Mylearning.be

The people from CommonCraft have created a new video about SharePoint. If you want to learn what it is and what it can do for you in 3 minutes, this is the way to go:

Jane Hart posted some links to free e-learning content about … e-learning. The content was created by Brainshark, and is very traditional (slide based), but of high quality. I embed my favorite below, check Jane’s site for the other content.

Microsoft is offering 3 free e-learning “clinics” about the upcoming Windows 7. So if you do not have time to find out every new feature by yourself, have a look at the modules.

You get free access for one year. Access to the site is usually rather slow, but still acceptable. And a tip for the Internet Explorer 8 users: make sure you activate Compatibility View for the site, otherwise content is not displayed properly on a lot of interactive pages!

The links:

• What’s New in Windows 7 for Consumers
• What’s New in Windows 7 for IT Professionals
• What’s New in Windows 7 for Information Workers

For those who followed my SharePoint introduction session on the Microsoft SMB Roadshow, here are some links that will help you evaluate Microsoft Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services:

• the Microsoft “Fabulous 40″ templates
• the Microsoft SharePoint Techcenter on Technet
• a comparison of the different versions of SharePoint
• a trial download of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
• a planning guide for your first SharePoint site

One of our customers is still running Office 2003, but wants to use Excel Services. There seems to be some confusion if this is possible or not. As far as I am concerned, it is very well possible, although there are some prerequisites, and some limitations. These are my observations from an end user perspective:

• The files in SharePoint need to be in .XLSX or .XLSB format, it does not work with .XLS. You can install the Office File Converter pack, which will allow Excel 2003 to save files as xlsx. 
  I had some issues installing it, but installing Service Pack 3 of Office 2003 fixed all issues.
• With Office 2003, you can not limit the display of the workbook in Excel services to a specific area (worksheet, named range…). It always displays the full workbook if you open the file in Excel Services. In the Excel Web Access web part, you can limit the display to a worksheet or a named range. 
• Office 2003 can not work with parameters, that allow you to change certain values dynamically in the worksheet (e.g. using filter web parts). 

If you want to know more about Excel Services from an end user perspective, have a look at the Microsoft online training material.