Today’s SharePoint Shop Talk covered its usual wide range of topics:

• We discussed the issues around opening up parts of a SharePoint site collection to your trading partners.  It’s not the most complicated thing in the world, but when you start talking about out loud, you realize there are a lot of small individual things that need to be done to do this correctly.  You have to consider the firewall, licensing (your intranet SharePoint license may not be, and probably won’t be, sufficient), SharePoint configuration (AAM, extending web applications to zones that probably have HTTPS enabled), etc.  If anyone has a checklist of what to do and the sequence, I’d love to see it in comments.  This question wins the “Most Discussed Question” aware of the year (so far).
• I got to ask a question about the image library functionality that generates those thumb nail images.  I speculated that an event receiver on the image library is generating the thumb nail.  I’m probably way off base, but it does seem like there’s an entirely separate image on the web server for the thumb nail itself.  Vamshi, a SharePoint Shop Talk regular, points out this blog entry: http://pathtosharepoint.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/picture-libraries-take-advantage-of-web-friendly-formats/.  That’s a pretty interesting post about images in SharePoint if you’re interested in it.
• We discussed custom edit forms (that you create via SPD) and the fact that you lose the attachment functionality when you do that.  Laura Rogers has blogged on that subject here: http://sharepoint911.com/blogs/laura/archive/2009/09/10/fix-for-the-custom-form-attachments-issue.aspx

This week, we introduced a new feature where we spent about 10 minutes demonstrating an interesting tip/trick in a SharePoint environment.  This week, we showed how to added a content editor web part (and actually any web part) to a newitem.aspx page.  In this case, the objective was to show some extensive online help for that newitem.aspx page.  This is also one of the usual starting points for integrating jQuery into your environment.  Next week, we do plan to show a jQuery tip/trick.  We hope to see you there. 

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

We’re hosting our next weekly SharePoint Shop Talk session tomorrow at 12:30 PM EDT.

This is an open Q&A and general kibitzing session on all topics SharePoint related. 

You can read various recaps of prior sessions here to get a sense of what we do on these calls here: http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=blogview&_c=BlogPart&partqs=cat%3dPublic%2520Speaking

Registration is up and ready right here: https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=0z40kg9nb0t0842f

Twitter your questions to me, @pagalvin.

Email them to questions@sharepointshoptalk.com or just show up on the line and ask them out loud. 

We hope to see you then!

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

I’ve noticed that people seem to be waiting until the last minute to register for SharePoint Shop Talk sessions.  Last Thursday, at about 11:45AM, we had nine people register, which is a very small number.  However, at one point, we had 18 or 20 people signed in, so at least nine people signed up for it 45 minutes or less before the call.  I’m not complaining, just observing.

We had a full schedule of questions and discussion topics and couldn’t get to all of them.  As usual, we’ll pick up where we left off this coming Thursday.

Here’s the recap:

• Vamshi asked about building a WSS environment that has SP1 and not SP2.  You can download that configuration here:

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4191A531-A2E9-45E4-B71E-5B0B17108BD2&displaylang=en.  And someone else suggested looking here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb400747.aspx.

• We had a (welcome) surprise return visitor.  A few weeks previous, Blue had asked us a question that left everyone on the call a little sad because we couldn’t help.  His problem and solution are really fairly complicated, but it boils down to creating a data view web part with a range of filtered dates (not just one single filtered date, which is easier).  He may write up a blog entry on this and if does, I’ll link to it.  In the course of the discussion, he referred everyone to these two links:
• http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/archive/2008/09/05/sharepoint-conference-building-a-sharepoint-designer-mashup-part-deux.aspx and
• http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointcustomization/thread/01d61148-84fd-40dd-8b28-2476db3c9b4d?prof=required
• Looping in SharePoint designer – can it be done?  The answer is “yes” in some narrow cirumstances.  However, to do it, you need to do some tricky stuff that is hard to conceptualize, hard to implement, hard to debug … it’s just plain hard.  The panel’s consensus – don’t do this if you can help it.  If you need looping, create custom actions or drop down into visual studio.  Of course, if you’re using SPD, you prob can’t easily drop down into VS, but it is what is is, sadly.
• Speaking of sad, Nancy wins the “Make the Panel Sad” award by (futilely) asking about drag and drop from a data view web part.  The scenario is very interesting and if anyone has a clever solution, please let me know.  Here’s the problem: she has a DVWP that is doing some necessary filtering on a document library that returns back dozens or more documents.  This works great.  However, her users need to take those documents and burn them to CD.  This is doable using a windows explorer type view, but how to do it from DVWP?  We couldn’t think of a good answer.  Can you?
• Laura Rogers, followed by Lori Gowan of www.endusersharepoint.com fame (and elsewhere) made us aware of the fact that attachments to InfoPath forms can be submitted via a web service to an image library in SharePoint.  Out of the box!  That is a very interesting fact with some very interesting implications.

That’s pretty much it.  I probably missed something, but hopefully you get the gist of it.

Even though I know you won’t actually sign up until noon, Thursday, here’s the registration link for the next session, Thursday 10/08 from 12:30 to 1:30 PM EDT: https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=0z40kg9nb0t0842f

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

SharePoint Shop Talk registration is up and ready for tomorrow.

We have a few questions teed up that address some management issues (dev/test/prod and syncing up service packs), email notifications (how to select people to email based on metadata of a document) and some discussion around using InfoPath forms services in an FBA environment.

As always, if you want to talk about a topic:

• Send an email to questions@sharepointshoptalk.com
• Twitter me (@pagalvin)
• Leave a comment here.
• Just show up on the call and ask it there.

You can read about past SharePoint Shop Talks on my blog here: http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=blogview&_c=BlogPart&partqs=cat%3dPublic%2520Speaking

Register for the session here: https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=h6hm9ptg8zt7302t

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

We finished our 8th SharePoint Shop Talk open Q&A session yesterday.  During that session, we covered the following topics:

• How to send out a highly formatted email from a workflow created using SharePoint Designer.
  • Check out this link for a treasure trove of great SPD info and email: http://tinyurl.com/cssworkflow
• Where to find information on the differences between SharePoint 2010 and especially Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (the free version of SharePoint). 
• We discussed jQuery maintenance and management.  More specifically, “where should the jQuery go?”  We had a great discussion around this topic and one interesting new ideas (to me) is the idea of a content delivery network.   This bing search pulls up a lot of interesting data on the subject: http://www.bing.com/search?q=microsoft+content+delivery+network&FORM=DLSDF7&pc=MDDS&src=IE-SearchBox
  • Special mention to Jan Tielens’ CodePlex project on installing jQuery to an internal network as a feature that can be managed like any other feature in a SharePoint environment.  Look it up and consider using it if you’re leveraging a lot of jQuery in your environment: http://www.codeplex.com/smarttools
  • While you’re at, check out Marc Anderson’s jQuery work as well: http://mdasblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/jquery-library-for-sharepoint-web-services-v0-2-10-released/.  He’s very responsive to comments from the community.
• Someone mentioned that parts (or maybe even all) of the up-coming mega conference in Las Vegas in October will be broadcast over the internets.  Check out this site for more information: http://www.week3.org/Events/default.aspx
• We talked about RSS.  That discussion covered a lot of ground.  There’s a CodePlex project that does better RSS than what you get out of the box and www.endusersharepoint.com has some good articles up by Laura Rogers on how to use DVWP to build really good RSS sessions.

That about covers it.  People seem to be getting a lot of help from these so we’ll keep them going.

In a burst of efficiency, I’ve already set up next week’s SharePoint Shop Talk session.  You can register here: https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=h6hm9ptg8zt7302t

If you want to participate, fire off an email to questions@sharepointshoptalk.com, hit me up on twitter (@pagalvin) or leave a comment here.

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

Registration is up and ready for tomorrow’s SharePoint Shop Talk at 12:30 PM.

During these conference calls, a panel of experienced SharePoint pro’s take your questions via email, via live meeting or directly over the phone.  We do our best to provide independent expert advice on all topics related to SharePoint.

Email your questions to “questions@sharepointshoptalk.com”, twitter them to me, leave a comment here or just show up on the call and ask.

We also welcome and seek insight from audience members.

You can read some recaps on previous SharePoint Shop Talk sessions on my blog.

This week we already know we’ll be addressing questions relating to workflow (a constant favorite) and search to name a few.

Register here: https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=dv3m7cl30sxkq2n1

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

The next SharePoint Shop Talk takes place this Thursday, 09/17 at 12:30PM EDT.

What is SharePoint Shop Talk?  It’s a one hour conference call where a panel of SharePoint pro’s answer questions.  Send your questions to “questions@sharepointshoptalk.com”, leave a comment on my blog here or just ask them out loud on the call.  The panel tries to offer several different approaches to solving the underlying problem behind the question and just generally provide unbiased expert advice.

This week we continue with the same panel, including myself, my two Arcovis partners Harry Jones and Natalya Voskresenskaya and Laura Rogers of SharePoint911.

Briefly recapping last week – we had more questions than we could answer, so this week, we’ll start off with those.  We had 34 registrants and I think 25 people actually joined the call.  We covered a wide variety of subjects that I would say were 75% end user oriented, including:

• Strategies for rolling up content from sub-sites to top level sites inside and across site collections.
• The impact of customizing editform.aspx using SharePoint Designer.
• Dealing with the famous “collect data from a user” SharePoint Designer workflow action.
• Using jQuery to solve some common user interface problems.
• Time zone questions (for a geographically distributed environment)

We covered several other items as well, but the details escaped me.

I promised to do follow up with a live meeting to dig into one of the questions and still need to do that. 

Register for this week’s session here: https://www323.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=bhj8dbrswhv1hv8r

This week, we’re going to talk about at least:

• Strategies for managing and getting at version history for documents
• Suitability and ideas around using SharePoint as a front end that allows your customers to view some financial data.
• Workflow questions (as usual).

We’ll see and hear you there!

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

I’ve uploaded my presentation for the New York SharePoint Saturday here: http://cid-1cc1edb3daa9b8aa.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/SharePoint/Follow%20the%20Yellow%20Brick%20Road%20to%20SharePoint%20Mastery.pptx

It’s not terribly useful if you don’t go to the presentation, but I do hope to add a lot of notes between now and Tampa, when I present it again.  That would give it more legs and context and be more generally useful.

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

SharePoint Shop Talk continues this Thursday at 12:30 PM EDT to 1:30PM EDT.  This will be our 5th call I believe.  SharePoint Shop Talk works like this:

• A panel of SharePoint Experts answer questions.  This week the panel includes Laura Rogers, Natalya Voskresenskaya, Harry Jones and me.
• Any SharePoint question is fair game. 
• Send or ask questions:
  • By email: info@arcovis.com
  • Twitter directly to @pagalvin
  • Leave a comment on this blog
  • Write the question down on the back of a piece of poster board, one side of which is covered with $20 bills and mailed to my home address (leave a comment and I will be in touch with you directly).
  • Lastly, dial into the call and just ask it out loud.

This week we have a few questions around SharePoint workflow.  Two sample questions:

• “How do I deploy a SharePoint Designer workflow from development to test?”
• “Does SharePoint Designer workflow work well with InfoPath?  How I can share information between an InfoPath form and a SharePoint Designer workflow?”

This week’s SharePoint Shop Talk registration is up.  Click here to register.  We hope to hear you there!

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

We resume SharePoint Shop Talk tomorrow at 12:30 PM EDT.  As usual, if there are any topics or questions you’d like the panel to address, please email them to info@arcovis.com.

This week we are drawing a few questions from the www.endusersharepoint.com Stump The Panel forums:

• “I understand that a parent site and a child site cannot communicate. For instance, I would like to either push data from a list in a child site to a list in a parent site or have the parent site pull data from child site. Is there a way to design a workflow to accomplish having data sent for pulled from lists in a parent/child site relationship?”
• “On my newform.aspx for my main list, I have a lookup column that points to the title column in my employee list.

  In the employee list, there is another column that is a checkbox named ‘active’.

  What I would like to happen is on the newform of the main list, when they click on the dropdown it only displays the records from the employee list that are marked active.

  Is there a way to filter the dropdown on the mainlist’s newform.aspx so it only displays the ones marked active?”

• “I know this is simple but, for the life of me I can’t get it to work! We have a discussion board that we built a date field into call expiration. I would like to automatically have expired items delete after their expiration date. If you could send me a screen shot of the workflow it would be much appreciated. Basically if expired = today then delete current item “
• “I am trying to set up a sign-up list for a blood drive, wherein once a time slot is chosen, it is no longer available. Is there a way to do this, besides just making an Excel-type spreadsheet be the sign-up? “

And if we have time:

• How many SharePoint experts does it take to change a light bulb?

In addition, we answer questions directly from email and we’re open to questions any time on the call itself.

Register here: https://www323.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000043750/Registration.aspx?pageName=0dc4shjthnl6d0mm

</end>

Subscribe to my blog.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin