JohnR

TRAINING - “The Developers Guide to Web Content Management"

Jo has just blogged about some training she's organised with Combined Knowledge for partners on Web Content Management using SharePoint.

Combined Knowledge have a great reputation when it comes to SharePoint training so it's definitely worth booking a place.

We’re pleased  to announce the release of the “The Developers Guide to Web Content Management” course. This five day training course is designed to provide SharePoint developers with the basic and intermediate information and skills they need to extend, customize, and deploy a Web content management (WCM) publishing site implementation. The primary audience for this course is SharePoint developers who are responsible for the successful implementation of a WCM site.

Deliveries will take place on the 16^th  June and the 30^th June, at Combined Knowledge in Leicestershire.

For more information or to enrol, please use this link: Here is the link: https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/search_adv.aspx?ssid=6d49d9f3-a95c-4f4d-8a30-da2c3299bec0&site=UK&lang=en-uk

If you have any problems enrolling, please contact our helpdesk on 0870 8509442, or by email on ukplcsup@microsoft.com.

Deploying and Administering Forefront Client Security, Forefront Security for Exchange and Forefront Security for SharePoint

We still have some spaces available on the Deploying and Administering Forefront Client Security, Forefront Security for Exchange and Forefront Security for SharePoint Training course.

Overview of the course –

Learn critical deployment and administration skills in this 400-level instructor lead training class on Forefront Client Security and Forefront Server Security products.   Targeted at systems integrators, consultants, and deployment partners, this 5-day class includes lecture and hands on labs (both client and server) and was developed by Microsoft Consulting Services using their detailed implementation knowledge and best practices. 

Delivery Date – 9^th – 13^th June 2008

Delivery Location - London

Further Details of the course can be found by logging into the Partner Learning Centre and using the link below -

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?publisher=12&delivery=232649&site=UK&lang=en-uk

Agile Methodology for SharePoint Consultancy

I've been reading up a bit lately about the Agile Methodology for Software Development. It's iterative approach to solution development seems to me to suit SharePoint down to the ground - deploy the platform and then build solutions on the top.

I know of a few partners that are using Agile for their SharePoint Consultancy - People like Business Agility, dot net solutions and BrightStarr - And I was wondering if anyone else was using this approach?

SysInternals Utilities for download

Handy set of utilities to have around, including :-

Sysinternals Utilities Index

Sysinternals Suite
The entire set of Sysinternals Utilities rolled up into a single download.

AccessChk
v4.02 (9/4/2007)
This tool shows you the accesses the user or group you specify has to files, Registry keys or Windows services.

AccessEnum
1.32 (11/1/2006)
This simple yet powerful security tool shows you who has what access to directories, files and Registry keys on your systems. Use it to find holes in your permissions.

AdExplorer
v1.01 (11/27/2007)
Active Directory Explorer is an advanced Active Directory (AD) viewer and editor.
AdInsight
v1.01 (11/20/2007)
An LDAP (Light-weight Directory Access Protocol) real-time monitoring tool aimed at troubleshooting Active Directory client applications.

AdRestore
v1.1 (11/1/2006)
Undelete Server 2003 Active Directory objects.

Autologon
v2.10 (11/1/2006)
Bypass password screen during logon.

Autoruns
v9.13 (02/26/2008)
See what programs are configured to startup automatically when your system boots and you login. Autoruns also shows you the full list of Registry and file locations where applications can configure auto-start settings.

BgInfo
v4.12 (11/5/2007)
This fully-configurable program automatically generates desktop backgrounds that include important information about the system including IP addresses, computer name, network adapters, and more.

BlueScreen
v3.2 (11/1/2006)
This screen saver not only accurately simulates Blue Screens, but simulated reboots as well (complete with CHKDSK), and works on Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003 and Windows 9x.

CacheSet
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
CacheSet is a program that allows you to control the Cache Manager's working set size using functions provided by NT. It's compatible with all versions of NT.

ClockRes
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
View the resolution of the system clock, which is also the maximum timer resolution.

Contig
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
Wish you could quickly defragment your frequently used files? Use Contig to optimize individual files, or to create new files that are contiguous.

