OneNote and Metadata in SharePoint–Creating a List of Client Names – Part 2 of 5

As described in our original scenario, we want to create of list of Client Names so that we can ultimately associate our OneNote notebook with one of them.

This list can be thought of as a standard Lookup list, as well as a repository for Client information. The Client Name will be used to fill dropdowns in other list columns or forms, but also provides a 1-click way for a user to see more detailed information about a Client associated with another item. I’ll show you what I mean, but first let’s create the list. You can use any of the following methods:

• The Standard Way
• The Import Way
• The SharePoint Designer Way
• The PowerShell Way
• The Visual Studio Way
• The External Content Type with Azure Way

Choose the option that works best for you – let’s begin! (click on images for larger views):

Deploying a Visual Web Part to your Remote-Hosted Fpweb.net SharePoint Site using Visual Studio 11 (Dev Preview)

(Update: this post also published on Developer Wiki of NothingButSharePoint.com)

The Developer Preview of Visual Studio 11 is now available, and I’ve been exploring its new capabilities, especially as it relates to SharePoint development. Two of the great new features in Visual Studio 11 that I’ll discuss are

• the ability to deploy visual web parts as sandboxed solutions
• the ability to automatically deploy sandboxed solutions to remote SharePoint sites

At the end of this article, I’ll explain why I think this is such a big deal. But for now, I’ll walk thru the 3 easy steps necessary to take advantage of these features. In my case, the remote SharePoint site I’ll use is my Fpweb.net Hosted SharePoint account.

Using Team Foundation Server with SharePoint Teams

This week I gave a presentation to my SharePoint team on Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), and how they could be used to grow our practice. I’ve been a fan of TFS since version 2005, and have watched it mature thru 2008 and now version 2010. I’ve also seen it begin to give more due respect to the SharePoint world – initially it seemed to be almost oblivious to the unique needs of the SharePoint development team. Some of the highlights of my presentation included the mention of using the automated Build Server to help SharePoint teams manage the WSP that results from their SharePoint dev. We also discussed how some non-traditional files, like InfoPath forms and CSS files, fit into typical source control story. And we talked about how SharePoint infrastructure engineers could also make use of Team System by incorporating work item tasks specific to server installations into a customized process guidance. Stay tuned to this blog in future posts as I elaborate on many of the topics included in my talk.

Putting a Cool Glow on your XML code

Lately I’ve been looking over the XML code contained in the Application Definition File for some SharePoint Business Data Catalog work I’ve been doing. As I normally do, I used Visual Studio as my XML viewer of choice. But I had to pause for a second to sit back and appreciate how Visual Studio 2010 makes looking at all that XML code a lot nicer. : )