Office 365: Cloud based and convenient

Office 365 is about mobility; it's about maximization of your time; and it's about being where you are all the time. With Office 365 you get some of the following great products to keep you connected and efficient: Microsoft Office; email and calendars; website; office web apps; file sharing and managing projects, instant messaging, presence, and conferencing; mobility; and security and trust.

Let us take a closer look at some of key features found in Office 365. One of the key drawbacks to placing everything in cloud is security. With Office 365 comes the built in security features and peace of mind. Office 365 applications are accessed through a 128-bit SSL/TSL encryption that ensures the safety of your documents and should someone try to intercept your work, they will not be able to read it. All antivirus signatures are up to date so you don't have to worry about infestations in your work. Microsoft is dedicated to security and keeping your data secure (check this website for whitepapers on security in office 365).

Use Dashboard Designer to Create a Scoreboard

SharePoint is the perfect business data container, but the data is not easy to read. Reporting and visualization of data is the only way to turn the data into usable information. Charts and Indicators are some of the ways to make such data easier to understand. The Business Intelligence Center is one of the templates shipped with SharePoint Server 2010. It is optimized to help you manage the working elements of business intelligence reporting: scorecards, dashboards, data connections, status lists, status indicators, etc.

In this article I will show you how to use Dashboard Designer to create a dashboard that displays a sales performance scorecard. The final result will look like this:

How to Create Charts in SharePoint 2010

Charts are one of the one of most common things to do while working with SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 makes creating charts easy. With the SharePoint 2010 Chart Web Part, you can create charts with no coding at all. Now, let us take a look at how to create a chart in SharePoint 2010.

1. Create a SharePoint Custom List and name it "Salary."

2. Add three custom columns named "Gross," "Housing fund" and "Medicare Tax." Each of these three columns types should be "Single line of text."

3. Add several items to the list.

Configuring Single Sign-ons in MOSS 2007

This SharePoint feature provides storage and mapping of credentials such as account and password so that you do not need to login again when you access portal site-based applications such as Custom Relations Management (CRM) system.

Its configuration includes the following five parts:

1. Enable the Service on the SharePoint Server
2. Manage Server Settings
3. Manage Encryption Key(s)
4. Manage the Settings for Enterprise Application Definitions
5. Manage the Account Information for Enterprise Application Definitions

1. Enable the Service on the SharePoint Server

The first step is to start the SSO service or else other configuration cannot be processed.

(1) Login to the SharePoint server.

How to Import Excel Data to SharePoint

If you are running a SharePoint Server and  have an excel spreadsheet of about 5000 rows / 40 columns, which you would like to import to a SharePoint list. Do you have any opinions on how to get these data into a SharePoint list?  Moreover, if these data need to be updated after importing them to a SharePoint list, do you have any opinions on how to update the existing data? In this article, you will find some ways to achieve those goals. With  SharePoint out-of-the-box, there are two methods that you can use to move your data from an Excel spreadsheet to SharePoint. One is to directly import your Excel spreadsheet into SharePoint list. The other is to utilize the cut and paste feature to directly move your Excel spreadsheet information into the datasheet view.   Using the first method - cut and paste into SharePoint datasheet, you have to make sure that the number of columns and rows in your Excel spreadsheet are exactly the same as in the SharePoint datasheet. There is no way of creating new columns and rows on paste.   The second method is to import from Excel spreadsheet into SharePoint list. To do this you have to first make some preparations before you can import into SharePoint such as ensuring that the list is clean with no blank columns or rows; ensure that the list has headers, that is, all columns should have a title; column data has to be consistent; and the first row is a representation of the rest of the data. All these steps can quickly become cumbersome especially if your list contains a lot of data and the time it takes to reorganize the data for importing can quickly make importing a very hard task.   There are some of the other problems you may run into when setting up to import your Excel spreadsheet. The first problem is that SharePoint list does not support importing Excel data into existing SharePoint lists. Another problem is that SharePoint cannot map Excel columns. The third problem is that the spreadsheet program has to be compatible with SharePoint.   If you want to update the Excel data that has already  been imported into SharePoint list, in my opinion, you can only achieve this by buying a third-party product. Excel Import may meet your needs.

Top 10 Benefits of using Microsoft SharePoint Server

What is SharePoint?

​Microsoft SharePoint 2010 makes it easier for people to work together. Using SharePoint 2010, your people can set up Web sites to share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions.

How to Remove Missing WebPart during SharePoint Upgrade

If you are upgrading SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and getting "MissingWebPart" error when using the Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet in PowerShell, this tip will help you diagnose the issue.

Following is the original error:

Category: MissingWebPart

Error: True

UpgradeBlocking : False

Message: WebPart class [8c8bca43-cbc1-da50-d518-54614c79b3f5] is referenced [1] times in the database [WSS_Content], but is not installed on the current farm. Please install any feature/solution which contains this web part.

Remedy: One or more web parts are referenced in the database [WSS_Content], but are not installed on the current farm. Please install any feature or solution which contains these web parts.

SharePoint Conference 2012

SharePoint Conference 2012 is the only conference experience brought to you by the team that actually built Microsoft SharePoint. The followings are the benefits the conference offers:

Truly unique content. Take a sneak peak at over 30 of our featured sessions with deep-dive information aimed at Developers, IT Professionals, and Business Decision Makers. Stay tuned for our full session list.

You can't get this kind of community anywhere else. Whether you're meeting with industry leaders or Microsoft product engineers, this is THE place where the community gathers to build relationships and share best practices.

Learn to work smarter. The expo floor will be packed with over 220 partners showcasing cutting-edge solutions and helping you find better ways to solve problems.

Visit www.sharepointconference.com to know more.

Different ways for getting SharePoint versions

SharePoint now has two major releases: SharePoint 2007 (with version 12.0) and SharePoint 2010 (with version 14.0). For developers, it's important to know which version they're working on. Sometimes developers need to working on both and write different code for different version.

Here are several ways to get SharePoint versions.

1. Get the version by SharePoint Object Model
This is easy for all developers, using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace and gets the version information by following code.

string version = SPFarm.Local.BuildVersion;
Console.WriteLine(version);

For SharePoint 2007, the output will be string begins with "12.0"; for SharePoint 2010, the output will be string starts with "14.0".

The Cloud-bases Office 365

When SharePoint was initially released in 2001, it were built with a goal to make business collaboration easier and enable large groups of individuals to corporate together. Now in 2012 Microsoft is getting a new and innovative leap with SharePoint 365, referred to as SharePoint Online, that is a section of the new Office 365 package. The purpose for Microsoft is to assist you as well as your organization collaborate much easier by moving into a cloud-based environment to boost functionality as part of a larger Office 365 and to help make your business teamwork faster and much more efficient. Being as a part of Office 365, it provides you with flexibility along with the capability to access your documents, files and information almost anywhere, and also making it simple to corporate with colleagues and customers.