Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Many-level-Group-by view

When I want the 3-level group by to view the list, I cannot customize in MOSS's modify view since there are only two-level group by. P'Aey told me the method to do is using the SharePoint Designer to custom it.

The introduction to create many-level group by view

1. Open the view page you want to customize in SharePoint Designer.
   
2. Right click, select Convert to XSLT Data View.


3. On menu tab, select Data View -> Sort and Group.


4. The Sort and Group window appears. You can Add the field you want and then, tick Show Group Header.
   
   Anyway, I found that we can't hide the folder when converting to XSLT Data View.

Let's Talk about .. MSDN Senimar Software + Services for Business Application

Today I went to MSDN Seminar at Swissotel Le Concorde, Bangkok. The main topic is, as same as the Microsoft Innovation Days that I went, Software + Services. It sounds like it's the new trend of the software developing.

This is the summary of what I got today.

Ms.Patama Chantaruck, General Manager of Microsoft (Thailand) said that the current software industry focuses on the Hybrid approach between the 100% On-premise (Traditional IT) and 100% Host (Pure-play SaaS: Software as a Services).
For the example of the Microsoft's products, the services can be separated into three types:

1. Building Block Services
   Windows Live Platform
   Silverlight Streaming
   BizTalk Services
   Virtual Earth
2. Attached Services
   Exchange Hosted Services
   Windows Update
   Windows OneCare
   XBOX Live
3. Finished Services
   Dynamics CRM Live
   Live Meeting
   Hosted Exchenge
   Hosted SharePoint

The First Topic: Office Business Application and VSTO
By Mr.Jirawat Padungkijanont, ISV Develop Evagelist

The Office Business Application is exactly the Ribbon, the Custom Task Pane, and the Form Region.

VSTO is the tool for developing the OBA solution. It was built in the Visual Studio 2008.

The Second Topic: Writing Secure Application Series
(I didn't participate.)

The Third Topic: Workflow in Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies 2007: Out-of-the-box and Creating Custom Workflow
By Mr.Noppawat Rujiratanaanant, Technology Specialist, Microsoft (Thailand),
Mr.Wichan Chuacharoensiri, VP of Professional Services, Indigy Co.,Ltd.

I can summarized from their parts that there are three types of Workflows (from low level of predefined structure to high)

1. Out-of-the-box workflows by MOSS2007
2. Custom Workflows / Sequential Workflows by MS Office SharePoint Designer 2007
3. Workflow SDK or 3rd Party Solutions / Sequential & State Workflows by MS Visual Studio, K2.Net, AgilePoint BPMS, or Nintex

Let's Talk about .. Excel 2007-Freeze the panes

You may got the problem to read when your spreadsheet is too large. You will not be able to know that what the column is. The way to solve this problem is freezing the panes.

The instruction to freeze the panes

• If you would like to freeze the selected panes,
  Go to View->Freeze Panes-> Freeze Panes


• If you wolld like to freeze the top row,
  Go to View->Freeze Panes-> Freeze Top Row


• If you would like to freeze the first column,
  Go to View->Freeze Panes-> Freeze First Column

• For the example, I selected Freeze Top Row. The result is here. The Top Row is freezed so I can see what each column is.

Let's Talk about .. SQL Server 2005-Reporting Services

Because next year I will have to use the Reporting Services for the project at my office, thus I need to know about it. I read from some resources from the internet. And it's summarized that the Reporting Services is a server-based solution for creating management, and delivery of traditional, paper-based report, and interactive, web-based reports.The Full Reporting Write Cycle Support contains 4 steps:-

1. Report Authoring: Report Developers create report by using Report Definition Report (RDL) design tools.
2. Report Management: Administrators use SQL Server Management Studio to organize report and data sources, schedule report execution and delivery, and track reporting history.
3. Report Delivery: Users view reports in Web-based format or in E-mail.
4. Report Security: It implements a flexible, role-based security model to protect reports and reporting resources.

Ref. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/reporting/overview.mspx

Let's Talk about .. Word 2007-Insert File Object

My friend, Net, just told me how to insert the file as an object to the document. It's also possible to do the same method in other office applications.

1. Go to Insert->Object->Object...


2. You can Create the new one or insert your exist file.


3. For my case, I inserted my exist file named DropDownList Excel file.


4. Tick Display as Icon if you would like to show your file as the icon. You can also change your icon to be other image.


5. The file appears in the document.

Let's Talk about .. Microsoft Innovation Days-Software + Services

I went to Microsoft Innovations Day on November 13, 2007 at InterContinental Hotel, Bangkok. The main topic was about Software + Services.

This is a little summazation from this seminar. In the seminar, they talked mostly about Software + Services and Office Business Applications (OBA)

Services Transformation consists of

• Service Delivery (SaaS)
• Service Composition (SOA)
• Service Experience (Web2.0)
• Other Services

If we are asked which one should we choose, the answer is all of them.
And that's the new trend of application.. SOFTWARE+SERVICES. What we get when software meets services are Consistent across multiple clients + On-premise & hosted + Extending tools & Platform to cloud + Expanded monetization opps

Building Applications consists of 2 main parts:-

1. Composition
   a. Multiple layers of the stack
   b. Mash-ups
   c. Office Business Applications
2. Building for service
   a. Scale
   b. Customization
   c. Billing
   d. Federation
   

Application Classes can be classified into three types:-

1. Office Business Application
2. Windows Applications
3. Rich Interactive Applications

What I understand about the OBAs is they are applications, that are calling some services, added on to Office programs such as Word, Excel, SharePoint, Access, etc.

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Create New Task

Task is one of the Component come with MOSS2007. It's used to assign the task for whom.
The Instruction to create the Task

1. Go to Site Actions->Create
2. Click Tasks
3. Type the Name of Task, Description, and E-Mail Notification
4. The Task appears.
5. You can set the list upon your requirement. For example, change some properties of column, etc. Go to Setting->List Setting
6. If you want to modify the view, you can go to View:, then select Modify this View. However, if you would like to create new view, you can create if by select Create View.
7. For this example, I selected the Calendar view because I want to create the Schedule Time Table Task.
8. The view is changed.

Let's Talk about .. Microsoft Solutions Summit 2007-PerformancePoint Server 2007

In the summit, Microsoft also displayed the new product that will be launched in 2008. Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.

It uses the concept of MAP or Monitor+Analyze+Plan.
1. Monitor (What?): by Scorecard, Dashboard, and Report
2. Analyze (Why?): by Analytic & Ad-Hoc query
3. Plan (How?): by Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting
Anyway, it's not important how the order is, but it's important at the process.

And who care these information ?
1. Business Executives who want to drive the Performance with fast, flexible to change and able to audit.
2. Information Workers who want to contribute to Performance with the user-friendly, collabolative, and be able to define, modify, and maintain.
3. IT Managers who want to reduce the complexibility.

PerformacePoint Server 2007 will be officially shown in March 2007. Finally, Microsoft said that the list of current-and-future applications that can help each business organization (the requirement is upon the size of the organization) consists of ..
- MS Small Business Server (Premium)
- MS SQL Server 2005
- MS Office Excel 2007
- MS Office SharePoint Server
- MS Office PerformancePoint Server 2007
- MS Visual Studio 2005

I also got Visual Studio 2008 Beta from this summit. Oh I feel like I just started VS2005 :p

Let's Talk about .. Microsoft Solutions Summit 2007-Business Intelligence

Today, I went to Microsoft Solutions Summit 2007 at Bangkok. The theme is Solutions Ready, People Ready. Most of the topics are involving with BI or Business Intelligence.
What I got from this summit is the definition of BI. BI is one of the MIS field (in the topic of DSS). BI is fundamentaly about providing business people with information and tools they need to make both operational and strategic business decision.

What the user need consists of Right information, Right time, and Right format. And who they are?
There are five types of users.
1. CEOs, who need the scorecard.
2. Managers, who need the dashboard.
3. Information Worker, who need the report.
4. Staffs, who need application integration.
5. Planners, who need analytic application.

Then, what these items are ...
1. Business Scorecard is meter or any kind of graphic report that mostly show the status of each process in color, e.g., Green as Finish/Ready, Yellow as Nearly to finish, and Red as Not Finish/Not reach the target. It shows the result by the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which is the current result compared with the past result or the target result.
2. Dashboard is any graphs that show the result which are linked to the detailed information.
3. Report is the normal report that is used by the normal information workers.
4. Application Integration is the output that are used by normal staffs. For example, the result of the Basket analysis that suggest which product should be related the promotion with this product. e.g., selling sci-fi movie with another sci-fi movie, etc.
5. Analytic Application, such as OLAP, which is useful for the planners.

