.Net Developer

Microsoft Access and SharePoint

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 by Mat Agrest

Microsoft Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010

With Access 2010 you can move your table to SharePoint 2010 and have user forms show up in SharePoint as well. One thing to note is that forms need to be created as Access web forms. This makes it so, for one, SharePoint can use these forms and two, it relies on the new Access Data Macros to drive the behaviors. Below is a nice diagram I found depicted the connection between Access and SharePoint 2010.

Let's take a closer look at how this all works!
Open Access and go to your database you want to send to SharePoint. You will need to run the Web Compatibility checker to make sure everything can transfer over smoothly. If any table fails, you will be given a list of the errors or problems so that you may try to fix them. Assuming all pass, you can then publish your database to SharePoint 2010. While publishing, Access moves the forms, reports, macros, tables etc to SharePoint. This will allow any users that have Access 2010 on their machines to download a local copy of the database to edit them if needed.

All your tables should now be SharePoint 2010 Lists and create all the necessary links between Access and the Lists. This way if someone were to download the database to their machine, Access will get all the SharePoint list data to maintain a local cache. While a user has this database open, Access will periodically sync with SharePoint with any changes made on either end.

All your forms get converted to ASP.NET (.aspx) pages, including javascript for any supported page events. The layout for these pages is mainly driven by HTML tables. One thing to keep in mind is that your controls on the form need to be placed within the cells. This helps Access transform the form into an appropriate .aspx page.

If your organization is looking to move your Access database(s) to SharePoint, you can do so with the peace of mind knowing everything should go over smoothly. Luckily, for those that are not using Access 2010, you can link SharePoint with Access 2007 as well. The link between Access 2007 and SharePoint is slightly different, but most functionality should still work as intended.

IncWorx Consulting is a leading Microsoft Gold Partner focusing on SharePoint Consulting, SharePoint Support, and SharePoint Application Development.

Microsoft Confirms Windows 8 Public Beta For Febuary 2012

Thursday, December 8, 2011 by Mario McGuire

During a San Francisco developers event held on Tuesday, Microsoft confirmed that it will release a public beta for Windows 8 in late February 2012 instead of the early January date indicated by a recently road map. The news arrived as Antoine Leblond VP of Windows Web services, introduced the upcoming Windows Store to the press.

So far the new tablet-console-friendly OS seems to be on track for a full retail release in Fall 2012 based on the beta's February launch. Given that Microsoft released a public beta of Windows 7 back in January 2009, there was speculation that the Redmond company was sticking to the same schedule. Yet the Developer Preview launched a month earlier (on September 13) than Windows 7's October distribution. That said, comparing the two release schedules seems to be somewhat pointless.

According to Microsoft, more than 13 million copies of the Windows 8 Developer Preview had been downloaded since its release back in the fall. California-based Net Applications said that, based on the Developer Preview downloads Windows 8 already accounts for three-hundredths of 1-percent of all PCs accessing the Internet. That's reportedly one-fourth the number of Windows 2000-powered PCs and half the number of Windows 98 PCs.

Despite the beta announcement, Tuesday's event was focused on Microsoft's app market simply called Windows Store. It will open its doors at the launch of the Windows 8 Public Beta and only offer free apps. Previous reports indicated that the storefront will only provide Metro-style applications, and that legacy applications for Windows 7 and later will only have a landing page that links back to the software publisher.

Being that IncWorx Consulting is a Microsoft Gold Partner and provides SharePoint Support, It makes me wonder what enhancements Microsoft will make in the way Windows and Internet Explorer interact with SharePoint 2010. Windows 7 and Office 2010 have odd quirks that create issues, like the inability to open Excel files from a SharePoint site using Internet Explorer 9 64-bit and many others.

Fixing ambiguous assembly references in SharePoint

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 by Nikolai Brendler

Here's an error that can show up in SharePoint from time to time, usually when you're developing a custom solution or installing one:

The type '<type>' is ambiguous. It could come from assembly '<some_assembly>' or from assembly '<some_other_assembly>'

This usually happens when there are two versions of the same assembly that loaded in .NET, from the GAC or wherever they may be. One way to fix this is with an assembly binding redirection, added to web.config:

</dependentAssembly>

Here I'm redirecting references of the old version of System.Web.Extensions (commonly installed to support AJAX on SharePoint 2007) to bind to the newer version. While this should fix the ambiguity errors, you still need to verify that the assembly you're redirecting to is backwards compatible or there may be runtime errors.

IncWorx Consulting is a leading Microsoft Gold Partner focusing on SharePoint consulting, SharePoint support, and SharePoint application development.

What languages should be used when a SharePoint Developer is doing custom development?

