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Becky Bertram Profile |
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Notifying Users Why Their Login Failed in the ASP.NET Login Control
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass4A44F8BCB154461483AE2A0933942053
divAs a follow-on to my a href="/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=53"last post/a on using FBA sites in SharePoint, I wanted to point out an additional enhancement you can make, which will help out your users./div
div /div
divWhen a user tries to log into your Web site using the Login control, unfortunately, it often just tells the user a bland message such as quot;invalid loginquot;. That doesn't give the user enough information. Is th [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 27th '10 |
The 7 Habits: Highlights from Habits 1 - 3
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassBCA4C634A1194658995552F4C883BBE5
divAlthough I'm the type of person that is skeptical of quot;self-helpquot; type literature, img style="border-bottom:black 1px solid;border-left:black 1px solid;border-top:black 1px solid;margin-right:10px;border-right:black 1px solid" alt="The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" align=left src="http://www.beckybertram.com/blogimages/7habits.jpg"I heard one executive of a large company say that if you could only read one book, [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 21st '10 |
My Sites without My Sites
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassB231D53A242442B9962DB50FE4E20DA1
divBeing able to import user profile information from a third party source like Active Directory is usually one of the most critical parts of a functioning Intranet site. What makes this even more powerful is when you layer on the ability for users to edit their own profile information, as well as search for other users. Layer on top of that the social networking features that My Sites provide, and you've got killer functionalit [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 14th '10 |
Central Administration Shortcut List
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassE067FBB4F87542C1834F83AF3516B3EAdivSomething I've gotten frustrated with at times is that the new Central Administration landing page seems to be missing a lot of the links that I use on a regular basis. For instance, under the quot;Application Managementquot; heading, there's a link to create a new Site Collection, but not delete one. (Often times, if I'm testing out the deployment of my solutions, I need to wipe away the Site Collection and create another one [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 17th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Tools in Visual Studio 2010 Slide Deck
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass89B32E8DD9204D94BEA5C2E77D7830BBdivThanks to all who showed up today for my presentation at the St. Louis SharePoint User Group. For those interested, you can download my slide deck here./div
div /div
diva href="/PowerPoint%20Presentations/SharePoint%202010%20Tools%20in%20Visual%20Studio%202010.pptx"SharePoint 2010 Tools in Visual Studio 2010/a/div/div/div
divbCategory:/b Speaking/Presentation/div
divbPublished:/b 6/8/2010 6:43 PM/divimg src="http://feeds.feed [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 8th '10 |
The surprising truth about what motivates us
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass9580B451F1854D1EB471C51A11432852
p/p
pa href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc/a/p
pThis is a video that I saw on Facebook, posted by several friends (Matt Bremer and Todd Kitta). If you have the time to watch it, I recommend it. The video, in a creative way, talks about what motivates. To sum it up:/p
ul
liWe are motivated by money, but a better way to put is to but it in negative terms, to say that if we em [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 4th '10 |
Presenting at the St. Louis User Group on June 8, 2010
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass6456FD7D989A4279A36231DEFFD65619
divJoin me this coming Tuesday at the St. Louis SharePoint User Group. I'll be demonstrating the new development tools available to SharePoint 2010 developers in Visual Studio 2010. I'll go over topics such as how to create features and solution packages; how to debug and deploy them to the server; how to build visual Web Parts; how to build sandboxed solutions; etc./div
div /div
divWe'll be meeting as usual in the Microsoft b [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 2nd '10 |
nativehr0x81072101/nativehr Error
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass3920F4BCF1C343E99E62E99EAD169A62
divI wanted to create two different Features in Visual Studio 2010: one to deploy a list definition to the Site Collection, and another to deploy an instance of that list to a particular Web. When I created my list definition, Visual Studio asked me if I wanted to create an instance of that list, too. I said I did, and it placed an instance of the list inside my list definition folder in Visual Studio. I then went and created my [read].
Posted: Fri, May 28th '10 |
Feature Folder Name
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassE52344B9320A44D294C9217F2EE8BC3C
divIn SharePoint 2007, I always manually compiled my WSP package using the makecab.exe tool. As a result, I always had the option of explicitly naming my Feature folder. /div
div /div
divIn SharePoint 2010, you can create a new Feature folder through Visual Studio. However, although you have given your Feature folder a name, if you look at the FEATURES folder after your Feature has been deployed, you might notice that SharePoin [read].
Posted: Fri, May 28th '10 |
"'google' Is Undefined" Javascript Error in SharePoint IE8 Site
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass2F16E93C923448AD9972057C92293DD4
divI wanted to use some jQuery in my Master Page to render a dynamic navigation control that was given to me by another developer. I wanted to use the Google JQuery library. Utilizing is about as straight-forward as one could imagine; I just needed to add this to the header of my Master Page:/div
div /divcodelt;script src=quot;a href="http://www.google.com/jsapi"http://www.google.com/jsapi/aquot; type=quot;text/javascriptquot;g [read].
Posted: Tue, May 25th '10 |
SharePoint Exam 70-573 Study Guide
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassD49A5BCE7E0849F1A829658B03A0558EdivThe SharePoint 2010 exams have now gone into beta testing. I've created an online study guide that you can use to study for strongExam 70-573: TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development/strong. I've mapped out each objective on the exam and provided links to what I have found to be some of the most helpful resources for learning about that objective, (mostly from the SDK on MSDN)./div
div /div
diva href="/Lists/Ex [read].
Posted: Mon, May 24th '10 |
SharePoint MVP Chats for May
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass72916F8E84134ABE8ED99DC44C604397divBased on popular demand (with over 1,000 people attending last month's SharePoint MVP chat) we're going to be having another expert chat for the month of May. As before, we're having one chat in the evening (U.S. time) so that people overseas can participate more easily. In addition, we'll be having another one during the U.S. work day./div
div /div
diva href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=125568720803118a [read].
Posted: Fri, May 21st '10 |
IE6 Hack for Making Rounded Web Part Titles
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassB8EA44DC11344AC88E979C0926989268
divI have a client who wanted rounded Web Part titles in their SharePoint 2007 Publishing site. quot;Easy!quot; I thought. quot;I'll just use a href="http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/brandsppart3a.aspx" target="_blank"Heather Solomon's great post/a that outlines exactly what to do!quot; That worked out fine and dandy until the client told me that they wanted it to work in IE6. I haven't built to IE6 standards for yea [read].
Posted: Tue, May 11th '10 |
Anatomy of the Wiki Homepage Feature
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass0616746E9CFE455EAB2EC79134673426divIn Publishing sites, it's possible to lock down a Rich HTML placeholder so that users can do certain things, but not other things, such as typing in text but not modifying fonts. Someone recently posed the question, is it possible to modify the Wiki homepage in a similar way? That question prompted me to track down just how this Wiki Homepage came to be, in order to find out if it would be possible to lock down the Wiki field [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 21st '10 |
Two More Upcoming SharePoint MVP Chats
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass087EA36AD73447EBA7C8F2D657A8D3DDdivBased on the overwhelming popularity of the last Q amp; A chat with the SharePoint MVP gang, we've gone ahead and scheduled two more MVP chat sessions. The first is on April 27 at 6 p.m. CDT, and the second is the next morning, on April 28 at 11 a.m. CDT. You can log into the chat room on those days by clicking here: a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx"http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx/a [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 20th '10 |
Prevention Research Center Publishing Site Launches
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassB451DC8B0FB34E7D959AF472092720A9divI've been working the last several months with the St. Louis Prevention Research Center, to help them rebuild their site using SharePoint 2007. They finally launched their re-designed site last week. /div
div /div
divThe site uses only out of the box features of SharePoint, and all customizations were done with SharePoint Designer. (You could say the site is quot;code-freequot;.) /div
div /div
divVisit the site for yourself [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 8th '10 |
MVP Chat on Monday, March 15, 2010
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass7AEF886CC83A454D852A1FC268C819E7
divI will be among a panel of MVP's answering question at the upcoming SharePoing MVP Chat. Plan on attending the chat if you'd like to pick my brains and those of my colleagues regarding difficult questions you've faced. Here are the official details:/div
div /div
divstrongChat with the SharePoint MVP Experts/strongbrDo you have tough technical questions regarding SharePoint for which you're seeking answers? Do you want to tap [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 11th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 Exams
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassD02B474F0F6A40C993142ECAF46C4EF3
divMicrosoft has now posted the objectives for the two SharePoint 2010 developer exams:/div
div /div
divTS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development/div
divufont color="#8b178b"a href="http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-573"http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-573/a/font/ua href="http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-542"/a/div
div /div
divPRO: Designing and D [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 8th '10 |
A Visual Guide to Content Deployment in SharePoint 2010
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass915A97CBDF594A979646B6C7890348B7
divstrongWhat's New in SharePoint 2010 - SQL Snapshots/strong/div
divContent deployment was traditionally one of the more quot;messyquot; things to deal with in SharePoint 2007. Although much remains in the same in terms of how you configure content deployment, the product team has provided us with a new way of getting content transferred to our destination server, using SQL database snapshots. The traditional form of content de [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 3rd '10 |
MVP Summit 2010
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassBD0C78D3D9F847D28DD8FD65AB289573
divThis was my first year of being an MVP and my first year to attend the MVP summit in Redmond. I had a wonderful time meeting other SharePoint MVP's for the first time. /div
div /div
divOn Monday, 19 of us headed to Steven's Pass to go skiing. (I guess the usual paintball experience was nixed this year because of the cold weather.) I had only gone skiing once, and that was 15 years ago, so I decided to bite the bullet and go [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 21st '10 |
Declaratively Referencing a Lookup List in a Lookup Column in SharePoint 2010
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass4ECEB31BBC4C454695271D71975DC3E6
divOne of the ugly things that most of us developers had to deal with in SharePoint 2007 was that a Lookup column could not point to the emname/em of a list that it was referencing; it had to point to the GUID of that list. That could be quite problematic. If you had one feature that provisioned a new list called quot;My Listquot;, then each time that feature fired, that list would have a different URL. If that was the case (wh [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 17th '10 |
Presenting at the St. Louis User Group on Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Becky Bertram
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass9FB374EE50E540598005BA2D3602C7AC
divFor those of you in the St. Louis area, I'll be showing off the WCM features of SharePoint 2010 at the a href="http://www.stlsug.org/default.aspx" target="_blank"St. Louis SharePoint User Group/a this Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. at City Place./div
div /div
divemPlease note:/em the meeting will not be held in the Microsoft offices as usual, but will instead be held in a conference room on the 2nd floor of City Place./div/div/div
div [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 4th '10 |
SharePoint 2009 Product Highlights - Lists and Columns
Becky Bertram
Body: I thought I would point out some of my favorite new and improved features of SharePoint 2010, which I learned about at SPC '09. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these in action:
Universal Content Types
Centrally Managed Because one Site Collection cannot span multiple databases, for disaster recovery reasons, many organizations split up their Intranet site into multiple Site Collections soas to divvy up their site between smaller content databases. However, Site Collections have bou [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 27th '09 |
SharePoint 2010 Hands On Labs
Becky Bertram
Body: For those who attended SPC 2009, copies of the Hands on Labs have been made available for download in PDF or XPS format:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c010fc68-b47f-4db6-b8a8-ad4ba33a35c5#tm
My understanding is that the labs were written for the Beta 1 release. There's a good chance some of these labs will not work with Beta 2 when it's released.
