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");