Ctrl2cap
v2.0 (11/1/2006)
This is a kernel-mode driver that demonstrates keyboard input filtering just above the keyboard class driver in order to turn caps-locks into control keys. Filtering at this level allows conversion and hiding of keys before NT even "sees" them. Ctrl2cap also shows how to use NtDisplayString() to print messages to the initialization blue-screen.

DebugView
v4.74 (11/27/2007)
Another first from Sysinternals: This program intercepts calls made to DbgPrint by device drivers and OutputDebugString made by Win32 programs. It allows for viewing and recording of debug session output on your local machine or across the Internet without an active debugger.

DiskExt
v1.1 (5/14/2007)
Display volume disk-mappings.

Diskmon
v2.01 (11/1/2006)
This utility captures all hard disk activity or acts like a software disk activity light in your system tray.

DiskView
v2.21 (11/1/2006)
Graphical disk sector utility.

Disk Usage (DU)
v1.31 (11/1/2006)
View disk usage by directory.

EFSDump
v1.02 (11/1/2006)
View information for encrypted files.

Filemon
v7.04 (11/1/2006)
This monitoring tool lets you see all file system activity in real-time.

Handle
v3.31 (04/15/2008)
This handy command-line utility will show you what files are open by which processes, and much more.

Hex2dec
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
Convert hex numbers to decimal and vice versa.

Junction
v1.05 (7/24/2007)
Create Win2K NTFS symbolic links.

LDMDump
v1.02 (11/1/2006)
Dump the contents of the Logical Disk Manager's on-disk database, which describes the partitioning of Windows 2000 Dynamic disks.

ListDLLs
v2.25 (11/1/2006)
List all the DLLs that are currently loaded, including where they are loaded and their version numbers. Version 2.0 prints the full path names of loaded modules.

LiveKd
v3.0 (11/1/2006)
Use Microsoft kernel debuggers to examine a live system.

LoadOrder
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
See the order in which devices are loaded on your WinNT/2K system.

LogonSessions
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
List the active logon sessions on a system.

MoveFile
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
Allows you to schedule move and delete commands for the next reboot.

NewSID
v4.10 (11/1/2006)
Learn about the computer SID problem everybody has been talking about and get a free computer SID changer, NewSID.

NTFSInfo
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
Use NTFSInfo to see detailed information about NTFS volumes, including the size and location of the Master File Table (MFT) and MFT-zone, as well as the sizes of the NTFS meta-data files.

PageDefrag
v2.32 (11/1/2006)
Defragment your paging files and Registry hives.

PendMoves
v1.1 (11/1/2006)
Enumerate the list of file rename and delete commands that will be executed the next boot.

PortMon
v3.02 (11/1/2006)
Monitor serial and parallel port activity with this advanced monitoring tool. It knows about all standard serial and parallel IOCTLs and even shows you a portion of the data being sent and received. Version 3.x has powerful new UI enhancements and advanced filtering capabilities.

Process Explorer
v11.13 (04/15/2008)
Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.

Process Monitor
v1.32 (04/17/2008)
Monitor file system, Registry, process, thread and DLL activity in real-time.

ProcFeatures
v1.10 (11/1/2006)
This applet reports processor and Windows support for Physical Address Extensions and No Execute buffer overflow protection.

PsExec
v1.94 (01/04/2008)
Execute processes with limited-user rights.

PsFile
v1.02 (12/4/2006)
See what files are opened remotely.

PsGetSid
v1.43 (12/4/2006)
Displays the SID of a computer or a user.

PsInfo
v1.75 (7/9/2007)
Obtain information about a system.

PsKill
v1.12 (12/4/2006)
Terminate local or remote processes.

PsList
v1.28 (12/4/2006)
Show information about processes and threads.

PsLoggedOn
v1.33 (12/4/2006)
Show users logged on to a system.

PsLogList
v2.64 (12/4/2006)
Dump event log records.

PsPasswd
v1.22 (12/4/2006)
Changes account passwords.

PsService
v2.22 (01/11/2008)
View and control services.

PsShutdown
v2.52 (12/4/2006)
Shuts down and optionally reboots a computer.

PsSuspend
v1.06 (12/4/2006)
Suspend and resume processes.

PsTools
v2.43 (2/12/2007)
The PsTools suite includes command-line utilities for listing the processes running on local or remote computers, running processes remotely, rebooting computers, dumping event logs, and more.

RegDelNull
v1.10 (11/1/2006)
Scan for and delete Registry keys that contain embedded null-characters that are otherwise undeleteable by standard Registry-editing tools.

RegHide
v1.0 (11/1/2006)
Creates a key called "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sysinternals\Can't touch me!\0" using the Native API, and inside this key it creates a value.

RegJump
v1.01 (11/1/2006)
Jump to the registry path you specify in Regedit.

RegMon
v7.04 (11/1/2006)
This monitoring tool lets you see all Registry activity in real-time.

RootkitRevealer
v1.71 (11/1/2006)
Scan your system for rootkit-based malware.

SDelete
v1.51 (11/1/2006)
Securely overwrite your sensitive files and cleanse your free space of previously deleted files using this DoD-compliant secure delete program.

ShareEnum
v1.6 (11/1/2006)
Scan file shares on your network and view their security settings to close security holes.

ShellRunas
v1.01 (02/28/2008)
Launch programs as a different user via a convenient shell context-menu entry.

Sigcheck
v1.52 (02/26/2008)
Dump file version information and verify that images on your system are digitally signed.

Streams
v1.56 (4/27/2007)
Reveal NTFS alternate streams.

Strings
v2.40 (4/24/2007)
Search for ANSI and UNICODE strings in binaryimages.

Sync
v2.0 (11/1/2006)
Flush cached data to disk.

TCPView
v2.53 (01/11/2008)
Active socket command-line viewer.

VolumeId
v2.0 (11/1/2006)
Set Volume ID of FAT or NTFS drives.

Whois
v1.01 (11/1/2006)
See who owns an Internet address.

WinObj
v2.15 (11/1/2006)
The ultimate Object Manager namespace viewer is here.

ZoomIt
v1.8 (03/10/2008)
Presentation utility for zooming and drawing on the screen.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb545027.aspx

ZoomIt - Your new demo friend

Introduction

ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations.

ZoomIt works on all versions of Windows and you can use pen input for ZoomIt drawing on tablet PCs.

Using ZoomIt

The first time you run ZoomIt it presents a configuration dialog that describes ZoomIt's behavior, let's you specify alternate hotkeys for zooming and for entering drawing mode without zooming, and customize the drawing pen color and size. I use the draw-without-zoom option to annotate the screen at its native resolution, for example. ZoomIt also includes a break timer feature that remains active even when you tab away from the timer window and allows you to return to the timer window by clicking on the ZoomIt tray icon.

Download ZoomIt
(44 KB)

Just in case you haven't seen this handy piece of software, it's available from the Technet Web Site. - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

SharePoint and CRM

If you're looking to integrate SharePoint and Microsoft CRM you might want to pop over to Simon Hutsons (Jabber as he's know locally) blog

He's got a nice couple of article on integrating the two together.

Creating SharePoint Sites With CRM Workflow

SharePoint 3.0 Document Libraries & CRM

Contextual Business Intelligence with Microsoft Office Visio Professional

Over the last few years, there has been explosive growth in the awareness and availability of business intelligence (BI) solutions in all organizations from small, family-owned businesses all the way up to the largest enterprises in the world.  One of the biggest challenges facing these organizations today is figuring out how to present data to users in a way that is both meaningful and easily digestible.

http://visiotoolbox.com/articles1.aspx?articleid=5&aid=31

Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit 1.0 Released

The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help administrate and manage Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. This toolkit contains two new functions - the ability to perform bulk operations on site collections and a Stsadm operation to update alert emails after a Web application has changed URLs.

WhitePaper: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=117212&clcid=0x409

o    x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=263CD480-F6EB-4FA3-9F2E-2D47618505F2&displaylang=en

o    x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F8EEA8F0-FA30-4C10-ABC9-217EEACEC9CE&displaylang=en

Love the ribbon? Love it more .. .. ..

Project: Search Commands



View Larger Image

Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks.

Crave more info?
FAQ - get answers to frequently asked questions
Blog - read the latest news from the team
Discussions - connect with other users



Watch Video

http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx

London boroughs lose sensitive data

"Thirteen London councils have admitted to losing or wrongly revealing personal data, an investigation conducted by the BBC has revealed.

Amongst the 23 boroughs that replied to the Freedom of Information request, 13 admitted personal data about their members had been lost, stolen or inadvertently disclosed during the last year."

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&ArticleID=2745

Maybe BitLocker, RMS and EFS would have helped?

Looking to migrate from Lotus Notes to SharePoint?

Well Steve Walch from Quest has started a blog on that very subject :-

http://notes2sharepoint.org/default.aspx

Enterprise SharePoint Search Training available on Technet

We just published ~17 hours of training videos for enterprise search on TechNet.

The 14 recorded presentations are based on training modules from three-day, in-person training,  Implementing and Deploying an Enterprise Search solution

The presentations provide details about key enterprise search capabilities in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

·         Module 1: Workshop Overview (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115635&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 2: Enterprise Search Overview (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115636&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 3: SharePoint Search 2007 Walkthrough (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115637&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 4: Search Architecture and Deployment Scenarios (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115638&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 5: Crawl and Query Processes (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115639&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 6: Relevance Ranking (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115640&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 7: Customizing the End-User Experience (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115641&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 8: Developing Search Solutions (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115642&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 9: Business Data Catalog Search (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115643&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 10: Extensibility and Integration for Search (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115644&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 11: Search Administration (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115646&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 12: Security for Search (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115647&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 13: Performance Scalability and Capacity Planning for Search (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115648&clcid=0x409)

·         Module 14: Search Operations (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=115649&clcid=0x409)

Extra Training Date - Virtualisation - Implementing and Migrating to Hyper-V

27^th-28^th May 2008

Virtualisation – Implementation and Migrating to Hyper V

Wokingham

10 am

Current Agenda for the Coures –

Day 1

Day 2

09:00     Introduction

09:15     Module 1 – Virtualisation Concepts

09:45     Module 2 – Hyper-V Architecture

10:30     Break

11:00     Module 3 – Identifying Virtualisation Opportunities

11:45     Module 4 – Deploying Hyper-V Parent Partitions

12:30     Lunch Break

13:30     Lab 1 – Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Installation

14:30     Module 5 – Deploying Hyper-V Child Partitions

15:15     Break

15:45     Lab 2 – Utilising Hyper-V

16:45     Day 1 End

09:00     Module 6 – High Availability with Hyper-V

09:45     Lab 3 – Failover Clustering and Hyper-V

10:30     Break

11:00     Module 7 – Managing Virtualised Workloads

11:45     Lab 4 – Automating Child Partitions with Scripts

12:30     Lunch Break

13:30     Module 8 – Migrating to Hyper-V

14:15     Lab 5 – Migrating to Hyper-V

15:00     Break

15:30     Module 9 – Common Virtualisation Scenarios

16:15     Module 10 – Implementation Planning

16:45     Workshop Review & Close

The events are now live in the PLC and can be accessed at –

https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/details.aspx?publisher=12&delivery=246572

More PerformancePoint Training

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007:  M&A Implementation Methodologies and Best Practices

This webcast will introduce you to Microsoft Consulting Services’ Performance management Center of Excellence (PM-CoE). The PM-CoE is responsible for documenting implementation methodology and best practices for Performance Point Server 2007. The presentation will take you through the suggested phases of a generic PerformancePoint Server M&A implementation; what to look out for – and the “do’s” and “don’ts”.

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007: Planning Implementation Methodologies and Best Practices

This webcast will introduce you to Microsoft Consulting Services’ Performance Management Center of Excellence (PM-CoE). The PM-CoE is responsible for documenting implementation methodology and best practices for Performance Point Server 2007. The presentation will take you through the suggested phases of a generic PPS Planning implementation; what to look out for – and the “do’s “ and”don’ts”.

Microsoft Finance Case Study: PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning Implementation Do’s and Don’ts

Microsoft is on the path of migrating all current planning and forecasting applications with an integrated solution based on Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. This webcast will address the financial management challenges addressed by PerformancePoint Server 2007 and lessons learned.

SharePoint: Site Collections vs Sub Sites

I got asked this week when to use Site Collections and when to use Sub Sites in SharePoint -

Here's a collection of articles that should be useful.

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/llowevad/archive/2007/11/09/when-to-use-site-collections-vs-sub-sites.aspx

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/llowevad/archive/2007/06/25/site-collection-logical-architecture.aspx

http://www.bobmixon.com/blog/archive/2008/04/15/sharepoint-2007-site-collections-and-when-to-use-them.aspx