After focusing on the end user population for the past few weeks, I thought it was time to geek out a little bit. My last blog post had a few videos on the basics of workflows in SharePoint. Today I came across this list of videos demonstrating creating custom workflows in Visual Studio. How exciting! I am feeling a little separated from my geekdom as I’ve been hanging out too much in the taxonomy of SharePoint. I hope you find as much value in this as I did.

Enabling incoming/outgoing email for MOSS 2007	Extracting Document Details with SharePoint Workflow’s
Click here to view	Click here to view
Extracting email addresses & Sending emails with SharePoint Workflow	Programmatically creating user tasks with SharePoint Workflow
Click here to view	Click here to view
Programmatically escalating Overdue Tasks	Building Basic Approval Workflow
Click here to view	Click here to view
Building a Multilevel Approval Workflow	Using Active Directory Searching/Lookup in a SharePoint/MOSS 2007 Workflow
  Click here to view	Click here to viewÂ

I posted a blog back in February about the SharePoint conference I attended in Seattle, and explained that like most of my colleagues, conferences that I attend are few and far between. A perfect example of this is this week the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is going on in Los Angeles. This conference has been Microsoft’s premier gathering of developers and architects. You usually learn about the future of the Microsoft platform, upcoming products. There are breakout labs where you can write some code, and socials to exchange ideas with fellow professionals. Since I am unable to attend I was very excited to see that the organizers arranged to have the sessions available online within 24 hours. You can check out the main keynote sessions which are broadcast and streamed live here at the PDC site. Sessions are archived and available for on demand viewing at Channel 9.

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Team Foundation Server, Team Suite, Architecture Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, and Test Edition. In addition, discuss what’s new for these editions for Visual Studio 2008.

Add to Calendar
April 9, 2008
10:00 A.M. Pacific Time

Scott Gu, one of the leaders in SharePoint technologies, has put together this roadmap for the new .NET Web products. It is a lot of information, so if you’re wondering about all the new technologies coming out this is a good site to check out.

Visual Studio supports the concept of build configurations. So you can configure different settings for “debug” and “release” configurations (which projects build, etc), as well as define your own for staging, testing, deployment, etc. You can configure which configuration in Visual Studio is the “active” one by selecting the Build->Configuration Manager. If you are using C#, you can also select the current configuration via a configuration drop-down located in the standard toolbar. This drop-down is not present in the VB or Web profile by default. 

To enable it in Visual Basic or the Web profile, perform the following steps: 1. Select the Tools, Customize
2. Click on the Commands
3. In the Categories list box, select the “Build” item
4. Scroll down to the very bottom of the Command list-box where you’ll find the “Solution Configurations” list item. 
5. To add it into one of the IDE toolbars (you need to click it and then drag and drop it to the toolbar in the IDE location you want to add it to)

I’ve been working with Visual Studio for years and I totally forget how many little tweaks I’ve done to my environment during that time. Every once in a while when I am looking over someone’s shoulder debugging code I notice they don’t have line numbers turned on, or they’re not taking full advantage of the task list capabilities. So here’s a quick reference to my favorite tweaks in Visual Studio. 

Environment
General
Turn off “Animate environment tools.”
Documents
Turn on “Show Miscellaneous files in solution Explorer” and set the number of documents to 10
Task List
I add a variety of tokens here, like Issues as a High Priority. I also usually add my name as well as the names of the people on my projects as an easy way to add specific items or comments for individuals or groups.  

Text Editor
All Languages, General
Turn on Line Numbers
All Languages, Tabs
Turn on Smart IndentingTurn on Insert Spaces 

VS 2005 Specific
Project and Solutions
General
Check all these settings except for the “Save new projects when created” option. Most importantly, be sure that “Show advanced build configurations” is selected because this enables the build combo in the toolbar. “Prompt for symbolic renaming when renaming files” is another good option to enable. If you rename a file and the class in it is the same as the file name, you will be prompted to rename the class name to match the file name.  

VB Defaults
Option Strict = OnOption Explicit = OnOption Compare = Binary  Once you have Visual Studio set up to your liking, go to “Tools” > “Import and Export Settings…”, and export your settings. 

Reset Settings
If you get to a point where you have tweaked your environment so much and you just need to get back to your original settings the command “devenv /resetsettings” will restore Visual Studio back to its original factory state. If you have previously saved your settings from the option above, you can pass them as a parameter: “devenv /resetsettings <SettingsFile>”. You can find more command line switches here. 

As a developer I thoroughly enjoy taking on a challenge of developing a piece of code that truly solves a problem for my clients. However, not all situations are cause to reinvent the wheel, especially if you can get the wheel off of the Internet for free. I was recently looking for a free Web part that might solve a particular problem I was having and discovered the plethora of free stuff that people have posted and thought it would be a good idea for me to keep an inventory. This is a listing that I will probably update from time to time as new cool parts are developed.

• ActiveX Scripting Web Part (Simon Mourier)

• Blogparts 

• Breadcrumb Site Navigation Web Part

• Countdown Web Part (P. Schaeflein)

• CSeg – SharePoint List Rollup 

• cseg Search 1.2 (Google-like)

• cseg Web Part Suite

• csegAlerts user manager alerts webpart

• csegMiniWiki for SharePoint

• csegRollUp 3.1 (the sharepoint aggregator)

• csegScriptWebPart

• cSegSmallCalendar Web Part

• DocLib Quick Launch

• Dynamic Page Viewer Web Part (B. Mixon)

• Events for You Web Part

• Flash Movie, DocLib Utils/Explorer, FeedReader, My Workspaces Web Parts 

• FlexListViewer: Display other Site lists w/o FrontPage

• Hello Web Part

• Image Upload Webpart 

• Image Web Part 

• InfoPath Viewer (CSeg)

• Jan Tielens’ SmartPart

• Macaw Discussion Board

• Macaw TraceInfo Web Part (Victor Vogelpoel)

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 List Web Part [MSFT]

• Milestone Countdown Web Part

• My Alerts Web Part (via Brightwork – Registration Required)

• Office 2003 Add-in: Web Parts and Components (v2 – 10/17/2005)

• People Picker Web Part

• Quick Launch Web Part (Bob Mixon)

• Reporting Services Web Parts (Bryant Likes)

• Rights Checking Content Editor WebPart

• SharePoint Forums Web Part (Simser)

• SharePoint Recycle Bin – Client Side Alternative (Todd)

• SharePoint Recycle Bin 1.0 New & Improved

• SharePoint RSS/ATOM reader

• SharePoint Web Part Code Snippets for VS 2005

• SmartPart User Controls

• SPPageToolBar (James Milne’s DVWP)

• SPS Area Listings Rollup / RSS Syndication Web Part

• StyleUnderCursor Web Part (T. Bleeker)

• Subwebs On The Quick Launch (DVWP)

• Who’s Online Web Part 

• WikiSharePoint version 1.0 (TamTam)

• Windows SharePoint Services RSS (WSS-RSS)

• C# for Sharp Kids – Part 1 – Getting Started
• C# for Sharp Kids – Part 2 – Learning to Communicate
• C# for Sharp Kids – Part 3 – The C# Language
• C# for Sharp Kids – Part 4 – Programming with the .NET Framework
• C# for Sharp Kids – Part 5 – Beyond This Book

VB

• Visual Basic for Very Bright Kids – Part 1 – Getting Started
• Visual Basic for Very Bright Kids – Part 2 – Learning To Communicate
• Visual Basic for Very Bright Kids – Part 3 – The Visual Basic Language
• Visual Basic for Very Bright Kids – Part 4 – Programming with the .NET Framework
• Visual Basic for Very Bright Kids – Part 5 – Beyond this Book

So after many years of being a programmer and coming up through the Unix system using a VI editor I happily admit I am a keyboard shortcut junkie. I absolutely love any keyboard shortcut that will keep me from having to take the time to actually take my hands off of the keyboard and reach all the way over to the mouse. I put together a list of these keyboard shortcuts for Visual Studio 2005 that I thought I should share with all those kindred spirits.

At times I have worked with clients that need to run multiple versions of .NET and are not sure how to configure the server properly. Luckily one of my colleagues wrote an article on this very topic. I think it is a valuable topic and one in which many companies will benefit, so check it out here.