Office and SharePoint Pro

Communities and Collaboration

grodcay — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:13:00 GMT

I have to admit, until a recent vendor briefing, I was unfamiliar with the term "communities of practice." But Eric Sauve, co-founder and CEO of Tomoye, was kind enough to enlighten me on the topic. Tomoye, (www.tomoye.com) whose name means revolution in the universe, was built around the concept of communities of practice, and last week released the next version of its collaboration offering, Ecco 2.0, which ties its collaboration offering to the Microsoft SharePoint platform. According to Sauve, the term communities of practice essentially means thematically driven collaboration. "They are peers that share common job title or focus, brought together across the enterprise to work together to improve their capacity in those jobs," he said. "They also extend typically into various different stakeholder groups--partners, supply chain, customers--which are brought into an internal company conversation." In the context of the Ecco product, the communities of practice concept encompasses four generic capabilities: • Questions and answers, which offer peer advice, similar to how Yahoo! Answers does. • Experts and networking in a group context, which captures people's interaction with each other and reveals the most helpful, relevant folks in a group context.• Community content, which includes content that you normally associate with rich communication, such as videos, tags, social bookmarking, wikis, and blogs, as well as the community around that content.• Leader and tech support, which offers support capabilities around metrics, security, and so forth. "So essentially, Ecco is a user-driven, social type of content and collaboration technology," says Sauve. "And we deploy the technology with a best-practice process model to help organizations make their communities the most productive and successful." And now, with the newest version, Ecco is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007-ready, allowing organizations to integrate the communities of practice technologies with SharePoint's rich document management and collaboration tools. This means you can add SharePoint documents to Ecco just as you would from your local hard drive; publish from a team site to an Ecco community for broader feedback or to take advantage of Ecco’s open security; and list SharePoint team sites directly from Ecco’s navigation. With both products on the same hardware, using Windows authentication, you can seamlessly go back and forth between the two products. Use them both to create a rich and full collaboration infrastructure.

License to Fill: Licensing SharePoint for the Extranet

danholme — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:01:00 GMT

There are a number of technical articles about how to configure Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 to serve as both a local, intranet collaboration site and an extranet portal for clients, partners, vendors, etc. There are issues relating to URL namespaces and Web applications, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and other security concerns, and using multiple authentication providers - using Windows authentication for your employees and forms-based authentication (FBA) for your extranet, for example. You also need to know that, generally, you'll want a unique site collection for each constituency (e.g., for each client) for user and group management reasons.

There are lots of ways to make WSS work, technically, for an extranet. However, there should be only one set of guidelines for how to license an extranet server. It should be easy to figure out, so that everyone who cares about being "legal" can be so easily, and so that Microsoft can make every dollar it deserves from the product. Unfortunately, it is not easy to figure out, partly because there are several moving parts to a WSS extranet and Microsoft does not clearly lay out the interaction of the parts, from a licensing perspective. To make matters worse, different Microsoft offices around the world are giving customers different guidance, and software vendors and implementers, some unscrupulous and some just as confused as the rest of us, provide further, different guidance.

This week, the lack of licensing clarity became particularly salient as my peers went around and around trying to make sense of it and as several customers complained to me about the crazy and confusing issues.

So I'm going to step into the ugly, sticky, dark, slimy place that I as a consultant try to avoid like the black plague it is: licensing. Over the next two weeks, I'm going to lay out the concerns as I see them and summarize what I have gleaned from Microsoft (from its Web site) and from peers and customers. I will tell you right now, and I emphasize: This stuff *is* insanely stupidly confusing, so my guidance is just that - guidance. You must consult with your Microsoft reps to make sure you are compliant. I hope this discussion will help you carry on an intelligent conversation with Microsoft. I'm also hoping that the high visibility of this newsletter prompts a clear response from Microsoft, which I'll obviously pass on to you if it contains clarification or corrections.

Identify the Components You Must License
These are the components of a WSS implementation that you must license or purchase:

• Windows Server (2003 or 2008): The server OS on which the WSS front-end runs or on which the storage (SQL Server) runs.
• Client access licenses (CALs) for access to Windows Server
• CALs for access to SQL Server

An important note is that the server and client licensing for Windows 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 has not changed. However, I found the Web pages describing licensing in Server 2008 were generally easier to understand.

Windows Server (2003 or 2008) Server

Details are at Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008

You must purchase or otherwise license Windows 2003 or Server 2008 as an OS. The server license allows you to install the server, but doesn't in itself allow users to access it - that's where CALs come in. Of course, sometimes this includes a certain number of CALs.

You will need the license for the server running the WSS front-end. If you are running SQL Server on a separate system, you will also need a license for that instance of Windows Server.

Virtualization
Of course, there are now licensing options for virtualization. If you are licensed for Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition or Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, you can run one instance of Windows Server on the physical system and up to four instances in virtual machines (VMs) on that physical system. With Server 2008 Standard Edition, you can run one instance on the physical system and one in a VM on that system. Both Windows 2003 and 2008 Datacenter provide unlimited server instances in VMs.

So, if you have a single license for Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition (or better) or Server 2008 Standard Edition (or better), you could run SQL on the physical system and WSS in a VM, or vice versa. Of course you'd also need to have appropriate licenses for virtualization software, but that's another story and there are plenty of free options (e.g., Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware Server, Server 2008 Hyper-V.

You can also use your downgrade rights to run a version of Windows Server prior to your licensed version. For example, if you have a Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise Edition server license, you could run the WSS front end on the physical system, leveraging the strengths of IIS 7.0 on Server 2008, and you could run SQL Server 2005 in a VM running Windows 2003 R2, because SQL Server 2005 doesn't gain a tremendous advantage from Server 2008, and since it's easier to install on Windows 2003, requiring fewer patches.

Bottom line
You'll need one or two Windows Server licenses. With virtualization and a Windows 2003 Enterprise or Server 2008 Standard license, you can save yourself one server license. Whether that makes sense from a performance perspective is left to your analysis.

Client Licensing for Authenticated Access to Windows Server

Just having the server OS isn't enough: The server must be licensed for access by clients. This is the first place it gets tricky. You can find details about Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 client licensing here.
Windows Server 2008 CALs are covered here.

The crux of the client licensing issue is authentication. If users are authenticated in any way, you need a CAL. That means any exchange of credentials, through logon, IIS authentication—anything—requires a CAL. The only thing that doesn’t require a CAL is anonymous access, such as a wide-open public Internet site.

CALs
That said, you have two basic ways to purchase access: CALs or an External Connector license. CALs are sold per-device/per-user or per server, and are fairly well understood. In an extranet scenario, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to manage device connections, so let’s assume you go with per-user licensing. You need a user CAL for each server a user accesses. For example, every user requires a CAL to access the WSS server. Similarly, each user requires a CAL to access the SQL server.

This is a very important point. You need Windows Server CALs for SQL Server access, even though technically the user isn't touching the SQL Server, but rather WSS is a middleman, grabbing data from SQL on the user’s behalf. That doesn’t matter; you need the CALs. So if your SQL Server is on a separate physical or virtual instance of Windows Server, and you’re using per-user CALs, you’ll need two CALs per user! This is an economic (if not technical) reason why some organizations choose to run SQL Server on the same Windows Server system as WSS.

I’ve just described per-user licensing. But you can also choose per-server licensing, in which case you must have CALs for the maximum number of users or devices that might simultaneously access or use the software. Again, you need to do this on both the WSS front-end server and the SQL Server. It doesn't matter that the SQL Server is not authenticating the users—it's providing services (indirectly) to authenticated users.

External Connector
If your users are internal users with Active Directory (AD) accounts, there must be CALs (either per-user/per-device or per-server). There is no option. If they are external users—for example partners, customers, or vendors—who will authenticate in any way, then you can either provide CALs for those individuals as part of your per-user or per-server CALs, or you can use the External Connector license. The External Connector license allows an unlimited number of authenticated users, as long as those users are external. Again, you would do this for both the WSS front-end server and for the SQL Server if they're running on separate instances of Windows Server.

Virtualization
If you’re running Windows Server inside a VM, the CALs or External Connector license must be purchased only for the physical system. For example, if you have run Windows Server (2003 or 2008) Enterprise Edition for the physical system, you can run four instances of Windows Server in VMs, and the CALs or External Connector for the physical system are valid for the four VMs.

Web Edition
Finally, you can use the Web editions of Windows Server—Windows 2003 Web Edition or Windows Web Server 2008—which don't require CALs or an External Connector license. You can't run the storage (SQL) for WSS on that system, so you will still need CALs or an External Connector license for the box running SQL Server. If, however, your design prescribes a Web front end and a SQL back end, using the Web edition for the front end might save you some license cost.

Bottom line
Do the math: You must have per-user (or per server) CALs for all internal users. You can choose per-user CALs, per-server CALs, or an External Connector license for external users, whichever is most economical. That’s the “Windows Server client license.” If SQL Server and WSS are on the same physical box (or running in licensed virtual instances on one physical box), you only need one “set” of that Windows Server client license package. If SQL Server and WSS are on separate physical boxes, then you’ll need two sets of your chosen client license solution. Microsoft makes this so easy, doesn't it?

SQL Server Licensing

Ya gotta have storage for WSS, and your choice of SQL Server edition and the placement of the SQL Server service affect licensing. Details are here.

If you install WSS with the Basic option, the setup routine configures the Windows Internal Database, which is SQL Server Embedded Edition (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server --MOSS--installs SQL Server Express). The Windows Internal Database is free to use, has no database size limit, but cannot be accessed remotely, making it an ideal solution for a single-server WSS implementation. Basic installation prevents that server from being added to a farm (which would require reinstallation of WSS). By using the Windows Internal Database, you do not incur costs for WSS storage. Note you're not allowed to run the storage for WSS on the Web editions (Windows Server 2003 Web Edition or Windows Web Server 2008).

