This just arrived in my mailbox:

Microsoft will offer SharePoint Designer 2007 free of charge, as a download, starting April 1, 2009. This change is being made in order to help customers get the most value out of their investments in SharePoint products and technologies.  Microsoft will remove SharePoint Designer 2007 from the April 2009 Volume Licensing price list.

Customers with active SA as of April 1, 2009 will be able to upgrade to Expression Web.  SharePoint Designer is not “end-of-life.” The next version of SharePoint Designer will ship together with the next release of SharePoint.

Details:
The ability to create SharePoint solutions and customizations is a key part of the SharePoint value proposition.  Microsoft’s strategy is to allow our customers to put these capabilities in the hands of more users, allowing them to make the most of their overall investments in SharePoint.

Starting April 1, 2009, SharePoint Designer 2007 will be available, free of charge, as a download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42.  As a result, Microsoft will remove SharePoint Designer 2007 from the April 2009 Volume Licensing price list. Note that SharePoint Designer is not “end-of-life.” SharePoint Designer capabilities will continue to be part of the future roadmap of SharePoint product and technologies. The next version of SharePoint Designer will be available at the same time as the next release of SharePoint.

Customers with active Software Assurance coverage for SharePoint Designer 2007 as of April 1, 2009 will be able to upgrade to Expression Web. While Expression Web currently does not work against SharePoint sites, this additional value will enable our customers to leverage Expression Web for non-SharePoint sites while continuing to use SharePoint Designer 2007 for SharePoint sites. Expression Web will directly support SharePoint sites in a future release. Extending rights to Expression Web will help us address potential CPE issues from customers as a result of these changes, while also helping our customers create great experiences on SharePoint.

• For More Information:
  • Channel Partners: Partners should access the SharePoint Designer section at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/FX100487631033.aspx

The InformationWorker group is running two events in the near future and we are looking for speakers for the events and I am hoping I can peak your interest enough to participate or forward this on to someone you know who may be interested.

First is in April at the "normal" meeting where we are running a tool fest. This session is about showing off your favorite SharePoint tool. What is great is that this is about tools you know (or learn between now and then) and you only need to speak for 10 to 15min so for people who haven't presented before or are a junior this is a great opportunity to get some practise (and with TechEd coming up later this year - maybe get yourself in the spotlight to talk at that).

The second session is tentatively scheduled for May and it is a new idea where we do a Saturday morning. In this session we will have a mix of hands on labs and 30 to 45min presentations running in two or three tracks. We are hoping to do a IT Pro, Dev and Business mix so if you don't think your technical but want to talk about testing or governence or something like that we would love to get it into the mix. Also we are hoping to cover a wide skill level (100 through 400) so if you know some things about the UI of SharePoint and tweaking it with the content query web part or how to get Silverlight to dance in SharePoint but maybe not what Visual Studio is that is fine too.

If either event appeals to you please drop me a mail ([email protected]) so we can discuss it!

Here is an opportunity for you to win great prizes by sharing your knowledge and breadth of experience with Developers in the SharePoint Developer Forum.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/threads/

From March 1^st, 2009 to May 31^st, 2009 there will be three contests and 5 monthly prizes given. You can win an Xbox 360, a Zune 120GB , or a 7” digital frame!

That is from The SharePoint Team blog and it sounds great to be rewarded for helping out on the forums - I mean that is what groups like InformationWorker are trying to do. One downside to this (like every other Microsoft competition) is that you must be in Canada or the USA! I guess I will stick to getting rep points on StackOverflow as my reward.

There is a new release of the VSeWSS (what a crap name) CTP 1.3. What are these? These are the tools you need to actually work with SharePoint from Visual Studio to create the advanced workflows or web parts etc… It also includes the documentation that is invaluable for working with any part of SharePoint from Visual Studio. What’s new in the Feb ‘09 release:

New Features in VSeWSS 1.3

• The extensions now install on x64 bit OS. Visual Studio 2008 and SharePoint must be already installed.
• Command Line Build option for TFS and MSBuild integration
• Separate WSP Package and Retract commands. You can now build the WSP without deploying it
• SPSolGen to Support Exporting from Content Management Publishing Sites
• New Item Template for RootFiles Deployment
• Automatically Remove conflicting existing features on development SharePoint server
• WSP View New Feature Dialog Improvements: scope, receiver checkbox, element checkbox
• WSP View can now be used to merge features and it blocks site features being merged into web features
• Allow adding separate binary files such as Workflow assemblies
• Some refactoring allowing for Web Part renaming and removing lines from feature.xml Item Removed
• Allow selection of GAC or BIN deployment for Web Part Project not including CAS generation
• Increase visibility of hidden features that VSeWSS creates
• Add fast update deploy for DLL only or file only changes to solutions
• Numerous Bug Fixes and improvements to error messages

You can download it on the Connect site.

Thanks to zainnab for the heads up.

Last night was the monthly meeting of InformationWorker which was where it was publically announced that myself, Marc, Johan and Veronique have joined Michael and Zlatan in the running of the group (many hands make light work). So we have this group that will work together to drive the group and make sure it continues and grows! It was also very cool that Sascheen did a presentation based on his white paper on TFS + SharePoint (which I blogged about last year). He was assisted with Ahmed from Microsoft and I think they took the crowd by storm! The Q&A about TFS + SharePoint lasted almost as long as the presentation! Big well-done to the both of them!