Category: SharePoint 2010
Published: 10/26/2009 2:28 PM [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 26th '09 |
SharePoint Conference 2009
Becky Bertram
Body: I just returned from a marathon two weeks full of "All SharePoint, All the Time". Two weeks ago I attended the MS Partner "Ignite" training, where I took a one week course by Ted Pattison from Critical Path Training about the new features of SharePoint 2010.
I flew directly from Dallas to Las Vegas to attend the 2009 SharePoint Conference, at which the new features of SharePoint 2010 were officialy unveiled. Not only did I appreciate seeing the new features of SharePoint up close, I als [read].
Posted: Sun, Oct 25th '09 |
Updating SharePoint Profiles from ASP.NET Profile Data
Becky Bertram
Body: In a previous post I talked about how to create an object to stored ASP.NET profile information for Forms Based Authenticated users in a SharePoint solution. Today I'm going to talk about how we can import user profile data stored in our Membership Provider database into SharePoint.
Since our code is most likely running in a process and not a current Http context, it's necessary to create a new Context object. In the code below, we're using the first SPSite object in our SPWebApplicat [read].
Posted: Mon, Oct 5th '09 |
SharePoint MVP
Becky Bertram
Body: I just found out today I'm officially a SharePoint MVP! Woohoo! Hopefully this means I'll be out and about more, getting to know more of all you fine SharePoint developers out there!
Category: General
Published: 10/1/2009 12:38 PM [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 1st '09 |
"I'm Not Dead Yet!"
Becky Bertram
Body:
It seems as if IBM is mounting the comeback of Lotus. According to this article, US Bank has decided to get rid of SharePoint and go with the Lotus platform:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/15/us_bank_switches_to_ibm_lotus/
Furthermore, IBM has dictated that all its employees have 10 days to migrate their data from Microsoft Office to Symphony.
http://dailycontributor.com/ibm-sends-microsoft-office-to-the-trash/7276/
As many of us out there, I used Lotus regularly at clients ba [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 16th '09 |
A New Way of Thinking About Site Organization for End Users
Becky Bertram
Body: One of the big shifts that people have to make when creating a SharePoint site is the fact they're used to a digital asset having a digital location, much the way an actual object would live in an actual location, such as a file drawer.
Just this last week, I had a client who kept asking me how she would mark a project as "complete" in the new system I'm designing for her. I started to ask her what "complete" meant to her, and she stated that when a project is "complete" in her old s [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 12th '09 |
SharePoint Administration Toolkit 4.0 Permission Tools
Becky Bertram
Body:
Being a SharePoint developer and not a SharePoint admin, I must admit, I don't usually take the time to examine each new Adminsitrative Toolkit that gets released, but something in the latest release caught my eye: the "Check Effective Permissions" tool. This is part of the "Permission Reporting" solution package that you can install as part of the Administrative Toolkit. (For instructions on installing PermissionReporting.wsp, see the TechNet article about installing the Admin Toolkit.) [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 11th '09 |
Set DateTimeField Value in a Custom ASCX List Item Form
Becky Bertram
Body:
I have a List called "Project Status Reports", which is a List populated with List Items based on the "Project Status Report" content type. Since each status report is associated with a given "Project" in my other "Projects" list, I wanted to write a custom User Control to be put in my CONTROLTEMPLATES folder, which could be used to render the form for the "New" or "Edit" view [See how to do it here], and I wanted this form to have some of its fields pre-populated based on fields from it [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 10th '09 |
Upcoming Conferences
Becky Bertram
Body: I will be attending the "Ignite" Microsoft Partner training program, in Dallas the week of Oct. 12, where I'll be learning about the finer points of SharePoint 2010 Development. I'll also be attending the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas the following week.
If you'll be at either of the events, I'd love to meet you in person. I don't like to post my contact info online because I don't want to get spammed, but if you'd like to meet up in person at either of these events, please [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 9th '09 |
Using ASP.NET Profiles in a SharePoint FBA Site
Becky Bertram
Body:
I have a requirement for my client that I'm supposed to allow users to authenticate using Forms Based Authentication. However, they also want users to be able to enter supplemental information such as their address, phone number, etc. Typically, this can be done rather easily using the ASP.NET Profile infrastructure.
