Playing around with Powershell and SharePoint user profiles

First thing to note when playing around with SharePoint and Powershell is that you will probably need to load a number of extra assemblies (For some background check out Load an assembly in Powershell).

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("microsoft.sharepoint.portal")
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.Office.Server")
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Web")

Next if you want to manipulate SharePoint user profiles using Powershell you might want to take a look at Creating and updating  user profile properties in SharePoint using Powershell

Now an interesting concept would be to use a XML file as a source for creating SharePoint user profiles – take a look at Processing XML with Powershell to get going. So basically if you want to build a reusable powershell script for creating user profiles you will need two parameters – the XML file and the name of the SSP. By adding in some extra functions and using the power of piping (See Piping and Pipeline in Powershell) you will have a very powerfull powershell script with only limited code.

$userprofileproperties = get-xml $xmlFile

$context = [Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext]::GetContext($sspName)
$profileManager = new-object Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager($context)

$userprofileproperties.userprofileproperties.userprofileproperty | foreach { checkIfExists $_.Name $profileManager }
$userprofileproperties.userprofileproperties.userprofileproperty | foreach { createProperty $_  $profileManager $context }

PS I’m not going to give you all the code but the code snippets above should get you going. Credits go to Jeroen for writing these nifty lines of powershell.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,user+profiles,powershell,administration,sharepoint+administration,moss+2007,moss

SharePoint and the 2000 security principal limit

Update 17/8: apparently my explanation was not that clear so I added some extra details

An  important thing to remember is the fact that SharePoint scales through the use of site collections. So if you have a fairly large implementation of SharePoint you will be typically using multiple site collections.

One of the things which has caused some serious problems in the past – but is not that clearly documented is the 2000 security prinicipals limit per site collection.

If you read through Plan for software boundaries – you see this

Security principal

Approximately 2,000 per ACL (Access Control List) on any securable object (scope)

The total size of the ACL on scopes can be no larger than 64kb. Because each security principal is approximately 32 bytes in size, there can be no more than approximately 2,000 security principals or less for each scope.  If this limit is reached, indexing of items in that scope, and all items below that scope, to fail. Also, because SharePoint Groups are expanded during the indexing process, having more than 2,000 users or Directory Groups in a SharePoint group and using that group for securing scopes may cause indexing of items secured with these groups, and all items below them, to fail.

The scope they are talking about is according to me - site collection level. Every time you secure something in a site collection – meaning you assign a security principal (for developers –a SPPrincipal object) with it’s permissions set to a site, or a specific library/list or even to an individual document/item, an entry is added to a list of security principlas at site collection level.  It is this list of security principals which has a limit of 2000 entries.

So no troubles if you are using 40 distinct Active Directory groups all over the places to assign security in thousands of individual documents – but when you are using more then 2000 individual users which are assigned a permission directly in one or more places within a site collection – you will get into trouble. There is no problem with Active Directory groups who contain thousands of individual AD users since they are not expanded.

The article only states problems when crawling but I also noticed some performance issues on SQL Server level where we needed to put in some extra processing power.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+server+2007,moss+2007,moss

InfoPath 2010 – new features

• Control filtering/cascading dropdowns – (definitely take a look at the video to see browser based InfoPath 2010 forms in action - With InfoPath 2010, it appears that these workarounds are no longer necessary. In the video I posted earlier this month about richer browser forms, see the filtering functionality at work in an InfoPath 2010 browser scenario. At least that's one big improvement to the browser form experience... [Source: http://blogs.3sharp.com/davidg/archive/2009/07/27/5058.aspx ]
• InfoPath Team Blog – What’s new in InfoPath 2010 – provides some insights about SharePoint integration as well – my favorites:
  • Create forms for SharePoint lists
  • Create mashups using the InfoPath Forms webpart
  • Quick (validation) rules
• InfoPath 2010 feature videos

PS Don’t forget the Office 2010 Technical Beta recruiting update and contest rules – unfortunately US and Canadians only … too bad.

Tags van Technorati: office+2010,infopath,infopath+2010

Keep your SharePoint site definitions minimal, really I mean it.

Something which caused me a lot of troubles last week – an overbloated site definition. Don’t do this. As stated in the ten commandments for SharePoint development:

4. Keep your custom site definitions as minimal as possible. A long debate started after Joel's post on the topic - Do you really need a site definition . They are nothing more than a "skeleton" for attaching programmatic elements in the form of features and should be deployed as solution packages.

Trust me – follow this advice, it will cause less problems in the future.

Related posts:

• Throwing myself behind site definitions
• Site definitions – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,governance,best+practices,sharepoint+governance

Things I read (and watched) this week

For those interested in SharePoint – don’t botter – the next links are all off-topic – but hey life is about more then SharePoint :-) …

• Zune hands on impressions, tears of joy
• Quick hands on with the Zune HD
• Is Bing worth all the money Microsoft is throwing at it? [video]
• What’s Microsoft’s next billion dollar business? (Hint: it’s not search)
• Step-by-step: Turning a windows 7 DVD or ISO into a Bootable VHD Virtual Machine
• How will Microsoft fix Windows Mobile? The softies still aren’t saying
• What happens when TCO meets the cloud
• Shining customer service in a tough business economy
• Why intranets will destroy the corporate website
• Expert-to-Expert:  Harry Shum – General purpose search, decision engines and Bing
• Why most presentations suck
• When internal collaboration is bad for your company (HBR) and the comments – Is collaboration bad, really?

Tags van Technorati: zune,tco,microsoft+research,off+topic

MBR and GPT partioning style for disks in Windows Server 2008

I noticed something new last week – when adding a new virtual  disk to a Windows Server 2008 setup it gave me a new option when I needed to initialize the disk. You can now choose between MBR and GPT. So what’s the difference? Techotopia to the rescue:

MBR is the standard partitioning scheme that's been used on hard disks since the PC first came out. It supports 4 primary partitions per hard drive, and a maximum partition size of 2TB.

GPT disks are new, and are readable only by Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows Vista (all versions), and Windows XP x64 Edition. The GPT disk itself can support a volume up to 2^64 blocks in length. (For 512-byte blocks, this is 9.44 ZB - zettabytes. 1 ZB is 1 billion terabytes). It can also support theoretically unlimited partitions.

Windows restricts these limits further to 256 TB for a single partition (NTFS limit), and 128 partitions.

Only Itanium systems running Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista systems with an EFI BIOS can boot from a GPT disk. The other operating systems mentioned earlier can use GPT disks as data disks but not boot disks.

 

Tags van Technorati: windows+server,disk+partioning,mbr,gpt

Reading PDF files on Windows Mobile

You can download Adobe Reader for mobile devices for free. Just run the installer from your PC and use ActiveSync to push the installation to your mobile device (this should work automatically). Don’t forget to read the Adobe Reader for Pocket PC FAQ.

Tags van Technorati: windows+mobile,pdf+reader

SharePoint Governance - random link collection

Links you should check out for some inspiration if you are thinking about SharePoint Governance:

• Why is governance pain so common with SharePoint?
• Maximizing business value from SharePoint : A management and governance perspective  (Whitepaper december 2008)
• IT Goverance deployment plan – MS Project Template 
• Metavis Architect for SharePoint – interesting tool to design your SharePoint information architecture as well keeping your information architecture clean and tidy
•  Drivesight for SharePoint – free product to analyze file shares which will help you in deciding which content needs to be uploaded and which indexed.
• Series of articles about SharePoint virtualization
• SharePointReviews.com – directory of SharePoint products with reviews by SharePoint experts & Users
• DeliverPoint – third party tool which allows you to discover all set permissions within your SharePoint farm as well as act upon the security information retrieved
• Investing in logical architecture design samples
• Checking user permissions in a site hierarchy
• Avoiding Fileshare 2.0 with SharePoint
• Don’t toss the grenade over the wall, it will blow up
• Mr Miyagi is not a direct descendant of superman - “one of the commmon mistake in implementing SharePoint we discussed is unrealistically staffing SharePoint deployments.”
• Did you achieve your SharePoint ROI (Return on Investment) – The solid business case for SharePoint
• White paper – Information architecture in Office SharePoint Server
• Automatisering Gids – SharePoint: balanceren tussen wildgroei en regie (Dutch only)
• SharePoint: the backbone of your Information Architecture
• SharePoint depth Wiki – Governance
• Lock Down Security : My best practices (and restoring usability)

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,microsoft,moss+2007,moss,wss3,governance,sharepoint+goverance

Activating Windows Server 2008 MSDN edition

Lastweek I installed Windows Server 2008 from MSDN subscriber downloads – unfortunately when I tried to activate it – I got an error telling “A problem occurred when Windows tried to activate. Error code 0x8007232B. For a possible resolution, click more information.” When you click the more information link you get "Code 0x9007232B - DNS name does not exist". Luckily I found the workaround - Activate Windows Server 2008 RTM (MSDN subscriberd downloads version) – just reenter the license key and Windows will automatically activate.

Tags van Technorati: windows+server,w2008,microsoft,msdn

Memory settings in VMWare Workstation

When you need to run 64-bit virtual environments on you dev machine – you will not be able to use Virtual PC. So most of the time I’ll use VMWare Workstation. A setting you will need to take a look at is how VMWare will use the allocated memory – go to Edit>Preferences and select the Memory tab.

SharePoint 2010 – Sneak preview videos – Overview Sneak peek video

Microsoft just released some sneak preview content about SharePOint 2010 . Definitely take a look at SharePoint 2010 - Overview Sneak Peek Video – by Thomas Rizzo.

Some key takeaways:

1. The core business value proposition - “The business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Web”
2. Quote - “We have taken a bunch of the great technology that FAST has and combined it with SharePoint technology to provide a rich, reliable, highly scalable search within SharePoint”
3. SharePoint 2010 has a ribbon interface which is customizable and contextual – this means you will get an extra Library Tools Tab when you are in a SharePoint document library. If you don’t like it you can still remove the ribbon.
4. Multiple item operations – check out the video – way cool.
5. Fluent user interface through complete assynchronous operations support
6. Direct web edit with live preview (similar to the office client) – again take a look at the video’s – definitely a killer feature. Common things such as changing images and text on a site is a lot easier.
7. SharePoint 2010 out of the box Silverlight web part
8. Apply PowerPoint theme to SharePoint sites to change the look and feel
9. Publish Visio diagrams directly to SharePoint and open them within the browser without the need to have a Visio client installed – it even works for data-driven Visio diagrams
10. Quote - “SharePoint Business Connectivity Services (BCS) – you can think of it as an evolution of the Business Data Catalog” – with support for read/write. From within SharePoint Designer 2010 you will see a new concept called Entities to handle back-end integration. SharePoint provides seemless integration with back-end systems – so database tables can be surfaced within SharePoint and will look exactly the same as any other SharePoint list. And it even works within Office.
11. SharePoint Workspace – the new Groove – again with support for SharePoint BCS – amazing – you can actually edit data from your backend system offline and synchronize it back. So you actually get offline data editing capabilities for free with SharePoint Workspace
12. Also check out the video editing within Powerpoint in the last demo….

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint+2010,microsoft,sharepoint,sharepoint+vnext

SCOM – SharePoint Management Packs – new download location

It seems that the download location of the SCOM management packs fro SharePoint have changed:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
• Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+server+2007,SCOM,microsoft,moss+2007,wss3,system+center

Freeing storage memory on E-Ten Glofiish M700

Today my smartphone started struggling with a lack of free storage. After searching for large files using storage memory – I found a file which is called mms_handler.txt which seems to be a log file of some sort. You can apparently safely delete it.

Tags van Technorati: windows+mobile,smartphone

KODU – XBOX game design for everyone

Just stumbled upon this project from Microsoft Research - KODU

Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input.

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,microsoft+research,kodu,xbox

Why you would want access to the sourcecode for custom developed SharePoint solutions

So why do you need to get access to source code of custom built SharePoint components? What about 3d party ISVs versus System Integrators?

One thing to note is that I make a distinction between system integrators/consultancy firms and firms whose main target is to build specific SharePoint products. I do not expect that 3d party SharePoint ISV’s will release source code but I also think this is not that much of a problem since their products are widely deployed (ask for references!!!) and they know that a bad rep would kill their business. Therefore they probably have a stringent quality process for building SharePoint addons.

If your custom built solution is procured as a product purchase it is very rare that you get access to the source code and even if you do – you have to make sure that he source code does not get into the wrong hands.

If the custom built solution is procured as part of a works made for hire or services engagement (which is mostly the case with system integrators or consultancy firms), the source code is mostly provided – but not always.

Sourcecode keeps SI’s honest

Access to source code gives you additional flexiblity. If you need a change to your custom built solution you might have the option to do it yourself instead of reverting back to the System Integration.  If you have access to the source code, then any SI can make the change.  It keeps everyone honest… and it is better from a business continuity perspective. You probably want to protect your investments.

It probably is very disturbing when you notice that you can’t upgrade your platform since you have a lock-in from a custom built solution tied to a specific system integrator or consultancy firm.

Review deployed sourcecode

A custom build solution deployed on SharePoint can have the ability to impersonate to any other account without their passwords – take a look at Elevation of Privilege for some background info. You cannot be absolutely sure that they are not doing this, unless you have the ability to review the source code from a technical perspective.

If you have access to the code it is  also easier to validate the deliverable (the code) in terms of what you have agreed upon – this is what I call review source code from a functional perspective.

If you do not care if SharePoint code runs as fully trusted and you do not attempt to enforce partially trusted scenario’s – you probably don’t need the source code. Reviewing source code (and this is certainly the case for SharePoint) is not for the faint of heart and requires a lot of effort.

Best practice – do your own builds

If you are planning to run business critical applications on top of SharePoint make sure that you actually do the builds of the source code yourself. You might be in for a surprise when you notice that the source code built does not equal the deployed assmemblies because some extra code was added in the dll’s which are deployed on your server.

If you are a customer who works with a system integrator or consultancy firm you might even ask access to parts of their code repository. This way you can use this code directly and even see actual progress of your project at any time without the delay of having to send an e-mail every time. Take for example a look at Using Team Foundation Server to develop Custom SharePoint Products and Technologies applications

Look at the contract

Common sense dictates that you have to look at contracts that you sign – and this is also the case for software project contracts. Make sure that you look at the small print of a contract. Look if it is not explicitly stated that you do NOT get access to the source code. Most of the time, the SI will give you  a non-exclusive license to use the source code internally. You get access but you do not own the code. The SI will probably retain the rights to reuse, package, deploy, sell, etc… the source code and all derivative works. 

Some SI’s work with  third party source code escrow agents where the source code is kept (under escrow) and is only released under certain conditions – for example when the supplier goes out of business (One of the players is Escrow Europe which also has an affiliate in Belgium  - another one is Merak)

Remark: The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,source+code,escrow,microsoft,tfs

SharePointGovernance.org launched

Because of it’s viral nature a SharePoint deployment without any control has a high risk of becoming total chaos. Yesterday SharePointGovernance.org launched to help you effectively manage your SharePoint environment. I will actively work with some peers on SharePointGovernance.org to share some of the do’s and don’ts with regards to share. Hope to see you there…

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,governance,sharepoint+governance,moss+2007,moss,microsoft,wss,wss3

The ten commandments for SharePoint development

1. Stick to the product if you can. SharePoint provides a lot of functionality out of the box - focus on these quick wins and don't immediately switch over to Visual Studio and start writing code.

2.  Built to last SharePoint projects are in continuous evolution so you need to develop in such a way that it is easy to evolve and to extend. Take a look at site definitions vs site templates for example.

3. Do not GAC every web part you develop. By the way, there are number of SharePoint development artifacts which you need to add to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) such as receivers -feature receivers as well as other event receivers - timer jobs and workflow assemblies.

4. Keep your custom site definitions as minimal as possible. A long debate started after Joel's post on the topic - Do you really need a site definition . They are nothing more than a "skeleton" for attaching programmatic elements in the form of features and should be deployed as solution packages.

5. Do not touch the production server's file system. Yes, if you need to deploy something you really need to wrap it up as a SharePoint solution file (wsp). Check out Creating a SharePoint Solution Package in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as well as my own post from a while ago - WSP - SharePoint Solution Files. Don't forget to take a look at WSPBuilder

6. Features are your friend . Features can be added to sites as needed. You can even force their deployment through stapling them to existing Site Definitions. Features can be activated, deactivated, and even upgraded, on existing sites.

7. Thou shall not use Full trust in vain. Changing the trust level in the web.config is just stupid for anything other than debugging.  So learn to use SharePoint Code Access Security policy files. 

8. Stay out of the database. The SharePoint database schema should not be altered in any fashion or you will lose all support in case of an incident. KB841057 - Support for changes to the databases that are used by Office Server products and by Windows SharePoint Services. I think it is also safe to not directly read from the database – SharePoint provides you with multiple methods to do exactly what you need – stsadm, the object model, web services or WSS RPCs so there’s no need to read directly from the database.

9. Use different development, build, test, staging, and production environments. Take a look at the SharePoint application life cycle from the P&P SharePoint guidance. If you are unsure about the why and how.

10. Be your admins friend You can make deploying a SharePoint solution very easy for your admins using SharePoint solution packages, together with powershell and/or stsadm extensions. Or can make his life hell – remember this quote from JThake - “Mr SharePoint Solution meets Mr XCopy in a bar and kicks the living sh*t out of him” (Jthake)

PS These commandments are not listed in order of importance… if you have some other ones – please add a comment.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,sharepoint+2007,best+practices

Hotfix for SharePoint SP2 trial version mistake

A quite unfortunately quirck of SharePoint SP2 was that after you installed it, the product expiration date was activated incorrectly (For more details check out KB 971620 )

The SharePoint team blog also states that an update of SP2 will be provided in the coming weeks.

 

• Download 32-bit version of the fix: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/5/2F51AB71-1325-49D2-9CB9-18DEC4780E99/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
• Download 64-bit version of the fix: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/B/5BBD34A9-C528-42B0-8A5F-9A8997B25C32/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x64-glb.exe

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint+server,moss+2007,moss,service+pack,microsoft,sharepoint

SharePoint - It's all about making the right choices and decisions - When to use custom site definitions.

This is the third posting about making the correct design decisions when implementing SharePoint. It's about site definition vs site templates.

I strongly believe that there are a couple of  reasons for using custom site definitions:

1. Better overall performance of using site definitions instead of site templates for creating sites
2. More control and flexibility in building a specific solution. One thing to keep in mind though is to keep your custom site definitions as minimal as possible and to use the SharePoint Features framework to add functionality.
3. Site templates are basically black boxes where you have limited control over the way that they are working - so when you get into trouble you're stuck.
4. It is easier to add additional functionality to site which are developed using a site definition in contrast with these built using a site template.

The main reason for choosing site templates is that overall it takes less effort to create a site template. You can just click everything together and use the Save site as template option. Another reason would be that you can change a site template without affecting existing sites (allthough this might be a disadvantage as well).

Some extra info: Site definitions versus site templates and deciding on the correct customization approach . On a similar note this same post from  Eric - The great debate: SharePoint Designer vs custom site definitions.

Previous postings:

• SharePoint - it's all about making the right choices and decisions - Part I
• SharePoint - It's all about making the right choices and decisions - Part II - One or multiple site collections

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,design,architecture,microsoft

Visio design templates for SharePoint 2007

Reminder:

• Free visio template and stencil for designing SharePoint 2007 sites.
• Visio Shapes for SharePoint (Commercial)

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,design,sharepoint+2007,visio,templates,microsoft,moss+2007,moss

List web part for Microsoft CRM 4.0

Another interesting one  to to integrate SharePoint and Microsoft CRM 4.0 is to use the List Web Part for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. (Released december 2008 - tip: there is a different web part for Dynamics CRM 3.0)

The List Web Part for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides a way to view and update Microsoft Dynamics CRM records using a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 Web site. Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can create shared or personal List Web Parts of Microsoft Dynamics CRM records from a SharePoint Web site, open records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 from the List Web Part, and create connected List Web Parts.

Tags van Technorati: dynamics+crm,sharepoint,crm,microsoft

Microsoft Dynamics Snap apps

If you want people to use the core applications you invested in (such as CRM and ERP), it is a good idea to integrate them into a familiar interface. Most people tend to use Office applications quite a lot in their daily job so why not integrate your CRM and ERP from within Office. Dynamics Snap applications show how information workers can work with data out of Dynamics CRM and Dynamics from within their Office applications (This is what Microsoft calls a Office Business Applications or OBA)

One that I tried out recently - Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics AX on Codeplex – of which the current release supports Dynamics AX 2009. There are two different snaps available for Dynamics AX 2009:

• Offline Expense - This snap-in enables expenses to be entered in Excel while disconnected from the corporate network, and then posted to Dynamics AX at a later time. This snap-in uses WCF-based services and LINQ to retrieve data from Dynamics AX, and uses the Application Integration Framework, or AIF to send business documents to Dynamics AX.
• Business Data Lookup (BDL) - This snap-in enables information workers to access data from Dynamics AX from within Excel, Word and Outlook. This snap-in is an upgrade of the BDL snap-in that was distributed with Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0.

Unfortunately the Microsoft Dynamics Snap Team Blog doesn't show any activity since january 2007

References:

• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics AX Integration Scenarios White Paper
• More about OBA and RAPs
• Office Business Applications – Crossing the chasm
• OBA Composition Reference Toolkit

Tags van Technorati: dynamics+ax,dynamics+crm,oba,microsoft,dynamics+snap,snap,codeplex

Troubleshooting Microsoft CRM

My colleague Koen has been writing some excellent blog posts about troubleshooting certain issues with Microsoft CRM:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 – enable tracing/logging
• MS CRM 4.0 VPC – remove the “crm” host header
• MS CRM 4.0 custom workflow activity assembly update not executing the new code

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,crm,mscrm,development,troubleshooting

Belgian Azure User Group launched …

Kurt Claeys just announced the birth of a new Belgian user group – www.azug.be

AZUG.BE is a Belgian user group with focus on development and architecture of the Microsoft Azure Services Platform. Azure is a cloud hosted development platform for internet oriented applications aimed at high scalability and based on .NET technology.

Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences with the .NET community in development and architecture in the Azure Services Platform and the .NET Services technology. As new programming skills and a new architectural approach are needed I’m inviting you to become member of this user group to prepare you for building this new style of applications.

We’ll have regular public meetings (free of charge) providing demos, training, presentations and discussions on the technology part of Azure. First public meeting is planned in september 09.

Interested in participating as boardmember ? Shoot a mail at board@azug.be.

Interested in the agenda of upcoming events, visit www.azug.be regularly or register for the newsletter at newsletter@azug.be with the word subscribe as subject. Hope to see you.

Tags van Technorati: user+group,community,belgium,azure,microsoft,cloud+computing

What’s in a name – SharePoint Online, BPOS and Microsoft Online Services

SharePoint Online, Microsoft Online Services or BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) are terms which you hear flying around when you look for information about Microsoft’s endeavors in the cloud. Here’s some more background information:

• SharePoint Online : is a collection of web-based collaboration tools built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and provided by Microsoft as a hosted service. For some more information check out Service Description for Microsoft Office SharePoint Online
• Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) : goes broader then SharePoint – it is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online.
• Microsoft Online Services: is the overall name of all services Microsoft will offer in a hosted environment – current focus for Belgium is BPOS but the offering will probably extend to also include Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in the coming months.

Before you rush in it is probably best to first take a look at what the trade offs are when you choose the SharePoint Online option instead of an on-premise deployment.  A good start is the SharePoint Online Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guide. Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) guides help you in making design decisions by looking at available options, taking into account cost, complexity and technical contstraints. They help you to align your business and IT more efficiently. There are already a number of IPD’s available (released versions)  - Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides

It is also important to note that the use of SharePoint Online is not mutually exclusive with a SharePoint installation on premise. These two forms can quite easily co-exist, it is however important that you define policies and rules for users when to use what. This is typically an important aspect of a SharePoint governance plan.

If you want to try it out – there is a 30-day free trial which you can use at the Microsoft Online Services – Customer Portal

More background info:

• Microsoft Online Services – Team Blog
• SharePoint Online (SAAS) review – what it is and what it isn’t
• Trial Guide for Microsoft Online Services
• Microsoft SharePoint Online Standard Developer Guide (133 pages) – the different sections already provide some guidance  about what is possible and what is not - Getting Started , Creating SharePoint Online Sites ,Customizing SharePoint Online Applications , Using a Data Form Web Part in SharePoint Online Applications, Using SharePoint Online Web Services , Integrating Microsoft Silverlight with a SharePoint Online Page , Workflows Using SharePoint Designer 
• Comment on Microsoft Online and the GSK Customer case (Bill Pray)

Tags van Technorati: bpos,microsoft,sharepoint+online,sharepoint+server,saas,cloud+computing

PDF Annotations

A common requirement for PDF files is the ability to add comments and annotations. Docutrack has an interesting tool called PDF-XChange viewer (which is free) which allows you to do just that.

Tags van Technorati: PDF,PDF+tool,annotations

Free Documentum Developer Edition available

On june 2d EMC announced  a free developer edition of EMC Documentum Content Server 6.5 which you can download from the ECM Developer Community.

To get you started take a look at the Content Server Developer Edition Install instructions. What’s a little bit weird is that Windows Server 2008 seems to be missing from the list of supported OS – I tried installing it anyway but it failed with this error -  DIWAOEMExecuteConfigurationscripts failed - "creating index agent" failed. Runtime execution failed with childprocess
launchftconfigurationprogram.bat

Too bad  … time to setup a new blank Windows Server 2003.

Technorati Tags: documentum,emc,content+server

Add some spice to your Powerpoint decks with PPtPlex

Last week somebody told me about Prezi.com – which seems to be some kind of Web 2.0 example of how you can build more interactive presentations with zoom effects and so on …

It kind of reminded me of something which I saw a couple of months ago – PptPlex from OfficeLabs

pptPlex uses Plex technology to give you the power to zoom in and out of slide sections and move directly between slides that are not sequential in your presentation. Watch the videos below to see how pptPlex can help you organize and present information in a non-linear fashion. Test drive pptPlex and wow your audience with your next presentation.

I just installed and I plan to use it for every a couple of weeks … see what it gives…

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,presentation,powerpoint,pptplex,office+labs

Web Testing (and load testing) SharePoint 2007 with Visual Studio 2008

Testing a SharePoint project is quite a tedious job – there are a lot of floating parts out there which make it complicated and time consuming. So everything which makes it a little easier is interesting. (Another reason for using it was to generate usage logs so that I could start working on my SharePoint extensions – Usage Statistics again) The last couple of days I have been looking at how I can use Visual Studio 2008 Test Edition to test SharePoint Server 2007 (this would also work with WSS 3.0).

To get you started there are some interesting sources out there on  Hello Its Liam:

• MOSS 2007 Testing Using Visual Studio Team System 2008 – shows how you can test uploading a document
• MOSS 2007 – Testing using Visual Studio Team System 2008 – Creating Team Sites
• MOSS 2007 – Visual Studio 2008 Testing (Search)
• MOSSS 2007 – Visual Studio 2008 Testing (Load Testing)

Some other usefull resources (SharePoint specific):

• Load Testen van SharePoint met VSTS 2008 en VSTT Load Agents – Deel 1 (Dutch only)
• Load testen van SharePoint met VSTS 2008 en VSTT Load Agents – Deel 2 (Dutch only)
• How to configure a stress test project for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 using Visual Studio Team Suite 2008
• Load Testing SharePoint (Lessons Learned) (Part 1)
• Load Testing SharePoint (Lessons Learned) (Part 2)

General information about VSTS 2008:

• Content Index for Web Tests and Load Tests (Ed Glas’s blog on VSTS load testing)
• SharePoint (Performance, Stress) Load Testing
• Web and Load Testing using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition

Tags van Technorati: visualstudio2008,vsts,load+testing,web+testing,microsoft,visual+studio+2008,sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss

SharePoint Server 2010 – some random info on the web

More and more information starts to spread about SharePoint Server 2010 – here are some links to get you started. As with most information at this stage, it is not sure that it will be a 100% accurate – and a lot of speculation is going around - but still …

• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 beta in two months - Microsoft will launch an invitation-only SharePoint Server 2010 beta test in July with a select group of customers and then follow the program up with a public testing phase ahead of the Office 2010 release in the first half of next year.
• Groove renamed to SharePoint Workspace - Microsoft claims that this is a natural progression since Groove is to SharePoint like Outlook is to Exchange. This definitely sounds interesting – can’t wait to get my hands on that one. I’m wondering how much overlap there will be with a tool such as Colligo Contributor for SharePoint. You should probably keep an eye out for more information on the Groove Development Team Blog or the newly created Working the spaces, sharing the point blog
• New Microsoft SharePoint 2010 details start to emerge  - some interesting quotes - SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only and require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 to run. It also will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005. - SharePoint 2010 will feature a “Web-enabled Ribbon control” and support greater use of Silverlight controls - A new version of FAST Search for SharePoint will be made available at a lower cost. Meanwhile, according to contractor and SharePoint blogger Lars Fastrup (whose blog entry is the source of a lot of this post), “the SharePoint team have scrapped their efforts to make the SharePoint search engine scale beyond 50 million documents in a single index. The argument will be to move to the FAST search engine instead.”
• New Gemini demo’s dissected -  0:40 The Sharepoint report centre. OK, so we can rate reports with stars, yeah that’s going to be useful… but other ‘social tools for collaboration’ might be interesting. 1:21 Seeing the report in a thin client. This is Excel Services, I think…? This will only make it harder to choose between Excel/Excel Services/Gemini on one hand and SSRS on the other. It would be nice if there was some kind of story linking the two.
• Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog available
• Office2010 the movie …
• Microsoft Office 2010 Discussion Forum

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint+2010,microsoft,office+2010

Community Day 2009 – don’t forget to register

Don’t miss the biggest Belgian Community event - Community Day 2009!  This year, Community Day will take place on Thursday 25th June 2009 in Utopolis, Mechelen.

The Community Day 2009 is supported by BESUG, BIWUG, IT-Talks, MVUG (Microsoft Virtualization User Group) , Pro-Exchange, SCUG, SQLUG, VBIB (Visual Basic in Belgium), Visug, WinSec, XNA-BUG.

Register now for free for this all day event on www.communityday.be !

Tags van Technorati: biwug,community,community+day,belgium,microsoft

PHP SDK for Windows Azure

Not really my cup of tea but still … http://phpazure.codeplex.com  - kudos to Maarten for another great initiative.

As part of Microsoft’s commitment to Interoperability, this open source project is an effort bridge PHP developers to Windows Azure. PHPAzure is an open source project to provide software development kit for Windows Azure and Windows Azure Storage – Blobs, Tables & Queues

PHP SDK for Windows Azure is an open source collaboration project driven by RealDolmen and Microsoft, based on a blog post of Maarten Balliauw.

Tags van Technorati: PHP,Azure,Microsoft,codeplex

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Microsoft Outlook

Since I need to work with Dynamics CRM quite a lot lately I decided to give Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Microsoft Outlook a spin. This is basically an addin which allows you to work with Dynamics CRM directly from within Outlook. Allthough I like the functionality a lot I’m under the impression that it slows down Outlook quite a lot and it definitely is a memory hog. I also noticed that when your CRM server has gone down, your CRM addin can completely lockup Outlook.

Anyone care to share tips and tricks about how to overcome these annoyances?

Tags van Technorati: CRM,Outlook,Microsoft

BIWUG presentations about SCOM, SharePoint and SharePoint Designer 2007 online

I just uploaded the presentations of yesterday’s BIWUG session to our site www.biwug.be (check out the Meeting presentations doclib). Thanks again to Alexandre from SCUG (System Center User Group) Belgium for the presentation. In case you missed it – the presentation should be available in the coming weeks on MSDN Chopsticks as well.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,scom,system+center,biwug,spd+2007,sharepoint+designer+2007

Tip of the week : search for documents in SharePoint Server 2007 from within Office or Internet Explorer

Sometimes small things make the difference between a good and a great platform. This is the first of a small tips which will make your daily interaction with SharePoint a lot more productive – let’s call it SharePoint Lifehacking

Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane

If you have a tip you want to share   - leave a comment.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,sharepoint+hacking,microsoft

How to configure the SharePoint people picker to search for users in other domains

The people picker will by default show the users in the forest that the SharePoint farm is installed (that is, the resource forest). According to the documentation Peoplepicker-searchadforests: stsadm property (Office SharePoint Server) – it should also display users in all two way trusted domains and forests but you can still use the stsadm command to be sure.

For one way trusted domains (or forests) you will need to do some extra stuff.

In a one way trust you will probably need to specify a user name and a password. This requires you to run the setapppassword operation first (For more details see Select users from multiple forest domains) - STSADM.exe -o setapppassword -password key. The key you specify here is used to encrypt the password you will use to establish the people picker connection. Note: run this on every WFE of your farm.

Next you need to add the forests/domains you are going to query using the people picker.

stsadm –o setproperty –pn peoplepicker-searchadforests –pv <list of forests or domains> -url <WebApp>,<LoginName>, <Password>

where <list of forests or domains> can be something like this "forest:contoso.corp.com;domain:bar.contoso.corp.com".

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,moss+2007,moss,active+directory,microsoft

BIWUG on SharePoint, SCOM and SPD

Another BIWUG event is planned on the 20th of may in the RealDolmen Offices in Huizingen - doors open at 18:00.

Agenda:

• Introduction: 18:30 - 18:45
• SharePoint and SCOM: 18:45-19:45
  • System Center Operations Manager 2007 is THE end to end Monitoring Solution. In this session we will discuss what you, as SharePoint guys, find relevant to be monitored. System Center Operations Manager uses a SharePoint Monitoring toolkit for monitoring the SharePoint Environment. This toolkit consists of a set of System Center Operations Manager 2007 management packs designed to help IT pros monitor their WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 and 2007 SP1 environments. These newly released packs were engineered to take advantage of SCOM 2007’s features, including new and improved reporting, additional actions, new views, and integrate IIS and SQL health rollup for a better understanding of the system-level dependencies of the SharePoint environments.And last but not least: System Center Operations Manager can also emulate end user experience by monitoring a Web Application. We will show you how to monitor a Web Application, even if it is require credentials, and how to record a browser session. If you have a SharePoint environment and don’t have a monitoring solution at the moment then you can’t miss this session!
  • Speaker: Alexandre Verkinderen, SCOM MVP
• Break: 19:45-20:00
• SharePoint Designer 2007 – Things you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask: 20h00-21h00
  • This session will show different tips and tricks about how you can use SharePoint Designer 2007 to customize SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. There is room for questions so we will foresee 15 minutes for an whiteboard discussion about what to do and what not to do with SharePoint Designer.
  • Speaker: Joris Poelmans, SharePoint MVP

We will also give away 2 copies of SharePoint Server 2007, The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly) to attendees with the most interesting tip or trick to use SPD2007.

Location

RealDolmen
Industriezone Zenneveld
A. Vaucampslaan 42
1654 Huizingen
T +32 2 362 55 55
F +32 2 362 55 99

Download the directions.

Register for the next event

 

Tags van Technorati: biwug,sharepoint,sharepoint+designer+2007,spd+2007,scom,system+center

Price and value

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." (Warren Buffett)

TaxOnWeb down …

It is that time of the year again …those dreaded brown enveloppes with tax forms just arrived in our mailbox. Just out of curiosity I decided to take a look at TaxOnWeb.be where Belgian citizens can submit their taxes online – unfortunately no luck – the site is down.

A Web 2.0 solution for dying plants

“Homegrown Terra-rists” Ignite Video - The Botanicalls system and applications use networked open source hardware and software to allow plants to communicate with people on people’s terms - using the telephone, text messages or twitter.

Tags van Technorati: LOL,fun,web2.0

Exploring Identity LifeCycle Manager 2007 R2

Update: see section about release data

A common issue in organisations is how to effectively and efficiently manage identities of users since data about users is maintained in a number of different systems (HR systems, AD,CRM, etc …) and needs to be pushed to a number of target systems such as SharePoint, Exchange, etc … Identity LifeCycle Manager 2007 is a product which provides an integrated and comprehensive solution for managing the entire lifecycle of user identities and their associated credentials.

The next version of Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager, Microsoft® Identity Lifecycle Manager "2" (ILM "2") is scheduled for release in the first quarter of calendar year 2009.

While the initial release was planned for first quarter of calendar year 2009 – I just found this blog post – ILM 2 Release Date put back a whole year.

I’m at TEC 2009 in Las Vegas at the moment, and it was officially announced by Microsoft today that the release date for ILM 2 is now Q1 2010, as opposed to the previously publicised date of “any day now”. We should be getting an RC1 version in Q3 this year.

Reasons why I wanted to explore ILM R2 (instead of sticking with the current version) - (For a detailed description take a look at Understanding ILM2 white paper)

• It provides a SharePoint-based user interface that enables system architects and IT administrators to create rules governing users and groups using natural language descriptors and easy-to-use menu-driven controls.
• ILM “2” provides powerful self-service capabilities for Office end-users, rich administrative tools and enhanced automation for IT professionals and .NET and WS-* based extensibility for developers.
• ILM "2" will also include a simplified configuration of synchronization with heterogeneous identity stores through synchronization rules. This will enable customized solutions to be delivered more cost effectively in less time as they require less specialized application knowledge or programming skills.
• New features in ILM "2" make it possible for users to manage their own identity information. IT can use ILM "2" to set policies to require workflows such as approvals for or notifications of these user-generated changes. For example, IT may choose to delegate management of mobile phone numbers to end users. Users would be able to use the ILM "2" portal to update this information. This helps keep identity data such as mobile phone numbers up to date so that users can be easily contacted in the process of doing business.
• ILM "2" includes rich, visual workflow management based on the Windows Workflow Foundation, which enables IT to quickly define, automate and enforce identity management policies. IT can use the integrated workflow in the approval / rejection process for actions such as creating accounts, or delegating tasks. For further extensibility and customization, ILM "2" will ship with WS-* based APIs that enable customization at both the platform and solution level. ILM "2" consumes Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) workflows, enabling organizations to import and reuse existing WF-based workflows in ILM "2".

First thing to do is setting up a test environment to check it out - installation requirements for ILM R2 (I skipped the Exchange Server installation) – notice the 64-bit requirement…

• Windows Server 2008 64-bit Standard or Enterprise Editions
• Active Directory Certificate Services (Remember: that you will not be able to change your computer name or domain settings after you have installed Active Directory Certificate Services)
  
• SQL Server 2008 64-bit Standard or Enterprise Editions
• Web Server (Internet Information Server 7)
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0
• Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 Framework
• Exchange 2007 SP1 Management Console (if provisioning Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes)
• Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP1
  Note: Only needed when using ILM “2” add-in for Office 2007

Tags van Technorati: identity+management,ILM2,ILM,ILM+2007,Identity+lifecycle+manager+2007,microsoft

Ferrari.com powered by SharePoint Server 2007

This looks really look – Ferrari.com – for some more public SharePoint Server websites check out Ian’s Top SharePoint WCM Web sites (with thumbnails)

PS Would have been even cooler if they had added some Silverlight stuff in there …

SharePoint Designer 2007 available as free download

From April 1st onwards SharePoint Designer (SPD) 2007 is available for free, customers with Software Assurance (SA) who bought SPD 2007 are entitled to Expression Web. An interesting statement in Q&A on SharePoint Designer 2007 licensing changes is the following

SharePoint Designer “v-next” will be available simultaneously with the release of the next version of SharePoint, and it will also be a free download.

Related resources:

• Video – SharePoint Designer 2007 (April 2009 announcement) with Tom Rizzo (Sr. Director of Product Management for SharePoint) and J.R. Arredondo (Sr. Product Manager for SharePoint Platform and Tools)
• Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Training (standalone edition)
• SharePoint Designer 2007 free download
• Letter to SharePoint Designer Customers
• Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (Wrox, Amazon) – excellent book and must read if you want to use SPD
• SharePoint Team Blog – SharePoint Designer available as a free download

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,sharepoint+designer+2007,spd+2007,microsoft

Try out Live Mesh

I must agree with Andrew – Get Hip to Mesh … it rocks  - I use it for synchronizing my Windows Live Writer Drafts folder on multiple computers – quite handy…

PS I haven’t tried Expanded Live Mesh for Mobile CTP but it definitely sounds cool as well.

Tags van Technorati: live+mesh,mesh,windows+live,blogging

SharePoint Server 2007, Office and Windows Server 2008

After 5 years of working with Windows Server 2003 and SharePoint using Windows Server 2008 is a little different – as well as the installation experience – for some interesting links – check out Installing SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008.

If you are setting it up as a demo machine on to which you also install Office 2007 remember that you will need to add the Desktop Experience feature without  it you will not be able to  save documents directly from your Microsoft Office application to a SharePoint Document Library.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,office+2007,windows+2008,moss+2007,moss,office,microsoft

BIWUG April 2009 – Change of agenda

Because of some unforeseen interference we needed to change our agenda. The session about System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) will be postponed to the next BIWUG session. Next week we will have a session from the guys of Ometa who will be talking about their experience with SharePoint and ERP integration and next a session about migrations with Tzunami. The BIWUG board apologizes for this last moment change – if you are interested you can still register.

Tags van Technorati: biwug,sharepoint,tzunami