Corey Roth [MVP] : Office 365, SharePoint 2010

Slides and Video from my Lync and Learn Session on SharePoint Online Development

CoreyRoth — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:36:15 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended my Office 365 Lync and Learn session last week. I enjoyed the opportunity to show everyone how they can use Visual Studio 2012 RC to get started with SharePoint Online development. I’ve attached a link to my slides as well as the video on YouTube. Also special thanks to Josh Topal for setting it all up and getting people to attend.

I’ve already had a few people reach out for questions. If you have any others, feel free to contact me.

Follow me on twitter: @coreyroth

TechEd Readiness Checklist

CoreyRoth — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:28:33 GMT

TechEd North America (#msteched) is just next week in Orlando, FL. This is my first TechEd and I’m excited to see what’s in store. 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 get the distinct pleasure of carrying a second laptop as well with my demos loaded on it in the event of an emergency / disaster. Disasters will happen. At SPC11, my virtual machine pretty much died on my primary laptop and I had to resort to the backup just twenty minutes before my session. I was sweating to say the least.
Netbook / Slate / Tablet – 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. This year, I am foregoing this because of the second laptop and my bag will be heavy enough. I have access to an Apple device but I am thinking I will probably leave it behind because I don’t want the extra weight and I’m embarrassed to pull it out at a Microsoft conference. :) 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. I still have my “temporary” AirCard I got for SPC11. :)
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 / Power Supplies – 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. I have gotten a few of these new emergency phone chargers at conferences lately and they are very handy here. Especially when you have a Nokia Lumia 900 and the battery life is terrible. Keep in mind your average day can be 16 – 18 hours plus and you don’t want to be left in the dark because your phone died.
Snacks – I got this idea from @TiffanyWI because she posted a picture of a mound of snacks. It’s not a bad idea to have some snacks in the room after a late night. A bag of M&Ms might look better for breakfast instead of one of those danishes no one ever eats.
Bail Money – The Houston SharePoint Users Group has a running joke about always keeping a stash of bail money around when attending a #SharePint. I’ve never been to TechEd before, but I have heard some stories so it’s probably not a bad idea.

Some other things you should remember to do before going and while at the conference:

Learn how to spell TechEd – This one has taken me months but I think I finally got it. It’s TechEd with no spaces. :)
Set your schedule on myTechEd - 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 myTechEd and set your schedule now!
Create your Bio on myTechEd – myTechEd is a great way to plan your conference experience. Take a few minutes to write about a little bit about yourself. Include where you work if you want along with what you want to get out of the conference. Upload a picture of yourself to make things more personal. Set your myTechEd profile now.
Arrange for Ground Transportation - Don’t forget to arrange for ground transportation. You really don’t need a car once you get to Orlando, but you do need a way to get there. I haven’t checked into shuttle service yet, so I’ll probably just go with a Taxi.
Create a #msteched Search in Twitter – There is no question you want to keep an eye on the activity of the #msteched 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 @TechEd_NA / @TechEd_Europe on Twitter – These are the official twitter account for TechEd. 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 – So I am not sure if TechEd is planning on using hashtags like SPC did, but they do have session codes that look similar so I could see them being used. If so, learn the session codes that you are in and use them to talk about the session you are in on twitter. Session code OPS338 looks like a great one. :)
Find out who is going from your area – it’s always great to have a friend to hang out with at the conference. If no one you know is going, maybe you can make a new friend.
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. Pay attention to @TheKrewe and their web site.
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. I screw this up every time and even when I think have enough space it’s never enough. This trip will be especially difficult for me since I am traveling for another four days after the conference.
Don’t be afraid to leave for lunch – I’m not a huge fan of conference food and it rarely gets along with my diet. Usually by the second or third day I am grabbing anyone I can find and going off-site.

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 a session at this year’s conference and I would love for you to see it.

#OPS338 – 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. What’s even better is I am using Visual Studio 2012 RC to demonstrate publishing Silverlight applications to SharePoint Online.

Enough with the shameless plug. :) Get ready and I’ll see you at the conference. If you’re into SharePoint, be sure and check out my TechEd Guide for SharePoint People.

You can follow me on twitter @coreyroth.

A TechEd Guide for SharePoint People

CoreyRoth — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:30:38 GMT

It’s true. I admit it. I have a sickness. I am a SharePoint person and proud of it. I’m attending Microsoft TechEd in Orlando next week (and in Amsterdam at the end of the month) for the first time. Although I am a noob to this conference, I thought I would share my thoughts on what you can do to maximize your SharePoint experience. TechEd covers all sorts of Microsoft technologies but there are plenty of SharePoint things to do.

Be sure and check out my TechEd Readiness Checklist as well.

There are over fifty sessions and hands-on-labs about SharePoint being offered. Take a look at some of these sessions:

Building Federated External Access for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Pre-conference Sunday 6/10 10:00a – S210A) – If you happen to be around for the pre-conference this session looks really exciting. Unfortunately, I won’t be arriving in time to see this session.
Advanced Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Monday 6/11 1:15p – S329) – This is a Bird of a Feather (BoF) session that goes deep talking about service applications, cross-farm services and search.
36 Terabytes: How Microsoft IT Manages SharePoint in the Enterprise (Monday 6/11 4:45p – S330A) – I always find it interesting to see how Microsoft is managing SharePoint internally.
Exploring the Power of Page Layouts in SharePoint 2010 WCM Sites (Tuesday 6/12 10:15a - S210E) – MVPs John Ross and Randy Drisgill will teach how to do great things with page layouts.
Advanced Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Troubleshooting (Tuesday 3:15p – S210A) – MVPs Shane Young and Todd Klindt explain how to get past common upgrade issues. That and the fact that Todd gave me crap on twitter. :)
Why Microsoft SharePoint and Windows Azure are Just Plain Better Together (Wednesday 6/13 8:30a – S230A) – I’ve seen Steve Fox speak a number of times and it always entertaining.
Code vs. "No-Code": Exactly Who Gets to Call Themselves a SharePoint Developer? (Wednesday 6/13 10:15a – S319) – This is always an interest debate and this BoF is sure to provide a great discussion.
Building and Customizing My Sites with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Wednesday 6/13 1:30p – S220G) – Another session with Ross and Drisgill showing you how to make your My Sites look better.
Making the Most of Search in SharePoint Online (Wednesday 6/13 3:15p – S210E) – The guy that is giving this session is awesome. I of course have to plug my own personal session. :) Come see how you can make search in SharePoint Online rock.
Configuring Kerberos for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 BI in 7 Steps (SQL Server 2012) (Wednesday 6/13 5:00p – S331A) – Configuring Kerberos can always be a challenge. This session can help.
I’m a SharePoint Developer in an Enterprise World! (Thursday 6/14 8:30a – S319) – I’m a fan of all of the Birds of a Feather sessions.
Step-by-Step: Building Search Driven Applications That Matter (Thursday 6/14 2:45p – N220A) – Great session on how to build SharePoint applications built around Search.

