Chris Bortlik's Blog

SharePoint as a Development Platform

2009-11-06T19:54:40Z

While preparing to present my 2 sessions at the “Maximize Your SharePoint Investment: Leverage It as a Development Platform!” events that we’re doing for Northeast enterprise customers in Waltham, MA (November 19) and Rochester, NY (December 9) I continue to be amazed at how rich and robust SharePoint is for configuring and developing custom solutions.

I’ve been involved in architecting and developing browser based applications for well over 10 years – both on Microsoft and other technologies. My technical evolution over the years has been consistent with what many others have experienced:

Static sites: HTML & JavaScript using tools like Notepad, FrontPage, DreamWeaver
Dynamic sites : C++, ISAPI extensions on IIS, Java
Wrapper applications: ASP
Frameworks: ASP.NET, AJAX
Platform: SharePoint

As with previous evolutions, using SharePoint as an application platform enables you to get out of the business of writing plumbing functions and focus on building applications that add unique value to your business. For example, why should you spend time writing workflows from scratch or building forms based solutions when SharePoint has out of the box capabilities and tools to automate most of that? Why should you write complex web controls, search, business intelligence and sites when SharePoint has so many out of the box site templates, features and web parts that you can configure and extend?

SharePoint provides a great layer of abstraction, services and functionality on top of ASP.NET This helps you accelerate your development cycles, lower project risk, reduce costs and get to market faster.

I’m very excited about many things that are coming in SharePoint 2010 to further improve the development experience on the SharePoint platform. In future blog posts I’ll dive into these areas deeper. However, if I’m pressed to outline my top 5 items in these areas they would be:

Development on a non server environment. In SharePoint 2010, you can now develop on 64-bit client machines that are running Windows 7 or Vista SP1 (or later).
SharePoint as a first class citizen in Visual Studio 2010. Great improvements here that any ASP.NET developer would love including, integrated debugging, visual designers, project/control templates, WSP deployment/packaging and tracing. There is also rich integrated Application Lifecycle Management through Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server.
Silverlight web parts shipping out of the box to enable you to quickly add rich Silverlight capabilities to your SharePoint site.
Composite applications that include round tripping, packaging and distribution of tasks between business analysts, power users and developers. Significant improvements such as Visio 2010 for designing workflows; SharePoint Designer improvements (including exporting to reusable WSP packages); Access Services; InfoPath Forms Services; Word Services; Visio Services; PerformancePoint Services; and Excel Services.
Business Connectivity Services for creating reusable read/write data connections to external data sources (e.g. Active Directory, ERP, CRM, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.) that can be exposed and used across SharePoint and the Office clients, including off-line usage via SharePoint Workspace.

There is so much more that we’ll get into at the local events and in future blog posts. For now, I encourage you to check out some of the links and resources highlighted in my earlier SharePoint 2010 blog post.

“Learning Snacks” for SharePoint 2010 Now Available

2009-10-28T11:22:27Z

Want to quickly learn about SharePoint 2010 products in preparation of the new Beta release? Try these new “Learning Snacks”; bite-sized online readiness courses provided by Microsoft Learning, on the following subjects:

Developing Solutions with Microsoft SharePoint 2010
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enables developers to build rich solutions easily, rapidly, and efficiently. This Learning Snack demonstrates how you can use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 to create and deploy your solutions. It also demonstrates how you can build Silverlight applications using the SharePoint 2010 client object model and use LINQ to SharePoint to create SharePoint entities

Experiencing the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 User Interface

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 includes an enhanced user interface that provides IT professionals with a streamlined administration experience. This Learning Snack describes the features of the SharePoint 2010 user interface. It demonstrates how the new Central Administration console enables you to perform several administrative tasks from one central location. The Learning Snack also describes how Shared Application Architecture can be used for flexible deployments in SharePoint 2010

Managing and Troubleshooting with Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 facilitates administration by providing several tools that help IT professionals efficiently manage data and troubleshoot any issues. This Learning Snack describes the Large List Resource Throttling feature, which helps you manage large lists. It demonstrates how a SQL Server logging database can be used to log SharePoint events. The Learning Snack also demonstrates how the SharePoint Best Practices Analyzer can be used to detect and automatically fix common issues

TechNet Webcast Series: SharePoint Internet Business

2009-10-22T23:52:55Z

TechNet Webcast Series: SharePoint Internet Business
Wednesdays at 1:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, 200-Level Partner-hosted Webcasts