However, an ASP.NET application has dynamically generated code that gets generated when the application is compiled on the fly. As you know, in SharePoint most all code [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 3rd '09 |
Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference
Becky Bertram
Body:
This November, I'll be presenting a half day tutorial for software development managers at the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While this conference usually focuses on open source technologies, this year the conference will be embracing more Microsoft technologies. If you live in the western Michigan or Great Lakes area, start thinking now about attending this conference.
Here's a summary of the presentation:
Help! I’ve Got a SharePoint Site. Now Wh [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 21st '09 |
Enabling Workflow on a non-workflow-enabled Publishing Site
Becky Bertram
Body: "Oh no! I created a site using the 'Publishing Site' template instead of the 'Publishing Site with Workflow" template, and now I realize I do need workflow! Help, what do I do?"
Have you ever found yourself in this position? No worries! This can be easily fixed through the browser.
1. Browse to your Pages Library settings page. (You can get there by clicking on the Site Actions menu --> Site Settings --> Modify Pages Library Settings."
2. Click on the "Versioning Settings" lin [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 17th '09 |
Creating a Line of Business Application with SharePoint and Word 2007 - Part 2: Retrieving Information from SharePoint Using the List Data Retrieval Web Service
Becky Bertram
Body:
In Part 1 of this series, we covered how to create a new Word 2007 ribbon that shows and hides the Actions Pane. Today we’re going to see how course information can be retrieved from SharePoint using a built in web service, so that the information can be dynamically placed into the Word document itself.
The information we’re going to be retrieving is information relating to a particular college course. The information is stored in a SharePoint Forms Library. (The idea is that professo [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 7th '09 |
Person.aspx Navigation
Becky Bertram
Body: For those of you who might have noticed, the top navigation disappears when you're viewing someone else's profile using the Person.aspx page. This behavior seems very mysterious, considering the navigation appears on the other pages in the root "My Site" site collection.
I ran across this post on Bob Moore's blog, where he describes how he disassembled the code and discovered that there's code in Person.aspx that explicitly looks for the Content control that contains the top navigation, [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 25th '09 |
What is "Web 3.0"?
Becky Bertram
Body: I saw a blog entry on CNN.com that asked the question "'What is Web 3.0' and Should You Care?" According to one person the blogger talked to, Web 3.0 already happened because we are in the 3rd decade of the Internet. However, I think there probably are some things we can look forward to in the coming era of the Internet. Some ideas that people who commented on the blog post had:
Web applications will be more tied to mobile phones.
Paid services such as "Office Online" mean we will buy [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 2nd '09 |
Creating a Line of Business Application with SharePoint and Word 2007 - Part 1: Creating the Ribbon and Actions Pane Control
Becky Bertram
Body:
For those of you who attended the most recent St. Louis MOSS Camp, you know I presented a topic on SharePoint and OpenXML. I thought it would be helpful to write out step-by-step for you how I created a LOB application with Word 2007. The end result will be a Word 2007 document with a custom Ribbon and a custom Actions Pane that retrieves information from a SharePoint list, which can then be inserted into the document.
The scenario I'll be basing this example on is one where pro [read].
Posted: Wed, May 6th '09 |
Last SharePoint MCTS Achieved!
Becky Bertram
Body:
At long last, I took the last of the Microsoft SharePoint exams. I successfully passed exam 70-630, Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. View my abbreviated study guide I used to pass the exam.
Category: MOSS
Published: 5/5/2009 12:32 PM [read].
Posted: Wed, May 6th '09 |
Dynamic Link Conference 2009
Becky Bertram
Body:
On Saturday I attended the Dynamic Link '09 Conference at Calvin College. This was a conference headed up by Calvin IT professor Pat Bailey and facilitated and planned by Calvin IS Majors. The purpose of the conference was to discuss how our Christian faith can have a positive impact on software development and management practices.
One of the specific topics covered was the divide that often takes place between software developers and testers, and management, with each person inv [read].
Posted: Mon, May 4th '09 |
Twitter RSS Feed Web Part
Becky Bertram
Body:
Thanks to Randy Drisgill's post, I've added an XML web part to my homepage that pulls my latest tweets. You can read about it here: http://blog.drisgill.com/2009/04/using-xml-web-part-to-show-your-twitter.html.
Category: WSS
Published: 4/30/2009 12:00 AM [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 29th '09 |
Exam 70-630 Study Guide
Becky Bertram
Body: For those who liked my study guide for exam 70-631, I've introduced a similar study guide for exam 70-630: Configuring Micrsooft Office SharePoint Server. You can access it at the following URL: http://blog.beckybertram.com/Lists/Exam%2060630%20Study%20Guide/AllItems.aspx
Category: MOSS
Published: 4/29/2009 1:49 AM [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 29th '09 |
Are You Clueless?
Becky Bertram
Body: I will be helping facilitate a discussion group at an upcoming conference at my alma mater, Calvin College. The student leader of our discussion group, Ben Van Drunen, forwarded me on several articles to get us thinking about the topics we'll be discussing. I enjoyed reading them, and thought I'd pass them on.
9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless
8 Reasons Why CIOs Think Their Application Developers Are Clueless
Category: General
Published: 4/28/2009 3:46 PM [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 28th '09 |
Musings on Information Architecture in SharePoint Intranet Sites
Becky Bertram
Body: Logical Organization and Security Building a collaboration and information-sharing platform is more akin to an art than a science, in the sense that are multiple ways of organizing content, and there is not necessarily one “right” organizational schema. One of the strengths of SharePoint is to allow the same content to be categorized in multiple ways, regardless of where the content resides on the site. (For example, SharePoint could return all the Web Pages that are “News Articles [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 21st '09 |
MSDev.com
Becky Bertram
Body: The site formerly known as "ISV Innovation" is now MSDev.com. I have found this to be another resource in the arsenal of on-demand training for developers. The site has a number of training videos and labs covering topics such as "Rich Internet Applications with SharePoint and Silverlight", "Office Business Applications and SharePoint" and "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as a Development Platform". If you haven't checked it out, take a look.
Category: General
Published: 4/21/2009 [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 21st '09 |
MOSS Camp
Becky Bertram
Body: In just a few hours I'll be presenting at the St. Louis MOSS Camp. I'll be presenting on the topic of using SharePoint as a data source for Word Documents, using Open XML. Here's my presentation if you'd like to download a copy.
OpenXMLandSharePoint%20.pptx
Published: 4/18/2009 10:38 AM [read].
Posted: Sat, Apr 18th '09 |
BPOS Hosted Exchange Tastes Like Dog Food
Becky Bertram
Body: As you might know, I partner with a company who is a Microsoft Gold Partner. As such, they made the decision to use Microsoft Online's hosted Exchange service for all company e-mail. In the industry, this is known as "dog-fooding" it, and in this case, it truly tastes like dog food. There are several significant problems I have run intoso far that have the potential to make my life bloody miserable:
There is no POP3 access to mail. I pay for my own Exchange account for my business e-mai [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 6th '09 |
Taxonomy Resources
Becky Bertram
Body: I'm working with a client now to help them understand coumns, content types, list/document libaries, and views. I create a brief Power Point presentation for them, and an Excel spreadsheet with instructions for filling in the columns, content types, lists, and views they would like. These are not extremely refined yet, and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have.
Taxonomy.pptx
Taxonomy Worksheet.xls
Category: WSS
Published: 3/25/2009 2:31 PM [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 25th '09 |
Creating an Order Form for a Particular Inventory Item in the Inventory Tracking WSS Site Template
Becky Bertram
Body:
I recently saw an interesting question posted to the MSDN SharePoint Dev message board, which intrigued me, so I took a little time to do some investigation.
In the Inventory Tracking WSS Site Template (part of the "Fab 40" site templates for WSS), there's a "Create Order" page, which really is the "New" page for a list called Transactions. That page has a drop down menu where the user can select an item to order. That "Item" drop down menu is looking up values in another SharePoint [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 17th '09 |
Resetting the SPFieldLookup.LookupList Property
Becky Bertram
Body:
As you might have discovered, the SPFieldLookup.LookupList property is Read Only, and cannot be set. I have a scenario where I'm trying to migrate a sub-site from one site collection to another, and the lookup list GUID will not be the same in the new site collection. I tried setting the LookupList property to the new GUID, but no dice. I got error. I knew there had to be a way around, and I found it. You have to do a string.Replace() on the SPField.SchemaXml, like so:
SPWeb web = [What [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 4th '09 |
On Being Independent
Becky Bertram
Body:
I just read a post by Joel Oleson that outlines several kinds of "gotchas" that independent contractors frequently face, including having start dates get shoved off indefinitely, having to wait to get expenses reimbursed, and never quite knowing when your paycheck will actually come. Having been independent (with the exception of two full time gigs totaling about a year and a half) since 2003, I thought I'd post a little about how I got here, and lessons I've learned.
How I Became a [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 18th '09 |
Newly Published WCM Training Materials on TechNet
Becky Bertram
Body: Microsoft has recently published a series of training materials for SharePoint Web Content Management. These topics cover everything from designing a consistent look and feel, to constructing your server infrastructure, to securing your installation. Each module contains a Word document containing instructions, with accompanying video modules. This is a nice set of free learning modules to take advantage of.
Download the Web Content Management Training Modules Here are the video module [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 12th '09 |
What's Next? - Random Readings
Becky Bertram
Body: As SharePoint matures as a product, and more so a platform, many of us out there are looking towards the future, wondering where SharePoint is heading, especially as vNext approaches. I thought I'd put together a list of the kind of topics that have interested me lately, in areas that I believe are indicative of where the product is headed.
Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) I remember having discussions nearly a decade ago about the merits of shrink-wrapped products vs. pay-as-you [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 10th '09 |
KC SharePoint Saturday
Becky Bertram
Body: SharePoint Saturday in Kansas City was a great success, thanks in part to many volunteers, especially Becky Isserman. The event was a great way for people to get training from experts who work with various aspects of SharePoint, and best of all, it was free. When almost 200 people spend their whole Saturday sitting in lectures about SharePoint, it's obvious that the event is meeting a need in the community, and I was happy to be a part of it.
I had the privelege of giving my Intro to WCM [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 9th '09 |
Migrating a Large(r) Subsite Between Servers
Becky Bertram
Body: Scenario:
I have a client who has a departmental site within their site collection, which is used for document management, and therefore has about 600 MB of documents (I'm guessing). Although the site is already a WSS 3.0 site, it's on a legacy farm. The IT department has spent significant time and money investing in a better MOSS installation, with more complete taxonomies, 3rd party tools, etc. I need to move the site to a different site collection on a different server in a different [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 5th '09 |
One more MTS
Becky Bertram
Body:
I just passed exam 70-631, Configuring WSS. 3 down, 1 to go, (MOSS Config).
For a person who's more of a developer than an IT person, I found the exam a little more difficult than the WSS and MOSS Development exams. A word to the wise: spend time studying NLB, DNS entries, SSL, ISA, and certificates. I personally found it very helpful to do some reading on those subjects. It's good to get back to basics every once in a while. (My biggest complaint about the exam is that it seemed da [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 28th '09 |
SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Guide
Becky Bertram
Body: I just received my copy of SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery Guide by John Ferringer and Sean McDonough in the mail yesterday and I've already plowed through about 100 pages.
I noticed that the publisher of the book focuses on publishing training materials, and in that same vein, the authors take the reader step by step through various back-up and restore processes, including providing screen shots of "click on this link", then "click on that link". This book is not a "Wrox Professional [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 21st '09 |
A Brief Biography
Becky Bertram
Body: A professor at my Alma Mater, Calvin College, is teaching a course to students about integrating their faith with their vocation. I told him a little about my story, and he asked me to record a brief clip he could play for his students. Since I'm not good at extemporaneous talking, I wrote it out ahead of time and thought I'd share it.
----------------------------------------------
Hello, my name is Becky Bertram. I graduated from Calvin in 1999 with a degree in Art History and German an [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 19th '09 |
SharePoint Designer Workflow Activity: Updating a document with the properties of its parent folder
Becky Bertram
Body:
I currently have a requirement for a client where there a series of folders inside a document library that get automatically generated by another workflow. The folder itself is a content type and has a series of columns that get populated during the workflow that creates it, such as product name, country, a custom ID number, etc.
Once the folder has been created, the documents inside the folder should also pick up the same properties from the parent folder, for reporting purposes. [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 13th '09 |
SharePoint Search Resources
Becky Bertram
Body: Today's post is only for thse folks who have Microsoft Partner access to SharePoint resources.
First off, for any of you who have not signed up to be a part of the Partner Learning Portal, you need to sign up now. They have GREAT resources and free learning, like on-demand webcasts, online tutorials, etc. https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/mytraining.aspx
Microsoft has posted a 14 hour web-cast series about Enterprise Search. Although the webcasts themselves are on TechNet, by g [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 13th '09 |
SharePoint Saturday - Kansas City
Becky Bertram
Body: I'll be speaking at the SharePoint Saturday event in Kansas City on February 7. You can learn more about the event at www.sharepointsaturday.org/kc.
I'll be presenting with some good pals of mine, including Matt Bremer and Todd Kitta. The event is being put together by Kansas City's leading SharePoint lady, Becky Isserman (the "other" SharePoint Becky, I'm told.)
See you there!
Category: General
Published: 1/1/2009 6:15 PM [read].
Posted: Thu, Jan 1st '09 |
What is Web Content Management?
Becky Bertram
Body:
Although many peope are familiar with the collaboration features of SharePoint, the web content management featurs are not as often so well-known. Before you start thinking about using SharePoint to publish content to the Web, it can be helpful to first ask the question, "What is web content managment, after all?" I've put together a quick 10 minute MP3 audio recording that answers that basic question, as well gives a brief explanation of why SharePoint is a good WCMS. You can also downl [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 1st '08 |
Best Practices Conference Redux
Becky Bertram
Body: Back by popular demand, Bill English and company are hosting another SharePoint Best Practices conference in February, but this time on the west coast, in San Diego. I just sent in my registration and am looking forward to meeting other SharePointers. Let me know if you're planning on attending and would like to meet!
Category: General
Published: 11/13/2008 11:51 PM [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 14th '08 |
Intro to MOSS WCM Presentation
Becky Bertram
Body: Thank you to all of you who showed up at today's St. Louis SharePoint User's Group meeting. I enjoyed meeting some new people this month. For those who would like copies of the presentation assets for themselves, here are links to the presention slide deck, as well as the code I used to provision my Page Layout as a feature.
Introduction to MOSS Web Content Management
BB.SharePoint.Publishing.Demo
Enjoy!
Category: Web Content Management
Published: 11/11/2008 3:23 PM [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 11th '08 |
Updating Content Types and Site Columns That Were Deployed as a Feature
Becky Bertram
Body:
How many times have you come across this scenario? You create several Site Columns as well as a Content Type or two in your Feature. Then you want to update it. Since you deployed it via a Feature (as opposed to editing it in the browser), being a good developer, you decide you want to execute your update through a Feature as well. However, you run into several problems:
When you deactivate your Feature, it keeps some Site Columns and deletes other ones.
You notice some of the Site C [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 1st '08 |
Web Content Management @ The St. Louis User's Group
Becky Bertram
Body: Join me again this month as I present at the November St. Louis User's Group meeting on November 11th, 2008. I'll be going over the basics of web content management, and review how you can create your own page templates using SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio.
