5/14/2009During today’s RSUG Meeting an attendee asked why the “Save as a Site Template” option isn’t available on SharePoint Publishing sites, or more specifically, sites that have the Publishing Feature activated. I know that Microsoft hides this option because it isn’t supported, but that didn’t really answer the attendee’s question. So after a quick search, I found a few articles/blog posts talking about this specific issue. Stefan Goßner has a post on this with some good info within the comments. He linked to this Microsoft KB article as being the only official document stating this action was unsupported, but still, no real explanation to why it’s not supported. After some more searching, I found this article by Forest Marcia to have the best explanation to way saving a Publishing site as a template isn’t supported. Check it out, and if anyone has a better explanation, please please add it to the comments section of this post. Thanks! 5/10/2009
Finally, a book (and a great one in that) covering SharePoint Designer! I recently finished reading Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, authored by MVPs Woodrow Windischman, Bryan Phillips, and Asif Rehmani. With Microsoft making SPD 2007 available as a free download, it’s important that users of the product understand how to use it properly. The authors did an incredible job covering the aspects of SPD from multiple perspectives. I enjoyed how they even included sections on developing solutions with Visual Studio. It was apparent those sections were added with the intent on getting readers familiar with the various options and methods they have available for developing extended functionality outside SPD, so don’t be disappointed if you don’t feel it’s advanced enough – remember that this isn’t a core development book. The one thing I loved the most about the book was the style of writing; the authors did a great job simplifying walking through the features of SPD without losing my attention. The level of detail and simplicity was balanced very well throughout the book. I learned a lot of things reading this book and I believe any user, no matter how good he/she is with SPD, can learn a new thing or two from reading this book as well. SharePoint Designer 2007 is a tremendous and powerful software. With Microsoft making it available to download for free, users need to have a strong understanding of how to work with it, and more importantly, how to avoid running into problems with it. 5/3/2009I’ll be traveling between Jordan & Saudi Arabia quite a while this month for community activities, so I thought I’d mention some of the things happening and where you can find me. | Date | User Group/Club | Location | Session | Speaker | | May 6 | JorDev | MIC – Jordan | Testing Principles Part 1 | Ruba Khattab | | May 7 | IEEE Club | Jordan University | Introduction to SharePoint Server 2007 | Muhanad Omar | | May 13 | Jordan SPUG | MIC – Jordan | SharePoint & Silverlight | Mair Swartz | | May 14 | Riyadh SPUG | MIC – Riyadh | Developing Multilingual Apps for MOSS | Ali Nimer | | | Automating you SharePoint Installations using Scripts | Muhanad Omar | | Workflow Foundation & MOSS 2007 | Amjad Issa | | Developing List Event Receivers in SharePoint | Jerry Yasir | | May 20 | Jordan SPUG | MIC – Jordan | TBD | Muhannad Abu-Obaid | | May 20 | SharePoint Geeks | Khobar | SharePoint Workflows in Depth | Fauzan Khan | | | SharePoint & Silverlight 3 Integration | Emad Abdel-Aziz | | Using SharePoint Features Framework | Jerry Yasir | | Best Practices for Building a Scalable SharePoint Farm | Muhanad Omar | | May 27 | Jordan IT Pros | MIC – Jordan | Hyper-V Deployment & Best Practices | Hikmat Kanaan |
Here’s a quick breakdown of the meetings/events I’ll be speaking at.
May 7 – IEEE Student’s Club, Jordan University I’m really excited for this! I love working with students, and this would be the first time I go back to my university since I graduated, so hopefully I can meet with some of my old professors while I’m there. Here’s the session abstract: “Introduction to SharePoint Server 2007: Join Muhanad Omar, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), to learn the ins and outs of SharePoint Server 2007. Get familiar with it’s features, capabilities, and how to work with it as a end-user, designer, administrator and developer. Jumpstart your professional career with knowledge on the fastest growing server product in Microsoft’s history.” May 14 – Riyadh SharePoint User Group Meeting, MIC I have a 30 minute slot during this meeting where I’ll be talking on how to automate a SharePoint installation using scripts. I thought this would be a good follow-up topic after my STSADM talk last month which went pretty well. My good friend Amjad Issa will also be presenting on workflows, so make sure you don’t miss this meeting! It’s a long drive but totally worth it, I promise :) May 20 – SharePoint Tech Days 2009, Khobar This is actually a Microsoft sponsored event being hosted by a fairly new SPUG in Khobar (Saudi Arabia) called “SharePoint Geeks”. My session is titled “Best Practices for Building a Scalable SharePoint Farm”. I’ll be talking about farm topologies, server roles, security, scalability, farm maintainability and DR… all very important topics! So if you’re in the area, please pass by; it’ll be tons of fun! And if you can’t make it, spread the word :) 4/17/2009Thanks to the Riyadh SPUG for putting this together and inviting me to speak. I had a great time! You can download my slide deck from here. Here are the links I mentioned during the session (also available in the slide deck): If you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment. Thanks again for everyone who attended! 4/14/2009If you’re in Riyadh, swing by the Microsoft Innovation Center at the Al-Yamama University this Thursday, April 16th, and attend what promises to be a great UG meeting for RSUG. I’ll be presenting a session on STSADM, covering what it is, how it’s used, it’s benefits, and how to extend it. Here’s the meeting agenda: | Session | Speaker(s) | Start Time | End Time | | Welcome Note | Ali Nimer / Jerry Yasir | 12:45 PM | 12:50 PM | | How to use SharePoint Variations with WCM | Ali Nimer | 12:50 PM | 1:20 PM | | Break | 1:20 PM | 1:45 PM | | Custom Field Types for SharePoint 2007 | Jerry Yasir | 1:45 PM | 2:30 PM | | STSADM - a SharePoint Administrator's Best Friend | Muhanad Omar | 2:30 PM | 3:30 PM | | Q/A and Giveaways | 3:30 PM | 3:45 PM |
Oh yeah, the giveaway is a freakin’ Xbox 360! How cool is that!! To register, click on the following link and fill out the form – http://rsugapril.eventbrite.com/
4/1/2009Congratulations to friends Mohamed Saleh for getting his Visual C# MVP renewed, and a big congrats on newcomer Mohammad Daoud, the first Dynamics GP MVP in Jordan! And of course, congratulations to everyone else around the world who received the MVP Award! Be very proud!! :) 3/31/2009I’m really excited about this one!! We had 75 members sign up for the webinar on the first day registration opened, so it looks like it’s going to be another great meeting for JSUG. Big thanks of course to David Mann for taking time out of his schedule to present to JSUG. Anyway, here are the details… Topic: Enterprise SharePoint Workflow: Building & Managing a High-Performance Workflow Environment
Speaker: David Mann, SharePoint MVP
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Your Desk Session Abstract Workflow in SharePoint is an exciting new capability. By now, most people have conquered the basics. However, as organizations have increased their usage of SharePoint, they have found that these workflow basics don't meet their needs. What they need is the ability to run thousands or tens of thousands of workflow instances on documents and list items across their farm. What they find is that the out-of-the-box settings and basic workflow development and management operations are not sufficient. This session will explore why focusing on your workflow subsystem is important, and cover the needs of a large scale workflow environment from the farm level down to individual workflow design specifications. Learn why all workflows need to be looked at in light of performance and scalability as well as how to build workflows that scale in an environment that scales, monitor workflow processing and overcome common obstacles. This session assumes a thorough understanding of the basics of SharePoint workflow and how to develop new workflows in Visual Studio. This introductory material will not be covered. The session will be heavy on code and demos. It will assume a familiarity with SharePoint administration, development and an understanding of basic performance/load tuning and testing. Registration Registration is only available to JSUG Members, and seats are limited, so hurry up and register now!
http://www.jordansug.com/Lists/April 29th Virtual Meeting/Registration.aspx?Source=/Pages/Go.aspx Here’s a quick tip for anyone new at administrating MOSS 2007. When attempting to delete the default SSP through Central Administration, the “Delete” option is grayed out. To work around this, run the below command using STSADM. stsadm –o deletessp <SSP name> –deletedatabases -force The “–deletedatabases” parameter is optional. The “–force” parameter is required when deleting the default SSP. It’s optional when deleting any other SSP, and is used to force the timer job to complete the deletion. |
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