Atlanta .NET Regular Guys

How to build an E-Commerce site on SharePoint

Matt Ranlett — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:55:07 GMT

Doug Ware at Elumenotion is writing a series of blog posts about how he is building an E-Commerce site based on SharePoint. The sample project will be a live e-commerce site where you can support the author's quest to keep food on his family's table by purchasing humorous welcome mats. Said that wrong. The author is not purchasing funny rugs. You can support the author by purchasing the rug. The author's quest to keep food blah blah blah... he's selling the rugs. You get the idea. Read the blog posts. Buy a rug.

Post 1 - The project envisioned

Post 2 - The project roadmap

Post 3 - The tools

Looks like this will be fun to watch

The Witching Hour is upon us

Matt Ranlett — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:54:31 GMT

No one told me about this before having a kid, but apparently it's a common issue that kids (lots of them, worldwide) get fussy between about 7pm and 11pm. This unexplainable phenomenon is known as the "witching hour". Parker's time seems to be between 9pm and 1am. 11pm is one of his feeding times but where he'd normally be content he screams through the feeding. What sucks is that my shift normally is between 8pm through the 11pm feeding. He gets so fussy and I'm reluctant to just turn him back over to the always exhausted Kim while he's crying that I end up staying up with him to 1 or 1:30. Last night Kim stayed with me through the 11pm feeding to see what I was talking about. She was astonished at how angry he was!

Oh well - this too shall pass. The biggest problem is that it cuts into my writing time. Deadlines are going to be pressured...

New photos of Parker are on Flickr if you've not seen him recently. He's gained nearly 3 pounds since his birth a month ago!

Here is a photo I've been playing with using Paint.Net as a free alternative to Photoshop.

Advanced Developers SharePoint 2007 Training

Dan Attis — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:40:45 GMT

There are a ton of training opportunities out there today for SharePoint. Sahil Malik, one of my SharePoint MVP colleagues and most excellent speaker, will be conducting a week of some serious advanced training, including things like Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, IIS 7, .NET 3.5, WCF, Silverlight, LINQ and Entity Framework and how they all related to SharePoint.

This is aimed at advanced developers and is being held in NORWAY. That's right, NORWAY. So in between session you can enjoy the Scandinavian luxuries, like snow, snow and more snow. You can get additional information here, http://blah.winsmarts.com./2008-6-Advanced_Developers_SharePoint_2007_Training_in_Norway.aspx, and as an added bonus, see a mug shot of Sahil as well.

DevCow calendar now up to date

Brendon Schwartz — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:16:16 GMT

If anyone doesn't know, the DevCow calendar is actually manually updated every month. I have been updating the calendar for about 3-4 years now every month. The process I take is to go directly to the websites of the user groups that we list on the site and make sure they are having a meeting for the month. Sometimes if the web site is not updated but I know the user group leader personally I will update the calendar based on what they tell me.

Recently I have been busy and the calendar has been one of those things to get behind. I have always wanted to automate some of the calendar, but that would still require a person to enter information at some point in time so it can only be as up to date as the knowledge or the group.

The reason I am letting you know this is because many of the groups have mailing list you can subscribe to. This will allow you to make sure from the user group leader the exact details of the meeting. I will get the calendar back on track now and hopefully we won't get behind again. Sorry for the delay.

Bad stuff happening in threes

Matt Ranlett — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:52:15 GMT

It has been a rough week or so for Kim and I recently. It started a week or so back with Kim's car. I took it in to get the oil changed and found that the car needed a bunch of expensive fluid changes. I spent a bunch of money on that, took the car home, and the next day it wouldn't start. We called AAA to come out and jump the car in the garage and I drove it back to the mechanic where we determined that the battery was completely dead. A new battery later and this morning the car wouldn't start again. This time AAA came out and got the car started. The problem now appears to be something to do with the fuel line. Who knows what that repair will eventually cost me, although it appears not to be an emergency as Kim now knows how to get the car to start if it's being stubborn again.

