Test SMTP Server for SharePoint Outgoing Email Settings
I have been trying to find a good solution for a test SMTP server for SharePoint for some time. Like many others, I have unique requirements including: 1) I run a SharePoint development instance on my Windows 7 laptop, 2) I run SharePoint test instances on virtual machines, and 3) I do many SharePoint demos from my laptop -- sometimes without an internet connection. Since SharePoint requires you to use a SMTP server that allows anonymous access, that somewhat limits one from using an ISP account as well. It is frustrating to demo a workflow without the ability to send an email.
I recently discovered an open source solution for developers that captures SMTP traffic on the developer machine and doesn't actually send it. This works perfect for demos for me. The solution is called smtp4dev. Here is how it works.
Once you have downloaded and installed smtp4dev from codeplex.com, double-click the icon in the system tray and click the options button on the dialog that appears. Switch to the server tab and put your computer name in the Domain Name field. Note that the smtp4dev instructions suggest that you use localhost which in most cases would be fine. However, in the Outgoing Email Settings in SharePoint, I received an error saying the localhost smtp server could not found. I got around the error by naming the domain and smtp server the same as my workstation.
Once you have smtp4dev configured on your SharePoint server, open up SharePoint's Central Administration. Go to Manage web application --> highlight your web application --> General Settings --> Outgoing Email. Fill out the screen similar to below.
After that, you are good to go! I opened up a calendar on my SharePoint 2010 Team Site and added an alert. It really doesn't matter to whom the alert would be sent as this tool intercepts all outgoing emails from your test server. Then I added an event to my calendar. A few seconds later, the smtp4dev icon in the system tray notified me that it had intercepted an email. I double-clicked on it and I saw the following:
When I double-click on the email message in smtp4dev, Outlook opens on my workstation displaying the alert email.
It's that easy! I saw one report that smtp4dev would not work when you do not have a live internet account. However, I disabled the wireless interface on my laptop and it still worked for me just fine. From what I can tell, this is going to be perfect for doing SharePoint demos. I'm sure I'll use it for years to come. I want to think Robert Wood for contributing this excellent solution.
Links to Some SharePoint Resources at Microsoft.com
I have created some TinyURLs for some links that I refer to often when giving SharePoint presentations or answering questions in forums.
To see what features are available in which edition (Foundation, Standard, Enterprise) of SharePoint, refer to the SharePoint edition comparisons page at:
http://tinyurl.com/sp2010editions
To download the SDK (Software Development Kit), including documentation and code samples for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, visit the Microsoft Download Site at:
To get started with SharePoint development, check out the presentations, videos, source code and hands on labs available in the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Kit at:
http://tinyurl.com/sp2010devkit
To get help making the right development and architectural decisions, visit the SharePoint Guidance Patterns and Practices site at:
Comparing SharePoint Forums
I have long been a fan of newsgroups and forums. I am appreciative to all of the professionals that give of their time to post questions, answer questions and moderate them. The questions that they answer continue to help others weeks, months and sometimes years later. Like many others, I try to give back when I have opportunity. My first love is definitely blogging, but I am trying to make browsing the forums more of a priority.
The two forum sites I participate in are the MSDN/TechNet SharePoint forums and SharePoint Overflow. Their are things that I like about both of them and some things that I don't. Here is a short list.
Voting System
Both forums have a voting system that allows the community to show support for good questions and good answers. Votes are accumulated for the question/answer authors and are applied toward the points system.
Points System
The points system (a.k.a. "reputation") of both forum sites are a great way to gain recognition in the community for a job well done. On the MSDN site you earn medals based on the number of points you have acquired. At SharePoint Overflow (which is based on the popular StackOverflow developer forum) it gets a little more interesting than that: you can earn new functionality at point thresholds. For example, a newbie cannot vote or flag questions as offensive, but can just after 15 points. As the points continue to accumulate, you may leave comments, vote down, create new tags, retag questions, edit other peoples' posts, vote to close or reopen questions and eventually become a moderator. To keep it interesting between point thresholds, you may also earn badges based on performing certain activities on the site. The badges make it fun in addition to educational.
Feedback
SharePoint Overflow allows you to comment on questions and answers. On the MSDN forums you may reply to others' replies, but it gets a little cumbersome to read as the thread must be read top-down. With SharePoint Overflow, multiple answers may receive their own reader comments -- so in effect you have multi-threaded responses.
