From donovanf's Office

Announcing the Microsoft Office 2010 (Beta) Workshop: A Developer Training Course On Channel 9

2009-11-09T16:54:03Z

The Office 2010 Workshop is an all new developer training course to debut on Channel 9 today. The release of this course consists of 29, 5-18 minute video segments, with presentations and demos on Office 2010 Beta development. That’s around 4.5 hours of content! But it’s available at your convenience to work through at your own pace. Shortly after Office 2010 Beta becomes publicly available the training course will be updated with the hands-on-lab and source code for each unit so you can dive in and get on to development. I will also be adding more content to the course as we move into the latter part of this year and next. So be sure to stay tuned.

The training course currently includes these units:

· Office 2010 Developer Roadmap
· Office UI Customization
· Office Client Workflow
· Security and Deployment
· Business Connectivity Services
· Developing BI Applications
· Open XML
· Office 2010 Services
· InfoPath 2010 and Forms Services

Office 2010 is an evolved developer platform with new services and extensibility. It provides the best productivity experience across PC, phone and browser with platform power to connect to cloud and on-premises services. This course introduces developers to the concepts of Office development and the broad set of tools available for both client and server side development. These include Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, InfoPath 2010, Access 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 to call out a few. With many new features, these tools help developers be more productive by providing greater flexibility in how they approach developing and deploying their solutions – all to deliver real value to information workers and organizations.

John Durant chats with Robert Hess and sets the stage for developing Office 2010 applications with Visual Studio 2010 in this Channel 9 interview. It’s a great video to listen to while you’re browsing through the new course content.

Also, be sure to check out the other training courses on Channel 9, especially the Visual Studio 2010 & .NET Framework 4 course and the all new SharePoint 2010 course brought to you by my colleague Paul Stubbs. Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are a powerful duo for creating your business solutions – you’ll see.

You can register for early notification on the Office 2010 Beta availability by following this link.

Enjoy!

PDC Developer Sessions for Office and SharePoint 2010

2009-10-27T21:02:51Z

Last week’s SharePoint Conference (SPC) was an amazing unveiling of all the investments that the product groups have made in Office and SharePoint 2010. These products, with their Beta version coming out soon, provide a powerful platform for developing business solutions. And as John Durant states, “At SPC, we placed a special "real user value" slide in every presentation slide deck that had to do with Office 2010 client. In each presentation we emphasized what the developer investments in the Office/SharePoint platform mean to real users, users who will never touch a line of code or know what Dim or Using mean in programming syntax.” With both time and budget constraints in organizations, it is critical that development investments will have reduced time to delivery and yet produce the greatest value for both the end user and the organization at large. That’s what makes developing on the Office and SharePoint platform such a great developer investment, you are surfacing in the Office applications (where users spend much of their time, where they’re familiar with the user interface) the types of data, KPI information, process automation capabilities, etc. that helps them to be more productive in their daily tasks. And for developer productivity, the tooling around Office and SharePoint has increased significantly (future bogs to come). I say all that to say this, if you missed SPC, you can still get exposure to the same type of developer-focused sessions at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) ($300 discount still applies until Oct. 30th). Office and SharePoint 2010 will be a highlight at PDC from the keynote by Kurt DelBene, Senior VP in Office, to these great sessions:

To get yourself ready for Office and SharePoint 2010 development, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was announced at SPC as well. And developing for Office and SharePoint with Visual Studio 2010 has never been better – new project templates abound. If you haven’t downloaded and installed it yet, Brian Keller’s blog is a great resource to help you with this.

Lastly, if you love developing for Office, be sure to join the Office Developer’s Guild!

Enjoy, and hope to see you at PDC!

A Taste of Microsoft Access 2010 and Access Services

2009-10-20T05:50:08Z

For all those that have loved Microsoft Access over the years (and for those that have yet to discover it) one of the announcements today at the SharePoint 2010 Conference was about Access 2010 and Access Services on SharePoint. Think of it, Access databases being able to be published to the Web! New opportunities for Access abound! But you really need to see this in action. The Channel 9 video below takes you through a great demo showing some of the key new features in Access 2010 from Office Themes, UI and Data Macros, to the publishing of the entire database, forms, reports, etc. to SharePoint. Don’t miss this video with Tina Wood interviewing Clint Covington and Ryan McMinn, Program Managers on the Access team!

As noted above, be sure to check out the Access 2010 Intro series at the Access team blog.

Enjoy!!

