Archive for September, 2009

SharePoint Saturday Copenhagen – Code samples

September 14th, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren

Author: Tobias Zimmergren 
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren

Introduction

After SharePoint Saturday in Copenhagen a while back I promised to upload my code-samples from my demos. Being a bit busy the last few days, it’s been taking a bit longer than expected.

I’ve been looking through the evaluation forms from the event, and wow – thank you for the support everyone who attended my session. It couldn’t possibly be any better than this :-)
You made my day, and I hope I made your day as well!

Never fear, the code is here!

Example 1: Write to the ULS logs (12LOGS) folder

I showed a demo of how you can write to the logs in your 12-hive, using the examples on MSDN to start out from.

This project simply wraps the ULS-stuff into a class and lets you statically call the method to log stuff in the 12-hive.

Remember, you need to compile this code as unsafe. If that’s a problem for you, please consider using another approach.

Download code: ULSDemo.zip

Example 2: Clean up those .wepbart files when you don’t need them anymore

In this example I showed you how you can easily clean up the .webpart files after you when you deactivate your WebPart Feature.

If you deploy a web part using a feature, and then deactivate the feature and remove the solution – your .webpart file will remain in the Web Part gallery which could lead to some confusion as you still can try to add it to a page, only to result in an error.

To prevent that, I’ve got a small snippet that cleans those files up when you deactivate your feature.

Note: If you’re playing a lot with Web Part properties and you re-deploy your solution and during that process will deactivate/activate the feature, the old .webpart files will be replaced by new copies – this means that your web par properties also can be affected!

Download code: WebPartCleanupDemo.zip

Example 3: SPExLib – SharePoint Extensions Library (.net 3.5)

Using the SharePoint Extensions Library (www.codeplex.com/spexlib) you are provided with a great set of extra extensions to your normal SPobjects.

Please see my very simple example for an understanding of what I talked about and showed at SPSaturday Copenhagen.

Download code: SPExLibDemo.zip

Summary

There you go – some of the examples I created during SharePoint Saturday Copenhagen. Enjoy.

Please leave a comment if you’ve got any questions, comments or just feedback.

SharePoint Books: Recommended Reading

September 12th, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren

Author: Tobias Zimmergren 
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren

Introduction

A lot of people are asking about recommended SharePoint reading – good books and literature on the subject. Most things can be found online today, but sometimes you just can’t get around the fact that a well written book is great to have around you while travelling, going to bed (whoa, don’t take it to far!), on vacation or for whatever valid reason you’d like.

With that said, I’ll try to keep this list updated with my recommended reading instead of answering the same questions over and over again ;-)

Enjoy!

My recommendations

Development

Being a developer, of course the most of my recommended books are around the topic of SharePoint development. Here goes my personal favorites:

Architecture and planning

Summary

As per request, the books mentioned in this posts are books that I’ve got in my bookshelf and that I’ve (partly or completely) read myself. There’s tons of SharePoint-related books out on the global market today, and the bits in this article are meant as my personal recommendations to anyone looking for some pointers.

TOZIT SharePoint Discussion Forum solution for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 released today!

September 1st, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren

Author: Tobias Zimmergren
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren

Introduction

I started a project about 2 years ago with the aim of improving the discussion functionalities that comes out of the box with WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. Since it was a spare-time project back then, I didn’t really have enough time to finish it off.

The last couple of months though, I’ve been working very hard to get this ship floating again and I am proud to say that we’re finally releasing version 1.0 of the TOZIT SharePoint Discussion Forum solution to the market.

Visit www.tozit.com/products.aspx for more information!

What is it?

The TOZIT SharePoint Discussion Forum solution is a product, or set of products, that makes the discussions in SharePoint become very intuitive and user friendly. It also adds on a bunch of features that doesn’t normally exist in SharePoint’s built-in discussion lists. Here’s a few highlighted features:

  • Discussion Forum Grouping
  • Flagging posts
    • Answers
    • Helpful posts
    • Abusive posts
  • Enhanced RSS Subscriptions
    • Subscribe to new threads in a specific forum
    • Subscribe to new posts in a specific thread
  • Enhanced Rich Text Editor with very rich formatting options and ability to paste in word-documents or Visual Studio highlighted code, and keep the formatting!
  • Ranking system
    • Top posters
      • By points
      • By posts
      • By most answers
      • By most helpful posts
  • Recent posts Web Part
  • Relative time-stamping
    • Displays "1 hour 32 minutes ago" to make it more intuitive
  • Adjusts colors and fonts to your current SharePoint theme.
  • … … …

Some screenshots of the discussion forum in action

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How do we get it?

By navigating to www.tozit.com/products.aspx you can get more information.

You can either get a 30-day free, fully functional trial version, or purchase the retail version from our web site.

Early-bird discounts & Volume discounts

Early Bird

By reading this blog, you’re up for early-bird discounts. If you or any of your clients purchase this product before the end of September, you can use the following discount code in order to get it 15% cheaper than the original price:

Coupon code: SharePointBird

Volume discount

If you purchase more than one license (one required per front-end machine in your farm), you’ll of course receive a volume discount. The table looks like this:

1 license no discount
2-4 licenses 10% discount
5-9 licenses 20% discount
10+ licenses 30% discount

Future versions?

We’re currently working on future version of this product with more brilliant features and functionality to help you manage your discussions in your SharePoint installations!

Enjoy!

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