Bart Hanssen's Blog

Reading SharePoint lists with PocketPC

2005-04-28T22:45:00.000+02:00

Carlos Segura has a very interesting post about reading list content with your PocketPC.
It is an application that shows the list items on your Today screen. The items are updated every x minutes.

Good job Carlos!

What is a SPS area?

2005-04-27T00:13:00.000+02:00

Patrick posted an interesting article where he explains what an SPS area is.
He compares an area with your desktop, which in my opinion is a good point of view.
Read also the comments on this article. It tells what some Sharepoint gurus see as the difference between an area and a WSS site.

I want to add to this that whenever you want a topic (read: area or site) to appear in the portal's navigation structure, it should be an area. You can't add a team site to the SPS navigation menu by default (there is a webpart however which displays all sub-sites). Area's are always added to the navigation structure somehow.

Sharepoint demo (free)

2005-04-06T18:58:00.000+02:00

Here you can find a nice demo of sharepoint!
There is no installation required.

U2U CAML Query Builder and Execution Tool Released

2005-03-29T22:23:00.000+02:00

Via Patrick Tisseghem
What is the CAML Builder?
CAML itself is the abbreviation of Collaborative Application Markup Language. It is an XML-based query language that helps you querying, building and customizing Web sites based on Windows SharePoint Services. The XML elements define various aspects of a WSS site. In the first version of our CAML Builder tool, only the query aspect of CAML is worked out. The tool will help you build, test and execute your CAML queries.

The tool we've all been waiting for!!

Great job guys (and girl :-) )!!!!!

SharePoint Course

2005-03-27T22:41:00.000+02:00

This week I've had the privilege to follow a SharePoint course by master-guru (Patrick Tisseghem) himselve. This was definitely the most interesting course I've ever had and I can recommend it to everyone. Anyone who is interested in SharePoint should check out his well-known blog

Branding a SharePoint Site

2005-03-26T12:53:00.000+01:00

When deploying a professional SharePoint site on the web or an intranet, you (or your client) mostly want to change the look and feel of the site. This process is called branding.

The first thing you have to understand is the way a web page is rendered.
Microsoft provides some site definitions out of the box.
A site definition is nothing more than a couple of files that are in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\\ on the server. Each folder in the above path is a site definition (except for the XML folder).

The contents of a site definition folder

When you request a page in your browser, IIS grabs the file from this folder and fills it with content out of the content database.
So when you modify these files, all pages of your site and all its subsites (created with the same template) will have the changes you made. We refer to these pages as 'ghosted' pages.
When you make your changes in FrontPage however, the page, including your changes, is stored in the content database. Now when you request the page, it is only grabbed from the database. None of the other pages or sites will have the changes you made to this page. We refer to these pages as 'unghosted' pages.

When you want to create your own site definition, be aware to make your changes in a copy of an existing folder (eg, copy STS and name it for example ACTIONCOMMITTEE). When you install an update of SharePoint, it's possible that the uodate overwrites this folder, resulting in a loss of your changes. And you don't want that to happen, do you?. So work with a copy. Your copy should be in capital letters.

After you made your own template, you have to let SharePoint know that it can use it.
To do so, you have to make a copy of the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\WEBTEMP.XML file. Rename your copy to WEBTEMP*.XML (type whatever you want instead of the *).

Each WEBTEMP.XML file contains a collection of Template elements and Configuration subelements, which identify to the compiler all the site definitions that can be instantiated. In each Template element defined in the WEBTEMP.XML file, the Name attribute must contain the same name, in all capital letters, that is assigned to the new folder. Also, in order to avoid conflict with IDs already used in Windows SharePoint Services, use unique values greater than 10,000 for the ID attribute.

Save all your files and reset IIS.
Now when you create a new site, your customized template will be available in the template list.

Also check out these MSDN articles on how to brand your SPS sites:
Introduction to Templates and Definitions
Creating a Site Definition from an Existing Site Definition
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals, Part 1
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals, Part 2: Using Templates and Site Definitions
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals, Part 3: Style Sheet Class Reference Tables
Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site, Part 1: Understanding the Use of a Corporate Brand
Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site, Part 2: How to Apply Your Own Corporate Brand

i-City

2005-03-24T09:11:00.000+01:00

As of yesterday evening, I'm an official member of the i-City Team.
i-City is an ambitious project where we want to make a whole city wireless.
The project's pilot city will be Hasselt, Belgium.
The purpose is to give PDA users a platform where they can retrieve all kinds of information regarding the city.

- Where can I find a pair of jeans?
- Busses timetables
- Important phone numbers and addresses

These are some questions that will be answered by the platform we're gonna develop.

If you're interested in the project, you should keep an eye on www.i-city.be (in Dutch, available soon)

Looking for SharePoint info?

2005-03-22T06:07:00.000+01:00

Here you can find a list of SharePoint Bloggers

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mkruger/archive/2005/02/15/1310.aspx

Microsoft Skills Assessment

2005-03-22T06:02:00.000+01:00

Here is a nice tool from Microsoft to test your (company's) knowledge.
It also gives you tips on what topics you should work on.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/assessment/default.asp

Available Assessments:
MS Windows XP
MS Windows Server System
End-User Support
MS Office System
Security
MS Visual Studio

Microsoft, Groove Networks to Combine Forces to Create Anytime, Anywhere Collaboration

2005-03-11T16:21:00.000+01:00

This article was announced yesterday.
(http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/mar05/03-10GrooveQA.asp)

Microsoft's plans to acquire Groove Networks, a leading provider of collaboration software for ad-hoc workgroups," will allow the company to better meet the needs of large and small organizations for borderless project teams, as well as bring Groove founder Ray Ozzie and other top executives to Microsoft.

Microsoft to Acquire Groove Networks, Combining Talents to Create Anytime, Anywhere Collaboration Products and Services
Groove Founder Ray Ozzie Will Join Microsoft as New CTO

Sharepoint 2006

2005-03-11T07:16:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I was privileged to have a sneak preview of the new Sharepoint 2006 features.
Allthough there are a lot of great new things, I'm not allowed to say anything about it. Guess you'll have to wait for the first BETA (Q4, 2005).
I CAN say that A LOT of new things will be implemented out-of-the-box (and there will be a security trimmed UI = When you have no rights to add an item, there is no link to add something)

Customizing List Item Forms in Windows SharePoint Services

2005-03-04T16:00:00.000+01:00

Les W. Smith describes in his MSDN article the steps to customize list item forms in SharePoint Services

He focusses on customizations you can perform in the following areas:
- The ASPX page that contains the list item form
- XML Schema files that define list item form fields and form views
- Custom Web server controls and custom Web Parts that consolidate code and implement types and members of namespaces in the Windows SharePoint Services assembly to extend user interaction with list data
read more...

Branding Sharepoint

2005-03-04T09:44:00.000+01:00

When I was branding our company's intranet, I ran into a problem.
When I wanted to see a news item in detail (txtlstvw.aspx), I received the following error

It's seems that you can't have any <%..%> tags in this page.
By removing the tags, the problem was solved.

Here are some useful articles about branding a SharePoint site:

SharePoint Services
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals Part 1
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals Part 2
Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals Part 3

SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Part 1, Understanding the Use of a Corporate Brand
Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Part 2, How to Apply Your Own
Branding a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Part 3, Customizing SharePoint Sites and Portals Style Sheet Class Reference Tables

Reading Blogs made easy

2005-03-04T02:31:00.000+01:00

A program that made reading blogs a lot easier, is Synops Sauce Reader.
Within this program you can add rss and url feeds. You can organize them in folders.
It looks a lot like MS Outlook:
- on your left hand, the feeds are displayed,
- on the right upper part, the items in the feed are displayed,
- on your right lower part, the contents of an item are displayed.
You can also flag an item.

It's free for personal use, so you should really try this.

(And of course add my blog to it )

My first post

2005-03-04T02:11:00.000+01:00

Not thinking very clear right now (it's 2:08 AM), I decided to start my own blog.
Doing a lot of research and development, I will be posting a lot of resources and articles about asp(.net), vb.net, sharepoint, infopath, and other interesting stuff.

I would apprectiate it if you guys give me some feedback once in a while, so I'd know if I'm doing a good job over here.

Enjoy this blog!

Greetz,

Bart