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

This is the fifth of the free videos. Feel free to download and distribute freely.

Creating and Customizing a SharePoint Page

This video shows a detailed demonstration of how to create and customize SharePoint pages using the browser. Many of the options in the ribbon are explored. First, a new page is created on the site then it is customized by adding text, table, image, list, and links. Also, it is demonstrated how to use Wiki linking to connect to content on your site.

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.

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

This is the fourth of the free videos. Feel free to download and distribute freely.

Changing the Theme of a Site

A Site’s Theme provides the look and feel of a site. The colors, fonts, images can all be changed by applying a new Theme to a site. Themes are packages of styles and images that can be applied to a site. Keep in mind that Theme is specific to a site and is not inherited by its subsite. This video shows how you can customize a Theme using the browser and then apply it to a site.

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.

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

This is the third of the free videos. Feel free to download and distribute freely.

Change the Title, Description, URL and Icon for the site

If you are the administrator of the site, it is easy for you to change the title, description, URL and icon for the site. However, there are some gotchas that you should be aware of when doing this. Things such as the impact of changing the URL, where do you store the site’s logo and more is explored in this video.

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.

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

This is the second of the free videos. Feel free to download and distribute freely.

Exploring a SharePoint 2010 Site

This video explores the makeup of a SharePoint site. The Quick Launch, Ribbon and Content Area of the site pages are discussed. Also, the navigation scheme of the sites is explored.

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.

Guest Author: Adam Macaulay

The Quick Launch is a site by site navigation panel which you can use to access any link that has been specified. By default you will see options such as Libraries, and Lists. Technically the Recycle Bin and (View) All Site Content are not a part of the Quick Launch and are instead their own links that live beneath the Quick Launch.

The Quick Launch hasn’t changed much since 2003 except in how you can manage it. In 2003, we could only manage it through Frontpage to add Headings and navigation was managed through FrontPage navigation. In 2007 you were allowed to manage the Quick Launch through Site Settings which enabled us greater flexibility without using SharePoint Designer. We also saw the introduction of new headings such as Sites and People and Groups. This continues into SharePoint 2010 with some of the terms and link locations being altered once again, for instance we no longer see Sites by default and the People and Groups heading has been removed. Another difference in 2010 is the Quick Launch will be visible on all pages inside of the site, even if inside of Site Settings. This was not the case on 2007.

2007 Quick Launch    2010 Quick Launch

Now that we know what the Quick Launch is, let’s focus on managing it. To manage the Quick Launch we will focus on 5 key areas.

1. Display/Hide
2. Create List and Site Settings
1. Create Site
2. Create List
3. List Settings
4. Look and Feel – Quick Launch Settings
1. Headings
2. Navigation Links
3. Order
5. SharePoint Designer
1. Display Quick Launch in a Site
2. Display List in Quick Launch
3. Modify the Quick Launch Design – the v4.Master
1. ScrollBars
2. Height

Display/Hide

The simple question is do you want or not want to display a Quick Launch. I will show you how via the browser you can control this. You can also use SharePoint Designer  to this and the instructions are below in the SharePoint Designer section. You will need Web Designer right to modify this.

To display or hide your Quick Launch, go to your Site settings. This can be found within the Site Actions dropdown.

Under Look and Feel, click “Tree View”.

To display the Quick Launch check “Enable Quick Launch” and to disable it uncheck “Enable Quick Launch”.

Once complete, click the OK button to save your changes. You should now see or not see the Quick Launch bar on page based upon your choice.

Create List and Site Settings

When we create a list or site we are given the option of controlling if the site or list should be made visible. Unlike in the list, if we choose not to display the site in the Quick Launch there is no way to have it automatically added to the Quick Launch and we will have to do so manually.  

If you have used SharePoint 2010 and tried to create a site or list you likely have done so through the Silverlight picker and have not seen the option I speak of. That is because the option is not presented unless you choose the “More Options” button when creating the list or site. If you are not using the Silverlight picker then this option will be displayed to you during site or list creation. Note, when creating a list, it will automatically be added to the Quick Launch however when creating a site it will NOT be added automatically to the Quick Launch.

Let look at the two options.

Create List

When creating a list and we have clicked on the More Options button, under the navigation group we are presented with the ability to display or not display the list in the Quick Launch. As you can see the default is Yes. Choose Yes to show the list in the Quick Launch and choose No to not. These options look identical in the ASPX version of the “New List” option.