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Step to Install MOSS2007

When you want to install the SharePoint Server to your server machine, you should follow these steps:

1. Windows Server 2003
2. Install DNS
3. Install IIS
4. SQL Server 2005 ( include dotNet Framework 2.0)
5. dotNet Framework 3.0
6. MOSS 2007

The reason that we should do like this is the requirement of MOSS 2007 that needs dotNet Framework 3.0.

After you finish installation of MOSS 2007, you can install SharePoint Designer if you want.

Let's Talk about .. Visual Studio 2005-Get the text from XML

My senior office colleague, P'Tuu, told me about how I can get the text from some tags of the XML file.
if my XML file is


New Year Day


First, I want "New Year Day" which is in the Day tag. I can use the following instructions to get it.

[VB.Net]
If Not (xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day") Is Nothing) Then
Session("DATE") = xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day").InnerXml
End If

[C#.Net]
if (xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day") != null)
{
DATE = xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day").InnerXml;
}
Second, I want "123" which is the value of the attribute Level inside Day's tag. I can use this instructions to get it.
[VB.Net]
If Not (xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day/@Level") Is Nothing) Then
Session("DATE_Level") = xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day/@Level").InnerXml
End If

[C#.Net]
if (xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day/@Level") != null)
{
DATE_Level = xdoc.SelectSingleNode("/Year/Month/Day/@Level").InnerXml;
}

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Create Audience

The senior colleague teached me today about how to create and manage the Audience in SharePoint.

1. If you are Administrator of the SharePoint Server, you will be able to enter SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.


2. After entering the SharePoint Central Adminitrator, go to your ShareServices. The default name is ShareServices 1.


3. Go to Audience


4. Click at Create audience.


5. The Create Audience page appears. Then, you have to type the name of Audience, the Description, and Owner of this Audience, and select that you want to satify the all rules or some rules. After that, click OK.


6. The Add Audience Rule page appears. In this page, you have to select that you want the operand to be the User or Property. Next, select the Operator, and Finally, type the Value. For example, if I want everyone in group of AllStar to be my Audience, I will select User as my Operand, Member of as my Operator, and AllStar as my Value. After that, click OK.
7. The View Audience Properties page appears. Don't forget to click Compile audience if you didn't set the schedule compilation. Note: you can enable the Schedule Compilation at Manage Audiences.
   

MOSS2007-Interesting Websites

Yesterday P'Pom, Outsource from C2X Company recommended me some interesting webs/blogs about SharePoint 2007

• [weblogs.asp.net] Writing Web Part for SharePoint 2007
  http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/09/02/Writing-Custom-Web-Parts-for-SharePoint-2007.aspx
• [msdn2.microsoft.com] How to use CAML Syntax to Query the ListItem in SharePoint List/DocLib
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spquery.aspx
• [developer.com] Calling SharePoint Web Services
  http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/3104621
• [msdn2.microsoft.com] Writing Custom Web Services for using in SharePoint 2007
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms916810.aspx
• [codeguru.com] Create Workflow Foundation (WF) to use in SharePoint 2007
  http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_misc/designtechniques/article.php/c13165/
• Others
  [weblogs.asp.net]
  http://weblogs.asp.net/soever/archive/2006/06.aspx
  [glorix.blogspot.com]
  http://glorix.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html

Let's Talk about .. Visual Studio 2005-Error Access Denied when calling Web Services

If you got the error message "Access Denied" when you called the Web Services, I suggest this method.

First, in Reference.cs, add the following command into the class of the Web Services that is referenced.

[C#]
this.PreAuthenticate = true;
this.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

However, the senior colleague at my office told me that this method mostly works with VB.Net but not C#. So he recommended me to try the second method by set it as the Network Credential by assigning the username and password. (So, this one will okay when you have the username and password for the server that you call the web services)

[C#]
this.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("username", "password");

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Error on AllowUnsafeUpdate

Yesterday I tried to delete the SharePoint item in the loop by using item.delete()
Then, I got this error message,

"Updates are currently disallowed on GET requests. To allow updates on a GET, set the 'AllowUnsafeUpdates' property on SPWeb."

So, I searched at Google and found many people've ever got this problem. I used the solution of Robin's Sharepoint Blog. And it's worked.

