Monday, July 23
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM
Business Drivers and Checklist for Successful SharePoint Governance
So you've heard about "Governance" from all angles in the SharePoint community – the fact that you need "people" to define "policies," but what "processes" are actually required to bring this to fruition? This session will introduce the three Ps and the business requirements that drive SharePoint governance. The instructor will discuss the types of policies he sees organizations use within their SharePoint Governance plans. From this session you should walk away with:
- An understanding of what the key concepts of SharePoint Governance is
- An understanding of the business requirements that drive SharePoint Governance
- An understanding of the types of policies you could have in your SharePoint Governance Plan
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Implementing SharePoint: A Project Manager’s 'How-To' Guide
Managing the implementation of SharePoint is a comprehensive task, one which requires strong project management skills, a detailed project plan, and creativity. Inefficient communication among stakeholders, poor document management practices and undefined project collaboration standards can compromise project success.
This session will walk you through effective planning techniques and implementation standards for a SharePoint implementation from the perspective of a project manager. We will discuss how to create and customize a SharePoint site for effective project collaboration and monitoring, as well as analyzing the project schedule and milestones in a SharePoint site, generating on-demand project status reports and how to synchronize common project management tools with SharePoint.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Increasing Findability in SharePoint 2010
SharePoint got you down? Want to make it easier for users to locate the right content whether they’re browsing or searching in SharePoint? In this session, you will be shown real-world ways to get the most out of key features like metadata, content search, people search, cloud tags, status feeds, list views, and content contribution.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Lists: Used, Abused and Underappreciated
No matter which version of SharePoint 2007 or 2010 you’re using (Foundation, Server, Enterprise, or SharePoint Online), you’re almost certainly using one or more lists or libraries. These containers form the core for almost all functionality in the SharePoint platform. Yet, most organizations are not fulfilling the potential these lists offer to users and consumers. Are your users still looking for documents by using the default views? Are they navigating a library the same way they use the file share? Learn some of the tips and tricks used to improve your users’ experiences and help them find the content they’re looking for more easily. Come to this class to:
- Learn best practices for creating, configuring, and using lists.
- See examples of list and library Web parts used to display list content more effectively.
- Create list views that increase user adoption and effectiveness.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
The SharePoint Maturity Model: How Far Along Are You?
As SharePoint gains in popularity and adoption worldwide, an increasing number of resources are available to help organizations understand and navigate the different aspects of this platform. What’s missing is a cohesive way to analyze and understand the whole.
The SharePoint Maturity Model applies a holistic view to a SharePoint implementation, and brings standardization to the conversation around functionality, best practices, and improvement. The speaker will take the audience through the competencies and levels, share current data from assessments against the Model, and provide templates for self-assessment. This class applies to SharePoint 2007 as well as SharePoint 2010.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Understanding Metadata – Working With Stakeholders to Build the Taxonomy
When it comes to defining the site columns and content types for a project, the first step is to help your stakeholders understand the concepts of metadata so that they can picture how they are going to organize their documents without using folders. Once this is accomplished, you can start to inventory the types of documents that are going to live in SharePoint, and then explain the function of site columns and content types.
In this session, we will discuss some methods that have proven to be successful for explaining these concepts and then organizing the taxonomy. You will learn how to use tools that help users to inventory their documents and capture the metadata. You will see how to conduct workshops that help you and your clients organize this information and then document the taxonomy in a form that can be shared, reviewed and easily modified. At the final stages, you will see how the required document libraries begin to emerge as part of this process.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
Upgrading to SharePoint 2010
Are you jealous of all your friends and their fancy SharePoint 2010 farms? Have no fear. In this session, you will learn how to upgrade SharePoint 2007 to 2010. We will cover the methods available and how best to use them. We will also cover some of the mistakes we’ve made the most often, hopefully preventing you from making the same mistakes.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
What IS SharePoint Development?
Tired of out-of-the-box SharePoint not getting the job done? Does it seem to always get you 80 percent of the way there and then you run into a brick wall? Have you hired a "SharePoint developer" who keeps wanting to open up Visual Studio and add weeks to your deadlines for even the most simple tasks? Why bother using SharePoint at all if everything seems to take longer to develop?
Maybe the solution is to fully understand what SharePoint Development means? SharePoint development does not always mean opening up Visual Studio and deploying solutions. There are many tools in the SharePoint developer toolkit, and a developer who understands all the options can drastically cut down development time and frustration with SharePoint. In this session, you will learn:
- The different methods of developing in SharePoint.
- How to determine which method is best for your situation.
- How to combine different development methods to get the best solution possible.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Best Practices for SharePoint User Adoption
Even with the most well-architected, well-designed SharePoint solution, there is no guarantee that users will be falling over themselves to use it! SharePoint provides a convenient and often personalized way for your employees to find the information and tools they need to be more productive. However, as great as SharePoint is, it comes with a unique challenge: You often have to convince users to give it a try! Employees have other options for accomplishing many of the tasks SharePoint enables, even if some of these options are “sub-optimal.”
In this presentation, you will learn the key elements of an effective user adoption plan, and be presented with numerous case studies and examples of how a variety of organizations successfully deployed their SharePoint solutions. Topics include:
- Critical elements for user adoption planning
- Best practices for communicating the messages that encourage adoption
- Practical examples of adoption approaches that work
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Creating a Forms Portal
Does your organization currently have or plan to have multiple InfoPath forms that will be filled out by end users? Create a single portal for your organization’s forms, so that hunting around for forms is not necessary. In this session, you will learn how to create a forms portal in SharePoint or SharePoint Online with Office 365.
Form best practices and considerations will be covered, such as the use of site columns and content types. There is also standardization that can be done across multiple forms, such as the use of universal data connections and form templates and template parts. You will also learn how to create a user interface that is easy to navigate. Form administration dashboards will be created, so that the business users who are in charge of each form will have a location where their forms are available to them.
Also attend the class InfoPath and SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow Best Practices for the InfoPath deep dive. In conjunction, the two classes take you through form development and the full user interface creation.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
Creating Simple Dashboards Using Out-of-the-Box Web Parts
In this session we will look at some basic out-of-the-box ways to create powerful dashboards for managing teams and projects. Our dashboards will be created using multiple connected Web parts all configured from the browser. This session will give you a good overview of lists, views, Web part pages and Web part connections. This is a great session for those just getting started with SharePoint and want to push the limits of out-of-the-box configuration.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Line of Business Essentials
Effective Requirements Gathering Workshops – How to Organize and Run Them
Analyst: What would you like SharePoint to do?
Customer: Well, what can it do?
Analyst: Tons! Let me show you…
All too often this is how conversations between analysts and customers/stakeholders begin, and it isn’t helpful to anyone. SharePoint has a vast array of capabilities, but if you start by describing or demonstrating what SharePoint can do and how the technology works, you will end up with customers who are confused and don’t know where to begin, or who have massively overblown expectations.
In this session, you will learn how to set up and conduct workshops with various stakeholders that will allow you to understand their real needs. You will then learn how to document and organize this information so that it is useful to the stakeholders and will allow you to guide them through prioritization and planning.
You will learn when NOT to do demonstrations of SharePoint, and when and how to do demos that are powerful and effective.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
Enhancing SharePoint with the Power of jQuery
We have all no doubt seen the effect of a jQuery script on our trips around the Internet, and it’s time to see what it can do for your SharePoint site. In this session, we will explore how to make use of this very powerful and versatile jQuery library to bring your SharePoint applications and Web Parts to life.
We will look at how to deploy and make available the library, then move on to the basics of jQuery, which will include an insightful look into the mighty jQuery selectors. With the basics covered, we will then take a look at how you can use jQuery to work with SharePoint data to see new ways of showing and interacting with your data. Finally, we'll cover building your own plug-in for jQuery.
This demo-heavy session will show you how jQuery and SharePoint fit together, how to get started, and how to create wonderful things!
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Getting the Most out of SharePoint Search
SharePoint Search is often one of the easiest areas to see immediate ROI from SharePoint. Although it works well out of the box, the key to unlocking the potential of SharePoint Search starts with understanding how it works. In this session, we’ll discuss the different factors that determine relevancy in SharePoint and how to use them to make sure users are finding the content they are looking for. This session is designed for all users who want to get a better understanding about SharePoint Search, and to learn techniques that don’t require any code to create a better search strategy for their organization.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
Impactful Information Architecture
It sounds interesting, but what is it? You know that your users have no way to find the information they need. Search is difficult and navigation resembles a hedge maze. In this session, you’ll learn a set of simple steps that you can do to generate a working information architecture and what you can do to test it. You’ll also learn how to think about thorny pieces of data that just don’t seem to fit.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials
Users, Profiles, and MySites: Managing a Changing SharePoint User Population
Every company has some level of employee change and turnover. The question is, how do you manage the graceful removal or modification of user information from SharePoint? If everything is perfectly aligned, SharePoint will automatically process and delete the user account, permissions, profile, and MySite for users that are deleted from the Active Directory. Updates to user information are also automatic in many cases.
But most SharePoint installations don’t have all the necessary components aligned for automated removal of old users and some profile properties refuse to update. Even when everything works as designed, you are still left with a problem of orphaned metadata references for documents and items created or modified by the deleted user. How can I manage a user base and still maintain historical metadata?
In this session, we will examine the underlying processes controlling user accounts, permissions, profiles and MySites and how they interact. Along the way you will learn best practices for managing users, their profiles, and MySites in a SharePoint environment.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
Building Enterprise Records Management Solutions for SharePoint 2010
In this session you'll learn the basics of records management as it applies to SharePoint -- what records are and what is important to know about how SharePoint treats them. You'll also learn the key features that are available in SharePoint to support your records management initiative, including declaring records both in-place and in a record center, document ids, content organizer, eDiscovery features, and managed metadata. Join this quick trip around the SharePoint records landscape.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
How to Be a SharePoint Developer
So you're a developer, and you've heard about this SharePoint thing and want to jump on the bandwagon? This is the session for you. Here you'll learn about the various options you have in setting up a SharePoint development environment. Then we'll explore the developer tools and build a few common features. Finally, you'll learn the best places to go to get information and help going forward, including books, classes and online forums.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Intro to Branding SharePoint 2010 in the Farm and Online
Between having on-premise SharePoint or having SharePoint in the cloud, more and more people are faced with creating a SharePoint site that is engaging and speaks to their business brand. This session will answer the question of how to start that process. We will look at the technologies involved in applying style to SharePoint 2010 both in the farm and Office 365 SharePoint Online. The focus will be techniques that anyone can approach, including creating and applying themes, working with CSS, and starting the process of working with SharePoint master pages. By the end of the session, attendees will have a basic understanding of how to make their SharePoint 2010 website look more like their existing corporate Web design.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials
Managing Projects Effectively with SharePoint and Project Server
In this class, we will review how SharePoint can be an effective tool for managing all aspects of the Project Lifecycle to increase visibility for the team related to the status of an individual project and its tasks. In addition, we will look at how the Enterprise Project Management features of Project Server can be leveraged to provide informative reports and dashboards related to your entire portfolio.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
SharePoint 2010 Integration and Interoperability: What You Need to Know
There are countless challenges when dealing with business data, including higher overhead for IT to service user requests, multiple places to administer, manage and maintain, high data integration costs (100 percent custom and often one-offs), silos or islands of business data leading to redundant data or processes, and multiple interfaces create user dissatisfaction and increased training costs.
SharePoint is a platform than can help significantly reduce the challenges mentioned above by using an interoperable platform of connected services. In this session, we will explore SharePoint's new interoperability underpinnings as well as the BCS to determine how they can be leveraged effectively in real-world scenarios.
We will cover:
- SharePoint’s important interoperability
- What is the BCS?
- External content types
- External columns
- External lists
- Extensibility and tooling
- Other ways SharePoint leverages the BCS
- Demonstration of BCS
- The limitations of BCS
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials
The Connection Between Metadata, Social Tools, and Personal Productivity
Administrators and managers alike do not understand the importance of metadata as the underlying drivers of social computing within the enterprise, the connection between social tools and search, and how a solid taxonomy and supporting governance strategy can increase and optimize productivity. This session will outline the connections between keyword taxonomy, social tools, the end user search experience in SharePoint, and present a business case for improving productivity by focusing on all three.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
The Undiscovered Country: I Need to Build a PerformancePoint Dashboard, but I’m Afraid of Analysis Services
In the SharePoint business intelligence tool set, PerformancePoint is one of the most powerful tools, but it almost always requires building an analysis services cube. Even if you know SQL and reporting, SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) can be undiscovered country. So please join this class for a deep dive into PerformancePoint and how to set up your first SSAS cube, and integrate into Analytics Charts and the Decomposition Tree.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Versioning and Upgrading Features in SharePoint 2010
Creating SharePoint Features, and the associated elements, is a well-documented process that is supported by the tooling in Visual Studio 2010. But what happens after you’ve deployed the Feature and want to add to it or make changes? SharePoint 2010 includes a framework for Feature versioning and upgrade, but it is not as well documented and is not supported (at least natively) by the tools in Visual Studio.
In this session, we will examine the Feature upgrade framework and walk through the mechanics of upgrading a Feature using a series of demonstrations. Along the way, we’ll touch on some of the pitfalls you may encounter when upgrading elements commonly created during custom development, such as site columns, content types, Web parts, and so on.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
3:15 PM - 4:30 PM
Building Remote Applications Using the SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model (ClientOM)
The SharePoint Object Model comes in two flavors: 1) the Server Object Model and 2) the Client Object Model. The ClientOM provides techniques for interacting with the Server Object Model from contexts other than the SharePoint Server. The ClientOM also comes in two flavors: ECMAScript and Managed .NET. The SharePoint Ribbon is dependent on the ECMAScript ClientOM, while the Managed .NET ClientOM can be used from any .NET context, including Silverlight. In this talk, you will be swiftly introduced to the concepts behind the ClientOM and then learn how it can be used in both an ECMAScript context and a Managed .NET context.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Cleaning Up Information Architecture in SharePoint and Other Jedi Mind Tricks
For administration Padawans, moving to the new SharePoint 2010 platform may seem fairly straightforward. But simple upgrade, it is not. Much work there is to align your organizational needs with the features and functionality of SharePoint, beginning with a strong information architecture. This session will outline the basic steps of cleaning up the critical aspects of your SharePoint platform, including content types, keyword taxonomy, and site templates. Fear these things, you will not. Master them, you will.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
InfoPath and SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflows Together
In your organization, forms are everywhere. InfoPath is a program that lets you quickly and easily create forms for business users to fill out and submit. The easy part is creating the form. The more complicated part is
finding out what needs to happen when it gets submitted, and automating that process. This is where workflows come in. InfoPath forms and SharePoint Designer workflows can be used in conjunction to create a complete business process.
