SharePoint SandBox beta - a site for sharing tips and discovering new tricks about SharePoint

About SharePoint SandBox
The site is a collaborative SharePoint community of practices, guidelines, hints, recommendations and "tips & tricks" for SharePoint Developers and Administrators. All content is based on personal experience or gathered from different books, magazines, forums, newsgroups and others open sources. Current recommendations and practices cover different areas - from design and architecture to development and customizations. All information represented on this site is tagged, discovered and collaborative. It is Designed & created by Michael Nemtsev

http://sharepoint-sandbox.com/index.php
You will have instant access to tons of hot topics to read and learn about SP 2010 and ofcourse the good old, MOSS 2007! One thing I never understood, scratch scratch... Why did they use php to build that site, aren't we talking about SharePoint here?!?!?! :)

Enjoy, Signing out...!

MS Office 2010 Beta now available for download

Download Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta from the MSDN evaluation center: Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 and related products offer a business communications and collaboration platform. It presents several exciting advances for developers by offering substantially expanded platform services, a big leap in tools productivity, and longer strides as an open/interoperable platform.

But, before you start to dirty yourself with this pre-release, make sure you read the release notes

Don't tell me that I didn't warn you!
Go get it!

SharePoint 2010 Beta download - now available!

Hoooray! Finally, the long awaited SP 2010 beta download for the non-MSDN subscribers in available online....

Download Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Beta
SharePoint 2010 provides a robust development platform to rapidly build solutions using familiar tools like Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010. Developers gain access to a rich set of out-of-the-box features such as Business Connectivity Services for read/write integration between application data, the web and Office 2010 client.

SP 2010 Beta download page on the MSDN evaluation center:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee390819.aspx

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta comes in two versions:

SharePoint Server 2010 (Enterprise Client Access License features)
For organizations looking to expand their business collaboration platform to enable advanced scenarios. Use the Enterprise capabilities of SharePoint to fully interoperate with external line-of-business applications, web services, and Microsoft Office client applications; make better decisions with rich data visualization, dashboards, and advanced analytics; and build robust forms and workflow-based solutions.

SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise
For organizations looking to create customer-facing public internet sites and private extranets using the full enterprise capabilities of SharePoint. This provides full SharePoint Enterprise functionality and no other technical limits.

Other links:

• Download page for SP 2010 Beta - This is a Beta version of SharePoint Server 2010, the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Web.
• SCOM Management pack for SharePoint 2010 - A Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Management Pack is available for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products Beta (which includes SharePoint Server 2010 Beta and Project Server 2010 Beta)

Enjoy, Sharepointers!

SharePoint 2010 learning courses and videos now on Channel9 MSDN

SharePoint 2010 provides the business collaboration platform for developers to rapidly build solutions using familiar tools while leveraging a rich set of out of the box features. Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 make developers more productive and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server delivers support for application lifecycle management. Developers can integrate Line of Business data in SharePoint 2010 with read/write capability delivered by Business Connectivity Services. Sandboxed Solutions can be deployed to a shared hosting environment to limit the impact of unpredictable code to the other applications in use.

Visit the Channel9 MSDN learning courses for SharePoint 2010

Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 can now securely connect clients to the corporate network without going through a VPN using the DirectAccess feat!

"From an IT standpoint, one of the great new capabilities of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is the ability to securely connect clients to the corporate network without going through a VPN. This capability, called DirectAccess , establishes bi-directional connectivity with a user's enterprise network every time a user's DirectAccess-enabled portable computer connects to the Internet, even before the user logs on. You can now download the Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) Guide for DirectAccess to help you design a DirectAccess infrastructure." *

* The above excerpt has been copied from an MS Technet newsletter.

It reads...
"The Windows® 7 and Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating systems introduce DirectAccess, which allows remote users to securely access enterprise shares, Web sites, and applications without connecting to a virtual private network (VPN). DirectAccess establishes bi-directional connectivity with a user’s enterprise network every time a user’s DirectAccess-enabled portable computer connects to the Internet, even before the user logs on. Users never have to think about connecting to the enterprise network and IT administrators can manage remote computers outside the office, even when the computers are not connected to the VPN."

SharePoint 2010: Getting Started with Development on SharePoint 2010 Hands-on Labs in C# and Visual Basic

Awaiting the SP 2010 Beta to be officially launched amongst the developer community, for those who want to dirty their hands with hands-on lab manuals for SharePoint 2010 to get started learning SharePoint 2010 development:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C010FC68-B47F-4DB6-B8A8-AD4BA33A35C5&displaylang=en

The package includes:

HOL01 - Developing a Visual Web Part in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab introduces the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint development environment. It shows how to build a Visual Web Part using LINQ to SharePoint, and how to connect one Web Part to another Web Part on the page.

HOL02 - Developing a List Definition and Event Receiver in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab walks you through building a list definition for SharePoint 2010 in Visual Studio 2010. It also shows how to build an event receiver for the list in Visual Studio 2010 and deploy it to SharePoint. After the list and event receiver are deployed, you can use the developer dashboard to evaluate the performance of the event receiver.

HOL03 - Developing Advanced Web Parts for SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab shows how to build a Web Part using several SharePoint-specific controls in Visual Studio 2010. Investigate advanced built-in Web Parts, including the Data View Web Part.

HOL04 - Developing with LINQ to SharePoint in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab explores a variety of LINQ queries on SharePoint 2010, going into more depth than the introductory hands-on lab. It also walks you through an exercise of creating a custom content type in Visual Studio 2010.

HOL05 - Developing for SharePoint 2010 with the Client OM and REST in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab introduces the Client object model for use in calling SharePoint 2010 APIs from a client machine. It also shows the use of ADO.NET Data Services to call REST services in SharePoint 2010.

HOL06 - Developing a BCS External Content Type with Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab walks you through building an external content type for Business Connectivity Services using Visual Studio 2010. It also builds a form for Microsoft Outlook and shows the data being edited offline in Outlook.

HOL07 - Developing a SharePoint 2010 Workflow with Initiation Form in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab walks you through building a workflow in Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010. You add an initiation form to the workflow and use an external data exchange activity in the workflow.

HOL08 - Developing SharePoint 2010 User Interface with Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab walks you through building Microsoft Silverlight applications for use in SharePoint 2010. You will access SharePoint 2010 data in Silverlight using the Client object model.

HOL09 - Developing SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solutions in Visual Studio 2010
This hands-on lab walks you through building a Sandboxed Solution Web Part for SharePoint 2010. It will also add code to the Web Part that overloads the limits placed by the sandboxed solution, and you will review how the solution is shut down.

HOL10 - Developing SharePoint 2010 User Interface Ribbon and Dialog Customizations
This hands-on lab walks you through adding a custom action to the SharePoint 2010 ribbon, and creating a Web Part that uses the Dialog Framework.

The above content is from Microsoft.
Let's get started! :)