This has been an incredibly fun year. A new version of SharePoint rolled out, quickly followed by a Master certification upgrade class, and now Aptillon. The short story is a group of 7 friends wanted to work together as a team. Todd Baginski, Darrin Bishop, Dan Holme, Gary Lapointe, David Mann, Matt McDermott, and I collaborated to form a new company that we've called Aptillon. We're all super excited about the new chapter that is unfolding in our lives. Check out the official news post on ... read complete article

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Are you attending the Best Practices Conference in Washington, DC?   If so, swing by and say hello! I am realy looking forward to catching up with old friends and, of course, meeting new ones.   I'm really jazzed about the two sessions that I'm presenting.  In fact, if I was paying attention I would have signed up to do a third one on PowerPivot. :)   You'll be able to find me presenting or at the Ask the Experts session...   Event Location Understanding and Leveraging the ... read complete article

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Background: I was originally scheduled to participate in a segment of the Best Practices Conference keynote where a group of MCMs would take some time to describe one of their favorite components of SharePoint 2010. Unfortunately, I scheduled a red-eye flight that landed *after* the keynote.  This morning's post is a quick brain dump of what I was planning to share with the audience...     PowerPivot is definitely one of most interesting pieces in SharePoint 2010.  Don't get me wrong - ... read complete article

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How many of you have started using Sandboxed Solutions?  What's the first thing you do in order to make them work?  Start the Sandboxed Code Service. For the most part, once the service is started, most folks don't think twice about the configuration.  That's pretty nice in many ways - it clearly shows the service is pretty easy to activate and use. What about optimizing the service? Tweaking the configuration is rarely done.  Why?  Quite honestly, it's probably due to the following:  a. ... read complete article

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If you're familiar with PowerPivot's default view of a PowerPivot gallery, you will see 2 buttons on the right hand side.  The first button allows you to create what is known as a thin workbook.  The second button takes you the scheduling page.  Today's discussion is around the first button...   When you create a new linked workbook, an ODC file is created and passed back to the client.  The ODC file is then used to call into PowerPivot's ServiceRedirector via msolap 10.  The redirector ... read complete article

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