Class Descriptions for Boston 2009

Full-Day Workshops
Monday, June 22
8:30 am – 5:00 pm

W1 Share and Ye Shall Find: Delivering Content That Users Need Favorite Class!
Bob Mixon
“Findability” describes the way information is made available to those who require it. Providing agility regarding the scope and context of information can be a monumental task. In this workshop, you will discover various ways of working with users to determine their specific needs and learn how to fulfill those needs using SharePoint. It’s all about agile information aggregation, dissemination and search—come see how to make it work.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

W2 Getting up to Speed as A SharePoint Administrator Back by Popular Demand!
Todd Klindt and Shane Young
Are you new to SharePoint administration and ready to jump-start your skills? In this fast-paced workshop, we’ll start at the very beginning, with planning and deployment, and then will quickly escalate to more advanced topics, such as performance tuning and admin tricks and shortcuts.
Topics will include:
• How to properly install and
provision new accounts
• Account troubleshooting and servicing
• When to use Kerberos and other authentication models
• Leveraging the power of SQL Server in
SharePoint administration—with some cow jokes thrown in just for laughs
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE


Half-Day Workshops
MORNING SESSIONS
8:30 am – 12:00 pm

W3-AM Introduction to SharePoint for Developers
Gary Blatt
What are the differences between Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server, and why should you care? What is the object model, and what are Web Parts? How can you integrate legacy .NET applications into SharePoint?
How can you create menu enhancement features? This class will offer developers with a background in .NET but little to no exposure to SharePoint experience with the major development features in the software.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

W4-AM Executing Briefing: Empowering Your Organization With SharePoint Hot New Topic
Dux Raymond Sy
SharePoint can be leveraged in many different ways within your enterprise to increase productivity and efficiency, facilitate collaboration, and more. This comprehensive, non-technical overview is designed to help business executives and IT managers assess how SharePoint technologies can have a positive effect on your company’s productivity and competitiveness.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

W5-AM Social Networking With Forms-Based Authentication Hot New Topic
John Stover
Some call it Social Networking, some say Professional Networking, some Web 2.0, and yet others call it Social Computing. This class will show administrators, architects and business users how to leverage SharePoint 2007 as a platform for building your Social Media solution—especially for users outside your Active Directory. SharePoint comes with Blogs, Wikis, Discussion Boards, User Profiles, Presence Information and People Search right out of the box. Learn how to extend these features into a robust solution that has the functionality of the top social sites on the Web, and see a real-world case study where we enhanced colleagues, blogs, groups, discussions, and added taxonomy and ratings—all with Forms-Based Authentication!
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

W6-AM A Primer for Developing SharePoint-Based Applications
Kevin Israel
This session will give experienced developers a good feel for SharePoint development, as they will write both a Windows and Web-based application. A laptop with Windows Server 2003 or 2008 Standard or Enterprise, the .NET Framework 3.0, SharePoint Server 2007, Visual Studio 2005 or 2008, and Office 2003/2007 is required.
This workshop will cover such topics as:
• SharePoint Architecture and how it impacts your development
• Setting up the Development Environment
• Overview of the SharePoint SDK
• Developing Applications using the SharePoint Object Model
• Developing Applications using the SharePoint Service Stack
• Developing Web Parts
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

 

AFTERNOON SESSIONS
1:30 pm – 5:00 pm

W3-PM Web Services and SOA in SharePoint
Paul Swider
An enterprise SharePoint developer must know what services are exposed through the SharePoint Web Services. Learn how to build sophisticated composite applications on top of the SharePoint platform using SharePoint Web Services and custom Web services that demonstrate the Windows SharePoint Services object model in addition to the Portal Server object model. Also, we’ll discuss how SharePoint Server fits into the enterprise SOA model and identify Shared Service components that use SOA tenets.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED

W4-PM SharePoint Performance Workshop
Mike Watson
Are you getting the most out of your hardware? Do you want to virtualize SharePoint and SQL? Unsure about SharePoint performance? This workshop for administrators will walk you through planning, assessing, and tuning performance for SharePoint products and technologies. You’ll learn how to load test SharePoint and how to monitor and tune SharePoint and SQL for peak performance. We’ll focus on testing, tools, best practices and virtualization.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED/EXPERT