PDC09 is Fast Approaching…

2009-10-14T16:04:27Z

will kick off on November 17th so now is the time to get registered. The $300 discount is still available until October 30th! This is going to be a great conference with tons of sessions to learn about the future of Microsoft’s developer platform, hands on labs to get a first look at these emerging technologies, excellent networking opportunities with other developers and industry experts and a lot of fun. Here’s the keynote line up. Be sure to visit PDC09 for all the details!!

Enjoy!

Microsoft Office 2010 Blog Resources

2009-10-08T07:23:11Z

Before I get to the numerous blog resources for Microsoft Office 2010 I want to mention that there are still some general registration openings for the SharePoint Conference. So if you’d like to go be sure and get signed up! For a great background on the history of SharePoint be sure to read Jeff Teper’s post on the SharePoint Team Blog.

In preparation for the conference or if you just can’t make it, I’ve pulled together a collection of Microsoft blogs around Office 2010. These provide the background and a taste of the amazing new capabilities the Office client applications and SharePoint bring to the information worker and business productivity overall for an enterprise. And for the developer, you’re going to love it – but that comes later. To build stand-alone components and applications or fully integrated business solutions on this platform – WOW! For now, give these a browse and get a sense for what you’ll be working with. I can’t say that this list is definitive, so will add others as I come across them or they come online.

Some additional goodies:

Office 2010, The Movie
Office 2010 Tech Preview (with video clips of each product)
Technical Preview Registration
Microsoft PressPass Site

Enjoy!

“donovanf’s Identity and Access Blog” becomes “From donovanf’s Office”

2009-07-13T09:36:52Z

As part of my transition to a new role, I’m changing the name of my blog to a more generic title, “From donovanf’s Office.” I thought this appropriate because although this is a personal blog, I use it to only talk about the technologies that are related to what I do “at the office,” as a technical evangelist for Microsoft.

But wow, is “at the office” an interesting concept in this day. In my past, “at the office” meant a distinct location that I traversed to, it housed file cabinets, essential documents, at one point a dumb terminal with access to only the mainframe computer and of course eventually a desktop computer. In that time, the office was a destination, a place I went to accomplish a set of tasks, and if I could not carry what I needed home in my briefcase, I had to wait until I returned the next day to access those items I could not transport. Or, if I had more to do than what I could transport with me or had to use the tools only available to me there, I would simply stay additional hours at my office. Hence, I would need to make that phone call, “honey, I’m working late at my office tonight.” As you may have experienced, that is generally never greeted with as much enthusiasm as one would like. But “the office” was tied to a physical place. So much so that in a community I once lived there was a local bar named, “My Office.” It can only be imagined how many times its patrons made that proverbial phone call with the declaration, “honey, I’m at My Office.”

But although “the office” may still be a physical location, and I have one, now “my office” is really all about what’s available to me on my mobile devices and connectivity to those locations I may need to access to perform my “office related” work. So “my office” is almost always with me because my devices are with me. That may not be a thought we really want to admit to, but it really means that “where I am,” there my office is. Sometimes it’s on a bus, on a plane or in an airport, sometimes at a coffee shop or restaurant, sometimes on my back deck or in my family room watching TV and sometimes in my physical office at Microsoft. But the point is that “my office” is essentially everywhere I am. Now, I can discipline myself when to “instantiate my office” so that it doesn’t overrun other critically important parts of my family life, but the incredible thing is that I am free to interact with office related activities “on demand” as appropriate. And that is intensely freeing – as I chose to take a few minutes this evening to “instantiate my office” in the comfort of my family room and didn’t even have to consider physically going to my office to make this post!

So, welcome to “From donovanf’s Office.” There is much more to come from “my office” to yours as we explore just how easy it is becoming to “instantiate your office.”

Enjoy!

Transitioning to a new Evangelism Focus

2009-07-08T18:46:31Z

Well it’s been a really good run for these past several years having the opportunity to evangelize the Identity and Access technologies on the Microsoft platform. And it has been my sincere pleasure to not only work with my Microsoft Identity colleagues, but with so many customers and partners around AD, AD LDS, AD FS and Windows Authorization Manager as well. But now my evangelism focus is shifting to another set of Microsoft technologies – I’ll have more on that in an upcoming post. Therefore, as I transition away from Identity and Access I’d like to simply say:

The show must go on… Although I’ll no longer be hosting The Id Element, the show will continue so be sure to stay tuned to Channel 9!!
My best to the Microsoft Federated Identity team as they push on to ship a great set of Geneva technologies.
Thanks to all that have been the source behind so many of these blog posts due to your writing, interviews, technical expertise, etc.
Thanks to all that have followed this blog, but as mentioned, you’ll see it transition shortly to a new focus. If it fits your interest, stay on board.
And a special thanks to Vittorio – it’s been great working with you! I’ll still be reading Vibro.NET!

Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 Highlighted on “The Id Element”

2009-06-29T18:29:43Z

For those that are struggling with getting a handle on Identity Management in their enterprise, Alex Weinert, Principal Group Program Manager, Identity Management, provided me with an “Id Element” interview on the subject that may be of great help to you. Alex first provides a background on evolution of the synchronization products on the Microsoft platform and then provides an excellent whiteboard session on how Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) 2010 (formerly known as Microsoft code name ILM “2”) builds on these to provide significant new identity management capabilities. Built on the .NET 3.5 technologies, FIM’s web services, workflow and portal provide a range of extensibility opportunities from the enterprise/ISV developer to the codeless capabilities offered to the IT Pro in the portal itself. If you want to check things out for yourself, you can download FIM 2010 RC0 here. Or to read more about FIM 2010 you can start here.

Enjoy!

FabrikamShipping Demo Application Available for Download

2009-06-19T22:19:07Z

In an October 2008 blog post I highlighted some videos from the PDC sessions, one being Identity Roadmap for Software + Services by Kim Cameron and Vittorio Bertocci. In this video, Vittorio demonstrates the FabrikamShipping application that was built using the Geneva Framework. We have gone on to use this demo in a number of other venues to show off the use of claims-based identity and it has always been really well received. Therefore, this application has now been upgraded to use the Geneva beta 2 Framework and made available for public download here. It provides an excellent example of how to build a claims-based application and is super simple to download and setup on your machine. Vittorio describes the details so I won’t repeat them here. So if you’re needing a way to show your management the really cool ways you can drive applications using claims-based identity, this will provide you with a super demo!!

Enjoy!

Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint (MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0) Products and Technologies

2009-06-19T21:30:39Z

I want to thank Ethan Wilansky and Tomek Stojecki for their excellent and hard work to pull together this two part whitepaper on Identity and Access Strategies for SharePoint Products and Technologies. Part 1 discusses the Membership and Provider Architecture and Part 2 digs into Membership and Role Provider Assignment. These constitute a comprehensive look at and guidance for the use of membership and role providers with SharePoint. Sample code, Identity and Access Strategies Code Sample for SharePoint Server, accompanies the whitepaper. To give you a flavor for the paper, here’s the introduction:

“Tomes have been written about the Microsoft ASP.NET provider architecture, and much of that content focuses specifically on the membership and role providers. In addition, there are probably two dozen blogs about how to configure membership and role providers in Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (which includes Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0). This article provides a variety of links to many of these additional resources. Why, then, write this article? We aim to start where most of these resources stop. Sure, certain items addressed in this article repeat existing guidance to establish context. However, this article delves deeply into describing exactly how SharePoint Products and Technologies use the membership and role providers. Then, it demonstrates how to automatically configure providers into Office SharePoint Server so that SharePoint Server manages the configuration settings for you. The article's examples focus on the Microsoft SQL Server Membership and Role providers and the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) membership and role providers in SharePoint Server 2007, and then briefly explores the Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) single sign-on (SSO) Membership and Role providers.”

Thanks Ethan and Tomek!

Enjoy!

Making the shift from ADFS v1 to Geneva Server

2009-06-14T20:08:47Z

After having worked with ADFS v1 for a number of years now, and with all that has been forthcoming around the Geneva Server betas, Vittorio proposed that he interview me about the deltas between ADFS v1 and Geneva Server. So in this episode of The Id Element I find myself, somewhat reluctantly, in front of the camera. However, for those that know and love ADFS as I do, it’s important to have some tips on how to make the conceptual connections to what Geneva Server has to offer – it has sooooo much more!

One other thing I want to add that is of great importance. In the video I highlight a significant delta in that the extensibility point in ADFS was the claims transformation module. By implementing a claims transformation module you could jump into the claims pipeline and reach out to a SQL database (or whatever) in your environment to augment, transform, etc. claims at will – but you needed to do this with code. In the video I highlighted that Geneva Server has built-in support for querying attribute stores that are based on AD, LDAP directories and SQL Server – which of course is a significant step forward. One need not write code for these now.

But after viewing the video, some might be saying, “but I need to get data for claims from other sources than the built-in stores, how do I do that?” That’s where I need to say here, you still can!! Geneva Server also provides extensibility in terms of custom attribute stores where you write your own module(s) that implements the attribute store interface. Once defined and plugged into Geneva server, the custom attribute store will be recognized by Geneva server and then can be used for querying the custom attribute store for claims population, etc. A whitepaper describing this is available for download on the Geneva Connect site, the document in Downloads is, Developing Custom Attribute Stores for Geneva Server. So, here’s the full picture…

Enjoy the document, and populate claims from any source desired!!