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by Ameil Abdallah

In order to become a SharePoint Developer you must first be an ASP.Net developer who is comfortable in Visual Studio. You will then be able to build the SharePoint development skills on top of the ASP.Net base. You can also use SharePoint Designer and do alot of custom development without ever using Visual Studio and .Net code. However if thats the case it is advised that you have a good understanding of HTML/CSS and XML for optimal gain. In reality both scenarios are really necessary to be a complete SharePoint Developer.

The reason why this language should be used in custom code development is because SharePoint is based on ASP.NET and is hosted in the IIS. Also master pages and application pages enable you to standardize page appearance and behavior. Web Part Pages and Web Parts are also used; this allows users to configure their own pages. You can also connect Web Parts to each other creating parent\child editing capabilities.

For HTML/CSS; branding or changing the look and feel of the web site by modifying the Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), HTML, Java Script requires alot of knowlegde of SharePoint page construction. Examples include Master Pages, Content Pages and the integration of how CSS and HTML are tied into the page.

AvePoint Released DocAve 6 Public Beta

Saturday, October 22, 2011 by Ameil Abdallah

AvePoint released the DocAve 6 public beta that simplifies deployment, monitoring, and enforcement of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 governance policies. It manages development and lets you test production farms with ease. It also features a redesigned, ribbon based interface to simplify and automate SharePoint governance and management.

Key benefits of DocAve 6 include Increase Business Productivity, Reduce Total Cost of Ownership, Provides IT Assurance and Enable Security & Compliance for Business Content. These benefits help deliver high-performance, global collaboration, increase operational efficiency and improve quality of service & minimize business disruption.
DocAve 6 is built upon Microsoft technologies including .NET, WCF(Windows Communication Foundation), and Silverlight which works well with SharePoint Design.

IncWorx Consulting is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and recipient of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award! Need SharePoint help? Let IncWorx Consulting come along side of your organization and be your SharePoint Partner. Give us a call today!

SharePoint "File Not Found" Error

Saturday, October 22, 2011 by Nikolai Brendler

When you do SharePoint Support for long enough, you will encounter a lot of error messages. Some messages are helpful enough to identify the problem, but others are about as generic as they come. I recently received a lovely "File Not Found" from SharePoint after deploying a custom-developed solution into a production environment. Here's how I was able to resolve it.

The curious thing about this particular error was that everything worked fine in the development environment, and I had double- and triple-checked the packaging to make sure all the necessary files were included.

So what's the problem? After some digging, I found the likely culprit on one of the custom application pages:

Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"

The problem is, this was a SharePoint 2007 environment -- which can run on versions of the .NET Framework as early as v2.0, and the System.Web.Extensions assembly is only included in v3.5 or later. Sure enough, after changing the directive to:

Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="System.Web.UI" Assembly="System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"

and redeploying, everything works great! So it turns out that my "File Not Found" was a missing assembly, because the System.Web.UI namespace is in the System.Web assembly in ASP.NET 2.0. Since my development server was running v3.5 it caused the conflict.

IncWorx Consulting is a leading Microsoft Gold Partner focusing on SharePoint Consulting, SharePoint Support, and SharePoint Application Development.

Nintex and IncWorx Consulting Announce Partnership

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 by Michael Mayes

Nintex and IncWorx Consulting Announce Partnership

Two award winning SharePoint firms announce partnership today. This has been a partnership negotiation for over two years and terms and conditions were finalized 7/18/2010. “We are very excited to enter into this partnership with Nintex, their extensive workflow offerings give us a competitive advantage in the SharePoint market, special thanks to Catrina Sheputis for her patience and hard work in helping IncWorx and Nintex formalize this agreement” Michael Mayes Business Development Director Incworx. With this announcement shockwaves are expected to be sent throughout this Chicagoland SharePoint market.

About Nintex
www.nintex.com
Nintex is a leading global innovator of software that extends Microsoft SharePoint, bridging the gap between existing SharePoint features and customer needs. All Nintex products are designed with a passionate commitment to innovation and user experience. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Nintex aligns with Microsoft’s strategic and architectural direction to ensure that Nintex and Microsoft products work in harmony, both today and into the future.

About IncWorx
www.incworx.com
IncWorx Consulting, winner of Microsoft’s 2010 worldwide Partner of the Year Award for SharePoint Deployment and Planning Services (SDPS) and a managed Gold Certified Partner, has been focused on delivering solutions utilizing Microsoft tools and platforms since 1998. IncWorx Consulting is considered the premiere Microsoft Partner for SharePoint architecture, design, development, integration, deployment and support. IncWorx Consulting is a boutique firm specializing in the Microsoft suite of products that support SharePoint including: .NET, SQL, Exchange, Server 2008 and Hyper-V.

