Another day in the Office

User Group Madness!

Well, I thought that once Tech.Ed was out of the way I could sit back, relax and slack off until Office 2010 hit RTM. No. Such. Luck.  In addition to my day job, I’ve been talking about Office 2010 at a couple of my favourite user groups and community events.

Check out the presentations in webified high fidelity goodness below. (If you are not already on the Office Web Apps preview, click here to enable them on your skydrive account).

For those that are Victorian based, Hopefully I’ll see you at SharePoint Saturday Melbourne on November the 14th! (What makes SharePoint better… OK – I’ll stop that now).

The more important question is…

Who prints their slides in 2009?

Did you miss Tech.Ed Australia 2009? Watch the Keynote online

Using InfoPath to add twitter-like functionality to SharePoint

The philosophy of many technical folks that I talk to is “Lock it down and save the user from themselves”. While this may seem great from a helpdesk or risk perspective, in reality it means that your users will have to ask you to make the change everytime, or even worse – they don’t use the system at all. There is a lot of information written on how to disable sharepoint designer and the like, which may be useful for fairly restricted Web Content management sites, using this on a collaboration site seems a little heavy handed.It is one thing to have a recommended template, but another to make sure every site is the same boring layout with no room for differentiation. A good SharePoint philosophy will maintain some standard sites, provide some good starting points, but also allow high performing teams to customise their collaboration tools to meet their requirements (without having to call IT).

Your users don’t call the helpdesk when they want to change a font in Word – make sure you are managing the infrastructure, not playing the role of the Content Police.

So, assuming that you are one of those civilised, modern, sensible (and probably ruggedly handsome) IT guys, or you are lucky enough to work somewhere that employs them, you can start to have some fun with InfoPath and SharePoint.

While InfoPath is traditionally used for forms that are a little more complicated than this, you will be happy to know that it can scale down to a 1 field form as well. I have made this form multiline and added a button that will submit to a SharePoint forms library as well as change the view to display a “thanks for your submission” message. When publishing the form, we can also promote that lonely field into a list column.

Then, I show a webpart with a customised view, showing the field and some of the metadata that SharePoint will capture automatically. I have called my shameless twitter clone SharePoint Social Networking Innovation Crikey, a common Australian expression of amazement.

Finally, I use that veritable workhorse of the gluecoder – the <iframe> to display that form in a Content Editor Webpart on my collaboration page.

If I was doing this properly, I could use the XMLFormView ASP.Net control to frame in the infopath form properly. However, with a form this complicated it wouldn’t really be worthwhile – and probably quicker to hardcode it in ASP.Net proper.

Happy gluecoding!

Office Partners – time to shine!

I love July! For one, it brings a new financial year, but perhaps more importantly, it is the eye of the storm. A short period of reflection before the cyclonic winds kick up again. My inbox is back to a manageable size and I can catch up on reading, training and skilling up on all the new technology that is out since I last looked.

If you aren’t a microsoft partner or interested in becoming a microsoft partner, the rest of this post will be pretty boring.

Today, I have been catching up on the announcement that the Microsoft Partner Program will morph into the Microsoft Partner Network. It seems like quite a big change, with everything from more marketing campaigns, more access to technical resources and some new (and some improved) competencies.

One of the interesting things I found in reading about the IW competencies was a breakdown of which service opportunities had the biggest market, the results are quite surprising.

According to Microsoft Partner Capacity Research, partner service opportunities for SIs and VARs around consulting development, integration, and maintenance for each specialization are expected to reach:

Source: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/competencies/iwsolutions/iwbenefits

The sorts of partners I will predominately work with over the next 12 months are the ones with Office Deployment and Office Solutions Development specialisations (or are trying to achieve them).

So what does it take to become one of these partners? Apart from 3 customer references, it comes down to Microsoft certifications:

Office Deployment Specialisation

To qualify, your organization must employ or contract with two individuals, each of whom must have passed one of the following Microsoft exams:

• Exam 74-139 : Deploying Business Desktops with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Office 2003

• Exam 70-270 : Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows XP Professional

• Exam 70-620 : TS: Microsoft Windows Vista, Configuring

• Exam 70-621 : Pro: Upgrading your MCDST Certification to MCITP Enterprise Support

• Exam 70-624 : TS: Deploying and Maintaining Windows Vista Client and Microsoft Office System Desktops

Office Solutions Development Specialisation

To qualify, your organization must employ or contract with two individuals, each of whom must have passed one of the following Microsoft exams:

• Exam 74-137 : Developing Microsoft Office Solutions using XML with Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003

• Exam 70-541 : TS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Application Development

• Exam 70-542 : TS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Application Development

• Exam 70-543 : TS: Visual Studio Tools for the 2007 Office System

Obviously these certifications continue to evolve as new products are released and old products are retired.

If you are a partner and have these specialisations, or are interested in attaining them, please let me know – we should be working together closely in 2009 and 2010!

Office 2010 tech preview roundup

What a week! At the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Stephen Elop demonstrated Office 2010 for the first time and the feedback I have heard from people I talk to is “GIMME NOW”.

Technical Preview is essentially a pre-beta engineering milestone – very interesting to developers and IT Professionals managing complex environments, but much like a house that is almost finished, it may not be a comfortable as a full release.

But, if you are reading this blog, you probably spend more time with Office than you do with your own loved ones – so the evolution of such an important product is kind of a Big Deal. Here is a fairly comprehensive list of information to get up to speed on 2010.

Proper published information:

• Office 2010 Technical Preview Official site – the first place to start for all official information about the TP.
• Office 2010 for business – all the business focused features.
• Backstage with Office 2010 – interviews from the Office team. You can also request videos on specific topics!
• SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek site – looks like there is a new flavour of pie!

Blogs, Blogs, Blogs:

• Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering blog – includes a really good post about the “Backstage” view, and how it is a continuation of the UX decisions of Office 2007.
• Daniel Escapa’s OneNote blog – perhaps the best place to go to find technical information on OneNote 2010
• Microsoft SharePoint Team blog – for some details on the SharePoint strategy. I’m sure there will be much more at this years SharePoint Conference.
• Excel Team blog – discusses some of the new performance investments and something that I am very excited by, “Project Gemini”
• Outlook Team blog – I am quite excited about the little things in Outlook – being able to see a calendar snapshot before I accept a meeting request, ignore a rambling reply-all storm and quicksteps will all save me a little bit of time every day, which will add up to a lot of my year.
• PowerPoint Team blog – good showcase of all the new transitions in PowerPoint and a hint of a new powerpoint viewer :).
• Word Team blog – multiediting – when I was at school, we called this cheating. Now, we call it collaboration!
• InfoPath Team blog – InfoPath 2010 is shaping up to be a very solid release for the little form engine that could. Picture Buttons, Quick Rules, Quick Publishing, Mashups and a First Class People Picker!!!

Documentation and Specifications:

For the alpha-developers out there, this documentation will be also very useful for you.

• SharePoint 2010 (Technical Preview) Developer Documentation
• Microsoft Office Protocol Documentation
• Microsoft Office File Formats Documentation

Office 2007 Deployment Series – the aftermath

Wow – is it really July already?

Last month we had about 150 people join (or watch later) our Office deployment webcasts. When we decided to run these, we were thinking that about 20 people would listen in – so the interest has still been quite high, even this far into the lifecycle of Office 2007 (and it still has legs!).

At the end of the month, we will be kicking off another round of these webcasts, and there are a couple of things we will aim to fix:

• We have had a few comments on the sound quality being inconsistent – we are looking into this
• Recordings of the sessions had only a 66% success rate (Alistair forgot to hit the big record button on the last session). You can access all of the presentations and the first two recordings through the original invitation links, or from my skydrive below. Please contact me through email or this blog if you’d like me to organise
a 1:1 session on these topics.

So, with all that done, and looking to the future – what would you like to see us cover in the next round of webcasts?

Mini Toolbar

The mini toolbar appears as you select and hover over text, or right click text in a document. This provides a handy font menu for changing the selected text. One of my favourite things about it is that it gets more or less transparent the further you move away from it, as if to say “you need me? oh, ok, I’ll get out of your way”.

Of course, you can banish it altogether - If you do not wish to use the mini toolbar, it can be disabled by:

STEP 1. Select Office Button | Word Options Button | Popular

STEP 2. Deselect the Show Mini Toolbar on selection option

STEP 3. Click OK to save

Note the mini toolbar will be disabled for hovering over selections, but will still appear if you right click.

What’s on the ‘tubes this June - Office 2007 Deployment Series

Oh, boy – here I was looking to hibernate this winter… but we will be kicking off a local deployment webcast series. 

woah.

So, it turns out that Wolfram Alpha has become aware… and dived straight into geek humour…

Groove 14 = SharePoint Workspace 2010

My favourite Office app is getting a new name and some very cool new features. Groove, the Office collaboration tool for geographically, organisationally, confidentially collaboration has always been great at strategic collaboration, but SharePoint Workspace will truly take this to the masses:

• easier to deploy and manage
• easy access to SharePoint content (or content from any server that implements the publicly documented protocols…  MyCoolServer Workspace?)
• Along with OneNote, it will be available as part of Office Professional Plus 2010

So, if you haven’t become a Groove disciple yet, now is a great time to understand the architecture of Groove!

More information at the Groove Development Team blog.

Free Office 2007 Seminar in Brisbane

Andrew Lowson and I will be hosting a free seminar at the Microsoft Brisbane office this Wednesday. In this session we will dive into some of the technical advancements in Office 2007, Office Business Applications and extensions to improve the Office experience. Full blurb here:

Office 2007 represented some revolutionary changes to Office. File format support for open standards, managed code support for document customisations, enhanced server side integration and of course, that ribbony ribbon.  But is Office “done”? As business situations change, so should how we think of the primary business software suite.

In this session, see some of the research prototypes from the Office Labs and understand the key concepts underpinning them. Finally, understand what you can do now using out of the box functionality and Office Business Application services to help improve business processes and the productivity of your people.

Details:

Register here

Wednesday, 13 May 2009 3:00 PM - Wednesday, 13 May 2009 4:00 PM Australia (East)
Welcome Time: 2:45 PM

Microsoft Brisbane -

Theatre 1, L9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St
Brisbane Queensland 4001
Australia

Guidance for potential Office System track speakers at Tech.Ed Australia

Office Gurus,

Time to dust off the lab coat, it is Tech.Ed time again, and once again Ian and I are organising the Office System track. The Office System is our “umbrella term” that covers Microsoft’s business productivity software and services – Office, SharePoint, Visio, Project, PerformancePoint (and we even bend the rules to include Windows Mobile and Dynamics content sometimes).

Last year we had over 50 unsolicited nominations for sessions in the Office System Track. This year, we are expecting plenty more and have put in place a structured tool to help manage all of that and to help provide better transparency of the process.

How do I submit a nomination?

Go to the Call for Content tool and register with your email address and the RSVP code TechEdANZ. Fill in all the details and hit submit. You can come back to the site at any time to update or review the progress of your submission. This is the tool we will be taking nominations from. If you have contacted your favourite Microsoft employee, MVP or newsgroup great – but the Single Point of Truth for selecting community speakers is this Call for Content Tool.

Guidance

So, with that said, some guidance:

• The focus of the track is the 2007 Office System
• It is over 2 years since the 2007 wave was released, our target audience this year is the mainstream IT Pros/Developers, rather than early adopters and power users.
• This year, due to a smaller (but beach-ier) venue and a big focus on Windows 7 , we have about 12 sessions to play with.
• Office Track doesn't need to be super technical. It is about equipping attendees with tools to solve problems their users face every day.
• Treat these sessions as the "Primer" to the topic, and recommend related Instructor Led Labs, Hands on Labs and other resources to complete the learning.
• Educate attendees not only in the tools, but also in the context. While Tech.Ed is definitely focused on preparing attendees to develop on and administer the software, we’d also like to focus on how “you, the user” can benefit by using the software appropriately. Talking about document management? Perhaps talk about how you can use the Office System to make better technical specifications. Perhaps even go as far as to cover what makes a good technical specification.
• Customer References, real solutions and demonstrable examples are preferred. If you have a couple of different scenarios around the same topic – even better!
• We have already identified the high level session topics. In fact, we have already assigned session owners and started planning. What we are looking for is people to co-present with us, provide insight “from the trenches” and to demonstrate real world examples.
• The high level topics we are interested in are:
  • Business Intelligence
  • LOB integration
  • interpersonal communication
  • personal productivity
  • document management and authoring
  • SharePoint customisation
  • application compatibility
  • change management and adoption
  • SharePoint governance and planning
  • Project Management
  • Visio
• Is the Office System the best place for your nomination? Consider the Architecture, Web, SQL & BI or Developer tracks also.

What is in it for me?

Wow – that sure is a lot of guidance. But, being a speaker at Tech.Ed has its own rewards (in order of appearance):

1. The respect of your peers and

2. There are various awards for best speakers

3. A Tech.Ed speaker badge – which gets you into Tech.Ed (worth up to $1999, not redeemable for cash) and into the coveted speaker room*.

We won’t be paying for travel or accommodation expenses – so be aware that you’ll need to pay (and stay) your own way to the Gold Coast.

I really look forward to reading your nominations and seeing you at Tech.Ed this year. There is truly no other event like it in Australia and it is the best “week of geek” you’ll find.

* Okay, it isn’t that coveted.It is usually just a bunch of smelly people swearing at their virtual machines.

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is in the wild

There are plenty of good posts on this:

Gray Knowlton’s post goes into a lot of interesting detail about some of the under the covers changes and the Office Sustained Engineering team blog is a font of knowledge.

What is most interesting to me in SP2?

• You can easily uninstall this service pack with a handy uninstall tool
• In addition to ODF and PDF support, the document format converter is extensible
• Outlook is now faster… making it easier to handle all that spam you get from facebook and twitter.
• Performance enhancements in SharePoint
• Caching client credentials when SharePoint is in Forms Based Authentication Mode
• SharePoint Support for IE 8, FF2.0 and 3.0

Sydney Business Technology User Group – This Wednesday night

Come and see me talk about some of the new developments in the world of Office!

This session will be a pretty high level walkthrough of some of the Office Labs research, the direction the Office team is going and what users and organisations can do now to be ready to take advantage of the technologies when they come down the line

After me will be Adam Cogan from SSW talking about how to take advantage of the integration opportunities between Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007.

Cost

$5 donation (to cover pizza)

Location

The group meets at Microsoft headquarters at North Ryde

1 Epping Road
North Ryde 2113 NSW

We start at 6pm.

For more information about the Sydney Business Technology User Group, check out http://sbtug.com/ or follow @sbtug