Office 2010 – Share / Save to SharePoint Feature
I’ve been using MS Office 2010 as my primary office productivity suite for quite some time now and have been very pleased. It’s very clear that a lot of thought was put into the products; not just focused on added functionality, but making them more intuitive, really improving the user experience. So many features come as second nature, that you don’t even realize that they are new. Until you are stuck with a workstation with a previous version of Office installed.
One such feature is the “Share” menu, with the option to “Save to SharePoint”. The following screenshot is from the MS Word 2010 Menu after creating a brand new file… complete with Recent Locations.
May not seem like much, but try living without it after you’ve had it for quite some time.
True, we’ve had “My SharePoint Sites” within the “Save File” screen in previous versions. But its never quite worked as expected… you had to explicitly be a “Member” of the site (not through an AD group), the profile import had to be working just right, after you were made a “Member” of the site it may not have shown up on your list until the following day, and a slew of other things. You could also say that we had “My Network Places”, but that required a certain level of proactivity that often times you just don’t have.
Nothing in Office 2010 was my idea… but to whoever's idea this feature was; Thanks for keeping my experience in mind.
SharePoint Saturday Houston, May 1st 2010. Now Open for Registration
The Houston SharePoint User Group (HSPUG) is proud to present the first SharePoint Saturday event for the greater Houston area on May 1, 2010.
This event will be from 8:00 am – 6:00 pm at Norris Conference Center, 803 Town & Country Lane, Houston, TX 77024. 713-590-0950. We will provide a continental breakfast, break refreshments and hot lunch. Parking is free in the parking garage (adjacent to Norris and Studio Movie Grill) in the 3rd level and above. Enter Norris on the third level from the south end of the parking garage.
About SharePoint Saturday: Whether you are a IT professional, professional, business owner, manager or enthusiast, SharePoint Saturday is an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of SharePoint-orientated topics. SharePoint Saturday is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!
Seats are limited so, register today! http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/houston/default.aspx
BCS External List Error – Unable to Display this Web Part.
Tonight while presenting at SharePoint Tech Dives I ran into the following error:
Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.
Correlation ID:[SomeCorrelationID]
This is not an uncommon error, its also not very descriptive. But just a little digging around in the ULS logs using the Correlation ID should quickly reveal the problem. Which (when external lists are involved) usually has something to do with security; like specifying that the Data Source Connection use the users identity when not all users have access to the back-end system. But that was not the case here; I configured it to Connect with an Impersonated Windows Identity, set up and configured a Secure Store Target Application, and triple-checked that I specified the correct Target Application ID. But the error persisted, and the logs simply stated:
The Microsoft Secure Store Service application Secure Store Service failed to retrieve credentials. The error returned was 'Target application not found (application id: AWContactAdmins).'
It turns out the Application ID I specified was right. But the Secure Store Service App under which I created it was not associated with the SharePoint Web Application where I built my External List.
The fix: I had more than one Secured Store Application Configured, one of which was already associated with the Web Application hosting my external list. So I just re-created the Target Application under the corresponding secured store.
Go to http://blog.rafelo.com/2010/03/bcs-external-list-error-unable-to.html for more information and to view the original post.
(BCS) Business Connectivity Services Team Blog
Looking for a good source of technical information on SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services. Check out the Business Connectivity Services Team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/bcs/
Cross Post from: http://blog.rafelo.com/2010/03/bcs-business-connectivity-services-team.html
How-To Video: Changing Application Pool Accounts in SharePoint 2010
Yet another cool feature in SharePoint 2010 is the “Managed Accounts” concept. Once configured SharePoint can automatically reset service account passwords on a schedule, detect imminent password expirations and notify an administrator, and automatically propagate service account changes to all of the servers in the farm.
Check out my latest blog posting with a step by step how-to video on the subject.
Additional information from TechNet at: Plan automatic password change (SharePoint Foundation)