The Edge

Steve Ballmer Keynote Speech

Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft, keynotes at the SharePoint Conference 2009 held in Las Vegas.

 

Creating Reporting Services Shared Data Source in MOSS Report Centre

 

OK so you’ve created a Report Centre in Moss, configured it to use Reporting services and have the list of reports that you need to upload, what could go wrong?

 

For me it was forgetting how to create the shared Data Source (.rsds file). Not only could I not quite remember how to create it the default settings in MOSS hid the ability to create the connection. So for those of you who are in a similar situation here’s a step by step guide to creating a MOSS SSRS Share Data Source Connection.

The Big Drop

As some of you may have seen on our website, four of us at Business Agility participated in a charity event for Children with Leukemia called The Big Drop. We managed to raise just under £1000 for the charity and complete the event with no injuries! A selection of pictures taken from the day are below.

 

Red Nose Day 2009

Well done to everyone who got involved with Business Agility's Red Nose Day. A lot of fun was had and we raised a lot of money for charity too! I have included a few pictures from the day below...

 

Generating VMware machines without Workstation

At Business Agility we use a lot of VMware virtual machines for development and testing of new technologies. This proves to be a quick way for team members to get up and running on a project, simply copying over the VM and they have everything ready to go.

Now although the VMware Player can be downloaded freely from the WMware site, you need to purchase something like the Workstation edition to create the VMs - or so I thought until a colleague pointed me in the direction of easyvmx. Here you can enter some simple parameters, such as the amount of memory and disk space your VM should have. Then the site will generate the empty VM, which you can download (4k zip!) and install your OS into. So far I am very impressed with the solution - more to come. Thanks easyvmx!

Developing Custom, Connectable Web Parts in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 provides a rich model for developing communication between web parts.  This is useful in scenarios where you need to pass either simple string values to another web part, perhaps to display and filter custom Parent-Child data, or pass complex objects for processing and rendering.  The principle of Web Part communication is that it is contractual and interface based.

Consider a scenario where Web Part A must send a simple string value to Web Part B as shown below.  Web Part A is the provider and Web Part B is the consumer.

Using Linq with Objects

This document assumes you have created a Linq to SQL project which references a table called myTable.

The diagram shows myTable as shown in the Linq to SQL designer.

 

After adding an item to the designer do not forget to build the object.

Linq Query

To retrieve data from myTable we need the following query.

linqExampleDataContext db = new linqExampleDataContext(); db.Connection.ConnectionString = connectionString; var results = from p in db.myTables       select p;

“db” is the database context 
“connectionString” is a string holding the connection details
“p” will hold the results from the linq query.

More than ever before, companies are using Agile to develop and deploy functional SharePoint applications - WHY?

Business Agility is running an Agile SharePoint deployment workshop on December 4th, further details and links to registration are below.

 

Business Agility and Microsoft invite you to attend a free, unique SharePoint workshop event.
 
When: Thursday, 4th December 2008.
Location: Microsoft Reading Office

 

Whether you are a new, existing or potential SharePoint user, at some point in your SharePoint journey, you may find yourself asking "What's next?". Due to the functionality and customisation available to SharePoint users, many organisations reach a point in their SharePoint project where they are unable to determine which capability to pursue next.
 
This half-day workshop will provide an overview of SharePoint best practice deployment, address "what next" scenarios and also demonstrate how real business benefits can be realised much faster by adopting an Agile development approach.   
 
Spaces are limited and will be reserved on a first come, first served basis. 

 

Reserve your FREE seat now by registering HERE or by calling +44 (0) 1462 476 160.

Configuring PerformancePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Integration Points

Problem

After you have instructed the PerformancePoint Server 2007 Monitoring Server to use a specific MOSS 2007 Site Collection, you may find that the site collection displays a Configuration Error after you have configured the Monitoring Server as follows:

Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified

...

The reason is due to the following assembly, part of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Extensions, not being made available by default.  This is common in scenarios where you are using just .NET Framework 3.5 and have not installed AJAX extensions manually.

<add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />

Resolution

There are a number of ways around this problem.  The first way is to install the specific AJAX extensions that are being referenced.  Another more complicated method, that may be desirable if you cannot install AJAX extensions, is to use assembly redirection to ensure that the correct version of the assembly is called using the <bindingRedirect> element in your web.config.  This presents other potential problems down the line and should be used with care.

Please note, you can only deploy Dashboard Viewer web parts to one site collection in your server farm with the current version of PerformancePoint Server 2007.  If you require multiple site collections to be integrated with PerformancePoint then this must be achieved manually through editing your web.config files.  This will result in an unsupported configuration however.

Passing Parameters to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 based Workflows

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 provides the ability to create rich, custom workflow solutions built upon the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) framework.  Workflow solutions provide a useful way to define and automate information based processes, which may or may not require human interaction at various points in the process.  This post will examine how to customise and extend customised workflows through passing parameters via association and initiation events.

A workflow association describes the process of linking a workflow to an object within SharePoint, such as a list.  A workflow initiation event occurs every time a workflow instance initiates.  Parameters passed via association are common to all workflow instances on that particular object.  Parameters pass via initiation relate only to an individual workflow instance.

MOSS provides a useful way of leveraging both workflow association and initiation, at the time they occur, to pass parameters into the workflow.  The easiest way to allow users to pass parameters into a workflow is through the implementation of Microsoft InfoPath forms.  It is possible to use ASP.NET pages to capture user input but MOSS provides out-of-the-box Web Part pages to display Infopath forms at the time the workflow is associated and initiated.  For instance, an association form could capture the location of another SharePoint repository which the workflow could use to route all pieces of content to on that particular list.  When a workflow must make ad-hoc decisions on an instance to instance basis, then initiation forms are more appropriate to parameterise workflows.