SharePoint Simple CMS

I surfed upon a new CMS site template for SharePoint at SharePoint Simple CMS.  It looks quite a bit like Joomla! or Drupal, but runs on SharePoint 3.0/07.  To publish articles, users have TinyMCE at their disposal.

This means most EcmaScript browsers can post complex articles, and CMS users can easily cross a bridge to the world of SharePoint.  SharePoint Simple CMS is currently looking for developers/designers to create new templates and code.  You can trade for a commercial license of SharePoint Simple CMS.

The SharePoint Security Model

SharePoint "Users" (also known as Security Principals) may be either Active Directory users or Active Directory groups.  These "Users" are contained in SharePoint "Groups."  SharePoint Groups are mapped to a permission level for a "Securable Object."  The mapping of groups to permission levels occurs at various "Scopes".  Although any site, subsite, list, library, folder or item is a securable object, not every object creates a scope.

New Microsoft Developer exams coming soon.

Microsoft Learning is building a new "hands-on" performance evaluation for developer exams.  Testers, anticipated to be MCTS candidates, will logon to a Virtual Machine and complete a set of tasks.  The end-state of the solution (not the code) will be measured; thus, a tester could switch between various languages and scripting methods to complete a task.  A link to a webinar demo should be expected shortly.

These exams are expected to appear around 2011.

List of SharePoint 2010 Training Videos

Following is a list of SharePoint 2010 videos from simple to complex...

Introduction to SharePoint

Videos, microsoft sharepoint:
Very high-end, introductory.

Learning Snacks, microsoft learning:
Introductory, What's new.

E-Learning Clinics, microsoft learning:
Free two-hour clinics, one for Developers, one for IT Pros.

OData

As of April 13th, 2010, Microsoft has created a new site dedicated to OData. What is OData? OData is a web-centric method of producing and consuming data. Using it, we can syndicate data from databases, file systems, websites and XML.

OData uses HTTP, XML/ATOM, RSS and JSON to communicate, and it is compatible with the Google Data API.

Why do we care? OData is built-in to SharePoint 2010, PowerPivot for Excel 2010, SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services and Azure. Client Libraries have been published for .NET, EcmaScript and PHP.

New SharePoint 2010 Training Roadmap

SharePoint 2010 is growing and growing, and a new roadmap for learning has been released. Microsoft is planning on MOS, MCTS, MCPD and MCITP certifications. Whereas many people have known about the TS and Pro certifications, now we have information about the MOS exam for Info Workers.

Here, we see that the Microsoft Office Specialist exam - SharePoint - will include SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint Workspace 2010.

SharePoint Business Intelligence Certification

There is a new SharePoint Certification, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Business Intelligence. The exam, 78-702, is difficult to discover on Microsoft's learning site, or find on the MCTS certifications list. Despite these shortcomings, this is a real exam that you can take today.