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Nick Swan Profile |
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BCS Meta Man and the Business Connectivity Services
Nick Swan
pI’m in Seattle now for 10 days. Last trip this year – probably. I had thought San Francisco in November was to be the last but that wasn’t to be true. Seattle though is one place I don’t mind having to travel to. Always an interesting reason for the visit plus everybody is friendly and the place generally has a good vibe to it./p pEverything has been really crazy over at Lightning Tools since June. The SharePoint Conference took place in October and we had been working like crazy to get [read].
Posted: Sun, Feb 28th '10 |
If I was Prime Minister - Job Seekers Allowance
Nick Swan
I'm sitting here before dinner and am thinking about the world. What are the things I'd change if I was Prime Minister? OK maybe the British Prime Minister can't affect the world anymore in the way they used to be able to (although perhaps Gordon Brown hasn't realised this) - so I'll probably just pick on a few things that could change the UKbr /
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span style="font-weight: bold;"Job Seekers Allowance/spanbr /
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This idea came to me today as I was sitting waiting [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 8th '10 |
BDC and SalesForce
Nick Swan
We’ve recently published a free article on how to connect SalesForce to SharePoint via the BDC. You can download the article, the code, and also try out the dummy web service we are hosting. Take a read to learn some more: BDC and SalesForce. [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 21st '09 |
Connect Via Books Relaunched
Nick Swan
Before getting into the SharePoint world a friend and I started a web site around 2004 called Connect Via Books. The aim of the site was simple – a social networking site for people who loved books. The original site was developed on ASP.NET 1.1 and although the original launch was quite promising after a little while we got distracted by other work (SharePoint for me!) and the site remained as it was. Well I’m very happy to announce that the site has recently been relaunched after a large r [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 11th '09 |
See BDC Meta Man Web Edition in action
Nick Swan
Phill Duffy will be taking two web casts tomorrow that show how you can configure the Business Data Catalog application definition files from within the browser using BDC Meta Man Web Edition. If nothing else it’s an amazing demo of how you can use jQuery within SharePoint to build very powerful applications. The sessions are Wednesday 17th June 3pm GMT Wednesday 17th June 8pm GMT If you’d like to attend either of these please drop an email to support@lightningtools.com and indicate which s [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 16th '09 |
Outstanding customer service
Nick Swan
We often spend so much time complaining on blogs I think it’s right that when someone does something good we mention it too. I was having dinner tonight at the restaurant that is part of the Marriott hotel in Redmond. As I sat down a large group of people were just ordering so I knew that I may have to wait a while but I had a book to read so no issue. It did take may be 15 mins longer for the starter to turn up – but I wasn’t fussed and the manager was nice enough to bring over a free dri [read].
Posted: Sat, Jun 6th '09 |
Life without caffeine
Nick Swan
For the past 4-5 months I’ve been caffeine free having given up tea, coffee and diet coke. I never used to drink any coffee but could quite easily get through about 6-8 cups of tea each day and 2 diet cokes. Of course the caffeine rushes were great but then the lull afterwards always meant the need for another coffee. I also found it quite hard to get off to sleep each night. At the end of the day caffeine is a drug and I’d rather my body not have anything going around it that it does not re [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 3rd '09 |
Taking pride in your work
Nick Swan
I’ve started taking the time to read a few blogs again. One of the blogs I’ve started reading is the famous Uncle Bob who I’m ashamed to admit I only really found out about relatively recently after his interview on Hanselminutes. Listening to that show and recent readings of his books and Crystal Clear by Alistair Cockborn have really put us in the right direction at Lightning Tools and also been incredibly motivating. Currently we do a lot of our development work remotely rather than all [read].
Posted: Mon, May 11th '09 |
SharePoint Podshow and doing things you enjoy and learn from
Nick Swan
Rob posted up the other day that we’d hit the 100,000 download mark with the SharePoint Podshow (we’re actually well over it now). While a nice milestone – I thought we’d actually get there quicker! So if you know someone who isn’t listening get them subscribed. Whether they are into SharePoint or not doesn’t really matter! As Rob said in his post we really enjoy recording the shows. I obviously work with Brett so we get along well, and I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t enjoy t [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 22nd '09 |
Nottingham SUGUK meeting
Nick Swan
SUGUK is spreading its wings a little further this month with the first meeting being held in Nottingham on April 30th! Steve Smith and Mark Macrae are presenting 2 great sessions so get your name down to attend: http://suguk.org/forums/thread/18475.aspx Steve and I have also penciled in the dates for meetings up to August – as soon as we have venues secured we’ll post up the dates as we know people want to put them in their diary as soon as possible. [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 21st '09 |
Golf Books
Nick Swan
Doing a little spring cleaning today and gathered all my golf books up together! Think I need to ban myself from Amazon for a little while! Out of all these, the two I would recommend are Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible and Short Game Bible. (I haven’t read all these yet by the way! I just like collecting :-) ) [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 13th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practice Conference Roundup
Nick Swan
Last week was the SharePoint Best Practice Conference (BPC) held in London, organized by Combined Knowledge. There have been a couple of BPC’s in the US, but this was the first in Europe – as it showed with a great attendance of around 450 people. Lightning Tools were there with a stand and we had a chance to speak to lots of people about what we do and the values of the BDC. This was also the first chance Rob, Brett and I had been in the same room since starting the SharePointPodshow – [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 12th '09 |
G20 – where does the money come from?
