Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010

In Access 2007 you were able to publish data to SharePoint 2007, Access 2010 – in combination with SharePoint Server 2010 extends this functionality by allowing you to publish full Access applications to SharePoint including forms, reports, queries, etc … This can be done without involvement of developers or server administrators. Once published, your Access application can be worked with from within the SharePoint native web interface.

PS Access Services is part of SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise edition – check out SharePoint 2010 edition comparison for more details

Monday, June 21, 2010

Access Services: solving this report failed to load because session state is not turned on.

I noticed the following error recently in one of the Access web databases driven by Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010.

“This report failed to load because session state is not turned on. Contact your SharePoint farm administrator. Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation. Correlation ID: 6968e6db-d139-4b88-bf5a-7c39c2e4a6be  Date and Time: 6/16/2010 7:37:01 AM”

The strange thing was that the State Service was in running state (within SharePoint Central Admin > Manage Service Applications). Underlying Access Services seems to use a ReportViewer Control so this article – Using Access Services with SQL Reporting Services provided the solution:

Enable the Session State for the farm by opening the SharePoint Management Shell. Enter the command [Enable-SPSessionStateService –DatabaseName “foobar”] — The DatabaseName value is the database that will be created on the computer that is running SQL Server. Perform an IIS reset.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Selling ECM,WCMS, BPM ….

Funny video  -  a fictional discussion between a business software salesperson and an IT Manager. …

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Dear CEO , why you should really consider moving to Windows 7 from Windows XP

Dear CEO, yes it is time to move away from Windows XP – here are some reasons why:

  • Mainstream support for Windows XP has already ended last year and extended support is available until 2014 – so you probably won’t be able to wait until Windows 8. You can only hold off for so long …
  • You might want to take a look at Windows 7 Business Value Analysis – depending on the type of organization you will have a different ROI and cost structure. “I haven’t heard about possible advantages” seems like a lame excuse for just sticking with what you know.
  • There are some great improvements – maybe you will not notice a lot of difference but believe me – when your workforce will adopt it Windows 7 in their home environment – they will notice these differences and might be disappointed for the lack of these features in their work environment. Yuo can even guide them using the new Enterprise Learning Framework My favorite improvements:
          • Performance improvements – yes even with older hardware I see that it just boots faster and that the settings screens load faster as well.
          • Support for 64 bit – I’m a SharePoint dev so …
          • Search desktop and programs (my personal favorite)
          • Better wireless support – I haven’t had any issues since I moved to Windows 7 – both Windows XP and Vista gave me severe headaches when using it in combination with my wireless network.
          • Productivity enhancement due to the new UI
          • DirectAccess – accessing networks without the need to VPN – I can’t wait for this one.
          • Boot from VHD option (yep probably not a typical end user operation)
  • Use the Windows 7 refresh to assess your desktop environments and try to rationalize the application portfolio you currently need to support. A migration is not only a technical operation – if you approach it intelligently you might create extra value while migrating.
  • Although the standalone user operating system becomes less relevant in a corporate environment – I do think that IT consultancy and services firms should typically lead the pack in migrations. Consider an account manager (or consultant for that matter) trying to sell the value of Windows 7 when giving a presentation with Office 2003 and Windows XP – must be a hard sell in my opinion.

If you agree or disagree … just leave a comment

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Wednesday, June 02, 2010

SharePoint Saturday Belgium Presentations and code samples

I finally collected all the presentations and code samples from the different sessions about SharePoint 2010 at our first SharePoint Saturday here in Belgium. Enjoy