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Last night, 80,000 of my closest friends and I sat in BC Place and experienced the closing ceremonies of the XXI Winter Olympics. It's always an emotional experience, to watch the games come to an end, to see the city empty of its throngs, and to begin the process of tearing down this little enterprise of 2000+ employees at NBC Olympics. I know how lucky I've been to experience six Olympics, and it's been great to share this one with you.
I appreciate the hundreds of notes I've received over the last weeks from friends and followers who have enjoyed my tweets and photos from Vancouver. It was a hard-working, but rewarding time, and I did get "out" of the International Broadcast Center to attend a couple of events, including two-man bobsleigh, which I enjoyed with SharePoint colleagues from Colligo, Metalogix, and Quest. I've posted one last batch of photos to my SkyDrive.
I'd also like to thank the people of Vancouver, who threw an incredible, friendly, exciting party for hundreds of thousands of people. Vancouver is a beautiful place, and the beauty is definitely more than skin deep. This is a vibrant place that really came alive last night after the thrilling hockey gold medal game. I've never seen a city come completely unglued with euphoria before! It was amazing, and I never thought maple leaves could be painted with such accuracy on so many faces and bodies!
Of course, the Olympics are a mammoth undertaking by everyone involved, starting with the organizers and the athletes down to those of us in the I.T. trenches. I like to use the Games as an opportunity to reflect on lessons that apply to my personal and professional life, and this week I'd like to share some of those "life and I.T." lessons with you.
Learn from the best, and dedicate the time to train
It astounds me just how many athletes, even those representing distant lands, make great sacrifices to spend time learning from the best in their sport. In IT, that means doing what you can to keep learning from the best in the business. There are so many opportunities to learn more about SharePoint: the SharePointPro Summit in Vegas next month, The Experts Conference in Vegas in April, and TechEd in June are the best "live" events out there, and in an earlier newsletter I presented a comparison of these events. There are also numerous virtual, live online and on-demand events including Connections Online. And there's a big, wide Internet full of expertise. Be sure to dedicate time to train your brain, to stay on top of your field, whether it's a few days at an event or a few minutes each day catching up on line.
Surround yourself with people who push you to be better than you think you can be
Canadian ice dancers Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue made no bones about it: they wouldn't have won the gold without their daily training and competition with American silver medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White. I'm a huge believer that, to be better, you must surround yourself with people who believe you can be, and push you to be, better than you are and better than you think you can be.
That's one of the things I value most about my Olympics experience: being surrounded with a team that is the best in the businesses, and who asks more of me than I think I can deliver. Give some thought to what you can do to surround yourself with top-caliber peers. Attend events, such as those mentioned above or your local SharePoint users groups, but also look "up" from whatever your job is. If you're an IT Pro or Dev, find ways into events attended by directors and CIOs-get a feeling for the strategic and financial issues they are concerned with.
Focus on the task at hand and tune out all the noise
We all watched the intensity with which Olympians focus, and how they are able to set aside thoughts of anything other than the race they're in. We saw athletes overcome painful injuries, family tragedies, and much more. And yet sometimes it is easy for me to get "caught up" in silly nonsense that distracts me from being my best. Next time you sense that you're getting caught in a quagmire of distraction, turn on your focus, and get the job done.
Know your equipment, know its limits, keep it in shape, and have a back up
Equipment succeeds, equipment fails, equipment breaks, equipment must be replaced. Are you prepared for slips, slides, and crashes of your SharePoint infrastructure, all the way down to the hardware level? I learned some lessons the hard way over the last two weeks. As I've been in Vancouver, I've been doing all my work on a "pimped out" laptop. Remember my rant against Hyper-V as a personal solution?
Unfortunately, one of my other client projects forces me to use Hyper-V, meaning that I have to use Windows Server 2008 R2 as my own "desktop" OS. Well now I am ranting even more strongly: Hyper-V made it downright impossible for me to deal with digital media (photos, videos, and streams) which, at the Olympics, was a big part of my job.
And I learned that SSDs are not guaranteed to last "forever." My six-month old, $800, 256GB OCZ Vertex drive just froze solid, leading to painful loss of data and time. And I was under the "spell" of SSDs and did not have an image of my system drive. Lesson learned! What are the single-points of failure in your technology ‘stack'? Make them redundant!
I'm proud to say that the Vancouver Games have already surpassed Torino's ratings, and we're hopeful that when yesterday's numbers come in this could overtake even Salt Lake 2002-that these might be the top-rated winter Olympics since the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics which were, you might remember, the center of the Kerrigan-Harding spectacle. I hope you were able to share some of the Olympic Games with your friends and family. And if you did, I hope you also found some lessons and some inspiration for your professional and personal life, and to share with your friends and family! Thanks for joining me on this journey, and I look forward to next week when we return to "tech" in the next issue of SharePoint Pro Connections Update.
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Here at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, I've put in long work days, every day working for NBC Olympics as we broadcast the Games to the US audience. But I did also manage to get away on Thursday evening for a dinner meeting with the folks at Colligo. I’ve been a big fan of their products for years, and have been thrilled to watch them win award after award, including several from Windows IT Pro magazine.
I didn’t realize until last week that they are headquartered here in Vancouver. They showed me just how fun the city can be, and it was cool to see that behind their great products is a really great team. Colligo is doing a web seminar, "Is SharePoint 2010 Ready for Enterprise Content Management?" with a keynote from Microsoft’s Tricia Bush, Director of Enterprise Business, on March 2nd. I’m not often able to carve out time to attend webinars, but I’m registered for this one.
People have asked me what third-party products we've been using here with SharePoint. On the back end, we’ve again turned to AvePoint for backup and restore functionality—there’s no doubt that we need to have the ability to do granular restore! Their suite of products has gotten much richer, and more complex, since we used them during our operations at the Olympics in Beijing, but it again proved itself a valuable addition to our toolset—kudos to them.
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Greetings from Vancouver, host city of the XXI Winter
Olympics, February 12-28, 2010!
I arrived here on Sunday to support the broadcast of the
Olympics on NBC, which will share the Games with US audiences in high
definition on its many networks and online at NBCOlympics.com. If you’ve read
my columns and articles over the years, you know I was lucky enough to act as
the Microsoft Technologies Consultant for NBC at both the Torino and Beijing
games. In fact, it was during Torino that I fell in love with SharePoint and
its ability to support rapidly deployed, “big win” solutions to collaboration
in an enterprise.
I am looking forward to sharing with you some of the things
we’re doing with SharePoint here in Vancouver, but I am pre-empted this week by
a really cool announcement from Microsoft itself, also about the Olympics and
SharePoint 2010.
I’m particularly thrilled to share with you that Microsoft
and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) have teamed up to bring Winter
Games content and information to reporters through a new press portal powered
by <drum roll> SharePoint 2010. That’s right, the USOC’s PressBox
site is powered by the beta version of
SharePoint 2010 which, among other things, is a real testament to the strength
of the product even in its pre-release state.
Through the site, the USOC is able to provide journalists
covering the Games a single destination for accessing information about events,
participants, and venues. The site features articles, statistics, photographs,
and athlete information, adding depth and color to coverage. Building the site
on SharePoint 2010 technology, the site exposes RSS feeds to enable real-time
access to breaking news and personal updates from athletes who are using
Twitter, Facebook, and blog posts. SharePoint’s enhanced search enables
rich sorting of athlete information, sporting events, article authors, and
more.
Deploying content for an event like the Olympics is a
high-stress, big-stakes undertaking. The USOC is able to leverage the
capabilities, manageability, and scalability, of SharePoint 2010 to tackle the
challenge. And journalists can take advantage of the content in new,
dynamic ways.
It’s pretty amazing to me that all of this is being
entrusted to a version of SharePoint that is so new, it’s not even “finished” yet.
In the midst of a week that was characterized by hype around unreleased
devices, here’s an enterprise putting a tremendous amount of faith in a
product we can all get our hands on today.
Join me again on Monday for more news from Vancouver!
Dan Holme
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One of the big structural changes in SharePoint 2010 are Service Applications, the successor to the Shared Service Provider model in SP2007. Now, service applications are part of SharePoint Foundation 2010 (successor to Windows SharePoint Services). And, there is a many-to-many relationship between service apps and web apps. That means that a web app can consume one or more service apps, and a service app can be consumed by one or more web apps. The easiest way to understand this would be some examples:
- Managed Metadata service app, which manages taxonomy and content types across sites, collections, apps, and farms. You might have an enterprise term store with the enterprise taxonomy, managed by IT. Another term store may contain taxonomy for Finance, and perhaps a select group of users or managers in Finance manage that term store. The finance team site can consume both the enterprise and the finance term stores.
- Search. You might have an intranet search service with search scopes that include Exchange public folders and file shares, as well as all of your SharePoint sites; and another search service that indexes a subset of SharePoint sites. Your extranet sites for partners may consume the SharePoint-only search service, but your intranet team sites may consume both the extranet and intranet search service apps.
Pretty cool, eh? Can you see how interesting this might get?
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If you have been following my commentaries, you know I am a *huge* fan of SharePoint 2010. It's astounding what the SharePoint Product Group has done in the three years since SP2007 went live. See http://www.sharepointproconnections.com/TabId/149/NodeId/1994/sharepoint-2010--what-a-difference-3-years-makes.aspx for my raving.
Just to give "fair time" to ranting, I thought I'd start a blog post that will document some of the more unfortunate announcements and gaps in SP2010
The first is that little love has been given to devs who have to develop for SharePoint 2007. All of the advances in Visual Studio 2010 (released in Beta today) are targeting new functionality in SP2010, and cannot be used against a 2007 environment. That's sad.
More to come.
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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!
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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
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