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My Top 10 Apps for 2010

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Following on from my post of My Top 10 Gadgets for 2010, I realised as I was writing it that there were some cool apps and software that I was using this year that deserved to be mentioned. These are not apps that I’ve bought or started using this year, but the ones I have had to most use for this year.

  1. Confluence – I have used Confluence probably more than any other software this year, and I still love it. I jointed Atlassian for two days for their Doc Sprint a while back, and have been creating lots of complex pages using forms and macros. I love this product.
  2. Google Apps – Basically if you don’t yet have Google Apps for Your Domain, and you have a domain, then get it. It just works! I would recommend GAFYD to any organisation unless they have a specific reason or are large enough to use Microsoft Exchange.
  3. Google Docs – Even though it was sad that Google Wave died this year, there have been so many great features added to Google Docs that I now use either Google Docs or Confluence more than Word. Some of the great new features are Drag and Drop images, Heading Style keyboard shortcuts, Collaborative editing and mobile editing.
  4. Dropbox – How much do I love DropBox? Let me count the ways… It’s one of those apps that falls into the category of, if you don’t have it already, just get it now!
  5. Access 2010 – As with most of the 2010 office suite, Access 2010 is a vast improvement over Access 2007. Having built one major client app in Access 2007 and Access 2010 each, I will very much think to say to clients that unless they upgrade to 2010, there is not much point continuing.
  6. Snagit – One of the projects I have been doing this year is writing a help system in Confluence. So ScreenShots are a key part of that project. Snagit is indispensable for ScreenShots. Snagit 10 has some great new features also that makes it worthwhile to get the upgrade.
  7. Sketchflow – I did a full project Mockup in Sketchflow. I now have a bit of a love / hate relationship with Sketchflow. It has it’s place if you are creating a full Silverlight or WPF app, but probably stick with Balsamiq for simple Mockups.
  8. Visio 2010 – Again there are so many fantastic new features in Visio 2010 that makes it so much easier to create good looking and easy to update diagrams. The new live connectors feature alone is worth the upgrade.
  9. Notepad++ – I use Notepad ++ extensively and just found some great new features in it that makes it even better.
  10. Google Chrome – My browser of choice now and the great new features of the Chrome Apps and Syncing makes it the best browser now. I still do use Firefox for web development, however as I love Firebug still.

Other Mentions:

  • Gmail – still my favourite email app – every time I have to use Outlook (event though 2010 is much better), I die a little inside.
  • Various VPN’s – I use at least 4 VPN clients and it allows me to connect to various client workplaces and work remotely, which is great.
  • Office 2010 – Apart from the specific mentions above, Office 2010 is just a fantastic improvement over 2007.
  • Google Wave – Such sad news this year that Wave was killed off. But overall it might be good – there are features that have been integrated into Google Docs, and now Facebook messaging will be taking a leaf from Google Wave – can’t wait to see that.
  • SharePoint 2010 – I haven’t done much work with SharePoint this year, but I can’t wait to get my hands on SharePoint 2010 for a real client’s site to see how it works.

Some Thoughts on SharePoint 2010

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This week I attended the launch of Office 2010 which included the launch of SharePoint 2010 and the other Office programs such as Project 2010 and Visio 2010. There is much to love about the new range of Microsoft products, and much to be wary of also, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about it.

The SharePoint Conference is coming up in Sydney on June 16 and 17. It is a community run conference (so not an official Microsoft event), but there is a number of great speakers. They will cover a lot of the new stuff in SharePoint 2010 and will cover SharePoint 2007 versions also. Part of the idea for writing this post is a great competition that SBTUG and SWUG are running to give away a ticket to the conference, which I would very much like to win.

There is so much that I want to learn about SharePoint 2010, and so many great new features – but I am uncertain about diving in right now. I just don’t think that it’s going to have the level of adoption in the next few years to warrant learning all about it right now. I think SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) is here to stay for another few years yet, until organisations are willing to tackle the upgrade.

The issue is, that to get the benefit out of SharePoint 2010, you need to upgrade a huge amount of software and hardware. You will need:

  • One (or more) 64bit server(s) running Windows Server 2008 (and preferably Windows Server 2008 R2 to get the most out of some of the new features).
  • Office 2010 for all staff that want to use documents stored on SharePoint (which is probably ALL staff), as the cool new features such as multiple document authors and some of the really cool new OneNote features.
  • Windows 7 because Office 2010 runs so much better on Windows 7 and the cool new features in Server 2008 R2 such as Branch Caching work only with Windows 7
  • Exchange Server 2o1o because there are some great features in Outlook 2010 that only work with Exchange 2010, and I’m sure there are some SharePoint features that only work with the new Exchange also.
  • Viso 2010 because the new Workflow features in SharePoint integrate so well with Visio 2010 – and not just any Visio – it has to be the Premium version of Viso. Also, the new data driven diagrams and diagrams that can be published directly to a SharePoint site make it a must-have for the power users in the organisation.
  • You probably want to also invest in Visual Studio 2010, only because if all the end users are going 2010 then the developers are going to want to too, but also because it also integrates very nicely with the new Workflow features in SharePoint 2010.
  • Probably SQL Server 2008 R2, especially if the organisation deals in very large files – because there is a great new feature in SharePoint 2010 called Remote Blob Storage which allows you to store large files on the file server, rather than inside the SharePoint database. (Yes, it only requires SQL server 2008, but as you will be building this new infrastructure now, you will get R2).
  • And if you are going to go this far, you may as well go the whole hog and get the new version of Office Communicator (not quite out yet) and Project Server 2010 as it integrates with SharePoint nicely too.

So after you have spent all that money, you may think, well SharePoint 2010 is free with Server 2008 so I don’t have to worry about that – well start worrying. To get many of the really cool new features of SharePoint, you really need the Enterprise Edition of SharePoint 2010 – this gives you Excel Services, Performance Point Services, InfoPath Forms Services, Visio Services, and the advanced features of the new FAST Search. And then why not integrate your external website with the Intranet and run SharePoint as an externally facing website. Thankfully the licencing for this has come down a bit in price (due to the External Connector Standard Licence), but it’s still a hefty amount in anyone’s language.

But Wow! If you did do all of these upgrades and got it all humming, that would really be a nice set of tools to work with, and you can call me to come and work with you :).

So after saying all this about SharePoint 2010, why would I want to go to the SharePoint conference and learn much more about SharePoint 2010? Because it rocks! There are so many cool new features in the whole 2010 suite of products, that it is like the Office suite has grown up – they were previously just playing around, and now they’ve gotten serious. And for large organisation that wants a really fantastic integrated suite of products, they will just have to get 2010!

Some of the really cool features that I want to learn more about are:

  • Integration with Office Web Apps
  • The whole range of new Business Intelligence features with Performance Point Services, Excel Power Pivot and the new Business Data Connectivity features (formerly the BDC).
  • The Services (eg Excel, Word, Access, InfoPath, PerformancePoint, Viso Services) and how to use them – eg automating the creation of Word documents behind the scenes with Word Services.
  • All the new Social Networking features – I’m not sure they will be a “facebook for the office” but they will be a start into social apps for the enterprise.
  • The new accessibility features, which I don’t think are 100% accessible yet, but they are built in – not an afterthought like SharePoint 2007.
  • All the new design tools and theming of SharePoint, including XSLT styling of lits and being able to import themes from Powerpoint.
  • Integrating Silverlight into SharePoint – it will be very interesting to see what’s possible with that in the future.
  • The new workflows engine and the integration with Visio and Visual Studio.
  • The FAST search and what is possible now for full enterprise wide search with SharePoint.

So I think that there is enough really cool new things to keep me busy for two days at the SharePoint Conference, and I really hope that I can get to play with these new tools in a real live environment sooner, rather than later.

Note: There is not a lot of hyperlinks to the Office 2010 stuff as the new Office site was not live at the time of this post (even though it was a few days after the official launch), and the SharePoint 2010 site is still lacking a lot of detail around specific features.

Conferences Been to and Going to

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A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend my first Microsoft TechEd which was held on the Gold Coast. It was a great event and just as good for networking and catching up with friends and acquaintances from all parts of the Microsoft World.
My key take away from the 3 day event was about the 2010 platform. Consisting of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Exchange 2010. These 5 products together are fantastic – it’s like Microsoft have been playing up until now, and these products are the real deal. However, that comes with one big caveat. They rock becuase they all work so well together. So don’t expect to install Office 2010 and have some of the cool new features in Outlook, because they don’t work without Exchange 2010. So with this in mind, I think it is a tough ask to have businesses upgrade their whole business platform all at once (not to mention the cool Dev tools of Visual Studio 2010 also). I hope businesses do come on board with this, because there is so much benefit in the whole platform, but I think it will be a while.

The SharePoint 2010 launch is happening in October in Las Vegas (which I sadly won’t be attending), so I can’t wait to see what excellent features will be in the new version.

However, the conference that I am attending very soon is Web Directions South 2009 on October 8 and 9 in Sydney. This is the premier Web Industry event and I previously attedned in 2007 and can’t wait to see how much I learn at this event.

Public SharePoint Websites

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There is a bit of debate over whether you should or should not use SharePoint for an externally facing public website (on the Internet rather than an Intranet or private Extranet).

In this post I will outline a few of the things to consider about using SharePoint for a public facing website, but please note, this is just my opinion, and there may be some inaccuracies, and you may not agree with it, so please feel free to comment.

Some of the important considerations for SharePoint as a public website are:

  • Content Management and Office Integration
  • Versions, Licencing and Support
  • Hardware
  • Web Standards and Accessibility
  • Design
  • Coding and Development
  • Security and Logins
  • SEO

But firstly who is already using SharePoint as an externally facing public website? There is a great site called WSSDemo that lists all of the externally facing public SharePoint sites on it, categorised by industry. Some Australian examples are WesternAustralia.com, AGL and MYOB and the government site of WA Dept of Premier and Cabinet. Interestingly, Microsoft’s own SharePoint site was recently released on SharePoint. A tip when looking at websites is, that if the URL has /Pages/ and the page is a type of .aspx then it is probably a SharePoint site.

Now onto those considerations…

Content Management and Office Integration

One of the main reasons for using SharePoint as an externally facing website is it’s excellent content management features. If you have SharePoint within the enterprise anyway then there is no duplication of training of staff to learn to update different systems for the Intranet and the website. The web content management features of SharePoint allow for the same content to appear on both the Intranet and Internet sites (avoiding duplication of information) and it has built in features for localisation and multilingual sites.

Also SharePoint works with your existing Microsoft Office implementations, allowing you to use the tools familiar to you to author and approve content on the site.

Versions, Licencing and Support

SharePoint MOSS 2007 comes in 2 flavours, Standard and Enterprise. To build an externally facing site, you need the Enterprise version PLUS you need the External Connector Licence. At over US$40k it is a hefty price tag and on top of all the other licencing you need it all adds up. (See the Bamboo Solutions SharePoint Price Calculator for more info).

Another thing that a lot of corporates need to know about is supportability. There are a lot of fantastic tools for SharePoint available on CodePlex, but as they are not officially supported by Microsoft this could be an issue for some companies. However, I think that for SharePoint you will need some of the CodePlex projects so companies may just have to compromise on this supportability issue a bit.

Hardware

On top of all the licencing costs is the hardware. SharePoint can’t just be installed on a server you have lying around, or one that you have in use for another purpose. Plus then there is the SQL Servers, the Dev, Test and Production environments etc, and all of the other servers that may be required depending on the site size and load. As I know very little about the hardware requirements, I won’t delve into them, except to say that you need a SharePoint Architect to assess the current hardware in the organisation and plan out the full requirements for the new SharePoint installation.

Web Standards and Accessibility

This issue is not a SharePoint issue but one that any public website has to deal with. At the recent Remix event in Sydney, Tatham Oddie and Damian Edwards gave a great presentation about building web standards compliant websites with ASP 4.0. A lot of what they went through will be relevant to SharePoint also (plus it’s a very interesting presentation, which is well worth a look).

SharePoint is not fully accessible out of the box, and requires a bit of tweaking to get it to be more accessible. Thankfully Microsoft is aware of this issue and have partnered with HiSoftware to release the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint which is free with a valid SharePoint licence. This is a good article outlining the issues with the Accessibility features in SharePoint.

There is also the ARF framework that helps developers to build Accessible websites with SharePoint. It does change the way developers need to approach SharePoint but as they need to do that anyway the ARF helps with the process.

Design

As with any website design, the more complex the design the more it costs. With SharePoint it is the more Master Pages and Page Layouts you have the more it will cost to design and build the site.

It is interesting that you can build a site in SharePoint that is not really SharePoint. Eg, one of the very first Australian sites to be an externally facing public SharePoint site is the WA Tourism Site. There is a really interesting talk by Jeremy Thake, one of the lead developers on the project talking about the development of the site (it’s quite long so I recommend watching the whole thing only if you are really interested. Part 1, Part 2). What I got most out of that talk is that the original WA Tourism Site is not 100% SharePoint, there is a lot of hand coded components to the site, just in a SharePoint framework. When you look at the newer WA Tourism regional sites (eg SouthWest and NorthWest , you can see that the design is a lot simpler, with one or two master pages, and only a few different page layouts (you will notice all the pages have a much more consistent look and feel).

There is a great article on Heather Solomon’s site explaining how all the SharePoint design components fit together. It’s an essential resource to at least understand some of the terminology of SharePoint.

So, you can do anything you want as far as design goes in SharePoint, but the more you do, the more it will cost. So stick to a simple design with one Master Page and a few Page Layouts and that will minimise the costs.

Coding and Development

This is one area where I know that I do not know enough about SharePoint… So this is my opinion only and it could all be factually wrong. But it just seems to me that SharePoint development is hard, and there is not a lot of Best Practices around for how to develop in SharePoint well. Now this is probably not specifically a SharePoint issue either, I’m sure any large Website, especially public facing, will have many issues about which is the best way to do things for them.

Thankfully there are some great resources starting to surface. The excellent SharePoint Dev Wiki is aiming to share best practices for SharePoint development, and anyone can contribute to the site.

Getting the SharePoint development environment set up well, having a good, documented process for development and deployment from Dev to Test to Prod servers and having a good dev team that works well together are essential for any successful SharePoint Project.

Some of the key people you need for a SharePoint development are:

  • SharePoint Architect – works out the structure of the overall SharePoint site, the hosting requirements and even the hardware.
  • SharePoint Administrator – (overlaps with the Architect). Makes sure all the SharePoint sites are installed, patched and up and running at all times.
  • SharePoint Consultant – works with the business to understand the requirements, does the customistation and configuration of SharePoint to meet the business needs. Works with the developers to ensure the business requirements are met, and does testing and training of the SharePoint installation with the business.
  • Designer – if not a specific SharePoint designer, needs to work with the developers to ensure that their design is translated into the correct CSS and themes by the developers.
  • SharePoint developer – for any custom development required (eg Web Parts, Line of Business applications, Custom Themes etc)

Thinking that you can build a successful SharePoint project without all of these people is just heading for disaster. And thinking that a SharePoint Consutant and a SharePoint developer can be the same person is also a concern. A person that can talk to the business has a completely different mindset than a person who can cut code. To have those two very different approaches in the one person requires a very special kind of person – one who probably would be doing something more than building SharePoint sites.

There is a great presentation by SSW on building a successful SharePoint public website for www.worleyparsons.com It’s quite technical but there are some very good points in it.

Security and Logins

As with any Website, security is a major concern that needs to be addressed in the very early architecture discussions of the site.

For people just browsing the website on the Internet, this is called Anonymous access, however, with any SharePoint site, people are going to have to interact with it, usually by logging in. SharePoint can have domain logins where every user needs to be authenticated on your Active Directory (not desirable for an Externally facing site) or Forms Based Authentication. I know very little about either, so I’m not going to go into it. But here are some articles that may be of interest.

There is a lot to understand about SharePoint security and it is a significant part of the overall SharePoint architecture discussion.

SEO

Again, SEO is not specifically related to SharePoint, but as with all things SharePoint there is some specifics about dealing with SharePoint that you need to know about. There is a whole site devoted to all things SharePoint and SEO called MOSSSEO.

Summary

In Summary, I don’t think SharePoint is any worse or better a platform than any other for building public facing websites. All public facing websites have to meet a number of requirements that make them much more difficult to deliver than a basic Intranet, so if you do already use SharePoint for the Intranet or are an exclusively Microsoft house, then SharePoint is definitely a candidate.

If you want to pay hundreds of dollars for an expert opinion on SharePoint for public facing websites, then try this one or this one.

Confluence and SharePoint Wikis

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This is the contents of a talk that I gave at the May 2009 meeting of SBTUG. It was a session on comparing the features of the wonderful enterprise wiki product Confluence by Atlassian and the wiki features of SharePoint. 

The session content was delivered to the user group using the confluence online trial sandbox where you can try most aspects of confluence online before you buy. 