SQL Server 2012 code name "Denali"

Friday, August 5, 2011 by Mat Agrest

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RC0 released

Now that SQL Server 2012 RC0 is released, I would like to briefly discuss what has changed in this new version. We will look at some Hardware/Software requirements, new features and some enhancements. So far, things sound like they are going in the right direction with this new version.

Hardware/Software Requirements:

You can't install SQL Server 2012 on mapped drives or compressed drives
You have to have the "no-reboot" package installed prior to installing SQL Server 2012). This is included in Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Otherwise, you can download the no-reboot package from Microsoft.
Requires .NET 4.0
You will need at least 3.6 GB of free disk space
Recommended Processors & RAM
64-bit version: AMD Opteron, AMD Athlin 64, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T Support or Intel Pentium IV with EM64T support running 2.0 GHz or faster. Recommended RAM is maximum that operating system supports or at least 2 GB
32-bit version: Pentium III or compatible running at 2.0 GHz of faster. Recommended RAM is maximum that operating system supports or at least 2 GB

New Feature: Multi-Subnet Failover Clustering

Failover cluster nodes can be connected to a completely different subnet
Subnets can be spread out to different geographical locations
Subnets must be in the same Active Directory domain

Enhancements:

Sequences are now added, this is a user defined object that generates a sequence of a number
Enhanced Order By option in a Select statement. You can now use Offset and Fetch along with Order By to help performance by bringing back exactly what you want to show to users. The Offset command states the starting point for the Select statement (in terms of paging), and Fetch let's you say how many records to return at one time
You can now search and index data stored in extended properties or metadata

The following link shows screenshots of the installation of SQL Server 2012
http://newtech.about.com/od/databasemanagement/ig/SQL-Server-2011--Denali----Installation-Gallery/

IncWorx Consulting is a leading Microsoft Gold Partner focusing on SharePoint Consulting, SharePoint Support, and SharePoint Application Development.

Chicago custom .net development and consulting

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 by Paul Haynes

IncWorx Consulting offers a wide range of custom .net development consulting services. We work with our clients on a staff augmentation basis with some of the best consultants located in Chicagoland and also have a full service project team who has lead technical architects, senior developers, PMs and QA. All of our resources are on-shore with 10 out of 10 communication.
Please contact me if you would like to discuss further: paul.haynes (at) incworx.com or call me, 847-839-9679.

MVC Consultants in Chicago

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 by Paul Haynes

While IncWorx Consulting is known for our award winning SharePoint practice, we also have a top notch custom development practice as well! IncWorx has very senior developers and solution architects on the .NET side and we also have consultants with skills that are very difficult to find such as: experience with MVC 2 and 3, mobile development expertise, Windows Workflow, MVC, WPF, Silverlight, etc.

Please contact me if you are looking for a strong MVC developer or another specialized developer you need! paul.haynes@incworx.com

How to customize a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Form

Monday, June 20, 2011 by Michael Mayes

Customizing forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

There are two ways you can customize a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 form. The most common forms are the Lead, Account and Opportunity forms. One way to customize these forms is by making changes from the form itself, the other is from the Settings screens. This blog post will give you a step by step guide in how to edit Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 forms. (Only the person with the proper rights will be able to customize the fields within these forms. If options listed below do not appear within the user interface, you will need to request the proper rights from the systems administrator)

Step by Step Guide in Customizing forms in Microsoft Dynamics 2011

From the Dynamics 2011 Home page click Sales then click Lead, Account or Opportunity (The form you want to customize)

Home Page of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Once the Opportunities, Account or Lead list appears click the New record button.

Once the new form appears click the Customize tab then Form.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Customize Form

Outlines around the Cells and fields indicate the ability to edit the form. The fields on the right are preconfigured fields you can add to the form. For any new fields, custom from the current list, the user will need to click New Field.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Editing Prompt

Once in the New Field prompt fill out the necessary information. You can change the way users interact with the field by configuring what type of answer you require. The type options are very intuitive; just remember once you save the custom field you can only edit the Type filed from the Settings Customization prompt.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Adding a custom New Field

The example I am using is: Blog Post Test. For the Type in this example we will choose the Two Option preconfigured selection. This can be customized further to change the answer from Yes / No to any two answers the user chooses. Make sure you select the Default Value meaning the answer you would like to appear when a new form is created. If you want your users to select from more than two options you should select Type - Option Set. You can further customize these options. Once you have finished selecting the options provided click Save and Close.

The new field will now appear in the fields list.

