One of the roadblocks that many people have when trying to develop or play with new functionality is that they don’t have an environment where they can safely experiment. To build such an environment takes a fairly long time, requires special hardware and software licenses and could be cumbersome overall. Most developers have an environment (a sandbox) already built, but what about the rest of us who still create powerful SharePoint solutions using either just the browser or various no-code applications like SharePoint Designer and InfoPath? Well, now there is a solution and it’s called CloudShare!
Virtual Machine ‘in the Cloud’
CloudShare provides a means of having a virtual environment ‘in the cloud’. You can access this environment just like you were accessing your physical desktop. Since everything is running remotely, you don’t have to worry about any requirements accept an internet browser to connect with.
What we are providing
Pre-built virtual machine that has all the bells and whistles already running within it:
- SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
- SQL Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft Office 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, InfoPath, Project, Access and more)
- SharePoint Designer 2010
- SharePoint Workspace 2010
- Visual Studio 2010
and more…
In this virtual machine, we have built four of the demonstrations. They are as follows:
- Customizing SharePoint List Forms using SharePoint Designer and InfoPath
- Automating Business Processes using Visio and SharePoint Designer for Workflows and InfoPath for Forms
- Using XSLT List View and Data View web parts to get access to your SharePoint List data and external Database data
- Building Business Connectivity Services components using SharePoint Designer
How does this work?
You can start by going directly to the pre-built virtual machine environment page. You will be asked for some info in order to register. Then you will be provided access to my virtual machine directly through the browser. You will have complete access to all the pre-built demos which are implemented in subsites of this site collection and also links to related videos for each demo on SharePoint-Videos. There is no cost to access this environment for 14 days.
So what’s the catch?
There definitely is a catch of course. You would be giving your email address to the CloudShare folks. There is no other catch. Use this environment and get the benefit from it for what it’s worth. If you like this environment and find it as valuable as we certainly do, you can subscribe to the CloudShare service and keep access to this environment.
If you found this stuff useful, be sure to comment below.[/am4show]