In this session, we will discuss and compare the different ways that forms can be submitted and streamlined, so that the life cycle of the form is efficient and logical. This includes best practices around the form’s data connections, buttons, rules, views, and the workflow that sends the form through an approval process. All of this is done without code, making the most out of the InfoPath and SharePoint Designer out-of-box functionalities. Also attend the class Creating a Forms Portal. In conjunction, the two classes take you through form development and the full user interface creation.
on.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
Introduction to SharePoint for the Rest of Us
Frustrated with SharePoint? Tired of getting lost in technical sessions? Struggling to grasp exactly what this beast called SharePoint is? Do you not even know where to begin? Wasn't SharePoint supposed to make your life easier? Whether you are a business decision maker, end user, or that lucky developer who just had SharePoint dropped in their lap, this is the session for you. In this entertaining, fast-paced session we will cover:
- The answer to that age-old question: "What is SharePoint?"
- Common sense guidance to avoiding pain and frustration, whatever your role in SharePoint may be.
- Tips and tricks to quickly getting help with SharePoint and finding the right answers.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Stop Those Prying Eyes Getting to Your Data
Whether you are an architect, developer or IT professional you will have
worked on projects where security is the number one priority. In this session, we will look at the methods that can be used to secure not only access to the site via authentication, but also look at securing content from people who should not be seeing it. We will use a mix of out-of-the-box capabilities, as well as custom code and the Microsoft Forefront product range. After this session, you will be able to successfully secure the content you need and have complete control over user access.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
The Core Pillars of an Effective Document Management Solution
Since SharePoint was introduced a decade ago, many organizations have
embraced the tool as a mechanism to adopt better document management
practices. While the platform provides features and functionality to support effective document management and collaboration, without proper planning and governance, many organizations fail at recognizing the true potential of what SharePoint can offer. During this session, we will review the core pillars of an effective document management solution and discuss how SharePoint 2010 can be configured to support these. This session will address important concepts such as:
- Creating an effective and reusable classification plan using the new and improved tools in SharePoint 2010 that optimize stakeholders' abilities to find the right document at the right time.
- Designing taxonomies and hierarchies to support business goals for collaboration, while also ensuring maximum performance and security.
- Implementing document content types in a way that allows for more effective and governed document management, without adversely impacting how users like to work.
- Managing the document lifecycle from creation to expiration.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
The Ribbon UI and Custom Actions in SharePoint 2010
There are Custom Actions control features in SharePoint, such as the List Item Menu, the Site Actions menu, toolbars, and the links within the Site Settings page, as well as the Ribbon UI in SharePoint 2010. Learn how to leverage Custom Actions to extend the SharePoint user interface. This session will describe the basics of Custom Actions and have demonstrations on how to build and apply them in SharePoint as they relate to our lists using SharePoint Designer 2010, as well as provide resources for additional information.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Solving Enterprise Search Challenges with SharePoint 2010
As companies seek to deliver more value with fewer IT dollars, they turn to SharePoint 2010 to deliver on the promise of "more for less." SharePoint 2010 Search offers a great deal of functionality beyond simple document search that can be derived through configuration and user interface customization. This session presents strategies for handling special search scenarios like line of business data, addresses and custom metadata. This session also presents techniques for rendering metadata and presenting the result in a way that is actionable to end users. The tips and techniques are presented as patterns that can be used in many different search situations:
• Search configuration overview
• Presenting Global Links to File Shares
• Rendering metadata in search results
• Creating a 360 degree view of your line of business data
• Creating actionable search results
This session is primarily for IT Pros, but can be for developers that want to know what can be done with Search out of the box.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Tuesday, July 24
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM
Getting the Best use out of SharePoint Designer 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, a free application, is "The Preferred" tool to design powerful no-code solutions and applications on top of SharePoint 2010. You can manage site metadata, security, list and library settings, build site-based workflows, connect to a variety of data sources and more.
In this session, you will understand why it is imperative for every organization to invest in learning this tool to truly realize their investment in SharePoint. We'll focus on the "need to know" facilities in this product to make you extremely effective at building your solutions instead of performing the actions in the browser or through code in Visual Studio.
This class sets the foundation for "Creating Data Centric Composite Applications with SharePoint Designer 2010."
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Introduction to Visio Services
Visio services is a powerful new addition to SharePoint 2010. In this session, we will look at different ways that you can incorporate Visio into your SharePoint projects. Once we have the diagrams published to our SharePoint site we will look at different ways to connect the diagram to SharePoint lists and web parts.
This session will allow you to see Visio services in action using real world examples, such as an interactive process diagram. If you have ever wondered if you would use Visio services or if it would provide value to your organization then this intro session is just want you need! This session will help you see how integration with SharePoint can really take your drawings to the next level.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Line of Business Essentials
Pitfalls of Migrating to SharePoint 2010
Organizations of all sizes are begging their technical departments to set up
SharePoint 2010 so that they're able to make use of some of the capabilities
introduced within the platform. While designing, implementing, configuring and deploying a system in and of itself has its own set of challenges, migrating into that shiny new SharePoint can be even more difficult.
In this session, you will learn tips, tricks and pointers for ensuring that you've considered the various aspects of challenges that arise during a migration effort. Further, as a bonus, you will learn how not to fall prey to some of these pitfalls, but rather be able to show that you're a well-rounded
professional that's thought things through before pressing the enter key.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials
SharePoint 2010 Server Administration for the Mature Server
This session is for the administrator of aging SharePoint servers, many of which have been running quietly in the corner for a couple of years now. Since, generally speaking, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, you have probably ignored poor SharePoint. In this session we are going to look at the long-running server and make sure it is up to snuff.
The instructors have done in the neighborhood of 200 server reviews over the past seven years and have learned the places to look in those adventures. This session will look at checking the overall health of the server, and talk about patching and other activities that you can do today so SharePoint runs for another couple of years, quietly, in the corner.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
SharePoint Performance: Best Practices from the Field
Want to avoid the performance mistakes before you make them? This in-depth session we will discuss how to properly position your SharePoint farm for success beginning with "hardware" and ending with troubleshooting methodologies to maximize performance. Learn the pitfalls before you hit them from someone who has climbed out of the deep dark holes in the wild. Best Practices from the Field combines recommendations from Microsoft with the experience of trial and error.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Social Media Maturity Model and Framework: Get the Most From Your Social Media Efforts
Sadie van Buren has done a tremendous job mapping out the SharePoint Maturity Model. It has been dispersed community wide as a verified way to measure the effectiveness of your SharePoint implementation. Now, what if we could do the same type of thing for community and social media efforts?