To add the field to the form, simply drag the field into the form until a red line appears. This will indicate when the field will reside.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Pasting new Field to UI

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Pasted Field in UI Prompt

Once you have completed your edits to the form click Save then Publish.

The other way to add fields to a Dynamics CRM 2011 form it to edit fields under the following breadcrumb. Settings – Customize the System – Entities – “Form you would like to edit (Lead, Account, Opportunity)”. This is the only place you can delete unwanted fields that you have created.

About IncWorx
IncWorx Consulting is a Chicago Microsoft Gold Partner. If you are looking for a talented .NET Developer or a .NET Consultant please feel to reach out to Michael Mayes at 847-839-9679.

"401 unauthorized" error while browsing the SharePoint application from the server

Thursday, April 14, 2011 by John Petrutis

A very common scenario I run into is when someone configures a SharePoint environment, creates the web application without issue, creates the site collection, assigns themself as a Site Collection Admin and gets a "401 Unauthorized" error on that SharePoint application. Before we start troubleshooting this issue as a SharePoint issue, let's rule out one simple thing, browsing on the local server.

Consider this... You create a new web application using the NETBIOS name or host name of the machine, use any port, and you have no issues browsing that same application in a browser on the server. Now consider this, you create a new web application where the URL is NOT the NETBIOS or host name. When browsing the site, you get prompted for credentials 3 times with no success. You might even have this site in your trusted zones, but it still asks you for credentials! This is by design for Server 2008 and Server 2003:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

When you use the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or a custom host header to browse a local Web site that is hosted on a computer that is running Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 or a later version, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

HTTP 401.1 - Unauthorized: Logon Failed

This issue occurs when the Web site uses Integrated Authentication and has a name that is mapped to the local loopback address.

The KB article explains this well. You can either follow the steps in the KB article or add a custom entry to your local host file on a different machine! This is important because adding your address to a local host file assures that the host name is passed to the IP address specified. This is useful when DNS has not yet been configured. I would only consider the KB article changes if I had no other choice but to test applications from the server. This is a security feature, not a bug. :)

If you are looking for help with Exchange, Outlook, SQL, .NET or SharePoint you contact me at 847.839.9679 or visit my website www.incworx.com.

IncWorx Consulting is the premiere Consulting company for SharePoint, we service clients in: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Topeka, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Los Angeles. We specialize in SharePoint and have invested significant time and resources into our SharePoint practice. We take a holistic approach from inception to delivery which provides the best possible outcome for our clients. IncWorx Consulting was also the winner of Microsoft’s 2010 worldwide partner of the year award for SharePoint Deployment and Planning Services (SDPS) and is a managed Gold Certified Partner. They have been focused on delivering solutions utilizing Microsoft tools and platforms since 1998. IncWorx Consulting is considered the premiere Microsoft Partner for SharePoint architecture, design, development, integration, deployment and support.

To learn more about SharePoint Support Services (S3) and other programs with IncWorx Consulting visit the website at www.incworx.com

SharePoint mobile device compatibilities in the Higher Education vertical

Monday, March 7, 2011 by Patrick Kelleher

Since most college students today are constantly attached to their cell phones, it was only logical to assume that SharePoint developers would eventually create mobile device compatibilities. These functionalities include most features of SharePoint and allow the user to access them on-the-go.

Implementing SharePoint 2010 Workspace Mobile allows the user to browse document libraries and lists right from your phone! You can also open, edit, and sync documents directly for viewing or editing in the various mobile office apps like Word 2010, Excel 2010, and PowerPoint 2010, and sync to SharePoint 2010. In addition to this, you can also perform a multitude of tasks such as people and document searches or receiving SMS alerts on SharePoint content. Since SharePoint 2010 supports accessing information from a web browser enabled mobile phone, it offers:

•Lightweight interface and navigation for accessing document libraries, lists, wikis, blogs, web part pages and LOB data
•Web companions for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
•Mobile MySite for staying in touch with colleagues
•Mobile search experience for finding people, contact information, SharePoint content and finding data in custom databases
•SMS Alerts for changes to SharePoint content
•Features are customizable and, all the information is in SDK.

SharePoint also supports a wide variety of mobile browsers, which includes:

•IE Mobile on Windows Mobile 5/6/6.1/6.5
•Safari4 on iPhone 3G/S
•BlackBerry 4.x and newer versions
•Nokia S60
•NetFront 3.4, 3.5 and newer versions
•Opera Mobile 8.65 and newer versions
•Openwave 6.2, 7.0 and newer versions

SharePoint mobile device compatibilities out-of-the-box include web part pages, document and picture libraries, lists, blogs, wikis, office documents, search, and MySite. In order for SharePoint to be accessible outside the corporate firewall, however, IT administrators must publish SharePoint via an SSL VPN gateway, use a mobile proxy, or expose SharePoint server to internet directly.

SharePoint's ability to be mobile within a cell phone could drastically increase the importance of using SharePoint in the collegiate environment. It is projected that SharePoint mobile capabilities will cause an increase in frequency of utilization in the classroom setting as well as relevancy in real world applications. Accessing SharePoint has never been so easy and versatile, and this is just one of the many SharePoint 2010 benefits. College students already carry their cell phones with them wherever they go, and now SharePoint can be with you on-the-go as well.

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2010/03/09/configure-sharepoint-server-2010-for-mobile-device-access.aspx

Indianapolis SharePoint Development

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 by Paul Haynes

Finding quality SharePoint 2007 and 2010 developers can be quite a tricky task these days, and I'm sure that any company who has looked for one can attest to. There are a couple of reasons why quality talent is so difficult to find.

First and foremost, the demand for SharePoint experts, including developers, far exceeds the supply and the injection of SharePoint experts into the market is not happening quickly enough. So basically, the developers that do exists are very pricey, very busy, and can pick and choose which projects that they want to work on. Also, there simply aren't a ton of these types of folks in Indianapolis...it's just a fact of life. The second issue, is that SharePoint is Microsoft's most successful product to date; there is a ton of money to be made here from a consulting and training perspective. Meaning, everyone is trying to get into the game and ride the wave, which leads to a number of firms who say they do SharePoint, say they have experts on staff, when really they're just assigning a .Net developer to your SharePoint project (which he or she will inevidably hate) and you are funding the learning process of your chosen consultancy. Anyone who has experience working with a number of SharePoint consulting projects most likely knows what I am talking about with this one. Also, if you have gone this route, you probably experienced the developer wanting to essentially custom build every application and store it in SharePoint; inevidably recreating the wheel and costing you thousands in development costs. There are a number of other issues that I could name, but I will stick with these.

Now for the shameless sales pitch....IncWorx Consulting provides the best SharePoint Development resources on the market and here is why:

IncWorx has been working with SharePoint for over 10 years before it was even a Microsoft product. We have a refined approach to organically developing SharePoint Developers by allowing them to shadow some of the most talented experts in the industry on some very challenging projects for Fortune 500 clients. Also, if one of our developers runs across a problem that they can't figure out, they can reach out to someone else on our team rather than spinning their tires and doing Google searches.
Due to the success of our SharePoint practice, we have won a Microsoft Partner of the year award, for SharePoint and have won contracts with companies like Dell, General Motors, Rubbermaid, P&G, Unilever, etc. -- These are the types of projects that serious developers want to work on. They come to IncWorx because they know they can get this type of challenging work.
While other companies are just starting to "create" SharePoint practices, they have to learn, and to learn they must fail. Since we have been working with the platform for so long, we have gotten our lumps out of the way. IncWorx has a proven methodology and approach that has been quite successful.
Since quality SharePoint developers can live anywhere in the United States, we have the ability to work onsite, or save your company costs associated with travel and work remotely (on-site when neccessary).

If you're interested in working with IncWorx, please contact me and I can provide more info and references!

Chicago Microsoft Gold Partner: SharePoint Expert

Thursday, February 17, 2011 by Michael Mayes

IncWorx Consulting has been working with SharePoint since 1998, and was on the beta team for SharePoint 2003, 2007 & 2010 and continues to be the leader for SharePoint development today. IncWorx's deep knowledge and experience covers all aspects of SharePoint 2007 & 2010, there is no other system integrator that has made the investment in SharePoint like IncWorx. While others can install and handle 1 or 2 aspects of SharePoint, IncWorx handles the gamut, supporting all Enterprise level functionality, 3rd party tools and having a comprehensive program that is unmatched by their competitions.

SharePoint 2010 Partner of the year – SDPS program
Envisioning – developed this program in 2007 to help organizations see the vision of SharePoint 2007 & 2010. Rolled into the formal Microsoft SDPS program in late 2007
Planning – Using best practices co-developed by Microsoft and IncWorx
Architecture – Using best practices co-developed by Microsoft and IncWorx
Development – a large team of skilled .NET developers fully trained and experienced in SharePoint 2007 & 2010
Migrations – with over 50 migrations from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, IncWorx is the leader in this space
Infrastructure – SharePoint touches many systems throughout the organization, understanding the architecture and environment is paramount to properly leveraging the systems within an organization to get the maximum value from SharePoint 2010
Deployment – a large team of skilled professionals with over 50 “white space” deployments of SharePoint 2010
Change Management – the key to a successful SharePoint implementation is proper Change Management, it’s built right into our methodology for maximum user acceptance. This component can’t be overlook, poor adoption could lead to failure reflecting poorly upon all involved
PMO – 100% SharePoint focused Project Managers that know the challenges and obstacles in managing SharePoint Projects to successful completion
Support and Maintenance – Developed the S3 program to address the resource scarcity with SharePoint 2007 SharePoint Support Services (S3). IncWorx is the first company to offer a full service, outsourced offering of SharePoint Support, a comprehensive level 1-3 support and pro-active maintenance program that addresses the shortage in the market for talent. Born out of necessity and now a major offering to over 80% of IncWorx’s client base, S3 is the answer to the “scarcity of experts”

SharePoint is a relatively easy platform for users, that’s been Microsoft’s primary goal, but make no mistake, implementing SharePoint 2010 is no walk in the park. To get it right, it requires a team of experts from multiple disciplines (security, messaging, networking, business analysis, design, development, application architecture, project management, etc.) to implement SharePoint properly. IncWorx’s commitment to the platform has transformed IncWorx into a high-end consultancy that concerns itself with both business process and technology. They have the depth and breadth to fully support any and all size SharePoint 2010 implementations. While others simply load disks, we have a best practices approach and methodology to planning, architecting and implementing SharePoint solution that we co-developed with Microsoft in 2007 and 2008.

Expert SharePoint consultant available

Wednesday, February 9, 2011 by David Jelinek

As you know, "experts" are nearly impossible to find right now. The majority of the experts in the market look good on paper, but after a brief conversation, it is quickly realized that they have no real world experience.

Please give Michael a call at 847-839-9679 X 201 or shoot me an e-mail if you're interested in having an interview with the consultant to see if he is a good fit for any initiatives you may currently have.

Introducing Michael S. - SENIOR SHAREPOINT DEVELOPER/ARCHITECT

SUMMARY

I am a Senior Consultant and Application Architect with fifteen years of professional development experience. I am a strong proponent of the Agile Software Development methodology. This OOA/OOD methodology consists of a series of principles and practices to produce code that can easily adapt to change. It uses patterns and test-driven design to force decoupling of code modules. I have designed several systems from scratch with minimal client requirements specifications. I am skilled in interacting with clients and managers to build a more detailed requirement specification leading to architectural design and code from database structure to UI layout. I am also skilled at teaching/mentoring and have spoken at the Atlanta Code Camp on the principles of Agile, MVVM, WPF and WCF. MVVM (Model, View, View Model) is a methodology that brings the principles of Agile to the UI layer by decoupling the presentation from the business logic.

CORE COMPETENCIES

SharePoint 2010
MOSS 2007
Foundation 2010
Custom .NET Development
CERTIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL SKILLS

Certifications:
MCP, MCAD.NET, MCSD.NET

Languages:

10 Years C#;
4 Years SharePoint 2007
2 Years WPF with MVVM
1 Year Silverlight
20 Years C
14 years C++, Visual C++ (MFC, ODBC, COM/ActiveX)
10 Years DirectX 6-9
ASP.NET (1.0 -4.0), ADO.NET
2 Years MTS, ASP, VB/VB

Database:
8 Years MS SQL Server, 2 Years MS Access

Software:
MS Visual Studio, Visio (development), IE, Test-First Development, NUnit, VSS, SVN

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

IncWorx Consulting 2007 to Present

Rubbermaid
Sr. SharePoint Architect / Sr. SharePoint Developer

Manheim, Dunwoody
.Net Architect/SharePoint 2007 Developer

Daugherty Business Solutions
.Net Architect/SharePoint 2007 Developer

Heidelberg USA, Inc.
SharePoint 2007 Administrator/developer

American Systems Corporation
.Net Developer

Other Relevant Experience

Marconi Wireless, Richardson, TX
Sep 2003 – Jun 2004
Data Mining/Massaging

Flextronics International USA, Inc., San Jose, CA
May 2002 – Jun 2003
Data Mining/Massaging

MMI, Oslo, Norway
Sep 2001 – Mar 2002
C++ Developer

Imagic Corporation, Marietta, GA
Mar 2001 – Jul 2001
Developer

LDC Direct, Inc
Nov 2000 – Feb 2001
Database Troubleshooting

Ockham Technologies, Inc., Atlanta, GA
Oct 1999 – Oct 2000
C++/ASP Developer

Marcam Solutions, Inc., Atlanta, GA
Oct 1998 – May 1999
C++ Developer

IMS UK Ltd. London, England
May 1996 – May 1998
C++ Developer

Sophos Plc. Abingdon, England
May 1995 – May 1996
C++ Developer

Please give Michael a call at 847-839-9679 X 201 or shoot me an e-mail if you're interested in having an interview with the consultant to see if he is a good fit for any initiatives you may currently have.

More About the Author
David Jelinek
National Creative & Marketing Director
Email: djelinek@incworx.com
Phone: 630.404.9413

More About IncWorx - Visit our Website
IncWorx Consulting is the premier consulting company for SharePoint, we service clients in: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Topeka, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Los Angeles.

We specialize in SharePoint and have invested significant time and resources into our SharePoint practice. We take a holistic approach from inception to delivery which provides the best possible outcome for our clients.

SharePoint Consulting: Financial Investment Consulting

Thursday, February 3, 2011 by Michael Mayes

IncWorx Consulting specializes in SharePoint consulting for financial investment firms, accounting and estate accounting firms and judicial consulting.

IncWorx Consulting leverages SharePoint built in functionality to provide full SOX compliance in terms of security, archiving, meta data search or full text driven search and document versioning. We can enable audit trails in the event the most stringent compliancy needs are identified. We harness the permissions and security features within SharePoi

nt 2007 & 2010 to keep proprietary information safe and secure. We specialize in extranet portal development for firms and carefully architect solutions to provide secure collaboration for business to business needs. We quickly identify document sharing and repository needs and develop dynamic and business optimized solutions. IncWorx Consulting has the industry's best SharePoint architects and developers in the nation. IncWorx Consulting understands the technology needs and trends of the future and is providing assistance to the investment management elite.

If SharePoint technology needs have been identified within your investment firm, IncWorx Consulting is ready to provide enterprise level consulting to optimize business processes with an emphasis on security. We architect solutions that link line of business applications and Microsoft technologies. We have the ability to manage data and present information into graphically elegant user interfaces. These dashboards, graphs and key performance indicators allow executives to make critical decisions accurately without having to obtain information from a variety of different sources.

IncWorx consulting Investment Management Experience:

Calculating Fixed Income Reporting
Bloomberg Data Reporting
Investment Data Reporting
Equity reporting
ETM Data experience
Metadata-driven Search
Docket Management

IncWorx Consulting has the ability to integrate the following applications:

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
SharePoint Foundation, Window SharePoint Server 2.0. 3.0
Business Objects Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010
FileNet P8
Microsoft Project Server 2010, Project Server 2007
Microsoft Commerce Server 2010, Commerce Server 2009
Microsoft BizTalk 2010, BizTalk 2006 R2
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, Dynamics CRM 4.0
Microsoft SQL Server 2011, SQL Server 2008 R2
Oracle 11g r2, Oracle 11g

About IncWorx
IncWorx Consulting is the premier consulting firm when implementing SharePoint 2010, we service clients in: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Topeka, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Los Angeles. We specialize in SharePoint and have invested significant time and resources into our SharePoint practice. We take a holistic approach from inception to delivery which provides the best possible outcome for our clients. IncWorx was also the winner of Microsoft’s 2010 worldwide partner of the year award for SharePoint Deployment and Planning Services (SDPS) and is a managed Gold Certified Partner. They have been focused on delivering solutions utilizing Microsoft tools and platforms since 1998. IncWorx is considered the premier Microsoft Partner for SharePoint architecture, design, development, integration, deployment and support.

Managed Metadata and Creating the Central Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010

Saturday, January 29, 2011 by Michael Mayes

"SharePoint 2010 Search is not working Properly"

When implementing SharePoint 2010 it is vital that you create an information architecture that will allow the Search function to work properly. The main reason organizations are unable to use search is typically because they have not set up their document libraries and metadata correctly. This can be done by creating a centralized taxonomy and making sure every document within your portal has metadata attached to it. In a proper SharePoint deployment when a user uploads a document it should inherit the metadata associated with the list or library.

Planning Managed Metadata
Planning and organizing managed metadata involves the following steps:

     1. Identify term sets.
     2. Identify the owner of each term set.
     3. Determine term set groups.
     4. Define term sets.

The first three tasks are often performed by a group, a solution architect, or a taxonomist. The fourth task, defining term sets, can be distributed to the owners of the term sets.

For the explanation of these for topics please read the following TechNet article:

Creating the Central Taxonomy
An organization's taxonomy is defined in the Term Store Management Tool – this is part of the Managed Metadata service application, and can be accessed either from Central Administration or from within Site Settings. Permissions are defined within the Term Store itself.

For my demo I “borrowed” the taxonomy from a popular UK electrical retailer, and added the terms manually (but note you can also import from CSV). The following image shows the different types of node used to structure and manage a SharePoint 2010 taxonomy, and also the options available to manage a particular term:

For more information on Term store please visit Chris O'Brien's blog post:
Information taken from: (Chris O'Brien: Friday, 4 December 2009, Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010)

About IncWorx
IncWorx Consulting is the premier consulting firm when implementing SharePoint 2010, we service clients in: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Topeka, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Los Angeles. We specialize in SharePoint and have invested significant time and resources into our SharePoint practice. We take a holistic approach from inception to delivery which provides the best possible outcome for our clients. IncWorx was also the winner of Microsoft’s 2010 worldwide partner of the year award for SharePoint Deployment and Planning Services (SDPS) and is a managed Gold Certified Partner. They have been focused on delivering solutions utilizing Microsoft tools and platforms since 1998. IncWorx is considered the premier Microsoft Partner for SharePoint architecture, design, development, integration, deployment and support.

WireShark for SharePoint Consulting

Thursday, January 27, 2011 by Michael Mayes

Wireshark is by far the best free tool to use by SharePoint Consultants to better understand network protocol. Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. It is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions.

Wireshark development thrives thanks to the contributions of networking experts across the globe. It is the continuation of a project that started in 1998. A good SharePoint Consultant can use this free software in a variety of reasons. If you are interested in SharePoint Support and how to use this software please feel free to reach out to us.

Features:
Wireshark has a rich feature set which includes the following:

Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all the time
Live capture and offline analysis
Standard three-pane packet browser
Multi-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many others
Captured network data can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode TShark utility

The most powerful display filters in the industry:

Rich VoIP analysis
* Read/write many different capture file formats: tcpdump (libpcap), Pcap NG, Catapult DCT2000, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, Microsoft Network Monitor, Network General Sniffer® (compressed and uncompressed), Sniffer® Pro, and NetXray®, Network Instruments Observer, NetScreen snoop, Novell LANalyzer, RADCOM WAN/LAN Analyzer, Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor, Tektronix K12xx, Visual Networks Visual UpTime, WildPackets Capture files compressed with gzip can be decompressed on the fly
Live data can be read from Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI, and others (depending on your platform)
Decryption support for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2
Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list for quick, intuitive analysis
Output can be exported to XML, PostScript®, CSV, or plain text

About IncWorx

IncWorx Consulting is the premier SharePoint Consulting company for SharePoint, we service clients in: Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New York, Houston, Topeka, Milwaukee, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, NYC, San Diego and Los Angeles. We specialize in SharePoint and have invested significant time and resources into our SharePoint practice. We take a holistic approach from inception to delivery which provides the best possible outcome for our clients. IncWorx was also the winner of Microsoft’s 2010 worldwide partner of the year award for SharePoint Deployment and Planning Services (SDPS) and is a managed Gold Certified Partner. They have been focused on delivering solutions utilizing Microsoft tools and platforms since 1998. IncWorx is considered the premier Microsoft Partner for SharePoint architecture, design, development, integration, deployment and support.

2011, a Committement to Delivering Value

Friday, January 21, 2011 by David Jelinek

We are excited to continue into a New Year with a proven track record of success with our clients. It is important to reflect and continuously find ways to improve – but equally important to reinforce the core principals that define our organization. When working with you, we leverage technology to drive performance thru effective solution design, development and implementation. Because of our holistic approach and methodology we continue to be a driving force for you – a trusted advisor of innovation with a specific focus of delivering value.

The IncWorx team has an integrated approach - there with you every step of the way - leveraging technology and our expertise to deliver value of our services.

Our hard work has resulted in clients…

reducing costs
Increased user efficiency
Streamlined business process
Increasing ROI of SharePoint
Increased user adoption

Technology should be easy, much like working with us. Client satisfaction is paramount within our organization, which is built on a foundation of process, methodology and a commitment to deliver of a complete solution.

Because of our dedication, clients do not hesitate to recommend IncWorx to trusted colleagues. Our holistic and responsive approach uniquely positions our organization in the marketplace.

Our dynamic and dedicated team are thought leaders in our specialities;

SharePoint Implementations
SharePoint Branding & Customization
SharePoint Support
SQL
.NET/ASP
User Experience Design

IncWorx Consulting thanks you for giving us the opportunity to bring success and value to your organization. We look forward to exceeding expectations in 2011, strengthening our relationship and continuously improving our service to you.

In 2011, stay ahead of the game with innovative approaches to technology, integrated solutions and a team that delivers results.

More About the Author
David Jelinek
National Creative & Marketing Director
Email: djelinek@incworx.com
Phone: 630.404.9413