Andrew Coates ::: MSFT

Microsoft Agile Tools Team doing Agile

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:35:31 GMT

Adam Cogan from SSW was in Redmond later last year, and he caught up with the TFS Agile Team while they were doing a Stand Up. He's produced a couple of great videos explaining what he saw.

By the way, these are a part of a pretty cool set of videos SSW are producing under the banner of SSW TV

Scott Guthrie, David Campbell and Mark Russinovich at the Cricket

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:55:54 GMT

[I originally posted this as an editorial for the MSDN Flash]

Happy New Year!

As some of you may have spotted, I'm a certified cricket tragic. In fact, I'm writing this from the top deck of the M A Noble stand, waiting for play to start on day 2 of the Sydney test. I've had plenty of time to kill since I started queuing at 4am both today and yesterday and apart from the good-natured and very knowledgeable banter with my fellow tragics, I've been whiling away the hours watching recordings from the Learn Windows Azure event that was held in Redmond and online on December 13 last year.

The event features some of the top technical brains at Microsoft including Scott Guthrie, David Campbell and Mark Russinovich.

We made some interesting announcements at the event including:

Support for Node.js, as well as a number of other Openness initiatives for Azure;
A new 90-day trial subscription model that guarantees you won't get charged for the trial
A tripling of the maximum database size in SQL Azure to 150GB, along with built-in support for federation of SQL Azure databases

There are some great presentations that were recorded at the event itself, as well as a bunch of supporting interviews and webcasts that area available from the event landing page. My favourites so far are:

Scott Guthrie's Getting Started with Windows Azure (including an awesome demo of Node.js on Windows Azure);
Dave Campbell's Cloud Data and Storage (check out the Hadoop on Azure piece!); and
Jay Schmelzer's Developing Windows Azure Applications with Visual Studio (although he had more than his fair share of issues associated with doing live demos to a world-wide online audience)

I've not yet watched, but am very much looking forward to:

Steve Marx and Wade Wegner's Channel 9 Cloud Cover Show Live; and
the Expert Panel Q&A featuring Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich

Of course, these sessions are all available to watch streamed, but I suggest you do yourself a favour and download them so you can watch them in half the time.

Estimating and prioritising a product backlog in Sydney on 9 Feb

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:06:30 GMT

Richard Banks is presenting a Readify Dev Day in Sydney early next month on a topic that I suspect most of us could do with a bit of brushing up on. From their event site:

At the conclusion of this Dev Day, attendees should not only understand the theory of estimating and prioritising a product backlog but would have also experienced the practices themselves so that they can feel ready to directly apply these techniques to their own projects the very next day.

More information and registration details

Australian and New Zealand SharePoint Conferences 2012 - Call for Speakers Closes 1 December

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:27:42 GMT

The Australian and New Zealand SharePoint Conferences are JUST around the corner. These events are organised by a dedicated group of NZ and AUS Community Leaders and MVP’s - Debbie Ireland, Mark Rhodes, Nick Hadlee, Mark Orange, James Milne and Kathy Hughes. Once again, the team are organising SharePoint conferences in Australia (Melbourne 20-21 March 2012) and New Zealand (Auckland 28-29 March 2012).

SPEAKERS

Deadline for submissions into the technical tracks is 1 December : Please go to www.spevents.co.nz to register.

Voice of Customer / Case Studies

This track is being revised. The idea is to promote "what SharePoint does", "what cool things we have done with SharePoint" and "what business processes we have improved/ productivity gains etc." - Customers will do shorter (20-30 min) demo based sessions – on things they have done, following a prescribed structure - Business issue, solution, gains, in time, productivity, $, ROI, or something to that effect.

This is an ideal opportunity for partners to work alongside customers to demo stuff, and show what they have helped to do. Note that these DO NOT have to be technical, complex solutions. They can be simple - the objective to help people see what is possible. If you have any ideas please email to debbieireland@envisionit.co.nz

Windows Azure BizSpark Startup Camp in Brisbane 2-4 December

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:07:51 GMT

Via Catherine Eibner

On December 2nd- 4th we are holding an Azure Bizspark Start-up Camp in our Brisbane office in the lead up to the launch of our Innovation Centre. This unique opportunity will showcase the potential when Government, Incubators, Universities and Microsoft come together to help Startups.

More details on Catherine's blog.

