Office SharePoint & .NET DevelopmentErika Ehrli
I get to write my first post on the new MSDN blog platform about a new open position in my group. My manager posted this position at the Microsoft Career site and wanted to share details in my blog in case you are interested.
Content Publishing Manager 2(720752 -External)
Job Category: Software Engineering: Content Publishing Location: United States, WA, Redmond Job ID: 720752 18116 Division: Microsoft Business Division
We are looking for an experienced content manager who will manage a team of experienced programmer writers and editors for a set of Office productivity applications, used by millions of developers: Excel, Access, Outlook, Word, InfoPath, and more! We’ve just shipped Office 2010. Your first priority will be to lead your team in developing all the high value content your team will deliver through our MSDN online presence (http://msdn.microsoft.com/office). We need your ideas, experience, creative energy, and persistence to continue to improve our content and connect with customers.
You will manage your own content acquisition budget, as well as collaborate with our partners in marketing to author or acquire content to support the Office 2010 launch. Think code samples, videos, walk-throughs, and scenario-based developer content! The candidate is expected to provide overall direction and team leadership, documentation expertise, creativity, and a drive for results. You will be developing, collaborating on, and managing cross-product and cross-team projects. Armed with metrics data from Office.com and MSDN, as well as other sources of data, you will be responsible for ensuring the content meets the business needs of our customers and the strategic goals of the product team and of Microsoft. You will also collaborate with all parties to define the overall content strategy for your continuous publishing efforts.
You will also be responsible for maintaining a high level of morale in the team and developing people. You and your team will be working in the context of a dynamic group with high morale and continual healthy challenges, along with countless opportunities to help customers in new ways.
Recommended qualifications and experience: - Experience with COM and VBA -- understanding of the Office object models is strongly preferred - Industry experience with managed code: Visual Studio has long provided a way to develop Office solutions from managed code. Ideal candidates would have experience with COM Interop. - Your exposure to Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is a bonus. - Awareness of OpenXML: our team also delivers the developer content for the OpenXML SDK v2, and we’re constantly evolving this content set. Let’s dig deeper to learn what adopters of this technology are experiencing. - SharePoint understanding is required: all client applications have ties to SharePoint and we need to develop more and more content that leads developers to leverage those ties. - Because our COM content requires quite a lot of engineering to build, familiarity with SQL Server and XML/XSLT is a definite asset.
I’ve been working on this team for five years and I can say it’s been an exciting ride to work on a group of talented writers and editors who provide developer content on MSDN for Office, SharePoint, and now UC and Exchange.
You can find the job description and apply to the job here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=1&jid=18116&jlang=EN
I spent the last couple months working with a couple different SharePoint teams putting together this new learning experiences, so I wanted to devote a special blog entry for this two projects.
Last October we released a Getting Started training series on MSDN SharePoint that includes a Silverlight application that displays 10 different SharePoint 2010 training modules with over 60 videos, more than 40 code snippets, 10 hands-on labs in both C# and VB, and fun quiz questions for each module. We’ve been monitoring traffic to this pages and we know this content set turned out to be quite popular, so we worked on a “v2” for launch.
Everything! All content was updated to work with RTM bits.
All videos were re-recorded and republished, all HOLs were recreated, and there’s three more new additions to this set:
We also added page rating and comments controls so you can send feedback and comment on modules and social media links so you can share the links to the training.
We all owe this amazing training series to Paul Andrew who contributed to this massive amount of content for SharePoint developers.
Here are links to all modules:
I mentioned in my previous blog entry that if you are looking for black-belt training on SharePoint 2010 development, this is it! This training set includes 1-4 lessons p/track. All content was created by Vesa Juvonen a Microsoft MCS Principal Consultant and by Todd Carter, a Microsoft Principal Premier Field Engineer. You can watch lessons on our pages or download them for watching them later. These are longer videos, about 1 hour or so each, so you can download the videos as well. You can also get all the PowerPoint downloads for each lesson and coming soon we will enable virtual labs too!
For developers, SharePoint 2010 provides a business collaboration platform to rapidly build solutions and respond to business needs. SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer Training offers technical training as self-paced modules and hosted labs for SharePoint 2007 professionals who want to upgrade their skills to SharePoint 2010.
1 | Developer Roadmap and Tools for SharePoint 2010
This module gives an overview of the SharePoint 2010 technical platform and the tools that are available for customizing a SharePoint installation. It also covers a new claims-based authentication option and Windows PowerShell improvements.
2 | Core Development in SharePoint 2010
This module covers core development topics that are available in SharePoint 2010.
3 | User Interfaces and Lists in SharePoint 2010
This module covers the new user experience in SharePoint 2010 and how you can use these new capabilities in your customizations. We also discuss improvements in list handling, including list relationships and new form-rending options, including InfoPath forms.
4 | Data Access in Technologies in SharePoint 2010
This module presents new data access technologies in SharePoint 2010. There are many new ways to manipulate information in SharePoint. These technologies make development and integration more straight forward and can help increase developer productivity.
5 | Composite Solutions in SharePoint 2010
This module presents composite capabilities that are available in SharePoint 2010. There are many different capabilities, which can be combined together to provide desired functionalities.
6 | Enterprise Content Management in SharePoint 2010
This module presents new capabilities in Enterprise Content Management.
7 | Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010
This module presents the Search capabilities that are available in SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 provides a flexible and robust search platform for intranet, extranet, and Internet deployments. You can also further enhance the search experience with FAST ESP.
8 | Business Intelligence SharePoint 2010
This module presents business intelligence capabilities in SharePoint 2010. There are improvements in this area to help build business intelligence dashboards, which can be used to expose relevant information for business users in a meaningful way.
9 | Communities in SharePoint 2010
This module presents information about communities in SharePoint 2010.
10 | Development Life Cycle for SharePoint 2010
This module presents information about customized life cycle management in SharePoint 2010. In the first lesson, we cover models and considerations for when customizations are upgraded from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. In the following lesson, we cover life cycle management for customizations in SharePoint 2010. We provide guidance about how to upgrade customizations that are already deployed and how to update previously created customizations to reflect changes.
We also released a twin training set for IT Pros with 9 additional tracks: SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Pro Training
We realize some of you are not using Silverlight so we also created a lowband version with pointers to all lesson videos and PPTX downloads at the bottom of the pages.
Finally, I’d like to mention that we are currently experiencing a massive amount of traffic to this pages and I’ve noticed this error on random occasions:
If you happen to get it, you can refresh the page and you should be able to get all the videos. Each module in a course uses a random MSN/Bing video server to spread the load and because of the high volume of traffic we are currently getting to this videos, you may get this error. You should be able to access all the content and videos after a refresh. If you have not enabled Silverlight or if you are unable to get the videos from the MSN/Bing server at any given time, you can still access all content from the lowband version at the bottom of the pages.
You can also find developer training courses for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on Channel 9:
For Office: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b90fadab-f4f9-4452-aa61-ed7bd5d8111e&displayLang=en
For SharePoint: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=83a80a0f-0906-4d7d-98e1-3dd6f58ff059&displayLang=en
The RTM training courses are live here:
For Office: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Office2010/
For SharePoint: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/SharePoint2010Developer/
A lot of work went into all training sets, from all the content creation, to the publishing of all the multiple pieces that make this training sets. I think it’s amazing that we have all this content on Channel 9, MSDN and TechNet at Launch time.
I hope you like this content set and please leave us feedback on the comments section of the pages or on this blog post.
Enjoy!
Oh my! The day is finally here! We have been working for months on producing and releasing technical content that matters to developers. So many steps and multiple people at Microsoft and the developer community have contributed heavily to the Office and SharePoint 2010 launch. Today is the happy day when we get to take it all live.
Many of you enjoyed the content we released during Beta, so we updated most of it and created more for Launch.
I realize each one of this projects deserves a blog entry, but since you all can’t wait to know about the recently released content, here goes my summary of technical content for developers that we just published on MSDN. This should matter to everyone interested in taking a deep dive into developing solutions with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.
MSDN Office Developer Center
Find quick links to developer content for Office 2010 and 2007 Microsoft Office system products and technologies.
We updated our top pages and added links to a lot of Office 2010 content that we just published. Don’t miss product specific content from the following pages:
Office 2010 Developer Center
This page points you to Office 2010 innovations that matter to developers and features Office 2010 and recently published content.
Developing with Office 2010
Find application compatibility tools, how-to videos, articles, references, and more in this getting started training.
Office 2010 is a broadly extensible platform for building information worker productivity solutions and developing for Office with Visual Studio 2010 makes this easy. This seven modules initiatives show you how to get started developing with Office 2010 and present multiple videos including new Office 2010 Visual How-tos!
Develop Solutions for Microsoft Office 2010
Visual Studio 2010 includes new project templates for creating solutions that target both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Office 2010. Beth Massi and I worked on a series of Video How-tos for Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010.
Office 2010 Product Guides
Download the product guides for your favorite Microsoft Office programs. The guides were created by our Office MVPs. Each guide provides an at-a-glance overview, a closer look at many new and improved features, and instructions to help you find the features you want quickly and easily:
Thanks Stephanie Krieger!
MSDN SharePoint Developer Center
Find quick links to developer content for SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2007, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
We used to publish all the WSS 3.0 on this site. The SharePoint documentation teams worked on revamping the MSDN SharePoint Developer Center and turned it into the new home for SharePoint 2010 content as well. Here’s a few pages you should not miss:
Get Started Developing on SharePoint 2010
Are you an ASP.NET developer who is ready to learn more about SharePoint 2010? Visit the Getting Started page to view screencasts and hands-on labs about working with SharePoint 2010 developer features that are familiar to ASP.NET developers, such as web parts and workflow.
Use these 10 modules to get started with development for SharePoint 2010 using Visual Studio 2010. We updated all the videos, hands-on labs, and added virtual labs and developer quick notes for some modules in this training. We also updated the Silverlight training control that displays all this content and enabled comments and social media sharing on our pages.
SharePoint Advanced Developer Training
If you are looking for black-belt content, this is it! For developers, SharePoint 2010 provides a business collaboration platform to rapidly build solutions and respond to business needs. SharePoint 2010 Advanced Developer Training offers technical training as self-paced modules and hosted labs for SharePoint 2007 professionals who want to upgrade their skills to SharePoint 2010. You can find a similar training for ITPros here: SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Pro Training
SharePoint Developer Tools in Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2010 includes new project templates for creating solutions that target SharePoint 2010 Solutions. Download a Visual Studio 2010 trial. Learn about SharePoint project creation, debugging, and solution deployment.
Beth Massi and I worked on a series of Video How-tos for SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010.
Finally, don’t miss the Launch Events!
Office 2010 Launch Events
Watch the keynote, join the virtual launch conversation, and participate in on-demand sessions for the global launch on May 12, starting at 11 a.m. EDT.
I uploaded a cool Word 2010 video to our Facebook group and people seemed to like it.
Roganov Ivan made this request: “Only one video? I want more! 2010!”
Done deal! We have about 20 more Office 2010 and about 30 SharePoint 2010 in the works now. Some more went live recently and were published to the MSN/Bing platform. You can find our recently published videos here:
Note: Videos from MSN/BING are streamed and video quality is adjusted after a few seconds depending on your bandwidth. Eric White has a post that talks about this in more detail.
Soon you will be able to find most of this videos featured at the MSDN Office Developer Center, the MSDN SharePoint Developer Center, and our new Facebook fan page.
I’ve been incredibly passionate about Open XML since it’s early beginnings. I remember back in the day I was very excited about the possibility of generating .NET server-side Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. I also had the opportunity to manage the Open XML Format SDK 1.0 documentation release, design a poster, and I also wrote for a few years a series of blog posts and MSDN technical articles about Open XML, the SDK, and how to use it.
Since then, the Open XML Format SDK has evolved significantly proving us a .NET API, documentation, and tools to help us simplify our task of generating documents programmatically.
The Open XML Format SDK 2.0 is a superset of the Open XML SDK 1.0. In addition to the functionality provided by the Open XML SDK 1.0, it leverages.NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) and provides classes to construct and query the contents of parts within a package. You can use functional construction for composing documents, and LINQ queries for extracting information from documents.
The SDK is a collection of classes that let developers create and manipulate Open XML documents – documents that adhere to the Office Open XML File Formats Standard. Because the SDK provides an application program interface that lets developers manipulate Open XML documents directly, they can do so without the need for the Office client products themselves in both client and server operating environments.
Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office offers a number of tools and resources to improve programmatic document processing thus making a task of the developer more efficient. The SDK also carries an interoperability improvements for open XML implementers as well as it is designed to let Open XML developers build high performance client-side or server-side solutions that handle complex operations using only a small amount of program code.
Microsoft has released an RTM version of Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office today. If you haven’t already, you can download it and find the online documentation versions here:
I want to use the remainder of this post to provide you all with a run down of most popular Open XML programmability content and detailed links to MSDN Developer Portal pages where you can find lots of articles, videos, and code snippets.
First, the Open XML Developer Center on MSDN provides you with a mix of community content, articles, learning, getting started, and technical content categorized by scenarios and technologies. Here are detailed links to all our top level entry pages:
Downloads Learn Open XML | Getting Started | Articles | How Do I Videos | SDK | Training | Webcasts and Videos
Scenarios Technologies | OPC | Excel | PowerPoint | Word Community
Finally, if you want to take a deep dive into Open XML technical content, here’s a detailed list of most popular MSDN content:
Book chapter:
Book Excerpt: Chapter 22: Office Open XML Essentials
Code samples:
CG: Sample: Word 2007 Sample: Using Open XML to Improve Automation Performance in Word 2010 for Large Amounts of Data
Sample: 2007 Office Sample: Building a Server-Side Document Generation Solution Using the Open XML Object Model
Sample: 2007 Office Sample: Manipulating Office Open XML Format Files
Sample: 2007 Office Sample: Using the Office Open XML Formats to Support Electronic Health Records Portability and Health Industry Standards
CG: Sample: 2007 Office Sample: Introducing the Open XML Format External File Converter for Microsoft Office
CG: Sample: 2007 Office Sample: Creating Documents by Using the Open XML Format SDK 2.0
CG: Sample: 2007 Office Sample: Open XML File Formats Code Snippets for Visual Studio 2008 Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Columns:
OfficeTalk: Creating Form Letters in Word by Using Bookmarks and Office Open XML Files
OfficeTalk: Working with In-Memory Open XML Documents
OfficeTalk: Programmatically Update Multiple External Data Connections in Excel 2007 by Using Open XML
Downloads:
Download: SharePoint 2010 Presentation: Deep Dive into Open XML 2.0 and the Open XML SDK 2.0
Download: 2007 Office Presentations: Open XML Training Presentations
Download: 2007 Office System Document: Open XML Developer Map
Visual How-tos (how-to article + video + code sample):
Visual How To: Building Word 2007 Documents Using Office Open XML Formats
Visual How To: Embedding Documents in Word 2007 by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Adding Images to Documents in Word 2007 by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Generating Documents with Headers and Footers in Word 2007 by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Merging Simple Content from Excel 2007 Workbooks and Worksheets by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Merging PowerPoint 2007 Decks Together by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 Classes Versus Using .Net XML Services
Visual How To: Retrieving Content from Different Parts: Explicit or Implicit Relationships in the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Searching for Content in Word 2007 Documents by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How To: Generating a Word 2007 Document by Using PowerTools for Open XML and Windows PowerShell
Visual How To: Creating a PowerPoint 2007 Presentation from a Folder of Images by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office
Visual How-To: Using XSLT and Open XML to Create a Word 2007 Document
Visual How To: Using XSLT and Open XML to Create a Word 2007 Document
Visual How To: Displaying Open XML Spreadsheet Tables in the Browser Using Silverlight
Technical articles:
Creating Valid Open XML Documents by Using the Validation Tools in the Open XML Format SDK
Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats
Using the SharePoint Foundation 2010 Managed Client Object Model with the Open XML SDK 2.0
Accepting Revisions in Open XML Word-Processing Documents
Working with Numbered Lists in Open XML WordprocessingML
Introducing the Open XML Format External File Converter for 2007 Office System SP2
Editing Data in an Excel 2007 Open XML File with VBA
Creating Documents by Using the Open XML Format SDK Version 2.0 CTP (Part 1 of 3)
Creating Documents by Using the Open XML Format SDK 2.0 CTP (Part 2 of 3)
Creating Documents by Using the Open XML Format SDK 2.0 CTP (Part 3 of 3)
Using Office Open XML to Save Time Without Writing Code
Taking the 2007 Office System Further with VBA and Open XML Formats
Using Office Open XML to Customize Document Formatting in the 2007 Office System
Getting More from Document Themes in the 2007 Office System with Office Open XML
Creating Business Applications by Using Excel Services and Office Open XML Formats
Creating a Simple Search and Replace Utility for Word 2007 Open XML Format Documents
Using Office Open XML Formats to Support Electronic Health Records Portability and Health Industry Standards
Creating Document Themes with the Office Open XML Formats
Inserting Repeating Data Items into a Word 2007 Table by Using the Open XML API
Building Server-Side Document Generation Solutions Using the Open XML Object Model (Part 1 of 2)
Building Server-Side Document Generation Solutions Using the Open XML Object Model (Part 2 of 2)
Manipulating Word 2007 Files with the Open XML Format API (Part 1 of 3)
Manipulating Word 2007 Files with the Open XML Format API (Part 2 of 3)
Manipulating Word 2007 Files with the Open XML Format API (Part 3 of 3)
Manipulating Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 Files with the Open XML Format API (Part 1 of 2)
Manipulating Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 Files with the Open XML Format API (Part 2 of 2)
The cherry on the pie: I also want to provide you links to Microsoft blogs where you can find more news about the latest release of the Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office:
Some developers asked if we could publish some SPC videos and slide decks after the conference on MSDN. While we can’t publish all the conference content, we were able to cherry pick most popular sessions and publish a selection of most popular Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 develop SPC videos and slide decks.
Here’s our selection of most popular sessions:
Office 2010 has many new developer oriented features. As a Microsoft Office developer, you can create highly refined user experiences that reduce complexity for users and make them instantly more productive. The following five videos represent a selection of most popular Office developer track sessions from the SharePoint Conference 2009.
SharePoint 2010 has many new developer oriented features. Developers can build collaboration applications on the platform features of Microsoft SharePoint 2010, the new tools for SharePoint 2010 make developers more productive, and new hosting options for SharePoint solutions provide more flexibility in deployment. The following five videos represent a selection of most popular SharePoint developer track sessions from the SharePoint Conference 2009.
Someone recently asked me (in Twitter) if I was keeping some nice stories in draft and waiting for things to go live to push the “publish” button in my blog, Twitter, and Facebook. The answer is yes! I am keeping a lot in draft mode. This is why I keep saying that this are exciting times for Office and SharePoint developers.
