Vedant Kulshreshtha

SharePoint 2010 101 Code Samples now available

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:07:00 GMT

SharePoint 2010 101 Code Samples are now available on Microsoft Developer Network's Samples website. A extremely useful resource for developers.

SharePoint 2010 101 Code Samples

Each code sample is part of the SharePoint 2010 101 code samples project. These samples are provided so that you can incorporate them directly in your code. Each code sample consists of a standalone project created in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

SharePoint ‘Strong Positive’ on Gartner’s Enterprise Search MarketScope

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:30:00 GMT

The new 2011 Enterprise Search MarketScope by Gartner was recently published (link: MarketScope for Enterprise Search). Microsoft is again ranked a ‘Strong Positive,’ the highest ranking given on the report.

Gartner indicates that “Microsoft has surged to a leadership position by offering effective, basic search and more sophisticated search for inward- or outward-facing applications.” Microsoft is also credited with strong customer momentum, a broad product line beyond search that makes it attractive for projects with a larger footprint, strong investments in federation and effective social search that allows users to collaborate on information gathering.

More information on Microsoft Search products is available here: Product Information and Enterprise Search Tech Center. Watch this video where Evan Richman, Group Product Manager for SharePoint, talks about some of the new search features and functionality in SharePoint 2010 ...

Troubleshooting Excel Web Access errors

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 06:05:00 GMT

Office Web Apps give users a browser-based viewing and editing experience by providing a representation of an Office document in the browser. When a user clicks on a document stored in a SharePoint document library, the document opens directly in the browser. The document appears in the browser similar to how it appears in the Office client application. The Web app also provides many of the same editing features as an Office client application.

When you try to open a Excel workbook in Excel Web App, you might see an error message that tells you the workbook contains features that are not supported by Excel Web App. Unsupported features are contents or functionality in a workbook that prevents the workbook from being opened for editing or, in some cases, viewing in the browser.

You can click on the "Details" link to view the message details and then the "Learn more about unsupported features" link to view information on the unsupported features.

Most common reasons are use of Comments, Worksheets with protection, Information Rights Management (IRM), OLE objects and, data validation in Excel sheets.

If you get the “Unsupported Features” message. you can use the <<Open>> command to open the document in Excel client application. Office Web Apps uses an add-on in your browser to open documents in your desktop program. If the Open command doesn’t work, then the only option is to download the document to your computer, work on it there, and then upload it back to the SharePoint library.

The main Office Help articles to refer to are:

Keyboard Shortcuts

There are lot of keyboard shortcuts provided for Office Web Apps. In case you are not getting the one you need, refer to following articles:

Upgrading to Office Web Apps SP1

Office Web Apps SP1 provides the latest updates for Office Web Apps, please refer to the Description of Office Web Apps SP1 and Patching Office Web Apps to SP1 and June CUs including SharePoint Server 2010 for upgrade information in case you were waiting for one of these features. Before upgrading, do not forget to read Known issues when you install Office 2010 SP1 and SharePoint 2010 SP1 :-)

Microsoft Media Platform Content Manager

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:13:00 GMT

Many organizations are going for a Video Sharing solution based on SharePoint technologies for their Intranet and also for Internet web properties. In SharePoint 2007 era, the most popular choice was the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS) available on CodePlex. On SharePoint 2010, due to out-of-the-box capabilities related to Rich Media management, much richer media sharing solutions can be built easily.

If you try searching for media related solutions on Microsoft Platform, there are lot of different technologies and solutions available. I am sharing one which would help meet most of the requirements for a typical media sharing solution.

The core of the solution is built on the Microsoft Media Platform. The Microsoft Media Platform provides a comprehensive set of functions to support encoding, delivering and playing rich media to virtually any type of network connected device. At the highest level, the Media Platform provides out of the box capabilities for each step of a video workflow:

Encode - Encode and transcode live and archived media assets using industry standard H.264 and VC-1 codecs.
Deliver - Deliver media via traditional streaming, dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP, and intelligent progressive download.
Watch - Create immersive end-user media experiences on PC and Mac using Silverlight, HTML 5 or native client technologies with advanced playback functions and support for closed captions.

It is built on following core technologies:

IIS Media Services -The server component that delivers content across the Internet and private networks using IIS Smooth Streaming, a standards-based technology for dynamic, adaptive streaming over HTTP.
Expression Encoder - A streamlined video production tool for creating, encoding, editing, and publishing content.
Silverlight - The web-based rich client development platform for delivering engaging and interactive cross-platform experiences.
PlayReady - A content access and protection technology approved by industry heavyweights such as DECE and major content owners.

and also provides some frameworks which are open source projects from Microsoft that augment the functionality of the core Media Platform:

Player Framework (formerly Silverlight Media Framework) - Enables developers to quickly deploy a robust, scalable, customizable media player across operating systems and devices.
Video Editor (formerly Rough Cut Editor) - Simplifies the editing and publishing process of media assets, enabling real-time, time-code-accurate, browser-based video editing.
Audience Insight - Provides real-time insight into media streaming applications through key performance indicators (KPIs) for decision-making and contextual business analysis.
Content Manager aka Microsoft Media Platform Content Manager - Provides content management system (CMS) capabilities and workflow management for creating live and on-demand IIS Smooth Streaming events, managing, transcoding and publishing media, and ad insertion.

The Microsoft Media Platform Content Manager (MMPCM) is an open source solution that can be used by enterprises, educational institutions and broadcasting companies to manage their video assets. This lightweight and highly-customizable solution is built on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft media-related technologies, including Silverlight 4, IIS Media Services and Expression Encoder 4. The MMPCM infrastructure enables users to:

Define, edit and approve or reject video assets
Transcode video into different formats
Broadcast Live Events
Insert Ads on Live Event transmissions
Edit videos online right within MMPCM
Publish videos to external players

You can read the documentation given in the MMPCM_1-0_Documentation.docx document. Given below is the high-level architecture from this document:

You can also know about MMPCM from Steven Woodward's MIX11 session Introducing MMP Content Manager.

Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

White Paper: Scale Test Report for Very Large-Scale Document Repositories

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:58:58 GMT

A new white paper - "Scale Test Report for Very Large-Scale Document Repositories" is available on the Microsoft Download Center.

This white paper provides details about a test lab that was run at Microsoft to show large scale SharePoint Server 2010 content databases. It includes information about how two SharePoint Server content databases were populated with a total of 120 million documents over 30 terabytes (TB) of SQL Server databases. It details how this content was indexed by FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. It describes load testing that was performed on the completed SharePoint Server and FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and shows results from that testing and conclusions about the results from the testing.

Building an Offline Learning Kit for SharePoint 2010

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:56:00 GMT

SharePoint 2010 product and documentation teams and, the developer evangelists have done a great job of providing developers and IT Pros with learning material online. This content can be accessed mainly through the product homepages on MSDN and TechNet websites. Channel 9 also has lot of content.

Besides the articles, white papers and Visio diagrams, there is lot of good content in Video format. Accessing this content requires Internet connectivity and the high-quality videos require a lot of bandwidth. This problem gets aggravated if you a large developer team or if you travel a lot.

What’s the solution? Based on my experience, the best (and sometime only) way out is to download all this great content and have it available offline on your laptop, on file server or on your team’s SharePoint site. The flip side is the bandwidth required and time (and patience) it takes to download.

How to Track the Content?

First problem is keeping track of the content being published. I keep track by following blogs and links given below:

Newly published content for SharePoint Server 2010 on TechNet. RSS feed
Recently Published Content on SharePoint Developer Center. RSS Feed

GetThePoint blog
Microsoft SharePoint Developer Documentation Team blog
To the SharePoint blog
Channel 9 – SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint tags
Microsoft Download Center

Let me know if you know of a better URL to keep track of all the content being published.

Downloading the Content

In this section, I have listed the various sources I found for downloading content. At some places, multiple video formats are available.

White Papers and Guides:

Presentations:

SharePoint Server 2010: Advanced Developer Training Presentations - Collection of in-depth training presentations for SharePoint Server developers
SharePoint Server 2010 Advanced IT Pro Training presentations - Collection of in-depth training presentations for SharePoint Server IT pros

Online Trainings:

MSDN - Learn SharePoint Development

TechNet - Learn SharePoint Server 2010

Channel 9 Videos:

Offline Training Kits:

More offline training kits are available here.

How do I – Videos

Other Kits

Office 365 content

Once you are through with all the downloads you would have exceeded 40Gb if you selected high quality video option (wherever available) !!

HTH.

Best practices for search in SharePoint Server 2010

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:23:00 GMT

A new TechNet article - Best practices for search in SharePoint Server 2010 describes best practices for configuring and maintaining search in SharePoint Server 2010. Personally, practice #4 was new to me

4. Defragment the search database - The search database contains metadata and ACLs of crawled content. Over a series of crawls, the search database can become fragmented. To improve performance of crawls and queries, periodically defragment the search database. For more information, see Database maintenance for SharePoint Server 2010.

More best practice articles are available here: Best practices (SharePoint Server 2010).

Office 365 Developer Training Kit Available

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:47:00 GMT

In Office 365, SharePoint 2010, Exchange 2010 and Lync Server 2010 are hosted in Microsoft cloud datacenters to provide collaboration and communication as software-as-a-service (SaaS). Along with the launch of Office 365 Public Beta, Microsoft has also released the Office 365 Developer Training Kit.

The Office 365 Developer Training Kit contains developer focused presentations, self-paced labs and links to key resources to help you build solutions that leverage SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. Using this kit, you’ll learn how to build collaborative and communication focused cloud solutions that run in Office 365 using Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework.

After downloading the training kit, run the self-extracting executable to extract all of the training kit files to your local machine. This is how the homepage looks:

The equivalent online version is available on MSDN here: Office 365 Developer Training Course. Units in this course are:

First step to develop on Office 365 will be to Sign Up for the Office 365 Beta. Refer to yesterday's post - Office 365 Public Beta launched for details

Office 365 Public Beta launched

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:15:00 GMT

Microsoft has launched the Public beta of Office 365 today. Read: Office 365 Hits Public Beta, Small Businesses Get the Next Generation Cloud Productivity Service and Office 365 Public Beta is Here!

For those new to Office 365, please refer to What is Office 365? page. I also covered it on this blog – read Office 365 posts here.

What’s in the Beta?

Office 365 was till now available to a select set of customers as a limited/private beta program. As of today, Office 365 Beta is publicly available to customers in 38 countries and regions in 17 languages. The Office 365 will eventually have lot of Subscription Plans as options for customers but in this Beta program, you can experience only 2 of them - Plan E3 for Enterprise customers and Plan P1 for Small Business customers. When Office 365 is commercially released, beta accounts will be activated to trial versions and you can easily continue using Office 365 beyond the 30-day trial period if you choose to purchase.

For more details, please download the Office 365 Beta Service Descriptions documents.These documents provide a detailed description of the features and functionality of Office 365 services currently in beta. If you are an Enterprise customer, please do go through the “Office 365 Beta Enterprise Support Service Description_Final.docx” document.

Note: There is currently no Office 365 Beta version for Education customers. You can explore the Office 365 Beta however, your Beta account cannot be transitioned to a trial for Office 365 for Education at conclusion of the beta program. A trial version of Office 365 for education will be made publicly available at a later date.

Sign up now!!

1) Just click on JOIN THE BETA link on the Office 365 website and choose from the Enterprise or Small Business options.

2) Select the Country and fill up rest of the form and hit Submit.

3) You should receive a message like the one below. Next step is to wait for the email invitation.

Office 365 Marketplace Beta

The Office 365 Marketplace powered by Microsoft Pinpoint is now available in Beta in the United States and select countries worldwide. Built specifically to showcase applications and professional services offered by Office 365 partners, this comprehensive marketplace helps customers easily find your applications and professional services that extend the value of Office 365.

Customers can find information at the Office 365 Marketplace, and partners can submit new apps and solutions.

Find useful Compete information on the “Why Microsoft” website

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:25:00 GMT

Last week Microsoft launched the new Why Microsoft website as part of The Future of Productivity website. On this website you can find useful information to compare Microsoft’s productivity platform against Google Apps, IBM, Cisco and OpenOffice.

Microsoft vs Google Information

On the Microsoft vs Google page, you will find a comparison between Microsoft and Google solution with a link to Resource Center where you can see why customers choose Microsoft over Google. Another resource is: White Paper: Counting the Hidden Costs of Google Apps. You can also Open it in Office Web Apps :-)

In the Word Web App vs. Google Documents demo you will see completely different results when the same document is viewed using Word Web App vs. Google Documents. Screenshot:

Useful Links

Industry Leader: Get Gartner’s research reports and see how Microsoft productivity platform stacks up in each of the key markets
Resource Gallery: View highlighted content to help you evaluate Microsoft Online Services vs. Google. Check out customer stories, see demos and videos, and read white papers
The Why Microsoft Blog

Using SharePoint Workspace 2010 to access SharePoint content offline

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:04:00 GMT

Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010, the new name for Microsoft Office Groove, is a client application (included with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010) for SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010. It provides offline access to SharePoint documents and lists from desktop and enables real-time synchronization of content in desktop with that in the SharePoint. When you are connected to the SharePoint server, all content updates on the server and in the workspace are automatically synchronized. When you are not connected, changes you make in the workspace are cached locally. The next time you connect to the SharePoint server, all changes are automatically synchronized.

SharePoint Workspace 2010 also provides options for creating Groove collaboration workspaces and synchronized shared folders. SharePoint Workspace supports Windows Search 4.0. So, you can search from the Launchbar, the Workspace, or directly from the Windows Start button. For this and more features, refer to SharePoint Workspace 2010 features and benefits and Top 10 reasons to try SharePoint Workspace 2010 for more details. Technical features are listed in Technet article - SharePoint Workspace 2010 overview.

Workspace Types

SharePoint Workspace offers three workspace types:

SharePoint workspaces, new in this release, allow you to create a copy of a SharePoint site on your computer that is automatically synchronized with the server. This type of workspace can include only one member, the creator of the workspace.
Groove workspaces will be familiar to anyone who has used an earlier release of this software, such as Office Groove 2007. This type of workspace typically contains a variety of productivity tools, added as needed, and usually contains two or more members who join via invitation.
A shared folder is a special type of Groove workspace that enables you to share the contents of a folder in your Windows file system

Based on the business scenario, users can choose to create appropriate Workspace. For example, many Enterprises discourage Peer-to-Peer file sharing so they disable the options for creating Groove Workspace and Shared Folders. More on doing this in my next blog post.

To learn using SharePoint Workspace, you can refer to the Basic tasks in SharePoint Workspace 2010 page or the SharePoint Workspace 2010 Product Guide. The 40+ Cool Features of Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 post on the MicrosoftFeed blog is also a good reference.

Topology options for SharePoint Workspace 2010

Planning a SharePoint Workspace 2010 deployment begins with selecting a topology that best supports your collaboration strategy. Refer to Topology options for SharePoint Workspace 2010 section in the Plan for SharePoint Workspace 2010 Technet article for more details.

1) SharePoint Workspace as a SharePoint client - This topology supports or builds upon:

Access to SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010 document libraries and lists.
Team contributors who work online and offline.

2) SharePoint Workspace as a peer collaboration client - This topology supports or builds upon:

Team contributors working online and offline.
Flexible, agile peer collaboration. Groove workspaces support multiple communication protocols and organizations can control which ports are open for peer message transport.
Team collaboration that is extended outside a private network to trusted partners and field sites.
Valuable contributions from clients that have no access to the organization’s SharePoint sites.

3) SharePoint Workspace as a SharePoint and peer collaboration client - This topology supports or builds upon:

Access to SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010 document libraries and lists.
Team contributors working online and offline.
Flexible, agile peer collaboration. Groove workspaces support multiple communication protocols. This lets organizations control which ports are open for peer message transport.
Team collaboration that extends outside a private network to trusted partners and field sites.
Valuable contributions from clients that have no access to the organization’s SharePoint sites.