Free Art for your WP7 App

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:12:42 GMT

If you're graphically challenged like me, but you still want to create gorgeous Windows Phone 7 applications, you need to find wither a tame graphic designer/artist or a great source of beautiful art that's designed for the form factor.

The folks at Microsoft Japan have released the Windows Phone Apps Art Gallery, which is "created for developers to freely use the provided materials for their Windows Phone applications".

SQL Server Denali Sydney Breakfast Briefing 1 December

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:32:44 GMT

The good folk at Readify are running a free breakfast briefing on 1 December in the Sydney CBD to give you a lap around the next version of SQL Server, code-named "Denali".

LightSwitch Star Contest - Win an ASUS Laptop

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:23:50 GMT

The folks over at The Code Project have launched a cool contest so you can show off your LightSwitch skills and win prizes in the process.

From their release:

Do you have what it takes to be a LightSwitch Star? Show us your coolest, most productive, LightSwitch business application and you could win a Laptop and other great prizes!

Prizes will be issued monthly for two categories: Most Efficient Business Application and Most Ground-breaking Application. Your submission is eligible to win every month! There’s also a grand prize at the end of the contest for each category – an ASUS U31SD-DH31 Laptop!

Just answer the questions on the submission template and either create a YouTube video or write an article for CodeProject explaining your application or extension. They’re looking for apps that show off the most productivity in a business as well as apps that use extensions in a unique, innovative way.

And so it goes on.

For the full scoop, check out their page.

Talking LightSwitch Shop with Richard

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:39:23 GMT

While I was at TechEd last month, I sat down (twice) with Richard Banks and recorded an episode of Talking Shop Down Under about LightSwitch. Richard's been hoarding his TechEd recordings and releasing them slowly. This one came out today.

Check it out.

SwitchedOn LightSwitch and Azure briefings for Wellington and Auckland

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 07:11:46 GMT

I thought I was 33% of the way into the SwitchedOn briefings for LightSwitch and Azure, but today I found out that I'm only 25% through. New cities, Wellington and Auckland have been added to the event, and I'm looking forward to seeing my Kiwi mates and having them commiserate with me about our Rugby team. I expect they'll be gentle.

Wellington: 16 November 2011 Register

Auckland: 17 November 2011 Register

SwitchedOn Briefing Slide Decks - LightSwitch and Azure

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:24:15 GMT

I've just finished the first of the SwitchedOn briefings (Adelaide) - we built a LightSwitch application (u:Adelaide, p:Pass@word1) and deployed it on Azure.

I've uploaded the slide decks:

Session 1 - LightSwitch Morning (2.2Mb)

Session 2 - both Azure decks (13.5Mb)

Session 3 - LightSwitch Afternoon (4.9Mb)

LightSwitch and Azure Around Australia in October and November

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:19:41 GMT

The Power of LightSwitch on Windows Azure

Update 10/10 - Now with Adelaide Details

Introducing Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch, a simple self-service tool that allows developers and business professionals to build business applications quickly and easily for the desktop and the cloud- without the need to code!

Come along to our Switched ON briefings in your city to find out what your business can do with LightSwitch to power Windows Azure.

We’ve designed the briefings to include a variety of topics that you can select to suit your individual needs. Please be sure to choose the session(s) you are most interested in when you register for the event.

AGENDA

7:30 – Registration opens (will run throughout the day)

8:00 – 9:00 – Business Applications and the “Un”-Professional Developer: LightSwitch on Windows Azure

9:00 – 9:30 – Breakfast

9:30 – 10:30 – Discover Windows Azure Platform Part 1: Business Overview

10:30 – 11:00 – Morning Tea

11:00 – 12:00 – Discover Windows Azure Platform Part 2: Technical Overview

12:00 – 13:00 – Break (lunch will not be provided)

13:00 – 15:00 - Build your first Azure application using Visual Studio LightSwitch – with (almost) no code!

Session 1: The Power of LightSwitch on Windows Azure
8:00 - 9:00am

In this comprehensive 1-hour breakfast briefing you will learn about the End User Developer and how Visual Studio LightSwitch allows these domain experts to quickly create scalable, forms-over-data business applications on the desktop and the cloud with little technical expertise and development skills.

This session is targeted primarily at Business and Technical Decision Makers, and is also valuable for Developers and Development Managers.

Session 2: Discover the Windows Azure Platform
9:30 – 12:00pm

These sessions will help you understand the opportunities for the cloud and Microsoft’s Cloud Computing offerings with the Windows Azure Platform. Sessions will cover both the technical & business benefits as well as help you understand how you can get started using the Windows Azure Platform today.

