Chris O'Brien

Adding ribbon items into existing tabs/groups (ribbon customization part 2)

Chris O'Brien — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:50:00 GMT

This is the second article in my series on ribbon customization. Last time we looked in detail at creating custom tabs , and in the course of that also looked at how to create "groups" on a tab, and also how to add controls. We mentioned that...(read more)

Customizing the ribbon (part 1) – creating tabs, groups and controls

Chris O'Brien — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:30:00 GMT

Some good posts are starting to appear on SharePoint 2010 ribbon customization now, and over the next couple of articles I want to cover some key things you might want to do with the ribbon when developing your solutions. Broadly speaking, the plan for...(read more)

ECM platform enhancements - Content Organizer, List Throttling, Enterprise Content Types etc.

Chris O'Brien — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:03:00 GMT

This is part 2 of my write-up on my ‘ECM Enhancements in SharePoint 2010’ talk which I did recently. You can find previous parts here: Part 1: Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 – a key ECM enhancement Part 1.5: Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 -...(read more)

Speaking on SP 2010 at UK user group – ECM Enhancements

Chris O'Brien — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:36:00 GMT

I’m excited to be giving the London/SE England SharePoint user group’s first SharePoint 2010 presentation in a couple of weeks, woohoo! It’s great to be able to talk/demo publicly on SP 2010 at last. The topic is a fairly general one - ‘Enterprise Content...(read more)

SP2010 – developer skills preparation

Chris O'Brien — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:21:00 GMT

So either you went to the SharePoint Conference last week, or you didn’t go but have seen the blog articles/tweets about various pieces of new functionality in SharePoint 2010. But ya can’t get your hands on the bits until late November when the public...(read more)

Incremental deployment support added to CD Wizard

Chris O'Brien's blog — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Back now from a short break from blogging for a holiday and some preparation for SharePoint 2010. One of the things I’ve been working on recently is the latest release of my SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard – this has just been uploaded to Codeplex...(read more)

Renewed as SharePoint MVP

Chris O'Brien's blog — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:08:00 GMT

Like several others, I heard the good news from Microsoft last week that I’m a SharePoint MVP for another year. I’m really pleased to get the award again, as it’s nice to be recognized by Microsoft for what you’ve done. I find it useful (to me anyway...(read more)

My checklist for optimizing SharePoint sites

Chris O'Brien's blog — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:47:00 GMT

Optimization is probably one of my favorite SharePoint topics – it seems there’s always a new trick to learn, and I love the fact that a minor tweak can have a dramatic impact on how well your site works. There are some great resources out there now for...(read more)

More on optimization, HTTP 304s etc. – a solution?

Chris O'Brien's blog — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:06:00 GMT

In my last post Optimization, BLOB caching and HTTP 304s , I did a fairly lengthy walk-through on an issue I’d experienced with SharePoint publishing sites. A few people commented, mainly saying they’d noticed the same thing, but there have been further...(read more)

Optimization, BLOB caching and HTTP 304s

Chris O'Brien's blog — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:21:00 GMT

There's been an interesting mini-debate going on recently in terms of where to store static assets used by your site - images, CSS, JS files and so on. Broadly the two approaches can be characterized as: Developer-centric - store assets on the filesystem...(read more)

Fix to my Language Store framework for multi-lingual sites

Chris O'Brien's blog — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:29:00 GMT

In my last post, I talked about a fix to my Config Store framework for an issue which manifested itself on certain SharePoint builds, with Windows 2008 and a recent cumulative update seeming to be the trigger. Some of you may know that I produced a sister...(read more)

Fix to my Config Store framework and list provisioning tips

Chris O'Brien's blog — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:42:00 GMT

Had a couple of reports recently of an issue with my Config Store solution, which provides a framework for using a SharePoint list to store configuration values. If you're using the Config Store this article will definitely be of interest to you,...(read more)

Slide deck from my deployment talk at Best Practices Conference

Chris O'Brien's blog — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:20:00 GMT

Had a great time presenting at the European SharePoint Best Practices Conference last week. I've been trying to put my finger on what made it such a good conference and I'm actually not sure, but I notice that other speakers and attendees have...(read more)

Command-line support for Content Deployment Wizard now available

Chris O'Brien's blog — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:10:00 GMT

I'm pleased to announce I've now completed initial development on the next version of the Content Deployment Wizard - this is a beta release for the next few weeks so if you need it "just work", you should continue to use the previous...(read more)

Update on next version of Content Deployment Wizard

Chris O'Brien's blog — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:33:00 GMT

Generally I only ever talk about SharePoint tools I'm working on once they're 100% complete and ready for use, but recently I had a conversation with someone at a user group which made me think about a policy change. Regular readers will know...(read more)

UK user group meeting in London this Thursday, with Q & A panel

Chris O'Brien's blog — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:41:00 GMT

Just a quick note to remind UK-based folks within reach that there is a UK SharePoint user group meeting in London this Thursday. There are two sessions, one of which is an open Q & A for you to bring your trickiest SharePoint questions - I'll...(read more)

Extending the web part framework - part 2

Chris O'Brien's blog — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:24:00 GMT

In part 1, I showed how we implemented a 'toolbox' of page templates and functionality modules wrapped up in a governance framework , to fulfil our client's requirement of a flexible WCM platform for building 80-100 internet sites with varying...(read more)

Extending the web part framework - part 1

Chris O'Brien's blog — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:31:00 GMT

Today I want to show some of the interesting things we've been doing with web parts for one of our clients. There's quite a lot to talk about so it will be over two articles: Part 1 - background and implementation Part 2 - issues and resolutions...(read more)

A better Config Store for SharePoint sites

Chris O'Brien's blog — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:05:00 GMT

I've recently made some enhancements to my Config Store framework on Codeplex which I'm now ready to share. Many of these enhancements are a result of adapting the solution to a large project where we built a platform for 80-100 internet sites...(read more)

Speaking at the SharePoint Best Practices conference

Chris O'Brien's blog — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:32:00 GMT

By now you've probably seen a few posts on the Best Practices™ SharePoint Conferences which are coming up - I'll be speaking at the European 'edition' which is being held 6th - 8th April in London, UK. I submitted a couple of sessions...(read more)