A freind of mine recently asked me about email lists.  The great thing about social networking is that I didn't know how to do it, but a Friend of mine did and another friend told me that friend knew and even wrote a pdf on the subject. 

http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads/How%20to%20configure%20Email%20Enabled%20Lists%20in%20Moss2007%20RTM%20using%20Exchange%202003.pdf This is an extreamly detailed 14 page article oh now to set up a librariy "to recieve incoming e-mail using standard e-mail address that can be used both internall and externally" quote from document.

I met Steve Smith in Berlin (did I mention what an awesome conference that was) he's part owner of Combined-Knowledge, really a great guy and I can certainly understand how he's become so successful.  If you ever get a chance to see any of his presentations I would strongly recommend it.

So the European SharePoint conference was outstanding.  The beer was especially good and the people were great.  I had opportunity to meet a lot of people who work with and around SharePoint.  A lot of folks that I already knew of but hadn't had opportunity to meet yet.

I stayed at the Estrel Berlin hotel, where the conference was held.  I bought a wireless lan internet access coupon for 8 hours.   The username is EST0085587 and the password is 38127656.  I didn't use much of it so there should be close to 8 hours left.

The was the largest SharePoint focused conference to date.  There was quite an exhibit hall, many sessions and just an all around great experience.  I think  the most surprising thing was that everyone spoke great english.  It was freezing cold so I decided to see germany from the inside out only going out 3 nights while I was there.  I'll definatly go to another european conference again.   

Dan Attis has written down the steps to have Forms Based Authentication (FBA) for SharePoint while maintaining all of the bells and whistles.  Bells and whistles?  Things like My Site and My Links.  I think it's the most complete and detailed blog on the subject to date.

Part One is the basics.  It details how to get FBA working with a site in the first place.  But that doesn't give us My Site functionality which is as allusive as a good night sleep, whilst trying to figure it out.  Dan asked me to go through the steps in step one just to make sure there weren't any errors.  It was perfect.  I think it's a model example of what a tutorial should be like.  Afterwards, I begged him to help me get My Site working. I already had the basics and needed My Site to work.  I gave a talk a few months ago on FBA at our local users group.  I did all my modifications in the machine.config and that's a pretty bad idea.  Here's the slide deck for what I've done.  I strongly recommend Dan's approach

Part Two explains what you have to do to get MySite working.  While wrestling through it I discovered a new interface element that I hadn't seen before.  I couldn't figure out why I could get to my root site and why I could get to my ssp site, via FBA, but I couldn't get into My Site - or domain/MySite/.  I opened up the Site Collection Administrator trying to add my FBA account and checked and rechecked the site administrators for where my My Site resides.  Staring at the interface below I said to myself, "I wish there was a radio button on '/MySite' " and clicked on the words as I was deliriously talking to myself.  Viola, it highlighted in yellow.  I was able to then set the site collection administrators for MySite.  I was overwhelmed by a strange set of emotions I was happy that I could now get the focus on that particular site collection and at the same time I was a little worried that they had run out of radio buttons or didn't even have a spare drop down list in Redmond.  I know I don't like the new interface design, but I do know that I like the fact that I can get FBA works now. 

This approach should work with Adam's Universal Provider Framework as well, though neither of us has tried it.  I'd also like to recognize Nick Swan and his post on Forms Based Authentication for helping me several months ago in just getting the basics down.  I think Dan has done a great job in refining the instructions into very basic steps that produce 100% of the out of box experience and forms authentication.  Great Job Dan!

Well I say 100% there is a known issue with  SharePoint Designer and Forms Authentication.  Basically you either have to log in with IE first or just use your windows authentication site to make your changes.  The later of course would be preferred unless your designer is not part of your domain.  In which case you'll have to log in with IE first.  All of the office products will have this kind of functionality.  For whatever reason Microsoft didn't build in login functionality into any of their office client products.

I was just chatting with a friend of mine Glenn and he pointed out a couple of really cool resources.

