edhild's WebLog : SharePoint 2007 book

Building Presentations from SharePoint Content

edhild — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:20:00 GMT

This is really just a publish of an old demo I have had for some time, but finally got around to putting a video together. This demo is about two different ways to build PowerPoint presentations based off of SharePoint content. The first uses an Office Add-in approach and the second does everything on the server using Open XML. Enjoy!

http://silverlight.services.live.com/55696/Building%20Presentations%20from%20SharePoint%20Content_2/video.wmv

By the way, both solutions are in my book: Pro SharePoint Solution Development

Video Demo: Merging SharePoint List Data into Word Documents

edhild — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:59:00 GMT

I've recently been moving a lot of my older demos from when MOSS first RTMed into my new dev environment. During the move, I am also taking the time to update them to VS.NET 2008 and any other nicer tools that have come along. A popular demo of mine is a solution that shows you how to merge SharePoint list data into MS Word documents leveraging the Open XML file format. This example was originally published as part of my book: Pro SharePoint Solution Development by Apress. While moving the demonstration to my new development environment, I made two significant changes that simplify the development experience.

First, I decided to use the Word 2007 Content Control Toolkit. This tool available from codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/dbe) allows you to easily insert a custom XML part into the document and provides a drag and drop experience for binding the content controls. This cut quite a lot of time out of building the solution since the toolkit creates the supporting relationship XML parts for you and handles the XPath queries for the content controls.

My other improvement was deciding to incorporate the September CTP of the Open XML SDK 2.0. There was no such SDK when I built the solution the first time, so my only option was to use the packaging API available in the .NET framework itself. I had previously tried the 1.0 version of the SDK and found it lacking in a lot of basic areas, but this new 2.0 one looks very promising. I commented out more lines than I had written in the first version of the solution. You can get this SDK here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb448854(office.14).aspx

I'm also doing a lot more of video capturing of my solutions for other developers to follow. Updated the video to use the new Silverlight Streaming service available on Live.

http://silverlight.services.live.com/55696/Merge%20SharePoint%20Data%20Into%20Word/video.wmv

Video: Building Presentations from SharePoint Site Content

edhild — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:31:00 GMT

First sorry for the long time away from posting. It was quite a busy fourth quarter. But welcome to 2008!

I put together a quick video blog of two demonstrations I show about how to automate the creation of PowerPoint presentations based on SharePoint site content. The first part of the demo shows how a Visual Studio Tools for Office add-in for PowerPoint can call SharePoint's web services to retrieve content and build slides. The second approach shows how this can be done completely server side by manipulating the new Open XML formatted files. Both demos usually get people excited; I hope you enjoy them. The code for these is available on Apress' web site since they are from my book: Pro SharePoint Solution Development. This book is mentioned a lot in the blog so it should be easy to find more info if you are interested. Sorry for the background noise in the video. The HVAC system here is running full strength on this cold day.

Also, I will be presenting at the upcoming SharePoint conference in Seattle in March. My topic will be "Enforce Governance by Provisioning Sites through Workflows" or something like that. Stop by and say hi. I may have a few books to hand out. http://www.mssharepointconference.com/Pages/default.aspx

Just an update: Ian at wssdemo.com has hosted this video on a streaming server which has much better quality: http://xpstream.winisp.net/imorrish/generate_ppt_sharepoint.wmv

Video: Building Presentations from SharePoint Content

Video: Demo of Extending SharePoint to Collab on Document Fragments

edhild — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:57:00 GMT

I have had many requests from customers and peers to have a look at my solution for supporting collaboration on fragments (or sections) of a MS Word document. In fact, few have referred to it as "slide libraries for word documents". It leverages the some custom actions in SharePoint with the Open XML file format to modify Word documents on the server. I'm a bit flattered, but thought I would take the time to capture a demonstration of the solution as a video to share. If you don't follow this blog, this solution is one of the chapters in my book: Pro SharePoint Solution Development. You can get the code off of Apress' web site as well as get a more thorough code walkthrough in the book. This demonstration is more how an end-user would use the solution. My first attempt at "podcasting". Anyway, I placed the video on MSN SoapBox so it should be easy to get. See the link and info below.