Nick Swan
Been watching the news today on the $1 trillion promise by the G20. I thought everyone was broke ? Why are the news programs not saying where the money is coming from ? Perhaps I need to read a book or two on economics. [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 2nd '09 |
Getting Things Done and Me
Nick Swan
I’ve been putting on Twitter about when I am doing my Getting Things Done (GTD) weekly review and replying to a few friend that have mentioned the book. Some people have asked me how I’ve been getting on with the whole thing and so I though the best thing would be to write a blog post about the system I’m using, the benefits of it and also where I need to improve and things I want to look into next. First though a little background into what got me into this… Getting Started… As you’ [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 1st '09 |
Will Twitter ruin search for us all?
Nick Swan
One of the pioneering things that the founders of Google realized was that people linked to good content – and part of their search ranking algorithm counted up incoming links from authoritative sources. It just so happened that as their search engine started taking off – blogging took hold and people loved generating more content, and linking to more pages and topics they liked. Since I’ve been using Twitter I’ve certainly not been writing as much on my blog. Rather than taking the time [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 26th '09 |
MVP Summit, SharePoint Podshow and UK Best Practice Conference Roundup
Nick Swan
It’s been a hectic few weeks with work, travel and fun! First off was the MVP summit in Seattle. The conference was on for 3 days but I booked a 9 day stay in Seattle to take some days to chill and play some golf. If anybody is visiting Seattle make sure you visit The Golf Club at Newcastle and play a round. Awesome views of Seattle off the first tee and a great way to get over jet lag. Usually when suffering from jet lag I don’t play very well but I did OK this time which got the week off t [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 25th '09 |
Try the Lightning Storm Forums for SharePoint
Nick Swan
We’ve just added the Lightning Storm Forums to a SharePoint site that is publicly available – go to it now to try out posting a topic or reply: http://connect.lightningtools.com This is some new functionality just released that people have requested being added to the forums! Anonymous viewing was possible before, but now we’ve added the ability to allow anonymous posting also – great for a public facing web site. [read].
Posted: Wed, Mar 11th '09 |
Jump around SharePoint
Nick Swan
As previously mentioned we have start using UserVoice for tracking new ideas for products and features for Lightning Tools. One thing that popped up was an idea for the Lightning Jump Web Part. This web part allows you to maintain a list of keywords that relate to specific urls that people want to visit often such as HR or expense forms. Think MOSS search Best Bets but with ajax auto complete functionality (works with WSS 3.0 also). One drawback from the initial version was that the keywords wer [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 10th '09 |
New release of Meta Man
Nick Swan
We’ve pushed out a new release of BDC Meta Man today. Cool new features include being able to connect to ODBC data sources using a connection string and localizing your entity names. Check out some more info on the Lightning Tools Blog. [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 10th '09 |
Rollup your SharePoint Content – new screencasts
Nick Swan
The Lightning Conductor Web Part is one of our best sellers as it has a very good UI for end users to configure how to rollup and display their SharePoint information, but also with the ability for developers to apply their own XSL styles and really weave some magic. Brett’s done a good job recording some new screencasts and articles to show you how do get the most from the web part: Getting started with the Lightning Conductor Web Part Rolling up lists and libraries with custom columns Rollin [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 25th '09 |
Business of Software Conference 09
Nick Swan
There have already been two Business of Software (BoS) conferences and I’ve wanted to attend both but things didn’t work out with schedules and other stuff. The event for 2009 has already been announced and so I bought my ticket on the day that they came out. If you write and sell software products it is a must attend event. To convince yourself make sure you watch the videos of the past events : http://network.businessofsoftware.org/video and to get your ticket for the 09 event in November [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 25th '09 |
Working with Web Services as a BDC Data Source?
Nick Swan
If you are, make sure you check out BDC Web Man. We’ve just released version 1.0.0.0. It will save you a ton of time by generating all the web methods and classes you need to get a web service layer working nicely with the BDC. BDC and Web Services. Of course all feedback and ideas welcome! [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 10th '09 |
Upcoming SharePoint User Group UK Events
Nick Swan
There’s a number of great upcoming SUGUK events in February posted on the web site you need to check out. Let’s hope the weather improves soon eh? Birmingham User Group Meeting – Tuesday Feb 17th Back in Birmingham to continue the back to basics series and user adoption theme that we started before Christmas. For more information and to sign up go here http://suguk.org/forums/thread/16933.aspx London User Group Meeting – Thursday Feb 26th Michael Noel is visiting us from the US and will [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 10th '09 |
Document Information Panel
Nick Swan
Brett has written a great support article that covers editing the document information panel to get around the limitations you suffer when using it out of the box with the Business Data Column Type for collecting meta data: BDC Document Information Panel [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 28th '09 |
The Survey Results
Nick Swan
We’ve published the results from the Big SharePoint Survey. Some interesting results around workflow and governance. Take a look – I’ve added a bit of commentary around the results also: SharePoint Survey Results. Also Brett, Rob and I had a good discussion about the results in the SharePoint PodShow number 15, take a listen: SharePoint Podcast [read].