There is a 2 hour course on AJAX.  Don't get me started - I was doing this a long time ago, when it didn't have a cool name like AJAX, now it's the next big thing.  AJAX is great, but like all technologies there's a time and place for everything.  I'll leave that for another post.

http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2007/02/23/free-asp-net-ajax-e-learning-just-shipped.aspx

Back in October they released 6 hours on .NET 3.0.  It's 3 courses, 2 hours each, on Windows Presentation Foundation (wpf), Windows Communication Foundation (wcf) and Work Flow (wf).  The e-learning has had over 60,000 activations since its release

http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2006/10/24/net-3-0-e-learning.aspx

Alex Funkhouser just emailed me to let me know that there are over 600 people registered for the Code Camp.  Makes me almost want to cancel my trip to Europe, but I'm not gonna.  I asked Andrew Connell if there was going to be a SharePoint track he suggested that I check out the agenda.  There are 12 sessions in all and one is even in Spanish and yes there is a SharePoint track.  The SharePoint speakers all rock!  If you want to talk about SharePoint and the mob of people are too think around John Holliday then find Mark Kruger, he's local to South Florida and knows a ton of stuff.  He won't be speaking, just wearing a regular attendee badge.

I love code camps!  I normally pay a lot of money to attend conferences and Code Camps are like a gathering for free.  It's a beatiful thing to see everyone work together to produce a really cool thing.

Thursday of this week I'll be co-presentating with Joe Homnick at the Gold Coast User Group on Business Intelegence.  It looks like it's going to be a pretty good event with the Vista and Office launch also included.  This Saturday I leave for SharePoint Europe that should be a lot of fun, I've always wanted to go to a Microsofte centric conference in another country.  Hopefully it will be a good opportyunity to network.  My flight leaves Saturday afternoon which is the same day as the Code Camp  I always like going to Code Camps.  You meet a lot of smart local people and the local connections usually prove to be more fruitful.  But I'm not going to let that stop me,  I'm still going to Berlin.

It looks like Office System is comming soon.  According to this press release http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-062007OfficeRTMPR.mspx evaluation copies will be available December first.  But I think, according to what I've heard through the grape vine on Andrews blog, we'll all be able to get the bits around November 16th.

Dan Attis got all fired up about Event Handlers.  Then he blogged about it http://devcow.com/blogs/jdattis/archive/2006/10/23/1797.aspx 

A freind of mine Glenn Block has just started blogging.

http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock

Glen is a Dev Product Planner for e-learning at Microsoft.  He's pretty smart, check out his stuff.

Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) is a real must have for any environment.  There isn't anything in SharePoint natively that tells you that it's blown up or about to blow up - well unless you count users.  By then it's usually too late.  MOM is a great tool that lets you monitor everything from one centralized location, allowing enterprises  to managing software the way software should be managed.  There are three Management Packs that are specific to SharePointics. 

• SharePoint Server 2007
• Windows SharePoint Services v3
• Project Server 07

These are all beta 2 technical refreshes.  But wait there's more.  These management packs are very specific to only monitor those things that are exclusive to SharePoint.  There are a slew of other management packs like IIS and SQL server.

But don't thank me, Joel Oleson has a blog post about MOM and SharePoint http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2006/10/12/b2tr-microsoft-operations-manager-mom-packs-for-sharepoint-server-and-wss-v3.aspx

One more thing I'd like to say about MOM - is that it gives you advice.  Good advice.  When you install the management pack it knows what's supposed to be happening and tells you what's not.  Like search is down, for instance.  And gives you several things to check and explanations of how these things all relate.  On my demo machine I turned of the SharePoint Timer Service in order to save system resources.  That, in turn, shut off the search service.  One of the suggestions was to make sure the timer service was running and had a very nice explanation.

Point being the folks who monitor the systems don't need to know all of the minutia about the system with a tool like MOM around.  Developers - you too can create MOM management packs for your in house applications.  Naturally the management pack is only going to be as good as the information that's entered into, so make a mini project out of it.  Have a ball!

I won an Xbox and yesterday when I got home there was an X-Box and an eager daughter waiting for me.   I kind of went through everything and I didn't see a browser jump out at me.  I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to integrate the X Box with SharePoint.  If I can't find a browser out there I'm wondering how hard it would be to create my own browser using XNA.  Or maybe my very own fat client application.  This way I can be at work and add chores to Alicia's list of things to do, before she can play video games.

The virtual labs are the coolest thing in the world.  There are 4 new ones for SharePoint Portal Server and 22 at the time of this writing

http://msdn.microsoft.com/virtuallabs/office/default.aspx

Here's an rss feed for all labs, if you're into that sort of thing.

I can only imagine how pleased my wife is now that she's found herself living with a Microsoft MVP awardee.  I told her "You may bring the MVP his glass of water now." While the MVP waits for his water, the MVP will complete his profile on https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile=7AE15364-8546-487D-A64C-A601BB8AE1D8 

The MVP is growing quite parched.  I think the MVP will have to go get his own water.

So a couple of weeks ago I went to Redmond and worked with Microsoft on a project related to SharePoint.  Not being on the vendor list they recommended GrandMasters, LLC and worked with Lisa Kreissler (pronounced like the car, Chrysler).  I've not been handed many contracts or worked with many people where I didn't have some sort of objection.  I usually require something to be changed.  Like those NDA's or non-compete contracts say anything you know is our property and anything we know is our property and you can't use either one in anything you ever do again.  The contracts were fair, equitable, concise and showed me that a contract can be polite.

Naturally I can't speak for everyone's experience but only my own.  We had three days to put this together.  Because of the last minute travel my airfare was probably a little more so I went over my travel allotment by 10% and was entirely reimbursed.  Maybe everyone was a little understanding about the last minutes travel and just did the right thing.  Not sure why I just know that I appreciated it. My luggage never made it on the plane in Seattle, as a result Alicia didn't get any travel gifts.  The luggage arrived the same day my check did so it was a happy day all the way around.

If you're not a vendor with Microsoft and need someone to work with I'd suggest Lisa.  Here's her contact information:

Lisa Kreissler
Director of Business Development

GrandMasters, LLC
1607 116th Ave NE, Ste 100
Bellevue, WA 98004
Tel. 425.471.5140
Fax 425.392.5943

So there I was trying to figure out how to make more traffic come to my blog when I stumbled across windows live writer by way of Andrew Connell's post.  I think this tool is going to be the bomb. 

I can create drafts now. 

public string RenderJavaScript(RenderTypes renderType)
        {
            // use this method to render jevascript to be consumed by a browser.  Use additional renderTypes for other senarios

            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            switch (renderType)
            {
                case RenderTypes.MorningReport:
                    sb.Append(RenderMorningReport());
                    break;
                default:
                    sb.Append("\\Unknown render type!");
                    break;

            }

turned on word wrap. It would have been nice to have a wrap character added automatically.

I'm adding an image to see how it deals with that. Noramlly I put images inot the dasBlog gallery and consume them from there. That way the images are always avaialbe and complete links can be created.

I was able to add a couple of cool effects to the image, sepia tone and water mark.

I turned on check spelling before publishing, so that should prove usefull. This is my first post with this tool but I really like it a lot. I think I'm going to stick with it if it doesn't post weird!

I just close windows live writer and reopened, finished this post and tried to save a draft and it errored out.   Reposting again just to make sure. 

As it turns out the image was making it upset.  I'm wondering if I could publish the article and then add the pictures later? 

 
I've just gone to my gallery in dasBlog found the url for an image and added it as a link.  I think this will work and be a workable system too.

Thanks for your post Andrew!

tags: windows live writer, blog tools

First of all I want to thank Andrew Connell for putting together the SharePoint track.  Way cool!  I'm not sure I've ever seen a track at a code camp, I'm pretty certain there's never been a SharePoint one.  There were many people who helped put this code camp together and it showed.  This Code Camp was very well organized and I learned stuff.   How do you beat that?

