SharePoint Server 2010 ships with a nifty Chart web part that displays visual data from a number of sources – SharePoint lists, BDC, Excel services, etc. It’s a handy control and one that was sorely missing from the 2007 version. It provides a number of chart options, including pies, lines, bars, cones, scatters, etc. in […]

I recently came across a curious scenario when using target audiences with SharePoint 2010 global navigation. I began with a common enough requirement – create a static menu structure in which certain links would be visible only to members of specific SharePoint security groups (no Active Directory in this particular environment). The basic hierarchy looked […]

SharePoint Conference has come and gone but the conference season isn’t over quite yet – there are still plenty of opportunities for great SharePoint content and education available across the pond. First up is SharePoint Saturday UK, being held in Nottingham on November 12th. Nottingham is our new base of operations in the UK and […]

Another SharePoint Conference has come and gone. With more than 7,000 attendees, we pushed the facility and surrounding entertainment venues to their limits (let’s just say Disney wasn’t quite prepared for our kind of crowd). There was a ton of great content, with lots of it being real-world advice from the trenches – and even […]

Programmatically creating site columns and content types in SharePoint 2010 is a relatively straightforward process, especially with the new project item framework in Visual Studio 2010 and enhancements like CKS:DEV. Create an element file to define the columns, create another to define the content type and specify which columns to include, deploy it and whistle […]

SharePoint Conference 2011 is almost upon us. Anaheim, California is *the* place to be the first week of October for all things SharePoint. There will be more than 200 sessions covering every aspect of the technology stack from top to bottom delivered by top SharePoint experts from around the world. I’ll be presenting two sessions […]

Microsoft has posted the SharePoint Enterprise Content Management Implementers Course on TechNet. The course consists of a set of self-paced videos, student guides and hands-on labs to help you understand, implement and optimize ECM solutions with SharePoint 2010. If you are new to ECM, are considering SharePoint as an ECM solution for your organization, or […]

This year the Dallas TechFest has expanded into a two-day event. It’s being held at the University of Texas Dallas (which, oddly enough, is actually in Richardson) August 12th and 13th. The fee for the conference is a paltry $100 – a pittance for the amount of content available over both days. Although TechFest isn’t […]

Three years ago I posted a screed entitled "Welcome to the Un-Social" on why enterprise customers weren’t buying into the whole Social Computing movement. My intent was not to dismiss the potential value of social applications but to challenge proponents to come up with viable business reasons why companies should invest in these new technologies, […]

During the recent SharePoint Connections Coast to Coast conference in San Antonio, I had a chance to sit down with Jeff Deverter of Rackspace as part of his SharePoint Talks video series. Jeff and I discussed post-deployment management and planning for SharePoint 2010, the challenges of recruiting qualified SharePoint people, the benefits of the SharePoint […]