Chris Johnson

Adios Microsoft…

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:57:00 GMT

*** UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for all your kind words and wishes in my new role. I have decided to move my blogging to http://www.looselytyped.net where things will stay much the same but with a slightly more personal twist. ***

My last day at Microsoft will be November the 1st 2011.

Starting November 2nd I will be moving to open Provoke Solution’s brand new branch/subsidiary in Seattle, WA, USA. (Press Release here: http://www.provoke.co.nz/about/13-10-11.html)

Provoke are are Microsoft Gold Partner headquartered in my home country New Zealand. I will lead their expansion in the US with the first office in Seattle, Washington and aim to grow their US business into a highly successful and vibrant Microsoft partner focusing on systems integration (SI) and packaged software (ISV).

I’m not leaving SharePoint. Not by a long way! The new venture will focus will be on SharePoint implementations and custom development projects.

This was one of the toughest decisions of my professional career, but I am sure it wont be the last.

Microsoft has provided me with phenomenal opportunities over the last 9 years and I have grown personally and professionally in ways I never would have imagined when I joined.

Some memories of my time here….

I joined Microsoft New Zealand in Aug 2002 as a dev consultant helping customers build solutions on our stack. Not long after that I started working on Content Management Server 2002 projects, which naturally led me to SharePoint. (all roads lead to SharePoint after all!) At that time the two were very separate products and customers wanted to build Intranets like sites they did with CMS02, but they wanted SharePoint collab capabilities at the same time. There were lots of “creative” ways of doing this. Needless to say I am glad the products came together eventually and Intranets around the world rejoiced :)

I got to travel the world for various projects and training events. I will never forget my first MGB event in New Orleans with Bill Gates. Steve B came out swinging to Eye of the Tiger and ran around chest bumping and high fiving people for about 20mins. I honestly thought he was going to die on stage he looked so exhausted. I just loved the passion and commitment and enjoyed it a lot. This was officially my first proper Kool-Aid moment … and ill never forget it.

(MGB pics … 25,000 ppl strong)

After some time in New Zealand I started doing some work around the Asia-Pacific region around the Office and SharePoint 2007 launch. This was awesome and got to visit Japan, Korea, Australia, Singapore and India in a mega 3 week training tour. It was a really fun product launch and people were lapping up the new stuff. I joined the SharePoint Ranger team covering the APAC area and got to work on some really gnarly deployments that we needed to ensure worked out right. This team is sponsored and paid for by the SharePoint Product Management Group (PMG) in Redmond, and this is what ultimately led me to Redmond.

I moved with my wife Vicki to Redmond in May 2007 to join the SharePoint engineering team working on O14, what became SharePoint 2010. It was great fun and I was able to work on our “Virtual Lists” that got named functionality aka External Lists built on Business Connectivity Services or the BDC at the time. I also got to work on things like allowing devs to install SharePoint on Windows 7, the Client Side Object Model, Visual Studio tooling efforts with amazing people like Mike Morton, VSeWSS tools and a few other things. It was an incredible learning experience see an engineering engine that is part of the overall Office group produce and support software used by literally 100s of millions of people. Its very hard to explain the scale of the operation and its hard to truly appreciate the effort put in by the people that work on the project unless you have seen it in motion.

Not long after we hit code complete on O14 (about 20 months after I joined) I moved to the SharePoint Marketing team. In my field role I had worked with Arpan and Richard and new it was the right place for me. I started in early 2009 and got the opportunity to help launch SharePoint 2010 through efforts ranging from training to press to keynote demos to all the things we build to help partners and MS field to sell SharePoint all over the world. Its staggering the monumental effort a billion+ dollar product launch is and its amazing to see the whole group working feverishly on making sure it’s a success. Again, being part of it is something I will never forget.

The Next Phase…

Now it’s time to jump into the next phase of my career, building a business. I want to build on the wonderful experiences I have had with SharePoint to date and become part of the most vibrant ecosystem around any product I have ever seen.

I’ll definitely be a part of the SharePoint community via various SharePoint events and on @LoungeFlyZ via Twitter of course. I hope to bump into all my friends and acquaintances … and of course I will be at SharePoint Conference 2012 !!!!,. but in a slightly more relaxed mode as an attendee this time :)

I have made some great friends as part of this journey and I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunities I have had here.

Till next time…

-CJ.

2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (SP1)

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:29:28 GMT

Just a heads up for those that use our demo VM sets that we produce.

We just released a new version 2010-10.

In a nutshell here are the big changes over the 2010-7 VM set we published previously:

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Office and SharePoint SP1's
Lync 2010 (Client and Server)
Exchange Server 2010 SP1
Project Server SP1

Download: 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (SP1)

Enjoy!

-CJ.

Unsung Hero Winners Announced

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:19:01 GMT

We received tonnes of incredible and inspiring nominations for your unsung heroes of the SharePoint community. We sat down, read and re-read them all over and over … and finally have a list of the winners we can announce! We decided we couldn’t just award 10 prizes, so we lifted the cap to 13 given how amazing these folks contributions are.

Here are the winners (in no particular order):

CA Callahan
Gary Payne
Joy Earles
Nele Lekens
Wes Hackett
Alon Havivi
Bonnie Surma
Kerri Abraham
Maron Man
Cathy Dew
Lori Gowin
Dan Usher
Victor Chataboon

We have contacted each of the winners and will be offering them one SharePoint Conference 2011 general registration conference pass (Approximate Retail Value: $1,199.00).

Additionally, these folks will be helping out in the Hands on Labs area of the conference, so if see them make sure you congratulate them and show them your appreciation for all the work they do in the SharePoint Community.

Congratulations to all the winners!! and we cant wait to see you at the conference!!

-Chris.

Send an unsung hero to SPC…

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:28:21 GMT

unsung hero

Part of Speech: n
Definition: a person who makes a substantive yet unrecognized contribution

We have 10 full SharePoint Conference 2011 (SPC) passes (valued at $1,199.00!!! each) to give to deserving individuals who would like to attend SPC 2011 and who are prepared to help the conference in a small way in return (some hours helping attendees in the Hands on Lab room).

We want you to nominate someone you know who has made a substantive yet unrecognized contribution and been going the extra mile for the SharePoint community. This should be someone thinking of others always, someone keen to go the extra distance and someone you feel never asks for anything in return.

We want to thank your unsung hero!

Here is how you enter:

Email spc@microsoft.com with the subject “My Unsung Hero Nomination” by 11:59 p.m. on the 31^st of July 2011.
Describe why the unsung hero deserves this prize in 100 words or less.
Your Unsung hero’s Name
Your Unsung hero’s Email address

We will judge the entries and pick 10 individuals who we will ask if they would like a full conference pass to SPC11. In return we will ask them for 2 hours of time per day at the event to help attendees with hands on labs.

We want dedicated and passionate individuals who love to help others. We want to reward them with the chance to attend SPC in person and see for themselves the spectacle that is the SharePoint community in full swing.

You can Nominate up to 5 of your unsung heroes! (separate email entries for each please)

Here are the Official Contest Rules

Thanks & have fun nominating those who you think help our community and don’t get rewarded for their efforts.

-CJ.

SharePoint Conference 2011– Content Planning Process–A glimpse inside.

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:15:05 GMT

I had a chat with @jthake yesterday on Twitter about the process we go through when planning content for the SharePoint Conference later this year. Based on that I decided to do this post to help give insight into how we go about planning for a conference of this magnitude. I hope this is interesting and that you come away not thinking that we ask for some sessions, throw them in a list & call it done :)

With over 240 breakout sessions + Hands on Labs etc. There is A LOT of preparation that goes into putting on an event like this for thousands and thousands of attendees.

I promised Jeremy I would blog out some of the process we go through to help folks get an understanding of how something like this works.

There are really two main high level factors that influence the content at a conference like this, I’ll chat about how we think about these below:

Attendee interests and needs
Conference Goals

Attendee interests and needs
When you plan an event this size for a product as diverse as SharePoint its important to realize that the attendees that come to the show are from all walks of life, professions, countries, disciplines, and backgrounds. Some are experts and some come to find out about what SharePoint is. We get both ends of the product knowledge spectrum and we strive to keep that in mind throughout the content planning process. This is paramount in ensuring we meet attendees needs.

Conference Goals
At the beginning of the process we sit down and work out what the goals for the conference are. What do we want people to walk away thinking about when they leave? What do we need to ensure attendees learn about to be successful?

A lot of these are distilled from the many channels of feedback and input we get from people around the world. Here is a sampling of the channels we are constantly monitoring: Customer feedback (we have lots of channels for this), partner feedback, our Support group feedback, MS account team feedback, Microsoft Consulting Services & the internet (blogs, wikis, social media etc…) We sit down and look at what is common across all of these channels and work out what are the common themes amongst all of these.

For the SharePoint Conference 2011 we distilled this all down into three simple themes:

Best Practices
Cloud
Core Learning

Best Practices: SharePoint 2010 has been in the market for quite a while now, we are throwing a 10th Birthday for SharePoint at Disneyland at SPC11 and there are a lot of things about every facet of SharePoint that everyone has learnt about how to best plan, implement and manage it. We want to make sure we share as much of these real world best practices are shared as much as possible to ensure everyone is successful.

Cloud: Whether you like it or not cloud computing is a hot topic and even if you or your organization isn't planning on moving to the cloud for a while there is a lot of demand from folks who want to understand how to get ready for it. Then there are the folks that are actually doing it and want to know about how they should take advantage of it now etc… This goal isn't just about Office 365, but cloud computing across all sorts of products.

Core Learning: SharePoint is an expansive product and I personally learn something about it everyday. There are a lot of people who come to the SharePoint Conference purely to learn about how to do various things with SharePoint. We have a lot of people who want the raw nuts and bolts content of how something works or how to plan, build, deploy or manage SharePoint.

Ok, so you have conference goals what’s next?
Now we form a group (v-team) across the SharePoint, Office, DPE & Project teams that “own” the content. We do this because everyone has their area of expertise and knows how to meet the conference goals for their area. Internally we divide up into focus areas such as Developer, IT Pro, Business User, Search, BI etc… and start working on what the goals are for that area given the overall goals. We work out a heat map of relative priorities stack up for the conference goals applicable to that area and this gives us a reference point to work with throughout the rest of the process. For example we might decide that in the Developer focus group we are going to do roughly 30% Cloud, 50% Best Practices and 20% Core Learning content (these are not the actual number BTW). This varies by focus area.

At this point the team starts working on what high level goals are for their area and how they map to the conference goals. At the end of this process you typically have a list of high-level topics you need to address in order to meet those goals. For example in the Developer area we know we need to talk about Application Lifecycle Management because it is a big topic of interest from our customers and partners. Another example might be Internet Site scalability, because our customers are using SharePoint more and more for delivering massive scale internet sites.

So now we have a high level topic list for each area, what's next?

Session Planning
This is when we start to formulate actual sessions. Typically this starts by working out what sessions we need for each topic. For example: we might decide we need an “Introduction to Developing for SharePoint” session.

We do this for each topic until we have a fully fleshed out list of sessions we think we need in order to meet the goals.

This is harder than it sounds. There are other factors like session allocation numbers. As the content owner for the conference I get to also work out how many breakouts we can have based on lots of things like conference space, seating arrangements, attendee numbers, attendee profile etc etc etc.… At the end of this I give each area owner an allocation number of the number of sessions they are allowed.

Right! So now we have a list of the sessions we think we need in order to meet our goals. What’s next?

At this point we turn to our experts to help us with sessions. There are three major groups we call upon for this:

External experts
Microsoft
Customers

External experts: For SPC we run what we call a private External Call for Content. This where we invite experts and trusted advisors to submit ideas on various topics. For SPC11 we invited MVPs, MCMs and select other subject matter experts that our content team identified. We ask them to submit topics via a form on the internet and all those submissions go into a database.

Microsoft: We also run an internal call for content where we invite experts from Microsoft around the world to also submit ideas. We also talk with our engineering and support teams to submit session ideas on hot button topics that they are seeing from customer and partner support calls etc…

Customers: We have someone on our content team who is specifically tasked with finding customers who have great examples of projects or things they are doing with SharePoint to tell their story. Again, that all tie back to our overall goals for the conference.