4) SharePoint Workspace and Groove Server as a managed collaboration system - For more information about this deployment topology, see Groove Server 2010. This topology supports or builds upon:

Centralized management of peer collaboration to address the organization’s security and management requirements.
Team contributors working online and offline.
Flexible, agile peer collaboration.
Team collaboration extended outside a private network to trusted partners and field sites.
Valuable contributions from clients that have no access to the organization’s SharePoint sites.
Existing integration with Active Directory system.

Performance and scalability

SharePoint Workspace stores downloaded SharePoint library documents in the common Office Document Cache (ODC) on the client device. The number of SharePoint Workspace documents that are stored in this cache has a direct impact on client system memory and performance. Because the ODC supports multiple Office applications, the implications of cache utilization by one Office application can extend to other Office applications on the system.

In the case of SharePoint Workspace 2010, as more documents are stored in the ODC for synchronization, system memory fills up and performance decreases. As the number of cached SharePoint documents approaches 1,800, depending on file size, types, and contents, available memory and performance may decrease significantly. This approximate upper limit is based on tests in a controlled environment. The limit may be higher or lower in actual scenarios with documents of different sizes, types, and contents.

For more details, refer to Scalability and performance considerations section in Plan for SharePoint Workspace 2010 article. If it helps, you can also change the location of Office Document Cache - How to change the default location of the Office 2010 Document Cache.

Useful Blogs and Posts

Working the Spaces, Sharing the Point - The development team blog of SharePoint Workspace 2010 and Groove 2007
Use SharePoint Workspace to access your SharePoint content when you’re off your network post on the GetThePoint blog.
40+ Cool Features of Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 post on the MicrosoftFeed blog

Learning Resources

Training: SharePoint Workspace 2010: An introduction - Learn how SharePoint Workspace 2010 lets you download and synchronize your SharePoint sites on your local computer. This course includes:

Three self-paced lessons.
A short test at the end of the third lesson. The test is not scored.
A Quick Reference Card you can print at the end of the course.

Video: Creating a SharePoint workspace - This video shows you how to take a SharePoint site offline into a SharePoint workspace. You see three ways to do this starting from the SharePoint site...

Video: Changing synchronization settings in SharePoint Workspace 2010 - Which lists you synchronize in a SharePoint workspace depend on how you chose to create the workspace. You might have chosen to synchronize all supported...

Useful References

How to Support a New Location with SharePoint Virtualization

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 15:04:00 GMT

Private cloud computing built on virtualization technology provides ways to reduce the capital cost by allowing you to utilize more of your existing resources. Using Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 and System Center Self-Service Portal 2.0, you can convert your existing workloads into virtual machines and manage where and when they run.

To take advantage of this cloud computing scenario requires some planning to deploy and configure the products to deliver true IT as a service in a private cloud scenario. Finding all the resources to implement this type of solution is can be time consuming. To help, TechNet has created a new virtualization scenario based hub. This one stop location has the resources and content to help you enable different virtualization scenarios. The site launches with 6 scenarios, each with a set of 4 bucketed asset groups, Explore, Deploy, Manage and Maintain. These groups contain links to videos, white papers, articles, library documentation and downloads that are aimed at help the IT Pro deploy a virtualization solution successfully. The scenarios currently available are:

How to Support a New Location with SharePoint Virtualization

Remote Offices provide a unique challenge to IT departments. The business units need the IT Department to deliver the same level of collaboration enjoyed by users at the main offices. A single powerful Windows Server 2008 R2 machine running virtualized instances of SharePoint can deliver collaboration solutions to these locations. Using browser access, remote workers can enjoy the benefits of rich productivity application features previously reserved for users with the full suite installed locally. With remote management capabilities built into Windows, the IT department can monitor and control all aspects of the server from the main offices.

The information on this page shows you how to you can deliver collaboration solutions to new locations as your business requires. Read more details on the scenario page.

Client solutions for WAN environments

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 06:46:00 GMT

Many organizations include users who are distributed across WAN links and users who are not always connected to the network. A new TechNet article for our SharePoint customers - Client solutions for WAN environments (SharePoint Server 2010) describes client solutions that can be used across slow network connections or when users are offline. Given below are some solutions from the article:

Mobile views

In low bandwidth or high-latency environments — such as latencies of 300 milliseconds or more — mobile views can provide acceptable performance when they are used to navigate a site hierarchy, complete simple forms, and view textual data. To display a mobile view in a non-mobile browser, append ?mobile=1 to the URL of any SharePoint site.

To configure mobile views for lists and libraries, see Configure mobile views (SharePoint Server 2010).

Office Web Apps

Microsoft Office Web Apps are online companions to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft OneNote, which enable people to access files and do light editing in a browser without downloading and uploading files over low-bandwidth or high-latency connections. In most cases, opening files in a browser results in a faster time-to-first-page than opening files in one of the Microsoft Office 2010 client applications. Additionally, users in your organization can use browser-enabled cell phones and mobile devices to read Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents that are stored on a SharePoint Server computer if views and content that are enabled for mobile access are published outside a firewall.

For more information about Office Web Apps, see Microsoft Web Apps Deployment.

Office 2010 Document Cache and the MS-FSSHTTP protocol

Office 2010 combined with SharePoint 2010 Products improves the experience of users who are using and managing files over slow network connections. Files that are open from SharePoint 2010 sites are downloaded by using asynchronous file transfer and cached locally. As a result, files open more quickly and users can start using the file before the download is complete. Additionally, only changes to files — not whole files — are transmitted between SharePoint 2010 Products and client computers. These capabilities are made possible by the new File Synchronization via SOAP over HTTP (MS-FSSHTTP) protocol.

For more information about the Upload Center and Office Document Cache settings, see Microsoft Office 2010 Upload Center and Office Document Cache settings.

Outlook 2010

Users can synchronize a SharePoint library, contact list, task list, project task list, and a certain type of SharePoint external list with Outlook 2010. Because many users of SharePoint 2010 Products also use Outlook 2010 to collaborate and coordinate activities and projects, the ability to synchronize these libraries and lists can help users become more efficient, especially when they are working offline or when access to SharePoint sites is not convenient.

For more information, see Synchronize SharePoint 2010 content with Outlook 2010.

SharePoint Workspace

Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 is a client application for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 that supports online and offline collaboration. SharePoint Workspace 2010 lets users access and share content that is stored on SharePoint sites, even when users are not connected to corporate networks.

For more information, see What's new in SharePoint Workspace 2010.

SharePoint Workspace Mobile for Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 includes Microsoft Office Mobile, which lets users work with files from their telephones. Users can also use Microsoft SharePoint Workspace Mobile to take SharePoint 2010 files offline on the telephone. Users can open and edit the files, and then save them back to the SharePoint site when the users are back online.

For more information, see Office Mobile 2010 for Windows Phone 7.

SharePoint Workspace with Groove Server

SharePoint Workspace 2010 can also be used together with Microsoft Groove Server to provide peer collaboration that does not require all team members to be connected to SharePoint 2010 Products. Collaboration can be extended outside a private network to trusted partners and field sites.

For more information about SharePoint Workspace and Groove Server, see Plan for SharePoint Workspace 2010.

Summary of the solutions available

Client solutions for WAN environments

	Mobile views	Office Web Apps	Office 2010 Document Cache	Outlook 2010	SharePoint Workspace	SharePoint Workspace for Windows Phone 7	SharePoint Workspace and Groove Server
Slow network connections	Y	Y	Y	-	-	Y	-
Working offline	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	-
Working with team members who are disconnected	-	-	-	-	-	-	Y

Scope of client solutions

	Mobile views	Office Web Apps	Office 2010 Document Cache	Outlook 2010	SharePoint Workspace	SharePoint Workspace for Windows Phone 7	SharePoint Workspace and Groove Server
Document	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
List	Y	-	-	Limited*	Limited*	Limited*	Limited*
Library	Y	-	-	Y	Y	Y	Y
Site	Y	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y
Site hierarchy	Y	-	-	-	Y	Y	Y

*Limited — not all list types are supported

Read the complete article here: Client solutions for WAN environments (SharePoint Server 2010)

Office 365: Part 4 – SharePoint Online

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 07:40:00 GMT

SharePoint Online delivers SharePoint as a cloud service. It helps businesses create sites to share documents and insights and enable collaboration between colleagues, partners, and customers. People can also customize these capabilities to address specific business needs. This means that people can share ideas and expertise and find the information they want—all without the need to set up SharePoint in their organization’s data center. Plus, SharePoint Online provides high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified management. SharePoint Online provides sites to:

Manage and share important documents. (My Sites)
Keep teams in sync and manage important projects. (Team Sites)
Stay up-to-date with company information and news. (Intranet Sites)
Share documents securely with partners and customers. (Extranet Sites)
Market your business using a simple public-facing website. (Internet Sites)

Features

Given below are some of the key features of SharePoint Online in Office 365:

Feature	Description
Storage	500 megabytes (MB) per user account
Site storage quotas	Up to 50 gigabytes (GB) per site collection
Site collections	Multiple
Total storage per tenant	Up to 1 terabyte per tenant
File upload limit	250 MB
Works with Microsoft Office 2010	Microsoft Access 2010, Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft InfoPath 2010, Microsoft OneNote 2010, Microsoft Outlook 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010, Microsoft Word 2010
Browser support	Internet Explorer 7 Internet Explorer 8 Firefox 3 Safari 3.1.2 on Macintosh OS X 10.5
Mobile device support	Windows Mobile 6.5.x Nokia E series and N series devices Apple iPhone 2.0

Points to note on storage are:

The storage is aggregated/pooled among the users. For example, an organization of 1,000 users has 500,000 MB (~500 GB) of storage.
Users can purchase more SharePoint Online storage in GB increments charged monthly
The SharePoint Online service administrator can set the storage limits for site collections and sites created by users. The maximum storage available for any site collection is 50 GB
The maximum SharePoint Online storage available to a single company is 1 terabyte

SharePoint Online Capabilities

As in on-premise SharePoint 2010, all the 6 primary capabilities are available in SharePoint Online: Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insights and, Composites. A detailed feature comparison between SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2010 is provided in Appendix B: SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server Feature Comparison of the Microsoft_SharePoint_Online_Standard_Beta_Service_Description_Final.docx document.

note: Not all the features in SharePoint 2010 are available during the Office 365 Beta and also may not be available at General Availability of SharePoint Online. Some features will be made available to SharePoint Online users in subsequent updates released quarterly. These are highlighted clearly in the service description document.

Office integration

SharePoint Online works with familiar Office applications. You can easily create Office documents and save directly to SharePoint Online, or you can coauthor documents with Microsoft Office Web Apps. Access important documents offline or from mobile devices and set document-level permissions to help protect sensitive content. With one click you can communicate in real-time with colleagues, customers, and partners from within SharePoint sites.

Some highlights of the new functionality in Microsoft Office 2010 that interoperate with SharePoint Online include:

Backstage View: The Microsoft Office Backstage™ view allows users to manage their documents and related data—they can create, save, and send documents; inspect documents for hidden metadata or personal information; set options such as turning on or off AutoComplete suggestions; and more.
PowerPoint Broadcasting: Presenters can broadcast their slide shows to people in other locations, whether or not they have PowerPoint installed.
Document Co-Authoring: With new co-authoring capabilities, multiple users can edit the same document, at the same time, even if they are in different locations. Users can even communicate as they work, directly from within the desktop application.
Outlook Alerts: Users can stay updated on changes to documents and list items on their SharePoint site by receiving notifications of changes as alerts and Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
Using SharePoint Workspace to Manage Documents Offline: Users can synchronize SharePoint 2010 libraries and lists to their computers with just a few clicks. They can easily update documents and lists offline, and be confident that everything will automatically synchronize to the server when they are back online.

Together, Outlook 2010 and SharePoint Online support:

Read/write access to SharePoint Online items such as calendars, tasks, contacts, discussions, and documents.
Synchronization for offline support of document libraries and lists.
Ability to check out and edit SharePoint site documents when offline.
Roll-up views of calendars and tasks across multiple lists and sites.
Unified view of personal and SharePoint tasks in Outlook 2010.

SharePoint Designer 2010 Support

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 is a Web and application design program you can use to design, build, and customize your Web sites on SharePoint Online. With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create data-rich Web pages, build powerful workflow-enabled solutions, and design the look and feel of your site. The Workflow Designer in SharePoint Designer 2010 can be used to create rules that associate conditions and actions with items in SharePoint Online lists and libraries. Changes to items in lists or libraries then trigger actions in the workflow.

note: Backup and restore from SharePoint Designer is not supported in SharePoint Online

Data Backup

Data protection services are provided to prevent the loss of SharePoint Online data. Backups are performed every 12 hours and retained for 14 days. This is not available during Beta.

Virus Filtering

Forefront Security for SharePoint is included with SharePoint Online to help protect the SharePoint Online environment from viruses while maintaining uptime and optimizing performance.

Developer Help

You can find articles, videos, and training for the developer features available in SharePoint Online at the SharePoint Online Developer Resource Center. Start by viewing Video: Developing for SharePoint 2010 Online: Understanding the boundaries - In this video from Tech Ed North America 2010, developer evangelist Chris Mayo helps define what the developer can and cannot do with SharePoint Online to help you understand where the boundaries lie.

Sandboxed Solutions

SharePoint Online allows tenant administrators to upload custom solutions without Microsoft review with a new feature called sandboxed solutions, which run at the site collection level and use a subset of the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace.

Client Object Model

The unified client object model in SharePoint Online provides a streamlined development experience and easy access to SharePoint functionality from remote clients. SharePoint Online supports Web 2.0 types of applications that are hosted in the browser and written in ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) or Microsoft Silverlight 2.0, and classical .NET client applications. Refer to:

Besides these options, you can enrich solutions be leveraging Excel, InfoPath Forms, Visio, and Access Services and also use the Web services available in SharePoint Online to interact with your SharePoint data remotely.

Administrator Help

The SharePoint Online Administrator manages site collections, sets up site collection administrators, ensures that storage quotas are maintained, and enables features on site collections. The SharePoint Online Administration Guide contains procedures for the SharePoint Online Administrator.

SharePoint Online Planning and Administration contains planning guides to help guide site collection administrators and site owners through the steps involved in setting up and using SharePoint Online for Microsoft Office 365 Beta.

End User Help

SharePoint Online for Enterprises

SharePoint Online for Small Businesses

Note: this post is part of a series of posts on Office 365 Beta. Links: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Office 365: Part 3 – Office Web Apps

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:18:00 GMT

Office Web Apps are the online companion to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, Office Web Apps enables users to access and edit documents from anywhere you have a connection to your organization’s SharePoint site. Users can view, share, and work on documents with others online across personal computers, mobile phones, and the web. Refer to the Product homepage and the Product Guide.

Office Web Apps is available through Office 365 as a part of SharePoint Online. So now Office Web Apps is available through following 3 options:

Office 365 Beta: Office Web Apps is included in the Beta offering of Office 365 licenses that include SharePoint Online
On-Premise: Business customers licensed for Microsoft Office 2010 through a volume licensing program can use Office Web Apps on a server that runs Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint 2010. For information on deploying Office Web Apps on on-premise SharePoint 2010 please refer to Deploying Office Web Apps post.
Windows Live: For consumers and small-business users, Office Web Apps is available on Windows Live as a free service. For more information, see Using Office Web Apps in Windows Live. As of Sep 2010, more than 20 million users have used Office Web Apps (refer to: Office Web Apps reach 20 million: New features today + 7 more countries). You can even embed a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet in a blog or website from Live!

When users click a document stored in a SharePoint document library, the document opens directly in the browser. In the browser, the document looks similar to how it appears in the Office client application. The Web App also provides many of the same editing features as the Office client application. Video: Your Office documents now can be everywhere you are :-)

Office Web Apps make it easier for you to:

Extend your Office experience on the Web: Use the Office tools you are familiar with, in a Web environment.
Work anywhere: A browser is all you need to access your documents.
Work together: Your teammates can work with you on projects regardless of which version of Microsoft Office they have

Browser Support

On Desktops/Laptops:

Internet Explorer 7 and greater on Windows
Safari 4 and greater on Mac
Firefox 3.5 and greater on Windows, Mac, and Linux

On Mobile Devices:

Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 5/6/6.1/6.5
Safari4 on iPhone 3G/S
BlackBerry 4.x and later
Nokia S60
NetFront 3.4, 3.5 and later
Opera Mobile 8.65 and later
Openwave 6.2, 7.0, and later

The Apple iPad is supported for viewing Word and PowerPoint files.

note: The list of browser and devices is slightly different than that in Planning Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) for on-premise version of Office Web Apps.

Supported File Types

The file types supported are again same as the ones supported by Office Web Apps running on-premise on SharePoint 2010. For details, please refer to the following resources:

Supported File Types section in Microsoft_Office_Web_Apps_Beta_Service_Description_Final.docx document
Microsoft Support article - Unable to view or edit in Office Web Apps

Viewing and Editing Documents

For the user experience and options available to view and edit Office documents using Office Web Apps, refer to either the Product Guide or the online help article Using Office Web Apps in SharePoint. Among the features provided by Office Web Apps, "Co-Authoring" is the most popular feature in my Customers.

Co-Authoring

Co-authoring enables multiple people to simultaneously edit a document at the same time. Table shown below details support for co-authoring within Office Web Apps.

	Word	Excel	PowerPoint	OneNote
Office 2010	Y	N	Y	Y
Office Web Apps	N	Y	N	Y

For more details, please refer to Co-authoring overview (SharePoint Server 2010). Though the details on “Co-authoring administration” are not explicitly given anywhere for the Office 365 Beta release, I would guess that all the Windows PowerShell based configurations given in Co-authoring administration (SharePoint Server 2010) for on-premise Office Web Apps would not be available. We would need to wait for more details on this as more documentation becomes public.

For more details, please refer to the Microsoft_Office_Web_Apps_Beta_Service_Description_Final.docx document available at: Office 365 Beta Service Descriptions.

Note: this post is part of a series of posts on Office 365 Beta. Links: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Federated Search Connectors for Enterprise Search

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:00:00 GMT

Federated Search Connectors allow a search solution based on any Microsoft Enterprise Search product - Microsoft Search Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft FAST Search for SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Search Server 2008, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to pass a query to a target system and accept and display results from that system. For details and guidance refer to the Federated Search Connector Gallery for Enterprise Search

Following connectors were made available for download through the Microsoft Download Center yesterday:

Some of the connectors are available in 2 formats: .osdx (OpenSearch Description) and .fld (federated location definition)

Download .osdx files for the following products:

Search Server 2010
SharePoint Server 2010
FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

Download .fld files for the following products:

Search Server 2008
Office SharePoint Server 2007

For using the connectors in SharePoint 2010, refer to article - Manage federated locations (SharePoint Server 2010)

Federated Search in Windows

The same connectors can be used for federated search in Windows (Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2) too. Federated Search in Windows article describes Windows 7 support for search federation to remote data stores using OpenSearch technologies that enable users to access and interact with their remote data from within Microsoft Windows Explorer.

To try out a connector, just download its .osdx file and click on it. You should get a prompt like this:

Click on “Add” and you are ready to start searching.

Users can also perform enterprise searches from a Windows 7 client by using federation. When a user types a search query in the search box in Windows Explorer, the Windows 7 client can retrieve search results from Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and display the results in the Windows Explorer window where the user typed the query. Search the enterprise from Windows 7 (SharePoint Server 2010) article describes different ways that administrators and users can enable this search capability by installing one or more federated search connectors from SharePoint Server 2010 to the Windows 7 client.

Office 365: Part 2 – Microsoft Office Professional Plus

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:49:00 GMT

As part of Office 365 offering, a subscription pricing model for Office will be available called Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop suite. This suite includes the following Office 2010 Applications:

Features and Benefits

As far as features are concerned, the Office Pro Plus suite which is part of the Office 365 is same as the normal Office Pro Plus SKU which enterprises buy today through the Volume Licensing option. So all the same benefits consequently apply. In addition to those, you get the flexible pay-as-you-go, per-user licensing of Office Professional Plus.

The process of administration, provisioning, and activation of Office users will be very different than what is today in enterprises.

Purchasing Office Professional Plus

You would use the Microsoft Online Service Portal to buy subscriptions to Microsoft Online services, including Microsoft Office Professional Plus when it becomes available. (As of now, the portal allow you to buy plans under the current BPOS offering, not the Office 365 plans)

When creating the account, the Service Administrator enters the number of Office Professional Plus licenses needed. This information is stored with the account in the Microsoft Online Data Center and can be modified to included new licenses or de-provision purchased licenses. Service administrators can return to this portal to decommission a license and reassign to a new user or to add new licenses.

Each license allows a user to install Office Professional Plus on five different machines. If a user attempts to install Office Professional Plus on a sixth machine, he or she will receive a message showing the machines that are active for the license. The message will instruct the user to disable the subscription on one of the active machines to proceed.

Provisioning Office Professional Plus Users

Microsoft Online service administrators will provision users for Office Professional Plus by providing Microsoft Online credentials for subscribers in Microsoft Online Service Portal. Once provisioned, the user can download Office Professional Plus from the Information Worker Portal.

Alternatively, the Administrators can also download Microsoft Office Professional Plus from the service and place the files on a central share. Users can then run the setup from this location or administrators can automatically deploy the setup using in-house tools.

Running Office Professional Plus for the First Time

As part of the Office 365 software download, administrators will install Office Professional Plus and prepare PCs with appropriate pre-requisites and updates for connecting to the Online Services. When users first run Office Professional Plus downloaded as part of Office 365, they will be prompted to enter the online credentials from their administrators. Once authenticated with these credentials, their subscription will automatically activate the product.

note: The license assigned to Office Professional Plus subscribers is valid for 30 days. The Office Subscription Agent evaluates the subscription once a month. If the subscription is still valid, the product is reactivated for another 30 days.

What Happens if the License Is Not Activated?

If the Office Subscription Agent does not find a valid license within 30 days of the last activation, the license begins a 30-day “grace period” - the product is fully functional though the subscription is not active. After 60 days, the product enters Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM). In RFM the user can view Microsoft Office documents but cannot create, save, or modify them.

note: Users using RFM product can reactive Office Professional Plus by connecting the PC to the Internet once that the licenses are active in Online Services Portal and typing the relevant command.

Microsoft Office Web Apps

Microsoft Office Web Apps are online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote applications that help users access documents from almost anywhere using a Web browser. Office Web Apps is available to users through the Beta version of SharePointOnline, which is part of Office 365. More on this in the next blog post.

For more details, please refer to the homepage of Office Professional Plus and the Microsoft_Office_Professional_Plus_Beta_Service_Description_Final.docx document available at: Office 365 Beta Service Descriptions.

Note: this post is part of a series of posts on Office 365 Beta. Links: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Office 365: Part 1 – An Overview

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:30:00 GMT

On 19th October, 2010 Microsoft announced Office 365, a new service that brings Office desktop software and Office Web Apps, together with SharePoint, Exchange and Lync in the cloud. Read the Press Release: Microsoft Office 365: The Power to Think Big and Be Small, to Be Big and Act Fast

To know more, click here: Eric Swift on Office 365, Video: Demonstration of Office 365 and Video: Capossela Discusses Office 365

What is Office 365?

Microsoft Office 365 is the next generation of Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) based on the Wave 2010 servers and brings together cloud versions of most trusted communications and collaboration products with the latest version of Office desktop suite. Office 365 is designed to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes – everyone from sole proprietors to small, mid-sized and large businesses and from government agencies to educational institutions.

Office 365 will replace the Microsoft BPOS, Office Live Small Business and Live@edu services, which have millions of users today, and provide more and improved licensing options along with the per-user subscription model for Office Professional Plus 2010 suite.

The Office 365 homepage is here: Microsoft Office 365, and the Team blog is here: Microsoft Office 365 Blog and the FAQs are here: Office 365 FAQ

Components

Dynamics CRM Online will join the Office 365 family of services next year, giving customers a more complete business productivity experience.

Key Benefits

Anywhere-access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any device
Simple and secure collaboration with colleagues and business partners
Work seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the other programs your users already count on everyday
Comprehensive solutions including desktop productivity applications, portals, extranets, external Web site, instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, Web conferencing, e-mail, voice mail and unified messaging
Business-class features including IT-level phone support, financially-backed 99.9% uptime, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and robust security and privacy controls and standards
Pay-as-you-go pricing options which give you predictability and flexibility for all or part of your organization

Subscription Plans Announced

Each user who accesses the Office 365 service requires a User Subscription License (USL).Microsoft offers Office 365 subscription plans designed for a variety of organizations. They include plans for infrequent users with light, computer-based workloads; plans designed specifically for small businesses; and plans for large enterprises.

Office 365 for small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises: 2 types of plans in this (a) For Information Workers, and (b) For Kiosk Workers
Office 365 for education

For plan details, feature, benefits and pricing click here: Pricing and Plans – Office 365 Fact Sheet

For Office 365 beta, only following two types of subscriptions are available:

The Office 365 (Plan E3) Beta provides the full capabilities of Exchange Online and related services.
The Office 365 (Plan K2) Beta is designed for users who require fewer messaging and collaboration features because they are infrequent users.

Availability

Office 365 will be available for purchase in 2011.

Microsoft will work with all existing BPOS customers to determine the best time for the customer’s business to make the transition. Customers must make the transition to Office 365 within 12 months of availability to the customer. The Microsoft Office 365 transition center page will be the one stop shop for ongoing guidance and discussion about transition.

As of today, Office 365 Beta is available in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States. Sign up here: Office 365 Beta

System Requirements

Operating System Requirements

Windows XP SP3
Windows XP Home is supported but will not support federated identity
Windows Media Center edition is supported but will not support federated identity
Windows Vista SP2
Windows 7
Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Office Client Requirements

Office 2007 SP2 or Office 2010
Office 2008 for Mac & Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition
Office 2011 for Mac and Outlook 2011 for Mac
.NET 2.0 or later
Lync 2010
Communicator for Mac

New Downloads

A service connector application that will replace the Sign in application

Browser Requirements – Administration Center and My Company Portal

Internet Explorer 7 or above
Firefox 3.x
Safari 4.x

Browser Requirements – Outlook Web App

Internet Explorer 7 or above
Firefox 3 or higher
Safari 3 or higher on Macintosh OS X 10.5
Chrome 3 and later versions
Outlook Web App also has a light version that supports a reduced set of features across almost any browser

Security audits

Microsoft regularly assesses the Microsoft Online Services infrastructure to ensure that the latest compliance policies and antivirus signatures are installed, along with high-level configuration settings and required security updates. The services have:

Achieved ISO 27001 certification.
Completed SAS70 Type I and II audits.
Added controls that assist customers in complying with HIPAA and FERPA.
Achieved the EU Safe Harbor seal

These certifications and audits apply to the services when they are generally available and do not apply to the Office 365 Beta services.

Note: This post is part of a series of posts on Office 365 Beta. Links: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

SharePoint Server 2010 Usage Best Practices

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:35:00 GMT

SharePoint Server 2010 Usage Best Practices White Paper is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. In this white paper, you will learn how to manage content effectively, how to choose the best option for displaying content, and the most effective way to find your content later. This paper provides best practices for SharePoint usage and answers questions like:

What collaboration methods and site templates are most appropriate for which types of situations?
What should I ask myself before setting up a SharePoint site?
How should I manage content?
Should I consider a document‘s lifecycle before posting it to SharePoint?
What should I think about when tagging?
What‘s the correct etiquette for social interactions?

I must read for all those involved in planning, architecting, implementing or even selling SharePoint 2010 based solutions.

Download: Enterprise Search Labs

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 06:07:00 GMT

The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search training course provides a series of hands-on labs, presentations, and videos that demonstrate how to enable high-end enterprise search with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

Following Lab contents became available today:

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search Labs: Use these labs to learn about deployment, search administration, monitoring, analytics, defining the end-user experience, federated search, people search, linguistics, and more.
SharePoint 2010 Demos: Enterprise Search Demos & Labs : Learn about crawling and indexing content and defining the end user experience. By completing these modules, you can build most of the Contoso Research Demo and gain a broad understanding of how to apply these design principles to your own site

It's really good stuff for developers and architects alike. I have added them to the SharePoint 2010 Resource Guide too.

If you are new to enterprise search, then complete the following training modules first:

Detecting installed SKU of SharePoint 2010 and Upgrading Editions

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:05:00 GMT

How often you wanted to figure out what SKU(s) of SharePoint 2010 family of products in installed on a particular server. Well, that's really easy to do by checking the relevant registry keys. The path to check in the Windows Registry is: "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\WSS\InstalledProducts\".

Value data	SKU Installed
84902853-59F6-4B20-BC7C-DE4F419FEFAD	Project Server 2010 Trial
ED21638F-97FF-4A65-AD9B-6889B93065E2	Project Server 2010
BC4C1C97-9013-4033-A0DD-9DC9E6D6C887	Search Server 2010 Trial
08460AA2-A176-442C-BDCA-26928704D80B	Search Server 2010
BEED1F75-C398-4447-AEF1-E66E1F0DF91E	SharePoint Foundation 2010
1328E89E-7EC8-4F7E-809E-7E945796E511	Search Server Express 2010
B2C0B444-3914-4ACB-A0B8-7CF50A8F7AA0	SharePoint Server 2010 Standard Trial
3FDFBCC8-B3E4-4482-91FA-122C6432805C	SharePoint Server 2010 Standard
88BED06D-8C6B-4E62-AB01-546D6005FE97	SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Trial
D5595F62-449B-4061-B0B2-0CBAD410BB51	SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
926E4E17-087B-47D1-8BD7-91A394BC6196	Office Web Applications 2010

The screenshot of above path for the 2010-7a image available for download (2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM)) is shown below:

This means that - SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, Project Server 2010 and Office Web Applications 2010 are installed on the 2010-7a image.

For detecting the installed SKU of SharePoint Server 2010 by using code, please refer to the MSDN article - How To: Detect the Installed SKU of SharePoint 2010. The code sample in this article demonstrates how to retrieve the registry key of the installed SKU of SharePoint Server 2010 and of other Microsoft Office server products, and how to match the SKU with a hash table that stores the names and keys for all of the known SKUs of these products.

In case you detect that the Trial version or Standard is installed and what you need are the Enterprise features of SharePoint 2010, you can upgrade the SharePoint installation to enable required edition.

Upgrade from a Trial version of SharePoint Server 2010

The Upgrade from a trial version of SharePoint Server 2010 article provides information and a procedure on how to upgrade from a trial version of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to a full product edition. The following upgrade options of a trial version of SharePoint Server 2010 to a licensed product edition are available:

Standard trial version to Standard licensed edition
Standard trial version to Enterprise licensed edition
Enterprise trial version to Enterprise licensed edition

Upgrading from Standard CAL features to Enterprise CAL features

The SharePoint 2010 Setup program installs both the Standard and Enterprise features on the server. It is the product key that you enter when you run Setup that determines which set of features is enabled and available for use in SharePoint sites.

To convert the license type to the Enterprise CAL from Standard:

Enable the Enterprise features on the SharePoint Central Administration Web site. Any new sites that you create will automatically have these features
Enable Enterprise features on existing sites using either the Central Administration website or the Windows PowerShell

For more information, please refer to Upgrade from a SharePoint Server 2010 Standard CAL to an Enterprise CAL article.

Publishing and reusing PowerPoint content using Slide Library

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:30:00 GMT

By using PowerPoint 2010, you can share and reuse individual slide content by storing those slides in a "Slide Library" on a SharePoint 2010 server. A simple but powerful feature; specially for those who work a lot on presentations.

The combination of PowerPoint 2010 and SharePoint 2010:

Provides Central Repository: store slides in SharePoint 2010 site for everyone to access
Help manage Versions: Track and review changes to slides using the versioning capabilities of SharePoint library
Get Notifications:
Help Keep Slides up-to date: Each time that you open the presentation on your computer, PowerPoint notifies you if the slide has been updated

Let's see how this works.

1. Creating a Slide Library

In any SharePoint site, click Create button and select Slide Library Template to create a slide library.

2. Publishing Slides to the Slide Library

Next step would be upload slides to the slide library created. There are 2 ways to do this:

a) In SharePoint 2010, click the Upload > Publish Slides menu option in the slide library view. You will next need to select the presentation to pick the slides from

b) In PowerPoint 2010, click File > Save & Send > Publish Slides menu option in Backstage area. You will need to select the Slide Library to save the slides to

c) In PowerPoint 2010, to publish specific slides, select the slides, right click on them and then select the Publish Slides menu option. You will next need to select the Slide Library to save the slides to

In all the 3 above methods, the slides of the presentation open up in a new window. You need to select one or more slides and then click on Publish button

If the Slides take time to upload, you can check the progress in the status bar at the bottom right of the PowerPoint window.

3. Viewing the Slides

The Slide Library has a default view to browse through the slides. You can add custom columns to capture metadata and also create more views if needed

4. Inserting the Slides in Presentation

There are again 3 different ways of inserting the slides.

a) From SharePoint 2010, browse for and select the slides needed and click the Copy Slide to Presentation option

You get a dialogbox with 2 options; either create a new presentation out of the slides selected or insert them into an open presentation.

Getting Alerts: You can subscribe to email notifications on changes to slides.

b) In PowerPoint 2010, under the New Slide menu, select the Reuse Slides option

This opens the Reuse Slides pane on the right. From this pane, you can either open a Slide Library by giving a URL or open a PowerPoint file

In either case, you get to select the slides by browsing them or searching based on a search term

If the Thumbnail is too small to view the contents, then you can just hover the mouse over the slide to see a larger view

PowerPoint automatically remembers the locations of multiple Slide Libraries so that you can easily locate them. It also displays a little arrow icon besides the slides added from a slide library.

5. Getting Updates

Each time that you open the presentation on your computer, PowerPoint prompts you to check for Slide updates. Click the Check button to check for updates

PowerPoint notifies you if the slide(s) has been updated and gives you the opportunity to ignore the update, append a new slide to the outdated slide, or replace the outdated slide with the updated one.

Deploying Office Web Apps

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:59:00 GMT

Microsoft Office Web Apps are online companions to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, enabling people to access and do light editing or sharing of Office documents from virtually anywhere. I had given an overview in my previous post - Office Web Applications. This post is about getting access to the Office Web Apps for your organization and deploying it. Refer to the TechNet links given inline for detailed guidance.

Cost

For consumers, Office Web Apps are free on Windows Live, by the use of a free Windows Live ID.
For business customers, purchasing a volume license edition of Office 2010-Office Professional Plus 2010 or Office Standard 2010-includes a license for the Office Web Apps. Business customers can then install and run Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010.

Get Office Web Apps

For personal use, Office Web Apps are available on SkyDrive, using a free Windows Live ID.
For business, Office Web Apps can be installed on SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 on-premises or hosted via Microsoft Online. Business customers licensed for Microsoft Office 2010 through a Volume Licensing program can download Microsoft Office Web Apps from the Volume Licensing Service Center. TechNet subscribers can download Office Web Apps from the TechNet Subscriptions page.

Office Web Apps platform comparison overview article provides a summary comparison of capabilities of Office Web Apps on Windows Live SkyDrive, and of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products if they are installed on-premises or on SharePoint Online.

Software prerequisites

To deploy Office Web Apps in your organization requires one of the following SharePoint versions:

SharePoint Server 2010 Standard edition
SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise edition
SharePoint Foundation 2010

Note: Office Web Apps cannot be installed on SharePoint trial editions or SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites edition.

Browsers Supported

Office Web Apps is supported in the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 7.0
Internet Explorer 8.0
Firefox 3. x
Safari 4. x for the Macintosh
Google Chrome

Note: Also refer to the Known Issues section in Planning Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article.

File Types Supported

Office Web Apps save files in the Office 2010 file formats. If you edit files online from versions of Microsoft Office earlier than 2007 for Windows or 2008 for Mac, Office Web Apps saves a copy of your file in the Office 2010 formats and leaves the original unchanged in your SharePoint 2010 library.

Microsoft Word

File format	View in Word Web App	Edit in Word Web App
Open XML (.docx)	Yes	Yes
Binary (.doc)	Yes	Yes, Word Web App converts the .doc file to a .docx file to allow you to edit the file but you must save the file in as a .docx file to save your changes.
Macro (.docm)	Yes	Yes, but macros do not work.
Templates (.dotm, .dotx)	Yes	No, you must open the template in the client.
Other file formats (.dot, .mht, .mhtml, htm, .html, .odt, .rtf, .txt, .xml, .wps, .wpd)	No	No

Microsoft Excel

File format	View in Excel Web App	Edit in Excel Web App
Open XML (.xlsx)	Yes	Yes
Binary (.xlsb)	Yes	Yes
Binary (.xls)	Yes on SkyDrive Not on SharePoint	Yes on SkyDrive. Not on SharePoint
Macro (.xlsm)	Yes	Yes. However, you are prompted to create a copy of the file that has the macros removed when you save the changes that you have made.
Other file formats (.xltx, .xltm, .xlam, .xlm, .xla, .xlt, .xml, .xll, .xlw,ods, .prn, .txt, .csv, .mdb, .mde, .accdb, .accde, .dbc, .igy, .dqy, .rqy, .oqy, .cub, .uxdc, .dbf, .slk, .dif, .xlk, .bak, .xlb)	No	No

Microsoft PowerPoint

File format	View in PowerPoint Web App	Edit in PowerPoint Web App
Open XML (.pptx, .ppsx)	Yes	Yes
Binary (.ppt, .pps)	Yes	Yes, PowerPoint Web App converts the .ppt or .pps file to a .pptx or .ppsx file to allow you to edit the file but you must save the file in as a .pptx or .ppsx file to save your changes
Macro (.pptm, .potm, .ppam, .potx, .ppsm)	Yes	No
Other file formats (.pot, .htm, .html, .mht, .mhtml, .txt, .rtf, .wpd, .wps, .ppa, .odp, .thmx)	No	No

For more information, please refer to following links

Microsoft Office Web Apps Product Guide_Final.xps document from the Office 2010: Product Guides page
Understanding Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products)
Microsoft Support article - Unable to view or edit in Office Web Apps

Office Web Apps deployment

The Microsoft Office Web Apps Deployment page provides links to the tools and resources for IT professionals planning to deploy Office Web Apps in a SharePoint environment.

The Deploy Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article provides details information for IT Pros planning to deploy Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010 Products on-premises in their organizations. Also refer to the Understanding Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) and Planning Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) articles available on Microsoft TechNet.

Office Web Apps is tightly integrated with SharePoint 2010 Products. When you install Office Web Apps, the Office Web Apps Services are added to the list of SharePoint Services and the Office Web Apps Feature is added to the available SharePoint Features. Office Web Apps services include the Word Viewing Service, PowerPoint Service, and Excel Calculation Services that are created and run within the context of SharePoint Services. For both stand-alone SharePoint servers and SharePoint server farms, deploying Office Web Apps involves three primary phases:

Running setup and PSConfig - Tasks include running Setup.exe and SharePoint Products and Technologies Post Setup and Configuration Wizard (PSConfig) on a stand-alone SharePoint server or each server in a SharePoint server farm. Running Setup.exe installs Office Web Apps files and components on a server. Running PSConfig is required as part of Office Web Apps setup in order to register the Office Web Apps services.
Activating the Office Web Apps services - Includes starting the service instances, and creating the service applications and service application proxies.
Activating the Office Web Apps Feature - Includes activating the Office Web Apps Feature on all existing SharePoint site collections where the Office Web Apps should be available. The feature will be activated automatically for new site collections created after Office Web Apps is installed. For more information about how to activate the Office Web Apps Feature for a site collection, see Activate the Office Web Apps Feature on site collections.

For the above steps in detail and troubleshooting tips, please refer to the Deploy Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article.

Note: When installing Office Web Apps in a server farm, it must be installed on every server in that farm. However, the Office Web Apps services do not have to be activated on every server in the farm.

Performance and Capacity Planning

Please refer to the Estimate performance and capacity requirements for Office Web Apps (OfficeWebAppsCapacityPlanningDoc.docx) whitepaper available at Microsoft Download Center. In addition to providing performance and capacity planning information, this whitepaper provides detailed testing information performed by Microsoft, as well as additional recommendations and troubleshooting information. Each Office Web App has slightly different performance characteristics, leading to slightly different capacity characteristics to consider when planning a deployment.

Note: If you will be installing Office Web Apps on an existing SharePoint server farm, it is important to plan for, test, and monitor how Office Web Apps will affect other aspects of your SharePoint server performance.

Configuring options for Outlook 2010

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:17:00 GMT

Outlook application provides you with a world-class experience to stay productive and in touch with your personal and business networks. With the release of Outlook 2010, you get a richer set of experiences - from a redesigned look to advanced e-mail organization, search, communication and social networking features. There are lots of customization options available in Outlook 2010, both for users and administrators, to make it more relevant or secure whatever is the purpose behind it.

Determine which features to enable or customize in Outlook 2010 article contains an initial list of some of the Microsoft Outlook features that you might need to configure and deploy with Microsoft Outlook 2010, such as Contact Cards and the Outlook Social Connector. For security and protection features, see Plan for security and protection in Outlook 2010.

Office Customization Tool

The Office Customization Tool (OCT) is part of the Office Setup program and is the recommended tool for most customizations. The OCT enables the customization of setup options, user setting preferences, feature states, and additional content. The OCT is available only with volume-licensed versions of Office 2010 and is also integrated into Update 1 of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010.

Office Customization Tool in Office 2010 article describes how to use the Office Customization Tool (OCT) to customize an installation of Microsoft Office 2010. Use the Outlook section of the OCT to customize the default Microsoft Outlook 2010 profile and to set Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 options.

Office 2010 Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML) and Office Customization Tool article on TechNet contains information about the new and updated Microsoft Office 2010 Group Policy and Office Customization Tool (OCT) settings that are included in the download package for Office 2010 Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML) and Office Customization Tool . Administrative Template files let you:

Control entry points to the Internet from Office 2010 applications.
Manage security in the Office 2010 applications.
Hide settings and options that are unnecessary for users to perform their jobs and that might distract them or result in unnecessary support calls.
Create a highly managed standard configuration on users' computers

For the latest information about policy settings, please refer to the updated Microsoft Excel 2010 workbook, Office2010GroupPolicyAndOCTSettings_Reference.xls which is available in the Files to download section of the Office 2010 Administrative Template files (ADM, ADMX, ADML) and Office Customization Tool download page. You can configure most Outlook options like account settings, security settings, mail format, UI items etc. through this option.

Configure Outlook 2010 section provides how-to information for configuring Microsoft Outlook 2010 with Microsoft Exchange Server account features, such as Outlook Anywhere, Cached Exchange Mode, Microsoft Exchange send/receive settings, and multiple Exchange accounts. It also provides information about how to configure security and protection features in Microsoft Outlook 2010 and how to customize Outlook profiles by using an Outlook Profile (.prf) file

Group Policy overview for Office 2010 article on TechNet provides a brief overview of Group Policy concepts. The intended audience for this article is the IT administrator who plans to use Group Policy to configure and enforce settings for Microsoft Office 2010 applications.

Outlook Social Connector

Several features and components of the Outlook Social Connector (OSC) can be managed by using Group Policy. The How to manage the Outlook Social Connector by using Group Policy article contains a custom Group Policy template that you can use to manage the following tasks:

Loading the Outlook Social Connector
Configuring People Pane notifications
Specifying he activity synchronization interval period
Specifying the global address list (GAL) synchronization interval
Specifying the social network contact synchronization interval period
Blocking social network activity synchronization
Block social network contact synchronization
Blocking Global Address List synchronization with local contacts
Preventing configuration of social network accounts
Blocking the download of Active Directory details
Blocking on-demand activity synchronization
Blocking specific providers
Configuring the specific providers to load
Displaying contact photos
Configuring the maximum number of items to display in the People Pane

Security and Protection settings

By default, Outlook is configured to use high security-related settings. You can customize many of the security-related features in Microsoft Outlook 2010. This includes how the security settings are enforced, which kind of ActiveX controls can run, custom forms security, and programmatic security settings. Refer to the Choose security and protection settings for Outlook 2010 article for information on this. You can also customize Outlook 2010 security settings for attachments, Information Rights Management, junk e-mail, and encryption. These are covered in additional articles listed in Additional settings table.

Personalizing Outlook

Personalizing Outlook section of Outlook 2010 Help and How-To has all the personalization information from an end user perspective.

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint specific indexing connectors

Vedant Kulshreshtha - MSFT — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:40:00 GMT

Most content sources can be crawled using the integrated indexing connectors in SharePoint Server 2010. These indexing connectors are set up by configuring the FAST Search connector Content Search Service Application (Content SSA). In addition to these, FAST Search for SharePoint includes three FAST-specific connectors:

FAST Search Web Crawler
FAST Search JDBC Connector
FAST Search Lotus Notes Connector

These indexing connectors are configured mainly by editing XML files and Windows PowerShell cmdlets and you operate them by using the command line. (Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint uses XML configuration files to control operations in several functional areas. Refer to: About configuration files (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint))

Plan and design for content collection (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint) article discusses planning for content crawling by helping you understand how Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint crawls and indexes content. Identify the sources of content that you want to crawl section summarizes the available indexing connectors and their recommended use cases. Given below is a snapshot of the information:

For Web site Content

Web site indexing connector	Use when you have a limited amount of Web sites to crawl, without dynamic content.
FAST Search Web crawler	Use when you have many Web sites to crawl. Use when the Web site content contains dynamic data, including JavaScript. Use when the organization needs access to advanced Web crawling, configuration and scheduling options. Use when you want to crawl RSS Web content. Use when the Web site content uses advanced logon options.

Refer to Configure the FAST Search Web crawler for information on configuring the connector.

For Database Content

Business Data Catalog-based indexing connectors

Use if the preferred configuration method is using the Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
Use when you want to use time stamp based change detection for incremental database crawls.
Use when the preferred operation method is using the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Central Administration.
Use when you want to enable crawling based on the change log. This can be achieved by directly modifying the connector model file and creating a stored procedure in the database.

FAST Search database connector

Use when the preferred configuration method is using SQL queries.
Use when you want advanced data joining operation options through SQL queries.
Use when you want to use advanced incremental update features.

FAST Search database connector uses checksum based change detection for incremental crawls if there is no update information available. The connector also supports time stamp based change detection and change detection based on update and delete flags.

Refer to Configure the FAST Search database connector for information on configuring the connector.

For Lotus Notes Content

Lotus Notes indexing connector	Use when the preferred operation method is using the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Central Administration.
FAST Search Lotus Notes connector	Use when full Lotus Notes security support is required, including support for Lotus Notes roles. Use when you want to crawl Lotus Notes databases as attachments.

The FAST Search Lotus Notes connector consists of two parts: a user directory connector and a content connector. The content connector collects content from a Lotus Notes content source. The user directory connector ensures that the end-users can only search Lotus Notes content that they have access to. The user directory connector maps the Active Directory user directory with the Lotus Notes user accounts and is closely integrated with FAST Search Authorization. The FAST Search Lotus Notes connector supports Lotus Notes version 6.5.6, 7.x and 8.x and Lotus Domino version 6.5, 7.x and 8.x.

Refer to Configure the FAST Search Lotus Notes connector for information on configuring the connector.

Plan to deploy FAST Search specific connectors (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint) article discusses the considerations to take into account before you start crawling content with these FAST Search specific connectors.