This talk will not go into the following

  • Other Wiki’s other than SharePoint and Confluence – See WikiMatrix for a complete comparison of all Wiki Software http://www.wikimatrix.org/index.php.
  • The whole debate over the use of Wiki’s and whether you can trust the content on Wiki’s – this is for a corporate usage where there is unlikely to be anonymous comments allowed.
  • WikiPatterns – although you should look at this site if you are interested in Wiki’s at all – http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns.

What is a Wiki

According to wikipedia, a wiki is:

A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked (often databased) Web pages, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites … originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.”

SharePoint and Wiki Features

Wiki Features

  • No external Editor, no uploading documents, edit button on the page
  • Wiki pages are constantly a work in progress – http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WorkInProgress (but Confluence has some add-ins for Page Status)
  • Revision Comparison
  • Recently Edited Pages
  • Links can go anywhere (not a structured hierarchy)
  • Comments and Discussions

SharePoint features

  • Document Management
  • Integration with MS Office

No Matter how structured and organised your content is and how good your search is in SharePoint, a Wiki still makes the information much more discoverable as it’s not hidden away in documents, it’s just a few clicks away at all times.

But Structured Publishing pages on SharePoint could just about do the same thing.

Confluence and SharePoint Comparisons

Confluence

For

  • Has many many features for corporate Wiki useage
  • Many installation options (eg Database could be MySQL, Oracle or SQL Server)
  • Is the most extensible Wiki platform through the Macro’s and Add-ins
  • Atlassian have won multiple awards
  • Confluence is now the defacto standard for corporate wiki’s
  • It can integrate with SharePoint
  • Has excellent Word and Excel editing capabilities

Against

  • Built on Java – many MSFT only businesses may be scared off by that
  • Smaller company – people may think, will they be around in a few years time
  • Has to be integrated with Active Directory to be useful for business – this can be difficult
  • Output to PDF limited and very hard to customise
  • Not there just yet with Office 2007 support (although it is coming)

Other

SharePoint

For

  • Is already part of SharePoint – nothing extra to maintain or install
  • Features of SharePoint that can be used with the Wiki (from http://woodywindy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!773832677F575173!653.entry
    • Setting Alerts to be notified of changes *
    • Setting the permissions of the library, or even individual pages *
    • Adding metadata fields – for example, subject tags, or even links to supporting documents
    • RSS feeds *
    • Requiring approval and document check-out for changes
    • Creating different views of the information
    • Friendly URL’s *
    • Add Web Parts to your Wiki Page

The items above with a * are available in Confluence also

Against

  • It’s not really a Wiki
  • Only uses SharePoint’s basic editor
  • Uploading images is a really big pain
  • A list of things that SharePoint can’t do from http://www.henricodolfing.com/2009/05/sharepoint-as-enterprise-wiki.html
    • There is no support for standard Wiki markup language.
    • The content editing capabilities of the default SharePoint Web Editor are limited.
    • There is no taxonomy solution, i.e. content tagging and hierarchical categories.
    • There is no content rating
    • There is no support for subscription RSS feeds.
    • No support for comments on Wiki pages. You can add discussion boards, but those are something different than what you would expect from a Wiki.
    • The capability for generating reports on the Wiki activity are rather limited.
    • There are no Wiki content templates (but this you could easily solve by creating a few page templates yourself).
    • There is no easy way to attach files to Wiki pages. You have to do this by adding the content to a document library, and then include the link in your Wiki page.
    • There is no support for things like Wanted pages, Orphaned pages, Most/Least Popular Pages, and Recent Visitors.

Other

Here are some links to articles about the SharePoint Wiki feature

To Wysiwyg or not to Wysiwyg

There are a lot of for’s and against for wysiwyg editing of wiki’s. See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WysiwygWikiUsefulArguments

  • Wiki syntax is much simpler than HTML – like a simple conversion layer between rich text and html
  • One of the main advantages of a wiki is its lightweight structure Confluence has a few basic formats, if you can’t say what you need to say with a few heading styles and bold and italic, it’s probably too complex.
  • Wiki syntax is simple, straightforward and intuitive – once you get used to working with it, it is much quicker to create documents
  • Keyboard shortcuts make editing quicker – http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Keyboard+Shortcuts

However

A Quote  from http://woodywindy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!773832677F575173!653.entry

One of the complaints often leveled against SharePoint’s wiki is its lack of support for “wiki markup” beyond intra-site page links. While this is true as far as it goes, it doesn’t consider what that markup is designed to do – compensate for the plain-text editing features of most wiki systems. For example, to make italic text in many wiki systems, you enclose the text in ”double apostrophes”. Yet while there are some conventions, there is no true “wiki markup” standard.