There’s few things for Microsoft people that bring more happiness than approaching RTM and start talking. As we get closer to that day, our team decided to start releasing new content and improved experiences for MSDN sites.
Today I want to share that a few minutes ago we re-launched the MSDN Office Developer Center and the MSDN SharePoint Developer Center with a new skin that matches our Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 branding.
This is the first time that Office and SharePoint MSDN sites blend with the product brand. Although this is only a visual update, it sets an exciting new look as we prepare for RTM.
Take a look yourself and see the nice difference made possible thanks to our new branded skin.
Who said developers don’t like pretty?
Our social media community is growing and we want to provide better support and more features to our followers. We are moving from a Facebook Group to a Facebook Fan Page.This will allow us to provide more frequent updates including news to developer content released weekly. Please follow us and become a fan of MSDN Office and SharePoint Developer Centers in Facebook. We'll be closing down the group, so please become a fan of our page http://www.facebook.com/pages/MSDN-Office-and-SharePoint-Developer-Centers/321737938338 and tell your friends.You can also find us in Twitter here: http://twitter.com/msdn_office
The following RSS feeds are now live with headlines from July 1, 2009 to February 19, 2010. The feeds include headlines for all of the Office and SharePoint Getting Started content, as well as the Channel 9 learning courses for SharePoint and Office.
MSDN: Microsoft Office Developer Center
http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/office/rss.xml
MSDN: Microsoft Office 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/office/rss2010.xml
MSDN Office: Community Submitted Content
http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/office/communitycontent.xml
MSDN: Microsoft Office Developer Center - Video
http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/office/video.xml
MSDN: Microsoft SharePoint Developer Portal
http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/sharepoint/rss.xml
MSDN: Microsoft SharePoint 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/feeds/msdn/en-us/sharepoint/rss2010.xml
And here’s a monthly recap of MSDN Office and SharePoint content published, with a spike in October and November:
The feeds will be dynamically pulled into multiple MSDN Developer Centers, as well as serve as the baseline for our Twitter and Facebook feeds.
Subscribe to this feeds and keep up with all the latest developer news about Office and SharePoint 2010.
I am one of those persons who has 25 apps running at the same time. I always have multiple instances of Explorer, VS, Office docs, and other apps running at all times. The one app I never close and I frequently visit is Outlook.
One of the neat new additions to Outlook 2010 is the the Outlook Social Connector (OSC). The Microsoft Outlook Social Connector is an add-in that surfaces social network data including friends, profiles, activities, and status information from social networks in Microsoft Outlook.
I really like the idea of bringing a lot of updates from multiple social networks sites where I have multiple personal and MSDN Office accounts to the one app where I spend a great deal of my day: Outlook.
Microsoft announced yesterday the availability of the Microsoft Outlook Social Connector (OSC) Beta (February Update) and a refresh about partnering with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace.
You can download the latest version of the Outlook Social Connector from the Microsoft Download Center. Please be sure to read the detailed instructions and if necessary remove the earlier Outlook Social Connector Beta. (More details are here)
What’s more cool about the Outlook Social Connector is that you can extend it. In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Myspace providers, you’ll also be able to write your own.
This diagram shows the Outlook Social Connector provider architecture:
If you are a developer and you are interested in extending the Outlook Social Connector, I recommend that you check this blogs, articles, and resources:
Additionally, as mentioned by Stephen Griffin, later on the Outlook team will be shipping the OSC as an add-in for Outlook 2007 and 2003, so you can get all that social goodness even if you’re not yet on Outlook 2010!
The Office Product Marketing group has released a new Silverlight-based training set to introduce you to developer investments in 2010 including VBA, Fluent UI, and the Office Backstage.
The app was released yesterday to MSDN and you can access it from this link:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/Atlas/Default.html
I’ll update this post with a link to an MSDN Dev Center landing page with more info as soon as it’s live.
In the meantime, here’s more info cross-posted from John Durant’s blog:
The Office Developer Atlas interactive training tool (built using Silverlight technology) is a great way for you to come up to speed on what developing productivity solutions with Office is all about. We've called it an atlas because it's designed to give you a series of training segments that help you orient yourself in the world of Office development.
The first three segments that we have included in the initial release of Office Developer Atlas include:
1) Making users instantly productive through VBA
2) The Microsoft Office Backstage view
3) The Microsoft Office Fluent UI (Ribbon)
In each section, you'll find a short explanatory video, an example that demonstrates the kinds of solutions you can build with the targeted technology, and links to rich content on how to convert your awareness to technical skill. Here are a couple more screenshots:
We'll be adding more modules to the training environment, and all you need is a Web browser to start using it. Enjoy, and please send your feedback and ideas for more training modules.
Blogs are super fun! Many product teams for Office and SharePoint are blogging about new features added to the 2010 release.
Here’s some blogs I recommend following:
Download this OPML
You can easily download and import this OPML to Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010:
Also, if you are interested, here’s a previous post with pointers to RSS feeds for Office and SharePoint developers.
The upcoming release of Office and SharePoint offers a wealth of interesting new scenarios and solutions that can be built thanks to new features and improvements added to different Office and SharePoint products and technologies. There’s more possibilities to integrate Office and SharePoint to build rich client-server solutions using tools such as Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, InfoPath 2010, and Access 2010.
Some of you already had an opportunity to play with the Betas and write code, read lots of blogs, twitter feeds, and some MSDN articles and videos. Some others are eager to get the final release to start building solutions and are already starting to ramp-up. In either case, I realize there’s a lot of information out there already and it’s always helpful to get some advice on where to start.
I find it fascinating to learn new technologies, and I truly enjoy working on training content and article plans. For those eager to learn as well, I’ll take you along with me on a joyride of learning what’s new for developers on Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010.
I’ve spent the last months working in content plans for upcoming MSDN articles, Visual How-tos, and MSDN site projects. Happily, there’s already plenty articles, code samples, and videos on our publishing pipe to cover the most interesting features and scenarios. We started releasing some content in October after the SPC 2009 and in November for Beta. We have much more to come in the following months and it’s a great time to catch-up on blogging as there’s so much to share in the following months. This are exciting times for Office and SharePoint developers!
With this blog post, I am starting a series of posts that will guide you through the most interesting 2010 features and resources available for developers. I’ll be tagging this series as learn2010.
I’ll start by introducing the top places/content I recommend if you want to learn more about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 development.
The links below provide videos, downloads, and technical articles specific to each pillar.