However, I got the second one,

"Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute."

Then, I searched again. I know from the MBR IT Soluctions web that because I used the foreach loop that is incremented by the SharePoint items which was deleted.

Let's talk about .. MOSS2007-Enable Dubugging

I think you may feel upset when your Web Part got error message like "Unexpected error". I found some info about how to enable debugging. However I never tried it yet. Someone told me that it's theorically fine, but not many people do it. Normally, it's practically okay when try with the computer that set server and client in 1 machine.

This is the instruction to

These are where I got the info from..

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e8z01xdh(VS.80).aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/pranab/archive/2007/07/04/how-to-implement-debug-option-in-sharepoint-application-within-vs-2005-with-complete-call-stack-instead-of-custom-error-page.aspx

Let's Talk about .. Excel 2007-Simple Drop Down List

This is the instruction to create the Simple Drop Down List.

• Go to Data -> Data Validation -> Data Validation.


• Inside the Data Validation, in Settings tab, set allow to List.


• Specify the source. For example, I have these list.

• Click OK.


• Then, I got the Drop Down List.

Let's talk about .. SharePoint Designer 2007-Body Area Style

The Styles in core.css that relate with the frame of Body Area are

• .ms-bodyareapagemargin
• .ms-bodyareaframe,.ms-viewareaframe
• .ms-bodyareaframe

Then, you can change the background, border, and padding.

Let's talk about MOSS2007-How to get GUID

If you want to know the Guid of your Document Library or List, you can try by this one.

// get current web(site)
SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;
// get current list or library
SPList List = web.Lists[DocumentName];
// get all item in list or library
SPListItemCollection items = List.Items;
// NATT will store Guid.
Guid NATT;
NATT = new Guid();
NATT = List.ID.ToString();


NOTE: the definition of DocumentName is....

private string _documentName = "DocLib_or_List_Name";
[
Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.User),
WebBrowsable(),
WebDisplayName("Documents Library Name"),
WebDescription("Documents Library Name")
]
public string DocumentName
{
set { _documentName = value; }
get { return _documentName; }
}

Let's Talk about .. Outlook 2007-Language Encoding

When you got e-mail which was not written in English, you may got some problems since the message was shown in other language. Yeah, you'd select the suitable encoding for your message. And for the 2007 version of Outlook, you can set the encoding by going to Other Actions->Encoding->More->"Your_Message_Language".

Let's Talk about .. SharePoint Designer 2007-Breadcrumb

Breadcrumb or the navigation is used to make the users know the track they are. They can go back by clicking where they want to go.

It is also set the style by the StyleSheet. You can modify it via the following styles.

• .ms-pagebreadcrumb
• .ms-pagebreadcrumb,.ms-pagebreadcrumb a

Then, you can modify the padding, border, font-size, background, and text-decoration.

Let's talk about .. MOSS2007-Approval Status

This is the way to enable the Approval Status for the Document Library.
1. Enter Site Setting.
2. Go to Site Administration>Site libraries and lists.
3. Click at Customize "Your document library/list".
4. Go to General Setting>Versioning settings.

5. Set Content Approval as "Yes".
6. Set Document Version History as "No versioning".
7. Set Draft Item Security as "items (and the author of the item) ".
8. Set Require Check Out as "No".
9. Click OK Button
10. The Approval Status appears.

11. Now there is Approve/reject inside the menu when you click at the down-arrow at the right of each item.

^_^ Enjoy your Approval Status ^_^

Let's talk about .. MOSS2007-SPListItem

If you're creating the Custom Web Part and using C#.NET, you should know SPListItem.

When you want to show the information of each item from the Document Library, we normally use the foreach-loop. I know some of the following variables from senior colleague. I think they are necessary things to know.

SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;
SPList List = web.Lists[Doc_Lib_Name];
SPListItemCollection items = List.Items;
foreach (SPListItem item in items)
{
// Display File Name.
writer.Write(item.DisplayName);
// Display Document ID.
writer.Write(item.ID);
// Display Metadata Column.
writer.Write(item["Column_Name"].ToString());
// Write Metadata Column.
item["Column_Name"] = "NaTT.biz";
item.Update();
// Compare String with Metadata Column.
String.Compare( (string) item["Column_Name"],"NaTT.biz");
// Display url of item.
writer.Write(web.Url + "/" + item.Url);
}

Let's Talk about .. SharePoint Designer 2007-Web Part Border Line

Today I was ordered to change the color of the Web Part's border line. I took about 2 hours to find which style is involving with the border >_< Finally, I found that the Styles in core.css that have the relation with the Border line of Web Part consist of .ms-partline, .ms-WPBorder, and .ms-WPBorderBorderOnly.

