Office 12 Client

New Office Online Site

Patrick Tisseghem — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 06:45:00 GMT

I really like the way they have redesigned the Office Online site. Very very cool.

New Office 2007 Client Programmability Resources

Patrick Tisseghem — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 07:48:00 GMT

Two new important resources for anybody doing Office 2007 client programmability:

Doug points to two new podcasts on the Open XML File Format and the options for developers.

PART 1 - http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=246549

PART 2 - http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=247408

Jensen has the link to the final schema for RibbonX, the XML file you have to create if you want to extend the Office 2007 user experience.

Cascading Dropdowns in InfoPath Forms

Patrick Tisseghem — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:55:00 GMT

I have received this question multiple times in my InfoPath sessions. Can we have one dropdown being a filter for another dropdown in an InfoPath form. I always do a demo showing off the power of the rules in InfoPath with a selection in a dropdown updating fields in textboxes on the form. That is pretty easy. A cascading dropdown involves some work as I tell people all the time. I have not found a time to really come up with my own solution but I have been researching other InfoPath stuff today (document conversions and why I can't convert to png on a beta 2 TR machine) and I came up with a very recent post on the InfoPath team blog detailing the steps what you have to do to come up with cascading dropdowns. Thanks guys...it saves me some work and now I can point people to your posting!

Superb Demonstration of New Word 2007 Feature

Patrick Tisseghem — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 07:34:00 GMT

I am always looking for new type of demos I can integrate in my gigs and since I will spend the week in Paris, I decided to have a look at the French Microsoft blogs. The first entry there caught my interest immediately. It nicely demonstrates how the new user experience in Word 2007 can help delivering a great experience, also in classrooms. The document contains Pascal formulas inserted via the Equations ribbon. Cool stuff.

Download the sample document here. See an impression of the document here.

Connectionstring for Microsoft Access 2007 Databases

Patrick Tisseghem — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 16:59:00 GMT

Every week I am telling people that I am very excited about this new version of Microsoft Access 2007. Excellent SharePoint integration! Being busy writing a couple of pages how to create a custom authentication provider for WSS/MOSS 2007 with MS Access as an example for storing your user accounts, I was looking for the connectionstring we have to use for accessing that new version and the new extension (accdb). First place I looked at was www.connectionstrings.com but these guys are not yet up-to-speed with all of this I think :). Then I remembered that you can simply create a .UDL file and double-click it going through a small dialog allowing you to create your connection information. Piece of cake .. if you open the UDL file you will see that the connectionstring for Microsoft Access 2007 accdb databases is

Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=c:\work\users.accdb;Persist Security Info=False

Cool! Back to the writing.. Btw.. loved the past week in Sweden. In total about 100 participants to the two events. Great! Great! Great! SharePoint is really rocking and getting the attention of everybody. Thanks Eva and also Göran for the very nice evening out and interesting talk.

Is it a bug or is it not a bug?

Patrick Tisseghem — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:59:00 GMT

I get many questions from people who are trying out all kinds of things in the beta 2 of WSS and MOSS 2007. Lots of times they hit the wall because it does not work. They ask me then whether it is a bug or not. These questions are often very hard to answer :).

Mart (via Joris) has posted a couple of useful links in case you first want to check out whether the wall you hit is actually a bug or not. And often there is a workaround described that maybe allows you to continue with your experiments.

Office 2007 clients - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517941033.aspx

2007 Microsoft Office Server - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517541033.aspx

Windows SharePoint Services - http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517981033.aspx

Office 2007 Sales Enablement Resources

Patrick Tisseghem — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:31:00 GMT

I am currently compiling new Office 2007 Sales Enablement seminars for BDM's and TDM's plus a small 'Discover what Office 2007 can do for you' technical workshop for Microsoft EMEA. The delivery starts next month and it will bring me again in a lot of countries in EMEA (Turkey, Russia, Sweden, Norway, France, Prague,... all the way down to South-Africa). During the prep of all the material to cover I stumbled upon this site that provides a good overview of the kind of stuff I will have in the seminars and workshop. It is again on the US Partner Readiness site.

By the way, if you are a partner and you have Office 2007 based solutions, case-studies, POCs or whatever that you think might me be interested for me to include in the sales talks, let me know. I am looking per area in Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 for some compelling demos or cases to talk about. Send me the stuff!! (patrick@u2u.be)

What is VSTA all about?

Patrick Tisseghem — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:18:00 GMT

VSTO...VISTA...VSTA.. It is sometimes becoming confusing for the students :). VSTA stands for the Visual Studio Tools for Applications and is a version of Visual Studio.NET 2005 that ISVs can license and embed within their own products to allow their users to extend these products. If you install Microsoft InfoPath 2007, you actually have the option to install VSTA along the ride and have the Microsoft Script Editor replaced by it so that you can extend InfoPath templates with .NET code directly instead of using VSTO. I have wondered a couple of times what I should tell about when to use VSTO and when to use VSTA for extending InfoPath. The results look the same, don't they?

Anyway, there is an on-demand webcast on the US Partner Readiness site titled ISV Touchdown Web Seminar: Overview of Visual Studio Tools for Application (VSTA) that is getting you started. It also explains the roadmap for VSTA.

Gorilla goes bananas!

Patrick Tisseghem — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:19:00 GMT

Ted Patisson has started a new adventure with his new training company called Gorilla Training dedicated to SharePoint 2007 trainings. Asking him for an explanation about the choice of the name he replied that it would offer him a lot of marketing potential. I am sure it does :)

To amuse you SharePoint geeks, he created a number of screencasts that are so typically TP. I am really looking forward to the two of us on the same podium at TechEd Europe. He in a monkey suit and me in a ? suit. Fill in the ? yourself :)

Office 2007 WebCasts

Patrick Tisseghem — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 06:59:00 GMT

Interesting webcasts scheduled the next coming weeks:

Introduction to Visual Studio Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System by Eric Carter (8/8/2006 10:00 AM)
Integrating Your Solutions with the 2007 Microsoft Office System User Interface by Savraj Dhanjal (8/9/2006 10:00 AM )
Developing, Deploying, and Hosting Rich Office InfoPath 2007 Client and Browser Forms by Pradeep Rasam (8/15/2006 10:00 AM )
Building Collaborative Applications Without Code Using Office SharePoint Designer 2007 by Rob Mauceri (8/22/2006 10:00 AM )
Extending the Web Content Management Features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 by Jim Masson (9/5/2006 10:00 AM )