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Virgil Carroll
Peter Serzo
Josh Henninger
Peel the layers and check out what High Monkey finds interesting, inspiring, or just plain cool.
February 06
SharePoint Saturday Austin & Chicago SharePoint User Group Slides
by  Virgil CarrollNo presence information  on 2/6/2012 11:24 AM
Category: Virgil Speaks

Thanks to everybody that came out to hear me speak recently at SharePoint Saturday Austin and the Chicago SharePoint User Group. I appreciated all the great discussions and enthusiasm for these two topics.

A special thanks to the SPS Austin organizing committee (with Salt Lick being one of the best speaker dinners I've been too) and to the CSPUG for having me over to Chicago for a very well attended event.

As promised, here are the links to my slide decks.

Governing Users in the Cloud

Putting The User Back in SharePoint UI

Please, feel free to contact me if you're interested in learning more about how I, and High Monkey could help your organization with your SharePoint.

 

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January 26
How to: Remove custom master page elements from modal dialogue popup screens in SharePoint 2010
by  Josh HenningerNo presence information  on 1/26/2012 9:55 AM

During the build phase of a recent client project of ours, we ran into an unexpected issue with the SharePoint 2010 modal dialogue popup windows. After building a beautiful master page layout, we were taken back to see that certain elements from the site master page design were being displayed in the dialogue popup for list items (new, edit, view).

As you can see from the screenshot below, these elements were unnecessary and to be quite honest flat out ruined the layout. Why in the world would someone want to add an item that hasn't even been created yet to their favorites list? They wouldn't. And we don't want them to try.

After a bit of Googling, I discovered that the "fix" for this solution was simply to code master pages with the dialogue popups in mind. Microsoft was clever enough to give us an OOB CSS class in SharePoint named "s4-notdlg".

This class can be applied to your HTML elements (in your master page) that you don't want to display in your dialogue popups. This can be used to hide anything from custom headers, custom navigation, custom footers, to any other elements that you notice interfering with your dialogue popups. See our example below.

After a few div class edits, here's our result.

As you can see, the intrusive navigation elements are no longer present on the dialogue popup screen.

So there you have it, the solution is simple: If you don't want a custom element displayed in the dialogue popup, just add the CSS class "s4-notdlg" to your HTML element class.

 

Happy building!

 

Reference: http://sharepoint.jsturges.com/2011/07/hide-custom-header-elements-from-modal-popup-windows/

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January 20
Blank Web Site Template and Term Store
by  Peter SerzoNo presence information  on 1/20/2012 11:46 PM

Problem

The blank site template does not expose the Taxonomy Feature which enables Term Store Management at the Site level and Enterprise Keywords in a document library. This is ONLY if the blank site template is used at the Site Collection level.

Resolution

On the Central Administration Server, run the following Powershell command as Farm Administrator:

Enable-SPFeature –Url "http://thesite" -Identity "TaxonomyFieldAdded"

  • Click on All Programs
  • Find the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
  • Run as Administrator : See Screenshot

  • Type in the following at the prompt

Enable-SPFeature –Url "http://yourwebsite.com" -Identity "TaxonomyFieldAdded"

Click Enter

This is a known issue. Check out this blog from Paul Stork who documented it almost two years ago and has a much more involved explanation:

http://www.dontpapanic.com/blog/?p=111

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December 15
November ‘11 Tour Recap - East Coast SharePoint Saturdays and User Groups
by  Virgil CarrollNo presence information  on 12/15/2011 7:35 AM
Category: Virgil Speaks

As soon as the holidays starting getting close, the number of conferences and events always seems to grow. The SharePoint Conference out in Anaheim kicked it off at the beginning of October, but it really took off for me in November as I drove through seven states to make it to five different SharePoint events in less than a week. I started out in Richmond, Virginia, then to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and finally back to DC for my last stop (totaling just over 1200 miles driven in 6 days). Not to leave out my next and final stop in Colorado for SharePoint Saturday Denver (see my separate blog post coming soon). Needless to say I saw a lot of things, met a lot of new people, saw a lot of old friends, and overall had a great experience.

