Monte Carlo, SharePoint, Energies Trading and Office 2007 userabilty.

Hi Guy's,

If you remember correctly I had previosuly created two posts showing Office 2007 Applications producing Monte Carlo risk simulations by using Application task panes and adhering to the Office 2007 fluent ribbon standards laid down my Microsoft.

I had to remove this screen casts due to popfly shutting down, so I want to blogg a little about what I have just finished for a Large scale energies and financial BI system here in Norway.

We have SQL Server Analysis, SharePoint, Excel Services, Performance Point and Oracle. Were using a combination of WCF and Web Services to communicate information. We are using Web Applications archeiecture and Office 2007 clients for UI Elements.

Our development enviroment is DB (SQL/PLSQL), .NET 3.5, WPF/Silverlight, oXML, VBA, VSTO, SharePoint API/WebServices.

More coming soon...

OCR SharePoint Style

Hi Folks,

How about a Workflow in SharePoint with built in OCR (Opitcal Character Recognition)?

There are a few solutions that provide this but after doing a little research I realised that the Office 2007 applications come with OCR scanning OOB. So I went in search of coding against this office component.

Turns out that a nice little NameSpace (using .NET of course) allows you to minipulate OCR on images. You must have Office 2007 client installed on the Server, so this is one draw back but then again I believe considering the amount you save its worth it.

So we start of by creating a SharePoint Worfklow in (STATE MACHINE/SEQUENTIAL) Visual Studio 2008, Associate it to the correct lists, add some actions and then when you get to your OCR scanning code part reference the following DLL's:

DocumentFormet.OpenXML - This one is from the OpenXML SDK from Microsoft.
MODI - This one is from Office 2003/7 Scanning software.

Add the following using statements:

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml;

Add a Class wide variable:

MODI.Document md;

* If you dont have MODI available its becuase you probably didnt install it when configuring the installation of Office. If you need to goto Control pannel > add/remove programs > Office 2007 > Change then right click the Scanning software and select "intall now" option (not on "install on first time ran"!)

Bellow is a function that will allow you to perform OCR on a TIFF.

private void OCR(String Name)
{
md.Create(Name);
md.OCR(MODI.MiLanguages.miLANG_NORWEGIAN, true, true);

string strText = String.Empty;

MODI.Image image = (MODI.Image)md.Images[0];
MODI.Layout layout = image.Layout;

for (int i = 0; i < layout.Words.Count; i++)
{
MODI.Word word = (MODI.Word)layout.Words[i];
if (strText.Length > 0)
{
strText += " ";
}
strText += word.Text;
}
md.Close(false);
// do something with the Words here...
}

Update soon,....

Multi-Touch SharePoint Document Management System

Hi Guys,

Apologies, I've got a few updates to do... Ive been busy with some projects recently. Of which one of them I am extremely proud to unveil. I have been working on a multi-touch sufrace similar to that of Microsofts but at much reduced price.

For example check out this youtube video (I will be posting all the screencasts and pics up later next month), but this will give you the idea.

Maximum PC's Multitouch Surface Computer from Maximum PC on Vimeo.

So I set forth and build one of these multi-touch PC's as the Maximum guys above have shown. However I didnt want to build new applications in Action Script and Flash, although it was cool just to play around with the samples that can be found open source in flash.

So I downloaded WPF 4.0 CTP and Visual Studio 2010 with Windows 7 also. Becuase Windows 7 has an API for 2 finger touch (I will explain what that means in a minute) and WPF 4.0 natively also it meant that I could start building my application very quickly.

For example and this is the really cool part... In WPF 4.0 we have methods dedicated to Touch. For example, the onfingerdown method...

On hold, sorry guys, but a client has asked that I keep this back for a while before release all the screen shots etc... Will be here soon as possible, if you want any guidence please just ask.

Dynamics AX 4.0 - MOSS 2007 Intergration

I've been away for while working on some really good WPF Sharepoint & Office Apps that will be put up later on.

This article will be in a series of articles talking about how to Develop and deploy Microsoft Dynamics Axapt 4.0 with MOSS 2007 Intergration.

Business Requirement:

Dyanmics AX 4.0 Information in federated combined MOSS 2007 search. Document handling through MOSS 2007 (Work flow, ECM (CHECKIN/OUT), Office 2007 pane intergration using WPF for PDF preview from axapta 4.0 and more..)

Things to keep in mind:

Dynamics AX 4.0 is build NOT UPON .NET!!! This is very important when designing your systems, you will need to have something called the BDC (Not MOSS BDC) But the Business Data Connector. This will be explained in more detail.

You will also need to have the Dynamics AX Enterprise portal templates, webparts and Site template defintitions. I have create adoc versions of these but my recommendations are that you use the installer found on the Dynamics AX setup disc.

Update coming soon....

Calendar List - editing the display headings.

Calendar List - editing the display headings.

Problem:

When creating a Calendar list in SharePoint you cannot edit the displayed columns. For example if I want to display the "created by" in the title along with the Description it isn’t possible with the base definition out-of-box from this list view.

Solution:

Ok, this part isn’t one of my more glorious moments but here you go. To add this functionality simply add another Calendar view to your Calendar???? - Yes this really works, to be able to edit the display data on the Calendar view you have to add another Calendar view then modify its properties. Simply click

1. In this Calendar list click Views, create view give it some details. Set this to your default if you wish.
2. Then click views modify this view then you can add additional information to the title etc...

Thanks

James

Sharepoint Timer Job - Records Management

Cooming soon....Sharepoint Timer Job - Records Management MOSS

Business Case:

I have a few lists that contain documents items etc... These items needed to be sent to the Records Center when they are over 30 days old. I looked at using a workflow but this didnt fit the solution, So i created a sharepoint timer job that would poll the lists I choose, check for created date and then send the to the Archive center.

From the Archive Center I have set records routing based upon metadata (not just content type).

Sharepoint Archive Centre Problem - Host header

Hi guys,

Quick one here, if you have any problems with your farm deployment of MOSS in regards to deployment of the archive center, make sure you ensure your host header information is updated.

For example located your hosts.txt file (sometimes host.txt) add the IP and the Host header name for the portal dployment. You might have to do this for serval servers in the farm but its not a huge problem.

James