Create Site

When creating a site and we have clicked on the More Options button, under the navigation group we are presented with the ability to display or not display the site in the Quick Launch. As you can see the default is No. Choose Yes to show the site in the Quick Launch or choose No to not. Remember if you choose No, you will have to manually add this later if you want it in the Quick Launch. These options look identical in the ASPX version of the “New SharePoint Site” option.

List Settings

After you create a list you can choose to hide or show the List Name in the Quick Launch. You can do this by modifying the List Settings in the browser or in SharePoint Designer. You will find instructions for using SharePoint Designer in the SharePoint Designer section below. We will focus on using the browser. For this you will need either Site Web Designer rights or Designer rights to the list.

Enter the list that you want to show or hide in the Quick Launch. Click on the “List” tab in the ribbon and click on “List Settings”.

Inside of List Settings, under General Settings click on “Title, description, and navigation”.

Under the Navigation group, to enable the Quick Launch, choose Yes otherwise choose No.

Click save to save your changes and you should or should not see the list in the Quick Launch depending on your setting. That’s the nice thing about the fact the Quick Launch is on every page now, you can see your changes immediately reflected.

Look and Feel – Quick Launch Settings

We can also modify the Quick Launch to include our own links to specific page or other sites. Remember if we didn’t select the Sub Site to be displayed in the Quick Launch bar when we created the site, we have to manually add it and that is what we will do here. We will also discuss how we can manage Headings.  To manage the Quick Launch you must have web designer rights to the site.

To manage your Quick Launch go to your Site settings. This can be found within the Site Actions dropdown.

Click on “Quick Launch” under the Look and Feel Group.

As you can see inside of the Quick Launch manager we can manage the Links, Headings, and Order of content in our Quick Launch. By default there are some which will already exist inside of the Quick Launch. I say this knowing that if you enabled a Blank Site the Quick Launch will actually be empty except with certain headings for each list group.

For our example we will create a link to a site that already exists. Let’s begin, by default unless there is a site being displayed within the Quick Launch there will be no Sites heading so we will need to create one.

Click on “New Heading”

Because we want to display a list of sites that my users will access, I will enter the following web address.

“/sites/Adam/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx?ShowSites=1”

You of course will want to use your own site URL. Notice how I am using the Parameter “ShowSites” and setting it equal to “1”. This will take the user to the ShowSites view of the All Site Content Page if the user clicks on the Sites Heading. By doing this users will be able to see all sites that exists directly underneath the current site without displaying it in the Quick Launch. There a number of other settings you can use here as well such as;

If the list has been hidden then it will not be displayed. This is different from being displayed in the Quick Launch as lists can be hidden from the browser and only managed via SharePoint Designer. If you are coder you can always modify this file to have more abilities, like displaying all webs there are underneath, but that is for an experienced developer only and should not be attempted by an end user. I have tried to override the ListTemplate to something like 104 for announcements but this is not recognized, so stick with the table above.

Next we need to give our heading a title. Let’s use “Sites” for our title.

Your final result should look like;

Click the OK button to save your settings. You should now have a new Sites heading. If we did not do this then the next step to actually add the site under the heading would not have been possible since we wouldn’t have a heading to put the site underneath. Look to the left of your page, do you see your new heading?

Now that we have the heading created let’s add a site beneath the heading. Click on “New Navigation Link” to create a new link and place underneath the heading.

Under the “Type the Web address”, type the URL to the site you wish to make available. The site can live anywhere you like as you can use any link provided it is valid URL. (It doesn’t have to be a valid page just a valid URL.) You can add JavaScript here if you like however there could be a negative reaction if you do so since the JavaScript will be added to the HREF attribute. In my case I am adding the URL to my sub site.

Enter the description of the URL. In my case I am using the Name of my site.

Finally choose the Heading you would like the new link to live underneath.

Once complete click OK and you should see your new link underneath the heading we created earlier.

What we want to do now is alter the location where the Heading Sites is located. We want Sites to be at the top. We will now click on “Change Order”

We are now presented with the Change Order Screen. We are given the option to alter the order by choosing the number of the order that we would like the heading to show up in. In our case we want it to be first, so we will select 1 from the drop down next to the Sites heading. Once we make the change the whole view will alter the order for all items.

Notice also you have the same option for all sub headings which you can do the exact same process for. So if you have multiple sites you could alter the order of the sites to match to your needs.

Click OK to save your change and look at the Quick Launch bar, did it change?

SharePoint Designer

Using SharePoint Designer we manage if a Site display a Quick Launch, if a List is Display IN a Quick Launch, and control the Quick Launch design. Before we begin you must have Web Designer rights and your Farm/Web Application/Site Collection must allow the use of SharePoint Designer. If are you are not allowed to use SPD then you will be presented with an error message indicating that. Talk to your Administrator about attaining the appropriate rights.

Display Quick Launch in a Site

When you open SharePoint Designer to a site for the first time, the first Site Management screen gives you multiple navigation options. One of them is “Display Quick Launch” under the settings panel. Check this option to display the Quick Launch and uncheck to not display it. Make sure you click save to save your changes.

Display List in Quick Launch

Once you open a list within SharePoint Designer the List Management screen gives you the option to hide or show the list within the Quick Launch. Check the “Display this list on the Quick Launch” to display the list within the Quick Launch and uncheck it to not. Make sure you click save to save your changes.

Modify the Quick Launch Design – the v4.Master

We have seen that we manage our Headings and Links in the Quick Launch from within the browser, but how do we modify the design. We can do so from SharePoint Designer. Locate the Master Page “v4.master” within the Master Pages navigation group. Before we modify this note that a new version of the master page will be created each time you save the file so you do not have to save a copy of the file as you will be able to return to a previous version if necessary.

Right mouse click on the v4.master page and choose “Edit File in Advanced Mode”.

You can also edit the file by clicking on it and then clicking “Edit File” in the management screen.

We will now manage some of the properties of the navigation. If you are viewing HTML code right now, you’ll need to get into the Design View. On the bottom of your SharePoint Designer select “Design”.

You are now ready to manage the Navigation. Left mouse click over the Quick Launch bar.

By default, when we click on the Quick Launch we are actually managing the ASPMenu object which is not the object we should manage. We need to manage the SharePoint.SPNavigationManager.  There are three ways to get to this.

1. You can right mouse click on the Object Name above the Quick Launch and choose properties. This will open the Tag Properties for that object. In this case I right mouse clicked on “SharePoint:SPNavigationM…#QuickLaunchNa” and chose properties.


2. You can double click on the Object Name within the Tag Viewer at the bottom of your Designer screen. This will open the Tag Properties for that object.


3. Click on the “View” tab in the ribbon and drop down the “Task Panes” option. Choose Tag Properties. Your Tag Properties Pane should now be open.
1. Now click on “Skewer Click” in the ribbon.


2. Move your mouse over the Quick Launch and left mouse click. Select the SharePoint:SPNavigationManager object. This will select the correct object and display its properties in the Tag Properties task pane.

Now that you have properties visible for your Navigation object let’s enable the Quick Launch so that we lock the height and enable the vertical scrollbar. The height we will use will purposefully be short so that we see the scroll bar activate. You can of course set this to any option you wish but this will stop the long scrolling page should you have a lot of sites, lists, and libraries displayed in your Quick Launch.

In the Tag Properties, locate the “ScrollBars” property under the group “Layout”. If you would you prefer to sort the properties alphabetically please by clicking on the Sort Icon at the top of the pane. 

In the ScrollBars property choose “Vertical”. This will turn the scroll bars on for you. After you make the change, in your design view you will see the following error message. Ignore it, you are still doing a great job.

Let’s edit the Height property which is under the same property group. Set the height to “100px”.

Now that you have completed the change, save your page. You will be presented with the message “Saving your change will customize the page…”. This is just indicating that you modifying the page and it will become unghosted which means that it will no longer use the file on the server as the base page for its design but instead will store the page directly into the Database. Click OK to continue. You can always return the page back to the Site Definition by right mouse clicking on the file and choosing “Reset to Site Definition”.

You may also see an error message “The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped section open.” Click the OK button and then wait. Once it comes up with the file dialogue box, hit your escape button. When back on the page, hit your escape button again and try to save. By hitting escape you remove focus from the control causing the problem. Hitting escape before saving will usually keep this error from happening because you will no longer be editing the properties of user object.

You may also see the error message “There are pending updates to one or more ASP.NET controls in the page…”. Choose no, return to your properties, delete the height entry and re-add it. Now try to save your page again. If the same message occurs, click yes. Open the page back up and go back to the properties. Add the properties that were not added before and save your page.

The final results should look like this;

As you can see the Quick Launch is locked to 100px height and is showing a Vertical Scroll bar. Now your page won’t go crazy when you have 50 lists inside of your site and you are displaying them within the Quick Launch.

Guest Author: Adam Macaulay

Adam Macaulay is responsible for research and development of the technology platform driving the success of CorasWorks products. He has over 15 years of experience developing Internet Applications that have taken internal, cost prohibitive solutions and turned them into profitable internet applications that continue to exist today.

At the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, I had the distinct pleasure to present the Introduction to SharePoint Designer 2010 session. The early estimates are that over 1000 people attended that session. I personally had a real good time talking about SharePoint Designer since, aside from the facts that it’s my favorite tool to customize SharePoint and that I co-authored the book on SharePoint Designer 2007, so many enhancements have been made to this product that I didn’t have to use the “maybe this feature will be included in the next version” answer even once in the session Q&A! Awesome! .

As they say, best things in life are Free

First, let’s talk about the price of SharePoint Designer 2010 (SPD 2010)… well, or the lack of a price tag. Just like SPD 2007, SPD 2010 will also be a free product. Once it’s available (it will be released with SharePoint 2010 itself which is going to be sometime in the first half of 2010), it will be available at the following site: http://www.microsoft.com/spd. The question that might come to mind is “does this mean that Microsoft will not be further enhancing the product or supporting it fully since it has gone down the free route”. The answer I can confidentially say is Absolutely Not! The product is and will be supported as part of your SharePoint deployment. The reason Microsoft has decided to make the product free is because they did not want the price point of the product to be the barrier in trying to customize and extend SharePoint to its full potential (before jumping into code). You can only do so much within the web browser window. To take ultimate advantage of your SharePoint deployment, it is almost (dare I say) a necessity to use either SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio.

What’s in a Name anyway

The last word in the name of this product confuses many people who first hear about it (IMHO). SharePoint Designer to them insinuates that it must be a product for people who need to do branding or styling in SharePoint. While it’s true that SPD is really good at letting you apply style sheets to your sites, modify existing SharePoint themes, alter or create new Master Pages etc, this is only one part of its functionality. In my own case, for example, I use SPD for all the non-branding reasons. I use it to create end to end solutions on top of SharePoint using functionality such as the Data View web part, Workflow designer, manipulating web part zones, creating page layouts, using the built in reports etc. just to name a few. I truly believe and always mention to my customers to very seriously consider using SharePoint Designer in their environment to take full advantage of their SharePoint investment.

The bells and whistles of SharePoint Designer 2010

In my session at SPC, I presented 10 features of SharePoint Designer 2010. I also did plenty of demos related to these features. Whether you attended the conference or not, you can find the video demos for all of them at the SharePoint-Videos.com site here: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/free-sharepoint-sharepoint-designer-and-infopath-2010-videos/. The features that I highlighted are listed below. Keep in mind, that there are more great things about SPD 2010 then are listed below. Also, not all of them are new, but they are all very useful. This is just to give you a taste of the power of SPD.

1. New User Experience with Summary Pages, Ribbon and Quick Launch navigation

Just like the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, SPD also now has a Ribbon on top that changes depending on the object (site, list, workflow etc) you are focused on. Of course there is a learning curve if you are not comfortable with ribbons yet, however, once you do get comfortable with it, it makes you Really productive and efficient! The Summary Pages show you the settings and summary of an object that you are currently viewing. For example, if you are focused on a list, it will show you the name, description, views, forms etc for the list. The Quick Launch navigation on the side gives you a quick way to get to different categories of objects within the site (lists, workflows, site pages etc.). Overall, it’s easier to navigate a SharePoint site using this new user experience.



2. Creating SharePoint Content structure

Once you start out with working in a SharePoint site collection, the types of things you will need to create will consist of subsites, lists for content, and pages to display the information among other things. While creating these objects, you will need to manipulate their name, description, schema and other settings as needed. You can do all of this in the browser or you can do it in SPD. My reason for doing this in SPD is that it’s much faster and efficient than going to the web browser and waiting for each page to load after clicking on a link to, let’s say, change the title and description of the site. The web browser is much slower than using the SPD client application. That’s a fact!



3. Configure Site Security

Until SharePoint 2007, you had to go through the browser to configure the security for your site. It didn’t matter what your credentials were. You could be the SharePoint server admin, but still you had to resort through using the browser. Not anymore! You can configure security directly in SPD now. Creating new SharePoint groups, associating them to the appropriate permission levels and adding users to the groups is all built into the environment now.



4. Create Content Types and attach to Lists directly

Having a good solid content type design in your SharePoint deployment is always a good idea. It is basically how you are telling SharePoint what types of content you will be generating in your environment. If you have not looked into content types, I advise that you read up on it. Using SPD 2010, you can now create your content types hierarchy without going to the browser. Adding site columns (or creating new ones) to content types is also pretty simple to do within SPD.



5. Create Site Assets for your site

There is a new type of library now included in SharePoint 2010 called Site Assets. The objective of this library is to store the files that are used as resources for the site such as style sheets, JavaScript files, xml files and even images which need to be served up on site pages. You can create these resource files in site assets library directly through SPD. Since SPD supports intellisense for JavaScript, style sheets, and also xml, it is a much more conducive environment in which to author these files.



6. Use XSLT List View web parts to show dynamic views of your data

In SharePoint 2007, we had List View web parts (LVWP) to show our list or library content in a page on the site. They worked fine, however, they were not very extensible. Meaning, if you wanted to manipulate their look and feel, you could only get as far as using the pre-built styles and layouts either through the browser or through SPD. On the other hand, we had the XSLT Data View web part (DVWP) which you could configure visually using only SharePoint Designer. That web part lets us manipulate any data points at a very granular level since all data was fetched as XML and manipulated using XSLT which is a very flexible way of transforming and presenting your data. The problem with this approach was that once the web part is deployed, it could not be easily changed or manipulated using the web browser. Enters XSLT List View web part! It gives us the best of both worlds. All lists and libraries are now deployed on pages as XSLT LVWP which can be easily configured using SPD and also extended further as needed using the browser.



7. Connect to Data Sources outside of SharePoint

More often than not, you will need to display data on SharePoint pages that’s coming from outside of SharePoint. SPD provides an easy to use interface to make a connection to a data source that you have access to. It’s a fairly simple wizard driven process to connect to external data sources such as databases, xml files, server side scripts (including RSS feeds), and web services (also included in this release is the support for connecting to REST web services). The best part about this functionality is that you can link the data sources together and then show a unified view of the data. So for example, let’s say you’re in a retail business… your category information could be in a xml file, while your subcategories could be accessible through a vendor’s web service and then your actual products information is in your database. You can first create the connections to your data sources and then connect all of this information together to display a combined view of the data for your users. End users don’t need to know where the actual data is coming from as long as it all just works together ‘automagically’.



8. Create External Content Types using Business Connectivity Services

SharePoint 2007 introduced a new functionality called Business Data Catalog. That functionality has now been renamed Business Connectivity Services. The idea behind this functionality is to expose Line of Business data from your back end services (such as People Soft, SAP, custom databases etc.) to business analysts so they can use them within SharePoint. Each piece of information (for example a table in a database that has your Customers information) can be exposed as an External Content Type (ECT) by an IT professional or a developer using SharePoint Designer. Then a business analyst can use SharePoint through the web browser to make an External List which uses this ECT. The result will be that they have a list now showing information straight from the Customers table in the database (following the example from earlier). When anyone (who has permission of course) manipulates the information in that External List, it will actually be written back to that table in the database.



9. Create Powerful Reusable Workflows

SharePoint Designer 20007 came with a very versatile platform to make really powerful Workflows. These were rule based workflows and utilized the ‘Activities’ already deployed at the server level. Aside from all the good stuff that these workflows provide, there was one big problem… You could not copy these workflows from one list to another or one site to another site. That quickly became a big problem if you had invested hours or days in making the workflow and then found out you couldn’t replicate it anywhere else. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create reusable workflows! These workflows can then be attached to lists, libraries or even content types. Not only that, but you can even package your workflows as a .wsp (solution file) and extend it further using Visual Studio! In addition to the reusable workflows, you can also create workflows which are specific to a site so there is no need to attach to a list or library at all (called Site Workflows). Oh, did I mention that workflows can now be modeled in Visio 2010 and then exported to SharePoint Designer? There are so many improvements in SPD workflows that it will take a separate blog post to dig into it all.



10. Restrict SharePoint Designer usage as needed

SharePoint Designer 2010 is a powerful application. The usage of this application can be controlled at the Web Application and at the Site Collection level. A Site Collection admin, for example, can decide if she wants her Site admins to be able to utilize SPD at all. Not just that, but various functions within SPD can also be restricted. An example of that is creation and management of Master Pages and Page Layouts. Another facet that can be restricted is customization of pages and detaching them from the site definition.

As you can tell, this is a very exciting new release of SharePoint Designer and it will change the way we manage, customize and configure our SharePoint environments. Each of these 10 things I mentioned above (and more that I did not get a chance to mention), deserve their own separate blog posts. Over time, I will be digging deeper into each of these things to provide you more perspective of how you can best utilize the features to your advantage. For now, I would recommend checking out our free 2010 videos that highlight many of the features listed above and more.

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