Once this “gathering” phase of the process is complete we have a HUGE database of session ideas. Each tagged and with metadata indicating how it bubbles up to the overall goals for the conference. At this point I like to pull it all into Excel and use Pivot Tables and Slicers to slice and dice the data into all sorts of interesting facts and figures. This gives us a good view into content we received.

For example: We had over 700 content submission ideas (external + internal) in total. 700!! Its an amazing number and just goes to show the interest and passion people have for this stuff. It was amazing to see.

Now the real work begins :)

Once we have all our session submissions we pull them into a SharePoint list (naturally :) who wouldn’t?!?!). Then our content team can slice and dice those as they wish to see what kinds of things people have submitted.

Each person works slightly differently at this point. Some (like me) to go through the sessions submissions and bucket them into my high level topics for my area. Others like to go the other way and scan for sessions of interest.

This is A LOT of work. We read the title and abstract for every session and evaluate it. Will it be a good session? Does it map to the conference and area goals? Is the speaker good? What has the reaction been to a session like this at past conferences? Is it new content or old? There are lots of things we think about when evaluating them.

After a lot of work we end up with an idea of what sessions from the call for content will be suitable given our goals.

We also end up with a LOT of gaps. These are sessions we know we need but we didn’t get input on. This typically happens because it is a new topic, something only we are seeing via our support channels or something that doesn’t typically jump to mind. We need to go and work out what that sesssion will look like and who might be a good expert on that to deliver it.

Ok, so now we have a rough session list for the conference.

Review!, Review!, Review!
Next we start reviewing all the sessions and scrutinize everyone one in horrifying detail :)

We do an all day meeting with everyone in one room for the day where we have each area owner present information about their area, the goals and the sessions they have. This is where everyone in the room gets to critique the sessions, ask questions & provide feedback. This is where we start to see overlaps, duplicates and, most importantly, gaps that are not covered across the conference.

We sit back and make sure that the content makes sense when seen together as a whole. We fiercely critique our sessions, do they meet the goals, are they going to resonate with attendees, are the speakers the best experts we can find for that specific topic, are they great speakers & most importantly will the attendee get ultimate value from it? etc… It’s a brutal process and after the all day meeting I personally felt totally fried and ready to go to bed, my brain was spinning :)

Once we have our content review complete we ask people to work on the sessions based on the feedback they have received.

Scrub, Scrub, Scrub
Usually at this point we are pretty close to having a final list of sessions. But there is a lot of work to do yet. We obsess over the details at this point. Finding speakers, tweaking titles, tweaking abstracts etc… We work as a team to make sure we still have the right coverage of sessions and topics. We also look for speakers who have too many sessions. We don’t want someone delivering too many and not doing a great job on all of them, so this is important too.

(Note: This is the step we are at in the SPC 11 content planning right now … we are close to finishing the scrubbing)

Finalize
Once each area owner is certain they have the right content I get to sit down and take one final look over all the content plans. I make sure every session bubbles up to our goals, makes sense in the context of the other content at the conference & most importantly will the attendee love it?

Invite speakers
Next we invite speakers. Sometimes if the session was originally from the call for content we invite that speaker to talk on the subject (usually the abstract and title are different at this point given the iterations and scrubbing done). Sometimes we invite speakers who didn’t submit a session on that topic because we know they are the best person to speak for that session.

At this point there is usually some speaker churn. Some can’t make it or have other commitments for example.

Session development
I wont get into this topic in this post, but its worth mentioning that there is a whole other process for working with speakers to develop their content, review it, refine it and make sure it meets the goals of the sessions. This is another huge amount of work multiplied by ~240 :)

Finally … we get to deliver the session at the conference :)

Summary

I hope this gives you some insight into the process we have chosen to plan and build out the content for the SharePoint Conference 2011. There is a lot that goes on behind closed doors and I hope this has unveiled that in an enlightening way :)

So … in summary … We start at the overall needs of our audience, we work towards goals for the conference, we build a team of people responsible for delivering content for their area to those goals, we ask experts internally and externally what session they think would work & then we work REALLY hard on working out what actual sessions will deliver on the goals & meet the attendees needs.

It’s all an incredible amount of work that really is not very visible from the outside. But there is one thing that is very very visible on Oct 3rd – 6th 2011 … the conference & the content. We the content team can’t wait to see everyone at the conference enjoying the fruits of our endless planning.

We cant wait for SPC… and hope to see you there too :)

Thanks,

-Chris.

SPC Content Owner 2011

Part 2: “Headless” Authentication with SharePoint Online and the Client Side Object Model

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:26:48 GMT

This is a continuation from my last post: Authentication with SharePoint Online and the Client Side Object Model

Part 1 tackled how to authenticate and get data from SharePoint Online (SPO) in a client application like a Windows application. This included popping up a browser in a dialog window where the user could enter their Office 365 credentials, and then attaching the authentication cookies Office 365 issued to the SharePoint Client Side Object Model (CSOM) to query to your SPO site.

This works great for when a user is involved, but its not a good solution if you client code is a service or another application where a user isn’t present.

To deal with this scenario the code needs to effectively BE the user and login on their behalf.

To do this this sample queries the Office 365 STS directly using the Windows Identity Foundation (WIF). WIF helps with managing the security tokens and requests to the STS.

Note: To run this sample you need to have the WIF runtime installed from here.

At a high level this sample:

Uses WIF to login the user with the Office 365 STS
Extracts the Authentication Cookies from the response (“FedAuth” and “rtfa”)
Constructs a CookieContainer with those cookies
Attaches the CookieContainer to the CSOM web request
Calls your SPO site and returns the Title property of the site

Usage: Compile the project and then run the ExampleCmdLine.exe like this:

ExampleCmdLine.exe <spo site url> <spo username> <spo password>

e.g. ExampleCmdLine.exe https://chjohn.sharepoint.com cj@chjohn.onmicrosoft.com pass@word1

PS: those are not really my credentials … don’t bother trying to run that example :)

Note: Its important you use HTTPS in your site url. It wont work otherwise.

