I am glad to announce the SharePointPROs.SG, the first SharePoint user group in Singapore.  It is setup to bring the local SharePoint community together to share tips, tricks, ideas and know-hows on SharePoint.  The group does not target only developers and administrators, but also end users who could share on how SharePoint is being used in their organizations.  So everyone who works with or is thinking of working with SharePoint will likely learn something at the meetings.

We are targeting a regular monthly meeting on every second Thrusday of the month.

Our first meeting will be held on October 9, 2008 at 6:30PM in Microsoft Singapore Office Level 22.

Agenda:

07:00PM - 07:15PM Welcome to SharePointPROs.SG

07:15PM - 08:00PM Developer Introduction to Web Services in SharePoint 2007 by Razi Bin Rais

08:15PM - 08:30PM OpenSpace Discussion on building a vibrant SharePoint community in Singapore.

 * We will be giving a way SharePoint books in the last session.  Whilst stock lasts.

To register for the event, please send email to ssofian at mvps dot org, and include your name, contact and email address.

Hope to see you on October 9! 

A dedicated section on TechNet that provides quick reference to best practices for design and operational practices.

Click here to go to Best Practices Section

The following best practices articles are available:

Search Server / Express 2008 has been released for some time now, just that my projects have been revolving around MOSS 2007.  Finally I am able to explore Search Server Express 2008 with WSS 3.0 to conduct a feasibility study for a customer.

If you have been used to MOSS 2007 search capabilities and search configuration, you might get a shell-shocked to see how little you can configure with WSS search.  But no worry, now that Microsoft has released this great "add-on" to WSS.  Search Server Express is based on the same engine used in Search Server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2007, just that it could only be installed on a single computer/server.

Some of the features added after installing Search Server Express:

• Shared Services (different from MOSS, only used to manage search) which includes the following (similar search configuration in MOSS)
  • Content Sources
  • Crawl Rules
  • File Types
  • Authoritative Pages
  • Metadata properties
  • Server name mappings
  • Federated Locations (this is not available in MOSS till you apply the Infrastructure Update)
• Additional configuration settings under the Site Collection Administration Settings
  • Search settings
  • Search scopes
  • Search keywords
  • Search queries
  • Search results

A few things to note is that during your installation, you will be prompted if you want to create a new site for the Search Center.  I would recommend not create it especially if you already have an existing WSS site, unless you want a central search center for all your WSS sites.  Otherwise, you could create the Search Center under your site collection by creating a new site and selecting the Search Center template.

If you have selected the second option and creating the search site yourself, there is a couple steps that you will do:

• Activate the Office Enterprise Search and Office Server Site Search feature under web application features for your site collection in Central Administration
• Setting the WSS search server in the content database
• Enabling the custom scopes and setting the search page result in the Search Settings under Site Collection Administration section

Detailed steps on the configuration could be found here on TechNet

Other resources:

Enterprise Search Home

Enterprise Search Team Blog

A white paper on integrating InfoPath and InfoPath Forms Services with SAP Web Services.

Table of Contents:

• Best Practices for InfoPath-based Forms Solutions
• Connecting Forms Solutions to SAP System
• Starting Simple - Using InfoPath 2007 as a Forms client
• Extending Forms client solution - Adding SharePoint Technologies for Scability
• Creating a Complete SOA Compliant Managed Forms Solution
• An InfoPath Forms Solution
• InfoPath Forms Solution Implementation

Download

Recently, one of my SharePoint projects encounter the following error: "Updates are currently disallowed on GET requests.  To allow updates on a GET, set the AllowUnsafeUpdates property on SPWeb". 

The application has been working fine till my customer implemented SiteMinder for their Single-Sign-On solution. 

And with this I have changed the Authentication Provider for the web application to use Forms Based authentication and changed the authentication provider to LdapMembershipProvider.  Subsequently, all of the media artifacts residing in the style library does not show up on the page.  And have also tried accessing the images directly from the style library and BAM! the error message turns up.  HHmmm, thats funny why does it happen to images, stylesheets and js files only.  And images that I have stored on the file system are being displayed.

Apparently, I have turned on disk based caching in the web.config file and disk based caching only applies to items stored in a document library, that is the reason why the images on the file system is displying.

<BlobCache location="C:\blobCache" path="\.(gif|jpg|png|css|js)$" maxSize="10" enabled="false"/>

Disabling the caching solves the problem.

SQL Server 2008 has been RTM (Release To Manufacture) today.  It means that SQL Server 2008 is now available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

Though the release has been delayed, however, I am amazed that it has now been released as I have just get to know of the RC1 bits being available internally.  Good news anyway :)  Guess it is time to update my VPC with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 now.  I am looking forward to test out the new reporting services add-in for SharePoint, hopefully it is available soon, since the last bits was for SQL Server 2008 RC0. 

[Update Aug 9 2008]

SQL Server 2008 has dependency on VS 2008 for some of its features, mainly the tools.  If you installing SQL 2008 now, here is a KB article on the dependency.  Or you might want to wait for VS 2008 SP1 release which is targeted to be released on Aug 11 2008.

KB Article

A new white paper has been released on how to business solutions on top of MOSS 2007.

"Learn how to build a business solution leveraging a broad range of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise capabilities. This white paper focuses on the real-world example of an application to help consulting companies track client engagements and business performance. But the insightful lessons learned and best practices will apply wherever your next SharePoint development project takes you."

Topics include Office SharePoint Designer 2007, workflows, Excel Services 2007 and the Enterprise Search API. Whether you are a SharePoint development guru or a Microsoft .NET developer evaluating the platform, this white paper has something for you."

Download here

VSeWSS 1.2 has been released. This version is targetted for Visual 2008 version only.

VSeWSS stands for Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services, contains tools that help you to develop SharePoint applications by providing you with a set templates in Visual Studio and a SharePoint Solution Generator.

Version 1.2 includes the following:

Proejct Templates

• Web Part
• Team Site Definition
• Blank Site Definition
• List Definition
• Empty SharePoint Project

Item Templates

• Web Part
• Custom Field
• List Definition (with optional event receiver)
• Content Type (witn optional event receiver)
• Module
• List Instance
• List Event Handler
• Template

Download VSeWSS 1.2

If you are looking for more information on how to use the extension, there is a user guide available.  Though the guide is targeted for version 1.1, the concept and steps are still applicable

Download User Guide version 1.1

Kinda off track....

Just released, Window Live SkyDrive is now available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand...

So what is SkyDrive?  It allows you to store up to 5GB of files where you can access from the internet.   And you can share these files with your friends too. 

Get your account here at: http://skydrive.live.com/

This is just a quick short tip if you ever encounter this, specially when you have come up with your own custom page layouts.  You might encounter the aspx extension in the breadcrumb.  To remove this aspx extension, simply include the following property of the PortalSiteMapProvider class into the SiteMapPath:

<asp:SiteMapPath SiteMapProvider="CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode"></asp:sitemap>