Comparing Features areas in SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007

With the release of the SharePoint 2010 Microsoft has regrouped all the feature into 6 new Feature Areas.



Here is the Mapping between the Feature Areas from Office SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010

1. Collaboration is now Communities

2. Portals is now Sites

3. Business Processes is now Composites

4. Business Intelligence is now Insights

5. Search is Search

6. Content Management is now Content

Videos on SharePoint 2010

Here are some good videos on SharePoint 2010 from Microsoft:

Top Features areas for IT Professionals:


Top Features areas for Developers


Enterprise Search:


Composites:


SharePoint Foundation:


SharePoint Partners:


Insights:


Communities:


Sites:


Content:

Taxonomy Services and Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010 we can associate Metadata (data about the data) with a content item. This metadata can be of two type managed and un-managed. We can apply both kind of this metadata in SharePoint 2010 using Taxonomies (Managed Metadata) and Folksonomies (Unmanaged Metadata).

Here are some terms which needs to be understood properly before going deep into this:

Taxonomy – A hierarchical tree of values which are centrally managed and predefined. User while putting the conent can tag the content using these taxonomy values. So If we take example of countries a taxonomy would look like:

-North America
--USA
-South America
--Brazil
--Argentina
-Asia
--China
--India
-Europe
--France
--UK

Folksonomies: This is a set of Unmanaged set of metadata which is not centrally managed. With this user can add their own tags if they dont find a specific values defined in the managed set.

Term Store – A new database that contains taxonomies values in SharePoint 2010.

Term – A term can be defined as a node in the taxonomy. So in the example above each country is a term. Each term has an ID.

Term Sets – A collection of Terms. So it is again subset of Taxonomy.

Here is the diagram which shows how these Terms, Term Sets can be arranged in SharePoint 2010:

Tagging – Tagging is the process of applying these terms to a content item.

Managed Metadata Column: A new type of column which can be single or multi value field. This is bind to a Term Set. Multiple Managed Metadata columns can be created on a SharePoint List, Document Library or Content Type. We can make this column mandatory. When the user are tagging the content automatically SharePoint shows a hierarchial UI to tag the content.

So if we create a term set using the above example and then associate it using the Managed Metadata Column the user can select the tags easily. It shows a very intuitive interface to tag the content like:

Managed Keywords: This type of field is used for the folksonomies. With Managed Keyword users can put the new terms into the Term Store. Also Managed Keywords can be promoted as a managed Term.

Managed Keyword Column: This is also a new column and supports Managed Keywords. It is essentially a text box with lot of feature where the user can type, and they are given suggestions from the term store. If their entry doesn’t exist, the system will add it automatically in the term store.

SharePoint 2010 allows to create Terms, Term Sets and importing terms using Term Management Tool. This tool is available in Central Administration --> Manage Service Applications. A new service application with the name Managed Metadata Service is introduced to manage these operations. This services publishes these term stores and help to ensure common vocabulary for the metadata. This was partially achieved using site Columns in SharePoint 2007 which was very cumbersome and difficult to manage.

These Terms can be associated with the content using the browser, Office Clients (using Document information Panel), InfoPath forms, or by a custom application using SharePoint Object Model. SharePoint can also add this metadata based on location of the content storage which is really cool feature.

The applied Metadata help to drive search, navigation and behaviors of this content. The column headings AND left-hand navigation displays the tag taxonomy as a means of filtering or pivoting the library listing. It’s kind of automatic, faceted, dynamic folder trees based on tags which helps to browse the content easily. These terms can automatically extracted for further usages.

There is a new feature with the name Metadata Navigation and Filtering. If we activate this feature it allows to filter the data based on this metadata values.

Once we activate this feature a new link shown up in the list as shown:

Now we can add the managed metadata column in the list which allows for easy filtering. So once we add this it will look like:

See Also Document Sets in SharePoint 2010

Managed Account in SharePoint 2010

Microsoft has introduced a new feature in SharePoint 2010 called Managed Accounts. These days generally we use a Service Account while setting up any Web Application. and it may happen that this account will be used in multiple Web Applications. Now when we change the password for this account this needs to be changed in all the Web Applications using this account. Sometime it happens that we forget to change the password for some of the Web Apps. In that case these Web Apps will be down. Also it is a big burden to change the password perodically if we have multiple service accounts used in multiple web applicaiton.

Now with this new feature a Managed Account can be created in SharePoint 2010 and we need to set the password while creating the managed account. Then this account can be used while creating the Web Applicaitons. The cool thing about this that we dont need to provide the password while using this account when we are creating a new Web Applications which is using this Managed Account.

SharePoint can take the control of this service account. SharePoint 2010 can automatically do the password change for these managed accounts. While creating Managed Account, we can specify how long before the passord expiration it needs to be reset and SharePoint will change the password at the specified time without any intervention. Also if we can configure it to just send the mail to the users for notifying for the password changes and then we can do it on our own. Here is how you create managed account:

Videos on SharePoint 2010 - Getting Started

Here are some videos which gives starting point on the SharePoint 2010:

1. What Can SharePoint 2010 Do for Me?

2. How SharePoint 2010 Works

3. Simple Install for Testing

4. Search

5. Backups

6. Creating Your First Web Application, Site Collection, and Web

7. Security

8. Windows PowerShell for SharePoint 2010 Administrators

9. Performance and Control in SharePoint 2010

Important Announcements done in SPC 2009 for SharePoint 2010 - Day 2

Here are important things which were annonunced in SPC 2009 Day 2:

1. WebParts in a WebPart page are versioned.

2. Contributors are not allowed to change web part properties in SharePoint 2010 Web parts due to XSS safeguard . Only designers and Owners can make changes.

3. Developers can create reusable components for BCS (UI, models, etc) that non-developers can make use of in SP Designer.

4. We can work with BCS using SharePoint Designer 2010.

5. BCS allows to connect to a .NET assembly, so you can connect to anything you can write the code for and surface in SP/Office

6. Now the content query web part in SharePoint 20101 allows choosing columns you want to display.

7. Navigation can be created using Metatags OOB.

8. A new role, "delegated admin" is introduced. With this we can say a person can manage only search nothing else.

9. A list view can include fields from other lists that have been joined to the primary list.

10. Document ID is now included in OOTB functionality and it is preserved across site collections.

11. With BCS we can connect to Outlook and make a BCS entity map to Outlook Contacts, Tasks.

12. A new OOB web part called Tag Cloud is introduced in SharePoint 2010.

13. SharePoint 2010 has services called Visio Services, Access Services and Excel Services.

14. Project 2010 can now sync the data with SharePoint 2010.

15. Now SharePoint 2010 supports claims based authentication using Geneva Framework.

16. Custom Ribbon tabs - developers can write their own "ribbon" interfaces to run inside SharePoint, just like you can in office 2007 desktop apps.

17. Visio is now a workflow designer tool and includes a template and a lot of shapes for designing them. You execute these workflows in SharePoint.

18. Service applications - Now we can build our own "Shared Services" Application for providing functionality across web applications. This may be a huge oppurtunity for enterprise SharePoint installations because it will facilitate integration with other apps in a much broader manner. SharePoint has basically become a real application server.

19. SP2010 provides a Chart web part, which you can hook up to SharePoint site definitions, the Business Data Catalog, excel services, or another web part.

20. BLOB and metadata storage are separated within SQL in 2010

21. Mixed mode authentication in SharePoint 2010 will no longer be asp.net based, but instead it will be claims based.

22. We can design the Workflows in Visio and export them in SharePoint Designer 2010.

23. Workflow created using SharePoint Designer 2010 can be saved as WSP and opened in Visual Studio.

24. In SPD 2010 we can build workflows once and associate with other lists/libraries.

Good learning resources on SharePoint 2010

Here are some very good resources on SharePoint 2010:

1. Developer Evaluation guide on SharePoint 2010
The SharePoint 2010 developer evaluation guide describes the SharePoint 2010 developer platform, including walkthroughs of some of the new capabilities for developers.

2. Evaluation guide for SharePoint Server 2010 for IT Pros

3. Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010 (Services and their description)

4. Hosting Environments for SharePoint 2010 Products
Summarizes the support for hosting environments and illustrates common hosting architectures.

5. Enterprise Search Planning for SharePoint Server 2010
This model describes primary architecture design decisions for search environments.

6. Design Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
This model describes the steps to determine a basic design for a SharePoint Server 2010 search architecture.

7. Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
This model describes the physical and logical architecture components of the search system.

8. Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010
Discusses the business intelligence tools available in SharePoint Server 2010

9. Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
Compares and contrasts search technologies in SharePoint 2010 Products

10. Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products
Illustrates how to deploy services across farms to provide centralized administration of services.

11. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Planning
Describes requirements and considerations for planning to upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010

12. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Services Upgrade
You need to give special consideration to the issues involved when you upgrade services from the previous version of SharePoint Server.

13. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Test Your Upgrade Process
To help ensure a smooth transition to SharePoint Server 2010, perform a trial upgrade to find issues likely to surface during the actual process.

14. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Approaches
This model describes the three basic approaches to upgrading to SharePoint Server 2010: in-place, database attach, or a hybrid of the two.

Important Announcements done in SPC 2009 for SharePoint 2010 - Day 1

Here are the latest updates from the SPC 2009 which explains changes done in SharePoint 2010:

1. WSS 4.0 has been renamed to SharePoint Foundation Services 2010.

2. The SharePoint 2010 Beta will be available in Nov for the public.

3. There will be no STSADM commands in 2010 and it will be managed using PowerShell. Microsoft is shipping 500 cmdlets to manages SharePoint effectively.

4. Business Conectivity Services will be replacing the BDC and this would be the services to connect to external DB's. This service can read and write the data in external Databases.

5. SharePoint Server for Internet sites for small and medium sites running on SharePoint on Internet.

6. We can also host SharePoint site using Microsoft infractrue using SharePoint Online.

7. SP2010 now has a a client object model (which works from .NET, SL and JS), REST APIs and LINQ to SharePoint.

8. There are no Web Part Zones required to insert the Web parts in SharePoint pages.

9. "Save site as template" now creates a WSP which can be imported into VS 2010 as a new project.

10. User Solution to be depoloyed for Site Collections.

11. There will be no Shared Service Provider in SharePoint 2010. All are services. Enterprise can create their own Services and deploy. If all these services are enabled 19 DB are created.

12. There are new taxonomy services to manage the metatags in SharePoint applicaiton.

13. Site collections, sites and lists can be backed up and restore using Central Admin.

14. SharePoint 2010 can run on 64 bit Vista/Win7 for development purpose.

15. There are workflows which can be attached at site level.

16. Data can be validated while inserting in a list using the excel like formulas.

17. Developer Dashboards are introduced which gives info on how code performs to a very detailed level.

18. SharePoint 2010 has ribbon based menu & it changes according to where you are & what you click on.

19. There is a new list type called External List which will store the data from External DB.

20. A new feature called Document Sets which are like special folders. They help to manage a collection of documents as a single object for workflow, metadata, etc. within SharePoint.

21. Groove has been renamed as SharePoint Workspace.

22. SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint is announced to slice and dice massive amount of information.

23. Support for very large lists. Data displayed will be controlled using list throttling features.

24. Visio Services to render interactive visio diagrams in browser.

25. XSLT will be used to rather than CAML to define Views in List Definitions.

26. Ratings can be added as OOB feature in the pages, Documents by enabling a feature. Ratings can be done from 1-5.

27. Business Connectivity Services are available in SharePoint Foundation Services.

28. A new farm configuration wizard which does common farm configuration tasks after installation.

29. There is no option of installing as Web Front End while installing SharePoint 2010.

30. SharePoint pre-requisite installer will install a set of softwares required to install SharePoint.

31. A new unique ID with is associated to each documents. With this ID docs can be tracked even while they are moved or renamed.

32. A huge relief. Multiple Files can be dragged while uploading files to SharePoint.

33. SharePoint Designer 2010 will be only working with SharePoint 2010 not with SharePoint 2007.

34. Sites can be exported as WSP and then the best part they can be opened in Visual Studio.

35. A new Content Type called External Content Type. This content type will be required working with the external data through BCS.

36.OOB Search in SharePoint 2010 supports Type ahead. So if you type any query in the search text box it will autocomplete it.

37. Workflows can be created in SharePoint 2010 Designer and then can be imported into Visual Studio.

38. UI for Managing the List improved to select for multi delete, multi check outs.

39. Scope for Content Type to be Enterprise Wide.

40. Content Orgnizers for directing the document uploads to specific locations based on some rules.

41. In Build Web Part to host XAP files for silverlight.

42. Content Types can be managed from SharePoint Designer, including content type properties, document templates, content type IDs, etc.

43. There will be no SharePoint 12 Hive. It would be called SharePoint Root.

44. OOB video streaming is now supported within SharePoint 2010.

45. Now there will be reusable SharePoint Designer Workflows for lists. These workflows will not be tight coupled with the lists.

Document Sets in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 has introduced a new feature called Document Sets. It can be understood as a special kind of folder. Essentially Document Sets is a content type. Now since Content Type supports workflows the Document Sets also supports Workflows. So as a real time example if we are working on a set of related documents we can put them in a one Document Set and now we can have a workflow on the document set so that they can be sent in a bunch for approval. See also how to Customize the Document Set and also how to access various details for DocSet using SharePoint Object Model

Document Set also support sharing the meta data between all the documents which are there inside the Doc Set. So as soon we associate any meta tags with the Document Set all the docs will be tagged with the same meta tags if we want. Docuement Sets can be created in the Document library once the feature is enabled. Document Sets have their own welcome page. When we view the document set in a document library, it opens like a folder but displays a welcome page  showing metadata and each child document. This is how the Welcome page looks like for the Document Set and it can be fully customizable so you can create your own Welcome Page.

It also provides the ability to download the whole set as a zip file which is really helpful if we have multiple files inside the Document Set. We can also add another set of content items in the Document Set Content Type. So if we want to include a set of documents which should always be created when we create a new Document Set we just need to add the additional Content Types in this Document Set.

Since Documents Set are a Content Type we need to follow the same steps what we do to enable a content type and associate it with a list/document library in SharePoint 2007. Here are the steps to enable and create Documents Sets in SharePoint 2010:

1. First we need to enable the Document Set Feature. To do this open the SharePoint 2010 Site and navigate to the "Site Collection Features" link.
2. Find the feature with the name "Document Sets". Just activate this feature.

1. Once this feature is activated we need to change the document library to accept content types as by default list/libary do not allow adding content type. To do this here are the steps:
2. Go to Library --> Library Settings --> Advanced Settings and here allow Management of Content Type
3. Once this is done we need to associate the "Document Set" content type to the library. Go to Add from Existing Site Content Type and here we should select Site Content Type from as Document Set.
4. Now if we click on the "New Document" button we will see a new button below document called  "Document Set".

Developing Solution with SharePoint 2010

Here is a very good resource on Microsoft which shows how to create Solutions in SharePoint 2010:

Learning Solution in SharePoint 2010

Developer Videos on SharePoint 2010

Here are the videos from MSDN to learning development on SharePoint 2010. They show some really exciting new features on SharePoint 2010:

Getting Started

Module 1: Getting Started: Building Web Parts in SharePoint 2010

Module 2: What Developers Need to Know About SharePoint 2010

Module 3: Building Blocks for Web Part Development in SharePoint 2010

Module 4: Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data and Objects with Server-Side APIs

Module 5: Accessing SharePoint 2010 Data and Objects with Client-Side APIs

Module 6: Accessing External Data with Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010

Module 7: Developing Business Processes with SharePoint 2010 Workflows

Module 8: Creating Silverlight User Interfaces for SharePoint 2010 Solutions

Module 9: Sandboxed Solutions for Web Parts in SharePoint 2010

Module 10: Creating Dialog Boxes and Ribbon Controls for SharePoint 2010

Inserting data into SharePoint list from Excel using Access

I have seen there is a very common requirment in many SharePoint Applicaiton where we need to get the data in SharePoint which is available external data sources such as SQL Server DB or Oracle DB. We need to take this data in SharePoint from these sources and then process it. It can be done easily using Excel and then creating a linked table from Access. I am putting a scenario here where I have the data avaialble in the Excel (copied from SQL Server Table) and I will use Access to insert the data available in Excel into SharePoint list.

Here are the steps to accomplish this:

1. Create a table in Access with the same columns as there in the Excel sheet. So for our example lets say that our excel has a column of data with the Column name as "Title" and we will keep the workbook name as Data in the Excel. So In Access we need to create a table having a column with the name as "Title". Lets have the name of the table created in Access as "AccessEmployeeTitle".

2. Now we will add a button to the Access tool, On click of which the Data in the excel sheet will be loaded into the table created in the step 1.

3. Add onClick eventhandler to the button and add the below code

On Error GoTo UploadDataErr
Dim Status As Integer
Status = ImportFile("AccessEmployeeTitle", "Data")
If (Status) Then
MsgBox "Successfully upload the data"
End If
Exit Sub
UploadDataErr:
MsgBox "Error in Upload Data" & vbNewLine & "Error ID: " & Err & vbNewLine & "Error Desc: " & Error$

In this code the AccessEmployeeTitle is name of the table in Access and Data is the name of the workbook in Excel sheet. This code will put the data from Excel sheet to the local table created in Access.

4. Create a Sharepoint linked list table on Access. Here are the steps:

a. Goto Create Menu->Sharepoint lists -> Existing sharepoint list



b. Enter the SharePoint Site URL having list to insert the data:



c. Select the option “Link to the data source by creating a linked table”.

d. This will show all the lists in the SharePoint URL. Select the list in which we need to insert the data. I have a list with the name "SharePointEmployeeTitle".

e. With these steps a linked list in Access will be created and now you can directly edit the data in this list which will be reflected in SharePoint list.

5. Now we will create a stored proc which will copy data from the Access table created in the Step 1 in the SharePoint list:

INSERT INTO SharePointEmployeeTitle ( Title )
SELECT AccessEmployeeTitle.Title
FROM AccessEmployeeTitle
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT ID FROM SharePointEmployeeTitle WHERE SharePointEmployeeTitle.Title = AccessEmployeeTitle.Title);

6.Create another button, and on clicking of this button, Data would be transferred to SharePoint list. So we will use OnClick event of this button and here is the code for transferring the data:

On Error GoTo TransErr
DoCmd.SetWarnings False
DoCmd.OpenQuery "<Query created in Step 5>"
MsgBox "Successfully Transferred data"
DoCmd.SetWarnings True
Exit Sub

TransErr:
MsgBox "Error in Data Transfer" & vbNewLine & "Error ID: " & Err & vbNewLine & "Error Desc: " & Error$

So with these steps this can be accomplished.This solution gives the flexibility to append the data in SharePoint list and do not use any complex Object model code. It uses only OOB features of SharePoint.

Creating new topics in Discussion Board and replies using Object Model

We had a requirments to create new discussions and the responses using SharePoint object model. Here is the code which we used to create this.

SPList oList = oWeb.Lists["My Discussion"]; 

SPListItemCollection myListItems = oList.Items; 

SPListItem oFirstItem = SPUtility.CreateNewDiscussion(myListItems, "Talk about Task X"); 

oFirstItem["Body"] = "What say you about task X?"; 

oFirstItem.Update(); 

SPListItem oReply1 = SPUtility.CreateNewDiscussionReply(oFirstItem); 

oReply1["Body"] = "my reply @" + DateTime.Now.ToString(); 

oReply1.Update();