W-5-PM Become Your Company’s SharePoint Superstar!
Mark Miller and Paul Grenier
SharePoint power users and site administrators have the ability to develop powerful yet simple solutions for enhancing the SharePoint interface. The first half of this workshop demonstrates various ways to set up and implement jQuery—the lightweight JavaScript library that can be used to sort through documents—within SharePoint. The session will also provide tips for implementing jQuery-based solutions in a hosted environment. Included in the discussion will be best practices and recommendations on tools to facilitate exploration of the SharePoint user interface and how to safely change it.
The second half of the session is a lightning-paced walkthrough, showing SharePoint interface solutions implemented through jQuery with a dive into the code that creates each solution. 
Here are a few things you will see during the presentation:

  • Control the Quick Launch display… tweak, collapse and hide
  • Expand and contract all groups in a list
  • Create a preview pane to display metadata on a mouseover
  • Fix the Gantt view so that it's actually usable
  • Setup mouseovers in a calendar to expose event information
  • Display deep metadata in a list or library with a simple mouseover

TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

W6-PM Demystifying SharePoint Branding
Randy Drisgill and John Ross
Everyone wants to add some style to their SharePoint site, but where do you begin? In this workshop, we will review the topic of branding as it relates to SharePoint as well as dive into the use of themes, master pages, page layouts, CSS and XSLT to create a more engaging look and feel for SharePoint. We will also discuss the entire branding process from the creation of the design to the deployment of the elements to your farm. You’ll hear real-world experiences from a SharePoint user interface designer, and we’ll discuss how branding impacts other aspects of your implementation.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

 

Technical Classes
TUESDAY, JUNE 23
100 SERIES
9:45 am – 11:00 am

101 Success With SharePoint, From Start to Finish Back!
Errin O’Connor
You’ve heard the saying, “Fail to plan, plan to fail”; it never holds more true than with SharePoint. This soup-to-nuts session will show you how to initiate a new project with SharePoint, whether it’s the first use of the technology at your company or the first use within a specific department. We’ll take a deep dive into a real-world Project Plan for a successful SharePoint implementation, and demonstrate how establishing best practices on planning, requirements gathering, and creating the proper architecture can help you get your project right the first time. We’ll show you how to gather functional requirements and business requirements, and simultaneously increase user buy-in, all with a simple and easy-to-customize approach that you can use time and time again no matter the size of your project.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

102 Building the Perfect SharePoint Farm: A Walkthrough Of Best Practices From the Field
Michael Noel
SharePoint 2007 has proven to be a technology that is remarkably easy to get running out of the box. On the flipside, however, some of the advanced configuration options with SharePoint are notoriously difficult to set up and configure, and a great deal of confusion exists regarding SharePoint best practice design, deployment, disaster recovery, and maintenance. This session covers best practices encompassing the most commonly asked questions regarding SharePoint infrastructure and design, and it includes a broad range of critical but often overlooked items to consider when architecting a SharePoint environment. In short, all of the specifics required to build the “perfect” SharePoint farm are presented through discussion of real-world SharePoint designs of all sizes.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

103 SharePoint Administrators: The Reluctant SQL Server DBAs Fave!
Todd Klindt
Are you a SharePoint administrator who has been thrust into the role of SQL Server administrator as well? In this class, we will go over some basic SQL Server features and configurations. We will cover why you should consider 64-bit SQL Server. We’ll explain what those pesky transaction logs are and what you can do to get them under control. Finally, we’ll go over some maintenance steps you should take to keep both SQL Sever and SharePoint happy. By the end of this class, you’ll have a good understanding of SQL Server and how to make it cooperate with SharePoint.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

104 SharePoint Search Configuration and Administration
Shane Young
Everyone knows that SharePoint Search is super cool, but to get the most out of it, you have to set it up correctly. This class will cover how to configure search properly, with considerations for companies ranging from the super large to the super small. All of the hidden powers of search and how to use them will be revealed.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED

105 Planning Your SharePoint Intranet Solution Around Your Business
Matt Passannante
In this non-technical session, business executives and administrators will learn the roles and relationships required to effectively plan an intranet solution. You will be guided though a step-by-step approach to planning and requirements gathering. You’ll gain insight into real-world experience, identify common roadblocks, and get answers to common questions. All of this will guarantee the time, effort and resources you spend on deploying MOSS 2007 within your organization are focused on critical business needs and will return the maximum investment for your business. What better reason to deploy SharePoint into your organization than to solve critical business problems?
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

