My slide deck from my SharePoint User Group Southampton presentation. This was an introductory overview to the CodePlex Project Community and a quick look at a few of the CodePlex Projects that I've recently reviewed.

1. Looking at CodePlex
SharePoint User Group UK – 11th March 2014
Steven Andrews

2. Who am I?
• Works as a Business Analyst for Live Nation /
Ticketmaster
• Working with the product since SharePoint 2003
• Spends a lot of time in the forums (both answering
and asking questions)
• Likes running

3. Agenda
• CodePlex Introduction and mention of famous SP Projects
• Reasons for looking at CodePlex projects
• Commercial vs. Open Source & how they apply to SharePoint
• Individual / Personal benefits to getting involved in CodePlex
• Brief discussion of four SharePoint projects

4. Introducing CodePlex
• Launched June 2006
• January 2010 it hosted 13,022 projects
• January 2010 Mercurial support was added
• March 2012 Git was added as a source control
option
• March 2013 it hosted 32, 310 projects
• Has 2409 SharePoint related projects

5. Famous CodePlex Projects
• CodePlex has some famous SharePoint projects that already have a
fair amount of coverage: -
• Jquery SPServices by Marc Anderson – 114,257 downloads
• AutoSPInstaller by Brian Lalncette –62,191 downloads
• SPManager (2007 – 2013) by Anders Dissing & Carsten Keutmann (63,035
downloads)
• These projects already have a fair amount of literature and attention,
so whilst they’ll be acknowledged as part of the community, generally
they won’t be discussed

6. Why look at CodePlex projects?
• Commercial companies / communities have their own evangelical
types
• AvePoint (Jeremy Thake)
• Metalogix (Christian Buckley)
• Etc.
• Exploring the stats in the community a little. 2409 approx. projects
• Not all have source code
• Some are pointers to blogs / paid products
• Education & Sharing of information regarding these tools
• Microsoft have uploaded many of their code samples to CodePlex

7. Commercial vs. Open Source
• Open Source vs. Commercial lines of thinking have some very
developed thought processes
• Cost: Purchase cost vs. life cycle cost (snapshot product)
• Security: Security still an issue but not as severe as
• Flexibility: Paid extensibility vs. OS Community contributions
• Support: Paid Support vs. adhoc developer support
• Soft Benefit: Community Member Contribution
• Services & Products vs. snapshot product

8. CodePlex Licensing
• CodePlex makes available a number of
licenses ranging from standard Open Source
licenses to Mozilla and Microsoft-specific
licenses. Some of the more frequently
available licenses are: -
• GPL: Obliges ANY changes made to the code to
be made public
• LGPL: Allows dynamic linking of code without
the sharing restriction
• MIT: Obliges credit to be given but little else

9. Other Benefits of CodePlex
• Individual / Professional of getting involved in CodePlex
• Peer Networking: Some interesting & gifted people work on CodePlex projects
• Collaboration: Potential to work on some of these projects
• Coder
• Tester
• Documentation
• Code Learning / Education: Increase exposure to parts of the product

10. Scope of CodePlex Projects
• 2409 SharePoint Products
• 1727 Alpha
• 1534 Beta
• 1019 Stable
• Additions include items such as
• Chart Parts
• Service Application Extensions
• Responsive Design Templates
• Search Engine Customisations
• Windows Forms Applications

11. Introducing CodePlex Corner
• Several people in the community have looked at CodePlex stuff
• Bill Simser used to mention a few projects a month
• Michael Greth & his SharePoint Daily
• My own contribution is a new project / series: CodePlex Corner
• Deep dive on each project that looks interesting / useful
• Where appropriate a brief tutorial will also be written
• Aim is to create a education / information review that can be used
• Currently posted to my blog & the TechNet Wiki for community editing

12. Project #1: Seadragon Viewer
• Built by Nikolas Charlebois – Laprade
• Creates an Web Part Wrapper around a
Deep Zoom Image
• Originally created by Microsoft Live
Labs
• Example usage can be seen on the
SharePoint 2013 Server Architecture
diagrams in TechNet
• Sample Usage: High level / large images

13. Project #2: List Field Manager
• Built by Adam Cauley for Corasworks customers
• Exposes column level properties via a Web Part
• Does not work on External Content Types
• Can provide more utility for form management for
Power Users and provide more extensibility

14. Project #3 JEFS
• Built by Tomek Stojecki
• Stands for JavaScript Editor for SharePoint
• Sandbox Editor that provides an in-browser alternative to CEWP
• Provides an easy way to manage and separate CSS, HTML, Libraries &
Java Script
• Can be surfaced on Form Pages, Views, Wiki Pages and invoked
manually

15. Project #4 Sushi
• Developed by Joseph Fluckiger & Ryan Hayes
• SharePoint Utility with a Smart Helpful Interface (Sushi)
• Designed to work around stsadm limitations
• Some utilities overtaken by PowerShell but others still very useful
• Copy View
• Archive Documents
• Apply theme to sites (bulk)

16. Upcoming Plans & Ideas
• Continue looking at projects such as
• Feature Manager
• Responsive SharePoint
• Would invite other community members to contribute
• Potentially bundle these up in a PDF download for the community

17. Thanks & questions?
• Thanks for your time
• Any questions, comments?
• Contact Details
• Email: Steven.Andrews@livenation.co.uk
• Blog: http://baron72.wordpress.com/
• Twitter: @backpackerd00d