Richard Willis – SharePoint Learning Kit Coordinator, SalamanderSoft Owner

SLK 1.5 has the following SharePoint features you can activate.

Site Collection Level

SharePoint Learning Kit Web Parts

When activated this feature automatically adds the Assignment List Web Part to the web part gallery for a site collection.

Site Level

SharePoint Learning Kit

This is the same feature as present in previous versions of SLK. When this is activated in a site the "E-Learning Actions" menu item is added to document libraries.

SharePoint Learning Kit – Assign Self

This feature add the "Assign To Self" menu item to document libraries. This allows the user to immediately assign an item to themselves and run it.

SharePoint Learning Kit – Assign Site

This feature add the "Assign To Site" menu item to document libraries. This allows the user to start assigning an item to the current site without having to choose the site to assign to. In effect it jumps straight to the Assignment Properties page for the current site.

Web Application Level

SharePoint Learning Kit Admin

This feature adds the Configure SharePoint Learning Kit functionality to Central Administration. This is just here for completeness as it’s actually a hidden feature which is activated automatically so you should never see it or need to activate it.

As you can see I still need a image for it.

With the imminent release of SLK 1.5 I thought that I would run through its new features

Support for SharePoint 2010

This has to be the highlight of the release. SLK now natively supports SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010. The functionality is exactly the same, but there are separate installers for the two versions. I’ve updated it so that the core components are the same, it’s only the installation scripts and a few references in aspx pages are different.

E-Learning Actions can be localised

Since the beginning of the project the phrase "E-Learning Actions", which appears in the document library drop down menu, has not been able to be changed or localisable. I have now moved this out to a resource file and this can now be localised for other languages, or even just changed on a farm by farm basis. So if you wanted your instance to say "Assign Work", you can just edit the text based resource file to change it.

Two New Document Library Edit Options

There’s 2 new options for document library edit menu. These are shortcuts for assigning work to yourself or to the site the resource is stored in. They are called "Assign to Self" and "Assign to Site". Just like "E-Learning Actions" these can also be localized. It is completely up to you which of these 3 actions you have in any site.

Automatically add the Assignment List Web Part to the Web Part Gallery

SLK now includes a feature to automatically add the ALWP to the web part gallery. This has been a big miss in my opinion in the releases so far and just made it annoying to install.

Various Bug Fixes for the Drop Box

This release rolls up all the fixes for all the bugs I’m aware of in the Drop Box.

This is a reminder for myself more than anything.

To set "List Folder Contents" on a folder you need to set:

FileSystemRights.ReadAndExecute

InheritanceFlags.ContainerOnly

PropagationFlags.None

The only difference between "List Folder Contents" and "Read & Execute" is that List Folder Contents is only inherited by folders rather than by folders and files.

There’s now only one week left until the 2010 Learning Gateway Conference. This will be a fantastic learning resource for all those using SharePoint in Education and there’s still just enough time left to register. See http://www.learninggatewayconference.com for more details of the day.

Since my last post on it we have announced the agenda and key note speaker:

Agenda

Key Note Speaker – Simon Shaw

As Head of Institutional Management Simon has led Becta’s work to support schools using ICT to improve parental engagement through online reporting. Working with a national network of leading "advocate" schools and local authorities to develop best practice he led the creation of the online reporting framework and supporting resources. Working with Naace Simon led the development of the ICT Mark and has worked closely with local authorities to engage schools in improvement through self-review. As project leader of the ICT Test Bed project he supported change management in schools to make innovative and effective use of technology for learning and teaching. Early work with Becta included providing procurement advisory services, managing research into the total cost of ownership of ICT in schools and developing lifecycle based investment planning tools to use in capital investment programmes. Simon comes from an educational background as a teacher of science, technology and outdoor activities, a physics subject leader, school ICT coordinator and "in house" system developer. As a MCSE he also used his technical expertise in designing and integrating curriculum and information systems as a business development manager and NGFL service manager working as part of the Capita group.

I’ve blogged before on how to Easily add a dll to the GAC, but that involves two instances of Windows Explorer and the mouse.

It would be quicker and easier to use the command line to update a dll in the GAC. You can do this with the Global Assembly Cache Tool gacutil, but this is only present if you have the .net SDK or Windows SDK installed. This is going to be the case with your development machine, but you don’t really want to be installing it on all your test servers.

