SPC: Upgrading Your Website to SharePoint 2010 with Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson
Published 10/23 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community
I only had time to catch one session before my flight home today, so I was looking for a strong finish. Andrew Connell and Chris Johnson's session on upgrading your website to SharePoint 2010 looked to fit the bill and, sure enough, did not disappoint in the slightest. With three separate demos, one on the basic upgrade process, another on applying Web Content Management (WCM) to the site, and the last on Content Query improvements, Andrew and Chris remarkably managed to simulate a complete upgrade during the course of a single session.
They got started by pointing out that in advance of your upgrade from 2007 to SharePoint 2010, you should: upgrade to SP2; run the Upgrade Checker (included in SP2); reconsider custom solutions which are now available out-of-the-box; and verify that all custom solutions will deploy and work in 2010. Andrew allayed any fears regarding content migration from 2007 to 2010, saying that, "all the content is going to come over just fine." Andrew also explained that immediately post-migration, a site will for the most part appear to be unchanged from a look-and-feel perspective as the 2007 (3.0) style will be maintained. There are a few additional steps which must be taken in order to manually activate the UI and many of the 2010 features, which Andrew proceeded to walk through with three separate demos.
Before beggining the demo, it was mentioned that after flipping the switch to activate the new 2010 UI (which, as Heather Solomon noted in her session on branding and customization of 2010 My Sites, can be done a la carte or all at once), the content master page will need some attention and app pages will need to be updated to 4.0. After updating the content master page, 2007 controls should be manually removed "because they're baked in [to 2010]," and the server Ribbon will need to be manually applied.
In broad strokes, Andrew's first demo, covering the initial upgrade itself, involved using the SQL Enterprise Manager to restore the content database, creating a Web app, and using PowerShell to attach the content database to the Web app. Andrew mentioned that the "db attach upgrade" isn't the only means of running the upgrade, and that it can also be accomplished via an in-place upgrade. Andrew applied the 2010 UI to all sites for the sake of his demo and showed that, once complete and as mentioned above, the 2007 UI had been retained.
When an (expected) unexpected error occurred, Andrew pointed out that errors in 2010 have Correlation IDs, which is a new feature that provides more details on errors. This revelation drew applause from the Administrator-heavy audience. Andrew went through the process of creating a new master page, removing the default code, pulling in the code from the site's existing custom (3.0) file and, editing in Advanced Mode, and removing the publishing console, site actions menu, and breadcrumb code (which are no longer needed). After adding the 4.0 Ribbon code, voila, the 2010 UI was in place. Andrew then demonstrated that adding the new Developer Dashboard to the site is as easy as copying that (4.0) code into the custom master page.
Chris spent a few minutes discussing many of the new WCM (Web Content Management) features that are available out-of-the-box in 2010. Some of these include: cross-browser RTE (Rich Text Editor) with valid markup; rating and tagging; dynamic rollup filtering; site-based workflows; and Silverlight / video streaming.
Andrew's second demo focused on the Managed Metadata service app, and walked through the process of adding custom ratings to a site. Andrew was particularly enthusiastic about this functionality, saying, "the metadata addition to SharePoint, if not the biggest is I think one of the top two additions in 2010." It was pointed out that ratings are not a live update, and that by default the resync occurs once per hour (though this is, of course, configurable).
Chris walked through the Content Query improvements in 2010, some of which include dynamic filters based on page fields, and data view fields which remove the need to specify CommonViewFields and allow you to pass in semicolon-delimited lists of field names which are, in turn, passed into the style sheet. Andrew's accompanying demo showed how to use the Content Query Web Part to specify ratings behavior (i.e., if this many stars, then show this image).
And with the upgrading to 2010 session complete, my time at the 2009 SharePoint Conference had also come to an end, and it was time to head to the airport.
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