Latest Publication topics

This month I had the opportunity to contribute an article for the online Dutch Information Worker Group (DIWUG) e-magazine . This is great publication and one you should have on your radar as it always has some killer content. It’s available as a PDF and a specially formatted PDF for eReaders. As you have likely noticed if you frequent this blog, my head has been in the SharePoint 2013 workflow space lately so with this article, I decided to write about something that was didn’t have a lot of guidance out there about it.

I’m thrilled to announce that today Pluralsight published my new course in their catalog… you can watch it right now! The course is called SharePoint 2013 Workflow - Fundamentals . This course is available to all Pluralsight subscribers. The goal of this course is to help people immediately get up to speed and productive in creating automated business processes as workflows in SharePoint 2013. The target audience for this course are developers and power users as I cover building workflows and assigning tasks using both SharePoint Designer 2013 and Visual Studio 2012.

The goal of this course is to build off my previous course and tackle some of the more complex things you’ll need to accomplish in your day-to-day SharePoint workflow development. The target audience for this course are developers as I cover building workflows using Visual Studio primarily. There is no specific customer focus… everything I show you works both in an on-premises deployment as well as a hosted environment such as Office 365.

In this course students will learn how to consume and interact with external data sources as well as how to create a custom .NET Assembly Connector.

In this course you will learn how to create lists and document libraries using the SharePoint development tools in Visual Studio 2012. Students will also learn about the various events in SharePoint 2013 including the new remote event receiver capability.

In this course students will learn the basics of security and permissions in SharePoint 2013, specifically AuthN, AuthZ and claims based security.

In this course you will learn how to create custom application pages as well as content pages and the details around customizing pages.

SharePoint extensibility has traditionally been done using solution packages (*.wsp’s). The two types of solutions, farm and sandbox, are covered in depth in this module. Students will learn when they are available depending on the deployments.

In this course students will get up to speed on SharePoint 2013 both from a SKU/license perspective as well as from a capability and architectural perspective.

This course covers all the security aspects in SharePoint 2010. New to SharePoint 2010 is the support for claims based authentication. Students will learn how to configure a site for claims based authentication and how to do various security programming tasks. In addition the business intelligence (BI) capabilities of SharePoint 2010 are covered. You will see how to create custom dashboards using KPIs and filters along with SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services. By the end of this course you should be able to create dashboards using provided Dashboard Designer included with Performance Point Services.

Enterprise Content Management & Web Content Management - this course will teach you about the content management capabilities in SharePoint 2010 including Enterprise Content Management features and creating Publishing sites with Web Content.

The goal of this course is to help people immediately get up to speed and productive in creating automated business processes as workflows in SharePoint 2013. The target audience for this course are developers and power users as I cover building workflows and assigning tasks using both SharePoint Designer 2013 and Visual Studio 2012. There no specific customer focus… everything I show you works both in an on-premises deployment as well as a hosted environment such as Office 365.

Automating Business Process, Enterprise Data & Search - this course covers automating business process with workflow in SharePoint 2010 as well as the improved support for working with data that does not live in SharePoint.

Information Architecture Storage and Data Access - learn how SharePoint 2010 stores data and how you can access that data both from server-side code (including using the new support for LINQ) and client-side code.

Customizing and Extending SharePoint - this course covers the SharePoint 2010 user experience for developers.

Students will also get an introduction to the new developer tools included in Visual Studio 2010 as well as how to develop in terms of Features and Solutions.

Learn how to use SharePoint Designer, the browser and InfoPath to create robust business solutions for SharePoint 2010.

A few weeks ago I blogged how two samples I provided MSDN in August 2012 were recently republished using the latest SharePoint 2013, Workflow Manager and Visual Studio 2012 developer tools. Well today I’m happy to say that it appears a few more of my samples have been refreshed and republished. The samples are updated to use the latest and greatest stuff and are based on the following: SharePoint 2013 RTM + the March 2013 Public Update applied Service Bus 1.

This sample allows a company, such as a cable company, to better manage is fleet of vehicles. A fleet manager workflow instant starts when a new vehicle is added to the fleet (as an item in a SharePoint list).

This sample demonstrates how to use remote event receivers to trigger workflows & how to use the CSOM to start an instance of the workflow.

This basic workflow scenario supports a document review and approval/reject process. The workflow assigns a task to a reviewer, who evaluates the draft, makes comments as necessary, and then concludes the task by either routing the document back to the writer for revisions.

Back in August 2012 I published , via the MSDN Office Developer Documentation Team , two workflow samples that showed how to build a workflow using Visual Studio 2012 that called an external web service and updated a list item as well as how to encapsulate this within a custom activity. I recently updated these two samples and they were republished this week. Previously people had issues with the samples because they were written with pre-beta SharePoint 2013 / Workflow Manager / Visual Studio 2012 / Office & SharePoint 2013 Developer Tools.

I’m thrilled to announce we’ve published our complete SharePoint 2013 Setup Guide. This guide follows on our popular setup guide for SharePoint 2010.

The sample workflow is bound to a list named Customers. After the user enters a value for CustomerID, they can manually run the workflow. The workflow uses the CustomerID to search for the customer using the public Northwind sample OData service.

The sample workflow is bound to a list named Customers. After the user enters a value for CustomerID, they can manually run the workflow. The workflow uses the CustomerID to search for the customer using the public Northwind sample OData service.

I’ve been a slacker in posting about this cool new resource. Steve Fox over at the Microsoft Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group recently blogged about an update to a cool training resource available for SharePoint developers. In July Microsoft refreshed the SharePoint & Windows Azure Developer Learning Kit which includes labs demonstrating how to integrate the two products. This is a pretty cool concept especially for those who need to break out of the sandbox in environments such as Office 365.

Get a detailed look inside SharePoint 2010—and master the intricacies of developing intranets, extranets, and Web-based applications. I was a contributor to this project.

An article I worked very hard on has recently been published on MSDN. The article, Customizing and Extending the SharePoint 2010 Server Ribbon , is very long and a comprehensive companion to what you’ll find in the SharePoint 2010 SDK. I found there to be a lot to uncover and expose in the SharePoint 2010 ribbon while researching the subject. This paper was supposed to be around 15 pages but I couldn’t hold back… ended up over 40 pages!

A Visual How To (VHT) I worked on has recently been published on MSDN. The VHT, Creating Custom SharePoint Server 2010 Document Sets with Visual Studio 2010 , helps you understand how to create document sets in SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Content Management in a declarative way which makes them much more reusable between environments: Document sets, introduced in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, enable users to create a composite item that consists of properties and child documents.

Learn about the components that make up the SharePoint 2010 Server ribbon and how to customize the ribbon by walking through two ribbon customization scenarios.

A visual how to I worked on has recently been published on MSDN. The video, Creating Custom SharePoint 2010 Service Applications and Consumers , demonstrates how to create custom SharePoint 2010 service applications for robust, scalable, and fault tolerant shared services. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 introduced Shared Services Providers (SSPs) to provide common services to web applications. In Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Microsoft changed this model to use the new service application framework, which no longer groups services together for multiple web applications.

An article I worked on has recently been published on MSDN. The article, Debugging and Logging Capabilities in SharePoint 2010 helps you learn about the new logging and debugging capabilities in SharePoint Foundation 2010 that enable developers to build more reliable and testable solutions. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is a very extensible product that developers can customize to suit various business needs. Because SharePoint is based on Microsoft ASP.NET, it provides developers with the same debugging and logging options that are available to traditional ASP.

Learn essential concepts to help you create engaging user interface designs in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 publishing sites.

Last time around the Real World SharePoint 2007 book was one of WROX’s most successful SharePoint books. Well, here we go again! The 2010 version that I was involved in is now available on Amazon for ordering today! My chapter is on building custom service applications but I don’t cover just HOW to create them. The important thing that most people don’t understand is WHEN to create them. I’ve talked to some folks who say that’s all they are building… hmmm… not so sure they’ve got it right as very few people should be building these in my eyes.

Developers and development managers should use what is addressed in this article to create a process and guidelines that fit the size of their specific development team and background and the type of the project.

Learn about the new logging and debugging capabilities in SharePoint Foundation 2010 that enable developers to build more reliable and testable solutions.

Learn how to create SharePoint Server 2010 document sets by using Visual Studio 2010 instead of by using the browser-based user interface.

Learn how to create custom SharePoint 2010 service applications for robust, scalable, and fault tolerant shared services. This Visual How To demonstrates how to create custom SharePoint 2010 service applications and consumers that take advantage of the service.

Learn how to use the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 managed client object model to read and write data in SharePoint sites from Microsoft .NET Framework–based applications.

This article covers the details on creating a Silverlight 3 application, deploying and leveraging it in a custom field type and field control sample for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Publishing sites.

An article I worked on has recently been published on MSDN. The article, Creating Custom SharePoint Server 2010 Field Types and Field Controls with Silverlight 3, demonstrates how to create a custom SharePoint field type and field control that leverages Silverlight 3 as the editing and display experience. While the article is written for SharePoint 2010, it does also apply to SharePoint 2007. The only real difference is that you don’t have access to the rich Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Development Tools and that your SharePoint 2007 server is not configured OOTB to support Silverlight 3.

Understand Microsoft .NET Framework code access security (CAS) and how to work with it in custom SharePoint solutions. Explore configuration options, get best practices for managing CAS in SharePoint environments, and walk through a complex CAS scenario.

Learn about the Web Content Management features in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that enable organizations to deploy Internet-facing publishing sites, and considerations for developers and designers when designing and building high-performance publishing sites.

Learn the essential concepts needed to create an engaging user interface design in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 publishing sites. This article is part 2 of 2.

Learn the essential concepts needed to create an engaging user interface design in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 publishing sites. This article is part 1 of 2.

Explore and learn how to address security and performance issues of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 publishing sites before launching them as Internet-facing publishing sites.

Learn the details of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 field controls and Web Parts and how they differ, and best practices for when to use each type of control.

Learn two ways in which developers and designers can create Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 master pages that define a site’s global appearance and to create page layouts that define the rendering of specific content pages in Microsoft Office SharePoint Sever 2007 publishing sites.

Discover where to find the SDKs, peer-to-peer forums, MSDN developer centers, and Microsoft TechNet resources you need as you develop with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies.

An article I worked on has recently been published on MSDN. The article, Implementing a Brand in a SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Site , discusses three options for deploying files used in branding a MOSS 2007 Publishing site including the advantages and disadvantages of each. Personally I strongly prefer the last approach, but it’s good to see all your options. The paper does NOT talk about how to make your site not look like SharePoint.