The links below provide videos, downloads, and hands-on labs specific to each pillar.
While generic, the links above can help you understand the big picture. As we approach the launch, I will be drilling-down into more detailed info about developing solutions using specific features pertaining to key pillars of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 development. I’ll try and share more videos, links to articles, pointers to interesting blog posts, and code samples for each piece so you can continue to learn more about features that you find particularly interesting.
It’s been an exciting week with all the recent announcements at PDC. Today, at PDC we announced the availability of our public Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Betas. Lots of developers from the community who have been monitoring the new developer investments on Office 2010 can start creating solutions with the latest features. You can find links to all our downloads here:
Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, Communicator, SharePoint Workspace, and Office Web Apps.
You can learn more about the benefits of Office 2010 by downloading the beta from www.microsoft.com/2010
Today, I am also happy to share the availability of our new Office 2010 developer pages on MSDN. We launched a few minutes ago a set of pages that provide Office 2010 developer learning resources including Channel 9 videos, developer references, articles, feeds to Office 2010 bloggers and community resources, and our very first three Office 2010 Visual How-to videos!
We will start publishing more Office 2010 VHTs soon.
We have updated our Office 2010 (Beta) Developer Center with more community content and links to developer specific resources. We will add more links to content and videos as we continue publishing.
Office 2010 Beta is a broadly extensible platform for building information worker productivity solutions and developing for Office with Visual Studio 2010 makes this easy. The following six key initiatives show you how to get started developing with Office 2010.
1 | Getting Started Developing with Office 2010
2 | Extending the Office 2010 Backstage View and Other UI
3 | Working with Office 2010 Data Through the File Formats and Office APIs
4 | Integrating External Data and SharePoint 2010 Platform Services in Office 2010 Solutions
5 | Creating Tracking Applications in Office 2010 and Publishing Them to SharePoint 2010
6 | Using Office 2010 APIs to Customize Application Behavior and Automate Tasks
We have modified our home page so you can find your way to both Office 2007 and Office 2010 developer content. We have a commitment to continue delivering and helping you discover Office 2007 content.
You should also check the Products tab to find your way to product and version specific developer content.
Check back often the MSDN Office Developer Center for the latest updates on Office 2010 development and follow us on Twitter for the latest news and twits for new content and cool stories about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 development.
I’d also like to suggest you all read David Hale’s great post on Developer Help Updates for Office 2010 Beta!
In case you missed it, you can find detailed information about our recent SharePoint Conference release here:
Also, check back often the MSDN SharePoint Developer Center for the latest updates on SharePoint 2010 development.
Happy coding!
It’s always hard to stay away from blogging when there’s so many new things to share and talk about. Today at the SharePoint Developer Conference Keynote, Jeff Teper talked about SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 features for developers and IT professionals. This is the time to start to blog more about the new release of Office and SharePoint and I am glad that we can all talk now!!!!
The SharePoint team blog has a good summary of key announcements made today at the conference, so in case you missed the keynote, go check out this blog.
Here’s a few more cool surprises from the MSDN Office and SharePoint Developer Center team.
I had the opportunity to work closely with Paul Andrew, Martin Harwar, the MSDN team, and the SharePoint developer content team during the last few months on the new SharePoint 2010 Getting Started training on MSDN. We released this training a few minutes ago and you can all access it here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee513147.aspx
The goal of this training is to show you how to get started with development for SharePoint 2010 using Visual Studio 2010.
This training provides a Silverlight navigation experience that allows you to navigate between ten different learning tracks or modules and you can even test your skills.
Each module includes a set of videos, hands-on labs manuals in C# and VB, and a set code samples/snippets that you can also find in Paul Andrew’s blog.
Here’s a list of all the different modules in this training:
Module 1: Getting Started: Building Web Parts in SharePoint 2010
Building Web Parts is one of the most common tasks you will undertake as a developer. SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 enable you to create Web Parts quickly and easily. You can use project templates and project item templates to help you get started building standard ASP.NET Web Parts. You can also build a new type of Web Part called a Visual Web Part.
In this module you will learn how to:
Module 2: What Developers Need to Know About SharePoint 2010
Visual Studio 2010 integrates with SharePoint much more closely than in previous versions. Visual Studio 2010 includes SharePoint-specific project types and project item types, and includes powerful packaging, deployment, and debugging features that help increase your efficiency as a SharePoint 2010 developer.
Module 3: Building Blocks for Web Part Development in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 includes many components that help increase your efficiency as a developer. The SharePoint platform includes many built-in Web Parts that you can include in your solution, and provides many more components that you can use in Web Parts that you develop.
In this module, you will learn how to:
Module 4: Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data and Objects with Server-Side APIs
Accessing SharePoint data in server-side solutions is one of the most common tasks that you will perform as a SharePoint developer. SharePoint 2010 provides powerful server-side APIs that enable you to retrieve, add, edit, and delete SharePoint data programmatically. SharePoint 2010 also includes the new LINQ to SharePoint technology that enables you to work with SharePoint data efficiently and easily.
Module 5: Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data and Objects with Client-Side APIs
SharePoint 2010 provides a new client object model that enables you to create SharePoint solutions that run remotely from the SharePoint server farm. For example, the client object model enables you to consume and manipulate SharePoint data in Windows Forms applications, Windows Presentation Framework applications, console applications, Microsoft Silverlight applications, and ASP.NET Web applications.
Module 6: Accessing External Data with Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 provides a new set of technologies known as Business Connectivity Services for retrieving, editing, updating, and deleting data from external systems. This module provides an overview of Business Connectivity Services, and delves into development examples of using Business Connectivity Services data in custom SharePoint solutions.
Module 7: Developing Business Processes with SharePoint 2010 Workflows
SharePoint 2010 provides a powerful workflow framework that enables you to implement custom business processes that are driven by SharePoint data.
Module 8: Creating Silverlight User Interfaces for SharePoint 2010 Solutions
Silverlight 3.0 provides the opportunity for developers to create the next generation of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). SharePoint 2010 integrates closely with Microsoft Silverlight to enable you to build compelling user interfaces that interact with SharePoint data.
Module 9: Sandboxed Solutions for Web Parts in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 provides a new sandbox environment that enables you to run user solutions without affecting the rest of the SharePoint farm. This environment means that users can upload their own custom solutions without requiring intervention from administrators, and without putting the rest of the farm at risk.