Category: General
Published: 10/20/2008 10:15 AM [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 21st '08 |
InfoPath and Web Content Management: an End-to-End SharePoint Scenario -- Part 3: Creating the Page Layout
Becky Bertram
Body:
In my previous entry in this series, I went over how to export values from your InfoPath form into columns in your document library. The end-goal of our scenario is to allow information about newborns to be published to a public-facing web site. That being the case, it will be necessary to create a Publishing Page Layout, i.e. a page template, that we'll use to give a nice look and feel to the information being presented about the new born.
Overview of SharePoint Page Layouts
Befo [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 9th '08 |
To Bracket or Not to Bracket (Field Element ID GUID)
Becky Bertram
Body:
When creating Fields, Content Types, solution packages, etc., in SharePoint, you'll make heavy use of GUIDs. However, it seems to be hit-or-miss as to whether SharePoint expects the curly brackets surrounding a GUID.
I spent several hours today trying to get a solution package deployed that would provision some fields into my site collection. When I activated the feature, the fields would not get provisioned. There was no error in the SharePoint error log, no error in the server's [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 3rd '08 |
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Best Practices
Becky Bertram
Body: I am in the process of reading the Microsoft Press book by Ben Curry and Bill English, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Best Practices. While there are numerous books on the market explaining how to technically carry out a SharePoint implementation, this book does a great of summarizing the various business and project management issues surrounding the construction of a good SharePoint solution.
When SharePoint 2007 was first released in Beta 1, customers immediately be [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 1st '08 |
InfoPath and Web Content Management: an End-to-End SharePoint Scenario -- Part 2: Submitting the InfoPath Form to a Document Library
Becky Bertram
Body:
In this series, I'm illustrating a SharePoint solution that starts with collecting information using an InfoPath form, and ultimately publishes the data collected in the form to a public facing web site.
In my last entry, I talked about how to create an InfoPath form that retrieves information from a SharePoint list. Today I want to talk about saving that information to a SharePoint document library.
Two Step Process We have to remember that there are two forms we need to keep track o [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 27th '08 |
InfoPath and Web Content Management: an End-to-End SharePoint Scenario -- Part 1: Creating the InfoPath Form
Becky Bertram
Body:
This month at the SharePoint User's Group meeting, I spent an hour going through a demonstration of an end-to-end SharePoint solution, and I wanted to share the contents of that lecture with you.
Because SharePoint is such a large product, it often gets segmented into different areas of functionality, which label things like "Collaboration", "Business Intelligence", "Web Content Management", etc. While these labels are helpful, they tend to encourage silo thinking; that is to say, w [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 22nd '08 |
Quick Script for Uncustomizing Page Layouts
Becky Bertram
Body:
I ran into an issue where several of my Page Layouts had been customized using SharePoint Designer. I didn't want them to be customized, because I had deployed an upgraded solution file, which had updated the Page Layout Feature on the file system; if the pages remained customized in SPD, they wouldn't "pick up" the new changes on the file system. I wrote a short command-line application, and I thought I'd post the code so you could do it, too, if needed.
using System; using System. [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 19th '08 |
September 2008 St. Louis User Group Meeting
Becky Bertram
Body: I'll be presenting at the upcoming St. Louis Users Group meeting on September 9, at the Microsoft office at City Place. The topic of my presentation is "InfoPath and Web Content Management: So Happy Together". I'll be giving a demonstration of a solution that allows employees to collect information internally via an InfoPath form, and then publish it to a public site, via a custom workflow that leverages SharePoint's Publishing features.
Todd Kitta, author of the Wrox book Professional Wi [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 4th '08 |
No More Kool-aid
Becky Bertram
Body: For those of you who remember my "I drank the Kool-aid" post from last year, I feel like it's time I let the world know that I am no longer partaking of the sugary goodness of Microsoft. I actually started working for myself back in 2002, and had a successful career as an independent contractor for a number of years. Working for Microsoft was a great honor, as I think anyone who has worked there would agree. However, after almost a year there, I realized that I have always been happiest w [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 1st '08 |
Creating Custom List Forms for Creating, Editing, or Displaying a List Item
Becky Bertram
Body:
You might have noticed that when you create a new list or library in SharePoint, a set of forms get automatically created for creating a new list item, editing a list item, or displaying that list item. When you add a new column to that list, the column automatically gets added to those forms. Where is this code generated? And how can you create your own Create, Edit, and Display forms?
If you look in the 12 hive, in the CONTROLTEMPLATES folder, you'll see a file called DefaultTempl [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 30th '08 |
Online Study Guide for Microsoft Exam 70-631: Configuring Windows SharePoint Services
Becky Bertram
Body: I have published a set of links to Microsoft published content for each skill set outlined in the study guide for exam 70-631: TS: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Configuring. Hopefully this will be a helpful preparation guide for those of you who are joining me in studying for the Microsoft exam.
You can find the study guide here:
http://blog.beckybertram.com/Lists/Exam%2070631%20Study%20Guide/AllItems.aspx
Category: WSS
Published: 8/27/2008 8:40 PM [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 27th '08 |
The Trusted Advisor
Becky Bertram
Body:
I am going on my 10th year of consulting now, and as I progress in my career, I'm becoming increasingly aware that it's not just technical proficiency that makes me successful at what I do. I can only execute a project on a technical level when a client has given me the okay to move ahead with the project. Being an effective consultant means I can get buy-in from my client, that the plan of action I'm proposing is the best way to accomplish their goal. I can best do that when my client t [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 23rd '08 |
Welcome to the New and Improved BeckyBertram.com
Becky Bertram
Body:
Well, I finally bit the bullet and decided to move my blog to a real SharePoint site. Although I used the basic Blog site template, I've made an effort to customize the site's look and feel so it doesn't look so "SharePoint-ish". You can still access my old blog entries by clicking the "Old Blog" link in the left menu. I hope you enjoy the new site!
