In this tutorial, we will show how to develop Provider and Consumer web parts and connect them through an Interface.

The result will be the ability to have two web parts on a SharePoint 2010 page and filter the contents of the consumer web part on the data from the provider web part. This is almost like a master - detail view.

You can view the same functionality by looking at the standard SharePoint web parts. Modify a web part --> select Connections and the "Provide data to..." or "Receive data from..."



and then...



Lets Go:
We will show the detailed steps to:
1 - Develop a Connection Interface
2 - Develop a simple provider web part.
3 - Develop a simple consumer web part.
1 - Develop a Connection Interface.

Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new project. In the New Project dialog window, select Visual C# --> SharePoint 2010 --> Empty SharePoint Project.
Provide a descriptive name and click on OK.
Select to deploy the solution as a "Deploy as Farm Solution" and click on Finish.
Wait for the solution to be created in Visual Studio.

Now we will create the web part connection interface which is responsible for exchanging connection information between a provider and consumer web part.
In the Solution Explorer, right-click on your project and select "Add --> New item".
In the Add New Item dialog window, select Visual C# --> Code --> Interface.
Enter ITaskin the Name textbox and click the Add button.
Open ITask.cs in code view and change the visibility of the interface to Public and add the following code inside the interface:
namespace WebPartConnectors
{
   public interface ITask
   {
      int Id { get; }
      string Name { get; }
   }
}

2 - Develop a simple provider web part:
In the Solution Explorer, right click on your project and select Add --> New Item…
Select Visual C# --> SharePoint 2010 Web Part.
Enter ProviderWebPart in the Name textbox and click Add.
Open ProviderWebPart.cs in code view and in the ProviderWebPart class declaration, implement IProject.
public class ProviderWebPart : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart, ITask

Insert the following code after the ProviderWebPart class declaration.
This code block implements the IProject web part connection interface and adds a local variable to the web part.
DropDownList _objPicker = null;
int ITask.Id
 {
    get
    {
     return int.Parse(_objPicker.SelectedValue);
    }
 }
string ITask.Name
 {
   get
   {
     return _objPicker .SelectedItem.ToString();
   }
 }

Update the CreateChildControls method to contain the following code:

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
  try
  {
    _objPicker= new DropDownList();
    using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Web.Url))
    using (SPWeb spWeb = spSite.OpenWeb())
    {
      SPList objList = spWeb.Lists["Tasks"];

      foreach (SPListItem objListItem in objList.Items)
      {
        _objPicker.Items.Add(new ListItem(objListItem.Title, objListItem.ID.ToString()));
      }    
     }
     _objPicker.AutoPostBack = true;
     this.Controls.Add(_objPicker);
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {  
    this.Controls.Clear();
    this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(ex.Message));
  }
}

Insert the following ConnectionProvider property below the CreateChildControls method. This provides the Connection Provider interface point for the ProviderWebPart: [ConnectionProvider("Task Name and ID")]
public ITask NameDoesNotMatter()
{
  return this;
}


Save your solution and build. Ensure that there are no build errors before you proceed.


3 - Develop a simple consumer web part.
In the Solution Explorer, right click on your project and select Add --> New Item…

Select Visual C# --> SharePoint 2010 Web Part.
Enter ConsumerWebPart in the Name textbox and click Add.

Insert the following code inside the ConsumerWebPart class declaration:
ITask _provider = null;
Label _lbl = null;

Update the CreateChildControls method to contain the following code:
protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
try
{
_lbl = new Label();
if (_provider != null)
{
if (_provider.Id > 0)
{
_lbl.Text = _provider.Name + " was selected.";
}
else
{
_lbl.Text = "Nothing was selected.";
}
}
else
{
_lbl.Text = "No Provider Web Part Connected.";
}
this.Controls.Add(_lbl);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
this.Controls.Clear();
this.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(ex.Message));
}
}

Insert the following ConnectionConsumer property below the CreateChildControls method. This provides the Connection Consumer interface point for the ConsumerWebPart:
[ConnectionConsumer("Name and ID")]Edit a page and add the two new web parts.
public void ThisNameDoesNotMatter(IProject providerInterface)
{
  _provider = providerInterface;
}
Save the solution, Build the solution and Deploy the solution.
Go to your target SharePoint 2010 site and refresh the site.



View your two new web parts on the page:



Edit the page again and select the ProviderWebPart and click on Edit Web Part.



Select the ProviderWebPart again, but this time select "Connections" --> "Send Task Name and ID To" --> ConsumerWebPart.



Now, if you select an item from the dropdown list control in the providerwebpart you will see the corresponding data change in the consumerwebpart.

This way you will be able to build master-detail views or web part filters based on selections of other web parts

A Data Connection Library in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is a library that can contain two kinds of data connections: an Office Data Connection (ODC) file or a Universal Data Connection (UDC) file. Microsoft InfoPath 2010 uses data connections that comply with the Universal Data Connection (UDC) file schema and typically have either a *.udcx or *.xml file name extension. Data sources described by these data connections are stored on the server and can be used in standard form templates and browser-enabled form templates.

How to create a SharePoint Server Data Connection Library?

1. Browse to a SharePoint Server 2010 site on which you have at least Design permissions. If you are on the root site, create a new site before you continue with the next step.

2. On the Site Actions menu, click More Options.

3. On the Create page, click Library under Filter By, and then click Data Connection Library.

4. On the right side of the Create page, type a name for the library, and then click the Create button.

5. Copy the URL of the new data connection library.

How to create a new data connection file in InfoPath?

1. Open InfoPath Designer 2010, click Blank Form, and then click Design Form.

2. On the Data tab, click Data Connections, and then click Add.

3. In the Data Connection Wizard, click Create a new connection to, click Receive data, and then click Next.

4. Click the kind of data source that you are connecting to, such as Database, Web service, or SharePoint library or list, and then click Next.

5. Complete the remaining steps in the Data Connection Wizard to configure your data connection, and then click Finish to return to the Data Connections dialog box.

6. In the Data Connections dialog box, click Convert to Connection File.

7. In the Convert Data Connection dialog box, enter the URL of the data connection library that you previously copied (delete "Forms/AllItems.aspx" and anything following it from the URL), enter a name for the data connection file at the end of the URL, and then click OK. It will take a few moments to convert and save the data connection file to the library.

8. Confirm that the data connection was converted successfully by examining the Details section of the Data Connections dialog box while the name of the converted data connection is selected.

9. Browse to the SharePoint data connection library, click the drop-down next to the name of the data connection, click Approve/Reject, click Approved, and then click OK.

Today when duplicity problem has increased a lot, authentication has become a must. Authentication is the process of determining if someone is who they claim to be. It answers the question "Who is this guy really?" Taking advantage of SharePoint Server 2010 Claims Based Authentication feature may help you curb this duplicity issue. Even if you are a SharePoint Foundation 2010 user, you can enjoy the same feature to authenticate the user identity.

In case you are looking for a place to host your Enterprise Wiki Sharepoint site, please have a look at ASPHostCentral.com. With the lowest and most affordable Sharepoint Server 2010 hosting price, you can maximize the use of this template for the benefits of your company/organizations

Most enterprise applications need some basic user security features. At a minimum, they need to authenticate their users, and many also need to authorize access to certain features so that only privileged users can get to them. Some apps must go further and audit what the user does. On Windows Azure, these features are built into the operating system and are usually quite easy to integrate into an application. By taking advantage of Windows integrated authentication, you don't have to invent your own authentication protocol or manage a user database. By using access control lists (ACLs), impersonation, and features such as groups, you can implement authorization with very little code. Indeed, this advice applies no matter which OS you are using. It's almost always a better idea to integrate closely with the security features in your OS rather than reinventing those features yourself.

In the real world, we face the following challenges:
* Privacy regulations and other pieces of legislation are impacting what kind of information we are allowed to capture and store about users, so in some cases we can't just demand that people give us all of their personal details.
* Businesses want to interoperate with other businesses, and government organizations want to provide more integrated services to citizens. However, different systems use different authentication systems and businesses want to integrate in a secure, legally compliant manner.
Consequently, claims based authentication in SharePoint Server is designed to address the two challenges mentioned above. Claims based authentication addresses privacy and other compliance concerns by requesting less specific, less personal information about people, and by trusting other parties or systems to do the "proof of identity" check. Claims based authentication addresses integration of different systems by allowing communications using open standards, and by providing a platform for developing more specialized 'identity connectors' between systems.

