My Two Bits : Observations & Other Stuff

A post I wish I had written

Kailash — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:19:04 GMT

Reading some through mails today I came across a link to this excellent article on OneNote. I’ve been working on OneNote as a GTD app with Outlook – similar to David. But it seems David’s done a lot more to get things done!

Here’s his post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/david_rasmussen/archive/2006/06/14/630885.aspx

I’m adding his blog to my Outlook feed reader.

Using XP Mode

Kailash — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Recently I had a customer demo to deliver for SharePoint 2007. I had the VM checked out and needed to set it up the evening before the demo. So I fired up my virtual PC app. Surprise, surprise! Windows 7 does not support VPC! Panic mode sets in and I’ve got all pistons firing – how do I recover this for the demo tomorrow at 11?

Move to Windows Server 2008 w/HyperV?
Move to XP? or Vista?
XP Mode?!

What I’d discovered was that XP Mode is actually a VPC like app running a VM with XP preinstalled. So I figured that if I could get that to run, I’d be able to fire up a VHD I had. (instructions on how to get it running)

So I download the requisite files from microsoft.com and they install fine. Now comes the moment of truth. Double click. Configuration screen. Pass. Error message!? – Need to enable hardware virtualization. OK, fine, no trouble.

Downloaded the Intel utility to check my hardware. Test results came out ok. Went into BIOS and enabled the Virtualization Technology. Back to Windows and double click – same error! And so I sat there dumbfounded. Fiddled with it for the next 3 hours and finally decided to reread the instructions.

Enable Virtualization Tech and then Shutdown machine, disconnect from power for 10 seconds. – that’s the gist of what I’d missed. Did that and VT was up and running! Double click to see the beautiful sight of the VM booting up.

Day 2 with Windows 7

Kailash — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:47:00 GMT

Ok, so I noticed the box around running apps. Subtle, but cool – I guess since I was confused, I was paying attention. I haven’t noted any other blogs or reviews on this.

So, how am I feeling?

I like the libraries feature. What is it? Simply, I can organize and arrange my folders as I like them on the disk. Then if there are some key folders I use often, I can drag them into Libraries and have them 2 clicks away, without upsetting their locations.

I’ve not tried nesting them, but I think this should work. – ok I tried it and it doesn’t. Don’t have a use for it yet, but I’m sure I’ll think one up!

Taskbar – I’m liking it a lot! When I mouse over the open apps in Taskbar, I get previews like I used to in Vista, but when I hover over the previews, I get a full-page view without switching apps! Which is awesome, because then it’s easy to reference info or glance at something and then back to whatever you’re doing.

Also, having live writer on the task bar, I’m encouraged to blog a bit more. We’ll know the impact of this after a while. I’m trying to post more and have to keep reminding myself.

Screen dimming – this is awesome! I love it. So here’s the thing. If I leave my computer for a while the screen dims to conserve power. As soon as I touch a key or move the mouse, it restores to the original brightness. Way to go! Imagine this happening across the world! We’d save a ton of energy.

Hmm… I have a few issues with my screen resolution. I’ve got a Compaq nc8430 with ATI Radeon graphics card. When I switch it to the highest res, 1680 x blah..

erm.. I tried it out and it worked again! Wow.. things are getting fixed as I write!!! :D

In any case I filled out a report (click on send feedback on the top right of almost every window!) and sent it out. We’ll see. But hey my issues are getting fixed – which is awesome..

I upgraded my Vista to Windows 7 on impulse and compared to the hassle with upgrading to Vista (updating ROM – I was one of the very first and issues with drivers) this has been a very smooth transition. All my apps seem to be working great – no hangs. Except SKYPE. I get a warning saying that Windows 7 has compatibility issues with Skype. It’s up and running at the moment and the chats seem to be going thru. Will write more about this another time.

Good day!

Keeping up with MS Bloggers

Kailash — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:39:00 GMT

I wish you all a very happy new year.

Keeping up with all the MS blogs and bloggers can be hard. If you’re facing this challenge. Here’s a great way to resolve it.

http://blogs.technet.com/blogms/

DVD issue and the not-so-helpful error codes

Kailash — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:47:30 GMT

I was playing Rise of Legends over the last few days. After a late night session the day before, I woke up to find that my DVD drive had disappeared. It was physically present, but for some reason it just wouldn't play a movie, a cd and certainly not the game. Flabbergasted, I looked at the Device Manager and discovered an exclamation mark beside the DVD drive. It appeared that I had a pioneer dvd. The error code said that my drivers were corrupted and that I needed to reinstall my DVD driver. Go figure. It's a Pioneer (which, I for some reason, keep spelling Pinoeer) K17 DVDR. After much head bashing, and searching – I happen to consider myself very good at searching – I had to finally give up. Resorting to forums, I found a couple of posts.