Posted: Wed, Jan 28th '09 |
See the LT Data Viewer Web Part in Action
Nick Swan
This Thursday at 3pm GMT, 29th Jan 2009, we are holding a webinar on the Lighthing Tools Data Viewer Web Part. If you’d like to see the web part in action, discuss it’s features, and see how you can make use of it make sure you come and attend. If you’d like to take part please drop an email to support@lightningtools.com and we’ll send an invite to you. [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 26th '09 |
BDC Meta Man as a browser application!
Nick Swan
It’s always exciting to release a new product (especially in beta!) – but this one is especially interesting for two reasons… - tons of hard work has gone into it - when we started we didn’t know if it would work out technically well! BDC Meta Man is the main product of Lightning Tools and the one that most people know us for, so we’ve very happy to announce an extension to your options for building and generating BDC application definition files: BDC Meta Man Web Edition [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 12th '09 |
Take the SharePoint Survey
Nick Swan
After we put together the BDC survey and posted the results we’ve received a lot of emails thanking us for sharing the information and how interesting a couple of the results were. We probably assume quite a lot with regards how SharePoint is used in the real world, and surveys are one way of finding out the real answers. This time we’ve put together a more general SharePoint survey on how you may have deployed it and for what you are using it. Please take a couple of minutes to fill it out: [read].
Posted: Tue, Jan 6th '09 |
New Year – new BDC Meta Man release
Nick Swan
Happy New Year to everybody. Hope you all had a nice break over the festive period and got to hang out with people you like! I’ve managed to virtually stay away from my computer for two weeks which has been fantastic! The first few days are hard – but from then on you kinda want to make it a permanent thing! :) Retirement here I come! Anyway – back to the important stuff. If you are back to work today and try using BDC Meta man in the developer mode you’ll notice it has expired. We make [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 4th '09 |
Keeping up with SharePoint, blogs, pod casts etc
Nick Swan
As you may remember I’m not a particular fan of email and my inbox. For keeping up with blogs and rss I used to rely on FeedDemon which is a fantastic application, but it got to the point where I felt like it was another inbox – with pressure on me to read every item that came in. I know you have the panic button and can easily mark all as read but what if I missed something really important! To be honest – if it is really that important when you do need to find it you can easily search fo [read].
Posted: Fri, Dec 12th '08 |
Business Data Catalog – doing some ajax stuff with your data
Nick Swan
I’ve just published a couple of articles over on the Lightning Tools blog to show how we can use the BDC, WCF, ASP.NET Ajax and jQuery to display some of your business data Click here for Business Data Catalog and WCF (part 1) Click here for SharePoint, Ajax, jQuery and Client Templates (part 2) If you like them give them some link love! [read].
Posted: Thu, Dec 11th '08 |
Business Data Catalog PodCast
Nick Swan
Rob, Brett and I had a good chat about the business data catalog for the latest SharePoint PodShow. Rob tried to turn it into a Lightning Tools love fest but Brett and I kept it down to good technical information so hopefully you’ll get a lot listening to it. Click here to listen to the Business Data Catalog PodCast. And remember if you like it, give it a blog post or a tweet on twitter! Thanks! [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 10th '08 |
New Forum Release
Nick Swan
We’ve just released a new version of the Lightning Storm Forums which now allow you to tag your forum posts and make use of a new tag cloud web part. Check out the blog post on the Lightning Tools site for more information Lightning Storm SharePoint Forums [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 9th '08 |
Business of Software site and networking event
Nick Swan
If you are into writing software and want to start a MicroIsv or are running a software company make sure you check out the Business of Software networking site and blog. I went along to the first meeting in London last month and had a great time – picked up some great ideas and tips from others who were attending. The next physical meeting is January 13th 2009, get over there and sign up. Also check out the videos that are being hosted from the last Business of Software conference event this [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 3rd '08 |
Presents for Programmers
Nick Swan
If you’re wondering what do buy your friendly programmer colleague for Christmas this year check out the T-Shirts Andy Brice has put together: http://successfulsoftware.net/2008/11/25/what-do-you-buy-a-programmer-for-christmas/ My favorite is “Be nice – I have a blog”. The good thing is all profits are also going to charity – nice one Andy! [read].