How to implement Claims based authentication?

The claims-based authentication is implemented in the following way:
* From a developer's point of view, the platform that Microsoft is providing is called the Windows Identity Foundation. Earlier, it was called the Geneva framework. It provides a programming library suitable for building claims-aware applications. This library is also used by SharePoint 2010
* Active Directory Federation Services implement services to create, accept, and transform tokens that contain claims.
* Cardspace provides a user interface for users to select which "identity card" they wish to use for a particular system
Claims based authentication won't address the lifecycle management of identity information.
Claims based authentication may let our system know that a user is a contractor from a partner company, but it alone won't let us specify a rule that says "all of my company's financial spreadsheets must not be seen by contractors". Not only does claims based authentication not provide this capability, but neither do the role-based access controls provided by SharePoint. In fact SharePoint's role-based access control model itself is too limited to address this. It still needs substantial improvements.
Claims based authentication feature was not available in MOSS 2007; SharePoint Server 2007 uses a native Active Directory-based authentication between machines and systems. In addition to claims based authentication, take advantage of other exclusive features in SharePoint Server 2010 and also enjoy some free SharePoint templates or web parts that come with SharePoint products.

While consulting with clients new to SharePoint and how the robust functionality can empower their organization’s collaboration efforts, we are typically asked this question:  “What’s the difference between a discussion board and a blog?”

Well, that’s a very good question to ask and sometimes a little difficult to explain.  Why?  It’s mainly due to the fact that the technical functionality between a discussion board and a blog are essentially the same.  Both provide a platform for a user or users to post a message that other users can respond to.   However, there are three core differences that separate the two within SharePoint

Organization – A discussion board’s posts are typically organized by a topic.  The blog on the other hand is organized in a chronological format, with the posts assigned to a category

List vs. Site – In SharePoint specifically; a discussion board is a preconfigured List template.  On the flip side of that coin, a blog in SharePoint is actually an entire Site template.  The blog being a site allows a great deal more functionality, while the discussion board is limited because it’s only a list


The main difference:

Purpose – the philosophical purpose of a discussion board and Blog are very different from each other

A discussion board is used to solicit feedback from others and is a great tool for generating dialogue between users in a group.   Anyone can post a message and users have a platform to respond to each other in a constraint free environment.  We typically think of a discussion board as a conversational view of an email (think ‘Reply All’ here).

A blog however is intended for a specific person or a specific group to post ideas, thoughts, and articles.  Generally the posts are considered expertise (although an occasional rant) and visitors can comment on them.  A blog’s purpose isn’t to start dialogue, but is meant to deliver a message

Here’s an example that will put it in perspective

Scenario: We want to find out what my team thinks is the best place to have lunch on Friday

Discussion Board or Blog:  Discussion Board



Scenario: We want to explain why Just Fresh is the best place for team lunches on Fridays

Discussion Board or Blog:  Blog

Conclusion

As you can see, the discussion board and blog have some major conceptual differences between them.  Although the core functionality is similar (topic, post, comments) what sets the two apart is what you want to accomplish with them.  If you want to have communication between users about a topic, utilize a discussion board.  If you have a topic that you want one user to communicate to users, utilize a blog.  In the next article we will review the blog Site template in SharePoint and how it can be used in organizations

An Enterprise Wiki is a publishing site for sharing and updating large volumes of information across an enterprise. If an organization needs a large, centralized knowledge repository that is designed to both store and share information on an enterprise-wide scale, consider using an Enterprise Wiki.

In case you are looking for a place to host your Enterprise Wiki Sharepoint site, please have a look at ASPHostCentral.com. With the lowest and most affordable Sharepoint Server 2010 hosting price, you can maximize the use of this template for the benefits of your company/organizations.

Comparison of Enterprise Wikis with Team Sites

The Team Site template provides a flexible way to create content. This template includes a cross-browser Rich Text editor and in-line auto-completion. The Team Site template enables collaboration across teams within an organization or across organizations. Team Sites address two key concerns for anyone responsible for ensuring the integrity of an organization's content

- Editorial control   Administrators of a Team Site, or anyone with Full Control permissions on a Team Site, can allow a subset of users to edit entries and allow all users to read the entries
- Version control    Users can view previous versions of an entry and see when and by whom changes were made. If the changes were incorrect or inappropriate, the entry could be rolled back to an earlier version

In SharePoint Server 2010, the Team Site template home page is a wiki page. The Enterprise Wiki template uses the publishing features of SharePoint Server 2010 to add page ratings, managed metadata, and customization capabilities. Integration with Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it easy to modify the display of content by changing page layouts and implement consistent branding by changing master pages

Uses and benefits of Enterprise Wikis

Enterprise wikis help organizations collect, organize, and distribute information. Enterprise wikis often become repositories for an organization's unstated knowledge, which otherwise might not be stored anywhere. Enterprise wikis can encourage informal learning and sharing tips with other users, which can reduce the need for formal training or continuous IT support

Limitations of Enterprise Wikis

Because an Enterprise wiki can generate a high level of network traffic, you might find it necessary to configure a single site collection and a single, dedicated Microsoft SQL Server database. If the Microsoft SQL Server database is shared, users might experience slower performance

Enterprise Wiki pages cannot be converted or migrated to pages on a Team Site without using custom code. Because Enterprise Wikis are used with the publishing feature in SharePoint Server 2010, there are significant differences between an Enterprise Wiki site and a Team Site

SharePoint 2010 comes with some wonderful managed metadata features. A quick Google search returns oodles of information about planning your managed metadata, adding managed metadata columns to lists and libraries, and using metadata navigation. What most of them fail to point out is that there are features that need to be enabled in order to use the managed metadata columns and the metadata navigation. Those features aren’t exposed in the UI in an out of the box configuration.

After much spelunking and blog reading and traipsing through the SharePoint root directory, I finally figured out how to enable these two features. Using the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (PowerShell), you simple run the following commands:

Enable-SPFeature -id "73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" -Url <Site-URL>
Enable-SPFeature -id "7201D6A4-A5D3-49A1-8C19-19C4BAC6E668" -Url <Site-URL>

The first one is the feature that allows the use of managed metadata columns for libraries and lists. The second one is the one that adds the metadata navigation options (and filter keys). Technically, the second feature isn’t listed as hidden and so it should show up in the UI. But, in my development install, it did not.

As a side note, when you read about features that aren’t showing in your UI, and you want to track them down, head on over to your SharePoint feature directory, which is typically:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES

Find the subfolder for the feature you are interested in, and find the Feature.xml file within. Open it with a text reader, copy the ID for the feature, and plug it into the commands above. Run it and you’ll be able to install any of the hidden features.

Hopefully this will save someone else a major search hassle J

The following is a comprehensive list of all SharePoint 2010 out-of-box web parts, with a couple of screen shots thrown in there!  The groups are just the built-in groupings in the UI

Lists & Libraries

- These are list view web parts for the lists & libraries on the site

Authoring
- Content Editor – Foundation
- Image Viewer – Foundation
- Media Web Part
- Page Viewer – Foundation
- Silverlight Web Part – Foundation

Business Data
- Business Data Actions
- Business Data Catalog Filter
- Business Data Item
- Business Data Item Builder
- Business Data List
- Business Data Related List
- Key Performance Indicators
- KPI Details
- Visio Graphics Service

Content Rollup
- Chart Viewer
- Content Query
- HTML Form Web Part – Foundation
- iView
- Picture Library Slideshow Web Part – Foundation



- RSS Viewer
- What’s Popular – pick from content, search queries, or search results



- XML Viewer – Foundation

Documents
- Document ID Lookup
- Document Set Contents
- Document Set Properties
- Relevant Documents – Foundation

Filters
- Choice Filter
- Current User Filter
- Date Filter
- Filter Actions
- Page Field Filter
- Query String (URL) Filter
- SharePoint List Filter
- SQL Server Analysis Services Filter
- Text Filter


My Information
- My Calendar
- My Contacts
- My Inbox
- My Mail Folder
- My Tasks

Navigation
- Categories
- Site Aggregator
- Sites in Category
- Summary Links
- Table of Contents
- Tag Cloud



Office Client Applications
- Excel Web Access
- InfoPath Form Web Part

- WSRP Viewer

People
- Contact Details
- Profile Browser
- Site Users – Foundation
- User Tasks – Foundation

PerformancePoint
- PerformancePoint Filter
- PerformancePoint Report
- PerformancePoint Scorecard
- PerformancePoint Stack Selector

Search
- Advanced Search Box
- Dual Chinese Search
- Featured Content
- Federated Results
- People Refinement Panel
- People Search Box
- People Search Core Results
- Refinement Panel
- Related Queries
- Search Action Links
- Search Best Bets
- Search Box
- Search Core Results
- Search Paging
- Search Statistics
- Search Summary
- Top Federated Results

Miscellaneous
 - Chart Web Part

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As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, ASPHostCentral.com strives to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to our customers across the world. We proudly announce the availability of Windows Sharepoint 2010 Spanish Language Pack version and you can preview the demo here.

Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com

What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:

- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
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Happy hosting!

With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can build complete, rich, reusable, process-centric applications on the SharePoint platform that integrate external data. SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it possible to build composite applications by configuring or designing components such as data sources, lists, content types, views, forms, workflows, and external content types — all without writing any code. Further, SharePoint Designer 2010 now provides tools for all of the important components in a SharePoint solution: “You don’t have to leave SharePoint Designer to build your solution.”

Views & forms

This release of SharePoint introduces significant new view and form capabilities for lists: the XSLT List View Web Part and InfoPath forms. You have more flexibility than ever before in choosing how people will interact with data by using the views and forms in your solution


XSLT List View Web Part

Every standard list view in SharePoint 2010 products is now a Data View — specifically, an XSLT List View Web Part (XLV). This means that you can easily customize any standard list view in SharePoint Designer 2010 — for example, you can now add conditional formatting to any list view. And after you customize a list view in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can still modify that view using all of the options in the browser, such as adding or removing columns or filtering and sorting. An XLV is fully customizable both in SharePoint Designer and in the browser.


Shared XSLT templates mean cleaner code & better performance

The XSLT List View Web Part (XLV) uses shared XSLT style sheets that reside in the _layouts directory on the server. Every standard list view on the entire server uses the same set of shared XSLT templates. An XLV uses one template to format each field (or column), one template to format the row, and one template to format the table. When you customize the appearance of an XLV, you generate overriding XSL templates only for the specific templates that you modify — for example, if you highlight a field, you generate XSLT that overrides just the shared template for that specific field. This means the XLV is easier to work with in Code view, and also has better performance when this page is rendered in the browser

Easily undo customizations by reverting the XSLT

If you customize an XSLT List View Web Part and later decide that you want to undo those changes, or if you encounter errors in the XSL that you’re unable to fix, you can always revert an XLV to how it first appeared before you made any changes. When you revert the XSLT for an XLV, that XLV goes back to using the shared XSLT templates on the server. You can choose to revert the entire view or just specific XSLT templates, such as the item template.

Create Data Views from the Ribbon

The Data View is a powerful feature for viewing and editing data from a wide range of data sources — including both data in SharePoint lists and data external to SharePoint. The Ribbon makes to easy to insert a Data View with just a couple of clicks. Then you can further customize your Data View by using all of the options under List View Tools (for XLVs) or Data View Tools (for the Data Form Web Part) on the Ribbon

Apply conditional formatting from the Ribbon

Conditional formatting can give your Data Views more impact by highlighting the information that’s critical to your team. Now you can apply conditional formatting rules to your Data Views directly from the Ribbon

Share view styles and apply them from the Ribbon

You can easily share custom styles for your list views (XLVs) with others in the site collection by uploading the styles (.XSL files) to the Style library in the top-level site in the site collection. Anyone with proper permissions can then use SharePoint Designer 2010 to apply these custom styles to their own list views with just one click

Data Views support AJAX

Data Views provide many features that make data easier to work with, such as paging, filtering and sorting on column headers, and inline editing. Now you can turn on asynchronous updates for each view, so that all of these features no longer require full-page refreshes in the browser — only the Data View is refreshed. You can also specify a time interval when the data in the view is automatically refreshed, or you can add a button to a Data View that people can click to manually refresh the view

Related item views

SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it easier to create dashboard-type pages that show all data related to a specific item. First, you use lookup columns to create a parent-child relationship between data in two different lists — and now, in SharePoint 2010 products, you can use the options for a lookup column to enforce referential integrity between those lists, so that there are no child items orphaned without parent items. Then, from the Ribbon in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can easily create related item views that show all of the children items in one list related to a specific parent item in a different list

Custom actions

With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can make it easier for people to discover the important actions that they might need to take on an item. For example, you can add a custom action to the list item menu of any list so that people can start a workflow directly from the menu on the list item. You can also add custom actions as buttons on the Ribbon for the form and view pages of a list. Custom actions make solutions easier for people to use by providing the right actions in the right context

InfoPath forms

In SharePoint Server 2010, lists can now use InfoPath forms for their New Item, View Item, and Edit Item forms. InfoPath makes it easy to change completely the layout and appearance of forms. Plus, InfoPath forms provide very useful features such as formatting rules and validation rules. And you have flexibility because every content type associated to a list can have its own set of forms. When you need to design forms in InfoPath, you can launch InfoPath 2010 directly from the Ribbon in SharePoint Designer 2010


External content types & Business Connectivity Services

SharePoint 2010 products and Office 2010 include new capabilities for deeply integrating external business data and processes into the user experience in Office and SharePoint. These capabilities include new features, services, and tools in the SharePoint platform. With Business Connectivity Services (BCS), you can connect to external data from Microsoft SQL Server, Web services, or .NET assemblies. And you can connect to this external data from the client or the server, whether online or offline, and you can create, read, update, and delete data in those external data sources


External content types

In the previous version of SharePoint, there was the concept of a Business Data Entity, which was a type of external business data available in the Business Data Catalog. For example, an entity could be a Customer or Order. Now an entity is called an external content type (ECT). Content types in SharePoint can have behaviors such as workflows or policies associated with them. Similarly, external content types can also have behaviors called operations associated with them. An operation is not a workflow or a policy; it determines whether people can create, read, update, delete, or search for instances of that external content type. So content types and external content types have this in common: They define not only the schema of the data (the fields and field types), but also the behaviors or operations associated with the data

Create external content types in SharePoint Designer 2010

In the previous version, SharePoint did not support authoring an application definition in the Business Data Catalog. Now, SharePoint Designer 2010 provides the tools to connect to external data, to create external content types, to publish those external content types to the Business Data Catalog on the server, and to auto-generate both an external list and all of the forms required by that external list. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can surface external data from line-of-business systems such as SAP or Siebel in SharePoint without writing a single line of code

External lists

An external list is the key building block for BCS solutions. An external list looks and behaves virtually the same as any SharePoint list but contains data from an external source. An external list makes it easy for people to read and write external data within the familiar experience of working with a SharePoint list. You can create an external list and its forms right from SharePoint Designer 2010. Creating an external list also creates views (using the XSLT List View Web Part) and forms (using the XSLT List Form Web Part) for the browser, and a customizable Outlook 2010 form and an InfoPath 2010 form. The InfoPath form can be used instead of the default XSLT views and forms to view and edit data in the external list in the browser, and the Outlook form is used to display external data in Outlook 2010

External Lists in SharePoint Workspace

After you create an external list, you can just click the Connect to SharePoint Workspace button on the server Ribbon to make that external list available in SharePoint Workspace 2010. In SharePoint Workspace, you can view and edit the external data directly from the client, whether you’re connected or offline. BCS provides a cache and synchronization mechanism that is installed on the client computer and that keeps the data fresh and synchronized with the back-end system. SharePoint Workspace also provides error and conflict resolution. When you connect an external list to SharePoint Workspace, InfoPath 2010 forms for viewing and editing the data in SharePoint Workspace are auto-generated

External Lists in Outlook

You can also connect an external list to Outlook 2010. When you create an external content type in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can map it to a native Office item type such as a contact or task so that the external data looks and behaves just like a contact or task item in Outlook. For example, suppose that your external data is a list of customers and you want to display that external data in Outlook. Because the data for customers closely resembles contacts in Outlook, you can map that external content type to the contact item in Outlook. After you connect the external list to Outlook, you can create, update, and delete the external data directly from Outlook just as you would create and update native Outlook contacts

Business Data columns, workflow, & Word

After you create an external content type, you can add a Business Data column to a list or library. A Business Data column is associated with an external content type and represents a field from that ECT. If a document library uses a Word document for its template, you can edit the template in Word by adding Quick Parts, which are content controls that are bound to Business Data columns. When people create a new document based on that Word template, external data is displayed inside the document in content controls. The content controls automatically enable picking and resolving functionality for the external data. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can also create a workflow that is associated to this document library and that reads and writes data to the external list. In SharePoint Designer, the standard workflow list actions have been enhanced to work with external data


Control where & how people can use SharePoint Designer 2010

If you are an IT professional who administers SharePoint for your organization, know that you can broadly deploy SharePoint Designer 2010 and have complete confidence that you can easily control where and how people in your organization can use SharePoint Designer. Moreover, the new page-editing experience in SharePoint Designer 2010 means that — by default — customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) is neither possible nor necessary in order to compose powerful pages and dashboards.

Administration pages for the Web application and site collection

If you are a server administrator, you have a new page in Central Administration dedicated specifically to settings for SharePoint Designer 2010. If you are a site collection administrator, you have a similar page in the Site Settings of the top-level site in the site collection. For each Web application or site collection, you now have options to allow people to use SharePoint Designer, to customize pages, to customize master pages and page layouts, and to use the All Files view

Customizing pages requires higher permissions by default

Customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) now requires higher permissions than in the previous release: By default, only Site Collection Administrators can customize pages, master pages, and page layouts, or use the All Files view. This means that, in the Navigation pane, most people will not see the nodes for Master Pages, Page Layouts, and All Files. Instead, people will build solutions by creating and storing Web Part pages in the Site Pages library. So it’s easy for you to preserve a consistent branding and layout across your Web application or site collection

New page-editing experience: default mode vs. Advanced mode

In SharePoint Designer 2010, the emphasis is on creating and configuring components like Data Views, forms, and workflows — and less on editing HTML and other Web designer-type tasks. Thus, the default mode for editing Web Part pages is simpler and more intuitive — in fact, the default mode is much like adding content to a wiki page. People can insert Data Views and forms, type text, and add other content inside the main content placeholder (PlaceHolderMain), but the rest of the page is locked for editing. In this mode, all custom content resides inside a hidden Web Part, so in the default mode a page cannot be customized (“unghosted”). By contrast, in Advanced mode, you can fully customize the page by editing anything on the page. Again, by default only Site Collection Administrators can edit pages in Advanced mode

Site Pages

In the previous version, you might have been concerned about people saving files to the root of the site or changing the folder structure of the site. In SharePoint Designer 2010, by default most people will not have access to the All Files view in a site; instead, all new pages created in a site reside in the Site Pages document library. The Site Pages library provides a simple, streamlined way for people to create and store the files necessary for their solution

Easily revert site pages to a previous version

The Sites Pages library uses versioning, so if you inadvertently break a page, you can easily roll back to a previous version. In SharePoint Designer 2010, every SharePoint page has a summary page that displays the version history for that page. On the summary page, you can restore a previous version right from the Ribbon

Easier upgrades moving forward

Customized pages can complicate the upgrade process. For example, when upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007, customized pages did not automatically take on the new look and feel, and you often had to manually reproduce the customizations on a new version of the page. With SharePoint Designer 2010, people can take advantage of all its application-building and customization capabilities without customizing (“unghosting”) any pages. So you can broadly deploy SharePoint Designer 2010 and know that any future SharePoint upgrades will not be complicated by large numbers of customized pages


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