Below are the rest of my observations on SharePoint 2010. Apologies for the delay in publishing these, I’ve been running a .NET training course internally in work.

• Team sites now have a pages library
• Wiki linking is built into pages. You can now wiki link to pages, lists, items and docs
• Silverlight is built-in to SharePoint’s ‘Create’ dialog. Apparently SL can be made accessible. Not sure if this is the case with this Silverlight dialog. Need to check accessibility
• Pages check for changes every minute and auto save if you have made any.
• Built-in Rich Text Editor has multiple levels of undo
• Versioning is on by default.
• New master pages exist. v4 is the latest. Changes here are carried through to site settings pages. Also have a minimal (no ribbon), simple (for error pages) and default (legacy)
• Accessibility is covered by everything being AA and XHTML. Not sure if this applies to central admin though.
• Text editors all render to XHTML
• You can add buttons to the SP Ribbon. I tried this and it’s a nightmare….
• You can associate more forms with lists, rather than New, Edit & Display. This includes InfoPath forms. Done through SPD
• XLSTViewWebPart is used for all list data now. More efficient and custom XSL can be supplied.
• Ajax settings can be configured on lists, i.e. refresh interval, manual refresh button, enable/disable Ajax etc.
• Lists can support inline editing (enabled in SPD) and a rating column (think star’s *****) , although InfoPath doesn’t support the latter in it’s designer.
• 2 versions of InfoPath are being banded about, a designer and a ‘Filler’
• A new post processing synchronous event now exists for lists that can be used to give feedback to a user after an item has been added.
• Cancelled events can redirect to a custom page that displays within a SP Modal Dialog
• Event submitters can be determined. In WSS sometimes the event owner would be assigned to a workflow/system account. MSF holds details on who raised what event.
• Built-in SP Explorer doesn’t expose bound list events. This is poor. No visibility if a list has 34 events already bound to it.
• Lists now support referential integrity (master detail) and cascading deletes.
• List joins can be made through queries (join up to 6 lists). Limit of 800kb for return results
• Projected fields now exist within lists, i.e. on a child list display a field from the parent, i.e. parent:company name
• MSF (Microsoft SharePoint Foundation) now supports 50m list items
• Throttling available from central admin for list queries. Can be time based (i.e. only allow this quota between 9-5pm). Settings available to allow/deny overrides via the object model. Administrator has a lot of control on query results.
• Unique column constraints available on column types. Company name can be made unique. Requires indexing and depends on SQL Collation
• Linq To SharePoint removes CAML Pain, but you need to generate SP Class Entities via a tool in the 14 hive called SP Metal. Basically point SP Metal at your SP Site and it generates a load of strongly typed C# classes.
• Lists are still stored as STP files, despite site templates being converted to WSP’s.
• Columns now have validation. Syntax similar to Excel, i.e. [CompanyEmployees] >= 50

Client Object Model

• Consistent interface across .NET, Silverlight, Javascript. Same (to a degree) method names. Obviously some differences in type support, i.e. JS’s NAN
• ‘Client Context’ used to batch operations
• All communications go through a client.svc WCF Service
• Requests appear to be sent as XML, responses as JSON
• New Silverlight webpart. XAP files deployed to webparts folder. XAP file is simple a zip for cross platform operation
• LINQ To SP not provided within Silverlight. ADO.NET Data services used instead
• Uploading an office theme for use in SP2010 doesnt work in this beta.
• SharePoint ‘Web application service’ service under central admin is used to sync your WFE servers. It’s dangerous though because it starts deleting your IIS files when you stop it. It will recreate them when restarting but any web.config changes etc you’ve made are gone

Workflows

• Workflows can now run against a site & list items. Event handlers needed to initialise
• Workflows can listen to notifications from external systems before resuming excution. Uses EDE (external data exchange). Long winded and complicated process
• Workflows can now be added & deployed via the new Feature packager
• Workflows can be created in Visio, exported to SPD and then again brought into VS2010. You can move between Visio & SPD easy enough but it seems that when it enters VS2010 it can’t be exported again to the others
• No version control in SPD other than SP2010’s list version control.
• New workflow events (started, completed)
• New visio web plugin displays visually the workflow path. It’s ok. Doesnt center workflow properly on load. Bit like page viewer web part
• SSP is gone, replaced by Service Providers. These can be load balanced & moved across servers as required.
• New Word automation service can be used to convert docs to PDF, Word 2003 etc. Word Open XML SDK intended for doc manipulation. Will still need Aspose.Net for Word 2003 docs
• Developers can create their own Service Providers. Looks reasonably complicated. Specific usage scenarios, i.e. intense calculations etc

BCS

• BCS is the new BDC
• Entities are now ECT’s, External Content Types
• BCS is now supports read/write to external systems
• SPD used quite well to create connections and CRUD screens
• SP2010 now has external lists that can expose data from external systems. Appears that workflows now support for these list types
• SSO details now stored in new Secure Store Service
• Groove (SP Workspace) seemed decent enough. Change I made in Groove went back to SP2010 and then on out to external system (SQL DB)

ECM

• Folders now supported in Page Libraries
• new content deployment option ’snapshot’. Time based snapshot sent between servers. Requires Enterprise SQL ‘05 or ‘08.
• New web analytics & reports. Looked ok but definitely not google contenders. Didn’t appear to be a means to export
• End users can now tag metadata to content themselves in addition to standard method
  Record management now possible ‘outside’ record center
• New ‘Unique Document Id’ service. Every document given a unique ID. Stays with it even if moved. Apparently has limited configuration options. This ID when used in conjunction with a specific URL (by sticking the ID on the query string) will take people to the document regardless if it is moved within the same document library or across libraries within a site collection
• Hold actions no longer tied to record center
• New document set. Content type composed on sub content types. ‘Document Set’ feature needed to be activated for it to work.
• Doc sets have versions and workflows can be run against them and constituents. Possible use is WF to check that all docs have been completed before moving to next stage.

Search

• 3 Levels of Search for SP Foundation Server
  • • Basic – Search Server Express 2010
    • Intermediate – SharePoint search 2010 (Index outside SP & Filestores)
    • Advanced – FAST can accept ‘push’ updates from code
• JDBC Support now included
• SP2010 has search connectors for Exchange, Notes, Documentum, FileNet, Opentext & custom .NET connector
• Support for search attachments
• Search web parts now unsealed. Can be overridden.
• New ability to override a query before its executed and results before display to users
• Search can have multiple levels of ranking models. Can be manipulated via PowerShell

BI

• BI Includes status indicators (as before, i.e. red amber green), chart web part, Performance Point Services, Excel Services, BI Search, Visio Services (Visual representation of KPI’s in Visio)
• Reporting Services doesn’t ship with 2010. Separate download
• BI Search adds Excel & Reporting services to search. Search for ‘delivery’ & spreadsheets with query are returned & filtered on query
• BI Centre template – Starting point with BI Portals
• New server product ‘Gemini’ provides in memory olap manipulation. Seamless for developers, no need to touch it.
• Little change is PerformancePoint Services
• Office Excel Web app looks decent.