If I didn’t list your session, no offense. I can’t cover them all. That and I wanted to actually get this post out before the end of the conference. :)

TechEd has some great opportunities for certification. If you are looking to get certified, be sure to check out the following session.

Exam Cram Session on Exams 667 and 668: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (Tuesday 6/12 1:30p) – MCM Shannon Bray will be there to help you study for the exams.

There’s a whole heap of Hands-on-Labs (HoL) for SharePoint. This is a great way to work through a scenario in SharePoint while being able to raise your hand for help. Here are a few examples (see the link above for the complete list):

Of course there are a lot of other non-SharePoint things you should consider attending as well:

Opening Keynote (Monday 6/11 9:00a – N. Hall A1) – Of course you don’t want to miss the keynote
Windows Azure Today and Tomorrow (Monday 6/11 11:00a – N310) – When Scott Guthrie talks, you listen.
What’s New in Visual Studio 2012 (Monday 6/11 1:15p – N210) – If you are a developer, you need to know what’s coming in Visual Studio 2012. Be sure and check out my Visual Studio 2012 series for SharePoint as well.
PowerShell Remoting in Depth (Monday 6/11 3:00p – S320E) – We use a lot of PowerShell in SharePoint.
Tuesday Keynote (Tuesday 6/12 – 8:30a – N. Hal A1)

Hopefully this is a good list to get you started. Is there anything that I missed that should be on here? Leave a comment and I’ll get it added. Also keep an eye our for my TechEd Readiness Checklist post as well as a similar post for TechEd Europe. I look forward to seeing everyone there next week! Have a good TechEd!

Excited to be speaking at TechEd this year

CoreyRoth — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:48:29 GMT

I am excited to say that I’ll be speaking at both TechEd North America and TechEd Europe. This is my first time to even attend a TechEd so I am looking forward to see what is in store. Both events are sure to be exciting but I am particularly excited to be going to Amsterdam for TechEd Europe since I haven’t been in 10+ years. If you’re at either event, be sure and check out my session on Making the most of Search with SharePoint Online. There you will learn some great tricks on how to get more out of your search experience in the cloud. Links to my sessions are below.

TechEd North America

TechEd Europe

If you’re going to be at either event let me know. I am looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting some new people.

Follow me on twitter: @coreyroth

Understanding versioning with Excel Web App

CoreyRoth — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:19:26 GMT

If you have used Excel Web App (part of Office Web Apps), you are familiar with the fact that there is no “Save” button. The changes you make are immediately saved back to SharePoint and you even have multiple people editing the spreadsheet at the same time with Co-authoring. I had always wondered what happened when it comes to versioning so today I decided to dig a little deeper to find out what happens. We’ll start with editing an Excel document in the browser with versioning enabled. Whenever you change the value of a cell, the results are immediately saved back to SharePoint. However, opening a second browser to look at the versioning shows that we are still on the same version.

The changes have been saved to SharePoint, but no version has been created. Effectively, you can think of this as the same thing as calling .SystemUpdate() for you programmers out there. However, what I have found is if you wait long enough (a couple of minutes), eventually it will go and commit a new version. Otherwise, it will commit a new version when you

A new version will also be created if you close the document (either close out of the file menu or using the breadcrumbs). Where it gets really interesting is when you have multiple editors. You’ll see the same behavior as before, where a new version will be saved a few minutes after the first change. However, if multiple changes have occurred, it will write the last author’s name into the version.

However, ultimately whomever closes their browser session last (or times out last apparently) is the final author of the version. In this case, Anna closes the document first, then I closed it. It then goes back and updates the author and modified date on version 4.

In summary, Excel Web App will create a new version automatically for you if one hasn’t been created whenever you close the editor or after a period of time has elapsed after the first change. Whomever makes changes last will end being the ultimate author of that version. Btw, I have never seen it create a second version of a document when you leave it open for a long period of time. It appears that it will only create one version for a given Co-authoring editing session. Hopefully, this help you understand how versioning with Excel Web App works better. These examples were demonstrated using my Office 365 E3 account.

A look at content type hubs in SharePoint Online (Office 365)

CoreyRoth — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:29:02 GMT

For those of you familiar with SharePoint 2010, the content type hub is nothing new to you. However, in SharePoint Online, the content type hub works a little differently. The first thing to know is that a content type hub has been set up automatically for you. You just have to know where to find it. You can’t get to it from Tenant Administration like you might expect. Instead, you can find the location by going to the Site Settings page of any site collection and then the Content Type Publishing link. You will see a screen like the one below which links directly to the content types of a site collection containing your hub.

From here you will learn that your content type hub is located in a site collection named /sites/contentTypeHub. Clicking on the link from this page will allow you to view the content types in the hub. One issue I have noticed here though is that only the original Office 365 account creator has access to the site collection. Accessing it with another user will get you an access denied error message even if you are a global administrator.

Unfortunately, you cannot fix this yourself from the tenant administration page because this site collection does not show up on the list. This means you need to get the person who created the original Office 365 account to go to this site collection and add you as a site collection administrator. It’s easy to fix but it requires you to involve whomever set up the account to begin with.

