Word 2007 – Filling Up Demo Documents

Often when I’m demonstrating things like SharePoint document libraries, I find I need to create a new Word document and quickly fill it with some placeholder text, ideally real text rather than the usual “asdadsadasdasda” that you end up typing otherwise.

For a long time I’ve used a little feature in Microsoft Word, whereby you can type =rand() and hit enter to generate some placeholder paragraphs, or =rand(paragraphs,sentences) to specify a number paragraphs and sentences.  Even though this feature has been around in Word for several versions now, most people still don’t know it exists.  One thing that has changed in Word 2007 is that the generated paragraphs are a little bit of Word 2007 help, like this sample -

On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document …

In previous versions of Word, using =rand() generated multiple paragraphs of The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog which is a pangram containing all letters of the alphabet.  Well, thanks to this post on the Microsoft Word Team blog I’ve discovered you can still use the “quick brown fox” version – you just have to use =rand.old() instead. 

The Word Team’s post also mentions another function (new to me) which can be used in Word to generate Lorem Ipsum text, using = lorem() – again, quite useful for generating placeholder text in documents, web pages and SharePoint web parts.

Technorati tags: Word 2007, lorem ipsum, placeholder

Tools for SharePoint UI Layout

A while ago I wrote about Balsamiq Mockups and since then I’ve been trying it out on a couple of specification jobs.   On the Balsamiq Mockups to Go site I found this very handy set of pre-built SharePoint elements – so many thanks to Gordon MacLeod of Navantis for that.   Following a quick download of these elements It was possible to create mock-ups like this (click image for a larger view):

 

So definitely worth considering if you need some quick SharePoint mock-ups for a presentation or proposal.  By the way you can now link Mockups together, also useful when presenting to an audience.

I also just heard about Visio Shapes for SharePoint, basically three different collections of stencils and shapes covering SharePoint UI prototyping, architectural design and conceptual views of your SharePoint implementation.   I haven’t tried this one myself yet but looking at the screenshots on the site you get a very comprehensive set of design elements.  I plan to take a look soon – if anyone reading this has worked with this product please leave a comment and let me know – I’m keen to hear what it’s like.

Technorati tags: User Interface, UI, SharePoint, Mockups, Visio

Kilimanjaro Becomes SQL Server 2008 R2

News in the past week of plans for the next version of SQL Server.  This previously had the code name Kilimanjaro, but now becomes SQL Server 2008 R2.  I’m not really sure I understand the Microsoft’s logic behind product naming.  As far as I can see SQL Server 2008 R2 will be released in H1 2010 – at around the same time that we will start to see other new products such as SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010…

Anyhoo, you can take a look at some of the new features and services on this SQL Server R2 page, and you can also sign up for notification when it gets to Community Technology Preview stage.  I’ve also heard that this release of SQL Server will, like other future server products, be 64-bit only.  As well as some interesting screenshots the page has a clever “silent movie” style video:

It does look like R2 will get some nice new Business Intelligence and reporting features.  One of these is currently known as “Project Gemini”,  which uses in-memory database technology and column-oriented processing techniques.  This can be combined with a forthcoming Excel 2010 add-in to provide a much improved ad-hoc data analysis tool.  Excel 2007 is pretty good at this at the moment, but not as good as it should be, and certainly not as good as some of the desktop analysis tools from ProClarity.

We don’t have all the details on Project Gemini at the moment, but here’s a video of a demo by Donald Farmer from Microsoft showing how it will work with Excel (with 20 million rows of data!):

And here’s another one showing how you might publish your analysis out to a SharePoint site:

Technorati tags: SQL Server 2008, Kilimanjaro, Business Intelligence, Project Gemini

Important SharePoint Service Pack 2 Info

It seems there is a problem with SharePoint 2007 SP2 whereby during installation a product expiration date is improperly activated, and the result is that your SharePoint installation will expire as though it were a trial version after 180 days – more details available on the SharePoint Team blog here.

Apparently there will be a hotfix available soon, and if you have already installed SP2 on MOSS 2007 then you can fix by re-entering your Product ID.  If you have already applied SP2 to Search Server Express you need to wait for the hotfix, but will definitely need to install this.

If you haven’t already installed SP2, sounds like its definitely best to wait…..

Technorati tags: SharePoint, Search Server Express, SP2, Hotfix

Planning for SharePoint 2010

So, lots of discussion in the SharePoint community following this post from the Microsoft SharePoint Team on preliminary system requirements for SharePoint Server 2010.

We’ve known for quite a while now that the next release of SharePoint will be 64-bit only.  The new and interesting information is:

It will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2.  In other words, you won’t be able to use Windows Server 2003, even if it is a 64-bit version.

It will also require 64-bit SQL Server, either 2008 or 2005.  In fact Microsoft best practice suggests that in a SharePoint farm, the SQL Server boxes should be the first candidate for 64-bit technology anyway, but this certainly gives you more reason to go 64-bit.

Now it’s worth bearing in mind we are talking about a product version which isn’t even in a full beta yet, so it’s going to be a while before real deployments (probably second half of 2010 for those pioneers who aren’t afraid of arrows).  But the points covered in the post should certainly be taken into consideration, particularly if you are in the planning stage and looking at hardware and software selection.  Also Microsoft are promising a much easier upgrade path this time, which is why they’ve put the Upgrade Checker into Service Pack 2.

If you are investigating 64-bit now, I would recommend taking a look at the Combined Knowledge whitepaper on how to move MOSS2007 from 32-bit to 64-bit which you can download from here (lots of other good downloads there as well). 

You might also be interested in best practices for using virtualisation technologies in a SharePoint farm.  If so, let me point you to the set of Best Practice for Virtualizing SharePoint articles from Brian Wilson of the Microsoft UK SharePoint team.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, moss, 2010, upgrade, 64-bit