Credits: I am not clever enough to work this stuff out. I need all the help I can get. There were two people instrumental in putting this together. I simply took from their examples and put it into a simple example/package and tweaked a few things.

Steve Peschka. Excellent posts on this topic, here here and here
Wictor Wilén. Did a talk on this topic a while back, and who’s presentation and sample code is here

Before you can run this you will need to install:

Unzip, compile and run from a command prompt. All things going well it will return you the title of your SPO site.

Download:

Thanks,

-Chris.

Authentication with SharePoint Online and the Client Side Object Model

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:39:46 GMT

With the Office 365 Beta opening not long ago people are starting to test the waters with regards to custom development and seeing what they can do etc… We put out the SharePoint Online developers guide here to try and assist with that: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh147180.aspx

However, one of the topics not addressed directly in that paper is how you can use the Client Side Object Model (CSOM) to interact with SharePoint Online. You might want to do this if you are writing an application that wants to store or talk with data stored in SharePoint Online for example.

The CSOM allows you to do this in an easy to use manner by providing a library you can use to make calls to SharePoint, however, by default the CSOM doesn’t handle SharePoint Online’s authentication system.

To address this gap we have published a paper and accompanying code sample projects to assist with showing how to accomplish this.

WhitePaper: Remote Authentication in SharePoint Online Using Claims-Based Authentication

Code Sample: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Remote-Authentication-in-b7b6f43c

In short, the code sample does the following:

Pops a browser dialog to authenticate you against SharePoint Online

Captures the various authentication cookies required and attaches them to a CSOM context.

Uses that CSOM context to request the SharePoint Online site’s “Title” property and writes it out.

Note: If you want to use SharePoint web services then you would need to do almost the exact same thing, except attach the auth cookies to the web request instead. Below is some code snippets to help with this:

// get the cookie collection
CookieCollection authCookie = ClaimClientContext.GetAuthenticatedCookies(targetSite, 925, 525);

listWS.Lists list = new listWS.Lists();

// attach the cookies to the List WS request
list.CookieContainer = new CookieContainer();
list.CookieContainer.Add(authCookie);

// execute the query
System.Xml.XmlNode nodes = list.GetListItems(listName, viewName, query, viewFields, rowLimit, null, string.Empty);

We hope this helps!

Thanks,

-Chris.

SharePoint 2010 SDK – Now with more SharePoint Online!

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:25:22 GMT

Our fantastic documentation team released an update to the SharePoint SDK today that includes a raft of important things for prospective SharePoint Online developers.

In particular is the SharePoint Online General Reference topic.

Additionally the SDK is now marked up with “Available in SharePoint Online” tags so you can see if a particular feature is available in SPO. Not everything is tagged this way during the SPO Beta … so stay tuned as we get more detailed in future releases of the SDK.

E.g:

Big ups to AJ and team for getting this out. Very very useful!

-CJ.

Real World Branding with SharePoint 2010 Publishing Sites

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:49:08 GMT

Want to learn how to build an internet facing web site on SharePoint 2010?

A newly released Whitepaper from Andrew Connell and Randy Drisgill provides and end to end, step by step walk through of how to go about planning, designing and implementing your project.

This is a fantastic resource for everyone going SP WCM development, written by two of the most experienced MVPs we have.

Real World Branding with SharePoint 2010 Publishing Sites

Announcing SharePoint Easy Setup for Developers

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:42:00 GMT

Starting today developers can download a new set of pre-packaged tools that help developers easily get started with SharePoint 2010 development by automating the provisioning of a developer workstation using Windows 7, SharePoint & associated tools.

Written in Windows PowerShell these scripts will install and configure all the pre-requisites & products to get you up and running with SharePoint development.

Additionally they will download evaluation copies of the products it installs (or use fully licensed product bits you supply), install them either locally or in a user supplied Windows 7 VHD & set that VHD up for dual boot using the Windows 7 VHD native boot feature. It also allows you to configure what products are installed via a configuration file, so you can add or remove products.

All the source is included for your use. If a particular aspect of the setup isn’t right for your requirements then you have the ability to change it. A good example of this might be to configure the SharePoint installation to fit your organizations standard deployment.

Out of the box it will help you install:

SharePoint Server 2010 + pre-requisites (Standalone)
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition
Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio
Expression Studio 4 Ultimate
Open XML SDK
Visual Studio SDK
Visual Studio SharePoint Power Tools
Office 2010 Professional Plus
SharePoint Designer 2010
Visio 2010

Download the kit

Walk Through Guide

I did this just now and here is how it works…

After installation of the kit you will see a introduction screen like the one below:

The kit also installed the set of scripts in the following location:

C:\SPEasySetup\Labs\GettingStarted\Source (This is the default install location)

Before continuing review the Config.xml file.

The Config.xml file specifies 3 main things:

The type of SharePoint product to install
Any other applications to install
VHD locations (if you want to set up VHD boot)

In my case I have set the location to a Windows 7 Ultimate sys-prepped VHD file I supplied. This is the source VHD that will be used. The script makes a copy of the source VHD at a location you choose. I specified I want my copy of the VHD to boot into at d:\Win7.VHD

For more information on the Config.xml file, refer to the “GettingStarted.docx” included in the kit.

Once you are happy with your Config.xml setup you can kick off the build of your machine.

Right click Run.bat and choose Run as Administrator

The first thing the script will do is download all the pre-reqs and applications needed for the installation. This can take quite a while depending on your connection. Hey, we said it was an easy script … not a fast one :) Note: Running the script a second time wont download the products again.

Once everything is downloaded you will need to specify if you want to install on your current host [H] or a new VHD [V]. If you pick [H]ost then it will attempt to install all the products locally on your machine. If you pick [V]HD then it will make a copy of the VHD you specified in the Config.xml file, mount it, copy all the source installation bits & setup your boot options to add “SP Easy” as an additional Boot option.

I picked the [V]HD option.

Once this is complete you are prompted to reboot your PC and pick the “SP Easy” boot option. It wont be your default option, so make sure you pick it before the timer runs out and you are booted into your default installation.

This is where you will be booting into your newly created VHD. Its worth noting that because you provide the VHD for this there is the potential for things to go wrong. The best way to ensure this all works correctly is to provide a sys-prepped/generalized VHD. This will ensure the correct drivers etc… are installed on first boot for your specific hardware. When in doubt about this step go and have a chat with your most friendly IT-Pro Windows deployment person :)

Once your new machine has booted (potentially with a reboot after driver installation etc… ) the SP Easy script will start off again.

You might be prompted to reboot after the script turns of UAC.

Again, after the reboot the scripts will continue. This is the point at which the Windows components will be added & the products will be installed. Time to sit back and watch or go and get a coffee. Again, this will take a considerable amount of time, depending on the products being installed. I leave this running and go and do some other work for a few hours.

You might see some red text like below during the install. Don’t panic, it is the script just checking if a reboot is required after installing a product. If a reboot is needed the script will pick back up where it left off in the installation cycle.

TIP: If for some reason you get a product that fails to install, it could be that there are Windows Updates that are pending and a restart is needed. Try rebooting & the script will try the installation again.

If everything works as expected then you will see a message stating “Setup has completed”.

Open IE and put navigate to SharePoint using your PCs name e.g. http://Chris-PC

You will be prompted to pick a template for the default site. I picked Team Site.

Once that is complete you should see your shiny new SharePoint 2010 site.

There you have it. An easy way to provision your Win 7 machine with all the stuff you need to get started with SharePoint 2010 development.

Be sure to hit up the SharePoint Developer Center on MSDN to learn about what you can start building. http://www.msdn.com/sharepoint

Thanks,

-Chris Johnson

SharePoint Connections, Las Vegas & SharePint Community Event

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 23:16:52 GMT

If you have ever been to a SharePoint event in the past, then you will know that one of the highlights is usually the SharePint. It’s a great way to mix and mingle with fellow like minded folk & glitterati of the SharePoint world. It’s a guaranteed good time :)

For the SharePoint Connections conference the SharePint is being held at the Eye Candy lounge, Wed November 3rd @ 7pm.

I will be there buying people drinks and chatting SharePoint, Sky Diving, the debacle of New Zealand almost losing The Hobbit movie and a raft of other stuff. Be sure to come find me.

Chief SharePint Grand Poobah Andrew Connell will also be attending as well as a host of Microsoft Speakers.

See you there!

-CJ.

SharePoint Sideshow

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:31:47 GMT

The new SharePoint Sideshow is up live on Channel 9. The first show is up and live with Paul and Donavan talking you through what they are planning for the show and some of the first things to get you started.

The SharePoint Sideshow is about all things around SharePoint and Office development. Here, those just starting with this development platform and seasoned veterans alike will find discussions about developer tools and resources, tips and tricks and technical interviews with product group members that can take you deep into these technologies

SharePoint Connections, Las Vegas Nov 1-4

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:10:08 GMT

I will be presenting 2 sessions at the up coming SharePoint Connections in Las Vegas, Nov 1-4.

HMS01: Crash Course in SharePoint 2010 Development
HMS10: Overview of Enterprise Content Management in SharePoint 2010

The Microsoft SharePoint team will also have a booth in the exhibitor space where we will be giving stuff away, including free training books & other great SWAG. Be sure to stop by and say hi.

We have some other great things planned for the event & I will update this post once they are finalized.

Learn SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft and SharePoint experts from the USA and Europe!

SharePoint Connections is scheduled for November 1-4 2010 at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, NV. This conference offers great content for IT Professionals, developers as well as no-code solutions for business managers using SharePoint 2010.

Highlights of this three-day SharePoint event include over 45 technical sessions and keynote. Full-day pre-conference and post-conference workshops are available for an extra charge. You can see the whole line-up of sessions online at www.devconnections.com.

The conversation starts on November 1. Come to Las Vegas and participate in the SharePoint community! Meet other professionals in sessions, in the expo hall, and at conference events. This is your chance to network and make those personal connections with conference speakers, the SharePoint team from Microsoft plus our sponsors and vendors.

Learn from recognized third-party experts and the SharePoint 2010 team from Microsoft, including:

Todd Baginski, Andrew Connell, Donovan Follette, Steve Fox, Scot Hillier, Dan Holme, Chris Johnson, Chris Mayo, Michael Noel, Ted Pattison, Girish Raja, Asif Rehmani, Paul Stubbs, and others.

Bonus No Code Solutions Track

If you aren’t a SharePoint developer or SharePoint administrator but you still want to learn to use new features in SharePoint 2010, we have a whole track of sessions just for you! Our No Code Solutions track presents important, high-business-value topics that span across developer and IT pro audiences, as well as BDM/TDM, project manager, and information worker.

SharePoint development environments, my guidance

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:41:15 GMT

At most conferences or events I get cornered by at least two or three people wanting my opinion on how to best set up their development environments. Questions like:

Should I have all my developers on one shared SharePoint server?
Should I virtualize?
What spec PCs should I buy our developers?

Here is my guidance in its simplest form, in order of preference:

Locally virtualized instance of SharePoint developer environment for each developer. (either Hyper-V or other, not a debate for this post).
Centrally virtualized instances of dev environment. Still one per developer.
Locally installed SharePoint developer environment “on the metal” with Windows Server 2008 R2.
Locally installed SharePoint developer environment (on the metal” with Windows 7.

“Why virtualize?” That way you can snapshot, rollback, have different projects in different VMs etc… There is nothing less productive than having to spend a morning re-building your development environment if you break it.

“Why Windows 7 last?” We enabled installation on Windows 7 primary for people who were not allowed or didn’t have access to virtualization technology & secondly people who couldn’t install a server OS on their developer workstation for whatever reason. I prefer to develop on bits that are as close to production as possible and therefore I would try and develop on Windows Server 2008 R2 first. Dev on Windows 7 is a great experience, don’t get me wrong, its just I would prefer to use a server OS first. YMMV.

“Why not have everyone on one server?” Productivity. Having everyone on one server is nasty for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to: stomping on each others toes with changes by mistake, limited debugging or only one person at a time, versioning issues and dependency management. It is just so much more productive to have each dev on their own instance of SharePoint and share code and assets around using a source control and build system like TFS.

“What spec machine should I use?” My guidance is to buy a quad core proc or greater with 8GB of RAM. Hard drives are VERY critical you should get the fastest you can buy, 7200 RPM min. SSDs in my experience are the single best way to improved your SharePoint development experience. I would rather have a fast SSD over 16GB of RAM any day. We use them in our demo laptops and it makes them scream. Tip: Run the host OS off your slower spinning disk and run your VMs of the SSD.

Vesa did a good write up on this topic a while back. It has much more in depth commentary on the subject: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vesku/archive/2010/02/01/sharepoint-2010-team-development-environment.aspx

Information on setting up SharePoint on Windows 7 is available here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx

Our Patterns and Practices team recently released an updated set of guidance for SharePoint. In there is a ton on building apps for SharePoint. Check it out.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff770300.aspx

Thanks,

Chris.

SharePoint, ADO.Net Data Services and Silverlight 4 data binding example

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:03:00 GMT

I presented recently at an internal Microsoft conference here in Seattle & showed a simple OData/ADO.Net data services & Silverlight 4 data binding example. It is very rudimentary, but shows how simple it is to get up and running binding Silverlight controls to data coming from SharePoint.

For this you will need:

A SharePoint development environment with VS 2010 set up. (see here)
Silverlight Web Parts Visual Studio 2010 project template. This is an extension project template from Paul Stubbs that make it super easy to create a custom Silverlight web part.
Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010

One time setup:

Create a new Custom list called “Projects” in the root of your SharePoint site.
Add a new text column to the list called “ProjectName”
Add some new data to the list and fill in the column values.

The resulting list should look something like this now:

Ok now for the good stuff…

Creating the projects:

Create a new “Silverlight Web Part” from the SharePoint > 2010 project templates in Visual Studio. This template is part of the Silverlight Web Parts Visual Studio 2010 project template VS Extension. Make sure you have that installed if you don’t see it.
In the new project wizard that pops up make sure the path to your SharePoint site is specified. e.g. http://chjohn3 is the url to my dev site on my machine.
Make sure “Deploy as a sandboxed solution” is ticked & Click Next
Enter “MySilverlightWebPart” as the Silverlight Project Name. Select “Shared Documents” as the library to deploy the Silverlight control to.
Enter “My Silverlight Web Part” as the title for your new web part & click Finish
Right click on the MySilverlightWebPart project and choose properties. We need to flip the Target Silverlight Version to Silverlight 4
When prompted click Yes to reload the project.

Hooking up the OData/ADO.Net Data Services data source:

Right click on the “MySilverlightWebPart” project and click “Add Service Reference”
Enter the address to the listdata.svc service e.g. http://chjohn3/_vti_bin/ListData.svc (you will need to use your server name of course)
Click GO & you should see “HomeDataContext” appear in the list of Services. Expand it to see all your lists. You should see “Projects” in the list.
Change the Namespace to “Contoso” and Click OK

Your project should now look like this:

Building the UI:

In this example all we are going to do is drop a grid onto our Silverlight surface and bind it to the Projects data.

Double click “MainPage.xaml” to open it. You should see the design surface.
From the Data Sources panel drag out “Projects” onto the design surface and size it appropriately
If you only want to show the ID and Project Name columns delete all the others from the XAML window.
Save the file. CTRL+S

Binding to the data:

Now we need to issue the query to the server to retrieve the data and bind those results to the grid.

Right click “MainPage.xaml” and View Code
Add the following Namespace definitions

using MySilverlightWebPart.Contoso;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Data.Services.Client;
Uncomment the Loaded event handler wire up in the MainPage() function. It should look like this:
Declare some local variables. Context is the data context for our ADO.Net Data Service, projects will contain the collection of projects we are going to bind to the grid & projectsViewSource is the view source collection that controls what data will be shown in the grid.
Add the functions below to the code. This will query the datasource for the projects & then bind them to the grid when the main page loaded event is fired.

/// <summary>Page loaded event handler</summary>

private void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{



    // this news up our data context with the URI to the ListData.svc

    context = new HomeDataContext(new Uri("<a href="http://chjohn3/_vti_bin/ListData.svc"">http://chjohn3/_vti_bin/ListData.svc"</a>, UriKind.Absolute));



    // create the collection that we are doing to store the projects in

    projects = new DataServiceCollection<ProjectsItem>();



    // get the view source reference from the grid

    projectsViewSource = (CollectionViewSource)this.Resources["projectsViewSource"];



    // Define a query that returns orders for a give customer.

    var query = from p in context.Projects

                select p;



    // wire up the loaded event

    projects.LoadCompleted += new EventHandler<LoadCompletedEventArgs>(projects_LoadCompleted);



    // Asynchronously load the result of the query.

    projects.LoadAsync(query);



}



private void projects_LoadCompleted(object sender, LoadCompletedEventArgs e)

{

    // if there wasnt an error

    if (e.Error == null)

    {

        // load the view source with the list of projects that were returned.

        projectsViewSource.Source = projects;

    }

    else

    {

        MessageBox.Show(string.Format("An error has occured: {0}", e.Error.Message));



    }

}

Building and Deploying

Now its time to try it all out!

Hit F5
Visual Studio will build the projects, Package up the solution in a WSP package, Deploy it into the Solution Gallery (the spot where sandbox solutions are deployed) & will start up IE and attach to the right processes for debugging. IE should load with the homepage of the site.
Click Page > Edit in the Ribbon
Click Insert > Web Part in the ribbon
Click into the Custom folder where you will find your web part “My Silverlight Web Part” & select it
Click Add to insert it onto the page
You will see your web part load and moments later the data should show up in the grid. Looking something like this:

Congratulations. You have just built a Silverlight 4 web part that is data bound using ADO.Net Data Services to SharePoint list data!

If you want to have a poke around with the ListData.svc Service then you can try hitting some URLs directly from IE like these:

http://<servername>//_vti_bin/ListData.svc">_vti_bin/ListData.svc
http://<servername>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Projects
http://<servername>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Projects(1)
http://<servername>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Projects?$filter=id eq 2
http://<servername>/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/Projects?$filter=Title eq 'Project 2'

Here is a good starting point in the documentation for how this REST interface works: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff521587.aspx

Thanks,

-Chris.

SharePoint 2010 Demo and Eval VM (RTM edition)

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:16:52 GMT

Happy to announce we have published our new RTM Hyper-V Virtual Machine. It contains all the goodies you have come to love & a few new ones, including SQL 2008 R2 & Windows Server 2008 R2.

Because we have moved to Windows server 2008 R2 … there are some gotchas with evaluation periods etc… so you MUST read the last section of the setup guide for details on how to deal with those.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=751fa0d1-356c-4002-9c60-d539896c66ce&displaylang=en

If you have any comments/suggestions/issues please feel free to comment on this post.

-Chris.

SharePoint 2010, Office 2010 and Profile Pictures

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:30:07 GMT

As many of you will know SharePoint & Office make heavy use of your profile pictures to personalize the experience. For example, here is my profile photo in my My Site.

I get to set up this stuff up quite often in demo environments & so i thought i would post about the process for doing this.

The first thing is to get the photos into your My Site. Easiest way to do that is to manually upload it via your profile page. But you can also use some code to upload the file (use UploadSPFile powershell commandlet) to a document library and then use some more powershell to set the “PictureUrl” profile property property to point at the uploaded file.

Example Uploading Photo:

[Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFile]$file = UploadSPFile -url ([string][string]"http://intranet/my/") -libraryName "User Photos" -filePath "<path to photo to upload here>"

*** UPDATE *** Get Supporting PS File with UploadSPFile function from here.

Example Setting Profile Property:

$upm = GetProfileManager -url $siteUrl
$up = $upm.GetUserProfile("CONTOSO\danj");

$picturePropertyName = GetProfilePropertyName -UserProfileManager $upm -PropertyName "PictureUrl";

if (-not [System.String]::IsNullOrEmpty($picturePropertyName))
{
$PortraitUrl = CombineUrls -baseUrl $file.Web.Url -relUrl $file.ServerRelativeUrl;
$up.get_Item($picturePropertyName).Value = $PortraitUrl;
}

This will simply set the picture you uploaded as the profile picture.

But wait … there’s more …

You can upload a picture of any dimensions and size … however SharePoint and Office have some images sizes that work best in the UI and SharePoint provides some help to get all your pictures resized to 3 sizes it needs. 96x96 is the largest optimal profile picture size.

SharePoint provides a powershell command to automatically resize all your profile pictures for you.

Example, resizing profile pictures to optimal resolutions:

Update-SPProfilePhotoStore –MySiteHostLocation “http://intranet/my/”

This command will take a look at every users profile picture and will do two things:

Re-Size the photo into the 3 optimal sizes and save them in SharePoint
Set the users profile property to the newly resized photo

Now you should have great looking photos in SharePoint. Additional tip for getting great photos … make sure you start with a square image. That way you make use of the optimal viewing window for profile pics in SharePoint.

Now … that is the SharePoint part out of the way. The next part is getting photos into apps like Outlook and Communicator.

The Exchange blog has a great post on this topic and so i won’t repeat here. You can read that post here: GAL Photos in Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010

Here is some additional reading on this topic:

http://blogs.msdn.com/russmax/archive/2010/02/27/sharepoint-2010-profile-picture-property-101.aspx
If you are upgrading you also need to update your profile photos to the new sizes. More Info here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263286(office.14).aspx#Taxonomy

The best part about setting all this up is that people will quickly realize they don’t have a photo set up in SharePoint and will not want to be left out! Sooner or later you will get nice rich looking SharePoint profiles & pictures for people in Outlook.

-CJ

TechEd 2010 North America and the Office and SharePoint Track

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:22:29 GMT

If you were wondering if you should come to TechEd this year wonder no more. Planning is well underway for TechEd North America 2010 for the Office and SharePoint track (OSP) and it is looking great.

Right now we are almost finished figuring out what sessions we are going to have. Yep that’s right … for a show this big and complex these things are decided well in advance.

We will have great coverage across Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Project Server 2010.

Registration is open: http://northamerica.msteched.com

More details to come….

SharePoint 2010 Beta Virtual Machine available

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:22:18 GMT

(Long time no post … sorry! we have been really busy!)

Last week we released a new SharePoint 2010 Beta Virtual Machine. (GET IT HERE)

This VM contains a bunch of pre-configured products including SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, SQL, Exchange, Office Communications Server & Visual Studio + a bunch more.

We will also be releasing an RTM version of this VM when that time comes (stay tuned).

This image is great if you want to get up and running with SharePoint/Office etc… and dont want to go through having to install and configure the products yourself. They are also really good for giving demos. We use these VMs for all the demos and shows we do.

As you might imagine running all those products requires a pretty beefy machine to run them. Specifically you will need 8GB of RAM and Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role configured.

Here are my hint and tips for running this VM:

Use Hyper-V R2. We built the VM for Hyper-V and there are optimizations specific for Hyper-V. Although it is possible to convert the VM to other virtualization solutions, we haven't tried those out.
Run the VM off a 2nd hard drive. Don't run the VM off your primary OS drive. The VM is pretty IO hungry, so a fast disk is best. A fast SSD like the Intel x25 gives the best performance. The key is fast random reads and writes rather than sequential reads and writes.
You only need the 2nd VM provided if you want email/exchange integration enabled. Don't start it unless you want email up and running.
Don’t try and recreate the VM from the VHD. You must import the VM into Hyper-V. The reason is that some services in the VM are tied to network adapters & if you recreate the VM from the VHD the hardware IDs of the NICs will change and things wont work right.
The first time you boot the VM it can take some time for the VM to finish detecting your CPU, NIC & some other devices that are specific to your hardware. You might notice networking wont connect right away.

Finally … make sure you follow the instructions on the download page to the letter. They are important and are there for a reason.

Happy VMing.

-Chris.

Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:34:00 GMT

We just went live with a brand new HUGE! two part whitepaper on branding SharePoint 2007 Publishing Sites.

This is an awesome resource for getting up to speed on how to build cutting edge internet facing websites on SharePoint 2007. We take you step by step through the process all the way from the things to think about ... to wireframes, on to photoshop mockups & then on to implementation. It really is a facinating look to how to do this from the begining to the end.

In the sample we take you through building a site and provide the download links to all the accompanying assets.

This is a resource that was begging to be written about and Andrew Connell (MVP) & Randy Drisgill (MVP) have done an excellent job.

Real World Branding with SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites

There are loads of SharePoint sites on internet today, many of which can be found here. Take a look, there are loads of amazing looking sites out there.

-Chris.

How we demo…

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:56:00 GMT

I get a bunch of questions at events etc… on how our team do demos. I don't mean the content of the demos, i mean the actual setup and execution.

You might think this is a simple question to answer, but it is more complex than you think.

First up there is no single answer to this, but it basically boils down to what type of event you are demoing/presenting at.

Here is how we break then down:

Tier A: Big high profile keynotes demos, usually done by or for an executive. Think of TechEd keynotes, PDC keynotes etc… These are demos you never ever want to mess up in :)

Tier B: These are still important demos, but usually a smaller crowd (less than 300). Sometimes for an exec or in front of a bunch of execs.

Tier C: Everything else.

Demo Tip: Don’t tell the owner of the event which bucket you have categorized their event in. They sometimes don't like you telling them they are a Tier B event :)

Physical Hardware:

Tier A & B events usually require a complete set of backup demo gear. This sometimes will save your day & or may never get used at all. Trust me, when the s**t hits the fan you will be counting you self lucky you have it on hand.

For Tier A events we usually get in server grade machines to ensure total stability and performance. Most of the time they just run Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

For other event types we tend to need to be more portable & we run most demos on a grunty laptop. Currently we are using HP 8530w machines with Quad core extreme processors, 2 SATA 7200 RPM disks (important to have the 2nd drive for Virtual Machine performance) & 8GB RAM.

If you need 2 machines in the set up then a crossover cable between them for networking is ideal. Not using a hub/switch is good because that is one more single point of failure you want to rule out. Most gigabit network cards can just use a regular network cable, you don't need a cross over cable as they auto detect.

Remember what i said earlier about backup gear. For Tier A & B events we usually run two identical sets of gear.

Software Setup:

For SharePoint demos this usually requires 1x Server with SharePoint, AD, Exchange, OCS etc… on it. We have a library of ready to go Virtual Machines (Hyper-V) that we spin up when needed. We run this image on one of the HP laptops spec’d above & give it 6GB RAM.

For Tier A & B events we sometimes we also need to add another machine, or two, for the Client machine(s). This is usually a Windows 7 machine with Office and IE on it. Joined to the same domain as the server virtual machine. It is usually a physical machine so we get Aero effects etc… working.

Fail over:

If the worst happens you want to fail over to your backup kit quickly. This means it needs to be in exactly the same state your primary kit was in when you flip the video switch over.

How do you do this i hear you ask? … easy … you have someone on the backup kit back stage following mouse and keyboard strokes click for click.

When you switch to back up the other person (we call them our shadow) takes hands off keyboard and mouse and the presenter is back in control.

To make all this work you need some pretty sophisticated KVM technology. This allows two sets of screens, keyboards & mice to be plugged in and working on the same machine at the same time. One set up front on stage … and another back stage.

Demo Prep:

They say preparation is the key. IT IS. When prepping for a Tier A & B event we script every mouse click and movement in a demo script & then learn it. On stage we have a shortened version that you can follow along with in case you get lost.

They key here is that your shadow will have also learnt the script and will be following along. They will be watching you screen and following along … but it is much easier if they know what should be coming next.

Remember, every time you deviate from the script you potentially run into something you were not expecting :)

Demo Tip: Have an automated way to get back to the starting state of your demo. For us this usually means a snapshot in Hyper-V. You must be able to roll back to a good known state time after time. This bit me during my PDC session when my machine was not quite in the right state to begin with & my demo didn't work right.

Demo Tip: For Tier C events where you don’t have a shadow backstage you can use Hyper-V snapshots very effectively. Snapshot the major areas of your demo after you have completed them. In the event of demo meltdown you can simply roll forward to the next snapshot and move on. This is really important if a latter part of your demo relies on a previous part working!

Summary:

I hope this has given you some insight into what goes into some of the demos we give & how seriously we take them.

Final note: For Tier A events it is usually a 500:1 ratio of prep time to demo time. So if you have a 15min demo on stage plan on spending 125 hours in prep. That includes working out what you are going to demo, building it, scripting it, debugging anything, setting up the hardware & software etc… i.e. LOTS of work. For Tier B & C events the ratio drops significantly.

SharePoint Conference Tweets

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:41:35 GMT

Letting blog readers know that the official SharePoint Conference tweet stream is up: http://www.twitter.com/SPConf Follow!

VS 2010 and SharePoint

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:21:09 GMT

Soma posted on the new SharePoint and Visual Studio integration coming in the next release of Visual Studio. http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/02/19/sharepoint-tools-support-in-visual-studio.aspx

This is something I have been working on with the developer division and it is very cool to see this finally being talked about! Great work Reza, Mike and the rest of the team.

This is very exciting for SharePoint developers!

-Chris.

Demoing SharePoint… how do you do it?

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:43:26 GMT

Ivory Tower (Redmond) to all earth bound SharePoint peeps. I need some info on your l33t SharePoint skillz.

I am doing some research into how you, as SharePoint evangelists, demo SharePoint to others. This could be as part of a sales pitch or just a regular Thu night demo to the SharePoint Users Group. Anything really.

Some common methods include:

- Locally installed on my laptop (duel boot for example)

- In a Virtual Machine. For this one i would like to know if you use a Microsoft Provided one or build your own.

- Remote Desktop into a machine somewhere back in your office?

- Use a SharePoint site you have on the net somewhere that you use to demo?

You can either reply with a comment here. Or tweet/DM me here http://twitter.com/LoungeFlyZ

We are looking at how best to serve our customers/partners and would like to make sure we are providing the right material to help you do your best work.

-CJ.

SharePoint Conference 2009 announced

Chris Johnson [MSFT] — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:38:43 GMT

Vegas, SharePoint & loads of great content & people … do i need to say any more?

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/

Early bird registration is open now. Best conference out there for under a grand USD.