Reza Alirezaei’s Blog

If you are among the millions who adore the most recent release of Microsoft Windows’ server line of operating systems , Windows Server 2008,  you have completely shifted [at least] your SharePoint dev environment to this great server platform.  First of all it is the most stable OS ever. Why would u want to develop anywhere else? (Real man only develops on Server OS not something like Vista 😉 ). Secondly every single driver and program I use works perfectly ; Needless to say that I ONLY work on x64 machines all the way through and all Vista x64 drivers works just fine for me. Okay , admittedly I have one issue in my development environments though. It is the MailServer!

Let’s say you are developing Workflows , event handlers , alerts or generally any SharePoint custom dev that requires sending (and receiving) emails. Obviously , you will want to be able to test the email generating functionality.right? Truth to be told , there are couple of issues here:

1. Not every developer is spoiled by having Exchange and AD on their dev machine or [if they are too much spoiled] on their dev farm!, but again many of us develop in virtualized environments and the question is why would we want to run a resource-intensive application such as Exchange Server on our Windows 2008 dev system  where every free bits matter?
2. Okay what about POP3 ?! Well, fortunately or unfortunately POP3 mail protocol is no longer shipped with Windows 2008 Server , so even at organizational level if you happen to be using POP3 , once you migrate over to Win 2008 you will have to use other applications such as Exchange or Small Business Server (SBS) ,so Pop3 is out of question too.
3. Windows 2008 Server is shipped with SMTP Service , but it is still running in IIS6 mode. Truthfully, once you go for IIS7.0 , you can’t go back to IIS 6.0 again . It is like driving a mountain bike after years & years of owning a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo! Just as a side note , I WANT that freaking chick-killer car (I have no idea if there is such an expression as chick-killer in English , but anywho!).I just need someone to teach me how to save my money 🙂
4. You certainly don’t want to send mail traffic via company SMTP server or Exchange as well- no dice!

The best news is that there are many free standalone Mail Servers out there that can get you setup in a heart beat! In this blog post , I am demonstrating how you may use  SmarterMail – a fully RFC compliant mail server package with a nice ASP.NET-based administrative console. I have been using this mail server since I shifted the gears to Windows 2008 and it works pretty slick for me.

1) Install SmarterMail Version 5.x which is available here.Their free version comes with many features , truthfully way more than what you may need.

2) Installation is pretty straightforward and it installs the administrative Web console at port 9998 by default, so go ahead and Log into SmarterMail with username admin and password admin.

3) You can override the default installation setting using SmarterMail Web Server Config utility which is shipped as part of the installation.

4) Right after you log in , you must change the default admin password. Type the new password and Click Next.

5) In this wizard,  you need to specify the IP of Primary DNS and Secondary DNS. Let’s just go ahead and only point the Primary DNS to 127.0.0.1. Leave all the other wizards with default values and Click Finish.

6) Once you logged into the administrative Web console , in the Manage tab, choose All Domains node from the left tree view and click on New icon on the right pane.

Read more…

Just a quick note to let you, PoSH lovers , know that if you are adding managed paths to an SPWebApplication object using PoSH ,  for adding an SPPrefix object to the existing SPPrefixCollection , you need to specify one of the following arguments (without space), otherwise you get a conversion error  to type “Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPrefixType” due to invalid enumeration value:

1. “ExplicitInclusion”
2. “WildcardInclusion”
3. “Exclusion”

In the following example, I am creating a sample Web application using the best defaults that SharePoint can determine (Thanks to SPWebApplicationBuilder!).I don’t care about setting any properties for my SPWebApplication. I then go ahead and immediately after the web application is provisioned (appears in IIS as a site) I add a managed path. Again , DO NOT forget to call Update() method on SPWebApplication object to serialize its state and propagate changes throughout your server farm. No different than when you write managed code against the SharePoint object model!

I was reading Mike Walsh‘s new book Teach Yourself SharePoint 2007 in 24 hrs over this weekend. A fantastic book for beginners and intermediate users who quickly want to get some brief understanding of the some intresting SharePoint topics.Well, I read/scan read every SharePoint book that comes to the market and I don’t care about the audience. It’s amazing how every single book has something new to offer. Don’t let them slip under your radar , no matter how good you think you are!

Although Mike doesn’t get too deep into the discussions (and that’s because of the nature of the book as everything must be wrapped up in 24 sections), I guess he has covered a good chunk of information and lots of leads on intresting topics not covered anywhere else.No fluff , simple wordings, lots of screenshots and real world content are all among the most obvious positive characteristics of his book. I must say Good job to my fellow MVP!  I am very impressed by your book.

Chapters in Mike’s book that really caught my eyes:

Hour 13 and Hour 14 where he talks about WSS 3.0 Search and leveraging Search Server 2008 Express.

Hour 17  and Hour 18 where he presents OneNote 2007 and Access 2007 Integration with SharePoint.

In short, You can use Access 2007 to report against SharePoint lists. Bascially any SharePoint list can be stored as an Access 2007 *table*, so ineasted of connecting to the lists.asmx Web service (for example in your Reporting Services data source) , you bascially get Access 2007 reporting facilities to report against that list (some restrcitions apply). Needless to say that joins are working nicely too! . Finally reverse operation is also doable: You can add an access table to a SharePoint site as a list.

Check it out:

http://www.microsoft.com/canada/techdays/default.aspx

My session description has also been updated too.

TechDays 2008 is the Microsoft largest technical education conference series for IT Professionals and Developers in Canada. I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting the ONLY SharePoint related session at this important event. Getting back to my technical background and after almost three years of the good old days of being a SQL Server Reporting Services MVP, I will be presenting the following topic:

Information and Collaboration in One Place – Integrating SQL Server Reporting Services with SharePoint

Learn how to extend Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 with the power of SQL Server Reporting Services to integrate rich reporting into the SharePoint portal Server, Report Center or dashboards. You will see how SQL Server Reporting Services enables end-users to view, create, manage and deliver enterprise reports through one centralized user interface of SharePoint via deep integration with MOSS 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0. You will find out how to manage and secure reports using the SharePoint security model, as well as learn about the new features of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services and MOSS/WSS integration including data-driven subscriptions, passing report parameters on the URL and others.

If you want to hear about this topic on 30th of October (2nd day of the conference) in Toronto please come along!

Update (Nov 01,2008): It is now confirmed that I will be delivering this presentation in Winnipeg (December 04, 2008),Calgary (December 11, 2008) and Vancouver(January 22, 2009) as well. For more information on the dates and venues click here.