When:Friday, February 10, 2012

Time:12:00 – 1:00 Eastern

Register: Click Here to Register

ANSOR Legal Marketing and Experience Suite helps law firms of all sizes maximize their Microsoft investment while accelerating the proposal development process. ANSOR Proposal Generation Center built on the power of Microsoft Office and SharePoint delivers a robust set of Legal Marketing Components that allow your firm to develop, manage, and deploy approved marketing content. The webinar will focus on how firms can quickly generate unique, high quality proposals and marketing content as well as delivering new capabilities in collaboration, workflow, and access to experience content.

Presenter:
Rich Westle. a management consultant with Kraft Kennedy, leads solution development and product strategy for ANSOR Software, and has been involved in leading teams to deliver SharePoint based solutions to the legal market since 2004. Rich has been a featured speaker in the area of developing law firm experience management systems, most recently at the LexisNexis Redwood Analytics conference and Gensler Legal Market Summit.

When: Friday, February 24, 2012
Time: 12:00-1:00 Eastern
Register: Click Here to Register

Presenter BIO:

Joe Hoegler is the Practice Leader of Kraft Kennedy’s Infrastructure and Enterprise Systems Practice Group. He provides technical leadership and strategic guidance on client engagements involving a broad range of law firm technologies and is responsible for directing technology strategy and providing technical management at the firm. As of December 2011, he has led or advised over 35 law firm clients totaling over 35,000 users on projects related to Exchange 2010, ranging in size from 30 to 6,000 users. Joe is a Microsoft Certified Master on Exchange 2010, one of only approximately 50 people worldwide who hold this certification.

This works great with lists, as the new form is populated with all of the fields from the content type, and you can easily modify the XSL to choose which fields are displayed, as well as the layout.  However, the form will be a lot more empty if you try this with a document library.  For some reason, the new document library forms include the data view web part for the library, but do not start off with any of the fields included.  But the fix for this is pretty easy.  Just follow the steps below to get the data view web part to include all of the available fields:

1) In Designer, create a new edit form and pick your content type

2) Click the form to open it

3) Click to the right of the “created at” field.  This should show “Data View Tools” in the ribbon.

4) Open the Design ribbon, and check “Sample Data.”  That should be it–that puts all the fields into the form.

After that, you should be able to modify the layout, as well as the fields in the XSL.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/838028

There are several options and workarounds for dealing with this issue.  One workaround is simply to disable the “options” call, which will disable the initial authentication prompt that users would have to cancel.  Before attempting this, you should read the KB article to learn more about this call, and thoroughly test your environment.

To disable the call, just add the following code to the <system.webServer> section in the web.config file for each web application on each SharePoint web server.

<security>
<requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping=”true”>
<verbs allowUnlisted=”true”>
<add verb=”OPTIONS” allowed=”false” />
<add verb=”PROPFIND” allowed=”false” />
</verbs>
</requestFiltering>
</security>

“Some or all identity references could not be translated”

The systems were up to date on updates and hotfixes, and the applications appeared to be configured correctly.  The problem in the end turned out to be that the servers all had the same SID and were joined to the domain with different computer names, but the same SID.  This led to the unpredictable domain authentication issues that we were seeing.

For anyone in this situation on Windows 2008 Server R2 machines, don’t run the “NewSID” tool.  That will blue screen the server, and you’ll have to restore from a backup or rebuild the box.  Instead, you can use sysprep to change the SID of the machines, even after the machines are fully configured (though it’s best to use it before configuring machines).

You should backup the machines before makiong any changes.  We were able to do the following sequence on the servers to fix the authentication issues:

1) Use the PSTools (psgetsid) to view the current machine’s SID, available here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

2) Disconnect the machine from the domain and place in a workgroup.

3) Delete the computer account from Active Directory.

4) Run sysprep on the Windows 2008 R2 server from this path:
/System Drive/Windows/system32/sysprep/sysprep.exe

Click the “Generalize” box, which creates the new SID, leave the other options as is, and press OK.

5) Once the machine reboots and runs through some Windows dialogs, use psgetsid again to verify that the SID has changed.  Rejoin the server to the domain, and then verify that the apps are all working as they should, and that the authentication issues are gone.

The requirements to participate in the Microsoft Partner Program have recently evolved to help differentiate technical and business capabilities among participants; Kraft Kennedy has risen to the challenge by quickly exceeding the goals set forth by the program.

Each competency requires specific individuals with deep technical skills, Microsoft verified customer references, and challenging certification exams to be completed.  This commitment demonstrates our breadth, deep specialization, and proven expertise across a range of Microsoft technologies.

About Kraft Kennedy

Kraft Kennedy provides business and technology-related consulting services to the legal community. By combining outstanding technical skills with an intimate knowledge of our clients’ business and information needs we tailor solutions that enhance attorney productivity, effectiveness, and client value.

We focus on the business needs of the client and ensure that technology is used to enhance, not inhibit their business. KK’s talented staff of strategic consultants, project managers, and network consultants have years of experience with hundreds of projects for firms from small to large. Our services portfolio includes advanced infrastructure projects, business continuity and data center consolidation, desktop deployment, network design and implementation, storage design and replication, and messaging systems migration among others. Our Microsoft specialties include: Desktop, Server Platform, Unified Communications, Portals and Collaboration, Search, Systems Management, Virtualization, and Small Business Specialist Community.

SharePoint Designer 2010 gives you the ability to create impersonation steps, which run in the security context of the workflow author.  So it’s simple to create an entire process that will run in the context of the item submitter, but have one step which runs with elevated permissions.  In that way we could setup an HR workflow that checks how many vacation days you have left and updates the number, without having to give the actual user anything more than read rights to the HR list.  You only need to make sure the workflow author has the elevated permissions required on the list.

Another interesting feature is the ability to use Visio 2010 Premium to design the layout for workflows and then import them into SharePoint Designer.  While this sounds good, I found it less useful in practice.  First, it’s limited to Visio Premium, which many companies might not have.  Second, you can only create a layout, but cannot set any of the actual parameters or configuration settings.  Thirdly, I found that when I imported the Visio project into SharePoint Designer, it didn’t look anything like what I expected.  So I decided to just stick with using SharePoint Designer for the entire process for our workflows.

Another great feature is the ability to create globally reusable workflows that are tied to content types.  This lets you reuse workflows between many lists and libraries, rather than having to be tied into a single library.

The new task processes also make the workflow process more powerful and give you full control over how tasks should look and function.  As with any workflow activity, you can insert it by simply typing a few words in the text box in the workflow designer.  The approval task process is a prebuilt process that can be inserted into workflows for gathering approval on an item.

You would start off by selecting participants for your approval process, the duration for each task, the due date, and instructions that should be sent in the email.

You then have full control over the approval workflow and individual tasks, and can customize all of the emails that get sent for task assignments.  You can also easily customize InfoPath forms that users see when approving items.  The following screen shots show samples of the steps that can be customized in the approval and task workflows:

My overall impression is that the workflow engine in SharePoint Designer 2010 has been considerably improved and should be the starting point when considering what tools to use for building workflows.  Much more complex workflows can be build now versus what was possible in 2007.  In the case that you need custom actions that are not available out of the box, those can be built in Visual Studio and imported into SharePoint, for use in SharePoint Designer.  But there’s a lot of functionality that can be leveraged in SharePoint Designer before considering custom development in Visual Studio or third party tools.

I got the new 11.6″ MacBook Air with 1.4 GHz processor and 4GB of RAM with a 64 GB SSD drive. This thing is tiny. Its about the same width as the iPad, super thin and only weighs about a pound more than the iPad at 2.3 lbs. My primary work machine, a Dell Latitude E6410, seems like a boat anchor in comparison. I was concerned about the slower 1.4 GHz Core2 Duo processor, but it seems to be holding up quite well. However, I won’t be running any Windows 7 virtual machines with this, especially with only having 64GB of storage. The only part where I notice slight lagging is in Outlook 2011. Every now and then, my typing will lag for a second, but then is fine. I never noticed any performance issues with the built in applications, even when I had my entire mailbox downloaded with the built in mail app. I have 25,000 items in my Inbox, so that probably doesn’t help.