• .ms-partline is the properties of the line between the content of Web Part and the link to add something to that Web Part.


• .ms-WPBorder and .ms-WPBorderBorderOnly are the properties of the lines of Web Part.

Let's Talk about .. Excel 2007-Pivot Table

Pivot Table is a powerful summation tool that is used to analyse. It's very essential thing but easy to create and use. I will show you how easy to create it is

1. I create the excel table as the example as shown in this figure.


2. Then, I select the cell that I want to create the Pivot Table for example, G2.


3. Go to Insert tab->PivotTable->PivotTable.


4. The CreatePivotTable window appears, then you select all the cells of your information that you want to create the Pivot Table. Then, the Range shows in the textbox. Moreover, you can select the Table if you're already name your table.
   
5. Click OK.
   
6. The PivotTable Field List appears in the right zone. You can drag the fields into the below bottom which are Report Filter, Column Labels, Row Labels, Values. You can manage your Pivot Table to make it useful for your analysis. I managed my Pivot Table as shown in the following figure.


7. Then, I got my Pivot Table.

Let's talk about .. MOSS2007-Adding Custom Web Parts

If the webparts that are prepared by MOSS cannot satisfy your requirement, the Custom Web Part will be your solution.

These are Five Benchmarks of Custom Web Parts (From Developer's Guide to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 ).

1. Compiled : All Web Parts are encapsulated in a compiled DLL
2. Signed : They're signed web part assemblies.
3. Marked as Safe : WSS 3.0 Web app. run only when it's
4. Trusted : WSS 3.0 leverages the Code Access Security (CAS) as same as WSS 2.0
5. Deployed : The Web Part must be on the right place on every Web server in the WSS 3.0 farm.

After you finish creating Custom Web Part, the following steps are used to add your new Custom Web Part into the Web Part Gallery.

1. Copy your .dll file to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[Your_HostHeader+Your Port]\bin\
2. Open web.config of your MOSS server. (It's mostly at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\[Your_HostHeader+Your Port]\)


3. Add new SafeControl of your Web Part in web.config.
   Tag: SafeControl
   Attribute: Assembly="Your_Web_Part_Assembly_Name, Version=Your_Version, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=Null" Namespace="Your_Namespace" TypeName="*" Safe="True"
   
   Note: If you don't know the assembly name and namespace, you can use the Reflector program to view them. This program is a class browser program. The Reflector program can be downloaded at http://www.aisto.com/Roeder/
   
4. Save web.config.


5. Go to Site Setting in MOSS.


6. Enter Gallery->Web Parts.


7. In Web Part Gallery, click New.


8. Select your Web Part. You can change your Web Part file name here if you want.
9. Click the Populate button on top of the page.
10. Finally, your new custom Web Part will be in the Web Part Gallery, so you can add your Web Part to your Web Part Page.

Let's Talk about .. Excel 2007-Synchronizing Tables with MOSS Lists

If you've ever used Excel 2003, you can connect to MOSS, both to read and write the list. But for Excel 2007 you may found that it can not do it directly. One of the methods is to do via Access 2007. I think because Microsoft recommended to use Access as the platform to connect to SharePoint. So you can transfer your Excel table to Access first, then use Access to update the list of SharePoint.

Anyway, there is the add-in from Microsoft to make your Excel 2007 be able to synchronize with MOSS. You can download the add-in from Microsoft at this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=25836e52-1892-4e17-ac08-5df13cfc5295&displaylang=en

The instruction to Add-in:-

1. Go to Excel Options.
   
2. Add-Ins-> Go.
   
3. In the Add-Ins window, click Browse.
   
4. Select your add-in.
5. Click OK.

After you added in, the new Publish button appears in menu of Excel 2007. Then, you can synchronize your table.

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Target Audience

You can target the group of audiences in MOSS2007 (I just tried today). In MOSS2007, you can specify which group can see each item in the navigation menu. This is the simple instruction.

1. Enter the Site Settings->Navigation.
2. In the Site Navigation Setting, scroll down to Navigation Editing and Sorting.
3. Click at Head or Link you want to make target group for.
4. The Web Page Dialog appears, then click at the book icon.
5. Select the audience you want to target.

PS. You can create new group of audience if you have the right to do.

I also tried the case of one user in 2 groups of audience. The result is showing all items that both groups have been targeted.

Let's Talk about .. Windows Live Messenger-Show Song Name

Showing the song name you're listening is one of the ways to make your friends know more about you. Windows Live Messenger or the new version of MSN Messenger has the same function as the previous version that you can show the name and artist name of the song you're listening via Windows Media Player. You can show song info by the following steps:-

1. Open Windows Media Player.


2. Go to Tools->Plug-ins


3. Click Windows Live Messenger Music Plugin.
   NOTE: if you don't have this plugin, you can download it from internet by click at download plug-ins.



4. Open Windows Live Messenger.
   


5. Go to Tools->Options.




6. Select Personal, then set "Show song information from Windows Media Player as a personal message".



7. Finally, your personal message shows the name and artist name of the song.

Anyway, it depends on the properties that are set with the song file. You can change it by changing the its property. First, right-click at the song file. Second, select Properties. Third, select Summary tab. Forth, select Advanced>>. Forth, type the info.

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Flyout Navigation Bar

Creating a flyout nevigation bar is easy in MOSS2007. Even I took about one week to do it >_<
First, you should enter the "Site Setting". Since the nevigation bar is already prepared by MOSS, you just create new or edit the exist one. Then, you got the left nevigation bar.

Second, if you are ok with the default navigation bar, that's it. Anyway, you can modify to change its style or make it be flyout by opening SharePoint Designer, the new version of Front Page.

Third, open the master page, then see the code of the navigation bar. To make it be flyout, you just set the following attributes in the tag:-

• Orientation="Vertical"
• StaticDisplayLevels="2"
• ItemWrap="false"
• MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="6"
  

After that, the bar will be flyout navigation bar.

Forth, if you want to change the style, you can change the styles of

• LevelMenuItemStyles tag
• LevelSubMenuStyles tag
• LevelSelectedStyles tag

to change your font, background, and more. However, if the styles that are prepared may not satisfy you, so you can add your own styles inside the masterpage, and use them.

If you got any problems, I recommend you this blog. It's very helpful for me when I first tried to make it since there is the simple step-by-step instruction to make it.

http://www.helloitsliam.com/archive/2006/08/29/moss2007-–-look-and-feel-part-3-–-navigation-bar-basics.aspx

Fifth, after you can change the style of the main bar of the navigation bar, if you want to change the style of the flyout of the bar, you can do it by adding the following tags:-

DynamicMenuStyle CssClass="YourStyle1"

DynamicMenuItemStyle CssClass="YourStyle2"

DynamicHoverStyle CssClass="YourStyle3"


These tags are located inside . YourStyle1, YourStyle2, YourStyle3 are the names of the style you use.
Enjoy your Navigation bar !!

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Minimal Master Page

Today I modified the Master Page from the default master page. Do you know what the trouble I got? .. Yeah, the unexpected error occured. My colleague suggested me to create the minimal master page first. Even I didn't do what she told me but I think it's the good method to do when we have to start create the master page.

We should create the minimal master page since it contains all thing we need. There are the PlaceHolders that are used in. This method prevents you from spending time to look back the code again.

You can enter this page to see the instruction of creating the minimal master page..

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa660698.aspx

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Excel Web Access

Today I participated the training course of How to apply MOSS2007 Excel Web Access. The instructor teached about the basic concepts of the important features of Excel Web Access in MOSS2007.

Interaction between Excel Service & Excel
- View the latest formular results.
- Refresh the live data from an extended data sources such as OLAP cube.
- Navigate the different worksheets, parts of the worksheets, or selected named items in workbook such as chart or excel table.
- Sort and filter data.
- Expand or collage levels of data and use a report filtering a Pivot Table report.

Security
- We don't have to worry about the security coz it leverages the security infrastructure provided by SharePoint.
- We can scale up add more CPU

Excel Service Config
- Excel Calculation Service

• Open SharePoint 3.0 Central admin site
• Click on Operation Tab
• Click on Services on the Server link from the topology and Service
  

Trusting the Location
- Workbooks must be placed in trusted location.
- Call to open fails if it comes from untrusted site.
- Trust a location using SharePoint 3.0 Central admin or Script.

