Brainlitter » Sean’s most notable SP2010 Highlights from SharePoint Conference – Day 1

Sean’s most notable SP2010 Highlights from SharePoint Conference – Day 1

Yep, I’m in Vegas with the wife and kids and *sigh*, the Mother In Law (nah, she’s not so bad but I’m required by law to complain about her). I hope to see them sometime this week. 🙂

   

I saw the keynotes this morning and then attended the SharePoint Admin sessions. Here’s a few of the highlights as its time now to go hang with my family. The best part is the NDA has been lifted. More to come, fast and furious.

   

First impression: (besides the stuff already released to MVP’s) is – AWESOME! Game Changing! Wahoo!

   

SharePoint Notes

  • Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 will now be called “SharePoint Foundation 2010”. I like it. It should help a great deal with language and customer understanding
  • Upgrades via ‘Visual Upgrade’ allow site owners to choose when they are ready to take on the new look and master pages (should they even want to). And you can flip back, if it didn’t work out
  • There are 500+ PowerShell cmdlets already in Beta 1 to SharePoint 2010 WFE’s
  • Direct Wiki commands supported, so that you can link directly to documents inline in a dashboard by starting with the “[[” syntax and browse right to your content
  • Steve wants everyone to go to SharePoint online, as determined by the 25+ references to it 🙂
  • Developer Dashboard is an icon that appears on a page and gives *TONNES* of detail about the performance of the page, right down to each webpart, how long each takes to display, etc. Effectively, end users can help in the site performance debugging process
  • Document libraries can now better support the 2500+ list item display threshold through a series of new functionality to help manage it
  • Site List Export functionality – huge! Rapid “Unattached” recovery of lists (with security even) from SQL – nice
  • Automatic Password management for service accounts with notifications, to help stay inline with IT security policies
  • As expected, Groove has been renamed to SharePoint Workspace and while still providing Groove functionality, is now the ‘offline client’ for SharePoint
  • Video streaming support (fetches ahead with incremental download technology) of your media, right from the server complete with Silverlight web parts to display the media, included

       

    Visio 2010 Services Session

  • This session was really cool and the product is very promising but alas, I left my laptop behind. What I do remember is Visio Services is available with Enterprise CAL only but was very slick and browser embedded. Love the wireframes for websites and the hot/cold utilization validations based on submitted data

       

    InfoPath 2010 Session

  • Lots of people at this session – very surprising (but encouraging)
  • Clients are now ‘SharePoint InfoPath 2010 Designer’ and ‘SharePoint InfoPath Filler’ (yes!, clear distinction between reading and writing apps now!)
  • Office Ribbon integrated – I love it, don’t care what others say
  • I can launch modification of an InfoPath form directly from the browser/ribbon (no .xsn chase)
  • You can add SharePoint Columns (in a list), directly from within InfoPath Designer now
  • List/rules filtering provide quick, no-code access to presenting related information at the click of a few buttons
  • InfoPath now has a people picker field
  • Cross browser support for web based forms

 

Other Notes

  • My feet hurt. It was a bad idea to get new shoes just before coming. Sometimes my brain works in funny ways (I.e. I knew better and ignored my own inner commentary)
  • Suggestion for Swag for vendors at the next conference. Provide bags! So many fancy balls, mugs, etc. but nothing to put the damned things in 🙁
  • Met Dux Raymond Sy – cool, I’m a big fan of having folks get enlightened by his book (SharePoint for Project Management – O’Reilly Press)