I installed Office 2011 Business edition. This includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook. Outlook was missing in the older versions of office, but is now back. It looks very much like Office 2010 for Windows complete with ribbon bars. It connects to Exchange via RPC the same as Outlook for Windows and doesn’t rely on WebDAV that Entourage used. You get the same full functionality as the Windows version as far as I can tell.

That said, I think there are some limitations. I haven’t really used Excel, PowerPoint or Word yet (other than to draft this blog post), but at first glance, they look and operate the same as the Windows versions. I also got hold of a copy of the Office Communicator 2011 client for Mac. This works just like the Windows version and connects directly to the OCS servers. It doesn’t need to proxy through a Communicator Web Access server like the Blackberry or iPhone clients.

Outlook 2011 for Mac complete with Ribbon Bar

I am a big user of OneNote for taking notes in meetings so not having an OS X version of OneNote was very disappointing to me. However, a colleague of mine told me about Microsoft’s OneNote Web App. By storing my OneNote files on our company’s SharePoint server, I can work in my OneNote files via Web browser using the Web App version of OneNote. I can also use standard OneNote 2010 while at my desk to work in the files stored on our SharePoint server. There’s no need to store two different sets of files. There are some limitations of the Web App version of OneNote, but for basic note taking, it works great. The only caveat is that you must have an Internet connection to access the application and data.

OneNote Web App Integrated with Sharepoint 2010

For applications that don’t have a native OS X version, I’m using Web versions of the application or Citrix published applications.  Many legal applications, such as Document Management Systems, do not have Mac versions of their applications.  Again, I’m not replacing my primary laptop with the MacBook, so this is not a deal breaker for me. The full Citrix Client for Mac is very nice and a user can create application shortcuts to individual applications easily themselves through the “Dazzle” interface.

As much as I love Apple hardware and software, I still don’t think going native OS X on a Mac is ready for prime time at our law firm clients. By native OS X, I’m referring to running only the OS X operating system and not running a Windows operating system via virtualization or by running the full Windows OS instead of OS X. However, Office 2011 is a big step in the right direction. Its much better than the built in Mail program that comes with the Mac. For someone looking to use an iPad in the work place, they should look at the MacBook Air as an option. The only downside is having to support Apple equipment. iPads and iPhones are one thing, supporting OS X is a whole other animal as it’s a full operating system that needs to be managed and secured just like a Windows machine.

Overall, I find the MacBook Air is a great secondary machine and compliments my work Windows laptop and home iMac very well. I love the MacBook Air hardware. It’s so small and light and plenty fast for my needs. I see myself using this much more than the iPad.

(Note: SharePoint 2010 adds the option to use InfoPath forms for lists, but this still might apply in certain cases.)

Here’s a good primer on using SharePoint Designer 2007 to edit or create a new list item form:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-designer-help/create-a-custom-list-form-HA010119111.aspx

Adding client-side javascript events is where it gets a bit tricky.  You could look at the source code for the page in a browser in order to find the ID of the control you wish to add an event to.

Then you could add a function in javascript to assign another function to run after an event.  Note, you can’t just simply add the event into the control in the source code, since the control is a server-side SharePoint control.  So you’d have to have a separate function where you assign the event, as shown below.

function addEvents(){
//Add event functions here

document.all.<ID-OF-CONTROL>.onclick = function(){EventCode()};

document.all.<ID-OF-CONTROL>.onchange = function(){EventCode()};

}

function EventCode(){
//Actual code to respons to event

alert('test');
 }

The next tricky thing I found is that if you simply call the “addEvents” function in script or in the page load, it doesn’t actually do anything.  This seems to be because the page needs to be fully built and loaded before the events are added.  So adding the following timeout to the script, in order to wait a second after the page loads before assigning the events, seems to do the trick.

setTimeout('addEvents()', 1000);