Ayman El-Hattab's Blog (SharePoint MVP)

Tools & Resources you don’t want to miss!

2011-09-14T08:41:00.001-07:00

Yes, I know. It has been long time since I last shared links. If you were following my blog, I was more focusing on sharing some real life experience through original content. However, the following tools and resources are super cool, stuff that everyone should share!

Below are tools that every Developer and/or IT Pro should have in their toolbox.

Web App Gallery – create websites the easiest way
Windows Phone SDK link – all you need to write world class mobile apps
Azure SDK - get the tools and learn how to develop Cloud apps

Below are resources that every Developer and/or IT Pro should have in their toolbox.

Microsoft virtual academy – free e-courses on Virtualization and Management
TechNet Portal – the essential portal for IT Professionals
TechNet Wiki – collective knowledge of Microsoft experts and your peers
TechNet Downloads – download free trials and betas of the latest Microsoft software
IT Skills for the Cloud – all you need to set the sky as the limit for your career in a Cloud IT environment
MSDN link – the key portal to knowledge base, free tools and
MSDN Virtual Labs – it’s like a big full scale data-center but for your experiments and creativity only
MSDN News Flash – subscribe for the key news and special offers

Creating No-Code BCS Solutions in SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010–From TechEd Middle East 2011

2011-04-10T15:08:00.001-07:00

As per the requests I received after my sessions at Microsoft TechEd Middle East 2011, I’ll be posting the slide decks of my sessions here along with some photos (I know I know, you might not be interested in this)

I’ll start today with the session I delivered in the Pre-TechEd day.

Title: Creating No-Code BCS Solutions in SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010
Track: Office and SharePoint (PRE301)
Speakers: Ayman El-Hattab, Muhammed Nabil
Session Type: Pre-Conference Seminar
Room: Green Room 2 | Level: 300 – Advanced
Description: With the introduction of Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2010, It's now easy to build no-code productivity solutions that extend LOB Systems to the user level by means of powerful and familiar interfaces (and what's more familiar than Office?). This session introduces BCS, Office Business Applications (OBA) and shows the power that SharePoint 2010, Office 2010 and BCS brings to the table.

View Slide Deck on SlideShare.net
View Slide Deck on PowerPoint Web Apps
Download Slide Deck from SkyDrive

Photos from the session

VIEW SLIDE SHOW

DOWNLOAD ALL

SharePoint MVP for another year .. Exciting news

2011-04-03T06:28:00.001-07:00

I should love April 1st… this is my anniversary date for my MVP award. You never know if you’re going to have an April Fool’s joke pulled on you or not. Regardless, I got the following email last Friday :

Dear Ayman El Hattab,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in SharePoint Server technical communities during the past year.

Wuhoooooo, I have been renewed as SharePoint Server MVP for 2011. I would like to thank Microsoft for this. It’s an honour to be part of this vibrant knowledgable community. It's also really exciting to be associated with this great product "SharePoint". The product itself is fantastic and it has bunch of talented experts in the form of MVPs and support of product team is excellent. Moreover SharePoint community is really vibrant, helpful and knowledgeable (You can follow the hashtag #SP2010 and #SharePoint on Twitter to understand what I mean).

I'd to like thank my MVP Lead Ruari Plint and my ex-lead Baransel Dogan for their support and encouragement. I'd also like to thank people who have attended my talks, read my blogs and participated in the newsgroups and forums.

Last year was a very busy year and one of my best when it comes to community participation. It ended up with three very successful TechEd talks and my first contribution to a published book (SharePoint 2010 Unleashed). I've big plans for the SharePoint community this year, especially the online one.. Stay tuned!

Follow me on Twitter : @aymanelhattab http://www.twitter.com/AymanElhattab
Connect with me through LinkedIn:http://eg.linkedin.com/in/aymanelhattab

Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA - Registration

2011-01-15T07:04:00.000-08:00

Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA is back on January 22nd, 2011. This is the second annual SPSEMEA and promises to be a huge event with over 30 sessions, 4 simultaneous Live Meeting Channels and a public text chatroom open to participants and speakers.

Registration for SPSEMEA began last Tuesday, January 11 and is free to the global SharePoint Community. There are over 30 SharePoint Evangelists, including 10 SharePoint MVPs, from around the world providing content you would normally only see at a paid SharePoint Conference. Tracks are set for SharePoint End Users and Business Managers on topics for "How We Did It: Real World Case Studies", "No Code/Assembly Solutions", "SharePoint Interface Branding", and "SharePoint for Business". The sessions will be recorded and made available two weeks after the event.

Confirmed Presenters

Agnes Molnar, MVP: Hungary
Andrew Woodward, MVP: United Kingdom
Ant Clay: United Kingdom
Ayman El-Hattab, MVP: Egypt
Brett Lonsdale: United Kingdom
Chirag Patel: United States
Chris Poteet: United States
Christian Buckley: United States
Coskun Cavusoglu: United States
Daniel McPherson: India
Dave Coleman: United Kingdom
Derek Weeks: United States
Eric Riz: Candada
Fabian Williams: United States
Geoff Varosky: United States
Hossam Behery: United States
Ian Woodgate: United Kingdom
Jeremy Thake, MVP: Australia
Jerry Yasir, MVP: Saudi Arabia
Jim Bob Howard: United States
Jose Antonio Morales: United States
Laura Rogers: United States
Mai Omar: Egypt
Marc Anderson, MVP: United States
Mark Rackley: United States
Marwan Tarek, MVP: Egypt
Matt Bramer: United States
Michael Hinckley: United States
Muhammed Nabil: Eygpt
Nicolas Georgeault: France
Nigel Price: United Kingdom
Rackley Mark: United States
Rutherford Wilson: United States
Ruven Gotz, MVP: Canada
Saifullah Shafiq, MVP: United States
Sarah Haase: United States
Symon Garfield: United States

Toni, Isaac, Mark and I will be moderating the sessions, making sure everything is going smoothly.

We hope you'll join us for Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA. Please register in advance to guarantee yourself free access to some of the best presentations available, all aimed at SharePoint End Users.
See you there.

Ayman El-Hattab (@aymanelhattab), Egypt
Mark Miller (@eusp), United States
Toni Frankola (@ToniFrankola), Croatia
Isaac Stith (@MrIsaac), United States

Feature and Solution Framework in SP2010–From Ignite Training

2011-01-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

As promised, here is another slide deck from SP2010 development training that I delivered last week to partners @ Microsoft Egypt.

Today I’m sharing a presentation about the main building blocks of SharePoint; Features and Solutions.

Your feedback is appreciated.

View in brower (PowerPoint Web App)
View on SlideShare
Download from SkyDrive

Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA!

2011-01-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

SharePoint Saturday EMEA is a loosely knit group of SharePoint evangelists from around the world. We are working together, using SharePoint as a collaboration tool to sponsor live, online global events.

On January 22nd, 2011, we will hold our 2nd annual, live online SharePoint Saturday event in the EMEA Timezones.

Registration to attend LIVE ONLINE SHAREPOINT SATURDAY EMEA begins on January 11, 2011. Please mark your calendar to guarantee your seat.

On January 11, 2011, we will begin open registration for those wishing to attend the sessions. Please mark you calendar and begin spreading the word. Last session we had 600 registrations and hope to break 1000 for this series. Thanks in advance for helping us out.

SPSEMEA Organizing Team

Mark Miller, United States
Toni Frankola, Croatia
Isaac Stith, United States
Ayman El-Hattab, Egypt

SharePoint 2010 Architecture Slides–From Ignite Training

2011-01-04T04:30:00.000-08:00

During my SharePoint 2010 Ignite Training for developers @ Microsoft Egypt, I delivered two Architecture sessions; I’m sharing the slides here.

First Session: SharePoint 2010 Web Application Architecture

View on PowerPoint Web Apps
View on SlideShare
Download from SkyDrive

Second Session: SharePoint 2010 Service Application Architecture

View on PowerPoint Web Apps
View on SlideShare
Download from SkyDrive

SharePoint 2010 as a Development Platform– From SharePoint Ignite Training

2011-01-02T10:38:00.001-08:00

Last week, I delivered “SharePoint 2010 Ignite training for developers” for Microsoft partners @ Microsoft Egypt. I was very lucky to meet some of the top-notch developers in Egypt and teach them some of the new development features in SharePoint 2010.

I received many requests to share my slides and I promised to share them on my blog! Today I will share one of the dearest presentations to my heart, “SharePoint 2010 as a Development Platform”, feel free to download it and share it with your teams.

Session Objectives

1. Understand SharePoint editions and prerequisites.
2. Understand the features SharePoint offers as a development Platform.
3. Explore the differences between a site collection and a site.
4. Create site collections and sites
5. Create lists and libraries through the browser.
6. Use Web Part pages.

View it on the browser using Office Web Apps
View it on SlideShare
Download from SkyDrive

Egyptian MVPs Dinner

2010-12-29T12:51:00.001-08:00

[[Cross-post from Shady Khorshed’s blog]]

I'd like to thank all the great team that attended our dinner, really it was great day and wish to see you all soon my dear friends.

From right to left
Mina Nagy, Mohamed Nar, Dr. Ahmed Bahaa, Sherif Talaat, Ayman El-Hattab, Yasser Makram, Walid Omar, Shady Khorshed and Mohamed Wahby.

[[Cross-post from Shady Khorshed’s blog]]

SharePoint Saturday Arabia Postponed

2010-12-03T03:55:00.000-08:00

I am sorry to announce that SharePoint Saturday Arabia, scheduled to be held on December 11th has been postponed until further notice.

For those who cannot wait and keen to attend other SharePoint talks and events, I recommend the following top-notch events:

1. SharePoint Saturday EMEA: this will be huge, organized and sponsored by great ISV’s and partners, stay tuned for more info http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/emea |http://www.endusersharepoint.com

2. TechEd Middle East : Register Now!

3. SharePoint Conference 2011, Qatar. Register Now!

4. MS3arab Community monthly meetings: I’ll be speaking next month about SharePoint 2010.

Stay tuned for the news dates for SharePoint Saturday Arabia, this will be announced very soon!

When to write a custom BCS connector?

2010-12-02T23:57:00.000-08:00

I have been asked this question several times during the last month and I have tried to shed some light on that during my session at OpenDoor Egypt. Today, I stumbled upon a good MSDN article that concisely answers this question :

Differences Between Using the .NET Assembly Connector and Writing a Custom Connector

Happy Coding

About MS3arab Community!

2010-11-24T05:54:00.000-08:00

Who Are We?

Set of cooperative Industry Geeks who targets cooperating with community to avail high-end sessions to the Microsoft technical community in Arabic.

Who are MS3arab Co-Founders?

Ahmed Bahaa, Ph.D, MVP, and RD
Ayman El-Hattab, MVP.
Mohamed Rafaat Samy.
Mohamed Bahaa, M.Sc.
Mahmoud Ghoz.
Shady Naguib

Other Key Members

Marwan Tarek, MVP –SharePoint
Sharif Talaat, MVP –Windows Power Shell
Mahmoud Magdy, MVP –Exchange.
Mohamed Aamer
Mohamed Yehia.

Our Target Audience

Working Professionals.
Enterprise Workers

Our Host

Our Gatherings

When :On Monthly Basis, Last Wednesday of the Month (6:30 –9:30)

Where : EBI

How: Each gathering will include 2 sessions (2 X 75Min.)

Always Check Prerequisites before attending

Connect With Us

Facebook Group (MS3arab)
Facebook Fan page (MS3arab)
Twitter (MS3arab)

Microsoft leading the Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace through SharePoint

2010-11-20T23:56:00.000-08:00

Microsoft moved forward considerably on the 2010 Social Software for the Workplace Magic Quadrant. Microsoft maintained its #1 position on the Ability to Execute axis and moved forward rather substantially on the Completeness of Vision axis, overtaking IBM and several other competitors there and coming very close to Jive.

Also it’s worth mentioning that there are two competitors who are NOT present in the 2010 Social Software for the Workplace MQ: Google and Cisco.

Google was dropped from this Magic Quadrant for 2010 due to the demise of Wave and Gartner’s lack of confidence in Google’s commitment to the enterprise. Cisco, on the other hand, despite a year of heavy marketing of Quad to analysts and customer elites failed to meet the bar for market presence.

Click here to download the full report.

PDC Cairo Local Event / MS3arab Community Launch in photos!

2010-11-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

PDC Cairo Local Event/MS3arab Community Launch was phenomenal with great enthusiastic attendees and speakers. I would like to thank all those who participated in making this happens (including Egyptian MSP’s). I would like to leave you for now with some photos from the event.

Photo Album

VIEW SLIDE SHOW

DOWNLOAD ALL

I have received some questions via mail about the new community (MS3arab), the process of registration and more. I'll leave this to another detailed post, stay tuned ….

SharePoint Saturday Arabia is back –11 Dec 2010

2010-10-27T06:32:00.000-07:00

SharePoint Saturday Arabia Online event is back!

Following from last successful event, this online event is scheduled for DEC 11, 2010.

Last March, we hosted the first instance of SharePoint Saturday Arabia and it was a success, thanks to our speakers and sponsors. It was a ten hour event with 15 Speakers, including 8 MVPs, and two simultaneous sessions running every hour. We had 750 registrants and around 150 attendees( Recording from the first event are still available here http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2010/04/05/sharepoint-saturday-arabia-wrap-up-recording-and-bonus-videos/ )

This is the second event and we are hoping for the same success and enthusiasm from our audience.

In the spirit of giving back to the SharePoint Community, the event admission will be free of charge, supported by people volunteering their time to speak on their favorite SharePoint topic.

We are now taking speaker submissions. Please download the speaker submission form. There are some new questions on there that you might not have seen if you have participated in previous SharePoint Saturday events since we are dealing with multiple timezones and continents.

We will take submissions only for 2010 material. Presentations will last one hour with possible Q&A continuing through the live blogging platform.

Speaking at Open Door Egypt 2, 3 November

2010-10-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

Microsoft will be hosting its new annual event Microsoft Open Door at the Fairmont hotel, Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt for two days 2nd and 3rd of November 2010.The event will have two tracks; one for Developers and the other for ITPros.

I will be presenting “Developing Office Business Applications with Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010“on November, 3rd (2:30 – 3:30 PM)

Developers track schedule

TUE NOV 2nd - Day 1

8:30 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Keynote

11:00 AM 11:30 AM Break

11:30 AM 12:30 PM Building Modern Line-of-Business Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

12:30 PM 12:45 PM Break

12:45 PM 1:45 PM Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Application Platform

1:45 PM 2:45 PM Lunch Break

2:45 PM 3:45 PM Lap around the Windows Azure Platform

3:45 PM 4:15 PM Break

4:15 PM 5:15 PM IE9 for Developers

WED NOV 3rd - Day 2

9:00 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Microsoft Office 2010: Developing the Next Wave of Productivity Solutions

11:00 AM 11:15 AM Break

11:15 AM 12:15 PM Overview of Microsoft Web Platform

12:15 PM 12:30 PM Break

12:30 PM 1:30 PM Software Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

1:30 PM 2:30 PM Lunch Break

2:30 PM 3:30 PM Developing Office Business Applications with Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

3:30 PM 3:45 PM Break

3:45 PM 4:45 PM Jump into Microsoft Silverlight and Become Immediately Effective

4:45 PM 5:00 PM Break

5:00 PM 6:00 PM SQL Unplugged

6:00 PM 7:00 PM Introducing Microsoft Lync 2010

ITPros track schedule

TUE NOV 2nd - Day 1

8:30 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Keynote
11:00 AM 11:30 AM Break

11:30 AM 12:30 PM Realizing a Dynamic Datacenter Environment with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Partner Solutions

12:30 PM 12:45 PM Break

12:45 PM 1:45 PM Business intelligence: Creating the right cubes for Microsoft Office Excel and Excel services

1:45 PM 2:45 PM Lunch Break

2:45 PM 3:45 PM SharePoint 2010 : The new era of digital media platform

3:45 PM 4:15 PM Break

4:15 PM 5:15 PM Windows 7 + MDOP: Optimized Desktop Solutions

5:15 PM 5:30 PM Break

WED NOV 3rd - Day 2

9:00 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Deploying Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization v1 to Solve Windows 7 Application Compatibility

11:00 AM 11:15 AM Break

11:15 AM 12:15 PM Business Ready Security: Exploring the Identity and Access Management Solution

12:15 PM 12:30 PM Break

12:30 PM 1:30 PM Introducing Microsoft Lync

1:30 PM 2:30 PM Lunch Break

2:30 PM 3:30 PM Upgrading from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003/2007 to Exchange Server 2010: Tips, Tricks, and Lessons Learned

3:30 PM 3:45 PM Break

3:45 PM 4:45 PM Microsoft High Performance Computing Server

4:45 PM 5:00 PM Break

5:00 PM 6:00 PM SQL Unplugged

6:00 PM 7:00 PM Introducing Microsoft Lync 2010

Registration:

Developers track

ITPro track

Invitation: Enterprise Developers Academy–Microsoft Egypt

2010-10-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Develop your expertise

Get up to speed on all the latest tools available to enhance
your skills and create new, innovative solutions.

Develop your network

Meet and interact with industry leaders and professionals. Share
and exchange tips on development, generate ideas and establish relationships.

Develop new solutions

Discover how you can get more value out of your existing tools and
deliver superior solutions through in-depth discussions and demos.

Don't miss this exclusive event.

Introduction to SharePoint Development

Date: Wednesday October 27, 2010

Time: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Presenter: Ashraf Mansour

Place: Microsoft Egypt Building in Smart Village

Description:

Learn to develop for SharePoint Server 2010 using Visual Studio 2010, with demos on developing a sample custom workflow and a sample web part.

Seats are limited, to confirm your attendance, please reply back to mohamedw@microsoft.com

Speaking at Open Door Egypt 2, 3 November

2010-10-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

Microsoft will be hosting its new annual event Microsoft Open Door at the Fairmont hotel, Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt for two days 2nd and 3rd of November 2010.

the event will have two tracks; one for Developers and the other for ITPros.

I will be presenting “Developing Office Business Applications with Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010“on November, 3rd (2:30 – 3:30 PM)

Developers track schedule

TUE NOV 2nd - Day 1

8:30 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Keynote

11:00 AM 11:30 AM Break

11:30 AM 12:30 PM Building Modern Line-of-Business Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

12:30 PM 12:45 PM Break

12:45 PM 1:45 PM Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Application Platform

1:45 PM 2:45 PM Lunch Break

2:45 PM 3:45 PM Lap around the Windows Azure Platform

3:45 PM 4:15 PM Break

4:15 PM 5:15 PM IE9 for Developers

WED NOV 3rd - Day 2

9:00 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Microsoft Office 2010: Developing the Next Wave of Productivity Solutions

11:00 AM 11:15 AM Break

11:15 AM 12:15 PM Overview of Microsoft Web Platform

12:15 PM 12:30 PM Break

12:30 PM 1:30 PM Software Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

1:30 PM 2:30 PM Lunch Break

2:30 PM 3:30 PM Developing Office Business Applications with Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

3:30 PM 3:45 PM Break

3:45 PM 4:45 PM Jump into Microsoft Silverlight and Become Immediately Effective

4:45 PM 5:00 PM Break

5:00 PM 6:00 PM SQL Unplugged

6:00 PM 7:00 PM Introducing Microsoft Lync 2010

ITPros track schedule

TUE NOV 2nd - Day 1

8:30 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Keynote
11:00 AM 11:30 AM Break

11:30 AM 12:30 PM Realizing a Dynamic Datacenter Environment with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Partner Solutions

12:30 PM 12:45 PM Break

12:45 PM 1:45 PM Business intelligence: Creating the right cubes for Microsoft Office Excel and Excel services

1:45 PM 2:45 PM Lunch Break

2:45 PM 3:45 PM SharePoint 2010 : The new era of digital media platform

3:45 PM 4:15 PM Break

4:15 PM 5:15 PM Windows 7 + MDOP: Optimized Desktop Solutions

5:15 PM 5:30 PM Break

WED NOV 3rd - Day 2

9:00 AM 10:00 AM Registration

10:00 AM 11:00 AM Deploying Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization v1 to Solve Windows 7 Application Compatibility

11:00 AM 11:15 AM Break

11:15 AM 12:15 PM Business Ready Security: Exploring the Identity and Access Management Solution

12:15 PM 12:30 PM Break

12:30 PM 1:30 PM Introducing Microsoft Lync

1:30 PM 2:30 PM Lunch Break

2:30 PM 3:30 PM Upgrading from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003/2007 to Exchange Server 2010: Tips, Tricks, and Lessons Learned

3:30 PM 3:45 PM Break

3:45 PM 4:45 PM Microsoft High Performance Computing Server

4:45 PM 5:00 PM Break

5:00 PM 6:00 PM SQL Unplugged

6:00 PM 7:00 PM Introducing Microsoft Lync 2010

Registration:

Developers track

ITPro track

Creating a host-named site collection programmatically

2010-10-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

A host header is a third piece of information that you can use in addition to the IP address and port number to uniquely identify a Web domain or, as Microsoft calls it, an application server.

In SharePoint 2010, You can apply host headers at two different levels :

The Web application (IIS Web site) level
The site collection level

The following code snippet programmatically creates the host-named site collection with the URL http://training.sharepoint.com in the SharePoint Server 2010 Web application with the URL http://sharepoint

SPWebApplication webApp = SPWebApplication.Lookup(new
Uri("http://sharepoint"));
SPSiteCollection sites = webApp.Sites;
SPSite Site = sites.Add(“http://training.sharepoint.com”, "Training",
"Training Site", 1025, "STS#0", "domain\ayman",
"Ayman El-Hattab", “ayman@aymanelhattab.com”, "domain\marwan”,
"Marwan Tarek", marwan@marwantarek.net, true);

You can also use PowerShell to achieve the same results, for more info refer to : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc424952.aspx

SharePoint is leading Gartner Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals

2010-10-19T04:45:00.001-07:00

Gartner recently published a report by Jim Murphy, Gene Phifer, Ray Valdes and Eric Knipp: the 2010 Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals. In the report, Microsoft not only maintains its Leadership ranking but moves into the #1 position on the report – highest on both the Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision axes – overtaking IBM.

Five vendors dominated portal selections during the latter part of 2009 and into 2010: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Liferay. Microsoft SharePoint is a consideration in more Gartner portal inquiries — over 70% — than any other vendor.

Source: Gartner (September 2010)

http://blogs.technet.com/b/cbortlik/archive/2010/10/19/congratulations-to-sharepoint-product-team-for-achieving-1-ranking-on-gartner-s-2010-horizontal-portals-magic-quadrant.aspx

Contributor Author to “SharePoint 2010 Unleashed”

2010-10-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, SAMS announced the release of “SharePoint 2010 Unleashed” book, the successor of “SharePoint 2007 Unleashed”, one of the best-selling SharePoint books. This really means a lot to me since I’ve contributed to the book by writing Chapter 9, “Managing and Maintaining SQL Server in a SharePoint Environment”. I’m really excited about this and looking forward to writing a complete SharePointy book very soon, would you like to join ?

I would also like to thank Michael Noel for this great opportunity and for the great writing tips he provided me with… Thanks Michael and I really wish to see you again in Cairo.

TechEd Middle East Registration Opens

2010-10-12T03:48:00.001-07:00

Registration is now open for TechEd Middle East 2011. Tech·Ed is Microsoft’s premier technical education event providing the most comprehensive technical training on Microsoft’s suite of products, technologies, solutions and services and takes place in Dubai, March 8 – 10, 2011.

Hear about the future of Microsoft’s products and technologies directly from the Microsoft leadership team in the keynote
Choose from 200 technical sessions delivered by Microsoft and industry experts
Touch the technology through more than 40 PC-based instructor-led training labs
Ask your questions at the NEW Ask The Experts forum
Meet with product experts and see product demos at the Technical Learning Centre
Explore industry solutions at the Tech·Ed Expo

Benefit from the Super Saver registration fee of only $795 for all registrations before 31 December 2010.

www.teched.ae

Microsoft MEA Center of Expertise Blog

2010-10-11T14:05:00.001-07:00

We are a 60+ technology enthusiasts helping Microsoft customers around Middle-East & Africa region. We bridge Microsoft tools & technologies to their businesses. Our aim is to solve customer business problems using Microsoft technologies.

And here is our blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/meacoex/

Cairo PDC10/MS3arab Community Launch

2010-10-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

Since 1991, the PDC has been the epicenter of Microsoft’s biggest platform announcements. This year will be no exception. Leading-edge developers and architects will gather in Redmond this October to hear firsthand from Microsoft’s leaders about the next generation of Microsoft developer technologies.

The PDC isn’t just about content and sessions – it’s an opportunity for you to get hands-on access to the latest technologies, have your questions answered by the people who conceived and built the technologies and plan the features and architecture to support your business goals. If you’re a developer, architect or technology leader involved in making strategic technology decisions for your company or organization, you can’t afford to miss the PDC.

Due to the overwhelming interest in the Redmond event, The MS3arab Community, under sponsorship of CompuPharaohs are working with Microsoft Egypt, to provide easier opportunity to attend a PDC10 event in Cairo-Egypt.

About MS3arab:

A new Microsoft Oriented Community. It has been founded by the Microsoft Regional Director-Middle East, Group of MVPs, as well as other industry geeks.

Register here

New features in Office Web Apps

2010-09-25T10:08:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Microsoft Office Web Apps team introduced very cool new features to the web apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote).

In a nutshell, the new features are :

Now in Excel Web Apps, you can add line, bar, pie, and many other charts to your excel speadsheets just from the browser.
Drag and copy formulas and data just as you do in Excel.
View Excel spreadsheets on your mobile browser. (Similar experience to Word and PowerPoint on mobile).
Insert Clip-arts to PowerPoint presentations (from office.com).
Embed a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet in a blog or website. With PowerPoint presentations, viewers can page through a mini version of the slides or view in full screen.
Now you can open Office files on your desktop directly from SkyDrive. Microsoft added this feature after seeing that over 90% of the Office documents on SkyDrive are created in Office on the desktop. Making it easier to work with those files just makes sense.

For more about the new features, demos and videos, refer to this post.

Indexing files larger than 16 MB in SharePoint 2010

2010-08-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I came across an interesting blog post by Fellow MVP, Todd Klidnt in which he explains how to work around the 16 MB limitation for file indexing in SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell.

“As with previous versions of SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 will not index the contents of files larger than 16 MB. There are a couple of reasons for this such as network usage pulling large files across and the time it takes to break them apart”. Click here to continue to the post.

SPQuery to External List ignores the RowLimit attribute

2010-08-22T04:44:00.000-07:00

Using CAML Queries is the only supported way to query external lists. It comes in very handy If you want to retrieve external data within a sandboxed application, without using a full-trust proxy. However using CAML Queries with external lists comes with some gotchas. Consider the following snippet :

SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
query.Query = "<Method Name='ReadList' />" +
"<OrderBy><FieldRef Name=\"CustomerID\"/></OrderBy>" +
"<RowLimit Paged=\"TRUE\">10</RowLimit>" +
"<Aggregations Value=\"Off\"/>";

SPListItemCollection items = lstCustomers.GetItems(query);

Unfortunately, this query just ignores the RowLimit and returns all the data from the external data source and not only the first 10 items as specified in the query. This is a known issue!

For more information :

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010programming/thread/7a86ba74-ea19-42f3-bde9-690542c84552

Browsing PowerPivot Generated Cubes in SQL Server Management Studio

2010-08-09T02:34:00.000-07:00

When publishing Excel Workbooks that contains PowerPivot objects, a real Analysis Services cube is generated on the fly, you don’t believe me?

1. Install the PowerPivot Add-in for Excel 2010 and use it to create a workbook.

2. Publish the workbook to a document library which is marked as a trusted data source (Unlike MOSS 2007, All SharePoint sources are trusted by default in SharePoint 2010 as shown below).

3. Open SQL Server Management Studio, click Connect > Analysis Services and type the URL of the workbook you just published and click Connect.

Interesting, eh ?

Presenting tomorrow : “Delivering Business Intelligence Using SharePoint 2010 Excel Services”

2010-08-05T05:25:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I’ll be presenting @EgyGeeks online UG. I’ll speak about SharePoint 2010 Excel Services from both the technical and the business perspective. If you have any questions or if you need me to cover anything related to Excel Services, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment here.

For more info, follow the hashtag #EgyGeeks on twitter.

Excel Services limitations and workarounds

2010-08-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while presenting about Business Intelligence using SharePoint 2010 Excel Services, we came across the data validation limitation. NOTE: Excel Access Web Part refuses to load a published Excel workbook that contains Data Validation.

Here are couple of interesting articles that are worth reading:

1) A PivotTable Trick That Brings Data Validation to Excel Services http://blogs.msdn.com/b/excel/archive/2008/02/13/a-pivottable-trick-that-brings-data-validation-to-excel-services.aspx

2) Unsupported Features in Excel Services
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms496823.aspx

Cannot Refresh or Filter Data in Published Workbooks [Excel Services – SharePoint 2010]

2010-07-31T13:09:00.000-07:00

As shown in the screenshot below, I was trying to consume data from SQL Server Analysis Services cube using Excel 2010 Pivot Table.

Refreshing and filtering data worked as expected on the client but when I published my workbook to Excel Services, filtering and slicing produced the following error :

“The data connection uses Windows Authentication and Excel Services is unable to delegate user credentials.”

Of course, the workbook existed in a trusted location and the external data connection file resided in a trusted connection library.

To solve this issue, I navigated to the Central Administration and started “Claims to Windows Token services” as shown below :

This allowed me to refresh data using Windows Authentication…

Using external data in Excel Services [MOSS 2007]

2010-07-31T04:39:00.000-07:00

Excel Services supports displaying data from external locations if those locations were configured as “Trusted”. Try creating a simple excel document with a Table that displays data from a SQL server table . Now try to view it in Excel Web Access. You will get the following error:

After some investigations, I found out that Excel services supports displaying data from external data sources, but not in a table format, only in a pivot table!

To work around this limitation, you need to convert your tables to pivot ones? How ? Download this tool and you are good to go !

For more info : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cumgranosalis/archive/2006/11/03/query-tables-work-around-for-excel-services.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc514223(office.12).aspx#MOSS2007TenTips_ConfiguringExternalDataConnections

Error when publishing to MOSS 2007 "This file cannot be saved to this location because there is no connection...."

2010-07-29T02:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was playing with Excel Services on an old MOSS 2007 VM that has no network. When publishing an Excel Spreadsheet to Excel Services, I received the following error:

"Microsoft Office Excel This file cannot be saved to this location because there is no connection to the server. Check your network connection and try again. "

After some quick research, I found out that this problem is related to the System Event Notification Service. To work around this issue, I ran net stop sens from the command line.

And I was able to publish the Excel spreadsheet :)

Cool Stuff : All up Business Intelligence Demo – Release 9.2

2010-07-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has developed a comprehensive Business Intelligence solution demo (version 9.2) using SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 technology. This solution enables Business Intelligence for everyone at Contoso (fictional company created by Microsoft) through familiar tools, self–service capabilities, and access to critical business information.

There are two ways to access this demo solution, online remote access to server configured by Microsoft or via configuring virtual machine locally.

The Demo Release 9.2 has been made available on the Microsoft Partner site for download. There are 42 files in the download (around 29 GB in all, once extracted though over 80). Need some serious RAM and of course Hyper-V for it to work.

Key Features:
• SharePoint 2010 Insights, PerformancePoint Services, Excel Services, Visio Services, Reporting Services, Search, Social Relevance, Communities, Team Sites, People Profiles, Blogs, Organizational Browser, Workflows
• Silverlight, integrated with Bing Maps for the Enterprise and SQL Server Analysis Services
• Office 2010 Web Applications, Excel Co-editing
• PowerPivot for SharePoint, Excel
• PowerPivot Management Dashboard
• Report Builder 3.0
• SQL Server 2008 R2 DB Engine

Get it from here: http://www.mssalesdemos.com

For more info : http://bisqlserver.rdacorp.com/2010/03/all-up-bi-demo-release-92.html

Interview with Microsoft MVPs

2010-07-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Just thought of sharing this interesting interviews with you … I really enjoy reading them and knowing the different learning techniques and strategies of other fellow MVPs.

Click here to read the interviews and click here to read mine :)

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 MCPD & MCITP Certifications

2010-07-21T01:43:00.000-07:00

Last month, I took the beta exams for SharePoint Server 2010. Over the last week, the results for these have been declared. I'm really glad to say that I have passed the exams. That gives me the right to use the following logos:

For those who are not aware of SharePoint 2010 Certifications, Microsoft now offers two separate tracks namely MCPD for Developers and MCITP for IT Professionals each containing two exams. For more information about the exams and how to prepare yourself for them, check Razi’s post here.

Now on CodePlex: SPListConfiguration Feature

2010-07-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

SPListConfiguration is a SharePoint feature that developers can use to configure their SharePoint lists using XML and without the need of writing .NET code.

SPListConfiguration can be used for many different purposes. For example, you can use it to set most of the properties for the SPList object that references your list or to stop inheriting permissions from the parent web. You can even use it to add properties to the property bag of the list root folder.

For configuring a list using SPListConfiguration, you should specify the list name in the preoperty Key and the desired configuration settings in the property value as shown below :

<Properties>
<Property Key="Calendar" Value="Hidden,true;EnableVersioning,false;AddToPropertyBag,MyKey:MyValue"/>
<Property Key="Tasks" Value="BreakRoleInheritance,false;ReadSecurity,2"/>
</Properties>

The previous XML does the following on your behalf :
SPList.Hidden = true;
SPList.EnableVersioning= false;
SPList.BreakRoleInheritance(false);
SPList.ReadSecurity = 2;
And it also adds a property of name "MyKey" and value "MyValue" to the property bag of the SPlist root folder. Neat, eh ? This is the Reflection magic:)

SPListConfiguration can be used in two ways:

1) From a site definition; in the <WebFeatures> element.

<WebFeatures>
<Feature ID="9697591b-c325-43e8-bf2f-3c33e05c59b4">
<Properties>
<Property Key="Calendar" Value="Hidden,true;EnableVersioning,false;AddToPropertyBag,MyKey:MyValue"/>
<Property Key="Tasks" Value="BreakRoleInheritance,false;ReadSecurity,2"/>
</Properties>
</Feature>
</WebFeatures>

2) Since the key component of this feature is its feature receiver which performs all the heavy lifting,
you can only use the feature receiver assembly and hook it up as a receiver for your features :

<Feature Id="ID of Your Feature" Title="Countries List"
Description="A list that contains all the countries of the world"
Hidden="FALSE" Scope="Web"
ReceiverAssembly="SPListConfigurationFeature, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=064ae22bb48e8f1b"
ReceiverClass="SPListConfigurationFeature.SPListConfigurationFeature"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<ElementManifests>

<ElementManifest Location="elements.xml"/>
</ElementManifests>
<Properties>

<Property Key="Countries" Value="Hidden,true;BreakRoleInheritance,false"/>
</Properties>
</Feature>

Also keep in mind that you set any list properties of type String, Boolean or Int32 and this covers almost 95% of the available properties.

Let me know what you think !

More About Feature Scope

2010-07-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

Features are scoped, this means that you can have a feature activated at the farm, web application, site collection (site) , or site level (web). When a feature is activated at a scope, it also affects subscopes, so if you use a web application–scoped feature to add a custom action somewhere, then every site collection and every site beneath the web application will have the same custom action.You can combine different elements within a single feature as long as the elements are of compatible scope.

The following table lists some feature elements and the available scopes for each.

As you might have noticed, some features are available at more than one scope and the scope you select will depend on the granularity you need. If you want to add a custom action to the Site Actions menu of every site in every Web application, you can set the scope of the feature in which the element is defined to Farm. If you want to affect a single web within a site collection, set the scope to Web. Other features are available at only one or two scopes. For example, site columns (Field element) and content types only allow Site scope while List Instances and List Templates allow Site and Web scopes.

This does lead to a bit of a challenge when you want to add a web-scoped list template where you add some custom fields, which are site-scoped. More about activation challenges later...

Note: This is an excerpt from a lecture that I teach at USPJA

Free USPJA Webcast - “How to Best Gather Requirements for SharePoint” by Dux Raymond

2010-06-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

Poor requirements can be attributed to failed SharePoint implementations. The key to successful SharePoint implementation is properly developing requirements. A lot of people know that this is important, however, only a handful of folks truly understand what it takes to do this right.

In this presentation, you will learn key techniques in effectively eliciting, analyzing, prioritizing, validating and documenting requirements for SharePoint projects.
In addition, participants will be able to identify:
· Key components of requirements gathering process
· Why requirements traceability is paramount in defining ROI in SharePoint projects
· Why having a well defined business case is necessary to effectively initiate requirements gathering

The primary audience for this class are executives, managers, analysts, consultants who wish to properly implement SharePoint and immediately reap its’ organizational benefits.
Participants will get presentation notes, checklists, and templates.

It's a great lecture, held by one of the true masterminds of SharePoint project management, Dux Raymond Sy.

If you want to learn more about USPJ Academy, please visit http://www.uspja.com/

USPJ Academy Faculty Meeting in Dubai

2010-06-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was a special one not only because it included my birthday or because I spent it in a luxurious hotel in Dubai but because it held the first official faculty meeting for USPJ Academy. I really had fun meeting the SharePoint heroes in the photo above. We had great time celebrating the academy launch, socializing and of course discussing lots about the teaching system in the academy. We came up with very interesting ideas, stay tuned!

Here’s the list of my fellow faculty members, along with links to their blogs.

Sahil Malik
Laura Docherty
Marc Anderson
Bjørn Furuknap
Christina Wheeler
Anil Sharma

Speaking tomorrow at Microsoft Technology Week

2010-06-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

It might be a bit late, actually too late to announce it. I’ll be presenting tomorrow (June 16, 2010) at Microsoft Technology Week. The sessions will be held at Microsoft Egypt premise in Smart Village, Cairo. I’ll focus on SharePoint from the business perspective and the new features in SharePoint 2010. No code involved here. Oh, and attendance is free and no registration required.

