Phil Wicklund

Speaking at SharePoint Connections, and the MN SharePoint User Group

Phil Wicklund — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:04:00 GMT

Great news! I was just informed that I'll be speaking at next March's SharePoint Connections conference in Orlando Florida. I missed the deadline for November's conference in Vegas, but I am very pleased & excited that I was able to get my ideas submitted in time, and chosen, for March's conference. Plus, Minnesota spring weather is nasty and sloppy; what better place to go to than Orlando! Here are the topics I'm presenting on:

How to Effectively Manage your SharePoint Customizations, Deployments, and Environments with Solution Packages, Source Control, and Solid Governance
How to Build a "Hello World" SilverLight Web Part for a SharePoint Site in 10 Easy Steps
Development Ideas on how to make your SharePoint environment more SOX or HIPPA compliant

Connections Site:
http://www.devconnections.com/

Event Logistics:
March 21^st – 26^th, 2009
Orlando, Florida

Also, if March is too far away – I'll be speaking again at the Minnesota SharePoint User Group (MS Office Developer's Interest Group - MODIG) on October 28^th. I'll be talking about Code Access Security: what it is, why you care, and how to use it (this is both a developer and administrator topic). Time permitting; I'll build a workflow with visual studio, since a lot of people at our last group expressed interest in that topic as well. Thanks to Neil Iverson from Inetium for offering me a gracious welcome at the last MODIG, and for his offer to come back to speak again at the next meeting! It'll be a good time – and the pizza never fails to satisfy J

MODIG Site:
http://www.sharepointmn.com/modig/default.aspx

Event Logistics:
Tuesday October 28th
5:30 pm

Driving Directions

Talk to you then!

Phil

[this post was cross-posted from http://philwicklund.com]

The SharePoint Product Manager: Get Yourself a Pit Bull

Phil Wicklund — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:05:00 GMT

Every SharePoint deployment needs clear leadership and accountability in order to be "successful". Success is a loose term with SharePoint, but I like to define it as follows: A state in which the SharePoint deployment has continued to provide tangible business value over a long period of time, with minimal cost and maximum corporate adoption.

There are a lot of obstacles that hinder achieving this status of "success". Obstacles like ballooning cost, lack of compelling features, and lack of company adoption. You may start off with a bang, but find it harder and harder to keep the momentum up as time goes by. I've seen this so called stagnation in few companies, and I've really come to appreciate the role of Product Manger because of it. I've seen some companies that spin up a SharePoint site, and almost haphazardly put it on cruise control and expect great things to happen. The problem with this is that if it isn't someone's job to make things happen, nothing will happen and your initial "momentum" will come to a halt. Now, before you think I'm trying to make a sweeping statement here, even if you have a great Product Manager but don't have a budget, or executive by-in, you're going to have a hard time. However, there's a lot this person can and should be doing.

What to do when your DLL needs to be in the GAC…

Phil Wicklund — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:02:00 GMT

Code Access Security (CAS) is a hot topic these days, and for good reasons. CAS is an important thing to have an understanding of if you work in a security conscious company, or if you're striving to understand best practices. If you're new to CAS, there are many articles, but I like to describe it with an analogy that we all can identify with. Think of "User Access Security". It's not a coined phrase like CAS is, but essentially it is a conglomerate of rules and measures that enable a given user or person the ability to do something on their computer/network/domain. CAS is the same thing, except with code. If we say John Doe user doesn't have access to crawl files in a sensitive network share, why would we say that third party DLLs (code) can? CAS says "this code can only do X, and nothing more" – much like "John Doe can only do X, and nothing more". CAS is just as important as user access security.

Consolidating Master Pages Customized By SharePoint Designer

Phil Wicklund — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:44:00 GMT

I hate Designer for SharePoint Master page development. My biggest issue is that after you start customizing master pages with Designer, 6-12 months later you realize you have a huge mess on your hands. You end up maintaining hundreds of copies of the same file. Say you need to make a minor change to a master page, you'd have to go back and crack open every site, one at a time. This could take hours. Also, you may not even know the places that need the change, or you think you changed them all, but turns out you missed some. Designer means inconsistency and costliness in the long run.

So, off the soap box, what if you're down this road and want to get back to a better practice? Here are the steps: