Goodbye useful functionality

I'm in shock. Microsoft have decided to remove one of the most useful features in Excel 12 - the ability to synchronize list data. You can still export data from a WSS list into Excel, and you can still publish information from Excel into SharePoint. But what is missing is the ability to synchronize changes between your Excel list and SharePoint.

Microsoft have decided that this feature should now live in MS Access. The only problem is that organisations rarely deploy Access to all their users, where-as Excel is everywhere.

Excel also provides some really nice features for playing around with your data in an ad-hoc way compared to Access.

Read more about this at Bart Bultinck's blog and at the MSDN Excel blog

Sydney SharePoint User Group for October

As usual, the SharePoint User Group in Sydney will be meeting at Unique
World's offices at Level 14, 24 Campbell Street, Haymarket.

This month Carlos Mora will be demonstrating the new Forms Management
features in SharePoint 2007. All are welcome.

For more information, and to subscribe to e-mail alerts on up-coming
events, visit http://sps.uniqueworld.net/sydney

SharePoint and Documentum getting chummy

Microsoft and EMC - the makers of Documentum - announced that they will be working to ensure their products compliment each other in the future. Good news if your organisation has both of these technologies.

It also seems that they will be using Vorsite's technology to make this happen.

Here is an extract from the press release:

EMC will bring to market new solutions that seamlessly integrate the EMC Documentum platform with multiple Microsoft solutions and platform technologies including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, SQL Server™ 2005 and enterprise search solutions. Microsoft provides content management capabilities in SharePoint Server 2007 today. With this new alliance SharePoint users can take advantage of the advanced ECM capabilities of the Documentum platform. Information workers will be able to access the Documentum platform natively from within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the Microsoft Office system, enabling users to leverage the power of the Documentum platform in areas such as advanced records management, business process management, imaging and rich media from their preferred Microsoft applications.

Read more here
And more: a nice article on InfoWorld.com about this

Saving to MOSS using Office 2003

SharePoint 2007 now supports different "templates" for a document library. These are called "content types". Each content type can have it's own set of meta-data that you can apply to documents.

So how does this work when you try to save a document from MS Word 2003 up to SharePoint? Quite well actually. When you get to the screen that asks you for your meta-data, you will see a drop down menu of the different content types available in that library.

As you choose different content types, you will see the set of meta-data fields changing. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:

Fix: Workflow in MOSS 2007 stops working

Here's one that you might come up against if you are using the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Refresh. I was trying to create a new workflow for a document library through the browser. However, when I tried to access the second page in the wizard, I got the following error:

Critical Error

There has been a critical error while processing the form.

Click Start Over to load a new copy of the form. If this error persists, contact the support team for the Web site.

Click Close to exit this message.

Details: Too many bytes in what should have been a 7 bit encoded Int32.

The fix for me was quite straightforward
1. Run stsadm -o reconvertallformtemplates
2. Delete your internet explorer browsing history

MVP for Me!

What a great start to the week. I've just returned from 8 weeks in Europe to find out that I have been awarded an MVP (Most Valued Professional) in SharePoint by Microsoft. What an honour! Knowing some of the other SharePoint MVPs out there, I am thrilled to be counted in their numbers.

Yeah, I realize that from your perspective this may not be the most interesting news, but permit me to wallow in the moment, won't you?

Wallow, wallow, wallow, wallow, wallow, wallow, wallow, wallow, wallow.

What was I doing in Europe? Well, I went back to Ireland to catch up with the family, then onto Italy for a holiday before dropping into the International Criminal Court in The Hague (Holland - not Belgium) to help them integrate their SharePoint Portal with their Records Management system. What a nice bunch of people, even if you do have to go through barbed wire, electric fences and metal detectors to get to them.