Posted: Mon, Dec 1st '08 |
Sony eBook Reader
Nick Swan
I keep walking through the bookshop Waterstones and keep getting my attention distracted by the Sony eBook Reader that they are selling in their stores now. I’m not put off by the £200.00 price tag, although many people will, what I am not understanding is the price of the ebooks. Lets take a look at Richard Bransons new book – Business Stripped Bare. The price of the hardback book is currently £10.00 as it’s on special offer. The price of the ebook - £16! Ok this may be a bad example [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 28th '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show with Arpan Shah
Nick Swan
Check out the latest edition of the SharePoint Pod Show. Brett, Rob and I had good fun recording the intro/outro. I wonder if Rob has kept all the funny bits we had to cut out over the various shows - could make a great Christmas out-takes special! So check out the show about SharePoint in the cloud, Azure, and other stuff. [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 25th '08 |
BDC Meta Man new version out there
Nick Swan
We've just pushed out version 3.0.0.7 of BDC Meta Man. Some improvements for Oracle and ODBC users, full details over at the Lightning Tools Blog [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 24th '08 |
Christmas Present Recommendations (for geeks and golfers)
Nick Swan
That lovely time of year is with us again where we have to worry about what presents to buy for each other. I thought it might be a good idea to give you a round up of the good gadgets and things I've bought this year that I'd be happy to recommend to you so that you can request it or get it for someone else - and then use it yourself! :-) I've also tagged 5 people at the end as well as I could do with some ideas myself, so if those I've tagged - or anybody else for that matter - can recommend 5 [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 24th '08 |
Linq to SQL class designer.cs file deleted
Nick Swan
I’ve been working on my ASP.NET MVC project recently (more about that to come later) and I’ve been having a problem that whenever I added a new table to my Linq to SQL class when I compiled the project the designer.cs file would be deleted and I’d be listed with 100’s of errors. It seems this is a known bug and all you need to do to get around it is go into your cs file where you are added custom business logic and move the using statements to be within your namespace definition. Fixes t [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 22nd '08 |
Sleep experiment finished
Nick Swan
Well I got to Thursday morning at 4am and decided to end the sleep experiment of 30 minutes sleep every 4 hours. I would have thought I would have quit due to being tired, but by the third day I was coping very well and was probably at 90% effectiveness while awake. I decided to give up for the following reasons, between 2am – 7am it was hard because: - the missus was asleep so I had to creep around the house quietly - the house was cold! - I was pretty bored! There isn’t much to do between [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 21st '08 |
We are looking for a sales person
Nick Swan
We're growing the team and looking to take on a sales person at www.lightningtools.com. Here's the deal... Lightning Tools are a small, growing and profitable, SharePoint Web Parts and Tools company. We are looking to expand our team and revenues for next year and therefore wish to recruit a technical sales person to build and lead a sales strategy for the company. The role would include: - input in the generation of sales material - contacting potential customers - closing sales and selling sup [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 19th '08 |
Sleep Experiment - update 1
Nick Swan
5:45 a.m. I am starting to type this on the start of what is the 3rd day, although really Monday wasn't really a proper day of the experiment so this is the start of the second real day. Yesterday I realized quickly that 6 hour periods wouldn't be possible and so have switched to the more standard 4 hour blocks of 3hr30 being awake, 30 min sleep. During the day has been fine, and I've been able to get some sleep at each of the set time periods, but for some reason I haven't been able to sleep a [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 19th '08 |
SharePoint PodShow music survey
Nick Swan
We've been having some discussions about whether we should change the intro music on the SharePoint PodShow. A survey seemed the most democratic route, so we'd be really interested in your vote! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2bcfGBkLyc17yy8e5vSWdeg_3d_3d ps I want to change the intro music! [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 18th '08 |
Polyphasic Sleep Experiment
Nick Swan
I've often thought about trying to cut down on the amount of sleep I have. Generally I need to have about 8 hours a night, or if I have less I take a power nap at some point during the day - the pleasures of working from home. I'd seen about Polyphasic sleep before on the BBC breakfast program when one of the presenters did the experiment. Basically you stay awake for 4-6 hours, then have a nap of about 30-60 mins. There are more details about it here on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 17th '08 |
Lightning Tools BDC workshop
Nick Swan
Want to know more about the Business Data Catalog and will be around Tampa, Florida on 11th December, then register for the 1 day Business Data Catalog Workshop! https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=133493 It's a nominal $99 to attend but we'll give you this as a discount to BDC Meta Man after the event. Brett is going to be teaching this workshop so you'll certainly be learning a lot in a single day! We're planning on organizing these in other places also. If you'd like to attend [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 17th '08 |
SharePoint User Group UK Meetings in November
Nick Swan
We have two great meetings planned for SharePointers in the UK this month - London and Edinburgh. London - 25th November First session we've got is one that scored very highly in the topic survey we did a number of months ago - seems a lot of people want to know about customizing and deploying search so Ben Robb is going to give us a run through. Second we have Rickard Lofberg speaking on how they have deployed and managed MOSS 2007 in Credit Suisse. It'll be great to hear how they manage data g [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 17th '08 |
SharePoint PodShow with Andrew Connell posted
Nick Swan
The second half of the interview with Andrew Connell has been posted over at www.sharepointpodshow.com. Here's a direct link to the page: Interview with AC. We hope you are enjoying listening to the shows - we're having a great time putting them together! [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 17th '08 |
Getting started with the BDC and writing back to your data source
Nick Swan
I’m going through the process of moving content from our support wiki over to main content pages on our web site as for some reason the wiki wasn’t getting spidered by Google. We’ve got some great stuff over there and just wanted to pick two particular walk throughs/screen casts out. The first one is ‘How to get Started with the Business Data Catalog’ – a great guide to get you displaying your MS SQL Server content in a matter of minutes. The second screencast shows you can use BDC M [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 5th '08 |
Pod Show Server – give it a test
Nick Swan
The Pod Show server was upgraded last night. Please try downloading a show and let me know if the download speed is better (especially if you are in the US) Here’s a direct link to the latest show: http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/shows/SharePointPodShow_Episode_9.mp3 Thanks! [read].
Posted: Wed, Nov 5th '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show Server upgrade
Nick Swan
The SharePoint Pod Show server is being upgraded at 9pm this evening to hopefully fix the download speed some people have been experiencing! Try downloading a show tomorrow and let me know if the speed has improved! [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 3rd '08 |
and so we start again.
Nick Swan
Of course I’ve committed one of the worst blogging sins. Although I’ve not completely changed urls I have swapped out my SharePoint hosted blog for a SubText one. Although a SharePoint champion using the platform for a simple blog is really a bit overkill! Also my installation was a bit broken and I didn’t have the time to fix it!
I had a quick scan through all the old posts and there weren’t too many important things that there – most were meeting notices for suguk, so I decided to j [read].
Posted: Mon, Nov 3rd '08 |
Anonymous comments not working
Nick Swan
Body: After asking people to leave a comment if the podshow is downloading slowly, it seems this blog won't allow anonymous comments!
Its setup to allow anonymous to add list items to the Comments list, and I've turned off content approval as well just to make sure - any other suggestions? (nick@lightningtools.com)
I'm close to giving up and going to subtext!
Published: 10/31/2008 8:14 PM [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 1st '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show with Andrew Connell
Nick Swan
Body: Rob Foster had the pleasure of interviewing Andrew Connell when he was over training in Nashville. We've ended up splitting the interview into 2 sections as there was so much good stuff - you can get the first one now from here: Link to show Also - we've had a few people complaining about the download speed of the shows. We're working with our hosting company to figure a few things out - if you are having a bad time downloading the shows though please leave a comment here.
Published: 10/31 [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 1st '08 |
SharePoint User Group Meeting on Thursday
Nick Swan
Body: If nothing else you know I’m consistent about giving you late notice about the next SUGUK meeting! Hopefully by now everyone has signed up on the suguk.org site anyway as we send out the meeting newsletter with plenty of notice. So Thursdays meeting is being held at the LBi offices on Brick Lane, London, which means 3 things: 1, A cool office 2, Beer 3, Curry Oh and of course I nearly forgot - 2 great presentations covering a WCM real life case study and SharePoint best practises learn [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 15th '08 |
Lightning Storm Forums for SharePoint Feature List
Nick Swan
Body: We’ve had some great feedback and comments around the Lightning Storm Forums for SharePoint. One common question, ‘What is the current feature set?’ This is now listed on the site, but here also for you blog readers! Current Features Standard web forum look and feel User security driven by standard SharePoint groups Look and feel driven by SharePoint CSS and Themes Rating of topics Marking posts as answered Administration ability to remove/edit topics and posts Link/Picture [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 14th '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show - Bill English and David Mann
Nick Swan
Body: Brett was at the SharePoint Best Practise conference a couple of weeks ago and managed to grab interviews with Bill English and David Mann. Have a listen to the podcast here: http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/archive/2008/09/30/moss-enterprise-search-and-sharepoint-workflow-episode-7.aspx
Published: 10/2/2008 10:15 AM
BlogTitleForUrl: sharepoint-pod-show-bill-english-and-david-mann [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 2nd '08 |
Creating Web Services for the BDC
Nick Swan
Body: We've had a number of support questions about how to build web services, or why other web services won't work well with the business data catalog. Check out the support page put together: http://support.lighteningtools.com/default.asp?W56
Published: 10/1/2008 5:47 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: creating-web-services-for-the-bdc [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 2nd '08 |
Lightning Storm Forums for SharePoint
Nick Swan
Body: It was back in May that I first posted the screen cast for the Silverlight SharePoint Forums so you can tell we've been working on this idea for some time (since around January). We decided to take a step back from Silverlight for the time being as we had no idea when the Silverlight 2.0 bits would be released. Plus the extra requirements of a client side install and extra web.config edits - we thought we'd wait to see how the enterprise adopts to the Silverlight thing! So we've gone the w [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 1st '08 |
October 16th SUGUK meeting
Nick Swan
Body: The full session abstracts have now been posted up for the meeting on October 16th. The titles are: Session1 : Web Content Management in MOSS, real life case study – Riaz Ahmed Session 2 : Best practices/lessons learnt: building MOSS Content Management sites – Chris O’Brien Full more info and to sign up visit the following forum post: http://suguk.org/forums/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=13880
Published: 9/29/2008 7:12 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: october-16th-suguk-meeting [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 30th '08 |
Announcing the Lightning Jump Web Part
Nick Swan
Body: We've got a new web part out today, the Lightning Jump Web Part! The idea is, people always need to get to areas within SharePoint such as HR or Expenses, but they don't want to have to navigate through a complex menu structure to find it. Sure Best Bets for Search work, but that's still a two step process of Searching->Navigating. The Lightning Jump web part makes this a one step process by allowing users to enter a keyword, pressing enter, and navigating them off to the Url. Keywords [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 26th '08 |
New golf clubs and the Ryder Cup
Nick Swan
Body: The Ryder Cup weekend is over and after the excitement of Friday and Saturday, Sunday was a real disappointment. I think the European team should really be proud of the way they played - it just happened that on Sunday the Americans were a lot better. What is interesting though is the two we expected great things - Harrington and Garcia - really were disappointing. Ian Poulter (who my mum absolutely loves), who I thought shouldn't have been picked, was amazing. Big thumbs up to you Ian and [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 23rd '08 |
The BDC Survey Results
Nick Swan
Body: Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to complete the Big BDC Survey! I’ve posted the results up on the Lightning Tools blog with a few thoughts from me on what people entered. Click here to see the results.
Published: 9/19/2008 3:08 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: the-bdc-survey-results [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 20th '08 |
Does the world need SharePoint Live Chat
Nick Swan
Body: One of the ideas we’ve been floating around Lightning Tools for a little while has been a Live Chat type solution for SharePoint. It would be similar to how the Facebook Chat works: All browser based, see what pages your colleagues are looking at etc etc… Obviously Live Communication Server/Messenger accomplishes this, but would having it all built into the browser be a good idea? Would this be something you could see your organization or customers wanting or using? Feel free to leav [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 16th '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show with Robert Bogue – part 1
Nick Swan
Body: The latest edition of the SharePoint Pod Show is up. Rob gets to chat to another Rob, Robert Bogue, on SharePoint Governance, engagement and Taxonomy. When Rob F spoke to Rob B we ended up with so much good material we decided to break it down into two shows, the second of which will be up later this week. Catch the first part here: http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/archive/2008/09/08/sharepoint-governance-engagement-and-taxonomy-part-1-----episode.aspx Also we’ve posted an interview wit [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 16th '08 |
Lightning Storm Forums
Nick Swan
Body: After a false start or two we really are now able to send out the Lightning Storm Forums to people who want to give them a test. After some initial feedback on our Silverlight Forums, and our feelings on whether Silverlight will be rolled out to the enterprise (plus manual config steps required on servers) we decided to change tact slightly and push ahead with a standard html/web part approach. If you'd like to try these out please ping me an email to nick@lightningtools.com and I'll send [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 15th '08 |
BDC Web Man beta 1.0
Nick Swan
Body: Lots of organizations are moving to a scenario where they are presenting their data to different applications through web services. We've been quite surprised at the number of people wishing to go this route with the BDC, and with the BDC really needing web service methods built a specific way we really hope our new tool BDC Web Man is going to help a lot of people out. The UI is similar to BDC Meta Man, but instead of dragging tables on the design surface to create entities, you drag and [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 9th '08 |
Patrick Tisseghem
Nick Swan
Body: Woke up to really sad news today that Patrick Tisseghem has passed away. Anybody who has done any SharePoint development will have been touched by his work and we should all feel very lucky that he chose SharePoint as the area to write, teach and present on. I met Patrick at a couple of conferences that we both were speaking at. We got on well as we shared three passions - SharePoint, Football (soccer), and Indie music! Well today I'm going to spend listening to the Stone Roses, The Charla [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 5th '08 |
The big Business Data Catalog survey!
Nick Swan
Body: Have you been using the Business Data Catalog? If so we'd like to hear from you! Please take a couple of minutes to fill out the quick survey we have put together. Click Here to take survey We're going to give away a Nintendo Wii to one lucky person who completes the survey as an extra incentive. No doubt the information we gather will be useful to others so we'll look to display completely anonymous results once we have some good numbers.
Published: 9/4/2008 9:50 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: the- [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 4th '08 |
Released - BDC Alert Manager 1.0
Nick Swan
Body: BDC Alert Manager 1.0 is now out to purchase after an initial beta period. You can reach the product page from the link here: http://www.lightningtools.com/bdc-alert-manager/default.aspx Phill has also recorded an excellent screen cast of the solution in action which you can watch here: http://support.lightningtools.com/bdcalertmanager.wmv We're licensing the Alert Manager per SharePoint Farm, so in theory you only need to purchase one license of it, which costs $800.00. If you're an exist [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 1st '08 |
Lightning Storm Forums
Nick Swan
Body: Well the first thing is we've changed the name, the second thing is the Silverlight 2.0 built forums for SharePoint are ready for a beta test. If you have a test/dev environment you can throw away (well both Silverlight 2.0 and these forums are classed as in beta so things could go wrong! :-) ) please send me an email at nick@lightningtools.com and I'll send the bits over to you. This is a good chance to give us some feedback and get the forums built the way you're organization needs to us [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 28th '08 |
Growing a Business
Nick Swan
Body: Just finished another great book - Growing a Business by Paul Hawken. This was recommended by Joel Spolsky on the Stack Overflow podcast. Lightning Tools is doing well, and it's always a tricky decision whether to try to grow a company organically or take investment. This book focuses more on the organic route. It's a great read, written by someone who has plenty of real world experience. 5 stars from me!
Published: 8/28/2008 10:23 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: growing-a-business
Attachments: http [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 28th '08 |
SharePoint PodShow Number 3
Nick Swan
Body: The next SharePoint PodShow is up for you to listen to. At the recent SUGUK meeting I had the chance to grab 30 mins with Eric Shupps and ask a few questions about SharePoint and best practises around performance and developing. This is the first interview we've done for the show - hopefully it comes out ok: http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/archive/2008/08/26/episode-3-sharepoint-design-for-performance-discussion.aspx
Published: 8/28/2008 12:21 AM
BlogTitleForUrl: sharepoint-podshow-number [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 27th '08 |
SUGUK Meetings - vote for topics
Nick Swan
Body: We've had some good session ideas submitted for the user group. Now it's your turn to go and vote. We should be able to schedule the most popular topics in between now and January, hopefully repeating them both down South and up North. Here's where to go and vote: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=jfApsEaMnLLTEspX3hIl0w_3d_3d If there's a topic missing that you are passionate about lemme know.
Published: 8/26/2008 12:52 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: suguk-meetings-vote-for-topics [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 26th '08 |
Announcing Connect.LightningTools.com
Nick Swan
Body: As much as we love writing web parts and tool for SharePoint at the end of the day we do write them for other peoples usage and hopefully they find them useful enough to purchase. Generally I think our web parts and tools so far have been pretty good - sure some have sold better than others - but we've not built one that hasn't got a number of satisfied customers yet! But of course we want to continue that trend, and rather than guess what people want we need to get closer to our customers [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 21st '08 |
The Secret Millionaire
Nick Swan
Body: I try to watch as little TV as possible. I think it melts your brain and is a terrible way to waste your time (Match of the Day, Golf and Top Gear are all the exception though!) Whenever I’m at a conference and talking to people from the US we always end up talking about Top Gear as everybody across the world seems to watch it. Now the current series has finished I want to point you to something else great – The Secret Millionaire. It is easily the best thing on TV at the moment! There [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 16th '08 |
New Product - BDC Alert Manager
Nick Swan
Body: Phill at Lightning Tools has been working away at a new product that we've released in beta yesterday - the Lightning Tools BDC Alert Manager. We've had quite a few people asking for functionality like this - you can kinda setup BDC alerts using lists and the Business Data Column - but of course with the BDC Data Column not being a live lookup to your LOB System the alerts are only ever going to be fired once you click the little refresh button. The BDC Alert Manager will poll your LOB sys [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 14th '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show Number 2 up
Nick Swan
Body: The second SharePoint Pod Show pod cast is now up and available for you to download, you can grab it from here: http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/archive/2008/08/11/sharepointpodshow_episode_2.aspx In this episode we cover a brief history of SharePoint since 2001, and also an overview of the different components that make up WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. As always we're really interested in your feedback and ideas for future shows. Feel free to leave a comment on the SharePoint Pod Show blog or em [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 12th '08 |
SharePoint Best Practices Conference
Nick Swan
Body: If you’re looking for a conference full of hardcore SharePoint information, and low on marketing make sure you check out the SharePoint Best Practises Conference which is being hosted in Washington DC, Sept 15 – 17. Brett will be there to do two talks on the Business Data Catalog: 1, Introduction to the Business Data Catalog 2, Developing Solutions around the Business Data Catalog As well as Brett presenting Lightning Tools are also co-sponsoring the event so we’ll have a stand t [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 5th '08 |
SUGUK meeting - August 14th
Nick Swan
Body: Really looking forward to the next SUGUK meeting. Eric Shrupps is over all the way from Texas and has a great talk planned on 'Developing High Performance Applications for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007'. His company Binary Wave have a great product out called Sonar and I'm sure he'll pass on lots of great information he's learnt from building that. Matt Groves is also going to be covering SharePoint Extranets. A topic lots of people want to know about as they look to get external [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 4th '08 |
Getting to Yes
Nick Swan
Body: Just finished reading another good book: Getting to Yes - negotiating agreement without giving in. A book that's under 200 pages and is nice and easy to read. It contains some great information about Principle centered negotiation rather than negotiating around positions. Generally thinking about it I don't have too many opportunities to negotiate interesting things such as large sales deals but I wish I'd read this book before purchasing our house 2 years ago. We got a very good deal out [read].
Posted: Sat, Aug 2nd '08 |
SharePoint Pod Show Launches
Nick Swan
Body: I was on my way back from Seattle a few weeks ago thinking about starting a podcast on SharePoint. Rob Foster IM'd me and asked if he could chat - and funnily enough he was thinking of doing exactly the same thing! So we've teamed up together with Brett Lonsdale and launched the SharePoint Pod Show. You can get the first episode from here: http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/archive/2008/07/30/sharepointpodshow_episode1.aspx This is a 'soft launch' as it's our first experience of recording [read].
Posted: Fri, Aug 1st '08 |
Game Changer
Nick Swan
Body:
I've just finished the book Game Changer by A.G. Lafley and Ram Charan. I picked this one up at an airport in America a few months back so it might not be out in book shops in the UK yet. It's a fantastic book that everybody should read that is running or thinking of running their own business. The main premise behind the book is that you should focus on what your customer wants rather than cool technologies or solutions to problems you think they have! Sounds like common sense right but [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 28th '08 |
Will Silverlight take off in the Enterprise?
