Corey Roth [MVP]

SharePoint Conference 2011 (#SPC11) is coming fast.  This promises to be a great conference and I’m excited to see everyone again and meet some new friends.  With any conference, it’s always best to be prepared.  You want to make sure you bring the right things and get everything done before you step foot on a plane.

Here are some of the things I’ll be packing that might also be useful for you as well:

• Laptop – As a presenter this one is obvious.  However as an attendee, you might not want to lug one around.  It can be worth it though.  You will find that you want some type of computing device so that you can keep up on twitter, follow the latest gossip, and find out about any impromptu #SharePint events that might occur.  Maybe even read a few E-mails.  As a presenter, I’m also having a colleague bring his laptop as well with my demos loaded on it in the event of an emergency / disaster.
• Netbook / Slate / Tablet / iPad – In lieu of carrying around your heavy laptop, I find carrying my netbook at conferences to be quite handy.  I can keep up on twitter, the battery will last me all day.  Bring whatever device or combination thereof you prefer, but keeping up on what’s going on at the conference using one of these small devices is much easier than trying to look things up on your phone.  You also can use these to fill out session evaluations.  There are usually incentives for filling out evaluations so I try to complete each evaluation right before the end of the session so I don’t forget.
• AirCard – The wireless networks at conferences are rarely good.  They are jammed with geeks trying to post updates on Twitter and check out what’s happening on Facebook.  If you have access to a wireless AirCard bring one.  See if your company has any that you can check out temporarily.
• Cash – Just a little (more if you drink a lot :) ).  There are a lot of free events but you might go to something before or after the conference and I am not a fan of running tabs at busy restaurants and bars.
• Chargers – I remember when I went to PDC05, I forgot my laptop charger.  I was quite bummed.  Don’t forget the chargers to your laptop, netbook, iPad, phones, etc.
• Bail Money – The Houston SharePoint Users Group has a running joke about always keeping a stash of bail money around when attending a #SharePint.  With past history of SharePoint conferences, maybe it’s not such a bad idea. :)

Some other things you should remember to do before going.

• Set your schedule on My SPC  - This will make your SPC organizers happy when it comes to capacity planning.  You aren’t required to go to that session you schedule, but it will help you pick from the 10+ sessions going on at any given time slot.  Go to My SPC  and set your schedule now!
• Create your Bio on My SPC – Whether you are an end user or a SharePoint rock star, take a few minutes to write about yourself.  Include where you work if you want along with what you typically do with SharePoint and what you want to get out of the conference.  Upload a picture of yourself to make things more personal.  Set your My SPC bio now.
• Arrange for Ground Transportation  - Don’t forget to arrange for ground transportation.  You really don’t need a car once you get to Anaheim, but you do need a way to get there.  Taking a Taxi can be quite costly, so I opted to take one of the many available shuttle services from the Airport.  It’s relatively inexpensive at $15 each way.
• Create a #SPC11 Search in Twitter – There is no question you want to keep an eye on the activity of the #SPC11 hash tag.  You will find out about sessions, events, and it will generally give you an idea of what is happening at the conference.
• Follow @SPConf on Twitter – This is the official twitter account for SPC.  This account often posts useful stuff about the conference.  I’ve also used it to ask questions or provide general feedback and I’ve had good luck getting a response.
• Learn hash tags for the sessions you are attending – Every session you are attending has an associated hash tag that you can follow.  For example, my Search Session is number 364, so the hash tag for it is #SPC364.  You can go ahead and save a search for that one now. :)  I hear #SPC348 is also a good one!
• Reach out to your local SharePoint User Group – Find out what your local SharePoint User Group is doing while at SPC.  Many of them are having meetings or socials.  For example, H-SPUG (#HSPUG) is having a happy hour on Sunday night.
• RSVP for Parties – There are a lot of them this year.  Many of them require that you RSVP or stop by a booth so be sure and find out before hand.  Mark Freeman put together an excellent list.
• Leave space in your bag – Between the conference materials and the vendors you are going to end up with a heap of product information, trinkets, and T-shirts.  Make sure you have room in your bag to bring them home.  Otherwise you’ll be hand carrying them on the plane or leaving things behind.

That’s my list.  I’m sure there are other things to remember.  Do you have anything else to add?  Leave a comment.  This probably goes without saying, but if you are not on twitter, now is the time to join.  It’s the best way to keep up with what’s happening at the conference. 

I’m also giving two talks at this year’s conference and I would love for you to see them.

• #SPC348 – Extending SharePoint 2010 for your customers and partners will cover everything you wanted to know about creating an Extranet with SharePoint 2010.  Although, this topic is nothing new, this is a great talk for people just now looking to consider an extranet for his or her organization.
• #SPC364 – Making the most of Search in SharePoint Online.  I am beyond excited about this talk because I get to talk about Search and SharePoint Online in the same talk.  You might just be amazed at what you can do with Search in the cloud.  I’ve got some great demos built using Silverlight and the Search API that you will want to see whether you want to extend search off-premises or on-premises.

Enough with the shameless plug. :)  Get ready and I’ll see you at the conference.  You can follow me on twitter @coreyroth.

When SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 came out, I noticed the following line in the release notes regarding Office Web Apps.

“Lets you insert clip art in PowerPoint Web App. (By default clip art support is disabled. An administrator can decide to enable it.)”

However, it didn’t say how to enable it.  I looked all over the Internet multiple times and never found a solution.  I knew it had to be some property I could set with PowerShell but guessing the right one and how to set it was the question.  On a recent search, I came across this support article on Symantec web site where someone was having an issue and it was then I discovered the property name, EnableClipArt.  On a whim, I decided to give it a try.

Here is what your ribbon bar looks like before you enable clip art:

To enable it, we can build a simple PowerShell script.  You will need to determine the name to your PowerPoint Service Application’s proxy.  In my case, mine is PowerPoint Service Application Proxy.

Now for the script.  Remember to change the name of your proxy to match your environment.

$proxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -eq "PowerPoint Service Application Proxy" }
$proxy.EnableClipart=1
$proxy.Update()

When it completes successfully, PowerShell will just return you a new prompt without an error.  Now, edit your PowerPoint document again in the browser and you should see the Clip Art ribbon button enabled.

Select a valid region in a slide to do an Insert and click the Clip Art button.  It will then let you search the online library of clip art for use in your slides.

Select the image you like and you will see it in your slide deck.

It’s simple to enable this support.  I wish I could have found this documented sooner.  I hope you enjoy this functionality.  I was curious to see if this functionality was present in SharePoint Online (Office 365), but unfortunately it doesn’t look like it is there yet.

That’s not a deal breaker though for Office 365.  Maybe we will see it in the future.

At this point, SharePoint 2010 has been out about a year and a half more or less and you might have forgotten some of those new features that came along with it.  Since I am often one to talk about SharePoint search solutions, one of my favorite new features we got with SharePoint 2010 was Keyword Query operators.  They are all kinds of awesome.  Someone coming from a T-SQL background may be far from impressed, but in the search engine world, this is a BIG deal.  I’ve written about Search keywords in the past, but I thought this was worth some additional coverage, especially since I am speaking on the topic at SPC11 and it applies to both SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Online (Office 365).

Since I am talking about getting more out of search with SharePoint Online, I’ll use my Office 365 account for today’s examples. The Keyword Query language for Search was expanded to include operators such as >,>=, <, <=, and <>.  These operators are great for comparison against built-in managed properties such as Size and Write (Modified Date).

For example, to see all documents modified since the beginning of this month (September), issue a query like this:

Write>=”9/1/2011”

Note, that the spacing (or lack there of) is important.  If you put spaces between the operator, property, and value, it won’t work.    Remember you can always put the value of the query inside quotes like you see above. This is especially important for values that have spaces in them.  Size can be used in the same way to ensure that files are of a certain size.  For example, to ensure files are greater than 100,000 bytes, use the following:

Size>100000

This returns files greater than 100,000 bytes (not to be confused by 100k like hard drive manufacturers would like ).  Notice, that we are getting an image preview in the search results with SharePoint Online.  That’s interesting.  We’ll explore it later.

It also supports the “NOT” operator using “<>”.  For example, to see everything that is NOT written by me, you could issue the following query.

After all, if I didn’t write it, the content must be good. :)  As a reminder, you can combine any of the terms together to get more restrictive results.  A space in between terms is the equivalent of the word “AND”.  You can also use the keyword OR if desired.

For more information on operators, see this MSDN post.  Interested in seeing more that you can do with Keyword queries?  Come to my talk (#SPC364) at SharePoint Conference 2011 this October in Anaheim.  We’ll cover many way that you can use Keyword queries to get more out of Search.

Since I first stepped foot at #SPC09, I knew I wanted to speak at a SharePoint Conference some day..  This year that dream has finally become a reality.  I have the honor to present two different sessions at SharePoint Conference 2011.  I am speaking on subjects that are both old and new to me and I am excited to see how they turn out. 

My first talk is #SPC348 – Extending SharePoint 2010 for your customers and partners will cover everything you wanted to know about creating an Extranet with SharePoint 2010.  Although, this topic is nothing new, this is a great talk for people just now looking to consider an extranet for his or her organization.

My second talk is #SPC364 – Making the most of Search in SharePoint Online.  I am beyond excited about this talk because I get to talk about Search and SharePoint Online in the same talk.  You might just be amazed at what you can do with Search in the cloud.  I’ve got some great demos built using Silverlight and the Search API that you will want to see whether you want to extend search off-premises or on-premises.

I’m looking forward to giving my sessions and seeing all of my friends out there in the SharePoint community.  I’m excited to meet some new friends out there as well.  If you’re going to be in Anaheim this year for the conference, feel free to say hi and check out my sessions.  Thanks for all of your support especially for all my friends at the Houston SharePoint Users Group (#HSPUG)  I’ll see you all in Cali.