SharePointPro Connections Update

Last week, at the SharePoint Conference, 7000-plus SharePoint professionals descended on Las Vegas and enjoyed one of the most exciting IT events I’ve ever experienced. The energy and excitement around SharePoint 2010 was palpable.

Microsoft has done a truly stupendous job of enhancing SharePoint in the short 3 years since v3/2007 was released. There will be a lot to share with you between now and “the first half of 2010” when the product is released. Today, I’d like to share with you what you contributed to this newsletter over five months ago!

On May 4, 2009, I published my “SharePoint Wish List.” It was a list of the top requests I receive as a consultant and trainer—a list of common requirements I was hoping would be met by SharePoint 2010. Many of you added your own items to the “wish list.” My expectation, at the time, was that I’d be able to follow up within a few weeks with the results, but the SharePoint non-disclosure agreement wasn’t lifted until October 19th.

Now, I’m pleased to share with you some of the results. While many of the items in the wish list are not “headline” features of SharePoint, they are what you, and other customers asked for! So, without further ado… the SharePoint Wish List…

Below is my original “SharePoint Wish List” items and the results:

• Creating a development environment. The development environment is a pretty pathetic story right now. Disparate toolsets and the fact that you have to develop on a SharePoint server prevents would-be developers from even getting going.
Bamboo Solutions proposed a method to run Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) on a Windows Vista client, but Microsoft needs to come out with a better (and supported) solution.

o Delivered! You can run SharePoint 2010 for development on a Vista or Windows 7 client. This still doesn’t address the trainer/demonstrator (ISV at expo hall) issue I ranted about a few weeks ago in my Virtualization article, but it addresses the needs of many developers, and Microsoft is to be applauded for this not insignificant improvement!

The integration between SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 made even some of the most vocal critics smile in Vegas at Microsoft's SharePoint Conference 2009. The bad news: Few if any of the improvements will help you develop any better in a mixed or 2007-only environment. There’s a very direct “tie-in” between the new versions of VS, SharePoint Designer, and SharePoint 2010.

• Replication (or duplication). Anyone who is not a developer (or who is, but has not yet learned how to create SharePoint solutions) knows how tough it is to get stuff from staging to production, let alone to duplicate stuff between sites, site collections, web apps, and farms. Trying to get your small business's intranet to reflect consistent branding (i.e., a consistent look and feel) isn't easy without cracking open Visual Studio.

The same problem exists with custom content types, custom form pages, yada yada. Fortunately, several third-party vendors (such as those listed below) currently provide solutions for SharePoint replication.

o Improved, but with lots of room to grow. The managed metadata service, other service applications, and content deployment features make it easier to address the challenges exposed by multiple farms; and sandbox solutions address yet other challenges. However, I think that vendors providing content replication will still find plenty of customers for whom SharePoint’s out-of-box capabilities lacking.

• Granular restore. SharePoint doesn't let you recover deleted items, lists, libraries, or sites on an individual basis. Significantly greater rollback occurs when you restore an entire site collection. Several vendors currently provide products with granular-restore functionality, which is an investment worth making.

o Improved. (Many of you also called out SharePoint v3/2007’s backup and restore capabilities.) The features in 2010 are much improved. You can now restore a site, list, or library.

But when you look at the most granular restore task (restoring an individual item or document) and the most significant restore tasks (server or farm restore), there are still gaps in the story, so third party solutions will still be needed in many organizations. Greatly improved, but with room to grow.

• Better cross-browser capability. Only Microsoft can deliver better cross-browser capability and is beginning to do so in SP2 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Microsoft also announced its intentions to provide broader browser support in future products such as Exchange 2010, so there's good reason for hope here.

o Delivered! SharePoint 2010 supports all popular browsers and provides XHTML, WCAG 2.0 AA compliance. Level 1 browsers, which support 100 percent functionality, include 32- bit versions of IE7, IE8, and Firefox on Windows. Level 2 browsers are IE7 and IE8 x64, Safari, Firefox on other platforms. Level 2 browsers will have some limitations in rendering and behavior.

• Better scalability in lists, libraries, content databases, unique ACLs, and document size. Only Microsoft can architect SharePoint for greater scalability. Given Microsoft's push to provide "software plus services" and to satisfy enterprise customers, there's again good reason for hope here.

o Delivered! We’re talking millions of items in lists, thanks to improvements on the back end and in the management of performance with throttling.

Many of your requests, and the results of those requests, are below:

Office Client Integration
• Use of color in SharePoint calendars, similar to Outlook.
o Not out of the box, not in the Web UI. However, definitely something that can be built. Not yet.

• Connections with OneNote lists.
o Not yet.

Workflows
• Ability to put external email addresses into a workflow and build this into the templates.
o Doable now with SharePoint Designer. Same in 2010. Delivered.

• Reduce the cost of SharePoint for internet sites.
o I agree completely with this. I know I would move my own company’s web site to SharePoint in a heartbeat if it were affordable.
Microsoft could get a sizeable market share for internet sites, particularly in the small and medium sized business space, by creating a SharePoint-based option that is affordable. Steve Ballmer discussed in his keynote a service called SharePoint Online for Internet Sites. I couldn’t get any details about this service, particularly not its pricing, and was told it is at least a year away. We’ll have to see what happens! To be determined.

• Support for indexing PDFs.
o This still requires an iFilter. There are several out there, including one from Adobe that is free. No change.

Lists and Libraries
• A built-in (simple) database, like the one built into eRoom.
o Welcome, Access Web Services. You will never look back! Incredible! Delivered and how!

• An easy way to copy an existing contact list (in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet or Outlook contact list) into a new SharePoint contact list.
o There are easy ways to move lists from these applications into SharePoint as long as your lists are set up correctly. Outlook, particularly, is a no-brainer: drag-and-drop.
The real problem for organizations is that the data sources—the original lists—are not rationalized in a way that make them a good candidate for any “automatic” or “easy” transfer. In other words, the data itself is usually a bigger problem than the data store. Already possible.

• A Web Part for video streaming (uploading a video clip).
o SharePoint 2010 offers great support for video streaming, even directly from the SharePoint data store (SQL). Delivered.

• A Web Part with a rotating set of photos (we found a way to do this using JavaScript, but that’s too complicated for end users). Not in SharePoint 2010 but there are third party web parts and solutions. Check Codeplex and some of the vendors. o Not in SP2010.

• Column lookups
o The new relational list capabilities of SharePoint 2010 will open up a new set of solutions, and Access Web Services will probably address yet more previously- problematic scenarios. Delivered.

• More hierarchical lists.
o With the new relational capabilities of lists, “hierarchical” lists might be achievable, depending on exactly what type of scenario you’re trying to address. Delivered.

• Integrity between lists – if a list is used in some lookup field, prevent the deletion of values which are used (like DRI in SQL). For example: A list which contains projects is referenced in a lookup field in a list which contains subprojects. Now it is possible to delete a project and the corresponding subprojects remain with incorrect (nonexistent) values.
o One word: Delivered!

• Field level security in lists and libraries
o Not delivered and unlikely ever to be delivered, because of the amount of processing that is required. However, it is quite do-able to make fields “read only” or “hidden” with the greatly improved customized web form capabilities of SharePoint 2010, so while you aren’t technically setting permissions on fields, you are managing field visibility and modifications. Delivered, as much as it will ever be.

• The possibility to define a field or combination of fields as unique. For example, email address in the contact list. Now it is possible by mistake to enter the same person many times and SharePoint doesn’t check and warn about this.
o There is now field- and list-level validation so, happily, this is Delivered!

• Better rich text editing, support of media, etc.
o The new text editor—built into the ribbon and ubiquitous—is rich indeed. I think you’ll find it meets your needs! The media insertion and management story is so much better. Delivered.

Security and Management
• Permissions could be a LOT easier to implement. We have a one-hour training session that we strongly recommend that site owners attend, and most folks need additional help even after taking that class because the rules regarding SharePoint permissions can be confusing.
o Provisioning permissions to remove the onus of security management on non-technical users is the best practice, but is not always possible when you’re talking about site owners. Hopefully the streamlined interface will help. To be determined.

• End users would like to be able to control access (permissions) to their documents when they upload them.
o This is not a best practice according to information assurance guidelines: Security should be managed by IT. However, you can do this now with workflows that change item permissions when an item is added to a library.
But because it’s not a typical best practice, I can’t imagine this will ever be an out-of-box capability of SharePoint. Possible now, with customization.

• Better page hit reports
o The analytics that are built into SharePoint 2010 are much improved. I have not had the chance to play with the reports, but I know the data is there and is much better. Hopefully you’ll find this is Delivered.

• Transform STSADM to a GUI-based tool
o Actually, STSADM has been “transformed” to PowerShell … PowerShell is the new preferred command- line management tool. STSADM will eventually go away.

• More robust workflows with no code
o You will adore SharePoint Designer 2010. Wow. Delivered.

• Easier maintenance/visibility of security.
o New UIs and reports, not to mention the already- downloadable Administration Toolkit. Delivered, but we will always be wanting more. There will still be a big place at the table for third party security management tools.

• Reorganize content: drag and drop lists, libraries, sites between site collections
o Do-able to some extent today, with SharePoint Designer. No real change in your ability to do this in Central Admin or any web UI. SharePoint Designer customization.

Backup, Restore, and Disaster Recovery
• Scheduled Backups.
o Not exposed in the web UI of Central Admin yet, but possible in 2010 (as it is with v3/2007) using Windows Task Scheduler and STSADM (or PowerShell), not to mention SQL’s own backup capabilities (which are fully schedulable). Already in SharePoint, no change (yet) in 2010.

• Ability to restore a site, list, library, item or document.
o SharePoint 2010 allows the restore of a list or library, but not an item or document. That will still be the value-add of third-party ISVs such as AvePoint and Quest. Partially met.

• Full fidelity backup (file system, registry, metabase, etc.).
o SharePoint 2010’s backup and restore story is so much better than 2007/v3, but you will still need third party tools for full fidelity backup. Improved but not completely delivered.

• Replication
o There are big improvements that address scenarios that in 2007/v3 require replication. Most importantly, the managed metadata service makes metadata and content types available across boundaries up to and including farms. The content organizer will probably address some replication scenarios. But there remains lots of room for third-party tools for replicating SharePoint content and configuration.

• Disaster recovery
o SharePoint 2010 leverages SQL Server mirroring and supports failover. The bottom line: Your SharePoint front ends can fail over to another SQL Server instance. This is a big improvement.
But there’s going to be a lot of room for further improvement because the failback scenario isn't fully fleshed out—there’s a lot of heavy lifting to get everything back to normal on the original instance, with all of the updates that were made to the “standby” instance while the original was offline.
Out of the box, SharePoint provides DR that will address minimum requirements for many organizations, but for fully fleshed-out geo-replication and DR, you’ll still be looking at third-party tools. I’ll be addressing this, specifically, in a future article.

Other
• Staging Environments: It would be nice to extend the concept of content management from individual web parts and the content therein to entire site collections or even web applications. It would be important to provide the ability to synchronize content with another instance of the environment prior to deployment or during the process of deployment.
In this way, a virtual development or testing environment could be created. Once ready, the overall administrator would have the option to deploy the whole environment or segments thereof to production in a manner akin to “publishing” content.
o A full solution to address every “staging” requirement is not there yet, but there are big steps forward, both with the new Service Applications model (which allows “sharing” services between the staging and production farm, where appropriate), and the new sandbox solutions capability.

Big improvements
• More themes and easier customization of look and feel.
o Delivered!

Bridging SharePoint's Faults

Although Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful, transforming technology in our enterprises, it presents many administrative obstacles in configuration, management, and security. Let’s look at some common headaches that IT professionals face when implementing SharePoint Products and Technologies.

The Random Port for Central Administration
When you perform a basic installation of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, the setup routine makes all configuration choices for you. Along the way, SharePoint setup selects a random port on which to publish the Central Administration website. This means that you’re forced to access Central Administration using a URL in the format http://server:port number, but you must know the port number. Remembering a random port number for one farm’s Central Administration site is painful enough. Multiply that by several farms, and you’ll quickly be checking yourself into the SharePoint funny farm.

Luckily, you can retrieve the port number by looking at the list of web applications in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) IIS Management snap-in. You can also use the Stsadm command (stsadm.exe). To use Stsadm, open a command prompt and focus it on the BIN folder by typing

cd %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft SharedWeb Server Extensions\12\bin

Then type the command

stsadm o getadminport

to get the port number.

Better yet, you can set Central Administration on each of your farms to a standard port number of your choice. There are two ways to specify the port for Central Administration. The first is to perform an advanced installation instead of a basic installation. After performing an advanced installation, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. The wizard presents the Configure SharePoint Central Administration Web Application page, where you can configure the port manually.

Alternatively, you can use Stsadm to configure the port after either a basic or advanced installation. From a command prompt focused on SharePoint’s BIN folder, type

stsadm o setadminport port
  port_number

Stsadm also takes other switches, such as -ssl, which lets you enable Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption for the administration port.

The “Non-Fully Qualified” URL for Central Administration
Sometimes, the URL of a SharePoint web application isn’t what you want it to be. SharePoint Central Administration, for example, might be tied to a non-Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), such as http://server01:9999. You can change the URL of Central Administration to a more accessible name, such as http://server01.contoso .com:9999. To do so, open a command prompt and type

cd %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server
  Extensions\12\bin

Then type

stsadm o addzoneurl http://<currentURL> urlzone default
  zonemappedurl http://<newURL>.

In our example, the command would be

stsadm -o addzoneurl http://server01:9999 -urlzone default
  -zonemappedurl http://server01.contoso.com:9999

Drilling Down to Use Stsadm
You’ve seen several examples of using Stsadm commands in this article, and in each you’ve had to drill down to its folder in the Program Files directory. You’ll quickly get tired of doing that. To make it easier to use Stsadm, use the following method to open a special Stsadm-enabled command prompt. Open Notepad and enter the following four commands, one per line:

@echo off
set path=%path%;%CommonProgramFiles%\microsoft shared  web server extensions\12\bin
cmd.exe
@echo on

Save the file as “STSADM Command Prompt.bat.” Include the quotation marks, so that the file is saved as a batch file and is not given a .txt extension. Double-click the batch file, and a command prompt will open. The command prompt includes the path to Stsadm, so you can use the command without specifying its full path.

Missing Command-Line Administration Tasks
Although Stsadm lets you perform some important functions from the command line, there are several tasks it doesn’t perform. Luckily, SharePoint MVP Gary LaPointe has contributed a phenomenal set of Stsadm extensions to the community. You can find them at stsadm.blogspot.com/2007/08/stsadm-commands_09.html. At the time of this writing, he had added 41 additional capabilities to Stsadm. Among my favorites are extensions that make it easier to copy content types, lists, and security settings between sites, but with as many extensions as Gary has created, there are sure to be a handful of useful options for you.

The Lack of a Check in Documents Permission Level
When a user checks out a document, then forgets to check it in, other users can’t edit the document. This is particularly painful when the user leaves on vacation, resigns, or is terminated. Anyone who has Design (or Full Control) permissions to a library (or to the individual document) can check in the document or discard the checkout. But it’s annoying to have to escalate such a simple matter to the site administrators. Many organizations want to allow a subset of a library’s users—perhaps the managers of the team or department—to check in documents that are locked for editing.

The Override Check Out permission allows one user to check in a document checked out by another user. The same permission allows a user to discard the checkout of a document checked out by another user. This permission is part of the Design and Full Control permission levels. You can delegate this specific permission by creating a new permission level. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Open the Site Settings page.
2. Click the Advanced Permissions link.
3. On the menu bar, click Settings and choose Permission Levels.
4. Click the Add a Permission Level button.
5. Enter a descriptive name, such as Manage Check Out.
6. In the List Permissions section, select Override Check Out. Other required permissions will automatically be selected.
7. Click OK.

After creating the permission level, follow these steps to create a role that will be associated with the permission.

1. Open People and Groups.
2. In the menu bar, click the New button drop-down arrow, then choose New Group.
3. Enter a group name, such as Document Check Out Managers.
4. If you want the group to have this permission for all lists and libraries in the site, select the permission in the Give Group Permission to this Site box. If you want to assign the group permissions to one or more specific lists or libraries, then clear all permissions.
5. Click OK.

Finally, you can give the role permission to the site or to one or more specific document libraries (or lists). To assign the group Override Check Out permission to the entire site, select the permission in step 4, above. To assign the group permission to one document library, open the permissions for the library, add the group (click the New button and choose Add Users), and select the permission level.

When you assign the role to a site or library, that site or library may be inheriting permissions from its parent—the default security model in SharePoint. You’ll have to break inheritance before you can assign a new permission at that level. To do so, click the Actions button and choose Edit Permissions.

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THIS WEEK

Commentary

Office 2010 Will Not Appear in 2009

From the Community

Performance Issues with Multiple ListViewWebParts

New and Improved

CustomGuide SharePoint Training

Events and Resources

Events and Resources

Sponsor:Certeon

Accelerating Virtualized Applications Webinar

Accelerating generic traffic and applications such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Office, and Exchange over the WAN has typically required the purchase of special purpose hardware that adds cost and management overhead. With many distributed enterprises deploying virtualization, application acceleration can now be delivered through a software-based virtual appliance, reducing operational costs and leveraging the benefits of a virtualized infrastructure.

This webinar discusses how Certeon’s aCelera software accelerates all WAN traffic and maximizes application performance within a distributed Microsoft Hyper-V infrastructure. Remote users will realize a reduction in application response time by as much as 95% and save over 60% in TCO. Learn how you can speed applications over the WAN, save on operational costs, and increase your ROI.

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Commentary

Office 2010 Will Not Appear in 2009

As readers of this newsletter know, I've been referring to Office 14 as Office 2010 just as a "wild guess," but it appears that the name might stick. Last week, during his annual “Strategic Update” briefing with Wall Street analysts, Steve Ballmer disclosed that Office 14 won’t be shipping in 2009. "The next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release," Ballmer said, "Which will not be this year." His announcement appeared to apply to both the client (Office applications) and server (SharePoint) product lines, as it should--it wouldn't make much sense to release the two separately. It also means that the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, which I'd hoped would be the "coming out" party for Office 2010, might be a bit early for that to happen. I'm sure Microsoft has plenty of business reasons why it's not releasing Office in 2009, and why it hasn't even laid out a roadmap for a beta release quite yet. But one thing's for sure: With the current economic climate, and 2009 budgets already "set in stone" for most enterprises, it makes sense to release Office in the first part of next year, when (we hope) the economy and therefore IT budgets can start to loosen up. Sounds to me like your 2009 roadmap should include continued movement on Office 2007 and preparations to deploy Windows 7. Office and SharePoint 2010 won't be your priority quite yet. A transcript of the Strategic Update, which is actually an interesting look into the business of Microsoft for those of us who don't spend our days dissecting its numbers, can be found here.

Restoring a Site Collection into a Different Managed Path

Fellow SharePoint MVP Randy Williams came across an interesting challenge recently. He was working with a client to create a "sandbox" of a production site collection. For example, taking http://intranet and creating a copy of it in a different managed path, such as http://intranet/test. It didn't work out quite as smoothly as he had hoped, and along the way Gary Lapointe's most excellent STSADM Extensions came to the rescue. This type of "sandbox copy" is a great idea in many environments where the reality of SharePoint is that there's not as clean a separation between test and production as one would hope. Randy's blog post is a good read, both for the solution he was building as well as the fix he applied and the reason that fix was necessary for a publishing-enabled site collection.

Ramp Up Part 2

Microsoft's Ramp Up effort, designed to help developers, well, "ramp up" their SharePoint dev skills, hit another milestone with the release of SharePoint for Developers Part 2. If you're a newer developer, or are looking to refresh your existing skills, check out the resources on Ramp Up.

Running a Mail Server for Development on Windows Server 2008

As more enterprises turn to the (quite fantastic) Windows Server 2008 operating system as a foundation for SharePoint, more developers are discovering that WS2008 doesn't ship with a POP3 service. So if you want to develop workflows, alerts, or other email-related functionality, and assuming you want to separate your dev efforts from your production messaging environment, you'll want to read Reza Alirezai's Blog post in which he details configuring a dev server with SmarterMail. I'd set up my virtual environment with a cheap (but not free) alternative that isn't as good as this free one. Great work, Reza!

WS2008 HyperV Allows Hibernate

When WS2008 was released, I know a lot of dev's raced to put it on their production laptops so that they could develop using Hyper-V virtual machines, only to find out that Hyper-V is incompatible with power options such as hibernation. Guru and great guy Ben Curry got me excited at a reception just tonight when he told me that the Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 allows hibernation. I might just replace my Windows 7 laptop with a Windows Server 2008 R2 installation, now!

From the Community

Performance Issues with Multiple ListViewWebParts

In the SharePoint forum, a user writes: I have 12 Lists which are interconnected.I have a master list named ProjectList, which has three columns (columns which is important ). One is ProjectID (number), second ProjectName(Text) and the third Project (a calculated column - ProjectID + ProjectName).The other 11 Lists has a column called RelatedProject (which is a lookup on ProjectList and the column is the calculated column Project).

I created a page which list the ProjectList as a one column (option box to select the project) and connected to other ListviewWebpart using RelatedProject.

The problem I had was the connected webparts allowed the RelatedProject to be sorted and if the user sorts it the data is always wrong and I didn't know why it was and so, I want to remove the RelatedProject from the View and Sharepoint doesn't allow me connect the webpart because the column is not there in the view. Help!

New and Improved

CustomGuide SharePoint Training

CustomGuide announced the release of SharePoint 2007 training, in both interactive online tutorial and print-on-demand courseware formats. CustomGuide's online SharePoint training simulates the experience of actually using SharePoint, and the print-on-demand courseware lets trainers use material for training without having to write it themselves. CustomGuide's SharePoint training includes teaching users how to manage and work with lists; how to work with libraries, blogs, wikis, and workspaces; how to use SharePoint with Microsoft Office, and how to manage sites. Learn more about CustomGuide SharePoint training at http://www.customguide.com/microsoft-sharepoint-training.htm.

Events and Resources

Top 10 Features to Look For in a Data Migration Solution
Effective and efficient data migration continues to be a necessity for all companies as shrinking budgets and exploding data growth increasingly force IT departments to do more with less. Download these 10 tips on what to look for in a data migration solution and find the best solution for your storage environment. Download this pocket guide today!

Make Sure Your SharePoint Deployment Doesn't Blow Up
View this free web seminar to learn the top ways you can manage your rapidly growing SharePoint deployment with strong governance and well managed permissions. Hear from Microsoft SharePoint MVP Shane Young on best practices and real-world guidance for drive space monitoring and analysis, trend analysis, database maintenance, solution packages, data management and rearrangement, and activity monitoring and analysis. View on-demand today!

Eliminate Exchange Recovery Infrastructure Overhead with Recovery Manager for Exchange
A highly effective recovery solution for Exchange will allow you to avoid compliance-related fines and ensure minimal impact to productivity should you need to restore data at any level. Recovery Manager for Exchange offers its users several benefits, including search and recovery for all Exchange content types; accelerated discovery; easy integration with existing backup software and media; and item-level recovery. Try Recovery Manager for Exchange free for 30 days!

Build a Highly Reliable SAN without the High Price Tag
Find out why buying pricy components with the highest reliability ratings might not improve your system. In this white paper, you’ll learn how to determine exactly how a component will fit in with the rest of the system to maximize its efficiency while ensuring that it meets your needs. Choose the appropriate component for your system. Download this white paper today!

Last Chance for Early Bird Rate for SQL Server for Non-DB Specialists eLearning Series!
Join SQL MVP Allan Hirt on March 26 and April 30, 2009, for 6 fundamental SQL Server lessons tailored to pros new to SQL Server, plus live Q&A sessions—all on your own computer! For only $79 each day, you'll learn how to plan, deploy, and administer SQL Server. The discussion includes aspects of SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, and SQL Server 2008. Seats are limited to allow for lots of live Q&A at the end. Register today--Early Bird pricing ends soon!

Keep Your SharePoint Data Growth in Check with Effective Content Lifecycle Management
Save time, space and money by archiving infrequently accessed information. In this web seminar explains why archival is a critical component of an effective SharePoint content lifecycle management strategy. Learn how to improve performance and availability of your SharePoint environment, while achieving a cost-effective balance for your information lifecycle. Register for this web seminar today!

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This week, here in the United States, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day on Monday. The holiday is a tribute to the man who represents our country’s progress towards equal rights for all--a journey that continues to be marked by “two steps forward, one step back” but is absolutely worth celebrating. The next day, Tuesday, January 20, two million people will attend, and tens of millions will observe on television, the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Regardless of one’s politics, the historic significance of this day cannot be overstated.

My earliest memory as a child is when I was just over two years old. My parents sat me down in front of our black-and-white television set and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I simply must remember what I was about to see--that it was history in the making. I then watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and I remember it to this day.

Please, parents, make sure your children--no matter how young--know that you think they should remember this day. Let us all, regardless of our politics, join in the hope that the promise of better tomorrows can be built by this astounding man and the team he has assembled. For I think we all, around the world, recognize that these times call for us to join together in ways we haven’t done for decades.

History, Beta 1
I want to call out two major developments in the Microsoft space this week, starting with the historic level of interest in Windows 7. Windows 7 Beta is, in a word, tremendous. The overhauled and responsive user interface marked by the new task bar takes a day or two to get used to, then is completely addictive. I applied the Beta to my production laptop (risky, I know) last week, and I am in fact addicted to the task bar’s previews, to the tight integration of search functionality, and to the new Explorer windows with their crisply designed navigation and the new libraries functionality. Even little things make a big difference--a New Folder button on every Explorer toolbar. It’s about time! Now if we can only get Microsoft to add an “up one level” button back in to make up for the sometimes too-small breadcrumb navigation feature that appeared in Vista. Oh, and if anyone at Microsoft is reading this--why the heck can’t we search Favorites within IE?

Windows 7 is a not-so-tacit admission that Vista just didn’t cut it from a usability perspective. I love Vista, and have been using it since early betas, but the “pro vs. con” equation was only slightly weighted on the “pro” side, and then only after significant tweaking. Windows 7 is a whole other story. It is, so far, entirely pro. There may be some problems that arise over time, but so far… wow. In fact, I’ll put out there that Windows 7 is arguably “moving past” Mac OS X (which I really like as well) for usability, and certainly for functionality. If you are interested in trying Windows 7, follow the rules: do it on a test system. And if you’re going to dive in head first (like me), back up your system fully and read all the release notes (especially this time, so you don’t screw up your entire MP3 collection!). I found a few “tricks.” First, my laptop’s mobile broadband drivers would not install under Windows 7, so I ended up restoring my backup and upgrading my Vista system. This worked well.

With a few other small workarounds, I seem to be fully up and running in Windows 7, except for my beloved Rhapsody player and for the often-persnickety QuickBooks. So I have a VMware virtual machine (which has USB support) running Windows XP with those two applications, and anything else I find incompatible later on.

Hats off also to the Windows Live team, for the tremendous new Windows Live Essentials suite. The Photo Gallery is so, so good! When I have time, I’ll post my configuration and favorite Windows 7 applications, but until then I found this blog, which boasts a list of recommended Windows 7 applications quite similar to mine. (http://www.on10.net/blogs/nic/Top-15-Essential-Apps--Codecs-post-Windows-7-Install/)

My most recently-implemented random and silly Windows 7 tips: Since I live on the Hana Highway in Maui, I just had to get the Hana Highway theme from the Windows 7 Themes site (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows7/Personalize). I added my own photos of Maui and am using Windows 7’s new desktop background shuffle (http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/archive/2009/01/13/shuffle-your-desktop-backgrounds-in-windows-7.aspx) which, because I have a multi-monitor setup and one monitor is often showing the desktop, makes for a nice “picture frame” for me.

Virtual Support for History
A lot of organizations have applications that won’t run on Windows Vista, let alone Windows 7. These applications are, sadly, often among the most critical to a business because they were custom developed at some point in history to support a business process. Last week, Microsoft released MED-V Enterprise Desktop Virtualization Beta.

This tool allows you to run legacy applications on a Windows Vista client. In a nutshell, a Virtual PC running Windows XP runs “in the background” to host the applications, but the applications appear in the Start menu just as if they were installed locally on the client. Enterprises can completely manage the VPC images, so basically you will create VPCs with one or more ‘problematic’ applications and deploy those VPCs, rather than the applications themselves. It’s a super-slick technology based on Kidaro, which Microsoft bought a while back.

Why MED-V doesn’t run on Windows 7 so I can run my QuickBooks installation is beyond me! Windows 7 Team, please meet the Virtualization Team. But I’m sure it will happen by Windows 7’s release, predicted by most to be in the May/June timeframe.

Folks, this kind of solution is the future of compatibility solutions. Don’t wait to learn more about MED-V 1.0 Beta 1 (http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/archive/2009/01/15/microsoft-enterprise-desktop-virtualization-med-v-beta-is-publicly-available.aspx).

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SharePoint Security Simplified

THIS WEEK

Commentary

Report from the MVP Global Summit: No Serious Injuries

Microsoft and Office/SharePoint 2010: Microsoft is Listening

Dan Goes On SharePoint Tour

From the Community

IT in the Cloud: A chat with Microsoft’s Brett Hill, industry expert Curt Spanburgh, and Windows IT Pro editors

New and Improved

SharePointBoost announces SharePoint Batch Check In

Events and Resources

Events and Resources

Sponsor:iDevFactory
SharePoint Security Simplified

Demands for SharePoint to serve as a company’s centralized data repository continue to increase at exceptional rates. This increase in usage drives hard the need to increase security and management of the company’s sensitive data as well as awareness of SharePoint’s physical and storage composition. iDevFactory understands these concerns and stands armed and ready to provide your company the needed support with a simplified, “no headache” tool suite. With 10 security features at your fingertips in Universal SharePoint Manager v2007® (USPM v2007®), your access and manageability woes are now under your control. Tools such as the “Site Security Auditor” will run complete, real-time security audits on a specified site to show exactly how many users have access; as well as who are the site users and their respective permissions. Other tools such as the “Add Account Sites Security” will enable you to add multiple accounts to single or multiple sites in one simple, process.

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Please visit www.idevfactory.com to download your FREE trial of USPM v2007 today, and don’t forget to download your totally FREE copy of SWAT 2007!

Need help with your 2003 environment? Ask about our Universal SharePoint Manager 2003 version!

Commentary

In This Issue:
• Report from the MVP Global Summit: No Serious Injuries
• Microsoft and Office/Sharepoint 2010: Microsoft is Listening
• Dan goes on SharePoint Tour

Report from the MVP Global Summit: No Serious Injuries

Last week, I spent several days surrounded by many of the leaders of the SharePoint community at the MVP Global Summit in Seattle and Redmond. This annual event is an opportunity for us to represent the pulse of the community to Microsoft, and for Microsoft to share with us their plans and activities surrounding upcoming product releases. Each product group is slightly different, but I'm happy to say that the SharePoint product group is particularly forthcoming--willing to share both their successes and the challenges they face--and also particularly willing to solicit and listen to feedback from the community. It was a phenomenal experience, and a humbling one--to be around that many SharePoint brainiacs.

The week started off with friendly warfare as many of the SharePoint MVPs took to blasting each other to smithereens in a paintball game. Luckily there were no fatalities, though I heard a rumor that Andrew Connell may not be having any more children. Not sure if that's true or just vicious rumor. The SharePoint MVPs were also rumored to have undergone brainwashing. Not the kind that happens when we are called to the mothership in Redmond for annual reprogramming, but the kind that happens when dozens of fun loving men and women get away from their homes and spouses in a town that has a few good bars.

More seriously and importantly, we were treated to a number of technical deep-dives into SharePoint 14, which I've been referring to as SharePoint 2010 on the off chance that there's a predictable pattern to Microsoft's branding and which, now publically by Steve Ballmer, has been slotted into "not this year"--i.e. 2010 may be just about right. This rite of passage begins an uncomfortable phase of the product release for people like me--a phase in which I can begin to tell you just how excited I am about the new release, but can't tell you anything really useful for a bit longer.

Microsoft and Office/Sharepoint 2010: Microsoft is Listening

What I can tell you is that I am, in fact, very excited by what I saw and, moreover, how impressed I am that Microsoft has thrown a lot of investment in time, people, money, and creative energies into the future of SharePoint. It's no secret that SharePoint is a huge success, and that a number of other product lines are to some extent being asked to "toe the line" with SharePoint. It's the engine right now that will give both Microsoft and the market an opportunity to revamp the relationship we have with our information, our peers, and the devices with which we interact... perhaps even moreso than Windows. Microsoft has also publically discussed online versions of Office applications, and that, combined with Microsoft Online Services hosting SharePoint, Exchange and more, might prove to be a game changer. SharePoint is a thrilling product to be watching and working with.

Microsoft has had its hands full with a number of initiatives and environmental demands over recent months, and it has been less than forthcoming about its plans for Office/SharePoint 2010. It's been holding its cards close to its vest. But nevertheless it's clear to me that Microsoft has done a lot to incorporate the feedback it receives from customers, analysts and the community. I know we're all looking forward to a first peek at the next versions of Office and SharePoint. For most of the market, SharePoint 2007 was really their first experience with SharePoint, and all of us learned to love (ahem!) the Ribbon in Office 2007. We will all benefit from the incorporation of collective "lessons learned" into the next version of these applications! Microsoft will never do everything right--it's not possible when "everything" is defined differently for so many parts of a market--but it is doing a lot right. Its progress in this regard is marked, and a big difference from 5-10 years ago! Kudos.

Dan goes on SharePoint Tour

I head to Orlando later this week for Windows Connections, where I'll be delivering a pre-conference full-day workshop, and several sessions covering SharePoint. If you're there, please be sure to say "hi!"

We also just announced two stops on my 2009 "Tour de SharePoint" (my own label :-) )... Lisbon and London and Los Angeles. I'll move on to "M" cities later. If you're wanting to pick up some great, independent scoop on SharePoint technologies, check out these opportunities!

  • Lisbon: Seminário Sharepoint Solutions (my sessions will be in English)
  • London: SharePoint Summit: Administration, Governance & Solutions
  • Los Angeles: TechEd 2009

Dan Holme

From the Community

IT in the Cloud: A chat with Microsoft’s Brett Hill, industry expert Curt Spanburgh, and Windows IT Pro editors

Read last week’s lively online chat about Microsoft Online Services and computing in the cloud—what are the benefits? What are the pitfalls? Check it out!

SharePoint news announcements require Windows authentication?

Paul asks in the Forum: When a news announcement is sent to Outlook 2003 from Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007, by opening the email you are required to put in the Windows authentication user name and password and log in to SharePoint. This is not a requirement in Outlook 2007. Is there a fix for this? To see what solution Paul found: http://community.officesharepointpro.com/forums/30625/ShowThread.aspx#30625

Calling all SharePoint Admins

Are you looking to connect with SharePoint experts and SharePoint colleagues in a great learning environment? How about taking a getaway to Orlando to attend the SharePoint Connections conference, March 22-25. Each year at this conference, SharePoint gurus gather to present a rich set of sessions for IT pros who support SharePoint. One such presenter is SharePoint MVP Robert Bogue. With a broad set of credentials and experience, Bogue will bring you up to speed on getting the most from workflows, deploying a SharePoint extranet, and steps to make sure your SharePoint implementation is successful.

"First, I'm doing a whole day on bringing data to life with workflows," says Bogue. "Most companies have developed terabytes of data, but it's static and doesn't really do much. In my pre-conference session, I'll be covering what you need to know to bring your documents to life with workflows. It's a complex topic with many facets, but we're going to make sure that you know how to take advantage of the electronic, but unstructured data that you have."

Bogue will also show you what you need to do in order to get an extranet scenario operational--or to deal with authentication in your Intranet environment where you don't use Active Directory (AD).
To read more: http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/101537/calling-all-sharepoint-admins.html

New and Improved

SharePointBoost announces SharePoint Batch Check In

SharePointBoost Batch Check In lets users check in documents all at one time instead of one by one. SharePoint Batch Check In can check in multiple documents in a SharePoint document library. Users can also upload multiple files to a document library and check in them at the same time. SharePoint Batch Check In is compatible with both MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0, has cross-browser support, and is multi-lingual. SharePoint Batch Check In is available for a 30-day evaluation and can be downloaded from http://www.sharepointboost.com/software/BatchCheckInSetup.zip.

Events and Resources

WinConnections, March 15-18, 2009, Orlando, Florida
The first 500 paid attendees receive SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition with one CAL. Windows Connections will be co-located with Microsoft Exchange Connections. Register for one event and attend sessions of the concurrent event FREE.

Hit the Ground Running with SQL Server for Non-DB Specialists!
Join SQL MVP Allan Hirt on March 26 and April 30, 2009, for 6 fundamental SQL Server lessons tailored to pros new to SQL Server, plus live Q&A sessions—all on your own computer! For only $99 each day, you'll learn how to plan, deploy, and administer SQL Server. The discussion includes aspects of SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, and SQL Server 2008. Seats are limited to allow for lots of live Q&A at the end. Register today!

Virtualizing Servers
Live Web Seminar: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 (12:00 PM EDT)--Join us for an introduction to Hewlett-Packard (HP) solutions using industry-standard Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor-based ProLiant servers with Intel Virtualization technology designed for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization technology. Discover the benefits of deploying virtual machines on HP ProLiant servers with Intel Xeon processors, one of the best managed platforms in the industry. During the webcast, we provide server scenarios to help you determine which HP servers with Intel Virtualization Technology are right for your business virtualization needs. Register for this live resource today!

Featured White Paper: Endpoint Security: Learn How to Unify Essential Components in a Single Agent
Endpoints are the new Achilles heel of network and information security. How do you respond to the challenges and make sure your organization is set up to unify endpoint security? This white paper will help you better understand the risks you face and discusses a new strategy that organizations are turning to--using a broad set of technologies for endpoint security unified into a single agent with central control. Read this white paper to avoid stolen data, disruptions of business operations, and potential penalties for noncompliance.

Secure and Simplify Windows Server Migration with a Cost-effective Solution
There’s more to server migration than just taking files and folders and putting them on another server; administrators have to reestablish and restore groups and settings on the new server too. Secure Copy transfers not only files and folders, but also file shares, file share permissions, local users, local groups, NTFS permissions, and more! Security is maintained throughout the entire transfer, so you can ensure that your data arrives at its new server uncompromised and uncorrupted. Try this awesome software free for 30 days!

Overcome 3 Major BI Optimization Barriers
Learn the most important factors to consider when optimizing your business intelligence (BI) with this Essential Guide from IT powerhouses Microsoft and Intel. You’ll find out how to move forward with BI optimization when your data is dispersed across multiple source systems, the data quality in the source systems is poor, and the relational databases are unsuccessful in running your analytical queries. Download this must-have guide today!

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Ascentn AgilePoint model-driven BPMS
Enterprise Ready Workflows for SharePoint
Commentary
If Steve Ballmer Were Santa, and I Were on His Lap

From the Community
Featured eBook: Getting Started with SharePoint
New and Improved
Hosted and Bundled: A Complete Messaging and Collaboration Solution
Events and Resources
Events and Resources
Sponsor: Ascentn AgilePoint model-driven BPMS
Enterprise Ready Workflows for SharePoint

The AgilePoint BPMS empowers users with the ability to create highly dynamic SharePoint workflows and composite applications with no code. When you need a solution to build complex workflows in SharePoint, don't get locked down with a product that uses compiled code.

AgilePoint is different because it uses XML to store solutions so later revisions won't interrupt your running processes. The rich Microsoft Visio based design environment enables drag and drop workflow creation and simple process deployment. A unique underlying SOA & IT framework makes sure that these business assets are aligned to the existing IT infrastructure.

Give your SharePoint the power to exceed expectations. For a free demonstration or more information, contact Ascentn sales.
Commentary

If Steve Ballmer Were Santa, and I Were on His Lap
If Steve Ballmer Were Santa...
OK, please get any of the imagery from that title out of your mind. It's the holidays, and it's only a metaphor. And while it's hard to believe, it's the end of the year—an amazing year for me, highlighted of course by the opportunity to work with the talented and wonderful team at NBC Olympics in Beijing. But when I think of 2008, I'm likely to remember this as the year of technical hell. I expect that I've lost nearly 1000 hours of my life this year to fighting technology: failed hardware, crappy operating systems, drivers and software, incompatibilities between those components, and researching acquisitions of the "lesser of evils" alternatives. So my mood about technology in 2008 is "Bah, humbug." There are some bright spots on the horizon, and I'll talk about those next time, in my "New Year Forecast" issue. This week, though, I'd like to imagine what it would be like if Steve Ballmer were Santa, and could deliver some of the things that I and my peers and my clients and friends and family desperately need. These requests go beyond SharePoint to the entire Microsoft technology platform and ecosystem. So if Steve were Santa, my "requests" for Christmas would include the following. There's a common theme here: communication. Microsoft says it's listening to its customers, but in my client base that's not what is happening. The largest clients have very real problems with manageability and scalability of Microsoft technologies. The smallest clients often get no love at all. And many of the complaints are shared, and are not new. I'm hearing the same questions I've heard for 15 years: "How can I tell my manager what Joe has access to? How can I know who has access to the payroll? How can I distribute this across my enterprise? How can I make it accessible to nonemployees?" Fifteen years ago it was about information on file servers. Now it's about that and SharePoint. The business needs for manageability, security, and transparency/auditability have not changed. Neither has Microsoft's inability to deliver answers to these questions. Those are just examples of "listening". On the "talking" side of communication, stop telling us things are perfect: scalable, secure, robust, manageable, blah blah blah. Sure, the technology may be, on paper, all those things, but in the real world it's not. That's job security for consultants like myself, and for third party application developers, but it's exhausting to the market, and in an economic downturn will result in reexamination of alternatives that appear to be more predictable. So for one last request:
Add PREDICTABLE to the list of "benefits" of Windows. While we hear a lot about scalable, securable, and manageable, what we don't get, particularly on the client front, is predictable. I can't predict how long my current installations of Windows 7 or Vista will last before they deteriorate into a molten pile of bits. I can't predict when my system will hang while UAC, Windows Desktop Search, Outlook, VMware and my solid state drive get into a cat fight again or (because now I've identified those problems), where the next cat fight will erupt. My first prediction is that if predictable isn't attained, the mobile phone market won't be the only one Microsoft sees as all but lost.
And on that cheery note (I told you my technology mood was "Bah, humbug!") , let me "tease" you with a truly cheery one. I'm still my optimistic and upbeat self about the future. "Software plus services" is finally beginning to materialize; Azure is as exciting an opportunity as SharePoint, Windows 7 and 2008 R2 have some promise, and Office 14 will, when Microsoft finally starts talking about it, have very exciting stories to tell. There are also some brilliant opportunities, even in a down economy, to improve operations, management, and knowledge in 2009. I'll see you next year with all the good news! Thank you for reading the Update in 2008, and for being a part of the amazing SharePoint community! And I hope that the end of the Julian calendar year, and the holiday season in many parts of the world, treats you extremely well and gives you the chance to be surrounded by peace, friends, and family.

Publish the list of who's naughty and nice. The downside of the enormous, global, diverse "ecosystem" surrounding the Microsoft technologies platform is that not everyone follows the rules. Programs are still written that break the fundamentals of least-privilege (i.e., non-admin) execution, that ignore age-old Windows features such as folder redirection, or that refuse to throttle their resource-hogging ways. Perhaps worse is that some of these applications don't play well with others: Put program A and program B on the same computer, and chaos breaks out. Certainly worst are vendors who refuse to make simple adjustments to their applications, drivers, and services so that they will play by the rules. We all know of at least one gigantic vendor that manages to obsolete their devices by delaying or avoiding updating drivers to work with the newest Microsoft OS, and by creating bloatware that can bring a powerful system to its knees. Microsoft has access to a lot of this information, because too often customers blame Windows and call Microsoft for support. The majority of complaints about Vista have less to with Microsoft than with the vendors who don't, and haven't, kept up with the times. The "Certified for Windows" logo is a disaster. The market doesn't pay attention to it. Time for a "stick" instead of a carrot: publish the knowledge of what problems are caused by those apps that are not certified for Windows, and of the problems caused by "Certified" applications that can't play in the same sandbox together.
Get the elves marching in the same direction. One of the reasons Microsoft probably won't publish the list of who's naughty and nice is that it would reveal some of its own applications are on the "naughty" list. Ever tried "pausing" Windows Desktop Search and watched it continue to chew up system resources? Ever analyzed the far-less-than-least-privilege permissions applied by some of Microsoft's Active Directory (AD) delegations and client-side features? Ever wondered why so many applications can be deployed by Group Policy Software Installation—oh, except Office? And on the consumer front: Zunes don't "Play For Sure"... hellooooooo?
Put under our tree a vastly improved Windows Mobile experience… now! When even Microsoft's most enthusiastic evangelists carry iPhones, the message couldn't be any clearer. Can you hear us now?
Let Rudolph enlighten you about Vista and Windows 7. I'm a fan of Vista, which served me very well for all of 2007 before collapsing in 2008, but I'm still a fan. But I'm finally at the point where I'm really, really concerned about the market and cultural fallout of Vista's nuclear implosion. I sat through a Microsoft event last week, the message of which was "Vista really is great, really!" We were told Vista's network stack is so overhauled that it can be up to 10 times faster than XP. But you and I both know... it's not. Maybe the network stack is 10x faster, but everything else on the behemouth, including all the other pieces that don't play well in the sandbox (Desktop Search, UAC, OneCare and god knows what else from third party vendors) mean that I still can't copy files at anywhere near the speed they should be on my gigabit LAN. And as I tried to watch the "Survivor" finale (in standard, not high definition) online, the stuttering made it unwatchable, and nothing in Microsoft's (or Sysinternal's) toolset gave me a way to identify or fix the problem. Sure, I'm guessing Mark Russinovich could have figured it out, but I didn't want to wake him up. Microsoft needs to figure out a way to help us make our systems work. The very nature of its ecosystem is that there are a lot of moving parts. If I need one of those parts to really move, I should have a way to make it happen other than power up my Mac. Stop telling me how great Vista is, and stop trying to sweep the dust under the carpet with Windows 7: Vista with lipstick. If the dynamics of "moving parts" aren't addressed, it won't be any better. My client wants to know why her disk light is flashing incessantly, preventing anything else from happening, and to be able to stop whatever nonessential thing is eating it up. That's not too much to ask, and you shouldn't need a PhD in Windows internals to answer it.
Accelerate the sleigh so you can keep up with the times. New mobile and storage options are not so new any more. An example: Microsoft's own knowledge base articles admit known performance problems on solid state drives, which are not new and are, in fact, standard issue on many laptops. Again—moving parts (or in this case, unmoving parts) not playing well together. Fix the problems or tell the market, "If you use Outlook, don't buy a computer with a solid state drive." Preferably, fix the problems!
Gift idea for my friends who are admins: make sure that administrative tools (the RSAT or "remote server administration tools") are compatible with each new release of Windows 7. It was insane that Windows Vista was on the market for 18 months before it had a supported, fully functional set of administrative tools with which to manage a Windows enterprise. Don't do that again. You only get one "pass."
Gift idea for my friends who are developers: improve the "Step #1" story. The most basic choice that a developer needs to make is how to build their development environment. SharePoint won't run on Vista. So it's either a virtual or remote connection to a Windows Server OS (each of which have their own pros and cons) or using the expensive Windows Server OS as their desktop OS. Oh, but Microsoft's own Windows applications (e.g., the Live applications) don't install on Server. Oops. Sandbox fight. Oh, and HyperV disables power management on the laptop. Darn. It's just not pretty. If you're not making it easy to develop on Windows as you try to make it easy to develop for Windows, there's something that needs to be fixed.
Gift idea for all Windows users: Make HyperV available for Vista and Windows 7, so we don't have to use VMware workstation on our desktops and Hyper-V on our servers. And make it not disable all power management. Also deliver the new PowerShell and Active Directory Management console for all OSs, including Vista. If we could run VMs easily on our desktop, it would give us the ability to solve a lot of problems, by "splitting up" those components that don't play well together. If you want Windows 7 to be something more than "Vista with Lipstick", give us some real meat. Show us you mean to help our Windows systems, not just our Windows OS, work better.

From the Community

Featured eBook: Getting Started with SharePoint
Explore SharePoint: Journey Through How-To's, Sample Studies, and Best Practices
If you're looking for a starting point for a better understanding of SharePoint, this is the eBook for you. SharePoint offers a simple, secure, and effective support for collaboration, knowledge management, and business processes.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. What a mouthful. And what a handful. First, let's take care of the mouthful: The product is often referred to as SharePoint Server, just SharePoint, or MOSS. For the handful, SharePoint addresses an exceptionally broad range of business scenarios by delivering capabilities in six categories: Portal, Enterprise Search, Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Process, and Content Management.

Journey through specific how-to "experiences" with Dan Holme, learn how to integrate SharePoint and System Center with Michael Noel, and find out about designing highly available MOSS Server Farms with Ryan Femling. Get this featured SharePoint eBook today!
Get this featured SharePoint eBook today!

Cloud Computing Roundtable at TechEd 2008
Windows technology experts Mark Minasi, Guido Grillenmeier, Rhonda Layfield, Sean Deuby, and Michael Otey discuss cloud computing, Software as a Service, Microsoft’s Software Plus Services, and the changing role of IT.

Watch the video now.

New and Improved

Hosted and Bundled: A Complete Messaging and Collaboration Solution
by B. K. Winstead, products@windowsitpro.com

Intermedia just released Business Productivity Suite (BPS), an efficient, flexible, and proven solution for your company's hosted messaging and collaboration needs. BPS is based on Intermedia's proprietary HostPilot platform, which gives admins complete control over the hosted environment and data through an intuitive web-based control panel. In addition to Exchange 2007, SharePoint, and OCS 2007, BPS includes Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Entourage 2008, and many other features. And there aremany optional services to choose from, such as BlackBerry and iPhone synchronization and Good Mobile Messaging for additional mobile device support. BPS is available on a month-to-month contract, which might make it easy try out a hosted service without getting locked into a long-term deal. Having all these capabilities bundled for easier implementation and use might be an even stronger selling point. To find out more about Intermedia and its offerings, visit the company's website. You can read a longer version of this article at the link below.

Click here to read the rest of Hosted and Bundled: A Complete Messaging and Collaboration Solution

Events and Resources
Live Event on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Are the costs of managing, administering, and securing your desktop environment out of control? A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution could save you a great deal of money while maintaining the power and personalization of traditional desktop computing. Join us for a free live web seminar that explains how VDI combines the benefits and flexibility of server virtualization with the personalization of traditional desktop computing. This web seminar will also explore today's technology options for deploying a VDI solution.

5 Things You Need to Know About Better Collaboration with Business
Collaboration among members of an IT team is natural for most of us. Within the IT team, our own procedures and language create a familiar environment to understand and be understood. However, collaboration with business clients often falls short of the effectiveness needed to create the highest-quality projects. This white paper discusses five things you can do right now to improve collaboration with business users.

Combat the Dangers to Your Private Data Posed by Unified Communications
If you aren't strictly monitoring employees' use of third-party communications applications, your company's intellectual property is in serious peril. This white paper examines many methods through which unregulated use of communications applications can compromise data and discusses solutions to prevent unauthorized access to company information. Read this white paper now to learn what you have to do to protect your company's assets.

Protecting Against the New Wave of Malware
Managing threats to the endpoint infrastructure is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations of all sizes. Viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware are becoming more virulent, their authors are becoming more adept at getting around defenses, and malware-generated profits are funding new and more dangerous threats. This white paper addresses the variety of issues facing organizations today in the context of their system management challenges

Empower Your Processes with PowerShell!
Join MVP Paul Robichaux on February 26, 2009, at 11:00 AM Eastern time as he equips you with PowerShell how-tos in 3 informative lessons--all on your own computer! For only $99, you'll learn how to
* execute commands a set number of times or until a preset condition changes
* master tools for formatting and displaying data
* import and export data in CSV and XML formats
and much more! Seats are limited to allow for lots of live Q&A at the end. Register today!
WinConnections, March 15-18, 2009, Orlando, FL
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August 7, 2008

Dan Holme
Office & SharePoint Pro
Community Manager
Editor's note: this is a special edition of the To The SharePoint newsletter, straight from Beijing, China, where our own Dan Holme is serving as the Microsoft Technologies Consultant for NBC television to help bring the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to television and the Internet.
SharePoint Sharing from Beijing
Greetings all, from Beijing! It's been a crazy couple of weeks in my life and work, wrapping up a three-week journey through China and beginning work at what is an incredibly exciting and challenging event—the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. As you might imagine, SharePoint has played a big part in our preparations for the broadcast, which begins later this week on NBC. We developed several important applications on SharePoint—applications that support our operations here in areas including transportation management, production, and even in the workflow that results in the broadcast of events over the multiple Internet channels we will be feeding. You can read the details about some of these applications in the August Windows IT Pro article "Gold Medal SharePoint Applications in Beijing".
One of the characteristics of an effort as big as the Olympics broadcast is constant change. When several thousand people converge to achieve a goal, there are always unanticipated needs that arise. As we found at the Torino Olympics, SharePoint has been instrumental in our ability to meet those needs. I'm so grateful to have a tool that I, a non-developer, can use to deliver solutions in minutes or hours. In the next few weeks’ issues, I’ll be challenging you to make forays into some of these areas so, if you have not done so already, prepare to experiment with SharePoint Designer workflows, for moving important flat databases online, and for front-ending applications with Microsoft Office Access.
But because some of my colleagues have done a great job discussing technical issues related to SharePoint over the last few weeks while I’ve been out-of-pocket, I’d like to spend a moment sharing some thoughts from my perspective in Beijing. I came to China knowing little about the country and its people. I studied China in passing in several courses during my education, but in all reality I knew pretty much only what I absorbed from the media and other such sources of information in the United States. I knew very, very little. So I came to China with few expectations—I knew only that it would be an adventure.
What a glorious experience it has been. The Chinese people are, on the whole, the most friendly, enthusiastic, and welcoming people I’ve met in my travels, and they are so very proud to be welcoming the world to their home this summer. China has, over the last 50 years but certainly over the last 20, undergone change that my country took well over a century to undergo. My new friends here who are in their 30s tell me stories about their childhood years that are radically different from the lives they live now. This change has brought incredible opportunities and challenges to the country, and China is enormously excited for the opportunity to enter the world stage in a very big way this week and next. It is thrilling for me, as a lover of humanity, to see an entire nation “busting its buttons” with genuine joy and heartfelt hospitality, and with a level of integrity and involvement that boggles my mind.
This is so different from the expectations with which I came to this country. What I thought I might find here is not the vibrant city, the blistering pace of change, and the warm outreach that I’ve found. I am not about to say that China doesn’t have major issues to tackle—it definitely does—but the biggest issues are, I think, quite different than the ones that make the headlines in the United States. And of those issues that make the headlines, they are very real to be sure, but they are but a small facet of an incredibly complex social, economic, and political powerhouse. And even with that, I think it unwise for any citizen of an imperfect nation to cast the first stone at another.
I wanted to share this with you, because I fear that in its search for sensationalism, the media of the world is missing the real stories here at the Olympics—stories of a billion people waiting with baited breath for a torch to light the way toward a brighter future; stories of youth entering a world unimaginable by their parents, let alone their grandparents; stories of athletes from nations other than ‘mine’ who overcame incredible odds just to represent their countries at the Games; stories of an entire city transforming from caterpillar to butterfly; and the story of a nation with a complex and tumultuous history of interaction with the outside world making a very real and very big step toward engaging with its peers on the global stage—an opportunity we must seize with open arms if we hope to walk together toward those aims to which we all aspire.
I know the Olympics can seem like an over-commercialized endeavor when you watch them on TV, but they are very real, and very genuine here. Search out those stories that dig deeper into the meaning of the Olympics for the athletes, the spectators, the participating nations, and the host country. And please, do yourself a favor and watch the Opening Ceremonies on August 8. They are the most spectacular ceremony that the world has ever seen—you will be left breathless with the exquisite and extraordinary representations of China’s history and its rich culture, and of the theme of these Olympics: One World. One Dream. There are so few opportunities for the world to come together in harmony… to share. This is one of them. And isn’t that the point?
Until next week, all the best!
Dan Holme
danh at intelliem dot (top level commercial domain)

Events and Resources

Doing it Right! Deploying the Perfect SharePoint Farm
If you're like most IT shops, you've either implemented or are considering SharePoint. How do you deploy the optimal solution with limited time and expense? This fall, Windows IT Pro and Office & SharePoint Pro.com present the event series Deploying SharePoint. Industry experts will share best practices regarding infrastructure, design, forms configurations, and redundancy. Register early to save $100! Early-bird pricing applies through August 29.
Visit the new Windows IT Pro video site – ITTV.net!
Now there's a new way to connect with your IT peers! With IT TV (www.ittv.net), an exciting video website by Windows IT Pro, engaging interactively with other IT pros and developers has never been easier.
SharePointConnections Conference Fall 2008
Don't miss the premier event for Microsoft IT professionals in Las Vegas, November 10-13. Register and book your room by August 25 and receive a FREE room night (based on a three-night minimum stay).
Choose the Right Hosted Email Service for Your Business
Are you considering outsourcing email, arguably your business's most mission-critical application? A hosted Exchange service can save companies tens of thousands of dollars. Download this paper for a complete evaluation checklist for hosted Exchange services.
Got SharePoint? Get Specialized Training!
Whether you're an IT pro or a developer, master SharePoint with help from the world's most respected SharePoint experts in three SharePoint workshops built just for you and presented straight from your desktop! On September 30 and October 1, Windows IT Pro and OfficeSharePointPro.com bring SharePoint MVPs Dan Holme, Michael Noel, and Andrew Connell direct to you to share their real-world perspective, experience, and expertise and help you build a better SharePoint infrastructure, develop more effective SharePoint applications, and enable more powerful collaboration. Choose the info-packed sessions that are right for you.
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October 16, 2007
SharePoint® 2007 Backup Pros & Cons, Evaluation Standards & Strategies

SharePoint Backup Strategies Discussion - With SharePoint quickly becoming the preferred platform for team collaboration, protecting it against data loss and damages is a key concern for today’s administrators. This webinar discusses MOSS 2007 backup pros and cons, and recommends new evaluation standards and practices for SharePoint backup.

Improve your SharePoint back-up strategy, view this discussion today!
By Dan Holme
Office & SharePoint Pro
Community Manager

Join us for SharePoint Pro Online Live!

I'd like to invite you, personally, to join me and three other SharePoint gurus (Melissa Fraser, Andrew Connell, and Daniel Larson) for *free*, expert SharePoint training sessions that will be conducted live, online, Wednesday October 17.

SharePoint Pro Online Live! is a phenomenal event that we produce a couple of times a year. It's the "best of all worlds," I think, as far as training opportunities. First, it's free! Second, it's independent--you won't be hearing the same old Microsoft song, but rather expert opinion based on real world experience with SharePoint. We're not afraid to look at the dark underbelly and share some workarounds and tips that will help you take your efforts to the next level. Third, it's live. You'll be able to submit questions and, after the session, the expert will tackle as many of them as possible. Fourth, you don't have to leave your office and suffer through the throngs at a conference center :-) Finally, there are sessions for all audiences: developers, IT Pros, and even my session, which is for IT Pros and end users.

The event begins at 11:00 am EASTERN TIME. You can register here. The agenda of the event is below. We hope to see you there!

11 am - 12:15 pm EDT
Configuring Content and Document Management within SharePoint Portal Server
Melissa Fraser
Office SharePoint Server 2007 adds rich information management capabilities in the form of fully customizable content delivery mechanisms and powerful document management libraries that expand the traditional definitions of document management with flexible schemas andmultiple delivery mechanisms.
Building Custom Content for Consistency & Compliancy
Advanced Document Management - Custom Entities and Security Patterns
Building a "real world" solution- using document management in a customized site to fulfill a business need
12:30 - 1:45 pm EDT
Introducing Features! A Deep Dive into the New "Feature" Infrastructure in Windows SharePoint Services v3
Andrew Connell
Microsoft is introducing a new concept to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 called Features. Features are a more portable and modular framework you can use to deploy new functionality to WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 Web sites. After an overview of the Feature framework you will see how you can utilize them to deploy your own custom solutions to new and existing WSS v3 Web sites. This session will also cover all the different things you as a SharePoint developer can do using Features.

2:00 - 3:15 pm EDT
Programming Dynamic Applications with the SharePoint AJAX Toolkit
Daniel Larson
The SharePoint AJAX Toolkit is a professional open-source framework for developing realtime collaborative applications using ASP.NET AJAX technologies. Learn how to develop frameworks, APIs and components using standard AJAX technologies. This session is designed for experienced ASP.NET programmers who want to bridge the power of ASP.NET AJAX with the Windows SharePoint Services platform. We'll look at the SharePoint AJAX Toolkit, example applications, and supported techniques for developing AJAX applications on WSS and MOSS.

3:30 - 4:45 pm EDT
Better Together: Microsoft Office Applications as SharePoint Clients
Dan Holme
You've got Microsoft Office. You've got Windows SharePoint Services. Make the most of them! Join the guru behind Office and SharePoint Pro for a session focused on how to leverage these two technologies in ways that add real value to your business. Learn what you and your information workers can do to maximize SharePoint lists, libraries, and content types. Discover what functionality differences to expect with the 2003 and 2007 versions of Office. And take away lots of practical, ready-to-implement guidance to ensure your SharePoint service is a success.

Dan Holme
danh at intelliem dot (top level commercial domain)
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December 10, 2007
By Dan Holme
Office & SharePoint Pro
Community Manager
Well as you may remember, last week I was flooded out with work. This week, I'm just flooded out. A freak storm completely flattened the infrastructure here for a few days--no power, no shops or restaurants open, no cell phone service and (gasp!) no Internet connectivity! We called our ISP (who shall remain nameless but they're big) and the customer service line recording indicated that there were outages for the entire state! Wow. In the past, I've always been in control of my offline status--I knew when I traveled to remote corners of the world that I'd be disconnected. But to have it happen in the middle of the end-of-year work crunch was a real lesson in just how dependent I've become on being connected. Luckily, the rest of the country kept cranking along, so there's lots of cool stuff happening out there in SharePoint land.

Size It!
Last week, Microsoft released the beta of the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool. The tool's name says it all. Instead of wading through the capacity-planning documentation, you can get a rough idea of your hardware needs and farm topology design. Just enter information such as the number of users, locations, bandwidth and network topology, preferred hardware, and usage profiles. To get the tool, go here, sign up for a Connect account if you don't have one already, and follow the instructions on that page. And, by all means, provide your feedback. The team responsible for this tool is a great group of folks who want this tool, and the others that are on the way, to be truly useful to you. The tool is a beta, and it's just a tool not an experienced integrator with a brain, but it's a welcome addition to the aren a of capacity planning, where HP has had a tool available for some time now.
Explore It! (Or NOT)
One of the common questions I get about SharePoint is about troubleshooting the Explorer view of document libraries. You can (theoretically) open a SharePoint document library with Explorer, either by choosing Open With Explorer from the Actions menu or choosing the Explorer View from the View menu. Unfortunately, this has proven problematic in a number of scenarios. Issues related to Internet Explorer (IE) configuration and security zones, firewall, and other settings mix together to make troubleshooting problems quite tricky. I know our community has folks who've successfully troubleshot (is that a word?) this problem. If you've found tips or workarounds that are helpful, please post them as replies to this thread.
Learn It!
I've gotten good feedback from our readers about my pointers to "free training." Luckily, there's a lot out there. I recently discovered that CorasWorks offers online workshops, some of which are product centric for those people who are interested in the company's great products, and some of which fall nicely into the general SharePoint training category.
Patch It!
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 SP1 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 SP1 is around the corner, and product team member and all-around-great-guy Joel Oleson posted an overview of what's to be expected on the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog. Start planning now--there's great news both for IT pros and for developers (can you say "AJAX"?).
Shout Out of the Week
A big "shout out" to Janis Hall of Mindsharp, who posted a clear and relevant blog entry to help you determine when and why you should create additional document libraries. The blog entry is here.
Until next week, all the best!
Dan Holme
danh at intelliem dot (top level commercial domain)

Successful SharePoint
2007 Deployment
and Administration
Truly centralize your SharePoint back-end management. Controlling the deployment of operations and applications across enterprise SharePoint environments and creating a well governed administration strategy is critical for successful management of SharePoint. Andrew Yeung will walk through the evolution of SharePoint to an IT managed asset, sample administration scenarios, how to take control of your enterprise-wide SharePoint environments, and more.
You won't want to miss this webinar - register today!

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