Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’
New blog design launched
December 27th, 2011 by Tobias Zimmergren
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
A look back at 2010
January 6th, 2011 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren
Introduction
A new year dawns, as we move into 2011. There’s plenty of awesome things going on that will shortly be announced for 2011.
Right now, though, let’s focus on what 2010 looked like. Here’s a short summary of some of the highlights.
Popular articles from 2010
The main focus of my blog the last few years have been to produce quality articles to help people (myself included) to better understand certain development tasks in SharePoint.
Here’s a list of some of the most popular articles I’ve written in 2010, in no particular order:
- SP 2010: Find error messages with a Correlation ID token in SharePoint 2010
- SP 2010: Developing with the Word Automation Services in SharePoint Server 2010
- SP 2010: Introduction to programmatically working with Taxonomies in SharePoint Server 2010
- SP 2010: Uploading files using the Client OM in SharePoint 2010
- SP 2010: How to create a PowerShell Snapin – Part 1
- SP 2010: How to create a PowerShell Snapin Cmdlet – Part 2
- SP 2010: SharePoint Server 2010 – Creating a custom Document ID provider
- SP 2010: Validate Sandboxed Solutions using SPSolutionValidator
- SP 2010: Getting started with Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2010
- SP 2010: List Joins & SPQuery enchancements!
Events in 2010
What makes for a great year if not a great conference? Better yet, what makes for a great year if not for several great conferences?
During 2010 I was attending and speaking at various conferences, user groups and events around the globe. I’ve got to say that it’s quite awesome to be part of the SharePoint community.
Some of my favorite events of 2010 includes these;
- SEF 2010, Stockholm
- SharePoint Evolutions Conference, London
- TechDays, Örebro (Sweden)
- SSUG Events, Sweden
There was a few more conferences I was attending, but the aforementioned are the ones I thought brought significant value for the attendees (myself included) in terms of technical content, market understanding and building your social and professional network!
SSUG – Sweden SharePoint User Group

It’s with great pleasure that I can announce that the SSUG group is expanding and we’ve got a huge member base – we’re growing each day. What’s even more impressing is the quality and quantity of the people attending our meetings.
Without our members showing up on our meetings, we wouldn’t be able to sustain such a great group – a thank you goes to our members, as always!
MVP x3
For the third time in a row I was awarded the MVP award from Microsoft for my community engagement. Let’s hope that 2011 will be just as awesome and that we will spend many joyful hours together online and offline.
Summary
2011 is here, let’s embrace it like we always do with a new year and rock the socks off! There’s plenty of cool things going on in 2011 that you will not want to miss out – more on that later.
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/zimmergren
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging
Vacation!
July 13th, 2010 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren
Introduction
It’s vacation, what can I say…

Enjoy the summer, and I’ll see you all again in August!
Cheers!
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging
This is my current development rig
March 15th, 2010 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
http://www.zimmergren.net | www.tozit.com | @zimmergren
Introduction
A lot of my clients, students and SharePoint friends have been asking me about details on my latest development rig – so here you go, a full disclosure of the machine and it’s peripherals that I’m currently using for my primary SP 2010 development.
Notes: I’ve been running with HP for my laptops the last couple of years – and all I can say is that they’re amazingly stable and versatile and my next laptop will probably be HP as well!
Hardware configuration
In this section I’ll talk about the hardware configuration of my development rig, along with the peripherals I use on a daily basis to make my SharePoint and .NET world rock!
Laptop details
Learn more about the actual laptop models:
HP Compaq EliteBook 8530w (Mobile Workstation, EliteBook)
Accessories
I use this docking station on a daily basis to enable quick docking of my laptop at home and at the office. Definitely worth the cash!
CPU
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU, T9400 @ 2.53GHz
RAM memory
8 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Disks
For my internal disks (that is, not external) I’m using two of these:
Corsair 128 GB Performance Series Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
For my external disks, I’m using the following:
+ 500GB eSATA 7200rpm disks connectable to the eSATA port on the laptop, for storage
Software configuration
This is my current software configuration (related to my daily-basis work):
- Windows 7 Ultimate
- VMWare Workstation 7
- Office 2010 (Beta)
Summary
To sum it up really quick – I’m using a normal EliteBook laptop.
I’ve simply replaced the optical (DVD/CD) drive with a second SSD disk. This makes for a super-fast experience in your computer no matter if you’re doing things virtually in VMWare or if you’re doing it on the host operating system, as I’m placing my VM’s on the secondary drive.
It’s definitely worth spending a few extra bucks on those SSD drives, I would do it without a blink of an eye.
Since there isn’t any alternative for running a client-based virtualization engine in 64-bit from Microsoft, I’ll stick with VMWare Workstation for now – which has done the job very (very!) well!
Sidenote: I’m looking at the HP Envy for an upgrade to a newer model later. Support for +16GB RAM is going to have a huge impact on my decision for my next laptop.
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging, Hardware
My most popular SharePoint posts of 2009
January 4th, 2010 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren
Introduction
As per requests, I have put together a small list of my post popular and most read blog posts of 2009.
