The Goldfish Bowl

Windows Folder Web Part - new download location

grahamtyler — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:52:00 GMT

Just a quick note: the sample Windows Folder Web Part for WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 that I posted some time ago is now available for download again from the GotDotNet 'User Samples' area. I re-posted it here after I received several emails pointing out that the GotDotNet 'Code Gallery' area where the web part was originally posted had been closed down. Many thanks to those who sent feedback pointing this out.

It looks like the web part has proved popular, as just before the GotDotNet Code Gallery area was closed down I took a screenshot with the download counter standing at 8133 downloads! Wow, I hope that the solution was useful for all those who downloaded it. Please refer to my original blog post for more details.

Today's "Wow" moment - Microsoft Surface

grahamtyler — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:46:00 GMT

Ready for something completely different?

Ever seen the movie 'Minority Report'? One step closer. Microsoft just announced a new product, "Microsoft Surface". You have to watch the videos to appreciate this.

First check out the video that Major Nelson posted for a good overview (this is where I first caught the news - thanks Major).
Then take a look at the official Surface website
The Seattle PI has a writeup with more videos
BBC News has posted a story
Robert Scoble seems excited - "surface computing is real and is wild. I want one of these in my house, but it is too expensive". Scoble previously posted videos of the product whilst it was still a research prototype

Great stuff; especially as I was thinking about buying a new coffee table anyway. I'm guessing that these won't be available at staff discount for some time though.

PDC "rescheduled"

grahamtyler — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:14:00 GMT

... sounds like 'cancelled' to me for 2007! Shame - especially as I was planning to go!

http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/

Still, it's for technology reasons - the dates fall inconveniently between technology release waves. Maybe we should keep the 'social' aspect alive and still have the party at Universal Studios?

(Suggestions for 'business justification' gratefully received.)

MOSS receives DoD 5015.2 certification

grahamtyler — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:45:00 GMT

For those who have been building or evaluating records management solutions using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), you may be aware that MOSS was recently submitted to take the DoD 5015.2 certification test. Adam Harmetz explained why the DoD 5015.2 certification might be relevant for some customers in a post on the Records Management Team Blog a while ago.

Good news - it was just announced that MOSS has passed the test, and received DoD 5015.2 Certification. Hurrah! You can now see MOSS on the Joint Interoperability Test Command list of certified records management applications (meaning that it's official :-)). The capabilities will be made available via an add-on later this year.

The solution has been developed by using the supported MOSS object model - so in theory, anyone could have built the solution given enough time. I think that this is a good example of the power and capability of the solutions that can be created by building on the MOSS platform. Whilst Microsoft chose to address this particular US standard because it is widely recognised, hopefully this shows that MOSS-based solutions can be adapted to meet differing standards. For example, in Europe the upcoming MoReq2 standards look as though they will be increasingly important in the near future. I wonder whether there are any partners looking to build a similar 'compliance pack' for MoReq? (Just my speculation by the way :-)).

If you've not heard of DoD 5015.2 yet, or you do not have a specific need to be compliant with that standard, you probably don't need to think about installing the components.

[UPDATE 5th June 2007]: There is a great white paper that was published by the partner that developed the DoD 5015.2 certification solution for MOSS, describing the new functionality that will be added, here: Military Grade Compliance for SharePoint 2007 (published in January 2007).

There is also now a post about the certification by Adam Harmetz, ECM Program Manager on the ECM Team Blog here.

Communicator Mobile client released

grahamtyler — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:39:00 GMT

An entirely new version of the Communicator client application for Live Communications Server has just been released, this time specifically for mobile devices. Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile is for Windows Mobile-based devices, and extends the reach of LCS 2005 so that you can stay connected and in touch with your contacts even while out of the office. What's more you can download the client for free (assuming you've already purchased LCS 2005 Client Access Licenses of course ;-)

Communicator Web Access has also been available for some time.

Via Mark Deakin. (Mark writes about Unified Communications and Mobility technologies, so be sure to check out his blog if you're interested in this area!)

SharePoint dev team start blogging

grahamtyler — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:10:00 GMT

The SharePoint product development team at Microsoft have recently launched the SharePoint Team Blog, where they will be talking about the upcoming releases of the product set. Already published are posts from the Corporate VP of the Office Servers product group, and the General Manager of SharePoint Portal, Search, and Content Management, so make sure to subcribe!

'Windows Folder web part' published to GotDotNet

grahamtyler — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 03:06:00 GMT

I have just posted a sample SharePoint web part to GotDotNet (note: since moved to MSDN Code Gallery), which I've called the "Windows Folder web part". This is the result of a project I worked on some time ago which I'm now able to share.

What does it do?

