// Posts

Today I released the next version of the AzureSearchTool (v.0.3.0.0). If you have not read about the tool at all, please see the introduction here. In the very first version the tool was quite simple and most of the search parameters were not handled. That has changed now: Index I implemented the schema overview (actually that was not that much but looks great): So now you can see what fields of what type you have - and how those fields are specified.

Today I released my first Open Source tool to support the development, testing, debugging of **Azure Search **- the AzureSearchTool. AzureSearchTool - v.0.1.5.0 The tool lets you connect to different indexes and assists you crafting search queries. As a byproduct it generates a REST URL for you to use in your application or website. With this it should be easier to develop against the Azure Search REST API - and should speed up the testing time enormously.

Germany’s latest and greatest SharePoint community event was last weekend (30.05.2015 & 31.05.2015 at Microsoft in Munich) - and it was awesome, once again! ShareCamp & Community What is so special about ShareCamp? Easy question, it is entirely community-driven. On both days, Saturday and Sunday, there is a session vote before the “conference” starts. So the attendees prepare presentations and do a short intro during the vote - if more than 3 people raise their hand there will be a session and there were lots of em.

So Ignite is over - and I am pretty impressed how fast the content is available! I followed the first conference (we even had a community hangout during the first keynote) of this style closely via twitter - and the feedback there was quite interesting! Most importantly for me as a SharePoint guy, was of course the announcements of SharePoint 2016. And well, you can be of different opinion of the rescheduled release - but lets focus on the positive side: It’s the first time that we publicly hear what is coming and what will be changed: over a year ahead!

Microsoft Ignite is next week (see countdown below), and apparently it is in Chicago so many of us can’t make it. So lets make the best out of it and watch the keynote together! That is 100% more fun than watching it alone, right? Guaranteed! 2 <div id="9030-dashboard" class="jedi-dashboard"> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-weeks_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> weeks </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -13 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-days_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> days </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -6 </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-hours_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> hours </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -2 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -1 </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-minutes_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> minutes </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -2 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -4 </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-seconds_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> seconds </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -1 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -2 </div> </div> </div> <div id="9030-bothtml" class="jedi-bothtml"> </div> Microsoft Ignite 2015 Hangout If you want to watch us talking and discussing the keynote you can watch the stream here: https://melcher.

300 attendees on a Saturday - all “SharePoint-crazy”. Its my first visit to Belgium and I must say: I am impressed of the community and the spirit here. In the following I recap SharePoint Saturday 2015 in Antwerp. SPSBE From the start at 9:00am until the official end of SPSBE (SharePoint Saturday Belgium) at around 17:30 I had good fun. I apparently had to prepare my session on this Saturday, tests my demos and optimize my slides - so I could only attend one full session (see my summary here), but there was enough time for me to talk to community members, board members and other speakers - good times, good fun.

I think its my first time that I attended a search session for business users/decision makers - interesting times here at SharePoint Saturday in Belgium. Here follows a summary for “Improve SharePoint Search Experience” in my words. Speaker was Elio Struyf (@eliostruyf) - he has some nice blog posts about search, go read them! Elio on stage Improve for everybody, don’t forget the novice users There are different types of users in every enterprise, some of them are more mature with SharePoint, some do a search query with just one keyword - well, one of Elio’s key messages was that you should optimize the experience not only for the “educated” users.

In this post I show you a simple PowerShell script to retrieve Managed Account Passwords for SharePoint 2010 / SharePoint 2013. This is actually a repost and I do not want to claim any credits for this post - see the original here by Jason Himmelstein (<= thank you!!!). Why do I repost? I never find the PowerShell when I need it, even tho I have it in my almighty OneNote!

Recently I had the request to locate all files that are bigger than 40 MB - and they were located in the entire farm across multiple Site Collections. Easy you might say? Just use search and query for size>41943040 Well, I said efficiently and thats the most efficient way - you are right! They key constraint here is that those files were excluded from search - so lets go for the PowerShell way.

Traditions are traditions - at least when you repeat at least once, right? So last year I started to review my year with SharePoint - lets do it again. Conferences & Social 2013 started great - after several attempts I convinced my company to send me to the very last SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas - and it was epic. Not only that I covered 30 SharePoint sessions, I met friends and new friends - I knew some of them via Twitter for a long time, but meeting in person is a totally different story, of course!