Pushing Departmental Announcements to Students - Appointlink

Customers often ask about how they can push departmental announcements to student homepages. Using SharePoint audiences customers can target specific content to a particular group on their SharePoint sites. In this demo, Appointlink shows us how they have extended this functionality by providing the interface for departments to post specific messages directly to a student audience home page in SharePoint.

SharePoint LMS Course Management - AppointLink

I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard customers ask about LMS solutions being developed on SharePoint. Almost immediately people see how the rich feature set of SharePoint could be extended for LMS style solutions. In this demo, Appointlink walks us through an example of how their solution can be used by faculty to manage classes provisioned via the SIS system, send student announcements/email, review homework submitted, and be able to re-use content from previous semesters. I love seeing examples like this!

SharePoint LMS Student Home Page - AppointLink

Looking for inspiration for a SharePoint Student LMS landing page? Look no further. In this demo, Appointlink walks us through the student home landing page they have developed complete with relevant links/information, event, groups/sites, and course information. The course information can be pulled from a variety of student information systems including Peoplesoft, Banner, Datatel, home-grown, etc...

SharePoint LMS Seating Chart - Appointlink

This is cool demo by AppointLink that allows an instructors to build a seating chart tied with student photos by course. The solution ties in with the SIS system, which makes it easy for instructors to only return the appropriate students per course for quick builds of the seating chart. Once the SIS information is available to SharePoint the solutions are really up to your own imagination. Very cool indeed!

This is particularly important for Law Schools teaching in a socratic method.

Note - there are two videos related to one another. This video describes the seating chart itself. The other video shows how students along with their photos are associated to the application.

Independent SharePoint 3rd Party Product Reviews

With so many SharePoint Partner building solutions on the platform it come sometimes make your head spin keeping up. Check out this web site for 3rd party product reviews.

SharePoint Product Reviews

Another FREE resource for SharePoint How To Videos

This is a great resource to add to your End User SharePoint training toolbox. Simply think to the site or video from your SharePoint Support site. End users can access this information 24/7, which may help in minimizing the training burden on your IT Staff.

http://www.sharepointhosting.com/video_tutorials.html

Video Instruction includes:

Adding Documents to a SharePoint Site

Create a new SharePoint Site Collection Administrator

Add Links to a SharePoint List

Add SharePoint Site to your Trusted Sites in Internet Explorer

Add Users to a SharePoint Security Group

Approve another user's SharePoint Blog Post

Change SharePoint Navigation to a Site Tree View

Change the SharePoint Site Image

Change the SharePoint Site Title and Description

Change a SharePoint User's e-mail address

Change a SharePoint User's password

Create a SharePoint Calendar Appointment

Create a Document-specific SharePoint Alert

Create a New SharePoint User

Create a SharePoint Announcements List

Create a SharePoint Blog Posting

Create a SharePoint Calendar

Create a SharePoint Contacts List

Create a SharePoint Discussion Board

Create a SharePoint Document Library

Create a SharePoint Document Work Space

Create a SharePoint Gantt Project Management Chart

Create a SharePoint InfoPath form Library

Create a SharePoint Links List

Create a SharePoint Meeting Site

Create a SharePoint Picture Library

Create a new SharePoint Security Group

Create a new SharePoint Sub-site

Create a new Task in a SharePoint Tasks list and assign it to a user

Create a SharePoint Wiki Document

Create a SharePoint Wiki Library

Customize a SharePoint Meeting Site

Delete a SharePoint Meeting Site when you are finished with it

Edit SharePoint Blog Categories

E-mail a SharePoint Document Library

E-mail Enable a SharePoint Discussion Forum

Enable Multiple SharePoint Blog Categorizations

Edit the SharePoint Quick Launch Menu to Customize with your own navigation options

Enable SharePoint Document Versioning

Change SharePoint Top Link bar navigation options

Manage Access Requests to your Site

Move Documents between SharePoint Document Libraries

Remove Permission Inheritance from SharePoint Sub-sites

Remove the SharePoint Quick Launch Menu

Remove Top Link Bar Inheritance from a SharePoint Site

Restore Deleted Items As the Site Collection Administrator

Restore SharePoint Site Permission Inheritance (sub-sites)

Work with the SharePoint Recycle Bin

Create a SharePoint Sales CRM Application

Work with your SharePoint Themes

Add Tabbed SharePoint Navigation Options to your Site

Add SharePoint Web Parts

Sign in as a different SharePoint User

Work with a SharePoint Gantt Project Chart

Create a Custom Site Column

Copy/Bulk Move in SharePoint

At times you may need to copy/bulk move some SharePoint content around. This cool solution from MetaVis Technologies allows you to do just that...and much more.

MetaVis Technologies

Network File Share Webparts

Many customers have asked for Network File Share Webparts that would provide access to their shares directly within SharePoint. The file shares can either be displayed using a traditional web application or via web folders (WEBDAV).

Special thanks to Mike "Mick" Robeck at Tallahassee Community College. TCC has developed some very exciting solutions on SharePoint, including integration with Blackboard and their mainframe system for students. They also have a robust Intranet leveraging forms, Excel Services, document management, and collaboration for their faculty/staff. Very exciting stuff! Thanks again to Bill Campman and the rest of the team for sharing this code with the rest of the education community. I hope to see you soon or at the very least the SharePoint Conference in October!

Network File Share Webparts on CodePlex

Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit Platforms

Many customers have been waiting for the Adobe 64-Bit iFilter to be produced. This makes it possible to search within Adobe PDF documents being crawled by the SharePoint Search Engine. At last here it is...

Adobe PDF 64-Bit iFilter

Scanning, Storage, and Archiving with SharePoint

Many customers are unaware that SharePoint has some excellent partners who specialize in Scanning, Storage, and Archiving large volumes of data. Below, I've listed some of these partners:

http://www.knowledgelake.com/

http://bluethreadinc.com/

http://www.clearviewecm.com/

https://www.onbase.com/English/Products/Integrations/MicrosoftIntegrations/SharePoint

 

More partners can be found here:

PartnerPedia

SharePoint Conference 2009

Microsoft is delighted to announce SharePoint Conference 2009 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 19-22, 2009.  Don’t miss your chance to attend the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies!

SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the conference to learn about SharePoint “14”.  Be the first to learn about the improvements we’ve made to the platform and how many of those investments can be quickly implemented to add value to your organization and businesses.

If you’re an IT Professional, an IT Decision Maker, an Architect or a Developer you will find a deep set of technical content to give you a kick start for SharePoint “14” and further your skills and knowledge with SharePoint Server 2007. 

In addition to the session content you will have ample opportunities to network with technical and industry experts including many of the Microsoft staff that helped in building SharePoint, Microsoft Most Value Professionals and many of our top Certified Partners.

Early bird registration is open today for a $300 discount for the first 500 registrations only.   Don’t miss out on the biggest SharePoint event of the year!  Register today to save over 25% and secure your spot at this monumental event!

Unfortunately, there isn't any education pricing for this event. Please register early as this event fills up quickly. For more info please visit the link below:

SharePoint Conference Web Site

FREE SharePoint Developer and Search Training

There is some very good new developer training available and it is completely FREE. With over 12 hours of content these modules cover:

• Developing Solutions on the SharePoint Platform
• Web Parts
• Page Navigation
• Page Branding
• Data Lists
• Web Services
• Event Handlers
• Content Types and Site Columns
• Workflow
• User Management
• Silverlight
• Deployment

The Search Training has over 18 hours of in-depth technical training, including:

• Introduction
• Enterprise Search Overview
• SharePoint Search Walkthrough
• Search Architecture and Deployment
• Crawl and Query Process
• Relevance Ranking
• Customizing the End-User Experience
• Developing Search Solutions
• Business Data Catalog Search
• Extensibility and Integration for Search
• Search Administration
• Security and Search
• Performance, Scalability, and Capacity Planning
• Search Operations

Special thanks to Martin Harwar for producing these videos. If you are new to SharePoint development or Search these modules are invaluable. They are not bad as a refresher as well.

Search Training

Developer Training

SharePoint EDU examples over the pond (UK)

SharePoint provides so much functionality right our of the box. How you combine these feature to solve your specific EDU challenges can be an art unto itself. If you are looking for inspiration and ideas check out what some of our friends are doing in the UK. Providing value to parents, students, faculty, and staff is very powerful. These sites leverage the learning gateway framework.

http://www.the-kraal.com/Gallery/index.htm

I'm a Loser!

Some people just shouldn't bet. Particularly when your not very good at golf. You see this post was conceived on the golf course. That ever elusive pastime that married men with kids can certainly relate too. Recently, my good pal Jeff Nuckolls (Nucks) and I decided to head out to The Preserve Golf Course, very nice I might add, up here in Michigan. The bet was simple...whoever lost had to blog about the great performance of the victor. This is silly but here goes...

First, let me introduce you to Jeff Nuckolls or "Nucks" as I call him. Jeff is an excellent golfer despite being sent home with his tail between his legs at the most recent pro-am tournament in Michigan. He probably wished he played as well that day as he did on this day (38 on the back 9).

This match wasn't close (Nucks 81, Dunk 103). The drama was over within the first few holes about who would win this bet. To keep things interesting Jeff decided, for whatever reason, to continuously hit up on the group in front of us. The 1st time the group simply shrugged their shoulders. The 2nd time two holes later they appealed to Jeff to "Give them a break", insisting they can only play as fast as the group in front of them. However, on this day Jeff wasn't having any of the ridiculous golf etiquette business. No Sir!

RED MEANS GO (I guess so)...

Despite the appeals from our golfing brothers my pal Nucks decided on the very next hole to pull out the driver and hammer the ball, cutting the corner on a 357 yard par 4. Excellent shot and our frustrated new friends had a great vantage point from the green where they were putting. Yes...he hit the green from 357!

I really thought those fellas were gonna read Jeff the riot act, and they did in their own professional-like way. From that point on Jeff behaved and didn't get us into trouble. That's until I smoked a 7 wood at them while they were walking off the 18th green.

Moral of the story? Idiots travel in pairs.

Actual Footage of Nuck's 357 Yard Drive

Graphic of Hole

GOOD TIMES!

I'm A PC

And I am passionate about Education and preparing our kids for the global economy!

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/windows/videoGallery.aspx