It's always refreshing to see so many growing SharePoint communities throughout the country (and world), and I'm pleased to have had the chance to be a part of so many of these events. As promised to everyone who attended my sessions; below is a brief recap of each event, the corresponding talks I gave and a link to the slide decks.

My first stop in Virginia was for SharePoint Saturday Richmond. As always, the SharePoint community in Richmond came together to make it a great event that was very well attended. Here I spoke about Breaking Down SharePoint IA Silos. A special shout out to Bonnie, Erin and Adam, who worked tirelessly to provide one of the best run SharePoint Saturdays I've been to! I had a great opportunity to catch up with a lot of people I hadn't seen for over a month (haha…at the SharePoint Conference in Anaheim) or for longer than that (I think going out to 2 months).

After leaving Richmond I started my long trek towards my next destination, Pittsburgh! Now as many of you that read my blog religiously (wait, I think that's only me – I only post once a month) know, I am a HUGE Steelers fan and was able to attend my first home game in September to help celebrate my 40th birthday. As I feared, as soon as I went to my first I wanted to go to another one right away. So as soon as I knew about Richmond, I decided to see if the Steelers were home, and low and behold they were. So this past Sunday night I was lucky enough to attend the Sunday Night Football game between the Steelers and Ravens. Though it was a great game and I was sitting only 3 rows from the field, unfortunately the Ravens cheated with 8 seconds left and won the game J (ok maybe not really). On my way to Steel town I stopped off for the night in Winchester, Virginia and got to watch a movie at a theatre that served beer!

After Pittsburgh and the disappointing loss, I stopped off for a lunch meeting then headed off to my next location, Philadelphia. Since I didn't need to be there until Tuesday night, I decided to stop over in Harrisburg, PA, a city I've been a few times and really enjoy. After a good day and night in Harrisburg, I headed off to the Philly Area SharePoint User Group where I spoke about Governing Your Users in the Cloud. While in Philly, I hooked up with my good friend Christian Buckley, from Axceler. Christian and I worked out to do the 3 user group tour together for the rest of the week, right before we both fly out on Friday to opposite ends of the world (Christian = London, UK, Virgil = Denver, Colorado). The user group evening was great and I really enjoyed the random conversations many of us had for a while after it was over. Thanks to David and Michael for all their hard work in putting this night together and inviting Christian and I.

After Philly SPUG, I got on Interstate 95 and headed up to New Jersey. There Christian and I visited the cool town of Princeton, New Jersey for a talk at their SharePoint User Group. We got there a night early so got to spend some time on Wednesday touring around and visiting the campus of Princeton University. Now I have been on a lot of campuses during my days, but Princeton had to be the most 'ROYAL' looking outside of the UK. Almost every building was its own unique architecture and each had a certain level of grandeur. After visiting, I feel like I really understand where those high tuition rates go. Later on that night, Christian and I descended on the Princeton SharePoint User Group. Speaking again, this time I spoke about what I like to call, Business Intelligence for the Common People. It's a fun talk that takes a common approach to what BI really is and how you actually understand it without needing a rocket science degree. Thanks to Jason and Greg for arranging for us to speak to this great local group.

The next day it was back on the road and heading back down to Washington DC to speak at the D.C. SharePoint User Group. Here I again gave my talk Business Intelligence for the Common People to a great crowd and have some good conversations and questions. We mixed it up this night and Christian spoke first (his excuse was he needed to catch a plane to London, but I think he was jealous of the attention I was). He gave a talk on migration and how you need to be properly prepared before you even start. Thanks to Nelson and Judith for having us out here.

Again I put out a heartfelt thanks to all who invited myself (and Christian) to come share some of our thoughts and loud voices with your community. I really like getting the chance to visit people from all over the world, whom share a common bond in the form of the beast that we all like to call SharePoint!