After all was said and done we dropped the “o” and did the post meeting SharePint ;) Where Jonty and Johan had everyone in stitches! Lesson to be learnt - even though the session ends at 5 (or 5:30) plan to stay a bit longer - it’s worth it :)

Rein got interviewed on ZA Tech Show last week and the podcast is up for those who want to listen to him talk about CocoaHeads: http://zatech.co.za/episode-48/

www.informationworker.co.za is a great community site built on top of SharePoint by Michael O’Donovan. There is a lot happening there which is not standard functionality:

• Forms based authentication which pulls from a database.
• Signup system which allows people to signup and writes them into the database, all automatic.
• RSS Feeds aggregator which actually copies the feeds in so they are searchable.
• Lots more!

Well today is a special day since it’s the day I got to click the “Publish This Project” button on CodePlex for the new project which shares all that source code to the world so you can use it on your projects! To access it just go to http://www.codeplex.com/iwsharepoint

Thanks to Michael for allowing us to share the code with the world.

Note: The raw code is available, to use it you would need to build it in Visual Studio first! For any feedback or questions please use the forums on www.informationworker.co.za

A bit late in sharing the stats from last month (it fell off my task list for some unexplained reason). The stats are based off of IIS log parsing as well as off of the stats information from SharePoint (which powers it).

Previous Stats (this will look cooler when it has more than one, promise)

• December 2008

Some notes on it:

• Distinct Users means people which can be identified through logs/tracking to be unique (it’s not an exacting science so there may be people who are counted more than once while others are grouped together as they come from behind a proxy). They are not members and can include things like search bots. I don’t care about the number too much on this but rather the trend.
• Registered Members are people who have completed the registration form on the website.
• People are back from holiday but without new content (we didn’t do anything in Jan) the numbers fall far behind November 08 (the first real month on the new site).
• New members climbed by 6 which is not bad.

WF has two two types of activities you can create, the easy one and the hard one. That’s not really their names (though it would be cool), the first (easy) is a composite activity. This is is the one that Visual Studio lets you create and is in effect just another sequential workflow which you build up and reuse.

However when you use them they just look like sequence activities. If you want something that looks like a “real” (read: what you get out of the box) activity to need to create the hard one which is call an activity (so clear a name, ain’t it). The smallest this can be is one class and the biggest it can be is five classes and they all basically have the same structure. So it’s weird that there is no easy way to build these, say a template. Well I have created one which sets up the base for an activity and lets you get going as quickly as possible.

Usage

To use it, select the normal Add -> New Project, and under Visual C#, My Templates will be the template called WF Activity! Some things that should become clear from that little sentence

• You need Visual Studio 2008 (yeah, that wasn’t clear but I need to sneak it in somewhere).
• It’s C# only
• It creates a project for your new activity for ease of packaging purposes.
• And for some reason if I put a space in the name, if crashes my Visual Studio - so um, that could just be me.

When you create it, it creates 4 files which all start with the name you choose (that will also be the name for your activity, so I don’t suggest putting activity in it) - For example mine was called ConsoleWriteLine so my files are:

• ConsoleWriteLineActivity.cs
• ConsoleWriteLineActivityDesigner.cs
• ConsoleWriteLineActivityDesignerTheme.cs
• ConsoleWriteLineActivityValidator.cs

Special Features

I will come back to what they do but I thought I would point out that I have taken special care with the code so that if you run code analysis (fxcop) you get no issues with the code - you will get five for the project not being signed and com visibility stuff - and that StyleCop also reports no issues. I have also added in three TODO’s (if you use the VS task list)

• The first one (Write Code) takes you to the Execute method in the {Project}Activity.cs file. This is what will run when your activity is executed.
• The second one (Pick some nice colours) takes you to {Project}ActivityDesignerTheme.cs file where you can specify the start and end colours for the gradient. By default it’s dark to light blue.

• The third one (Add validation) takes you to the Validate method in the {Project}ActivityValidator.cs file where you can add any design time validation you need. It even has a sample of how to add a validation failure message.

What do I need to add to use it?

Basically all you need to do to get up and running is

1) Add the properties you need to the {Project}Activity.cs file.

2) Add the code as indicated by the task item.

3) Compile and use.

Optionally you can change the colours, add validation, add an icon or change what is shown on the component. The changing of what is shown is controlled via the SetText method in {Project}ActivityDesigner.cs and it has been wired up so that it will respond to property changes. So you can actually have the text change if the properties change with very little code needed.

How do I deploy it?

To use it just dump the ZIP file in the Visual Studio 2008 > Templates> ProjectTemplates > Visual C# in your documents folder and restart Visual Studio!

Where can I get it?

Note: My hosting provider has something that corrupts zip files so it has been uploaded in 7-zip format which you will need to extract it.

Hopefully you get some productivity benefit from this component or it helps you learn how to write your own, and if it does please leave a comment here so I know (and get that warn fuzzy feeling I like so much).

I often end up in the eventlog with SharePoint problems - since there is so much goodness there… um normally too much. So this trick of using PowerShell to filter the results and the export to a grid or CSV is very useful.

Get newest 20 SharePoint logs to a grid:

get-eventlog –logname Application –source ‘*sharepoint*’ –newest 20 | out-gridview

Export all SharePoint logs to CSV (perfect for Excel):

get-eventlog –logname Application –source ‘*sharepoint*’  | export-csv c:\eventlog.csv