The organizers provided an optional slide deck theme.  I'm forever agonizing over what theme I should be using.  Maybe someday I'll produce a nice Wild Wires, LLC theme for code camps, but I doubt it.  There were lots of people to help folks find their sessions in the really terrific Advanced Technology Center building, Florida Community College at Jacksonville, I even signed up for wireless and it worked great.  I'm not sure if I understood correctly but I think the facility is available for rent.

Obligatory Restaurant Review

Preparing and going to a code camp is expensive, so I like to make a little vacation out of it for my family, even though they don't get to see me much.  On the way home we drove down A1A and stopped at a really cool restaurant Caps on the Water.  It's hard to tell if they were white collar bikers or not, but there sure was a lot of chrome everywhere.  The food was outstanding, everyone loved the hanger steak beef tips appetizer.  The gator tail was pretty cool until I got a nasty piece of gristle which made me focus more on the fish dip and 4 cheese fondue, both yummy.  The Shrimp Vilano, named after a nearby beach or town, was delicious!  After cruising down A1A with the windows down and the sun roof rolled back we were ready seek shelter from the oppressive Floridia heat so we ate inside.  There were a ton of tables outside right next to the water but we still had a great view.  Across the Intracostal is an airport we waited for planes to take off or land while being distracted by several nice boats cruising the water way.  If you ever get a chance to eat there I'd say do it, it's the classiest place you'll ever get to wear shorts too. 

One of the coolest things about traveling to the code camps.  It's all about getting to know the people and places around you, and figuring out what you don't know.  A perfect example, Duray and I ran into David Strommer at Deep Blue (a nightclub overlooking the beautiful St. Johns, one of the few north flowing rivers in the US).  David went on about rules engines and ilog and all kinds of great wonderful things that I had never heard of before.  The best I could come up with was, "Yeah, well I went fishing with my Dad and I caught a fish!"  Point being it's great to run into other people who are using the same technologies you are and see how differently (and how similarly) they are implementing them.  If you ever get a chance to go to a code camp in another area you should go.  It helps bring those tools and techniques back home and make your pool a little bit better.

Review of my Presentations

Something I'm learning how to do is review my own presentations,  I gave myself a 3 at this code camp but the population gave me a 6.  I really blew it.  I thought I was all set up, but I hadn't plugged in my laptop.  As a result it booted up from hibernate mode at 500mhz instead of the 1.8ghz.  Boy was that painful.  I rebooted a couple of times before I realized what was going on.  At this point I was about 6 to 10 minutes into my presentation.  I'm crawling around on the floor looking for a plug, since silence is deadly I'm telling everyone exactly what I was doing and what was going wrong.  It wasn't a pretty sight!  I think I recovered as well as anyone could from such a mistake and will have that one etched into my memory for a long time to come.  I spent a lot of time working on the abstract, with the help of Andrew and as obvious as it may seem, the abstract is what drives people to your session.  There were probably 15 to 20 people in that session about the Feature feature.  I know that they didn't just show up just because it talk about the Feature.  A lot of questions came up about what it is and isn't and when do you use it.  That again was my fault, I did have more information on what it is and when it's used but I botched it.  But I did finally manage to step through all of the things that you have to do to make a feature work so I got most of it out there.

Yet another cool thing about code camps, I can totally go in there and make a mess out of things and it's really not that big of a deal.  Code camp presentations are usually either good or great.  Mine was still on the good side because I did get information out there that people could use.  It certainly wasn't great.  But hey!  Maybe next time.  At a code camp even the worst presenter in the world is going to give a good presentation because the subject matter is about technologies they know and study and work with.  I think I've seen  something to the effect that code camps help local folks become regional folks.  I'm not a professional speaker.  I'm just someone who gets a charge out of showing potentially useful information to a group of people.  Maybe someday, if I screw up in enough code camps (I mean gain enough experience), I too will be among the ranks of desirable speakers.

I also did a presentation on the resources needed in a SharePoint environment.  This was to gear me up for an article I'm writing and I got some pretty good feedback out of there too.

Review of other Presentations

So there was this Cool Code contest.  I think Duray won only because he turned his kid orange.  I personally think mine was the coolest, I demonstrated how to iterate through the list of HTML elements to find the SharePoint form elements so that you could manipulate them.  I still think it's very cool and will post an article on it some time soon when I do the extensible fields in SharePoint, and show this technique as an alternative.  Jim Wooley had a pretty cool concept of generating an rss feed from the event log and that got him third place.  Jacob Sanford did an wonderful presentation on themes.  With the coolest part being that he inherited his own page.  Neat trick!  Joe Healy demonstrated AJAX and as I write this I realize that my presentation was almost as bad as his!   Holy crap I should just kill myself now!  Needless to say, the session was a lot of fun!

I saw Andrew Connell's presentation on creating your own successful blog.  I'm sure this post has him scratching his head wondering if I learned anything at all in his presentation.  I don't have the years of experience he does blogging but I'm stubborn non-the-less.  The one thing that I did really like he said is that you blog is your resume.  I really believe that.  What better way to demonstrate what I know and when and how I learned it.  You can't make this stuff up.  The point that I disagreed with him on is narrowing the subject matter of the blog.  Deep down inside I'm sure he's right.  Andrew is a one of those few great public speakers. 

Jacob Sanford gave a great presentation on ASP.NET themes.  I came out of there knowing exactly what I could do and how I to do it.  A presentation doesn't get any better than that. 

I have missed David McNamee's presentation 3 times on 'Making Technical Presentations'  I did catch the Q&A section and I know that I really have got to watch this presentation.  I've just hired a speaking coach, but I know this presentation is something that I have to watch.  You can just tell David has been doing this for a real long time.  Not just because he's old, but because you can see that when he's giving a presentation he really knows what he's doing. 

Jeff Barnes gave a cool talk on RFID that session answered some question and made new doors visible.  I'm trying to figure out how to approach my client with RFID.  I'm having a hard time figuring out what it costs them to not have it.

There was a lot of buzz about John Holliday's presentation on using reflection to create a SharePoint site definition in c# and Duray gave a great talk on the BDC (Business Data Catalog).

getting life back to normal

I under-slept all week last week and didn't even get to stay long at the party, that's my favorite part too!  Monday was crazy and yesterday was hurricane Ernesto preparation and party night.  A friend of mine bought an xbox and brought it over, while I was playing and he asked me if I thought I could play all night, I thought sure I probably could. . . but what he was really trying to tell me is that he wanted to take his game and go home.  Enesto turned out to not live up to his name.  I'm not even sure if it was a tropical storm as it passed through here.  Now my focus is on a Magazine article due Sept 8th (of this year!).

I can't say enough cool things about Magic Button, but I did want to mention something that wasn't really very intuitive to me.

First of all Magic Button is a task management program.  In case you didn't notice, when you click the X to close a window it doesn't really close.  It's really open using resources, namely your battery.  With magic button it's super easy to change application and close the ones you don't want to use anymore.

While Magic Button is running there is a button on the task bar at the top that look like a home.  It always takes you to the Toady screen.  Well if you hold it there are all kinds of options.  Like Settings for instance.  The first thing you to do is turn on the Auto Start, Battery Status (Yeah I know you already have one but this one is better), and for me Show clock and 3 icons works the best.

Have fun with that

Stacy Draper

I'm not an Infragistics expert by any stretch.  I've used just about everything they have to offer in their suit and everything is pretty cool.  The absolute coolest thing they have is the ability to copy styles and easily distribute them.  This makes development for yourself or in a group really easy.  I can create a style (or someone with taste can create one) and it can be easily applied and shared.

Now Infrangistics has come out with an AppStylist I've had this tool for a few months but never used it.  It's a reason all by itself ot buy the product.

A definate thumbs up,
Stacy Draper

I’ve been to the Microsoft campus a few times.  I’ve gone for an authors and publishers briefing, MMIT training (during the week of 9/11 and decided to drive back home) and I was there earlier this year for a SharePoint conference, but this was the first time that I’ve ever been paid by Microosft.  I’d have to say that it was an outstanding experience!

I met Todd Baginski for the first time and as it turns out I had a lot of explaining to do.  Todd asked me why I thought he’s full of crap.  I was dumbfounded.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  He jogged my memory by referring to a blog post I made last month.  Back peddeling as deftly as I could I explained I felt the first post I read was aggressive and via my blog I was trying to communicate that he really pulled through by meeting his publicly stated goals.  He bought that and instead of grabbing me by the face and dragging me around the campus, ultimatly we became pretty good friends.  Really though, Todd is just a fun loving guy who doesn't take himself to seriously, even though he probably could given all the cool stuff he's done. 

I also met Eli Robillard, who I’ve worked with in the past.  He was a technical reviewer providing, Jason and I, feedback on our work.  Everything was always via email, never even once speaking by phone, so it was fulfilling to meet the person behind the feedback. Eli is one of these easy going agreeable people who asserts him self in a positive way.  He’s a very “Yes, and . . “ kind person rather than a “No, but . . .” person.  I admire his blog quite a bit  blog was a major influence for me doing mine.  He co-ordinates a SharePoint user group.  I gave this some thought in the past but I immediately discredited it because I thought it was too niche.  But seeing the success in his makes me want to help put one together in my area. Maybe in the new year?

There were other people I worked with last week who are equally impressive as Eli and Todd, the whole experience was just outstanding and I really hope to do something like it again in the future. 

The Greater Southeast District Information Worker Community (GSDIWC) is a member only site that I participated in and won a X-Box 360 among other things. What follows below is a note from Mike Gannotti the site administrator:

Greetings All,

I had hoped to have the monthly newsletter out by now to include the winner announcement but have been buried and won’t have a chance to do that until tomorrow. However, since quite a few of you have inquired on this I thought I would quickly send out a note before I hit this road this morning.

Without further ado…… (drum roll please) The winner of the Xbox 360 contest is……… Stacy Draper!

Congratulations Stacy. A brand new shiny Xbox 360 will be headed your way. It pays to participate at GSDIWC. I will be announcing a new contest with a new top prize shortly but for those who may be interested the rules are the same as the previous contest. Best of all contributions (questions, answers, tips & tricks) submitted starting this month will count towards the next round. Well I have to hit the road so have a great day everyone.

You can go to the site and find the link to sign up and Mike will get you all hooked up.  Basically the contest is pretty simple.  It's a drawing and the entry is in the form of points.  the more points you ahve to more times you are entered to win.  I'm the guy who buys just one lottery ticket, but I really tilted it this time.  I entered a lot.  You get 1 point for each question you ask, 2 points for each question you answer and 5 point for writing an article.  Come to think of it I don't know how many points I earned.

Tell 'em I sent you!

The Greater Southeast District Information Worker Community (GSDIWC) is a member only site that I participated in and won a X-Box 360 among other things. What follows below is a note from Mike Gannotti the site administrator:

Greetings All,

I had hoped to have the monthly newsletter out by now to include the winner announcement but have been buried and won’t have a chance to do that until tomorrow. However, since quite a few of you have inquired on this I thought I would quickly send out a note before I hit this road this morning.

Without further ado…… (drum roll please) The winner of the Xbox 360 contest is……… Stacy Draper!

Congratulations Stacy. A brand new shiny Xbox 360 will be headed your way. It pays to participate at GSDIWC. I will be announcing a new contest with a new top prize shortly but for those who may be interested the rules are the same as the previous contest. Best of all contributions (questions, answers, tips & tricks) submitted starting this month will count towards the next round. Well I have to hit the road so have a great day everyone.

You can go to the site and find the link to sign up and Mike will get you all hooked up.  Basically the contest is pretty simple.  It's a drawing and the entry is in the form of points.  the more points you ahve to more times you are entered to win.  I'm the guy who buys just one lottery ticket, but I really tilted it this time.  I entered a lot.  You get 1 point for each question you ask, 2 points for each question you answer and 5 point for writing an article.  Come to think of it I don't know how many points I earned.

Tell 'em I sent you!