**Update** link to all recorded webcasts here.

Mike Benkovich and I kicked off our multi-part webcast series for SharePoint Developers yesterday - for those of you who were able to join us, thanks!  We have 12 parts to the series designed so far.  Here's the schedule:

  • Part 1 – SharePoint for Developers 4/13/2007 1 pm PST: Join the first webcast of this four-part series to find out what you need to know about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as a developer. We cover the basics of SharePoint Server 2007, and we show how you can use this new product to simplify collaboration, development, and management of your software projects. Learn what it takes to set up SharePoint Server 2007, customize the master pages, and how you can use other tools to develop custom applications. Attend this session to discover compelling reasons for choosing the new 2007 Microsoft Office system and SharePoint Server 2007 for your solution development needs.
  • Part 2 – SharePoint Designer 2007 4/16/2006 1 pm PST: There are many tools to choose from for developing Web sites; in this second installment of our series, we look at Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, a new product for creating standards-based Web sites. See how you can build powerful applications on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies platform to enhance your productivity and deliver rich-looking sites. Join this session to learn how you can use SharePoint Designer 2007 to take advantage of Microsoft ASP.NET version 2.0, Web Parts, and integration with SharePoint Products and Technologies.
  • Part 3 – Migrating to SharePoint 4/25/2006 Time TBD: Do you have a portal site that you would like to host in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services? In this third installment of our series on Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies for developers, see what is involved in the process of moving a portal site to Windows SharePoint Services. Topics we cover include: using Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to customize the master page, creating new content types, and working with workflow.
  • Part 4 – SharePoint and Access 2007 4/30/2007 1 pm PST: So far in this webcast series, we covered how Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies serve as powerful collaboration tools. In this final session, we take a look at how Microsoft Office Access 2007 integrates with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services. Join this session to learn how Access 2007, the popular data management application, and Windows SharePoint Services enable you to centralize and simplify data management, and share data across your organization.

·         Part 5 - Workflow and Sharepoint 5/4/2007 10:00 am : Mike and Lynn discuss the ability to use, update and create custom workflows which can be used in your SharePoint site.  They show the built-in workflow capabilities in SharePoint and demonstrate what customizations are available via SharePoint itself.  In addition, they show how to use the SharePoint designer to open, view and modify included workflows.  Finally the cover a demonstration of the capabilities of the SharePoint workflow design wizard. 

·         Part 6 - SharePoint and Content Types 5/11/2007 – 10:00 am : In this webcast we review the concept of content types as it relates to your SharePoint Site. First, the default (included) content types, then we discuss why you might wish to update the built-in content types or to create your own.  We cover how to create custom content types and provide several business examples of why and where you might wish to do this.  Finally, we show some of these newly content types in ‘action’ on your SharePoint site.

·         Part 7 - SharePoint and Forms Services 5/18/2007 – 10:00 am : This webcast shows both InfoPath as a form tool and the ability to host forms centrally via the Forms Server feature of SharePoint.  We provide an overview of InfoPath, demonstrating both the customization of an included template form and the creation of a custom form which connects to SQL Server as well as the configuration of the SharePoint administrative website, which is required to set up appropriate permissions (and other settings) for using SharePoint Forms Services.

·         Park 8 – SharePoint and Business Data Catalog 5/25/2007  - 10:00 am : In this webcast Mike and Lynn will explain the concepts surrounding the BDC.  They demonstrate the use of an application definition file to create the connection between your SharePoint site and a custom data source.  They also demonstrate the use of a ADF-creation tool.  Finally we cover using BDC-derived data with included web parts, such as the filtering web part.  We end this webcast with a discussion of various ways you can work with the BDC in production

·         Part 9 – SharePoint and Visual Studio June 2007 - date/time TBD: We’ve covered SharePoint as a platform and many of the tools you can use to get the most out of your investment. In this webcast we dive into how Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint enable the ability to take the technology even further. We start with the project types and show how you can add event handlers, site definitions and more into your toolbelt.

·         Part 10 – SharePoint and Visual Studio June 2007 - date/time TBD: advanced developer topics - web parts, etc...

·         Part 11 – SharePoint and Visual Studio June 2007 - date/time TBD: advanced developer topics - tbd

·         Part 12 – SharePoint and BI June 2007 - date/time TBD: Excel Services, KPIs, connecting to OLTP and OLAP data sources and more!

 

Several of you asked how to set up a development environment for MOSS or SharePoint.  Here goes:

1) Set up a Virtual PC (or test server) with Windows 2003 server w/SP2 w/IIS and ASP.NET enabled
2) Install Office 2007 Ultimate w/ MOSS (enterprise is not required, but we will use this edition for our series)
3) SharePoint Designer will install as part of Office
4) Install VS 2005
5) Download the following add-ons for VS - Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions here, MOSS SDK here, MOSS templates here.  Also you'll want the .NET framework 3.0 here, and the WF (Windows Workflow extentions) here.