Video: Using SharePoint to Collab on Document Fragments

My SharePoint developers' book is done

edhild — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 21:36:00 GMT

So I am all done with the book. We have written all 15 chapters, had them reviewed by the techical reviewer, and been through second drafts. We have also been through a round of copy edits and proof readers. I just finished posting the last proof of the last chapter to the publisher which is what I review before it goes to the printer. The only remaining items are the index and the front matter for the book. Neither do I expect to have many significant edits. We are on target for a mid-may release.

If you are asking yourself, what book? Check Out: http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/pro-sharepoint-solution-development-combining-net-sharepoint-and-office-2007.aspx. I'll make the final edits to the TOC in the next few days as some of the names have changed. But everything you see there made it into the book.

If you want to read more, the technical reviewer posted a review the other day:

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-4-Ed_Hild_-and-amp;_Susie_Adams__Pro_SharePoint_Solution_Development.aspx

SharePoint Book Update

edhild — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 07:27:00 GMT

Just chiming in on where we stand on the book. I just finished writing up the conclusion chapter. I've updated the TOC (http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/pro-sharepoint-solution-development-combining-net-sharepoint-and-office-2007.aspx). The chapter is called "Realizing the Vision". In this chapter we spend some time on helping you identify if SharePoint is a fit for your custom application. And we look to the horizon to see VSTO "Orcas", LOBi for MOSS 2007, and the licensing of the Office UI. We also take a moment to review some helpful tools that will help you on your way to developing on the Office platform: SharePoint Solution Generator, WSS Extensions for VS.NET, and the ECM Tookit.

The InfoPath/Forms Services chapter is nearly done, so check back soon on that. I'm also half way through a smart document solution for Excel that allows users to capture list content from different sites so they can modify them in an offline scenario. This one requires VSTO 2005 for the document level project support so its developed with Office 2003. The solution still runs in Office 2007 of course. As soon as I am father along, I'll post some screen shots.

Plus updates from my upcoming conference. I am participating in two sesssions with Bob German. One is on features/templates/solutions and the other is on enhancing web content management. I'm sure a few goodies from my demos will make it up here shortly.

Excel Services and User Defined Functions in Managed Code

edhild — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 05:59:00 GMT

So I just finished coding the solution for my chapter on Excel Services. The more I dig deep in this feature of MOSS the more I am impressed. The thing is you have to look past the fact that this allows an organization to post thin-client read-only versions of spreadsheets. This is a great feature and a lot of the customers I have worked with see it as a help to low-bandwidth requirements as well as a way to distribute spreadsheet information. But of course my book is for developers and there is another side to the Excel Services story that is just way cool...

It shouldn't be difficult to imagine going into a consulting gig and the customer throws you a bunch of spreadsheets that contain the logic that they want coded into their enterprise application. This usually results in the development team re-inventing the wheel and rebuilding all of this logic into their app spread through stored procedures, business objects, and even the presentation layer. The problem is that such an approach reduces the organization's ability to maintain the logic that was in the spreadsheet. Things like ranges for price discounts, percentage of markup from their base prices, etc. This should be the developers view fo Excel Services. This approach allows the organization to still have access to these calculations in a spreadsheet form and once published a custom application can interact with it through the Excel Services web service.

Of course, the spreadsheet once a part of an enterprise solution, probably needs to communicate with databases, other web services, etc. This can be done as well with user defined functions. Basically these are methods of a .NET class that has been decorated with attributes so that it can be called as a function within Excel!

The solution in Chapter 6 of my book takes this exact approach. We dive into a spreadsheet for calculating prices of products, add connectivity to a database and web services, and then publish it to Excel Services. From there, we show you how to invoke the spreadsheet through web services thus including it as part of a custom application. Here are some great references I have found in researching these techniques:

Shahar's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/cumgranosalis/default.aspx

Luis' Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/luisbeonservices/default.aspx

A primer: http://blogs.msdn.com/cumgranosalis/archive/2006/04/04/UdfsPrimer.aspx

Great list of links to get started: http://blogs.msdn.com/luisbeonservices/archive/2006/09/28/pre-requisites.aspx

Video: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20060427exceldk/manifest.xml

So back to writing. Should have this one written up quickly as it has lots of good stuff. I'll update the TOC for the book once I am done. In case you have no clue as to what book I am taking about: Read more about my SharePoint/Office 2007 development book: http://blogs.msdn.com/edhild/pages/pro-sharepoint-solution-development-combining-net-sharepoint-and-office-2007.aspx

Susie is hard at work finishing up the InfoPath and Forms Services chapter. I'll have a post on that likely next week.