Swiss IT Professional and TechNet Blog : SharePoint

MOSS 2007 Toolkit - v4 released

mepprecht — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:22:11 GMT

Version 4 of the much loved Toolkit for MOSS 2007 has been released.

Some of the new or improved functionality included in v4:

Diagnostic Tool improvements
Permission Reporting Tool
Quota Management Command
Security Configuration Wizard

Further information about the Toolkit can be found on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog or directly on TechNet.

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009

mepprecht — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:39:09 GMT

October 19-22, 2009, Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, USA

The SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the first and the best conference to get in depth training on SharePoint 2010, from upgrade and migration to the business value of new platform features and functionality. Come and get early insight into what you’ll be able to do with SharePoint 2010 and how you’ll be able to get there.

Naturally, SharePoint 2007 will also be covered by experienced experts.

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/

How to become a SharePoint Professional

mepprecht — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:56:58 GMT

Interesting post from Michael Gannotti on how to become a SharePoint Professional. Some good tips and resources.

http://socialmedia.mikegannotti.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=203

Microsoft Connection Days

mepprecht — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:46:55 GMT

At five locations in Switzerland from 28 September up to 8. October 2009, Microsoft Connection Days (ex Partner Days), an event for Partners and IT professionals will be held.

This year, Microsoft Partners and now IT Professionals will have the opportunity, under one roof, to network and make interesting contacts. Five IT professional topics will be available for you to obtain the latest information about cloud computing (key note), Windows 7, Office/Exchange 2010, Windows Server R2 and Hyper-V R2, SQL Server and Online Services (BPOS).

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide – SharePoint Online

mepprecht — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:24:00 GMT

You may want to Evaluate SharePoint Online (USA Site) (Swiss Site), but don’t know where to start.

Well, the new IPD (Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide) for SharePoint Online is exactly the right thing for you. The document you are looking for on the web page is the “SharePoint Online - Evaluating Software-plus-Services.zip”

All the important facets are explained step-by-step, including a Tally Sheet Job Aid to help you determine the impact and benefits for your users.

New White Papers for SQL Server Published

mepprecht — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:55:41 GMT

A number of new white papers have been published relating to SQL Server and Microsoft or 3rd Party Applications:

Configure disaster recovery across SharePoint farms by using SQL Server log shipping
Create a disaster recovery farm in a geographically distributed data center for SharePoint
Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server
This paper documents performance for aligned and nonaligned storage and why nonaligned partitions can negatively impact I/O performance
Data Compression: Strategy, Capacity Planning and Best Practices
The data compression feature in SQL Server 2008 helps compress the data inside a database, and it can help reduce the size of the database. Apart from the space savings, data compression provides another benefit: Because compressed data is stored in fewer pages, queries need to read fewer pages from the disk, thereby improving the performance of I/O intensive workloads.
Improving Microsoft CRM Performance and Securing Data with SQL Server 2008
This paper provides an overview, benchmark results, and recommendations for implementing selected Microsoft SQL Server 2008 features that can improve the performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and secure the CRM database.
SQL Server 2008 with Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards Applications
This white paper describes why SQL Server is the optimal data platform to use with JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel applications that run on the Microsoft platform
Competitive Review of Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC)
This white paper examines the main reasons why customers might not want to implement Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) in their database solutions.

SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 – Bug with Product Expiry

mepprecht — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:42:00 GMT

During the installation of Service Pack 2 (SP2), a product expiration date is improperly activated.

This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes.

Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

Microsoft is working on a HotFix for this issue, and since this issue will only present itself in 6 months time, this should not hinder you deploying SP2 now.

More information can be found on the SharePoint Team Blog and the KB Article

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is available

mepprecht — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:47:26 GMT

Today we shipped Service Pack 2 for:

Microsoft Office 2007
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Highlights include:

The ability to open, edit and save documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These applications now let users save, open, and edit files as OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp).
Save As PDF or XPS add-in has been built into Office applications. Users no longer have to download and install the add-in separately.
SharePoint offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.

For a list of the other 50 or so improvements and also the bugs that were fixed, visit the Office Sustained Engineering Blog, KB 953195 (Office Client), KB 953334 (Office Server) und KB 953338 (Windows SharePoint Server)

The Service Packs can be downloaded from here

Virtualizing SharePoint – Real World Experiences

mepprecht — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT

If you are thinking about (or have already) Virtualized Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, have a look the the Virtualization blog for some really good real-world experiences and guidance.

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/04/06/Series-on-virtualizing-SharePoint.aspx

iFilters for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows Desktop Search

mepprecht — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:40:16 GMT

Quite often, customers and partners ask about iFilters. For those who don’t know what an iFilter is, well, when a Indexing Service needs to index the contents of a file, it needs to know what the format of the file is. A PDF file has a different format to a DOC or DOCX file. An iFilter file contains the meta-data so that the Indexing Service understand the file. More information on iFilters is available on the MSDN site.

For some good lists of iFilters, visit one of the 2 sites:

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2008/02/07/ifilter-pack-for-indexing-for-sharepoint-server-2007-search-and-sqlfts.aspx
und
http://www.ifilter.org/ (This site has some advertising content on it, but the site does have some interesting links to iFilters)

SharePoint Designer 2007 – Now Free!

mepprecht — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:14:38 GMT

The SharePoint 2007 Designer is now available as a free download.

For those who don’t know what SharePoint Designer is, visit she SharePoint Designer web page and have a look at the videos on offer. You can download the product from the same site.

Test Microsoft Online Services for Free for 30 days

mepprecht — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:46:27 GMT

On the 19th March, at x.Days, Microsoft Online was officially launched in Switzerland. Microsoft Business Productivity Online suite (BPOS) is this offering’s name which encompasses Services like SharePoint, Exchange and Unified Communications (IM, Presence and Live Meeting). Planned future enhancements are Online Versions of CRM.

BPOS is hosted in Microsoft Data Centers, under Microsoft Control. Currently for Europe, the data centers are in Dublin, Ireland and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The whole suite costs about CHF 22.- per month, per user.

You have the opportunity to test the services for free for 30 days, and have a chance to win a HTC Touch Phone.

To test the service, following the following procedure:

Create a Live ID if you don't have one yet https://signup.live.com
Subscribe to the free 30 days Test Suite of Microsoft Online (“Sign up for a trial”) at https://mocp.microsoftonline.com
Wait for the confirmation e-mail. During this time, your Microsoft Online account will be provisioned.
Visit the Customer Portal to retrieve the Administrator Account Information.
Login to the Administration Center with the Administrator Account https://admin.emea.microsoftonline.com
Create your first user accounts, configure Outlook and create your SharePoint site.

Further Technical Information can be found on TechNet (English / German / French). If you want to continue to use the service after the trial 30 days, you may wish to have a Qualified BPOS partner guide you further. These Partners are capable of helping you with Migrations, further Setup and can answer questions relating to your specific needs.

Originally posted on http://blogs.technet.com/chitpro-de/archive/2009/03/20/microsoft-online-services-30-tage-gratis-testen.aspx

BizTalk and SharePoint Server: Business Process Management and Optimization with the Microsoft Plattform

mepprecht — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:48:00 GMT

Based on many requests, a Microsoft Partner training event will be presented by the Microsoft CPLS Partner AddOn. The training will focus on Business Process Management and Process Optimization in BizTalk, plus how SharePoint Components can be used to simplify the solution.

For information on the Partner training in German, see the follwoing links:

BizTalk Training 27 April 2009
BizTalk Training 15 June 2009

http://blogs.technet.com/chitpro-de/archive/2009/02/27/biz-talk-und-sharepoint-server-gesch-ftsprozessmanagement-und-optimierung-mit-der-microsoft-plattform.aspx

New TechNet Event Calendar Web Page

mepprecht — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:20:40 GMT

Microsoft Switzerland now has a new page to show the TechNet Events/Seminars.

http://www.microsoft.com/switzerland/server/de/events/default.mspx

You now have an overview all off the Swiss TechNet events, including the Content, Session Description, Date and Venue. On each link from this page, you can get detailed information about each event, including detailed information and the Live-ID enabled registration link.

I hope to meet you are more of the TechNet events.

SharePoint Conference 2009

mepprecht — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:56:00 GMT

Do you know about the SharePoint Conference 2009 - the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies? SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the conference to learn about SharePoint “14”.

Who: If you’re an IT Professional, an IT Decision Maker, an Architect or a Developer you’ll find a deep set of technical content to give you a kick start for SharePoint “14” and further your skills and knowledge with SharePoint Server 2007.

What: SharePoint Conference 2009

When: October 19-22, 2009

Where: Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America

Why: There’s an exciting mix in the plans for SharePoint Conference 2009. This year’s conference will be looking towards the future with a broad array of deep content centered on the next version of SharePoint, codenamed SharePoint “14”, and at the same time, be firmly planted in the present, sharing real world experience and guidance to help you maximize your investment in SharePoint Server 2007. In addition to the session content you will have ample opportunities to network with technical and industry experts including many of the Microsoft staff that helped in building SharePoint, Microsoft Most Value Professionals and many of our top Certified Partners.

Register early to benefit from a discounted event fee. Visit http://www.mssharepointconference.com for further information.