Nick Swan
Body: We’ve been working on some stuff at Lightning Tools to create solutions using Silverlight 2.0 beta 2. To us the idea of Silverlight is great, rich internet applications, with zero javascript. Awesome! But we’re left with a few things we’re wondering over before we start pushing things out to get feedback. The two things that are pretty much ready for beta are the SharePoint Silverlight Forums which I’ve mentioned before and a Silverlight ToDo style list application also for SharePo [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 23rd '08 |
Great Developers needed
Nick Swan
Body: My good friend Flemming Madsen runs a very successful company called Onalytica. He’s looking for a number of excellent .NET developers who have experience working with large database setups. If you’re looking for a new challenge at a great company check out his page here: http://www.onalytica.com/jobs.aspx I wouldn’t usually post this kind of thing but Flemmings a great guy and is doing some very exciting stuff.
Published: 7/22/2008 1:41 PM
BlogTitleForUrl: great-developers-needed [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 22nd '08 |
book buying spree
Nick Swan
Body: I’m just sitting in the airport lounge in Seattle waiting for my flight back to London. Made a ‘flying’ visit out here for a few meetings yesterday so the trip has only been for 3 days. Not enough time to get over jetlag! Anyway I’ve been buying a few too many books, I think I’m addicted to it! Very strange as when I was at school I hated reading. I guess it’s because they make you read their boring crap back then ;-) So here’s what has been purchased this trip! Getting to Ye [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 17th '08 |
Support the Lightning Tools way
Nick Swan
Body: I’m in Seattle this week for a very brief trip (Monday –> Thursday evening) and was going through some support questions in Top Pot coffee shop (great coffee btw and free wifi!). Port Seattle were having an installation problem with BDC Meta Man, and after a quick search on Local.live.com I realized they were round the corner! A quick message later and I was in their offices discussing all the questions they had about the BDC. I even had my BDC t-shirt on! We can’t offer this kind [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 16th '08 |
Email – the biggest disrupter of productivity!
Nick Swan
Body:
I hate email, it’s now official as I’ve written it on my blog. It stops me working on new releases and new products and drains nearly all my energy away.
I’m know I’m not the first person to say this and I’m definitely not going to be the last. The final straw for me was reading this good article on the New York Times web site ‘I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip’ that made me realize that I had to do something to stop letting my inbox rule my life and demoralize me! The p [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 14th '08 |
Back on the blog train
Nick Swan
Body:
As you've probably noticed the number of posts I've been putting on here has dwindled an awful lot. As well as being very busy with Lightning Tools the posts from here were also being syndicated on SharePointBlogs.com. This was a blessing as it got a few more eye balls to look at posts but also a curse as I felt compelled to make every single post about SharePoint! While a lot of the blog posts I was previously writing were centered around MOSS without a little bit of personal writing I g [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 8th '08 |
Midlands SUGUK meeting on Thursday
Nick Swan
Body:
This week Bill English and Todd Bleeker are over to teach the administrator and developer course for Combined Knowledge so we thought it would be a good opportunity to hold another meeting in Ullesthorpe. Six sessions in total have been organized covering topics like workflow, SharePoint Designer, configuring SSL, scaling out a SharePoint farm, agile development in SharePoint and best practices for Search.
For more information and to sign up check out this link:
http://suguk.org/forums/1 [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 7th '08 |
suguk meetings this week
Nick Swan
Body:
A bit short notice I know, but we’ve two SharePoint User Group UK meetings this week. On Wednesday we’re in London. Usually we have 2 presentations separated by some pizza but this time we’re trying something a bit different. We’ve titled it ‘SharePoint A&E clinic’
The ideas is that you bring your SharePoint questions and problems and as a group we can sit down and discuss them, and hopefully come up with a solution that you are happy with. We might not be able to answer a [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 16th '08 |
SUGUK golf day
Nick Swan
Body:
The most important event of the year has been announced.
No not TechEd US or PDC, but the first (probably annual) SUGUK golf day!
It's on 10th July in Leicestershire and will sure be a lot of fun. For more info please see the link below:
http://suguk.org/blogs/combined_knowledge/archive/2008/05/07/10496.aspx
Dust off your clubs and get practicing!
Published: 5/8/2008 12:01 AM
BlogTitleForUrl: suguk-golf-day
Categories: SharePoint [read].
Posted: Wed, May 7th '08 |
Lightning Tools Blog
Nick Swan
Body:
We've finally setup a new blog on the Lightning Tools site. We wanted a way to let you know about new products, releases and ideas we have and a blog is the obvious best way to do this! As a lot of our work is focused around the Business Data Catalog we're also going to be publishing a lot of info and how to's focussed on that.
http://www.lightningtools.com/blog
Get yourself over, get subscribed, and leave us some feedback on what we're up to! Brett is going to post about the BDC CRUD web [read].
Posted: Tue, May 6th '08 |
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