106 How ASPX Pages Work In SharePoint — A Core Platform “Need-to-Know”
Maurice Prather
Understanding how the rendering engine treats ASPX pages is key to delivering long-term solutions. This presentation is geared toward developers who are new to SharePoint and would like a learn more about the mechanics of the system.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

107 Developing SharePoint Solutions With Silverlight
Bob German
Silverlight is a powerful new tool for developing rich user interfaces on the Web, and SharePoint sites are no exception. In this session, developers and architects will learn how to develop Silverlight Web Parts that interact with SharePoint data to provide richer, more compelling user experiences.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: EXPERT

 

TUESDAY, JUNE 23
200 SERIES
11:15 am – 12:30 pm

201 SharePoint Workflow Alternatives for Developers Hot New Topic
Gary Blatt
SharePoint Workflow Alternatives for Developers (SWAD) is a unique approach to solving the real-world problem of automating business processes in SharePoint. This architecture combines user-controlled custom workflows with .NET code for an effective approach with a lot less overhead than other methods.
The presentation will show how to:
• Provide an overview of architecture for this complete solution
• Create a custom list that will contain the workflow processing metadata
• Create an Event Handler to capture the existing process within SharePoint
• Create custom classes using the SharePoint Object Model to control the flow of the process
• Tie all the pieces together and create an effective deployment model
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED/EXPERT

202 HELP! Creating a Community of Support for SharePoint
Laura Rogers
How do end users obtain SharePoint-related help? In this session, we will go over challenges in helping and supporting SharePoint end users, and how to address those challenges. There are many different available avenues when it comes to SharePoint help, and we will cover how to consolidate that information to a single point of reference for your end users or customers to turn to. A SharePoint help site and community for your company will not only make the users happy and confident, it will also reduce calls to the help desk.
Attendees will learn:
• Some user perspectives when it comes to obtaining SharePoint-related help, and how to bring together available sources of help
• Why it’s important to do research to find out what the users need and what they’re looking for in SharePoint help
• Why it’s important to create a single point of reference for your company’s SharePoint users to get help with SharePoint, and how to tailor this site/community to your own company
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

203 Best Practice Enterprise Content Management With SharePoint 2007 Hot New Topic
Michael Noel
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has considerable document management capabilities and offers some of the best native integration with Office clients. That said, certain architectural hurdles exist for many organizations looking at deploying SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management, particularly for global deployments of SharePoint. This session covers best practices learned from the field in deploying SharePoint 2007 technologies for document management. Topics include content deployment and third-party replication, metadata considerations across multiple document libraries, navigational considerations, and disaster recovery scenarios.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

204 How Search Services Work And How to Optimize Them
Bob Mixon
Microsoft Enterprise Search Services are very powerful. However, tuning these services to deliver relevant information to your users is a complex science and art. Join Bob in this session and discover configuring scopes, faceted (metadata) filtering, techniques for customizing the user interface, and how the Microsoft Enterprise Search Services work.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

205 SharePoint Workflows: From Out of the Box to Out of This World Back by Popular Demand!
Frank Cottos
The options for creating simple to complex workflows in SharePoint, where no programming is needed, will be explored. The capabilities of the out-of-the-box workflows, and their pros and cons, will be examined. The focus will then turn to the workflow capabilities of SharePoint Designer and, finally, we will look at third-party add-ons to SharePoint that allow for out-of-this-world workflows.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

206 First, Do No Harm — A SharePoint Customization Hippocratic Oath
Woodrow Windischman
SharePoint’s dual role as both application and platform has led to a great deal of confusion regarding just how much custom work needs to be done in order to have a functional environment. This session will present a simple model and hierarchy to help you evaluate just how much customization you need to achieve your goals. Starting with knowing the product, and working up through branding, feature integration, and site definition development, you will learn where each level is appropriate, and where it isn’t.
Topics include:
• How to determine whether SharePoint already has the features you need
• Which techniques can bring high value with minimal investment
• Considerations that can help minimize difficulties when upgrading
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

207 Mashing Up in SharePoint
Tom Rizzo
Mashups! Composite Applications! SAAS! Software plus Services! If you boil these all down, it is about building applications faster, easier with better visualizations and empowering your end users. This session will explore how developers and IT professionals can use SharePoint as a mashup platform and rendering engine for your next generation applications, and how SharePoint Designer can empower you and your users to build a new class of application.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

 

TUESDAY, JUNE 23
300 SERIES
1:45 pm – 3:00 pm

301 A Tour of Development Governance
Robert Bogue
Whether your organization is large or small, you need to know how you’re going to do development in SharePoint. Blast past the basics of making Web parts. Take a left turn at Features. Swerve right to avoid out-of-memory exceptions in this journey through what your development governance and guidelines should look like.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

302 Creating an Electronic Form Solution Using InfoPath and SharePoint
Larry Riemann
Paper, paper, everywhere. There are so many forms in an office to keep track of that the task can overwhelm both the people who create the forms and those who fill them out. This class will show you how to ensure that everyone is using the correct versions of the forms and how to create dynamic forms using InfoPath 2007 and the Forms Server capabilities built into SharePoint Server Enterprise.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

303Shared Services Providers And Their Impact on Your Information ArchitectureHot New Topic
Matt Passannante
SharePoint administrators will obtain a solid understanding of the MOSS 2007 Shared Services and Shared Services Providers. You will learn how to evaluate various Shared Services Provider models and understand the impacts they have upon common information architecture taxonomies. This session will provide SharePoint administrators with the tools and confidence necessary to appropriately architect the scale of their SharePoint deployment.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED

304 Disaster Recovery in SharePoint
Mike Watson and Todd Klindt
Are you prepared for a disaster? Are you confident you can recover your lost content or servers? Are you sure? Get sure. This class will walk you through the nuts and bolts of disaster recovery in SharePoint and give you the knowledge you need to lead a disaster recovery effort. You’ll learn why out-of-the-box tools aren’t enough and how to recover a farm in minutes, not days.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED/EXPERT

305 Protect and Defend Your Data Hot New Topic
Christopher Regan
With most SharePoint implementations storing critical business data, it is crucial that this data be protected and quickly restorable in the event of a disaster. Learn how utilizing Data Protection Manager 2007 as your backup/restore/disaster recovery solution provides a full-fidelity solution with granular control. We will walk you through the initial configuration of DPM as well as setting up a recovery farm.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

306 Virtualizing SharePoint Components
Michael Noel
This session focuses on real-world architecture and best practice recommendations for incorporating SharePoint architecture into virtualized environments running with either Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 or Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. In addition, special focus is placed on virtualization management and provisioning using tools such as System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM). The session also focuses on outlining which specific components of SharePoint operate well in a virtualized environment versus which ones are not necessarily good candidates. In addition, this session gives an in-depth look at real-world designs for SharePoint using both major virtualization products and outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each product in relation to SharePoint functionality and supportability.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

307 Introduction to PerformancePoint Services
Chad Gronbach
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 now includes powerful monitoring and analytics features through the addition of PerformancePoint Services. In this session, we will walk through the expanded capabilities SharePoint Server now has around BI dashboard creation, KPI management, report integration and advanced analytics. SharePoint users in many different jobs will gain an understanding of what is required to deploy PPS, key features that make it a valuable part of any deployment, and what the end-user experience is like for viewing and creating business intelligence dashboards.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

 

TUESDAY, JUNE 23
400 SERIES
3:45 pm – 5:00 pm

401 Data and Views and Forms — Oh My! Building Apps Using The Data View Web Part Hot New Topic
John Stover           
Did you know that you can write complete applications without writing any actual code? Connect to a Web service, a database, or another SharePoint site to get or update data easily using SharePoint Designer 2007. This session will cover the basics of this little-understood and underutilized gem of SharePoint! See real world solutions and tricks, and see how to create an anonymous registration form that also tracks the ad source—done in SharePoint without writing any code! While this session is for administrators and power users, developers are encouraged to attend.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

402 Advanced InfoPath Form Creation Using Visual Studio 2008
Larry Riemann
Have you ever wanted to do something in InfoPath, only to find out that it is not possible or not supported? With Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA), almost anything is possible in InfoPath. This session will show you how to extend InfoPath when needed to meet your organization’s needs using Visual Studio 2008
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