To get round this I knocked up a quick utility which will remove an existing version of a dll from the GAC and then install the latest version. The code is:

using System;using System.Globalization;using System.EnterpriseServices.Internal;

namespace Test{    public class GacInstall    {        public static void Main(string[] arguments)        {            try            {                string assemblyPath = arguments[0];                Publish publish = new Publish();                publish.GacRemove(assemblyPath);                publish.GacInstall(assemblyPath);            }            catch (Exception e)            {                Console.WriteLine(e);            }        }    }}

You can then use it by passing it the dll you want as a command line parameter e.g.

GacInstall MyUpdatedCode.dll

Assuming that MyUpdatedCode.dll is in the same directory.

Combined with my last tip Recycle An Individual Application Pool From The Command Line you can now write a bat or cmd file to replace the dll in the GAC and recycle the application pool with 2 key presses: The up arrow key and then return.

When developing SharePoint artifacts which live in the GAC you have the following options to get your new release in as part of the development process:

1. Build your installation package and upgrade it
2. Put the new dll in the GAC and run iisreset
3. Put the new dll in the GAC and recycle the SharePoint application pool

This is because SharePoint will only pick up updated dlls in the GAC after a recycle.

As it is an iterative process when you are developing this happens a lot, so ideally you need a process which is as quick as possible. 1 & 2 take the longest time so you should aim to use 3.

Luckily there is a command line command which will recycle individual application pools, which will be quicker than using the IIS administration tool. The command is

C:\windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe recycle apppool "SharePoint – 80"

Where you replace "SharePoint – 80" with the name of your application pool.

Of course when releasing to a live server you should always go down the proper installation package upgrade, this tip is purely for development purposes on your development server.

There’s a lot more you can do with appcmd – it’s a utility for making configuration changes to IIS so pretty much anything you can do through the IIS MMC snap in can be done via it. There are more details about appcmd on Technet or you can run

C:\windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe /?

to get help details.

Note: appcmd is for IIS7 not IIS6.

I’ve added a property to Salamander My Sites so that you can now filter the site list by a regular expression on the site url.

When the Site Name RegEx is set it checks the sites’ urls and only shows links to those that match the regular expression. In the case pictured only those sites with urls such as

• http://moss/classes/Art1A
• http://moss/classes/Art-b2
• etc

This was prompted by a request from a school who wanted to link to a subjects class sites from their departmental site.

They wanted to keep all the class sites under the classes sub-site, as per the default Microsoft Learning Gateway set up as that’s the easiest way for students to get to them.

Salamander My Sites remains a free web part.

SharePoint licensing has always been a bit of a black art, but the release of SharePoint 2010 seems to have complicated it even more. This is my attempt at understanding it and may well be completely wrong! If nothing else it should help your understanding when talking to your Microsoft Education Partner who you buy your licenses from.

Dave Coleman posted a great blog on it at http://www.sharepointedutech.com/2010/05/19/licencing-sharepoint-2010-for-education-in-the-uk/, however on further investigation it has since come to light, and verified by Microsoft that he is missing a component which will in all likelihood double the price.

Basics of Licensing

Forgetting the educational differences to start with, the different types of license which may or may not be required to run SharePoint are:

1. Server License per server running SharePoint
2. Device CAL to allow a specific computer in your intranet to connect to the SharePoint server
3. A User CAL to allow a specific user in your intranet to connect to the SharePoint server
4. A student device CAL for student users
5. A student user CAL for student users
6. A device CAL to allow access to SharePoint from a specific computer/device
7. Office 2010 licenses to use Office Web Applications
8. External Connector License is required if you have an external users (i.e. not part of your organisation) logging into SharePoint. It covers an unlimited number of external users.
9. SQL Server licensing. Every authenticated user must also have a valid license for SQL Server.

The server licenses break down into Standard or Enterprise and then again into intranet or internet options.

• The Enterprise version has more features than the standard one.
• If you want to host an internet site with anonymous users you need the internet option.

For Education

That the basics of SharePoint licensing. Now to consider the educational licensing:

You obviously need a server license per server. I’ll come back to internet or intranet later.

Each SQL Server which is used by SharePoint will need licensing in the normal way. Every user which access SharePoint is will need a license for SQL as well. If you’re using the same SQL server as for other applications, you may well already be covered, otherwise a per-processor license is usually cheaper than individual SQL Server CALs.

Then for each staff member who will be using SharePoint you need a full user CAL (£11.95). So far nothing complicated.

For students it’s where it gets different. For SharePoint 2007, you needed a student user CAL per student. Now if you refer to the licensing for SharePoint Server 2010 at http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/userights/ProductPage.aspx?pid=320 it states

Student Only CALs (Academic Open License and Academic Select)
Student Only CALs are restricted to license student owned PCs or institution owned PCs dedicated to an individual student and are NOT for use in labs or classrooms.

