Category Archives: SharePoint 2010

SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities – 4/9 Recap

The latest SharePoint Saturday event in the Twin Cities was a huge success!  Some of the numbers:

The new location worked out very well – holding everyone without too much crowding (other than a few really popular sessions), with free parking and wireless access available.  A nice upgrade from our previous digs.  We also had a Kinect play area during the day.  Smile 

Presentations are now available on the site for download. 

Keep an eye on the official site for updates and news about the fall “ScarePoint Saturday” event – tentatively scheduled for October 29th.

A big thanks to Sarah Haase for overseeing the organization of the event, as well as to all the sponsors, volunteers, and attendees. 

See you in the fall!

New SharePoint Blogger!

Lookout SharePoint world – Sarah Haase (locally of Best Buy fame) has entered the blogosphere.  Sarah has been a presenter at the Minnesota SharePoint User Group, SharePoint Saturday – Twin Cities and the Best Practices Conferences and always has great information, especially when it comes to measuring the ROI of SharePoint solutions. 

Well, she finally started up a blog here:  http://sarahlhaase.wordpress.com/

Go check it out!

Learning about BCS in SharePoint 2010

Raymond Mitchell is a co-worker of mine at Avtex and a co-author with me on the SharePoint 2010 Six-in-One book where he wrote two chapters on BCS.

In addition to the book, Raymond also recently put together a webinar on BCS called: ‘Leveraging Business Connectivity Services’ for SharePoint-Videos.com.  This webinar / video is a lead-in to the rest of the videos on DVD:

If you have an interest or need in the BCS area, check these out!

SharePoint Pod Show

While attending the Best Practices Conference this week, Sarah Haase and I were interviewed by Brett Lonsdale for a SharePoint Pod Show on SharePoint lists.  Sounds like it might be about 2 weeks until ours is posted, but take a look at the site in the meantime – LOTS of great content out there. 

Our ‘episode’ was a result of the two sessions that Sarah and I are presenting this week:

  • Sarah’s “You could need a list if…”
  • My “SharePoint Lists: Used, Abused and Underappreciated”

Pretty fun – was only interrupted once by a screaming baby that was being carted by…  Smile 

I’ll update the post once our episode is online. 

SharePoint Lists – Follow up

A few things that were brought up in my session on lists the other day at the Best Practices Conference:

Inline Editing – SharePoint 2010 introduces the concept of inline editing within views.  This allows users to add/update fields within the view without having to open the add or edit forms.  This feature is not turned on by default.  Jennifer Mason of SharePoint 911 has a nice post about this feature. 

Alerts by View – We mentioned alerts and we mentioned views, but I didn’t have anything about the ability to create alerts on views.  Great comment from the session attendees on that one.  After looking at this again, I realized that this is NOT as intuitive as it should be.  You can create alerts on views, but not all views and there are some criteria for it.  Check out the following post for more information:
http://sharepointalert.info/2009/09/alert-me-tricks-fo-power-users/

Metadata Navigation – Another attendee asked about metadata navigation.  I don’t remember all the context to the question, but metadata navigation is available, but only at the list view level.  It’s not something that can be used on the main page or other web part pages.  It does, however, work with which ever view is currently being displayed – which is what I think the question was about. 

Fun session.  We had 45+ people in (and outside) a room set up for 30.  Thanks to the folks that were packed in and spilling into the hallway.  Smile

Minnesota SharePoint User Group – February 2011

Raymond Mitchell and Brian Caauwe delivered a presentation on SharePoint Search at today’s MNSPUG.  If you’d like to learn more, check out the PPT deck HERE.  Check back soon to download the recording of the session.  We had about 90 attendees between folks in the room and joining us online.

March’s session will be on SharePoint workflows and Business Process.  Check back to the MNSPUG site for more information as session details are rolled out.

See you next month!

SharePoint 2010: Six-in-One

In other fun and exciting news – I was invited to be a contributing author on a SharePoint 2010 book last year and the fruit of our labor was released a few weeks ago! 

We bring to you: SharePoint 2010: Six-in-One

I wrote Part I – Foundation and Overview.  If you want an overview of what SharePoint is, what versions are available, what to think about when considering and preparing to implement SharePoint and then some common places to start – check out these chapters:

  • Chapter 1 – SharePoint Overview
  • Chapter 2 – Planning for SharePoint
  • Chapter 3 – Getting Started with SharePoint

You can find it on amazon.com at the links below.  I’m very excited that it is also offered on the Kindle – can’t wait to see how it looks in that format…

Paperback edition:

Kindle edition:

The authors include:

Enjoy – and let us know how we did! 

October 2010 Cumulative Update Republished

In early November Microsoft announced an issue with the latest cumulative update.  To follow up, Microsoft re-released the October 2010 Cumulative Updates for SharePoint and Project Server 2010 today.  You can find the SharePoint Team Blog article HERE. 

Make sure you’re running the latest and greatest version and if you installed the patch with issues that you run through the steps to mitigate any issues. 

Happy patching!

Best Practices Conference 2010

I’m currently at the 2010 Best Practices Conference in Reston, VA (Washington D.C.) and will be presenting a couple of topics this week in addition to sitting in on an Ask the Experts panel. 

I LOVE the idea behind this conference – talking through the *why* we do things instead of only the *how*.  Don’t get me wrong, understanding how to do things with SharePoint is pretty important.  It’s a big platform that keeps getting bigger. 

One challenge that many decision makers, implementers and users run into with SharePoint is that there are often more ways than one to get things done.  While options are sometimes a good thing, it can also be confusing to know which solution is the best for a particular scenario.  The answer to this is understanding *why* a decision is made.  So, that’s what we’re tackling this week. 

There are a lot of experts here and a lot of topics being covered.  It’s going to be a good week.  My topics include:

Lists: Used, Abused and Underappreciated
Lists are used as the core of many things SharePoint but they are rarely used as well as they can be. Learn the top tips and tricks for getting the most of your lists: How to build them smarter, how to display them more clearly, and how to use them in your environment for effectively. Also see how these practices evolve from 2007 to 2010.

SharePoint: The Day After
You’ve deployed your farm, built your customizations and integrated your external systems… now what? How do you make sure your users are informed, educated, trained and supported? How do you measure success? How are you insuring the stability of the platform going forward? And why are answering these questions so important to your success.

I hope everyone has a great week!