Category: General
Published: 8/13/2008 6:46 PM [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 13th '08 |
Sharepoint Datasheet View Error
Becky Bertram
I was creating a custom list schema and I wanted to create a Datasheet view. I set the "Type" attribute on my "View" node to "GRID". However, when I tried to browse to the view, I got this error:
The list is displayed in Standard view. It cannot be displayed in Datasheet view for one or more of the following reasons: A datasheet component compatible with Windows SharePoint Services is not installed, your browser does not support ActiveX controls, or support for ActiveX controls is disabled.
Al [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 25th '08 |
My Posse
Becky Bertram
OK, so I don't normally post links to other blog entries, because I find it, well, redundant! But today I feel like I need to give a shout out to three of my talented SharePoint co-workers, who are all SharePoint Consultants for Microsoft Consulting Services in the North Central District. They're all like me, newbies to MCS, and are taking a stab at the whole blogging thing. Take a look at these recent articles:
Bryan Porter
Most recent article: ICallbackEventHandler
Matt Bremer
Most recent [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 19th '08 |
The Crush of E-Mails
Becky Bertram
I listened to an interesting article on National Public Radio, called Make It Stop! Crushed by Too Many E-Mails, regarding the influx of e-mails we receive every day.
The quote that stood out to me was this:
At the same time, companies are seeking ways to make the technology itself better at filtering what matters from what doesn't. Yahoo, one of the biggest providers of Web-based mail, is trying to rethink its e-mail as a social network, according to John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail. [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 17th '08 |
Custom Event Content Type
Becky Bertram
I was tasked with creating a custom Event List (i.e. Calendar) to be deployed as a feature. I was confused, because even though I had successfully added the additional fields to the schema.xml file, they still weren't showing up when I tried to create a new event. I figured out that I needed to extended the base Event content type to include my new columns, if I wanted them to appear in the "new", "view", and "edit" screens. Here's how I went about building my feature:
Inside my list definition [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 13th '08 |
Feature Dependency Order
Becky Bertram
I recently ran across a helpful blog entry by the Norwegian MCS Information Worker team, which succinctly outlines the relationships between features, in terms of activation dependencies across scopes and between hidden and visible features.
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcsnoiwb/archive/2008/05/28/hidden-features-and-dependencies.aspx
I've tried to visually represent some of the scenarios they've outlined:
This scenario does not work, because if you try activate the feature at the web level before [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 5th '08 |
Updating Pages Library with Default Page Content Type
Becky Bertram
I was creating a custom Site Definition for a Publishing site, and my Default page was based on a custom Content Type I had installed at the root of the Site Collection, which was based on the "Page" Content Type. The strangest thing happened, though, when I provisioned the new site, and tried to edit my Default page. Although all the editing fields showed up that were associated with the Page Content Type, none of the editing controls associated with the custom Content Type showed up on the pag [read].
Posted: Thu, May 29th '08 |
"This page has been modified since you opened it" Error
Becky Bertram
I was at a client recently where I had created a Solution Package for bundling up a Feature that provisioned the Master Page, stlyles, Page Layouts, etc., for a Publishing Site, as well as a Site Definition that included homepages for each site.
The client started getting an error every time they tried to edit certain pages on the site. Whenever they added a web part to a page, or clicked up a button in the Content Editor Toolbar, they would be redirected to an error page that would tell them, [read].
Posted: Fri, May 23rd '08 |
Page Layouts Not Updating on Solution Upgrade
Becky Bertram
One of the more complicated, and yet fundamental aspects of SharePoint is the concept of "customization" or "unghosting". When a page is not customized, it should refer to the definition that was installed on the file system in the 12 hive. That being said, when you do an stsadm -o upgradesolution command, and you update that definition on the file system, all the uncustomized pages on the site should pick up that change.
I was running into a mysterious circumstance where the changes were not [read].
Posted: Thu, May 22nd '08 |
Women at Microsoft
Becky Bertram
I just got back from TechReady, a week long training conference for Microsoft employees. This was the first year Microsoft put on a special event, just for women. Out of 5,000 attendees at the conference, just 450 were women. Although that number seems low, it's actually right about on par with other technology companies. Lately, Microsoft has been making an effort to increase the visibility of the women in its organization and their contributions. They have also started an event called "Digigir [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 26th '08 |
I drank the Kool-Aid
Becky Bertram
After five years of doing my own thing, I finally drank the kool-aid and joined Microsoft. I'm now working for Microsoft Consulting Services in the North Central District. After having worked with Microsoft CMS and SharePoint for 7 years, it's fun finally having access to the latest and greatest resources and people. Soon I'll be getting a new blog, however I'll try to keep the same Feedburner URL. Thanks to everyone who has responded to this blog over the last couple months. I'll continue to tr [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 26th '08 |
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