Tune in and learn how you can use Microsoft SharePoint for Internet Business to help you build your public-facing portal. In this series, you will learn from experienced partners how to create secure, dynamic web presence with personalization, rich commerce capabilities, catalogue and content management, business analytics, and search capabilities for anytime, anywhere access by customers and business partners

Click here for current schedule and registration

Partner	Date	Registration
Razorfish	Oct 28, 2009	Click here
Habaneros	Nov 4, 2009	Click here
Rosetta / H3	Nov 11, 2009	Click here
Corus Works	Nov 18, 2009	Click here
Inetium	Dec 2, 1009	Click here
Pointbridge	Dec 9, 2009	Click here
Metalogix	Jan 13, 2010	Click here
Razorfish	Jan 20, 2010	Coming soon!
Quilogy	Jan 27, 2010	Click here
Metalogix	Feb 3, 2010	Coming soon!
RightPoint	Feb 10, 2010	Click here
HP	Pending	Coming soon!
Dell	Pending	Coming soon!

TechNet Webcast Session Details
Webcast abstracts and details For all confirmed sessions

Creating Branded User Experiences in SharePoint (Level 200)

Presented by: Razorfish

Event Abstract: You can use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to develop Internet, intranet and extranet applications with great success. However, external-facing applications come with the extra challenge of having to reflect the company’s brand and integrating transactional, personalization, and marketing features. Attend this webcast to discover that SharePoint Server is an excellent platform for a variety of Web-related needs across the features of SharePoint and using add-on frameworks and components that take advantage of the rich integration capabilities of SharePoint Sever. To illustrate these best practices, we show you some recently launched sites developed on SharePoint Server 2007. Presenter: Andre Engberts, Technology Director, Razorfish

10 Reasons Your Next Website Should be Hosted on SharePoint for Internet Sites (Level 200)

Presented by: Habañeros Consulting Group

Event Abstract: SharePoint for Internet Sites is being leveraged by a number of industry-leading organizations across the globe. Join us for a in-depth look at how your organization can benefit from SharePoint for Internet Sites. In this webcast we will review ten areas of SharePoint FIS that are delivering concrete value to organizations that have deployed the technology. Presenters: Ben Skelton, Practice Leader, Websites and eCommerce, Habañeros Consulting Group and Jasvir Shukla, Information Archiect, Habañeros Consulting Group

Creating SharePoint Web Sites and Reaching Smartphone Users with Mobile Entrée (Level 200)

Presented by: Rosetta and H3 Solutions

Event Abstract: In this webcast, Dan Lindsay of Rosetta demonstrates how Rosetta has leveraged Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet Sites, , to build highly engaging, interactive, and effective marketing Web sites for their clients. He also addresses how SharePoint Server allows Rosetta to address all critical aspects of Web site development and deployment, including creating rich user experiences, managing content, search engine optimization, analytics, and accessibility Dan along with Lisa Ruff of H3 Solutions, will show how using H3’s Mobile Entrée the SharePoint Server Internet site can reach the Smartphone user for a full experience. Presenters: Dan Lindsay, Director, Lead Solution Architect Microsoft Solution Center, Rosetta Lisa Ruff, Business Development Manager, Mobile Entrée

X Design Pattern for Web Sites Where Contributors and Consumers Cross Boundaries (Level 200)

Presented by: CorusWorks

Event Abstract: Historically, Internet sites were built for external users to consume passive content. Now, there is an added ability for internal contributors to provide managed content. In this webcast, we present customer case studies of Internet sites, extranets, and communities, and we demonstrate how the X design pattern provides the ability for internal users and external Web users to act both as contributors and consumers. The key to this functionality is the layer in the middle where information and the process flow can be managed in both directions, mashed-up, manipulated, and analyzed. We introduce you to CorasWorks Solution for Internet Sites, which is a packaged solution that extends Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010 to enable organizations to accomplish this without requiring custom code development. Presenter: Adam Macaulay, Vice President of Technology, CorusWorks

Design Considerations for a Public-facing Web Site (Level 200)

Presented by: Inetium

Event Abstract: An effective Internet site based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 needs to be planned for and implemented in a way that is different than a typical public-facing site. A Web designer can certainly start with an empty master page and build it like any other site, but doing this would not take advantage of the powerful capabilities of SharePoint Server. In this webcast, we provide an overview of what is possible to brand, what SharePoint Server capabilities it makes sense to use, and what you might want to create yourself. Presenter: Lori Neff, Senior Consultant, UI Designer and Developer.

Using Your Existing SharePoint Server Investment to Power Your Web Site (Level 200)

Presented by: Pointbridge

Event Abstract: IT departments are continually pressed to do more with less. In this webcast, an IT professional shares his first-hand experience with companies who have used their existing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server investments to power increased functionality and business satisfaction on their public Web sites. Discover the financial benefits of consolidation and why more and more organizations are choosing SharePoint Server as their Web platform of choice. Presenter: David Soderna, Engagement Manager, Pointbridge.

Upgrading and Migrating from MCMS2002 to MOSS

Presented by: Metalogix

Event Abstract: Upgrading from Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)2007 can be a challenging and difficult process. Administrators and developers need to understand the differences between channels and page libraries and how document and image libraries replace resource galleries. Metalogix will provide an overview of the new MOSS containership model and address how Metalogix Website Migration Manager can support advanced MCMS to MOSS migration and upgrade scenarios. Find out how Metalogix Website Migration Manager can reduce your migration effort by up to 90% when compared to manual approaches. Presented by: Rasool Ryani, Director.

Planning Your Internet Presence

Presented by: Quilogy

Event Abstract: This webinar will discuss best practices for approaching the design and development of public web sites using MOSS 2007. The first half of the presentation will discuss tactics and techniques for information architecture and design with a focus on content-centric design, user-experience design, and visual interface design. The second phase of the webinar will touch upon the development team structure, development methodology, planning for page layouts, content deployment, and optimization techniques. Presenters: Jim McPherson, Practice Director, Interactive and Digital Solutions; Dan Hugge, Managing Consultant, and Sundar Swaminathan, SharePoint Architect.

Creating Highly Branded, Rich User Experiences in SharePoint

Presented by: RightPoint

Event Abstract: Does your SharePoint solution create a compelling online experience for your the end-user? Learn how to design rich user-experience for your SharePoint solutions where design and branding align with the needs, behaviors, and values of your target audience. Learn how to combines the art of design with the science of usability to produce the best in form and function within your SharePoint solutions. Presenter: Ross S Freedman, Director

SharePoint 2010 Announcements at the SharePoint Conference Today

2009-10-20T03:18:17Z

What a day here in Las Vegas! Earlier today we publicly unveiled SharePoint 2010 at the SharePoint Conference (SPC). There is such a positive energy, buzz and excitement from the 7,000+ customer and partner attendees.

Today’s events included the announcement that both SharePoint and Office 2010 will enter the public beta phase in November.

Not here at the SharePoint Conference this week and looking for more information? Check out the resources below:

SharePoint team blog: Jeff Teper – Corporate Vice President, SharePoint Server, has a great post describing all of the key capabilities related to SharePoint 2010.
SharePoint 2010 official site: This is the place to get all of the news, reviews and see demos on SharePoint 2010. You can also sign up to be notified when the public beta is available in November.
SharePoint 2010 forum: Great site to get answers to SharePoint 2010 questions.
SharePoint 2010 PressPass: View the SPC 2009 keynote video, a Q&A with Jeff Teper, and more.
SharePoint 2010 Developer Center: Early information on the SharePoint 2010 developer platform and resources have been released on MSDN.
http://www.mssharepointitpro.com: IT Pro information and resources.
http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint: Additional SharePoint information on the official SharePoint site.

Now that SharePoint 2010 has gone public, I’ll be blogging and sharing more information.

What aspects of SharePoint 2010 are you most looking forward to? What are you looking for more information on?

SharePoint Consulting and Training Resources

2009-10-12T13:02:00Z

Over the past few months I have been meeting and working with customers to help them with Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) and to plan for SharePoint 2010. Our discussion usually starts with generic questions such as:

How do we architect and setup our SharePoint environment?
What features should we turn on and what’s the impact of doing so?
How do we move content from one environment to another?
What are the best practices for governance, security and information architecture?
How much disk space do we need and what should we think about when planning for search and content databases?
What about backups?
How do we train our end users?

While there are some quick answers to these questions, most of the time there is much more to think about than just the surface level questions. Discussions that go well beyond a quick conversation.

In some ways getting started with SharePoint is a lot like building a new house for the first time. Just like how you would never build a house without having detailed architectural blue prints and plans, and involving subject matter experts (plumbers, electricians, etc.) to help with the construction, so too should you consider engaging certified SharePoint partners to help with the detailed architectural design, training and implementation.