All in all, the year of 2009 was awesome – and we’ve only got even more awesome things to look forward to in 2010.
But to get on with it, here’s my "Top 10 Most Popular SharePoint Posts" of 2009!
My Top 10 Most Popular SharePoint Posts – 2009
- MOSS 2007: Getting Started with the Business Data Catalog
- Related: Write your first BDC Web Part
- WSPBuilder – Walkthrough of the Visual Studio Add-in
- Introduction to SharePoint Online
- SharePoint Online – Customization
- SP 2010: Getting started with the Client Object Model
Although this was very recently posted, it has gained a lot of popularity and is quickly moving up the list of most read posts. - Recover/Fetch your Application Pool Password
- How To: SharePoint and Silverlight – Part 1
- Upload a document to a SharePoint Document Library programmatically (SharePoint Object Model)
- Debugging your code execution for anonymous users in SharePoint
- 10 Free SharePoint Themes – Visual Overview
Summary
A very short list of the most viewed articles I wrote in 2009. There’s plenty more of course, but to keep it short and concise I chose to go with the Top 10 as requested
There’s also another cool way to keep track of popular posts in the SharePoint community, and that’s using PostRank. Visit this URL: http://www.postrank.com/topics/sharepoint and you’ll be presented with popular blogs about SharePoint where you can easily find new content to read.
As for 2010, we’ve got some really fancy stuff to look forward to – and I’ve written a few posts about SharePoint 2010 to cover some of the new aspects for developers. Keep an eye out for them.
Enjoy this simple post. I’m still on vacation, so I’m not going to be much elaborate than this
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging
Merry Christmas and a Happy New SharePoint Year
December 22nd, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren
I’m finally going..
Vacation!
For the first time in 1.5 years I’m finally having a well deserved vacation
Got some nice SP 2010 posts lined up for january/february with all the new good stuff to know about developing with the new tools, as well as hacking about with the new object models.
But for now I will just satisfy by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - and see you again next year!
Cheers, Z
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging
Blessed with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award, again
October 1st, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
http://www.zimmergren.net | http://www.tozit.com | @zimmergren
Introduction
Without trying to sound too dumb to explain the award program, I’ll just quote the website:
We seek to recognize the best and brightest from technology communities around the world with the Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award.
These exceptional community leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds. They are teachers, artists, doctors, engineers, as well as technologists, who actively share their high-quality, real-world technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft.
With the MVP Award, we thank these inspiring individuals for representing the voice of thousands in the community through the powerful and independent feedback they give us, and for helping our customers maximize the potential of their software.
Re-awarded for another year
|
It is with great pleasure that I can proudly present you with the fact that I’ve been re-awarded for yet another year as an MVP within the SharePoint area. More about the MVP award program: |
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging, Microsoft, MVP, SharePoint
Sweden SharePoint User Group, May 28th Re-Cap
June 5th, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
URL: http://www.zimmergren.net
Introduction
On May 28th we held our Sweden SharePoint User Group meeting in Stockholm with great success.
Sponsoring the event for the evening was Precio, who had an arsenal of food and drinks layered up for us to dive into in-between sessions.
With that said, thank you Precio for lending us your time, place and beer.
What was said / Agenda
During the event, we had three main sessions:
- SPVisualDev by Tony Restaino (Precio)
- During this session, Tony did a great demonstration of how his CodePlex tool (SPVisualDev) can help you as a developer to complete your tasks a bit faster. A great complement to WSPBuilder!
- Microsoft Certified Master by Peter Williams (Microsoft Sweden)
- As the only one in Sweden who is a Microsoft Certified Master on SharePoint, Peter did an awesome job describing what the MCM program is all about.
If I can get hold of the presentation from Peter I will have this article updated with links to it.
- As the only one in Sweden who is a Microsoft Certified Master on SharePoint, Peter did an awesome job describing what the MCM program is all about.
- Nintex Workflows by Mikael Bolin (HumanData)
- Giving us a brief overview of what Nintex workflows bring to the table was clearly appreciated.
Post-Session Photos
And the real reason for this post is so I can show you some photos of the event!
Thanks to Tony for shooting some great pictures of the event – please bring this amazing camera next time
Summary
Remember, attending our User Group meetings is 100% FREE OF CHARGE! You can find more information on www.sharepointcommunity.se and sign up if you’re not a member already. You will then receive an email next time we will organize a meeting!
We organize meetings in:
- Stockholm
- Göteborg
- Malmö
- (other locations where it may be fun and there is an audience)
If you have any thoughts about future meetings, about being a presenter, about having a meeting in your city, about sponsoring a meeting or about anything at all – please send me an email at tobias@zimmergren.net and I will set it up for you.
Thanks for reading.
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging, SSUG
Sweden SharePoint User Group, May 28th
May 21st, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
URL: http://www.zimmergren.net
Introduction
On May 28th (thursday next week), we’re having our next SharePoint User Group meeting in Stockholm.
I’m travelling to Stockholm the 26th and leaving the 29th. Anyone care to hook up for a beer or three, let me know.
