Jason Medero SharePoint MVP: SharePoint Space for all things SharePoint, OCS, RMS, InfoPath, and Office

NYC SharePoint User Group

5/7/2008  5:30 PM – Microsoft Office – 1290 6^th Ave. (51^st/52^nd)

NEXT NYC SHAREPOINT USER GROUP: Wednesday, May 7

Paul Gavin & Natalya Voskresenskaya will present on

"Using Content Query Web Part to Solve Business Problems"

MOSS 2007's Content Query Web Part (CQWP) enables users to create custom views of data queried from many sources, and present that data in one place. Despite its powerful query and content refinement options, CQWP is often an underrated and overlooked feature. CQWP is both a “data extraction engine” (find documents or list items anywhere in a site collection) and also a first-class presentation tool that enables users to control how content is presented by wrapping HTML and styles to format the display nearly any way you wish.

In this demo-heavy session, we will show how to use the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) to solve business problems by showing off core features:
- Use default CQWP features, including audience targeting.
- Use CQWP as a reporting tool anywhere in a site collection via filter criteria such as “all documents created today”.
- Change look and feel of query results to highlight business data, show additional columns of information, display information in a grid format, and others.
- Show how CQWP can aid in content type administration (e.g. find all documents of a particular content type so as to understand potential impact of changing a CT definition).
- Describe some limitations of CQWP.
- Provide a list of resources for advanced CQWP techniques, including blogs, ECQWP Codeplex project and MSDN documentation.

Paul Gavin (MCP, MCTS, MCAD) is a Solutions Architect for Conchango & has been working professionally in the IT consulting world since 1991. He works in the collaboration group that uses SharePoint to deliver business solutions and has found that SharePoint's horizontal nature leads to many exciting opportunities for systems management, integration, BPI and more. SharePoint is a solution architect's dream platform.

Natalya Voskresenskaya (MCTS) is a SharePoint Architect at Conchango and has been working in the IT field for the past 10 years. Natalya has a diverse professional experience in a wide range of markets including media publishing, online crime news, digital music world, corporate law & consulting. With experience in design, architecture, development & deployment of Web based applications, Natalya has been dedicated to developing portal solutions since the early days of 2000. She has been working with SharePoint technologies since the 2003 version and is passionate about this technology. Natalya hopes that sharing her experience will help people see how they can get the best use out of the SharePoint platform.

The meeting will start at 5:30 p.m. with an opportunity to network with your colleagues in other companies and free food compliments of Certeon.

For immediate registration: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=127705

For additional information, directions & other details, visit the NYC SPUG website: http://www.sharepointusergroup.org/newyork/default.aspx

Each month follows the format below.  Here's the agenda for this month:

The sponsors for the May 7 meeting include:

Networking/Food:    Certeon

Speaker Gift:            CorasWorks

Door Prizes:             NGenious Solutions & Certeon
After Meeting Social: CorasWorks

NYC SharePoint User Group

5/7/2008  5:30 PM – Microsoft Office – 1290 6^th Ave. (51^st/52^nd)

NEXT NYC SHAREPOINT USER GROUP: Wednesday, May 7

Paul Gavin & Natalya Voskresenskaya will present on

"Using Content Query Web Part to Solve Business Problems"

MOSS 2007's Content Query Web Part (CQWP) enables users to create custom views of data queried from many sources, and present that data in one place. Despite its powerful query and content refinement options, CQWP is often an underrated and overlooked feature. CQWP is both a “data extraction engine” (find documents or list items anywhere in a site collection) and also a first-class presentation tool that enables users to control how content is presented by wrapping HTML and styles to format the display nearly any way you wish.

In this demo-heavy session, we will show how to use the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) to solve business problems by showing off core features:
- Use default CQWP features, including audience targeting.
- Use CQWP as a reporting tool anywhere in a site collection via filter criteria such as “all documents created today”.
- Change look and feel of query results to highlight business data, show additional columns of information, display information in a grid format, and others.
- Show how CQWP can aid in content type administration (e.g. find all documents of a particular content type so as to understand potential impact of changing a CT definition).
- Describe some limitations of CQWP.
- Provide a list of resources for advanced CQWP techniques, including blogs, ECQWP Codeplex project and MSDN documentation.