403 Deep Impact: Managing How SharePoint Interacts With Other Systems
Woodrow Windischman
SharePoint does not exist in a vacuum. The more of SharePoint’s functionality you leverage, the greater the impact it has on other portions of your network infrastructure and line-of-business systems. This session, for IT administrators and system architects, looks at some of those intersection points and provides planning guidance to ensure that the benefits of SharePoint integration do not come at the expense of your core applications. Topics include SharePoint’s databases, the Business Data Catalog (BDC) and Enterprise Search, as well as some of the less intuitively obvious impacts.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

404 SharePoint Worst Practices: Five Common Mistakes to Avoid
Dux Raymond Sy
In this presentation for business executives, IT administrators and project managers, you will learn how to effectively manage SharePoint projects and prevent five common mistakes in implementing SharePoint. Participants will get presentation notes, best practices checklists and a SharePoint project plan. In addition, participants will learn to:
• Identify the key components of a successful SharePoint implementation
• Value the significance of properly planning for a SharePoint rollout
• Define the maintenance and support needs of the SharePoint implementation
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

405 Getting Started With SharePoint Workflows
Jennifer Mason
SharePoint Workflows sound like a great idea, but how do you get started? Custom workflows can streamline your business processes by automating them! This class not only will walk you through the built-in workflows included with SharePoint Server, but it will also teach you how to create your own custom workflows using SharePoint Designer so that your business can work smarter, not harder.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

406 Introduction to the SharePoint “Fantastic 40” Application Templates
Jennifer Carbone
SharePoint technologies enable organizations and businesses of all sizes to increase the efficiency of their processes and improve team productivity. In this session, business and IT decision-makers will gain insight into the Microsoft “Fantastic 40,” a set of free, supported application templates that extend the SharePoint platform capabilities, facilitate technology adoption and target deployments in the context of business processes. Join this session to learn how these templates can easily be deployed to help increase the productivity of your business.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

407 SharePoint Online
Tom Rizzo
Welcome to the new world of Software + Services!  SharePoint Online is Microsoft's cloud offering of SharePoint that allows IT administrators to extend on-premises deployments with cloud-based solutions. In this session we will look at what SharePoint Online provides, how you administer it, how you develop against it and finally how it integrates into your existing SharePoint deployment.  If you're thinking about moving some of your SharePoint solutions to the cloud, you won't want to miss this session.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

 

Wednesday, JUNE 24
500 SERIES
8:30 am – 9:45 am

501 Tapping Into Your Line of Business With SharePoint BDC, Returning Searchable Live Data From Your SQL Data Repository
Fabian Williams
This class will walk users through creating an Application Definition File, connect you to your SQL line-of-business systems, and return searchable, live data. The solution will provide functionality that will allow users to obtain live information from their LOB systems to which they may not have an application End User Interface; a window inside if you will. We will use the out-of-the-box SharePoint Web Parts to represent this information to SharePoint users.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED/EXPERT

502 Building an Effective SharePoint Team
Jennifer Mason            
SharePoint projects start with good teams. This session will help SharePoint Project Managers and technical leads gain an understanding of how to ramp up a team to start working on SharePoint projects, giving them a better understanding of the skill sets needed for specific types of SharePoint projects, how to acquire the skills if they don’t already have them, and how high-performing SharePoint teams function.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

503 To Code or Not to Code: SharePoint Customization Vs. Development Back!
John Ross
There are two primary options for creating functionality in SharePoint to meet your organization’s business needs: Customization (no code) and Development (code). This session will discuss the benefits of each approach and how to effectively leverage both to create a SharePoint implementation that provides maximum value.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

504 Design Up Front: Capacity Planning And Implementation Scenarios Hot New Topic
Kevin Israel
No matter how well we optimize SharePoint Search, no matter how well we integrate with line-of-business applications, no matter how well we do BI or develop awesome Web parts, if we don’t spend adequate time doing SharePoint DUF (Design Up Front) when implementing SharePoint, our organization’s experience will be less than optimal. This session will address issues such as capacity planning and infrastructure options as well as configuration options in order to plan for scalability and high availability. Attendees should have a basic understanding of SharePoint’s architecture and familiarity with networking technologies at a conceptual level.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

505   Best Practices for Effective Requirements Gathering With SharePoint
Mauro Cardarelli
SharePoint has revolutionized the way organizations capture and share corporate knowledge by “empowering” and “entrusting” all employees. One of the challenges, however, is setting the proper process for getting new content owners on board. By setting the proper requirements, expectations can be better served and managed.  This session will highlight effective ways for admins to engage business owners and streamline the process of helping them define how they will use SharePoint to meet and exceed their business needs.  Key topics will include:

  • SharePoint 101 – How do you explain SharePoint key terms and functionality to a new user in 10 minutes
  • Mapping business problems to SharePoint solutions… the magic matrix
  • “Hot Zone” exercise – Helping users build their own metadata topology
  • Putting all together – the requirements document; what it is and what it isn’t

TECHNICAL LEVEL: Basic.

 

506 So THAT’S How! SharePoint and Office 2007 Integration
Laura Rogers
Discover the best ways to tackle your daily work with the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Tips include how to use Instant Search in Outlook to keep all your SharePoint lists and libraries within easy reach, and how to use Excel Services Web parts so people can interact with a worksheet on a Web page. From offline document editing and two-way list synch, to workflows you can only find in Office, this session is packed with tricks you can use to increase your SharePoint productivity. Demo will include Access custom lists, blog publishing and dashboards.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

507 Deploying SharePoint Globally
Mike Watson
Do you have users all over the world? Do you want to know how Microsoft deployed their corporate intranet, extranet and Microsoft Online? Come learn how the biggest companies in the world deploy SharePoint and how to plan and improve your global deployment. You’ll learn about multi-farm management, search coordination and federation, global navigation and WAN acceleration. Attendees should be familiar with SharePoint administration.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED

 

Wednesday, JUNE 24
600 SERIES
10:30 am – 11:45 am

601 Integrating External Document Repositories With SharePoint Server 2007
Scot Hillier
Structured data represents less than one-third of the total data in an organization. The vast majority of data lives in unstructured documents such as proposals, purchase orders, invoices, employee reviews and reports. In the enterprise, documents are stored in many different repositories including enterprise content management applications, enterprise resource-planning systems, customer-relationship management systems, product life-cycle management systems, custom line-of-business applications, and file shares. In this session, developers will learn to design, implement and deploy a complete solution for integrating an external document repository with SharePoint Server 2007.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: EXPERT

602 SharePoint With Windows Server 2008 And SQL Server 2008 Back!
Todd Klindt
Now that Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are out, should you put them into service in your SharePoint farm? Absolutely! In this class, we will show the exciting new features of Windows Server 2008 and how each of them can be leveraged by the SharePoint administrator. We will also look at some exciting new functionality in SQL Server 2008 and show how it can be used in a SharePoint environment.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

603 Making the Most Of Out-of-the-Box Web Parts
Laura Rogers
Out-of-the-Box Web Parts are extremely flexible. This session will provide business users and project managers with a detailed look at the Filter, KPI, Excel Web Access, Outlook Web Access and Business Data Catalog Web Parts. Some Web Part connection tricks will be shared, and customizations using SharePoint Designer will be demonstrated. Developers starting to work with SharePoint also could benefit from knowing its out-of-the-box functionality before they delve into custom coding.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

604 Why Taxonomies Are the Most Important Part of Document Management Systems, Part I Hot New Topic
Bob Mixon
Structuring information in such a way that it lends itself to various Scope and Contextual needs can be a daunting task. Many SharePoint failures are the direct result of the implementation not taking Scope and Context into consideration. In this session, Bob will present a case that will help thoroughly understand why taxonomies are so important, teach you how to implement them in SharePoint, and how to get started in your environment. Join Bob and learn more about data, site, navigation, topical, functional and task-based taxonomies in SharePoint.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

605 Customizing SharePoint Search
John Ross
Search within SharePoint is extremely powerful right out of the box. Whether you have Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 or WSS 3.0, with the freely available Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, this session will show you how to get even more out of the search functionality—without writing any code! We’ll discuss the Search components and how they work together. You’ll see how to create advanced searches that give users specific results, how you can customize the search results, and how you can create custom search solutions that deliver content to your users in less clicks.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

607 How to Build a Change Control System in SharePoint
Dux Raymond Sy
In any project, it is critical to establish a change control process for tracking changes. This class will show how beneficial SharePoint can be for automating this process. You will learn how to leverage the benefits of a change control system, automate change requests and approvals utilizing SharePoint Workflows, and create a basic change control system out of the box.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

 

Wednesday, JUNE 24
700 SERIES
12:45 pm – 2:00 pm

701 Getting to Know the SharePoint Object Model
Fabian Williams
Learn the primary objects that would be used in an average SharePoint development project: SPSite, SPWeb, SPList, SPListItem and more.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCEDFave!

702 Development Strategies For SharePoint — Declarative Vs. Imperative
Maurice Prather
The SharePoint developer is faced with the decision of how to best create and deploy a design. Let’s talk about the two major approaches to creating a solution and the compromise that lies between the two extremes.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

703 OBA: Unlocking the Secrets of SharePoint-Office 2007 Integration
Eric Kraus
Office Business Applications (OBA) development is a hidden gem of the Microsoft Office platform. Combining Visual Studio 2008 templates and SharePoint Web services, developers can create robust applications using familiar Microsoft Office applications and Windows SharePoint Services. This session will give a brief introduction to development on the Office platform and walk through common development scenarios, including adding custom task panes, customizing the Office menu and ribbon, and moving data between Office and SharePoint. Attendees should have knowledge of general .NET development and the SharePoint object model.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

704 Why Taxonomies Are the Most Important Part of Document Management Systems, Part II
Bob Mixon
A continuation of the earlier session on taxonomies.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED

705 Integrating the SharePoint User Profile Store in the Enterprise
Paul Swider
SharePoint provides a great infrastructure for building an application directory and profile store using Shared Services. This session will cover the concepts of working with profiles, importing from Active Directory and supplementing the data via a custom service or third-party import. We take a look at how to integrate this profile data with all of our enterprise applications. We also discuss some gotchas and best practices in working with the profiles database. This is a clear win as a developer; no longer do we have to depend on Active Directory to store user profile data for our applications. See how powerful user profiles can be and what real-world problems we can address with this centralized data store.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

706 Building Business Intelligence Portals
Darrin Bishop
Data is used everywhere and stored in every form, from rowsets to cubes to text, XML and HTML. Business applications need data, but business users need information. SharePoint provides a key framework for creating, securing, searching and displaying information. In addition, SharePoint provides the framework to display PerformancePoint dashboards, which provide the heavy lifting for advanced business intelligence. This class will examine how SharePoint portals, SharePoint business intelligence features and PerfomancePoint can be used to provide business intelligence to business users.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

 



Wednesday, JUNE 24
800 SERIES
2:30 pm – 3:45 pm

801 SharePoint Branding 101
Kanwal Khipple
CANCELLED

802 Association Intelligence: A BI Case Study
John Stover
Contrary to what most people believe, business intelligence (BI) does not have to be expensive to implement. BI should also not be a niche tool limited to a few executives. BI can be used to assist with planning at all levels of the organization. Come see how the Entrepreneurs Organization (EONetwork.org) uses SharePoint to deliver BI solutions globally to Staff, Chapters and Members. These tools not only support the organization’s membership and financial goals, as well as  planning at the global level, but they also specifically provide targeted dashboards and scorecards to the chapters and chapter leaders.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

803 Into the Wild: The Challenges of Customized SharePoint Apps in Release Back!
Andreas Grabner
This class will examine the real-world challenges of customized SharePoint applications when they are released “into the wild.” We will consider why such applications almost always work on the developer’s machine—and why they often fail in production. Web parts and lists are the main focus in this class.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED
           
804 Designing and Developing Logical Architectures
Dan Usher
SharePoint adoption tends to be viral in most organizations, growing faster than IT groups are able to handle. Most organizations work toward quick user adoption. Only a handful properly assess what their true vision for SharePoint is within their organization before building out the physical architecture. In this session, we will cover the basics of core design requirements, how they affect logical architecture design and taxonomies, and in turn how best to utilize the equipment available to the IT organization.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE

805 Getting Just Enough Governance
Robert Bogue
Bureaucracy. Everyone hates it. Governance doesn’t have to be that. It can be a way to draw people into SharePoint—and a way for you to connect with your users. You need to manage the risk associated with SharePoint. You have to let users use it. In this session, you’ll learn how to balance governance with adoption and engagement, as well as learn how to get a governance plan done ... without breaking the bank.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

806 SharePoint Search Engine Optimization — Tips and Tricks
Sean Bordner
It’s not that Google hates your public-facing website; it just likes several thousand other sites better. More and more organizations are turning to SharePoint as their public-facing site platform, and getting your site ranked high with Internet search engines is vital for your business, not to mention perceived legitimacy. From “Why Your SharePoint site is not being found on the Internet” to “Seven easy steps to winning over the search engines,” this class will show what works and what doesn’t with SharePoint SEO efforts.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC/INTERMEDIATE

807 Seven Ways to Leverage SharePoint for Project Management Success Hot New Topic
Dux Raymond Sy
In this presentation, you will acquire the practical knowledge of how
SharePoint can address common project management challenges such as inefficient communication among stakeholders, poor document management practices, and undefined project collaboration standards that can compromise project success. SharePoint provides a framework that can empower project managers to create a standards-based Project Management Information System (PMIS).
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

 

Wednesday, JUNE 24
900 SERIES
4:00 pm – 5:15 pm

901 Features and Solutions: Packaging SharePoint Functionality And Content
Darrin Bishop
WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 provide developers and administrators with a packaging and deployment framework using Features and Solutions. Features and Solutions provide declarative programming to add content and functionality to your SharePoint farm. This session will demonstrate the feature and solution life cycle, starting with development, using XML and C# code examples.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

902 Social Computing And SharePoint Hot New Topic
Paul Swider
CANCELLED

903 Integrating SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services With SharePoint
Christopher Regan
Microsoft provides the aptly titled SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to make the job easier, yet many SharePoint administrators and IT professionals run into issues during setup. This class is designed to show how to set up the add-in correctly the first time and how to use its many features. As a bonus, learn how to deploy the reports through Visual Studio—without having to write a line of code!
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

904 Five Foundations for Successfully Offshoring SharePoint Projects
Mike Taylor
As an IT professional or business executive, you have likely been confronted with the dilemma of whether or not to outsource solutions/software development to an outside company. In addition to weighing your outsourcing options, you have also likely struggled with the decision of whether to use an offshore development team. This interactive discussion and demonstration will examine offshore outsourcing challenges, examine the traditional “black box” approach, and offer a new model for offshoring success specifically as it relates to configuration and development solutions for SharePoint.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: BASIC

905 Using BDC to Extend TheSharePoint User Profile Hot New Topic
Fabian Williams
Using BDC to Extend TheSharePoint User ProfileFabian WilliamsThis class will walk users through creating anApplication Definition File, connect you to youSQL LOB Systems, and return information thatmay be consumed by the User Profile Store.The solution will provide functionality that willallow SharePoint Administrators and Stakehold-ers to extend their SharePoint environment,especially their ability to integrate other LOBsystem data into their user experience. We willuse the out-of-the-box SharePoint Web tools toincorporate and represent this information toSharePoint users. Attendees should have abasic understanding of the XML and SQL ServerT-SQL statements.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED/EXPERT

906 Advanced SharePoint Administration With PowerShell 2.0
Eric Kraus
Why limit yourself to STSADM? Discover the power of PowerShell 2.0 as it is used to perform advanced administrative and development tasks. This session will start with a brief introduction to PowerShell scripting and continue with a look into helpful SharePoint scripts including filtering event and ULS logs; managing sites and users; streamlining feature development; working with the object model; and much more! Both administrators and developers will benefit from this powerful discussion. Attendees should have an understanding of current SharePoint administration including STSADM, PSCONFIG and the object model. Attendees may find it useful to bring a laptop to the session to follow along; however, it is not required. Additional software to load: Windows PowerShell v2.0 CTP3 or newer.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED

907 Building Scalable, High-Performance SharePoint Applications
Andreas Grabner
While the development of SharePoint-based services is relatively easy, making them perform and scale can be a real challenge. This class will show you code in the SharePoint Component Model, so you can learn about what the framework is doing under the hood when it is used by a Web Part or an external application. This insight is vital in order to build high-performing and scalable applications based on SharePoint.
TECHNICAL LEVEL: ADVANCED