Disqus - Latest Comments for furuknap

Re: SharePoint Development Blog by Jeremy Thake in Perth, Australia - SPoint.me is LIVE!

Bjørn Furuknap — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:56:55 -0000

I'm not sure I see the great opportunity here. Opportunity for what? For showing SharePoint can be used as a community tool? It can't. It's not meant to be. It's not bad because of it.

Try getting wordpress to do proper workflow. It can't. It's not meant to do it. It's not bad because of it.

The noise is a very definite problem, yes, but at least it's noise in one place. An automatic or manual filtering thing would be great (show updates from [x] Topic YZX [ ] Topic XCZ, etc)

Re: SharePoint Development Blog by Jeremy Thake in Perth, Australia - SPoint.me is LIVE!

Bjørn Furuknap — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:41:23 -0000

Jeremy,

If SharePoint 2010 doesn't solve the problems that the community has, well, I'd take a long deep breath before blaming the community. I don't see spoint as a showcase for Microsoft. Microsoft isn't involved at all, as far as I know. spoint.me isn't there to promote SharePoint, it's there to help people using SharePoint.

One very definite problem for me is the ability to follow what I need in one place. I know there are Facetubes and Youbooks all over the place and that these can talk to each other and that there is a myriad of clients etc. I don't care. I barely have time to follow twitter a couple of times a day.

Case in point: We're now having a constructive discussion on a major issue in SharePoint. How large a portion of the community has no idea that we're doing so?

Re: SharePoint Development Blog by Jeremy Thake in Perth, Australia - SPoint.me is LIVE!

Bjørn Furuknap — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:28:08 -0000

Jeremy,

I have to disagree with some of your comments. First, I really think that the rewards system in MSDN and SO are ruining the show. People answer for reward, not for community benefit. The result is that you get tons of bad answers that the original poster has no idea is bad.

Your other main point, that these things exist already, is another reason I like spoint.me. To get services for forums, links, groups, blogs, you need to sign up for tons of services. Not just that, but you have to select the right service or risk loosing out on features or content.

With spoint.me, I get that in one place. Granted, there are still som bumps and creases to iron out, but if the community starts using the thing, the feedback gets better and spoint.me gets better.

The one thing, however, that I really disagree with is your point on platform. I see absolutely no reason why one should use SharePoint for everything. In fact, that's one of the main reasons why SharePoint has such as bad name; people try to force it into places it doesn't belong.

Let me put it another way, SharePoint already has a 'favorite links' that you can share with the world, so why are you using Delicious, Reddit. Digg, or whatever? Simply because those services are better.

For spoint.me, and even for USPJ Academy, SharePoint is not the right platform.

Re: Gmail box full ! Now what ?

Bjørn Furuknap — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:48:58 -0000

You can upgrade your gmail account to get more storage. It will set you back a few dollars per year but there's no (practical) limit to how big your mailbox can be.

Re: If you could go to one SharePoint Conference this year what would it be? - SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land

Bjørn Furuknap — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:32:21 -0000

See, I don't agree with the 'go to SPC to meet people'. It's like going to downtown San Francisco to meet people; sure, there are bound to be some great people, but how will you find them among the thousands upon thousands of people? How will the speakers have time to talk to you?

I like the smaller conferences far better. I like SPTechCon, for example, because the size means the level of intimacy makes for great social events. You get more time with great people, the atmosphere is more relaxed, and you're not surrounded by thousands of people with whom contact at best is a brief 'we should talk later'.

Re: SharePoint Partners are Part of a Symbiotic Ecosystem NOT Leeches or Mice - SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land

Bjørn Furuknap — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:42:18 -0000

Joel,

I don't subscribe to the idea that Microsoft is just selective about which features they add; if that were the case, the partners would indeed just be picking up crumbs from the table that Microsoft thought wouldn't be a success.

Evidence of this is abundant, in all the great add-ons made by third-party developers. Think of WSPBuilder - it is not by choice that Microsoft's competitor VSeWSS is the least favored (SPDevWiki survey, 2009) development tool.

I refuse to believe that Microsoft just didn't bother to make a better development experience because they didn't have time or space. Mr. Keutmann simply had better ideas, and, more or less single-handedly, created a much better solution.

This applies to other areas as well. Microsoft provides the platform and the partners and independent developers improve that platform. It's still a win-win, as the platform benefits from the full range of partner innovation.

I do believe we are saying the same thing, and I am not for a second doubting that the SharePoint team is performing to the best of their abilities, but as for any business, perhaps especially for SharePoint, there is undoubtedly a fair share of "Doh! Why didn't we think of that" in the halls of Redmond.

And that's a good thing.

Re: The art of SharePoint, how to make a graphical design work for SharePoint, part 1

Bjørn Furuknap — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:17:52 -0000

Excellent start, congratulations on a great article.

Re: Customizing the User Experience of SharePoint: Fast track to Feature Generation (Part 6 of 6)

Bjørn Furuknap — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:30:42 -0000

Hello,

Deploying lookup columns is a tricky business, but once you know why and how all it takes is a couple of lines of code. In short I ususally have a feature activated handler and hook up the columns on activation-time.

Re: Getting started with SharePoint programming: Simplifying SharePoint debugging by creating the troubleshooting toolbox

Bjørn Furuknap — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:26:48 -0000

Great tips, Ayman!

