What better way to begin the week than with a slew of new product release announcements?  I come bearing exciting news of the launch of new major releases for three of Bamboo Solutions' most popular Web Parts:

• Alert Plus, Release 3.0
• Calendar Plus Web Part, Release 4.0, and,
• List Rollup Web Part, Release 5.0

Two items to take note of regarding all three of these new releases:

• These releases are currently supported on SharePoint 2007 only.  We will be launching corresponding SharePoint 2010 versions of these products in the October timeframe.  In the meantime, please feel free to trial and purchase previous versions of all three products on SharePoint 2010 today.
• These releases are not currently supported on SharePoint Project Management Central Release 1.8.  Bamboo Solutions will be launching SharePoint Project Management Central Release 2.0 in the October time frame, which will provide support for these three new major releases.  If you are currently using SharePoint Project Management Central, please do not install these new versions until SharePoint Project Management Central Release 2.0 has been released.

Alert Plus

Did you know that Alert Plus is coming up on its 4th birthday?  Bamboo figured it was time that the product received some heavy-duty maintenance and that, similar to a car, it was ready for its 100,000 mile tune-up.  So what did Bamboo do for Alert Plus with this new major release?  We focused on reliability.  During Alert Plus' four-year tenure, the Alert Plus engine was powered by back-end Web Services.  These Web Services did their job, but over time the engine got gunked up with complexity and limitations.  As a result, Alert Plus has had its engine replaced with sparkling new custom SharePoint Timer Jobs.  Now Alert Plus is running like a champ!

Or course, whenever you do a major overhaul under the hood, you have to at least apply a new layer of wax to the body of the car.  With this wax job, Alert Plus got an upgraded tab interface to provide faster performance between tabs:

Alert Plus' mail format control has also been enhanced, providing:

• Print tool
• Find and Replace tool, and,
• Image Manager

  

Looking for additional specs?  Hop on over to the Alert Plus product page for in-depth feature listings. 

Are you a current owner of Alert Plus Web Part?  Go to How to Perform a Successful Upgrade (Part 1 of 3): Alert Plus Web Part

Calendar Plus Web Part

Speaking of age, Calendar Plus Web Part is OVER four years old!  Hard to believe this product has been around since WSS v2 and the SPS 2003 days!  I feel as if just writing this blog post ages myself… that being said, Calendar Plus Web Part was well overdue for a Home Makeover.  Bamboo's engineers were up for the task, and in response to their efforts, all I can say is WOW!

Calendar Plus Web Part, as of yesterday:

And now, Calendar Plus Web Part as of today:

So many fantastic new features added to Calendar Plus Web Part, including, but not limited to:

• New Settings interface for easier configuration
• Cleaner interface, including additional CSS classes for greater control over the look and feel
• Ability to aggregate up to 10 SharePoint Lists and/or Libraries in a single Calendar Plus Web Part instance
• Ability to display lists from across sites AND site collections.
• Updated color-coding with Solid or Gradient color options
• Option to add icon-coding for further item identifications

And that's just the beginning of the list!  Check out the Calendar Plus Web Part product page for additional feature listings, including a comparison between Calendar Plus Web Part and SharePoint Calendar Views. 

Are you a current owner of Calendar Plus Web Part?  Go to How to Perform a Successful Upgrade (Part 2 of 3): Calendar Plus Web Part

PLEASE NOTE:  With this release of Calendar Plus Web Part, the price of the product has increased to $720 per server license.  If you are planning on upgrading an existing installation of Calendar Plus Web Part to release 4.0, view the Bamboo Upgrade Policy for pricing options.

List Rollup Web Part

You asked, and we listened.  With the original release of List Rollup Web Part back in July of 2006, Bamboo Solutions provided the most flexible SharePoint aggregation tool on the market.  With the ability to rollup lists of any list type and join columns of any type, it was the do all/be all product, but some sacrifices had to be made at the time, and we saw performance take a hit as a result.  We then added a Cache option to List Rollup, but then the data was no longer real-time. 

Well, say "hello" to List Rollup Web Part, release 5.0!

Unlike the original List Rollup Web Part (by the way it is still included with the new List Rollup, but now called List Rollup – Classic Edition), List Rollup Web Part now uses SharePoint features to aggregate data, similar to the out-of-the-box SharePoint Content Query Web Part.  As a result, the new List Rollup Web Part with Schema Designer loads aggregated data in a fraction of the time that data was returned in List Rollup – Classic Edition.

We also changed the architecture of List Rollup Web Part.  Now to aggregate data, use the List Rollup Schema Designer Web Part (as shown above).  When you have finished building the aggregated data set, you can use the provided Bamboo List Rollup Grid View Web Part to display the data in a clean simple grid view, including the ability to perform the following tasks at runtime:

• Sort
• Group
• Filter, and,
• Export results to Excel

 

With List Rollup Web Part Release 5.0, you receive three Web Parts in one!

• List Rollup – Classic Edition (original List Rollup Web Part, used to build flexible aggregated views)
• List Rollup Schema Designer (to build aggregated views using SharePoint)
• List Rollup Grid View Web Part (used to view data produced by List Rollup Schema Designer)

Seeking additional information including trial and purchase options?  Visit the List Rollup Web Part product page for all of the details.

 

Are you a current owner of List Rollup Web Part?  Go to How to Perform a Successful Upgrade (Part 3 of 3): List Rollup Web Part