SharePoint Conference 2009: day 1

The first day of the Microsoft SharePoint conference in Vegas is over and some information is also coming this way.

First of all you can learn more by visiting the Conference's website at http://www.mssharepointconference.com. The keynote can also be viewed there.

I can already give you some quick information about what was told in the first few sessions.

As you probably already knew, FAST and SharePoint will be fully integrated to supply you with super fast search. Here's the new line-up:

* Search Server 2010 Express (quick, easy powerful search, free)
* SharePoint Server 2010 (complete intranet search)
* FAST Search Server for SharePoint (High-end search delivered through SharePoint)

New search functionalities:

* Wildcard search (finally)!
* Search as you type (dropdown list showing existing/related terms when starting to type in the search box as in Google)
* Results refinement (similar to the faceted search web part, but integrated OOB. FAST also adds counters to this)
* Previews of result content (e.g. thumbnails and a slider showing PowerPoint slides for a particular result)
* Manageable sorting options (by specifying fields for this)
Query suggestions (did you mean) and related searches
* Profile filtered pushed search results

Some new ECM stuff:

* A farm-wide (probably cross-farm) managed metadata service application to managed hierarchical multi-language corporate taxonomies. One of the usage scenario's is to filter large document libraries using the hierarchal metadata (also integrated with Office 2010 applications) and drill-down
* Multi-stage retention plans
* A new concept called 'document sets' which provides management capabilities for related sets of documents
* Document ID's (content can now be labeled with unique numbers)
* Improved support for records management e.g.:
Holding and e-discovery
Records declaration (e.g. without moving documents from their original location)
* Windows Server 2008 R2 file share content management capabilities (e.g. allowing for rules based uploading and archiving in SharePoint). This is especially interesting in a co-existence environment

Web Content Management:
Apparently not too many changes.

*You will have access to the new ribbon which will change a little bit the way the web editor works.
* Some changes in the content query web part. You can now compare page fields so show for example related content.
* Support for rich media like audio and video using a special Silverlight web part (skinnable) and an asset library optimized for managing audio/video

More in depth sessions will follow in the coming days.

And for the developers:

•Visual Studio:
◦more and better SharePoint templates for VS Projects
◦Team Foundation Server integration
◦Solution Explorer adjusted to better support SharePoint features and solutions
◦GUI editor for web parts where you can easily create your web user control
◦"one click deploy and debug"
•developer dashboard: a special section of the page which contains handy information for the developer like loading times for each component
•standard Silverlight integration
•more support for standards (accessiblity, XHTML, etc.)
•improved SharePoint designer which will be downloadable for free