Agenda
The agenda for the evening looks something like this:
- 17:00 – 18:00 : Welcome & Mingle
- 18:00 – ??:?? : Sessions
- Introduction to SPVisualDev (Tony Restaino)
- Feedback from the Microsoft Certified Masters program (Peter Williams)
- Demo of Windows 7 RC (Microsoft*)
- ??:?? – ??:?? : Beer-time. Everyone is welcome to join us for a beer or three!
Sign up
Since there’s a limit to how many people can fit into the room we’re going to be provided with, you need to sign up here: http://www.sharepointcommunity.se/events/sharepoint-user-group
Sign-ups have precedence before people who didn’t sign up if the room gets full.
See you there!
Tobias
- Posted in Misc
- No Comments
- Tags: Blogging, SSUG
WSS and MOSS: Service Pack 2 Released Today!
April 28th, 2009 by Tobias Zimmergren
Author: Tobias Zimmergren
URL: http://www.zimmergren.net
Introduction
Previous major updates for SharePoint related technologies has been:
- Service Pack 1
- Infrastructure Updates
- Misc. Rollups
Today – as promised – Microsoft released the next set of updates called Service Pack 2.
For an overview of major updates and rollups/cumulative updates post SP1, check out my mate Spence’s awesome blog here: http://www.harbar.net/articles/postsp1.aspx
The new WSS 3.0 SP2 brings this to the table:
Quoted from the Microsoft sites in the links section below!
Some big areas of the improvements that the Windows SharePoint Services team wanted to highlight:
- Faster, more reliable content migration and data backup and restore
- Reduced memory consumption
- Smoother upgrade experience
- Significant database performance adjustments
- Updated integration for forms authentication
- Advanced permission management
- Helpful administrative tools
- Expanded browser compatibility
The new MOSS 2007 SP2 brings this to the table:
Quoted from the Microsoft sites in the links section below!
Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
- Improves the performance and stability of the content deployment feature and of the Variations feature.
- Adds a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool. This tool provides the following functionality:
- Lets a SharePoint administrator use the Variations feature to scan a site for errors, report the errors, and fix certain problems.
- Finds and repairs missing peer relationships and corrupted entries in the internal variations relationships list.
- Handles the propagation of large volumes of variations content in a more manageable way.
Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access services
- Fixes Open Snapshot so that snapshots open more reliably, even if there is no SharePoint root site.
- Fixes display issues that cause calculations to appear incorrect in some cases.
- Improves connections to cubes by using .odc files in non-English cases.
- Improves the performance of programmatic scenarios.
- Fixes conditional formatting in Mozilla Firefox browsers.
- Improves support for generating Excel Web Access Web parts on new sites.
Microsoft Office Groove Server (64-bit version only)
- Office Groove Server 2007 Data Bridge now limits the number of file-sharing workspaces to 64 to make sure that all workspaces can be synchronized. This limit applies only to newly added file-sharing workspaces. If you already have more than 64 file-sharing workspaces, you can continue to use them.
- Improves synchronization reliability.
- Groove Server 2007 Manager can be installed and run with SQL Server 2008.
- Improves the Groove Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) connectivity and auto-activation functionality.
- Improves error reporting in the Groove Relay Server.
- Improves the robustness of Groove Relay Server.
Microsoft Office Forms Server
- Improves performance of large browser forms on InfoPath Form Services, both for memory usage and for page load time.
- Improves reliability of Forms Server and of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server by addressing the previous behavior in which an upgrade of an administrator-approved form template triggers an IIS reset.
- Improves the Digital Signature functionality for InfoPath Forms Services.
Microsoft Office Project Server
- Modifies the queue service to prevent it from using large volumes of memory over long periods.
- Improves the performance of certain database table indexes.
- Improves cost resource functionality. For example, the server now correctly handles tasks that have material or work resources assigned to the same task.
- Improves certain areas such as resource plans, build team, and the server scheduling engine.
Microsoft Office Search Server
- Improves the reliability and stability of WSS crawl, of SharePoint crawl, of crawling through a very large corpus, and of backup restore.
- Introduces a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint administrator tune the Query processor multiplier parameter. For example, the Query processor multiplier can be used to tune the query performance for SSP indexing content sources that have highly restrictive permissions and many duplicates.
- Improves the accuracy of searches that involve numbers. For example, there is additional support for large numbers in which a comma is used to separate every three digits (for example, 1,000,000), for numbers that are between 9 and 40 characters, and for numbers that are separated by spaces.
Platform support
- Provides full support for Windows Internet Explorer 8.
- Provides level 2 browser support for Mozilla Firefox (versions 2 and 3).
- For more information about browser support levels, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101945391033.aspx (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101945391033.aspx)
- For more information about browser support levels, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
- Provides support for Windows Server 2008
Summary, Links & Downloads
MOSS 2007
Download: MOSS 2007 SP2 Download
KB: MOSS 2007 SP2 Knowledge Base Article
WSS 3.0
Download: WSS 3.0 SP2 Download
KB: WSS 3.0 SP2 Knowledge Base Article