Replacing Signout.aspx in SharePoint 2010

2010-06-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, this was a common requirement in SharePoint 2007 and there wasn’t an easy and supportable approach to achieve that. Now in SharePoint 2007, it’s as easy as calling a method, specifying the page that you want to replace (for instance: Signout, error, access denied, ..) and the URL of your new custom page.

The following feature receiver replaces the default SignOut page with a custom one on activation and resets the SignOut page to the default one on deactivation.

You can also replace other pages like AccessDenied.aspx, Confirmation.aspx, Error.aspx, Login.aspx, ReqAcc.aspx, SignOut.aspx or WebDeleted.aspx by specifying a member of SPWebApplication.SPCustomPage enum.

Interesting, eh ?

Setting status messages from the server side using SPPageStatusSetter

2010-06-03T06:13:00.000-07:00

As you might know, in SharePoint 2010, you can add status messages in the OOB status bar that renders just below the ribbon and the top navigation menu. There are lots of useful blog posts and tutorials showing how you can achieve that in javascript using SharePoint 2010 UI Framework. However, there is almost no tutorials or enough documentation about SPPageStatusSetter class which enables you to add status messages and achieve the same level of control from the server side using the powerful .NET server side languages.

Here is how you can do that using C# , the code is self-explanatory.

And here is the result:

Also note that SPPageStatusSetter class is in Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls namespace which means that it’s not available in SandBoxed solutions.

SharePoint 2010 UI Tips

2010-06-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

SharePoint 2010 ships with a brand new framework for delivering compelling user experiences for custom applications created using the SharePoint platform. Waldek Mastykarz [SharePoint MVP] has done a great job highlighting some of the benefits of the UI framework and how developers can make use of it in custom applications.

Showing persistent messages using the SharePoint 2010 Status bar: SharePoint 2010 UI tip #1
Showing transient messages using the SharePoint 2010 Notification Area – SharePoint 2010 UI tip #2

I’ll be posting more about the new UI framework shortly, stay tuned!

Understanding SharePoint Sandbox Solutions

2010-06-01T15:09:00.000-07:00

Many folks asked me about Sandboxed solutions and whether they are good or bad. IMHO, they are neither good nor bad, but at least they are the only option for hosting scenarios . Besides, they make more sense for me than creating custom CAS policies.

In any case, to fully understand SharePoint Sandboxed solution, check the following resources (It will be more beneficial for you if you read them in the order specified):

1. SharePoint 2010 Sandbox solutions, the definitive guide by Sahil Malik
2. SharePoint 2010 Sandbox solutions are bad by Doug Ware
3. Sandbox solutions are pretty damn good by Sahil Malik (Make sure to read the comments)
4. A Reply to Sahil Malik’s Defense of the Sandbox Architecture by Doug Ware
5. You can deploy WebParts as Sandboxed solutions but ... by Sahil Malik

Weird behavior of Post Synchronous ItemUpdated event attached to libraries in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

This blog post by fellow SharePoint MVP, Randy Williams has always been a good reference for me when working with SharePoint 2007 event receivers. I have decided to test Randy’s finding against SharePoint 2010 and extend his great work by taking into account the newly introduced “Post Synchronous” events.

The following table summarizes how Synchronous, Asynchronous and Post Synchronous events work with lists and libraries in SharePoint 2010.

List	BeforePropoerties	AfterProperties	properties.ListItem
ItemAdding	No value	New value	Null
ItemAdded	No value	New value	New value
ItemAdded - sync	No value	New value	New value
ItemUpdating	No value	Changed value	Original value
ItemUpdated	No value	Changed value	Changed value
ItemUpdated - sync	No value	Changed value	Changed value
ItemDeleting	No value	No value	Original value
ItemDeleted	No value	No value	Null
ItemDeleted - sync	No value	No value	Null

Library	BeforePropoerties	AfterProperties	properties.ListItem
ItemAdding	No value	No value	New value
ItemAdded	No value	No value	New value
ItemAdded - sync	No value	No value	New value
ItemUpdating	Original value	Changed value	Original value
ItemUpdated	No value	No value	Changed value
ItemUpdated - sync	No value	No value	Original value
ItemDeleting	No value	No value	Original value
ItemDeleted	No value	No value	Null
ItemDeleted - sync	No value	No value	Null

No value –> column value in the hash table was not available.
New value –> the new value for the column was available.
Changed value –> the updated value was available.
Original value—> the original value was available.
Null –> the item is not available.

As you can see, in the Post Synchronous ItemUpdated event attached to a library ( not a list), the properties.ListItem[“AField”] returns the original value (the value of a field before the update occurs) and there is no way to get the updated value. I’m not sure if this is a bug or by design, I’ll check and get back to you very soon.

Programmatically enforcing relationship behavior for lookup columns in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

Adding lookup fields programmatically using feature is a common task in SharePoint 2007/2010. Normally, you would create the site column using a Field feature element. However, The lookup field definition requires the Id of the parent list and you have no way to determine this at design time, besides they will be different from one site to another. ( List Instances are different than Site Columns or Content Types; you cannot specify a list instance ID as the case with Site Columns or Content Types).

This dependency will force you to create Lookup columns using code that look up the parent List ID and uses it to create a new field object to define the site column.

I used to do this frequently in SharePoint 2007 but when yesterday when testing that for SharePoint 2010, I just asked myself, how can I programmatically enforce the relationship behavior ?

If you need more info about list relationships in SharePoint 2010, refer to this blog post.

This is straightforward using the UI from the column settings page and fortunately it’s as easy using code.

Consider the following example, I have two lists :

Parent List –> Employees
Child List –> Projects

I have a “Team Leader” field in the “Projects” list referencing the Employees List to specify the team leader of each project in the “Projects List”. To create a lookup field and enforcing the relationship behavior, see the following code snippet:

string teamLeaderFieldInternalName = projectsList.Fields.AddLookup("Team Leader", employeesList.ID, false);
SPFieldLookup teamLeaderField = (SPFieldLookup)projectsList.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(teamLeaderFieldInternalName);
teamLeaderField.LookupField = employeesList.Fields["Title"].InternalName;
teamLeaderField.RelationshipDeleteBehavior = SPRelationshipDeleteBehavior.Cascade;
teamLeaderField.Update();

The previous code will raise the following exception “This lookup field cannot enforce a relationship behavior because it is not indexed”. To fix you need to set the Indexed property of teamLeaderField to true as shown below :

You might also want to check the other members in the SPRelationshipDeleteBehavior Enum, I have copied the members along with their description from MSDN for easier reference below :

None: Nothing happens when a parent item is deleted and the child item is left pointing to the parent as an orphan.

Cascade: A cascade delete happens when deleting a parent item deletes all related children items of the related list.

Restrict: Restricts a parent item having any children items in the related list from being deleted.

Recycling list items using LINQ to SharePoint

2010-05-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

Another interesting method that I found while investigating LINQ to SharePoint is the RecycleOnSubmit method.

context.Projects.RecycleOnSubmit(aProject);

context.Projects.DeleteOnSubmit(aProject);

If you want to move an item to the Recycle Bin, use the first method but if you want to entirely delete it use the second one.

And of course don’t forget to call context.SubmitChanges() to commit the changes to the content database.

Recursive and Folder-Scoped LINQ Queries in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

As you might experienced in SharePoint 2007, a CAML query is by default non recursive. In other words, if you execute a CAML query, you will end up with items from the list root folder. This is still the same in SharePoint 2010. You have to define extra query options as shown below in case you want to query all folders and sub folders within a list (Recursive Query) :

qry.ViewAttributes = "Scope='Recursive'";

And if you want to scope your query to a certain folder :

qry.Folder = list.ParentWeb.GetFolder("Folders DocLib/2008");

What about LINQ to SharePoint ?

The default behavior is the same, however if recursive querying is the desired behavior, you can use the ScopeToFolder method from your EntityList<T> object.

Note the following queries:

var q = dc.Projects.Where(p => p.DueDate < DateTime.Now.AddMonths(1));

var q = dc.Projects.ScopeToFolder("", true).Where(p => p.DueDate < DateTime.Now.AddMonths(1));

The first one executes against the list root folder while the second one is recursive. You might be wondering about the empty string that I’m passing to ScopeToFolder method. Well, let’s see what MSDN says about the parameters that the method expects.

public IQueryable<TEntity> ScopeToFolder( string folderUrl, bool recursive )

folderUrl –> The URL of the folder.
recursive –> true to include items in subfolders; false to exclude them.

That’s it, if you want to scope your LINQ query to a specific folder, pass the folder URL as the first parameter to the method & “true” if you want the recursive behavior of the query. In the second query, I just wanted the recursive behavior and I didn’t want to scope my query to any folders so I passed an empty string, this does the trick.

Hope this helps!

Where is “Site Workflows” ?

2010-05-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

Just in case you are wondering about the location of “Site Workflows”. It has been moved in SharePoint 2010 RTM to “All Site Content” rather than “Site Actions” which was its location in the previous builds.

The new place makes more sense to me, what about you?

Enabling the developer dashboard programmatically in SharePoint 2010

2010-05-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

This is a question that I received during the Egyptian community launch of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. The following snippet does the trick!

SPWebService contentService = SPWebService.ContentService;
           SPDeveloperDashboardSettings developerDashboard =
             contentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings;
           developerDashboard.DisplayLevel = SPDeveloperDashboardLevel.On;
           developerDashboard.Update();

The guy who asked me this question wanted to create a farm-scoped feature to easily toggle the developer dashboard instead on using Windows PowerShell or STSADM command line utility. He also promised to share his feature with me once he finishes it.

If you cannot wait and you want to do it yourself, it’s very easy thanks to Visual Studio 2010 and the new SharePoint project and item templates that ships with it. Just open up Visual Studio 2010, create an empty SharePoint project, add a farm-scoped feature, add an event receiver to the feature, copy the code above to the FeatureActivated method, deploy your solution and there you go!

Note: Don’t forget to add a using statement to Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace!

Speaking at Microsoft Techday @AAST

2010-05-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

Using Lambda Expressions with RunWithElevatedPrivileges

2010-05-18T05:57:00.000-07:00

Elevation of privilege, a feature that was added in WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007, enables you to programmatically perform actions in code by using an increased level of privilege. The SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges method enables you to supply a delegate that runs a subset of code in the context of an account with higher privileges than the current user.

For some reason, I have never seen a code snippet that uses a lambda expression instead of the anonymous method syntax so I thought of showing you how to save some typing by using Lambda.

Commonly used syntax:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
{     // Do things by assuming the permission of the "system account".
});

Much easier syntax:

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(()=>
{     // Do things by assuming the permission of the "system account".
});

When I asked the following question on Twitter : “Why do people still use the anonymous method syntax rather than Lambda Expressions with SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges() ? #SharePoint”

I got the following answer from Todd Bleeker : “Delegate syntax has been around a lot longer. Lambda is still confusing and even scary for most. <Todd />”

I totally agree with Todd, but guys if you are not comfortable with LINQ and lambda expressions, you should familiarize yourself with them before diving deep into developing SharePoint 2010 solutions.

As you all might know, Now in SharePoint 2010 you can use LINQ syntax to retrieve items from your lists instead of using CAML queries. Microsoft has included a LINQ provider for SharePoint in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq namespace, some classes in this namespace are responsible for translating the LINQ Queries to CAML ones which are eventually translated into SQL. You can still write CAML Queries and fetch items in the old ways but LINQ can really make your life easier specially when it comes to joins.

SharePoint 2010 Community Launch in Photos

2010-05-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, May 12th was a special day. We had fun celebrating the Egyptian community launch of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. I have presented about “Visual Studio Tools for SharePoint 2010”, people were really excited to learn that they no longer need third-party tools for developing SharePoint Solutions. Finally Visual Studio 2010 is enough along with its great extensibility features!

I would like to extend a special thank-you to AvePoint and USPJA for sponsoring the event.

Here are some photos from the event:

Drop by “Ask the Experts Panel” at SharePoint 2010 official launch by Microsoft Egypt

2010-05-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow May 11th will be an interesting day, Microsoft will be hosting a launch event for Microsoft® Office 2010, Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010, Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 and Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 at Grand Hyatt Hotel – Laylaty Ballroom Time: 09:00 am - 05:00 pm

I will be there in the Ask the experts with my fellow SharePoint MVPs , Marwan Tarek and Shady Khorshied. If you have any SharePoint related questions, please drop by.

SharePoint 2010 Egyptian Community Launch: Transportation Updates

2010-05-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

Since the announcement of the Egyptian SharePoint community launch, I have been receiving a lot of emails about the transportation details. Sorry for the delay, but we finally managed to get everything set.