Once you get into the content type hub, you can create and publish your desired content types just like you would in SharePoint 2010. When you publish a content type, you should see it in the other site collections within a few minutes.

Working with the content type hub is easy. Try it out with your account today. These examples were demonstrated with an E3 account.

A look at the list editor in Visual Studio 11

CoreyRoth — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:28:10 GMT

I’ve written a number of posts in the last couple of weeks about the new SharePoint features in the Visual Studio 11 developer preview. These posts include publishing to SharePoint Online, Visual Web Parts, Silverlight Web Part, and the Content Type Editor. I’ll wrap up this series with a look at the new list editor. The list editor looks fairly similar to the content type editor actually. You start by choosing the List SharePoint Project Item from the New Item menu.

Selecting the List SPI will take you to the next screen where you have the choice of creating a new list which is based off of an existing list (i.e. tasks or document library) or to create a new instance of an existing list type.

Once it is complete, you will see the list editor where you can edit site columns and content types. The site column editor works very similar to the one used for new content types.

The only difference in this interface is that you can actually create new list columns here. If you click the Content Types button at the bottom, you will see a window allowing you to select content types from those available on the server as well as in your current project.

After you have set your content type, the site columns of the content type will automatically be added to the site column list. From here, you can click on the Views tab to edit the existing views (or add a new one). You’ll notice that all views are visible (including ones you normally wouldn’t touch). Be careful with what you do here. You can customize the columns in each view. Unfortunately, the user interface doesn’t give you any control over how things look, row groupings, or sort order though.

Finally, the Common Properties tab lets you set the title, URL, description, whether the list is hidden or not and on the Quick Launch bar.

Once you have finished your list, you can deploy it to a local SharePoint server or publish it to SharePoint Online. When you visit the site, an instance of the list will be there ready to go.

That’s just a quick look at what you can do with Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. If you haven’t checked it out yet be sure and visit the developer center on MSDN.

How to: Use the Silverlight web part with Visual Studio 11

CoreyRoth — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:11:14 GMT

Visual Studio 11 adds a new feature that makes working with Silverlight in SharePoint 2010 a bit easier. The new Silverlight Web Part feature automates deploying your Silverlight applications to SharePoint and can really save you a bit of time. We took a look at how the Visual Web Part works in VS11 a while back. Now, let’s see what happens when we use Silverlight.

To work with Silverlight,you can either create a new project or simply add a new item to an existing project. I’ll start by creating a new project by choosing the item SharePoint 2010 Silverlight Web Part. Remember the number of project types has been reduced in VS11.

After you provide the usual SharePoint specific information, a new screen will prompt you for information on your Silverlight application. You can use an existing application or let it create a new project for you.

You have a choice of Silverlight version 4.0 or 5.0. Once you finish, you’ll have two new projects to work with. The designer opens up and then we’ll just create a simple Silverlight application.

Now, let’s take a look at the files. They prove to be a lot simpler than you might think.

If we click on the web part itself, we actually see the contents of the .webpart file. Taking a quick look at it, reveals its simplicity.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<webParts>
  <webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3">
    <metaData>
      <type name="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.SilverlightWebPart, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c, processorArchitecture=MSIL" />
      <importErrorMessage>$Resources:core,ImportErrorMessage;</importErrorMessage>
    </metaData>
    <data>
      <properties>
        <property name="Title" type="string">SilverlightWebPartProject1 - SilverlightWebPart1</property>
        <property name="Description" type="string">My Silverlight Web Part</property>
        <property name="Height" type="unit">300px</property>
        <property name="Width" type="unit">400px</property>
        <property name="Url" type="string">/SiteAssets/SilverlightWebPartProject1/SilverlightWebPart1/SilverlightProject1.xap</property>
      </properties>
    </data>
  </webPart>
</webParts>

It simply has a reference to the existing SilverlightWebPart included in SharePoint 2010. It sets a few properties such as Title, Description, Height, Width, and Url. Here you will notice that it’s actually copying the .xap file from your Silverlight project into the SiteAssets library. Note, that this is the only place to set the dimensions of your web part.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" >
  <Module Name="SilverlightWebPart1" List="113" Url="_catalogs/wp">
    <File Path="SilverlightWebPart1\SilverlightWebPart1.webpart" Url="SilverlightWebPartProject1_SilverlightWebPart1.webpart" Type="GhostableInLibrary" >
      <Property Name="Group" Value="Custom" />
    </File>
  </Module>
  <Module Name="SilverlightWebPart1">
    <File Path="SilverlightWebPart1\SilverlightProject1.xap" Url="SiteAssets/SilverlightWebPartProject1/SilverlightWebPart1/SilverlightProject1.xap" />
  </Module>
</Elements>

If we take a look at the Elements.xml file, we see that it deploys both the .webpart file and the .xap file using a Module element.

When you are ready to deploy just use the Deploy command in Visual Studio. It will build the Silverlight application, the .wsp file and send it to SharePoint. You no longer have to manually upload the .xap file (or add it manually to your package). Now, we can just add the web part to a page from the Insert ribbon.

Then you’ll have your Silverlight application on your page. Don’t be jealous of how great this one looks. :)

What about SharePoint Online? Does it work there too? Indeed it does. Just use the Publish feature I talked about earlier to deploy that solution to the cloud. One issue I did notice is that the path configured in the SilverlightWebPart is absolute. If you publish into a site collection not on the root, you’ll need to modify the path. I need to look at this one more since it might be based off of the local SharePoint site URL that you specified originally. Still it’s nice to know that it works. I tried it with an E3 account and I’m pretty sure it will work with P accounts as well.

How to: Query sites and site collections using SharePoint Search

CoreyRoth — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:41:21 GMT

I often refer to my Handy Keywords in SharePoint Search because it forms the building blocks you need to become a rock star at writing SharePoint keyword queries. Today, I want to expand upon that post on how you can use search to return a list of sites or site collections. This is useful when you want to quickly inspect a SharePoint farm using the Search Center. The secret behind returning sites with Search is use of the contentclass managed property. You just have to know what value to specify. To return a list of all sites in the search index, we specify a value of STS_Web (remember our translation guide). Here is what it looks like.

contentclass:"STS_Web"

This works pretty well. However, if you inspect the results on your own server, you might quickly notice one thing missing. The root web of all the site collections is not present in the search results. To get the site collections, we specify STS_Site instead.

contentclass:"STS_Site"

Notice, I now have all of the site collections on my particular tenant. If you want the results combined, you simply combine the queries.

contentclass:"STS_Site" contentclass:"STS_Web"

Now you might be thinking this is great, but you don’t want every site and site collection on the farm. You want to restrict it to a particular web application. That’s actually pretty easy, just refer back to the handy keywords post and use the Site managed property. In my case, I’ll restrict the URL to my main web application.

contentclass:"STS_Site" contentclass:"STS_Web" site:https://dotnetmafia.sharepoint.com

There are lots of ways to get lists of sites in SharePoint, but I find this one works well since it doesn’t require a line of code for you to try. Of course, as a developer, you can make use of this with the KeywordQuery class inside your own application. This works with SharePoint on-premises as well as SharePoint Online. All screenshots were from my personal SPO site.

Quick Tip: Use % to return all items in the search index (FAST Search for SharePoint and SharePoint Online)

CoreyRoth — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:55:40 GMT

Ever wanted to see what exactly is in your SharePoint search index with a simple query? Sure, you can take a look at the crawl log, but you can’t see that in SharePoint Online. With SharePoint 2010, you can use queries using the ContentSource keyword to return everything in that content source (i.e.: Local SharePoint sites). However, you may want to see the entire index. Well that’s actually pretty easy. Just use type % in the search box and submit your query. It will return everything there is.

This is a great way to see what is in your search index. It can also help you find things that maybe you didn’t want indexed. It even works with SharePoint Online as well.

What about people search? It works there too with SharePoint Online.

However, this doesn’t work in FAST Search for SharePoint (which is just SharePoint Search when it comes to people) for me. Even still, % is a useful operator that you can use to help troubleshoot issues with search.

UPDATE: Erich Stehr pointed out that % does not work on regular SharePoint Enterprise Search. He is correct. What is odd is that it does work in SharePoint Online. That will make you think about things. As an alternative, you can issue the query Size>=0 (no spaces) to return the entire index as well.

How to: Query People Search in SharePoint Online (and other SharePoint platforms too!)

CoreyRoth — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:38:12 GMT

At my Search talk at SPC11, I demoed how to build a Silverlight application that could query search in SharePoint Online. I also built a separate application that could query people search, but I haven’t posted on it yet until today. To query people search, we have to know a few things about how SharePoint operates. It all starts with understanding the scopes involved. If you take a look at your Search Scopes link in your site collection settings, you’ll see a similar list to the one below.

What’s funny here is that SPO actually returns item counts for the entire (non-partitioned index). This tells me that there are 205,000 items and 96,000 people on my particular Office 365 SharePoint host.

Ultimately, querying people search is just a matter of executing a query against the scope People, but there are a few catches. In SharePoint 2007, you could actually execute the query Scope:”People” on a results.aspx with a CoreResultsWebPart and you would actually get results. It wouldn’t display pictures or additional user information such as department or phone number, but it would work. With the introduction of federated search in SharePoint 2010, people search now gets executed by it’s own federated location named LocalPeopleSearchIndex (see my post on the QueryManager class for more information). This means that a regular CoreResultsWebPart will not return results for Scope:”People” no matter what you do.

However, a PeopleCoreResultsWebPart will.

Issuing the query Scope:”People” will return every user in the user profile store. Including service accounts like you see above. The fact that I couldn’t issue a people search query to the regular CoreResultsWebPart actually threw me off for quite some time. It just didn’t make sense to me what was going on behind the scenes. It didn’t become ultimately clear, until I tried issuing the query to Search.asmx. The Scope:”People” query works just fine when calling the web service. Today you will learn how to query people search using the web service. I’m going to use the exact same application I have been using with my other search demos, we’ll just tweak the input a little bit.

For today’s example, I am going to build off of the Silverlight 4 application I used at SPC. I’m using Silverlight, but you could just as well write a console application or call this web service from some other ASP.NET application. We still want to start by creating a service reference to /_vti_bin/search.asmx. We then create an instance of the web service so that we can use it. We also bind an event handling method to handle the results of the web service call.

QueryServiceSoapClient queryService = new QueryServiceSoapClient();

queryService.QueryExCompleted += new EventHandler<QueryExCompletedEventArgs>(QueryService_QueryExCompleted);

Once we have a reference to the web service, it’s just a matter of constructing the input XML document and sending it to the web service. For SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2010, we actually don’t have to change any of the XML at all. We just need to change the query. That means our input will look like the following. Note, we’re using a type of STRING (even if using FAST Search for SharePoint).

<Format>urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document.Document</Format>

</SupportedFormats>

<QueryText language="en-US" type="STRING">Scope:"People"</QueryText>

</Context>

</Query>

</QueryPacket>

If we are using FAST Search for SharePoint, we need to add to a ResultProvider element inside the Query element. Remember, People Search is handled by the SharePoint 2010 search engine in FAST Search for SharePoint.

<ResultProvider>SharePointSearch</ResultProvider>

Just like before, I assemble this XML string using a StringBuilder. I allow the user to type in a query and I just automatically append Scope:”People” to the query ensuring we only get people results.

StringBuilder queryXml = new StringBuilder();
 
queryXml.Append("<QueryPacket xmlns=\"urn:Microsoft.Search.Query\" Revision=\"1000\">");
queryXml.Append("<Query domain=\"QDomain\">");
queryXml.Append("<SupportedFormats>");
queryXml.Append("<Format>");
queryXml.Append("urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document.Document");
queryXml.Append("</Format>");
queryXml.Append("</SupportedFormats>");
queryXml.Append("<Context>");
queryXml.Append("<QueryText language=\"en-US\" type=\"STRING\">");
queryXml.AppendFormat("{0} Scope:\"People\"", SearchTextBox.Text);
queryXml.Append("</QueryText>");
queryXml.Append("</Context>");
queryXml.Append("</Query>");
queryXml.Append("</QueryPacket>");
 
queryService.QueryExAsync(queryXml.ToString());

We’ll then bind the resulting XML to a textbox so that we can look at the results.

