Hi everyone,

Our first snow in Seattle came and went this afternoon. As promised below is the proposed draft list of the sessions we have in mind for this track. I have four more sessions I am working on which would put the total of this track to 29 sessions.

Keep in mind that this list is still a draft and we have not completely finalized the actual sessions. However it should give you a good idea of where we stand and the exciting offering for the Server track.

I will keep you posted as we finalized the list in the next week or so. Our leadership is working hard to make sure we have the right number of sessions balanced between the different tracks, so stay tuned!

 

Jerome

 

Session Title Speaker Name Abstract
Develop Business Insight with SharePoint 2007 BI capabilities, Excel Services, and Reporting Services Scott Davis, David Gollob Now, with tighter integration with SQL Server 2005, the 2007 Microsoft Office system empowers people to be more productive by answering their own questions in a security-enhanced, familiar, and easier-to-use environment. Using Excel 2007 and Excel Services, employees can more securely access, analyze, and share information from data warehouses and enterprise applications.
 
Come and learn how to leverage these technologies to build compelling dashboards for your Organization's needs.
Building a custom Webservice to query the EPM datastore and render the data in Excel 2007 Christophe Fiessinger This session will teach you how to develop a custom wss webservice querrying the Project Server database and displaying the resulst in an Excel 2007 AddIn
Creating projects in Project Server using Forms Server and WinWF Christophe Fiessinger This session will show you how to develop a solution that creates projects in Project Server using Forms Server and WinWF
Displaying Project Server data in an Ajax.NET WebPart   Boris Scholl This session shows you how to develop an Ajax webpart displaying data from Project Server in a Windows Live Map.
Best Practices in SharePoint Component  Deployment Ted Pattison (MVP) Solution packages are a critical aspect of deployment in SharePoint 2007 and understanding the techniques for creating and distributing them is an absolute requirement for administrators and developers alike. This session examines the different types of components that can be developed for a SharePoint environment and shows the steps involved with building a solution package for best-practice distribution and deployment. You’ll see the proper way to configure SafeControl and Code Access Security (CAS) setting in Web Part deployment as well as hear the benefits and drawback of Assembly deployment in the Global Assembly Cache versus the local bin directory for a particular Web Application. You will also learn best-practice techniques for modifying the web.config file for a Web Application using a Web Application-scoped feature which contains code using the WSS object model that is pushed out into a SharePoint farm using a solution package.
Creating Custom Workflows with SharePoint Designer 2007 Ted Pattison (MVP) SharePoint Designer 2007 (SPD) provides a no-code approach for create custom business logic that can be attached to items in a SharePoint list or documents in a document library. This session will introduce the SDP workflow designer and teaches you how to create custom workflows using conditions and actions that can automate common business processes such as document approval. You will learn how to create workflows that run automatically each time a document or list item or created or updated as well as how to create workflows that are manually started by a user. Along the way you will also see how to add functionality to your workflows for sending email notifications, updating SharePoint list data as well as creating and blocking on workflow tasks within the lifetime of a workflow instance.
Why develop on SharePoint for ASP.NET developers. Scott Case (InterKnowlogy) SharePoint’s current success is a reflection of its ability to perform the complex tasks that users and organizations need.  This paper presents an introduction for its three tier approach to solutions; out of the box, configuration and customization.  Selecting the right approach will impact the time, cost and skill sets required. 1. Out of the box, where users can immediately begin using features and functionality as soon as the server is installed.  2. Configuration, where technical skill sets can assemble platform technologies into meaningful solutions without code or deployment.  And 3, true customization, where software engineers leverage true .NET APIs to implement sweeping changes and integrations to the platform.  
Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint 1.1 Alex Malek This session will cover the details of the updated version 1.1 of Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services including new support for coding SharePoint project types using Visual Basic, and using the Feature Explorer to manage feature XML in SharePoint solutions.
Designer / Developer interaction of VS and SharePoint Designer Rob Howard This session covers the SharePoint Designer toolbox for using ASP.net and SharePoint controls in the context of building complete solution pages in SharePoint applications.
MOSS Faceted Search Leonid Lyublinski It has many names: Faceted Search, Refinement UI, Search within Search. Users asked us numerously to deliver this feature as a part of MOSS out-of-the-box feature.
Now the solution is available as an extension to MOSS. 
Office Workflow Solutions: from SharePoint Designer to VSTO "Orcas" John Holiday (john@johnholliday.net) Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 supports two workflow design experiences - code-based workflows developed using the Visual Studio 2005 Designer for Windows Workflow Foundation and declarative workflows developed using a rules-based, code-free workflow editor such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007.  This session will first show how to extend and customize an out of the box workflow using Office SharePoint Designer 2007.  It will then focus on how to create custom SharePoint workflows using Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) "Orcas".  We will also explore the strengths and weaknesses of the declarative approach and investigate ways to extend the power of this development model to include custom activities developed using Visual Studio 2005.
Building Document Management Solutions using Windows SharePoint Services v3.0 Content Types John Holiday (john@johnholiday.net) Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 introduces a new concept called "Content Types" that will dramatically alter the Enterprise Content Management landscape.  On the surface, Content Types make it easier to encapsulate field definitions into a nice neat package, but there is a lot more going on under the covers.  I this session, we'll take a deep dive into the world of content types and see how to declare them using XML and how to create them programmatically.  Then we'll use content types to create a real-world document management solution with custom policies that we'll use to control every stage of the document lifecycle.  At the end of this session, you will have a thorough understanding of what content types are with a deeper appreciation of the value they bring to document management solution development.
Microsoft Unified Communications for Developers: Building Communications into Your Applications Albert Kooiman, Kirt Debique The Microsoft Unified Communications platform enables developers to easily build secure and productivity enhancing applications atop a extensible foundation.  This session will explore the concept of communications as a first class feature in Windows and Web applications through sample applications that demonstrate how to build voice, video and messaging communications into your applications along with speech and messaging based UIs. It will give an overview of the types of applications that can be build using messaging as well as software-based Voice over IP (VoIP) and will explain which APIs and SDKs are available to build those applications.
Unified Communications Under the Hood: Architectural Patterns for Office Communications Server and Exchange Server Albert Kooiman Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 provides the infrastructure for enterprise communications including e-mail, voice, video, IM, conferencing, and unified messaging.  But these are also the cornerstone of a communications platform that you can use to build communications into your solutions.  In this session we will take a look under the hood of Unified Communications to examine the foundational components that OCS and Exchange make available for developers. Learn how to use the advanced publish and subscribe features of OCS to implement its rich presence features and how developers can use the OCS’s conferencing infrastructure to provide multiparty IM, voice or video conference calls. 
Building IM- and Speech-Based Applications Quickly: Windows Workflow Tools for Unified Communications Albert Kooiman, Vishwa Ranja This session will introduce the capabilities of the new automated agent platform of the Office Communications Server that leverages the Windows Workflow Foundation and managed code.  The session will show how to build an automated agent using both IM and Speech capabilities through higher level APIs. You will also see a preview of the tools that will be completed in the coming releases of the Communications Server.
Security and Unified Communications – Building UC Applications that Enforce Security and Help Maintain Compliance Adam Glick In large organizations it is critical to streamline communications while maintaining your obligtions to security and compliance.  This session will show you how developing UC solutions will maintain the level of security you need.  We'll also show you how you can use the APIs available in Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 to build ethical walls for communication, and other compliance tools.
Adding Presence and Identity: The New Managed Code API for Presence with Office Communications Server 2007 New in the beta of the ‘wave 13’ of the Office Communications Server due in Q1 of 2008 is a managed API for integrating presence into desktop applications.  This session will give an overview of the new API and show a coding example how to integrate presence and click to call capabilities in a project management application.
 
Customizing SharePoint’s Content Management System: Marc Hoppers [mhoppers@cogentcompany.com] Customizing SharePoint’s Content Management System: This session will  explain how to build web parts that extend the navigation framework within SharePoint. I will explain the SharePoint publishing framework along with a quick overview of how to skin SharePoint using master pages. The bulk of the session will be a demo where I build web parts that extend SharePoint’s navigation. The navigation utilizes a custom skin intended for an Internet –facing site and contains several features that allow users to add new elements to the page that normally would require the assistance of a designer. With these web parts, all that is needed is a trained user. At the end of this session the attendee will have a solid understanding of SharePoint’s navigation features and master page architecture. They will also be blown away by what can be done when you combine these two features and harness their power within web parts.
Integrating the MOSS User Profile Store in the Enterprise PAUL J. SWIDER [mailto:pswider@onclicksolutions.com]  SharePoint provides a great infrastructure for building an application directory and profile store using Shared Services. In addition we can access the profile database via web services. Put them together, and you can create great things! We cover the concepts of working with profiles, importing from Active directory and supplementing the data via a custom service or third party import. We take a look at how to integrate this profile data with all of our enterprise applications. We also discuss some gotchas and best practices in working with the profiles database. This is a clear win as a developer; no longer do we have to depend on Active directory to store user profile data for our applications. See how powerful user profiles can be and what real world problems we can address with this centralized data store.
Usable User Controls in SharePoint Robert Bogue (MVP) You know that you can create and use user controls in SharePoint.  However, creating the user control is just one part of the picture.  How do you deploy them to the server farm in a repeatable way?  In this session you’ll get a recipe for creating user controls including their associated code behind files and wrapping them into deployable SharePoint Solution files (WSPs).  We’ll walk step-by-step through creating a solution that creates the ASCX file, the code behind library, and the WSP necessary to deploy them.  You’ll see how you can make user controls fit into the development/deployment model your organization uses today for .NET applications.
Custom Authentication for SharePoint Robert Bogue (MVP) The SharePoint technologies allow you to plug in ASP.NET 2.0 authentication providers.  You’ll find plenty of information on how to plug in the SQL Server authentication provider to SharePoint – but what if you need to write your own?  What if you need to make SharePoint authenticate against your existing applications authentication system – and it’s something custom you wrote?  In this session you’ll learn how to write your own custom provider.  You’ll also get a chance to take away a pass-through provider which will log all of the communications from your provider and SharePoint – allowing you to gain visibility to the process and thus develop faster.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007: It's for Developers Dustin Miller (MVP) In this all new advanced SharePoint Designer session, dive deep into the more powerful and less documented capabilities of the Data View / Data Form Web Part, such as writing to SQL server databases, rendering JavaScript instead of tables, aggregating content from multiple lists, and performing heterogeneous joins.  Also, see how this powerful web part can be used to show "sub-views" of shaped, hierarchical data.  Don't spend time writing custom web parts when Data Views can do the heavy lifting, and don't tell the boss that you didn't write any code!
Delivering Modular Workflow Functionality via Components David Mann (MVP) It is not always possible to deliver a set of business logic as a fully developed workflow.  Often, customers or partners need to support different environments or different processes.  It is therefore, important to understand the options available to you to when you need to break a workflow down and deliver just the core pieces as components that can be used to build a whole process.  This session will be a technical discussion covering the construction and deployment of custom Visual Studio Activities as well as SharePoint Designer Actions and Conditions.  One of each will be built and demonstrated during the session.
SharePoint BDC Customization Mike Fitzmaurice
Building S+S based solutions with Office 2007 Joanna Bichsel Office 2007 is a natural fit for S+S because it exposes a rich set of services and it provides the presentation layer for displaying the results of this data retrieval into the client applications that end users are most often comfortable with. Using Visual Studio 2008 which contains Visual Studio Tools for Office 3.0 provides rapid development tools which enable developers to create powerful service-oriented Office Business Applications.  In this session, we will build a recruiting solution that harnesses LOB data with the BDC in MOSS, business logic through Excel Services, and ECM from SharePoint all while allowing the end-user to live within a single application.