Few days ago, I read a very interesting post from an Aussie friend of mine. He joked about writing a book titled,
 
"Nerds are From Mars, CFO’s are from Venus”
 
I would strongly suggest him to write that book. Had I been just as witty, I would have volunteered to be the co-author. You must read all postings by Paul Culmsee. If you worked with a CFO or Controller in the past, you will appreciate his post on “Learn to talk to your CFO in their language.” It is a five part series on SharePoint and covers topics such as Financial Modeling, Internal Rate of Return, and Risk Factors and so on.

If you work for a solution provider where your job is in pre-sales, you should arm yourself with the tools that he provided. If you are in the market to implement sharepoint solutions for your company, you should definitely look into his financial model.

In 2004, I joined my present employer excited about my prospective travel all over their locations. Years passed by, I did not get to travel to any location mostly due tools such as Logmein or GoToMyPC.
I have nothing against tools. In fact, these are awesome tools for supporting clients in remote locations.
 
In the beginning, I was working on a typical application without any need for travel. Lately things have changed; I have been involved in the implementation of a SharePoint solution that I developed for our external customers. I talk to people from all over the world. Our discussion ranges from school, cricket to SharePoint implementations. I have successfully implemented Share Point solutions for some of my clients and working on a few more. I really wish that I could go there and visit those beautiful islands. Who knows my wish may materialize. So far, it is my computer and the remote login…
 

 

Few days ago, I was working for a client in the Caribbean region. He wanted to install WSS 3.0 using SQL Server 2005 Edition.  Click here to preview setup steps. I will write about it later in the day.

 

Recently, my friend Sean and I were talking about upgrading SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007. As much as we want it to be, upgrading is not a simple process of inserting a setup CD and running a program. The web is full of resources, tools and tips for Sharepoint upgrades. I strongly suggest reading Microsoft Upgrade and Resource Center. There are very few players in the market that claim to offer real upgrade solutions. I have not tried anyone of those. So far, I have only trusted my experience and Microsoft resources.

If you are delegating the upgrade or migration task to someone, be sure to spend considerable amount of time in planning. This is exactly what I am doing. Just a day ago, management has asked me to look into an upgrade option for our portal. Unlike my other migrations or upgrades, this will be a very challenging project. I am planning to try some third party tools. I am looking forward to having some fun with that…

Few days ago, I was attending a user group meeting in West Palm Beach. I met a user who wanted to ask me a question. I have been providing my personal email to Share Point developers in the past. Now I thought of creating a Share Point specific email address. So feel free to contact me at SharePoint411@gmail.com.

I am back from my trip overseas. It was good to break away from work. I relaxed in the sun and ate like there was no tomorrow. The sad part is that I lost my luggage on my way there. Since that day, I am like a ping pong ball between Emirates and United Airlines. It feels good to be home though. I feel rejuvenated and excited to write more on Share Point.

Recently, I was a speaker at SQLSaturday Tampa 08.  Over-all it was a very successful event. A large number of people registered for the event and some of the conference rooms were over-packed. I would give big credit to Pam Shaw and her team as the arrangements were awesome. During the lunch break, everyone was able to enjoy a meal of their choice – roast beef or a veggie. That shows how considerate the organizers were towards the needs of the diverse community of SQL Professionals.
Click here to view the pictures of the code camp. My session was in the afternoon. It gave me enough time to create my demos. On my way back to Palm Beach, I drove through Orlando and enjoyed a heavy dinner near Sea World. I was thinking of stopping there for a night, but decided to drive back.

My 2008 started with some fun events. I am working on a re-write of a major project using some of the latest and greatest technologies. On the social front, exciting things are happening. Few days ago, I spoke at the South Florida Code Camp. That was a total blast. See my other blog entry. I am keeping my fingers crossed for SQL Saturday. Pam Shaw told me that I am one of the alternate speakers there. This event is for SQL Server professionals. I plan to talk about SharePoint 2007 and its close integration with SQL Server. I would focus on things SQL Server professionals can do with SharePoint. I am really looking forward to that.

I was a speaker at the South Florida Code Camp 08. The camp was a total success. A lot of credit goes to the efforts of Dave and Shervin.  I would say that Dave was working like a super-man. One minute, he was at the speaker’s lounge working on something, and the next he was lugging around boxes of the pizza. Oh! There were about one hundred and seventy pizzas delivered that day. Perhaps that pizza place decided to give it a rest during the Super Bowl. 

There was a flood of developers all over; the raffle time in particular was total chaos. Just look at the pictures. Developers were ripping open boxes of books to look for their favorites. Even though, they were asked to choose just one, I saw people walk away with stacks of books. It was a sight…

Dave was awarded for his excellent service to the community. He attributed his success to Shervin. I was in the lounge when Alex Funkhouser stopped by to chat. He is always full of funny stories. Russ Fustino was there the whole time. You know him, he loves talking about his tools.

I plan to post my presentation on-line. I have to ask Dustin about the best way to do that. Just drop me a line or comment if you have some questions about SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence and SharePoint 2007.

This is going to be a good year.

Finally, I got the word that I will be speaking at the South Florida Code Camp 08. I am very excited. During this whole week, I have been brainstorming ideas for this presentation. I plan to ask my friend Rohan for his suggestions. He always gives good advice.
 
Well, it started over a week ago. I called Alex Funkhouser. He encouraged me to sign up. Based on his advice, I took the plunge. Dave Noderer and Shervin Shakibi are really very cool people to work. When I was showing some signs of cold feet, Dave was extremely supportive. So here I am getting ready for this event. Check out the agenda, and see what I plan to do.
 
The final countdown begins...

Few months ago, I was attending a Gold Coast User group meeting in Boca Raton. The presenter, Stacy Draper – a good friend of mine, just back from a MS SharePoint MVP event, gave me an evaluation copy of MOSS 2007. He advised me to look into SharePoint 2007 and Excel Services. Between work and other social commitments at my HOA board, I could not find time.  My desire to explore Excel Services is very natural. I love Excel both a user and a developer. I will write about my experience with Excel Services, and share everything that I would discover on my way. Initially, I was not sure about the version of SharePoint 2007 that supported Excel Services. I happened to find the answer from Mauro Cardarelli’s blog on ‘MOSS 2007: Standard versus Enterprise’. I strongly suggest reading his blog entry to get full details on functionality across various versions. The focus of this entry is in Excel Services. For those of you interested in SharePoint installation, I highly recommend reading Tony Zink’s blog. He did a great job of sharing all steps with screen captures. It would have saved me a lot of time and energy if I had read it earlier. Tony mostly talks about SharePoint installation in VPC environment. However, if you are looking for installation in general then I encourage you to read Bill English’s blog. The topic of his blog entry is 'Installing a New Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Portal: Step-by-Step Instructions.' Enough said about MOSS 2007. Let us focus on Excel Services. Do not expect Excel Services as auto activated. I activated the services by going to Central Administration > Operations > Services on Server. Click on the Action column ‘Start’ to start these services. Notice that Excel Services are required on Farm. A quick way to check if the services are activated is by going to Central Administration > Application Management > Check Services Enabled in this Farm.   SharePoint sites rely on Shared Services Provider (SSP) for providing Excel Services.Therefore, give special attention to configuration of Shared Services. Otherwise, you may spend extra time on that. Microsoft TechNet is a wonderful resource for any help with the configuration. In fact, it came to my rescue when I was stranded. I asked for help from one of our resident SharePoint guru; he blatantly said, “I have no clue.” SharePoint 2007 provides many clues on the main create SSP page. http:/…/sspdetails.aspx?task=Create I learned it the hard way; never try to create a SSP web application that uses Network Services. SSP is not going to recognize that web application. Simply put, just follow steps from TechNet article or the blogs that I mentioned above. It will save precious time that can be used for development. Once everything is configured, click on Shared Services link on the Central Administration home page. That should lead to the following page: http://.../_admin/managessp.aspx An alternate route to this page is ‘Central Administration > Application Management > Manage this Farm's Shared Services’. Irrespective of the route, following site will open upon clicking on ShareServices.  http://.../ssp/admin/default.aspx  This is the SSP Administration application. This is the place where we configure Excel Services. Following are main tasks that can be performed by clicking on links underneath’ Excel Services Settings’: 

• Edit Excel Services settings.
• Trusted file locations  
• Trusted data connection libraries  
• Trusted data providers  
• User-defined function assemblies  

  Use ‘Edit Excel Services settings’ page for setting properties that directly affect the security related issues.  Microsoft does not recommend following combination of settings: 

• Anonymous access to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
• You have a UNC trusted location and the Process account is turned on.

 You can also use these settings to proactively deny service or avoid any eavesdropping. I suggest that you read Excel Services Best Practices on TechNet if you are planning to deploy an Intranet application. In my case, I mostly work on Intranet site within a selected group. It is worth spending time on MS sample reports before putting on the actual development hat. This report did not work for me. I was getting Access Denied error. Guess why? Sample reports use workbook that was not in the trusted location. So click on the Trusted File locations link. That will open the following page: http://.../ssp/admin/_layouts/ExcelServerTrustedLocations.aspx  A trusted file location can be a document library, a UNC path, or an HTTP Web site. Note that Excel Services will not open any workbook that is not stored in trusted file location. In my case, I gave the address of a parent site and trusted Trust child libraries or directories by checking the checkbox. In real world, it can be configured in any manner. For the purpose of my forth-coming demo, I did not play with any other settings. I plan to have fun and write on all other settings in due course of time.  SharePoint 2007 has also introduced a new SharePoint library known as Data Connection Library. This library is just like any other document library and is used for keeping and managing connection files. It is a good practice to add data connection libraries that Excel workbooks access.  I did not do anything with Trusted Data Providers, since it was auto-configured for me. I guess it read all data providers registered on the server. I need to read up on that. I will share my experience with others in case of any interesting discoveries. I was happy to see MSOLAP providers in that list. Since I plan to use those in my BI demo application. It was a nice quick and dirty application. I had an Excel application showing the results of a cube from a SQL Server Analysis Services. I published that workbook on the web to show the data to my team.   Well! This concludes my blog entry on Excel Services configuration. I am very excited and pumped up. Microsoft has done a great job to introduce Excel Services along with its impressive controls. I can see a lot happening with this technology in future, and I want to be an active part of that future. So, let the journey begin…  

 

Welcome to my blog. This is my first entry. I have named it Shehrzade for two very important reasons. Just like the tales of Arabian Nights, I plan to write thousand and one entries on SharePoint. This site is also the namesake of my beautiful niece – Shehrzade. She has both beauty and brains. When she was thirteen, she won a national competition on software development, and a trip to America to attend an international competition. I do not recall exactly what she wrote, but it was some game in Visual Basic. When I was thirteen, I leaned more strongly towards the ‘extra-curricular activities’. I wrote my first ‘Hello World’ program when I was twice her age.