What’s new in Windows CardSpace “Geneva” beta 2

2009-06-04T19:24:48Z

Oren Melzer, SDE, was introduced to “project InfoCard” (a former internal code name for Windows CardSpace) as an intern with Microsoft -- he’s now a developer on Windows CardSpace “Geneva” and a member of the Federated Identity team. This week I sat down with Oren to hear what’s new in CardSpace Geneva beta 2. Among the new features, managing information cards via Active Directory group policy (in concert with Geneva Server) provides new opportunities for using CardSpace within the enterprise. So enterprise developers and IT Pros will want to give this a listen. Oren also calls out the delta between beta 1 to beta 2 for the ASP.NET developer in that the information card control previously in the Geneva Framework beta 1 is no longer there. A number of code samples are available on the Microsoft code name “Geneva” Connect site under the Windows CardSpace “Geneva” section. These include ObjectTagSamples and a CardSpaceBackedWebApp showing how to work directly with the returned token. Oren requests feedback for the team on the new features so following are the pertinent links. Thanks Oren!!

Enjoy!

Geneva Server beta 2, SAML 2.0 and Interoperability with Sun OpenSSO Enterprise and Novell Access Manager

2009-05-29T20:58:32Z

In this episode of The Id Element I talked with Caleb Baker, Sr. SDET, who worked with the interoperability testing of Geneva Server’s SAML 2.0 with both Sun’s OpenSSO Enterprise and Novell’s Access Manager products. Caleb discusses his discoveries in the interoperability testing and demonstrates how to configure Geneva Server as both the Identity Provider and the Service Provider using SAML 2.0. He also shows how to configure Geneva Server for redirect, POST and artifact binding using the MMC and PowerShell. Two whitepapers were produced from the interop testing and are available here.

Enjoy!

PHP drill down for enabling Information Card use with CardSpace Geneva by Intand’s Scott Otis

2009-05-28T19:42:29Z

Last week I posted a video to The Id Element and described the work that Intand had done to enable their PHP S+S application to accept information cards from Geneva Server via Windows CardSpace Geneva for a prototype project with the Lake Washington School District and Microsoft. In a follow-up video interview, Jean-Christophe Cimetiere, Sr. Technical Evangelist - Interoperability, talks with Scott Otis, CIO, Intand. Scott first provides a demo of the PHP application using information cards for application access. Then he drills down into the PHP code to show exactly what it takes to information card enable a PHP application and access the claims. Thanks Scott and Jean-Christophe for providing this deeper look for PHP developers!

For more information about Microsoft’s work around interoperability, visit the Interoperability@Microsoft blog.

Enjoy!

Geneva Server, CardSpace Geneva and PHP Interoperability with Information Cards

2009-05-21T19:41:35Z

This week on “The Id Element” I had the opportunity to interview both the President and CIO, Bryan Otis and Scott Otis, respectively, from Intand along with Vijay Rajagopalan, Principle Architect, Microsoft Interoperability Strategy. Intand offers a calendaring application for scheduling/managing a school’s facilities, events, teams, etc. Prior to this prototype project to enable information cards in their PHP application, Intand’s sole source for user authentication and authorization data was in its own directory. Accounts for administrators, teachers, parents and students were provisioned into the directory. An administrator would then login to the application and update the users with the appropriate access permissions. School users could then login.

But with the work they did using the open source Zend Framework’s support for information cards, they now have an additional way to provide users with access to their application (again, this is a prototype and is not in production, the Geneva technologies are still in beta). To eliminate the need to create an additional user account, for those schools that are already managing their users in Active Directory, the Geneva Server can issue a managed information card to each user. Therefore, Intand, by implementing access to their application via information cards, “trusts” Geneva Server to issue it a security token with the appropriate permissions (in the form of claims) after the user authenticates to Active Directory. For instance, when the user accesses the Intand application, they can choose to login with an information card by clicking the information card icon on the web page. In the case of this prototype, Windows CardSpace Geneva is then invoked and the user selects the Geneva Server issued managed information card. The user is then prompted to authenticate to Active Directory at their school where they provide the appropriate AD credentials and the user then receives access to the PHP application via the trusted security token, issued by the Geneva Server. A video of this working prototype was featured in the Scott Charney, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft, 2009 RSA Conference keynote address.

In this segment, Vijay also discusses other open source interoperability work that’s been done around information cards for heterogeneous web applications, not only PHP (codeplex). This includes information card support for Java (codeplex), Ruby on Rails (codeplex) and a generic C module.

Enjoy!