Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

Back in 2008, Woody Windischman, Bryan Phillips and I (Asif Rehmani) teamed up to write a book on SharePoint Designer 2007. The main reasons we wrote that book are because we really believe in SharePoint Designer and felt that there was just not enough ‘good’ information out there in the market about how to use it effectively. In fact, even till this day if you go to Amazon.com and read the reviews for the product, you will see that the prevailing viewpoint of reviewers is the complaint of not having a good user manual for it. In my humble opinion, I think we did a pretty good job at documenting a lot of abilities of this product in our book. My only regret is that the book came out so late in the market (it was published in Jan 2009). I truly believe that if this book was available earlier, it could have saved lots of unnecessary pain to many people who went about using SPD in a not so effective manner.

With the upcoming release of SharePoint Designer 2010, we have teamed up once again to write another book. The title of the book is Beginning SharePoint Designer 2010 by Wrox publications and the target release date is middle of 2010 – right after the product gets released. Even though we are writing under the Beginning series, rest assured that there will be a LOT of detailed information on SPD in the book. SPD 2010’s interface and functionality is so different from SPD 2007 that this book is going to be almost a complete rewrite for us. The SPD 2007 book will continue to be needed by anyone who is still using SharePoint 2007 (Reason: SharePoint Designer 2010 is not compatible with SharePoint 2007). Each of us is a SharePoint MVP, but we have different areas that we focus on within SharePoint. We have divided the book chapters between us keeping our complementary skills in mind to provide the reader with the best viewpoint we can offer about each area of functionality. In addition to the explanations we will provide on each functional area within SPD, there will be plenty of examples in each chapter to walk you through step-by-step scenarios on how to create the actual solutions. We think that these examples will be truly indispensable for readers who prefer hands on experience with the product.

We have high hopes for this book and our goal is that this book will be indispensable to any SharePoint professional whether they play a role of a server administrator, site collection administrator, site administrator, designer, developer or IT professional. Our belief is that to truly take advantage of SharePoint 2010, you need to be proficient in SharePoint Designer 2010 and our book will serve as your guide in your SharePoint adventures to make you into a SharePoint rock star!

Guest Author: Asif Rehmani – SharePoint Server MVP, MCT
SharePoint eLearning

Asif has over 10 years of training and consulting experience in the IT industry. He has been training and consulting on primarily SharePoint technologies for over 4 years. He is a SharePoint Server MVP and MCT.

Asif is the co-author of the book “Professional SharePoint Designer 2007“ by Wrox publications. He has also been a speaker on SharePoint topics at several conferences over the years including Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference, SharePoint Connections, Advisor Live, and Information Workers Conference.

Asif runs a SharePoint eLearning website (http://www.sharepoint-elearning.com) which provides dozens of SharePoint Video Tutorials. He was the co-founder and is currently one of the active leaders of the Chicago SharePoint User Group.