New certification done – 70-576: PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications

Last monday I have passed my latest exam regarding the 70-576: PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications exam.
This exam is a good challenge even to experienced Sharepoint 2010 professionals.

Now I have to start working for my next certification.

Add link to approval task in notification email

One of the annoying things in Sharepoint 2010 is related to the workflows, if you are using Outlook 64 bits (or Word 64 bits) and try to use the “Open this Task” button in the email message (ribbon) this will not work, why? Known Issue!!!
Is there a fix? I have not found one that didn’t included editing registry entries . . .

So we can provide a workarround and include a link to the task in the email body. This is quite simple to do and it calm down your users. How can we do this?

1 – Open the Sharepoint Designer 2010
2 – Open the desired workflow
3 – Edit the Workflow
4 – Usually the notifications are in the “Change the behavior of a single task” option.
5 – choose the action related to sending emails:
a – Email task notification to . . .
b – Email …
6 – Edit the email body to include a text like: “You can also open the task using this link” or something lik this
6 – insert an Hyperlink using the option next to the font options with the symbol of the Hyperlink.
7 – Edit Hyperlink
a – Text to display – write the text you want to show the users.
b – Address – choose the fx button and select the following options:
b1 – Data Source: Current Task: . . . .
b2 – Field from source: Form_URN

That’s it you can now test and check that the notification email sends this link to the users.

NOTE: You must perform this action to all notificatio on emails that apply in the workflow.

Co-authoring documents in Sharepoint 2010

One of the questions most customers ask me regarding the collaborative work of documents is if more than one person can edit the same document at the same time. The classic approach using Sharepoint was to edit a document from a document library and this would enable you to do your work while everybody else would have access to a read-only version.
With the release of Office 2010 Microsoft enabled a very cool functionality, the co-authoring! Basically this enables a document to be edited by more than one person at the same time, restricting the zone that is being edited and allowing every other part of the document to be edited by someone else. Pretty cool, right?

Using Sharepoint there are a few configurations you have to set to have this working smoothly:

- Set the correct permissions to the document library
- Enable versioning major and minor versions. If you are using Onenote documents enable only major versions (note: Onenote does autosave and this can result in synch problems with minor versions).
- Do NOT require Check Out to edit a document

after this you can test yourself!

A simple but very useful functionality for everyone that needs to work in a collaborative way in the same documents, like reports or proposals.

SharepointPTDay is coming . . .

This year SharepointPTDay is arriving, stay tune!

Cannot open files from document libraries without save

When your users want to open a document (PDF, MSG, etc…) from a document library and it keeps asking them to save instead of simply open them, you will have a lot of complaints to answer  . . . but don’t quit your job yet, there is a solution.

Usually this happens due to security policies in the browsers and Sharepoint by default sets it’s browser file handling settings to Strict. If you search for a solution you will find hundreds of articles saying that all you have to do is to set this browser file handling configuration to Permissive and that will do the trick . . . well!!!

You will apply this setting and then test it, if it works GREAT! but if not . . . you will then search some more and find more dozens of articles that will guide you in development and IIS configuration. Well let me just say that I found a very usefull and more practical article from John Whites blog on this subject and it works like a charm

The article is called Opening PDF Files in SharePoint 2010 and is shows how you can use Powershell to solve the problem.

Good work John!

SharepointPT Day! the after report . . .

It was the first big event of the SharepointPT so we were a bit stressed out on how it would turn out . . . and guess what???? it was an excellent event !!!

A packed room with excellent speakers and a lot of Sharepoint

So we started with an intro by Rodrigo Pinto representing the SharepointPT, followed by the session of Joel Oleson.

Joel Oleson’s The worst practices in development session was great, good inputs, good wakeup calls and most of all many questions on the subject.

Afterwards we had Mark Miller live form New York, this session was on The Missing Link between SharePoint and the End User Community, the importance of endusers on the implementations of Sharepoint. A lot of interest on the subject by the attendants and some pretty cool interaction between Mark and Joel.

After lunch we had a session on Sharepoint Online by João Bilhim and Denis Heliszkowski from Microsoft, this session showed us what can and cannot be done on Sharepoint Online.

The last session was SharePoint2010 – Nuts and Bolts on Development  with Rodrigo Pinto & Rui Melo  from our own SharepointPT a session / Chalk Talk that provided us with the pointers to better development.

It was a great day for all that attended and organized this event, I would like to thank specially to our speakers, attendants and organizers for making this event great and for giving us reasons to organize much more.

See you in the next community meeting or event.

Attending SharepointPT Day!

I am attending the SharepointPT Day currently listening to Mark Miller session live from New York. Already attended the Joel Oleson session on Development Worst Practices.

Still to come Sharepoint online and Sharepont Nuts and Bolts.

A great day for the Portuguese Sharepoint Community.

Sharepoint 2010 – Compare Sharepoint Edition

One of the common questions is what does the several editions of Sharepoint 2010 have, so now we have a table that answers this question.

To compare Sharepoint Foundation, Sharepoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Editions-Comparison.aspx

An easy way to compare and check what is included in each edition.

CSP 2.0 Workshop

I´m currently atending an Microsoft CSP 2.0 Workshop on the new integration of Sharepoint 2010 and CSP (Citizen Services Platform) from Microsoft.

There are a lot of cool new stuff !!!

SharePointPTDay – One day event with Sharepoint Gurus

The Portuguese Sharepoint Community – SPUGPT is gathering a mega event for everyone that is interested in Sharepoint, but with some major upgrades from the usual community meetings . . . this one has some very special speakers: Joel Oleson and Mark Miller.

So the details?

When? 29th September (all day)

Where? Microsoft Portugal Auditorium (Tagus Park – Porto Salvo)

Who can attend? everyone, just need to register

Where can I register? http://www.sharepointptday.org/

Where can I access more details? http://www.sharepointptday.org/

Who are the speakers? Joel Oleson, Mark Miller, Rui Melo, Rodrigo Pinto, Denis Heliszkowski and João Bilhim.

How much will it cost? nothing, it is free!!!!

 Well, I think this sums up the main info, you can access more information on the events website: http://www.sharepointptday.org/. Or you can email me for details.