Here’s a trick you can use to make a “redirect” page — that is, a page whose only purpose is to send somebody to another page. This is a handy trick in many situations. I recently ran into a requirement for it when I wanted to push out a Twitter tweet with a link to a Trick Bag subscribe landing page.

Here’s the landing page: https://landingpage.dynamics.com:443/LandingPage.aspx?dl_lpai=41e05435-4218-4a33-ae43-a214bd49c8a5&dl_lpak=1949979038.

[Note: this landing page is generated by the "Lead Capture Pages" wizard in Dynamics CRM Online. If you've read any other recent Trick Bag posts, you may know this is a topic of interest to me. For example, here's a link to an article on the Trick Bag on the topic: http://www.dynamicscrmtrickbag.com/?p=163 ]

Anyway, that’s 117 characters all by itself, which only leaves 23 characters to convince somebody they might actually want to click a nasty-looking URL like that! Not enough characters for my poor persuasive skills, so I decided a shorter URL was in order.  

There are other ways to do this, but the easiest approach I’ve seen is to use Jscript code like this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
window.location = “http://www.google.com/”
//–>
</script>

So I need some code like that on a page with a nice short URL. Here’s a SharePoint example:

I created a page in SharePoint, which on my site now has a URL of http://www.imginc.com/pages/linkedintbsubscribe.aspx, much shorter than the other one. I put a Content Editor web part on the page, then put that code in the HTML of the page.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
window.location = “https://landingpage.dynamics.com:443/LandingPage.aspx?dl_lpai=41e05435-4218-4a33-ae43-a214bd49c8a5&dl_lpak=1949979038”
//–>
</script>

– and all the user sees is what you get to here: https://landingpage.dynamics.com:443/LandingPage.aspx?dl_lpai=41e05435-4218-4a33-ae43-a214bd49c8a5&dl_lpak=1949979038

For about the last month I’ve been working fulltime on an enormous MOSS 2007 rollout for a big Chicago-based enterprise. For the couple of years before that I’d been almost 100% on Dynamics CRM. Which goes some of the way to explaining my recent posting paucity, but that’s beside the point.

In any case, since my specialty is combining the two platforms, it’s been a good thing for me to be full-on MOSS and get my chops back. And to see how it’s done in a first-class enterprise rollout — with actual investment in things like custom web parts, standards and governance, change management — it’s good to know there are large enterprises that take those things seriously!

It’s also been an eye-opener for me to see where the skill shortages are. To me it looks like the biggest requirements — at least for the gig I’m on — are for what I’d call “Content Publishers”. Here’s what I think they need to know:

·         Understand SharePoint lists and libraries. Should have extensive experience with and deep understanding of the core data storage mechanism of SharePoint, lists and libraries.

• When to use lists v. libraries
• Create lists and libraries, customize settings
• Creating and modifying list and library views
• Creating and working with calculated columns
• Importing and Exporting data from lists and libraries 

·         Understand Web Parts. Should have detailed knowledge of and extensive experience with using all out of the box WSS and MOSS web parts to lay out and customize SharePoint pages. Should be able to quickly come up to speed on the use of custom web parts. Some of the most important SharePoint web parts you should already have experience with include:

• Content Editor, Summary Links and Content Query Web Parts
• Page Viewer, Form and Image Web Parts
• Use of Web Parts to expose lists and libraries
• Other commonly used SharePoint Web Parts
• Exporting and Importing Web Parts
• Targeting Audiences with Web Parts

·         Understand MOSS 2007 Publishing features

• Working with Pages document library
• Publishing workflow features

·         SharePoint Page Layout and Graphics. Should have experience with designing and implementing SharePoint pages, both with the SharePoint web UI, as well as editing/importing HTML, with a mix of text, graphics, links, etc. Have basic skills working with and modifying images. Have basic skills working with images in SharePoint: importing, integrating into pages, etc.

·         Other important required skills

• Designing and customizing navigation for sites and site collections
• Working with and customizing user management and permissions for sites and site collections
• Understanding and customizing site and site collection settings
• Understanding SharePoint search

That’s what I’m looking for, anyway. If you have these skills or if you know anybody that does, please let me know! You can post a comment here, or email me at richardk@imginc.com

There’s plenty of SharePoint work out there, so keep your chops up!

Hi –

If you’re a  reader of the posts I’ve been making on the Dynamics CRM Trick Bag — the old site is here: http://www.imginc.com/blogs/richardk/default.aspx – you might not be surprised that I’ve made a new home for it on a hosted (!) platform. So here it is. I’ll give you some details of the new platform in a forthcoming post (it’s actually an interesting story), but for now, I just wanted to let you know that if you found your way here, you’re in the right place (assuming you meant to be here in the first place…and if you didn’t, you’re quite welcome anyway and I hope you visit often!)

Anyway, it’s me (Richard), and in the near term I’ll continue to post on the old site as well as here, but at some point I’ll probably stop posting on the old one or just redirect to here. I will also move over content from the old site as time permits.

And let me know what you think of the new site! I’m running it on the WordPress platform, which is the leading blog software, and has a lot of cool features I’m looking forward to exercising.

Welcome, and cheers!

Richard Knudson
President, The Information Management Group
Gold Certified Microsoft Partner
mobile: 312-513-9401
corporate: www.IMGinc.com
Dynamics CRM User Group: www.DynamicsCRMUserGroup.com
Richard’s blog: www.DynamicsCRMTrickBag.com