If you use SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, you can avoid licensing fees, access the server remotely (i.e. configure a SQL Server back-end and a WSS front-end) but you have a 4GB database size limitation which effectively prevents you from using it for site collections with large document libraries.

Therefore, most split-server implementations will use SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition, for which you must have licenses. There are three options: Server plus device, Server plus user, or per processor. The Server plus device option is probably not realistic for extranet scenarios because you can't easily control the number of devices accessing WSS. Per-user licensing might make sense for very small implementations. Per-processor licensing is most common, as it allows unlimited connections to the WSS database and to any other application databases on the server. Each physical or virtual processor to which SQL processes have access must be licensed.

Don’t forget, if SQL Server (any edition) is running on a physical box other than the WSS server, you must have the Windows Server OS license and either Windows Server CALs or an External Connector license.

If you are running SQL Server in an appropriately licensed virtual instance, the Windows Server CALs or External Connector license is applied only to the physical system. Those licenses also apply to each licensed virtual instance of Windows Server.

Bottom line
Small, simple implementations will use Basic Installation and, by using the WID, avoid SQL license costs. Larger implementations and farms will typically use SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise Edition and will generally find that per-processor licensing is most economical.

Clear as Mud?

This two-part article took five single-spaced pages in Microsoft Word to summarize licensing. You can see why even Microsoft’s own employees can’t understand the licensing requirements. They are convoluted and there’s nowhere that puts the different pieces of the puzzle together to make it easy.

Although I’ve done my best to interpret all of Microsoft’s online licensing guides and have confirmed my interpretations with some very smart people, be sure to take this knowledge and confirm your licensing with your Microsoft representative. You might just know more than they do, now, so use this information to carry on an intelligent discussion.

I will revise this blog entry if I receive corrections or "nuances" from Microsoft.

Thanks to all the MVPs who contributed their experience and expertise to this round-up, particularly to Spencer Harbar (check out his blog) for helping untangle this web!

My TechEd 2008 Sessions

danholme — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:00:40 GMT

I've been lucky enough to be selected to present four sessions and participate in a panel at TechEd this year. My sessions are listed below.

PLEASE COME, particularly to the (very cool and new and different) sessions I'm delivering on Thursday and Friday. Two of my highest-rated sessions are the last two sessions of the entire event, so I'm imagining only crickets and janitors in the room... PLEASE COME!!!

Tuesday June 10

OFC370 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Business, and End-User Productivity: 2007 Microsoft Office System Applications as SharePoint Clients
Room N230

Capsule: Amazing things you can enable your end users to do with Office clients front-ending SharePoint (WSS or MOSS). Document libraries (Word/Excel), slide libraries, Outlook (wow!), Excel & Access. Great way to discover how to "sell" SharePoint and drive end user adoption, as well as how to leverage SharePoint for increased productivity & collaboration.

Thursday June 12

OFC55-TLC Ask the Experts: SharePoint Panel - Meet the SharePoint Consultants and Architects
Green Theater 1

SVR450 Reimagining File Share Security and Manageability
Room N230

Capsule: Deep dive into new features of WS2008 File Server role and (more importantly) learn to automate & provision & manage least-privilege security for resource access. Get very cool tools to help you fully provision secure file shares. Learn how you can answer "who has access to <insert name of resource>?" and "what does <insert name of user> have access to?"

Friday June 13

SVR453 Role-Based Management: Extreme Makeover
Room N310 E

Capsule: Innovative and important session that presents the fundamentals, internals, processes, and technologies involved with implementing role-based management using Windows technologies. Very highly rated, unique session.

CLI459 Reimagining IT Administration and Automation
Room N320 A

Capsule: Highest-rated session at Windows Connections this year. Incredible tools, scripts, shortcuts, and tips for admins and for solving common challenges with Microsoft technologies. The perfect way to finish off your week at TechEd.

Bridging the Paper and Digital Divide

grodcay — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:47:00 GMT

Companies are turning in droves to Microsoft's SharePoint platform, quickly recognizing the benefits of a system that enables better collaboration and document workflows, and therefore improving information worker productivity and efficiency. However, many processes and workflows require information that's available only in paper documents. I recently spoke with Bill Brikiatis, Director of Corporate Marketing for eCopy www.ecopy.com, one of a handful of companies providing solutions to integrate paper-based documents into an organization's digital workflows. Its eCopy ShareScan product, used with various connectors on a networked multifunction peripheral (MFP), lets you scan and send documents to desktops, networks, fax machines, email, or enterprise back-end application. One such connector, the eCopy Connector for Microsoft SharePoint, lets users quickly bring paper directly into the electronic world of collaborative software. "What sets us apart from most of our competitors, is that we target the average office worker," said Brikiatis. "Document imaging software has traditionally been used by what I would call a power user, whose sole job is to digitize documents. Instead, the people who use eCopy would be the person in the accounting department or ad department." This helps eliminate the bottleneck of centralized scanning and gets the information quickly into the hands of authorized information workers. Basically, an office worker walks up to an eCopy-enabled MFP, places the document on the glass scanning surface, and presses a button on the display panel. The user then navigates to the SharePoint repository in which he or she wants to store the document, and the document will be scanned and digitally stored in the SharePoint location of choice. Because eCopy authenticates against Active Directory (AD), the user will have SharePoint rights and permissions based on his or her AD account. SharePoint Connector also lets you encrypt documents, as well as create searchable text so that when the document is stored in SharePoint, the text is indexed into its search engine. Without that capability, some documents (e.g., PDFs) are simply image files and thus not searchable. And because eCopy ShareScan and eCopy Connector for SharePoint work seamlessly with existing Microsoft technologies, use a familiar UI, and present information in a familiar format, little training is required, leading to easier and faster adoption of the technologies.

SharePoint In Action Event Slides & Videos

danholme — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:44:00 GMT

Today I delivered a session entitled, Unleash the Productivity: Microsoft Office Applications as SharePoint Clients, as part of the live online event, SharePoint In Action.

Thanks to all of you who attended!!

Slides can be downloaded here.

You can view the event archive at

http://events.unisfair.com/index.jsp?eid=268&id=186

I'm awaiting the full Q&A report from Unisfair. As soon as I get that, I'll post the Q&A that makes sense to be "public" to this blog, so come back soon!

All the best,

Dan

Microsoft takes the ! out of the Yahoo offer

danholme — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT

On Saturday, Steve Ballmer sent a pointed letter to Yahoo CEO and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang that clearly indicated Ballmer’s frustration with the process. The full text of the letter can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-03letter.mspx. According to Ballmer’s letter, Yahoo had not only turned down Microsoft’s initial offer (a 62 percent premium on Yahoo’s stock price on January 31, the date of the offer) but had also turned down an offer last week of $33 per share (a 70 percent premium over the January 31 stock price) and had “insisted” (Ballmer’s words) on another $4 per share.

My personal opinion is that, just 3 months after its initial offer for Yahoo!, Microsoft is doing the right thing by walking away. Not just because of what Yahoo did or did not do to make the deal work, but because I think Microsoft might just be able to do it alone.

See the May 5th issue of the TO THE SHAREPOINT newsletter for more details.

SharePoint: Beyond the First Mile

grodcay — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:22:00 GMT

Success in the business world increasingly depends on distributed teams of people working together. People need to collaborate, communicate, and interact with partners, vendors, customers, and internal team members, and organizations are embracing collaboration technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint to do so. I recently spoke with CorasWorks (www.corasworks.net) founder and chief workplace architect William Rogers to get his thoughts on trends in the industry and what the future holds. Rogers happened to be attending Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2008 when I got hold of him and I thought it was interesting that he said most of the attendees were new to SharePoint. "SharePoint is exploding, and a lot of people are just starting out or at what we call the first level or the first mile," he said. "What Microsoft has done brilliantly is made that first mile incredibly easy. People get Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), which is basically free, and start to use it. Average business people with no technical skills can create sites and start sharing information, and it starts to spread virally. So you get this massively growing group of people that have gone the first mile in SharePoint." But as the companies that have succeeded in the first mile of SharePoint implementation begin to realize its potential, they want to do more with it. These companies can hire people with SharePoint expertise--developers, programmers, administrators--or, according to Rogers, they can use CorasWorks. "With CorasWorks Workplace Suite for MOSS 2007 modular software, the people that use SharePoint can change it to meet their needs themselves. Our product takes them to level 2, 3, and 4 and lets them develop office management solutions, sales force automation solutions, and Help desk solutions, and tie all these solutions together without requiring any custom development." According to Rogers, from an end user perspective, there's really only four things that are in every business application:

Navigation
Information display
Data connections
Tasks that users can do (e.g., add or change information)

"So what CorasWorks has done," he said, "is make all these components easy to drag and drop, configure, and snap together. We're like the Legos of software. Our whole mantra for the future of software is that the people who use the software, should be able to design, build, and modify it to meet their needs." When I asked Rogers about Microsoft's recent announcement about its SharePoint Online hosted service, he responded that he thinks it'll very good for a very mass audience, who want to go that first mile in SharePoint. He added, "The challenge Microsoft must overcome with the service is how to allow customers of third-party software vendors, such as ourselves, or custom developers to install modular components on their servers." He believes Microsoft will be very successful and will eventually commoditize the price point so that there's little financial incentive for companies to offer a bland native SharePoint server. "CorasWorks has started talking with SharePoint services vendors about adding our software to their systems because they have to move up the stack in adding more business value. I expect in a few months there will be a number of vendors in the hosted-SharePoint space announcing that they are launching a service that leverages SharePoint and CorasWorks, enabling customers to move up that value stack."

