PerfomancePoint Server 2007, want to create dimensions from a csv file

When you create dimensions in PerformancePoint Server you have an option to create a dimension from a csv file.

This sounds like a great way to kick start your dimensions because you can take a csv file with data and upload it to create a dimension and  have it populated with some data.

Great idea, but only if you know the format of the csv file.
The first 2 rows are header records that must be there to define the dimension and hierarchy before you list the column headers.

See the screen shot below.

If you have data, go ahead and add it in, so you create the dimension you can also have it import your data to give you a head start.

PerformancePoint Server 2007, why can’t I synchronize dimensions/models

If you create an application in Performance Point and start creating dimensions/models and you notice Synchronize all dimensions to Staging Area.. is grayed out, you wonder what it is going on.

The problem is that your user is not in the Modeler Role.  Once your user is added to the role you will have no problem synchronizing.

I find this to be weird behavior since you just created the application (and app and staging database).  I would assume you be in the correct role to synchronize by default, but apparently that is not the case.

This through me for a loop because I was able to open other applications that I created and would have no trouble synchronizing.  I have to dig through the PerformancePoint Server Operations Guide.

 

I do also have SP3 installed.

Anyone know any .net developers looking for a new opportunity?

Tweet from Outlook

Outlook is the one application I have open all day long.  I don’t like most twitter apps.

So I was happy to find an add-in for outlook that will tweet for you.  It can stuff all your new tweets in a folder (or your inbox) and you can save everything you tweet in a folder (like sent mail)

If puts a new toolbar in Outlook.

 

 

Here is the link

http://www.techhit.com/TwInbox/twitter_plugin_outlook.html

Summay of changes with SharePoint 2010

Microsoft has been very quiet about the new features of SharePoint 2010, but they have finally started providing some info.

They have produced some videos explaining some of the new changes here.

I was going to watch them, but I did find a someone else who watched them and blogged about it.  So here is a summary of the changes that Microsoft has announced.

I did copy all this below from Craig Roth.  I wanted it on my blog so I would be able to remember where it is.

Sharepoint 2010 Overview (Tom Rizzo)

• Mentions how they are supporting all browsers (although he tellingly stumbles when trying to say “Safari” … )
• Promises great strides in social computing
• Went around the SharePoint 2010 donut:
  • Sites
    • Sites are all about sharing information
    • Mentions a further push into extranets and internet sites
  • Communities
    • Plans to support a hierarchical structure of communities
    • “Regardless of how they come together” [implies to me embracing end user creation and maintenance of their own communities rather than just enabling administrators to create communities]
  • Content
    • People-centric, LOB-centric
    • “We’ve been Working hard to manage content from creation to disposition and destruction … ”
    • Will enhance ability of users to discover content
    • [our analysis of SharePoint 2007's enterprise content management showed weakness at the later stages of the process , so beefing up capabilites around disposition and discovery seem to show positive action from Microsoft to close the gap]
  • Search
    • FAST will be combined with existing SharePoint search.
    • More investments have been made in uncovering hidden assets
    • People search will be (better) blended with search.
    • At 8:22 he says “You’ll be able to find rich people across your organization”. [I guess that's handy if Bill Gates works at your company and you need to borrow money for lunch]
    • There’s a plug for the business connectivity services (formerly business data catalog) in terms of searching structured data
  • Insights
    • Combining the rest of SharePoint with the business intelligence stack. [not really any detail here, or nothing new to talk about]
  • Composites
    • “Rapidly create dynamic bus solutions” [At the SharePoint conference in 2006, none other than Bill Gates said building composites is the #1 capability of SharePoint. If they're going to get away from the "portal" word which is increasingly watered down then this is a good choice. Composite applications encompasses portals, but also other important styles of web apps made from piece parts including any type of assembly of web services or RESTful services, mashups, or business process management]
• Features shown in the demo
  • User interface
    • The Office ribbon now shows up all over SharePoint and is removable, customizable, contextual
    • He showed live editing of text in a website, and as you mouse over different font sizes you get preview of fonts just like in Word 2007
    • He showed a very fat client-like resizing of images, adding a border, etc.
    • You can add Silverlight with an out of box Silverlight web part
    • There’s the ability to apply PowerPoint themes to sites (colors, fonts, etc.)
  • Business connectivity
    • You’ll be able to put a Visio diagram directly in SP, and since Visio can have links to get live data from business systems that means live data too [neat!]
    • Forget BDC: it’s now BCS. There’s a new acronym: Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to replace the business data catalog (BDC)
    • Instead of just sites in SP designer 2010, it has lists, workflows, etc.
    • Also has an item in SP designer called “entities” for creating connections to bus data
    • Demoed a SQL connecter that auto-creates CRUD (create, read, update, delete)
    • You cal see a BCS data set in SharePoint and it looks like a list, but it’s a SQL database. Demoed filtering.
    • You can also click “edit item” and update the item. [I hope they improve the interface. It refreshes and fills the whole screen with a data dump of the row. Not at all like editing in a cell]
    • Demoed creating a new doc from SharePoint in Word which has a bunch of fields defined in BCS. You can select a customer name from the list and it fills in all the fields from that record in the document information panel
  • Work with data in richer ways
    • Microsoft finally clarified that Groove (new name=SharePoint Workplace) is the rich client for SharePoint. [wow, that took a long time for something we knew was going to happen]
    • Workplace can sync info from a SharePoint site
    • Showed in SP workspace how he can edit info offline, and then synced back up by selecting “Connect to server” and “Sync supplier list”. [Not sure why its so manual. In Notes you don't have to hit "connect" then "sync". Maybe there are automated, scheduled options too that weren't shown. I hope so]
  • Tom emphasized that these are just some of the features – not an exhaustive list.