Module 10: Creating Dialog Boxes and Ribbon Controls for SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 provides new user interface components, such as server ribbons, and the new dialog platform. As a developer, you can create controls for the server ribbon and dialog boxes for the dialog platform.
I am also glad to announce the availability of our new MSDN SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 (Beta) Developer Centers. We will start adding more links to all the SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 content we can now publish to these pages.
SharePoint 2010 (Beta) Developer Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx
SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Resource Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514557.aspx SharePoint 2010 Community http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee633451.aspx
SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Resource Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514557.aspx
SharePoint 2010 Community http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee633451.aspx
You can also find links to all the recently SharePoint 2010 developer content published at the SharePoint Developer Docs team blog.
I know it’s late at night, but I couldn’t resist. The MSDN Office, SharePoint, and VSTO Developer Center are blue now and match the super cool new MSDN branding and experience. Go take a look and enjoy:
Office Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/default.aspx
SharePoint Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default.aspx
Office Development with Visual Studio Developer Center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto/default.aspx
More sites here: http://blogs.msdn.com/lisa/archive/2009/10/17/msdn-com-refresh.aspx
I’ll be a the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas next week. I will be at the Office developer booths at the following times:
I’ll also be at the Office Developer and MSDN ATE tables.
I’d love to talk to you about both the MSDN new experience, great content in the pipe, and all the latest news about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. I’ll be blogging more often now that I can talk (starting Monday).
Also lookout for dev news in twitter: @msdn_office, @erikaec, and @sharepointdev.
Let the Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 dev stories begin!
It’s been a while since I had an opportunity to blog. When I am quiet it usually means I am up to something :).
This are exciting times for Office and SharePoint developers. While we have released some interesting news about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 already, there’s a lot more coming for the SharePoint Developer Conference and Beta 2.
We currently have more than 100 items in the publishing queue to be released between the SP Conference and after Beta 2, plus some great improvements and new pages being built for MSDN Office and MSDN SharePoint Developer Centers. Expect a lot of articles, videos, code samples, and more in the upcoming months.
Moving forward I will focus more on blogging about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 for developers and will share related stories and links to others who are doing the same. Here are a few blogs that you should definitely follow if you are interested in developer documentation for Office and SharePoint:
I’ll also be attending the SharePoint Developer Conference. It’s always refreshing to have an opportunity to talk to Office and SharePoint developers. I’ll be at the ATE tables and hanging out at the Office developer booths. Hope to see some of you there.
While we work on 2010 content, we are also getting MSDN Office and MSDN SharePoint ready to be revamped with the new MSDN redesign. Scott Hanselman has already shared a preview of this look-and-feel in his blog. Here are a couple snapshots for your delight:
Soon MSDN Office and MSDN SharePoint will get this look. I particularly like that this new set of UI and improvements make the sites more community focused and looking as fresh and cool as the Expression site and the Silverlight site.
This are also exciting times to work with the MSDN team. Scott will be blogging more about this project. If you are into MSDN, you should also check out the Inside MSDN & TechNet blog for more news about MSDN improvements.
If you are into Open XML like me, you may have noticed that in the last couple years we have published a lot more articles, Visual How-tos, and code samples for Open XML developers. We have mainly focused in writing more about the Open XML SDK 2.0.
For that same reason, the Open XML Developer Center needed to grow and be organized in a way that would simplify discoverability of content and expose better ways to access content, including videos.
Because we didn’t want to wait until Beta 2 to release this site, we decided to take it live yesterday. Open XML SDK 2.0 developers are interested in finding more articles and guidance and we hope the improvements made to this site can simplify the time you spend learning Open XML and using the Open XML SDK 2.0.
Here are the links that get you to all our new and redesigned pages.
These pages were optimized for the new MSDN redesign I discussed previously, so they will look even better once MSDN makes the switch to the new MSDN design.
Eric White from my team owns the content of this portal and will be blogging soon about more details about this project.
Looking forward to great times and to sharing new content for MSDN Office and MSDN SharePoint!
Zeyad Rajabi announced this week the availability of the new Open XML SDK 2.0 August CTP. As mentioned by Zeyad, changes to this CTP include:
If you are into Open XML Development, you will also be interested in a few more videos and code samples.
We have released some videos, walkthroughs, and code sample downloads in the last couple weeks:
More to come soon.
I am also glad to announce that yesterday we published 50+ Open XML code samples packaged as Visual Studio code snippets. The code samples were created by Ken Getz as an update to the previous Open XML Visual Studio 2005 code snippets released a couple years ago. The previous snippets provided samples on manipulating document parts and packages using the System.IO.Packaging namespace. This new set provides more code samples that show how to manipulate document parts and packages using the Open XML SDK 2.0. The snippets were tested and work well with the August CTP released this week.
You can download the snippets here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=78bea298-a3f9-44cf-bde0-b4f30dc986df&displaylang=en
The snippets in this download use the Open XML SDK 2.0 to accomplish many tasks involving Microsoft Excel 2007, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, and Microsoft Word 2007 documents.
You can use the enclosed code snippets with the Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 Code Snippet Manager. Each snippet provides unique functionality that you can reuse within an application. This download provides snippets written in Microsoft Visual Basic.NET® and Microsoft C#® development languages.
Here’s a list of all the snippets included in this package:
Excel: Add custom UI
Add custom ribbon markup to a specified workbook.
Excel: Delete comments by user
Delete comments from a workbook, given an author name. Pass an empty author name to delete all comments.
Excel: Delete row
Given a document name, a worksheet name, and a one-based row index, delete a row from the worksheet.
Excel: Delete worksheet
Delete the specified sheet from within the specified workbook.
Excel: Delete XL4 macro sheets
Given a document name delete all the XL4 macro sheets.
Excel: Export chart
Given a workbook and the name of a chart, export the chart to an XML file.
Excel: Get all sheets
Retrieve a List of all the sheets in a workbook.
Excel: Get cell for reading
Given a document name, a worksheet name, and a cell name, retrieve a reference to the cell for reading. Raise an exception of the cell doesn't exist.
Excel: Get cell for writing
Given a spreadsheet document, a sheet name and an address, return a reference to a cell ready to accept a value. Create the cell if necessary.
Excel: Get cell format
Given a document name, a worksheet name, and a cell name, return the CellFormat instance associated with the cell.
Excel: Get cell value
Given a document name, a worksheet name, and a cell name, get the value of the cell.
Excel: Get cell value given row and column
Rertrieve a cell value given its row and column numbers, or a row number and column name.