ResultsTextBox.Text = e.Result.Nodes[1].ToString();

That’s all that is involved in this first round of code. Compile the code and upload the Silverlight application to a document library and use the Silverlight web part just like before. If you want more details on how the above code works, be sure and check out the original Search with Silverlight 4 post. Let’s take a look at the results. Here’s the application running.

I issues a query and I got results. Let’s look at the XML in the results a bit more though.

<diffgr:diffgram xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata" xmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1">
  <Results xmlns="">
    <RelevantResults diffgr:id="RelevantResults1" msdata:rowOrder="0">
      <WorkId>72787</WorkId>
      <Rank>100000000</Rank>
      <Title>Craig Johnson</Title>
      <Size>0</Size>
      <Path>https://dotnetmafia-my.sharepoint.com/Person.aspx?accountname=i%3A0%23.f|membership|craig.johnson%40dotnetmafia.onmicrosoft.com</Path>
      <Write>2011-09-09T18:20:05-07:00</Write>
      <SiteName>https://dotnetmafia-my.sharepoint.com</SiteName>
      <CollapsingStatus>0</CollapsingStatus>
      <HitHighlightedSummary />
      <HitHighlightedProperties>&lt;HHTitle&gt;Craig Johnson&lt;/HHTitle&gt;&lt;HHUrl&gt;https://dotnetmafia-my.sharepoint.com/Person.aspx?accountname=i%3A0%23.f|membership|craig.johnson%40dotnetmafia.onmicrosoft.com&lt;/HHUrl&gt;</HitHighlightedProperties>
      <ContentClass>urn:content-class:SPSPeople</ContentClass>
      <IsDocument>false</IsDocument>
      <PictureThumbnailURL>https://dotnetmafia-my.sharepoint.com/User Photos/Profile Pictures/i_0_.f_membership_craig.johnson@dotnetmafia.onmicrosoft.com_MThumb.jpg</PictureThumbnailURL>
    </RelevantResults>

We have the user’s name in the Title field and we have some links to a picture and the user’s profile. For the most part though, these fields aren’t entirely useful. That’s because SharePoint treats this result as a regular document result instead of a person. If we want useful information about the user, we have to ask for that information in our original query. Specifically, we need to specify the names of the managed properties that we want returned (i.e.: JobTitle and Department). How do we know what the names of those properties are? In SharePoint 2010, we can just go look in the search service application. However, we don’t have that option in SharePoint Online. There’s another way though. Go back to your PeopleResults.aspx page in your Search Center and edit it. Then, you need to modify the PeopleCoreResultsWebPart. Expand Display Properties and then uncheck Use Location Visualization. The contents of the XML in Fetched Properties has the answer.

Here is what the XML looks like.

<Columns>
  <Column Name="WorkId"/>
  <Column Name="UserProfile_GUID"/>
  <Column Name="AccountName"/>
  <Column Name="PreferredName" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="YomiDisplayName" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="JobTitle" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="Department" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="WorkPhone" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="OfficeNumber" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="PictureURL"/>
  <Column Name="HierarchyUrl"/>
  <Column Name="WorkEmail" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="Path"/>
  <Column Name="HitHighlightedSummary"/>
  <Column Name="HitHighlightedProperties"/>
  <Column Name="Responsibility" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="Skills" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="SipAddress" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="Schools" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="PastProjects" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="Interests" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="OrgNames" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="OrgUrls"/>
  <Column Name="OrgParentNames" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="OrgParentUrls"/>
  <Column Name="Memberships" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="AboutMe" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="BaseOfficeLocation" HitHighLight="true"/>
  <Column Name="ServiceApplicationID"/>
  <Column Name="SocialDistance"/>
</Columns>

This gives you quite a few choices to display in your results. The column names are pretty self explanatory. Now, we just have modify our input XML to specify which managed properties we want. Do you remember how to specify managed properties with the Search web service? If not, we start by adding a Properties element inside the Query element. We then add a Property element for each managed property. One thing to remember is that the managed properties must be specified in lower case. You will get a NotFound exception if they are not. Here is an example:

<Properties>
  <Property name="accountname" />
  <Property name="preferredname" />
  <Property name="jobtitle" />
  <Property name="department" />
  <Property name="workphone" />
  <Property name="officenumber" />
  <Property name="pictureurl" />
  <Property name="workemail" />
</Properties>

Remember, once you specify any column, you must specify every column you want. The default columns will no longer be returned. When we recompile, upload the new application, and execute a query again, we now get much better results.

<diffgr:diffgram xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata" xmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1">
  <Results xmlns="">
    <RelevantResults diffgr:id="RelevantResults1" msdata:rowOrder="0">
      <accountname>i:0#.f|membership|craig.johnson@dotnetmafia.onmicrosoft.com</accountname>
      <preferredname>Craig Johnson</preferredname>
      <jobtitle>Accountant</jobtitle>
      <department>Accounts Receivable</department>
      <workphone>123-555-1215</workphone>
      <officenumber>123455</officenumber>
      <pictureurl>https://dotnetmafia-my.sharepoint.com/User Photos/Profile Pictures/i_0_.f_membership_craig.johnson@dotnetmafia.onmicrosoft.com_MThumb.jpg</pictureurl>
      <workemail>craig.johnson@dotnetmafia.onmicrosoft.com</workemail>
    </RelevantResults>

You can query with these same managed properties as well. For example, I could use the department managed property to see who is in Accounting with the following query.

department:”accounting”

Maybe, you want to look up who the CEO of the company is. To do that use the jobtitle managed property. Resist the urge to capitalize the words in the managed property. They must be in lower case. Note: that the title managed property is reserved for personal titles such as Jr., Sr. etc.

jobtitle:”CEO”

Now, that we can query with all of these properties, we can make a nice advanced people search application. In my demo at SPC11, I used the Telerik RadGridView control to display the user information along with the picture from the user profile. Here’s a screenshot of what the application looked like.

You can use the same techniques that I detailed in the Advanced Search with Silverlight 4 post to build a people search application like the one above. This code will work on-premises (SharePoint 2010 or FAST Search for SharePoint) or in the cloud with SharePoint Online. I’ve confirmed this works with both the P1 and E3 SKUs of Office 365.

Dealing with that pesky SharePoint server in another time zone

CoreyRoth — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:17:07 GMT

Working at an International company now, I found that I was often running into issues looking at the time stamps of documents. Our collaboration server was in EST while I was in CST. It could be confusing at times when you were working on a document for a while and you weren’t sure if the latest version had been saved. While I was at #SPC11, I sat in a session and picked up this quick tip. You can actually configure SharePoint to display times in your own time zone. If you’ve been working for a large company, maybe you already knew this, but I had never noticed it before.

It’s quite simple to configure. In the top-right menu (the one with your name on it), there is a menu item labeled My Settings.

Clicking this link will bring you to a page that contains profile information.

However, we’re not interested in the profile, we’re interested in the My Regional Settings button at the top. Click it and we can fix the problem.

Uncheck the Always follow web settings checkbox and then we can change our time zone.

This is also where you can change the Locale as well if you want your dates in a different format. Once you make these changes, your document libraries will show your documents with time stamps adjusted for your time zone. This setting is available in SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2007, as well SharePoint Online. The screenshots were from my Office 365 account.

Slides from my talk at SharePoint Saturday Denver

CoreyRoth — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:13:57 GMT

I had the honor of speaking at SharePoint Saturday Denver this weekend. Clayton Cobb (@warrtalon) and the people from Denver did a great job putting together this event. I spoke about how to improve your SharePoint Search experience. I’ve uploaded my slides to SlideShare at the link below. Denver was fun, but I have learned this weekend that the mountains aren’t for me. :) This was a great event and certainly one I will remember.

Making the most of SharePoint Search

The code for the advanced search application I demoed can be found in this post. The customization you can make to add a View Folder link to your search results, can be found in this post.

Follow me on twitter.

Building a SharePoint advanced search application with Silverlight 4

CoreyRoth — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:29:00 GMT

At SharePoint Conference 2011, I showed off a great looking advanced search application using Silverlight 4. This application queried the Search web service at /_vti_bin/search.asmx to retrieve results and display them directly inside the application. A couple of years ago, I demonstrated how to build an advanced search application with Silverlight 3. This application is very similar to that one except that I take it a step further and show you more of the possibilities of what the user interface could look like.

The code you will see today was intended for Office 365 / SharePoint Online but will work quite well with SharePoint 2010 (and to a degree SharePoint 2007). Everything from the pervious article pretty much applies. We create a reference to search.asmx, we build an XML input document, and then we make an asynchronous call to the web service. One thing I will point out is that I have been unsuccessful in getting the ClientAccessPolicy.xml file to work with SharePoint Online. This means that the application cannot run locally to allow us to debug it. I’ve posted to the Office 365 forums but have had no luck. If anyone figures this out, please let me know.

The way we build the input XML document and call the web service is exactly the same as the pervious post. However, what is different is the actual keyword query we construct. Let’s take a look at what the interface looks like first.

There is a number of things going on here in this interface. We first provide the user to do a simple keyword query search. However, we also give the user the ability to query by File Size, Modified Date, Author, and by Document Only. To do this, we use the following built-in managed properties respectively FileSize, Write, Author, and IsDocument. The user can select any combination of the above to get a more specific query. When the user clicks the SearchButton, our code builds a custom keyword query and sends it to the search web service. The QueryTextBox displays the query that was constructed by the code. However, it can also be modified by the user to test out a query manually. This serves as a great search query testing tool. After the user searches, the returned XML document is displayed in the large multiline textbox. Beneath the textbox, I have added a Telerik GridView control. I had this available to me so I decided to use it. I think you could just as well have used a DataGrid control to bind the data too.

The code for the Silverlight application is surprisingly simple. When the user clicks the SearchButton, we begin to construct the keyword query we want to pass to the web service. To do this, we need a StringBuilder class so be sure and add a reference to System.Text. We then check each control to see if it has a value. For example, for SearchTextBox, if it has a value we simply append it to the StringBuilder named searchQuery.

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(SearchTextBox.Text))       
    searchQuery.AppendFormat("{0} ", SearchTextBox.Text);

The FileSize managed property has an operator with values such as >, >=, < and, <=. These are contained in the ModifiedDateOperatorComboBox. If there is a value then we append it to searchQuery.

if (FileSizeOperatorComboBox.SelectedItem != null)       
    searchQuery.AppendFormat("Size{0}\"{1}\" ",       
        ((ComboBoxItem)FileSizeOperatorComboBox.SelectedItem).Content.ToString(),       
        FileSizeTextBox.Text);

We continue to this for the rest of the controls on the page in the SearchButton click event handling method. Here is the entire method.

private void SearchButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)       
{       
    StringBuilder searchQuery = new StringBuilder();       
      
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(SearchTextBox.Text))       
        searchQuery.AppendFormat("{0} ", SearchTextBox.Text);       
      
    if (FileSizeOperatorComboBox.SelectedItem != null)       
        searchQuery.AppendFormat("Size{0}\"{1}\" ",       
            ((ComboBoxItem)FileSizeOperatorComboBox.SelectedItem).Content.ToString(),       
            FileSizeTextBox.Text);       
      
    if (ModifiedDateOperatorComboBox.SelectedItem != null)       
        searchQuery.AppendFormat("Write{0}\"{1}\" ",       
            ((ComboBoxItem)ModifiedDateOperatorComboBox.SelectedItem).Content.ToString(),       
            ModifiedDatePicker.SelectedDate.ToString());       
      
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AuthorTextBox.Text))       
        searchQuery.AppendFormat("Author:\"{0}\" ", AuthorTextBox.Text);       
      
    if (DocumentsOnlyCheckBox.IsChecked.Value)       
        searchQuery.Append("IsDocument:1 ");       
      
    // pass the search query to the method to actually call the search service       
    QuerySearchService(searchQuery.ToString());       
}

The QuerySearchService method makes the actual call to the web service. Since we’re dealing with Silvelright, we have to call the web service method asynchronously. We do this by binding an event handling method to the QueryExCompleted event. Again for more details on how the XML is constructed see my information from the Silverlight 3 post.

private void QuerySearchService(string searchQuery)       
{       
    QueryServiceSoapClient queryService = new QueryServiceSoapClient();       
    queryService.QueryExCompleted += new EventHandler<QueryExCompletedEventArgs>(QueryService_QueryExCompleted);       
      
    QueryTextBox.Text = searchQuery;       
    StringBuilder queryXml = new StringBuilder();       
      
    queryXml.Append("<QueryPacket xmlns=\"urn:Microsoft.Search.Query\" Revision=\"1000\">");       
    queryXml.Append("<Query domain=\"QDomain\">");       
    queryXml.Append("<SupportedFormats>");       
    queryXml.Append("<Format>");       
    queryXml.Append("urn:Microsoft.Search.Response.Document.Document");       
    queryXml.Append("</Format>");       
    queryXml.Append("</SupportedFormats>");       
    queryXml.Append("<Range>");       
    queryXml.Append("<Count>50</Count>");       
    queryXml.Append("</Range>");       
    queryXml.Append("<Context>");       
    queryXml.Append("<QueryText language=\"en-US\" type=\"STRING\">");       
    queryXml.Append(searchQuery);       
    queryXml.Append("</QueryText>");       
    queryXml.Append("</Context>");       
    queryXml.Append("</Query>");       
    queryXml.Append("</QueryPacket>");       
      
    BusyIndicator.IsBusy = true;       
    queryService.QueryExAsync(queryXml.ToString());       
}

The last line passed the XML input document to the web service method. Now, it’s just a matter of handling the return results in the event handling method. The first thing we need to do is get the XML document with the results. We can always find this in the Result.Nodes[1] object available in QueryExCompletedEventArgs. For convenience, I write this value to a TextBox so that I can view it.

ResultsTextBox.Text = e.Result.Nodes[1].ToString();

However, I want to bind this XML to our nice looking RadGridView. To do this I must extract the data from the XDocument and expose it in a custom type. Here is where the LINQ to XML comes in. Normally, I would just use an anonymous type for this, but that doesn’t work in Silverlight. This means I have to create a new class to hold our search results. I call this class SearchResult.

public class SearchResult       
{       
    public string Title { get; set; }       
    public string Path { get; set; }       
    public string Author { get; set; }       
    public string Size { get; set; }       
    public DateTime? Write { get; set; }       
    public string SiteName { get; set; }       
    public string HitHighlightedSummary { get; set; }       
    public string ContentClass { get; set; }       
    public bool IsDocument { get; set; }       
}

I then use LINQ to XML to write the value of each property in. Since nulls are a real possibility, I use .Any() before assigning each value to ensure we don’t get an exception. To understand the LINQ we use, let’s take a quick look at the result XML document.

<diffgr:diffgram xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata" xmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1">       
    <Results xmlns="">       
        <RelevantResults diffgr:id="RelevantResults1" msdata:rowOrder="0">       
            <WorkId>2799582</WorkId>       
            <Rank>78969610</Rank>       
            <Title>Sales</Title>       
            <Size>65211</Size>       
            <Path>https://dotnetmafia.sharepoint.com/sites/fabrikam/teamsites/sales</Path>       
            <Write>2011-08-11T07:11:59-07:00</Write>       
            <SiteName>https://dotnetmafia.sharepoint.com/sites/fabrikam/teamsites</SiteName>       
            <CollapsingStatus>0</CollapsingStatus>       
            <HitHighlightedSummary>Site Actions &lt;ddd/&gt; This page location is: &lt;ddd/&gt; Home &lt;ddd/&gt; Team Sites &lt;ddd/&gt; Pages &lt;ddd/&gt; default &lt;ddd/&gt; Employee &lt;ddd/&gt; Resources &lt;ddd/&gt; Facilities &lt;ddd/&gt; News &lt;ddd/&gt; I Like It &lt;ddd/&gt; Tags &amp;amp; Notes &lt;ddd/&gt; Libraries &lt;ddd/&gt; Shared Documents &lt;ddd/&gt; Flyers &lt;ddd/&gt; Presentations &lt;ddd/&gt; Proposals &lt;ddd/&gt; &lt;c0&gt;Sales&lt;/c0&gt; Forecasts &lt;ddd/&gt; Lists &lt;ddd/&gt; Calendar &lt;ddd/&gt; Tasks &lt;ddd/&gt; </HitHighlightedSummary>       
            <HitHighlightedProperties>&lt;HHTitle&gt;&lt;c0&gt;Sales&lt;/c0&gt;&lt;/HHTitle&gt;&lt;HHUrl&gt;https://dotnetmafia.sharepoint.com/sites/fabrikam/teamsites/&lt;c0&gt;sales&lt;/c0&gt;&lt;/HHUrl&gt;</HitHighlightedProperties>       
            <ContentClass>STS_Web</ContentClass>       
            <IsDocument>false</IsDocument>       
        </RelevantResults>

Each search result is contained inside a ReleventResults node inside of the Results element. So we look inside there to create our query.

var results = from result in       
                                  e.Result.Nodes[1].Descendants("RelevantResults")       
                              select new SearchResult       
                              {       
                                  Title = (result.Elements("Title").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("Title").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  Path = (result.Elements("Path").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("Path").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  Author = (result.Elements("Author").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("Author").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  Size = (result.Elements("Size").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("Size").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  Write = (result.Elements("Write").Any())       
                                    ? DateTime.Parse(result.Element("Write").Value) : DateTime.MinValue,       
                                  SiteName = (result.Elements("SiteName").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("SiteName").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  HitHighlightedSummary = (result.Elements("HitHighlightedSummary").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("HitHighlightedSummary").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  ContentClass = (result.Elements("ContentClass").Any())       
                                    ? result.Element("ContentClass").Value : string.Empty,       
                                  IsDocument = (result.Elements("IsDocument").Any())       
                                    ? bool.Parse(result.Element("IsDocument").Value) : false       
                              };

We simply assign each property after verifying that it’s not null. Most values are strings but we did do some casting for DateTime and Boolean values. The last thing we do is bind to the RadGridView.

ResultsRadGridView.ItemsSource = results;

The next section applies to the Telerik specific content. If you don’t have those controls available to you, you can skip this section and you can configure the built-in grid in a similar manner. RadGridView has some column types that allow us to format links and checkboxes in a nice manner. Telerik has free trials available if you are interested. Here is what that code looks like.

<telerik:RadGridView HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="13,227,0,0" Name="ResultsRadGridView" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="776" AutoGenerateColumns="False">       
    <telerik:RadGridView.Columns>       
        <telerik:GridViewDynamicHyperlinkColumn Header="Title" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Title}" NavigateUrlFormatString="{} {0}" NavigateUrlMemberPaths="Path" TargetName="_blank" />       
        <telerik:GridViewDataColumn Header="Author" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Author}" />       
        <telerik:GridViewDataColumn Header="Write" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Write}" DataFormatString="{} {0:MMM, dd, yyyy}" />       
        <telerik:GridViewDataColumn Header="Size" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Size}" />       
        <telerik:GridViewDataColumn Header="HitHighlightedSummary" DataMemberBinding="{Binding HitHighlightedSummary}" />       
        <telerik:GridViewDataColumn Header="ContentClass" DataMemberBinding="{Binding ContentClass}" />       
        <telerik:GridViewHyperlinkColumn Header="SiteName" DataMemberBinding="{Binding SiteName}" TargetName="_blank" />       
        <telerik:GridViewCheckBoxColumn Header="IsDocument" DataMemberBinding="{Binding IsDocument}" />       
    </telerik:RadGridView.Columns>       
</telerik:RadGridView>

That’s all the code that is involved. Here is a screenshot of it in action.

I’ve attached the code to this post (minus the Telerik controls). This code will work on-premises or in the cloud with SharePoint Online. I’ve confirmed this works with both the P1 and E3 SKUs of Office 365. I just used built-in managed properties in my example, but if you create custom properties of your own you can add those as well. Try it out and see what you think.

Using SharePoint Online (Office365) for Extranets

CoreyRoth — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:39:27 GMT

This week at SharePoint Conference (#SPC11), I had the pleasure of giving a talk about the benefits of using SharePoint as an Extranet platform. I discuss the benefits and considerations of using SharePoint for an Extranet when it comes to on-premises solutions. I know I am likely to get the question, “What about SharePoint Online though?” It’s a great question and the more you think about it SharePoint Online is a great option for serving up an Extranet to your customers, partners, and vendors. Why you say? Well, let’s break it down to the things we have to think about when implementing an Extranet on-premises.

Target audience

The target audience of an extranet is typically, customers, partners, and vendors. It is also useful for remote employees when you don’t want them to have to log in to a VPN every time they need to view a document. The types of documents you often see on an extranet are reports, invoices, contracts, and anything else that you might need to collaborate on. As you will see, SharePoint Online is a great fit for this and quite possibly could be the fastest way to launch an Extranet for you organization.

The Network

In order to make an Extranet happen, one of the things that must occur is that you get that SharePoint environment exposed to the Internet in whatever way works for your organization. This is a huge consideration. It involves you getting network architects involved and various other people to find a way to poke a hole through your firewalls to allow SharePoint to work externally. There are simple solutions to this and extremely advanced solutions. The more stringent your network requirements are the more you have to consider this. With SharePoint Online, Microsoft has already made all of the hard decisions about getting SharePoint onto the Internet so you don’t have to. You just sign up, create your users, put some content out there and you are good to go.

Authentication

SharePoint provides many different ways to authenticate On-Premises. You can use Active Directory with NTLM or Kerberos, Forms Based Authentication (FBA) with the ASP.NET membership provider, LDAP provider, Active Directory, or something custom. You can also use a trusted identity provider with Windows Live or ADFS 2.0 That’s a lot of options and that’s not even close to all of them. Each one has its own set of considerations. When I am doing an Extranet, I prefer a solution where we don’t have to manage the users credentials or password resets. That makes Windows Live ID and other Trusted Identity Providers very attractive. There are so many options, but why should you have to worry about it. Office 365 makes it easy.

What does SharePoint Online provide? Well, it uses a flavor of Windows Live. You can create users easily using the administration portal. However, you don’t have to. Probably the coolest feature in SharePoint Online is the option to share with external users. I wrote a post a while back on how to configure this that you should check out. All you have to do is type the users E-mail address in. When the user receives an E-mail, they click on it and they sign in with their Windows Live account. You can assign permissions on this users Windows Live account just like they were a regular user. Out-of-the-box (cloud), SharePoint Online allows you to share with up to 50 external users. If you need more external users, you can purchase more (in 50 packs I believe).

SharePoint Functionality

SharePoint Online probably has most of the functionality you probably need out-of-the-box when it comes to sharing documents with partners. You can obviously create document libraries, set up content types, use search, and even apply some policies. Various licenses even include Office Web Apps for read (and optionally write) functionality which makes it really easy for users to view content without even having to download it. It really is a great platform for sharing documents with people outside your company.

Going “around” your IT department

IT people will hate this. However, business users who have to deal with slowly reacting IT departments will love it. A business user can sign up for Office 365 and have a SharePoint Online site in under an hour. I assure you no IT department out there will be able to match that. Even if your IT department reacts quickly, more than likely someone in the food chain will want to hold it up to “evaluate it” and make themselves feel important. I’m not saying to go out and not get IT buy in, but it really is an option for unresponsive IT departments. Of course, with SharePoint Online you have governance considerations as well and I could see companies making policies stating that all SharePoint Online usage needs to go through IT. Your business users may do what they need to do though. I can definitely see this being a challenge.

Summary

You’ve seen the considerations for running an Extranet now. SharePoint Online is a great fit and can be provisioned quickly. Hopefully this post will help you make the right decision when it comes to provisioning an Extranet.

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.