SP 2010 for IT professional video (Richard Riley)

• He mentioned on premise or as SaaS
• Beta later this year, general availability 1st half of 2010
• Goal is to scale up and out with high reliability [just as Bill Pray noted in his thoughts on Exchange 2010, it seems many of the administrative enhancements for SharePoint 2010 are to help it support SaaS rather than to just help current on premises installations]
• [bookmark] IT professional productivity
  • Central admin: he mentioned “easier to find” and ribbon UI [he didn't mention any actual functionality changes]
  • There’s a best practice analyzer
    • It analyzes health, performance, and has reporting
    • Rules can regularly run and send pop ups with issues encountered. Admins can build rules and automatically apply fixes
    • There is a new logging database, extensible with custom data and custom reports
• Scalable unified infrastructure
  • Large lists will not hang the system anymore [yahoo!]
  • The admin can set thresholds for how many rows max will be returned. And there’s a “happy hour” when you can get larger responses from queries.
• Unattached content database recovery
  • Admins can browse content in repositories, create an export, and upload to list
• Flexible deployment
  • You can detach a 2007 database and attach it to 2010
  • When you migrate to 2010 it keeps UI the same, but you can select an option to switch user experiences

SP 2010 for Developer (Paul Andrew)

• Developer productivity
  • Paul talked about the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools
  • There is a new visual Web Part designer and team foundation server
  • You can look at lists and other server items from the server explorer within VS without having to go to SharePoint
  • Can specify deployment configuration such as a package WSP file that can include custom installation steps
  • Demoed click and drag creation of a Web Part with a button that calls LINQ query
• Rich platform
  • There is the ability to use LINQ to access SharePoint lists including joins
  • The new client object model can be used to run code on the client machine (.NET, Javascript, Silverlight)
  • Paul also mentioned the Silverlight Web Part and business connectivity services
• Flexible deployment
  • Paul talked about solution deployment [but frankly I got distracted at this point and don't have notes here. I believe this is an attempt to address SP2007 weaknesses around staging from test to QA to production]

Data connectivity services

• In the demos, DCS still showed as BDC in VS 2010 since it’s not finished yet
• Paul showed how it supports creating methods for BCS CRUD
• In SharePoint you can create an “external list” now, which means data from the BCS
• There are new “list” menus in the ribbon bar in the SharePoint web UI
• Demoed using Silverlight to fill a data grid with data from a SharePoint list. With Silverlight, it’s running on the client so things like sorting the list are done without calls back to the server

stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint 2007

Micorosoft posted on TechNet a technical reference for stsadm (done with SilverLight).  Much easier to use than help from the command line.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/cc948709.aspx

SharePoint service pack 2 hotfix – expiration date

When you install SP 2 for SharePoint it will change the expiration date of SharePoint to be a trial product.  This does not affect WSS 3.0.  For a work around you can re-enter your product ID into Central Admin  (but who knows their product id).  Here is the link for x86 and here is the link for x64.

SPSource, a SharePoint helper

Here is the link to SPSource on codeplex.  Basically it allows you create your sites/lists/content types/etc in the SharePoint UI and export it all out as CAML.  This is a big saver (if your using CAML for deployment) for site creation/deployment.

http://www.codeplex.com/SPSource/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Home

 

It is a command line tool that takes one input parameter, the url to your site.  It will create the xml files for you.

This is much easier than hand coding the CAML for your site.

Where I see this adding tremendous value is where you have a customer who you have deployed a SharePoint site for.  They make changes through the UI (add navigation/sites/etc) and now your code base and the prod site are out of sync.
You can use SPSource to pull down what it takes to create their modified site and merge it with your code.

SQL Server 2008 intellisense not correct

Sometimes when you writing TSQL in sever 2008 you will get the red squiggles (indicating you typed a table or field name incorrectly).    Yet everything will compile and run correctly, so what’s the deal.

To fix this problem you just need to press ctrl+shift+r, which will rebuild the sql cache responsible for intellisense.’

SharePoint 2010 preliminary requirements

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx

News about the next version of SharePoint, it going to be all 64bit.