Excel: Get column header
Given a document name, a worksheet name, and a cell name, get the column of the cell and return the content of the first cell in that column.
Excel: Get defined names
Given a document name, return a dictionary of defined names.
Excel: Get hidden rows or columns
Given a document name, and a worksheet name, return a list of either hidden rows or columns.
Excel: Get hidden worksheets
Retrieve a list of all the hidden worksheets in a workbook.
Excel: Get style border
Retrieve information about a cell's border.
Excel: Get style border info
Get style border information.
Excel: Get style fill
Retrieve information about a cell's fill style.
Excel: Get style fill information
Retrieve specific font formatting information about a cell.
Excel: Get style font information
Excel: Insert Custom XML
Insert a custom XML part into a workbook.
Excel: Insert header or footer
Insert a header or footer into a workbook.
Excel: Insert number into cell
Given a file, a sheet, and a cell, insert a specified numeric value.
Excel: Insert string into cell
Given a document name, a worksheet name, a cell name, and a value, insert the text into the specified cell.
Insert a string into a specified cell.
Excel: Set recalc option
Given a file name, set the recalculation behavior of the workbook. Return the previous calc mode.
Excel: Worksheet part by name
Retrieve an entire worksheet part, given its name.
PowerPoint: Add comment
Add a comment to the first slide in a presentation.
PowerPoint: Delete all comments, by author
Delete all comments in a PowerPoint presentation for a specific author. Pass an empty string for the author name to delete all comments.
PowerPoint: Delete slide by title
Given a presentation and a slide title, delete the slide.
PowerPoint: Get List of Slide Titles
Given a presentation file, retrieve a generic list of strings containing the slide titles. Some slide titles might be empty strings.
PowerPoint: Get slide count
Given a file name, retrieve the number of slides in the presentation.
PowerPoint: Get slide index, by title
Find the zero-based index of a slide within a presentation, given its title.
PowerPoint: Reorder slides
Given a PPT deck, an original position, and a new position, attempt to place the slide in the original position into the new position within the deck.
PowerPoint: Replace image on slide
Given a presentation, a slide title, and an image file, replace the first image on the selected slide with the new image.
PowerPoint: Replace slide title
Given a presentation, a slide title, and a new slide title, find the slide, and modify its title.
Word: Accept all revisions
Given a document name and an author name, accept all revisions by the specified author. Pass an empty string for the author to accept all revisions.
Word: Add Table
Add a table, including text from an array, to the end of a document.
Word: Convert DOCM to DOCX
Convert a macro-enabled document to a standard document.
Word: Delete all comments
Given a document name and an author name, delete all comments by the specified author. Pass an empty string for the author to accept all revisions.
Word: Delete headers and footers
Delete headers and footers from a document.
Word: Delete hidden text
Delete hidden text from a document.
Word: Extract Styles
Extract the Styles part from a document, so you can insert it into another document.
Word: Get application property
Retrieve the value of an application property from a document.
Word: Get Content Control
Retrieve the markup for a specific content control.
Word: Get core property
Retrieve the value of a core property from a document.
Word: Get custom property
Retrieve a custom property for a document.
Word: Replace the styles part
Replace the entire styles part with a styles part extracted from another document.
Word: Retrieve comments
Retrieve all the comments from a document in an XDocument instance.
Word: Retrieve Table of Contents
Retrieve the table of contents markup, if it exists.
Word: Set application property
Given a document name, a property to set, and a value, update the document.
Word: Set core property
Set a core Word property (like Version, or LastModifiedBy).
Word: Set custom property
Given a document name, a property name/value, and the property type, add a custom property to a document.
Word: Set print orientation
Set the print orientation for each section in a document.
This will be interesting for all of you who are into Office development: As Office developers, we can start identifying ourselves as active members of the community by joining the “Office Developer Guild” spearheaded by John Durant.
The developer community for Microsoft Office grand and healthy. And, the knowledge and expertise in our community is pretty vast and deep. To make it easier for us to stay alert about events, up-coming content, etc. and more easily share ideas we now have the “Office Developer Guild”—a group of like-minded professional friends on Facebook. Additional benefits in the ODG include receiving announcements, slightly ahead of everyone else, of up-coming content, events, etc. That way you can tee up your own blog entries in advance! You’ll also receive exclusive messages from community leaders and insiders. As part of the on-going Office developer conversation I’ll be reaching out, asking questions, and soliciting feedback as well.
Who can join? Anyone who is interested in how to developer productivity solutions with Microsoft Office. This includes Web, SharePoint, SQL Server, Exchange, VBA, XML and other developers--- all of these products & technologies are relevant.
How to join? Search for my email on Facebook and request to be added: john.durant@microsoft.com. I’ll add you.
Host the ODG image: Place the ODG “badge” on your site or blog so that you identify yourself as a member of the “the Guild”. Be sure to announce on the ODG wall that you are hosting the ODG image (shown below).
Hope you all join the “Office Developer Guild!”
I remember all the buzz generated when we announced the new Fluent UI (Ribbon) for Office 2007 applications. The Microsoft Office Fluent UI replaced the previous system of layered menus, toolbars, and task panes with a simpler system optimized for efficiency and discoverability. The new UI, including the Office Fluent Ribbon, provides improved context menus, enhanced screen tips, a Mini toolbar, and keyboard shortcuts that help to improve user efficiency and productivity.
In Office 2007, the Fluent UI is implemented in several applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office suite, including Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. Fluent UI can be customized programmatically thanks to Fluent UI extensibility. MSDN has great articles, VHTs, and downloads that show you how to get started with Fluent UI extensibility.
In Office 2010, the Fluent UI is available in more Office apps including Visio, InfoPath, Publisher, Outlook (improved), OneNote, and Project. Thanks to the expansion of Fluent UI to more products, developers will be able to provide more custom Fluent UI experiences. As explained by Brian Jones, in Office 2010 the Fluent UI extensibility story has been improved as well. We have added the ability for programmatically activating tabs in the Fluent UI. For example, you can now have your custom tabs behave like built in contextual tabs, where tabs only show when specific events are fired.
If you are interested in learning more about Fluent UI extensibility and get ready for more Fluent UI programming in Office 2010, here’s a list of recommended resources:
Also, check out the Fluent UI resource centers on TechNet and Office Online.
