Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category

Introduction

The Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) have planned a new meeting in Malmö, taking place on March 14th in central Malmö.

In order to show up you need to register for the event (http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5577741174/)

Event Details

It’s time for the next awesome Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) event in Malmö – We’re all excited about the new and shiny SharePoint 2013, so the topics for this night will obviously rhyme well with those lines:

17:30 – Mingle & Beer

18:00 – Welcome to SSUG (Tobias Zimmergren)

18:05 – Welcome to Bouvet (Mathias Hansson, Bouvet)

18:10 – Session 1:
How can we design environments and tools that support knowledge sharing and innovation in organizations?
- What are the most effective and efficient ways of sharing knowledge in organizations working with complex tasks
- How can SharePoint be implemented in order to support knowledge sharing
- Examples from kongsberg Group, Statnett and Bouvet
Speaker: Åsmund Mæhle, Bouvet

18:45 – Break: Food & Beer

19:00 – Session 2:
Connecting the Enterprise around SharePoint 2013
Search Based Applications is one of the many buzzwords used when talking about the new SP2013 platform – but how can it be done? Steen will showcase how to integrate data & documents from LOB systems, file shares and Office 365 into SP2013. Providing the user with context based relevant and up to date business critical information from across the enterprise, is key to building Search Based Applications. Highlights in the presentation include:
- Bi-directional integration between all SharePoint versions, file shares and databases
- Intelligent rules driven meta data transformation and enrichment
- Ability to look-up meta data in-flight from external databases – Build integration jobs , schedule and run them in batch
Speaker: Steen Jakobsen, Surfray

For any questions regarding this meeting, please contact Tobias Zimmergren, tobias@tozit.com

See you there – awesome!

Cheers!

• Posted in Misc
• No Comments
• Tags: SSUG, Sweden SharePoint User Group

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

Microsoft MVP

It’s with great joy that I – for the fifth time – can announce that I’ve been awarded the Microsoft MVP award for SharePoint Server.

Thank you Microsoft and thank you to the global SharePoint community which is growing stronger, bigger and better every day.

Summary

Thank you Microsoft. Thank you Microsoft MVP’s and thank you to the global SharePoint community.

Awesomeness.

• Posted in Misc
• 8 Comments

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

Introduction

It’s that time again – time for yet another SSUG (Sweden SharePoint User Group) meeting in Malmö.

This time we’ll be kicking it off at Connecta’s offices in Malmö.

Agenda

• 17:30 – 18:00: Mingle and meetup
• 18:00 : Tobias Zimmergren (TOZIT AB) introduces SSUG and kicks the meeting off
• 18:05 : Carl-Johan Tiréus (Connecta) welcomes us to Connecta
• 18:15 : One year with SharePoint – Alfa Laval presents their experiences and lessons learned from introducing SharePoint in their organization
• 19:00 : Food & Beer!
• 19:15 : Wictor Wilén (Connecta) talks about the most important news in SharePoint 2013
• 20:00 : The End. Who’s up for a SharePint?

Location

This event is sponsored by Connecta, so the event will take place in their offices in Malmö.

Street: Djäknegatan 16, Malmö.

Registration

In order to attend any of our events, you’ll need to register.

Either visit www.ssug.se and select the event you’d like to register for – or simply go straight to the event signup here:

Questions?

You’re always welcome to contact me for any questions you have about SSUG or this specific event. Use the contact form here in the blog.

Be awesome. Stay awesome.

Enjoy.

• Posted in Misc
• 2 Comments

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

Introduction

As many of you know, customizing a form for a SharePoint list isn’t very tricky to do – but when it comes to modifying the forms for an External List it becomes a bit more of a challenge. In this article I will walk you through how the BCS (Business Connectivity Services) model can enable you to modify the New- and Editforms by creating and utilizing your own Custom Field Controls and I will also talk about how you can change the behavior and rendering of your DisplayForm using jQuery.

Related articles about BCS that may be worthwhile:

Scenario

So let’s pose that our scenario is that we’ve got a a source of data coming in through BCS and is represented like it’s always represented out of the box with BCS. What we would like to do is to customize the New- and EditForms to allow custom logic and we would also like to change how the DispForm behaves.

In this sample we’ve got a very simplistic BCS model containing one entity with these properties:

Published (boolean)

In SharePoint, our model is represented like this in the out of the box UI:

Display Form	New- and Edit Forms

What we really want to achieve in this article is to manipulate the behavior of our Display- and New/Edit forms to look something like this:

Display Form Published: Icon instead of Yes/No text. Color: Lit up with the selected color in the UI.	New- and Edit Forms Color: Replaced with a custom field control

As you can see in the last two images above, the result of our development is that we’ll be using a custom control (DropDown) instead of the standard TextBox for our Color-field, and we’ll change the way the Published-field looks in the Display Form. It should give you an idea of how you can customize and alter the behavior of your BCS External List Forms.

So without further ado, let’s get started with modifying our forms!

(I assume that you already have a BCS Model in place and will not iterate the steps for creating one here…)

Modifying New/Edit forms: Custom Field Control to the rescue

When it comes to the BCS Model, you should really always edit it through the XML and not through the Visual Studio UI. Start by right-clicking your BCS Model and selecting the "Open With…" alternative:

Then choose your favorite XML editor:

When you’re in this mode, you obviously have to be careful not to mistype or misspell anything as it can result in a broken BCS Model. Awesome

To cut it short, here’s an extract for the "Creating" Method, which references a Custom Field Control called ColorField:

            <Method Name="Create">
              <Parameters>
                <Parameter Name="returnEntity1" Direction="Return">
                  <TypeDescriptor Name="ReturnEntity1" TypeName="TOZIT.Samples.BCSExtensions.BdcModel1.Entity1, BdcModel1">
                    <TypeDescriptors>
                      <TypeDescriptor Name="Identifier1" IdentifierName="Identifier1" TypeName="System.String" />
                      <TypeDescriptor Name="Published" IsCollection="false" TypeName="System.Boolean" />
                      <TypeDescriptor Name="Color" TypeName="System.String">
                        <Properties>
                          <Property Name="SPCustomFieldType" Type="System.String">ColorField</Property>
                        </Properties>
                      </TypeDescriptor>
                    </TypeDescriptors>
                  </TypeDescriptor>
                </Parameter>
                <Parameter Name="newEntity1" Direction="In">
                  <TypeDescriptor Name="NewEntity1" TypeName="TOZIT.Samples.BCSExtensions.BdcModel1.Entity1, BdcModel1">
                    <TypeDescriptors>
                      <TypeDescriptor Name="Identifier1" IdentifierName="Identifier1" TypeName="System.String" CreatorField="true" />
                      <TypeDescriptor Name="Published" IsCollection="false" TypeName="System.Boolean" CreatorField="true" />
                      <TypeDescriptor Name="Color" TypeName="System.String" CreatorField="true">
                        <Properties>
                          <Property Name="SPCustomFieldType" Type="System.String">ColorField</Property>
                        </Properties>
                      </TypeDescriptor>
                    </TypeDescriptors>
                  </TypeDescriptor>
                </Parameter>
              </Parameters>
              <MethodInstances>
                <MethodInstance Name="Create" Type="Creator" ReturnParameterName="returnEntity1" ReturnTypeDescriptorPath="ReturnEntity1" />
              </MethodInstances>
            </Method>

As you can see above I’ve referenced a property called "SPCustomFieldType" in the code (Read more on BCS Custom Properties), which in turn is referencing something called "ColorField". The ColorField is my CustomField control that is simply a DropDown-box to be represented in the UI instead of the good’ol text box.

Modifying Display Forms: jQuery to the rescue

When it comes to modifying the DispForm of the External List, I’ve had several attempts with the documented RendererDefinition in the past and not one single time it worked for me nor any of my clients. So with that experience, I’ve resorted to using jQuery to modify the rendition of the Display Form. Obviously one could use jQuery for the New- and Edit Forms as well, if you want to.

Short story, the jQuery looks like this:

// Found this through google, but can't remember the source. 
// Great script for string replacements!
String.prototype.replaceAll = function (str1, str2, ignore) {
    return this.replace(new RegExp(str1.replace(/([\/\,\!\\\^\$\{\}\[\]\(\)\.\*\+\?\|\<\>\-\&])/g, "\\$&"), (ignore ? "gi" : "g")), (typeof (str2) == "string") ? str2.replace(/\$/g, "$$$$") : str2);
};

$(document).ready(function () 
{
    // Render an icon instead of Yes/No text
    var publishedHtml = $('h3.ms-standardheader:contains("Published")').closest('tr').children(".ms-formbody").html().toString();
    publishedHtml = publishedHtml.replaceAll("Yes", "<img src='/_layouts/images/TOZIT.Samples.BCSExtensions/checked.png' />");
    publishedHtml = publishedHtml.replaceAll("No", "<img src='/_layouts/images/TOZIT.Samples.BCSExtensions/unchecked.png' />");
    $('h3.ms-standardheader:contains("Published")').closest('tr').children(".ms-formbody").html(publishedHtml);

    // Render the entire TD in the color that was chosen
    var colorHtml = $('h3.ms-standardheader:contains("Color")').closest('tr').children(".ms-formbody").html().toString();
    var colorHtmlTd = $('h3.ms-standardheader:contains("Color")').closest('tr').children(".ms-formbody").attr("style", "background-color:" + colorHtml + ";");
});

Essentially what this jQuery snippet does is that it will find the correct elements in the HTML markup that corresponds to my Fields (you see the :contains("Published") part? That’s where I find the Published-field in the markup). Then I simply alter the text that is sent to us from the server, replacing "Yes/No" with an image of a checked or unchecked checkbox. Pretty simple trick to light up the form a bit without the hassle of trying to get your RendererDefinition working…

Tip: If you want to easily inject your jQuery to the External List Forms, I’d recommend using a DelegateControl override on the AdditionalPageHead. The code for my AdditionalPageHead DelegateControl looks something like this:

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string httpRequestUrlString = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;

            // Note: You should create a smarter verification for when to load the scripts than to use a hardcoded value like I've done in this sample. 
            if ((httpRequestUrlString.Contains("/Lists/Sample Entity/") || httpRequestUrlString.Contains("/Lists/Sample%20Entity/")) && httpRequestUrlString.Contains("DispForm.aspx")) // Only render scripts if it's the Display Form on the Sample Entity list
            {
                // Add a reference to jQuery if it isn't already loaded
                ScriptLink.Register(this.Page, "/_layouts/TOZIT.Samples.BCSExtensions/Scripts/jquery-1.7.2.min.js", false);
                ScriptLink.Register(this.Page, "/_layouts/TOZIT.Samples.BCSExtensions/Scripts/bcsDisplayFormScriptSample.js", false);
            }
        }

The code snippet above simply checks the current request and determines whether it’s your specific list being loaded, and then also determine if it’s the DispForm.aspx file being served. As noted in the comments, you should modify this if-statement to suit your needs, should you decide to create a DelegateControl like this.

Summary

Working with BCS is both fun and challenging at the same time. Like most SharePoint projects your requirements always change, and there’s always a need for further investigating the possibilities for how we can deliver quality solutions. In this article I’ve talked about some tips for how you can modify the NewForm and EditForm of your BCS External List by simply using a Custom Field Control. I’ve also talked about how you can deliver customized forms using jQuery as in the DispForm sample above.

As a final note I’d like to shout out to Scot Hillier who is a fellow SharePoint MVP and author of the Professional Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 book for valuable tips and awesome discussions regarding this topic.

• Posted in Misc
• 11 Comments
• Tags: BCS, BDC, External List, jQuery

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

Introduction

As I’ve talked about before, I’m putting some energy into organizing the Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) in the Skåne region. Yesterday we had our very first meeting (well, actually our second but the first one was about 4 years ago).

We had the pleasure to meet for food, drinks and sessions at Stretch Öresund AB where I had invited Carsten Keutmann (MVP) as a speaker, talking about the Model-View-Presenter pattern for SharePoint developers. Daniel Terborn from Stretch talked about Duet Enterprise and how SAP and SharePoint can be bridged together using Duet.

