John R. Durant's WebLog

The Innovation Decision

John R. Durant — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:42:27 GMT

For over a decade I have enjoyed so very much being a leading voice for custom solutions that integrate with Microsoft Office. The last 7 ½ years of that time have been as a Microsoft employee gleefully carrying my blue-badge with me all over the world. I’ve gone many places and talked with thousands of people about developing custom productivity solutions. Above all, I’ve been continually amazed and impressed with the many ways our customers extend and customize Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and the rest of the platform to suit their business needs. I remain as confident as ever in the value of Office 2010 and related products to Microsoft’s customers.

Beginning in September, I will be giving voice to new ideas, topics, and initiatives as I begin working for Savvy Sherpa, the best strategic research and business development firm in the world. I’ll be working with valued clients in a variety of industries to incubate and pilot new business products, campaigns, and processes.

Given the changes, I’m retiring this MSDN blog as of today, 11 August 2010. There will be no more updates, and comments will be turned off, but I’ll leave the content as it is. And, I have a new blog oriented around innovation and looking at a variety of problems in new strategic ways:

http://ideasareeverything.wordpress.com

You can also follow my new updates on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/johnrdurant

Here is the final Rock Thought of the Day (unless someday I become a writer for Total Guitar magazine<wink>):

The Heavier Side: Top Ten Songs and Why--

10. Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love by Van Halen— Strangely this song still conveys some element of pop, but it’s actually a very heavy song, loaded with attitude, anger, and isolation. Eddie’s guitar work is unmistakably his own. Re-recorded today it would sound richer and more forceful.

9. Don’t Forget Me by Red Hot Chili Peppers—This song evokes such desperate colors, one of the finest examples of musicians exhibiting maximum trust—trusting the notes and tones to do their job. It very patiently builds layers of dissonance, loneliness.

8. Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin—This is the band in full flight—all the swagger, the seduction, the psychedelic trip. The rhythm section is utterly unshakable allowing Jimmy and Robert to take us places we’ve never been before or since.

7. United States by The Smashing Pumpkins—This song shouts so loud that you are forced to hear. It’s 11 minutes of wrath unleashed. Billy and Jimmy tear down every wall with this one. As my readers know, it’s hard to pick only one SP song, because Geek USA, Silverf***, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Everlasting Gaze, and Marquis in Spades, Tales of Scorched Earth, and so many others are so very good.

6. Tom Sawyer by Rush— This song takes an ingénue and casts him against a backdrop of modern confusion where he’s threatened, ready to strike back. It crashes like a wave on the shores of our innocence.

5. I’m Broken by Pantera—If you ever wondered why Dimebag Darrell is so revered, just listen to the first two bars, and you’ll know—it’s riffing at its best. The whole song is a megaphone of distressed indignation.

4. Judas Rising by Judas Priest—Relentless and fierce. Metal posers of the last 20 years need to use this masterpiece of smoking hot rage as the measuring stick for their efforts.

3. Centuries of Sin by Probot—This is David Grohl’s homage to his metal heroes, and Cronos does the vocals. The song is almost painfully tight, and the energy is frantic. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. A real standout in a world of white-hot wildness.

2. Jambi by Tool— It is one of the few songs I can listen to multiple times in succession and never tire of a single note. It’s as close to a perfect song as mere mortals can write.

1. Blackened by Metallica—In my mind still the pinnacle of their song writing. Metal was never better before or after by any band.

Rock On

Promoting Office 2010 in Peru

John R. Durant — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:56:44 GMT

I just completed a much-needed 2 week vacation in Peru with one of my sons. While there, I wore my Office 2010 t-shirt as well as my Office branded hat, and it prompted some conversations about the products--- even while hiking over a mountain pass or two!

While I was away, I wasn’t blogging or even reading email, and that was great!

Now, I’m back, and the blog entries will begin to flow once again. If you’d like to see the brief video montage of my trip, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BFTw_CmZQI

(created using Microsoft Movie Maker as part of the Windows Live Essentials beta)

Rock Thought of the Day: The National have produced something innovative and fresh with their recently released album “High Violet”. In a world where so-called “indie” bands are sounding as conventional as the over-packaged bands during the final gasps of the Giant Label Era, The National are doing what any great band should do, irrespective of how they strike a distribution deal: Make music that takes us on a new journey.

Rock On

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011: Which Band Should Perform?

John R. Durant — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:35:04 GMT

As you all know the SharePoint Conference last year in Las Vegas was a great show (here are links to broadcasts of several of our sessions). I followed the show with a ticket to see U2’s 360 concert (unlike any other spectacle in rock-and-roll).

Since then, I’ve often been asked, “Is there going to be another SPC in 2010?”. The answer is: The next one is October 3-6, 2011 in Anaheim, California.

The weather in Cali is truly unbeatable, and the conference is sure to be another smash with great content all around.

I’d like to know, if we have a band perform at the attendee party—which band do you want to see?

Registration will open Spring 2011. Add yourself to the “keep me notified list” to stay up to date on all conference announcements at www.mssharepointconference.com.

If you have further questions about the show, you can email: SPC@Microsoft.com

Rock Thought of the Day: Of course, I would want to see Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins play, and SharePoint Conference 2011 would be on the map as the “Woodstock” of tech conferences! The biggest issues would be budget and scheduling. I would consider other bands, but it is not just about getting the biggest name. The selection has to work in the context of the overall conference. Other options I would consider (not necessarily in order of preference):

311
The Thermals
The Black Crowes
The Raconteurs
B-52’s
Dave Matthews Band

Rock On

Microsoft Office 2010 General Availability

John R. Durant — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:11:18 GMT

So, I was at TechEd 2010 talking a lot about Office 2010 solutions development last week and love was in the air…mostly because I gave out hundreds of t-shirts with our www.iheartmacros.com URL on them. I would say to people coming to our kiosk, “This shirt loves you” and hand them a shirt. But, I digress.

I did an interview for Channel 9 that’s getting lots of view. In it I discuss what’s new for solution building with Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. I really like the way this video was produced. Check it out here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/TheOfficeBlog/Developing-Solutions-for-Microsoft-Office-2010/

Also, today Office 2010 is generally available, and I have to say that the overall vibe at the kiosk last week was “rationally exuberant”. People are genuinely excited about what we’ve done in Office 2010 including the tighter integration with SharePoint 2010. Here are a two resources/cool materials related to the product that have shown up in the past few days:

1) Great blog post on how to view broadcast presentations on a mobile phone.

I demo’d this extensively at TechEd, and it was a big winner. Nothing beats creating presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint, but we should be able to see them anywhere. Now, that’s easier than ever.

2) Adding to the PowerPoint goodness are these: Some exceedingly attractive PowerPoint 2010 templates with embedded videos and innovative animations.

Here’s the maxim to remember: Every effective custom solution has to start with a truly great user experience.

IOW: users love and are familiar with the Office applications. The primary benefit of custom solutions in Office is to allow users to work in that familiar way while connecting their experience to more corporate resources such as workflows, databases, and more.

Rock Thought of the Day: Is The Cure’s Disintegration one of the best rock albums of all-time? I would argue that it is. It still occupies an artistic level that few of the best bands in the past 30 years will ever achieve. Now—you can get the 3-CD deluxe remaster with rarities of this album—supervised by Robert Smith himself (who else?).

Also—I’ve become rather intrigued by the work of the increasingly well-known artist Guillermo Kuitca. Check out his work with maps, print, and spaces.

Rock On

Open XML at TechEd 2010

John R. Durant — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:38:10 GMT

Open XML was a big part of my first session at TechEd 2010 called, "Office 2010: Developing the Next Wave of Productivity Solutions". The thing that gets the biggest reaction is the Open XML SDK 2.0 "Productivity Tool"-- especially the ability to reflect over an Office document to produce C# code that will produce the target document. Here's the scenario: I have a Word document (Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint deck) that a user produced manually. I want to be able to produce that same document via C# code. To do this, you point the Productivity Tool at the doc and then choose Reflect Code menu in the tool. In the pane on the right will appear the full C# code you need to produce the doc.

From there, you can paste the code into a fresh Visual Studio project (say a commandline project). You can press F5 and see the doc get produced. From there, you can alter the C# code to suit the needs of your specific business solution. Zeyad and Brian has blogged extensively about this tool and the SDK.

Attending my session was Mike Huguet, a consultant and trainer with SparkHound. He does a ton with Open XML, and I chatted with him for 2 minutes on video which you can see below. Apologies that my voice sounds a bit thrashed, and it was noisy on the expo floor. But, you can still hear how Open XML is being used by customers as Mike describes it.

Discussing Open XML

Rock Thought of the Day: Check out LCD Soundsystem "All I Want" from their album This is Happening. Also, got get The Dead Weather's "Die By The Drop". Jack White is starting getting very close to making my list of top rock artists of all time. He is endlessly interesting, compelling, suprising. "I'm going to take you for worse or better"

Rock On

Microsoft Office Programmability Delivers for Consultant’s Customers

John R. Durant — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:03:56 GMT

I’ve talked with with many dozens of customers here at TechEd 2010 about Office 2010 and shown them a lot of demos at the kiosk. As they arrive I hand them a www.iheartmacros.com t-shirt (hugely popular, btw). Very often the response is: “This is great. I actually do love macros and VBA”. I’m not surprised.

In the following 2 minute video clip I talk with Mike Corkery, a consultant and IT trainer who specializes in Office development and training. He mentions how a relatively small amount of Office code simplified a more time-consuming and complex process for one of his customers. You can contact Mike at mjcorkery@cssiofma.com.

Enjoy!

TechEd 2010: Office Delivers for Consultant’s Customers

Rock Thought of the Day: I’m rocking to some Judas Priest while creating this blog entry. Songs like “Living After Midnight” and “Screaming for Vengeance” are acetylene-powered rock and roll. Heavy metal has never been better than this.

Rock On

Technorati Tags: Office 2010,Office,Microsoft,Developer,VBA

New Office VBA site launch on MSDN

John R. Durant — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:25:55 GMT

MSDN now features a special site (also accessible via www.iheartmacros.com) dedicated to Microsoft Office VBA - an important part of the Office 2010 value.

The site presents a clear path for technically savvy users to begin learning how to customize the Office applications to meet their needs. This new MSDN site highlights content for:

What you can do with VBA
How to get started
Key blogs
VBA tips & tricks
Access to a new interactive training tool, the Office Developer Atlas.

In addition to previously published VBA content the site features new videos, samples, and articles to enrich the knowledge of VBA users across the learning spectrum.

Head to the site, check out the content, and tell us what you think!

Rock Thought of the Day: I am so happy to own Volume 1 of the Smashing Pumpkins “Teargarden by Kaleidyscope”.

It comes in a screen-printed wooden box containing a polished stone, the CD, and a vinyl 45 of one of the songs. The packaging and the songs have that Billy Corgan touch as the whole ensemble is surprising, unpredictable, multi-layered, and serving up just great rock-and-roll.

Rock On

Office 2010 & SharePoint 2010: Platform for Innovation

John R. Durant — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:30:09 GMT

There's a great new article by Michael Desmond in Visual Studio Magazine called "Office Alignment: Why Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are poised to unleash a new wave of developer innovation". Read it and you'll get Michael's always engaging insight into the new products investments in this release, and you'll read about some key customers who have leveraged the platform to drive their business.

I've been reading a lot about innovation, and it can be a topic that begins to elude us when we get too theoretical. The bottom line is that it means coming up with something new that drives forward the goals of an organization in an identifiable, measurable way. Customers who use Office and SharePoint as the backbone of their business productivity need to do more on a tighter budget. They need to get more out of the all of the investments they make, including IT. To me, that's an opportunity.

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are extensible, which means you can program them to do more than they do right out of the box. Developers can leverage the APIs and services in SharePoint and Office through Visual Studio .NET to tailor the software to meet the needs of specific users, departments, or a whole organization. For example, IT can connect SharePoint to line-of-business data sources such as accounts receivable/accounts payable and serve up the data in a customized way as a SharePoint site. Then, they can connect this to custom experiences right inside the Office client applications like Excel, Word, Outlook, etc. Moreover, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can create solutions that leverage the same infrastructure to serve a world-wide set of customers.

If you want to get an overview of "what's new" in Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Visual Studio 2010 for developers and also see how these translate into real advantages for customers, this Visual Studiio Magazine article is a great place to start.

As you want to learn more, here are some great places to go:

MSDN for Office: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office

MSDN for SharePoint: http://msdn.microsoft.com/SharePoint

Office Developer Atlas: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/msdn/en-us/office/media/Atlas/Default.html

Office Developer Guild on FB: http://www.facebook.com/officedeveloperguild

Keeping It Real With Microsoft Office: Asking Questions About Solution Design

John R. Durant — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:38:00 GMT

I just finished a whirlwind swing through Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp, and finally Vienna Austria. I've already blogged about the first three cities, but this last one is the focus of this post.

I went to Vienna mainly to meet with some customers in order to provide guidance around Office solutions and also to gather input and feedback. Most of my time on Friday 2 April was spent meeting with Rubicon (www.rubicon.eu), one of our Gold Partners based in Vienna. Thomas Kuhta, CEO for Rubicon, and his team including Markus Leimhofer and Ernst Scheithauer, along with representatives from Vienna Insurance Group and Business Insurance Application Consulting (Martin Bischof) showed me the details of an elaborate Microsoft Office-based solution called ECMS. This solution is designed to meet the needs of customers across many different geographies and includes a mobile-user option.

You can read more about it here: Customer- wr städtische Partner- rubicon

It's all in German, but using Bing Translator you get a pretty good rendition in English or the language of your choosing.

