Ever since I first read about the book "Creating and Implementing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Real-World Projects" by Jennifer Mason, Christian Buckley, Brian T. Jackett, and Wes Preston, I was eagerly expecting its release as I was hoping for it to keep its title's promise - describing how to implement SharePoint solutions that have a practical use.

After seeing the Table of Contents on Safari Online, I just had to purchase the Rough Cuts version (so basically the current Work in Progress). I created the PDF version of it on Safari Online, transferred it to my Touchpad, and started reading (well, browsing is more accurate, as I skipped most of the sections that describe how to do things such as create a library, or add a column).

I wasn't disappointed. Here's why:

The 10 chapters included in this book are:

1. Building a Project Management Solution Within SharePoint
2. Building a Training Registration Management System Using SharePoint Enterprise
3. Building a Basic FAQ Solution Using SharePoint Foundation
4. Building a Learning Center Using SharePoint Foundation
5. Building a Help Desk Solution Using SharePoint Server Standard
6. Building a Remote Teams Activity Site
7. Building a Team Blog Platform using SharePoint Enterprise
8. Building a RFP Response Solution
9. Building a Contact Management Solution
10. Building a Resource Scheduling Solution

As you can see, they cover an interesting range of business problems, many of them which are common to most companies (I myself worked on at least half of these solutions before, though with different scopes). The "Real-World" from the title definitely applies!

I also like the approach the authors take by standardising each chapter's structure, which allows you to quickly understand the what, why, and how of each solution:

1. Identifying the Business Problem
   Explanation of the business problem to be solved
2. Gathering Information
   What are the requirements from the business side
3. Designing the Solution
   How is the solution going to be implemented, which SharePoint features are going to be used
4. Building the Solution
   How is the solution created (with lots of screenshots!)
5. Managing the Solution
   What else can/should be done, but isn't part of the book's building process (mostly things that are driven by the individual company's requirements, such as managing permissions)
6. Reviewing the Platform
   Can this solution be implemented in SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server Standard, SharePoint Server Enterprise, and Office 365 (SharePoint Online)

The authors do not only explain how to do things (create a library, add columns, add a web part to a page), but if required also explain drawbacks of a particular approach, or also explain best practices (for example, when creating a columns, use a friendly name first). Definitely another big plus from my side.

The way I see it, this book is perfect for anyone working with SharePoint and implementing solutions with Out of the box features only. You'll get to learn how to leverage simple things such as lists, libraries, and columns, and how to integrate them and create valuable solutions, often also with the "intermediate" tools such as InfoPath or SharePoint Designer Workflows.

While I didn't read the final version of the book, the majority of changes that can be expected are more of a cosmetic nature (I saw several spacing issues, references to image file names, etc.), and the content should pretty much stay the same (have to mention that there wasn't an introductory chapter in my Rough Cuts). The final version of the book should be available in March, but can already be preordered now on O'Reilly.

Microsoft has made available the first official documents for the next version of SharePoint (v15) to the public. They are:

SharePoint 15 Technical Preview Managed Object Model Software Development Kit
Which contains a limited overview of some new classes. Interesting in here is the mention of "Apps" (for example in the new SPApp class).

Also quite interesting is Office 15 Technical Preview - Open Specification Update, which contains also details about SharePoint 15. I recommend to look at the overview document (Summary of changes) first to see which files have been updated. While these documents are quite specific (protocols), they still give a good insight into what we can expect.

Just by looking at the documents marked as new, I discovered the following:

• Improvements to Access Services to come
• PowerPoint Automation Services to come (similar to Word Automation Services, so in this case a conversion from PPT to (e.g.) PDF)
• The Education sector will get several new features (there's a new namespace Microsoft.Office.Education), e.g. there'll be Quizzes that can be used in an academic context
• eDiscovery will get improved (Microsoft.Office.Server.Discovery)
• there's something about video in there (Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Video)
• and another new namespace, not sure what it does after looking at it very briefly only: Microsoft.SharePoint.WorkManagement

Of course there is lots more information, as I said I only had a brief look at new documents and not at updated ones.

Today, I took the Microsoft SharePoint exam "Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring" (70-667), and managed to pass it within 20 minutes (50 questions) with a passing score of 950.

I'm definitely not someone with lots of SharePoint administration experience, I never managed a server on my own except for my own virtual machines, so I didn't quite know how well I'd do in this exam. As you can see, my knowledge was really enough to pass easily.

As for my preparation, I did it mostly with two things:

1. Reading MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-667): Configuring Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Training Kits) by Dan Holme and Alistair Matthews, and going through most of the practice examples (skipped a lot which I've already done before and felt proficient enough)
   
2. Practising a lot in my own SharePoint 2010 virtual machine. What I didn't know or had never done before, I did in here. As I already did the SharePoint 2007 exams (70-631 and 70-630), there was already a lot of content that I already knew as I had practised it back then. Other things (mostly the newer stuff such as service applications, for example) I had a closer look at to be more or less well prepared (didn't know how much this exam would different from the 2007 versions)

Finally, there's some official information on MSDN about the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in Office 365 (or more specifically, SharePoint Online).

The first article, Introduction to Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Online, provides a general overview of BCS:

• What Is Business Connectivity Services?
• External Content Types
• BDC Models
• External Lists
• External Data Columns
• Business Data Web Parts
• External Content Type Picker
• External Item Picker
• Secure Store
• SharePoint Client Object Model
• Conclusion
• Additional Resources

The second article, What's New for BCS in SharePoint Online, provides some brief information about how developers can manipulate external data sources, or to be more specific, that this has to be done through the client object model. Some code samples are given. This information is given in the first article as well, so it's enough to have a look at Introduction to Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Online.

This is going to be a very short posting, but something that I came across twice recently, so I just quickly wanted to share it.

Let's say you've got Publishing activated, but when you open a page you've got "Pages - " in front of the actual name of the page. For example, you have a page called Home, and when you open it your browser shows it the following way:

When you look at your Master Page, you'll see that the title is actually defined through a placeholder:

Where is this placeholder replaced with the actual title? In the Page Layout that your pages are using!

Looking at the custom Page Layout that I used, I found the following snippet:

The two important lines here are 36 & 37. Line 36 adds the list's name (in our case, Pages), line 37 (<SharePointWebControls:FieldValue FieldName="Title" runat="server"/>) adds the title value of the page (so the actual title).

After I removed line 36 (and removed the dash from line 37), the pages' titles are now displayed as I wanted them to: