SharePoint Blogs

Last Thursday I went to Khobar which is 450 Kilometers away from Riyadh in the eastern side of Riyadh.  I was there to present at SharePoint Techday that was organized by SharePoint Geeks (the only SharePoint User Group in that region).  Although it was a long travel of around 4 hours but we were able to reach there around 9:45 PM (You can calculate at what time we started the travel :)) I presented "Advanced SharePoint Feature Development" topic and got a feeling that everyone loved it.  I was pretty fast as I had only 1 hour for 4 full demos for Feature Development.  I loved every bit of it and hopefully the audience (Around 80) has enjoyed it allot.  Most of the attendees were basic level SharePoint pros so I have to make my session less technical which I hope I was able to do it.  Lets wait for the face book.

another point to share is that Muhanad Omar was unable to make to the event so My fellow RSUG Lead Ali Nimer presented "using Variations in Web Content Management"  very nicely and audience liked it allot.  Fauzan Khan who is the lad of SharePoint Geek's presented "Developing SharePoint 2007 Workflow's with Visual Studio 2008" which went quite well.  Another session was from Emad Abdul Aziz (Lead XAMLLight) who went on to present "Silverlight and SharePoint 2007".  It was a good try but the bad thing was there was no Silverlight developer in the audience so he made it really basic for audience.  He made interesting demo with a Story board.

So finally we have successfully conducted our May meeting for Riyadh SharePoint user Group.  Riyadh SharePoint User Group has proved to be successful in getting people attention and time for attending our events.  They not only learn SharePoint for free but also take lot of gifts from Microsoft.  This time I was really doubtful on the number of attendees but my doubt was cleared when I saw around 40 People attending our event.  This event was special for me because for the first time we have spent almost 30 minutes discussing some questions asked by the attendees.  Ali Nimer again did fantastic work by starting the meeting with first session about Multilingual Development for SharePoint.  Later Muhanad presented an interesting session about scripting SharePoint installations.  There was no demo in his session but information was very useful.  I did my Event Handlers session and demo and later Amjad finished it off with his workflow session.  He was unable to do any demo because his VM crashed ;}.  But overall everything went very well.  Later there was a draw for XBOX and one of our regular attendee Alla Barqawi won it.  There were so many interesting giveaways that were given to the audience and for the first time almost everyone has something to take home :)

Now we have to plan our June 2009 Meeting so I am planning something new.  There will be change in the presenters this time as many of our fellow SharePoint Developers wanted to get involved in presenting so I will try to give chance to some new presenters.  Ali Nimer will surly continue with something interesting to continue. 

I will upload the pictures for the event tomorrow in fellow up blog.  The tentative date for the next month meeting is 18th of June 2009.

Update

Event Pictures are available below.

Public Meeting 6 - May 14 2009

Download Information

VAI SharePoint Team Blog

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850

Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851

Detail Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968850

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968851 (Link not live yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
2. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007
3. April Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
4. April Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Please note: Start from April Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

Cool Picture for understanding Service Packs and Updates.

Read Full Article...

PressPass: What are you announcing today?

Capossela: We’re announcing that Microsoft will begin releasing new versions of Office-related products this year. Exchange 2010 will be the first product in this lineup, entering beta for customers to download today. Exchange 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. Office 2010 — including Office Web applications, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 — will enter a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

WAO so we will have our hands dirty of SharePoint and Other Office products in September or October hopefully :).

Read the full Press Release from below.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Apr09/04-15Office2010.mspx

I will be presenting at SharePoint Tech Days 2009 at Khobar.  SharePoint Tech Days 2009 is organized by SharePoint Geeks and will held on 20th of May 2009.  I will be presenting "SharePoint Feature Framework".  It will be great opportunity for me to present in front of new audience.  This event is right after RSUG Public Meeting which is on 14th of May so will have busy weekend in may.  The great thing about the event is that I, Ali Nimer and Muhanad Omar (MVP SharePoint Server) will be traveling together which will be quite a Fun.  Khobar is around 400 KM from Riyadh.  As the Event will begin at 8:30 we have to leave Riyadh early  morning to reach in time.  Lets home it goes well.

If you are living in Khobar please feel free to register and visit us.  for more details and registration click the banner.

www.SharePointGeeks.net

Few weeks back I upgraded a SharePoint 2007 Environment from Single Machine to a Server Farm of 2 Front End Server and Project Server 2007  as a separate Application server.  Another Challenge was that environment was in SP1 and customer wanted it to be at latest updates (Infrastructure).  Another important point was Language pack as customer wanted to have Arabic added to the language.  Customers was very much worried about loss of data as content was around 30GB and I have to make sure that everything is planned before I shutdown their environments.  To make sure I do not miss anything I prepared a project plan with all specific steps as checklist.  This project plan helped me in a great way that I was able to complete the upgrade is just 12 hours successfully without any data loss for the customer.     I am attaching the project plan here.  This can be used as an upgrade and can also be used as installation of a brand new MOSS Installation with Project Server 2007.

• WSS 3.0 SDK (online)
• WSS 3.0 SDK (downloadable CHM v1.5)
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK (online)
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK (downloadable CHM v1.5)

VIA Andrew Connell