Sandbox Solutions

• Site collection owners have power to deploy WSP’s to the sites sandbox, which is called ’solution gallery’
  Sandbox basically uses a cut down SP2010 Object model.
• Code executes in a separate process ‘Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service’
• A validation framework exists that can scan & validate wsp’s that are uploaded to the sandbox. Validators can revoke permission for the wsp to execute
• Sandboxed solutions are isolated to their own site collection.
  Two versions of the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll exist. The full version and the subset.
• When you create a new VS2010 project, you’re prompted if you want full trust of sandbox. If you select sandbox it ’still’ uses the full dll. No compile time checking that you should be using a restricted sharepoint dll.
• Sandbox apps use quotas. These are configurable and cover a varied number of scenarios such as process memory, db calls etc. For example, 20 db calls = 1 resource point. It you hit the max quote your web part/code is halted by SharePoint
• A timer job resets quotas at the end of the day.
• Doesn’t appear to be a means to determine what caused your quota to max out
• Quotas set via central admin or powershell
• I feel that setting quotas could be a dark art. Users * web parts * queries/cpu executions etc
• No means to promote from sandbox to live. Would require a removal & redeployment
• At runtime, sandbox wsps are retrieved from the solution gallery. Any required dll’s are extracted to a temp folder, loaded into memory and immediately deleted.
• It doesn’t look like you can debug sandboxed apps. There’s A) no place for PDB files and B) the user code service is a SP Service under central admin. No way to attach to it as far as I can see.
• Sandboxed apps can be load balanced

One of the big claims in the WCM space for SPS 2010 was it’s conformance out-of-the-box with the WCAG version2 standard to the AA level.

It’s only at Beta release at the minute and it’s subject to change but early indications look like this:

(NB: i have used a couple of common Accessibility Audit tools and am looking specifically for WCAG AA errors. NNB: While these tools are useful from an Audit perspective, there is no satisfactory measure of accessibility other than a proper evaluation with disabled users).

Also testing with client-side scripting (JavaScript) disabled as there needs to be an acceptable level of functionality without relying on this.

Team Site Template – Home Page

Total Validator (www.totalvalidator.com): Total errors found: 524 (Parsing: 7, HTML: 467, WCAG v2 A: 49, WCAG v2 AA: 1)

WAVE (http://wave.webaim.org/): WAVE has detected 12 accessibility errors

Disable JavaScript: Site Actions button doesn’t display a menu, none of the Ribbon controls work, ‘My Profile’ button doesn’t work, Search doesn’t work, Tags / Like It doesn’t work

Team Site Template – Document Library (Ribbon View)

Total Validator: Total errors found: 449 (Parsing: 12, HTML: 413, WCAG v2 A: 23, WCAG v2 AA: 1)

WAVE: WAVE has detected 13 accessibility errors

Disable JavaScript: Site Actions button doesn’t display a menu, none of the Ribbon controls work, document context menu doesn’t work, Search doesn’t work, Tags / Like It doesn’t work

Publishing Site Template – Home Page

Total Validator: Total errors found: 210 (Parsing: 3, HTML: 193, WCAG v2 A: 14)

WAVE: WAVE has detected 3 accessibility errors

Disable JavaScript: Site Actions button doesn’t display a menu, Help button doesn’t work, Search doesn’t work, Search field pre-populated with text.

Summary:

These figures are not totally accurate as several of the ‘errors’ flagged by these tools can be safely ignored, but we can see that things may not be as clear cut as stating that SharePoint 2010 has out of the box compliance with WCAGv2.

Hi all,

So I’m on the SP2010 MS Ignite training in Dublin. The course is a beta but its providing useful. Here’s some observations:

• STSADM for the most part replaced by Powershell. Aim is that STSADM will be deprecated in the next versions of Sharepoint. Powershell specific sharepoint version exists and users can create scriptlets for SP manipulation.
• We now have a 14 Hive. Bye bye 12!
• VS2010 is running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper V. 8GB Ram and it runs ‘ok’. VS2010 is fickle and crashes a lot. Our laptops will struggle. Not sure even a central dev server will cut it.
• New facility for mapped folders within VS2010, i.e. a mapped images folder that maps directly to the 14 hive images
• Contents=1 still works for webpart maintenance page
• Support for Visual Webparts (ascx files) as a project type.
• Great new facility within VS2010 for managing features & solution packages. Very easy to move features about. Need to find out if this is scriptable. Best thing I’ve seen so far.
• SharePoint explorer within VS2010 looks ok. Read only view of local sharepoint installs only. Currently available free tool SP Explorer is better than this but you can knacker your SP environment with it.
• WebTemplates are replacing Site Templates. All WSP based. Can be exported and brought back into VS2010 & customised. I.e user creates site, exports into VS2010 and boom, rebuilability (new word!)
• Features now have versions and dependencies (one level deep). With versions you can specify what gets upgraded.  We’ll need practice with this one..
• We can target event receivers against the top level site ‘RootWeb Only’. Possibility that a ‘Child Web Only’ attribute will be available in RTM version
• Can also target event receivers againts specific lists.
• Workflows can now be associated to sites.
• Features now have a property bag
• Developer dashboard is good. At the moment it can only be turned on/off via code (PS or c#)
• SharePoint can toggle UI Versions. Version 3 is the ‘classic’ look. Version 4 is the ‘ribbon’
• Webtemplates are stored in the solution gallery. Site Template Gellery is gone.
• Solution Sandbox stores content within the content db. I suspect this may use SQL Server 2008’s disk based storage.
• Solutions now have a ‘resource point’ system. Limits can be assigned to ensure that a solution doesnt hog resources.
• We can specify that solutions can be upgraded.
• New events exist, i.e. site added

Davey

Anyone that’s worked with SharePoint 2007 knows it’s a pain to make accessible. SharePoint spits things out as tables and the Site Actions menu is grim to behold in HTML. The guys working on the NSPCC NSU site used the ARF toolkit to replace the standard SharePoint 2007 controls with ARF controls that basically pull the info from SharePoint, render it as XML and apply an XSL to this. The result is the NSU Safeguarding Unit site that’s fully accessible. (Cue Ciaran or Nicky for a full blog post! =) )

Andrew McConnell has recently blogged about SharePoint 2010’s rendering; namely that it’s WCAG2.0 AA compliant ootb and it even converts existing sites! His post is definitely worth a read and can be found here:

http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2009/11/04/sharepoint-2010-changes-to-rendering.aspx

I wonder how accessible the admin interface is though? I’ve seen a few requests for accessible admin interfaces and I have a feeling it’ll be the next big thing.

SO I’ve seen one day’s worth of seminars about SharePoint 2010 at SPC09 and I want it now!!  I’ve collated a list of the new features that I’ve heard about so far below and I imagine this only scrapes the surface, but it will give you an idea of how far the product has come in the past 3 years.

