Windows Live Accounts in Sharepoint

Hold your hands up, everyone. Now put them down if you've never used a browser. OK, lost one.

Now, put them down if you've never used a browser to access a Sharepoint site. Wow, lost a lot there.

M'kay, now put them down if you've ever built or administered a sharepoint site. Anyone left? Oh, there's a few in the corner.

Now, put them down if you've never thought - "Gee, I wish I could authenticate users on my Sharepoint site without having to give them an account on my domain". Where'd the hands go. Woohoo, still got one. This article is for you - yes, you in the shirt.

Codeplex.com now has, in the Community Kit for SharePoint, a Windows Live Authentication feature that you can install and enable the use of Windows Live ID's to your sharepoint site. Kinda cool, huh?

Link here.

Customizing Instant Search in Vista

Instant search is the new search field in the Start menu in Vista. It allows you to hit the Windows key on your keyboard and immediately start typing. As you type, Instant Search begins to filter through items on the start menu and any other indexed locations such as email and your My Documents folder to find related items.

 

Did you know, however, that you can add additional search locations to the search results. For instance, I use Wikipedia frequently to get quick information about topics. I'd like to add that to my search results window.

• Press Windows Key + R and type gpedit.msc. Click OK to open the local Group Policy Editor on your Vista machine.
• Open the User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Instant Search\Custom Instant Search Internet Search provider policy setting
• Enable the policy setting, type Search Wikipedia in the first textbox and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%w in the second textbox, and click OK
• Open a command prompt and type gpupdate/force to immediately apply the new policy setting.

Now, when you click the start button and search for Crazy Frog you'll have a new search option immediately above the search box

Search Everywhere

Search the Internet

Search Wikipedia

Happy searching!

...summarized from ITworld.com

Wireless Internet using my Cellphone

Think your phone is good for nothing more than making calls and sending text message? Well think again. There's a whole world of capabilities out there that can really kick your "inner geek" up a notch.

Just today, I setup my cellphone to act like a modem for my laptop - no wires required!

I've got the Cingular (now AT&T) 8125. A decent device (crappy phone) but it has all of the 'extras' I need like wireless internet, wifi and bluetooth.

Here's how I accomplished it -

Turn on bluetooth on the 8125 and set it to discoverable mode. Turn on bluetooth on your laptop and pair with the phone. You'll end up with a bluetooth modem available.

Open your network connections and create a new dialup connection using the bluetooth modem.

IMPORTANT: Use phone number *99#

Anything else will cause the call to fail. Type in the username of ISPDA@CINGULARGPRS.COM and CINGULAR1 for the password. If the first username does not work, try WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM which means your phone is using the WAP gateway at AT&T to connect to the Internet.

IMPORTANT: Don't use the Cingular (or AT&T) Communication Manager to setup the connection. It sets the phone number to *99****1# and sets the Advanced Command string to AT+CDG. Both will cause the tethering to fail.

Now, the connection is not blazing fast, but it's way better than being stuck somewhere with no internet connection. Also, you can perform the above procedure with your phone plugged into the laptop via USB which will keep the phone charged while you're off updating your facebook status. This post was uploaded using the tethered connection and it was plenty fast.

Here's the result of my speed test. As you can see, not blazing. But then the 8125 I'm running is on the old GPRS connection, not the newer faster 3G lines.

There you go, happy surfing!

SPS Designer Class Notes and Links - Friday

Links -

www.ontolica.com - SPS search web parts for wildcard searches
www.dotnetfranco.com - Classmate who specialized in .NET coding (C#)
blogs.msdn.com/ecm/ - Enterprise content management team blog

SPS Designer Class Notes and Links - Thursday

More useful notes and links from the SPS Designer class in Atlanta...

Infopath and forms

- form is a CAB file with an .XSN extension - Trust levels - Restricted - Domain - Full Trust

- To create forms, Infopath must be installed in designer mode.
- There is a framework from MS for importing Word and Excel documents
- To run forms services, enable both Office SharePoint Server Standard Site features and Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site features in Site Features. Then, enable the same features under Site Collection Features.

- To force forms to be edited in browser, Advanced settings in the library, display as web page.

- If a form is going to be used in multiple locations, publish it as a content type. Then, when the form is updated, all locations where the form is used will also be updated.

Workflow

- Automates business processes

- Waits until something happens then proceeds to next step - Build on windows workflow foundation
- WF Program (template and forms)

- Installed as a feature into farm

- Workflow instance

- Activities

- .NET Framework Community Workflow site

http://netfx3.com/content/WFHome.aspx

- Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Step by Step by Kenn Scribner

- Shelton Blog - Workflow documents and videos

http://sheltonblog.com/

- El Blanco's Office 2007 Blog

http://chrissyblanco.blogspot.com/

- MOSS provides pre-built infrastructure for workflow. Possible with WSS but very difficult, have to build the infrastructure from scratch.

- Workflow templates (built from scratch) are deployed as features

- In Visual Studio (CTRL-K-B) to bring up snippets for sharepoint

- c:\program files\visual studio 8\xml\1033\snippets\sharepoint server workflow\snippets

Sharepoint Roll-Up Web Parts

www.bamboosolutions.com

This developer creates web parts for Sharepoint. Some of the more useful parts available include List and Calendar rollup web parts that allow you to display results from sub-sites in a single list.

For example, in the Clients site, a list of all open issues is displayed for all child individual sites.

Useful stuff!