Document scanning and SharePoint

I always thought it would make sense to have a document scanning application that scans documents and stores it in a document library. Of course that isn’t enough, it should also recognize information from the scan and put it in META data columns inside a document library. Below application does exactly that. What do you think? Interesting? Let me know.

2 Comments | Posted December 24, 2008 - 11:37 by Hans Blaauw in

iSharePoint – SharePoint on your Phone

A Dutch (not Deutsch) company is working on a iPhone application specifically for SharePoint. Below information is from their site:

Webstate's iSharePhone is developed with the iPhone SDK. It can soon be installed directly from the iPhone App Store. iSharePhone works asynchronous, which means that even if your connection isn't good, you can still view SharePoint content. Advanced compression algorithms make iSharePhone faster then a normal web application and makes it able to handle more data with less bandwidth.

Webstate's iSharePhone uses the familiar iPhone interface and can be used immediately by any iPhone user. You can work with SharePoint straight away, without learning any new skills. This makes iSharePhone more than just a SharePoint viewer.

Not sure how they are going to so this but I think they are taking the web service approach or even trying to change the SP mobile pages before they get displayed. Otherwise they have to modify the mobile pages on the server and that would be too much of a hassle.

Click here to visit their website.

2 Comments | Posted December 24, 2008 - 11:33 by Hans Blaauw in

iPod/iTouch version of our blogs

We just launched an experimental version of our blogs specific for the iPod and iTouch. Right now we show the latest 3 posts of every team member. Oh, and it isn’t build on SharePoint right now ;-)

Have fun sliding and touching!

http://isea.zevenseas.com/

0 Comments | Posted December 24, 2008 - 11:22 by Hans Blaauw in

SharePoint and Ping.fm to update status messages in all your Social Networks at once!

I’m a member of more and more Social networks and most of them support updating of status messages. That is very nice but also unmanageable because I need to go to every single application to update my status messages.

A while ago I discovered Ping.fm and it is great to update all your status messages to all the social networks. See below which ones they support right now:

Everything is on the list.

So we have the backend (Ping.fm) but not the frontend. Of course I wanted to use SharePoint because that is nowadays the interface I use a lot. SharePoint as a platform is great for hosting mashups and SP designer is great for building mashups.

Basically it is a very simple solution (always the most powerful) and it supports out of the box functionality by using Workflow. The good thing about this is that anyone can build and use it. So if you want a solution to do status updates at Social networks with one click ,please read on.

There are a few things that we need to build this very simple and small workflow:

The unique Ping.fm e-mail address that you get when signing up;
A site to test;
SP Designer;
A list called "Status messages” (or any list).

The Ping.fm address
From the Ping.fm dashboard you go to Post by E-mail. On that page you can see your unique E-mail address.

SP Designer
Now you can open SP designer. Open the site where your list resides and click “File|New workflow”. The Workflow designer will open up. Take the settings from below screen.

After that you have clicked next you need to set the “Send an email” action, see below screen:

Click on the link in the action and define your e-mail message. Ping.fm reads the body but the workflow also needs a subject. Use below settings:

Click OK and Finish to save and close the workflow.

Now go to your list and add a message.

After a while Ping.fm should have updated all your Social networks that you configured, that is basically it and it works great!

Click on below image to sign up now!

If you just want to update one service Ping.fm allows you to do that and you can use SharePoint to exploit the more specific features. Below is a list of triggers that can be used in your message to send an update to just one service. A sample message to just Twitter would be:

@be
Bebo
@bl
Blogger
@bk
Brightkite
@cu
Custom URL
@de
Delicious
@di
Diigo
@fb
Facebook
@ff
FriendFeed
@fs
Friendster
@hi
hi5
@id
Identi.ca
@jk
Jaiku
@ko
Koornk
@kw
kwippy
@li
LinkedIn
@lj
LiveJournal
@ma
Mashable
@mu
Multiply
@my
MySpace
@px
Plaxo Pulse
@pl
Plurk
@re
Rejaw
@tr
Tumblr
@tt
Twitter
@ut
Utterli
@wp
WordPress.com
@xa
Xanga
@ya
Yahoo 360
@ym
Yammer
@yo
YouAre

0 Comments | Posted December 24, 2008 - 11:07 by Hans Blaauw in

End of year thoughts, a personal note

A little early but because of the holidays exactly timed. And what a year it was :-)

First of all I need to thank two groups of fine people that made this company happen:

- our great team;

- the customers.

Our great team
Our team is a great bunch of hardworking fun people with SharePoint in their blood and veins. The “fun” part is important for me because work is about people in the first place. People are willing to spend at least 40 hours a week at our company and because of that we need to make sure that they enjoy these 40 hours otherwise they will move on.

The first guy I want to mention is of course Daniel. Our very ambitious full of energy Australian guy that is glued to his laptop. Does he ever sleep? When I met Daniel (it wasn’t easy to meet) I immediately thought “this is the guy that I need as a bizpartner”. Of course it took a while but in the end we started this zevenseas thing. Actually, Daniel came up with the name so don’t blame me for that :-) Thanks mate for this fantastic year and I really appreciate the high-level discussions that we have, it really improves us both person- and job wise.

The second guy is Robin (he is the first team member that joined). Robin has this very bright brain that can switch to solution mode very fast. Besides that he is a really wonderful person to work with.

The third guy is Mark. Mark also does tremendous work at customers and I don’t know anyone that doesn’t like Mark (he is a funny bloke). Watch the finger mate :-)

The customers
What shall I say? Our customers have supported us all along even when we started and they are all still there. I guess it isn’t easy to explain to a manager to do business with this small company called zevenseas :-) We want to thank all our customers (real people) for all the business they brought to us in 2008, we hope to see more in 2009!

The last year
So we started the beginning of this year and it took us a while to get used to the consultancy business. There are a lot of middleman in this business that don’t get SharePoint and potential customers get confused or even worse lost. We had to adapt to that and pick the right ones, a good lesson that we learned.

Our year started fantastic with the conference in Seattle and I really enjoyed the sessions and of course the city Seattle. Just the conference wouldn’t have been the same experience, I guess that describes our company best, hard work and socializing. We met great people and in 2009 we will be there again.

The rest of the year was one big rollercoaster but still enjoying it very much!

Right now we notice there is a gold rush going on with SharePoint but there aren’t many skilled gold diggers, that is a real problem but for us a fantastic potential. We think that our focus on SharePoint is the best decision we ever made.

On a personal level 2008 wasn’t a great year, I lost my beloved mother and I still have to cope with the fact that I have become a no-parents child and it isn’t easy. Anyway, thanks mam for the time that you have been around to support me!

The year 2009
This is a tricky one, everyone says we have a huge crisis but my feeling says we (zevenseas) are not influenced. There are several reasons to believe that:

we are small and we have a very healthy “modus operandi” financial wise;
we are very very focused and niche (although SharePoint is mainstream right now) and that always survives;
there is still a huge shortage of IT people in our country (5000-10000);
lay offs mean hires of temporary people (the work needs to be done);
we are really good with SharePoint :-)

The CEO of our partner Bamboo has a good story on optimism here.

We have lots of plans for 2009 and I want to share a few with you:

more direct customers;
more delivered products;
a Dutch web site;
a localized Nintex Workflow;
more partnerships;
more great team members (at least 3);
good fun.

I really really believe 2009 is going to be a fantastic year, SharePoint is going more mainstream in 2009 and we are on top of it!

Have a very good Christmas and a happy new year for you and your family!

2 Comments | Posted December 17, 2008 - 09:32 by Hans Blaauw in

SharePoint web part that shows latest “SharePoint” related tweets (twitter.com)

In our Marketplace I just released a SharePoint web part (no DLL) that shows the latest “SharePoint” related tweets by using the Twitter API.

Feel free to get it here. You need to register before you can download. Of course you are free to change the XML code and make a better one.

0 Comments | Posted December 16, 2008 - 16:51 by Hans Blaauw in

Using Facebook connect as SharePoint custom authentication provider

A while ago Facebook connect has been launched and I’m wondering if we could use it for public facing sites. Facebook has a large amount of users (also business) and I think it could be a good option for a SharePoint public site.

I think it would make sense. On Codeplex we can already find a solution for OpenID but no Facebook yet. Anyone?

0 Comments | Posted December 12, 2008 - 09:21 by Hans Blaauw in

Take voice notes and automatically store them in a SharePoint list, part 2.

First I have to say oops! Obviously more people tried to reach my web service with the Dial2Do service so it crashed. I knew it would happen because I did not invest a lot of time in it, just wanted to prove the concept.

So to cope with that problem I provide you with the VB.NET web service code. If you know how to start a VB.NET web service project you can use below code as a starting point

<WebMethod(Description:="Use this method to create a <b>new</b> item in a SharePoint list.")> _
    Public Function zsDial2Do(ByVal AppKey As String, ByVal domain As String, ByVal username As String, ByVal password As String, ByVal authmethod As String, ByVal site As String, ByVal list As String, ByVal message As String) As XMLOutput
        Dim Myservice As splists.Lists = New splists.Lists
        'execute the method
        'check API key
        If CheckAPIKey(AppKey) = False Then
            Return New XMLOutput("You did not supply a valid AppKey key.")
            Exit Function
        Else
            'run method
            Dim xmlDoc = New System.Xml.XmlDocument()
            Dim elBatch As System.Xml.XmlElement = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Batch")
            Dim Records() As String

            'list service settings
            Dim myCred As New System.Net.NetworkCredential(username, password, domain)
            Dim myCache As New System.Net.CredentialCache
            'credential and cache
            myCache.Add(New Uri(site), authmethod, myCred)
            Myservice.Url = site & "/_vti_bin/lists.asmx"
            Myservice.Credentials = myCache

            elBatch.SetAttribute("OnError", "Continue")

            Try
               Dim i As Integer
               Dim strBatch As String
               strBatch = "<Method ID='1' Cmd='New'><Field Name='ID'>New</Field>"
               strBatch = strBatch & "<Field Name='Title'>" & Message & "</Field>"
               strBatch = strBatch & "</Method>"
               elBatch.InnerXml = strBatch
               Myservice.UpdateListItems(list, elBatch)
               Return New XMLOutput("ok")
            Catch ex As Exception
               Return New XMLOutput("An error has occured.")
            End Try
                Exit Function
        End If
        Return New XMLOutput("Error.")

    End Function

Public Function CheckAPIKey(ByVal AppKey As String) As Boolean
        If AppKey = "blablabla" Then
            CheckAPIKey = True
        Else
            CheckAPIKey = False
        End If
    End Function

In Dial2Do you now need to link to the web service and provide the parameters (of course you can delete all parameters that you don’t want to use). So the URL could look like: http://yourdomain.com/webservices/service.asmx/zsDial2Do

0 Comments | Posted December 8, 2008 - 13:09 by Hans Blaauw in

Take voice notes and automatically store them in a SharePoint list, part 1.

Update: error in web service. There is a problem in the web service so stuff is not added to the list!

Last weeks I have been experimenting with a service called Dial2Do (www.dial2do.com) and I have managed to connect this voice service (virtual assistant) to SharePoint. In this post I will explain how it works and In a later post I will provide the source code for a small web service that you can build to voice enable your SharePoint lists.

Dial2Do is such a great service because it allows you to call a local number and to do things. For people that don’t have smart phones or need two hands on the wheel while driving it is great. Below you can see a screenshot of the services that I created:

You can hook up multiple services that use voice: blogging, twitter, read e-mail etc. But the real catch is hooking up your own service.

Because we are SharePoint experts I always try to combine SharePoint functionality with external services. SharePoint is the enterprise platform and it is important to use this as the main platform for all content.

What to do and what did I do extra

To get started you need to do the following:

Create an account at Dial2Do (https://www.dial2do.com/register);
Lookup a local number:
1. Put this local number in your phone.
The next thing we do is configuring Dial2Do with the stuff I developed. This is all stuff I have done very quickly just to demonstrate the power so don’t expect error handling etc. I built this on top of one of my existing web services that makes it easier to talk to SharePoint and I also added a small PHP script to talk to my own web service. I will provide you later on with VB.net code to hookup the Dial2Do service directly to SharePoint without using a PHP script.

Configure the Dial2Do service
1. Login to your Dial2Do account;
2. Click on the button “Add more commands”;
3. Click on the button “Make your own command”;
4. Now fill out the following things:
  1. Say = SharePoint;
  2. Icon URL = empty;
  3. Do what? = Choose record and post to URL;
  4. Post URL = http://codebehind.zevenseas.com/soap/dial2dodemo.php
  5. Click “add” to add the command.
You are now ready to call Dial2Do and to say “SharePoint”. After that just speak and disconnect if you are finished, please be aware that we publish it on a public site for now. The voice will be converted to text after a while and posted to the web service. Within a few minutes you should see your message on the following URL:

http://fishtank.zevenseas.com/sites/hansdev/dial2do

Did it work for you? This is the end of part 1.

1 Comments | Posted December 7, 2008 - 11:04 by Hans Blaauw in

Hans Blaauw

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