Paul Gavin (MCP, MCTS, MCAD) is a Solutions Architect for Conchango & has been working professionally in the IT consulting world since 1991. He works in the collaboration group that uses SharePoint to deliver business solutions and has found that SharePoint's horizontal nature leads to many exciting opportunities for systems management, integration, BPI and more. SharePoint is a solution architect's dream platform.

Natalya Voskresenskaya (MCTS) is a SharePoint Architect at Conchango and has been working in the IT field for the past 10 years. Natalya has a diverse professional experience in a wide range of markets including media publishing, online crime news, digital music world, corporate law & consulting. With experience in design, architecture, development & deployment of Web based applications, Natalya has been dedicated to developing portal solutions since the early days of 2000. She has been working with SharePoint technologies since the 2003 version and is passionate about this technology. Natalya hopes that sharing her experience will help people see how they can get the best use out of the SharePoint platform.

The meeting will start at 5:30 p.m. with an opportunity to network with your colleagues in other companies and free food compliments of Certeon.

For immediate registration: http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=127705

For additional information, directions & other details, visit the NYC SPUG website: http://www.sharepointusergroup.org/newyork/default.aspx

Each month follows the format below.  Here's the agenda for this month:

The sponsors for the May 7 meeting include:

Networking/Food:    Certeon

Speaker Gift:            CorasWorks

Door Prizes:             NGenious Solutions & Certeon
After Meeting Social: CorasWorks

So the other day I encountered this error when I simply tried to delete a personal site from a specific user.  Once I deleted this personal site then tried to recreate the MySite by clicking on the link I was receiving a credential prompt.  Even though I would input the password in correctly I was getting a 401 Unauthorized error after 3 prompts.  It didn't matter if I clicked the Mysite link for a regular everyday user or for an administrator.  I suddenly could not access any personal sites!  Good thing this was a dev server!  Well let's cut right to the chase and solve this problem shall we.  

The solution was to check the Mysite web application and see if any site collections existed.  The web application that is hosting your Mysites should have a root site collection and in a perfect world that root site collection SHOULD be using the My Site Host template.  So it turned out that yes the web application that was hosting My Sites had a root site collection but was malfunctioning for some reason!  I deleted the root site collection from the web application and now it was officially empty.  I then created a site collection in the My site web app using the My site host template (shown below) found under the Enterprise tab when creating a site collection ONLY.   I created the site collection at the root of the web app which in my case was http://mysite.domainname.com.  I went back to see if the “My Site” link was functioning again and how great it was creating a brand new My Site as expected.  Remember that earlier I deleted the My Site and wanted to create a new one but when clicking on the My Site link and was greeted with a credential prompt and then the page shown below 401 UNAUTHORIZED (shown below).  

So the tip of the day if you run into this problem when accessing Mysites throughout your organization is:  Re-create the MySite host site collection by using the MySite Host Template when creating your site collection in the web application that you are using to host your Mysites! I hope this saves some time for people when they run into this issue.and some hair on their head.o:p> Cheers,  

So the other day I encountered this error when I simply tried to delete a personal site from a specific user.  Once I deleted this personal site then tried to recreate the MySite by clicking on the link I was receiving a credential prompt.  Even though I would input the password in correctly I was getting a 401 Unauthorized error after 3 prompts.  It didn't matter if I clicked the Mysite link for a regular everyday user or for an administrator.  I suddenly could not access any personal sites!  Good thing this was a dev server!  Well let's cut right to the chase and solve this problem shall we.  

The solution was to check the Mysite web application and see if any site collections existed.  The web application that is hosting your Mysites should have a root site collection and in a perfect world that root site collection SHOULD be using the My Site Host template.  So it turned out that yes the web application that was hosting My Sites had a root site collection but was malfunctioning for some reason!  I deleted the root site collection from the web application and now it was officially empty.  I then created a site collection in the My site web app using the My site host template (shown below) found under the Enterprise tab when creating a site collection ONLY.   I created the site collection at the root of the web app which in my case was http://mysite.domainname.com.  I went back to see if the “My Site” link was functioning again and how great it was creating a brand new My Site as expected.  Remember that earlier I deleted the My Site and wanted to create a new one but when clicking on the My Site link and was greeted with a credential prompt and then the page shown below 401 UNAUTHORIZED (shown below).  

So the tip of the day if you run into this problem when accessing Mysites throughout your organization is:  Re-create the MySite host site collection by using the MySite Host Template when creating your site collection in the web application that you are using to host your Mysites! I hope this saves some time for people when they run into this issue.and some hair on their head.o:p> Cheers,  

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font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
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Have you ever wondered how you should plan on setting up your content database for your MOSS/WSS farm?  Questions such as:  Should I pre-create my content databases before bringing up my farm?  Is it best to start with just one content database for my web applications?  How do these content databases fill up?  Does the first content database grow until it reaches its site warning or max limit and then SharePoint begins creating sites in the next content database inline?  If you have three content DBs attached to your web application how do they fill up and in what order?   Well today I decided to write up this blog article to describe the process and the logic behind your web applications content databases  It seems that they fill up evenly across all of the content DBs.  Lets jump right into an example as this is the best way to explain this topic.  For example, if you have three content DB's all set to a warning of 5 sites and a max of 10 sites then SharePoint is going to evenly add sites to each of the content DB's. 

So you have content DB's named:

- Site A

 -Site B

 -Site C

Each are set to the aforementioned warning and max limits (5 site warning and 10 site max).  You then create three sites one by one and then have a look.  You should now see that one site has been created in each of the content DB's.    This occurs because each site has been set to the same exact dimensions in regards to site warning limit and max site limit.   Now consider this scenario:

If an administrator was to create a site, which content database do you think SharePoint will create the site in?  If you guessed Site C you are correct!  SharePoint will create the site in the content database that is farthest away from its site warning limit.  Essentially SharePoint will try its best to keep the site count to site warning limit between all content databases as even as possible.  This meaning that if you were to pre-create three content databases before you began creating sites all of your sites/site collections would be spread throughout those three databases evenly.   I thought this was very interesting because even though this approach makes sense logically it makes it more difficult to pin point what content database a certain site might belong to.  Luckily enough we now have the option to move and split our content databases up via this new STSADM command line.  What I usually recommend to clients is to start with one content database and have the processes in place (site collection quotas, quota templates) to make sure that your content databases are manageable from a disaster recovery's perspective.  The one content database at a time approach provides the ability (not the greatest of control) at a basic level to know what sites were created within what content database.  If current records are kept of when content databases are turned offline then this ability can become more accurate. Hope this helps!

Cheers,

td {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10pt;
}

Have you ever wondered how you should plan on setting up your content database for your MOSS/WSS farm?  Questions such as:  Should I pre-create my content databases before bringing up my farm?  Is it best to start with just one content database for my web applications?  How do these content databases fill up?  Does the first content database grow until it reaches its site warning or max limit and then SharePoint begins creating sites in the next content database inline?  If you have three content DBs attached to your web application how do they fill up and in what order?   Well today I decided to write up this blog article to describe the process and the logic behind your web applications content databases  It seems that they fill up evenly across all of the content DBs.  Lets jump right into an example as this is the best way to explain this topic.  For example, if you have three content DB's all set to a warning of 5 sites and a max of 10 sites then SharePoint is going to evenly add sites to each of the content DB's. 

So you have content DB's named:

- Site A

 -Site B

 -Site C

Each are set to the aforementioned warning and max limits (5 site warning and 10 site max).  You then create three sites one by one and then have a look.  You should now see that one site has been created in each of the content DB's.    This occurs because each site has been set to the same exact dimensions in regards to site warning limit and max site limit.   Now consider this scenario:

If an administrator was to create a site, which content database do you think SharePoint will create the site in?  If you guessed Site C you are correct!  SharePoint will create the site in the content database that is farthest away from its site warning limit.  Essentially SharePoint will try its best to keep the site count to site warning limit between all content databases as even as possible.  This meaning that if you were to pre-create three content databases before you began creating sites all of your sites/site collections would be spread throughout those three databases evenly.   I thought this was very interesting because even though this approach makes sense logically it makes it more difficult to pin point what content database a certain site might belong to.  Luckily enough we now have the option to move and split our content databases up via this new STSADM command line.  What I usually recommend to clients is to start with one content database and have the processes in place (site collection quotas, quota templates) to make sure that your content databases are manageable from a disaster recovery's perspective.  The one content database at a time approach provides the ability (not the greatest of control) at a basic level to know what sites were created within what content database.  If current records are kept of when content databases are turned offline then this ability can become more accurate. Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Now to completely change my regularly scheduled program, check out what keeps me busy besides SharePoint.  I have not really posted anything other than SharePoint related topics on this blog but I do have other hobbies that I take part in besides SharePoint. One hobby or sport that I take interest in is MMA (mixed martial arts) man they really have an acronym for everything! Anyways a couple of years ago I began practicing mixed martial arts which is a sport that encompasses all of the different martial arts found around the world. Some of the more popular ones are kickboxing, Thai boxing, wrestling, and juijitsu. In recent years the UFC has made MMA a main stream sport. In fact it now competes with Boxing as far as appealing to men and women in the young to middle age demographic.  Fighters such as Frankie Edgar and Kurt Pelligrino sign contracts with the UFC to fight professionally.  These are sanctioned fights just like boxing with rules to keep the sport clean.  So for the people who think that fighting is simply putting a couple animals in a cage and let them kill each other this type of thinking is very off base.

In fact once you really understand the rules and the different art forms watching these fights you can really appreciate the sport as its own art form (MMA).  Anyways while training at Rhino academy where I used to live I got the chance to work out with Frankie and the guy is just an animal.  He works so hard that I think I got dizzy just watching him.  Not to mention sparring with Frankie I think he hit me 10 times to my one and looked fresh as can be after our 2min sparring session while I thought I was going to die.  Frankie trains extremely hard and its no wonder why he has made it to THE BIG SHOW. 

Frankie and Kurt both grew up in nieghboring hometowns from where I grew up so of course I am always rooting for them.  Professional fighting is probably one of the hardest things to do for a living and takes great physical, and mental strength.  These guys have worked hard and have made it.  If anyone is interested they are going to be fighting tonight at 7pm EST on SPIKE TV.  Go check out the fight card.

 Ok now back to our regular scheduled program.

Now to completely change my regularly scheduled program, check out what keeps me busy besides SharePoint.  I have not really posted anything other than SharePoint related topics on this blog but I do have other hobbies that I take part in besides SharePoint. One hobby or sport that I take interest in is MMA (mixed martial arts) man they really have an acronym for everything! Anyways a couple of years ago I began practicing mixed martial arts which is a sport that encompasses all of the different martial arts found around the world. Some of the more popular ones are kickboxing, Thai boxing, wrestling, and juijitsu. In recent years the UFC has made MMA a main stream sport. In fact it now competes with Boxing as far as appealing to men and women in the young to middle age demographic.  Fighters such as Frankie Edgar and Kurt Pelligrino sign contracts with the UFC to fight professionally.  These are sanctioned fights just like boxing with rules to keep the sport clean.  So for the people who think that fighting is simply putting a couple animals in a cage and let them kill each other this type of thinking is very off base.

In fact once you really understand the rules and the different art forms watching these fights you can really appreciate the sport as its own art form (MMA).  Anyways while training at Rhino academy where I used to live I got the chance to work out with Frankie and the guy is just an animal.  He works so hard that I think I got dizzy just watching him.  Not to mention sparring with Frankie I think he hit me 10 times to my one and looked fresh as can be after our 2min sparring session while I thought I was going to die.  Frankie trains extremely hard and its no wonder why he has made it to THE BIG SHOW. 

Frankie and Kurt both grew up in nieghboring hometowns from where I grew up so of course I am always rooting for them.  Professional fighting is probably one of the hardest things to do for a living and takes great physical, and mental strength.  These guys have worked hard and have made it.  If anyone is interested they are going to be fighting tonight at 7pm EST on SPIKE TV.  Go check out the fight card.

 Ok now back to our regular scheduled program.