The target audience for these sessions includes BDMs, TDMs, Architects, and Development leads.

Session 3: Build your first Azure application using Visual Studio LightSwitch – with (almost) no code!
1:00 – 3:00pm

In this demo-heavy session, you will see end-to-end how to build and deploy a data-centric business application using LightSwitch. We’ll also go beyond the basics of creating simple screens over data, by demonstrating how to:

Create screens with advanced capabilities

Extend LightSwitch applications with your own Silverlight custom controls and RIA services

Create a fully-functional application running in the cloud on Windows Azure and SQL Azure

This session is targeted both at individuals with basic programming and technical experience, as well as professional developers.

ADELAIDE – 18 Oct
Microsoft Office Auditorium
L2, Westpac House,
91 King William St,
Adelaide SA 5000

BRISBANE – 19 Oct
Microsoft Office
North Stradbroke, L28
400 George St
Brisbane QLD 4000

CANBERRA – 25 Oct
Microsoft Office
Theatre 1, L2
Walter Turnbull Building, 44 Sydney Ave
Barton ACT 2600

MELBOURNE – 26 Oct
Microsoft Office
Exhibition Room, L5
4 Freshwater Place
Southbank VIC 3006

PERTH – 2 Nov
Microsoft Office
Enex 100 Seminar Room
100 St Georges Terrace
Perth WA 6000

SYDNEY – 10 Nov
Microsoft Office
Bushranger Room, LG
1 Epping Rd
North Ryde NSW 2113

Azure Announcements at Build

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:31:41 GMT

Early this morning at the Build Conference we announced some exciting new Windows Azure tooling and service enhancements.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8
Windows Azure SDK 1.5
Geo-Replication for Windows Azure Storage
Windows Azure Marketplace
Service Bus September Release
Windows Azure Service Management API

Check out the announcement on the Windows Azure team blog.

Cool LightSwitch Extensions from Aussie Developer

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:25:45 GMT

Aussie developer Yann Duran has just published his second Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 extension. The Luminous Controls extension is currently a TextBlock and a GroupLayout control.

This is the second LightSwitch extension Yann's published, the first being Luminous Themes. He's in the process of writing Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Development for Apress with Tim Leung.

Way to go Yann!

Visual Studio 2010 Tips and Tricks Session

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:04:22 GMT

As part of our developer readiness outreach, our Visual Studio Product Manager, Ibrahim Hamza, has organised what sounds like an excellent session on maximising your productivity with Visual Studio 2010.

Learn how to become a Visual Studio coding guru! In this fast-paced session, learn to write code faster than a speeding bullet, leap around large projects in a single bound, and become more powerful than a locomotive with the debugger. We take a wild ride through C# and Visual Basic IDE features in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and indispensible out-of-the-box solutions that will help you get your job done better and faster.

This is an online session that, unusually for this kind of thing, is running in daytime hours in Australia! Might even be worth gathering your development team and making a training afternoon of it.

Tuesday 27 September 2011, 14:00-16:00 AEST

TechEd 2011 Video Encoding Process and Status Update

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:05:00 GMT

Update (12 Sep)

All of the session videos are now up and the high-quality video files are linked to the thession pages - Step 11 is COMPLETE

The encoding process is proceeding apace and last I looked, there are 10 sessions to complete encoding - Step 12 is 93%

I now need to a final pass through the system and find any videos that had errors in encoding. I'll do this over the next few days. If you find a session with missing formats or with incorrect links, feel free to leave a note here or directly on the session page.

Background

A couple of days ago, I blogged about uploading and encoding the session recordings from TechEd Australia 2011.

Some people have had a less than optimal experience streaming the videos. That's because the original WMV file for each session is about 200MB and the Smooth Streaming version isn't available yet.

This post is a little more detail on the process itself, as well as a look at where we're at in the process and how long it's likely to be before all of the sessions are up in all their formats.

