Agile Sharepoint development by 21apps and Andrew Woodward MVP

On Thursday, 28th Jan 2010, I made my way down to the London SUGUK event.  I’ve been supporting the regional events and been unable to get down to London for a number of months.   The number of attendees was amazing – I didn’t count be I guess we have over 150 people and filled the room at Microsoft.

I did know quite a few regulars to the event,  but the great news again is the number of new faces.  SharePoint is really growing fast and wide and the need for information and community is growing with it.

Big Kudos to Matt for organising the event,  Matt has taken on the responsibilities for the South East and London,  to Ben Robb for doing a SharePoint Designer 2010 session  (although as he points out the whole Application Lifecycle Management is still not baked) and for Steve Smith for – umm not sure what Steve did

It was great to see Mike Fitzmaurice there  (this man made SharePoint happen),  and I suspect his presence on the panel was part of the reason the questions and discussion remained in the ITPro and User space.   Myself, Chris O’Brien, Matt Smith and Ben Robb tried hard to put a dev take on any questions where we could.

What I think would go down really well is to take a lead from the Nottingham group and organise focused events,  so we could have a Dev night, Design Night, End User night etc.

I have to apologies (thanks Alex Pearce for tweeting me this when we were in the Pub) – I did not advertise the #SharePint that took place afterwards, It was well attended and with more room than the pub we used to go to but not an ‘official’ #SharePint.

Hope to see you all at an event near you soon.

What better way to spend a Thursday evening,  first a couple of great sessions by Steve Smith and Mark Macrae (his first time speaking at SUGUK).

Sessions:

Session 1 – Understanding the relationship between IIS/Web Applications , SQL, SSP’s and Site collections – Steve Smith

In this session I will explain the logical relationship in the SharePoint Architecture and show you some usefull tips when creatng and managing them.

Session 2 -

Business Information and MOSS 2007 – Creating Interactive Dashboards using PerformancePoint Server – Mark Macrae

Start time – 6.30

Finish – 9pm then to the pub down the road

Break in the middle with Pizza and drinks

Location:

ID-Live offices, Strelley Hall, Nottingham. NG8 6PE

For directions and and to sign up go to the SUGUK site.

And to round the evening off in great style, the first Nottingham SharePint.

The Broad Oak

Main St., Strelley, Nottingham, NG8 6PD

I was planning to write up a post conference summary as a reminder to myself about the highlights.   The problem was that the whole conference was a highlight. So rather than write my own notes I thought I’d highlight some of the comments other people have made

As you know sometimes its just better to twitter

@lespaulrob: Hats off to @SteveSmithCK and team for putting together a great show at #spbpuk! the best run conf i’ve ever had the privilege to attend!

@SteveSmithCK: Appreciate all the comments everyone. Without a doubt all the hard work was worth it and I will definitely do another one #spbpuk

@molnaragnes: @SteveSmithCK Thanks again for the opt it was a very-very great event! See you soon! #spbpuk

@Nellymo: RT : @SteveSmithCK one word….QUALITY!!! that’s what the European SharePoint Best Practice conf. #spbpuk was all about”

@harbars: chilling out after #spbpuk great event – thanks to the entire CK crew

@brianwilson1: Thanks to all for awesome SharePoint Conference! Had a great time sharing cool tips on virtualizing SharePoint! #spbpuk #spbpc

@itwyatt: on my way home from #spbpuk , sad to be leaving its been a great few days – hope you’ve all enjoyed it.

@fatalfrenchy: As sun sets on sharepoint the moon rises on sharepint… had a great few days, def. worth it and would love to do it again Chris !#spbpuk

@RPWillis: #spbpuk Almost home after a great conference. Fantastic buzz and speakers,

@Erwin8: #spbpuk was a super conference, great organisation. too bad it’s over!

@ianmoran ditto – queuing at Gatwick but been well worth it. Best conf I’ve been to! #spbpuk. Well done @stevesmithck and all speakers

@StephenHynds: @SteveSmithCK #spbpuk conference was excellent. Lots to think about on the train back to Glasgow. Same time next year?

@markvlunenburg: #spbpuk ask the dev experts panel. I had a great conference! Thanks guys!! http://mobypicture.com/?ljfu5l

@helloitsliam: Great Conference, speakers and great to meet tons of people. Hopefully see you all again. Big respect to @SteveSmithCK!! #spbpc #spbpuk

Mark Rackley has also done a great summary from the twitterverse.

But for those that have more than 140 characters to say,  blogging works a lot better, although takes a little longer to get together.

What can I say about the conference?

Really just need to say massive great big thanks to Steve Smith @ Combined Knowledge for organizing a fantastic event. The Venue, Speakers, Sessions and Everyone there was fantastic.

Liam Cleary

Day 3 of the SharePoint European Best Practices Conference

Really had a great time over the last 3 days and will definitely go again

Justin French

These are just the examples I found; If I’ve missed you add a comment with a link back to your post.   I had a great time meeting people new and old and can’t wait for the next time. Vegas anyone

Wow, two great SUGUK events planned for November.   London on 25th and Scotland on 27th.

Edinburgh at the Scottish Parliment

Thurs 27th November

Spencer Harbar SharePoint MVP – MythBusters – debunking common SharePoint Farm Misconceptions
This interactive, whiteboard session will dive into common SharePoint Farm Myths and discuss common misconceptions around Global Deployments, Farm Topologies, Shared Service Providers, High Availability, Security and more. Alongside best practices for each “myth”, the SharePoint “magic numbers” will be covered and there will be plenty of scope to discuss any particular queries you may have on farm deployment.

Andrew Woodward SharePoint MVP – Test Driven Development – Contrary to popular belief it can be done on SharePoint projects
In the style of Don Box this PowerPoint free session will take you through the development of a SharePoint solution using TDD. We will introduce TDD , the tools of the trade, how TDD influences you design and mocking out the core SharePoint object model elements using the new Typemock Isolator APIs.

Sign Up for the Edinburgh event at SUGUK forum with your full name.

London at Microsoft Cardinal Place

Tue 25th November

Ben Robb SharePoint MVP – Customizing SharePoint Search

SharePoint Search is very powerful, and there are some key best practices which should be used to ensure that your search results are giving users the ability to find information more quickly. In this session we will learn how to customise search results and what search rules should be put in place to make sure that system pages do not find their way into search results. Finally, we will explore how to apply Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques so that external search engines can crawl public facing sites effectively.

Rickard Lofberg – Lessons learned deploying SharePoint at Credit Suisse

This session will explore how Credit Suisse, a world leading financial services company, has deployed SharePoint as a large scale collaboration platform.
We will learn about the design, best practises and challenges of hosting more than 2000 Site Collections and 1.8 TB of data.
We will cover topics ranging from the physical farm architecture to SharePoint Designer Contributor settings.
Finally, we will discuss some of the operational process and policies needed to ensure platform stability.

Sign Up for the London event

Andrew Connell is co-ordinating the SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night event at PDC in LA.

Going to PDC 2008 in Los Angeles, CA in just over a week (or live in the greater LA area)? Interested in hanging out in a casual social setting with other folks interested in SharePoint? We’ll be doing another SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night in LA the Sunday (October 26) @ 7p before PDC 2008 officially kicks off. So check into your hotel, drop your bags off and come on over to the Millennium Biltmore Hotel bar around 7p (till whenever) and join us (a few SharePoint MVPs will be there as well as a few folks from the SharePoint teams @ Microsoft).

I’m flying into LA on Sunday so will head straight to the Bar after checking in,  If you plan on comming please leave a comment on Andrews Connells blog post.

Another packed evening has been organised, this time at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane which promises to provide SharePoint, Curry and Beer in various quantities.

What looks like two great sessions.

Session1 : Web Content Management in MOSS, real life case study – Riaz Ahmed

This session will showcase how SharePoint content management has helped the world’s most international bank, a top 25 FTSE 100 company, deliver an online digital solution for clients, analysts and employees.

Session 2 : Best practices/lessons learnt: building MOSS Content Management sites – Chris O’Brien

This presentation explores key tips and developer techniques for building WCM sites, based on the experience of delivering sites such as that shown in the earlier session. As well as key topics such as security, optimisation and deployment, much of the presentation will cover practices which are not widely documented but which can shave time and make the difference on a very tight timescale.

Signup at SUGUK by replying to this post:  http://suguk.org/forums/thread/13880.aspx

Location:

LBi UK, Atlantis Building, Truman Brewery, 146 Brick Lane, London E1 6RU

Summer is usually a quite time for the SUGUK sessions, but there is treat lined up for you on the 14th August in London. Eric Shrupps – SharePoint MVP from the USA is over to present:

Full Speed Ahead: Developing High Performance Applications for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Discover tips, techniques, tools and best practices for creating high performance MOSS 2007 applications using Visual Studio 2008, C#, the SharePoint object model, web services, and the latest features in the .NET 3.5 framework. Learn how to measure application performance, optimize code execution, and configure SharePoint to support data intensive, highly transactional line-of-business applications.

Followed by Matt Groves of Trinity

Subject Unknown

But I would guess will be doing something ITPro related, possibly around ISA server and publishing SharePoint, check out the SUGUK site for the latest news on this.

Arrive for 6.15 for a 6.30 start, recommend stopping behind for a beer afterwards – even get your picture taken with the man in the Hat

Microsoft London (Cardinal Place)
100 Victoria Street
London SW1E 5JL
Tel: 0870 60 10 100

Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to attend as I will be on Holiday.

All of the SharePoint forums have recently been migrated to new homes and are now hosted on the latest Microsoft forum platform.  There has been a slight reorganisation but all have nice new URLs and I have included details below and split between TechNet and MSDN

TechNet Forums

SharePoint – Collaboration

Topics about team sites, project tracking, document collaboration, extranets, etc.

SharePoint – Community Advancement

Topics about improving or expanding the worldwide SharePoint community through blogs, forums, social networking, conferences, user groups, code camps, etc.

SharePoint – General Question and Answers and Discussion

General (typically presales oriented) questions and discussions.

SharePoint – Search

Topics about Search capabilities in SharePoint.

SharePoint – Setup, Upgrade, Administration and Operation

Topics about installation/setup and upgrade/migration as well as administration and operation.

SharePoint – Social Computing
Topics about MySites, blogs, wikis, tagging, social networking, knowledge search and brokering, communities, etc

MSDN Forums

SharePoint – Accessibility
Topics about improving accessibility and usability for the physically challenged.

SharePoint – Business Data Catalog

Topics about the Business Data Catalog capabilities in Office SharePoint Server.

SharePoint – Business Intelligence

Topics about implementing SharePoint for business intelligence oriented solutions.

SharePoint – Design and Customization

Topics about site design (i.e. definitions, templates) and page customization (i.e. layouts) as well as SharePoint Designer and similar tools.

SharePoint – Development and Programming

Topics about development and programming (i.e. web parts, features, etc.), SDKs, and tools (i.e. Visual Studio).

SharePoint – Enterprise Content Management

Topics about document management, records management, and web content management capabilities in SharePoint products and technologies.

SharePoint – Excel Services

Topics about Excel Services capabilities in Office SharePoint Server.

SharePoint – InfoPath Forms Services

Topics about InfoPath Forms Services capabilities in Office SharePoint Server.

SharePoint – Workflow

Topics about workflow capabilities in SharePoint products and technologies.

Additional Forums of interest

These additional forums are also of interest to SharePoint people.

Forefront Security for SharePoint

Topics Include: Detection of viruses, unwanted files, and inappropriate contect for SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services servers.

Next Generation Forefront Security for SharePoint

Discussions and questions on the next generation of Forefront Security for SharePoint.

Windows PowerShell

Discussion on Windows Server Windows Powershell

Setup Deployment

Discussion on setting up and deploying Windows Server

Using the SharePoint Products and Technologies Protocols

Discuss technical content and implementation of the SharePoint Products and Technologies protocols described in the Open Specifications

The SUGUK Big Event of 2008 took place last night and was a resounding success. I presented an introduction to Agile SharePoint Dev with zero code demos, which was a welcome relief to the audience as Todd Bleeker had just fried their brains with the SPD to Visual Studio workflow session. (looking forward to seeing this online). This introduction looked at what Agile means, the importance of the Empirical approach and the problems with the prescriptive process that so many organisation continue to flog. I introduced the Agile manifesto which is the foundation to the changes happening in the industry.

The talk looked at Scrum as an example of an agile management process interwoven with some discussion on XP processes and how the two work together.

I have uploaded the presentation here.

Agile Sharepoint Dev (Suguk 11 July 08)

There was a lot of really good discussion that continued in the bar afterwards, a lot of things to cover over the coming months.

If you have any comments on what was presented, or what areas of agile SharePoint development you think are lacking on the web please post them here.

A big thank you to Steve Smith and Nick Swan for organising a great event, to Matt Groves, Todd Bleeker, Bill English, Penny Coventry and Steve Smith for presenting.

Hope to see you all at a future SUGUK event, the next is scheduled for 14th August in London.

The SUGUK meeting on the 10th looks like being a fantastic event,  we have 5 SharePoint MVPs presenting, two coming in from the USA.

Signup here for a night not to be missed.

Start – 6.00 PM

Session 1 – 6.00 to 7.00

Room 1 – Penny Coventry – SharePoint MVP

Using Data Views and ASP.NET controls with SharePoint Designer

In this Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 session, you will learn how easy it is to create views of your data using the Data Views, also known as the Data View Web Part (DVWP) or Data Form Web Part (DFWP) – the Swiss Army knife of Web Parts. Then watch as a Data Form Web Part is combined with ASP.NET controls to validate user input, thereby maintaining data integrity. The session produces the solution without writing any code.

Room 2 – Matt Groves – Trinity

How to configure Basic with SSL and Anonymous access to SharePoint sites

In this session I will demonstrate how to configure additional web applications to allow different authentication methods into SharePoint sites. We will also look at how to configure the necassary settings in central administration and in site settings.

7.00 – 7.15 Break – snacks and drinks

Session 2 – 7.15 – 8.15

Room 1 – Todd Bleeker – SharePoint MVP

Porting a SharePoint Designer Workflow to Visual Studio

In this session Todd will replay his SPC session where he did the impossible and showed how to migrate workflows created in SharePoint Designer into Visual Studio thus allowing you to use the workflow against lists and librarieswhich you cannot do with SharePoint Designer. A great developers story and one not to be missed by the developers.

Room 2 – Steve Smith – SharePoint MVP

Scaling Out a SharePoint Farm and Configuring Network Load Balancing on two Web Servers

In this session I will demonstrate how to add Two new servers into a SharePoint single server farm and re-assign server services like Search and Excel. Then I will Network Load Balance the two Web Servers for resilience. Surely this can’t be done in an hour I hear you say. You betcha so come and get some back to basics knowledge.

Session 3 – 8.15 – 9.15

Room 1 – Andrew Woodward – SharePoint MVP

Agile Development in SharePoint

Agile development techniques help teams produce better quality code, more consistently whilst meeting customers changing needs.  In this first session of a series I will introduce agile development using SCRUM and the changes this brings to your development process, I will introduce some of the tools used to help support agile development.  The session will highlight some of the additional challenges SharePoint development introduces and demonstrate ways to overcome these with an initial focus Unit Testing.

Room 2 – Bill English – SharePoint MVP

Best Practices for Configuring Search

Following on from the launch of Bill’s best practices book for MSPress this session will go through various configurations for Search including the crawler architecture, Content Sources and other search best practices.