What the H*!LL is the bug? - Debugging the right way...

Debugging, tedious right? What the h!*ll is wrong? Well, I’ve been programming for 18 years and I have learnt a very simple but quite effective principle that usually helps you find the error quicker. It is actually quite simple, but I often find myself not following it and wasting time and patience.

When you get a bug, what is the first question you ask yourself? What the H**LL is the problem?!!!! Well, that phrase actually puts the finger on it. You’re asking the wrong question! It is usually quite difficult to know WHAT the problem is when you don’t know WHERE it is. So the first question should be, WHERE the h****ll is the problem? When you know where exactly the bug is in the code, the question to WHAT the h***ll is the problem? Is usually trivial or very simple.

Might seem a bit too obvious? Think about it, and think about it the next time you're debugging, and I think you might learn to appreciate it.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

New CRM SDK

The new CRM SDK has been released, if you havn't already heard. There are some smaller updates and some fixes. It can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9C178B68-3A06-4898-BC83-BD14B74308C5&displaylang=en

Talked to my collegue Michael Jansson today and he told me he met some guys down in Malmö who said they followed my blog. Thanks guys, to know that there are some really sharp CRM and SharePoint consultants that find this blog valuable is a great compliment. If there is anything concerning CRM and SharePoint you would like me to blog about, please send me a mess and I will see what I can do. Nothing is to basic, there will always be people who are new to CRM and SharePoint, and if you're not careful, they might be way ahead of you in no time at all.

I have also seen the first screenshots from Titan (code name for the next version of CRM) and it looks really good and there seems to be some really inovative features that will boost this already great program! So, be there or be square (swe: "Var där, eller var rektangulär ;)

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

SharePoint & Exchange Forum 2007

If you live close to Sweden or close to Europe for that matter, make sure not to miss SharePoint and Exchange Forum 2007 in Sweden, the 14:th and 15:th of May. It is THE place to be for all SharePoint (and Exchange) professionals, decision makers, developers, administrators and powerusers. I will be the presentor for one of the tracks and I will also be holding a seminar on SharePoint and Microsoft CRM integration.

There will be a host of very prominent speakers, some of these will be:

Patrick Tissegheim, SharePoint MVP & author, Belgium
Michael Noel, SharePoint MVP and expert on MS ISA, author, USA
Nick Swan, SharePoint MVP, USA
Göran Husman, SharePoint MVP & Author
Eric Legault, Outlook MVP and author, USA
Scott Schnoll, Exchange expert, Microsoft, USA
Micke Nyström, Windows Server MVP
Lasse Pettersson, Exchange MVP
Peter Andersson, Microsoft Sweden
Kalle Becker, Microsoft Sweden
Pontus Haglund, Microsoft Sweden
Magnus Danielsson, Microsoft Sweden
Christer Olsson, Exchange expert, Microsoft Sweden
Michael Jansson, SharePointexpert and trainer, Humandata

So invest in your social network and knowledge from the worlds most competent SharePoint and Exchange Experts! Not to be there is not an option...

There are a limited amount of seats so make sure you get one! Go to www.seforum.se for more information!

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Bugg found in SharePoint 3

I was recently working with a customer and we were defining some new content types. As you probably know, you always have to inherit a content type from an existing one. This is fine, but sometime you don't want the first column to be called Title. Well, we changed it, and guess what... all new lists created bellow this site, all had Title exchanged for our new name, in this case, "Customer Name", not very nice, for instance in a normal Task list.

Well, not a big problem, we thought, we'll just change it back. Well... we couldn't... so we were stuck with a "non-Title-name". Bad, really bad. The only way I found of resetting this, was to delete the entire sitecollection (I had changed the site column at the top site) and the creating a new one. Not a very nice workaround...

So, be ware, don't change the "Title" site column located in the group "_hidden".

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Content Query Web Part

The content query webpart is a very powerful tool when constructing complex SharePoint structures. I will try to make a posting on how to use it in an effective way using custom content types, later. As for now, please read the following article concerning how to display other columns in the webpart than the standard ones:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms497457.aspx

Here is another blog posting concerning the same theme:
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/nl/community/columns/stevenvandecraen/contentquerywebpart.mspx

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Different versions of MOSS

There are as many of you know, different versions of MOSS, mainly standard and enterprise. What differs them from eachother? Is excel services included in std? Want more exclamation marks than questionmarks? Have a look at this product comparisson from Microsoft:
http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT102011901033&CTT=5&Origin=HA101978031033


Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

New CRM 3.0 Partner Preparedness Tools Available

New tools for presales of CRM 3 has been released, it is called:
"CRM 3.0 Partner Preparedness Tools".

Please check it out at the following site:
Jim glass blog


Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se