The Process

Send the Channel 9 team details of the event so they can create an event landing page
COMPLETE
- Create a banner and a bunch of other artefacts to conform to their standard format and to match the theme of the event
- Get admin access to the site, and then make sure that admin access includes the sub-parts of the site
- Done pre-conference
Record the sessions (all 160 of them)
COMPLETE
- whatever goes to the screen and whatever comes through the speakers to a 640x480 WMV
- Retrieve each raw file from each room after each session and give it to the editor
- Sessions were captured onto a dedicated PC by putting a USB pass-through video capture card directly into the AV stream and using Expression Encoder 4.
- Done
Top and Tail the recorded sessions (all 160 of them)
COMPLETE
- cut out the 10 minutes between when record was hit and when the speaker started and the 10 minutes from when the speaker stopped to when the stop button was hit
- Re-encode
- This was done on-site at TechEd and over the following weekend by one person dedicated to the task (thanks Nick - you're a legend)
Transfer the Edited Files (all 160 of them, about 50GB in total)
COMPLETE
- From the editor to the processing team
Sanity Check 1
COMPLETE
- check that the naming conventions are right and that the files are a sensible size
Retrieve the final decks from the speaker manager
COMPLETE
Upload the Slide Decks to Azure Blob Store (all 160+ of them, about 890MB in total)
COMPLETE
- Use a custom uploading app written by the Channel 9 team
Upload the Edited Files to Azure Blob Store (all 160 of them, about 50GB in total)
COMPLETE
- Use a custom uploading app written by the Channel 9 team
Create a Spreadsheet with
COMPLETE
- Session Details (Code, title, abstract, date and time of session, Speakers)
- Name of the WMV file and the PPTX file (generate a URI based on some assumptions)
Sanity Check 2
COMPLETE
- Check that the URI for each of the files generated in the spreadsheet doesn’t 404 using a link checker I wrote for the purpose
- Fix any mis-named files, either in the blob store or in the spreadsheet
Send the Spreadsheet to the team at Channel 9 so they can create the individual pages for each session
70% Complete
- This step can be repeated any time info changes, new files are added, etc
Encode the WMV file
40% Complete
- multiple other formats
  - Smooth Streaming
  - Low resolution WMV
  - MP4
  - Low resolution MP4
  - WMA
  - MP3
  - JPG thumbnail (multiple sizes) from the first frame of the video
- Upload the encoded formats back to Azure blob storage and get it out to the CDN
- Link to the various formats from the session page when they’re done
- This is all done automatically and asynchronously using background processes. We can monitor the status of the encoding jobs
Deal with exceptions manually
Ongoing
- Speakers needing session recordings removed/edited
- File name changes/errors
Explain the process to as many people as possible
Ongoing
Monitor Twitter and the comments on the sessions themselves so anyone who hasn’t read this can be pointed at it
Ongoing

Where We're At

Steps 8 through 15 are repeated as more and more files become available.

Steps 8-10 (file upload): At the moment, we've uploaded 152 of the video files up to the blob store and 157 of the slide decks, so there are only a few exceptions to track down. We'll call this part pretty much done.

Step 11-12 (update by Channel 9 folk and encoding): The session details for all sessions, the slide decks for all sessions and the video files from Wednesday and Friday at TechEd have been submitted via spreadsheet to Channel 9 and have therefore kicked off the encode process. The encode process is (as you might imagine) fairly processor intensive. There are 4 machines dedicated to encoding Channel 9 videos and each session takes about 2 hours.

Step 13 (Exceptions): There have been a few of these, but dealing with them manually has been pretty straight forward.

Step 14-15 (communication): This post is part of that, but I'm also monitoring the #auteched tag on twitter, the individual comments on the sessions and direct emails to me and the rest of the TechEd team. If you see someone who doesn't understand the process or is wondering about when things will be "finished", please point them here. If you've got questions about any of this, please feel free to leave a comment here and I'll do my best to clarify.

Bottom Line

By my calculation, if the process continues to go as smoothly as it has to date, we should have the rest of the links to the high-quality (but slow to download) videos up by Thursday evening AEST (8 Sep), and the encoding to multiple formats done by Sunday evening AEST (11 Sep). If that changes, I'll update this post.

Visual Studio LightSwitch GDR for SQL Azure

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:00:53 GMT

While we were at TechEd (talking, by the way, about Visual Studio LightSwitch, twice), the LightSwitch team released a GDR (General Distribution Release, aka update) to "resolve an issue encountered when publishing to SQL Azure"

"This is due to a recent SQL Azure server upgrade which caused the version incompatibility"

August 2011 Windows Azure Releases

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:49:00 GMT

While I was overseas, the Windows Azure team announced the availability of the

Grab 'em while they're, if not hot then at least luke warm.

TechEd Australia Session Recordings and Decks

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 08:23:00 GMT

Update 4 Sep 2011 - The videos and slides are beginning to appear on the Channel 9 TechEd Australia 2011 Site.

