Should I attend: This session will not be a deep dive into Sandboxed Solutions – this session is aimed at providing the audience with an understanding of where Sandboxed solutions fit, why they would want to use sandboxed solutions, why companies are targeting the sandbox and how this could change the way you work!

If you’re not a developer and want an understanding of what Sandboxed solutions are, this session is for you.

Spence has a few great tips as always.

MSDN has a good post which actually gets you up and running.

One things that I found after getting SharePoint installed was a lack of access to some of the services – namely Services on Server and Add New on Web Applications.

After a bit of playing I found the solution.  The default installation adds the URL to the machine to the Trusted Sites in Internet Explorer. In order to get options to work correctly you need to add the URL for the local machine to the Local Intranet.

• Click tools Internet options
• Select the security tab
• Select Local Intranet and click sites
• Add the current machine URL site to the list
• Close the dialogs and the browser

Once added you will now see the options to manage services on server.

One of the challenges with best practices for a new platform is that a lot of these tend to be emergent at best, invalid at worst or just unknown. With this in mind my sessions at the conference are based on real world work that we have done at 21apps, sharing the lessons we have learnt and looking at the emerging practices that, at the time of writing, feel like they have some grounding in becoming or forming part of an accepted best practice.

The sessions I am presenting are both in the developer track; however they have a different target audience.

Automated Solution Testing with Visual Studio 2010

Audience: Developers, Testers, Project Managers, Team Leads, QA, End Users, Product Managers

Session Level: 300

Time: Wednesday 25^th, 2:45pm – 4:00pm in Lake Ann A

Abstract: In this session we will look at the enhancements to Visual Studio 2010 and how easy it is to automate testing of your SharePoint solutions from the user perspective. With the introduction of the Client Object Model and the fluent UI in SharePoint 2010 UI based testing is increasingly important, the ability to increase testing through automation ensures the quality of your solutions today and into the future. Automated testing is an essential part of your development lifecycle and Visual Studio 2010 makes this possible.

Should I attend: Do you have any involvement in the development, testing, deployment or maintenance of SharePoint solutions? If you do then you will want to attend this session. If you are a user or business owner who is frustrated with poor quality of solutions being provided this session will show what is possible and why there are no excuses.

This is the only session at this year’s Best Practices conference focused specifically on Testing!

Related Sessions:

· Wednesday  2:45-4:00pm, Regency B – Ben Curry, Performance and Capacity Planning 

Real World Sandbox Solutions

Audience: Power Users, Developers, IT Pros, Project Managers, Solutions Architects

Session Level: 200

Time: Thursday 26^th, 2:45pm – 4:00pm in Regency A

Abstract: In this session we will take a look at Sandbox solutions, understanding what they are, why they were introduced and why you would want to build one. Based on a real world project at 21apps we will look at why we chose to build one, how the limitations of the sandbox altered our design and how we mixed server side and client side frameworks to provide the solution. We will also take a look at what the future may be and how Sandboxed solutions could change the face of SharePoint forever!

Should I attend: This session will not be a deep dive into Sandboxed Solutions – this session is aimed at providing the audience with an understanding of where Sandboxed solutions fit, why they would want to use sandboxed solutions, why companies are targeting the sandbox and how this could change the way you work!

If you’re not a developer and want an understanding of what Sandboxed solutions are, this session is for you.

Related Sessions:

· Monday 4:15-5:30, Regency B – Maurice Prather, Understanding and Leveraging the Sandbox

Ask the Experts

I’m also delighted to be taking part in the Development Ask the Experts session on Wednesday 4:30-5:15 at the UserVersity Coffee Lounge.

If you haven’t already signed up I think there are still a few places left. I’m looking forward to meeting up with some folks and of course the infamous SharePint

Well this is never the case with SharePint – it took a trifle over 21 minutes to arrange for this years Best Practices Conference in Washington DC.

It started with a question from @gvaro and quickly concluded with the event would take place at Jacksons Mighty Fine Food in Reston on Wednesday evening from 8.00pm till late.  If you arrive earlier we are planning to take over the middle bar

And during those 21 minutes we also got @wonderlaura on the guest list

For those unfamiliar with  SharePint:

1. Let people know when and where
2. Let @SharePint know so it can be pimped
3. Tweet it with the #SharePint tag
4. Promote it with one of the official logos
5. Arrive
6. Drink
7. Be social
8. Have Fun
9. You know the rest

Please Note:   Like Fight Club there are rules to SharePint:

1. No sponsorship
2. No sponsorship
3. If this is your first SharePint, You have to Drink!

If someone is happy to put some money behind the bar on the night, that’s a good thing    But please no banners, flyers or sponsored by. 

Sadly a few events in recent times have gone against the ethos of SharePint and played the sponsorship card,  if you do see a sponsored SharePint you know it’s not a real SharePint – go ahead and setup your own.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/pages/editions-comparison.aspx

This small blog post is really for my own reference as I always struggle to find it…  sure I could do book marks but.. I think this is better

If you’ve not heard of us before we are a small firm specialising in Microsoft Technologies. In June this year we launched our first product, 21SCRUM, a solution for SharePoint 2010 that allows teams to manage their scrum backlog, sprints and burn down charts. 

As developers we are passionate about the craft and believe that development is not just about writing code, constantly looking for ways to improve our own techniques and skills. The same applies to our consultancy activities, we pride ourselves on doing more than is required and always looking for techniques and approaches that yield greater value.

Why are we expanding?

We have many things that we want to do and need to grow the team, bringing passionate people to help us define and realise these goals. It has never been a better time to be a developer. Developing solutions for the cloud using the latest technologies and techniques the opportunities are endless.

We can offer you the ability to join us at the early stages of our growth, an ability to work on interesting projects where your ideas and input are invaluable.  A place where continuous learning is expected, where the community is valued and promoted.  Where the job does not feel like a job.

Interested?

We could list down a load of technologies that we are interested in,  information about what we think the job entails and other things that traditionally you would be expected to get your CV to match.

We value the person more than the CV – it’s up to you to let us know why you feel 21apps could be somewhere you want to work and what you could bring to the team. Tell us what technologies and techniques excite you most and what you think is the most important things a job should offer.

If your interested I would love to hear from you.  Contact me (Andrew Woodward)  Andrew@21apps.com or Twitter @AndrewWoody

I look forward to hearing from you

PS: Please no recruitment consultants.

’The document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible application could not be found to edit the document.’

The error is misleading because like most people you do have an application like Microsoft Office installed that will be able to edit the document in question.

The Problem

Documents are associated with a particular application via the DOCICON.XML file.  More information on this file and how it works in Understanding DocIcon.xml files. In Internet Explorer the browser has the ActiveX control integrated that allows it to marshal the call to the associated application.

Firefox does not include this ActiveX control and reports, although not a very good error message, that there is no compatible applications.

Office 2010 to the rescue

As part of the installation of Office 2010 Microsoft have included a plug-in for Firefox that allows Firefox to work correctly in the form of the FFWinPlugin Plug-in. 

As with the rest of the SharePoint the user experience is almost identical regardless of the browser used.

Not a golden bullet

With SharePoint 2010 support for IE6 was removed, with good reason and to the delight of many UI designers. The problem is a lot of organisations take time to move there desktops, often locked into IE6 because of fixes added to applications to over come IE6 problems.

Getting SharePoint 2010 into these environments is a challenge and using Firefox is one of the olny real options available – short of a desktop refresh. These older desktops will also likely be running older versions of Office.

Unfortunately the Firefox plug-in is provided as part of Office 2010!  Leaving these users with a different experience.  Hopefully Microsoft will see that this Firefox Plug-in is really useful and release it as a standalone installation to make it available to those that can’t yet move to Office 2010 or IE8.

Minor Bug with Office 2010

There is a KB article which details an issue with the Plug-in  when the document library is set to Require Check Out.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979634

We have set up the correct email SMTP server in Central Administration and everyone is receiving their email alerts correctly.  When we add new users to the site it always fails to send the email reporting an error has occurred.

Investigation

The error in the SharePoint ULS logs shows that the SMTP server connection failed. 

Cannot connect to SMTP host your.smtp.server

Analysis

For any SMTP testing you rely on Telnet by running the command

telnet your.smtp.server 25

This is likely to fail as well with a similar error,  which immediately leads you to the conclusion that the there is a problem with the SMTP server. 

However there is a niggling doubt – if the SMTP server is not working how do the alert emails get sent?

Root Cause

After a bit of investigation the problem can be traced back to the Anti Virus software.  You will likely have checked the Firewall and ensured that it was not blocking and thought nothing of the Anti Virus as this isn’t really what it’s for.

However most Anti Virus software will have some form of Email Worm protection built in and this will be enabled.  In my example the server had McAfee Anti Virus installed and has a protection called:

“Prevent Mass Mail Worms form sending emails”

Editing the properties shows an include wild card (* << meaning everything) and a list of excluded applications.  In this list of applications you will find OWSTIMER.EXE.

OWSTIMER.EXE is the SharePoint Timer Service and is used to send all email alerts.

Fix

Add W3WP.EXE to the list of excluded applications and McAfee Anti Virus will then allow your emails from forms like the Add Users page to be sent as well.

W3WP.exe is the worker process used by IIS to run your SharePoint sites.

The problem was not related to how SharePoint was configured but down to the fact that SharePoint sends emails using a number of processes and each of these need to be allowed to use SMTP.

As this was the first SharePoint Retreat the prize is really pretty fantastic.

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscriptions valued at $11,899 each!*

The prize was donated, indirectly, by Microsoft, I was sent a number of copies to give away for being an MVP and taking part in testing Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

There were some great posts:

@WorTony : SharePoint Retreat

@Weshackett: Review of the day

@nigel_price: SPRetreat London

 But there was one that really stood out and provided some great code samples and “how to”s from the day 

… and the winner of the prize is

Martin Hatch

Martin did a great 3 part series on the challenges and lessons learnt from the day.  With full source code available in part 3.

Congratulations Martin