SHAREPOINTBlogs.com Mirror

Sharing Links: SharePoint Designer Governance

I just wanted to take a quick second to direct you to a post published today by Robert Bogue, a SharePoint MVP: http://thorprojects.com/blog/archive/2008/02/12/737.aspx The article covers Rob's views on the proper usage of SharePoint Designer (SPD) and how that usage should be governed by SharePoint administrators. SPD is a great tool for the customization and modification of SharePoint, but when not used properly it can really generate some heartburn for you. I highly recommend checking out Rob's article and taking his advice to heart; it may not be directly applicable to your situation but hopefully at least it will get you thinking about what kind of limits your organization needs around tools such as SPD. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

EndUserSharePoint.com: Six tools for SharePoint Users

After you have been working with SharePoint for awhile, is there anything that can help you quickly become more of a Power User? Check out this toolset and see if there is anything there for you. SharePoint Explorer One of the most useful tools you can Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Neues von Tools und Addons

SharePoint Cross-site Configurator The tool automates the process of deploying the MOSS site settings in all or selected sites in a server farm Applying Master Pages across a SharePoint server farm. Setting up Web Titles for all or selected site collections Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Windows Live Writer Plugin: Imtech Word Count

Reading the Windows Live Writer wish list forum I have stumbled upon a request for a Word Count plugin. As the request has been done quite a while ago and there hasn't been any response yet I have decided to make one myself. As the solution wasn't that difficult I was able to stuff making it between work and personal stuff. The plugin I have made works pretty simple: it grabs the selected text, removes any HTML elements (the string you get in the plugin method, contains the source view of a post content), decodes HTML entities and then makes the count using Regular Expression. It's the first version of the plugin and I might have missed some exceptions as I'm not a professional editor myself. Let me know if you have any suggestions or improvement/extension ideas. I have already posted the plugin to the Live Gallery . Yet somehow I don't believe it's going to be available there really soon ( the Find & Replace plugin still isn't by the way...), so I have put it at our CodePlex site as well. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Windows Live Writer Plugin: Imtech Find & Replace

I use Windows Live Writer to post on my blog. Sometimes I just miss the Replace functionality which in my opinion is a must-have of each content editor - even the Notepad proves it. If I'm not wrong the Live Writer development team has promised to include the Replace in the next version. As a developer you have two options: waiting or just doing it yourself. I have chosen for the second one.... The Find & Replace Plugin I have made support plain search as well as Regular Expressions. Furthermore you can do a replace on the Preview (F11 View) or the Source (SHIFT+F11 View). You can download the Plugin from our CodePlex site . I have posted it to the Live Writer Plugins gallery as well, but I don't know how long will it take to have it published. In the meanwhile be the first one to have it: Imtech Find & Replace in Windows Live Writer . I have wrapped the Plugin in an MSI installer. Just run the setup and the Plugin with be automatically put in the Plugins directory of Live Writer. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Windows Live Writer Plugin: Convert RGB color to Hex

Since a while I've been using the Windows Live Writer. Though it's a nice and handy tool that works way better than any web interface, it misses some functionality like pasting the code from Visual Studio, Search and Replace, etc. Some time ago I have found a nice plugin to paste the Visual Studio keeping the formatting , yet there is one downside to it. This blog doesn't support the colors definition using the rgb syntax, like: style="color: rgb(0,0,255)". Community Server renders the colors properly in it's edit mode (preview mode of Tiny MCE) but the text is all black after publishing. After doing the replace by hand a few time, I have decided to write my own Live Writer Plugin to do it for me. All I need to do now is to Select All and then click on the plugin to do the job for me. Writing the Live Writer plugins isn't very difficult and you can do it easily within a few minutes. I suppose the mechanism is quite powerful yet the most simple things like replacing can be done by writing a few lines of code. You can download the plugin from the CodePlex site . I haven't wrapped the plugin in any fancy installer. Simply unzip it and put it in the Plugin folder of the Live Writer and it will automatically appear on your Insert bar. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Imtech Test Content Generator v1.3.0.0 (free SharePoint 2007 tool)

Testing the editors area in SharePoint 2007 isn't really convenient. Image you would like to check whether the overview Web Part you have made really shows 100 items per page. Copying the items in the Explorer View might be a solution, still it's that handy when it comes to testing various Content Types and Page Layouts. Another scenario you might want to test is scheduling: does my page become available at the given timestamp? Yes, you can test this using the SharePoint 2007 interface, but still I think it can be done much easier. When it comes to testing custom Web Parts, overviews and the rest of the editing features within SharePoint 2007 I have developed Imtech Test Content Generator v1.3.0.0: a tool which helps me creating a given number of pages. As parameters I can set the desired Page Layout and content within the page. One click on a button, a cup of coffee and a couple hundred of items are there for me: Checked In, Published or even Approved if I want to. Imtech Test Content Generator v1.3.0.0 is free and you can use it without any restrictions. Download Imtech Test Content Generator v1.3.0.0 from our CodePlex site . Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Microsoft SharePoint Developer Certification: 70-542 Tips and Tricks