Pivot Table (Pivot = round; rotate)
- Pivot Table reports are tables that organized and summarize info for easier analysis
- Its grapical representations of the same data
- PivotTable and PivotChart are interactive -> trend & relationships

Name Item
- Normally we user the name of the coumn as the name of variable we call, but when the column is changed, the formular got problems.
- In office 2007, we can refer it by the name instead of the column.

Parameterized Excel
- Interactivity

• we can define cell in excel as parameterized .
• we can work with the parameter task pane (the right-hand-side windows in OfficeEx. Textbox, list box ) -- Value of drop down in task pane come from SQL server. User defines, then export the parameter via the parameter task pane.
• we can see the changes in the data / reports

- Visibility we can show / hide sheet and/or part of data

Let's Talk about .. MOSS2007-Excel Services

My division executive suggessed the member of the division to read the MSDN article about the Excel Services. I think MSDN article is very useful when we want to know about the features of Microsoft's products.

The Excel Services is one of the new technology in MOSS 2007. The users can load, calculate, and display the Excel worksheets on SharePoint Server 2007. The important thing is the ability that user can the data to display, and maintain a single version of Excel worksheet without writing custom code.

Two primary interfaces for Excel Services are available:-
(1) Excel Web Access Web Part: you can view and interact with a live worksheet via browser.
(2) Excel Web Services: for programmatic access.

The user can view live, interact worksheets and save it within portal sites. It's able to analyze PivotTable reports and charts by browser.

The selected cells in worksheets can be edited by making the parameters to them. When saving the items that users choose to make viewable, they will appear in the Parameters pane in Excel Web Access.

Anyway, the users have to create a workbook by MS Office Excel 2007 because creating function is not enable in Excel Services.

Let's Talk about .. MOSS 2007

.. I have to use Microsoft SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 for the project that I was assigned. This is the first time that I use MOSS 2007. I know from MSDN Magazine that there are many better features than SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003.

MOSS 2007 is built on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or WSS 3.0 and ASP.NET 2.0. Therefore, MOSS 2007 portal sites are created using WSS features and site definitions along with ASP.NET building blocks such as Master Pages and Web Parts and are added by ASP.NET components such as server-side controls and custom Web Parts. The special features are Portal and Search.

There are the extra dimension inside MOSS 2007 - Web Content Management, Document & Record Management, Business Process Integration and Forms, and Business Intelligence.

One of the Business Intelligence Features is the Excel Service which is a server-side version of the traditional Excel calculation engine on top of WSS 3.0. Users can see the numbers displayed by a worksheet within Browser.

For the Managing Documents and Business Processes, MOSS 2007 introduces "InfoPath Forms Services" that also renders the InfoPath within Browser. And we can use InfoPath 2007 Form Designer to create Web-enabled forms.

That's just a little introduction of the "Assembly and Configure" Philosophy application, MOSS
2007.

Let's Talk about .. Web UI Design

Let's start the first posting of this blog with the UI design for web page and web application. This step is one of all steps that makes problem with the many IT consultant companies. Not because of the hard of creating, but the style to make the user impressive with the result is very difficult to reach. About three or more times to change something is the normal case. So what the user interface is, it's the display that user has some interaction with.

The important target of the most UI is the user friendly. The good application shouldn't make the user confuse when using it. Even the duty of design is owned by the graphic designer, but talking among the user, programmer, and graphic designer is necessary task. The requirement of UI design can be got this meeting.

There are 4 important things that are vital for the designer to know before starting the job.

First, Color Palette - There are many lavels of the color palette we can define depended on the organization and the users. For example, the main color palette, the supporting color palette, the alert color palette, etc.
Second, the font type - The font type for the content should be the same for the whole web site.
Third, the resolution - Because in the past, there are many kinds of resolution people used. But in the present, the 1024 x 768 pixels is mostly used.
Forth, the page layout - We should start to write it in the paper, declare each part to each location. The header is normally located on top of the page. The nevigation menu is where we place the main function of site. The transaction area, which contains the site tools, is the source of the tools that facilitate the users to browse, search, or call some web applications. The size of content area is up to the requirement of users and up to how much the information will be
displayed.