Organization
With the advent of SharePoint 2010, the MSDN forums have been divided into four forum categories: General, Setup/Upgrade/Admin/Opps, Customization and Programming. That number is down from the fifteen forums available for pre-SharePoint 2010. I can appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do in trying to organize the posts and allow for moderators to specialize on specific categories. There are downsides, too. One thing is dislike is when a newbie posts a question in the wrong category and a moderator chides them and moves the answer to a different category (granted some moderators are more graceful than others). What's just as bad is when a poster posts the same question into multiple categories. What would be nice is if the poster could just worry about posting the question and someone else could decide where to put it. With SharePoint Overflow, you don't have to worry about that. There is one forum for all SharePoint products, and the organization is accomplished using tags and filters. I tend to favor SharePoint Overflow in this category -- I give it a thumbs up for ease of use.
Speaking of filters, both forum sites have great filter/sort/search capabilities. I give MSDN the nod, however, because the MSDN forums make it easier to identify which questions have absolutely no responses in addition to identifying which questions just haven't been flagged as answered. You may also filter on MSDN by the posts that contain code.
Reporting
Both forum sites have nice reports for reporting on your activity. The MSDN forums seem to be more useful in terms of linking those activities back to the original posts.
Bio Pages
Both sites allow the participants to have a bio page to tell about themselves -- a very cool feature. Here is my MSDN Forum Bio. Here is my SharePoint Overflow Bio.
Syndication and Notification
One of the things I like so much about SharePoint Overflow is that it notifies me of new posts in both twitter (@spoverflow) and via RSS (I use a RSS Reader on my mobile phone). When I first started participating in the MSDN forums, RSS feeds were not available. It appears that they now are. What a great way to keep up with the kinds of challenges others are experiencing! MSDN will also notifiy you via email if you so desire when there is activity on a thread you are watching. SharePoint Overflow provides you with an activity page to monitor when people comment on one of your posts.
Popularity
The MSDN forum site is the clear winner here. There are exponentially more users, posts and responses on the MSDN site. SharePoint Overflow, however, is a force to be reckoned with and it is where I find myself spending the majority of my "forum time" lately. SharePoint Overflow is really community run. Its founders designed it that way. The MSDN forums have the backing of Microsoft, its product teams and a larger number of MVPs. It is great to see how Microsoft recognizes the contributors and MVPs both on the forum pages and on the MSDN home page.
In closing, I would like to endorse both of these forum sites. Again, I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I also think they cater to different people. I have noticed that many SharePoint pros participate on both sites, and I will likely continue to do the same. I hope that both sites continue to improve functionality. The fact that both of these resources are available (as well as countless others) just reinforces my opinion that the SharePoint and .NET technical communities are hands-down the best communities to be a part of. Go team!
Update: 30+ Days Later (8/20/10)
- At first I wasn't a fan of allowing moderators to mark responses as the answer, but I understand more now why it is necessary. There are times when someone gives a response that is the clear answer. Many times the asker was just a one-time visitor who got his/her answer and ran with it -- never taking the time to log in and mark it appropriately. In those cases, it leaves future readers wondering if the question was answered or not. It is best to let a moderator mark it as answered.
- On MSDN I saw a case where someone answered a question and the asker replied "Thanks, that worked" but inadvertently marked his own acknowledgment as the answer rather than the actual answer. On SPO, Person A answered a question and Person B replied that he agreed with Person A -- then Person B's answer of "I agree" was marked as the answer. : )
- MSDN allows multiple replies to be marked as answers. This is useful for a couple of reasons: 1) there is often more than one way to solve a problem, and 2) sometimes an answer spawns another question that needs to be answered. It is great to keep that all in the same thread for future reference.
Fun with Data View Web Parts
I'm working on a series of posts regarding the Data View Web Parts in SharePoint 2010. I'm intrigued by the idea of companies using SharePoint Foundation (fka SharePoint Services) and DVWPs on Site Pages created in the free SharePoint Designer as a viable alternative to InfoPath for collecting data with web forms. Granted, if a company has InfoPath, I would recommend using it for online forms 9 times out of 10. But until Microsoft decides to make a end user version of InfoPath available for free so that users can fill out forms, I am confident there will be plenty of organizations that will not purchase it.
So I will be introducing some jQuery for sprucing up the presentation of the forms. I will also show you some tips and tricks for data validation and page redirection. It's an exciting topic. Stay tuned.
Getting Started with .NET Development
A couple of times this week I got the opportunity to share with some individuals suggestions for getting started learning .NET development. Sometimes I take it for granted that these resources are commonly known, but there are definitely those who assume that there are still no free editions of Visual Studio. I wanted to point you to some FREE resources to help you get started learning .NET.
First of all, Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition comes in a few flavors. The reason is that you can only support one language at a time in the Express Edition. So you must download the Visual Basic edition or C# edition, for example. With the Professional Edition you get support for all the languages in a single IDE (plus additional features), but the Express Editions are definitely a great way to test the waters and you can definitely write production ready code. See http://www.microsoft.com/express/ for more information and to download the Express Editions for free.
Also available on the Express page is a link to download SQL Server 2008 Express for free.
If you want to learn SharePoint (everyone should), then there are some free resources for you as well. If you have Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595&displaylang=en to download SharePoint Foundation. You will have to install it in standalone mode following the instructions listed at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx.
Finally, there is also a free download for the latest version of SharePoint Designer -- SharePoint Designer 2010. You can do a great deal of SharePoint development and administration using this product. See http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/product/Related-Technologies/Pages/SharePoint-Designer.aspx for more information.
I should mention that there is help available in each of the products. Visual Studio contains tutorials to help you get up to speed quickly. In addition, MSDN has virtual labs available for many Microsoft products at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/aa570323.aspx.
If you are an aspiring developer or a hobbyist programmer, don't use Java just because Eclipse or NetBeans are available for free. Microsoft has responded with these Express products to help you evaluate and learn the best development environment on the market.
No 32-bit SQL Server with SharePoint 2010
I'm often asked questions related to "mixing and matching" server architecture in a SharePoint environment. Although it was not recommended, it was possible to install a 64-bit MOSS farm against a 32-bit SQL Server instance. The problem was that mixing the environment like so could result in unpredictable performance. However, with SharePoint 2010 the requirements specifically call for 64-bit SQL Server 2008, or 64-bit SQL Server 2005 SP3 CU3.
First of all, let me say that the installation process (the prerequisite check, required service accounts and so forth) for SharePoint 2010 has been streamlined nicely. Kudos to the product team. So I wondered if they had gone so far as to check for the stated minimum requirements for SQL Server during the SharePoint installation process. Guess what...they did!
So, at first we had 32-bit SQL Server 2005 SP3 (no cumulative update) installed and tried to install a SharePoint 2010 Foundation server against it. We got the following error:
I had to wonder: was it because I was using 32-bit SQL Server, or because I did not have Cumulative Update 3 applied. The only way to know for sure was to apply CU3. So we did. As a result of the update, the error got a little more descriptive:
SharePoint 2010/Office 2010 Released To Manufacturing
Read about it on Arpan Shah's blog --> http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/04/16/sharepoint-2010-reaches-rtm.aspx
The products will be available via download to many customers later this month and become generally available the 1st of May -- earlier than previously anticipated.
Enjoy!
Recap of Western Kentucky DNUG Meeting
I had a great time at the Western KY .NET User Group meeting last Thursday. Gene Merlin and I made the 2 and a half hour drive with a little help from Red Bull and Hershey's. There were great questions and feedback from this well-educated group at Murray State University. One thing I learned was that it is impossible to cover all of the new development features of SharePoint 2010 in a single sitting! I'm definitely going to split the presentation out into multiples. I thank everyone at the group for their attendance and hospitality.
My favorite demo of the meeting was WPF and the SharePoint Client Object Model. It is definitely worth an encore. I presented a bare bones approach to updating a SharePoint announcement list. If you look at the code attached below and it seems over-simplistic, that's because it is. It is worth taking a look at the solution to see get familiar with the concepts, but my intentions are to add to it as time allows to show some more advanced SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model functionality.
Visual Studio 2010 WPF Solution
SharePoint 2010, Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 Launches Are Final
The much anticipated launch date for SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 has been set for May 12 -- with a RTM date of April. If you have attended a SharePoint Saturday event lately then you are aware of many of the new features. On a side note, I remember how great it was when MOSS 2007 (on WSS 3.0) was released -- it was SOOOO much better. One thing I tired of really quickly, however, were all of the books, articles, blogs and training courses that explained "this is how it was done in SPS 2003, but this is how you do it in MOSS 2007" or "this is what it is now called" or whatever. I have made it my personal intent to not go there. Not that I'm not a fan of MOSS 2007. I was with it from the beginning and I'm still rolling out MOSS 2007 projects today. I'm a huge fan. However, for the sake of clarity, I will focus on SPF4 and SPS2010 exclusively on this blog. My logic is that there are going to be many folks who are new to SharePoint this release. That is my audience. I'm guessing that they don't care how it was done before. And, by the way, I'm even more excited about SharePoint 2010 than I was MOSS 2007!
The other date that I'm really excited about is April 12 -- the official launch date of Visual Studio 2010. Hopefully you made it (or will soon make it) to one of the MSDN Live events! They only scratch the surface of what you can do with SharePoint 2010 in Visual Studio 2010, but it is enough to get you excited. I have been playing with the beta release for a while now. I hardly open Visual Studio 2008 any more.
Speaking of which, I will be showing some SharePoint 2010 development at the Western Kentucky .NET Users Group on March 11. If you are in the Murray State area, please come check it out!
