MOSSIG Christmas Party

The MOSSIG End of Year Christmas party is on this Wednesday 12^th December 2007 at 5:30pm at Microsoft Southbank.  To register for the meeting/party please email register@mossig.net by COB Tuesday 11th December 2007.

Agenda

Ben Walters - Will be your MC for the night and will provide an overview of plans for MOSSIG next year and the Melbourne Office Devcon 2008.

Office System 2007 Solution Showcase and Contest – These sessions aim to show what members have been up to in 2007.  The MOSSIG Board have selected five solutions which will be presented by the selected members. These presentations will provide a great look into what’s possible with the Microsoft Office System 2007 and the presenters have been asked to pay special attention to the real world experience their project has to offer and share with the group.

1. Tim Wragg, Professional Advantage – WSS Extranet using forms Authentication and Integration into Dynamics GP and CRM.

2. Elaine Van Bergen, Strategic Data Management – South East Water’s CMS Implementation with Excel Services

3. Eben Illingworth, Professional Advantage – Rolling out the MOSS Enterprise Platform to a scalable, secure infrastructure

4. Kevin Ramsey, The Online Workshop - VSTO and Outlook – the creation of the SmartAsset product.

5. Rai Umar, Uniqueworld - Forms and Workflow using MOSS

After the presentations the audience can ask questions and vote for their favourite solution presenter who will win a copy of Office 2007 Ultimate.

Rai Umair – Rai will be launching the brand new MOSSIG web site.

Plus plenty of networking opportunity, giveaways and bubbles!

DON’T FORGET  – Bring your business cards for prize draws!  Just for showing up you will be eligible for the draw of a copy of Visual Studio Professional, and don’t forget bring your business card to enter.

MOSSIG Christmas Party

MOSSIG Christmas Party
5.30pm on the 12th December @ Microsoft
Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place
Melbourne, Australia.

MOSSIG will be having drinks and nibbles over the night for a casual end to the year topped off with some great presentations of the work done by our MOSSIG members over the year.

For more information check our website at www.mossig.net or register for our monthly newsletter at register@mossig.net

Also 2 Prizes (Office 2007 Ultimate – worth $1000) will be awarded on the night for the best solution and the most informative. This will be judged by the audience.

MOSSIG’s new site is live and has PodCasts

The guys at MOSSIG have launched their new website.  The new site is powered by the Community Kit for SharePoint (User Group Edition)

If you are a regular to MOSSIG, only been to an event once or twice or have never heard of it before, you should check out this site.  It has information about previous meetings including Slide decks and Podcasts, it also has Newsletters, Discussion threads, event schedule, announcements, RSS feeds.

MOSSIG Panel Session – 24 Oct 2007

Tonight MOSSIG will be presenting a panel discussion with a number of Microsoft collaboration specialists and I will be there also. For more infomation please contact register@mossig.net.

Special Panel discussion
Topic: “The Platform Inquisition”
David Lemphers – Developer Evangelist
Graham Elliott – Microsoft Services Architect
Nigel Watson – Architect Advisor

Join us for a special panel session with David, Graham and Nigel from Microsoft.

These 3 smart fellas all represent different areas of Microsoft which are converging with platforms like SharePoint and we’re going to discuss this at length. Each of them having very different views should guarantee very interesting debate, while we will not have a worm analysing the audience response in our case the audience is allowed to loudly agree or disagree. We encourage you to submit your questions regarding the platform convergence.

Office DevCon 2007

 

I have just been told that the website for the inaugural Office DevCon is now live (http://www.block.net.au/devcon/index.htm).  This will be an excellent event with presenters from all around Australia attending. The event will be held 3-4 November 2007 at Microsoft’s North Ryde offices in Sydney.  Information about the event including agenda, speakers and registration can be found on the website.  Some of the speakers at the event will be Aaron Saikovski, Adam Cogan, Andrew Coates, Mick Badran and MOSSIG‘s very own Ed Richard.

MOSSIG Enterprise Search Extravaganza

 

This month MOSSIG will be presenting a series of Enterprise Search related topics, so come along and find out how Enterprise Search can help you unlock your businesses data and improve productivity.

Where - Microsoft, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank

When - 26 Sept 2007 5:30pm

Show and Tell Session – Contact Selector Control in InfoPath (Ben Walters)

Ben Walters from Strategic Data Management will be providing a brief overview of the Contact Selector control available in InfoPath 2007.

Business Session – Search possibilities in your Enterprise (Tim Wragg)

According to IDC (Content Technologies Study 2004-2005), workers spend 9.5 hours per week searching.  Join Tim Wragg from Professional Advantage as he discusses the Enterprise Searching capabilities of SharePoint 2007 and what it means for business.

The presentation will include,

• positioning of the current search landscape from desktop to the web and where its going,
• search features including documents, people, business data and other sources,
• tips and tricks for an effective implementation , and
• the gotcha’s in features and licensing.

Technical Session – How to access and search business data (Matthew Cosier)

In this half-hour session Matthew Cosier from Readify will step you through the means of integrating external data with the Business Data Catalog, and exposing it via search. In particular he will take you through the process of writing a BDC web service, generating the application definition using the new Microsoft Business Data Catalog Definition Editor tool, and finally exposing the data to SharePoint search.

To register for this meeting please email register@mossig.net by COB Tuesday 25th September 2007.

MOSSIG Meeting was great!

The MOSSIG meeting held on Wednesday was excellent.  We started the evening off with a brief overview of how MOSSIG came to be, where it is headed and also provided some ideas on how anyone can participate.  I then introduced Jonathan Lewis who is the IT Director at Microsoft Australia.  Jonathan gave and excellent overview of the process that Microsoft employed to enable them to upgrade from SPS2003/WSSv2 to MOSS2007/WSSv3, he even showed us around several of the internal Microsoft sites (including HRWeb, ITWeb and MSW).   Finally I introduced Joshua Tan from UniqueWorld who gave a very interesting overview of the Project Server 2007 product suite.   Slide decks for both presentations are now available on the MOSSIG.NET web site in the Archive section.

MOSSIG Meeting – August 22nd 2007

To register for the meeting please email register@mossig.net by COB Tuesday 21st August 2007.

Show and Tell Session

MOSSIG update (MOSSIG board)

The MOSSIG team will be providing an update on MOSSIG and sharing some statistics about the number of members, how many sessions it has run and how much pizza has been consumed.

Business Session

Microsoft’s internal Intranet implementation (Jonathan Lewis)

Jonathan Lewis is the IT Manager for Microsoft Australia. This month Jonathan will be taking some time from his very busy schedule to come down to Melbourne and tell us all about Microsoft’s internal Intranet implementation which used SharePoint.

Technical Session

Project Server 2007: Overview (Joshua Tan)

Joshua Tan is a consultant at Unique World. He has a breadth of experience in collaboration and enterprise project management (EPM) solutions. Come along to his overview of Project Server 2007 and learn about the new features and capabilities of Microsoft Office Project 2007, including the new system architecture, new server side API, improved timesheet capabilities, new project and program management functionality, and sophisticated reporting capabilities that will enable your organization to capture and understand work more effectively.

Also, visit MOSSIG at http://www.mossig.net/.

MOSSIG Meeting – July 2007

This month I will be presenting (although briefly) at MOSSIG on Web Content Management, so please come along and check it out.  Also Brett Coster will be discussing how to get governance right in SharePoint and Ben Walters will be showing us how to deploy InfoPath forms using Outlook 2007.

To register for this meeting please email register@mossig.net by COB Tuesday 24^th July 2007.

 

Show and Tell Session

Web Content Management (William Cornwill)

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

William Cornwill is a Senior Solution Specialist with Strategic Data Management (SDM).  William is also a board member of MOSSIG.  William has extensive experience with Web Content Management using Microsoft products and this month will discuss how to manage your web content using the SharePoint platform.

 

Business Session

Getting governance right in SharePoint (Brett Coster)

• Windows SharePoint Services • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Brett Coster, is a Senior Business Analyst with Unique World, and this month will present a business-oriented talk about how to Get Governance Right for SharePoint.

Governance is the process of setting controlling policies around a system, process or application, to ensure that it meets business goals and to mitigate risks. For the purposes of the SharePoint 2007 collaborative sites, these governance guidelines apply to the creation, management and lifecycle of SharePoint collaborative sites.

Effective governance of a system requires:

• A strategic, business-minded body to craft rules and procedures for the use of the system and to monitor compliance
• A tactical, technically-competent team to manage the routine operational tasks that keep the system running
• Clear guidelines for users of the system.

Brett will outline the process involved in developing and establishing good governance to maximise the effectiveness of your SharePoint implementation.

 

Technical Session

Deploying InfoPath forms using Outlook 2007 (Ben Walters)

• Microsoft Office InfoPath • Microsoft Office Outlook

Ben Walters is a Solution Specialist with Strategic Data Management (SDM). Ben is an InfoPath MVP and specialises in custom developed solutions.  He is also a board member of MOSSIG.  He has presented at numerous technical events including MOSSIG, TechEd and APAC SharePoint Conference and this month Ben will be showing us how to deploy InfoPath 2007 forms using Outlook 2007.

Using Virtual Earth in SharePoint (Part 1 of 2)

Over the past few weeks Daniel Colarossi and I have been working together on developing a series of Web Parts using Virtual Earth.  This article describes two ways in which you can use Virtual Earth from within SharePoint.  I will shortly be adding to these with a couple of additional ways we have used Virtual Earth.

Content Editor Web Part

The simplest way to insert a Virtual Earth map into your SharePoint page is to use the out of the box Content Editor Web Part.  All you need to do is simply add a Content Editor Web Part and past the following code into the Source Editor.  The code below will display a map centered on Melbourne Australia and also places a push pin (with my photo) on top of the Melbourne Town Hall (-37.81585174911994 Latitude and 144.965714083252 Longitude).

<script src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=5"></script> <script type="text/javascript">
  var map = null;   function GetMap()
  {
    map = new VEMap('myMap');
    map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(-37.81585274911994, 144.9657154083252), 10,'r' ,false);
    AddPin(-37.81585274911994, 144.9657154083252, 'CodeJedi.NET', '<strong>Name:</strong> William Cornwill.<br><strong>Blog:</strong> <a target ="_new" href="http://www.codejedi.net">http://www.codejedi.net/</a><br><br><a target ="_new" href="http://www.codejedi.net"><img src="http://members.optusnet.com.au/cornwill73/siteimages/William.jpg" /></a>');
  }   function AddPin(lat, lon, iconurl, title, desc)
  {
    var shape = new VEShape(VEShapeType.Pushpin,new VELatLong(lat,lon));
    shape.SetTitle(title);
    shape.SetDescription(desc);
    map.AddShape(shape);
  }   function addLoadEvent(func)
  {
    if(typeof window.onload != 'function')
    {
      window.onload = func;
    }
    else
    {
      window.onload = function()
        {
          func();
        }
    }
  }   addLoadEvent(GetMap);
</script>
<div id='myMap' style="position:relative; width:640px; height:480px;"></div>

Basic Virtual Earth Web Part

As you might agree providing a user with some JavaScript and telling them to paste it into a Content Editor Web Part isn’t really that user friendly.  So Daniel and I have wrapped this basic functionality into a WebPart.  The Basic Virtual Earth Web Part allows a user to provide Latitude and Longitude coordinates or enter an address, a zoom level, a pin title and pin description.  The result is a user friendly and easily adjusted Virtual Earth map in a SharePoint page.

You can download the code for the Basic Virtual Earth Web Part from the samples section of this blog.

Next time

In the next article I will be posting another two ways in which we have used Virtual Earth in SharePoint, including obtaining pin points from a SharePoint list of Lat/Longs (with an additional surprise) and also a Web Part that shows a map with pin points for all your contacts in Outlook.

These are just a couple of ways in which you could use mapping within SharePoint, there are countless other ways and I hope that this has gotten you as excited as I am about using Virtual Earth in SharePoint.

MOSSIG Meeting 27th June 2007

The next MOSSIG meeting will be this coming Wednesday 27th June 2007 at 5.30pm. The venue will again be the Microsoft Innovation Center, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank. If you want to know how to find the meeting visit the MOSSIG website and check out the Virtual Earth map on the home page.

The agenda for this months meeting will be:

Show and Tell Session

Using mapping in to assist productivity (Daniel Colarossi)

• Microsoft Virtual Earth • Windows SharePoint Services • Microsoft Office Outlook

Daniel Colarossi is a Solution Specialist with Strategic Data Management (SDM). Daniel has been developing some cool Virtual Earth based solutions and this month he will be showing us how to get Virtual Earth inside Outlook and SharePoint and hopefully how to behave itself while in there.

Business Session

Successful SharePoint Adoption (Brian Cook)

• Windows SharePoint Services • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Brian Cook is the co-founder and CEO of OBS and is also a board member of MOSSIG. This month Brian will talk about the issues affecting SharePoint adoption and provide strategies that can be used to increase usage and ROI.

Technical Session

Deploying InfoPath forms using Outlook 2007 (Ben Walters)

• Microsoft Office InfoPath • Microsoft Office Outlook

Ben Walters is a Solution Specialist with Strategic Data Management (SDM). Ben is an InfoPath MVP and specialises in custom developed solutions. He is also a board member of MOSSIG. He has presented at numerous technical events including MOSSIG, TechEd and APAC SharePoint Conference and this month Ben will be showing us how to deploy InfoPath 2007 forms using Outlook 2007.

To register for the meeting please email register@mossig.net by COB Tuesday 26th June 2007.

MOSSIG site updated

Today I finally got around to updating the content on the MOSSIG website. It is now a lot more functional and I think it looks a little better. The MOSSIG team are currently working on a more snazzy MOSS site and I will keep you all posted when that goes live. But in the meantime, enjoy the new site content.

I have to give a special thank you to Daniel Colarossi for giving some tutorial on embedding Virtual Earth in a Content Editor Web Part – pretty funky!

MOSSIG door prize winners

Congratulations to Andy Barker and Bruce Dyason

Who were the lucky winners of the MOSSIG door prize last night. They have each won a full version of Windows Vista® Business and a 60-day trial version of Microsoft® Office Professional 2007. Well done for registering to attend the meeting.

The next MOSSIG meeting will be Wednesday the 27th of June 2007.

MOSSIG May 2007 Meeting

The May meeting of MOSSIG will be held this coming Wednesday, 23rd May 2007 at 5:30pm. The venue will again be the Microsoft Innovation Centre, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place, Southbank, Melbourne.

Show and Tell Session – Automated Workflow System (Bruce Dyason)

Automated Workflow System; Highlights include Outlook add-in, Office add-in for document management and automated tasking system built on a custom workflow engine all using VS2005, .Net 2.0, ClickOnce deployment and some nifty stuff using Outlook as the Host UI.

Business Session – Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office Integration (Karl Iuel)

How together Microsoft CRM 3.0 and Office 2007 create a truly user friendly, practical Customer Relationship Management solution for the masses.

Technical Session – Custom Task Panes in VSTO (Ed Richard)

Custom Task Panes in VSTO. How to display LOB-Data, react to where users are in a document and displaying the context-sensitive data in the task pane as well as binding data in Word Documents.

In order to organise catering I ask that you please register for this meeting by sending an email to register@mossig.net.

We will once again have two copies of Windows Vista Business (Full) and Office 2007 (Trial) as doorway prizes.

MOSSIG Meeting – 2nd May 2007

The next MOSSIG meeting will be held this Wednesday evening in the Microsoft Innovation Centre, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place Southbank at 5:30pm. If you could please register for this event to aid us with catering it would be appreciated.

April Meeting—2nd May 2007 (5:30pm)

Show and Tell Session – How to effectively use the Outlook Calendar (Geoff Schaller)

Outlook 2007 takes collaboration to a new level, the integration with SharePoint Calendars being one of the added features. This session will show you how to get the most out of Outlook Calendar for both individuals and teams.

Business Session – The SharePoint Solution – a “How To” for Business Analysts and System Architects. (Ishai Sagi – SharePoint MVP)

The good, the bad and the ugly of SharePoint Architecture. Ishai will present how Microsoft Office SharePoint should be viewed from the Business Analyst and Systems Architect perspective.

Technical Session – Advanced workflows in MOSS and NINTEX (Steve Heaney)

Using the example of a common business process, this presentation looks at the workflow authoring scenarios available in MOSS and the advantages of using Nintex Workflow 2007.

New Groove developer portal on MSDN

Just read that the new Groove developer portal on MSDN has gone live.

This is a home for developers who want to learn more about Groove and how to develop solutions on the Groove platform. The site also links to relevant content on TechNet and Office Online, providing easy access to those materials.

This enables developers new to Groove to build a solid foundation of knowledge before taking Groove deployments to the next level by building a custom solution.

MOSSIG Meeting on Wednesday evening 28th March 2007

Don’t forget that Marc Dimmick will be presenting part 2 of his Microsoft Office Groove 2007 presentation at the MOSSIG meeting on Wednesday evening, this month from a business scenario perspective. If you are wondering what the value of Groove can be for your business this is a must see presentation.

MOSSIG March 2007 Meeting

This months MOSSIG meeting will again be at Microsoft Southbank, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place Southbank on 28 March 2007 at 5:30 (pizza, drinks and networking), 6:00pm (presentation starts).

Show and Tell Session – Outlook Asset Management add-in

At last month’s meeting, Kevin Ramsey raised his hand to do a show and tell session on his outlook add-in. In doing so Kevin received a set of Microsoft Binoculars. How is your new “Vista” Kevin? This should be a very interesting seesion.

Business Session – Microsoft Groove

Marc Dimmick will be presenting part 2 of his Microsoft Office Groove 2007 presentation, this month from a business scenario perspective. If you are wondering what the value of Groove can be for your business this is a must see presentation.

Technical Session – WSSv3 and MOSS Exams

Having completed both the WSSv3 and MOSS Beta exams, Elaine van Bergen will be giving MOSSIG members an overview of the topics covered and an understanding of why Microsoft Certifications are extremely important.

To register please email register@mossig.net by COB Monday 26th March 2007.

Don’t forget to stay up to date with the latest agenda by downloading the MOSSIG Updater sidebar gadget for Vista. [Download]

MOSSIG Updater Vista Sidebar Gadget

I have just submitted my first Vista Sidebar Gadget, download it at Live Gallery.

The Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group (MOSSIG) meet on the 4th Wednesday of every month in Melbourne and Sydney. This gadget is a countdown timer to next MOSSIG meeting, with the meeting agenda in flyout. You can select either Melbourne or Sydney in the settings to get local meeting content.

MOSSIG Meeting – 28 February 2007

This months MOSSIG meeting will again be at Microsoft Southbank, Level 5, 4 Freshwater Place Southbank on 28 February 2007 at 5:30 (pizza, drinks and networking), 6:00pm (presentation starts).

Show and Tell Session

Willy Vloedmans has developed a simple add-in for Excel that enables rapid navigation to workbooks and worksheets, especially when they contain hundreds of pages. Willy will show case his handy work for the MOSSIG group.

Business Session

Tim Wragg has expanded his show and tell session that was planned for last month and will be presenting a business session on conducting effective meetings using Microsoft Office OneNote.

Technical Session

Marc Dimmick will be diving into Groove to show how to customise and extend Microsoft Office Groove 2007.

To register please email register@mossig.net by COB Monday 26th February 2007.

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MOSSIG are also working with Steve Iatropoulous to arrange more Live Meetings this year for preview presentation to the ANZ Office Usergroups. The next Live Meeting will be on 14 March 2007 10am-12pm EST and will present Chris Boyd from the Project product group to discuss Microsoft Project 2007. I will be providing more information and the Live Meeting links in the next MOSSIG newsletter/update.

If you would like to recieve the monthly MOSSIG newsletter send an email to info@victoriadotnet.com.au and request to be added to the mailing list.

Update MOSSIG Meeting – 24 January 2007

An update on the content of this months MOSSIG meeting. Unfortunately Tim Wragg will not be able to present his “Effective meetings in OneNote” show and tell session this month. Ben Walters however, has kindly agreed to deliver a show and tell session on “SmartArt in Outlook”.

If you want to register for MOSSIG then send an email to register@mossig.net.