In this session, the instructor will cover the Community Maturity Model and Framework, making it available as a way to gauge the progress of your community and social media efforts. Research and feedback from some of the industries most knowledgeable sources, including input from Sadie van Buren, will be included as part of the presentation.
The four sections of the framework include:
- Content Management
- Content Ownership
- SEO - Driving Visibility
- Social Visibility
Each area is set within a stand-alone, graduated matrix for positioning your company within a community through social media efforts. At the conclusion of the session, you will receive a copy of the framework and a whitepaper describing the resources and contacts used for creating the model.
This session will help you focus on what is needed to create visibility through a structured marketing message built around social media. The people who will benefit most are project managers, community managers, marketing managers and community evangelists.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Line of Business Essentials
Using External Data Within SharePoint or Beyond the BDC/BCS Model
There’s lots of guidance around getting SharePoint to talk to an external system, but what do you do next? In this session, we will be exploring the different ways to use your external data within SharePoint, from the out-of-the-box Web Parts to developing custom solutions with the BDC or BCS Object Model.
We will be looking at the roles of the out-of-the-box Web Parts, including Business Data and Business Data Related Lists, and how to make decisions in a workflow based off your External Data. Additionally, we will be building a Web Part to display the line-of-business data. Along the way, we will be looking at pitfalls, best practices and recommendations of working with the BDC and the BCS.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials
Way Beyond Portals: SharePoint as the User eXperience Platform (UXP)
Integrating emerging technologies to address corporate challenges are driving a new, user-centered model for enterprise computing—the User eXperience Platform. The UXP provides a seamless, custom interface to enterprise communication, learning and business productivity tools. A Gartner report predicted widespread adoption of the UXP for Web and mobile solution deployment by 2015. SharePoint is uniquely positioned as the lead development platform for UXP implementation.
In this session, you will:
- Understand the UXP concept
- Learn how the UXP supports enterprise process and performance improvement
- See why SharePoint is the UXP development platform of choice
- View case examples of early UXP applications
- Explore a vision for a true, enterprise-wide UXP solution
This intermediate-level “concept and case study” session is for executives or developers seeking to increase the maturity level of their SharePoint implementation for tangible business process and performance improvement.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
A Practical Framework for SharePoint Metrics
Have you been asked to demonstrate how your SharePoint solution is
delivering meaningful value to your organization? If you haven’t been asked yet, you probably will be asked soon. Even if management isn’t asking you today, you should still be prepared. At every stage in the development of your solution, metrics provide a valuable means for focusing attention on desired behaviors and results. This presentation will showcase a practical and realistic framework for SharePoint metrics based on real-world examples and successes, including:
- Suggestions for measurement approaches at all stages of your SharePoint initiative
- Practical approaches to apply to your own SharePoint initiatives
- Real measurement examples that you can re-use
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Creating Custom Views with any HTML and JavaScript - It's Magic
See how easy it is to bend SharePoint's XSL-based list view (a.k.a. the Data View Web Part) to your will, creating a view that generates any HTML and JavaScript your geeky heart desires. And now, learn how to do it without using SharePoint Designer. With just a Web browser, you'll learn the secrets of creating magical, powerful and totally customized list views. Web designers and developers: Don't miss this session!
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Deep Dive into the Content Query Web Part
In MOSS 2007, the Content Query Web Part (CQWP) was a very powerful control used for aggregating content from a particular list, site, or site collection. However, this Web Part had some serious drawbacks. In SharePoint 2010, the CQWP has been given a facelift with improved features and cool new ones, including the introduction of slots, which simplify working with Item Styles, and the Content to Content concept, which provides functionality such as related content. Some improvements to the CQWP include dynamic filters and the CommonViewFields. The CQWP in SharePoint 2010 also has improved query performance over large document libraries and lists.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials, Line of Business Essentials
Maturing Your Business Processes in SharePoint
In order to bring your SharePoint implementation to a greater level of maturity, your organization’s business processes are a critical consideration – from the technical as well as human perspective. Feedback from SharePoint community members indicates that the biggest factor that drives SharePoint maturity upwards is the evaluation of business processes and the automation of workflows.
This session will take the audience through the Business Process Competency of the SharePoint Maturity Model, present case studies on each level of business process maturity, and share the latest survey results about how companies are using SharePoint for their business processes. Guidance on how companies can transition to the next level of maturity will be offered. Templates for self-assessment will be provided to all attendees.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
PowerShell for the SharePoint 2010 Developer
PowerShell is not just for SharePoint 2010 administrators. Developers also get access to a wide range of functionality with PowerShell. In this session, we will dive into using PowerShell with the .NET framework, Web services and native SharePoint commandlets. We will also cover some of the more intermediate-to-advanced techniques available within PowerShell that will improve your work efficiency. Not only will you learn how to automate your work, but you will also learn ways to prototype solutions faster.
This session is targeted at developers and assumes a basic familiarity with PowerShell, as well as fundamental knowledge of the .NET language.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
SharePoint Project Management: Lessons Learned
Planning and implementing a SharePoint-based solution as your organization’s intranet, extranet or public-facing website is a challenging endeavor. It should never be assumed that since SharePoint is part of Microsoft’s application suite, its implementation does not require careful planning and use of sound project management principles. The same approach, discipline and best practice standards that you would apply to any large-scale application implementation still pertain.
Using real-world examples and case studies, we will review the key concepts of managing large-scale SharePoint projects, providing tips and insights that will help you avoid the common pitfalls. This interactive session will cover topics such as SharePoint project management principles, requirements and design, development and implementation, deployment, and ongoing governance.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
SharePoint Storage: RBS for the Masses
To some, the Remote Blob Store is the Holy Grail of SharePoint storage. It gives us all the great SharePoint functionality, but without that heavy SQL footprint. To others, RBS is the worst thing ever as it complicates SharePoint and SQL and negatively impacts performance. In this session we will explain how RBS works, and discuss when you should and shouldn’t use it. We will also configure RBS and walk through some of the common tasks you’ll have to perform if you choose to use RBS in your SharePoint 2010 farm.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Ten Best SharePoint Features You’ve Never Used
Your team is competent in the SharePoint basics of adding, editing, and removing content. Maybe someone on your team has even become quite adept at building SharePoint Designer workflows. But most books and articles seem to jump from the basic to the incredibly complex, where you have to be a developer to understand the content and much less utilize it in your SharePoint environment. This session seeks to bridge that gap, demonstrating 10 of the best features that you've likely never used, but should be.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Application Lifecycle Management in SharePoint 2010
This session will explain the principles of Application Lifecycle Management in SharePoint 2010. It will also help SharePoint Developers, Team Leaders, Architects and Development Managers understand how to approach ALM with SharePoint. The pillars of ALM will be discussed in detail and the benefits of each from a solution perspective. The ALM maturity model will be presented to allow you to evaluate where you are in your own internal processes and how to mature them further.
The NothingButSharePoint.com Project ALM approach will be discussed in detail as a case study, which involves globally distributed development teams and designers. The pros and cons of this approach will be compared to others, and common problems with promoting from development to staging to production will also be discussed in detail.
From this session you should walk away with:
- An understanding of what application lifecycle management is
- An understanding of the approaches to ALM with SharePoint Development
- An understanding of how to get started with baby steps as a SharePoint Developer, Team Leader or Solution Architect
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Developer Essentials
Creating Dynamic Taxonomy-Driven Navigation For Publishing Sites
SharePoint 2010 Publishing sites provide the ability for customers to create content-driven sites. The navigation in a Publishing site is driven by the topology design of the site collection and its subsites. At times this structured approach can provide to be challenging for content reuse scenarios. Enter the dynamic taxonomy driven navigation solutions! In this session, you'll learn how to create dynamic navigation controls that are driven from taxonomies and provide multiple paths to content that has been tagged with terms from the specified taxonomy.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Custom Field Types and Field Controls
All SharePoint Lists and Libraries consist of a collection of columns that derive their display-mode and edit-mode characteristics from one of the out-of-the-box Field Types. The presentation of the data managed by the Field Type is governed by the Field Control. Using custom Field Types, .NET developers can extend the types of columns that a business user can add to a list.
In this talk, you will learn how custom Field Types can be derived from an appropriate out-of-the-box Field Type. You will also learn how a custom user interface can be constructed in the context of a List Item being displayed in a list or on its own, as well as the column's behavior and presentation when the screen is in edit-mode. In the end, the business user is empowered to construct the new/edit/display user interfaces he or she needs without the aid of someone from IT.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Four Real-World Examples of using the Client Object Model
Before SharePoint 2010, custom code business solutions were limited to two methods: Write server-side code or utilize Web Services. The issue with rolling code on the server was one of governance and security, which many enterprises restrict. The issue with Web services is that the developer is limited to what methods are exposed, and writing complex code that required knowledge of SOAP and AJAX to present a modern day Web interface. The Client Object Model offers an alternative.
Leveraging this technology, a developer can create business applications that do not sit on the server. Most importantly, developers can leverage technology they already know. This is fundamentally the only introduction on how to use the Client Object Model you will ever need. The reason for this is because the four real-world examples chosen cover a broad range of foundational possibilities.
We will review these examples, which will include highly visible Internet sites, in detail with customized instructions given to you on how to implement them. By the end of the session, you will understand when it is best to use each component of the technology, and have a clear understanding of the Client Object Model.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Practical SharePoint Information Architecture
SharePoint 2010 can be dangerous to your career. Expectations are often set very high, and not enough time is invested in understanding how those expectations can be met. Many SharePoint 2010 projects fail to meet their initial goals. Practical SharePoint Information Architecture arms you with proven tools that will help you ensure that there is an agreement on the goals and scope, and how to then efficiently design your taxonomies. You will learn how to educate your users on what metadata is and why it is important so that you can build SharePoint 2010 solutions that exceed the expectations of your users.
You will see demonstrations of the tools that the instructor uses for planning and documenting the scope, navigational taxonomy, document taxonomy, metadata, page layouts and workflows for a successful SharePoint 2010 project. If you have been tasked with delivering an intranet for collaboration, document management or a corporate portal, your only chance for success is to get all of these elements right, and then to make sure that you and your stakeholders are all on the same page.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
SharePoint Authentication and Authorization
No matter which project, client or product you work with, there will always be a need to authenticate and authorize users into the solution. Historically, SharePoint has not always been the easiest platform to use for this, but now with the advent of SharePoint 2010, this changes the game.
In this session, we will look at the array of out-of-the-box approaches. Using a real-world business requirement, we will use the Windows Identity Foundation to create a trusted identity provider that will allow for single sign-on between other SharePoint sites. We will also perform the SharePoint configuration to implement this with the standard out-of-the-box security of SharePoint to ensure authentication and authorization is completed easily.
Using this technology, you will be able to see how SharePoint 2010 is more than capable of authenticating and authorizing users from any line of business or custom authentication store. By the end if this session, you will be able to identify the many authentication approaches, as well as when to use a specific type of authentication or authorization within your solutions.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
SharePoint In The Cloud
Microsoft has unleashed their cloud strategy, and Office 365 is now publically available. What does this mean for organizations using SharePoint today? How can organizations leverage the Microsoft cloud effectively with their SharePoint implementations and future SharePoint Strategies?
In the marketplace, information on SharePoint and the cloud abounds. Much of this information is fluffy, “cloud-like” marketing material, or does not clearly explain how businesses can practically leverage cloud technology with SharePoint. Join Richard as he discusses the practical application of Microsoft's cloud technology and SharePoint, when it has brought measurable benefit to organizations, and when to avoid it.
This session is geared toward companies struggling with understanding what SharePoint in the cloud really is, those that have not yet implemented SharePoint 2010, and those looking to migrate. It will cover:
- Implementing SharePoint in the cloud
- Differences between hosted and in-house solutions
- Cost
- Features lost/gained
- Finding the right hosting provider
- Drawbacks and integration Issues
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
The Essentials of SharePoint Disaster Recovery
“Are my nightly SQL Server backups good enough?” “Do I need an off-site disaster recovery facility?” “How do I even start the process of disaster recovery planning?” These are just a few of the more common questions that arise when the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery comes up. As with most things SharePoint, the real answer to each question is oftentimes “it depends.”
In this business and process-centric session, we will be taking a look at the topic of SharePoint disaster recovery from multiple perspectives: business continuity planner, technical architect, platform owner, and others. Critical concepts and terms will be explained and defined, and an effective process for analyzing and formulating a disaster recovery plan will be discussed. We’ll also highlight some common mistakes that take place when working to build a disaster recovery strategy and how you can avoid them. By the end of this session, you will be armed with the knowledge needed to plan or review a disaster recovery strategy for your SharePoint environment.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Line of Business Essentials
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Creating Data-Centric Composite Applications with SharePoint Designer 2010
Integrate your line of business data from a variety of sources into a single SharePoint solution. This session will demonstrate how the XSLT Web parts (List View and Data View) in SharePoint Designer can be used to gather data from SharePoint Lists, Libraries, Databases and Web Services. You will also learn how to conditionally format the data. In addition, you will also see how data from multiple data sources can be connected to produce a unified view of related information. But, that's not all... You will also see how to update data back in your line of business application through this mechanism. All without a single line of code!
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Data Visualization with SharePoint and SQL Server 2012
One key factor driving the self-service BI market is the growing volume and complexity of data. As a result, enterprises will adopt new interactive reporting tools designed to put more data analytics capabilities into the hands of business users. In this session, you will learn which self-service reporting tools are available in SharePoint and how they can be used to create business solutions to visualize and navigate data. Learn how to meet your business needs and discover best practices implementing data visualizations.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Group Work Lists (It’s a Site Feature!) Explained
Have you ever used the Group Work Lists feature, or ever hear of it? This session will walk you through this rarely used site feature that is available on all versions of SharePoint 2010. Add capabilities and lists for tracking team and resource scheduling. Walk through the feature capabilities, from the lists that are created to the additional capabilities that are added to existing lists on the site. See how the feature can be used at an enterprise level down through individual departments or teams. Come to this class to:
- See new features added to standard SharePoint calendars.
- Use a new Phone Call Memo list.
- Check out the ‘Check In/Out board’ for tracking users’ locations.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Increasing Engagement in Your Implementation
Whether you have everyone using SharePoint or you are struggling to get more than the IT department to use it, you can use tips, tricks, and techniques to get your users more engaged with SharePoint. In this session, you will get a perfect mixture of psychology and strategy and the detailed “how-to” tips to actually get users to be more engaged with SharePoint.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Moving Your SharePoint Sandbox Into the Cloud
The cloud is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. One of the least thought about uses of the cloud is one of the most beneficial for SharePoint architects, developers and business analysts. This session will show you how to use the cloud for your development sandboxes and eliminate the need for purchasing software and hardware, so you can dump that lump of metal taking up space under your desk and eating electricity.
We will show you how easy it is to get rid of pre-production hardware by using the cloud for development and testing. Find out how to spin up a fully configured, multi-server SharePoint environment in minutes. Yes, minutes, not hours or days. Learn the benefits of the cloud and how letting go of that 16 GB laptop or old server does not have to be a bad thing.
Setting up a SharePoint environment has never been faster or easier. Come see real-world examples of SharePoint applications developed, tested and deployed in the cloud, without any hardware or software installation required.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Developer Essentials
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities, and this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010.
We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world and discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy. We will also walk through configuring Forms-Based Authentication, Claims-Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 to authenticate and manage our external users. Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Popping the Hood: How to Create Custom SharePoint Branding
In this session, we will take a deeper look at how branding is created for SharePoint 2010. Some of the topics that will be covered include planning for branding, an in-depth look at how master pages work, how to create custom master pages from scratch using a starter master page, and how branding can be properly packaged for deployment to a production server. Throughout the session, we will look at how common gotchas, as well tools such as SharePoint Designer and Firebug, can be used to make the job easier.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials
SharePoint for the Internet!?
That’s right... INTERNET! As technology has changed, so too has the demand for websites that are not only informative and aesthetically pleasing, but also provide up-to-the-second data and strategic content through a collaborative interface. Users are now looking for an interactive experience that allows for dynamic content and social interaction on a regular .com site. Enter SharePoint 2010 with its extendibility, collaborative capabilities and rich media integration.
In this session, we will talk through what you need to know about leveraging SharePoint as your Internet site. You’ll learn about licensing, planning, deployment, search and effective content and data strategies to share information between your intranet and the Internet. This is a "must attend" session for anyone not using SharePoint for their Internet.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Wednesday, July 25
8:45 AM - 10:00 AM
Case Study: How State Government Utilized Social Tools to Build a Nationwide Knowledge Network
A large state agency working in conjunction with the public, academia, private business, research institutions, news media, and other government agencies (both national and international) needed an innovative way communicate and share information efficiently and swiftly. Using SharePoint as a platform, they needed to integrate social media into their public site. This included Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Their goal was to develop an online community of followers, engage in a two-way conversation, and provide a platform where ideas can quickly be shared and disseminated between disparate parties.
This session examines how Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were integrated into the agency’s SharePoint platform. Utilizing jQuery, REST, and social media APIs, you will be shown how to leverage social media tools within SharePoint. This session will provide you with the strategies and code necessary to integrate social technologies. The cumulative effect of this session is a real-world look at how to effectively plan and integrate social tools to engage diverse participants and build a knowledge network.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Climbing Denali – Adding SQL Server 2012 to SharePoint 2010
There’s no new version of SharePoint this year, unless you have SQL Server 2012! Codenamed Denali, SQL Server 2012 adds impressive new capabilities in system resilience and business intelligence, especially with the new SQL Reporting Services Alerts and Power View ("Crescent"), self-service business intelligence for users. This class will review how to upgrade to the new version of SQL Server with the new Always On architecture, and dive deeply into setting up and using SSRS, Power Pivot v2 and Power View.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Making the Most Out of Your Content: Combining ECM and Enterprise Search
Content Management and Enterprise Search are kissing cousins, but how can you make them really sing together? This session will provide a deep dive and best practices into how to best use search with ECM using SharePoint 2010.
You will learn how to optimize findability in different scenarios, including discovery and hold. You will also learn how to combine search across active and archived content and across ECM as well as other sources, and how to improve tagging and determine content migration priorities, machine-created metadata, and much more. If you are planning a complex ECM initiative (or are in the midst of one), this session is for you. An understanding of content management, MMS, content types and the content organizer in SharePoint 2010 is required.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
New SharePoint Features in Visual Studio 2011
Did you know the SharePoint developer tools in Visual Studio 2011 Developer Preview contain new designers and templates to facilitate SharePoint development, as well as new options for deploying and testing SharePoint sites? In this session, you will learn about the latest version of Visual Studio and how it impacts you as a SharePoint developer. Learn to extend SharePoint using the following new features:
- Create Lists and Content Types by Using New Designers
- Create Site Columns
- Create Silverlight Web Parts
- Publish SharePoint Solutions to RemoteSharePoint Servers
- Test SharePoint Performance by Using Profiling Tools
- Create Sandboxed Visual Web Parts
- Improved Support for Sandboxed Solutions.
- Support for JavaScript Debugging and IntelliSense for JavaScript
- Streamlined SharePoint Project Templates
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Office 365 Security and Licensing: Choosing the Right Plan
Office 365 licenses can be purchased in a variety of different forms. There
are comprehensive plans for professionals and small businesses (P plans),
enterprises (E plans), and educational institutions. There are also a la
carte plans if you don’t need all of Office 365, but which plan is right
for you? Each plan has different capabilities and a different price point. There are also differences in how the products operate at different plan levels.
In this talk, we’ll try to make sense out of what is included in each available plan. We’ll also look at how administration of user security reveals the different capabilities in the P and E plans. By the end of the talk you will know what plan is right for you, how much it will cost, and what you can do with it.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Sizing Your SharePoint Content Databases: Understanding the Limits
Did you know that Microsoft now supports content databases up 4TB and beyond? Hang on though—before you design or adjust your information and service architectures, there are a number of assumptions, caveats and trade-off choices you must understand. We'll discuss these and how database size affects performance, content recovery, and day-to-day administration tasks. We'll then look at various techniques to help you scale out your storage tier. We close the session by sharing the very latest guidance on employing using RBS (Remote BLOB Storage) in your environments.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials
Superior SharePoint 2010 Surveys and Analysis
A fact that's little-known to others, your presenter has a university math
degree specializing in statistics! (But let’s just keep that between us.)
In this session, leverage the full abilities of the out-of-the-box
SharePoint survey to create one that is at a professional level. We will start with the principles and practices of good survey question design and
selection of a valid “sample population.”
We will then extract the survey results to Microsoft Excel and perform proper analysis to determine the statistical validity of the survey results. You will learn the meaning behind a saying like “The margin of error was 2 percent, 19 times out of 20.” We will examine third party add-ins that extend the survey list capabilities. You will be glad you attended this fun and informative session.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
The Prettiest Pictures Win the Funding: Ripping Apart the SharePoint 2010 Interface
At the KMWorld Conference last year, Peter Moreville said something in the keynote that rang as true as the Liberty Bell: "When competing for grants, the prettiest pictures win the funding." This was an epiphany for the instructor. We all know it's true, but are we taking advantage of it? Are we using all of the resources at our disposal to create an intuitive interface that will encourage participation and user buy-in of our sites?
In this session, we'll examine a default team site created in SharePoint 2010. We'll rip apart the presentation layer, piece by piece, exposing the underlying structure and CSS to see what can be done to create a more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing site.
At the conclusion of the session, you will have an understanding of how the presentation layer of SharePoint pages is structured and what you can do to make your site stand out from the basic SharePoint sites you see everyday. To paraphrase Moreville, "When it comes to End User buy-in, the interface wins the funding." Let's work together to get you that funding.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
Advanced SharePoint Web Part Development
Web Parts are the foundation of user interfaces in SharePoint. As a developer, it's relatively easy (particularly with the Visual Web Part in SharePoint 2010) to build something simple and get it deployed. But what do you do when you need to add editable properties or when you need to connect two Web Parts together?
This fast-paced, demo-heavy session covers the more advanced aspects of building Web Parts for SharePoint 2007 and 2010. We’ll take a look at creating custom editor parts, building Visual Web Parts, constructing connected Web Parts, making Web Parts asynchronous, and using custom JavaScript code with Web Parts.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Battle-Scarred But Still Standing: A SharePoint Admin’s Tell-All
Anyone who tells you that SharePoint Administration is painless has never tried it. There are no “It’s so easy, a caveman can do it” commercials for being a SharePoint Admin. Are you thinking about installing SharePoint for the first time, in the middle of a migration from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, or a seasoned veteran who is looking to hear about some of the pain points that you might encounter as you continue to grow your SharePoint Farm?
No matter your level of engagement with SharePoint Administration, you will find value in this session. You will learn some of the most common mistakes, pain-causing issues, “hidden features” and gaping holes with the product that the instructors have found, troubleshot, beaten into submission where possible, and on rare occasion surrendered to. Join this class as we come out from the trenches to share these real-world lessons, the occasional tale of woe, and many exciting “war stories” about battles with SharePoint Administration over the years.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Is Your SharePoint Intranet Driving Corporate Value?
Intranets have been the backbone of information and knowledge sharing for years, but are they doing the job they should? This session will focus on understanding what the gold standard for intranets should be and how intranets can overcome their current challenges. Come to this class to discuss:
- Is the money that you're spending on your website delivering results to your business objective?
- Is your intranet truly a place where employees go to get work done, find the people and information that they need one that they would miss desperately if they join another organization?
- What constitutes success for your intranet? What role is SharePoint playing with other organizations to transform culture and business process and help drive efficiency across large organizations?
You will learn an innovative approach to strategy and governance through a case-study format of engagements with organizations like Rogers, National Wildlife Federation, and Dow Jones. You will also leave with the guidance you need for building on your SharePoint successes.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Learn How to Put HTML5 in Your SharePoint Master Page
HTML5 is the new Web hotness. If it seems daunting, or you think you have to scrap what you have now and start over, then check out this class. Learn how to easily convert your existing SharePoint master page to HTML5 while creating better structure for your content. And yes, everyone will still be able to access your site!
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
SharePoint 2010 Search Center Customization
There is a great deal you can do to improve the presentation of search results in SharePoint 2010 to make the search results actionable for your end users without compiled code. This session will detail the best practices for using SharePoint Designer to create XSL search center solutions for delivering actionable search center results. The session will discuss:
• Search Center Results XSL Configuration
• Search Center Branding
• Search Center Links and Imagery
• Presenting Actionable BCS Results
• Presenting Image and Video Search Results
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
SharePoint Governance Part I: Focus on Business
In the first part of a two-part series we will discuss the importance of business-focused SharePoint governance. This session covers information governance, which focuses on the content within SharePoint, the policies that users can, should, and must adhere to, and key recommendations for keeping SharePoint content well organized and easily usable.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Testing SharePoint 2010: Unit Testing via Mocking
Even if you develop your SharePoint 2010 software in patterns, you still will not be able to successfully unit test your software. The SharePoint Object Model has internal constructors, sealed classes, no interfaces, and many other challenges. Consider this – what if you do not even have an instance of SharePoint to run the test against? At best, you would need to carefully configure a “test bed” of a SharePoint site. Possibility and productivity for unit testing is greatly enhanced via commercial Mocking software (in this demonstration, JustMock from Telerik will be demonstrated.) Of course, you will first learn what “mocking” is and why it is so crucial!
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Using Report Builder for List Views and Charting
With SharePoint lists and libraries, views are used as different ways of looking at the data. Sometimes the out of box view settings are not sufficient for what needs to be accomplished, when it comes to how the information appears on the page. In many cases, SharePoint Designer is used in order to customize those views or create data view Web parts. When SQL Server Reporting services (SQL 2008 R2) is installed on your server, it opens up a whole new way of creating list views, which is Report Builder 3.0.
In this session, you will learn an entirely different approach to list views. You will learn how quick and easy it is to create pretty and professional reports based on SharePoint list data, and even cross-site data. Reports, charts, and even maps can be created and displayed in a Web part on any SharePoint page. Not only are these reports printable and exportable, but they can be put together on your site to create your own dashboards.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
Flying in the Cloud: New Ways to Develop for SharePoint
With all of the talk about moving SharePoint into "the cloud,"
developers have to rethink some of the methods they have used
successfully in the past. Sandboxed solutions, while still powerful,
impose limitations which can stymie traditional SharePoint developers.
To add to the challenge, today’s SharePoint users want more from their
applications, both in terms of functionality and the overall user
experience. At the same time, CIOs and CTOs want to get more "bang for
their buck," spending less to accomplish more.
In this session,
we will discuss the latest developments with the alternative development
approach that the instructor calls the SharePoint's Middle Tier. This
includes HTML, XSL/XML, JavaScript/jQuery, Data View Web Parts (DVWPs),
SharePoint’s SOAP (XML) Web Services and more. The techniques are
sometimes called "no code." Whatever you call them, they don't require
any server side deployment and that makes them ideal for use with
Office365 and even on premises enterprise deployments.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials
Future-Proofing Your SharePoint Strategy
Having an effective SharePoint strategy is essential for getting the full value out of your platform investment, but how do you create an effective strategy and where do you start? SharePoint is a constantly evolving platform, so once you do have a strategy, how do you ensure it will be successful over time?
This session will provide best practices for ensuring your SharePoint implementation will succeed over time.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Heavy Metal PowerPivot Remastered
Undoubtedly, PowerPivot is the shiny new toy in the Microsoft BI toolbox, but installing and configuring this powerful new addition to the SharePoint stack can be a daunting task. Come to this session to learn how to navigate the pitfalls and traps to a successful implementation. You will learn the best practice for configuration and discuss some implementation choices and the reasoning behind them. You will also get a comparison of features between SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL 2012 to help ease the decision of jumping into a new version.
In the second half of this action-packed presentation, you will be shown some flashy examples of PowerPivot in action, giving you an understanding of how dynamic a tool the new version of PowerPivot really is. You will also be taken on a guided tour of Power View. Lastly, you will be shown the integration between the new SQL 2012 features and SharePoint 2010 and how the experience has improved in the new version.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
InfoPath and SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflows Together
In your organization, forms are everywhere. InfoPath is a program that lets you quickly and easily create forms for business users to fill out and submit. The easy part is creating the form. The more complicated part is
finding out what needs to happen when it gets submitted, and automating that process. This is where workflows come in. InfoPath forms and SharePoint Designer workflows can be used in conjunction to create a complete business process.
In this session, we will discuss and compare the different ways that forms can be submitted and streamlined, so that the life cycle of the form is efficient and logical. This includes best practices around the form’s data connections, buttons, rules, views, and the workflow that sends the form through an approval process. All of this is done without code, making the most out of the InfoPath and SharePoint Designer out-of-box functionalities. Also attend the class Creating a Forms Portal. In conjunction, the two classes take you through form development and the full user interface creation.
on.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials, Business User Essentials
Integrating Line-of-Business Applications with SharePoint 2010
One of the biggest value-adding enhancements in SharePoint 2010 is the Business Connectivity Services (BCS). In this session, we will overview the BCS, demonstrate connecting line-of-business applications and external systems to SharePoint through external content types, and walk through surfacing that data with external lists.
This session is targeted at developers. No prior experience with the BCS is required, but a basic understanding of SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint solutions is suggested.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials
Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Unleashed
Office 2010's integration with SharePoint 2010 has been greatly enhanced, making it a more broadly extensible platform for building Information Worker solutions. Office has been drastically improved in the areas of application development, including its ability to access various data sources using BCS and SharePoint with data handling and rich integration with Office and the Visual Studio development stack. This session will demonstrate the new Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 integration features for building stronger and richer solutions.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
SharePoint Governance Part II: Focus on IT, Customization
In the second part of a two-part series we will discuss the importance of technically-focused SharePoint governance. This session covers IT and application governance, which focuses on the back-end maintenance of a SharePoint farm, the policies that administrators can, should, and must adhere to, and key recommendations for keeping SharePoint farms well organized with high uptime.
We will also cover the custom solutions that your organization will likely build within SharePoint. This session discusses the IT and customization policies that developers and power users can, should, and must adhere to, and key recommendations for keeping SharePoint solutions well organized and well behaved.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials
Upgrading to SharePoint 2010
Are you jealous of all your friends and their fancy SharePoint 2010 farms? Have no fear. In this session, you will learn how to upgrade SharePoint 2007 to 2010. We will cover the methods available and how best to use them. We will also cover some of the mistakes we’ve made the most often, hopefully preventing you from making the same mistakes.
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
3:30 PM - 4:45 PM
Business Connectivity Services – Beyond the Beginning
This is a fast-paced session providing you with a lightning tour of BCS and the benefits that it can provide your organization. After the overview of BCS, we will quickly dive into advanced topics surrounding the connectivity to external data sources using both SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio.NET 2010 Professional. Many of the "gotchas" will be explained, as well as tips around performance and security improvements that you can make to your BCS solution.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Creating Simple Dashboards Using Out-of-the-Box Web Parts
In this session we will look at some basic out-of-the-box ways to create powerful dashboards for managing teams and projects. Our dashboards will be created using multiple connected Web parts all configured from the browser. This session will give you a good overview of lists, views, Web part pages and Web part connections. This is a great session for those just getting started with SharePoint and want to push the limits of out-of-the-box configuration.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Line of Business Essentials
Developers..Who Needs 'Em? DIY SharePoint Enhancements for Admins
Who doesn’t love a Do-It-Yourself home project on TV? Well, this is a live DIY show - SharePoint style. In this economy, businesses and organizations are tight on budgets, resources, and training, leaving SharePoint admins wearing many hats and handling a variety of responsibilities. Find out what you can do to spice up your site without having to create any code and without having to purchase a third-party solution.
We will discuss and demo the surprising things you can do with
out-of-the-box Web Parts, generating list rollups across site collections, and how to get started with free pre-packaged jQuery widgets. Get ready to dig in on a step-by-step walk through so you can head back to
the office and do it yourself!
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: IT Pro Essentials
Expert Practices: Solution Deployment in SharePoint 2010
Come to this class to learn the benefits of carefully planning your features and solutions. You will learn the best practices surrounding feature activation dependencies, feature stapling, provisioning with PowerShell, and a detailed end-to-end run-through of the feature upgrading process. Also attend the session for a chance to receive a signed copy of the instructor's book "Expert SharePoint 2010 Practices."
Level: Advanced
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials, IT Pro Essentials
Good vs. Evil: Customizing Your Site Without Devs OR Admins
There has always been a struggle between the good admin and the bad developer. Or maybe it’s the good developer and the bad admin? Depends on who you ask, right? At every level there is give and take and the battle has been lengthy. As the demands of a new site build and change from simple logo and theme updates into the coveted ‘rounded corners’ and Data View Web Parts, there is much to consider. Branding and customization sounds great and normally look great, but at what cost?
In this session, we will discuss the difference between branding and design, and the effects it can have on the functionality and effectiveness of a site. More importantly, there will be an overview of Basic Customizations (OOTB) vs. Advanced Customizations and how to avoid the rabbit hole of non-stop customization requests and tweaks. To ensure you get the most out of your SharePoint site, we will discuss best practices and governance, planning, and testing based on real-word scenarios. This class is geared towards power users and curious business users.
Level: Overview
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials
Integrating SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio Lightswitch
Visual Studio LightSwitch is a tool that's designed to let power users build data-centric business applications for the desktop and cloud. The tooling takes care of code generation, data access, and common infrastructure needs, allowing the application builder to focus on business logic. If enhanced functionality is required, developers can extend the application with custom .NET code.
In terms of data access, LightSwitch applications can use many data sources, including SharePoint 2010 list data. The tooling uses a combination of the client object model and the REST API, so the integration is rich and powerful. In this session, you'll see how to build LightSwitch applications that use data from SharePoint 2010.
Level: Advanced, Intermediate
Topic Areas: Business User Essentials, Developer Essentials
Make SharePoint Look Good!
Master pages are so yesterday. The real key to branding SharePoint is CSS. Update SharePoint controls, create different branded versions of your Web site, and write crafty CSS statements that override inline SharePoint styles. Become best friends with descendent selectors, pseudo selectors and attribute selectors. We will round out the class with taking a look at the many things CSS3 has to offer.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Developer Essentials
Worst Practices of SharePoint
In a perfect world, SharePoint systems are well planned with defined requirements, stakeholder approval, and methodology approaches. Oh, and unlimited budgets. But the reality of SharePoint implementations is deployments and operations are typically not what might be seen through rose-colored lenses.
In this session, you will learn what the instructors have seen in terms of worst practices and approaches for getting a system implementation and deployment back on track, as well as methods to fix and optimize operations that may not be addressing your system's current needs. For all of the things that can go wrong with your SharePoint implementation, one of the best things we can do is learn from others. From not accepting that implementing an established information architecture and having an available infrastructure are core tenets of every SharePoint installation to managing SLAs with your end users. Come to this class to hear not only worst practices, but also worst experiences.
Level: Intermediate
Topic Areas: Architecture Essentials
