New Visio Stencils for SharePoint Architecture Design

If you remember, I blogged about Visio Stencils for SharePoint some time back. This time Microsoft has released new set of the Visio 2007 stencils for SharePoint designing. Please download them @ http://blogs.technet.com/tothesharepoint/archive/2009/03/12/3212193.aspx

InfoPath 2007 – Langagues Drop Down Control Template Part

Similar to my last post. I am unable to find a custom drop down control with list of langauges. Hence I reolved to build a template part to list most frequently spoken languages in Australia with English as default. Yet another important and frequently used control on the InfoPath forms.

Download the template part from my SkyDrive.  

Langauge Control (Drop down) Template Part File:

http://cid-02a869228a03aad1.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/InfoPath2007/LangaugesControl.xtp

Source Files:

http://cid-02a869228a03aad1.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/InfoPath2007/LangaugesControl.rar   

Please feel free to update the list of langauges in the xml file. If you want to know how to import this template part to your InfoPath template, please refer to http://blog.funknstyle.com/?p=503

InfoPath 2007 Template Part – List of Countries Drop-Down Control

I am presently working on a ‘Lab Application Form’ gig for one of my clients here in Adelaide. There is a requirement for ‘Birth Country’ control on the form. It is a drop down control with the list of countries and ‘Australia’ selected as default.

List of the countries is a general control we see in lot of forms/applications. I thought it should be readily available as part of the custom controls in InfoPath 2007. I was surprised to find that, it is neither part of the custom controls nor available on the web. Hence I decided to create a custom template part with Countries Drop Down Control. Please find xtp file (template part) and source files on my ‘InfoPath2007′ public folder on SkyDrive. If you feel like changing the list of countries, please update the ‘Countries.xml’ file in the source files and save the template part.

XTPFile:

http://cid-02a869228a03aad1.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/InfoPath2007/CountriesControl.xtp

Source Files:

http://cid-02a869228a03aad1.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/InfoPath2007/CountriesControl.rar

SharePoint 2007 integration options with Various Microsoft Office versions

Today, I am working on a scoping document on SharePoint 2007 Intranet re-development project  for a client who has Office 2003 as part of the Standard Operating Environment (SOE). I found myself wandering in Google for some information on how SharePoint 2007 integrates with Office 2003. It looks like there isn’t much information on listing various integration options. But I found the “Fair, Good, Better, Best” white paper very helpful in understanding various integration options with different office versions.

The increasing levels of functional capabilities have been deemed “fair” for Office 2000, “good” for Office XP, “better” for the Office 2003 Editions, and “best” for the 2007 Office Suites in terms of how they work together with SharePoint.In a nut shell;

Feature	Office 2000	Office XP	Office 2003 Editions
Save and open files from SharePoint sites	Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Word)	Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Visio, Word)	Enhanced (Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Publisher, Visio, Word)
Create new documents in Web browser	No	Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Word)	Yes (Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, Publisher, Word)
Collect metadata automatically	No	No	Enhanced (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
Promote and demote file properties and metadata automatically	Data stored, but not displayed (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Word)	Yes (Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, Word)	Enhanced (Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, PowerPoint, Visio, Word)
Track document versions	No. Use Web browser to view and manage document versions.	No. Use Web browser to view and manage document versions.	Enhanced (Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Word)
Check-out and check-in documents	No. Use Web browser to manually check-out and check-in documents.	No. Use Web browser to manually check-out and check-in documents.	Enhanced (Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Word). Use Web browser to manually check-out and check-in other types of documents.
Manage Microsoft Project documents, risks, and issues	No	No	Yes
Upload multiple documents	No	No	Yes
Inline discussions	Yes	Yes	Yes
Microsoft Office Components for SharePoint	No	No	Yes
Person Names Smart Tag	No	No	Yes
Integration with Microsoft Business Solutions	No	No	Yes

Download the white paper here.

Auto Save Your documents in Office 2007

This is a quick tip on how to enable auto save option in Office word 2007.

1. Click on the Office Button.
2. Go to ‘Word options’
3. Click on the ‘Save’.
4. Check the check box before ‘AutoRecovery information every __ minutes’.
5. Based on your need, specify the time interval for Auto Saving the document. In my case, I set it to 5 minutes.

Note: This tip holds good for Excel and PowerPoint too.

Updated:13th May 2008

Following the above steps, you can set a Auto Recovery point for the word document. Unfortunately there is no ‘Auto Save’ option in Office 2007. What a pity.

An Alternate to content query web part.

It’s always advantageous to work on technology which is very customizable. Yes, I am talking about SharePoint Server. I found a new web part “FlexListViewer webpart”, which is ought to be an alternate to Content Query Web Part. Drawback with the Content Query Web Part is, it only displays content within the site collection. If you need to display the lists from a different site collection, FlexListViewer webpart will help you in acheiving that.

The complete credit goes to Robert te Kaat and Bart Gunneman. The Link for the web part can be found on Bart Gunneman’s blog. The post contains nice run down of how to install of the web part. Good read for development geeks!

No time to read !! Here is the direct link >> Download

Note: I haven’t tested the web part yet. So feel free to discuss an issues with Bart. I will test it when I have some spare time.

Office SharePoint Server in a nutshell.

As I am extensively working on SharePoint Environment these days, I always wanted to know the overview of SharePoint Server 2007 and where it fits in the Microsoft Office System. One major question I always ask my self is “what is the difference between MOSS and WSS 3.0?”

Today i found a neat figure explaining a lot about SharePoint Server 2007 in a nutshell. Its always important for consultants like me to have this basics on the fingure tips. So fellow developers and consultants, take time to understand this nice figure to 100%. This figure from MSDN definetely answers few of my questions. Hope it does the same to you.