonly known for the presence in the martial ar [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 27th '09 |
Did you know 2.0
Andrew Woodward
A while ago I posted a link to what I regarded as a great Power Point presentation (Shift Happens), but more importantly it was a really eye opening message.
In keeping with the Shift Happens theme, this has been updated and is now on You Tube as ‘Did you know 2.0?’
Always worth showing people just to get get them to really think about the future.
And a further update to this in the Did you know 4.0.
They have also started a Wiki page to discuss this further http://shifthappens.wik [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 18th '09 |
Delayed Review of BPC 2009 in DC
Andrew Woodward
Yet again the Best Practices Conference was a success. But what do I mean by success?Â
Was it well attended? - Yes, considering the economy
Were the sessions good? - Yes, exceptional as always
Was the accommodation and organisation good? - Yes, Mark did a great job again
If you read some of the other (definitely quicker off the mark posts) you will get a feel for the event.
Paul Culmsee - Segways Rock
Laura (@WondaLaura) Rogers - Part 1 - Brilliant Video Interviews
Laura Rogers - Pa [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 13th '09 |
iPhone – Not showing email content
Andrew Woodward
A quick post as this problem took me some a while to resolve.  I dropped my iPhone which forced it to do a reset, nothing appeared to be broken and it started up without any real issues, that was with the exception of the email. I use Exchange 2007 email hosting and the emails appeared to be getting pushed to the my iPhone ok; I could read the summary but every email I tried to view I just got the message
‘this message has not been downloaded from the server’
Having tried nu [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 5th '09 |
What to learn TDD?
Andrew Woodward
If you’ve read my blog you’ll know that I am a fan of Test Driven Development and an avid user of Typemock Isolator, specifically for the hard to test SharePoint code.
If you’re not sure of the benefits of doing TDD or need to get some justification from you boss as to how quickly he could see a return on investment, have a read of this empirical evidence.
Roy Osherove is giving an hands-on TDD Masterclass in the UK, September 21-25. Roy is author of "The Art of Un [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 19th '09 |
SharePint – Best Practices DC 2009 Edition
Andrew Woodward
Looks like I’ve been a little slack in my planning for SharePint at the Best Practices Conference in Washington DC - Andrew Connell has trumped me big time with what looks like the SharePint to end all SharePint’s at SPC in Vegas.
What’s the reason for my delay you may ask? Â
In part because I have been busy, but the main reason is that I will be in the Reston area a whole week before SharePint will take place and thought what better opportunity than to do a bit of a local [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 4th '09 |
My Dev Rig - The story so far
Andrew Woodward
Having worked for more years than I can remember as a consultant I have lived on my laptop, everything I do is on the laptop including all of the development.  My current, and have to say the best one ever owned, is a Lenovo T61p. The plus points it has a proper caddy so I run two drives internally (VMs on one, OS on the other) and all of the drivers just seem to work.  I’ve upgraded the drives a few times to squeeze in some more space (now with 500GB available) and for speed 7200K d [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 25th '09 |
Slidedeck from Microsoft Learning Gateway Conference
Andrew Woodward
A big pat on the back for Alex Pearce and Richard Willis for organising the first every Microsoft Learning Gateway conference that took place on last week. With such a focused topic as SharePoint in Education it was amazing too see that there were over 150 people packing out the two session rooms.
As promised I have uploaded my slide deck to Slideshare. I have also included the option to download the original PowerPoint presentation as some of you may want to use this to discuss your own Sha [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 20th '09 |
In Washington DC in Aug – We should talk!
Andrew Woodward
OK the title does sound like a bad attempt at a pickup line, but I really mean we should talk. I was honoured to have been asked back to talk at the Best Practices Conference in August which is my reason for being in Washington DC, but that is not the reason we should talk.Â
Have you implemented SharePoint? If you have, how did it go? How is it being adopted in your business?
How would you like to have four leading SharePoint thought leaders in
Organizational Change, Project Management, Requ [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 20th '09 |
Small steps for testing, big steps for SharePoint testing
Andrew Woodward
Following on from my rant response yesterday about the more negative views from the SharePoint community my reading this morning was so much more positive.
Unit Testing Workflows
In my response to a question from Aaron Weiker I said that I would like to see much more guidance and investigation into the way we approach Unit Testing workflows in SharePoint, so it was great to find Richard Fennell is doing a lot of work in this area. I have been working with Typemock Isolator, CThru and SilverU [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 25th '09 |
TDD and SharePoint is it worth doing?
Andrew Woodward
Just read a post by Sahil Malik where he gives his reasons for saying
TDD + SharePoint 2007? Well - screw it! Not worth it IMO.
The reason for his statement is that he sees the actual C# code developed as being a very small % of the total SharePoint project and the effort to do this as not worth the return when you consider the project costs overall.
The problem is, like so many people, he is getting TDD mixed up with doing good development. He dismisses TDD because it is harder to do in [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 23rd '09 |
Measuring velocity is not enough
Andrew Woodward
Scrum as an agile approach is great, it allows teams to get up to speed quickly with agile and also enable the business to understand what being agile means. The problem is that people often just do Scrum. Doing Scrum is not enough, it is a great place to start and will help you with your projects but your team still need to get the engineering disciplines in place, they still need to work on doing the right thing the right way and with level of quality demanded by the business [read].
Posted: Sat, Jun 20th '09 |
Doing Agile in a Team of One – Day 2 and the End of Sprint 1
Andrew Woodward
I recently wrote about my experience of doing agile development in a team of one, where I questioned the idea that ‘If your the only member of the team is it really worth going through the same agile development process that you would in a team of eight?’
One interesting test for the project was that it was not going to be developed in one go, the days spent on this project would need to fit around other work and I want to see how using agile techniques could help to keep the mom [read].
Posted: Sat, Jun 20th '09 |
SharePoint in Education and The MLG Conference
Andrew Woodward
There has been a noticeable increase in the amount of people now blogging and tweeting about SharePoint in Education, or more accurately the Microsoft Learning Gateway platform. Having posted a number of articles on the subject and having started the Education Special Interest group on SUGUK I thought it time I posted about some of this content.
The first an probably the most important change is the work Alex Pearce has done in rescuing what was really a failed attempt by Microsoft to promote [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 4th '09 |
Typemock ASP.Net Bundle – get a free license
Andrew Woodward
One of my favourite tools Typemock has just been released in a fantastic ASP.Net bundle and have once again offered this up to the blogging community to get for free.
Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.
Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers - the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.
The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolat [read].
Posted: Tue, May 19th '09 |
Doing Agile in a Team of One
Andrew Woodward
If your the only member of the team is it really worth going through the same agile development process that you would in a team of eight?
Isn’t it quicker to just crack open Visual Studio and start coding?  After all your the customer so you know what you want right?  You not going to have to deal with any of the social complexities that conspire against you. You’re going have the hottest of communication with the dev team, the dev and test roles will have an interment knowl [read].
Posted: Fri, May 15th '09 |
Introducing Project Aberdovey: Scrum for SharePoint
Andrew Woodward
Being an advocate of SharePoint as an application platform I looked long and hard for a decent implementation of a Scrum and have always been found wanting. I have seen simple examples where any power user could set things up but found the lack of any Burndown charts meant you lost probably the most important part of Scrum - the visibility.
I have found that VersionOne is one of the best products on the market, although it has a lot of options which tends to put off new teams.
For those that u [read].
Posted: Mon, May 4th '09 |
SharePint after first SUGUK event in Nottingham
Andrew Woodward
What better way to spend a Thursday evening, first a couple of great sessions by Steve Smith and Mark Macrae (his first time speaking at SUGUK).
Sessions:
Session 1 - Understanding the relationship between IIS/Web Applications , SQL, SSP’s and Site collections - Steve Smith
In this session I will explain the logical relationship in the SharePoint Architecture and show you some usefull tips when creatng and managing them.
Session 2 -
Business Information and MOSS 2007 - Creating Interacti [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 23rd '09 |
More great Unit Testing SharePoint Examples
Andrew Woodward
Great to see that more people are publishing their experiences with unit testing SharePoint.  Here are some of examples I have found that are really worth looking at:
Richard Fennell - Testing SharePoint Workflows using TypeMock Isolator (part 1, part 2 and part 3) - Richard is also going to be talking at a few NextGen meetings on the subject.
SharePoint Dev Wiki is really starting to get some good content not just on unit testing but on the whole development field.
Jeremy Thake (creator of S [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 23rd '09 |
SharePoint, perchance to drink. Ay, there’s the rub,
Andrew Woodward
As if written by the Bard himself, perhaps? Wherever there is a gathering of SharePoint people you will likely find a SharePint. From foreign cities at global events, in bars around the world, people are getting together to SharePint’s.
Questions you may have about SharePint
Where do you find a SharePint happening near you?
Can you arrange one?
Who organises them at big events?
Where do I find a SharePint?
The best place to find a SharePint near you
Twitter Search: http://search.twitt [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 17th '09 |
European Best Practices SharePoint Conference – The Best Ever
Andrew Woodward
I was planning to write up a post conference summary as a reminder to myself about the highlights.  The problem was that the whole conference was a highlight. So rather than write my own notes I thought I’d highlight some of the comments other people have made
As you know sometimes its just better to twitter
@lespaulrob: Hats off to @SteveSmithCK and team for putting together a great show at #spbpuk! the best run conf i’ve ever had the privilege to attend!
@SteveSmithCK: Appreciat [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 10th '09 |
SharePoint Conference goes large in the UK
Andrew Woodward
Unless you’ve been hiding under a bush for the past year you will have heard all about the fantastic Best Practices SharePoint conference’s that have taken place in Washington and San Diego. Showing that you don’t have to jet across the Atlantic to see the best speakers the European Best PracticesT SharePoint Conference comes to London from April 6th thru 8th 2009.
Perhaps you looking to see Governance Man (Joel Oleson) for real, share a pint with Andrew Connell, meet the i [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 30th '09 |
Future Creep – Your aren’t gonna need it!
Andrew Woodward
How many times have you added an additional parameter or bit of logic to your code because you thought it could be useful and it’s easier to add whilst your already changing the code?  If you are your introducing Future Creep! and should stop doing it.
What does Future Creep mean?
If your from from an XP (Extreme Programming) background you would know this better as YAGNI, You Aren’t Gonna Need It!  I actually prefer the term Future Creep I first saw on the post, beware of [read].
Posted: Sun, Mar 15th '09 |
SharePoint Pod Shows on TDD at MVP Summit 2009
Andrew Woodward
Ever wondered if it was possible to do Test Driven Development on SharePoint projects?  Have you been reading the blog posts and white papers here at 21apps. Got involved in the debate with Eric Shupps?
The SharePoint Pod Show team finally tracked me, Andrew Woodward, down for a series of in depth interviews late one night during the MVP Summit 2009.  The Pod Show is broken into 3 parts with Rob Foster asking about the basics of Test Driven Development and SharePoint; Eric Shupps, the [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 10th '09 |
The cost of Test Driven Development
Andrew Woodward
A short and to the point post by Dror Helper at Typemock looks at industry findings on the cost benefits of doing TDD.
The Cost of Test Driven Development
..the research proved two points:
Using TDD reduce the amount of bugs in the code significantly
Using TDD takes more time then not using TDD
This is in line with what was expected, the question is does the extra time doing TDD reduce the quality or is it the unit testing. Could doing Test Last unit testing give similar results?
There is a [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 5th '09 |
Improve you SharePoint code with Red Gate ANTS
Andrew Woodward
As development practices around the SharePoint platform mature the demands for better quality and better performing solutions are being made. Gone are the days when Enterprises will accept that the Roll-Up Web Part they purchased will not scale beyond a few site collections. A knowledge of the platform and defensive coding alone will not cut the mustard, the need for a holistic approach to your development practices will be the only way to achieve success. In this blog post I am focusing o [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 24th '09 |
Hard to find error creating SPWeb through API
Andrew Woodward
Ever wondered what it is like to be on 3rd line support at Microsoft? The client calls in with a really obscure error that only happens some of the time? No me either, but the past few days have probably been pretty close.
The Problem
I am working on a Silverlight/SharePoint solution, that will take the Education world by storm in the not too distant future, which was throwing a very strange error during the creation of a SharePoint web (SPWeb).
1: MESSAGE
2: System.NullReferenceExcept [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 22nd '09 |
SharePoint and TDD – The other view
Andrew Woodward
My friend and fellow SharePoint MVP Eric Shupps has been promising to enter the conversation, started a number of years ago by Spence Harbar, and provide his wisdom and views on why he thinks TDD in SharePoint is just wrong! It has been debated over email and over a SharePint for many many months. Finally Eric has put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and joined the conversation.
SPTDD: SharePoint and Test Driven Development, Part One
I now know why it took Eric so long to [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 19th '09 |
Microsoft Online Offering – First Impression
Andrew Woodward
I was fortunate enough to get access to the Microsoft Online Services before it actually comes to the UK.  I will be sharing my impressions of the service as I try out the various offerings.  Getting signed up was very easy, I did have to create a US based Live ID to get around the country location restrictions.
Fellow SharePoint MVP Tobias Zimmergren has done a great post introducing the online services, so rather than restate this I’ll recommend you take a look at his SharePoint [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 15th '09 |
Best Practices: Test Driven Development with SharePoint Slide Deck
Andrew Woodward
In contrast to the Agile SharePoint development with Scrum session this was very light on the slides. In good Agile tradition I adopted a Pair Programming approach with me at the keyboard and the audience been my code buddy. Everyone was provided with a copy of Uncle Bobs Three rules of TDD to help with during the pairing process. The rules state:
You are not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a failing unit test pass.
You are not allowed to write any more of a unit [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 10th '09 |
Best Practices: Agile SharePoint Development with Scrum Slide Deck
Andrew Woodward
As promised the slide deck from my Agile SharePoint Development with Scrum.
Abstract
Provide an introduction to Agile development using Scrum and discuss how the iterative approach to development helps the customer to get the solution they want. Look at how this approach works when applied to SharePoint projects, how it helps leverage more of the core platform and focuses effort on the biggest value areas. We will look at the challenges this brings to your development team by doing early integra [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 8th '09 |
Best Practices SharePoint Conference – Under Starting Orders
Andrew Woodward
People are starting to arrive from around the globe to the Best Practices SharePoint Conference
in San Diego. As expected a number were to be found in the hotel bar.  If you want to catch up will all of the buzz search for the twitter tag #SPBPC.  For those travelling in the location is great, Sun is just rising and from the hotel room i’m overlooking the 18th hole of the Torrey Pines course, with views out over the sea. This really is going to be a great event, Ben Curry h [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 1st '09 |
TDD in SharePoint Using DI - Summary
Andrew Woodward
This post is part of a series on Test Driven Development - Using Dependency Injection
In this 5 part series we refactored the solution developed in our white paper Unit Testing SharePoint - Getting into the Object Model to make the code more testable, and enable us to work within the available features of TypeMock Isolator for SharePoint.
We started with a review of the code and the specific line of test code that was not supported, reviewed the options available to us including upgrading to t [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 26th '09 |
SharePint San Diego – Daily Beer List
Andrew Woodward
Count down to the SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night San Diego Best Practices Edition I thought it only right to give you a look at the current beer list.  There has been talk on twitter about which beers are the best, I’m looking forward to having the debate with the ale in my hand.
Haven’t signed up yet, put your name down here so the La Jolla Brew House knows how much beer to get in [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 25th '09 |
Low mic volume on Windows 7 in Skype
Andrew Woodward
Installed the Skype 4 Beta to see if this works on Windows 7 I noticed the microphone volume was very low. I’d had a similar problem a while back, with Vista 64bit. Luckily the solution in my post Low mic volume in Vista 64bit solved the problem for Windows 7 as well.
Also not had any problems yet with the Skype Beta which you can get here. I’m not sure what to make of the new Skype UI, time will tell. [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 24th '09 |
TDD in SharePoint - Step 2 Implementing DI
Andrew Woodward
This post is part of a series on Test Driven Development - Using Dependency Injection
We introduced some terms previously to help describe some of the things we need to do in order to make our code more testable and started the refactoring of our solution in Step 1. In this step we are going to complete the refactor and implement Dependency Injection in the RandomMessage class.
There are a couple of ways to pass in the object we want to work with; we will use the Constructor as this is probably [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 19th '09 |
Windows 7 & VMWare Workstation Problems
Andrew Woodward
Having had some really high hopes with the VMWare Workstation 6.5 running on Windows 7 things have gone down hill. I have a number of problems and have spent most of Sunday trying to resolve them without success. Some people are using this without problem, I am only reporting the issues I have encountered.
Running Windows 7 64bit (Build 7000) VMWare 6.5.0 build-118166 Guest Windows 2008 32bit (not R2)
Problem 1 - Networking
Using a wireless connection generally forces y [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 18th '09 |
SharePint in San Diego – Feb 3rd 2009
Andrew Woodward
Just a reminder that during the Best PracticesT SharePoint Conference in San Diego there will be a SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night San Diego Best Practices Edition.
Already we have a great lists of people attending, so if your at the conference or just in the San Diego area on 3rd Feb this is looking like it’s going to be a great evening. Be sure to add your name to the lists so that the bar can arrange for enough beer. [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 14th '09 |
TDD Using Dependency Injection - Step 1. Refactoring
Andrew Woodward
This post is part of a series on Test Driven Development - Using Dependency Injection
We introduced some terms previously to help describe some of the things we need to do in order to make our code more testable. In this step we are going to start the refactor to support Dependency Injection in the RandomMessage class.
The code that is causing us a problem when using Isolator for SharePoint is in the GetRandomMessage method.
public string GetRandomMessage(string WebUrl)
{
string message = [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 13th '09 |
TDD in SharePoint - Introduction to common vocabulary
Andrew Woodward
This post is part of a series on Test Driven Development - Using Dependency Injection
There are a number of terms that you are likely to hear very early on in your journey to Test Driven Development, these terms generally refer to specific patterns of coding that have developed to support particular problems. You should be familiar with terms like Singleton and Factory which are used as a common vocabulary and help developers to communicate their design.
In order to complete the refactoring of [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 9th '09 |
TDD in SharePoint - Using Dependency Injection
Andrew Woodward
In our previous white paper Unit Testing SharePoint - Getting into the Object Model we introduced the concept of mocking, looked at the new Typemock Isolator AAA API to demonstrate testing against SPSite, SPWeb, SPList and SPListItem objects and reinforced the benefit of using TDD.
In order to keep the white paper easy to follow we used the Isolator features to fake the call to our GetRandomNumber() method as part of the test GetRandomMessage_MultipleMessages_ReturnMessage.
[Test]
public void Ge [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 7th '09 |
SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night - The Logos
Andrew Woodward
Coming to the SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night Best Practices Edition? Want to show you enjoy a SharePint?
Grab a copy of one of these great new logos that were designed by Sam Dolan of Pink Petrol
With black text 472 x 151
With white text 472 x 151
I promised to give Sam a bit of love for kindly doing the these great logos, if your looking for someone to do some customisation’s for your SharePoint branding I recommend you have a look at some of the great designs that Sam h [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 6th '09 |
SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night - San Diego Best Practice Edition
Andrew Woodward
Attending the Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference in San Diego in February? Have some questions you thought about after the sessions, or were too late to ask? Want to just hang out with fellow SharePoint geeks? or just looking for some friendly company to share a few pints in the evening?
Keeping the tradition going there will be a SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night event on Tuesday 3rd February at La Jolla Brew House around 7pm till you’ve had enough.
Location: approx. 6miles [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 6th '09 |
Applying DDD, TDD and Patterns to enable Reuse your SharePoint Code
Andrew Woodward
John W Powell has posted a great article on MSDN where he explains how he used Domain Driven Design (DDD), Test Driven Development (TDD) and design Patterns to create a framework for working with the SharePoint.
He goes into detail about the framework and the reasons for the final design. I would have liked to have a little more detail, code samples, from the iterations he went through to reach this design to help people better understand how the DDD and TDD are really about designing better s [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 5th '09 |
Best Practicesâ„¢ SharePoint Conference - Can you afford not to go?
Andrew Woodward
During these challenging financial times tough questions are asked of everyone; project budgets are cut and more focus is placed on the Return on Investment. If you planning to deploy SharePoint or have already deployed you will be aware of some the challenges you will face.
Whether you’re a CIO, Project Manager, Developer or Information Worker you will need to consider what influence you can have. At the top of your list should be to spend a few days at the Best Practicesâ„¢ SharePo [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 3rd '09 |
Does TDD speed up development?
Andrew Woodward
Scott Bellware posted a great article on what is often one of the main reasons for people dropping or never starting TDD or Unit Testing; often stating ‘It takes longer doing TDD’ and ‘I can code this much quicker without unit tests.’
The answer to the question, “Does test-driven development speed up development?” depends on what you personally believe “development” is.
He discusses how we should be looking at software production and how the softwa [read].
Posted: Sun, Dec 14th '08 |
Unit Test SPSite construction Exceptions with new Isolator method
Andrew Woodward
In our white paper Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - Getting into the Object Model we needed to use Natural Mocks to allow the testing exceptions that are thrown as part of the the SPSite constructor. Our test code looked like this and although not complicated it introduced another concept that could complicate things for newbies more than necessary.
[Test]
public void GetRandomMessage_SiteNotFound_ReturnErrorMessage()
{
//Arrange
using (RecordExpectations expections = RecorderManager. [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 25th '08 |
Isolator for SharePoint
Andrew Woodward
Another great day for SharePoint developers.  Typemock have announced the introduction of Isolator for SharePoint.
Take a look at our white paper showing Isolator in action and how this really does make Unit Testing your SharePoint solutions that much easier.
Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - Getting into the Object Model
Quote from Typemock Blog:
Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the o [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 24th '08 |
IE8 Beta 2 - NTLM 401.1 (Not good for SharePoint developers)
Andrew Woodward
Found a really annoying bug this week after upgrading one of my Windows 2003 SharePoint development Virtual Machines to IE8 Beta 2.
HTTP 401.1 - Unauthorized: Logon Failed
As most people do I make use of the HOSTS file to allow the use of FQDN to remove the need for high port numbers (i.e. http://agile.21apps.dev).  First thoughts were this was down to the zone within IE, but changes here had no affect. All of the web sites continued to work in Firefox so there was no issue with ShareP [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 17th '08 |
SUGUK Meetings in November
Andrew Woodward
Wow, two great SUGUK events planned for November.  London on 25th and Scotland on 27th.
Edinburgh at the Scottish Parliment
Thurs 27th November
Spencer Harbar SharePoint MVP - MythBusters - debunking common SharePoint Farm Misconceptions
This interactive, whiteboard session will dive into common SharePoint Farm Myths and discuss common misconceptions around Global Deployments, Farm Topologies, Shared Service Providers, High Availability, Security and more. Alongside best practices for each â [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 13th '08 |
SPDisposeCheck - the tool every SharePoint developer needs
Andrew Woodward
At long last Microsoft have announced publically the excellent SPDisposeCheck tool.  This tool will examine your IL level components and report any possible areas where you may have the potential for a leak due to objects not being disposed of correctly.  The output from the tool does require a deep understanding of the way objects are disposed of as there is the potential for false positives, for this reason the tools cannot just be downloaded but has to be used under Microsoft Guidance [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 12th '08 |
Unit Testing SharePoint - Getting into the Object Model
Andrew Woodward
The white paper and associated code can be found here Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - Getting into the Object Model
The first document in the Beginners Guide to Test Driven Web Part Development Series provided an introduction to unit testing, a look at how TDD influences your design and makes your code testable. That document deliberately avoided testing the SharePoint Object Model as in order to do this we need to introduce the concept of mocking.
This second document in the series will co [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 12th '08 |
VS2010 - New SharePoint Features
Andrew Woodward
Keynote announcement on the new SharePoint features in Visual Studio 2010. Paul Andrew has posted a summary here. It’s very evident that Microsoft have been listening to the community and also looking at the open source projects that have started to fill the gaps in the product.
Server Explorer for SharePoint viewing Lists and other artifacts in SharePoint directly inside of Visual Studio
Windows SharePoint Services Project (WSP file) Import to create a new solution
Added a new [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 10th '08 |
SharePoint Guidance goes Live on MSDN
Andrew Woodward
It was with great pleasure that I was able to contribute to the first SharePoint Patterns and Practices guidance.
Patterns and Pratices
This guidance helps architects and developers design, build, test, deploy and upgrade SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation that is named the Contoso Training Management application demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development, and application lifecycle management challenges.
This guidance discusses the following:
Architect [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 5th '08 |
Type Mock embraces SharePoint
Andrew Woodward
TypeMock have recently made some updates to their site and have started to pull together information around testing SharePoint. I’m really getting to like the new AAA (Arrange, Act, Assert) approach that they are building into the product from version 5 onwards.
 Gil Zilberfeld post a great example of this by refactoring the work that was done on the SharePoint Patterns and Practices project using the (coming very soon update to TypeMock).  Although I like Natural Mocks it tended to [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 30th '08 |
Reflection on The Future of Unit Testing @ PDC2008
Andrew Woodward
Great panel session at PDC on the future of Unit Testing. There were some good discussions by some ‘luminaries’ in the field (Peter Provost, Daniel Cazulino and others) that really talked more about where we are today than about where we are going in the future. Some of the biggest things I took from the session.
What is a Unit Test
People still don’t understand what a Unit Test is. There were questions on complication on testing components, testing databases, testing WCF. [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 30th '08 |
Office and the Mesh - Live collaboration on Office Docs
Andrew Woodward
Wow the demo on the new Office collaboration feaures at PDC2008 was fantastic. Everyone always asked of Excel Services can I edit my workbooks in the browser? Can I see what other people values?  Now you can and in near real time.
Taking advantage of the Live Mesh services changes are sync’d between all devices automatically. The online editing is also pretty amazing, will run in IE, Firefox and Safari.
Joel is doing some pretty good blogs remotely. Good to see SharePoint still [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 29th '08 |
SharePoint Services on Windows Azure
Andrew Woodward
Big news, the announcement of Windows Azure as the cloud platform for everything that is Microsoft. If you run it on site you will over time be able to run it in the Cloud. Taking away the issues of scaling, effectively buying what you need.
Identity Management is a big play, the ability to sync security from your on site Active Directory with the indentiy in the cloud. Windows Azure is looking to take away the issue of identity from the developers.
SharePoint Online and running on Win [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 28th '08 |
Anticipating suprise Office 14 and SharePoint news at PDC
Andrew Woodward
Mike Gannotti has hinted that there is likely to ge some exciting news on the Future of SharePoint and Office 14 at the PDC.
SharePint was a great event, not too many people and a way to meet up with old friends and meet some new faces. It was great to see so many Microsoft SharePoint people, Arpan was quoted as saying he’s not been as excited about a conference as this one. Check out the SharePoint Team blog for news throughout the week. [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 28th '08 |
PDC 2008 - the main event.
Andrew Woodward
Much like Andrew Connell when I setup on my own around 18 months ago I promised myself that I would go to conferences, I could never convince my previous company of the value. I’ve had a steady build by with TechEd 2007, SharePoint Conference 2008 now time for the main event Microsoft PDC. The buzz and excitment surrounding this event is just fantastic, follow me @21apps and others @PDC2008 to see what we’re up to.
For those that question the value, say you get the info onl [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 25th '08 |
Agile Perspectives, Industry and Microsoft @ PDC 2008
Andrew Woodward
Going to PDC?  into Agile development?  going to be there for the Pre-conference sessions on Sunday?
You need to attend the session Agile Perspectives, Industry and Microsoft
Presenter(s): Mary Poppendieck, Grigori Melnik
Agile development is here! During this all-day agile session Mary Poppendieck, author of “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit” will share profound insights that will optimize your agile processes. The session will focus on best practices and advice to [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 17th '08 |
SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night - PDC 2008 Edition
Andrew Woodward
Andrew Connell is co-ordinating the SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night event at PDC in LA.
Going to PDC 2008 in Los Angeles, CA in just over a week (or live in the greater LA area)? Interested in hanging out in a casual social setting with other folks interested in SharePoint? We’ll be doing another SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night in LA the Sunday (October 26) @ 7p before PDC 2008 officially kicks off. So check into your hotel, drop your bags off and come on over to the Millennium [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 15th '08 |
PDC 2008 - MS people have a booth
Andrew Woodward
PDC 2008 is getting closer and, although not a SharePoint event (it’s good to look at other things from time to time), there will be some SharePoint related sessions - sadly nothing on O14 but some good stuff. I’m personally going to check out the FAST: Building Search-Driven Portals with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight, check out Paul Andrews blog post for details on the sessions and MS SharePoint people that will be manning a booth - I recommen [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 9th '08 |
SUGUK London Meeting 16th Oct 2008
Andrew Woodward
Another packed evening has been organised, this time at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane which promises to provide SharePoint, Curry and Beer in various quantities.
What looks like two great sessions.
Session1 : Web Content Management in MOSS, real life case study – Riaz Ahmed
This session will showcase how SharePoint content management has helped the world’s most international bank, a top 25 FTSE 100 company, deliver an online digital solution for clients, analysts and employees.
Session 2 [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 1st '08 |
State of Agile Development in 2008
Andrew Woodward
Version One have released the results of it’s third annual State of Agile Development 2008 Survey.