Once again we've captured all of the main track sessions from TechEd Australia this year. We grabbed whatever video went to the screen and whatever audio went to the speakers. This means we've got almost 170 75-minute sessions to do the following to:

Edit the files to remove the extra time at the beginning and the end then re-encode
Upload the 200+ MB file to an Azure blob
Process the high quality file to produce about 5 other formats including audio only, a couple of MP4 versions, at least one more WMV and some jpg thumbnails, as well as a smooth-streaming version
Upload the slides to the an Azure blob
Create the landing page for each session which will allow you to view the session and/or download any or all of the formats in 3 and 4 above (linked from http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/Tech-Ed-Australia-2011)

As of right now, numbers 1 and 4 are complete. Number 2 is about 10% done, number 3 is yet to start and while the pages are up (5), there's not yet a link to even the slides. Of course, if you were at TechEd Australia, you can log into the Schedule Builder and download slides from there.

I'll keep this blog updated every once in a while with the progress of things.

TechEd Australia LightSwitch Decks and Resources

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 04:00:54 GMT

My TechEd Australia sessions proved to be pretty popular and I had a great time catching up with people afterwards.

The number 1 resource you need for LightSwitch is http://msdn.com/lightswitch

Here are the decks:

Introduction to Visual Studio LightSwitch DEV201

Advanced Solutions with Visual Studio® LightSwitch™ DEV213

LightSwitch Decks from TechEd NZ

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:23:11 GMT

I presented two sessions at TechEd NZ last week and I've attached the decks here for anyone who's interested.

Introducing Visual Studio LightSwitch DEV203

Visual Studio LightSwitch Beyond the Basics DEV308

Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games & Tankster Version 1.0 | Nathan Totten

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:39:00 GMT

This looks like it could be a lot of fun. I think I've figured out what my son and I are going to do in our spare time for the next little while.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games & Tankster Version 1.0 | Nathan Totten

Document Creation and Conversion with the OpenXML SDK and SharePoint 2010 Word Automation Services – Part 2

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:35:35 GMT

A long time ago, I wrote Part 1 of this post, based on the presentation I did at the 2010 SharePoint Conference in Sydney. If you're following along with the code, you may want to review that post so you can set up your development environment to match mine.

To quickly recap, the last post showed how to create Word (OpenXML, docx) documents programmatically and write them to disk using the OpenXML SDK (and therefore without the requirement for Word/Office on the machine creating the documents).

In this part, I'll extend the solution to write the documents to a document library in SharePoint and then use Word Automation Services to automatically convert the docx files to PDF format.

Setup

To follow along with this walkthrough without changes, setup your SharePoint instance (at http://localhost) as follows:

Create a document library called "Created Docs" in the root site
Create a document library called "Converted Docs" in the root site

If you use a remote server, and/or a different site or library names, you'll need to adjust some of the URI and path strings in the code below to make it work.

Writing to a SharePoint Library

Carrying on from last time, wire up the click event of the CreateOneSharePointDocumentButton:

Click event handler
 private void CreateOneDocumentOnSharePointButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    gen.CreateOneDocumentOnSharePoint();
}
 

Generate a stub for the CreateOneDocumentOnSharePoint() method in the DocGenerator class using the Ctrl+. technique made possible by the Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools.

Switch to and add a using statement to the DocGenerator class to give you access to the SharePoint Client Libraries - giving it an alias will help disambiguate the File class later:

 using SPC = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;
 

Using the SharePoint Client Libraries, it's very easy to write documents to a document library, and there's no need to write a document to a local drive. This means we'll use a different overload of the OpenXML SDK's WordprocessingDocument.Create() method that writes, not to a file, but to a MemoryStream.

CreateOneDocumentOnSharePoint
 internal void CreateOneDocumentOnSharePoint()
{
  SPC.ClientContext clientContext = new SPC.ClientContext("http://localhost");
  string fileUrl = "/Created Docs/MyVeryVeryCoolDoc.docx";
 
  sw.Reset();
  sw.Start();
 
  using (MemoryStream ms = gen.CreatePackage())
  {
    ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
    SPC.File.SaveBinaryDirect(clientContext, fileUrl, ms, true);
  }
 

In this code, you create a new SharePoint.Client.ClientContext that gives access to the site (in this case at http://localhost, but if you've got things set up differently, change it here).

Create an overload of the CreatePackage() method in the DocumentCreator class that creates and populates a MemoryStream:

CreatPackage Overload
 internal MemoryStream CreatePackage()
{
 
  MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
  using (WordprocessingDocument package = 
    WordprocessingDocument.Create
    (ms, WordprocessingDocumentType.Document))
  {
    CreateParts(package);
  }
 
  return ms;
 
}
 

Move the pointer to the start of the MemoryStream and call the File.SaveBinaryDirect() method passing in the ClientContext, a string indicating where the file should be written, the stream and a boolean that tells SharePoint whether or not to overwrite an existing file with the same name.

Running the app and clicking the One document in SharePoint button shows that it's very fast - in my case 102ms

Writing lots of documents is fast too - add an event handler to the CreateOneSharePointDocumentButton:

Click Event Handler
 private void CreateManyDocumentsOnSharePointButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  gen.CreateManyDocumentsOnSharePointInParallel((int)NumberOfDocumentsToCreate.Value);
 
}
 

And add a CreateManyDocumentsOnSharePointInParallel() method that uses a Parallel.For() loop to call CreatePackage() and File.SaveBinaryDirect() for as many files as you create:

Create lots of SharePoint Docs
 internal void CreateManyDocumentsOnSharePointInParallel(int NumberOfDocs)
{
  SPC.ClientContext clientContext = new SPC.ClientContext("http://localhost");
  string fileUrl = "/Created Docs/MyEvenCoolerDoc{0:D5}.docx";
 
  sw.Reset();
  sw.Start();
 
  Parallel.For(0, NumberOfDocs, i =>
  {
 
    using (MemoryStream ms = gen.CreatePackage())
    {
      ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
      SPC.File.SaveBinaryDirect(clientContext, string.Format(fileUrl, i), ms, true);
    }
 
  });
 
  sw.Stop();
 
  System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(string.Format(
      "Wrote {3} documents to SharePoint ({1}{2}) in {0} ms (using parallel processing)",
      sw.ElapsedMilliseconds,
      clientContext.Url,
      fileUrl,
      NumberOfDocs));
 
}
 

This is also pretty fast - in my case 40ms per document.

Navigating to the document library shows all those documents sitting just where you'd expect to see them:

Converting Word Documents to a Fixed Format (PDF or XPS)

Up until now, we've not had to use Word (or any other Office client) as all we've been doing is generating documents, not rendering them. Just like you can create an HTML document without requiring a browser, it's perfectly valid to create a Word document (or any other OpenXML format document) without using Word.

However, to view the document, or to create a fixed version of it like PDF or XPS, it's necessary to render it. Up until the release of SharePoint 2010, the highest fidelity way to do this was to open the document in Word. Of course, doing that on the server was fraught with difficulty. Word is not designed to be a server-side tool - it throws (sometimes modal) dialogs, it spends a lot of resources on updating the screen and it's not optimised for multi-processor, large memory scenarios. When there is a user interacting with Word though, the bottleneck is rarely the computer.

The SharePoint team addressed this problem with the Word Automation Services feature in SharePoint 2010 (standard edition and higher). Word Automation Services is the client code from Word with the UI bits stripped out and optimised to run as a server process. All of the rendering engine is available for SharePoint to use without any of the issues (both technical and from a licensing point of view) of using Word on a server. There's lots of great info on Word Automation Services on MSDN and elsewhere. Here's the list of resources I provided in the first post in this series:

Word Automation Services (WAS) document conversion jobs run as as an asynchronous server-side job that can either be scheduled automatically (for example, when a document is placed in a folder) or programmatically. Either way, the job won't start immediately, just the next time the WAS scheduler runs. The frequency of the scheduler running is set in Central Administration - see the links above for details on how to set it up. I set it to the minimum interval - one minute.

Interacting programmatically with the service is pretty straightforward, but there are two gotchas:

the .NET libraries are 3.5 only, so the project you create must be a .NET 3.5 project, and
the calls will fail (with cryptic exceptions) if it's not a 64-bit call, so you must target either x64 or Any processor type, not x86.

Create a new console application and make sure that the target framework is 3.5.

Open the Visual Studio Configuration Manager dialog by dropping down the Solution Configurations drop-down on the Visual Studio Standard toolbar (or choosing Configuration Manager from the Build menu):

Next, add a Solution Platform:

to target Any CPU (or x64)

Now you're ready to start building.

Converting a single document to PDF

Add references to the Microsoft.SharePoint and Microsoft.Office.Word.Server assemblies.

Add using statements for those assemblies:

 using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.Office.Word.Server.Conversions;
 

Add a couple of static string properties to the class that you can adjust to suit the way you've got your SharePoint setup configured:

 // If you manually installed Word Automation Services, then replace the name
// in the following line with the name that you assigned to the service when
// you installed it.
static string cWordServicesName = "Word Automation Services";
static string siteUrl = "http://localhost";
 

Now you can initiate the conversion of a single document:

Convert a single document
 private static void SingleConv()
{
  using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite(siteUrl))
  {
    ConversionJob job = new ConversionJob(cWordServicesName);
    job.UserToken = spSite.UserToken;
    job.Settings.UpdateFields = true;
    job.Settings.OutputFormat = SaveFormat.PDF;
    job.AddFile(siteUrl + "/Created%20Docs/MyAwesomeDoc.docx",
        siteUrl + "/Converted%20Docs/MyAwesomeDoc.pdf");
    job.Start();
    Console.WriteLine("Job ID: {0} started", job.JobId);
    Console.WriteLine("Press the any key ...");
    Console.ReadKey();
  }
}
 

There are a few things to note here.

Firstly, you get a reference to the Site using the SharePoint libraries, not the SharePoint Client libraries that we used to write the Word docs to the list in the first place.

Next, you need to pass a user token to the new ConversionJob, and you get that from the SPSite user token.

Third, you specify the output format using the SaveFormat enumeration.

Finally, remember the service is performed asynchronously and so although you get a Job ID back, you don't get any more information about the job status (more on that when we do bulk conversions)

Converting documents to PDF en-masse

Converting whole libraries at once is also very easy. The ConversionJob class has an AddLibrary() method that takes as parameters a source and destination SPList object.

Converting whole libraries
 private static void BulkConv()
{
  using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite(siteUrl))
  {
    Console.WriteLine("Starting conversion job");
    ConversionJob job = new ConversionJob(cWordServicesName);
    job.UserToken = spSite.UserToken;
    job.Settings.UpdateFields = true;
    job.Settings.OutputFormat = SaveFormat.PDF;
    job.Settings.OutputSaveBehavior = SaveBehavior.AlwaysOverwrite;
    SPList listToConvert = spSite.RootWeb.Lists["Created Docs"];
    SPList listToPopulate = spSite.RootWeb.Lists["Converted Docs"];
    job.AddLibrary(listToConvert, listToPopulate);
    job.Start();
    Console.WriteLine("Bulk conversion job {0} started", job.JobId);
    ConversionJobStatus status = new ConversionJobStatus(cWordServicesName,
        job.JobId, null);
    Console.WriteLine("Number of documents in conversion job: {0}", status.Count);
    while (true)
    {
      System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000);
 
      status.Refresh();
      if (status.Count == status.Succeeded + status.Failed)
      {
        Console.WriteLine("{2} Completed, Successful: {0}, Failed: {1}",
            status.Succeeded, status.Failed, DateTime.Now);
        break;
      }
      Console.WriteLine("{2} In progress, Successful: {0}, Failed: {1}",
          status.Succeeded, status.Failed, DateTime.Now);
    }
 
    Console.ReadKey();
  }
}
 

Checking the status of the job is straightforward (as long as you have the JobId - a GUID uniquely identifying this conversion job). The ConversionJobStatus object holds information about the conversion job including how many documents are to be converted, how many have been converted successfully and how many have failed. Calling the Refresh() method gets the most up-to-date status and you can use that to poll for completion. Remember that jobs only start every <n> minutes, where n is a setting in SharePoint Central Administration

The result is a SharePoint list full of PDF files, created without ever needing to open Word.

Conclusion

The combination of the OpenXML SDK and Word Automation Services makes server-side document creation simple, scalable and efficient. This is definitely a tool worth adding to your arsenal.

Source Code

I've zipped up the two solutions - the document creation (.NET 4.0) WinForms project and the document conversion (.NET3.5) project for you to download and play with. Notice that they are NOT production ready - they're illustrative only. Use them at your peril, your mileage may vary, contents may be hot no guarantees etc … you know the drill.

Document Creation Solution Download (241kB)
Document Conversion Solution Download (115kB)

Counting the number of sections in an OpenXML Document

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 03:54:00 GMT

1/4/11 - Updated a couple of images and some of the code explanation

Adam Cogan asked me a question the other day that asked (among other things) "How do you know if a doc has multiple sections?"