Optimizing the WAN for SharePoint

grodcay — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:50:00 GMT

The days of the centralized corporate workforce are waning. In a recent briefing, Gareth Taube, Vice President of Marketing for Certeon (www.certeon.com), said that there's evidence that more than 60 percent of employees of major corporations are located outside of corporate headquarters. As businesses become more and more decentralized, they must learn to meet the challenges of supporting globally distributed workforces. Unfortunately, most companies have taken applications that were originally designed to run on a LAN and made them accessible to remote workers. "When you do that, the WAN gets in the way," said Taube. "Networks are usually bandwith-constrained, they have lots of latency, and they have lots of packet loss. Large documents can take minutes instead of seconds to move across the WAN, and that's painful. So people tend to replicate files and store them locally, which defeats the purpose of having a Web tool environment and tools such as SharePoint for collaboration."

About 2 years ago, a group of products called WAN optimization controllers sprung up to try to negate some of the impacts of the network. These products use various techniques, such as optimizing the TCP_IP protocol, packet compression, packet differencing, and Quality of Service, which identifies certain streams of traffic, and decides which stream is more important. Certeon has taken a different approach to WAN optimization with its S-Series application acceleration appliances that are preloaded with Certeon’s Application Acceleration Blueprints for Microsoft Office System and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. These blueprints understand the semantics that Microsoft uses for SharePoint and knows what SharePoint objects look like. Therefore the appliances loaded with the blueprint can difference on the entire file as opposed to the pieces of the file that are made of packets, thus turbocharging the response time of the blueprinted application

"Companies have spent time and resources to deploy SharePoint in branch offices all over the world only to find they can't use them because of the network," said Taube. "With the Certeon solution, people are actually using SharePoint as their supposed to."

So what's next for Certeon? According to Taube, Certeon will be following the trends in the marketplace. "Virtualization is a very hot technology," he said. "Later this spring, we'll announce that Certeon will follow the industry trend led by Microsoft and others and allow for application acceleration in a virtualized environment."

Online, Offline, or Remote—SharePoint Comes Along

grodcay — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:02:00 GMT

Companies today rely more than ever on the ability to share information with employees, partners, and customers, and solutions have evolved from simple fileshares and document storage systems, to more elaborate content management and collaboration applications. Microsoft's SharePoint platform has fast-become the leading contender in this space, providing a set of productivity and collaboration tools that let information workers access information and share it with colleagues. In fact, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in his keynote address at Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference 2008, stated that SharePoint is one of the fastest-growing products in the company's history. A robust collaboration platform is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity, and workers have become used to having ready access to all the information required to perform their jobs. This "I want it all, and I want it now," expectation gets a bit more difficult in environments with a mobile workforce and globally dispersed offices. When a worker in London, for example, wants information stored in a central SharePoint site in the main office in Houston, the low bandwith and high latency over the WAN provides an unsatisfactory user experience.

According to Jeffrey Wolff, Vice President of US Operations and Technical Director for Infonics, (www.infonics.com), if the user-experience is horrible, then users will blame SharePoint (even though the WAN is the bottleneck) and instead of using SharePoint, will go back to emailing documents around. "To ensure the success of a SharePoint site and the happiness and productivity of your users," he stated, "you need to have a strategy for global replication." Infonics saw this need and developed a solution so that rather than have users come to a central location, companies could replicate SharePoint content and server farms to branch locations. With Infonics Geo-Replicator, the user experience is the same whether you're working in a branch office or the home office. The underlying technology for this server-to-server solution is Epsilon, a byte-level differencing technology that significantly reduces replication traffic by recognizing byte patterns and sending only the unique patterns.

Another benefit of a replication solution is that it allows for continuity of business operations, Wolff said. "If the WAN connection goes down between your satellite and main office, you have a fully functioning, up-to-date SharePoint site at each location. Users can continue to access either site, and when the WAN is restored, the sites will automatically synchronize themselves when the WAN comes back up."

Geo-Replicator's Server to Laptop solution further enhances the user experience by providing the ability to take SharePoint offline. By creating a replica of portal content on their laptop, Geo-Replicator provides offline users with uninterrupted access to critical information.

Outlook mail connection error

danholme — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:33:00 GMT

I just ran across a very strange behavior that I figured I'd better blog about, in case it might help someone else. I'm not yet sure what the problem is, but I found the solution.

I was configuring a machine for demonstration purposes that had Outlook 2007 running on a Windows Server 2008 domain controller/DNS server (again this was just for demo purposes) that has an SMTP server running on it. Outlook would not connect to POP3, SMTP or IMAP when I used the DNS name of the server. I had to use the IP address. This is despite the fact that DNS is configured perfectly and there are no other IP or DNS related problems on the machine. Again, I'm not sure why this is happening, but the fix was just to configure the mail account in Outlook with an IP address.

Developer tip: Windows Server 2008 as your personal operating system

danholme — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:18:00 GMT

If you're developing for SharePoint, unfortunately you are stuck developing on a Windows Server box running SharePoint, or on a desktop running Windows Server in a virtual machine.

After the recent release of Windows Server 2008 (which I love by the way), a number of posts on the internet have addressed how to run Windows Server 2008 on your personal machine (e.g. your laptop). That makes sense for a lot of reasons, including the ability to run SharePoint locally and to use Hyper-V to run VMs (assuming your hardware supports it).

So if you're running Windows Server 2008 as your main OS, you should definitely search Google--there are a lot of guides to making it work, and everyone agrees you can do pretty well with it--and the rest can go in VMs, right?

There are two things I've run into that are harder to find answers to online (not impossible, just harder) so I thought I'd bring them to light here.

First, of all things, the Windows Live applications don't install on WS2008. Go figure! The "Windows" in "Windows Live" I guess doesn't mean all versions of Windows... though it should. Even more interesting: The apps run, they just don't install. So I found that if I took my Windows Live Writer folder (out of Program Files) from my Vista laptop and just copied the folder on to my WS2008 box, it just worked! Slick!

The second problem is one I've not yet found an answer for, so I'll throw it out to the community. As soon as you enable Hyper-V, you can no longer put your laptop to sleep. That's a big deal, particularly for me. There's got to be some kind of hack. Let me know if you find one!

SharePoint: What do YOU think?

danholme — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:04:00 GMT

It's conference season, and I'm lucky enough to be representing our community in several events, including the upcoming SharePoint Pro Live events in several cities in March and April.

At these events, I'm speaking on the "State of SharePoint." I certainly have my opinions, but what I really value are yours. What do you think about SharePoint's role in your enterprise? What are your experiences? Your trials and tribulations? Your hopes?

I'm curious:

What do you wish someone had told you about SharePoint "earlier" (so it wasn't so painful to learn yourself)?
What have you leaned that you want to share with others?
What are the biggest gaps in the product?
Where is SharePoint delivering the biggest value for you?
What were the easiest, and the hardest things for you in your learning curve?

I'm definitely interested in the technical, but I am even more interested in the "meta"--the business, the strategy, the governance, the process...

I don't want to start a religious war or a whine-fest, nor do I want to produce a bunch of sugar-coated schlock. I'm interested in real, constructive thoughts from you. I'll assemble my experiences and opinions, and yours, and present them to you at these upcoming events and through this newsletter.

Please come to my new SharePoint blog and tell me what you think! 16 months into the SharePoint (V3/MOSS) lifecycle, and on the dawn of Office 14, I think it's time we pooled our thoughts!

Open a SharePoint Document Library in Explorer View

danholme — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:02:00 GMT

As I was installing and testing WSS 3.0 SP1 on Windows Server 2008, I was having troubles getting document libraries to open in Explorer view. I was actually using IE on WS2008, an it just wasn't working. The DESKTOP EXPERIENCE features had been installed (a requirement), of course.

Turns out the System Event Notification service interferes somehow with that functionality. By issuing the command:

net stop sens

I was able to solve the problem and view the library in Explorer view. Of course, I'm sure I open an entirely new can of worms and I've not yet had time to research and document the side effects.

So if you're having problems viewing a site in Explorer view, you now know the fix and some keywords for searching for more information. Let me know what you find out by adding comments here.

Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express

danholme — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Microsoft announced the availability of Search Server 2008 Express. This tool, unveiled last year, is a free (did I say free?) downloadable enterprise search product that enables you to easily provide powerful search capabilities across a wide range of information, including SharePoint sites and file shares. A number of vendors are or will be providing federated search connectors. The tool delivers enterprise-class features, including relevancy tuning, security-trimmed search results, and great out-of-the-box administration and reporting. You can learn more about Search Server 2008 at http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch.

Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

danholme — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT

SharePoint does deliver, in my opinion, a fantastic platform for web application development. Sure, it’s “version 1.0” but wow what a 1.0 it is! It’s awesome on the ‘back end,’ but we’ve lacked a way to create rich, interactive user experiences. That now changes, with the release of the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint. The blueprint includes sample applications combining SharePoint and Silverlight, detailed guidance and best practices from Microsoft (claims Microsoft—I’ll await feedback from developers to confirm or modify that claim), and new business data visualizations and interactivity. You can download the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8343228

SharePoint and IT

danholme — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT

So if you didn’t already know that SharePoint was “big,” Microsoft announced that it is now a $1 billion (with a “b”) business! Wow. After 18 months of v3/2007, I’d say that rocks! Microsoft also claims that there are already 100 million licenses sold, though I’m quite skeptical about how that number was determined, given that the same announcement mentions 17,000 businesses using SharePoint. My guess is that the 17,000 number (which is impressive in its own right since, according to Microsoft, it is actual “in use” deployments) is the one to watch, and that the 100 million number is some voodoo related to Software Assurance or Vista or some kind of “included” license. 100 million licenses—that suggests 1 out of every 50-60 people on the planet have a license to SharePoint. Hmmm…

Not to detract from how big SharePoint really is, however, and how much people are spending on the platform. Case in point: Microsoft’s SharePoint conference for IT Pros this week drew in the neighborhood of 4,000 attendees. The last two TechEd events drew roughly 10,000 to 15,000 attendees and that included developers and IT Pros across all Microsoft technologies. It’s clear where the focus is right now! It’s going to be a great year!

Microsoft Online Services Offers SharePoint, Exchange, Communications and Live Meeting to Businesses of All Sizes

danholme — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT

This morning, in front of the 4,000 or so attendees at the sold-out Microsoft SharePoint Conference (SPC), Bill Gates raised the curtain on a set of services and products that I think will have a wide-reaching impact on the industry and on the way we administer our enterprises moving forward. Microsoft hosted SharePoint and Exchange services for businesses of all sizes. He also announced the availability of the SharePoint Server Express, a free enterprise search tool, and of Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint, which opens lots of possibilities for rich user experiences to be built on top of SharePoint.

SharePoint Online and Exchange Online lower the cost and risk of entry into these two powerful platforms through a per-user subscription service. These services expand the offerings of Microsoft Online Services (MOS), an effort that launched in mid-2007 to deliver hosted Exchange services to enterprises with 5,000 or more seats. Now, any business will have access to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) and Exchange 2007. The services are scheduled to be fully released in the second half of 2008, but a trial, beta program was launched today for US-based companies, who can register at http://www.mosbeta.com.

Companies will receive named-user licenses for Exchange 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The initial release of the SharePoint Online service will support collaboration and content management. Business intelligence, enterprise search, Excel and InfoPath services are not part of this version of SharePoint Online. Limited customization is supported, including SharePoint Designer, but the hosted service will not allow web parts with code to be included.

Microsoft will offer Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting as part of the suite of services, or as individual services, as well. A standard license for Microsoft Office LiveMeeting allows 15-user meetings. In my own experience with various online conferencing software, I’m definitely a fan of LiveMeeting.

The new services are managed through a single, secure, Web-based interface through which you can monitor the performance of the services, add and configure users, submit and track support requests, and manage users and licenses

Pricing has not yet been determined, but in my discussions with the Microsoft product team, I am convinced that MOS is dedicated to making the service competitive with or cheaper than existing hosted Exchange and SharePoint offerings. In fact, I’m convinced enough that I’ll be signing my company up for the beta in full anticipation of subscribing to the service when it is finalized.

I was very excited when I first heard about the new offerings, and I must say I only liked it better the more I learned about them. But I also had a lot of questions. I hope my questions, and the answers I was able to obtain, help you better understand what these services mean.

How do these services compare with OfficeLive?

OfficeLive Workspaces and OfficeLive Small Business are services offered by the Live division within Microsoft. They’re fantastic services, delivering SharePoint-based collaboration (in the case of Workspaces) and web site, email and business applications (in the case of Small Business). Any consumer or business can take advantage of these services, which are free of charge for a baseline service with several for-fee addons. The revenue model is advertisement-driven.

SharePoint Online and Exchange Online are managed services, through which you outsource (so to speak) the management of these complex and costly IT services. The revenue model is obviously subscription-based, and there are guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs). These services are definitely business-focused, and are less likely to be attractive to individual consumers.

How do these services compare with Google Sites?

Last week, Google announced Google Sites (www.google.com/sites), a set of hosted applications and collaboration tools. I’m looking forward to examining this offering more closely, but it appears to be a much more direct competitor to the OfficeLive services than to the Microsoft Online Services offerings.

How will this announcement impact Microsoft’s partners?

A number of Microsoft’s partners—many of them Gold partners—already offer hosted Exchange mailboxes and Windows SharePoint Services. Fewer offer MOSS. Many of these partners will be migrating to MOS, where the partners provide the front-end and value added services on top of MOS services, including customization, migration, consulting and managed services. In fact, Atos Origin S.A., BT, Ceryx Inc., Evolve, Getronics NV, HCL, HP and Unisys Corp. have already announced they will support Microsoft Online Services and provide offerings based on the new services. I currently outsource my business’ Exchange service to Intermedia. Rurik Bradbury, VP of Marketing for Intermedia, said, “Our clients see the Microsoft brand name as industry leading, and its entry into this market gives us tremendous opportunity to grow our business.” In fact, this was a theme I heard from Microsoft as well: Microsoft-provided hosted services validates the entire hosted service model.

Why should I move to hosted services, and will I have to do so some day?

The answer to the second question is, of course, “Who knows?” But Microsoft’s current “software plus services” model aims to allow you to deliver software on servers you manage, as a hosted managed service, or as a combination of the two. Customers with a subscription have rights to both Microsoft Online Services and on-premises server software, giving them the ability to blend Web-based services with on-premises software. This flexible, blended approach is certainly the most reasonable way to address the varied needs of enterprises today.

To make the transition to online services more financially viable, new customers can purchase Microsoft Online Services as a per-user subscription, and existing customers with Microsoft Client Access Licenses and Software Assurance can purchase a user subscription for MOS at a discount.

The reason you should move to hosted services? Cost. My experience has been, both within my own company and in my clients, that a service model is a “no-brainer” from a total cost perspective. As long as service level agreements are in place and are delivered, the cost of migration, upgrade, support, and management plummets. One of my clients spends, per-mailbox, at least double what I pay Intermedia (who delivers better service than I get within that client’s mail environment). Another of my extremely large clients has had an internal shared Exchange service for hundreds of thousands of users for many years, relieving its business units from the cost and headaches of maintaining a communications platform.

With online services now taking off, companies can move their communications and collaborations platforms to MOS. Coca-Cola Enterprises, Autodesk Inc., Blockbuster Inc., Ceridian, Energizer Holdings Inc., Ingersoll-Rand Company Ltd., PFT-Medway, and XL Capital are among the first companies to do so, and my guess is the tidal wave will only grow from there. I think this is going to be big.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP1

danholme — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:25:00 GMT

Microsoft has released Office 2007 SP1, an update for all Office clients. This is the client application Service Pack -- a rollup of bug fixes and other patches that Microsoft has released in year since Office 2007 went public.

The service pack is a mere 218MB (50% of the size of the original distribution)… ha! Why’s it so big? Well, Microsoft also incorporated a number of fixes for bugs that they previously had pretended didn’t exist, unless “called to task”, like the highly problematic (and baffling as to how it slipped by) bug related to Excel’s handling of 65534 and 65536. A quick analysis of the Excel file that lists fixes shows over 300 fixes that had no KB article, versus less than half that amount that did.

There are enough fixes and security tweaks that this service pack, like all major updates, should be tested extensively before it is widely deployed. Microsoft has not had a great track record with Office service packs, so listen to the “buzz” as others stub their toes.

The Service Pack is not (yet) on Microsoft Update, but can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9EC51594-992C-4165-A997-25DA01F388F5&displaylang=en

The KB article about the Service pack is http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936982.

And the Excel file that lists all the changes is at http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/C/F/BCFBEC81-ED9E-40A3-BBF0-1410B67A365A/Office%202007%20Service%20Pack%201%20Changes_all.xls

SharePoint Service Pack 1 Goes Gold

danholme — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:09:00 GMT

Big news! The long-awaited release of WSS/MOSS SP1 has hit the streets. And this is a doozie of a service pack. So big that a page on TechNet has been created to guide you through it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx. Note! Even the product team is saying “be thoughtful” here. Per Joel Oleson, “It is essential that you understand the appropriate guidance and test out the patch in a separate test environment.” Spend the time it takes to evaluate the SP—don’t just roll it out.

Start planning for WSS/MOSS SP1

danholme — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:47:00 GMT

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"?).

Size It! with the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool

danholme — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:42:00 GMT

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 to the Microsoft's Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com), 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 arena of capacity planning, where HP has had a tool available for some time now. Take its results with a grain of salt, but its a worthy grain of salt. I am told that we can expect the final (and significantly beefier) version early summer.

New white paper addresses SQL storage sizing & performance for SharePoint

danholme — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:39:00 GMT

On Thursday, Microsoft released a white paper focused on the planning and optimization of SQL storage for SharePoint.

Check it out at

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/f/?en-us/library/ca472046-7d4a-4f17-92b1-c88a743a5e3c1033.mspx

Microsoft Users to “Save As DAISY”

grodcay — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:19:00 GMT

This week, Microsoft and the Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) Consortium announced a joint standards-based development project that will provide assistive technology to computer users who are blind or print disabled. This open collaboration project will result in the “Save as DAISY” feature, a free, downloadable plug-in for Microsoft Office Word that will enable the translation of millions of Open XML documents into DAISY XML, the foundation of the accepted standard for digital talking books. The “Save as DAISY” feature will give people with print disabilities better access to the information in billions of documents. You can find more information about the Daisy plug-in at

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/nov07/11-13daisy.mspx

2007 Microsoft Office Security Guide Available

grodcay — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:51:00 GMT

Microsoft has released the 2007 Microsoft Office Security Guide, a free set of tools that can help organizations of all sizes improve the security and privacy of desktop computers. The recommendations and resources included in the guide were created and tested in partnership with businesses and governments around the world. The toolset lets customers get the most benefit from the improved security features in the 2007 Office system. You can find additional information about the security guide at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/clientsecurity/2007office/default.mspx

Free Training Opportunity from AvePoint

danholme — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:44:00 GMT

AvePoint announced a series of five, half-day workshops focusing on SharePoint deployment and administration from 11/27/2007 to 12/11/2007, in Waltham, Washington, Mountain View, Austin and NYC. AvePoint's product, DocAve 4.5 SharePoint Adminsitrator fills some important "gaps" for enterprise implementaitons of SharePoint, so it's not too bad to learn a little about those gaps and their great product. And a good portion of the event will be led by Errin O'Connor, author of Windows SharePoint Services (MS Press) so it will be a great opportunity to learn from an expert and to get some questions answered. And the price is right (free!). See http://www.avepoint.com/seminars for more info.