SharePoint Demos

(the demos for Confluence were done in real time during the talk).

Screen Cast Demo 1 http://screencast.com/t/oau54Mt3ONs

  • Navigation
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Wiki Pages
  • Orphaned Pages

Screen Cast Demo 2 http://screencast.com/t/MtM5ZPUC

  • Create Link to new Page
  • Insert a Table
  • Format some fonts – yes you can easily make it very ugly
  • Go to history
  • Restore an old version

Screen Cast Demo 3 http://screencast.com/t/hMljFNIe0

  • Insert a picture into a SharePoint Wiki – showing ow difficult it is to just add a simple picture into a SharePoint wiki.

Extending the Wiki

Confluence

SharePoint

The Bottom Line

My thoughts

  • Use the Wiki Feature on SharePoint but maybe don’t call it a Wiki, or you might put people off Wiki’s for ever.
  • The SharePoint Dev Wiki is on Confluence http://www.sharepointdevwiki.com
  • SharePoint is great for structured, corporate information that are policies and procedures that do not need to be edited regularly. If you are a SharePoint house, then use the Publishing Pages and document libraries for the structured information and allow Wiki’s in smaller team sites where a few people are editing them and they are small and single subject based.
  • Comparing Confluence Enterprise Wiki to SharePoint Wiki is really not fair. SharePoint is not an Enterprise Wiki, and has never tried to be.
  • However, comparing a corporate Intranet built on SharePoint vs one built on Confluence may be a better comparison, but that is a topic for another session.
  • In a future session we will look into the Confluence SharePoint Connector to see if it really does enable a company to have the best of both worlds.

Thoughts from others

From WikiSym 2008

  • The wiki is the place for fast collaborations.
  • Sharepoint is the place to go for final documents (authoritative).

From http://www.henricodolfing.com/2009/05/sharepoint-as-enterprise-wiki.html

By definition, SharePoint is something completely different than an enterprise Wiki. If all you want is a Wiki, you don’t have to spend your time on implementing SharePoint. There are better solutions out there. But a Wiki is very rarely the only thing that a company wants, and if SharePoint does the most things you as a company wants, then it is very easy to add some 3rd party Wiki functionality and that way satisfying your need for an enterprise Wiki as well.

From http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2009/03/comparing_sharepoint_to_confluence_wiki.html

Document-centric collaboration systems like SharePoint certainly have a place in the universe. Atlassian has always maintained that SharePoint is an excellent tool for storing and managing online Office documents. That’s why we partnered with Microsoft to build the SharePoint Connector. Martin’s post forces us to think about the differences between the wiki way of collaborating and the SharePoint way of collaborating. Those differences run deeper than a few superficial features like browser support and wiki markup. At it’s core, Sharepoint strives to be something different than an enterprise wiki.

 

Free Online Training Resources for Microsoft Products

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Now that I have some time on my hands I need to take advantage of some of the free online training that is available for Microsoft Products.

Next week, there is some great online training for Microsoft CRM. See the details on Catherine Eibner’s blog here. There is also some excellent free face to face Microsoft CRM training in early May in Sydney. See the details on Chris Auld’s blog here.

Then there is the fantastic series of free online courses from Microsoft called Ramp Up. The courses include the following topics:

  • SharePoint for Developers – Part 1
  • SharePoint for Developers – Part 2
  • Visual Studio 2008
  • For the VS 2002/2003 Developer: Learn VS 2005
  • For the VB 6.0 Developer: Learn VB 2005
  • For the Java Developer: Learn .NET
  • Developer Basics

There is also a lot of Microsoft Software that you can try for free – details are here. This is from a great post by David Lean about lots of free stuff you can get from Microsoft.

For SharePoint specifically, SharePoint Designer 2007 is now available as a free download, plus there are some training video’s available also here.  And if you want to try out SharePoint there is a pre-configured SharePoint VHD available for download here.

I’m sure this is not a comprehensive list, but it’s the ones that I’m going to start with now.

what’s been keeping me busy

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In the few months that I have been working for myself I have learned a whole heap of new skills and expanded on number of my existing skills, so I thought I’d start to document a few of them.

GoodBarry / Business Catalyst

I first came across GoodBarry at BarCamp #3 early in 2008 and thought, great idea, I’d like to know something more about that. Late last year I had the chance. I’m doing some contract work for a GoodBarry partner building GoodBarry sites. I’m also setting up one for my sister, just to practice with the GoodBarry platform even more. I love the GoodBarry concept – a complete tool for online businesses. My sister currently has a website with hosting, an online shop, a payment gateway, and a mailing list app – all costing lots of dollars each per month, and the look and feel of jumping from the website to the online shop is not consistent. With a GoodBarry site, it is all in the one place with consistent look and feel for a very small monthly fee – including hosting!

So I have well and truly got stuck into knowing everything I can about how to build a GoodBarry site. There is just so much you can do with this platform, it’s quite amazing, and they are always adding new features that make it even better. Of course, as with any packaged system there are some limitations as to what you can do, but in most cases you can work around it.

The site I’m building for my sister is an exercise in minimalist styling and trying to use the templates out of the box that GoodBarry provides. I’ve had to make some small changes to the layout and CSS but overall it looks quite good as a basic template. (I will post a link to the site once it’s live).

The beauty of GoodBarry is that it is a platform, and you can skin it however you like, using CSS / Flash / Javascript etc – after all it is a website. The two sites I’ve been working on for the GoodBarry partner have been with a CSS guru which is great, so I’ve been building the structure, layout and functionality and my CSS guru has been making it look great. In the meantime I’m learning a heap about CSS and Javascript too. (Firebug really helps with CSS learning).

So have a look at the site’s I’ve been part of – I’m quite proud of them

  • www.reportsurfer.com – a site to upload, share and run Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services reports. The reports list is a GoodBarry web app with some custom CSS. Next steps is to make it a full social networking community once GoodBarry release some new features.
  • www.angrykoala.com.au – a website showcasing the business of Angry Koala – a Microsoft Partner specialising in Business Intelligence. There is a lot of lovely graphics and CSS on this site, but it still is a GoodBarry site underneath.

SQL Server / Microsoft Products

I’ve been doing a small project on SQL Server for a client and any hesitation that I may have had that I had not used SQL in a while has well and truly gone, and I am tackling different things every day and increasing my skillset with SQL Server all the time. Things I’ve been doing are:

  • Merge Replication
  • Backups and Maintenance Plans
  • Scheduled Jobs
  • Server Roles and security
  • SSIS packages, including migrating from DTS packages on an old SQL Server 2000 box and using BIDS to build the packages
  • General Transact SQL statements

And I just love that this is all able to be done remotely from my desktop logging into 4 different servers to keep an eye on how they are going.

Also on the Microsoft front I have been getting much more familiar with Microsoft CRM and other Dynamics products like AX and NAV via some downloaded VPC’s from Microsoft. I already knew a fair bit about CRM and NAV but it’s good to keep my hand in and discover and learn some new things.

Word Development / Confluence

I’ve just completed a nice little word development project to set up a small business with excellent looking, well functioning templates, complete with lots of autotext entries. I love doing this stuff because it is very easy for me and it’s something I can do really well.

I’ve also been playing with Confluence to try to convince them that Confluence is the way to go for their team collaboration. I love Confluence and would recommend it to any business that either has SharePoint (as an add-on to SharePoint) or for a small business that can’t afford SharePoint. Confluence even has pricing specials on at the moment that makes it even more affordable for a small team – and they will host it for you.

SharePoint

I went to a user group a few weeks ago on SharePoint and I rediscovered my passion for it, so much so that I would really like to work with SharePoint full time. Doing SharePoint and integration with other MS apps in the business. It was confirmed to me that yes, I do know my stuff with SharePoint and I can go into a business and add value to them from day one in their SharePoint implementation. Yes, there is still a heap I need to learn about SharePoint but I think that’s the case with most people too.

So yes, I have been keeping busy and keeping my hand in to existing products that I have previously used and learning a whole heap of new stuff along the way.

UPDATE: The Angry Koala site is now live (www.angrykoala.com.au) and it looks fantastic (I didn’t do the beautiful design I just built the site in GoodBarry).