What many customers do not realize is that there are often a number of free benefits and services available to them that are designed to assist with the up front planning. These include:

Packaged services consulting benefits: Prepaid consulting days that many customers have available to them based on their contract with Microsoft. Key ones to note for SharePoint:

SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) is designed to help your organization plan an effective deployment that can optimize the core capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
Business Value Planning Services (BVPS) helps your organization's business decision makers develop a plan to maximize the business value of the Microsoft Office system through structured, multi-day engagements.

There are also a number of different IT and end user training resources available. Most of these are at no additional charge as well:

Training vouchers can be used to attend training classes with Microsoft certified training partners.
E-Learning courses can be used for self paced training.
The Productivity Hub can be downloaded, installed and customized in your SharePoint environment to both provide training resources and showcase key SharePoint capabilities.

One final note: many of the resources above are provided to Microsoft customers that have Software Assurance (SA) for SharePoint. If you don’t currently have SA for SharePoint, now may be a good time to get the above resources as well as the rights to use SharePoint 2007 now and SharePoint 2010 after it is launched next year.

See you at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas!

2009-09-01T18:58:07Z

It’s hard to believe, but the SharePoint Conference is less than 7 weeks away! The conference is being held in Las Vegas from October 19-22. This will be THE place to hear and see all about SharePoint 2010.

I will be attending the SharePoint Conference and will be involved in a few things, including:

Presenting a session titled: “Office 2007 vs. Office 2010 - Deployment Considerations”
Proctoring hands on labs where you can use SharePoint 2010

The hands on labs are self explanatory. This will be your time to take a guided tour of all things SharePoint 2010 and be able to use the latest bits.

My presentation, at first glance, may seem a little odd. Why, at the SharePoint Conference of all places, are we talking about Office?

The answer: in the 2007 product release, the Office client lights up many of the key SharePoint capabilities and helps drive end user usage and adoption. More details on that can be found here in my prior blog post. In the 2010 release, we will build upon and extend this integration.

This session will dive into the pros and cons of Office 2007 and Office 2010 deployment and discuss how deploying Office 2007 now can help pave the way for Office 2010 in the future. Specific areas of focus will include the Open XML file formats; Office Business Applications; user interface changes and adoption; application virtualization; and integration of the Office client with SharePoint, Exchange and Office Communications Server (OCS).

Are you planning to be at the SharePoint Conference as well? If so, what sessions and topics are you most interested to learn about?

New look, new focus …

2009-08-28T21:25:16Z

I recently changed roles here at Microsoft and decided it was time to put a fresh coat of paint on the blog.

While I will continue to work with Northeast Enterprise customers in a technical pre sales role, my focus will be shifting from the Microsoft Office client to the SharePoint platform. This change will allow me to get back to my roots and work more deeply with SharePoint architecture, design, development and implementation.

I’ll continue to blog about things that are Office related but the posts will generally be more about how Office integrates with SharePoint and ways that you can leverage the SharePoint platform at your company.

This is an exciting time to be working with SharePoint given all of the recent news and announcements around Office & SharePoint 2010. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at the SharePoint Conference in October.

Until then feel free to reach out to me and send me your comments and areas of interest for future blog posts.

P.S. Given my role change, we also now have a job opening here at Microsoft in the Northeast region and we will be hiring for an Office client technical specialist. Ping me if you know of anyone interested.

Free Office, SharePoint and Windows training resources for your Intranet

2009-08-27T15:32:00Z

We have recently released the Productivity Hub as a free download. A number of my customers have been beta testing this Hub over the past few months and it has received great feedback and helped to accelerate the deployment, adoption and training for Office and SharePoint 2007.

The Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection that serves as a learning community and is fully customizable. It provides a central place for your training efforts, and includes training content from Microsoft’s core products. Microsoft also provides ongoing and updated content packs.

The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking capabilities, such as blogs and discussion groups. In addition, it offers the Coach program, a change management feature to help you train end users to self-help, reducing the burden on your training and IT staff. The Coach program impacts productivity in a collaborative and positive way.

What the Productivity Hub is:

Format: Pre-loaded SharePoint site collection, optimized for Web 2.0 functionality and easily deployed within SharePoint Server 2007 environment.
Content: Convenient end user productivity training in a variety of formats (documents, videos, podcasts, etc.). Receive free quarterly updates of content that you will learn about through the Productivity blog.
Blog: The Productivity blog offers tips and tricks for end user productivity. Use it as is, or your training staff can use the posts as their own to help them get started in running an internal blog.
Train the trainer: Includes IT/Manager section to aid with deployment of the site collection, and guidance to develop the Coach program.
Products: Office 2007 System applications including SharePoint Server 2007. Windows 7 and others will be added in the future.

Office, SharePoint, Visio and Project 2010 News …

2009-07-14T04:44:00Z

Today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, major announcements were made regarding Office, SharePoint, Project and Visio 2010.

Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 have reached the technical preview engineering milestone. Starting today, tens of thousands of people will be invited to test Office and Visio as part of the Technical Preview program. Full details can be found in this press release.

Here are some additional resources that were made available today:

Office 2010 site: Get all of the news and see demos of the next version of Office.
Office 2010 Press Pass: Additional press releases and information on Office 2010.
SharePoint 2010 preview site: See some of what is coming in SharePoint 2010.
Worldwide Partner Conference site: Watch the keynotes and read other announcements.

How Office 2007 Helps Protect Your Information

2009-06-12T18:59:58Z

One of the primary business concerns that I hear from my customers is: “How do we keep our information and documents safe?”

Since so much of what we all do is collaborating and sharing information with others via Microsoft Office, today’s post summarizes some of the top ways that the Office 2007 system can help keep your business critical information safe and secure.

Below are my top 10. As always, your feedback and comments are encouraged and appreciated.

Information Rights Management (IRM) enables you to protect Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents so that you can restrict who can view, edit, copy and print documents and for how long. You can also protect e-mail messages in Outlook to prevent people from viewing, forwarding, printing, copying and replying to all on messages. These capabilities are especially useful in making sure that sensitive information does not leave your company.
Document inspection in Word, Excel and PowerPoint helps ensure that sensitive information is easily removed from documents. Examples are comments and revision history (e.g. if you were tracking changes); speaker notes; watermarks; document properties; and hidden data.
Digital signature capabilities integrated in Office 2007 enable you to electronically sign documents and confirm the identity of the person that signed the document. Many customers are using this capability to secure their documents and also eliminate paper based approval and signature processes.
Office 2007 integrates with SharePoint so people can publish documents securely to a SharePoint site which can be setup with proper access controls, versioning, work-flow, audit and archival policies.
Excel Services allows you to publish an Excel workbook to SharePoint while securing sensitive information, macros, data connections, charts and formulas. One of the benefits of this is that anyone with a browser, and the proper access rights, can view only the components of the spreadsheet that you allow.
Groove facilitates secure collaboration and sharing of documents and information internally and externally. Groove solves a common business problem where teams need to collaborate inside and outside of the firewall. Rather than having people email documents, or publish them to external public websites, Groove allows for secure and encrypted sharing of information. IT can also setup policies and audit the usage of Groove to manage the process.
The Open XML file format, which is the default for many programs in Office 2007, offers a number of security benefits and it also prevents most documents from being corrupted. Also, in the rare case that an Office 2007 document does become corrupted – you no longer lose the whole document. You can recover the document and remove the part of the document (e.g. image, video) that became corrupted.
Need to save an Office document to PDF or XPS but don’t want to spend extra money licensing 3rd party software? Great news. Office 2007 provides free integrated support for saving Office documents directly to PDF or XPS. Starting with Service Pack 2 (SP2) of Office 2007 these capabilities are directly integrated with Office.
Office 2007 is significantly more secure than prior versions of Office. In fact, the majority of Office security exploits and vulnerabilities do not affect Office 2007. By default, items that could possibly cause harm to your computer are disabled in Office 2007. The Trust Center in Office 2007 enables you to have much greater flexibility and control over add-ins; trusted publishers and locations; ActiveX Controls; and macros.
The Office Security Guide provides IT with more in depth details on security in Office 2007. If you are using Group Policy, solution accelerator templates exist to assist with applying security best practices.

Want to get Office Enterprise 2007 for $9.95?

2009-06-08T16:30:28Z

We recently rolled out changes to the Microsoft Home Use Program (HUP) that may enable you to download Office Enterprise 2007 for your home personal use for just $9.95!

Details can be found on the Home Use site.

Not familiar with the Home Use Program? Home Use is just one of the many Software Assurance (SA) benefits that many of our customers enjoy.

In addition to getting upgrade rights to newer versions of Microsoft software, SA benefits also help with training and deploying Microsoft software.

June 26 - Office 2007 Deployment Hands On Lab in Waltham, MA Office

2009-05-22T15:02:52Z

On Friday, June 26, 2009 from 8:30am – 4:00pm, I will be leading another 1 day technical hands-on lab related to Office 2007 deployment.

The event will be held at the Microsoft offices at 201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor, Waltham, MA 02451

Space is limited and attendance is restricted to Northeast enterprise customers only. Register Today!

Click here to register or call 877.673.8368 and reference Event Code 1032400099.

Event Summary

Join us for the Deploying and Managing Office 2007 in the Enterprise hands on lab to learn about the new tools and technologies to deploy the 2007 Microsoft Office System. In this event, you will receive practical technical information and proven techniques necessary to design, customize, and deploy an Office 2007 installation in your environment. You will be given the deep technical assistance required to better plan your organization’s deployment, and have the opportunity to work with experienced resources that can help resolve potential deployment blockers and other upgrade related issues.

Join us for this one-day hands-on-lab and get technical information and experience on the following:

Planning for the deployment of Office 2007
Office Resource Kit
Deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office system with the Deployment Workbench
Office Customization Tool (OCT)
Multi-language integration
Local installation source
Group Policy Object templates and accelerators
Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM) scanning tool
Detecting add-ins
Handling macro and Access database concerns
Converting documents to Office 2007
Compatibility of Office 2007 with prior formats
Strategies and tools for ramping users up on the new Office 2007 fluent user interface
Best practices in the Enterprise

What is a hands-on-lab?

These aren't your typical IT training class. They are delivered by Microsoft Field Technical Specialists with real world deployment experience. These hands-on labs are for experienced IT Pros who want to gain hands-on practice and experience with Microsoft’s Office deployment technologies. You can expect to spend the majority of the time interacting with the deployment tools / technologies in your own virtual lab environment with a moderate level of instructor presentation.

Who Should Attend?

These courses are for IT Professionals and Technical Decision Makers who require a in-depth knowledge of Microsoft’s deployment technologies and tools.

Prerequisites?

To get the most from this course, you will need to be familiar with the Windows and Office desktop environment.

Register Today! This special, no charge training event will fill quickly and space is limited, so be sure to register as soon as possible to reserve your seat. Note that attendance is restricted to Northeast enterprise customers only.

Office 2010: Register for the Technical Preview Program and Get More Info …

2009-05-13T16:48:35Z

Earlier this week Microsoft made some important Office 2010 announcements during our annual TechEd conference. One of the announcements was that Microsoft will have an invitation only Technical Preview Program for Office 2010.

This program is scheduled to launch in July 2009 and will offer selected customers the opportunity to experience early, pre-release versions of Office 2010 which will include the following applications: Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Publisher 2010.

As we count down to the start of the Technical Preview Program for Office 2010, more information and resources on Office 2010 are becoming publicly available for our customers and partners. These include:

Office 2010 Technical Preview Registration: Register to be considered for the Technical Preview Program, which is scheduled to begin in July 2009.
Office 2010 IT Blog: The official Office 2010 blog of the Microsoft Office product group. This includes information on the preliminary system requirements for Office 2010.
Office 2010 Forum: A place to discuss the Office 2010 Technical Preview Program and other information and questions around the new version Office
Office 2010 the Movie: A fun trailer and preview of things to come.
Office 2010 Press Release: Some high level details on Office, SharePoint and Exchange 2010.

Office, SharePoint and Exchange 2007 – Better Together

2009-05-05T18:48:00Z

One of the topics that I frequently present on at conferences is the Office system and why it is “better” to use the Office 2007 client with the 2007 versions of the SharePoint and Exchange server products.

The presentation that I use for most of these sessions is a summary of many of the key items discussed in the Office/SharePoint “better together” whitepaper. It also touches upon some of the areas discussed in this Exchange 2007 feature comparison for the Exchange server with different Outlook and Outlook Web Access clients.

Here are some of the highlights:

Enterprise Content Management: Content Management process integrated into the Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 clients. This helps increase the adoption and usage of your SharePoint site and integrates critical functionality such as workflow and document properties, including metadata that is used to drive SharePoint views and improve search results.
PowerPoint Slide Libraries: Publish slides for central storage, reuse and change notification. Slide libraries add a great amount of business value by making sure that key corporate messages, content and branding are being reused and kept in sync.
Excel Services: Publish spreadsheets for server hosting, web viewing and component access control. The Excel Services whitepaper and my recent Excel for Business Intelligence (BI) blog post have additional details.
Outlook / SharePoint Integration: Bi-directional sync of calendars, tasks, contacts, and discussion boards. Offline access to document libraries. The Outlook Exchange website has a great article that walks thru all of the details.
Outlook / Exchange 2007 Utilization: Unified communications, Managed folders, Scheduling enhancements and more. This article reviews these and other new Outlook 2007 capabilities in greater detail.
Electronic Forms: Publish e-forms for e-mail and browser based form completion. My InfoPath blog post provides more information on this and other ways to leverage InfoPath.
OneNote / SharePoint Integration: You can have OneNote automatically synchronize shared notebooks with SharePoint, which can then be searched and viewed by people with the appropriate permissions. More information on OneNote can be found in this blog post.
Groove / SharePoint Integration: Direct synchronization between Groove workspaces and SharePoint document libraries. This whitepaper demonstrates how you can use Groove to securely collaborate and extend SharePoint to customers and partners that are outside of your organization and those with the need for off-line functionality or access to content in low network bandwidth scenarios.
Access / SharePoint Integration: Host Access data on SharePoint sites, use either browser or Access client to work with data. This enables you to move Access data to SharePoint lists and also helps with querying and joining multiple SharePoint lists and other data sources. More details can be found here.

Excel 2007 – Your Business Intelligence Client Solution

2009-05-01T23:50:00Z

Many of my customers are evaluating business intelligence (BI) solutions. There are often many business drivers behind this trend including the need for analysis, reporting, planning and forecasting.

Prior to the release of Excel 2007 many customers would purchase a variety of different BI tools each with their own user interface, licensing costs and set of functionality. With Excel 2007 we have sought to bring BI to the masses while eliminating the need for a number of different tools and lowering the overall total cost of ownership for BI solutions.

Here is a summary of my top 10 favorite aspects of Excel 2007 for BI solutions:

Excel has become the rich BI client front end for PerformancePoint, SharePoint, SQL Server and any external data source or system. This allows users to easily aggregate, slice and dice many disparate data sources and get a consolidated view of their business.
By supporting 1 million rows and 16,000 columns of data in the same workbook, Excel 2007 allows you to work with more data. This addresses a critical business need expressed by many Excel users and overcomes previous product limitations of 64,000 rows which often resulted in the creation of multiple workbooks and extensive macros and programming to link the data together.
Excel Services enables you to easily publish an Excel workbook to SharePoint and then allow other users to access that data with just a web browser. This is of tremendous value when you want to make sure that everyone is looking at the latest version of data (aka a “single version of the truth”) and cases where you want to suppress hidden formulas, data and secure other sensitive data.
Conditional formatting adds powerful data visualization capabilities to Excel. You can easily add data bars, color scales, key performance indicators (KPI), and other icon sets to spot trends.
Pivot tables can now be created and used by anyone to organize and report on data. You do not need to be the “Excel guru” to be able to work with and change pivot tables. The redesigned pivot table capability and wizards streamlines the process.
The graphics engine for Office has been significantly improved with Office 2007. Charting and SmartArt produce professional looking graphics in very little time. These graphics can be shared and reused across Excel, PowerPoint and Word and eliminate the need for many 3rd party services and tools.
Tables in Excel automatically add common tools for working with related sets of data. For example, the filter and sort features have been improved and are automatically enabled now for Excel tables. You can apply multiple selections and even filter and sort by color (e.g. rows highlighted in green) and conditional format (e.g. by KPI).
Advanced built in formulas automate the creation of even the most complex calculations. Using Excel tables you can now even refer to cells based on user defined column and row names (e.g. Northeast, Southwest, etc.) rather than having to figure out the cryptic cell/column numbering (e.g. A1).
Data tools for identifying and removing duplicates, consolidating data and performing what-if analysis improves how you work with large sets of data and obtain meaningful insight from it.
Custom Office Business Application by partners and customers for building solutions on top of Excel. These could range from advanced Visual Studio .NET applications to basic macros. Since Excel uses the Open XML industry standard file format, Excel documents can be programmatically built and accessed from various tools.

Want to learn more? Check out the Microsoft Business Intelligence site and review customer case studies.