What went down

We had a pretty nice attendee-count and I’m hoping we can grow this awesome group as time progresses. We landed on around 35-40 people showing up for this first meeting:

Carsten Keutmann talked about Model-View-Presenter patterns when you create Web Parts in SharePoint 2010 development projects:

Daniel Terborn talked about Duet Enterprise:

What’s next

We’ll be planning a next meeting soon. Either we’ll have the meeting pre-summer or post-summer. Speakers and session-suggestions welcome, as always!

See you next time.

• Posted in Misc
• No Comments
• Tags: SSUG, Sweden SharePoint User Group

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

Introduction

The Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) is finally kicking off in Malmö again after a long wait. My hope is that we can organize a meeting in Malmö every other month together with a bunch of awesome people in the region. It’s the perfect opportunity if you want to broaden your network and get to know more fellow SharePoint-folks in the region.

SSUG Malmö Meeting, May 2 – Details

This time we’re honored to be sponsored by Stretch Öresund AB who will sponsor with snacks, drinks and office space during the evening.

Agenda

• 17:30 – 18:00: Meetup and mingle at Stretch Öresund AB.
• 18:00 – 18:15: Tobias Zimmergren introduces SSUG and Stretch will present their company.
• 18:15 – 18:45: Carsten Keutman (Creator of WSPBuilder and SharePoint Manager) will talk about developing SharePoint-projects using the MVP-pattern (Model View Presenter)
• 18:45 – 19:00: Paus! Snacks, beer and mingle!
• 19:00 – 19:45: Increased productivity with Duet Enterprise. Daniel Terborn from Stretch talks about how SAP and SharePoint can play an important role with Duet Enterprise.

Location

The Stretch-office is located at "Stora Nygatan 61"

(Google Map: http://maps.google.se/maps?q=Stora+Nygatan+61,Malmö )

Sign up / Register

You will need to register your attendance for the event, and this can be done by visiting this EventBrite link: http://tz.nu/HVYAAx 

Questions about the event?

Do you have any questions or comments about the event or SSUG? Contact Tobias Zimmergren and he’ll assist.

Regards,

Tobias Zimmergren,
Sweden SharePoint User Group.

• Posted in Misc
• No Comments
• Tags: SSUG, Sweden SharePoint User Group

Introduction

The Sweden SharePoint User Group (SSUG) is a non-profit organization where we continuously  provide meet-ups and presentations about SharePoint in Sweden.
There’s no doubt that everyone’s been very busy the last year and things aren’t about to change now. As we head deeper into 2012 I’m sure we’ll have plenty of awesome SharePoint-related meetings and conferences to attend!

The group started in Stockholm several years ago when Me (Tobias Zimmergren), Göran Husman, Wictor Wilén and Daniel Bugday decided to join our forces and provide a common ground for people in Sweden that are interested in SharePoint.

We’ve conducted several meetings in Stockholm, a few meetings in Gothenburg and unfortunately only one meeting in Malmö. Things are about to change!

With our new establishment of TOZIT AB in the region, I’ve decided to shorten down the long trips I’ve previously had and focus my attention to this region (Öresundsregionen – Helsingborg/Lund/Malmoe/Copenhagen etc.) – this means more time for the SSUG (Sweden SharePoint User Group) in Malmö as well.

Upcoming Event – Malmö

During late February or early March we’ll have our first meeting since 2008, when myself and Carsten Keutmann did presentations on SharePoint Online and WSPBuilder.

Upcoming Event – Stockholm

Update: The details for the SSUG Event in Stockholm have been published, and you can sign up and read more here: http://ssug.eventbrite.com/

Sponsors and Speakers

The routines for our meetings is that we’ve got a sponsor to host the meeting (provide meeting rooms, projectors and food/beverages) and we’ve had one or more speakers during an evening.

We’re currently looking for:

• Meeting Sponsors: Where you provide your offices or conference rooms for our meetings
• Speakers: Where you talk about whatever interests you in SharePoint. Here’s some of the popular focus areas we’ve had speakers talk about before:
  • Focus: Development
  • Focus: Architecture
  • Focus: End User Adoption
  • Focus: No-Code Solutions
  • Focus: Marketing
  • Focus: Show Cases / How-We-Did-It

See you soon at a local SSUG meeting!

Enjoy.

• Posted in Business, Misc
• 3 Comments
• Tags: Malmö, SharePoint, SSUG, Stockholm

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

Introduction

A while back an announcement was made that TFSPreview.com had been made available for general testing. Various bloggers at Microsoft put an invitation token in their MSDN blogs so everyone can have a go at it.

In this article series we’ll take a very quick look at what the hosted TFS solution by Microsoft looks like.

Articles currently in the series:

What we need to know before getting started…

Firstly you’ll need to get an invitation token from someone who already have an account on tfspreview.com and then you’re good to go. In this post I’ll assume that you’ve got that already.

Sign in to the TFSpreview account you just acquired:

This should give you access to the Team Foundation Service Preview console:

From here you have a few options for proceeding:

• Create a team project – The first step to create a new TFS site and project
• Download software – You’ll want to visit this link so you can download the required software for connecting from VS 2010, if you haven’t already.

To guide you through the process of getting up and running, I’ll create a new project and call it "TOZIT AB Project 42" so you can follow the sample this article through.

Getting Started – Step by step

Right, so you’ve got your account set up and want to create a project. Follow along and I’ll take you through the entire process. Hang on.

Click "Create a team project":

Next you’ll get a dialog telling you the progress of setting the new project up:

When this is done you can navigate directly to the project or click close. I pressed close and made sure I could see the team project in my project list when I press "Browse all…":

Simply click on the "Navigate" button to navigate to the project and you should see your team project dashboard, similar to this:

What you get here is the intro to your Project. You can see in the top menu that you’ve got options for these things:

• Home (This is what you see above)
• Work
• Source
• Build

HOME

As depicted in the screenshot above, this is the welcome screen of the currently selected project. From here you can control your Product Backlog, Product Backlog Items, Sprints, Work Items and so on. Think of this as your online control panel for the Scrum project. Pretty neat, if you ask me.

WORK

Under the "backlog" tab:

You’ll get a more detailed overview over you current situation in the project including the Product Backlog, Sprints and Work Items with an overview as well as detailed information about each item you select. From here you can control, create and modify your current project quite easily from the Web Browser.

For example, you can create a new PBI (Product Backlog Item) from here:

and it’ll immediately appear in the list below, and you can start working with it:

I’m obviously not going to walk you through each and every button on these pages, that’s for you yourself to try out, but this should give you an overview and idea of what’s available.

Under the "board" tab, you can easily get a really awesome overview of your current status in the project with all your Product Backlog Items in the selected sprint. You can easily drag and drop these items from one to the other section:

(Pretty awesome…)

Of course you can edit everything from the browser UI here as well:

Under the "work items" tab you can get a more familiar overview of the current work items, and even create you own queries in the section to the left – much like you would do from Visual Studio otherwise:

SOURCE

Under the Source tab you can see (perhaps one of the most important things) the source code of your project including the history, changesets, shelvesets and so on:

BUILD

An overview of your current build configurations. In this post I haven’t set up any build configurations yet, but keep your eyes out for that soon enough.

Summary

This was intended to be a short introduction of what capabilities and features you’ll see in the hosted Team Foundation Services 2010 hosted service. More on this subject to follow!

Enjoy.

• Posted in Misc, Technical
• 6 Comments
• Tags: Cloud, Source Control, TFS

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

A new blog platform means…

I finally migrated from WSS 3.0 as a blogging platform to WordPress. Obviously WordPress contains tons of awesome utilities and functions for SEO and general blogging tasks. The SharePoint platform was pretty descent to have the blog hosted on, but in reality it doesn’t beat WordPress when it comes to just the blogging.

This also means I’ve got a new RSS Feed Url (http://feeds.feedburner.com/tobiaszimmergren). I’m looking forward to posting some more awesome content during 2012.

• Posted in Misc
• 18 Comments
• Tags: Blogging, Wordpress

• Posted in Misc
• No Comments
• Tags: SUGUK