Well, I am off to Colorado for SharePoint Saturday Denver! If you are attending, make sure to check out my session on Breaking Down SharePoint IA Silos. I look forward to seeing everyone there.

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October 25
SSRS and Data Sources
by  Peter SerzoNo presence information  on 10/25/2011 8:14 AM

Last week I gave a webinar on SQL Server Reporting Services and data sources. In this blog I wanted to follow up on a couple of interesting points. To set this blog up, there were approximately 60 attendees. Ok, so it was not the best representation of organizations or users:

  1. I did a poll in the beginning of the session on who is interested in using the following data sources. Here are the results:

As you can clearly see, reporting off of SharePoint Lists is the biggest need. Thank goodness for R2 and Report Builder 3.0. You can report off of SharePoint Lists with Report Builder 2.0 (SQL 2008) – but you have to write CAML.

It was very interesting to me that no one was interested in Azure. There are a couple of compelling cases in which to use Azure but it seems that the Microsoft message is not getting out there. Again, this is a small webinar with a small cross section of folks; however, I thought we might get 1%.

The second Poll I did was about reporting off of social elements:

  • Linked In
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Other

No surprise Twitter and Facebook were the top two.

The other item I wanted to mention that I covered in the webinar is:

SQL Server Reporting Services AZURE: I find this to be compelling in the right use case. Take the case of this customer I just visited last week. They are using a citrix component for folks to get to their SSRS reports worldwide. This works for them but what if they hosted those reports in the cloud. Folks would just navigate to a URL, authenticate, and run the desired reports.

Before you jump all over what I said – I clearly see the disadvantages of doing this: authentication, data has to be in the cloud (which then brings a HOST of multiple issues), cost, ect.

All that being said, I am convinced there are times when SSRS in Azure makes sense.

If you are interested, see the recording here: http://www.week3.org/Lists/Sessions/past_event.aspx?ID=75

Best part is that you can fast forward past all the boring parts. Enjoy!

 

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October 07
SharePoint Conference Recap
by  Peter SerzoNo presence information  on 10/7/2011 7:46 PM

California actually got rain a couple of the days during the week of the conference, but that did not take away from any of the luster of the week's event.

Not every session I attended was great, but they all had several important tidbits of valuable information that I will be able to utilize in the near future. Overall, the conference was well worth the investment. Like many things in life, you get out what you put in.

Here are a few of the sessions I attended and what I got out of them:

BI Architecture – This session was ok, but not great. It really burns me as an attendee when a speaker says their demo machine had issues JUST before coming in. I find it somewhat hard to believe, and a very lame excuse. However, the speaker at this session knew the topic well, and he shared some nice diagrams I had not seen before. I look forward to reviewing them more closely in the slides. He also had '20 questions,' which are similar to the assets I put together for my BI sessions when I speak. The main difference is my questions are broken down by category.

Azure Post session - Steve Fox presented a lot of this session, and it was fire hose to brain. So much information yet all of it was valuable. Several labs were shown that are all publicly available. What was really great for me was seeing a friend's Javascript library being touted by Microsoft as a way to get things done. I'm referring to the work of Marc Anderson, who wrote 'SPServices' which you can find on CodePlex. Great stuff!

Seattle school district – This session was very disappointing. Number one, it was VERY short. Secondly, not much information was given out. There were some valuable nuggets of information around infrastructure, how it was built out, and the tools being used (such as InfoPath).

Developer 365 Story – This session started out with what felt like a sales pitch showing the different plans, but in retrospect the information is important to know. For instance with 365 plan 3 or 4, you can use Access Services and InfoPath Services. Here are a few other valuable nuggets from the session:

  • You are able to use the MAC version of Office against 365
  • As a developer, you must have Visual Studio 2010
  • Applications are only deployed as Sandbox solutions
  • Directory Sync does not do passwords
  • Use REST API with Excel Services
  • SQL Server reports do not work with 365 as of yet

Denali and PowerPivot – This was a very good session. The KPI Screen is new! Crescent uses PowerPivot. You can import PowerPivot models into Denali as a database, which is VERY nice. You can do row level security – Excellent! You can also import PowerPivot into VS 2010. There are a lot of great new features in Denali. It is a must have if you are using PowerPivot!

Managing ECM Content Types – Lots of good information, but definitely a 200 level session. It was nice to see that there was code written to run reports on this stuff, and I hope that code is shared. Honestly, not much new in this session other than to reinforce the basics if this is what you are doing already in your organization. Nuggets:

  • There are two data models for content types: Database and Feature Based
  • 1 Content Type Hub per Metadata SSA
  • Daisy chain to move from dev-test-prod

Integrating Social Networks with SharePoint – This session started out ON FIRE. GREAT information showing how Ticketmaster is doing things right (even though they are not using SharePoint). They covered Facebook plugins, twitter stuff, and some UI. The session devolved into code. I really believe this should have been two sessions, but overall a very very good session.

Other – This category is for non-sessions (the rest of the conference). The SharePoint Conference is really about two things; networking and knowledge. One knowledge nugget that I did not take advantage of until the last day was visiting the central Microsoft booth. There was a treasure trove of (Microsoft) people working there including some who I consider 'SharePoint friends' (such as Eric Harlen). I hate to be the one to tell you, but if you did not visit this area and/or speak with the folks working there – YOU missed out. I had the pleasure of speaking in detail with a SSRS Engineer about PowerPivot, Denali, SSRS, and Crescent. I was able to obtain a LOT of knowledge that is public info but is not common knowledge or been blogged on yet. He was smart, sharp, patient, and excellent. You will be seeing this stuff in my upcoming talks. (check out www.week3.org and www.highmonkey.com to see where I'll be speaking next)

My overall thoughts on this conference is that it is a value event worth going to and supporting. Even though there were no big announcements, the information is what you make of it. I laughed when Steve Fox asked the question, 'Who here knows SharePoint in and out?' About 5 folks raised their hands. No MCMs did, because they will be the FIRST to tell you no one knows SharePoint in and out. There are always new things to learn. The SharePoint Conference and other events like SPTechCon (www.sptechcon.com) or even SharePoint Saturdays are some of the best places to find that knowledge.

These conferences require a lot of work from a lot of different people. High Monkey had a booth at the SharePoint Conference this year and it went fantastic. Joel, Brad, and Jared manned the booth and I just want to thank them and everyone who dropped by. We had a lot of fun with everyone, especially the folks who posed in front of our booth (in the High Monkey t-shirts). Great sports!

I think the keynote at the conference stated it best (in a subtle way): Business is a very serious thing, but you need to have fun. There has to be a value to life. High Monkey brings that (balance of serious, fun, and value) to our customers and partners.

See everyone soon!

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October 04
Day 1 SharePoint Conference
by  Peter SerzoNo presence information  on 10/4/2011 9:16 AM

It's has been a couple of years since Vegas – this year family friendly Disney.

I attended three sessions today plus the keynote:

  1. Keynote – A bit underwhelming I hate to say. The Hollywood video showing Mrs. Brady, Luke something from 90210 was cute. I actually thought they were going to trot out a Hollywood star with Jeff Tepper. But they did not.
  2. The Future of BI – Unfortunately, not much new here and not much on the future of BI. I would even call this a retread of a session I saw two years ago in Vegas. However, Project Crescent was shown very briefly. Very nice end user tool. But you will have to have Denali – whenever that is released. GOLDEN NUGGET: The October CU will have enhancements so that PPS/Excel Services will show on mobile devices such as the IPAD. (Also, not to brag, BUT, they are using a Movie Database with Crescent – I have been speaking and using a Movie DB (and Cube) since about 2 years ago when I speak about PPS).
  3. Bill Baer showing Denali – Unfortunately I got there late due to Exhibitor duties. But it was a very deep session on the new enhancements in Denali. Very nice.
  4. PPS/Excel Services Troubleshooting – Good session, deep. Kevin did talk about SP1 enhancements AND a little bit about Denali. GOLDEN NUGGET: There will be a new content type with Denali – The BISM Content Type. This will be a kind of back door method to taking care of the double hop when obtaining data from a backend database. More to follow on this…

High Monkey is a proud exhibitor at this year's conference – so come see us. I have loved meeting all the folks that have come by – put on the shirt and have your picture taken: Check out the story on our High Monkey Facebook: www.facebook.com/HighMonkey.

Mention this blog and one golden nugget and I will ensure that you will get a tee shirt (and they are awesome!). Maybe even a signed book (maybe…).

Talk to you later.

Peter

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September 21
My 40th Steelers PA SPUG weekend
by  Virgil CarrollNo presence information  on 9/21/2011 3:09 PM
Category: Virgil Speaks

I have been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since I was right around 6 years old. You ask how? Well growing up in Alaska, you kind of get to pick your own team, I am also the middle child and believed for most of growing up that I needed to dislike whatever my family liked J So I was sitting on my dad's lap when I was around 6 years old and the Steelers were playing the Seattle Seahawks (my Dad's favorite team), the Steelers won and the rest is history. So it has been my dream, really all my life, to get a chance to see a Steelers game in Pittsburgh. Well this past weekend I got that chance. A couple of months ago I realized that my 40th birthday was coming up soon (as if I didn't realize it for the last year, or 5 years, or 10!) and I wanted to do something extreme for it. I got an urge to check out if the Steelers might be playing at home, which they were. Even to make it better, they were playing the Seahawks. So as if it was written in the stars, my birthday weekend plans were set.

So as the big day approached, I decided I would reach out to the Pittsburgh SharePoint community and see if there was anything going on while I am in their neck of the woods. So again…looking to the stars…I get in touch with @SandyU from Pitt, who said they have a SPUG meeting on the 15th. So she got me in touch with Brian LaSitis, who runs the group, we talked and I was asked to present at their September meeting.

I spoke at the PA SPUG meeting on September 15th. I want to thank everyone who attended the event. As I understand it was a larger than usual crowd, so I appreciate everyone coming out and having a chat with me about the world of SharePoint. I spoke on everyone's favorite topic, governance, and enjoyed the interactive conversations I had with all. I especially appreciated the great tips I got to make the most out of my first ever home Steelers game.

Here is a link to my slide deck for my PASPUG presentation

Facilitating the Government out of Governance 

Missed me there? Well you can next catch me at the SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire in a few days. It will only be my 2nd trip ever to New Hampshire and I am looking forward to doing a little more exploring this time around. You can also catch up with me running around the SharePoint 2011 conference in Anaheim or drop by to visit the High Monkey Consulting booth in the exhibit hall.

As for the rest of my trip, Pittsburgh is a great city and I look forward to a time when I can go back more often. It has one of the better skylines I have seen, especially when the sun falls, Pittsburgh really lights up. Some good friends of mine came into town on Friday and Saturday to hang out, celebrate my birthday and go to the game.

Game Day – Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Seattle Seahawks

The day started out with an early breakfast and the long drive into town to start doing some great tailgating compliments of some long time Steelers fans, who invited us to join them. We decided to part at Station Square, which is a great entertainment area, and take the Gateway Clipper boat across the river, right up to the stadium. We then proceeded to participate in some hardcore tailgating right next to the stadium and soak up the great atmosphere!

As the game drew closer, we decided it was time to head in and see some of the great sites in Heinz field itself

I got to see the jersey of my all time favorite Pittsburgh Steeler, Rod Woodson (BTW, did I mention I was in Atlanta watching the game where he broke the punt return record at the time…96 yard run back…priceless memory)

And last, but certainly not least, I got to see the game from really unbelievable seats!

Overall it was a day I won't soon forget, the Steelers ended up whipping up on the Seahawks 24-0! The only bad part now is…I really want to go back and I think I may already have my next trip planned!

So thanks again to everyone who attended my session, or just made my trip to Pittsburgh so great. It's a great place with a great team, and I look forward to getting more involved there in the future.

 

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September 14
Learning SharePoint
by  Peter SerzoNo presence information  on 9/14/2011 7:00 PM

Two events have happened recently which have reinforced some ideas I have had on learning SharePoint from scratch.

The first is I had the privilege to teach SharePoint at one of our military bases. What made it even better is that I had this opportunity during the week of 9/11 – 10 year anniversary. To be honest, I felt pressure to do my best. As a background (for any who care) – I am a native New Yorker, have worked in the World Trade Center in the past, and LOVE the city.

The second event is that we here at High Monkey have hired two new folks straight out of college to do SharePoint.

The question is: How do you go about training people from scratch so it all makes sense?

I am a BIG fan of Lynn Langit – Contagious Curiosity – she worked for Microsoft. She is a strong proponent of team learning.

I utilized some of her methods with both of these groups from above.

To see my thoughts on this – read my article for SPTECHWeb:

http://www.sptechweb.com/link/35902

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August 21
SharePoint Saturday the Conference is one of this year’s best community events
by  Virgil CarrollNo presence information  on 8/21/2011 9:12 PM
Category: Virgil Speaks

It was great to have the opportunity to speak at the first ever "SharePoint Saturday - The Conference" in Washington DC last week. The conference was very well put together and attendance of both the conference and my talks were great! I want to thank all of the organizers for the time they put into making the idea of a 3-day SharePoint Saturday Conference a reality, and the sponsors and attendees that came together to make the conference such a success. I have to say I was wondering how a SharePoint Saturday would be pulled off over 3 days, but leave it to the brilliant minds of Usher, Dux and all the rest of the great crew to make it happen. I found out that through the 3 days there were over 100 volunteers helping to make the whole process run as smooth as possible. Though I know they had some things arise from behind the scenes, I can honestly say from my perspective the event ran smoothly like some of the major conferences I have attended and spoke at. Kudos to you all. There were a ton of vendors, attendees and great activities throughout the 3 days. I really do enjoy these community events for the community…sans any of the Kool-Aid J

For me, I was able to participate during the first 2 days of the conference. I had a wedding to get to on Saturday back in Minnesota, so had to miss out on the last day of fun.

First up was my all day workshop titled "SharePoint IA Design 101" with Richard Harbridge from Allin Consulting on Thursday. Though Richard and I have known one another for quite some time, this was the first time we've taken the opportunity to share our expertise together. If I do say so myself, it ends up that Richard and I really do complement one another in both our knowledge and speaking styles. We had a packed house and some great interactive participation by the audience. Overall feedback was very positive and I cannot say this surprises me considering how neither Richard nor I were allowed to take a bathroom break during the event, because at each break we had at least 10-15 people lined up to ask additional questions. I can honestly say I was completely exhausted the end of the day and really, really had to tinkle. J For those that attended and have not done so yet, you can access our slide deck and additional resources at www.practicalintranet.com. I also want to send a shout out to Ruven Gotz, who collaborated with Richard on a similar session at SPTechCon in June. Their information is also on the site and we have all been sharing our best practices back and forth with one another. Ruven brings yet another brilliant perspective to this topic.

On Friday, I gave a shorter version of some of the content I covered in the workshop called "Breaking down the SharePoint IA Silos". I had a full-house with a great audience; I appreciate all the audience interaction and hope that everyone walked away with some valuable insights.

Here is the link to my slide deck, "Breaking Down SharePoint IA Silos" for you to go back and review.

Thanks again for everyone that made it, and I look forward to seeing you next time!

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