SharePoint 2010 – WSS 2010

In the wake of our coverage of last week's SharePoint Conference sessions, this will be the first in a series of posts documenting the keynotes and sessions I attended at the Microsoft "Airlift" event for Office 2010.  This four-day event took place in Seattle during the first week of June, was open to participants in Microsoft's Technical Adoption Program (TAP), and in essence took the form of a mini-SharePoint Conference.

Given Bamboo's participation in the Microsoft's Technical Adoption Program (TAP), it was with great anticipation that I arrived in Seattle this past June to attend the Office 2010 "Airlift" event.  The Airlift was held at the Seattle Westin Hotel and took the form of a conference, with four full days featuring daily keynotes, breakout sessions offered in 8 tracks, and a hands-on lab which was plentifully stocked with machines loaded with the then-latest builds of Office 2010 applications and suggested exercises.

The first day's keynote, focused on "the apps, the classics," was given by Antoine LeBlond, SVP of the Office Productivity Applications Group, who announced to the over 500 attendees that this Airlift was "by far the most sophisticated pre-adoption program we've ever done for Office."  Straight off, Antoine frankly addressed the question of the release date for Office 2010, saying that RTM (Release to Management) would occur "in the first half of next year – we don't have a specific release date yet."

Antoine shared that the core themes for Office 2010 were: build on the 2007 foundation; software and services; interoperability by design; and a strong focus on the "fundamentals" (security, performance, and compatibility).  Since one of the core messages was that Office 2010 would enable users to "work the way you want to," Antoine confirmed the universal presence of the Ribbon interface, saying, "the Ribbon is in absolutely every Office app."  Acknowledging the initial mixed reception of the Ribbon, Antoine said, "the round button that people had so much trouble with in 2007 is no longer round – it's a tab," and I must say that the giant UI leap forward that the Ribbon-as-contextual-tab represented was immediately apparent to this reporter.

Antoine next demonstrated some of the slick enhancements made across the Office apps, such as:

• PowerPoint features some truly impressive new transitions, generating the first burst of spontaneous applause from the audience
• Some equally impressive new visual / UI improvements in Excel
• Searching in Word renders a preview pane with highlighted hits called out
• Almost too many new features in Outlook to cover in this space, but highlights included: contact photo (if present) and mini-contact card auto-extracted and displayed within mail; see your availability at-a-glance without having to open your calendar; conversation view which allows you to follow an entire thread with a single click … and supports one-click deletion of an entire thread; thread cleanup automatically removes redundant content throughout the entire thread; thread ignore automatically moves an entire selected thread to your Deleted Mail folder, including future incoming mail in that thread; mail tips offer contextual information (e.g., you're trying to send internal mail to an external contact; an addressee is out of the office, etc.)

Last but certainly not least, was SharePoint, which Antoine positioned as providing "browser-based companions to all of the Office apps."  Specifically demonstrated were pixel-perfect renderings of Document Library content, directly in the browser and without so much as a line of (for example) Word code present.  The SharePoint demo allowed Antoine to conclude his keynote by underscoring the "work the way you want to" theme, pointing out that SharePoint combined with the Web-based Office apps will allow you to access and work with your content seamlessly whether you're accessing that content via your PC, browser, or even your mobile device.

Tags: Overview

[Disclaimer: Article content is based on WSS 4.0 beta1. Information provided herein will probably change as we get closer to production release.]

Since Bamboo was a member of the Microsoft Technnology Adoption Program (TAP) for Office 2010, I had an opportunity to test out early builds of the next version of SharePoint earlier this year. Spotlights were shone upon the cool "F5" feature and how the new VS2010 along with SP2010 will make developer's lives easier.  Nevertheless, my own focus remained on the new SharePoint feature known as Sandbox solution.

Sandbox solution is a pretty powerful idea.  Oftentimes I've wanted to try out a Web Part that I'd come across on the Web, or just wanted to test one of our own Bamboo Web Parts, and the only way I could try it out in SharePoint 2007 was by deploying it in my virtual environment. This is mainly required because I need farm admin rights to use STSADM deployment.  With the sandbox feature I can now be a site collection admin and can still deploy the WSP package. This is good news for developers like me, because now I can quickly deploy a Web Part for testing in my MySite site on our company's portal without breaking anything. This should be quick and easy and could simplify the lives of many. At least in theory.
 
All of this may sound good, but may also cause you to think for a second, "can we really trust sources from over the Web?" "WSP" package could lethal if it is not done properly. We could add assemblies to GAC, change web.configs or even change CAS policy. Worst of all, what will happen if a third party Web Part starts consuming resources without beyond bound?
 
These are not unfounded concerns, but fortunately we don't have to worry about it too much.  SharePoint 2010 has already taken steps to run these solutions in a fortified process. The new infrastructure puts some limits on what can be used from SharePoint Object Model, and it also applies stricter code access security (CAS) policy.  To control the resource usage, it even allows a farm admin to set the quota limit to protect servers from bad code.
 
In this and subsequent sections I will use a sample Web Part (what else than the "Hello Web Part"?) to explore the sandbox environment in further detail.

SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;float:right;margin:8px;” />Step 1: Preparing Web Part for sandbox deployment
 
Assuming you know how to work with Web Parts and package them as WSP solutions, I'll just mention one important thing, and that is the Web Part must be derived from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebPart namespace. This means that our old SharePoint-based Web Part will not work. The environment does not support SharePoint Web Parts at this time. The ramification of this drop is quite significant. Specially, if you have many older Web Parts that you wish to run in a sandbox environment. The custom tool part properties will require changes and the manifest must be of .webpart extension and schema (However, this change does not apply to solutions deployed in a farm environment).
 
Just in case you need some help preparing the Web Part, check out the following sites:

• ASP.NET Web Parts Overview (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hhy9ewf1.aspx)
• Walkthrough: Creating a Basic SharePoint Web Part (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms452873.aspx)

Create WSP package before moving to the next step.  For example, here is the Hello World WSP file I used for this exercise.
 

Step 2: Deploying as a sandbox solution
 
Deploying in a sandbox environment is much easier than regular STSADM deployment. The WSP package can be managed through the "Solutions" gallery from the site's top level setting area. Not to be confused with Solutions in Central Admin area. In SharePoint 2010, solutions are of two types (the title has changed slightly). The old Solutions are now called Farm Solutions and the newer kind are called User Solutions. The latter are used to manage sandbox deployments.
 
The upload through Site settings is a simple and straightforward process. Following are some screen shots to help you navigate through the different screens to complete the upload.
 
SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;margin:8px;” />

Figure 1: Sandbox upload process in SharePoint 2010

Once the WSP package is loaded successfully, don't forget to "activate" it before using it on a page. Otherwise the Web Part will not show up in the Web Part Gallery and it will take a while before the problem is identified.
 
Getting this far without any problems is a good sign. But we are still not ready to use the Web Part. During my testing I realized that adding a Web Part directly to a page is not a good idea from a practical perspective, though I learned this the hard way. The error reporting is very minimal in the sandbox environment. This needs to be taken care of, otherwise troubleshooting will be very difficult.
 
During testing, many times I would add a Web Part to a page and would get zero response (and sometimes just a one-line message simply saying there is an error in the Web Part). This pushed me to take some unusual steps. I tried to reinstall, restart the WSS service, add the Web Part multiple times, etc., but all without success. Luckily before my exercise loops forever, I resorted to an old trick. Well, two old tricks. First, I set CallStack= true in web.config and second, I previewed my Web Part from the Web Part Gallery to verify that everything was in working order.
 
SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;margin:8px;” />

Figure 2: Enabling CallStack in the web.config to view error details

SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;margin:8px;” />

Figure 3: Using Web Part Gallery to preview "Hello Web Part"

Once I saw the text, "Hello World!", I knew that my Web Part installation had been successful.
 

Step 3: Adding the Web Part on an ASPX page
 
Now we are ready to put the Web Part on a Web page in our site. Before moving forward, make sure to create a Web Part page.

SharePoint 2010 went through major UI changes and the procedure to add a Web Part to a page is no exception.

Following are some screen shots that show how to do that.

SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;margin:8px;” />

SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;margin:8px;” />

SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution” border=”0″ style=”border:0;margin:8px;” />

Figure 4: Deck of screen shots.  Adding "Hello world!" Web Part to a page

Once a Web Part has been added successfully to a page, you can use the Web Part menu option to change custom properties to create a personalized greeting. 

Congratulations, you got your first Web Part running in a sandbox environment!

Conclusion
 
Sandbox solution is welcome addition to SharePoint 2010 feature list. Now it is possible for site collection admin to add a WSP package in User Solutions area without having to have SharePoint central admin access or permissions. This will greatly simplify evaluation of 3rd party web parts and give more freedom and control to SharePoint site collection admin to configure the environment to best suit their needs.

Tags: Overview

In the wake of our coverage of last week's SharePoint Conference sessions, this is the second in a series of posts documenting the keynotes and sessions I attended at the Microsoft "Airlift" event for Office 2010.  This four-day event took place in Seattle during the first week of June, was open to participants in Microsoft's Technical Adoption Program (TAP), and in essence took the form of a mini-SharePoint Conference.

Arpan Shah explained at the outset that the purpose of this particular Airlift session was to provide a "high-level overview focusing on end users," and he went on to deliver on that promise and then some.  Arpan and Gideon showed so much in their demos that I found myself scribbling notes as fast as I could throughout the entire presentation just to keep up.

As a social media professional, I was particularly thrilled to hear at the outset that "social is now embedded in the platform overall."  And speaking of SharePoint as a platform, it was noted as an observation and a realization since the 2007 release that, "SharePoint is an application and a platform."  Following these and other introductory remarks, the demos began in earnest, with Gideon walking through three areas: sites, communities, and content.  Of particular note at the time was the fact that all of the live demos in this session were done not in the IE browser, but in Firefox.

Gideon got started with a live demo of the new SharePoint 2010 with screenshot”>Web edit functionality, demonstrating the ease-of-use in editing text and images in SharePoint 2010.  In doing so, as a matter of course, he also demonstrated the contextual Ribbon which is also new to SharePoint with the 2010 release; visible tabs featured in the Ribbon upon our first look at the site were Site Actions, Browse, Edit, and Share & Track.  The Web edit functionality also boasts a live preview of the changes, so you can see how the changes to your text and images will look before committing to them.  Mentioning that in-line list editing is also going to be possible in 2010, Gideon correctly pointed that in-line editing represents a "very easy rich editing experience for end users."

Addressing the notion of communities, or social features of 2010, Gideon demonstrated that tags are now embedded throughout sites and are seamlessly integrated, allowing  for a productivity-based means of tracking what people are working on.  Also demonstrated was a pane in Outlook which surfaces MySite updates (…added new photos, colleagues, etc.).

Regarding content, Gideon introduced document sets as a new content type which allows for contextual bundling of documents by declaring a given set of documents as a document set.  With a set, Manage Set appears as an actionable tab in the Ribbon, allowing all of the included documents to be treated as a whole, with Edit, Manage Permissions, Start Workflow and the like all available as options.  Also under the content umbrella and regarding the approach to the management of metadata in 2010, Gideon mentioned that they were "obsessed" with capturing and managing metadata, up to and including metadata-driven navigation.

At this point Gideon handed it over to Arpan, who took over to demonstrate search, insights, and compositions.  Beginning with enterprise search, and how much easier it is to find experts in 2010, Arpan demonstrated a number of enhancements.  Check it:  phonetic name lookup; the ability to match the correct name when a misspelled name is entered; the ability to type in a few letters in the name if you're not sure of the full name, and choose from suggested results which are presented; a nickname feature which will show results including, say, James, when Jim has been entered.  Outside of the realm of names, suggested keywords is also a feature of enterprise search in 2010.

The insights portion of Arpan's demo included: the notion of Excel Services wedded with SharePoint, making spreadsheets much more interactive; PerformancePoint Services making interactive dashboards available (and built right on top of SharePoint 2010); and the new Chart Web Part, which allows visualization of your data so that they really pop.  Arpan demonstrated the new user-friendly wizard feature which is available to assist end users with connecting the Chart Web Part to external data sources.  Stepping though the wizard-assisted setup process, Arpan showed how an end user would connect to their desired external data source.  Once setup was complete, Arpan showed how the Chart Web Part allows for multiple configuration options, and how adding new data points may be quickly added and are instantly updated on the Chart.

Regarding compositions, Arpan noted that another of the approaches with 2010 was how to better enable end users to create new apps.  Addressing SharePoint Designer, Arpan referred to it as among "the tools of choice to create compositions."  Demonstrating one of the new lists which are available in 2010, Arpan showed off an External List which renders data from an external source in a "really user-friendly way."  Given that the data is coming from an external source, some traditional list features are missing (e.g., Check-in and Check-out), but editing of the data within the list is fully supported, updated live, and can even be taken offline. 

Tags: Overview