|
|
-
FarPoint Technologies Announces Spread for SharePoint
Component Vendor Releases Spreadsheet Web Part with Event Subscription
MORRISVILLE, NC — July 10, 2008 – FarPoint Technologies has announced the release
of Spread for SharePoint. Spread for SharePoint is a Microsoft® Windows SharePoint® Server v3 (WSS3.0) integrated spreadsheet Web Part. Through Spread for SharePoint, SharePoint site owners can bind to SharePoint lists to provide users with a feature-rich, customizable spreadsheet experience. Addressing the needs of the SharePoint users, administrators, developers and system integrators, Spread for SharePoint offers a range of capability from a company specializing in enterprise spreadsheet solutions.
Spread for SharePoint presents SharePoint list data in a dynamic and flexible spreadsheet that is integrated with SharePoint List View customizations including column visible, column order, sort, filter, group by and totals. Users have a complete data-binding experience where changes to the data are immediately reflected back to the SharePoint list and changes to the SharePoint list data made outside of Spread for SharePoint are automatically reflected in the spreadsheet. Users can personalize their view of SharePoint lists by setting column format elements: background color, text color, font, borders, and alignment through the use of a built-in tool bar. Dynamic data analysis can be performed on the data through the use of conditional formatting and multiple-level filtering. Through Spread for SharePoint, users can also save the current view of the list to PDF, Excel 97-2003(XLS), or Excel 2007(XLSX) documents.
“We recognize that SharePoint professionals need rich tools to effectively manage list data,” said FarPoint CEO Rick Williamson, “so we have leveraged our expertise in spreadsheet technologies to produce a spreadsheet component for SharePoint to address these needs.”
SharePoint developers can create custom SharePoint Spreadsheet Web Parts by extending the unsealed base class of Spread for SharePoint. The unsealed base class is part of the Enterprise Edition of the product. System integrators can codelessly incorporate SharePoint lists into event-driven, pub-sub scenarios by subscribing web services, external to SharePoint, to SharePoint list events through the Event Subscription and Routing functionality provided in the Tool Pane of Spread for SharePoint. This functionality is available in the Enterprise Edition of the product. This is yet another innovation from a company that has received the SD-Times Top 100 innovators award.
Availability
FarPoint Spread for SharePoint is available directly from FarPoint Technologies at (800) 645-5913 or (919) 460-4551. The Standard Edition has a suggested retail price of $995 (and is available at an introductory price of $695) and the Enterprise Edition has a suggested retail price of $1495.
# # #
|
-
Thanks to Sander Schutten, the certified Microsoft BizTalk Server technology specialist of Avanade, for mentioning our Spread for BizTalk product. We're glad to see that word is getting out about our Spread for BizTalk solution. As he says:
"If you’ve ever wanted or needed to parse Excel files using BizTalk, you can now."
And he's got lots of other great BizTalk information at his blog, http://www.afanaat.nl, including posters and videos. Great blog, Sanders!
|
-
FarPoint is now offering a set of user interface controls for ASP.NET development -- a set of eight input controls, as well as two help controls and five validation controls that can be assigned to those input controls. The product is FarPoint Input for ASP.NET and the beta is available for interested developers. Simply drop us an email at beta@fpoint.com to request a copy. The input controls have more features than the ones that come with Visual Studio so your Web pages can offer more functionality for data entry; the validation controls and user assistance controls provide for better data entry and a richer user experience. The eight input controls include: - Calculator
- Calendar
- Combo Box
- Date
- Edit
- List Box
- Mask
- Number
The two user assistance controls are: The five validation controls check for: - Character types
- Date range
- Date comparison
- Forbidden and allowed characters
- Text length
|
-
Jim Duffy of TakeNote is doing a fine job of leading the first ever ("inaugural" he says) class on FarPoint Spread. We're having some fun talking about the real power behind Spread ("this is way more than a grid") and getting into some of the many features available, whether it's the Spread Designer (who would want to start from scratch from code?), the Spread skins (maybe we should have an area on the forums for posting and sharing skins), or the sorting, grouping, conditional formatting, filtering and more. 
These two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) are training on Spread for Windows Forms. Then comes Spread for ASP.NET. So today, Day One, had the overview, the appearance settings, and some of the cool interaction that is available with Spread. Tomorrow we cover the cell types and more. Way to go, Jim! Keep up the great work!
|
-
Well, we've made a splash in the Japanese market with our major reseller there, GrapeCity, Japan.
They've sent a nice recognition award that we have on our shelf with other awards. We think it looks pretty cool. Here's what it looks like:
The high-quality of our products is something we work very hard to acheive and we are glad that this translates into more business for both GrapeCity and FarPoint. Thanks for thanking us, GrapeCity. Keep up the good work.
|
-
Is it a message board?Is it a forum? Is it a blog? Well, I guess it's all of them now. It seems that all this social networking stuff is converging anyway, so why not have our blogs in the same community space as our forums, and make it that much easier for users of our forums to rate and comment on our blogs.
We just upgraded the forums and added blogs. And we moved our existing blog content to this new blog. Or blogs. Well, for the forums, you shouldn’t notice anything too radically different (if so, please let me know!).
Tag clouds are also now supported which we hope will make it easier to navigate to topics about which you want to read more. We're working on the tag list presentation. Sometimes it's showing up as a bullet list and sometimes as a tag cloud.
I prefer the cloud myself. Let us know what you think of the new blogs, and the new forums too.
|
-
Thanks to Bob Mixon of Mixon Consulting for mentioning our Spread for SharePoint product -- yes, we too are excited about offering the first integrated spreadsheet Web Part. As he says:
They have taken their Spread product and created a SharePoint enabled Web Part. I did see a demo of it and the UI abilities are very feature rich. If you are looking for a way to display SharePoint List and Library information in a highly customizable way, I recommend taking a look at this product.
 
Well, enjoy the rest of Tech-Ed and let us know when you've tried out Spread for SharePoint. We think you'll be amazed at the power it affords for working with SharePoint lists.
|
-
Spread for ASP.NET has been an incredible product since it was initially released, but it has not achieved the market prominence that we felt it deserved. So we studied the market more and talked more with our customers; we identified short comings and a list of desired features during the design of our latest version. The number one complaint we were getting about Spread for Web Forms was speed. Well, the beta of version 4.0 should be ample evidence that we have done our homework. We have increased the performance to the point that you may be surprised, and we are adding over two dozen new features as well. Among the latest features we are adding are:
- Vastly increased performance – reduced client-server overhead for lightning speed
- New browser-based, full-featured Spread Designer
- ASP.NET AJAX extender controls added as cell types
- Support for document types: Excel 2007 XML, PDF, and ODF
- Several new interaction features added: row template (for multiple-line columns), row edit template (for data entry), sheet title and subtitle, group footer, and more
If you are interested in trying the beta of the latest version of Spread for ASP.NET for yourself, contact beta@farpointspread.com and ask for Spread for ASP.NET version 4 beta.
|
-
Okay, we've done it again. We received the prestigious Top 100 Award from the SD Times in the category of Components confirming that FarPoint Technologies continues to provide innovative and market-leading component solutions. And this is the second year in a row that we've received it.
BZ Media's SD Times is the twice-monthly newspaper of record for the software development industry. (SD Times reaches more than 60,000 subscribers in over 130 countries.) See the current issue for the full scoop on the awards. Thanks, SD Times, for recognizing us!
|
-
The FarPoint guys are at the booth all day today - no breaks - so no time to blog. (Now if we were using Twitter, I guess we'd have time for that.)
We are official exhibitors at the Developer part of Tech-Ed 2008, and we are showing off our latest advances in spreadsheet technology. Spread for Windows Forms is our biggy for .NET development. We will be coming out with a new version of Spread for ASP.NET any day now soon in beta and you may get word from the guys at the booth about that. Also, for SharePoint users, be sure to ask Robby what's new with Spread for SharePoint.
|
-
-
We join INETA in inviting you to the INETA Tech-Ed 2008 Community Leadership Summit, Monday June 2nd, 2008 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. prior to the start of Tech-Ed this year. FarPoint Technologies is pleased to be sponsoring the event.
The Summit will be an informal gathering (not as structured or formal as last year) of Community Leaders, INETA Volunteers, and INETA Speakers, allowing attendees to meet each other, socialize, and discuss the topics related to the user group community.
There will be several panel discussions on various topics of interest.
This will be a great opportunity to interface with members of INETA, your peers from the community, as well as to talk with our sponsors on how they can get involved to support your user group.
You can email noram.communityactivities at ineta.org for registration and details. The Summit location will be sent to you after registration.
|
-
June 13th. Friday the 13th. What could possibly go wrong?!
That's when you luckily get to hear our own Robby Powell present how to use Spread for BizTalk Server 2006 in a real-world application to handle Excel data. The title of the talk is Creation of an Order Entry and Fulfillment, and Billing/Invoice Process Using Spread for BizTalk, BizTalk Server 2006, and VS 2005. It's not as complicated as it sounds. This is an hour-long Webcast - part of the Microsoft BizTalk Server Technical Brown Bag Webcast series.
When: Friday, June 13, 2008 1:00pm PST, 3:00pm CST, 4:00pm EST, 9:00pm UK
For visual: Microsoft Office Live Meeting
URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=BTSBAG&role=attend&pw=35DKTQ
Meeting ID: BTSBAG
Meeting Password: 35DKTQ
For audio: 866-500-6738 or +1-203-480-8000, Passcode: 221223#
(During the call please use *6 to mute your phone to reduce background noise, and *6 again to unmute and ask questions.)
The Webcast is available for replay within 24 hours after the session. The PowerPoint presentation is at: \BTSBAG113_RobbyPowell-FarPoint_FarPoint Spread for BizTalk to Read-Write Excel XLS Spreadsheets.ppt .
The talk should go for just over an hour. The presentation will step through the creation of a BizTalk Application to produce an automated Order Entry, Invoice Generation and Order Fulfillment system. Through use of FarPoint Spread for BizTalk, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, and Visual Studio 2005, we will create a system that receives Excel (XLS) documents as orders, and creates invoice and inventory pick-list documents. This presentation will take you through the codeless creation of this solution using development tools that are integrated into the Visual Studio 2005 design-time environment. The Spread for BizTalk pipeline disassembler will parse Excel (XLS) data into XML-data, and the Spread for BizTalk pipeline assembler will create PDF and Excel documents from XML-data in the BizTalk Application. Explanation of the use of the BizTalk Mapper and BizTalk Orchestration is also part of this presentation.
Spread for BizTalk Server 2006 provides a complete solution for integrating Microsoft Excel data seamlessly into your BizTalk applications. Spread includes a pipeline disassembler that parses Excel data (XLS, Excel 2007 XML, CSV, TXT) into XML, and a pipeline assembler that creates Excel (XLS, Excel 2007 XML) and PDF documents from XML data in BizTalk Applications.
Robby Powell is Product Manager, Spread SOA Components, FarPoint Technologies and is pretty good with giving demos and answering questions, so we highly recommend this one. This is classified as a beginner level talk so don't think it's too complicated if you are new to BizTalk or Spread. We were joking about anything going wrong. Robby has done it before, with the early version of BizTalk - we blogged about in FarPoint Spread for BizTalk - Technical Brown Bag Webcast and BizTalk 2006 Technical Brown Bag Webcasts: Unlock Your Excel XLS Data.
Thanks to Microsoft for putting these on. We think it's a great way to see how a product can be used to solve a real-world problem. We'll post the details when they are finalized.
|
-
Of course we were skeptical at first if anyone would log in and chat with us during the single hour that we were available for an online chat with whomever logged in. That was a year ago when it started to pick up in usage. Now during the course of an hour, three or four people will log in and get answers even more quickly than on our forums, and in an informal chat way that can speed communication.
One of our most recent visitors put it this way during a chat session:
"thanks a lot for your help.... and this is my first time to the "live" chat.... very impressive and a sure way to hold on to your customers!!!!"
We felt pretty good about that one.
Scott is usually there as well as a few others from the testing group. It's definitely a chance to pick some serious brains. We're even thinking about having a contest to see who can stump Scott. Give him a question that he can't figure out a good answer for. It's a tough one because he's pretty good an providing answers, and usually more quickly than the rest of us.
Be sure to tell us which product and which version you are using; sometimes that can help avoid confusion and allow us to give you an answer quicker.
And don't feel inhibited -- ask us anything about our products, anything that helps you find solutions to your application development issues. Whether it's how to do something in particular or how to improve speed. Or if it's a sales question, we can help with that, too. If you have a suggestion for product improvement or a new product, let us know. Or just stop by and say hello. We'll be there. So, if you like to remain somewhat anonymous and you are too impatient for email or forums, you have another alternative: real-time chat.
Remember FarPoint Tech Support Chat, Tuesday mornings 10:00 to 11:00am EDT and Thursday afternoons 2:00 to 3:00pm EDT. Brought to you by FarPoint Technologies, makers of Spread.
You can find a link to the chat on the left side menu of the ClubFarPoint web page or at the top the forums page.
--Bill
|
-
In April of 2008, TakeNote was selected as an official training partner for FarPoint Technologies. Initially TakeNote is offering hands-on, instructor-led classes for Spread for Windows Forms 4.0 and Spread for Web Forms 3.0 here in the RTP, NC location.
Future plans are to offer these classes across the U.S. and on-line. If coming to one of these classes is not an option for your organization, TakeNote can come to you and offer these classes onsite.
We have secured June dates for those companies who are looking for training in FarPoint Spread products.
FPS101: Implementing FarPoint Spread Windows Forms 4.0
June 24-25, 2008
FPS201: Implementing FarPoint Spread for Web Forms 3.0
June 26-27, 2008
Work with an individualized networked desktop computer and flat panel monitor with high-speed Internet access. We make it easy for you to get started using Spread and to get the most of these products. With the two classes back-to-back, we make it easy for you to attend both if you are an enterprise customer and have both products. This is a great opportunity if you have used our COM product for years and want a refresher course on our .NET product, or if you are new to using Spread and need to come up to speed quickly on the power of spreadsheet components.
Thanks to Jim Duffy the masterful trainer at TakeNote who is spearheading the training of our .NET products. The training facility is in the Concourse Building at One Copley Parkway, Morrisville, NC, USA, at Exit 284 just three miles from RDU International Airport. It is within walking distance of ten hotels, an outlet mall, a food court, and several restaurants.
Hope to see y'all soon.
|
|
|
|