Next SharePoint Expert Chat is on April 27th, 2010

Last month's chat was a success. This month there are two chat sessions. I will participate (as an expert) in the chat on April 27th, 2010. More details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx Join us then for another interesting chat session. Let's make it a success!

Meet MEA MVP Lead Ruari Plint

Meet MVP Lead Ruari Plint: http://microsoftfeed.com/2010/meet-ruari-plint-microsoft-mvp-lead-for-middle-east-africa/

SharePoint MVP Chat (Mar 2010)

Here is the link to the chat's (Mar 2010) transcript. It contains several useful questions and answers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/ff625251.aspx

Renewed as MVP

04/01/2010 [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="178" caption="Microsoft MVP"][/caption] I have been renewed as MVP today. This will be my fourth consecutive year as a SharePoint MVP. I am happy and excited. I have lots of plans for this year. I would like to thank my MVP lead Mr. Ruari Plint. He has been very active in the promotion of community activities in the EMEA region and also came up with certain unique ideas for the promotion of community activities in the region. I would also like to thank the members of my group who continue to support me and the overall activities that we plan for the group. Last but not least, I would thank Dustin Miller who does an excellent job of promoting SharePoint through his free blogs' site. I just love sharepointblogs (now vspug) and that's the reason I haven't moved my blog to my personal site yet. Thanks Dustin. Saif

InfoPath 2010 cannot connect to SharePoint 2010

You have installed Office 2010 beta and you are trying to connect to SharePoint 2010 from InfoPath but you get an error. [caption id="attachment_452" align="alignnone" width="603" caption="The internet address is not valid"][/caption] Figure 1: The Internet address is not valid. You click OK and you get another error “The operation could not be completed”. Click Show Details >> and you will see error “Unable to connect to the SharePoint site”. [caption id="attachment_453" align="alignnone" width="654" caption="The operation could not be completed."][/caption] Figure 2: The operation could not be completed. You try a little harder to connect to the SharePoint but this time you get yet another error “Network is down or you may not be connected to the network”. What do you do next? You check if the enterprise features are enabled or not. They are enabled. You check DNS settings. Settings are fine. Now what? It happens if you have not created a top level site collection. Create a top level site collection and then try to connect and it should work. If you are not sure whether you have created a top level site collection or not, try to open the main site URL in the browser. If the site does not open then you have not created a top level site collection. For example, http://sp2010/sites/spsite opens fine and you can access all areas of the site but http://sp2010 does not open, then you have not created a top level site collection and in this case if you try to connect to http://sp2010/sites/spsite from InfoPath you will get an error. To create a top level site collection, go to central admin site and follow these steps:

1. Under Site Collections, click Create site collections link.
2. Select web application where you want to create site collection from the drop down.
3. Give title and description and select “/” from the URL drop down. Front slash stands for a top level site. You will not see it listed in the drop down if you have already created a top level site collection because you can only create one top level site collection per web application. You can create multiple sub site collections by selecting “/sites/” from the drop down and then entering the name of your site in the text box provided.

Root level site collection

Figure 3: Select top level for your site collection

4. Select a template for your site and enter primary site collection administrator and click OK. You are done. Now go and try to access the top level site link in InfoPath. It will work.

Activating Office 2010 Beta

Are you sure you have activated your Office 2010 beta? No, just downloading and installing it will not activate your copy. You have to activate it yourself. To activate Office, open Word. Click on File tab and select Help. Click "Change Product Key" link and enter the key that you downloaded with the program. Office configuration will take some time. Close all Office programs and restart any of the Office program. You will be prompted to activate the copy. Activate your copy and enjoy Office programs!

Excellent SharePoint Chat

The SharePoint chat session held today was very useful. 207 users joined the chat. If you did not attend the chat, the transcript of the chat will be available in a week's time. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx