http://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/atom.aspxCommunity Server2006-06-08T17:22:00Zhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2007/05/08/client-looking-for-a-sharepoint-designer-developer.aspx2007-05-09T00:23:00Z2007-05-09T00:23:00Z<p>Hi all. I just got off the phone with someone who called me about doing some SharePoint Development for them. Since I don&#39;t do that kind of work he said it was OK for me to post his information for anyone here that would be interested.</p> <p>Here are the particulars as I know them:</p> <p>1) He has a WSS v2 site that was customized using Frontpage and wants to recreate/rebuild it in WSS v3. He used lots of tables which does not seem to work well when trying to duplicate in WSS v3, and he can&#39;t figure it out.</p> <p>2) He wants something now using Master Pages. </p> <p>If you would like to talk with him to find out more, his name is Jon Frost, of Jack Frost Design. He can be contacted at #925-551-0162 or <a href="mailto:jonf@jackfrostdesign.com">jonf@jackfrostdesign.com</a>. </p> <p>Good luck!</p> <p>Andrea Kalli</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=25113" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=643" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2007/03/09/create-a-training-portal-in-sharepoint-2007-link-to-video.aspx2007-03-10T02:06:00Z2007-03-10T02:06:00Z<p>I found this great video on how to create a Training Portal in SharePoint 2007.</p> <p>Here&#39;s the link: </p> <p><a title="Creating A Training Portal With SharePoint 2007" href="http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=1048aa25-b902-423e-8bc2-706ff7616b8c" target="_new"><img height="300" alt="Creating A Training Portal With SharePoint 2007" src="http://a1818.g.akamai.net/f/1818/23830/v0001/msnuuv1.download.akamai.com/23830/frames/prod/1e/e0/8a/c636d0c1-7959-40a8-a53e-0c5c7a8ae01e.jpg" width="400" border="0" /><br /><br />Creating A Training Portal With SharePoint 2007</a> </p> <p>Andrea Kalli</p> <p>Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC</p> <p><a href="http://www.virtualassist.net/">www.virtualassist.net</a></p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=20745" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=644" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2007/03/08/incorporating-podcasts-into-your-sharepoint-site.aspx2007-03-08T08:07:00Z2007-03-08T08:07:00Z<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">&nbsp;</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><font size="3"><font face="Calibri">Incorporating Podcasts into your SharePoint Site</font></font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font size="3"><font face="Calibri">These days, my life is filled with SharePoint, Outlook, and podcasts. Podcasting is such a wonderful medium for content delivery, so I thought I would see just how I could pull these three technologies together. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;">&nbsp;</span></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Here are the THREE different ways I came up with to incorporate podcasts into your SharePoint site.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><font size="3"><font face="Calibri">ONE:</font></font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">If you are lucky enough to have a SharePoint hosting company that provides a RSS reader web part or you host your own SharePoint site and have installed a RSS reader web part for your users, you can use it to display podcasts that would be beneficial for your users. Below is a screenshot of the RSS FeedReader that is displaying three different podcast feeds, and only showing the most recent 5 episodes for each feed.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/1.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">The properties window of the feed reader allows me to set a filter type and number to better control what gets displayed in a single window.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/2.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Some podcast episodes will launch a player immediately, as seen below.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/3.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">And some will open the blog post where the podcast is located. Here, you can read the additional notes on the episode and have access to other features available on the blog itself.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/4.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><font size="3"><font face="Calibri">TWO:</font></font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">I found a couple of multi-episode podcast players that allowed me to put in my feed url, and it produced some html that I was able to insert into a Content Editor Web Part. The end result looks like this:</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/5.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Clicking on the player image provides a pop-up podcast player, which lists all the episodes in the podcast. Clicking on the title of the episode I wish to hear starts playing it.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/6.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">You can find these players at:</font></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt 0.5in;TEXT-INDENT:-0.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;"><font size="3">·</font><span style="FONT:7pt &#39;Times New Roman&#39;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><font face="Calibri" size="3">Podcast Pickle: </font><a href="http://www.podcastpickle.com/app/player/free.php"><font face="Calibri" color="#800080" size="3">http://www.podcastpickle.com/app/player/free.php</font></a></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt 0.5in;TEXT-INDENT:-0.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-list:Ignore;"><font size="3">·</font><span style="FONT:7pt &#39;Times New Roman&#39;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><font face="Calibri" size="3">PuPuPlayer: </font><a href="http://www.pupuplatters.com/pupuplayer/try.htm"><font face="Calibri" color="#800080" size="3">http://www.pupuplatters.com/pupuplayer/try.htm</font></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;"><font size="3"><font face="Calibri">THREE:</font></font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Now that SharePoint sites have blogs, and the blogs have RSS feeds, well…you get where I’m going here, right? I posted a blog post with links to a couple of my training videos to my SharePoint site blog. What I particularly like about using blogs for your podcast is that you can write up additional notes and provide more links to supporting files, etc. People can comment on it as well. Plus, text has the added bonus of being searchable.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/7.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">I have the Outlook RSS reader watching my SharePoint Company Blog, so when a new podcast gets posted I’ll see it.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><img src="http://www.virtualassist.net/images/8.png" alt="" /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="mso-no-proof:yes;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Now, a fourth way, that I just thought of, might be to create a document library to upload the audio files to, grab the RSS feed from the library and aggregate it in your reader, like Outlook 2007. I’m trying this out right now, but I’m still waiting to see if it works like I think it might. I’ll keep you posted…</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">...OK, here are the results of the fourth way.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">It does pull the individual files into the Outlook RSS reader, however, here are some observations about this method:</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">1) First, you&#39;ll be uploading the files to your SharePoint server, so space may become an issue over time, especially if you are uploading video files and if you use a hosted solution where your plan comes with a set storage limit. </font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">2) Also, if you don&#39;t name your files accurately, people won&#39;t have any idea what the episode is about until they listen or watch it.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">3) As the items are being displayed in Outlook, it only shows a link back to the &quot;Article&quot;. Clicking the link takes you directly to the SharePoint Site where the file is stored. You can play it from there. </font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Andrea Kalli</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">www.virtualassist.net</font></p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=20614" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=645" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2007/03/07/the-fix-for-method-post-error-in-excel-2007-import-spreadsheet-to-sharepoint.aspx2007-03-07T23:37:00Z2007-03-07T23:37:00Z<p>Have you tried importing a Excel 2007 spreadsheet into SharePoint Service v3 and are getting a Method Post Error? Thanks to an open&nbsp;SharePoint&nbsp;forum, someone posted the fix.&nbsp;</p> <p>I take no credit for this fix. My SharePoint hosting company is <a href="http://www.frontpages-web-hosting.com/">www.frontpages-web-hosting.com</a> and on their forum is&nbsp;a post by Bradley Elder (Thanks Bradley!) I was able to easily apply the change mentioned in his post and can now import a spreadsheet from Excel 2007 to SharePoint Services v3.</p> <p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~&nbsp;</p> <p>Here is his post below:</p> <div id="post_message_1225">Importing lists from Excel 2007 returns a Method &#39;Post&#39; of object &#39;IOWSPostData&#39; failed dialog. Again, not really a problem with WSS 3.0 but rather the result of a failed Application.SharePointVersion() call in the Excel Add-In which results in Excel attempting to use the IOWSPostData.Post() method to publish the Excel range which is used with SharePoint Team Services 1.0. By forcing the version lookup result variable to 2 or greater, Excel will use SOAP to communicate with WSS 3.0 and the publish request will be successful. To make this change, open the Excel Add-In EXPTOOWS.XLA locate in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033 by default. Press Alt+F11 to display the <a href="http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1330234&amp;page=1#" target="_blank"><font color="#22229c">Visual Basic</font></a> code editor and search (Ctrl+F) for the line lVer = Application.SharePointVersion(URL). Comment out that line with a single quote and add the line lVer=2 so your Intialize() method should now look like this:<br /><br />Sub Initialize(List, Title, <a href="http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1330234&amp;page=1#" target="_blank"><font color="#22229c">URL</font></a>, QuickLaunch)<br /><br />strQuickLaunch = QuickLaunch<br /><br />aTarget(iPublishURL) = URL<br /><br />aTarget(iPublishListName) = List<br /><br />aTarget(iPublishListDesc) = Title<br /><br />&#39;lVer = <a href="http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1330234&amp;page=1#" target="_blank"><font color="#22229c">Application</font></a>.SharePointVersion(URL)<br /><br />lVer = 2<br /><br />End Sub</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~&nbsp;</div> <div>Andrea Kalli</div> <div>Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC</div> <div><a href="http://www.virtualassist.net/">www.virtualassist.net</a></div><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=20578" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=646" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/12/01/internet-explorer-is-unable-to-update-password-protected-feeds-bad-for-sharepoint-v3-rss-feeds.aspx2006-12-02T02:55:00Z2006-12-02T02:55:00Z<p>MORE INFO ADDED 12-1-06: &quot;Internet explorer is unable to update password-protected feeds&quot; ...that&#39;s what I get when I want to see any changes to my SharePoint lists or libraries I&#39;ve subscribed to. Huh???</p> <p>I&#39;m finding it odd that having&nbsp;this great new&nbsp;ability to subscribe to SharePoint lists and libraries via RSS seem to be blocked when using Internet Explorer 7. (I&#39;m also hearing the same to be true when subscribing to a SharePoint RSS feed via Outlook 2007, but I&#39;m not sure...)</p> <p>Here&#39;s what one of my SharePoint list feeds look like: <a href="http://www.kalliwssv3.com/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B06233581%2D7451%2D45BA%2D9547%2DBD818880B930%7D">http://www.kalliwssv3.com/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B06233581%2D7451%2D45BA%2D9547%2DBD818880B930%7D</a>. Now, when I try to add this to another RSS reader, like Newsgator, it won&#39;t accept it because it doesn&#39;t recognize this url as a feed. The same for Firefox.</p> <p>So...I can&#39;t use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Outlook 2007, Newsgator, etc. to read any of my SharePoint feeds. What good is this feature? How am I supposed to read these feeds?</p> <p>I don&#39;t get it. Talk about 2 steps forward and 3 steps back...</p> <p>What am I missing here? Someone please explain this logic to me. </p> <p>See this post on the subject: <a href="http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AccessingPrivateAndAuthenticatedFeedsWhyItsImportant.aspx">http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AccessingPrivateAndAuthenticatedFeedsWhyItsImportant.aspx</a></p> <p>Andrea Kalli</p> <p><a href="http://www.virtualassist.net">www.virtualassist.net</a></p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=16520" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=650" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/11/20/v2-to-v3-migration-options-for-companies-that-host-sharepoint-services.aspx2006-11-20T22:39:00Z2006-11-20T22:39:00Z<p>I&#39;m just curious if anyone knows much about the environment that SharePoint hosting companies usually have. The company I use is not offering any kind of conversion or migration options for their customers that want to&nbsp;change their v2 sites to&nbsp;v3 sites and that we&#39;ll need to re-create our SharePoint Services sites from scratch on their v3 servers. What they are telling us is that the migration tools currently available will break the environment and they&#39;re telling us to check into SharePoint Designer to see if it can help. </p> <p>I&#39;ve even tried saving lists as templates from my v2 site and upload them to my v3 site. They upload just fine and are in the v3 List Template library, but don&#39;t seem to be available to choose from when I want to create the new list on the v3 site. </p> <p>I find it hard to believe there is no other way to move the data in a hosted environment.</p> <p>If anyone has any thoughts on this I would love to hear it.</p> <p>Andrea</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=16270" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=651" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/08/04/sharepoint-non-business-ideas-thinking-outside-the-box.aspx2006-08-04T07:28:00Z2006-08-04T07:28:00Z<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Even though this article is geared mostly for those using a hosted SharePoint site, it will apply to&nbsp;those that have opened up their SharePoint site with the ability to add outside users</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, you’re using your SharePoint to help organize and share internal business information and processes with your co-workers or team members…great! Maybe you’ve even created subsites for you to collaborate with each customer…fantastic! By now, you might be feeling pretty comfortable with how to use SharePoint. This may be a good time to start thinking of other uses…fun uses…non-business uses for SharePoint subsites. Remember fun? Remember personal lives? What can a SharePoint site offer? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You can start by putting together a list of <b>any groups</b> you might be involved in.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sports team</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Association</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Your family (yes, family)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Club</p> <p class="MsoNormal">PTA</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Band</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Committee</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Training team</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span></span>&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The list can go on. Why would a SharePoint site be helpful with any of these? Two reasons…password protected and user-interactive. Keeping these two points in mind, let’s get into a few of the groups and explore just some of what we can do.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sports team:</p> <ul> <li class="MsoNormal">create a team roster – customize the form and add your own fields</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a list of important contacts</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a calendar for the playing schedule, and maybe include when the fund raising events will be held</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a discussion thread about changes to the uniforms</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a discussion thread about what fund raising events you will run for the year</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a task list to assign duties for each event</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create an issues list to discuss various problems that need to be resolved</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a photo library and post pictures of highlights during the season</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a photo library with pictures of each team member in their uniform</li> <li class="MsoNormal">create a photo library with pictures of everyone having fun during the fund raising events</li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Your family:</p> <ul> <li class="MsoNormal">Create various photo albums for: weddings, birthday parties, baby pictures, family reunions, old family pictures, vacations</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a family address book where everyone can update their own contact record as their information changes</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create separate document libraries to store: genealogy files, favorite recipes, marriage certificates, birth certificates, military records, personal accomplishment awards or certifications, personally written items such as poems, stories, jokes, etc.</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Make digital voice recordings of the most elderly people in your family journaling their life and what it was like during the time period they grew up in. Upload these digital files in their own document library. Your family has history…capture it!</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a calendar for birthdays and anniversaries</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Have a Special Announcements list so people can post their special announcement…such as: having a baby, getting married, and finishing their college degrees and certifications. Anything of importance to them is encouraged to share.</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create custom lists for each of the following: Your Hobbies, Your Favorite Movies, Your Favorite Websites, Vacation Journals or Stories</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a discussion threads for: retirement ideas, next family reunion</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Use the Links list to enter the various websites any family member has</li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Book Club:</p> <ul> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a calendar to show when the next meeting will be and at what location</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a contact list / address book with all pertinent information to the group</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a Favorite Books custom list for people to list and describe what they loved about each one.</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a Favorite Places to Read and/or to Buy Books custom list.</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a calendar where people can post the various book signings in locations close to them.</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a discussion thread on the potluck food list for each meeting. Who will be bringing what</li> <li class="MsoNormal">Create a discussion thread for a Book of the Month so everyone can add their own comments about it</li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So as you can see, SharePoint can accommodate your need to share and organize information with all the different types of groups you interact with. Give it a try…I’ll bet you can come up with several of your own ideas.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Andrea Kalli</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span>Productivity Training, Support, Customization, and Brainstorming for users of Outlook and SharePoint.</span></p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9734" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=652" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/07/31/integrate-business-processes-with-microsoft-office-systems.aspx2006-07-31T23:37:00Z2006-07-31T23:37:00Z<p>article from Advisor&nbsp;Guide to Microsoft SharePoint </p> <p><a href="http://mssharepoint.advisorguide.com/">http://mssharepoint.advisorguide.com/</a></p> <p>Information workers can use Microsoft Office to access and interact with business applications and create more fluid processes.</p> <p><font size="2">Microsoft has revealed a strategy to foster the development of Microsoft Office Business Applications (OBA). Microsoft&#39;s goal with the new products and services is to help companies maximize the productivity of their employees through process integration with line-of-business applications.</font><br /><br /><font size="2">Because of the collaborative nature of most people&#39;s work, integrating business applications with Microsoft Office creates more fluid processes, according to Microsoft Corporation. For example, thanks to OBA, salespeople can access customer information, manage their sales calls in their Microsoft Office Outlook calendar, access product experts inside their company, and easily make proposals.</font><br /><br /><font size="2">Microsoft Office Business Applications (OBA) consists of services including: workflow; search; user interface; Microsoft Office Open XML Formats; and the Web Site and Security Framework. Users can take advantage of these services to extend business intelligence, unified communications and collaboration, and enterprise content management as well as other business applications by independent software vendors or corporate developers.</font><br /><br /><font size="2">In addition to OBA, Microsoft has announced a future set of line-of-business interoperability (LOBi) capabilities for Microsoft SharePoint. LOBi will work together with Microsoft Office client applications and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. LOBi is designated to let people update transactional applications from within Microsoft Office and more securely take structured business processes and data offline. Developers can get started today creating Office Business Applications using the Microsoft Office System 2007, then expand those capabilities with LOBi when it becomes available.</font><br /><br /><font size="2">To simplify the connectivity between the Microsoft Office System 2007 and other applications, Microsoft will offer the BizTalk Adapter pack. This set of line-of-business application adapters underpins connectivity and process integration with line-of-business applications.</font><br /><br /><font size="2">OBA services are available for beta testing (via the Microsoft Office System 2007). A technical preview of LOBi for Office SharePoint Server is scheduled to be available at the end of 2006.</font></p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9616" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=653" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/07/26/see-our-trumba-class-calendar-on-our-sharepoint-site.aspx2006-07-26T20:14:00Z2006-07-26T20:14:00Z<p>Hi everyone. For those curious about the whole Trumba calendar on a SharePoint site thing, I&#39;m including a link to our newly published calendar. It completely replaced the static SharePoint calendar we had on there before. </p> <p>We decided to put this on a SharePoint site because we can easily password protect different areas of the site for each specific student, such as Student Assignments. Each student receives their own custom username and password that the SharePoint server automatically provides and emails to them.</p> <p>The main page is open to all and has anonymous access, therefore no login is required to see and interact with the Trumba calendar. From the Trumba calendar they can sign up for the class and click the link in the Ticket Web Link field to pay for the class. </p> <p>We are sooo happy with this solution!</p> <p><a href="http://eoffice-virtualassistantsonline.net/UofVAs/schedule/default.aspx">http://eoffice-virtualassistantsonline.net/UofVAs/schedule/default.aspx</a></p> <p>Andrea Kalli</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9482" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=654" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/07/11/sharepoint-v3-and-outlook-2007-custom-fields-columns-sync-between-the-two.aspx2006-07-11T19:32:00Z2006-07-11T19:32:00Z<p>I know the current versions of these two products does not provide any kind of syncronization of <strong>custom field</strong> (columns) data between them, but I&#39;m curious if anyone knows if this feature will be available in the next versions of these products. I would love to hear from any Outlook/SharePoint people on the subject.</p> <p>Thanks for any insight on this.</p> <p>Andrea</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9093" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=655" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/21/hosted-sharepoint-options-quite-the-bang-for-your-buck-for-small-companies-or-solo-entrepreneurs.aspx2006-06-21T21:06:00Z2006-06-21T21:06:00Z<p>When most small companies read about SharePoint Services and all it can do for them, they may be wondering how they can afford such a great tool. After all, small companies (even ones with a single person) need to collaborate with team members, partners, customers, etc. just as much as larger companies do. Usually, they don&#39;t have the kind of infrastructure in-house that&#39;s needed. They may not even have a server, depending on the size of the company. That&#39;s where SharePoint hosting companies come in. For an incredibly affordable <strong><u>$20 a month</u></strong> ( a typical&nbsp;price, but you&#39;ll need to shop around&nbsp;), the small company and solo entrepreneur can get a SharePoint Services site with <strong>unlimited users</strong>, <strong>unlimited sub-sites</strong>,&nbsp;and <strong>1GB of space</strong>. These specs and prices will vary between the different hosting companies, so again...shop around. In a nutshell, a hosted SharePoint Services site is a rented SharePoint space on someone else&#39;s server. Your data will be there and not in-house. If you are OK with that, then it&#39;s a great solution for the majority of folks out there needing this type of functionality. Many hosting companies offer several package options. There are limitations administratively. For example, you will not be able to install 99% of the web parts out there, free or otherwise, as the majority of web part installation usually requires installation on the server...and it&#39;s standard that you will not have permission to do this. The hosting company that I use has already installed over 60 custom web parts for us to play with and use.&nbsp;They have also&nbsp;already installed a ton of custom templates to utilize. If you have a problem, you&#39;ll submit a help ticket, so you will want to make sure that whatever hosting company you select has a nice support system in place for their users. I found a nice list of SharePoint hosting companies listed at <a href="http://wss.collutions.com/pages/VII%20-%20Documents%20and%20Web%20Sites.aspx">http://wss.collutions.com/pages/VII%20-%20Documents%20and%20Web%20Sites.aspx</a>. Look at FAQ 03 for the list. It&#39;s not all encompassing, but it&#39;s a great start. You might want to google &quot;sharepoint hosting&quot; to find more.</p> <p>Just because you&#39;re small, doesn&#39;t mean you have to miss out on the type of functionality that SharePoint Services can offer. The resources are out there...just waiting for you. </p> <p>Andrea Kalli</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8539" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=647" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/20/here-s-some-free-articles-in-advisor-guide-to-microsoft-sharepoint.aspx2006-06-20T05:35:00Z2006-06-20T05:35:00Z<h1><font size="2">For even more great articles, they have a subscription service.&nbsp; </font><font size="2">For example, there&#39;s a killer article called: </font><font size="3">Integrate with Partner SharePoint Portal Server Sites</font></h1> <h1><font size="2">Free articles from <a href="http://mssharepoint.advisorguide.com/">http://mssharepoint.advisorguide.com/</a></font></h1> <h1><font size="2"> <a href="http://mssharepoint.advisorguide.com/"><img height="67" alt="ADVISOR GUIDE TO MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT" src="http://my.advisor.com/wimage.nsf/vCatID/logo.ztmssp_200/$file/ztmssp_200x67.gif" width="200" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.advisor.com"></a></font></h1> <h1><font size="3">1) Top 10 SharePoint Myths</font></h1> <h1><font size="3">Improve your SharePoint project&#39;s chances of success by dispelling these common SharePoint myths.</font></h1> <h1><font size="3">2) Integrate Business Processes with Microsoft Office Systems</font></h1> <h2><font size="3">Information workers can use Microsoft Office to access and interact with business applications and create more fluid processes</font></h2> <h1><font size="3">3) Prepare for Downtime</font></h1> <h2><font size="3">Downtime can cause huge losses for any organization. Find out how to identify your most critical servers, and some guidelines for determining the potential costs of downtime.</font></h2><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8469" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=648" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/17/continuing-topic-trumba-calendar-in-sharepoint-site-event-registration-in-a-sharepoint-environment.aspx2006-06-18T01:36:00Z2006-06-18T01:36:00Z<p>This is a continuation of : <strong>Trumba Calendar in a SharePoint site = Event registration functionality within SharePoint environment </strong><a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/08/8232.aspx">http://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/08/8232.aspx</a></p> <p>I&#39;ve had more time to explore how this is going to work for us, and the subject came up as to how we might be able to&nbsp;tie the event payment process in with the Trumba event calendar and our SharePoint site. Trumba doesn&#39;t offer the ability to take payments from people who sign up for your events. I mean, why would they? I wouldn&#39;t expect them to.</p> <ul> <li>In the spirit of keeping it simple, here&#39;s what we did to work around the whole payment thing...we created customized paypal buttons for each event using the paypal button wizard on paypals website. We put those buttons next to each event description on our website and bookmarked them. We put the url (including the bookmark) into the Ticket Web Link field on the trumba form (we use the Education template) for the corresponding event item. This process seems to work like a charm.<br /><br />**************<br />The user clicks on an event item in the calendar that is displayed on our SharePoint site, <li>they click RSVP to sign up for the event, <li>they click the link in the Ticket Web Link field which opens a new window and takes them directly to a PayPal button on our website, <li>when they click the PayPal button it has all the information for the event already there (name of event, cost of event, etc. ), <li>they finish the PayPal process, <li>they close the window and they are still on our Trumba calendar item. <li>They get a reciept for thier payment from PayPal, <li>they can put the event item on thier calendar, <li>we get notification of registration from Trumba and of payment from PayPal.</li></ul> <p>We are very happy with how this works!<br /><br />*****************<br />For this kind of functionality in a free service, I don&#39;t know how it could get any easier. Plus it has the added bonus of bringing visitors to our website.<br /><br />I hope some of this helps those looking for a simple event registration system with a round-about way to incorporate event payments.<br /><br />Andrea Kalli</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8435" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=649" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/08/implementing-a-video-library-on-a-sharepoint-site.aspx2006-06-09T00:46:00Z2006-06-09T00:46:00Z<p>Now, I&#39;m not sure if this is the absolute best way to handle this, but so far it has worked great for me and others that I have set this up for. If anyone has a better idea, I am all ears.</p> <p>I create video tutorials using a program called Camtasia Studio. Then I produce them in a format best suited for viewing via&nbsp;the web. I didn&#39;t want just anyone to have access to these videos, only people that I gave permission to. So, what I did was create a Web Part Page and added links to each section of video tutorials into a Content Editor Web Part. I&#39;ve included a document with a screen shot with this posting (hope that works) so you can see what it looks like. I had to upload all the video files to my SharePoint site (which is a hosted site btw) using FrontPage 2003. Once you get going with the process&nbsp;it&#39;s really easy to do. Based on how Camtasia Studio produces the videos for web viewing by creating several files, to include a flash file, and an html file that pulls from the flash file. You set the hyperlink in the CEWP to point to the html file, and voila! Anyway, this keeps users from downloading the video tutorials and they can only be displayed when they have access to the SharePoint site.</p> <p>Andrea</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8238" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=656" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspxhttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/akalli/archive/2006/06/08/combine-outlook-contact-activities-with-sharepoint.aspx2006-06-08T22:22:00Z2006-06-08T22:22:00Z<p>Since my background is in customizing Outlook in the Exchange world, I&#39;m always interested in integration points, especially with SharePoint these days. </p> <p>In case you didn&#39;t already know...</p> <p>...once you link a SharePoint contact list with Outlook, you can take it one step further and set up the Activities tab in the linked folder to your mailbox or personal folder items. For example, if you have been emailing, setting up calendar items, creating journal entries, tasks items etc. for your contacts, you will be able to see all these when you set up Activities in your SharePoint contacts within Outlook.&nbsp; To set up Activities, right-click on the SharePoint list within your Outlook, go to Properties, click on the Activities tab, click on the New button, give the group&nbsp;a name like &quot;All Associated Items&quot; and click the upper-most checkbox for your mailbox or personal folder. Repeat these steps for any Archive folders you have. With careful planning you can keep a long history of emails you have sent to and recieved from the contact by moving the emails out of your mailbox or personal folder and into your Archive folders. You will also be able to see the other items such as appointments, tasks, and journal entries. It&#39;s driven by the email address that both the SharePoint contact list contains and the email address in the Outlook items. Play with this and see how you might be able to use it.</p> <p>Andrea</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=8236" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> <hr><span style="font-size:10pt;">Posted on <a href="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/">SharePoint Blogs</a></span> <img src="http://www.sharepointblogs.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=657" width="1" height="1">Unclaimed Bloghttp://www.sharepointblogs.com/members/Unclaimed-Blog.aspx