Last Friday a terrible storm blew through the area and for 30 minutes or so we had what felt like gale force wind gusts blowing rain sideways. During the storm we had a significant water leak through one of the window frames in the kitchen, a minor leak through another window frame in the kitchen, and at least two and perhaps up to four leaks in the roof. Part of the roof is under warranty and will be fixed for free, but the roofing company was so busy they couldn't even estimate the costs to repair the rest of the roof. The roof is covered with cedar shake shingles and is going to be expensive to repair. I went into the attic and found and "fixed" one of the leaks but it had already damaged the ceiling drywall, which had actually just been repaired and repainted. Now there is a nice little hole which needs to be patched in the kitchen and I think that the ceiling in our master bathroom is about to need to be replaced.

Monday, Memorial Day, I went outside and did five hours of yard work - mowing and trimming all things green. When I came back in, I noticed that the A/C was making funny noises. Downstairs in the basement, I noticed ice on some of the lines coming out of the furnace and the motor running the blower in the furnace was not able to start, although it kept trying. I managed to get a repair guy to come out and look at the unit. He declared the blower motor dead and in need of replacement. Of course, he didn't have a part to fit and getting a replacement would be hundreds of dollars. Kim and I knew when we bought the house that the furnace was over 30 years old and the air compressor outside was over 20 years old. It didn't make a lot of sense to cobble it back together so we just bit the bullet and replaced the entire set. Now we have a nice new Lennox furnace inside and quiet new air conditioner outside, both of which should be WAY more energy efficient. Even so, the cost was enough that I could have purchased a Toyota Yaris.

Kim and I have decided that my mother is the jinx and she's probably not going to be allowed back! She's been staying with us for these past few weeks and has been helping us with the baby. The baby who is now sitting comfortably in efficiently conditioned and cooled air. When he turns 16 I'm sure he'll wish we'd bought him a Yaris instead...

Do you know your Local Microsoft Evangelists

Brendon Schwartz — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:42:58 GMT

If you do know your Microsoft Evangelists you have probably attended events in your area, but if you don't, make sure to read up on the Microsoft support teams in your area.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/events/bb905078.aspx

I am sure they would love to hear from you as much as you would like to talk with them.

Stay connected with the MSDN Flash Newsletter

Brendon Schwartz — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:35:39 GMT

If you want to know what is going on with Microsoft in Georgia and the Southeast Region, make sure to sign up for the MSDN Flash Newsletter.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/flash/default.aspx

It now has three of our DEs on pictures on it. Can you name all of them?

Free SharePoint Training by Microsoft

Dan Attis — Tue, 20 May 2008 12:51:57 GMT

Microsoft is stepping up and providing free SharePoint training webcasts to those who want it on 10 critical developer tracks. On top of that they are asking for feedback on what they can do better to provide more great content to the SharePoint development community. Check out this blog post (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/05/20/developers-developers-developers-sharepoint-wants-you.aspx) to learn more.

The content should be excellent since it is being delivered by 2 awesome SharePoint MVP's, Andrew Connell and Robert Bogue.

We will miss Eric Engler a User Group Member and Speaker

Brendon Schwartz — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:57:00 GMT

<From Brendon>
Today it is with a sad heart that I inform you of news I found out yesterday. Eric Engler, an awesome person, passed away last week. He was an amazing member of the Atlanta Microsoft User Group Community and will be missed dearly. It is sad to know I just saw him at the Atlanta Code Camp recently and will not have the opportunity to let him know how great of a person he was. You might have seen him at one of his many in depth and wonderful talks on many subjects, including ASP.NET 2.0 and AJAX in which he also tech edited a book for Wrox press. He leaves behind a wonderful family and friends. If we have any more information on how you can help his family we will post it.

<From Matt>
Just this morning we learned some sad news. Our friend Eric Engler passed away last week after a tragic heart attack. Ironically, his heart is what I remember best about my friend Eric. I only knew him through our association at the Atlanta area .NET User Groups and Code Camps, but I’ll remember him as a personable and friendly man who was happy to share his knowledge with his peers via public presentations, blog posts, and editorial efforts.

Please leave your thoughts for his family and show the support of our Atlanta Microsoft Community.

Instant SharePoint GAC deployment gratification

Dan Attis — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:16:07 GMT

Often times, while working on SharePoint projects, I find myself needing to deploy only the code. I don't care about the Feature .xml files, or any of the other wonderfully useful files in a typical SharePoint project. Up until today, deploying this code was either a Solution upgrade, or launching a command file containing only the gacutil command along with an application pool recycle.

What prompted this post was that my current project contains multiple Visual Studio Solutions and each of those contain multiple Projects. Neither of the above two methods are very efficient since Solution upgrades take forever, and switching directories or having multiple command windows open at the same time is not manageable.

Visual Studio External Tool to the rescue!

You will need to create a command (cmd) file that contains the commands you want to launch using the External Tool. In my case, my file contained the commands listed below. Don't worry about %1 and %2, those are the arguments that will be supplied by the External Tool when we create it and are outlined below. Essentially, all this is doing is adding a folder to the PATH so that gacutill can be called, it's then calling gacutil to place the assembly into the GAC. The last line is recycling my application pool for my SharePoint site. This last line is optional. I needed it, you may not.

@set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin;%PATH%

gacutil /i %1 /f

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cscript.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\iisapp.vbs /a %2 /r

It needed to work across multiple projects and be contextually aware of the current project that I am working in so that it can deploy the assembly for that project. The solution was to create an External Tool to do this for me.

Under the Tools menu in Visual Studio, there is an External Tools... menu option. Clicking that gives you the External Tools dialog. Clicking on Add will add a new empty tool to the listbox.

Give the tool a tool a name, I named mine "Deplo&y Code Only". The ampersand in the name simply assigns a keyboard shortcut to this command (the best part in my opinion), as I will be able to launch this by simply clicking ALT-T-Y.

In the command textbox, enter the command you want to call. At first I was not sure that what I wanted to do was possible but after some experimenting, I found out that it was. What I mean here is that if you click on the buttons beside the Arguments or Initial Directory textboxes you will see that they bring up a list of possible macros you can use that provide dynamic references to places you care about, like the current project root folder, the current output path, etc... This button is not available next to the Command textbox. The macros ARE however usable in that textbox. My DeployCode.cmd is always at the root of my project but I don't want to have to create a new External Tool for every project. That would be silly. By using the $(ProjectDir) macro, I always get a reference to the root of my project.

In the Arguments textbox I am passing in the assembly path and the name of my application pool, since I am recycling it at the same time (this second argument is optional). The cool part here is that it will use the Debug or Release version of the assembly here depending on the Build Configuration you have selected in your project.

The Initial Directory textbox tells the External Tool to run in the project directory for the command. This is not required in this case.

I also checked the Use Output window checkbox so that I can see the output inside the Visual Studio environment.

This has made my life quite a bit easier since now it takes me about .5 seconds to deploy only the code for my project. I hope you find it as useful as I did.

Life changing events

Matt Ranlett — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:11:08 GMT

Parker Sean Ranlett was born on May 7th at 5:29 pm. He tipped the scale at 6lbs and 14oz. He's gorgeous, has a full head of hair, and can currently be seen sporting a pair of bluish-grey eyes. Check out more photos on my Flickr photostream. Parker is named after Kim's father and my grandfather, both of whom we miss terribly.

Parker is doing fine at home and Kim is recovering a lot faster than either of us expected. I'm already back at work thanks to the constant presence of family members helping us out. Kim's sister has been helping us with that initial transition from hospital to home and my mother is going to come in and help out for three weeks. I've been back at work one day and I've already had to run home just to pinch those cheeks!

I wanted to give a public thanks to everyone who has been helping us out over these past several days and for the help which continues to pour in. Thanks everyone! We appreciate it more than you can imagine.

Hub City User Group starting up in Mississippi

Brendon Schwartz — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:53:07 GMT

The user group community in Atlanta does many events with our other southeastern states such as Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Mississippi. As you can tell we align with the Microsoft Regions a little bit. That is because the DE that covers Atlanta also covers other areas and plugs us into other events.

The big news out of Mississippi is that a new user group, the Hub City .NET User Group is being created by some friends of ours.

If you are in Mississippi and close by check out the full details here: http://hubcitynug.org/announcements/first-net-user-group-in-mississippi-forms-in-hattiesburg-ms/

Twitter is seriously impacting my blogging

Matt Ranlett — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:51:25 GMT

Now I can say most of what I used to say here in a far more immediate and visceral way using Twitter. You should all be using Twitter and Twhirl! Go forth and tell everyone what you're doing.

What is Twitter?

How do I get an account?

What is Twhirl?

