Well, I got the email New Years Day that I was awarded the 2010 Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Services, which recognizes community leaders all over for their effort in sharing their knowledge and expertise with those in the community and Microsoft.  An award like this is an honor to receive and validates all the work that I've been doing up to this point, and, well it's also just freakin' cool too :)

But, there's no sitting on my laurels here, look for continuing posts on SharePoint Technologies as well as talks at the local SharePoint Saturdays/Code Camps and Tri-State SharePoint User Group (formerly known as the Philly Office Geeks).

Happy New Year folks!  2010's already lookin' great! - M

One of the enhancements to SharePoint was an "upgrade" to how it does Themes.  Everyone remembers how Site Themes are handled now, right?  Head into the Site Settings and under Look And Feel find the Site Theme link, which shows you the below image.

Now, when heading into the same area in SharePoint 2010 you see the following:

Note the additional information now available in the page: the color scheme is shown, the text backgrounds and foregrounds, accents and hyperlinks are shown as well.  This aligns up perfectly with a PowerPoint Theme.  Now, how can we create a PowerPoint Theme?  Well, you can either open up PowerPoint 2007 and start playing there, or, enter: Theme Builder.

Theme Builder (currently a beta tool) allows you to create Microsoft Office 2007 Themes to be used throughout the Office suite.  Utilizing a tool like this allows you to create Themes that can also be used in your SharePoint 2010 sites.  Using the interface (see above) you can assign colors to the various areas that match those that SharePoint is looking for (accents, hyperlinks, etc).  Once created, you can upload the Theme to the Gallery, and then reference it in the Theme Settings.

So, to create a custom Theme using Theme Builder

1. Open up Theme Builder
2. Assign different colors to the various accents and hyperlinks
3. Select the font of the major and minor fonts
   • Major=Heading Font; Minor=Body Font in SharePoint
4. Test the Theme in Powerpoint
   
5. Save the Theme inside the PowerPoint interface
6. Open up the SharePoint 2010 Site you wish to play with
7. Navigate Site Actions --> Site Settings
8. Select Themes under the Galleries section
9. Upload the Theme created/saved in the steps above
10. Navigate back to the Site Settings page, then select Site Theme under the Look and Feel section
    • You should now see your uploaded Theme as a choice in the list
11. Select the new Theme...the color scheme, accents, hyperlinks and fonts in the page will now reflect your Theme
12. Select the <Apply> button
13. Your site now has this new Theme throughout

Relatively simple, eh?  It's not too bad for something automated.  Now, you can experiment with different color schemes and see what looks best for your new theme.

Note: When trying to just save the Theme through the Theme Builder only, and then uploading it, SharePoint exceptioned, hence we need to save it through the PowerPoint interface.

Enjoy! - M

Let's set the stage:

Initial Steps
The following prepare the virtual of a SharePoint Server 2010 Farm Installation.  Note this install will use DOMAIN\Administrator for all access.

1. Rename your virtual server something sensible (instead of taking the funky looking name it is given when you install WS2K8R2)
2. Within the virtual server I took the IPCONFIG information and made it static in the properties of the network adapter (verify network/internet connectivity)
3. Next install the Active Directory Role and DNS
4. Next, install the Application Server and Web Server Roles (taking the defaults with these)
5. Install the WCF hotfix for SharePoint 2010 installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 (found here - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231)
6. Take a snapshot here, just in case we need to revert back.
7. Install SQL Server 2008 Standard + SP1 + Cumulative Update 2 (64-bit all the way here)
8. Snapshot #2

SharePoint Server 2010 Installation
Here's what we're all interested in...and with screenshots!

1. Fire up the beta, and the welcome screen appears...select Install Software Prerequisites.
   
2. The SharePoint 2010 Preperation Tools dialog appears...click <Next>
   
3. Accept the licensing agreement, click <Next>
   
4. The prerequisite software will now be installed
   
5. After a little time the prerequisite installation completes, click <Finish>
   
6. Next, select Install SharePoint Server
7. A little setup preperation happens...
   
8. Time to enter the Product Key for the Beta then click <Continue>
   
9. Accept the Terms of Agreement then click <Continue>
   
10. Next we'll choose the Server Farm installation
    
11. Select the Complete Server Type installation then click <Install Now>
    
12. Installation begins...
    
13. Applying updates...
    
14. Installation complete!  You can run the Configuration Wizard next if you choose to do so (which we choose to do so!), click <Close>
    
15. Here we have the Configuration Welcome Screen, click <Next>
    
16. The service restart notification dialog appears, click <Yes>
    
17. Select Create a new server farm, click <Next>
    
18. In the Specify Configuration Database Settings page, enter the Database server, Database name, and the username/password of the access account
    
19. Enter and confirm the farm passphrase. This is new for SharePoint 2010 and is used to protect the farm's configuration data.  Each server that joins the farm is required to enter this, so keep it handy! Click <Next>
    
20. Specify the port for Central Administration and the security configuration, click <Next>
    
21. Verify the configuration information then click <Next>
    
22. The configuration progress dialog...
    
23. Successful configuration!  Clicking <Finish> takes you into Central Administration to continue with additional configuration of the farm
    
24. Upon entering CA you're asked if you want to participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program.  Pick yes/no then click <OK>
    
25. Continuing with configuration you are given the choice of following a wizard or configuring all yourself.  We'll use the wizard for now.  Click <Next>. (Click the image for a larger view)
    
26. The next screen configures the services that will run on this farm, along with the account that they will run under.  Again, if you were following least privilege you'd have created additional/different accounts after installing AD (part of the initial steps above).  Here we'll just use the DOMAIN\Administrator account again.  Click <Next>.  (Click the image for a larger view)
    
27. The system will now complete the configuration process of the farm.  This part took a little time on my rig (then again, it is a 4GB virtual running on an external HDD)
    
28. Upon completion the system allows you to create a new site collection (so I did).  Value the relevant fields with the information you wish, select the relevant template, and click <OK> (Click image for a larger view)
    
29. After the site collection is created a configuration details screen is displayed, with all of the relevant information for the farm.  Click <Finish>. (Click image for a larger view)
    
30. And after all that, we now have a Team Site (created in the steps above). (Click image for a larger view)
    

 Happy installing! - M

Link finally resolves to a download of files (x86, x64 and i64).  Find it here.

Walkthrough of stand-alone setup forthcoming... 

- M

Just after I hit <Submit> for the post...the Beta is available on the TechNet Partners site at least!  Download at your heart's content!

So far, the links are "broken".  We'll see how long it takes for them to wire up...

- M

Huge props go out to Dave Mann and group for putting together a serious kick @$$ event this past Saturday.  We had 20+ speakers, 8 hours of sessions, over 275 people, and it was just an overall awesome event.  I personally had like 50 people in my talk Web Content Management in SharePoint Server 2010 (link to slides below).  Thanks again to Dave Mann for putting this all together.  Give the user group tons of love at Philly Office Geeks.

Web Content Management in SharePoint Server 2010

- M

More info coming out of the conference.  There's just waaaaaaaaay too much for one person to handle (I've met some folks that have 4 people from their businesses and they still say that there's too much info for them all to grasp).  So, with that I wanted to hit the highlights of what I saw yesterday, and how they'll impact SharePoint work going forward.

SharePoint Development on Windows 7!
Yup, you heard it here first (well, not really first, but still).  Matthew Burnett from Microsoft did a great session on this.  SharePoint can now be installed on Windows 7 (and Vista SP1) machines.  Couple that with Visual Studio 2010 (currently also in beta) and the other requisite tools, you can now do SharePoint development w/o the need for a Server OS.  No more running through hoops to get development tools installed on servers.  This is a really huge thing.  Couple this with Window's virtualization technology, you can also create a .VHD (Virtual hard Disk) that Win7 can boot to, and have it run just like a host OS, with access to all resources (that means that if your machine/lappy has 8GB, the .VHD you booted from will have it).  This is a HUGE step forward in SharePoint development.  Yet another reason to move onto Windows 7.  But you're already on it, right? Right?

SharePoint Online
This has been in the news for a bit, but the details coming out of this are great.  At the highest level, for businesses/enterprises that don't want to have to deal with all of the effort for the care and feeding of the infrastructure, patches, health, etc. a hosted solution becomes very, very appealing.  They announced a number of clients that are on this (one of them Coca-Cola) and more moving onto it.  Now granted, there will be some limitations when you're on their Standard plan (shared hardware/infrastucture) like custom coding, branding initiatives, and the like.  If you're on their Dedicated service you have more flexibility, but again, you'll be paying for that.  The Standard plan starts for 5 users, the Dedicated starts at 5,000.  But still, at a higher level, moving to the "cloud" for a SharePoint implementation just brings up all these new opportunites for those resources that are now freed up because of this.

More to come...enjoy! - M

Well, a lot of information from a keynote and a couple tracks, so much so my head's going to explode.  But check out what I believe is going to be big news...

1. SharePoint 2010 Public Beta: November! (11/1 or 11/30, who knows, I'm hoping earlier)
2. Development on Windows 7 (or Vista...64-bit client needed but no longer do you need a local server for development!)
3. RBS: Remote Blob Storage: Basically allowing you to store content in a place other than SQL.  This is huge for media streaming
4. Access Services! Note just putting your .MDB up but converting forms and all of the other assets to SP ones...the possibilities of this one are pretty huge, given how prevalent Access is used is many enterprises

More details/info to come as the conference goes on!

- M

Hey, you got your Las Vegas in my SharePoint...no, you got your SharePoint in my Las Vegas!  Two great tastes that go great together have finally converged on Las Vegas (in fact, you can tell who the East Coasters are as they've been wandering around the hotel since like 5AM PST) for a week's worth of SharePoint geek!  Registration started at 8am here today and is through this evening.  There's over 7000 people attending so get your stuff early.

Also, AC's putting together what could probably be the largest SharePint event in history @ eyecandy in Mandalay Bay.  See any/all of you there, or around the conference as well!

-M

Hey folks, fresh off of some much needed vaca and back in the swing of things.  And, on that note, I'll be speaking at the SharePoint Saturday - Philly event on November 7th.  This is a great opportunity for those that are looking to get into SharePoint, as well as be the place to be for all things SharePoint Server 2010 (well, after the SP Conference that is).  It's 8 hours (including breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack) of all SharePoint goodness, including...

- Lots of SharePoint 2010 discussions!
- 8 hours
- Information Architect, Developer and Administration tracks
- 250 seats with tables (laptops welcome)
- Free breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack  
- Raffles and prizes at 5:00
- Easy parking
- After hours party at the Shanachie pub in Ambler (network with speakers and attendees)

My talk will be entitled Web Content Management with SharePoint Server 2010 and it's from 10-11.  Check out the list of Speakers and Sessions.

Registration's wide open, and word has it it's already half full.  So have at it folks!

- M