MSDN Office Developer Center (ODC) provides a developer roadmap to understand and work with Office System programs, servers, services, tools and technologies. Since we are developers, we thought it would be great to provide a Office Developer Resources Ribbon Tab that you can download for free. Frank Rice created a super cool Visual Basic .NET shared add-in in Visual Studio that creates a tab on the Word 2007 Ribbon.
This Ribbon tab provides quick access to developer sites on MSDN for Office and SharePoint, as well as a rich set or organized links to Get Started, MSDN Library, Learn, Community, Forums and Support resources that matter to Office/SharePoint developers.
This is a useful tool for anyone interested in getting quick access to Office and SharePoint developer resources from a frequently used application like Word. Also, if you are into blogging from Word or writing technical documentation related to Office or SharePoint, this a tool that simplifies navigation and discoverability to most popular developer resources. Finally, this is just another great sample of the detailed level of customization you can get with Fluent UI extensibility.
Frank Rice has created most of the developer content we have about Fluent UI extensibility on MSDN and he is considered our expert in Fluent UI development. Frank shares in his blog post the code and process he followed to create this Ribbon. You can download this free add-in at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/OfficeDevResourceTab/. Kudos to Frank for this great sample.
I was out of town and had to miss the excitement of blogging about the launch of the Office Technical Preview yesterday. Lucky me, today I have tons of links and trackbacks to other blog posts to share!
Yesterday, Stephen Elop announced the technical preview milestone for Microsoft Office 2010 at the WorldWide Partner Conference.
From the Press Pass:
Office 2010 and related products will deliver innovative capabilities and provide new levels of flexibility and choice that will help people:
Read more here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-13Office2010WPCPR.mspx
Read more details at John Durant’s great post.
Read more details at Paul Andrew’s post and at the Developer Sneak peek video:
Availability to the Technical Preview program is “by invitation only” and is not broadly available to the public. There is a waitlist you can sign up for, found here.
I’ll keep updating this blog entry as I hear more.
Some time ago I blogged about How to: Uploading a File to a SharePoint Library Site from a Local Folder and How to: Magic with SharePoint 2003, uploading files using a Web service. Some people found these samples useful and some people asked if I could provide sample code that works with SharePoint Server 2007.
For some time I asked around and realized that there are multiple possible ways to accomplish this task in SharePoint 2007. Here are some popular approaches I’ve learned about and some great possibilities and drawbacks for each:
For this last approach, Joel Krist has created a new Office Visual How-to that shows how to use the HTTP PUT method to programmatically upload files from an ASP.NET Web application to a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site: Uploading Files to SharePoint Server 2007 from ASP.NET Web Applications by Using the HTTP PUT Method. This article provides code samples in both VB and C# and a video that shows how to this.
Here’s a preview of the video from that same article.
MSDN Developer Centers pull together content and resources around specific products and technologies. They connect developers with code samples, community sites, technical articles and documentation, upcoming events, and much more. The MSDN Office Developer Center (ODC) provides a developer roadmap to understand and work with Office System programs, servers, services, tools and technologies.
As we prepare for our next product release (Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010), we worked on a set of site updates to improve navigation, increase discoverability of content, and add more community content and features.
Here’s a summary of new features and updated pages:
Coming soon Open XML Developer Center revamp!
Here’s a few toys and great reads that have kept me entertained for the last couple weeks:
If you manage a personal or company Web site and haven’t heard about this yet, get ready to be amused. The IIS team released last week the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit Beta – a free toolkit that helps Web developers, hosting providers, and server administrators improve their sites’ relevance in search results by recommending how to make them more search engine-friendly. The SEO Toolkit Beta is available for installation via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta.
The IIS SEO Toolkit Beta is a piece of the larger Microsoft Web Platform strategy, which enables developers and end-users to build great websites, experiences, and achieve success in the Web ecosystem.
Some of the great features this tool includes are: customization of crawling (you can ignore ‘nofollow’ attribute and ‘noindex’ metatag, define #links to crawl, and consider internal linking from groups of directories and subdirectories). You can also get SEO violation reports, query results using a UI query builder, generate sitemaps, page inventories, reports of external and internal links, and much more. My favorite one is the keywords suggestions view:
We’ve already crawled MSDN_Office and we’ve found lots of SEO violations. We already started fixing critical issues and our Web site will benefit extensively by using this tool and following best practices recommended by this tool. If you are interested in improving your site for SEO, this download is a must!
Here’s a few great reads and sites for download:
If you are doing SharePoint development and configuration and struggle to remember Stsadm commands, you should check out this super cool application. It provides a fully browsable interface, in-depth information from the TechNet TOC and library, and links to specific topics for each Stsadm command line operation and property. By using separate XML data files, the SilverLight application is instantly updatable and localizable.
You can find the Stsadm SilverLight application on TechNet here:
Some other blogs posts where you can find more info about this tool:
Even after years of getting my hands on Office development and loving it, I still continue being a passionate Web developer. I still keep my addiction to anything ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, and Web platform in general. ScottGu’s blog is a great read to keep-up with news from DevDiv. Another fantastic blog to follow is Scott Hanselman’s blog. Scott is an expert in Web development and a former ASP.NET MVP who is now working with MSDN and providing great insight and suggestions to improve MSDN. He has a couple blogs posts that discuss alternate views for MSDN, including a Low-Bandwith (loband) view and MSDN Updates - and RFC for you. He is currently working with MSDN on a set of proposed let's go crazy here and try some way-out-there-MSDN designs for MSDN Developer Centers. Here’s a couple designs:
It’s great that someone like Scott is providing all this out-of-the-box thinking and ideas for MSDN. The MSDN Office Developer Center team can’t wait to see the final designs and roll them out to our pages. More here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MSDNUpdatesAndRFCForYou.aspx. You can also follow Scott on on Twitter: @shanselman
Last year I had the opportunity to attend the Office Developer Conference 2008 in San Jose, CA. I remember being there with Sanjay, Ken Getz, and Wouter at the Open XML booth where we had the opportunity to talk to some of you about the latest improvements to the Open XML Format SDK 1.0 and distribute Open XML posters. I was super happy to hear from Gray that we will have an Office Developer Conference moving to the SharePoint Developer Conference 2009. Office 2010 enables better integration between Office client applications and SharePoint products and technologies. It makes sense to have a shared conference.
For those of you who are already collecting links to Office 2010 resources, don’t forget to sign-up for the Technical Preview and to pass on the word about the Office Developer Conference this year.
Here are some other MS blogs that you should follow for news about the conference: