David Strome's Blog

How do you find the information you need?

David Strome — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:00:00 GMT

If you've installed Exchange Server, there's a really good (ok, near 99.999%) chance at some point you've needed to look at the documentation to figure out how to do something. It's a big product. There's a lot of stuff you can do with it. But when you need to look something up - how do you do that? I'm interested in how you find information that you need to complete a task. My goal is to use information I gather from your feedback to help us as we think about the documentation experience in the next version of Exchange. The rest of this post me firing questions at you. :) It'd be really great if you could let me know your thoughts.

When you need to find information on how to do something or how something works, what's your first step?

Do you go to the Exchange Server TechNet Library and follow the table of contents (TOC - pictured right) to the node you need?
Do you use search? When you use search, do you go for a help topic in the product documentation on TechNet or do you go for the community blog, forum, etc? If you don't go for the product documentation, why is that?

When you look at the product documentation in TechNet, how important is the TOC to you? Do you use it? If you do, how does it help you to find the information you need?

If you arrive at a topic on TechNet from a search query, and that topic doesn't have the information you're looking for, what do you do next?

Do you click around in the TOC
Use the More Resources panel on the right-hand side of the page
Back out to the search query and try another search result?

How long do you stay in the documentation looking for the right answer before you back out to the search query?

Immediately
After clicking around a bit
Never (meaning you then use the TOC to find the relevant topic)?

We do have anonymous, generalized, site usage information that gives us some insight into some of these questions, but I'm really interested in how you find content, whether you find the TOC useful, and how often you use it. Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

The Exchange Management Shell Banner

David Strome — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:56:00 GMT

When we introduced the Exchange Management Shell with Exchange 2007, we included a banner every time the shell opens. This is what the banner looks like:

The top part of the banner includes common commands that should make your life easier if you're brand new to the shell. Commands to discover cmdlets, find help, read the Exchange Team blog, and so on. The bottom part of the banner includes a "Tip of the Day". Tips are usually short and contain examples of command syntax or how to take a complex task and turn it into a simple one-liner.

While we've included the banner with both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010, we've never actually received any feedback about whether people actually like it, use it, or if it even just gets in their way. So, this is your opportunity to let us (well, us being me since I own this bit of the product :) know whether you find it valuable. What can we do to improve either the top banner or the Tip of the Day, or both? Are there other often-used command examples that should be displayed in the top banner (keeping in mind that if we add something, an existing command likely needs to go due to space issues)? Are the commands in the Tip of the Day relevant to you? What types of tips do you wish you would see more of? Most importantly, have you ever discovered a command or way to do something via a Tip of the Day that you didn't know before? I want to know!

Please use the comments to leave any feedback you might have. Alternately, you can use the "Email Blog Author" link to the right to send me a message directly.

Multivalued Properties in Exchange 2010

David Strome — Sun, 29 May 2011 18:51:00 GMT

This blog article is based on a wiki page that I created for our Exchange 2010 SP2 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) private wiki site. This new syntax will make it into the Modifying Multivalued Properties topic when SP2 ships. Since the syntax also works with SP1 (the update just happens to be timed with SP2), I wanted to get this out. I hope you find it useful!

If you work with the Exchange Management Shell, you’re probably aware that some parameters on cmdlets can accept multiple values. These parameters are associated with “multivalued properties". If you’ve worked with multivalued properties, you’re probably also aware that it’s very easy to accidentally overwrite these properties when you attempt to add a value to them. That’s because the behavior in the shell is generally to overwrite the existing value in a property, rather than add to it. For example, assume that you have a distribution group, and you’ve configured David, Chris, and Susan to be able to manage them:

Get-DistributionGroup Sales | Format-List ManagedBy

ManagedBy : {Contoso.com/Users/david, Contoso.com/Users/susan, Contoso.com/Users/chris}

And now you want to allow a fourth user, Gary, to manage the distribution list. So you go and run the following command:

Set-DistributionGroup Sales -ManagedBy Gary

To your dismay, this is what you see when you re-run the Get-DistributionGroup cmdlet from above:

ManagedBy : {Contoso.com/Users/gary}

When you ran the Set-DistributionGroup cmdlet, the value that you specified with the ManagedBy parameter overwrote the existing value of that property. You probably didn’t want to do that. Previously there was a way to get around this by storing values in a temporary variable, adding a value to that, and then hefting all of that back to the actual property (see Modifying Multivalued Properties for all the gory details). Removing values from a multivalued property was just as cumbersome.

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1, however, there’s a much easier way to add and remove values from a multivalued property. With this new syntax, you simply specify the syntax, along with the value or values to add or remove to or from the property, as a value on the parameter when you run the cmdlet. Here’s the new syntax:

To add a value:

@{Add="<value1>", "<value2>", "<value3>"}

To remove a value:

@{Remove="<value1>", "<value2>", "<value3>"}

The syntax is then specified as a parameter value on a cmdlet:

Set-SomeCmdlet -Parameter @{Add="<value1>", "<value2>", "<value3>"}

If we use the example with the distribution above again and want to add Gary, we would use the following command:

Set-DistributionGroup Sales -ManagedBy @{Add="Gary"}

Now when you run the following command again:

Get-DistributionGroup Sales | Format-List ManagedBy

Here’s what you’ll see:

ManagedBy : {Contoso.com/Users/david, Contoso.com/Users/gary, Contoso.com/Users/susan, Contoso.com/Users/chris}

As you can see, Gary’s been added to the ManagedBy property and the other users remain. Now, let’s assume you want to remove David from the ManagedBy property and add Gerald at the same time. You can combine Add and Remove operations in the same command by separating the Add and Remove commands with a semi-colon. Here’s the syntax to use:

@{Add="<value1>", "<value2>"; Remove="<value1>", "<value2>"}

So to remove David and add Gerald at the same time, you’d use the following command:

Set-DistributionGroup Sales -ManagedBy @{Remove="David"; Add="Gerald"}

When you run the following command:

Get-DistributionGroup Sales | Format-List ManagedBy

You’ll see that David has been removed from the property and Gerald has been added.

Hopefully you’ll agree that this new syntax makes it much simpler to manage multi-valued properties. Of course, you can continue to replace all the values stored in a multi-valued property by assigning new values directly.

Exchange 2010 permissions management in SP1

David Strome — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:28:00 GMT

If you're new to Exchange 2010 SP1 and need to learn how to assign permissions to your administrators or other specialist users (such as employees who perform records searches), check out Understanding Permissions. This topic walks you setting up permissions that the vast majority of Exchange administrators will use. You don't need to know about management role assignments, scopes, and so on, in order to make use of a wide variety of options we provide you out of the box to customize Exchange 2010 SP1 to your permissions model. With SP1 you can use the RBAC editor in the Exchange Control Panel to easily add and remove members to and from role groups, and also add and remove roles to and from role groups. You can even create your own role groups and also manage role assignment policies, all without having to open the Exchange Management Shell.

If you're coming from Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2003, see these topics for information on how permissions between Exchange 2010 and those versions are handled:

Understanding Permissions Coexistence with Exchange 2003
Understanding Permissions Coexistence with Exchange 2007

As always, if you want to go beyond what we've provided out of the box, you can read all about advanced permissions extensibility available with Exchange 2010 SP1 in Understanding Role Based Access Control.

I'm always looking for feedback on RBAC content so please send me a message if you have any suggestions or comments. Don't forget that you can always send feedback via the feedback link in the top right-hand corner of any topic. We look at every piece of feedback we receive.

David.

Exchange Server 2010 Forum

David Strome — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:18:00 GMT

If you've downloaded and installed Exchange Server 2010 (if you haven't, why not? :) see my post below for information on how to get your hands on it), be sure you head on over to the Exchange 2010 forums. There, you can talk with other people like yourself who are trying out Exchange 2010. Talk about what you like (or don't like), offer help and ask for help if you need some. MVPs and Exchange product team members are also there to help you.

Have fun!

Exchange 2010 Beta Available

David Strome — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:45:00 GMT

Exchange 2010 Beta bits, get em while they're hot!

Exchange 2010 is available now for download. We've worked for two and a half years to create the most advanced e-mail system available. There are dozens of new features in every area of the product - and entirely new feature areas that are just plain cool - mailbox, high availability and resiliency, compliance, permissions, end-user self-management, distribution group self-management...the list can go on and on.

Go to the Exchange 2010 download page and grab the beta bits now. It's a 360 day evaluation. There are several installation prerequisites you'll need to install first. You can find more information about those prereqs on the Exchange 2010 Prerequisites page.

You can learn about all the new features of Exchange 2010 on the What's New page.

Finally, check out the documentation we've put together for you. It's a beta, so content is still being written. Please make use of the feedback button and tell us what you think of the docs. The beta is as much about getting the documentation right as it is about getting the code right. We need your feedback!

Over the next while I'll be posting more about Exchange 2010 in general but specifically about my feature areas - Role Based Access Control - the new, highly flexible and extremely powerful permissions model in Exchange 2010, and the Exchange Management Shell - the command line interface first introduced in Exchange 2007. We've made some pretty interesting changes to the shell infrastructure that you should find interesting.

Now get going and get downloading! :)

Internet Routing Pandemonium

David Strome — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:28:21 GMT

Here’s an interesting blog post explaining how a single routing error made by a small ISP in Europe caused a world-wide “Internet meltdown” a couple of days ago. Basically a bad routing update was propagated amongst routers across the net, many routers choked on the update and stopped talking to its neighbors. Multiply by thousands across the globe and we have a problem. Read the article for a fascinating explanation of the problem and how fragile our little Internet may be.

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Live Search Mobile

David Strome — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:13:49 GMT

I ran across a nifty little utility for my cell phone over the weekend: Live Search Mobile. It’s a small application that you can install on Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices that

provides a slick front-end to the Live Search service. When you open the app, it tries to determine your location automatically. For me its consistently located me to within a block or two without having to turn on GPS. You can then select from a bunch of different options – Movies, Gas Prices, Traffic, etc. Clicking on an icon brings up search results based on your location. I find the movies really useful given that we practically live in movie theatres. Clicking on Movies opens up a page that has two tabs, one that lists the theatres in your area, the other that shows all of the movies playing. I use the theatre tab which lets me browse through each location and pick what movie i want to see. Show times, length, rating and reviews are all shown.

While you’re in the context of a particular entry you can perform a location based search on that entry. So, for example you can choose a movie theatre to go to and then search for restaurants around that location to find a place to go for dinner. Nifty.

In addition to the options on the main page, you can also click on Categories to view several dozen different categories from Restaurants to Arts and Entertainment and Fitness. As with movies, you can drill down into the details of each entry and perform related searches, bring up phone numbers, or get directions from your location to the place you want to go via turn-by-turn GPS (and grab traffic info while you’re at it).

If you don’t want to navigate through menus to find what you want, you can also click on Speak and say what you’re looking for. The client has surprisingly good voice recognition. Most of the time it goes immediately to a search for the term I want but if it needs to it’ll display a list of possible choices to choose from.

Live Search for Windows Mobile is available in the US, the UK, France and Italy. If you don’t have a supported device or you aren’t in a location that is currently covered by Live Search Mobile, you can always use the mobile version of the online Live Search service at http://m.live.com.

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Exchange 14 Intro Video

David Strome — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:19:14 GMT

OK this is exciting for me – I’ve been waiting a couple years to post something…anything…on the next version of Exchange. Finally I can :)

KC Lemson and Jim Lucey from the Exchange team provided an introductory look at “Exchange 14” (E14) today in a post and video on the Exchange Team blog. This is the first look at E14 that we’ve provided to the public. E14 is the first release of the product that embraces not only on-premises, which are the traditional deployments that Exchange is known for – physical deployments of Exchange servers in organizations, but also embraces services - which offers Exchange over the internet as a web application. The post talks a bit about our Exchange Labs service that we’re currently testing with our Live@EDU customers.

In the video, Jim walks you through the new web interface that allows you to access everything you’d expect – e-mail, calendar, and so on. While it’s commonplace in the enterprise now, the collaborative features of Exchange becoming available to educational institutions is significant. KC is right – why sit outside the prof’s office for hours for a few minutes of face time when you can schedule an appointment over e-mail? Obviously that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Jim then gives you a peek at the new web options and administration interface for users and administrators. Individual users can perform self management of their own account (want to create your own distribution group or update your personal info? Go for it!) while administrators can manage mailboxes, contacts, etc. Of course, Outlook is there as is Windows Mobile and ActiveSync. And Windows PowerShell will naturally be part of the administration model too.

We have a lot more in store for you in this release of Exchange. More videos will be posted over time giving you more peeks at what’s coming. Watch the videos as they come out and be sure to send in feedback on the Exchange Team blog with what you think of this new version.

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Exchange 2007 “How Do I?” Videos

David Strome — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 01:51:20 GMT

If you want to learn more about Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, check out the “How Do I?” videos that we’ve published in the Exchange TechCenter library. These videos combine narration and step-by-step procedures recorded on test servers. There are some great videos on how to:

More videos will be posted in the future on a variety of topics so check back regularly.

More Windows 7 Info

David Strome — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:06:27 GMT

Be sure to read the release notes to learn about known issues with the current beta release. In particular, be sure that you read about the issue that impacts MP3 files that are be accessed by the Windows 7 installation, either on the local computer or on your network. View the MP3 knowledge base article to download the fix to correct that issue. It’s strongly recommended that you install the fix, or perform one of the workarounds specified in the release notes, before you allow Windows 7 to access MP3s or corruption of the MP3 files could occur.

You can visit the Microsoft TechNet Windows 7 forums to talk to others about Windows 7 and receive support offered by Microsoft MVPs and subject matter experts. Visit the Windows 7 tab on the Springboard Series website for lots of information on how Windows 7 can help you in your organization.

Windows 7 Beta Released

David Strome — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:33:14 GMT

Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta today. Head on over to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx to download your copy. You can choose 32 or 64 bit in English, German, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi. You might need to try a few times – looks like the servers are getting lots of traffic so the site’s slower than usual. Keep trying! Only the first 2.5 million people can download a copy. If you have TechNet or MSDN subscriptions, head over to those sites and download a copy there. They’re probably not as busy right now.

Keep in mind that this is beta software so all the typical disclaimers apply. The beta will expire on August 1, 2009. Visit the Windows 7 Beta FAQ for more information.

Windows PowerShell v2.0 CTP3 and Windows Remote Management 2.0 CTP3

David Strome — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:50:20 GMT

The Windows PowerShell and Windows Remote Management (WinRM) teams recently released updates to their products. Windows PowerShell v2.0 has many new features and improvements over v1.0. The most notable is the integrated scripting environment (ISE). The ISE is a new graphical PowerShell host that, in my opinion, makes Windows PowerShell much more usable for scripting and also for novice command line users. The things I find the most useful about the ISE are:

Intelligent formatting – the ISE colors the various command line components – cmdlet names, parameter names and values, etc like in C# and other languages. This makes it much easier to read your scripts
Tabbed runspaces – You can open new tabs which are each their own isolated runspace. This can be useful if you want to isolate your environments for testing or if you want to use WinRM to connect to remote runspaces.
Tabbed scripts within runspaces – Not only can you have multiple tabbed runspaces but within each runspace you can have multiple scripts open in their own tabs.
Interactive command window – While you are working on your script in the script window, you can try out commands in the command window without having to worry about accidentally changing your script. Or, if you just want to use the ISE as an interactive Windows PowerShell host, you can minimize the script window and just use the command window. I find myself using this over the original text-based console. There’s more screen real estate and the ISE also accepts unicode characters unlike the text-based window.
Dedicated output window – Any output that is displayed is sent to the output window.
Lots of other stuff – The ISE gives you lots of additional features that aren’t available in the text-based console – easy cut and paste, F1 help, a debugger, and more.

WinRM also shipped at the same time as Windows PowerShell. WinRM is a transport protocol that you can use with Windows PowerShell to allow a local Windows PowerShell session to communicate and run cmdlets on a remote Windows PowerShell host. Very useful if you need to manage multiple remote computers.

Give Windows PowerShell v2.0 CTP3 and WinRM 2.0 CTP3 a try by downloading them from the following locations:

PowerShell - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135123
WinRM - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=135126

Be aware, however, that Windows PowerShell v2.0 isn’t supported with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. You must continue to use Windows PowerShell v1.0 to manage your Exchange 2007 server.

You can visit the Windows PowerShell blog here - http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/

The CTP3 versions of both Windows PowerShell and WinRM are included in the Windows 7 Beta release that comes out on Friday 1/9/2009. You can find out how you can get Windows 7 by visiting the Windows Team Blog.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

David Strome — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:40:03 GMT

Oh man, did I ever do a lot of umm, 'testing' today with the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. I've spent a few hours bouncing around to many web sites seeing how Beta 2 handles the various designs, coding styles, etc. If you used Beta 1, you probably used that 'IE7 rendering' button nearly instantly. Beta 2 handles sites MUCH better now. So far I haven't run into any problems with rendering, all of the various elements work properly, etc. A couple of things I like right off the bat:

color-coded tabs - I'm a tab junkie. I have a dozen tabs open at any one time. Beta 2 groups them together now using color to indicate which tabs are related to each other, and also places them together. This is really nice if I'm researching something and don't have to deal with reading each tab to figure out if I'm in the right place.
accelerators - These are pretty nifty. Highlight some text, and a little blue arrow appears. When you click on the arrow you are given choices of several tasks to perform using the highlighted text: search the web, open a map, look up a definition, etc. I use the defaults right now but fully expect 3rd parties to load this up to provide easy access to all sorts of stuff (hint hint Facebook).
InPrivate browsing - This is a pretty interesting idea. I honestly probably won't use it much but I do think it'll be extremely useful if I'm using a friend's computer or a public terminal. It lets you browse without storing history, cookies, temporary Internet files, etc, on the computer. No footprint remains of your session.
suggested sites - OK so I've been using this 'world wide web' thing since 1993, around the time the first popular graphical browser, Mosaic, was released (I still have a place in my heart for Lynx). Yet I can never think of interesting stuff to look at online. I bounce around a few sites but that's about it. Suggested sites will hopefully open my web world a bit. If you enable it, it looks at the sites you visit and suggest sites that might be interesting to you. I'm going to watch this over time and see exactly how good it is at finding interesting sites. Hopefully in the process I'll find some new favorite sites.
address bar - To make it easier to see if you've been sent to a site that isn't legit, the address bar now makes the domain name of the web site stand out better. If you don't recognize the site, leave. Also, if you click on down arrow on the right of the bar, the list now includes recently visited sites, favorites, favorites and feeds. I always forget about my favorites so I really like this.

There are lots of other features but I haven't played with them yet. To see what the IE team says about the new beta, go to the IE team blog. There are also a bunch of videos that have been produced to show off IE8. To see them, go to the IE8 videos page.If you want to go and install beta 2 right now (you know you want to), go to the IE8 web site. Unlike Beta 1, Beta 2 is a version that the general public, rather than developers, should feel comfortable installing.

Here's a general overview video about IE8

Power Pack 1 available for Windows Home Server

David Strome — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:52:00 GMT

The Windows Home Server team released Power Pack 1 today. It's been a long road for the Home Server team and I have to imagine, a pretty big learning experience. We always want to release the best software we can but being part of the beta audience for Home Server within the company, I could see the true commitment and devotion to making this the best release possible. That team deserves a huge congratulations for a job really well done. And now we get to enjoy the results :)

If you want to install Power Pack 1 right away (and why wouldn't you?), head over to the Microsoft Download Center and grab yourself a copy. Follow the instructions to install it. If you want to wait (but you don't want to, do you?), PP1 will be installed on your server via Windows Update in August. Either way, once you install it you'll have all of benefit from all this stuff:

Windows Vista 64bit support
Shared folder backup to hard disks (more below on this one)
Connector software auto-update (really helpful if you have more than a couple clients)
Segment Remote Access users (allow some to access computers only, some to access shared folders only, both, etc)
Drag and drop file uploads and download multiple files more easily in Remote Access
Improved power management
A fix for the data corruption problem
Lots of other improvements

I've been running PP1 for quite a while and it's been rock-solid on my server. Aside from the 64bit support I've used all of the features listed above and they've made life a lot more simple. I actually used Home Server to transfer data more securely to and from my tax guy this year - it was simple enough for him to log in, see only the things he should see, get the data and transfer. Nice!

Something I've wanted since Home Server was released was a local backup. I've been using Jungle Disk to back up my shared folder data to the Amazon S3 service, which is nice, but I only really want to use that in the event of a catastrophic failure. It'd be much simpler (and faster) to be able to restore from a local copy of the data. Power Pack 1 lets you install a hard disk (external disks are better in my opinion) and indicate that it's a back up drive. You can then select the shared folders you want to back up and back them up to the drive. If you use an external drive, you can then dismount and remove the drive and store it in a safe place. I know some people at work use multiple backup disks and keep a disk 'offsite' (usually by taking a disk to work). This way they always have a safe copy of the data, including a copy not in the same location. Right now I just have a single 250GB external disk that I back up to regularly and use the Jungle Disk backups as an insurance policy if the house burns down. I didn't get this kind of data redundancy even at my last job. After all, family pictures are more important than budget files, right? :)

Head on over to the Windows Home Server blog for the official announcement and be sure to get a copy of Power Pack 1.

End of an Era

David Strome — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:02:26 GMT

You think some things will never end...you think your parents will live forever, that a relationship will never fade, that you have all the time in the world. And then reality hits. Today that reality hit for me again when Bill Gates officially ended his 33 year full-time job at Microsoft.

Back in the early 80's my parents bought an IBM PC. I think it had an 8086 processor in it. It had a monochrome monitor, two 5 1/4 drives, a Fujitsu dotmatrix printer, and DOS. The moment my dad powered the computer on and that little A:> prompt came up I was hooked for life. I was too young to really do much with the machine for a while so I watched my parents do work on it. How could they type stuff into it and have it display an answer? I had to find out. I was tinkering with DOS and BASIC and all sorts of other programs, understanding the file system, figuring out how the peripherals worked.

Back then my favorite game was F-15 Strike Eagle. I can't remember if it ran on the 8086 or if we'd upgraded to the 286 by then. It was an awesome game where you flew around in a virtual cockpit and aimed at little triangles as targets. The engine sound was this godawful high screeching sound that came out of the PC speaker. Click here for a screen shot of the game. (We've come a weeee bit since then) We'd collected more programs and even a modem. I was mesmerized by the fact that I could play a game on it one time, my mom could type up a report, and my dad could phone into his computer at the office to work with the mine control software. And I could write little programs to do simple things like calculate data, store it on a drive, print it out, etc. I think it was DOS 4 or DOS 6 that introduced the menu system. I set up the computer so that my family simply had to make easy choices to launch their favorite apps without having to figure out the file system. I loved DOS. I was a master of Edlin and batch files :) It felt powerful to be able to simply life for my family.

When we bought our first copy of Windows I realized where DOS and Windows came from - this company called Microsoft. And that Bill Gates ran it. I became even more fascinated with computing, seeing what plans they had. Dealings with IBM, this new graphical interface that let you manipulate stuff as little pictures, making it easy for my mom to create docs and pictures, eventually OS/2 and Windows 3. This Gates guy seemed so incredibly smart and forward thinking. I remember telling my parents at some point to buy Microsoft stock in the late 80s. They obviously didn't because I'm working :). oh well. But back then I knew that something big was happening, Microsoft was at the center of it, and I wanted to be part of it. My goal in life from that point was to work for Bill. I considered him then, and still do now, a visionary.

Fast forward a decade and a half during which I'd had a few jobs (including an obligatory dot-bomb job were my wife and I both got laid off within four days of each other right after New Years - from separate companies), moved cities, etc. Microsoft released Windows 95, Office, Exchange and SQL Server, Windows NT, and more. Exchange Server eventually became the thing that would get me in the door. After almost two decades of waiting I would finally be able to work with people who'd really revolutionized how we live. I figured I'd spend the next several years in the company with Bill at the helm.

Then came June 2006. Less than a year after I'd been hired - Bill announced he'd retire in two years. Umm. DOH! Just like people expect your parents to always be there, I kind of always expected Bill to be in charge. June 2006 was a pretty big shock but 2008 was still kind of far off, right? Then today strolled by. Cue reality. Up until now, Microsoft was Bill Gates. From today forward, Microsoft is heading out on its own. We have amazing leadership in Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie and others. I'm confident that the next 33 years will be as equally incredible as the last 33. And I hope to be part of the company for that entire time. But still, it'll be just a little different with Bill gone. It really is the end of an era.

Here are a few stories and videos of Bill's time at Microsoft:

Surface in Las Vegas

David Strome — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:22:09 GMT

I might have to go back to Vegas again :) Harrah's in Las Vegas just launched Microsoft Surface in the iBar at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. They've added several apps to the Surface that are really tailored for social interaction in the bar. From the video below you can see examples of the various games and apps you'll be able to use when you sit down for a drink at the Surface. One of the most interesting things is something called Flirt. At first I thought it was just some kind of marketing thing but Flirt actually lets you bring someone up on your Surface using cameras located around the bar, chat with the people you see, send them photos, and more. It'll be interesting to see how people react to that!

If you're not going to be in Vegas anytime soon and want to play with a Surface, wander on over to Surface-equipped AT&T store.

Exchange Server 2007 Community Annotation

David Strome — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:54:21 GMT

A few days ago we enabled community annotation on our Exchange Server 2007 documentation (Exchange Server 2003 documentation got this a few months ago). Community annotation enables you to add your own mark to our docs so that you can share things you've learned with your fellow Exchange admins. Find a great way to set something up? Learn something new that you haven't found in the docs? Add it all to the community content section of the Exchange docs and let the rest of the world know!

You can add community content to any Exchange Server 2007 or Exchange Server 2003 topic at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996058(EXCHG.80).aspx.

Find details about community annotation on the MS Exchange Team blog.

If you have feedback on how the community content feature works, feel free to send a message via the contact page.

Exchange Demo Day

David Strome — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:24:55 GMT

I can't wait for Exchange 14 to hit the streets. The Exchange team recently held a demo day where we all got together to see all the new features being packed into the next release of Exchange. That weekend I got Exchange 14 up and running on my home network handling my personal email.

Demo days are events we hold every few months in Exchange where people from each of the teams get up in front of close to 500 of their peers and demo their features. It's a mass migration from building 34 to Kodiak in building 33 driven mainly by the general anticipation of seeing what everyone else has been working on for months. And free food and lattes. New features are great but when we're in there for four hours - we combined the demo day with an all hands meeting - free stuff rocks. I really like these days because it's pretty rare that the entire team gets into one room and the management gives a really good overview of the state of the business. I get to see people I haven't been able to talk to in a while too...and I get free food.

As you can imagine, demo day is pretty interesting. For presenters, imagine walking up to the front of a huge, packed, auditorium, two massive screens on either side of the podium, projecting your demo machine's screen - running code that was checked into the product a few hours ago. And asking it to work perfectly :) Oh, and the VP is watching it all. No pressure. For the audience, it's a combination of getting to see amazing new features mixed with a nervous anticipation. Will it work or will it go down in flames? :)

I wish I could tell you everything we saw. The team has done an amazing job and I personally think that what we have in store for you in Exchange 14 is on par with what we gave you in Exchange 2007. Although if you can't wait until we release, why not take a look over at the exCHANGE your Career web site and come work with us? :)

WorldWide Telescope Beta Released

David Strome — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:05:50 GMT

Microsoft Research released a beta version of WorldWide Telescope last night. This is the amazing program I talked about recently that lets you explore the sky like never before. Take a look at a couple of screen shots I've taken:

Binary star system

Supernova remnant cross-faded midway between a color sky survey and X-ray

I've spent far too much time over the past while playing with this. Do yourself a favor and head over to the WorldWide Telescope web site and click on Experience It to try out the beta. You'll love it!

Microsoft Surface at AT&T Retail Stores

David Strome — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:03:16 GMT

On Thursday Microsoft and AT&T launched Microsoft Surface at five of AT&T's retail stores in four cities across the US: New York, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco. The deployments at the AT&T stores enable you to view wireless coverage maps, view phone information, compare phones with each other and more, just by placing the devices on the Surface. If you want to experience Surface, make your way on over to the following AT&T retail stores and give it a whirl:

New York
381 Madison Ave
New York, NY 10017

350 Park Ave
New York, NY 10022

Atlanta
3429 Lenox Road NE
Atlanta, GA 30326

San Antonio
13127 San Pedro Ave
San Antonio, TX 78216

San Francisco
1206 El Camino Real
San Bruno, CA 94066

Check out the following stories and videos about the AT&T Surface launch:

Microsoft Surface Arrives at AT&T Stores
Microsoft Surface Makes Its Real-World Debut
Hands on with AT&T's Version of the Surface Table from Microsoft
Microsoft Surface Hits Stores
Multi-Grope: Interacting with Microsoft Surface at the AT&T Store

I really hope that an AT&T in Seattle gets Surface in the near future :) I've played with Surface a bit on the units we've placed in buildings around the campus but it'll be really fun to go out and see one actually implemented, doing what they're meant to do. It'll also be great to see people's reactions to this new way of computing.

Exchange Server 2007 Cmdlet Examples

David Strome — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:16:40 GMT

If you're new to Windows PowerShell and Exchange Server 2007, take a look at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/message/exch2007/default.mspx?mfr=true. The link goes to the Exchange Server 2007 Script Repository which contains a few dozen cmdlet and script examples for common administrative tasks. It's a really useful resource if you're just getting started.

Take a look and if you have any suggestions for examples we should add, be sure to send me a note via the Email page or post a comment.

Really Cool New Toy

David Strome — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:55:29 GMT

It was my birthday last week (Happy Birthday to meee) and my wife got me a few things...some books, a Sirius radio setup for my car (channel 14 kicks butt) and...a little RC helicopter! Everyone who knows me knows I'm a complete gadget freak so naturally I was on the ceiling happy. Ripped the box open, tried to plug in batteries and got the thing going. So cool!! The cat HATES it but that just means I love it more :) Check out the video and the go do yourself a favor and pick yourself up one. They're a complete blast!

Now I just have to take it to work and buzz my boss and fly it around the atrium :)

Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Single Label Domain Update Now Available

David Strome — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:26:20 GMT

Ed Beck announced that we have released the English language version of the prerequisite check file for Exchange Server SP1 setup that will allow you to install Exchange 2007 SP1 in a single label Active Directory domain. You can find all the instructions on how to download and install the prerequisite check file at the Exchange Team blog. The English language update can only be installed on English language versions of Exchange Server 2007 but future localized versions will be released in the near future.

As mentioned previously in Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and Single Label Domain Names, we recommend that you move away from single label domains. The next major version of Exchange Server after Exchange Server 2007 SP1 will not support single label domains.

Exchange Management Shell Help Feedback

David Strome — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:20:32 GMT

As you know we're working on Exchange 14, the next version of Exchange Server. As part of that work we're taking a look at how we write content for all of the features of Exchange. I'm working on defining the guidelines for how we write the content for the Exchange Management Shell - what overview and procedural topics need to be written to what content we put into the individual cmdlet topics and how its displayed to you.

I'm really interested in what you think of the Exchange Management Shell help in Exchange Server 2007. What do you like about it? What do you, well, hate? Is it how it's displayed? Or are we missing something important that would make your life easier if we'd included it? Or did you discover something that just made things 'click' for you?

I want to know about it. Put together a wish list or list of things you love (or both!) and send them to me. I'll be taking your feedback and seeing how it can help us to improve the E14 product documentation. Some things will be easier to do and some will likely be harder so I can't promise everything you send to me can be addressed. But I will take everything you say seriously and work to align the shell help to meet your expectations.

The best way to send your feedback to me is to click on the Email link on the left side of this site. Or you can copy this URL into your address bar: http://blogs.technet.com/dstrome/contact.aspx. Please pass this blog post on to your colleagues and ask them to send their feedback too. The more the better.

Thanks!

David.

PS. Don't forget to send feedback on individual topics in the Exchange Server 2007 documentation library located here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124558.aspx. Click on the "Click to Rate and Give Feedback" link in the top right corner of the page. Every comment and rating you submit with that tool gets submitted directly into a database that we continually monitor. That link is the best way to get attention on topics that need work or to send kudos on topics you especially like.