The Windows Folder web part allows users to store files within a standard Windows (NTFS) folder in a shared network location and display a list of those files in a SharePoint page via a consistent ‘document library’-style interface.

This means that if your users need to work with file types that do not work well when stored within SharePoint, you can now continue to store them in NTFS, but users can locate them in SharePoint alongside the rest of their files that are stored within SharePoint, via a consistent interface. (Note that NTFS does not natively support all the SharePoint features such as check-in, check-out, version history etc so these options are not available for files accessed via the Windows Folder web part.)

The initial requirement for which I developed this solution was for a company which was migrating all user files from NTFS to SharePoint, but were heavy users of Microsoft Access, with hundreds of small databases stored in NTFS used for various adhoc custom purposes. They would often have multiple users reading and editing data from an Access database simultaneously. When accessed via SMB (i.e. over the local network), Access is capable of handling this type of 'simultaneous access' pretty seamlessly. However, if accessed via HTTP (such as if stored within SharePoint), due to the stateless nature of HTTP, each user perhaps unknowingly downloads a local copy of the database. Any editing they perform happens only on their local copy. If they even realise this, there is no easy way to synchronise their changes back to the version stored in SharePoint and resolve any conflicts. My solution - keep doing it the old way behind the scenes but pretend to store them in SharePoint :-). This way users still have a single place to go to find all their files.

I'm sure you can think of other scenarios where this could be useful. Note that even with this web part available, you should continue to store most file types within SharePoint to take advantage of check-in, check-out, version history and all the other benefits SharePoint adds over NTFS. Use this solution only when there is something blocking you from otherwise using SharePoint.

Sounds hard to manage?

This is the cool bit: When a SharePoint site administrator adds the Windows Folder web part to the site, a new NTFS sub-folder representing the site is automatically created underneath a 'root' NTFS shared folder (configured by the server administrator when first installing the web part). The NTFS security ACLs for each sub-folder are automatically synchronised to match the list of SharePoint users for the site, so the site administrator experience is simply to "drag and drop" the web part. New users added later to the SharePoint site will also be added to the NTFS folder next time the site admin visits the site.

Works best (most securely) if Kerberos authentication is used.

Where can I get it?

You can download the entire solution from ~~GotDotNet~~ the MSDN Code Gallery, including install files, source code and full documentation (hence I'm not going into great detail in this post as to how it works :-). Please note that the solution is only provided "as is", i.e. as a sample with no support provided, and I'd encourage you to evaluate it thoroughly and make any changes required before deploying into production to determine if it meets your needs and security requirements. If you review the source code you may find that you can improve it in some (possibly many ;-) ways - if so please go ahead - I'd welcome any feedback on the solution or advice on how it could be further improved! Hope that you find it useful. If you have any questions, please post them on the ~~GotDotNet~~ MSDN Code Gallery message board (or use the contact form on this blog).

[UPDATE: 3rd Sept 2007 - changed the hyperlinks from this article to point to a new download location after the GotDotNet CodeGallery was phased out - solution is now located in the GotDotNet User Samples area. Thanks to those who pointed out the original links no longer worked.]

[UPDATE: 22nd Feb 2008 - changed the links again after the whole of GotDotNet was shut down :-), code was migrated to the MSDN Code Gallery.]

PDC05 Session recordings available now

grahamtyler — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:00:00 GMT

All the sessions from PDC05 were video recorded - and the recordings have now been posted on a public website here: http://microsoft.sitestream.com/PDC05/

There was some extremely valuable stuff discussed at PDC that hasn't been well captured elsewhere - if you're anything like me even if you were at PDC there were far too many sessions to catch half the stuff you were interested in, so now's your chance to catch up :)

Also you can still download the slide decks seperately here: http://commnet.microsoftpdc.com/content/downloads.aspx

Group Alerts and Role-based Messaging samples for LCS 2005

grahamtyler — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 14:27:00 GMT

Some great new LCS 2005 sample code has been released recently to cover some commonly-requested messaging scenarios:

Role Agent for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
Role Agent is a sample Microsoft Windows service application that implements a role-based messaging agent for managing sessions and for brokering and dispatching instant messages between users and members of a defined group.

Group Alerts Sample for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005
The group alerts sample application provides a simple user interface for sending instant messages to the online members of an Active Directory group or distribution list and its subgroups.

Presence Controls for Office Communicator released

grahamtyler — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:48:00 GMT

Recently I enthused about the planned RTC Presence Toolkit, which would provide an easy way for developers to add integrated communications and presence to their own applications. The toolkit has now been published as the "Presence Controls for Office Communicator 2005".

If you're already using Office Communicator as your client interface you'll be familiar with the new 'Gumdrop' icons which indicate presence - these can now be used in your custom applications, complete with action menus. "Suck them and see" :-)