akalli's blog

Hi all. I just got off the phone with someone who called me about doing some SharePoint Development for them. Since I don't do that kind of work he said it was OK for me to post his information for anyone here that would be interested.

Here are the particulars as I know them:

1) He has a WSS v2 site that was customized using Frontpage and wants to recreate/rebuild it in WSS v3. He used lots of tables which does not seem to work well when trying to duplicate in WSS v3, and he can't figure it out.

2) He wants something now using Master Pages.

If you would like to talk with him to find out more, his name is Jon Frost, of Jack Frost Design. He can be contacted at #925-551-0162 or jonf@jackfrostdesign.com.

Good luck!

Andrea Kalli

Hi all. I just got off the phone with someone who called me about doing some SharePoint Development for them. Since I don't do that kind of work he said it was OK for me to post his information for anyone here that would be interested.

Here are the particulars as I know them:

1) He has a WSS v2 site that was customized using Frontpage and wants to recreate/rebuild it in WSS v3. He used lots of tables which does not seem to work well when trying to duplicate in WSS v3, and he can't figure it out.

2) He wants something now using Master Pages.

If you would like to talk with him to find out more, his name is Jon Frost, of Jack Frost Design. He can be contacted at #925-551-0162 or jonf@jackfrostdesign.com.

Good luck!

Andrea Kalli

I found this great video on how to create a Training Portal in SharePoint 2007.

Here's the link:

Creating A Training Portal With SharePoint 2007

Andrea Kalli

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

I found this great video on how to create a Training Portal in SharePoint 2007.

Here's the link:

Creating A Training Portal With SharePoint 2007

Andrea Kalli

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

Incorporating Podcasts into your SharePoint Site

These days, my life is filled with SharePoint, Outlook, and podcasts. Podcasting is such a wonderful medium for content delivery, so I thought I would see just how I could pull these three technologies together.  

Here are the THREE different ways I came up with to incorporate podcasts into your SharePoint site.

ONE:

If you are lucky enough to have a SharePoint hosting company that provides a RSS reader web part or you host your own SharePoint site and have installed a RSS reader web part for your users, you can use it to display podcasts that would be beneficial for your users. Below is a screenshot of the RSS FeedReader that is displaying three different podcast feeds, and only showing the most recent 5 episodes for each feed.

The properties window of the feed reader allows me to set a filter type and number to better control what gets displayed in a single window.

Some podcast episodes will launch a player immediately, as seen below.

And some will open the blog post where the podcast is located. Here, you can read the additional notes on the episode and have access to other features available on the blog itself.

TWO:

I found a couple of multi-episode podcast players that allowed me to put in my feed url, and it produced some html that I was able to insert into a Content Editor Web Part. The end result looks like this:

Clicking on the player image provides a pop-up podcast player, which lists all the episodes in the podcast. Clicking on the title of the episode I wish to hear starts playing it.

You can find these players at:

ú         Podcast Pickle: http://www.podcastpickle.com/app/player/free.php

ú         PuPuPlayer: http://www.pupuplatters.com/pupuplayer/try.htm

THREE:

Now that SharePoint sites have blogs, and the blogs have RSS feeds, well.you get where I'm going here, right? I posted a blog post with links to a couple of my training videos to my SharePoint site blog. What I particularly like about using blogs for your podcast is that you can write up additional notes and provide more links to supporting files, etc. People can comment on it as well. Plus, text has the added bonus of being searchable.

I have the Outlook RSS reader watching my SharePoint Company Blog, so when a new podcast gets posted I'll see it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, a fourth way, that I just thought of, might be to create a document library to upload the audio files to, grab the RSS feed from the library and aggregate it in your reader, like Outlook 2007. I'm trying this out right now, but I'm still waiting to see if it works like I think it might. I'll keep you posted.

…OK, here are the results of the fourth way.

It does pull the individual files into the Outlook RSS reader, however, here are some observations about this method:

1) First, you'll be uploading the files to your SharePoint server, so space may become an issue over time, especially if you are uploading video files and if you use a hosted solution where your plan comes with a set storage limit.

2) Also, if you don't name your files accurately, people won't have any idea what the episode is about until they listen or watch it.

3) As the items are being displayed in Outlook, it only shows a link back to the "Article". Clicking the link takes you directly to the SharePoint Site where the file is stored. You can play it from there.

Andrea Kalli

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

Incorporating Podcasts into your SharePoint Site

These days, my life is filled with SharePoint, Outlook, and podcasts. Podcasting is such a wonderful medium for content delivery, so I thought I would see just how I could pull these three technologies together.  

Here are the THREE different ways I came up with to incorporate podcasts into your SharePoint site.

ONE:

If you are lucky enough to have a SharePoint hosting company that provides a RSS reader web part or you host your own SharePoint site and have installed a RSS reader web part for your users, you can use it to display podcasts that would be beneficial for your users. Below is a screenshot of the RSS FeedReader that is displaying three different podcast feeds, and only showing the most recent 5 episodes for each feed.

The properties window of the feed reader allows me to set a filter type and number to better control what gets displayed in a single window.

Some podcast episodes will launch a player immediately, as seen below.

And some will open the blog post where the podcast is located. Here, you can read the additional notes on the episode and have access to other features available on the blog itself.

TWO:

I found a couple of multi-episode podcast players that allowed me to put in my feed url, and it produced some html that I was able to insert into a Content Editor Web Part. The end result looks like this:

Clicking on the player image provides a pop-up podcast player, which lists all the episodes in the podcast. Clicking on the title of the episode I wish to hear starts playing it.

You can find these players at:

ú         Podcast Pickle: http://www.podcastpickle.com/app/player/free.php

ú         PuPuPlayer: http://www.pupuplatters.com/pupuplayer/try.htm

THREE:

Now that SharePoint sites have blogs, and the blogs have RSS feeds, well.you get where I'm going here, right? I posted a blog post with links to a couple of my training videos to my SharePoint site blog. What I particularly like about using blogs for your podcast is that you can write up additional notes and provide more links to supporting files, etc. People can comment on it as well. Plus, text has the added bonus of being searchable.

I have the Outlook RSS reader watching my SharePoint Company Blog, so when a new podcast gets posted I'll see it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, a fourth way, that I just thought of, might be to create a document library to upload the audio files to, grab the RSS feed from the library and aggregate it in your reader, like Outlook 2007. I'm trying this out right now, but I'm still waiting to see if it works like I think it might. I'll keep you posted.

…OK, here are the results of the fourth way.

It does pull the individual files into the Outlook RSS reader, however, here are some observations about this method:

1) First, you'll be uploading the files to your SharePoint server, so space may become an issue over time, especially if you are uploading video files and if you use a hosted solution where your plan comes with a set storage limit.

2) Also, if you don't name your files accurately, people won't have any idea what the episode is about until they listen or watch it.

3) As the items are being displayed in Outlook, it only shows a link back to the "Article". Clicking the link takes you directly to the SharePoint Site where the file is stored. You can play it from there.

Andrea Kalli

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC

www.virtualassist.net

Have you tried importing a Excel 2007 spreadsheet into SharePoint Service v3 and are getting a Method Post Error? Thanks to an open SharePoint forum, someone posted the fix. 

I take no credit for this fix. My SharePoint hosting company is www.frontpages-web-hosting.com and on their forum is a post by Bradley Elder (Thanks Bradley!) I was able to easily apply the change mentioned in his post and can now import a spreadsheet from Excel 2007 to SharePoint Services v3.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Here is his post below:

Have you tried importing a Excel 2007 spreadsheet into SharePoint Service v3 and are getting a Method Post Error? Thanks to an open SharePoint forum, someone posted the fix. 

I take no credit for this fix. My SharePoint hosting company is www.frontpages-web-hosting.com and on their forum is a post by Bradley Elder (Thanks Bradley!) I was able to easily apply the change mentioned in his post and can now import a spreadsheet from Excel 2007 to SharePoint Services v3.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Here is his post below:

MORE INFO ADDED 12-1-06: "Internet explorer is unable to update password-protected feeds" …that's what I get when I want to see any changes to my SharePoint lists or libraries I've subscribed to. Huh???

I'm finding it odd that having this great new ability to subscribe to SharePoint lists and libraries via RSS seem to be blocked when using Internet Explorer 7. (I'm also hearing the same to be true when subscribing to a SharePoint RSS feed via Outlook 2007, but I'm not sure…)

Here's what one of my SharePoint list feeds look like: http://www.kalliwssv3.com/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B06233581%2D7451%2D45BA%2D9547%2DBD818880B930%7D. Now, when I try to add this to another RSS reader, like Newsgator, it won't accept it because it doesn't recognize this url as a feed. The same for Firefox.

So…I can't use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Outlook 2007, Newsgator, etc. to read any of my SharePoint feeds. What good is this feature? How am I supposed to read these feeds?

I don't get it. Talk about 2 steps forward and 3 steps back…

What am I missing here? Someone please explain this logic to me.

See this post on the subject: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AccessingPrivateAndAuthenticatedFeedsWhyItsImportant.aspx

Andrea Kalli

www.virtualassist.net

MORE INFO ADDED 12-1-06: "Internet explorer is unable to update password-protected feeds" …that's what I get when I want to see any changes to my SharePoint lists or libraries I've subscribed to. Huh???

I'm finding it odd that having this great new ability to subscribe to SharePoint lists and libraries via RSS seem to be blocked when using Internet Explorer 7. (I'm also hearing the same to be true when subscribing to a SharePoint RSS feed via Outlook 2007, but I'm not sure…)

Here's what one of my SharePoint list feeds look like: http://www.kalliwssv3.com/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B06233581%2D7451%2D45BA%2D9547%2DBD818880B930%7D. Now, when I try to add this to another RSS reader, like Newsgator, it won't accept it because it doesn't recognize this url as a feed. The same for Firefox.

So…I can't use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Outlook 2007, Newsgator, etc. to read any of my SharePoint feeds. What good is this feature? How am I supposed to read these feeds?

I don't get it. Talk about 2 steps forward and 3 steps back…

What am I missing here? Someone please explain this logic to me.

See this post on the subject: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AccessingPrivateAndAuthenticatedFeedsWhyItsImportant.aspx

Andrea Kalli

www.virtualassist.net