There will be a pickup bus from Lebanon Square.
2:00 to 2:15 > Gathering in-front of Mo’men
2:15 to 3:15 > Moving to Microsoft Egypt
7:45 to 8:00 > gathering in-front of Microsoft
8:00 to 8:45 > back to Lebanon Square

Please if you have any problem regarding transportation, don’t hesitate to call Shady Khorshied on 010 19 11 216 .

I would like also to announce that AvePoint is sponsoring the event, stay tuned to their giveaways ;)

Reminder: Presenting @ SharePoint Saturday India

2010-05-07T17:08:00.000-07:00

This is a quick reminder of my session tomorrow at Live Online SharePoint Saturday India. I’m really excited about this and looking forward to meeting my fellow Indian SharePointers.

Title: Troubleshooting SharePoint Solutions.
Date and Time: Saturday May, 12th , 13:30 PM (GMT +3)
Language: English

Click here for the complete schedule.

LINQ is Better Than ForEach

2010-05-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

Chris Eargle has done a great job comparing LINQ and ForEach loops from the performance and maintainability perspective.

Here is Chris’ conclusion: The vast majority of code I come across that either can be written in LINQ or refactored to LINQ has no noticeable, negative performance impact, but it has a positive impact on maintainability.

Click here to read the full post !

Test your LINQ knowledge

2010-05-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I stumbled upon LINQ Quiz, try to answer as much as you can from the 17 questions posted there, this will help you evaluate and test your LINQ knowledge.

Oh, and before you start writing LINQ queries against your SharePoint lists, you should take a look at this tool (LINQPad), I found it very useful to refresh my LINQ knowledge before diving deep into LINQ to SharePoint. Let me know what you think about LINQPad, I really love it!

My Speaking Schedule For May 2010

2010-04-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

It seems that May 2010 will be an interesting month for me, I’ll be busy presenting 3 different SharePoint topics for different user groups and events. The sessions will be in 2 different languages for different audience and nationalities. Two of them will be online and the other will be offline. Below is my speaking schedule in Cairo local time (GMT+3)

Date/Time	Topic	User Group/ Event	Language
SAT May, 1st – 12:00 AM	SharePoint 2010 Workflows	Online : EgyGeeks Online User Group	Arabic
SAT MAY, 8th – 13:30 PM	Troubleshooting SharePoint Solutions	Online: SharePoint Saturday India	English
WED May, 12th – 15:45 PM	Visual Studio Tools for SharePoint 2010	Offline: SharePoint 2010 Community Launch by EGYSUG	Arabic

Unlocking the Mysteries of the SharePoint Data View Web Part XSL Tags eBook Now Available

2010-04-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

Marc Anderson, one of the faculty members of USPJ Academy announced a couple of days ago the availability of a new SharePoint eBook named “Unlocking the Mysteries of the SharePoint Data View Web Part XSL Tags”.

The eBook is based on Marc’s popular set of articles on EndUserSharePoint.com and his blog. I really enjoyed the Marc’s series and just thought of spreading the word about this valuable eBook which can help you to understand the inner workings of the XSL used in SharePoint's Data View Web Parts (DVWPs), AKA, the Swiss Army Knife of SharePoint.

Click here to get the eBook.

What a great day: SharePoint 2010 RTM is Available for Download on MSDN

2010-04-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

Yessss, I’m really excited. SharePoint 2010 RTM and Office 2010 RTM are available now for download on MSDN.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/

Programmatically enforcing a field value uniqueness in SharePoint 2010

2010-04-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

The following code snippet shows how to programmatically modify a field to enforce the uniqueness of its values (like the unique constraint in SQL Server).

SPField titleField = myList.Fields.GetField("Title");
titleField.Indexed = true;
titleField.EnforceUniqueValues = true;
titleField.Update();

Oh, and this only applies to SharePoint 2010, Unique fields are completely new to 2010..

Hope this helps!

USPJ Academy Applications Open Tomorrow

2010-04-12T04:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, on Tuesday 13th, USPJ Academy will open up for new applications for the early access program.

First, if you want to convince your boss to let you attend, check this brief 5-minute video explaining all your boss may need to know:
http://www.uspja.com/dearboss

Let me also briefly mention what you'll get at USPJ Academy:

Unlimited self-paced courses
Up to three concurrent collaborative classes, facilitated by SharePoint industry experts
Access to virtual labs as much as you want
Library with SharePoint books, articles, lectures, videos, and more
Faculty blog containing exclusive and rapidly updated information
Superstar lectures where we invite the best SharePoint people to speak
Campus forums to share or learn from other students and faculty members

For more information about the academy check www.uspja.com and let me know if you have any questions.

Binding To Non Public Members in SharePoint Workflows!

2010-04-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I received an email from Ahmed Omar ElSakka asking me the following question:

“I am new to SharePoint Workflows; when creating SharePoint Custom Workflows using Visual Studio 2008, I saw many blog posts and articles saying that you should declare the properties and fields within the workflow code as public so that you can use them from the workflow activities and bind them to activity properties. I have tried to declare some properties as private or protected and yes I couldn’t find them in the dialog box when trying to bind the HistoryDescription of LogToHistoryListActivity to one of those private members, any justifications?”

My answer is:

Yes Ahmed, this is true; you cannot bind activity properties to non public members and this is attributed to the serialization mechanism used by the workflow foundation.

In other words, workflow instances stay in the memory for a relatively small time . When a workflow is waiting for an event to occur (like OnTaskChanged), the workflow runtime serializes the workflow state into XML by performing a shallow copy which means that the runtime only reads the public members when serializing the workflow instances and stores the state by calling the workflow host persistence interface. When the workflow receives a notification to get back to life (for example when the task is changed), the workflow host deserializes the XML into a new instance of the Workflow type, so if you are planning to use activities that need data, declare the workflow class members that reference this data as public".

I hope this answers you question Ahmed.

Check Out My Interview @ Microsoft Feed

2010-04-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, MicrosoftFeed published an interview with me as a part of a series of interviews with MVPs. Check it out here: Meet Ayman Mohammed El-Hattab : SharePoint Server MVP from Egypt

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday India

2010-04-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

After SharePoint Saturday EMEA and SharePoint Saturday Arabia and the great feedback we received from our attendees, it’s now India’s turn!

I have just received an e-mail from Rajendra Shekhawat informing me that my abstract for speaking at Live Online SharePoint Saturday India has been accepted, I’m really glad to be there and share some SharePoint tips and tricks with the Indian SharePoint folks.

Rajendra and his fellow organizers are currently in the process of finalizing the session topics and timings for the event. Previously, they were planning to do multiple tracks for the event on 24th April 2010. However, based on the registrants feedback, they divided the event over two Saturdays – 24th of April 2010 and 8th of May 2010. My session is scheduled to be on 8th of May.

The event is free, click here to register.

Session Details

Title: Troubleshooting SharePoint Solutions
Description: SharePoint troubleshooting can really be a nightmare for those who are new to the platform if it is not performed properly. Bugs, performance and storage issues are the main reasons why you as SharePoint developer are subjected to lengthy and tiresome projects—complete with crabby stakeholders, grouchy quality engineers, missed deadlines, and late nights. This session will help SharePoint developers learn how to author both SharePoint 2007 and 2010 applications with fewer bugs in the first place and walks them through the tools and techniques available at their disposal when encountering any kind of troubles.
Date: 8 May 2010
Time: 10:30 AM ( GMT +0 ) - 12:30 PM ( Cairo Time)
Duration: 1 hour
Language: English

EgyGeeksOnSkype ?

2010-04-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (Friday, April 4th), Mohamed Meligy, Ramy Mahrous, Emad Mokhtar, Mohamed Gamal and myself had a wonderful talk on skype. This meeting was not scheduled, it started by a conversation on twitter about how are we going to spend the easter day, then we moved to TinyChat and we ended up on Skype talking about different technical and non-technical topics.

The interesting part about this talk is that we came up with the “EgyGeeksOnSkype” idea! It’s simply an online gathering for Egyptian geeks (Non Egyptians are most welcome to join) to discuss different technical and non-technical topics.

We will start next Friday at 11:59 PM Cairo Time (GMT +0), I will be speaking about “No-Code SharePoint Solutions” from 12:00 AM to 12:30 AM followed by an open discussion about OData.

To join the conversation add "mohamed.meligy", "rmahrous", "emad.mokhtar.habib", “aymanelhattab” or "gamalilio" on skype and don’t forget to follow the hashtag #EgyGeeksOnSkype” on twitter.

Don’t miss it!

Top 20 SharePoint MVP MSDN Rankings

2010-04-03T04:34:00.000-07:00

@givenscj has done a great job coming up with a list for SharePoint MVP MSDN Rankings, I have listed here the top 20 MVPs. For the full list, please refer to this blog post to know where your favorite SharePoint MVP stack up in the forums.

Oh, and I’m ranked the 14th :)

Name | Points | Posts | Answers

1) Mike Walsh      | 48357 | 15438 | 1657
2) Paul Galvin      | 15895 | 3304 | 890
3) Fabrice Romelard| 9585 | 1264| 683
4) Mike Oryszak    | 8139 | 1326| 500
5) Moonis Tahir    | 7054 | 1186| 468
6) John D. Ross    | 6919 | 1495| 348
7) Waldek Mastykarz| 6437 | 1110| 396
8) Gary Lapointe   | 4972 | 807 | 318
9) Ishai Sagi      | 3830 | 596 | 255
10) Randy Drisgill | 3382 | 623 | 206
11) Michael Nemtsev | 3324 | 717 | 198
12) John Timney     | 3091 | 436 | 207
13) Wictor Wilen    | 2683 | 428 | 164
14) Ayman El-Hattab | 2308 | 268 | 113
15) Becky Bertram   | 2061 | 273 | 134
16) MatthewMcDermott| 2043 | 619 | 089
17) Andrew Woodward | 1570 | 386 | 085
18) Mirjam Van Olst | 1504 | 234 | 089
19) Scot Hillier    | 1299 | 212 | 082
20) Stephane Eyskens| 1252 | 227 | 074

SharePoint Saturday Arabia Recordings + Bonus Videos !!

2010-04-02T18:54:00.001-07:00

As I promised yesterday in my wrap-up post, SharePoint Saturday Arabia recordings are now available for download. I have just uploaded 15 hours of great SharePoint content to SkyDrive, please let me know if you have any issues in downloading the recordings!

Session	Speaker
Keynote and Introduction to SPS Arabia	Dux Raymond, Ayman El-Hattab, and Marwan Tarek	Arabic / English	Download
Developing Sandbox Solutions	Mohamed Yehia	Arabic	Download
Troubleshooting SharePoint Solutions	Ayman El-Hattab, SharePoint MVP	Arabic	Download
Intelligent SharePoint Architecture and Storage Optimization Strategies	Dawid Kozlowski [AvePoint]	English	Download
Visual Studio tools for SharePoint	Marwan Tarek, SharePoint MVP	Arabic	Download
XSLT in SharePoint	Osama Mourad	Arabic	Download
SharePoint 2010 Architecture Fundamentals: Virtualization & Scalability	Michael Noel, Forefront MVP	English	Download
SharePoint 2010 Data Manipulation Techniques	Mostafa ElZoghbi, C# MVP	Arabic	Download
SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Document Management	Agnes Molnar, SharePoint MVP	English	Download
Unleash the Power of OBA with SharePoint 2010	Razi Bin Rais, SharePoint MVP	English	Download
Introducing ALM to SharePoint Development Implementations	Jeremy Thake	English	Download
SharePoint Identity Crisis	Michael Hinckley	English	Download
Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010	Jerry Yasir, SharePoint MVP	English	Download
SharePoint for Public Facing Web Sites	Jose Antonio Morales	English	Download
No Code Business Connectivity Services	Fabian Williams	English	Download
SharePoint 2010 Worldwide Deployment	Nicholas Georgeault, SharePoint MVP	English	Download

During the event, Jose Antonio Morales received lots of questions about Public Facing Sites with WSS 3.0 so he decided to create two more videos to answer the attendees questions, you can get Jose’s videos from the links below.

WSS 3.0 For Public Facing Sites - Part 1
WSS 3.0 For Public Facing Sites - Part 2

Another question that we received more than once during the event was about installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7, my dear friend Mohamed Moses has done a great job summarizing the process in a short video, you can get Mohamed’s video from the link below.

Installing SharePoint 2010 Beta on Windows 7

Thanks again for all our attendees, speakers and all people who helped me in organizing SharePoint Saturday Arabia, stay tuned for more videos on SharePoint4Arabs.com !

SharePoint Saturday Arabia Wrap-Up

2010-04-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

SharePoint Saturday Arabia was a live online, ten hour event on March 27th 2010. There were 15 Speakers, including 8 MVPs, and two simultaneous sessions running every hour. We had 750 registrants and around 150 attendees.

Initiation

Throughout my blog, twitter and Facebook, I had wonderful opportunities to get connected with tons of nice folks in the Middle East and especially in Arabia and the one thing I have noticed in common is the thirst for SharePoint knowledge.

These people are in true need for answers, they feel like they are alone, they don’t have enough conferences as with the case in Europe and America, they don’t have Visual How To’s in their native languages and they just cheer up when they come across someone who knows their struggles.

The first step for bridging the gap and fulfilling the needs was creating a community channel and a place where Arab SharePoint professionals can share their expertise and hence www.sharepoint4arabs.com was created.

Moreover, after the great success of SharePoint Saturday EMEA and the amazing feedback I received about my Arabic session there, I decided to follow Mark Miller’s footprints and to organize a similar event with more localized content for Arabs.

First step was contacting Marwan Tarek, my partner in most of my crimes and asking him to help me in organizing the event like managing speaker submissions, sponsor requests and making sure that speakers are having good and reliable internet connections. I have also contacted Baransel Dogan and Ruari Plint (MEA MVP Leads) asking them to spread the word and ask more MVPs to participate.

I would like also to point out that Mark Miller (EndUserSharePoint.com) has done a terrific job putting together the lessons learned from SharePoint Saturday EMEA in a brilliant article here ( http://www.endusersharepoint.com/2010/02/26/notes-on-running-a-sharepoint-live-online-event/ ), I would encourage anyone willing to run an online event to strictly follow the advices presented by Mark in this article.

The Event

We had Six MVPs + Two other people who were recognized as MVPs just 5 days after the event (I am happy to be one of those).

We also had other seven SharePoint experts in different countries and time zones, I would like to seize the opportunity and thank them all for their wonderful sessions and the willingness to help and share. Special thanks go to Dux Raymond for staying up very late and keynoting the event, it was very nice having a SharePoint expert like Dux with us.

The event went very well; the speakers were punctual, interactive, and keen to share their expertise with the audience. We had one moderator per session; the moderator was responsible for keeping an eye on the chat room, managing the audience requests, passing the questions to the speakers, resolving any audio issues and recording the sessions. Egypt SharePoint User Group leaders and Ahmed Ramy from dotnetwork user group were responsible for moderating the sessions.

Feedback

The best part about the event was the closure. We had an interesting talk with the audience about the ways we can improve the event, whether they like this type of online events and how frequent they would like to see SharePoint Saturday Arabia.

The feedback was positive, I would like to refer to two blogs post that really made me happy and more determined to organize and sponsor more online events. I have even quoted some paragraphs here:

SPS Arabia event was truly amazing: http://techforceblog.com/2010/03/28/sps-arabia-event-was-truly-amazing.aspx

SharePoint Arabia (nontechnical view): http://baraahomari.blogspot.com/2010/03/sharepoint-saturday-nontechnical-view.html

"Yesterday, I’ve seen the success after months planning, I’ve seen achievements after team working, I feel so honored to join such a wonderful team. I almost felt like I’m one of them! The way they introduced each others was my favorite, they way they thank any speaker after his session was amazing, all speakers were proud to be a part of it. The online chat room was really active, the attendees were so friendly, I knew many SharePoint related new guys", By: Baraah Omari

“Each session lasted from 45 to 55 minutes followed by a Q & A session. All of the speakers were well versed in their topics and inspired a lot of questions from attendees. I was only able to attend 8 of the 16 sessions. The set up was really nicely done with two LiveMeeting Channels set up (one for the Arabic sessions and the other for the English sessions) this was used for the slide presentations and audio from the session speakers; along with an online chat room sponsored by endusersharepoint.com for questions from the attendee’s. The sessions started and ended pretty close to on time and everything was done really well.”, By : Johnathan

Here is another feedback that I received from Razi Bin Rais, SharePoint MVP and one of SharePoint Saturday Arabia speakers :

"Thanks for an amazing event, kudos to all the team members behind SharePoint Saturday Arabia. I been chatting about the event with couple of folks from Asia Pacific region and they are impressed by the quality and execution of the event. I am planning to do a detail blog post once the recording of the sessions are available."

Waiting for your blog post Razi and thanks for your e-mail :))

Another one is from Fabian Williams, one of the great experts who joined us in SharePoint Saturday Arabia :

"I have to echo the remarks and accolades for both the organizers and speakers in this event, spot on mates... I am looking forward for the next one. "

Thanks Fabian for your e-mail, I have received wonderful feedback about your session! I look forward to having you in our next event; Arabs love you man ;)

Recordings

I have received lots and lots of e-mails, Twitter DMs and FaceBook messages from our attendees and people registrants asking about the recordings and the slides. I know I am late, sorry guys for this, but the recordings needed some extra work and editing, all what I need to do now is uploading them, so the recordings along with the slides will be available within 24 hours. Please keep an eye on EndUserSharePoint.Com, SharePoint4Arabs.com, SharePoint Saturday Arabia site and my blog for any updates.

Not April fool : Recognized by Microsoft as Most Valuable Professional (MVP)

2010-04-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

I received the following email today :

"Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in SharePoint Server technical communities during the past year"

Needless to say, I am honored to be counted with some of the dazzling minds in the software industry and very delighted that my contributions in the past year were recognized by Microsoft.

I would like to extend special thank you’s to all MEA MVPs who have always helped, supported and motivated me since I have started my community activities a couple of years ago like Marwan Tarek (Egypt), Mostafa Arafa (Kuwait), Hammad Rajjoub (Pakistan), and Muhanad Omar (Jordan).

Many more thanks to everyone that has had direct involvement in my career like Mahmoud Kandeel, Ayman El-Tohamy, and Ali AlKahki.

Last but not least, I should also thank Bjorn Furuknap ,Mark Miller, Kailash Kalyani, Baransel Dogan and Ruari Plint for supporting all my previous community activities especially SharePoint Saturday Arabia.

And The best part about this award, that NOW we have two SharePoint MVPs at USPJ Academy !! Wooohooooooo !!

Login information for SharePoint Saturday Arabia

2010-03-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

This is a quick note to let you know that the session schedule, presenters and session listings are now available for download:

http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/arabia/Shared%20Documents/SPSArabia_Schedule_Final.xlsx

Locations and Presenters for Each Channel

Intro and Keynote: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SPSArabia1&role=attend Ayman El-Hattab and Marwan Tarek

Channel 1: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SPSArabia1&role=attend

Channel 2: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SPSArabia2&role=attend

Live Text Chat for All Sessions: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/EUSPChat/

Details

The first session starts at 7:00am (GMT +0 ) Marwan Tarek and I will do the intros together and then present a short keynote talk to get everthing started. Everyone should login for the first session of the day. That’s when we’ll give instructions on how the day will work and how to attend the sessions.

Location: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=SPSArabia1&role=attend

There is no password needed, so leave that field blank.

Live Text Chat for SPSArabia: We have setup a live text chat so you can participate in the discussion during the live sessions. No login is needed… ignore the password field. Each of the various tracks will have their own chatroom, making it possible to flip back and forth between tracks.

Location: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/EUSPChat/

The session schedule, presenters and session listings are now available for download:
http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/arabia/Shared%20Documents/SPSArabia_Schedule_Final.xlsx

To save time before the meeting, check your system http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90703 to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

If you still cannot enter the meeting, contact support http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidLiveMeeting?p1=12&p2=en_US&p3=LMInfo&p4=support

SharePoint Saturday Arabia Updates

2010-03-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Good morning, afternoon, evening

This is a “warm up” note to let you know how Live Online SharePoint Saturday Arabia is going to work (hopefully).

There will be two simultaneous sessions running each hour; one in Arabic and the other in English. The sessions schedule will be posted next Monday at most on SharePoint4Arabs.com, on the registration page and on SharePointSaturday.org/Arabia. Participants will choose a session each hour. They are welcome to switch back and forth between sessions. The session descriptions and speakers are available at SharePointSaturday.org/Arabia.

The first session starts at 7:00am GMT+0. Marwan Tarek and I will do the intros together and then present a short keynote talk to get everything started. All the registrants will receive the login information and the live meeting URL during the next week.

In order to hear the presentations, you will need speakers or headphones. THERE IS NOT CONFERENCE CALL DIAL IN NUMBER since this is an international event. Everything will be done over your computer.

I would like also to seize this opportunity and thank all our sponsors, I have announced all about the giveaways and the raffles on twitter last week but for those who are not following the hashtag #SPSArabia, here are they :

Our platinum sponsor “USPJ Academy” is offering 20 copies of “Introducing SharePoint 2010” journal issue as raffles. This issue, spanning a massive 180 pages, is the first independent book on SharePoint 2010 available on the market.
SharePoint-Videos.com is offering one yearly subscription (worth $199.50) as a raffle.
TekPub is providing free monthly subscription to all SharePoint Saturday Arabia attendees.
Telerik is offering one premium collection license as a raffle.

Please keep an eye on www.sharepointsaturday.org/arabia and follow me on twitter (@aymanelhattab) for up to the minute updates.

Sincerely, thanks for participating in this event. We are doing our best to make the presentation process as transparent as possible.

Looking forward to a great event.
Ayman El-Hattab

USPJ Academy Faculty Announced

2010-03-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick note to let you know that Bjørn Furuknap has announced the faculty members of the new USPJ Academy yesterday. I’m really happy to be a part of this academy and glad to help people learn what I have been learning about SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

Bjørn Furuknap has reached out to me back in December 2009 and he introduced the idea and his vision regarding the academy. I was so excited, I really love writing, blogging and teaching! I have even met with him in person in Dubai back in Feb 2010 to discuss more about the Academy. The idea was brilliant!!

I would also like to point out that it’s not only Bjorn and me, there are great SharePoint experts with us who are very generally enthusiastic about teaching and the academy in specific and they are willing to share their expertise with the students . Here’s the list as Bjørn announced it today, along with links to their blogs.

Sahil Malik
Laura Docherty
Marc Anderson
Bjørn Furuknap

If you would like to know more about the faculty, please refer to http://bit.ly/9fAVry .

Cairo Code Camp 2010, A Success Story

2010-03-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

CairoCodeCamp 2010 was a phenomenal success story, i couldn’t imagined it better. I’m really proud of the great efforts done by dotnetwork guys. Thank you guys and hope to speak in each and every event organized by you!

As you might know, I presented there a session titled “What’s New in SharePoint Designer 2010?”, the attendees were wonderful, interactive and passionate about SharePoint and their questions were extremely essential for the full understanding of the new enhancements in SPD 2010.

You can get my session resources from here.

Speaking at CairoCodeCamo’10

2010-02-26T04:25:00.000-08:00

I’m really happy to announce that I’ll be presenting at CairoCodeCamp’10, my session title is “What’s New in SharePoint Designer 2010?”

Session Abstract :

SharePoint Designer 2010 is the core design tool for designing, prototyping, and customizing both SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 sites, from small sites to enterprise-level internet sites and intranets. In this session, you will learn how to :
• Customize a site from the early stages of prototyping and design to the final deployment phase
• Build powerful workflows and align them to your business processes
• Integrate and present external data into SharePoint sites
• Create and manage Data Views and Data Sources
• Use InfoPath 2010 to customize SharePoint List Forms

And here is the official announcement from CairoCodeCamp orgainzers :

CairoCodeCamp’10 is going to be even bigger it has 8 international speakers and 12 domestic speakers presenting 40+ sessions to 1000+ attendees.
Cairo Code Camp’10 is an extra step towards our strategic goal, by having Scott Hanselman, the principal program manager of Microsoft as a speaker and due to his publicity and exposure, Cairo Code Camp’10 will have huge publicity by the enthusiastic global software community.

Cairo Code Camp’10 sessions will be recorded and distributed offline and online.
For more information & to get your ticket , please visit: http://www.CairoCodeCamp.com
Check out the speakers at http://www.cairocodecamp.com/Speakers
Check out the agenda at http://www.CairoCodeCamp.com/Agenda

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Jordan

2010-02-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

A couple of days after I have announced SharePoint Saturday Arabia, Muhanad Omar [SharePoint MVP and one of the very active SharePoint experts in the region] announced the first SharePoint Saturday in the middle east. The event will be hosted in Amman, Jordan featuring an international line-up of world-class speakers, including Michael Noel and Joel Oleson.

I am really glad to be one of the event speakers and to meet Joel Oleson and Michael Noel for the second time ( first time was in Egypt SharePoint User Group sessions ).

My Session Details :

Title : "Introducing SharePoint Desiner 2010!"
Description : SharePoint Designer 2010 is the core and the only design tool for designing, prototyping, and customizing both SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 sites, from small sites to enterprise-level internet sites and intranets.
In this session, you will learn how to :

Customize a site from the early stages of prototyping and design to the final deployment phase
Build powerful workflows and align them to your business processes
Integrate and present external data into SharePoint sites
Create and manage Data Views and Data Sources
Use InfoPath 2010 to customize SharePoint List Forms

SPS Jordan is your premier event for SharePoint 2010 content, so make sure you register for this great event! http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/jordan

Recordings from SPSEMEA – Marwan Tarek and Ayman El-Hattab

2010-02-12T15:20:00.000-08:00

[[Cross-posted from EndUserSharePoint.Com ]]

Ayman El-Hattab, founder of SharePoint4Arabs.com, made an announcement this morning that, following in the footsteps of Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA, he is sponsoring Live Online SharePoint Saturday Arabia! This is exciting news. Now that the door has been opened, hopefully more of these event will start being localized for communities that don’t have the resources to produce their own.

When I received Ayman’s message, it reminded me that I hadn’t posted his recorded session from SPEMEA. His session was done in Arabic, so making it available now is a good warmup for SharePoint Saturday Arabia, coming on March 27, 2010. Also included for download is Marwan Tarek’s session on SharePoint 2010.

Downloads for SPSEMEA

Data-Centric Composites (Mashups) in SharePoint 2010 [in Arabic]
by Ayman El-Hattab
SharePoint 2010: Getting Ready
by Marwan Tarek, SharePoint MVP

[[Cross-posted from EndUserSharePoint.Com ]]

SharePoint Saturday Arabia

2010-02-12T04:41:00.000-08:00

I am really pleased to announce that Registration is now open for participation in Live Online SharePoint Saturday Arabia. By registering for this event, you are confirming you would like to view the live presentations, presented from 7:00am to 3:00pm (GMT+0), on March 27, 2010.

In order to hear the presenters, you will need headphones or computer speakers. There will be no conference call dial-in phone numbers.

The live blogging platform will allow for real time questions to be passed to the presenters. There will be multiple sessions running simultaneously so that we can present to a diversified audience with different technical needs. ( Till now we are planning for two channels, one in Arabic and the other in English ).

As you register, we would very much appreciate it if you would spread the word to your SharePoint colleagues.

Thank you for joining us. With your participation, we hope to make this an exceptional event.

Egypt SharePoint User Group - January 2010 Gathering

2010-01-27T04:11:00.000-08:00

I am more than glad to invite you to our first 2010 gathering, in January the 30th.

Event Details:

Date: January 30th 2010

Venue: Dar Al Deyafa - Ain Shams University

11:00am – 12:00 pm

Approaches and best practices : Deploying SharePoint sites through multiple environments - Mohamed Khalil

12:15pm – 1:15 pm

How to build Advanced Web Sites using SharePoint 2010 - Shady Korshed

1:15pm- 2:00 pm

Ask the Experts

About the Speakers

Mohamed Khalil (MCSD.Net, MCTS) is Technology Expert at OMS with over 6 years experience working with complex projects on Microsoft technologies. Mohamed is still very much a hands-on developer, and has participated in several large-scale web initiatives including e-commerce, WCM, intranet, back-end integration and workflow projects. Past client engagements include Bank of Scotland Plc, Microsoft Technology Center-UK, Kaplan Financial, AMCOR Artenius , and Bunzel Chemical. With a background in ASP.Net/Content Management Server/Corporate Portals, Mohamed’s current main area of focus is building public websites on MOSS and he continues to learn with every project.

Shady Korshed is a SharePoint MVP who has participated and joined huge successful projects in Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 and MOSS 2007. Shady is into research, investigation in technologies and he is also ready for a challenging game in chess.

Please Register here

The First Arabic SharePoint Session Ever at SharePoint Saturday, Acknowledgments

2010-01-25T21:46:00.000-08:00

[[Cross-post from EndUserSharePoint.com]]

And the SharePoint community continues to prove its uniqueness and awesomeness.

This weekend, at SharePoint Saturday EMEA, I conducted the first ever Arabic SharePoint Saturday session. The session was first scheduled for 9:00 AM GMT+0, but due to some technical reasons (the Hyper-V server hosting my virtual machine had some connectivity issues), it was rescheduled to 11:00 AM. That really depressed me and I expected to have less attendees than the other session running in parallel but I was impressed to see that the number was not affected and the attendees exceeded what I anticipated.

I can still recall the first time I recorded a session from the Egypt SharePoint User Group, June 2009 meeting and made it accessible online. The reaction and the support of the SharePoint community was marvelous and unparalleled! Mark Miller wrote a complete post about it, Mike Walsh showed great support to the idea through his blog and I received wonderful feedback even from non-Arabic speaking SharePoint folks congratulating me and urging me to record more sessions. The same happened once SharePoint4Arabs.com was officially launched. The number of retweets, announcements, and blog posts referring to it really surpassed my expectations.

Before leaving you to benefit from the other great articles available at EndUserSharePoint, I would like to extend special thank-you’s to some people that really supported and spread the word regarding SharePoint4Arabs.com, Egypt SharePoint User Group and my ARABIC session at SharePoint Saturday EMEA. The list includes but it is not limited to the following folks:

Mark Miller
Hammad Rajjoub and Ronald Widha (DotNetMEPodCast )
Joel Oleson
Hanan AbdelMeguid ( LINKdotNET CEO )
Emad Alashi
Kailash Kalyani (MSFT)
Ruari Plint (MSFT)
Saed Shela and Huthaifa Afanah (Palestine SharePoint User Group)

And of course, no tribute to the community is inclusive without my colleagues at SharePoint4Arabs.com, Marwan Tarek and Mohamed Yehia.

SharePoint Saturday EMEA session schedule !

2010-01-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick note to let you know that the session schedule, presenters and session listings are now available for download:
http://www.endusersharepoint.com/WorkshopDownloads/SPSEMEA-FinalSchedule.xls

I’ll be speaking at 11:00 AM Cairo Time, waiting for you all!

For the first time : Arabic session at SharePoint Saturday!!

2010-01-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

Throughout my blog, twitter account and Facebook, I had wonderful opportunities to get connected to a lot of nice guys in the middle east and especially in the Arabia and one thing noticed in common is the thirst for SharePoint knowledge. Moreover, I have been lately receiving many requests for more Arabic Content at SharePoint4arabs.com so cheer up guys, I have good news for you!

As you might know, I’ll be speaking at SharePoint Saturday EMEA on January 23rd. The good news is that for the first time ever, there will be a session delivered in Arabic. I’m really glad to be the speaker and hope to see you all there. (Please spread the word)

Here is a brief description of my session.

For the list of speakers and sessions, click here.

If you haven’t registered yet, click here.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday EMEA

2009-12-27T16:49:00.000-08:00

I would love to announce that I’ll be speaking at SharePoint Saturday EMEA on January 23rd, 2010. I’ll be co-presenting “Implementing Multi-Lingual Solutions on SharePoint 2010” with my colleague, friend and mentor Marwan Tarek. I’m really happy and proud to have my name along with those highly visible names in the SharePoint community.

I’m also happy to announce that there will be great Arabic SharePoint Experts speaking for the first time at SharePoint Saturday like Mohamed Yehia, Mostafa Arafa and Muhanad Omar.

For the list of speakers and sessions, click here.

If you haven’t registered yet, click here.

Four reasons TO directly query SharePoint logging database

2009-12-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Remember my post “Five reasons not to directly query SharePoint databases” ? I have cautioned you more than once throughout it NOT to directly query SharePoint databases and I have mentioned its disadvantages and problems. If you haven’t read this post, I would encourage you to do that before carrying on.

I’m not contradicting myself! The first post was all about SharePoint 2007 but now I’m talking about the new and the amazing 2010 version of SharePoint.

So you might be asking “What the hell is SharePoint Logging Database?” Good question!

To answer you, please fire up the SQL Management Studio, and expand your databases. You’ll notice a new one named WSS_Logging.

SharePoint 2010 keeps tracks of everything it does by logging into the WSS_Logging Database. It aggregates all of the raw logging data accumulated in the text files under the 14 hive and imports it into this wonderful logging database. This is the ONLY database in SharePoint that Microsoft will be happy to let the developers directly read, query and build reports against it. There is a bunch of useful views at your disposal, the one that I will show you now is the “RequestUsage” View.

Every time a user visit generates a page request, a record is inserted into one of the partitioned tables in this database and the “RequestUsage” view is kind enough to union all the data in the partitioned tables and presents it to you to consume in your custom solutions (Web Parts, Reports, Application Pages,…). An example is shown below :

Let’s dive a little bit deeper to see what happens behind the scenes and where this data come from.

1) Navigate SharePoint 2010 Central Administration > Monitoring > Configure usage and health data collection.

2) Now let’s configure the data collection by specifying what events to log to the text files under the 14 hive. Use the snapshots below to configure your own SharePoint system.

3) Did you notice the “Log Collection Schedule” section ? This implies that there is a timer job that collects the log files located under the 14 hive and copies the events you specify into your logging database which can be employed later for reporting purposes. You can even schedule this timer job based on the load patterns of your server as you will see in the next step.

4) I have opened up my favorite troubleshooting tool ( SharePoint Manager) 2010) to track this job. As you can see in the figure below, I have configured the “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import” job from the central administration to run every minute.

5) Out of curiosity, I have decided to use .NET Reflector to check out how this timer job works, I have noticed two things.

The first one is that the Job lock type specified in the constructor is SPJobLockType.None which instructs the Timer Service to run this job on all the Web Front Ends in the farm, this makes sense!

The difference between the Job and the None LockTypes is that the Job LockType ensures that the timer job only runs on one server but the None ensures that the job runs on every server.

The second one is the ImportUsageData() Method in the execute method which is called when the timer job runs, this method is responsible of copying the events from the log files into your logging database. You can further expand this method if you need to know more.

So, what are those four benefits I’m talking about ?

1) It’s fully supported by Microsoft to directly read, query and build reports from the logging database. Third party applications can even write their data back to it.
2) It’s enabled by default on all the SharePoint deployments.
3) The retention policy is customizable allowing you to manage how many data you want to accumulate.
4) The Schema will be documented which will definitely facilitate its usage.

Forcing the Execution of Timer Jobs in SharePoint 2010

2009-12-21T14:49:00.000-08:00

Since you are here, You have probably read my Understanding SharePoint Journal bonus issue about SharePoint troubleshooting or my blog post “Forcing the execution of timer jobs” where I discussed debugging custom timer jobs.

That’s what I have written four or five months ago:

“You will probably need to execute your timer jobs outside of their scheduled times when you are developing, troubleshooting, or testing your custom timer jobs. Unhappily, this is not possible from Central Administration, but you can work around that using the SharePoint object model”

Of course this was all about SharePoint 2007 but NOW in SharePoint 2010, Microsoft has made it easier for us, you can directly force the execution of any timer job by just pressing a button! Awesome!

“People who suffered from this limitation in SharePoint 2007 will really appreciate this…

Data-Centric Composites (Mashups) in SharePoint 2010 [EGYSUG, Dec09 Meeting]

2009-12-21T10:58:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I was happy to deliver another SharePoint 2010 talk for Egypt SharePoint User Group members. My session, titled “Data-Centric Composites (Mashups) in SharePoint 2010), focused on the following topics:

1) What is a composite ?
2) What is a mashup ?
3) Business Connectivity Services
4) XSLT Data Views, The ultimate mashup tool.
5) SharePoint Designer 2010.

We also had two other sessions by Mohamed Mosaad who gave a brief overview on the SharePoint topology and Mohamed Yehia who spoke about the new and the amazing “Access Services in SharePoint 2010”.

I loved how the audience was enthusiastic and interactive. I would like to thank them all for their amazing feedback and interactivity during the session, your feedback guys means a lot to us.

Associating Workflows to SharePoint 2010 External Lists

2009-12-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

I’m a real fan of SharePoint 2010 composites, so since the beta version came out, I have been playing a lot with most of the features of BCS, SharePoint Designer 2010 Reusable workflows, Access Services and others.

While I was preparing a demo about BCS and External Lists for Egypt SharePoint User group, I noticed that you cannot associate workflows to SharePoint external lists. I double checked that with some Microsoft guys and I reached to a conclusion that SharePoint 2010 External lists doesn’t support the automatic triggering of Workflows however using custom actions ( which could by easily created now using SharePoint Designer 2010) can do the trick, in other words, clicking a button on the ribbon on an external list and triggering a workflow could be a workaround.

What if you in a real need to automatically trigger workflows for external data ? you can create a SharePoint list with external data columns and treat your list as any native SharePoint list. However, be informed that External data is a little bit different from external lists in the way it’s only copy of the external data but you can always refresh it manually.

I would also like to highlight another feature, you can now author SharePoint workflows that access external data through external lists or external data columns. Brilliant!

Egypt SharePoint User Group – December 09 Gathering

2009-12-10T04:12:00.000-08:00

Egypt SharePoint User Group is glad to invite you to its December 2009 Gathering which will be held on Saturday, Dec 19th at Microsoft Egypt - Smart Village. This time, we have a valuable speaker that you shouldn’t miss, Mohamed Mosaad (SharePoint PFE, MEA). This is a great opportunity to benefit from his expertise in MOSS 2007 installations and implementations.

Please find below the event schedule

Time	Topic	Speaker
11:30am – 12:30 pm	MOSS 2007 Administration	Mohamed Mosaad
12:30pm- 12:45 pm	Break
12:45am – 1:45 pm	Data-Centric Composites in SharePoint 2010	Ayman El-Hattab
1:45pm- 2:00 pm	Break
2:00pm -3:00pm	Access Services in SharePoint 2010	Mohamed Yehia

Please Register here …

About the Speakers

Mohamed Mosaad is SharePoint Premier Field Engineer (PFE), Micorsoft MEA, with extensive experience in SharePoint administration and implmentations.

Mohamed Yehia has been diligently working in the development of enterprise solutions using Microsoft SharePoint technologies including SharePoint Portal 2003, MOSS 2007 and currently 2010. Mohamed is a Technical Architect and is Microsoft Certified Professional since 2001, MCSD, MCAD and MCTS Charter Member in SharePoint technologies. He participated in a lot of Events for CuttingEdge Club and Egypt SharePoint User Group. Twitter : @mohdyehia

Ayman El-Hattab: is a SharePoint Developer, Speaker and author. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer as well as a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in SharePoint configuration and development. Ayman writes articles about topics in relation to SharePoint and related technologies for online magazines, publicly speaks for numerous user groups and offline communities, organizes events and conferences for EGYSUG, founder of SharePoint4Arabs.com and you will always find him active at MSDN forums and on Twitter @aymanelhattab

SharePoint 2010 TechDay!

2009-12-08T04:07:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, Egypt SharePoint User group and .NetWork user groups organized SharePoint 2010 TechDay, it was a full day of new SharePoint features, we started at 10:30 AM and we finished at 5:00 PM.

Marwan Tarek started with “SharePoint 2010, Getting Ready!” exploring the new and exciting features of SP2010.

Mohamed Yehia followed him by “Developer tools for SharePoint 2010” in which he introduced Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools, LINQ for SharePoint and Client Object Model.

Finally, I presented “Developing No Code SharePoint 2010 Solutions”, I have created an end-to-end no code Training Request Solution in which I featured the following :

1. SharePoint Designer 2010 enhancements.
2. SharePoint Designer Workflows
3. Visio 2010
4. InfoPath 2010 Integration with SharePoint 2010
5. Data View Web Parts & XSLT list View Web Parts
6. Using JQuery with SharePoint

I would like to seize this opportunity to extend a special thank-you to all our attendees, their interaction and questions really made my day!

I would also like to thank my colleagues Marwan Tarek and Mohamed Yehia for their wonderful sessions , Good job guys!

A feature that I really appreciate in InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2010

2009-12-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

Microsoft heard our feedback guys and took them very seriously regarding the portability of the solutions created in the development environments. You can now take all the lists, libraries, site assets, data and forms, package them up all into one file and easily deploy them onto different environments!

Now, the question is “What about InfoPath forms?”

In InfoPath 2010, all the links you have to external data are now relative, so when you move that form to different environments, those links will continue to work.. I really appreciate this!

Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA

2009-12-02T05:09:00.000-08:00

SharePoint Saturday EMEA is a loosely knit group of SharePoint evangelists from around the world. We are working together using SharePoint as a collaboration tool to sponsor live, online global events.

On January 23rd, 2010, we will hold our first online SharePoint Saturday event in the EMEA Timezones (8:00am to 5:00pm London time).

Registration is now open

Join Facebook group here.

I’m really proud to be one of the organizers and speakers in this event, stay tuned, we have a bunch of creative ideas that you will definitely like!

Understanding InfoPath Forms Services -Jordan SharePoint User group

2009-11-30T04:03:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to let you know that Mohamed Saleh [C# MVP] has just sent me the slidedeck from the most recent Jordan SharePoint User Group meeting. You can get it now from here.

I’m really happy to be presenting this :) keep up the good work Jordan guys ;)

SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard Visualizer

2009-11-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard Visualizer is a jQuery-based solution that extends the Developer Dashboard by plotting an interactive diagram with data from the Developer Dashboard, giving you an **instant** insight into where the bottlenecks are in your code.

Get SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard Visualizer from here and let me know what you think!

Reusable and Globally Reusable Workflows in SharePoint 2010

2009-11-26T06:20:00.000-08:00

"SharePoint Designer Workflows" is nothing new, we've had that in 2007 as well. In SPD 2007, workflows were not reusable. Once you have defined a workflow, you cannot move that workflow to another list or reuse it somewhere else.

NOW in SharePoint 2010, this is possible! You can create reusable workflows and attach them to more than one list.

"Reusable workflows" is one of the coolest features in SharePoint 2010, however when I opened up SPD for the first time, I was a bit confused because I noticed two different terms "Reusable Workflows" and 'Globally Reusable Workflows".

When you create a Reusable workflow in SharePoint Designer 2010, it’s by default reusable within the site it has been created in, which means that it can be attached to any list within this site. But what if you want your workflow to be reusable in the whole site collection ? Well, this is the definition of “Globally Reusable Workflows”. You can easily convert your workflows to be available anywhere in your site collection by opening your workflow and clicking on “Convert to Globally Reusable” from the ribbon as shown below.

Also it’s worth mentioning that only the workflows created at the root level of the site collection can be converted to be Globally Reusable but other ones created in sub sites cannot. Try to create a workflow in a sub site , open it and note that the Conversion button is dimmed.

Another important question is what if I want to take my workflow and give it to somebody else in a different site collection? There’s another button in the ribbon called “Save as Template”, this takes the workflow, put it in a wsp file and save it to the ‘Site Assets” library. You can export this file and deploy it to other site collection and what’s really cool is that you can import this wsp into Visual Studio and extend it over there. Very cool stuff! Thanks Microsoft for this feature!

Speaking at SharePoint Techday [December, 5th]

2009-11-25T02:12:00.000-08:00

Egypt SharePoint User Group is pleased to announce its co-operation with DotNetWork User Group in putting together a full day about SharePoint 2010.

TechDays is a new type of .network's gatherings. It consists of 2+ sessions talking about a specific technology from the basic to advanced levels going in sequence to expose audience to different areas of that technology.

I’m pleased to be presenting there with Marwan Tarek and Mohamed Yehia, please find below the event details :

Date: Saturday, December 5th 2009
Time: 10:30 AM – 4:00 PM
Place: Dar El Deyafa – Ain Shams University – Isis Hall – first floor, El khaleefa el Mamoon - EL Abbasia– Cairo
Agenda:
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM SharePoint 2010, Getting Ready! Marwan Tarek
12:30 PM – 02:00 PM Developers’ tools for SharePoint 2010 Mohamed Yehia
02:30 PM – 04:00 PM Creating No-Code SharePoint Designer Solutions for SharePoint2010 Ayman ElHattab
The ticket to attend the event is 15 L.E.

Hope to see you all there!

Jordan SharePoint User Group – Nov 2009 Meeting

2009-11-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

Jordan SharePoint User Group has recently conducted November 2009 meeting on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at Princess Sumaya University for Technology.

Mohamed Saleh [C# MVP] and Ali Nimer, Sr. SharePoint Developers delivered exciting sessions covering how to build browser-enabled web forms using Microsoft InfoPath Forms Services.

Here are some of the covered topics:

· What is InfoPath and how does it work
· How to get InfoPath to work with SharePoint InfoPath Forms Services
· InfoPath or ASP.NET Web Forms?
· Consuming Web Services from InfoPath Forms
· Business Rules Verification and Validations

About JSUG :

The Jordan SharePoint User Group (JSUG) is the very first SharePoint User Group in the Middle East. It was formed to connect SharePoint professionals within Jordan together, to share knowledge and build a higher level of awareness for SharePoint Products and Technologies within the region.

Looking forward for more collaboration between JSUG and EGYSUG…

In SharePoint Designer 2010 : XSLT List View Web Part = List View Web Part + XSLT Data View Web Part

2009-11-23T23:41:00.000-08:00

XSLT Data View Web Parts have been and still remain to be one of the most powerful web parts in SharePoint , some people call it “The Swiss Army Knife of SharePoint Web Parts” , the only problem that I can see with the Data View Web Part that once you add it to a web part page, the end users cannot further manipulate it, they have to come back to SPD Designer to modify it or directly edit the XSLT from the browser which is not an easy task (All data is retrieved as XML and manipulated using XSLT which is a very flexible way of transforming and presenting your data). Otherwise, the XSLT Data View Web Part is a wonderful web part, you can aggregate data from a variety of sources and present them in an awesome way.

In SharePoint 2007, we also had List View Web Part, which could be used to show a list content in a page but you cannot customize it that much in SPD 2007, you have to convert it to XSLT Data View Web part in order to customize or extend it.

In SPD 2010, there is a new web part called XSLT List View Web Part which is a combination of both :

XSLT List View Web Part = List View Web Part + XSLT Data View Web Part

You can customize it directly through SPD 2010 and once it's added to a page, end users can still customize it using the browser by adding views and doing anything that was possible using List View Web Part.

Ah, by the way the Swiss Army Knife of SharePoint Web Parts still exists in SharePoint Designer 2010 with a much better designer surface using the new Ribbons interface :)

Creating mailing lists for SharePoint sites and blogs [No Code Required] – Part 6: Administering the mailing list using Microsoft Word Mail Merge

2009-11-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

NOTE : This article was published on EndUserSharePoint.com a couple of weeks ago and because of the wonderful feedback I received, I decided to cross-post it here too.

This is the sixth article in a multipart series that is intended to help you create mailing lists for your SharePoint sites or blogs without writing a single line of .NET Code. In the introductory article, I listed the project initiatives, requirements, and objectives. In Part 1, I created a secured backend where we will store the subscribers’ contacts. In Part 2, I configured the ‘Contact’ content type, created a subscription form for the mailing list and did some simple customizations to it. In Part 3, I utilized the thrilling DataFormWebPart to further extend and enhance the subscription form to meet the project requirements. In Part 4, I implemented requirement # 3 by creating a list that comprises the names of all the countries of the world and a lookup field that gets its values from this list. In Part 5, I showed you how to create the primary and secondary SharePoint Designer Workflows needed to meet our project requirements.

In the previous article, I showed you how to connect the approved contacts to Outlook by creating a workflow that is triggered when the list administrator approves a subscriber request moving their contact to the “Approved Subscribers” list. I have also provided you with some excellent resources if you need to know more about SharePoint Designer Workflows.

As I mentioned in Part 4, most of the questions that I have received lately focused on the sixth requirement. For easier reference, I have copied it below.

“List administrators should be able to send e-mails to all the approved and registered users specifying some filters. For instance, the list administrator should be capable of sending e-mails to all the registered users from Canada”.

In this article, I will show you how to implement this requirement using Microsoft Word Mail Merge.

Unexpectedly, Microsoft Word has no option to pick a SharePoint list directly as the data source for a mail merge. However, we can work around this limitation by connecting our “Approved Subscribers” list to Outlook and selecting the Merge data source to be an Outlook Contacts List as shown in the following figures.

Summary

There you go! Yes, we are done; you can now create and administer your own mailing list for your SharePoint site or blog.

Since this series is intended to be educational, you should now be capable of:

Creating and configuring SharePoint Lists using SharePoint Designer.
Configuring anonymous contributions for SharePoint Lists.
Creating simple SharePoint Designer workflows for sending confirmation mails to list subscribers.
Configuring content approval for share point lists.
Creating custom SharePoint list forms.
Creating Client-Side validation for SharePoint list forms.
Using the DataFormWebPart.
Connecting SharePoint Lists to outlook.
Using Word 2007 Mail Merge feature with SharePoint Lists.
Using and creating SharePoint List Templates.
Hiding SharePoint lists.
Using lookup columns in SharePoint lists.

Again, I would like to thank everybody who took time to drop me an e-mail, follow me on twitter, or even leave me a comment. Your feedback, guys has always made my day.

So until I talk to you again (most probably about SharePoint 2010 ), check out my blog at http://www.aymanelhattab.com , where you will find shorter articles, tips and tricks, questions and answers, and downloadable content. You can also follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/aymanelhattab or drop me an e-mail at ayman.elhattab@gmail.com if you have any questions.

About EndUserSharePoint:

EndUserSharePoint.com is a community of SharePoint authors dedicated to providing content to SharePoint End Users on three levels: Information Worker, Power User/Site Administrator and Site Collection Administrator.