Functional Area	Improvements/New features
General	· The Microsoft office ribbon is now being used across the pages and libraries to provide all user functions· Capabilities for compositing, Rapid Application Development and communities extended in 2010 · Better support for multiple browsers and phones
Workflow	· Out of the box workflows can now be customized via SharePoint Designer so that it is no longer necessary to start from scratch· SharePoint Designer workflows can now be deployed at list and site level · SharePoint Designer workflows will now be reusable · Workflow processes in SharePoint Designer can be imported from and exported to and from Microsoft Visio · Workflow visualisations can be displayed by Visio Services so that people can see clearly what stage in the workflow the document is currently at
Web Content Management	· Cross browser support is now provided for page authoring. XHTML support for accessibility · The ribbon provides a rich feature set when editing page content · Live preview is provided when formatting content style and positioning · Pictures don’t need to be uploaded to the picture library to be made available for insertion – pictures can be selected from a local drive and will be uploaded automatically to the digital asset library when added to a page · Ability to resize and reposition images on the page (with live preview) · Spell checking is now built into the WCM content editor when publishing the page – also checks for draft items on the page · Media web part available – silverlight based media player allowing streaming video to be delivered from the SharePoint rich media library - Ability to create custom skins for the media player - Streaming in BLOB cache (Maintains the health of the servers while content is being streamed · Host header can now be created for site collections (instead of at web application level) · Improvements to the Content Query Web Part     - The filter section of the content query web part has a new field to be able to specify a value relating to the page in which the web part is embedded    – No longer need to fiddle with XSL to make the values appear in the web part     – Now a UI for specifying which fields to show· Changes to the page layout in SP Designer will be brought through to all pages created from the page layout · Site branding via custom themes and master pages will now be applied to all pages – system pages will no longer be excluded
Document Management	· Web parts available to show newest documents, highest rated documents, modified by me· Unique document identifiers are now facilitated for all documents · Document libraries can have a million items per folder or 10s of millions of items per library · Ability for administrators to throttle lists to limit the number of items being viewed · Taxonomy can be used to navigate millions of items – improving user experience · Social context can be used to find documents using document ratings – who rated this document from my team· Metadata navigators provided on the left of libraries to drill down into library contents to help filter the documents in the library · New drag and drop ability within the Upload Multiple Documents interface· Hierarchical metadata and taxonomy for classifying content · New concept of Document sets- A document set is a document content type in itself that contains child document types     – Allows documents to be grouped together and managed together     – Enabled features such as multiple checkout and check in     – Can include instructional information for a document set including streaming video to give advice on processes     – Can manage entire set or individual documents within the set · Big investments have been made to enhance the interaction between office applications and SharePoint     – Ability to add notes to a document within Word     – Auto-complete available on property fields in Word     – Office is now aware of the content types in libraries and the templates associated with those content types, knowing where to store it and which metadata to capture · Office online applications allow documents to be opened and edited in the browser by multiple users · File Server co-existence is now possible using File Server Resource Manager (Provided by Windows Server 2008 R2)     – Provides the ability to apply metadata over existing file shares     – Content classifier and folder classifier     – Automatically applies metadata based on the content of a document (based on iFilters) – applied based on pattern matching within the documents     – Can decide what stays in place and what is promoted to SharePoint     – Powershell scripts used to send documents to SharePoint     – Content Organiser used to place the document in the correct location in SharePoint     – A link is left in the file share to the document in SharePoint     – A report is produced detailing what has been moved to SharePoint by the PowerShell scripts
Records Management	· Can now declare documents as record in place· Can lock the system down so only certain users or workflows can declare or ndeclared documents as records · Also still have the ability to send documents to the records centre (Can be done on any document, wiki item or blog entry) · In 2007, policies were applied to content types – Now, policies can be applied to both content types and libraries/folders· SharePoint 2010 allows the construction of hierarchical records repository · Can now have multi-phased disposition schedules · Content Organiser allows content to be sent to the correct part of the file plan     – Can set up organiser rules based on metadata properties and content types – can have multiple conditions     – Documents are routed to the appropriate location based on the rules- The content organiser can be used on any sites – not just the record centre     – Can have an auto-provisioned file plan based on the rules chosen · Can now send items to the Records Centre as part of a SP Designer workflow · Can leave a stub behind in the document library when moving to the records centre · eDiscovery and Holds     – Powerful new tools for discovery of information     – Hold capability is not being restricted to a records centre – items can be held in place or moved to another location depending on the options chosen when searching for items to hold     – Hold reports available for the sites
Content Classification	· New Managed Metadata Service makes it possible to define content types and hierarchical taxonomies across multiple sites and farms· Can import taxonomies from .csv format · Can specify if users can use taxonomy terms when tagging content· Can specify terms in different languages (which can be switched depending on the user) · Can provide synonyms for taxonomy terms · Allows users to suggest new terms to be added to the taxonomy · Metadata can now be used to drive discovery and navigation · Add hoc bottom up taxonomy management – ability to tag content and manage navigation via the taxonomy
Enterprise Search	Search Product Options· Search Server 2010 Express     – Quick, easy, powerful search for free-      Basic search · SharePoint Server 2010     – Complete intranet search     – Intranet-wide search     – People and expertise search · FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint     – High-end search delivered through SharePoint     – Visual experiences, extreme adaptability and advanced content processing     – Powerful platform to build on     – 360 degree views     – Research portals     – Reputation analysis·  Standard and FAST Search – unified set of connectors, improved user experience, wildcard searching, filtering, navigation, federation · Experience, relevance, navigation – new relevance algorithms for people, taking account of misspellings of people’s names (using phonetics algorithms) · Scale and flexible platform – increased programmability and scalability – FAST adds to the extensibility · Type ahead now provided in search box · Metadata extraction to provide faceted search criteria in the left nav to filter search results · Ability to save search to desktop to allow items to be searched later form windows explorer· Improved relevance rankings · Enhanced language support and word breaking· Ability to preview office documents in the search page (this looks really good) · User context – allowing relevancy to be based on user interests · Enhanced people search     – Ability to filter results based in job title, interests, etc in the navigator     – Extraction from the user profile returned in the search results to make it easier to find the right person · OOTB Sources for SharePoint Search now include File shares, Web sites, Databases, SharePoint, Exchange Server, Documentum and Lotus Notes
Social Computing	· Power of social computing has been harnessed in 2010 for the enterprise· Tag clouds available along with blog rolls · Ability to build networks and see what other colleagues are up to · Rating feature now available in lists and libraries (including blog and wiki entries) · New search capability – rich people search to find people by expertise, ability to view recent content published by a user from the search -queryless search, enhanced search results interface · Profile sites show lists of tags that users have applied to content · Note boards (walls) available on user profiles for colleagues to leave notes and questions·
Business Intelligence	· Performance Point Services is now an integrated part of SharePoint 2010- Provides the ability to drill down into graphical information and use decomposition trees from the graphs – allowing managers to breakdown information within the browser, slicing and dicing information    – Seamless integration, more advanced dashboards and visualisations · SQL Server PowerPivot (released next year) – empowering Excel workbooks to handle 100 million rows of data · Ability to build workbook views in Excel and publish information to SharePoint · RSS feeds available for Excel workbooks to see what changes are being made · Excel services, SQL Server support – slicers, capability for new chart types, new visualisations of data, exposing Excel formulas –Visio Services and Chart web parts – ability to bind Visio to live data and allow data to be sliced and dicedBusiness Connectivity Services – external line of business and SQL data brought in as SharePoint data·
Offline Content	· SharePoint Workspace is the replacement for Groove, allowing content to be taken offline and synched back when required· Workspace is aware of Document Sets so keeps documents grouped as they are in SharePoint
Administration	· Ability to have a mix of sites on-premises and/or in the Cloud· New web and Powershell Admin – improved central administration UI, better command line scripting ability     – PowerShell to replace STSADM(500 commandlets being shipped with the public beta with the ability to crack open and customise) · WhatIf command can be used with PowerShell commandlets to show what will happen when the script runs before it runs · Throttling, monitoring, analytics – proactively manage the health of SharePoint –more rules being produced and shipped with later releases. Ability to write own reports against the schema (for the usage analysis database – not the content databases) · Improved upgrade and availability – new model for visual upgrade – ability to run old UI pages as they are in the new environment or use the new UI when required, much less downtime required for applying patches with mirroring and log shipping
Development	· Developer productivity with VS2010 – beta released 19/10/2009· New tools for SharePoint· New list of templates for site definitions, workflow, web parts, content types · All available to run on Windows 7 and Vista · Don’t need to jump to explorer to view the SharePoint site – site explorer in the left nav of VS · Graphical designers built in to help build and package solutions · Drag and drop for building web part interfaces · Ability to map folders from file systems to publish through to SHarePoint – to use to embed images in web parts (uses relative URLs) – VS will package the folder and deploy it to the 12 hive · One click to deploy and debug – can set a breakpoint before deploying – F5 retracts, installs, deploys, etc with one click· New UI for adding web parts to pages · New developer dashboard in SP 2010 – shows all database calls, callstack of what was called (xray technology for web parts), shows event offsets – timings of each call     – can be used by developers and IT Professionals (this looks great)     – Provides a report of slowest to load pages within a site plus the time of each image load and databse roundtrip on the page