Andrew Connell friend and fellow SharePoint MVP is coming to NYC and is bringing all that WCM knowledge with him!  He is going to be teaching one of his famous WCM classes from March 31 – April 3.  This is a really great opportunity for individuals that are looking for some great MOSS 2007 WCM training.  Its not everyday that the WCM rock star comes to town so jump on this class as they still may have some open spots left but be quick about it will ya!  Andrew will also be speaking at the NYCSPUG on Wed. April second and will have a little over an hour to present on you guessed it…..drum roll please…..WCM. 

He will of course not have time to really dive deep into WCM so if this is what you are looking for go register for his class here:

Developing Publishing Sites with SharePoint Server 2007

Below is the information for the presentation he will be giving at the NYCSPUG:

The speaker at our April meeting will be Andrew Connell. The presentation is titled "Structured Approach to Building MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites". "SharePoint doesn't support source control." "SharePoint doesn't follow good SDL or change control processes." "Developers have to use SharePoint Designer to create publishing sites."Heard these before? Guess what? All these myths are completely untrure. Unlike many traditional SharePoint projects, publishing sites frequently require following an organization's change control process, software development lifecycle processes & integration within source control. Not only is it possible to follow all of these common development guidelines in SharePoint, it is a lot easier than you might think.

In this session we'll take a look at how this is possible by obtaining a better grasp of the inner workings of SharePoint, how you can make sure your development team leverages this, as well as some tips & tricks on how to achieve it. Andrew Connell is an independent consultant, developer, instructor & Micorsoft MVP focusing on Web content management. He's authored numerous books & articles on Microsoft Content Management Server and on SharePoint products & technologies.With a passion for SharePoint development & content management sites, Andrew has spoken on the subject of MOSS 2007 development & web content management at various events & national conferences (i.e. TechEd, SharePoint Connections, VSLive, Office Developer Conference & the Microsoft SharePoint conference in Australia).

You can reach Andrew or subscribe to his blog at http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog 

Here's the agenda for this meeting: 

Click here to register for this meeting!

Am looking to forward to see you all there so please come introduce yourself.

Cheers,

Andrew Connell friend and fellow SharePoint MVP is coming to NYC and is bringing all that WCM knowledge with him!  He is going to be teaching one of his famous WCM classes from March 31 – April 3.  This is a really great opportunity for individuals that are looking for some great MOSS 2007 WCM training.  Its not everyday that the WCM rock star comes to town so jump on this class as they still may have some open spots left but be quick about it will ya!  Andrew will also be speaking at the NYCSPUG on Wed. April second and will have a little over an hour to present on you guessed it…..drum roll please…..WCM. 

He will of course not have time to really dive deep into WCM so if this is what you are looking for go register for his class here:

Developing Publishing Sites with SharePoint Server 2007

Below is the information for the presentation he will be giving at the NYCSPUG:

The speaker at our April meeting will be Andrew Connell. The presentation is titled "Structured Approach to Building MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites". "SharePoint doesn't support source control." "SharePoint doesn't follow good SDL or change control processes." "Developers have to use SharePoint Designer to create publishing sites."Heard these before? Guess what? All these myths are completely untrure. Unlike many traditional SharePoint projects, publishing sites frequently require following an organization's change control process, software development lifecycle processes & integration within source control. Not only is it possible to follow all of these common development guidelines in SharePoint, it is a lot easier than you might think.

In this session we'll take a look at how this is possible by obtaining a better grasp of the inner workings of SharePoint, how you can make sure your development team leverages this, as well as some tips & tricks on how to achieve it. Andrew Connell is an independent consultant, developer, instructor & Micorsoft MVP focusing on Web content management. He's authored numerous books & articles on Microsoft Content Management Server and on SharePoint products & technologies.With a passion for SharePoint development & content management sites, Andrew has spoken on the subject of MOSS 2007 development & web content management at various events & national conferences (i.e. TechEd, SharePoint Connections, VSLive, Office Developer Conference & the Microsoft SharePoint conference in Australia).

You can reach Andrew or subscribe to his blog at http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog 

Here's the agenda for this meeting: 

Click here to register for this meeting!

Am looking to forward to see you all there so please come introduce yourself.

Cheers,