I would also like to point out that when attaching to the debugger you can select all the w3wp processes in case your code runs in different application pools or you don't know which pool is correct.
.b

Re: SharePoint Magazine User Experience Week: Using DelegateControls to Customize the User Experience

Bjørn Furuknap — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:58:55 -0000

I think you have your work cut out for you, yes :-)

Re: SharePoint Magazine User Experience Week: Using DelegateControls to Customize the User Experience

Bjørn Furuknap — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:13:21 -0000

I tend not to create what you call tangible examples at all. I'd rather people be creative on their own by telling people how a certain feature works and then leave it up to them to explore the full potential.

I do evaluate your feedback, though :-) Why don't you pick up where I left and write another article with more tangible examples?

Re: SharePoint Magazine User Experience Week: Using DelegateControls to Customize the User Experience

Bjørn Furuknap — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:51:42 -0000

Are you saying that having a method to alter the CSS of a page is not part of user experience?

DelegateControls is very much a part of the user experience, yes. Both the top navigation and quicklaunch data sources are DelegateControls, as is the search box, the My site links, the visual interface... All of these things affect the user experience.

Add your own DelegateControls to your own master or content pages and you can modify the entire interface and behavior of a site by adding or removing Features from a site.

So how you can say that DelegateControls are not part of UX is a mystery to me. But I am very open to your further thoughts.

Re: Customizing the User Experience of SharePoint: Content Type User Interface (Part 4 of 6)

Bjørn Furuknap — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:07:33 -0000

I'm not sure I fully understand your question. Do you want just a random document to be added when you hit new? I'm not certain where such a scenario would be appropriate, but you can certainly override the 'New' button, and menu, to do mostly whatever you like. I'll encourage you to look at part 3 of this series to get an intro to CAML and then look at how the New item on the toolbar gets contructed. You might also be able to do this using a CustomAction, briefly described in part 2 of this series.

Re: Customizing the User Experience of SharePoint: Fast track to Feature Generation (Part 6 of 6)

Bjørn Furuknap — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:47:29 -0000

I certainly agree, there are plenty of tools with similar capabilities. I prefer WSPBuilder for its VS integration, but each person's style and task is different.

However, for this article I wanted to explain a certain technique, not discuss the various tools available. As the technique used SPM and WSPBuilder I elaborated on the use of WSPBuilder.

On that note, I have yet to see any single tool capable of performing the same CAML dump->Feature combo that WSPBuilder plus SPM can do. Most other tools, like VSeWSS, when it releases, perform a single task very well.

Re: Customizing the user experience: Overview of the default interface (Part 1 of 6)

Bjørn Furuknap — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:02:22 -0000

Hello,

I am very glad you enjoyed it. I wanted to make it deeper and cover more ground, but for the sake of the time you will have to spend reading I found it better to shorten it a bit, and rather focus on getting an overview here.

The next articles in the series will go into far more detail on each of the topics covered here, so if you are particularly interested in one area you should have a field day :-)

This article is also spanning two full chapters in The Book so you can imagine the depth that I will be able to explore there.

Re: Customizing the user experience: Overview of the default interface (Part 1 of 6)

Bjørn Furuknap — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:49:22 -0000

Thanks a lot, feedback such as this makes it all worthwhile :-)

For finding time, well, Arno was kind enough to let me write this stuff so the least I could do to thank him is to find time to do a good job.

Re: Customizing the user experience: Overview of the default interface (Part 1 of 6)

Bjørn Furuknap — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:22:43 -0000

Hello,

Thanks, how nice of you to say that, I am glad you liked it. I was afraid that it would be too deep for online reading, or that the attempts at humor would distract from the reading experience.

Look forward to the next article as well, and of course, The Book.

Re: Writing CAML Queries For Retrieving List Items from a SharePoint List

Bjørn Furuknap — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:05:37 -0000

Great article!

I would like to point out a great tool by John Holliday called CAML.net which helps write the CAML code for you and prevents quite a lot of typo errors. It is available on CodePlex at http://codeplex.com/camldot...

Re: Use SharePoint Designer to Email Daily Task Reminders

Bjørn Furuknap — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:57:47 -0000

Hello,

While it is fully possible to use SPD for this purpose I hesitate to do so. Not just because I am a developer, but because I prefer the right tool for the right job. I don't use a hammer to get a wingnut in place, even if it would be possible.

However, I really love your way of inspiring creativity. People seriously underestimate what is possible with SPD. I've previously used SPD to mimic a ticket handler functionality using simple intelligence to determine if an incoming email to support@example.com should be routed to helpdesk, how important it is, and to handle automatic escalation. I wouldn't put it into production, it was used primarily to demonstrate what you are doing here, that SPD can be very flexible if you need it to be.

What I really miss is more focus on combining 'regular' development with SPD, specifically creating custom activities. Quite often semi-power users need to do more advanced tasks or end up creating the same, repeating set of tasks multiple times. Being creative may solve the problem of creating advanced tasks, but if ten people want to accomplish more or less they same they tend to end up creating ten different solutions, taking ten times as long and frustrating IT ten times as much. These power users should learn when it is not efficient to create new solutions and either create or have someone create a more versatile custom activity.

Again, SPD out-of-the-box is not always the best or even a good solution, but combine it with some custom development and it can become truly amazing in a lot more cases.