SharePoint Dragons

Here’s a small trick for enabling the workflow DSL for a custom activity:

1. First, create a new empty SharePoint project.
2. Add a  reference to the System.Workflow.Activities assembly. It’s located in the GAC, and therefore it may be a bit of a hassle to reference it. For cases like these, we like to use Muse.VSExtensions ( http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/36a6eb45-a7b1-47c3-9e85-09f0aef6e879 ) from the Visual Studio gallery. It adds a new menu option called Add GAC Reference that allows you to search for and reference assemblies in the GAC directly. If that’s not enough, it also adds a menu option that removes unused references. It’s a great tool, that works like a charm.
3. Also add a reference to System.Workflow.ComponentModel.dll, also located in the GAC.
4. Add a new class: 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Workflow.Activities;

namespace SharePointProject1
{
    public partial class Class1 : SequenceActivity
    {
        public Class1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
    }
}

Finally, add another class called class1.designer.cs:
 
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace SharePointProject1
{
    public partial class Class1
    {
        private void InitializeComponent()
        { }
    }
}

Now, when you click class1, you’ll find that now you can drag n drop activities. See http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010programming/thread/23f11f0f-d50d-4f99-a409-90f582b19442 for more info.

Most customers and SharePoint consultants share a vision, or dream if you will, of a SharePoint work environment that can be accessed anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Lately, we’ve actually met several people (completely separate from each other) that walked around with plans of creating some sort of IPad or smart phone support for SharePoint. It seems that Infragistics SharePlus will be shattering those ambitions. It also seems that SharePlus provides a missing piece of the “anywhere, anytime, anyhow” puzzle and may just well prove to be strategically important to Microsoft as well.

What does SharePlus do?

Finally, we’ll have a good answer when our customers are asking us about a way to access SharePoint from their iPads, iPhones, Mac desktops, BlackBerry Playbooks (BlackPads), Android phones, and soon, Windows phone support will be added. SharePlus will allow you to acess SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, BPOS, and Office 365. It offers a range of authentication methods, inlcuding Windows authentication, Forms authentication, HTTPS SSL and client certificates, ISA server, and MS ForeFront Authentication. Infragistics offers three versions:

• Lite, this version is free and is primarily intended for reading documents and list items.
• Pro, this version (at the time of writing) costs $19,99 and offers a full-blown content and document experience AND offers offline support.
• Enterprise, the price of this version depends on the situation and amount of users. This version is meant for in house deployment within a company, and therefore offers features such as rebranding and custom on demand features.

Yes, but what does it do?

We’re listing some of the appealing features (ignoring version differences here, contact Infragistics about that):

• It makes reading Office and PDF documents easy.
• It has Message File support. You can open mail files (.msg and .eml) and reply to message’s recipients, forward messages, and browse attachments.
• It allows you to navigate sites, lists, list items, and list item metadata.
• It allows you to search within a list.
• It offers a drag n drop UI for sorting and grouping.
• It allows you to manage your calendar, contacts, and tasks.
• It has offline support for lists.
• It adds an additional level of security for your client device (such as encryption for data that is locally stored).
• For iPad2 and iPhone: support for capturing and uploading audio and video recordings.
• WiFi sharing.
• Search bonuses such as searching within a user profile or within a list.

Where can I find more info about it?

For sure, SharePlus is an interesting product that has caught our attention. If you feel the same way, the home of SharePlus is http://www.shareplusapp.com/.