Got all that? Excellent - now check out a neato mashup of Twitter and Google Maps.

OneNote should be your ultimate Office tool

Matt Ranlett — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:11:09 GMT

I love OneNote. I use it all the time. I used to have a tablet and I used to be able to do things like draw my diagrams and stuff, but I've actually increased my use of OneNote since I got rid of the tablet. It's just such a powerful application. I've been pinged by several people today about OneNote and my fan-dom so I'm pumping it up a bit more with this blog post.

Did you know that you can do the following with OneNote:

grab a snippet of a screen just like with SnagIt
put an image into OneNote and have it index the text inside of the image so that you can search for it
record audio during a conversation and take written notes which are tagged with audio markers so you can replay bits of the conversation based on what you were writing, or replay the entire conversation and have your notes highlighted as the recording covers what was being said as you wrote the notes
share OneNote notebooks with your friends in a collaboration love-fest
export OneNote content as PDF or HTML for broad distribution

You should be using OneNote. Learn more by watching this video from Channel 8. Warning - it is a bit education focused (hence inclusion on Channel 8) but the content is fantastic.

OneNote: the Mega-Tool for Learning

Don't ask why the bottom is getting cut off - click the link to follow to the source.

Dot Net University - SharePoint class

Matt Ranlett — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:37:00 GMT

The Dot Net University has release a new SharePoint class. This brings the number of classes offered by the virtual University to three, SharePoint, BizTalk, and .Net Fundamentals. The new SharePoint class has 4 PowerPoint decks, associated Hands On Labs, and accompanying video recordings complete with demos.

I am proud to say that I helped record two of these videos, with Josh Carlisle and Doug Ware recording the other two. Brendon Schwartz, Dan Attis, and Brian Gough pitched in to create the Hands On Labs and PowerPoint decks.

Crack the Code - SharePoint Designer Webinar

Matt Ranlett — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:52:00 GMT

I'm giving a sort of intro to SharePoint Designer webinar for Intellinet on Wednesday at noon. Rather than attempt to re-craft the descriptive text, check out what the Intellinet marketing department (Rebecka, Laura, Alysha, et al.) put together.

We're going to cover some customizations to master pages, data view web parts, a bit of no-code application logic, and some workflow. The challenge is getting it all to fit in a single hour!

April 2008

Live One-Hour Webinar:
{Crack the Code, Empower Your Portal with SharePoint Designer 2007}
Learn more!

Wed., April 23
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT

Coined in 1959, what term was used to refer to a small receiver that delivered a radio message individually to those carrying the device?

Easily Customize SharePoint Sites with SharePoint Designer 2007

Office SharePoint Designer 2007 provides powerful tools that enable you to create dynamic SharePoint sites. The intuitive what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) environment allows you to quickly build advanced solutions such as Data Views, reports, and workflow tracking without the use of complex code.

Get the most out of SharePoint Designer 2007: View an overview demo or register now for a free, one-hour webinar on building collaborative applications, workflows and custom websites with SharePoint Designer.

Advanced Infrastructure | Business Process & Integration

Custom Development | Data Management | Information Worker
Networking Infrastructure | Security

atlanta | charlotte | houston | new york | www.intellinet.com

Troubleshooting Linksys Routers?

Matt Ranlett — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:08:34 GMT

I found this today while trying to talk a friend through the administration of her wireless Linksys router. Linksys has put an online representation of all of their devices' admin applications across all the versions on this site - http://ui.linksys.com/. This was great b/c I could ask her to read me this section then that section and was not forced to try to recall what she should be seeing.

Great tool.

New INETA web site looks great

Brendon Schwartz — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:11:07 GMT

If you haven't been to the INETA web site (http://www.ineta.org) recently you will notice that is has been updated and has a very nice navigation for finding users groups and information that your user group might use.

Our reporting article got extended

Matt Ranlett — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:41:47 GMT

JOPX on SharePoint just released a blog post which extends the work Brendon and I started in our 2 part ASP.Net Pro magazine article (part 1, part 2). JOPX went so far as to release his extension on CodePlex.

Check it out!

Camtasia: video presentations for everyone!

Matt Ranlett — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:35:20 GMT

I've been playing around with Camtasia recently as I record videos for the SharePoint course of the Dot Net University. The tool is totally AWESOME! I'm about to become a video blogging fool!

I'm now a SharePoint MVP

Matt Ranlett — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:11:58 GMT

I just received notification that I've been selected as a SharePoint Server MVP, after 2 years of being a SQL Server MVP. I'm glad someone more deserving got the SQL spot I'd been occupying, but not as glad as I am that I'm now able to hang out with my SharePoint buddies and not have to hide in the shadows!

Thanks everyone!

4th Annual Atlanta Code Camp a great success

Matt Ranlett — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:01:24 GMT

Saturday morning 200+ software developers converged on the Decatur campus of DeVry University to learn more about current trends in software development along 8 different tracks and from over 25 different speakers.

I'm really glad I got to be a part of the team this year. We had some great prizes, some great speakers, and a fantastic set of attendees. I want to personally thank all the different event contributors. Avanade, Wildermuth Consulting, Microsoft, and Magenic all helped defray the costs of the event. ComponentArt, Red Gate Software, The Silverlight Tour, Wintellect, Windows IT Pro, Pearson Education, Wrox Press, ASPSoft, Code Magazine, CodeSmith tools, and Telerik all gave software, books and other sundry items to be won as door prizes.

Lunch, grilled hot dogs and burgers was cooked on site in the back courtyard and seemed to run very smoothly thanks in part to a dual ticketing system devised by Dan and Keith.

The sessions all seemed to be fantastic and I really want to thank all the speakers who took time out of their personal lives to prepare so much content. We'll start putting the content online as quickly as possible for the attendees to download.

Thanks so much to everyone who contributed and to everyone who came. This was a great event this year and next year, our Fifth Annual Atlanta Code Camp, will be even better!

Atlanta Code Camp speakers dinner at Athens Pizza

Matt Ranlett — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 02:24:11 GMT

At 4pm this afternoon, the Atlanta Code Camp planning committee met at DeVry University's Decatur campus to put the various marketing sheets and raffle tickets into attendee bags. Brendon, Dan, Keith, Steve, Jim, Rik, and I built an assembly line Ford himself would have been proud of. Glen Gordon even showed up and filmed part of the process for his Code Camp behind the scenes documentary. After two grueling hours of stuffing attendee bags with over a dozen different papers and magazines, the planning committee went over to the speaker dinner at Athens Pizza Atlanta. We probably had 35 to 40 people show up, including luminaries such as Shawn, Wally, and Josh. The food was plentiful and really good.

It's now past 10pm and I better get my presentation ready. I'm giving a talk on Workflow In SharePoint. This will be an overview of SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio workflows.

The Tax Man cometh and he wants his pound of flesh

Matt Ranlett — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:22:35 GMT

And boy, does he ever. Due to what appears to be an accounting mistake on one of our paychecks, Kim and I owe an astronomical amount to the Federal and State governments this year. Consider our emergency fund completely blown at this point. We're going to follow up with the payroll people to figure out why the amount of money withheld for taxes went down over 2007 when we actually were making more money. Looking at 2006 vs 2007, our net taxable income increased by 22% (yay!). However, the taxes withheld actually went down by 4%. The difference was so impactful that we actually owe a penalty to the IRS for under-withholding. Apparently there is a rule that if you make above a certain amount of money as a family AND you fail to withhold at least 90% of your year end tax bill, there is a extra penalty. Our penalty is all of about $50, but the concept is pretty obnoxious.

Next year we will be looking into ways to minimize our tax exposure. Along those lines, check out these details from No Credit Needed, who points out that a dual income family can put aside $3208.33 into retirement accounts each month. The 401(k) portion of this definitely helps reduce taxable income.

Toilet Paper Restrictor Plate

Matt Ranlett — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:57:14 GMT

I've never seen anything like this, so I had to take some photos and put it online. I'm working at a client site in town today - basically it's a non-profit organization with some SharePoint issues. In the restroom, they have this TP distribution system I've never seen before. Basically there is a restrictor plate on the TP-Spinner which prevents delivery of more than 2 sheets at a time. This was obnoxious and I can't see that it really does anything to reduce the per-capita TP usage for the organization. Having said that, I'm about to go look for one I can install at home!

Enclosed are some photos

Restrictor plate in "ready" state

Restrictor plate in "engaged" state