In Word, of course, you can break a document up into sections by inserting a section break from the Breaks button in the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab:

It turns out that counting these programmatically is really easy using the OpenXML SDK 2.0 (download)

I created a new console application, added a reference to DocumentFormat.OpenXML and WindowsBase and used this code:

Count Sections in Word Docx
 using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO.Packaging;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Office2010.Word;
 
namespace CountSections
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      if (args.Length != 1)
      {
        Console.WriteLine("Usage: CountSections <filename>");
      }
      else
      {
        using (WordprocessingDocument d =
            WordprocessingDocument.Open(args[0], false))
        {
          Console.WriteLine("Found {0} section(s)",
              d.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.Descendants().
              OfType<SectionProperties>().Count()
              );
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Press any key ...");
        Console.ReadKey();
      }
    }
  }
}
 

In it I take the filename passed as an argument and open it ReadOnly (line 22-23). I then find the number of sections using the typed enumerator (lines 26-27)

I also added the path to a file in the Command Line Arguments edit box in the Debug tab of the project Properties so there's a file being passed in when I press F5:

Running the program gives the answer very quickly:

Cool huh?

Sample file with 2 sections Download

Storytelling - A Moth-eaten theme

Andrew Coates [MSFT] — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:54:56 GMT

One of the most effective ways to get a message, any message, across is to use stories. For some reason the human brain appears to be wired to be good at remembering and regurgitating stories. I like to begin presentations with a story that’s somehow relevant and am always on the lookout for a good story to add to my repertoire.

The best stories seem to be those told from a personal perspective - either something that happened to you or something you witnessed. Good stories also stir emotions, both in the storyteller and the listener.

This week I heard two stories that did just that. I’ve been a listener to the Moth Podcast for some time now, and have always enjoyed the mix of professional storytelling with deeply personal and evocative content. Two of the stories I heard this week though moved me as much or more than any other I’ve heard.

The first, told by a comedian, wasn’t funny. The second, told by someone who plays the blues, was uplifting. Both made either made me laugh or cry - literally out loud.

Listen to

and then tell me whether you experienced the same thing.

While you’re there, subscribe to the Moth podcast either in iTunes or via their RSS feed.

Andrew Coates ::: MSFT

Microsoft Agile Tools Team doing Agile

Scott Guthrie, David Campbell and Mark Russinovich at the Cricket

Estimating and prioritising a product backlog in Sydney on 9 Feb

Australian and New Zealand SharePoint Conferences 2012 - Call for Speakers Closes 1 December

SPEAKERS

Voice of Customer / Case Studies

Windows Azure BizSpark Startup Camp in Brisbane 2-4 December

Free Art for your WP7 App

SQL Server Denali Sydney Breakfast Briefing 1 December

LightSwitch Star Contest - Win an ASUS Laptop

Talking LightSwitch Shop with Richard

SwitchedOn LightSwitch and Azure briefings for Wellington and Auckland

SwitchedOn Briefing Slide Decks - LightSwitch and Azure

LightSwitch and Azure Around Australia in October and November

The Power of LightSwitch on Windows Azure

Session 1: The Power of LightSwitch on Windows Azure 8:00 - 9:00am

Session 2: Discover the Windows Azure Platform 9:30 – 12:00pm

Session 3: Build your first Azure application using Visual Studio LightSwitch – with (almost) no code! 1:00 – 3:00pm

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Update (12 Sep)

Background

The Process

Where We're At

Bottom Line

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August 2011 Windows Azure Releases

TechEd Australia Session Recordings and Decks

TechEd Australia LightSwitch Decks and Resources

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Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games & Tankster Version 1.0 | Nathan Totten

Document Creation and Conversion with the OpenXML SDK and SharePoint 2010 Word Automation Services – Part 2

Setup

Writing to a SharePoint Library

Converting Word Documents to a Fixed Format (PDF or XPS)

Converting a single document to PDF

Converting documents to PDF en-masse

Conclusion

Source Code

Counting the number of sections in an OpenXML Document

Storytelling - A Moth-eaten theme

Session 1: The Power of LightSwitch on Windows Azure
8:00 - 9:00am

Session 2: Discover the Windows Azure Platform
9:30 – 12:00pm

Session 3: Build your first Azure application using Visual Studio LightSwitch – with (almost) no code!
1:00 – 3:00pm