How To: Implement a rating scale in InfoPath 2010

I recently worked on a project were the customer wanted to have a rating scale within an InfoPath form, similar to SharePoint’s rating feature. This does not come out of the box and requires a little bit of work but works like a treat once implemented.

The most important thing to mention is that this is based on picture buttons and therefore only works with InfoPath 2010. I’ve created the rating in a sample form that you can download and trial here. And here are the steps to re-create the rating section:

1. Firstly you will need the picture for the picture buttons. I normally use Iconfinder which I find really great to get free, high quality icons in all different sizes and shapes. We need 3 different pictures, one representing non-selected (), one representing selected () and one representing a hover over functionality ().
2. Once you have your pictures, open up the InfoPath form you want to add the rating to
3. Create a new field called “Rating” as shown below

   

    

4. We want a 5 star rating, so next we’ll insert 10 picture buttons. Why? Because for each rating score we need an “Active” button and an “Inactive” button
5. Next we configure all picture buttons as shown below:
   1. The first picture button will be an “Inactive” button

      

       

      1. Make sure you name your button appropriately (ID field)
      2. In the “Picture” section click on Browse and select your inactive picture. Note that the filename of your file will not match the filename in the picture drop down. InfoPath creates its own internal filename
      3. Make sure the “Hide picture button in read-only views” box is NOT checked if you want to show the buttons in read only views.
      4. In the “Dynamic Behaviour” section click on Browse and select your hover over picture. Again, the filename in the drop down will be different to the actual filename.

       

   2. The second picture button will be an “Active” button

      

       

      1. Make sure you name your button appropriately (ID field)
      2. In the “Picture” section click on Browse and select your active picture. Note that the filename of your file will not match the filename in the picture drop down. InfoPath creates its own internal filename
      3. Make sure the “Hide picture button in read-only views” box is NOT checked if you want to show the buttons in read only views.
      4. In the “Dynamic Behaviour” section click on Browse and select your hover over picture. Again, the filename in the drop down will be different to the actual filename.

    

6. Now that we have the buttons configure we’ll set up the rules to show and hide the different buttons and make the rating appear dynamic. Each button requires two rules. One to hide the button when a certain rating score is reached and one to set the rating score value in our “Rating” field.
   1. We configure the “Hide Control” rule on the first inactive button as shown below:

      

   2. We configure the “Set Rating Score” rule on the first inactive button as shown below:

      

   3. We configure the “Hide Control” rule on the first active button as shown below:

      

   4. We configure the “Set Rating Score” rule on the first active button as shown below:

      

   5. No we repeat the steps above for the remaining buttons but amend some of the conditions:
      1. Inactive button 2:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating > 1
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 2
      2. Active button 2:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating < 2
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 2
      3. Inactive button 3:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating > 2
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 3
      4. Active button 3:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating < 3
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 3
      5. Inactive button 4:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating > 3
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 4
      6. Active button 4:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating < 4
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 4
      7. Inactive button 5:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating = 5
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 5
      8. Active button 5:
         
         1. “Hide Control” condition: Rating < 5
         2. “Set Rating Score” set field: Rating = 5
   6. We end up with something similar to the below:

       

      

       

   7. Congratulations, we are done. Now preview your form and rate your work

Nintex Live – Not a trusted root authority

I am just preparing a Nintex Wworkflow 2010 demo for a client. As part of the demo I want to show Nintex Live and came across an issue when trying to access the catalogue. It seems that Nintex Live has problems connecting to liveservices.nintex.com. The symptom is quite obvious; you will not be able to access the Nintex Live catalogue from the Workflow Designer or in Central Admin.

Looking into the event viewer you will be able to see the following error:

An operation failed because the following certificate has validation errors:\n\nSubject Name: CN=*.nintex.com, O=Nintex Pty Ltd, L=Melbourne, S=Victoria, C=AU\nIssuer Name: CN=Thawte SSL CA, O=”Thawte, Inc.”, C=US\nThumbprint: 4337AD2543C366EC108AAB9B6EF21E8A4BB44CEC\n\nErrors:\n\n The root of the certificate chain is not a trusted root authority..

Going into Central Admin -> Nintex Workflow Management -> Nintex Live -> General Settings you will see the following error:

The connection attempt to Nintex Live failed. Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority ‘liveservices.nintex.com’.

To resolve this follow the steps below:

1. Open up Internet Explorer and go to https://liveservices.nintex.com
2. In IE you will notice the following:

   
   

3. Click on the and then “View Certificates”
4. In the certificates pop-up you will see a “Details” tab. Click on it
5. Then select “Copy to File” which opens the export wizard
6. Pretend to be an infra guy and click “Next”, “Next” and “Browse”
7. Browse to the location you want to save the certificate to and type in a name for the certificate
8. Hit “Save”, “Next” and “Finish”, finally “Ok”
9. Then go to Central Admin -> Security -> Manage Trust (under the General Security section)
10. Click “New”
11. Type in “Nintex Live” for the name and select the certificate from the location you saved it to (step 7)
12. Click “OK”
13. Go to Nintex Workflow Management -> Nintex Live -> General Settings and ensure that the error disappeared
14. Congratulations, Nintex Live is now available J

*****UPDATE*****

I just got informed by Nintex, that Nintex Live actually contains a Powershell script file in the Nintex Live program directory which imports all necessary certificates for you. For now you will have to do this manually after the installation of Nintex Live, but I was assured that Nintex will incorporate this into the product installation in a future release.

Contact Selector in InfoPath 2007 and 2010

There are heaps of articles and blogs out there that describe how to create the Contact Selector control in InfoPath 2007. I guess I just want to take the opportunity to refresh everyone’s mind on this and also show you how to create the Contact Selector in InfoPath 2010 for an InfoPath 2007 form.

Let’s start with InfoPath 2007:

1. Creating the control:
   
   1. In InfoPath select Insert -> More Controls
   2. A task pane comes up and on the very bottom you will have the option Add or Remove Custom Controls
   3. Select this option, Click Add in the next dialog box
   4. Select ActiveX Control and click Next
   5. Select Contact Selector from the list of controls and click Next
   6. Select Don’t Include a .cab file and click Next
   7. Select Value for the binding property and click Next
   8. Select Field or Group as the Field or Group Type and click Finish
   9. Click Close and then OK
2. Creating the data structure: (Note: You have to ensure that spelling, structure and capitalisation is exactly as described in the next steps)
   1. Navigate to the Data Source pane in InfoPath
   2. Right click the node where you want the control’s data structure to sit within your form schema (e.g. right click “myFields”) and select Add

      

   3. Add a non-repeating group as shown below. (Note:
      the name of this group is up to you)

      

   4. Add a repeating group named Person as shown below

      

   5. Add 3 text fields to the repeating group, labelled DisplayName, AccountId, and AccountType

      

3. Create a data source to specify the SharePoint server: (Note: this step is only applicable if you have client AND browser-based forms. If you have browser-only forms, the form will always run in the context of the site the form is published to)
   
   1. Open up a text editor of your choice (e.g. NotePad or WordPad)
   2. You can copy and paste the following:

      <Context siteUrl=”http://<YourServerName>”/>
      

   3. Save the file as Context.xml
      DO NOT SAVE IT AS A TEXT FILE
   4. Return to InfoPath and select Tools -> Data Connections

      

   5. Click Add
   6. Select “Create a new connection to” and then “Receive data“
   7. Select XML document and click Next
   8. Browse to the Context.xml file you created earlier and select it, then click Next
   9. Leave the default option selected and click Next
   10. Make sure “Automatically retrieve data when form is opened” is selected and click Finish
4. Add the Contact Selector to the form:
   
   1. Click on the myContactSelector group and simply drag & drop it onto the form
   2. The following selection comes up and you need to select Contact Selector

      

   3. Last but not least TEST YOUR FORM

Now let’s have a look at InfoPath 2010:

In InfoPath 2010 you have the Contact Selector as a ready-to go control already built in. There is no need to perform any configuration steps other than Step 3 from the instructions above. Again this only applies in case you deploy forms that will also be used on clients. Simply select the Person/Group Picker control from the controls list. InfoPath will automatically add the data structure required for the control.

DVWP vs. Search Core Results

I recently had to deal with some content rollup requirements and was instantly thinking of using SharePoint search to do that. But then I ran into a couple of restrictions with what the out of the box (OOB) search web part can and can’t do. (BTW, we are talking SharePoint 2007 here )

Going through the requirements again I thought of using a data view web part (DVWP) but again, some of the requirements were not met a 100%.

So we ended up using a custom search web part. But this is not what this post is about. I just wanted to shared the requirements and thoughts around the two options with you. At the end of the day it will depend on your specific requirements anyway but here are some pros and cons around the two approaches.

The requirements were to be able to:

• Retrieve documents based on a certain content type;
• Filter these documents based on the document type;
• Return any field that is part of the content type;
• Sort by any field that is part of the content type;
• Easily modify the look and feel of the results; and
• Eventually rollup content from other site collections.

On a first look, the DVWP does not do cross site collection rollups but meets all the other requirements.

The OOB search results web part can do cross site collection rollups (with some configuration, but still it can do that) and all the filtering and look and feel costumisation is doable too. But it only allows you to sort by relevance or modification date. We wanted to be able to sort on any field that gets returned.

We ended up coding a search results web part that does allow us to use all the advantages of search but also to specify which field/s we want to sort on and what fields should be returned.

But back to the core of this post and here are the pros and cons for each content rollup approach:

That should give you some ideas on what to consider when creating content rollups. Obviously at the end of the day your choice always depends on the detailed requirements, but I think the above list gives you a good indication on what to consider when talking to your client or designing the solution.

How To: Check if a user is part of a SharePoint group in InfoPath

Earlier this week a colleague sent out an email with the following problem:

“My client wants to hide certain fields and sections in an InfoPath form if a user is not part of a specific SharePoint group. The InfoPath form should not use code as the client declines solutions with code behind.”

This email got send around and a couple of people replied that custom code in form of a web service will need to be used. Not quite what my colleague’s client wanted.

One of the responses was to use the GetUserCollectionFromGroup method from the UserGroup web service (one of SharePoint’s out of the box web services), wrap it in a custom web service and verify the group membership in the custom web service. The reason for this suggestion was that the returned result set in InfoPath doesn’t get interpreted correctly. It basically can’t be used and the custom web service can be used to transform the results and do the verification within the web service.

I am a BIG fan of SharePoint’s out of the box web services and I was sure that the web service still can be used to get users of a certain SharePoint group. This could then be used to determine if the user is part of the group. My first thought was to save the InfoPath form as source files and modify the XML schema of that web service somehow. A bit of googeling later I had a solution ready to go thanks to Ian’s Blog entry here. It describes exactly what needs to be modified in the XML schema. Great post! And here is my solution with Ian’s help:

• First we design a new InfoPath form (I am using InfoPath 2010 and I recommend you do the same…it is just so much better than InfoPath 2007 J)
  
• Create two text fields:
  
  • CurrentUserAccountName
    
  • IsGroupMember
    

    
    

• Next we will create a data source to get the account name of the user that opens the form. We will utilise the SharePoint UserProfileService web service:
  
  • Click on Data Connections under the Data tab and select Add
    
  • Create a new connection to receive data
    
  • Select the SOAP Web service option
    
  • For the location  of the web service type: http://[YourServerURL]/_vti_bin/UserProfileService.asmx
    
  • Select the GetUserProfileByName method and click Next
    
  • Use the default settings in the next screen and click Next again
    
  • Click Next
    
  • Use the default settings, click Finish and close the dialog window
    
• Right click the CurrentUserAccountName field and select Properties:
  
  • In the property window select the formula button for the default value
    
  • Select Insert Group or Field
    
  • From the drop down select the GetUserProfileByName data source
    
  • Expand the dataFields group as shown in the screenshot and select Value
    

    
    

  • Select Filter Data and add a new filter
    
  • In the first drop down select “Select a field or group”
    
  • Select the “Name” field as shown in the screenshot
    

    
    

  • Back in the filter conditions dialog select “Type text” in the third drop down and type AccountName
    

At this stage the form queries the current user’s account name and stores it in the CurrenUserAccountName field on form open. Next we will query the UserGroup web service to get us a list of users in a specific SharePoint group:

• The UserGroup web service contains a method “GetUserCollectionFromGroup” which we will use in our setup:
  
  • Click on Data Connections under the Data tab and select Add
    
  • Create a new connection to receive data
    
  • Select the SOAP Web service option
    
  • For the location  of the web service type: http://[YourServerURL]/_vti_bin/UserGroup.asmx
    
  • Select the GetUserCollectionFromGroup method and click Next
    
  • In the next screen select Set Sample Value and provide InfoPath with the name of the group you want to query (e.g. if your user is in a SharePoint group “Test” put in “Test“)
    
  • Click Next
    
  • Provide InfoPath with the same group name in the next screen and click Next again
    
  • Click Next
    
  • Use the default settings, click Finish and close the dialog window
    

Now the tricky part. We need to save our form and then use the Export Source Files option under “Publish“.

Once that is done, close the form and navigate to the location where you exported your form to. There should be at least one file named “GetUserCollectionFromGroup.xsd“. (In case there are more, use the largest one) This file defines the XML schema. Open the file in a text editor and copy the below into the file. (These steps can be found in Ian’s blog. Thanks again!) Just insert the code within the comments.

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<schema elementformdefault="qualified" targetnamespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/directory/" xmlns:http="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/http/" xmlns:mime="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/mime/" xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap12="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap12/" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:tm="http://microsoft.com/wsdl/mime/textMatching/" xmlns:tns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/directory/" xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/">  
 <complextype name="GetUserCollectionFromGroupType">  
  <sequence>  
   <element maxoccurs="1" minoccurs="0" name="Users">  
    <complextype>  
     <sequence>  
      <element maxoccurs="unbounded" name="User">  
       <complextype>  
        <attribute name="Notes" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="Name" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="IsSiteAdmin" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="Sid" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="ID" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="LoginName" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="Email" type="s:string"></attribute>  
        <attribute name="IsDomainGroup" type="s:string"></attribute>  
       </complextype>  
      </element>  
     </sequence>  
    </complextype>  
   </element>  
  </sequence>  
 </complextype>   
 <element name="GetUserCollectionFromSite">  
  <complextype></complextype>  
 </element>  
</schema>

Also replace this

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<s:element name="GetUserCollectionFromGroup">
	<s:complexType>
		<s:sequence>
			<s:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="groupName" type="s:string"></s:element>
		</s:sequence>
	</s:complexType>
</s:element>

with this:

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<s:element name=“GetUserCollectionFromGroup” type=“tns:GetUserCollectionFromGroupType” />

We are almost there J Now save the file and open the manifest.xsf by right clicking it and select Design.

If you have a look at your GetUserCollectionFromGroup data source and its fields, you will notice that it has changed from this:

to this:

Now the last thing we need to do is setup the IsGroupMember field. We want it to return a 1 if the user is in the group and a 0 if the user is not in the group.

• Right click the IsGroupMember field and select Properties:
  
  • In the property window select the formula button for the default value
    
  • Select Insert Function
    
  • Select the Count function
    
  • Double click “Double click to insert field”
    
  • Select the GetUserCollectionFromGroup data source
    
  • Expand the dataFields group and select “LoginName”
    
  • Select Filter Data and add a new filter
    
  • Leave the first drop down as is (It should show “LoginName“)
    
  • Select “Select a field or group” in the third drop down
    
  • Select the “Main” data source
    
  • Select the “CurrentUserAccountName” field
    
  • Confirm all open windows by clicking on “OK”
    

We are done. You can now use the “IsGroupMember” field to hide and show different sections and fields in your form based on if the user is a member of the configured SharePoint group.

One thing to be aware of though is, that whenever you change the “GetUserCollectionFromGroup” data source, you will need to go through the setup process again for this data source.

Happy InfoPath-ing

*****UPDATE*****
Thanks to Phillip for the hint. Apparently you have to make sure that all users have read permissions to the SharePoint group you want to check. Otherwise it will come up with the common 5566 error that indicates that there are problems accessing the datasource. To give users read permissions on the group follow the steps below:

1. Go to Site Actions -> Site Settings -> People and Groups
2. Click on the “Groups” heading on the left
3. Locate the group your users need to have read access to
4. Click on the Edit button next to it
5. Make sure that in the Group Settings section of the following page, for the first question (“Who can view the membership of the group?”) the option “Everyone” is selected
6. Click OK

Thanks again to Phillip for pointing this out! Much appreciated.

Workflow History List for Auditing?

Yesterday a question came up on how long SharePoint keeps the workflow history, because users wanted to know for auditing purposes. The answer is that there is a timer job  in SharePoint 2007 (SharePoint Central Admin -> Operations -> Timer Job Definitions) which permanently deletes workflow instances and any related task which exist for 60 days after the workflow has been cancelled or is completed. Workflow History list items however do not get deleted. (The list is a hidden list and you can access it through this link http://[servername]/[sitename]/lists/Workflow History)

The 60 day retention can be adjusted through various ways and have been mentioned lots of times in other blogs (refer to TechNet for the stsadm command), I am not going to cover this here.

The reason for the post today is more the “for auditing purposes” comment in the question. SharePoint’s Workflow History list and auditing? A bit like cats and dogs to me…they usually don’t agree with each other.

Why?

The main reason it tell my clients is, that it is not secure enough by default. (my Information Security lecturer at uni made me a bit paranoid ) At the end of the day it is a normal (although) hidden list that users with the appropriate permissions can modify. It is not temper proof and your customer will spend a LOT of time to secure all workflow history lists if they decided to use it for auditing. Also I don’t think any sane auditor will regard this as a valid auditing mechanism.

But what else can you do? Well a very good option would be to use SharePoint auditing logs and Visual Studio to create workflow auditing reports. You then don’t have to mess with the timer job definitions and all auditing standards can be met by customising the reports. Also a report centre within SharePoint could be used to centrally manage and store all auditing reports, not only workflow reports.

With all things on earth, there is a catch with SharePoint auditing. There is an approximately 15% performance decrease, so be careful when enabling auditing.

As always, I’m happy to receive any kind of feedback regarding this topic (or any other topic)

Can’t install Nintex Workflow 2010?

After a long week at work, I finally got a chance to spend some time on my SharePoint 2010 VM yesterday. I wanted to install Nintex Workflow 2010 to have a bit more of a play with it. During the install I encountered an error that I thought is definitely worth mentioning it

First of all, and that is apparently a quite popular question I get, you need SharePoint 2010 to use Nintex Workflow 2010. Nintex Workflow 2010 does not run on MOSS and Nintex Workflow 2007 does not run on SharePoint 2010.

However, if you are a Nintex customer and have software assurance, you can upgrade for no extra fee. Also you will be able to run all your Nintex Workflow 2007 workflows in Nintex Workflow 2010.

If you try to install Nintex Workflow, first of all make sure that the account you use for the install is part of the farm admin group and an admin on the server.

Second, and this is where I spent a lot of time searching for the underlying issue, make sure that (at least for the installation) you have turned off UAC (User Account Control) or set it to the very minimum.

Otherwise you will be getting the following error when the installation tries to deploy the solution packages:

The Zone of the assembly that failed was:  MyComputer

Don’t know how to change the UAC settings? Follow these steps:

1. Click on Start, and then Control Panel
2. In Control Panel, click User Accounts
3. In the User Accounts window, click User Accounts
4. In the User Accounts tasks window, turn the User Account Control to the very minimum
5. Restart to apply the changes

Nintex Workflow 2010 released

Nintex Workflow 2010 just got released at the World Partner Conference 2010 in Washington. So time for me to have a look at the new product and my first impression => it is awesome!! Well done Nintex!

But back to the start. I just downloaded Nintex Workflow 2010 (NWF2010) and installed it. For those of you interested, I am running SharePoint 2010 on my Windows 7 machine and installed NWF2010 on that machine. And guess what? It works like a charme. So I can now develop my workflows on the move. (Too bad I have my 2 year anniversary weekend getaway this weekend…guess the missus won’t be happy if the laptop comes along for some workflowing on the weekend )

The installation process hasn’t really changed:

1. Download the MSI
2. Run the installer
3. Go to Central Admin after the install finishes
4. Deploy the wsp’s
   
5. Import your license file
6. Manage your allowed actions
7. Activate NWF2010 to the web applications where it is required
8. Activate the site collection features (depending on your license this will vary)
9. Activate the site features
10. DONE

When accessing Central Admin…that was the first time I was pleasantly surprised. NWF2010 has it’s own spot in the left hand side navigation! No more going into Central Admin and Application Management, no just go straight into the Nintex Admin page.

The workflow management page hasn’t changed that much, but you will definitely love the 2 new options there.

1. Manage user defined actions:
   This allows you to package workflow segments and shared them within other workflows. Also custom workflow actions can be developed in Visual Studio and imported into NWF2010 from within that single screen.
2. Manage context data:
   How awesome is that? Things like the All Approver Comments, Initiator, etc. can be customised and additional items can be added for reuse in the workflows. I haven’t even used it and already love this feature!

Once you have activated NWF2010 you will notice the new NWF2010 entries in the Site Actions menu. From here you can create and manage:

• Site Workflows
• Reusable Workflow Templates (only available within the site)
• Site Collection Reusable Workflow Templates (available in the whole site collection)

For more information on Nintex Workflow 2010 here is a bunch of links:

Nintex is currently available in 3 different versions: Workgroup, Standard and Enterprise. A comparison can be found here. In case you are interested in support options, they canbe accessed here.
Assistance with the installation provides the Installation Guide.

And where do you get it? Just download the trial version here.

I will explore NWF2010 in more depth within the next week or two, so stay tuned for more NWF2010 blogs, but from what I have tried so far, the Nintex guys managed to exceed my expectations in most areas! An awesome product that will help lots of companies to take a step forward in their productivity and business process automation.

Last but not least…if you need someone to implement it, create your business process in NWF2010 or to help you with getting more value out of SharePoint and Nintex technologies, you know where to find me. Or email me, twitter me, ….

You’ve been certified – Updated

Been a while since my last post and I wasn’t planning to blog today, but I just received my first SharePoint 2010 exam results. And I passed the SharePoint 2010, Configuration exam I am no officially certified. Just thought I share that and will hopefully soon find time to blog more relevant stuff.

Update: I just got an email stating, that I passed the SharePoint 2010, Administration exam I am now double certified and all ready to go…at least the exam results say so

SharePoint 2010 Beta Exams

Last Tuesday I was lucky enought to sit the SharePoint 2010 beta exams. And now I want to share the questions with you….not I thought, since there is not a lot of pointers available at the moment to actually prepare and study for the exams, I just share my study experience with you.

First of all, the exams were really good. A job well done by the Microsoft exam writers. In my oppinion way better than the MOSS exams. Which exams did I do?

• 70-667 TS: Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, Configuring
• 70-668 PRO: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Administrator

Ok, now to my study plan. The following should be seen as a study guide and nothing else. I will not discuss any exam contentor give you pointers for areas to focus on My quite busy schedule last week only left me with 3 days to prepare, 2 of them on the weekend. So, how did I tackle it:

• I started going through the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site. It’s a great start for those who haven’t had a chance to work with SharePoint 2010 or haven’t even worked with any of the previous versions. Especially the “Why use SharePoint?” section is quite a good starter and divided into 3 streams (IT Pro, Developer, End Users);
• Next step was to watch the SharePoint 2010 – Advanced IT Professional Training videos on TechNet. Take your time with these videos. To be honest with you, some these videos are a bit boring to watch and you will need lots of coffee This is certainly not because of the topics, more because of the presenters. The topics themselves are really good and my personal favourite videos were “1 | Core Architecture in SharePoint 2010″ and “4 | Upgrading to SharePoint 2010″. They were well presented and very informative;
• Once done with the SharePoint 2010 site and the videos (which took a while anyway ) I thought it was time to have  a play and try a few things that I just saw in the videos. So I sat down and went through Central Administration and configured, customised and played for the next 2-3 hours. For anyone who hasn’t got a Virtual Server or anything yet, either download trial versions and install SharePoint 2010 or download the pre-build 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine;
• As always, when you play with things, there are a few questions that came up, which needed some further research. So I spent quite a while with researching a few things on TechNet and MSDN; and
• Last, but not least, the SharePoint 2010 forums are a very good source too.

That’s pretty much all I did. Reserve the most time for the videos. Some of them are more than 80 minutes.

For those who hope to get some classroom training, the current ETA for the Microsoft classroom training is the 31st of August. Also the final version of the exams should be available by the mid of July.

I’m sure there is heaps more that you can go through, but the above is what I went through in my limited timeframe. Was it enough? Not sure yet, as the beta exam results will be sent out not earlier than in 8 weeks.

Any questions, feedback, etc. either use the comments section or any of the contact methods provided on the top left

Resources:

• SharePointBlog.at (for the German speaking part of the readers)
• MS TechNet
• MSDN
• MS SharePoint 2010 website
• MS Learning Exam 70-667
• MS Learning Exam 70-668
• SharePoint2010.at (again only for the German readers )
• MS SharePoint Team Blog