What impresses me about all of this is the final value things like Open XML in Microsoft Office bring. For developers, there's always a temptation to get caught up in the excitement of a given technology-a mostly intellectual enterprise. I made this mistake earlier in my career, and it was costly. Fortunately, I gained wisdom and learned that we need to 'keep things real' and always focus on what the final value is on a number of important fronts. Below are a few considerations.

As you approach a given task or project, force yourself to ask the tough questions such as:

-- Will what I'm doing make life easier for a non-technical person? Even if it will, can I move their experience from good to better to best?

Most business solutions built on Microsoft Office are designed to save users time, reduce complexity, or automate steps in a long process. But, that's the minimum requirement. Reach farther.

-- Is what I'm about to code have an inherent ability to adapt to new business needs and new requirements?

Business solutions are often out of date soon after they are rolled out. That's OK, and it's to be expected. Business needs change, and your design has to take this into account. At the same time, don't fall into the trap of over-engineering things. You want to build in flexibility without trying to create nearly infinite adaptability which will ultimately add milestones to your schedule.

-- On a scale of 1 to 10, to what extent is the technology I'm using in this solution untested, untried, or just a fad?

This one is tricky. New things are not necessarily to be avoided. But, to figure out which new technologies to bet on, take into account the big picture. See how the new technology or software fits into the broader context of where the industry is going. It's analogous to being a trader on Wall Street. Many traders desperately and usually fail to pick out of nowhere the next "big thing" and cash in on that IPO or stock. The risks are huge. Taking a similar approach to software technologies is foolish at best, because no CIO's can take those kinds of risks in their IT infrastructure. But, that doesn't mean you need to sit on your hands and wait until a technology is super popular to get started. You might miss some important opportunities. So, to mitigate the risk, get informed (just like a stock trader should!). Learn as much as you can not just about the technology but even more about the overall market and industry. This will help you avoid costly mistakes.

-- Does the functional design build on existing user experiences or does it require a completely new set of UI and software requirements?

People love the user experience in Microsoft Office. Why not build on that rather than creating an application with completely distinct UI and flow? Many of our partners, like Rubicon, do just this. They leverage the familiarity of Microsoft Office to land an augmented experience through a custom solution.

So-as I sat in the beautiful offices of Rubicon there in Vienna Austria I was struck by how well they had made the right calls, in my personal view, both technically and strategically. Later on, I was able to see the city, and I must say it is one of the cleanest European cities I have ever seen. The architecture is distinct and classy. I could sense the history of the place-a palpable desire to reach higher. Even the taxi driver who drove me to the airport for my trip home at 4am was so excited to have me listen to his "Learn English on CD" training courses. He was thrilled to be learning something new and couldn't wait to try it out on me at 110 decibels!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office,Developer,Productivity

Connect Microsoft Excel To SQL Azure Database

John R. Durant — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:17:57 GMT

A number of people have found my post about getting started with SQL Azure pretty useful. But, it's all worthless if it doesn't add up to user value. Database are like potential energy in physics-it's a promise that something could be put in motion. Users actually making decisions based on analysis is analogous to kinetic energy in physics. It's the fulfillment of the promise of potential energy.

So what does this have to with Office 2010? In Excel 2010 we made it truly easy to connect to a SQL Azure database and pull down data. Here I explain how to do it.

By following these steps you will be able to:

1. Create an Excel data connection to a SQL Azure database

2. Select the data to import into Excel

3. Perform the data import

All mistakes herein, if any, are my own. Please alert me to potential errors.

Import SQL Azure Data Into Excel

You need to be running Excel 2010 (post-Beta 2 builds) for these steps to work properly.

In Excel 2010 select the Data tab on the Office Ribbon. Choose Get External Data and then press From Other Sources. In the resulting list select From SQL Server.
The Data Connection Wizard launches. Add the server name (for SQL Azure), user name, and password. Then press Next.
The wizard will then let you choose the table or view. Choose a table or view and press Finish.
The Import Data dialog lets you select where you want the data to land in Excel. Choose a location and press OK.

The designer will display your tables. You can close the designer after adding the tables.

Now, the user can work with the data just as with any other collection of data in Excel. Excel can save your connection information as a *.odc file so that you can re-connect any time.

Resources

· Getting Started Integrating Windows Azure with Microsoft Office Solutions

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office 2010,Devleoper,Excel,Productivity,Windows Azure,SQL Azure

Rock Thought of the Day: Listen to the Song "The Weary Kind" from the film Crazy Heart. This is what country music is all about at it's core. It's not pop glitter or just a lazy twang, my friends. It's about heart-ache and pain, about loss and yearning, about trying to measure up in our hearts to what our dreams tells us we can be. Country music was my first music love-affair. I listened to Trini Lopez, George Jones, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and so many more. Their songs had soul and stirred something in me that has never settled down going on four decades later.

Rock On