SharePoint Sharpener

At the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, Paul Andrew gave a thorough overview of the new features for developers in SharePoint 2010.

This is my modest attempt to convey Paul’s presentation in a simple blog post. Please note that the session contained a huge amount of information and I probably (definitely!) didn’t manage to take it all in. Read on at your own risk…

Development environment and tools

Traditionally, the path to your first SharePoint hello world-web part is littered with technical obstacles in the shape of tedious installation problems, Windows Server 2003 blues, virtual server nightmares etc. No more. Now you just need your laptop to develop SharePoint applications.

The box

SharePoint developers no longer need to run a Windows 2003 Server. In fact, SharePoint and the development tools can now be installed directly on Windows 7 or Vista (service pack 1). Either versions of SharePoint can be used, i.e. SharePoint Foundation (formerly WSS) or SharePoint Server.

The operating system must be 64 bit since SharePoint 2010 only runs in a 64 bit environment.

SharePoint on a desktop operating system is just for developers and not for running a production environment.

Visual Studio 2010

Many of SharePoint 2010’s new features can be accessed from inside Visual Studio 2010. Also, quite a few third-party add-ons may not be needed anymore as the functionality is now covered by Visual Studio.

Highlights:

• Built-in designers for:
• Web parts
• BCS (formerly BDC)
• Workflows
• Package and deploy SharePoint projects
• Generate WSPs
• View SharePoint sites in server explorer
• Integration to Team Foundation Server
• Support for SharePoint sandboxed solutions
• WSPs from SharePoint Designer can be imported (including workflows)
• Build workflow steps for SharePoint Designer
• SharePoint Business Connectivity Services support
• New events projects templates

General improvents

Developer dashboard

A developer dashboard can be displayed automatically at the bottom of every page. The DD displays valuable information about how the page is generated, for instance:

• Timing and duration of events
• Database queries (even the ones SharePoint does in the background)

The DD is activated with the follow stsadm command:

stsadm –o setproperty –pn developer-dashboard –pv ondemand

Coding

Coding for SharePoint just got slightly easier due to the many improvements in .NET framework 4.0 and SharePoint 2010.

Below is a rundown of some of the new features:

• LINQ for SharePoint
• After-synchronous events
• New event types:
• Site-scoped events
• Web creation events
• Workflow improvements:
• Initiation and association forms in Visual Studio
• New design user interface for workflows in SharePoint Designer
• Use Visio 2010 to design workflows
• SharePoint UI can now be saved as a template
• WSP is now the unified developer format – works in site collections and machine

Improvements to lists

In SharePoint 2007, lists can cause any developer headaches. Hopefully, the new list architecture in SharePoint 2010 will solve this. Below is an overview of some of the improvements:

• Validation with Excel-like Formula – forms can be validated using simple syntax
• Lookup to multiple columns
• Lookup fields have true relations which ensure proper deletion (transaction-style)
• List index auto-creation
• Scalability and performance vastly improved:
• Lists and folders can now contain a million elements
• Document libraries can contain 10 million documents
• List query throttling
• Lists views no longer based on CAML but XSL-T. Queries still use CAML

Ribbon and Dialog framework

The ribbon we know (and some love) from Microsoft Office is now used in SharePoint 2010.

Some of the highlights:

• Custom actions can be embedded in the ribbon
• The ribbon is context sensitive
• The SharePoint out-of-the-box forms are replaceable
• New web dialog functionality:
• A dialog floats on top of the SharePoint page and is used to get input from the user
• Fully programmable

Silverlight 3

Silverlight plays an important part in SharePoint 2010 and is used in many of the improved UI elements. From a developer’s point of view, these are the highlights:

• Built-it and customisable media player web part
• List and site creation from within Silverlight
• Office web applications run in Silverlight
• Client object model – call SharePoint APIs from within Silverlight

This is it – the long awaited SharePoint 2010 has been unveiled, not released, by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The public beta will be available next month.

SharePoint 2010 is a huge update of the platform and most attendees at the keynote were blown away by the dramatic improvements across the board in SharePoint.

Jeff Teper (MS Corporate VP), Jared Spataro (MS Director, SharePoint) and Arpan Shah (Director, SharePoint Technical Management) showed off many of the new features in SharePoint 2010 – see my notes below.

New features in 2010

User interface

• Ribbon-based contextual menus, much like in Office 2007
• Live preview of font changes etc.
• Broad use of AJAX to minimise number of page refreshes
• More seamless integration of web-based and desktop clients
• All Office documents can now be viewed and edited in a rich web version of the desktop client

Accessibility

• Cross-browser compatibility
• XHTML and WCAG compatible output

Collaboration

• Completely revamped wiki
• Improved editing tool
• Dramatically improved image upload and handling
• Richer blogs
• Improvements to the calendar lists
• Web-based, OneNote-like functionality

Organisation

• Tagging, social tagging
• Rating of documents
• Bookmarks

MySite and Social Computing

• Smart profiles
• Activity feed – overview of a user’s recent activity
• Browse colleagues
• Locate experts within the organisation
• Tag cloud of a person’s recent activities
• Note board – i.e. a tagwall

Content Management

• Improved scalability – lists and folders can now contain a million elements. Document libraries can contain 10 million documents
• Digital Asset Management
• Consistent content type across all servers in a farm
• Streaming of video placed in document libraries
• Improved governance possibilities

Search

• Choice between standard SharePoint search and FAST Search
• Wild card searching – used of asterisks
• Improved people search – rich info on the search results page
• Live preview of documents, slides etc right on the search results page

Business intelligence

• Excel Services – including SQL Server PowerPivot
• PerformancePoint Services – advanced BI dashboards
• Visio Services and Chart web part
• Business Connectivity Services – the new name for Business Data Catalog (BDC)

SharePoint Workspace (the new name for Groove)

• Improved offline content
• Improved mobile access to content

IT infrastructure

• 64-bit only!
• SharePoint Foundation is the new name for WSS
• Online/cloud version of SharePoint is a focus point for Microsoft
• PowerShell Admin
• Fully scriptable admin of SharePoint
• Around 500 PowerShell commandlets will be shipped with 2010
• Admin SharePoint from PowerShell running on Windows 7
• Whatif command to preview impact of commands
• New Central Administration
• Problems and solutions page with overview of current problems on the farm, and possible solutions
• Throttling
• Control how many resources specific lists, sites etc. may use
• Monitoring, Analytics
• Usage analysis database will be customisable
• Improved Upgrade and Availability
• Visual Upgrade enables individual users to choose when to upgrade a site

Last night I arrived in Las Vegas for the annual Microsoft SharePoint Conference – along with 13 colleagues from PeopleNet and a handful of clients from Denmark.

Some of us are staying at Mandalay Bay and some (including me) at the Luxor.

Today is the official Microsoft welcome reception and, more importantly, the first SharePint of the conference.

Tomorrow the NDA of SharePoint 2010 is lifted and the sessions can begin. I’ve signed up for many more sessions than I can possibly attend and I also intend to spend time at the partner floor and network/socialise with SharePoint contacts from around the world.

I’ll blog as much as I can and you can also follow me on Twitter.

It’s going to be a busy week…

According to the Groove dev team’s blog, Microsoft Groove is to be integrated more tightly with SharePoint and in the process be given a new name.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 is the new official name for Groove.

I wonder how many more products Microsoft will collect under the SharePoint umbrella before the next release? It seems like Microsoft are aiming to capitalise on the SharePoint name and rebrand some of their lesser known products and even roll them into SharePoint.

Last year PeopleNet gathered more than 30 Danish SharePoint enthusiasts for a series of events at the SharePoint Conference in Seattle.

The events went down a storm and the Danish delegation benefitted a great deal from the networking facilitated by PeopleNet.

Next stop Las Vegas

This year, we are taking things a step further – we are putting together a complete conference package which includes:

• Return airline ticket (Copenhagen – Las Vegas)
• Hotel (Mandalay Bay)
• Conference pass
• Special events during the week of the conference

This way, SharePoint stakeholders from different Danish organisations get to travel with like-minded people instead of going to the conference alone.

For more info (in Danish), click here.

As I mentioned three weeks ago, the next SharePoint Conference will be held in Q4 in Las Vegas!

Early bird registration is now open at the conference site.

Focus will be on the next version of SharePoint (codenamed SharePoint 14).

More to follow.

2009 looks to be a big year for Microsoft, release-wise. The very promising beta of Windows 7 has just been released and Office 14 should be out towards the end of the year.

This gives credit to the rumor that the next version of SharePoint is due to be released in the fourth quarter of this year. There is no official statement from Microsoft which confirms neither when the next release is due, nor what it will be called, but SharePoint 2009 is probably a good bet.

SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas!

Moreover, the next SharePoint conference is not held in March as usual; it’s been slated for Q4 as well! As you may know, the conference normally swaps between Europe and the US and since last year’s conference was held in Seattle one would assume that this year a return to Europe would be in order.

But one would be wrong in that assumption. A very good source has revealed that the conference will stay on American soil (i.e. Las Vegas). This ties in nicely with the coincidental release of SharePoint 2009. Microsoft obviously want to throw the release party (the conference) of their top products (Office, SharePoint) on their own turf

New Features in SharePoint 2009

Likely new features in SharePoint 2009 are:

• Master Data Management
• 64-bit architecture only
• More use of Silverlight in the UI
• Tighter integration with Groove

In addition, I sincerely hope that Microsoft are rethinking the database architecture behind SharePoint. Most developers are acutely aware that biggest hurdle for SharePoint world domination is the way SharePoint handles relations and large quantities of data.

SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 2

Before version-next we’ll probably see another service pack for SharePoint 2007. Service Pack 2 will bring a number of improvements to the client-side Office applications as well as a few to the server:

• Variations: Performance and manageability improvements including STSADM commands for repairing links between source and target pages
• Office Project Web Access: Improvements around processing status approvals from Office Project Web Access into Office Project Professional 2007
• Content databases: Improvements to read-only content databases and index rebuild timer jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Not terribly exciting but more features may materialise before the update hits Microsoft’s download servers.