Jan Tielens' Bloggings

At the time of writing the Beta 2 bits of 2007 Microsoft Office System are not yet available for download, but on the Microsoft download center you can already find some 2007 Office System related stuff:

[Via Patrick] The release of Beta2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System seems to be imminent. The SDK's for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) are ready to download.

I love reading SmartPart success stories! Matt Ranlett has a nice one: "So I've just wrapped up a quick little demo of how easy it is to code for SharePoint. Since the focus is on easy, and they're not yet 100% sure if we'd be using SharePoint vs a make-your-own ASP.Net 2.0 site, I decided the best way to go is to use the SmartPart and show off how you can write normal old ASP.Net code and still get it to show up in SharePoint. Since we're thinking about an ASP.NET 2.0 site and everyone wants to write ASP.NET 2.0 code, I really had to use the Son of SmartPart, which includes the ability to display 2.0 User Controls and 2.0 Web Parts in SharePoint.  Since this is only a demo, I knocked up a quick little user control that replicates a report we have here.  To get SoSmartPart to "see" a user control, all you have to do is drop the .ascx into a UserControl directory on your SharePoint server.  I did that and PRESTO!  My control shows up in the list of available user controls in the SmartPart toolbox area.  I select the desired control and hit Apply.  BAM - error.

Next month I will present a session on Office 2007 Client Programmability. Registration is free, so register yourself at the MSDN Belux site!

[Via Mike Diehl] Hehehe, I like this one! But it's also very true: think about your schema's, get people involved and get them to think about the schema's as well. This will save a lot of time (trust me: been there, dont that).

Thanks to Maurice we know that WSSv3 has been signed off Beta 2 last Monday. Also the last few days quite some Microsoft guys and girls have been raving about the fact that Word 2007 Beta 2 can be used to create blog posts. So the whole SharePoint and Office community is holding their breath for the moment Beta 2 will be available to download. Officially there is no fixed date but Don (another MS employee) gives us another hint (and I quote): "This is in Beta 2 which will be available externally in the next week or two". Let's hope this information is accurate! :-)

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] One of the pain points of SharePoint 2003 (especially Windows SharePoint Services), is the lack of navigation possibilities. It’s quite hard to find out which sub sites are created under a WSS site. Also when you’re on a WSS site, you don’t have any clue or way to navigate to the parent site hierarchy. With a small amount of customization however, it’s possible to solve these issues. In my SharePoint classes I always show how to create a breadcrumbs web part and drop-down navigation web part. For a pre-fabricated solution, check out Tom’s tree navigation web part. In SharePoint 2007 these web parts become obsolete, navigation is available everywhere. First of all, breadcrumbs are everywhere! Take a look at the screenshot below; it’s displaying a Contact list on a site. Notice the breadcrumbs to navigate back to the site.

[Yet Another SharePoint Relief Series] Document Libraries in SharePoint are great for doing document management. Once of they key concepts in document management is the ability to check out documents while editing the document. This will prevent other users from making changes at the same time. Check out functionality is available out-of-the-box in SharePoint 2003 Document Libraries. The only problem is that users are not forced to check out a document when making changes. There is however a workaround, but it involves editing the ows.js JavaScript file. (for more information see the MSD2D tip).