So you will still need a student User CAL(£0.85) per student to cover them accessing SharePoint from home. However in addition to this you will need a full Device CAL (£11.95) for every classroom PC which is not dedicated to an individual student. This is where it could get really expensive. Microsoft estimates that there’s approximately 1 PC per 3.5 students in the UK, so using Dave’s figures of 1000 students, that’s about 285 machines which will cost £3,405.75, which is slightly more than the other licenses put together. Of course if you one of the fortunate schools who has issued on laptop per student you only need student CALS, and if you are on the Schools Agreement the core CAL should cover SharePoint access.

What if you want to use SharePoint to communicate with parents, feeder schools and prospective students? Ray Fleming has blogged on this at Licensing parents for SharePoint – what’s free and what isn’t. Basically for every student which is licensed for SharePoint, then their parents/legal guardians are also licensed for no extra cost. In addition if ALL of your students are licensed then you get a no cost External Connector license for

• Prospective students
• Alumni – student & staff
• Students & staff of collaborating academic institutions or government institutions

You can find out more details about these no cost licenses from Ray’s blog post and download the Parent/Guardian CAL Grant Letter and External Connector Grant Letter. In particular this should mean that you can host sites for your feeder schools with no additional license costs.

What about using SharePoint for my internet sites?

In my reading of the grant letters, they give you:

• CALs for parents
• The above groups of your community rights to log in to SharePoint

My reading of an External Connector License is that it only applies to authenticated/logged in users. So in a strict reading you would be licensed for parents (and your licensed students and staff of course) to access an internet site. You would not be licensed for anyone else to anonymously access an internet facing site as those groups above are only licensed to log on.

Arguably, the intent of Microsoft is to allow all those groups above access to your SharePoint, and you could argue that would include anonymous and logged in access. I don’t have an answer as to whether you are truly licensed for this or not, and neither is anyone I have spoken to, including Microsoft employees! If it doesn’t license you then you will need an internet edition of SharePoint, but if it does, then for the majority of schools their target audience for any anonymous internet web site is going to exactly be those groups above.

Conclusion

The release of SharePoint 2010 has only seemed to muddy the waters even more over SharePoint licensing. I have been told that Microsoft is looking at this area of Educational licensing for SharePoint and feedback is valuable so I would suggest emailing Ray via his blog and letting him know your thoughts.

Sorry about that Ray, but I hope you get lots of feedback!

If you are in education and using SharePoint then the Learning Gateway Conference is the must attend event of the year. Run by Alex Pearce (MVP) and myself it follows on from the highly successful first Learning Gateway Conference last year. This year will be even bigger and better! We have added a whole new track which is dedicated to leading SharePoint schools telling us their stories of how they have implemented their Learning Gateways, what has worked for them and what pitfalls to avoid.

With the recent release of SharePoint 2010, it is an exciting time in the SharePoint world and the educational pricing makes it a great product for use in schools, colleges and local authorities. However, in addition to covering some of the fantastic new features in SharePoint 2010, we will still have lots of content for SharePoint 2007. So whether you have already moved to SharePoint 2010, are planning to upgrade over the summer or don’t currently have any plans to change, there will be lots of great information you can take away and use in your Gateway.

With both technical and user oriented sessions there is something for everybody – network managers, technicians, users, Learning Gateway managers or members of senior leadership teams. In addition the conference will be relevant and useful whether you are an experienced SharePoint user, just starting out or just considering SharePoint. With 3 concurrent tracks running throughout the day it would be worth considering having more than one attendee!

In addition to the content it will of course be a great networking event with the opportunity to meet others in the same situation as you and discuss what you are doing. At only £150 for the day it’s an unrivalled professional development opportunity providing information you will be able to put in practice straight away.

The venue is Church House, Westminster in Central London so is easy to get to from almost anywhere.

For more information visit the conference web site and register today. To whet your appetite here is a list of the sessions:

We hope to see you there on the 14th!

I’ve just added support for uploading multiple files to the My Documents and My Shared Documents web parts. It’s a pretty simple implementation – if you click on Upload Multiple Documents

then you get given the option to upload up to 5 documents at a time.

Nice and simple.

If you are looking to upload more documents than that, then really you probably ought to be using SharePoint itself as the document repository. I always look on these web parts as a step on the way to fully using SharePoint, not as a long-term solution.

However, if you really need to upload many files, just zip them up, upload and unpack them when you are next in school/work.