The results are based on 2319 surveys representing 80 countries and gives a really useful insight into how agile development techniques are being adopted, most notable to me was the use of Scrum, XP or a hybrid of both covering almost 80% of all agile teams.
Struggling to get agile working or adopted then you probably have issues with the organisations resistance to change and a lack o [read].
Posted: Sun, Aug 31st '08 |
Patterns & Practices SharePoint Guidance and a TypeMock Video
Andrew Woodward
The Patterns & Practices group are looking at Guidance on SharePoint and are making regular code drops to the CodePlex project.
They have done research and the customers have ranked the requirements in order of importance.
Unit testing and debugging
Packaging and deployment
Setting up a team development environment
Unclear which SharePoint features/ components to use and when
Solution maintenance/upgrade
How and when is SharePoint Designer applicable
Who would have thought Unit testing [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 27th '08 |
Beginners Guide to Test Driven Web Part Development
Andrew Woodward
We are very pleased to announce the publication of our white paper ‘Beginners Guide to Test Driven Web Part Development‘.
This white paper forms part of our Unit Testing SharePoint Solutions - The Basics series and provides an introduction to unit testing web parts within SharePoint 2007; this is a beginner’s guide and as such does not aim to address some of the more challenging issues you will face as you develop your SharePoint solutions (we will be covering these in our futu [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 26th '08 |
SUGUK Meeting - London 14th August
Andrew Woodward
Summer is usually a quite time for the SUGUK sessions, but there is treat lined up for you on the 14th August in London. Eric Shrupps - SharePoint MVP from the USA is over to present:
Full Speed Ahead: Developing High Performance Applications for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Discover tips, techniques, tools and best practices for creating high performance MOSS 2007 applications using Visual Studio 2008, C#, the SharePoint object model, web services, and the latest features in the .NET [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 11th '08 |
Our new site goes live - focusing on Agile SharePoint Development
Andrew Woodward
Welcome to our new site
We have been working hard over the past few weeks to bring our site up to date. It started life as a simple Blogger site and has seen a few minor tweaks and changes over the past 18 months but we had found our needs have moved beyond what a pure blog can offer.
I had the pleasure of working with Sam Dolan (www.pinkpetrol.com) on a recent project and he persuaded me to sort out the web site! Sam is a web designer who has worked with a number of technologies included ShareP [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 31st '08 |
New look SharePoint Forums
Andrew Woodward
All of the SharePoint forums have recently been migrated to new homes and are now hosted on the latest Microsoft forum platform. There has been a slight reorganisation but all have nice new URLs and I have included details below and split between TechNet and MSDN TechNet Forums SharePoint - Collaboration Topics about team sites, project tracking, document collaboration, extranets, etc. SharePoint - Community Advancement Topics about improving or expanding the worldwide SharePoint communit [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 24th '08 |
Why SDLC is always needed in SharePoint projects
Andrew Woodward
Adam Buenz is a scarily clever guy; if your into improving your development approach and work with SharePoint you have to spare a few minutes to read and digest this. Quote: The point I am trying to drive home is implementing an SDLC is not a nice-to-have thing on any SharePoint project, it is required. And while this may be the case, it does not discount the tried and true project metric harvesting methods that have been around since the dawn of man. While producing of client deliverable [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 16th '08 |
Learning Content Development System (LCDS) has a forum
Andrew Woodward
I posted recently about the release of the LCDS to make it easier for people to create SCROM content. I had a few comments and concerns but generally liked the look and feel. We now we have a place to discuss issues and generally help each other get the most from it. http://www.21apps.com/2008/05/microsoft-release-e-learning-editor.html Oh and these forums are using the nice new ones so look pretty cool. [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 16th '08 |
An introduction to Agile SharePoint Dev
Andrew Woodward
The SUGUK Big Event of 2008 took place last night and was a resounding success. I presented an introduction to Agile SharePoint Dev with zero code demos, which was a welcome relief to the audience as Todd Bleeker had just fried their brains with the SPD to Visual Studio workflow session. (looking forward to seeing this online). This introduction looked at what Agile means, the importance of the Empirical approach and the problems with the prescriptive pr [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 11th '08 |
Top Tool Tips
Andrew Woodward
Do you write proposals? do bug testing? or write books? post blogs? or just need screen shots to help explain what you mean? If Yes then you need the latest version of SnagIt by TechSmith. In it's version 9 release SnagIt has moved from being just a good screen capture applet to being a fantastic, indispensable application that every good developer, author, tester etc etc should have installed. It's only when you start to use the new features without no [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 5th '08 |
SLK Course Manager 1.0 Released
Andrew Woodward
On the 1st July 2008 the SLK Course Manager package was uploaded to codeplex, this was something that I had been waiting for as there are plans to incorporate functionality into a project I am currently working on. Having installed and tested the solution I can say that I am totally under-whelmed, this add-on was expected to fill the Gap left after the move from Class Server to SLK/MLG. Please feel free to grab the download an try it out for yourselves, and post com [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 3rd '08 |
SUGUK meeting 10th July - 6 sessions
Andrew Woodward
The SUGUK meeting on the 10th looks like being a fantastic event, we have 5 SharePoint MVPs presenting, two coming in from the USA. Signup here for a night not to be missed. Start - 6.00 PM Session 1 - 6.00 to 7.00 Room 1 - Penny Coventry - SharePoint MVP Using Data Views and ASP.NET controls with SharePoint Designer In this Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 session, you will learn how easy it is to create views of your data using the Data Views, also known as the Data View Web Par [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 29th '08 |
Partitioning Silverlight Apps - use a common ServiceReferences.ClientConfig
Andrew Woodward
Microsoft have a great Hands-on lab that deals with partitioning of your Silverlight application. Quote: Partitioning Your Silverlight Application for Deployment This lab will demonstrate a technique within Silverlight 2 to enable you to partition your application into different deployment packages. This will enable your application to only use what it needs, when it needs it and provide an experience to the user and improve overall download times for your application. This lab walks through a [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 27th '08 |
Fish Eye Control in Silverlight
Andrew Woodward
Martin Grayson has a fantastic post, along with code, on one of the best Fish Eye controls I've seen implemented. Fish Eye for the Blend Guy Using this as a basis we have been working on migration to Silverlight, and finally got the time to get this working. The code is still a bit rough so I can't publish it, but it does demonstrate that it can be done. The main changes we needed to make were due to the lack of a Mouse position meaning we needed to pass this into [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 24th '08 |
Create Custom Policy programmatically
Andrew Woodward
Answering a forum thread I had to do a bit of digging into how to create new Policies in code. This post from Ethan helped point me in the right direction. The requirement was to programmatically give users Full Control of a web application, the code snippet below shows how to achieve this. SPWebApplication oWebApplication = SPWebApplication.Lookup(new Uri("http://webappurl")); SPPolicy policy = oWebApplication.Policies.Add("domain\\username", "MyCustomPolicy"); policy.PolicyRoleBi [read].
Posted: Sat, May 31st '08 |
Worldwide Telescope - Wonderful Educational Tool
Andrew Woodward
This post is off topic, in that it doesn't related to SharePoint, however as I do a lot of work in Education this new WorldWide Telescope released by Microsoft Research is fantastic and worth a post. I can remember going to the Planetarium in London way to many years ago and often spend a time on clear nights gazing at the stars (advantages of living in the country). http://www.worldwidetelescope.org What is WWT? The WorldWide Telescope .. enables your computer to function as a virtu [read].
Posted: Tue, May 13th '08 |
Microsoft Release - E-Learning Editor
Andrew Woodward
Remco Ploeg posted some great news to the Education Special Interest Group on the SUGUK web site announcing the release of the Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS). You can register and download the community edition from: https://www.microsoft.com/learning/tools/lcds/default.mspx This is great news as one of the real pain points of the SLK/MLG platform, since the move from Class Server, has been the lack of any decent content editors that can deliver content that conforms [read].
Posted: Mon, May 5th '08 |
Windows Server 2008 developing SharePoint - Can't connect from Office clients
Andrew Woodward
Now that Windows 2008 Server is out SharePoint developers (and I'm sure lots of others as well) will start to move their development machines onto the new platform. For SharePoint developers tend to work in Virtual Machines and develop on the Server OS directly as the XP/Vista development story is not that good right now. I have such a configuration (Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, SQL 2005, Office Suite 2007, Visual Studio 2008) and have been wor [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 22nd '08 |
SUGUK Meeting - Manchester Thurs 24th April
Andrew Woodward
Back in the North West by popular demand. Sign up here: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/9594.aspx - Its free as always and I heard some people will be heading to the bar afterwards so even more opportunity to chat. 1st Session : An introduction to the Silverlight blueprint for SharePoint - Andrew Woodward During the first part of the event Andrew will Walk us through configuring SharePoint and the creation of your first Silverlight application followed by a Q&A session on what this means for [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 20th '08 |
MVP Summit - What it's like to be a SharePoint MVP
Andrew Woodward
I attended my first MVP Summit in Seattle this week and it has reminded me how lucky I am to be part of the SharePoint MVP family. Lawrence Liu probably sums up the week best in his post. [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 17th '08 |
Low mic volume in Vista 64bit
Andrew Woodward
Having previously been an avid Skype user I decided to reinstall on my Vista ultimate 64bit laptop build. Download and software installation (version 3.6) went without issue, but making a Skype test call I could hardly hear myself. I made various changes to the settings including boosting the input without success. I eventually found this blog post that had a solution way down at the bottom of the page. Change your recording quality from the default DVD/CD qu [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 20th '08 |
Scripted SharePoint Farm deployment
Andrew Woodward
I normally do not cross post from other people blogs, but had to make an exception for this post by Ben Curry - because it mentions me :) Scripted SharePoint Farm Installation using PSConfig.exe and stsadm.exe Ben presented this session at SPC2008 and although the live demo (mucho kudos for not using Camtasia as heckled by Richard Taylor) had a small login issue it was voted as one of the best of the conference. Check out how to automate you SharePoint installations and celebrate this with [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 17th '08 |
Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint
Andrew Woodward
Silverlight seems to have had a new wave of interest with Microsoft releasing the Silverlight BluePrint for SharePoint. The code will be made available for download on Wed 5th March. I do like the look of Silverlight and think it can help to make us think about our UI in a different way. Adobe Flash and Flex do a similar thing but the marketing machine that is Microsoft will ensure that everyone knows what Silverlight is and can do, not just the techies. I would like to s [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 3rd '08 |
SPC2008 Keynote - Bill Gates
Andrew Woodward
\Online Services Online services is a key announcement during the Keynote. Providing Exchange and SharePoint to the people as an online service. To see for yourself have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/online - this sort of makes the Google sites offering look at little simple http://sites.google.com/ part of the Team Edition http://www.google.com/apps/business/index.html - Bill Gates stated that Google don't have the business understanding saying "The day they announc [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 3rd '08 |
SharePoint Conference 2008 - Get the Buzz
Andrew Woodward
Lawrence has syndicated so feeds to help people as he says 'get the Buzz at SPC' Go here for details http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/02/29/join-the-sharepoint-conference-buzzstream.aspx If you want to follow the buzzstream with your feedreader or syndicate it to your website, you can subscribe to the following feeds: Blogstream (via Technorati): http://feeds.technorati.com/search/SPC2008?authority=a4&language=en Photostream (via Flickr): http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/p [read].
Posted: Sat, Mar 1st '08 |
Heading out to SharePoint Conference 2008
Andrew Woodward
Tomorrow I will be heading out to the SharePoint Conference 2008 , this is my first to Seattle and I'm looking forward to a great week. There will be a plane load of people flying from the UK - some in business class and others like me in the cattle crates at the back! If your travelling from the UK there are a few sites that you should check out: SUGUK - http://suguk.org/forums/thread/7678.aspx Mark Harrison has started a Groove workspace http://markharrison.co.uk/blog/2008/01 [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 29th '08 |
SharePoint ate all my memory! - dealing with memory pressures in SharePoint
Andrew Woodward
One of the areas covered during the training I do on WSS Development is how to correctly dispose of objects, specifically the the ones that have a reference to SPRequest like SPSite and SPWeb. We talk about performance tuning but don't really get deep down into how tuning the IIS worker process actually works. Over the past few months there has been a marked improvement in the information being blogged on the subject so I thought it useful, as a personal reference, but also to help f [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 15th '08 |
User Profiles - Why do my changes not show in other sites? - a detailed understanding of how the Sync works.
Andrew Woodward
I was asked recently to advise on how to configure a MOSS 2007 installation to allow end users to update their display name as they had previously been able to do in 2003. My initial thoughts on this were that its a simple update of the profile properties to allow them to edit the Name field, however the results achieved in testing appeared inconsistent. In this article I will show How to setup the profile properties What the user sees and can edit What services/timer jobs are invo [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 13th '08 |
Not waving but drowning - dealing with the flood of blog posts.
Andrew Woodward
In my quest for knowledge I had subscribed to numerous blog feeds, spent many hours in the SharePoint forums, and subscribe to some very useful but verbose email distribution lists. What I have found is that after a two week break at Christmas and the installation of Vista 64bit (nice clean install) I didn't pickup my old habits - to the point that for the whole of January I had not read any of my blog feeds and spent little or no time in the forums. This weekend I decide [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 3rd '08 |
LLN another BETT Learning Gateway story
Andrew Woodward
One of the main projects I have been involved with over the past year is the Leeds Learning Network. I have blogged about some of the technologies and recently launched a Special Interest Group for SharePoint in Education on the SUGUK site, but it's also good to see some of the less technical information becoming available. A recent article on MSDN UK Schools Blog is one such post. [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 22nd '08 |
SUGUK Jan 10th 2007 - Meeting Write up
Andrew Woodward
There was a fantastic turn out for the SUGUK meeting in London last night - considering the awful weather we managed officially the biggest turnout with 106 people attending an suguk event! Chris O'Brien took on the challenge of doing a deep dive into workflow in just 1 hour! And as a bonus is giving away some of his top tips which he will be posting on his blog very soon, this was a great presentation and if you only take away one thing from it it should be 'Look at the [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 11th '08 |
Search Server 2008: Federated sites that do not return XML
Andrew Woodward
The OpenSearch standard allows for the returned content to be in XML or HTML/XHTML format, although the later makes it more difficult for Search Server 2008 federation as it is designed to use XSL Translation on the results to present the information to the user. There is however a fairly simple (although it does require some code) process to provide the intermediary step between the Federated web parts and the Federated search source. In this example I will provide an example [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 11th '08 |
SUGUK Presentation on Search Server 2008 - 10th Jan in London
Andrew Woodward
After a wonderful New Years break in Iceland I am back to work, I would like to say refreshed but the 4 hours of daylight and 'cultural' drinking until 5am have had it's toll :) However I am a dedicated SUGUK member and looking forward to presenting Microsoft Search Server 2008 at this weeks meeting in London. If your not already signed up please do here: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/7300.aspx And if Search is not your thing, Chris O'Brien has a deep dive on developing [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 8th '08 |
IFilters released for Office 2007 formats
Andrew Woodward
So how many of you thought that MOSS2007 was already indexing your Office 2007 documents correctly? Microsoft have just (17 Dec 2007) released an updated Microsoft Filter Pack which provides additional IFilters specifically for the Microsoft Office 2007 format documents: .docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx. Details of how to register the new filter for MOSS 2007 and Search Server 2008 are here. It is [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 21st '07 |
SharePoint and Office SP1s are Go!
Andrew Woodward
It's been a long time in the comming, a few people jumped the gun with annoucements, but it was worth the wait. MOSS 2007, WSS v3 and Office 2007 Client Suite Service Pack 1s have been released. The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1) Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 1 (SP1) Download an enjoy :) [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 11th '07 |
Search Server 2008: Federate sites that do not support OpenSearch
Andrew Woodward
This is the first of two posts covering how you can provide Federated Search to web sites that do not support the OpenSearch requirements of Search Server 2008. Part 1. How to federate to a site that does not support a url based search? This one is simple, just make use of a search provider that does and use it as an intermediary to your required source. In this example I will use Live.com to provide federated search to my web site www.21apps.com. Step 1. Export the Live.com FLD MSSX comes wi [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 6th '07 |
Search Server 2008 Express VPC essential tip.
Andrew Woodward
Many of you will have downloaded (or plan to download) the VPC image for Search Server 2008 Express and will be keen to get going with the Federated Searching that is the cool new things in MSS (see my other posts). If you plan to use Shared Networking for Internet access from your VPC you will probably want to take a look at this post by the VPC guy who has an invaluable tip to ensure Windows 2003 does not start rejecting incoming packets :) Just set your DNS in the VPC to 192.168.131.254. [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 6th '07 |
Microsoft Search Server 2008 - presentation in Newcastle
Andrew Woodward
Today I performed my first 'Official' Microsoft presentation at the TechNet briefing event in Newcastle. I got to present on the same stage as seasoned presenters James O'Neill, Steve Lamb and new Evangelist team member Andrew Fryer. I got an email on the 27th Nov (along with other MOSS MVPs) asking if there was anyone who could cover a session on the newly released Microsoft Search Server 2008 to 100+ people! After a small hesitation and some juggling with work commitments I raised my pro [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 5th '07 |
MLG version of SLK to be updated
Andrew Woodward
The Microsoft Learning Gateway 2007 components (www.codeplex.com/lg) include a version of the SharePoint Learning Kit (www.codeplex.com/slk) that has been updated to include the Observer Role (parent in Education context) and the ability to filter the contents based on the My Children connected web parts. It has recently become apparent that the SLK version in MLG was based on the code branch from before the Version 1.1 release and has subsequently missed out on some of the key fixes including: [read].
Posted: Thu, Nov 22nd '07 |
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