A few weeks ago, we launched a very cool contest that challenges developers around the world to design Office business applications that support non-profit organizations and encourages them to learn more about the 2007 Microsoft Office system at the same time.  I wanted to remind everyone of the contest -- it's called Develop without Borders and offers over $150,000 in prizes! 

The concept is simple:  Developers choose a charitable organization that they would like to help, understand the business challenges that it faces, and propose a solution based on the 2007 Office system that addresses one or more of those challenges.  The solutions that make the most impact on the organization and that best utilize the Office system technologies can win up to $50,000 to help pilot or implement the solution.

Microsoft E-learning has a free clinic on MOSS 2007:

Clinic 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

To register, go to http://www.microsoftelearning.com.  There are other free courses, too -- check them out!

You may have noticed that if you create a corporate intranet using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Beta 2, any team site that you create will lack the "Save Site As Template" link in the Site Settings admin page.  Does this mean you can't save a site as a template?  No...it just means that the link is missing.  To save the site as a template, simply navigate to the /_layouts/savetmpl.aspx page.  For example, if you have a site with a URL of http://myserver/sitedirectory/myworkspace/default.aspx, then go to http://myserver/sitedirectory/myworkspace/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx and you will get the correct "Save Site As Template" page for your site.

I've been in a lot of meetings lately where customers are looking at the best way to get a big-picture view of the health of their business. Scorecards are a great way to accomplish this, and Microsoft's Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) and SharePoint Portal Server are great tools to build them with.  Mauro Cardarelli, Managing Partner at Jornata, just published a great introductory article about BSM in TechNet magazine. I love when folks make it easy to understand a new technology very quickly - Mauro does just that. Check it out here. For other BSM stuff, the BSM team also has their own blog.

I will be speaking at the New England Regional SharePoint User Group next Tuesday night (June 27) at 201 Jones Road (6^th floor), Waltham, MA.  I hope to see you there!  The topic will be Introducing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  I'll talk about the new capabilities of the 2007 Office system and how they enable great business solutions.

The New England Regional SharePoint User Group (NERSUG) meets the fourth Tuesday every other month at the Microsoft Office in Waltham.

The 2007 version of SharePoint enables a user to email a SharePoint document as a link. This makes a lot of sense, since you want to leave the item in SharePoint, rather than emailing the item as an attachment every time.

In the 2003 version, this is not an out-of-the-box feature, and putting the link in an email is non-obvious to the average user.

The solution to this is an oldie but a goodie...simply modify the site template to add a link to the drop-down menu. I've included an example here that adds two menu items: Check Out & Save and Send Link via Email.  It builds upon the custom drop-down menu that is included in the SharePoint SDK:

Here's what you need to do:

1. Copy the custom_ows.js (1.62 KB) file into the [%System Drive%]:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\ directory.

2. Copy the CheckSave.txt (1.01 KB) file into the [%System Drive%]:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\ directory and rename it to .aspx.

3. Copy the sendLinkViaEmail.txt (1.29 KB) file into the [%System Drive%]:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\ directory and rename it to .aspx.

4. Open the ONET.XML File located at [%System Drive%]:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\1033\[%Site Definition%]\XML

* The Site Definition directory will be the template you are adding the menu functionality to.  In this case it will be the STS directory, where the standard team site templates lives.

5. Add the CustomJSUrl attribute to the <Project> tag of the ONET.XML

Example: <Project CustomJSUrl="/_layouts/[%=System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.LCID%]/custom_ows.js">

6. Do an IISRESET.

Note: Existing sites do not use the new custom JavaScript file, only sites provisioned after this has been put into place.

TechEd 2006 wraps up today. What a great event!  If you couldn't make it, be sure to check out the Virtual TechEd Site.

And just for fun - here's what the Green Monster in Fenway park looked like last night...Train gave a good show.

We've officially released the Microsoft Certified Architect certification. This will be a hard one to get.  I plan to get it - you?

I will be at TechEd Boston next week, working in the Office TLC area.

Here's my schedule if you want to drop by and talk about the 2007 Office system, architecture, and other topics:

June 12   9AM-1PM

June 13   1:30PM-5:45PM

June 14   9AM-12PM, 3PM-6:45PM

June 15   3PM-6:15PM

Give me a shout if you're in going to be in town. It should be a great event!

Thanks to all of you who attended yesterday's webcast.  There are so many great integration points between SharePoint, Exchange, and Outlook that we were bound to go over!  I will be posting the reply link and the answers to many of the in-webcast questions in the next day or two so that everyone will benefit.  Stay tuned.

Every once in a while I get a question about the lack of Macros and VBA in Office 2007.  Macros and other developer tools are indeed available, as you can see here.

However, the Developer Tab is hidden by default. To enable the Developer Tab in Word, for example, go to the Office button in the upper left, click "Word Options". Then select the "Show Developer tab in the Ribbon" checkbox.

I will be giving a webcast on configuring SPS 2003 & Exchange/Outlook integration points.  I'll also cover how to configure some of the new MOSS 2007 & Exchange/Outlook points as well.  The audience is an IT Pro, Architect, or Developer.  See you there!

Title: Integrating SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Outlook, and Exchange

Date/Time: 6/7/2006 9:30 AM Pacific

Duration: 60 minutes

Presenter: Scott Jamison

Attendee Registration URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032298065&Culture=en-US 

Audio Information: 800-227-8104 PIN: 6778