Hi there everyone. I am looking to get my MCTS in Sharepoint Developing. I need to pass the 70-542 Exam. I've found an microsoft e-learning course which seems to be very helpful, but I'm looking for any resources that anyone has come across out there. Please post comments with resources. Also please let me know if you have taken the exam and your impressions on it? Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

First Impression of the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor

One of my recent projects involved deciding where to place the results from a database. The database maintains cataloging information on a collection of works housed in the library on the campus where I work. The collection contains around 40,000 entries Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Tool to purge or delete site collections safely and quickly

I had to develop this tiny utility to delete around 1500 site collections which are autogenerated by some other tool. The autogenerated site collections were created in the format like this: http://sharepointsite.com/clients// So this tool of mine identifies the site collections which matches the above format and deletes them. At the same time it keeps log [...] Mirrored on SharePoint Blogs Posted on SharePoint Blogs...( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Hello, Live Writer!

I started using Windows Live Writer late last week to author my blog entries and have to say that I am very impressed.  In fact, the last 3 posts on this blog were all done with it.  Once configured, it is fast, extremely easy to use and focuses solely on the task of editing and posting blog entries.  This means that there is no menu/UI clutter from a bunch of bloat (yet) so it is pretty easy to find what you are looking for. Some of the cool things I've found so far: Save drafts locally Save drafts on the blog site as an unpublished post Publish blog entries to the blog site (kind of required!) Web Preview mode that shows the post using styles and layout from your actual blog site Edit and post entries to different blogs from the same editor Auto-upload embedded images (if the site supports it) Insert images from several sites (I use Flickr and SmugMug but there is a Community Server plug-in as well) Ability to scale images using the thumbnails created by the Image Hosting site To make blogging even easier, I've discovered a few related goodies that work well with pretty much any blog editor. An add-in for SnagIt that uploads my screen captures to Flickr right from the SnagIt editor A "Send To ..." utility for both Flickr and SmugMug that will upload an image file from the right-click menu Wonderfulness (?) aside, this is still a "dot OH!" product from Microsoft so there are a few small bugs yet to be worked out as well as the occasional...

Can I Map a Document Library as a Mapped Drive?

Chris Quick and I had this discussion this morning about mapping a document library as a mapped drive: Chris: “If you go to the library you wish to link and choose Actions -> Open in Windows Explorer you will see something like a network share Read More......( read more ) Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Potential Tool for Updating SharePoint's UI

I haven't gotten a chance to play with this yet, but if you're looking for something to help you change the look and feel of your SharePoint installation's user interface, you might want to take a look at the SharePoint Skinner: http://www.elumenotion.com/default.aspx This tool was recently released by Elumenotion, and it looks like it is free to use (it's also posted on CodePlex, so I'm betting that it is indeed free). I've downloaded the zip file, but haven't gotten a chance to install it and work with it yet. From what I'm seeing on Elumenation's site, the tool is intended to help you manipulate the CSS styles of your SharePoint site, meaning you can easily update the colors and images displayed on the site. I like the approach, but just keep in mind that if you're looking for something that will make your SharePoint site not look like a SharePoint site it doesn't look like the SharePoint Skinner going to do it for you on its own. But, it could be a pretty handy auxiliary tool in your site design toolkit. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Imtech Solution Setup (Free SharePoint Tool)

Imtech Solution Setup is a tool that installs and deploys SharePoint 2007 solution files (.wsp). The tool works in two modes: setup and standalone. The standalone mode is meant for "each day" use: after starting the tool you have to select the .wsp you want to install. Then you have to select the Web Applications where you want to deploy the selected .wsp to and click "Setup". In the setup mode the "Browse..." button is disabled: the .wsp has been passed to the setup tool as a command line argument. All the user has to do is select the deployment target(s) and click "Setup". Although this tool is not extremely powerful and customizable its light weight and simplicity make it works for me. It turns pretty handy in MSI-kind installers. Download Imtech Solution Setup v1.1.0.0 (44,5KB) Imtech Solution Setup v1.1.0.0 is a free tool and you can use it without any restrictions. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Imtech C# String Converter (Free .NET Tool)

Once in a while you need to paste one of these long strings into your C# code. I've set recently a record by pasting an exported SharePoint 2007 RSS Viewer Web Part: more than 400 lines! If it's only once during the solution development it's doable: you could get it well formatted using some Search and Replace with Regular Expressions. But what if you have to paste a dozen of such strings in your code? That's when I thought that a tool would make life easier: Imtech C# String Converter. It's all for free so don't hesitate and try it out. Download: Imtech C# String Converter v1.0.0.0 . Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks