Joseph Fluckiger's Blog

Frequently I will need to open an ISO image on a remote machine, this is a tool from Microsoft which I recommend for opening ISO images. It works with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Here is a link directly to Microsoft to download the utillity . Here is an article describing how to use the ISO reader .

I've started using Colligo for SharePoint which makes opening, editing, adding and savings documents to a SharePoint document library much easier. I've used Groove and Outlook, but Colligo is better. The main reason, it is more stable. Outlook kept crashing on me when I would preview a document, and it would slow my Outlook down. If you are like me, your email is critical, and so anything that slows it down or makes it crash doesn't work. Also with Outlook you can't add documents to a document library by drag and dropping them from windows explorer (major feature gap if you ask me). This is where Colligo drag-and-drop shines. Simple and reliable, I like it. Colligo offers a free version which gives you read-only access to a document library and a contributor version which they charge $125 for.

http://gooooooooooooogle.net It's alive! (evil laugh) I've created my own search engine. Ok so I cheated a bit by using the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 as the crawl engine and simply put a pretty face in front of it, but hey, it's a real live search engine. And I've actually found out a few useful things, for example, I searched through Cameron's blog for the word "fluckiger" and discovered I'm meantioned 3 times, including being given credit for an XML recommendation. (I'm really big-time now). I'm currently indexing my blog , Cameron Fuller's blog , and 1 layer deep of links from directory.google.com. Cameron pointed out that there is an easier, (though not as fun) way to search a blog using google blog search .

I'm trying out twitter, a microblog. What I think is interesting about the service is how simple the user interface is. Elegant, powerful, simple. No wonder it has been so popular. Here is a link to my twitter blog .

Note, the SUSHI project has now moved to codeplex at http://codeplex.com/sushi I proudly announce the public release of SUSHI (SharePoint Utility with a Smart, Helpful Interface). This Smart Client Utility offers powerful tools for common SharePoint management tasks with refreshing ease-of-use. Documentation for the utility and downloads can be found here: http://wiki.catapultdemo.com The SharePoint document utility is in use at several large clients that I have worked at, and several other consultants at my company have worked at. This utility is free and the source code has also been posted for free download. The documentation site is a public wiki, so I hope to build a community around SUSHI and get lots of participation. I hope that fellow SharePoint administrators will add their own features and improve existing features so that the utility matures and increases in usefulness. -Joseph

Ever used Google code search ? I’ve found a lot of good SharePoint code. Just searching for the Sharepoint namespace “using Microsoft.SharePoint;” you get lots of good practical examples. Sometimes a line of code is worth a thousand MSDN explanations. Here is a great example of rendering a SharePoint webpart by overriding the CreateChidControls() and RenderWepPart() methods.

Here are the tips I wish I had known before this week and this is what I learned so that you won't have to go throught the same pain when learning to build Webparts in SharePoint. -Ted Pattison has the best screencasts on SharePoint that I have found. He is also very funny. I insist that you watch the "Building ASP.NET Web Parts for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" as your first step to learning how to build a SharePoint webpart! Setup your environment as detailed below, and then walk through Ted's demo with him. IMPORTANT TIP. Make sure you DOWNLOAD the screencast (right click and save target as) so that you can pause and rewind the video as he walks through it. This video is the key to the difference between frustration and success! -Download The latest SDK for Sharepoint WSS 3.0 . Open up the help file WSS3sdk.chm, and start with the "Walkthrough: Creating a Basic SharePoint Web Part" (After you've gone through Ted Pattison's Screencast). The co...