Check them out, for example this page of PowerShell Vids called Script Center Videos for some reason not immediately obvious…
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/dd334524.aspx
TechNet Videos
Mary Jo Foley interviews Microsoft’s Betsy Aoki at
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=5712&tag=col1;post-5712
Her leadership is inspirational and one of the reasons I love this company.
You wouldn’t be reading this on http://blogs.technet.com/ if it were not for Betsy.
Have you heard? TechNet has launched a wiki for IT Pros and Devs – the TechNet Wiki (Beta). Why does this matter? If you think about the content development and distribution business in terms of the software business, then you can consider every un-met customer expectation as a “bug”. As relates to content, on the product teams at Microsoft we try to anticipate customer content needs, and fill them.
Working with community on this problem is starting to show some exciting signs of success. For example, I started a page on the wiki called Hyper-V: Gotchas, to collect some common Hyper-V customer issues, along with the fixes. Technically speaking, the information in this wiki article is not “new” – much of it is available on Microsoft websites, in different places, and with titles that conform to Microsoft content business guidelines. However, looking around community, I see that a lot of IT Pros refer to these issues as “gotchas”. On the wiki I can use this title, in the TechNet library – not so much.
So I captured a common issue here for IT Pros setting up the free-as-in-beer version of Hyper-V (Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2). There is no UI, so if you are unfamiliar with working on the command line (even if you are familiar) it is easy to mistype the OCSETUP command params – they are case sensitive.
But here’s the cool part – a community member came along and added use-case information I hadn’t thought to add!
“In fact, OCSetup.exe (as well as ServerManagerCmd.exe) is considered deprecated in Windows Server 2008 R2 (and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 also). You're supposed to use new Server Manager PowerShell cmd-lets. The good thing about these cmdlets is that they are not case sensitive (as everything in PowerShell).
But there may be special considerations when Server Manager PowerShell cmdlets are not enough. Consider the following scenario. You install Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) in Virtual Machine. You need to install Hyper-V Server Role to enable Item-level recovery (ILR) from backed up virtual machines. But installation of Hyper-V role normally requires presence of Hardware-Assisted Virtualization (HAV). This feature is not available in Virtual Machines. So you need to bypass this check. In order to do it you have to use another command-line tool that is also new to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and called “Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)”. And this tool is a case-sensitive one. So you should type the following command exactly as shown.
dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V”
This was easy to find, because the wiki mailed me the notification my article had been edited, and I clicked Compare Versions, which shows me the changes in green highlights.
It’s the wiki way.
Meanwhile, over on the PowerShell Survival Guide page, I started off on Feb 28 2010 with 228 words for around a dozen links to PS content. 27 days later, a dozen or so people have expanded this page to over 900 words of links (in two languages) that they know are useful (not some search engine guess…).
I’m cautiously optimistic this thing might work.
Ever wanted to help write a KB? Perhaps get the info a little faster? Now you can on the TechNet Wiki (Beta). Here’s an interesting ground-breaking example:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/biztalk-server-backup-job-does-not-delete-backup-files.aspx
The new TechNet Wiki (Beta) is (wide) open and folks are contributing some valuable content, and trying new things. As the content set grows, it becomes more and more challenging to find stuff. Inthe Beta, most folks are missing that the search bar at the top of the TN Wiki page is for searching the wiki. (noted for Vnext in the TNWIKI Forum).
You can also subscribe to lots of stuff using RSS, pipe that into Outlook, and then run rules on the folders to bring things to your attention.
While Outlook is running, it will periodically check the feeds to which you have subscribed and download any new content. Outlook shows an unread count for each feed next to the folder, so you can quickly see if there are new items you haven’t read yet. Because Outlook downloads the RSS feed data from onto your computer, you can access that data even while offline.
You can delete posts as you read them or keep posts of interest long after they have been removed from the feed. You can also categorize posts, move them to a separate folder, or flag them for follow up as you please.
On the wiki you can also subscribe to an article. When you click Post an article and create your content, by default the Email me updates to this page option is checked.
When you click Save, an email "subscription" is created and you will receive e-mail notifications to the address associated with your user name whenever the page is changed. This notice look like this.
To turn off these notifications, in the Options menu, click Unsubscribe to Article (Email),
Click the RSS button on your browser to copy the RSS feed for the content page you are on. For example, in IE8, it looks like this:
I use the RSS feed for a search:
If you use Add as Friend on another user, you will see the content they work on displayed on the Activity page of the Wiki homepage and <where else?>
To add a user as a friend, click on their username. Click Add as Friend.
You can subscribe to an RSS feed for a tag. Whenever you update your feed reader, you will get notification of new content with that tag.
A few years ago a Microsoft colleague names Jon Pincus talked about “Changing Grumbling Into Energy”. One of the most interesting things about the TechNet Wiki (Beta) is how liberating and energizing it is. See a problem with the documentation? Frustrated by how long it takes/how difficult it is to get it changed? Just change it your self on the wiki. Better yet, someone else might fix it first…
Can't find it? Write it! is on every wiki page, including the search, and is going on a t-shirt soon…
The TechNet Wiki (Beta) opened for early adopters 3 days ago. At the end of the first week there has been some great feedback and even greater content.On this page you can see the little widget that keeps track of the contributions.
Some interesting stories are developing. For example, I created a stub topic called “Windows PowerShell Survival Guide” on 2/28 (part of a SG series). This topic was intended to be a place to gather resources similar to the hard-copy Survival Guides we hand out at TechEd. Then I waited and watched to see what happened. The screenie below shows the 5 day results (all in green has been added by others):
400% increase in quality links, including TN Library links, links to video, Facebook, newsgroups, and local user group meetings.
Some important new Hyper-V content had published in the TechNet library:
Check it out.
Interesting developments on the TechNet Wiki (follow the wiki on Twitter): localized content.
What do you think? Leave comments.
Check it out, a wiki for IT Pros and Devs. Leave feedback.
There are some Hyper-V articles there already (some more complete than others – that’s the wiki way).
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=Hyper-V