One said, I had to reinstall the Operating System. I wasn't willing to do that. Looking at the error code (39) – find explanation here – I had very little hope. Then I came across another post that talked about clearing out a couple of entries in the registry. That rang a bell – I'd read something about that ages ago. I decided to chance it. It's my work machine, and it's a Microsoft game – I figured, I could talk to support. And so I tried the KB article's instructions (Manual – not the automatic stuff) and to my surprise (not really), it worked!

Here's the article for your use. I hope you'll save yourself some trouble at some point because of it.

Article Title: (it worked for my error code 39 too).

You can no longer access the CD drive or the DVD drive, or you receive an error message after you remove a CD recording program or a DVD recording program in Windows XP: "error code 31"

And there’s Audacity…

Kailash — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:47:05 GMT

Almost forgot to write about Audacity. If you're into podcasting – of the audio sort – then you can surely use this free tool. I was somewhat overwhelmed by it at first, but after locating the Record button, I felt a lot better.

Generally most of the podcasting software will record in WAV or other formats that are not MP3. But since MP3's so darn popular, Audacity does come with an Export function. To activate it you'll have to find and download the lame_enc.dll file and tell Audacity where it is (instructions here). Once that's done, you're all set to deliver. I just sent a mail substitute that was 17 mins long with Audacity. I've still to get a response, but initial feedback's been great. Maybe I'll just dump mails in favor of podcasts… and blogs!

Office Labs

Kailash — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:31:22 GMT

http://officelabs.com

Check out he website to find some interesting tools and ideas that we're trying out.

Concept testing is what this site is all about. The projects you find here are not products or beta versions. They don't even pretend to be complete product ideas. They are the equivalent of 'concept cars' for software. Automotive companies sometimes produce near and far-future test vehicles to test design concepts or features to see how effective they are. In most cases there is no intent to productize the vehicles as shown. They simply work for the purposes of getting feedback. We do the same for software. The difference is that you to get to test drive the concepts. Because of that, all these experiences are strictly 'use at your own risk', and we can't promise to fix every bug that is reported but we'll try to nip the worst ones.

We are often asked if any of the things seen here will become products or features of products in the future. It's possible that some of them will appear in some form. But what we are really after is feedback and information from you. We want to know how often people use these tools. What parts of them are used most? What are the patterns of usage? Do they work for you? You may see some of the concepts updated over time to improve them based on the feedback. Even with all that, most of these ideas just won't make the cut for a product. Even when something is pretty useful, there are usually many other things even more useful to more people that are selected for inclusion in our products.

You might be wondering why this site isn't located on microsoft.com. One reason is simple: we didn't want to give anyone the impression that these projects are full blown Microsoft products. This site itself is also a concept test. Over time we'll be modifying it to experiment with ways to engage with you, our community.

from: Welcome to Microsoft Office Labs

Open Standards @ MS – more steps

Kailash — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:25:35 GMT

More positive news from the Open Standards front – we've got the Open Specifications Promise from MS dated 2006 and it looks like we also have freed up the Office binary formats – so you don't need to move to Office 2007 formats to rest easy that your documents will be openable a thousand years from now!

More on OSP here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx

Office binary format specs: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx

Knowledge Centers

Kailash — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:48:01 GMT

I met Mike Gannotti in Seattle in July last year. He presented at a small team gathering and told us of the work he'd done around Knowledge Centers. That idea stuck with me and here's the complete series he's posted on getting them up and running.

Have a look at the first: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/mikeg/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=258

Thanks Mike!

Where’s my time going?

Kailash — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:18:09 GMT

If you often spend your full day working on your machine and wonder where your time went, then here's something that may help!

http://www.workingprogram.com/qlockwork.html

AJAX and MOSS

Kailash — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:19:34 GMT

I've heard a few of you ask about AJAX in MOSS 2007. Yeah, OOB MOSS doesn't support the ASP.NET AJAX framework, so here's an interesting bit of reading for you – thanks to Jose, whose post, I picked it from:

AJAX is not a specific technology but a set of technologies, mostly related to using client-side javascript to asynchronously do post backs and partial page refreshes. If you are using AJAX, you can leverage some of the other technologies mentioned here to interact with SharePoint. There is no out-of-the-box web part to host AJAX code, but there's already many discussions detailing how to support this scenario and leverage it inside a web part.

Reference: Information about ASP.NET-based AJAX: http://ajax.asp.net
Reference: Building a web part that uses AJAX: http://www.capdes.com/2007/02/microsoft_office_sharepoint_se.html
Reference: Building a web part that uses AJAX: http://sharethispoint.com/archive/2007/02/28/Using-a-SPGridView-inside-an-ASP.net-Ajax-UpdatePanel.aspx

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2007/04/05/integrating-sharepoint-with-other-portals-and-web-applications.aspx

.NET and J2EE/Java Interop

Kailash — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:48:56 GMT

I've had customers asking me about Interop with Java and SharePoint. This bit below should help us respond to them.

If you haven't seen/heard about it, I'd like to refer you to the following:
.NET and Java/J2EE Interoperability: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700845.aspx
Integrating with IBM's Websphere Apps: http://blogs.msdn.com/dotnetinterop/archive/2007/07/27/stocktrader-now-with-source-code.aspx
StockTrader Info: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684.aspx

.NET StockTrader Sample Application

An End-to-End Sample Application Illustrating Windows Communication Foundation and .NET Enterprise Technologies

This application is an end-to-end sample application for .NET Enterprise Application Server technologies. It is a service-oriented application based on Windows Communication Foundation (.NET 3.0) and ASP.NET, and illustrates many of the .NET enterprise development technologies for building highly scalable, rich "enterprise-connected" applications. It is designed as a benchmark kit to illustrate alternative technologies within .NET and their relative performance.

The application offers full interoperability with J2EE and IBM WebSphere's Trade 6.1 sample application. As such, the application offers an excellent opportunity for developers to learn about .NET and building interoperable, service-oriented applications.

From the demo's I've seen, this is an important bit of integration and it shows how we can really outperform the J2EE platform. So with apps like these running on MOSS, we can really gobble up customer mindshare.

Building Groove Apps

Kailash — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:30:00 GMT

I recently got asked by a customer about Building Groove Apps, so I dug around and found some relevant resources. Here's the info for you:

Groove Databridge:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/office/grooveserver/2007/guide/GDBAG_01.mspx?mfr=true

Groove Developer Portal:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb308957.aspx

You'll find the SDK and other important info like the following resources on the Developer Portal:

Groove 2007 Forms Developer Reference Guide
Learn to develop forms-based applications in Groove 2007 using either the Groove Forms tool or InfoPath Forms tool.

Groove 2007 Web Services Developer Reference Guide
This reference describes how to use the Groove Web Services APIs. It provides samples using both the underlying SOAP XML messages and application program source code.

Groove 2007 SDK
Download the SDK, which contains samples and libraries to help you develop Web services applications for Groove 2007. The SDK includes C# samples and the WSDL definitions for the Groove Web Services APIs. In addition, it provides local copies of the Groove 2007 Web Services Developer Reference Guide and the Groove 2007 Forms Developer Reference Guide.

Web Helpers for Groove 2007
Groove Web Helpers are a C# .NET assembly that provides an abstraction layer for Groove 2007 and Groove 3.1 Web Services. The abstraction layer provides an easy to use API with an object and eventing model, so that custom applications that interface with Groove can be built more quickly. Please note that because the Groove Web Helpers are a community project, Microsoft can make no guarantees that future releases of Microsoft Office Groove products will continue to interoperate with any specific version of Groove Web Helpers.

SharePoint Governance

Kailash — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:06:31 GMT

Almost every other customer wanted this information during my visits. I expect you'll find that your more enlightened customers will love these resources. Use it in your discussions and also to enhance your own understanding of SharePoint usage.

Previously Released:

Compliance features in the 2007 Microsoft Office system –
This whitepaper helps you understand top to bottom what you get and what you need to build around compliance.

Robert Bogue's SharePoint Governance, Part 1 & Part 2
Robert a SharePoint MVP does a great job of providing a list from Infrastructure to Branding to help you understand what needs to be taken into consideration.

New Whitepapers:

Information architecture in SharePoint Server 2007 – Scott Case, Interknowlogy
This case study describes the process by which a fictitious company plans, customizes and deploys an Office SharePoint Server 2007 installation in a large organization.

SharePoint Products and Technologies customization policy – Sean Livingston, (previously of MS IT now WSS Upgrade PM)
Learn about the range of customizations available in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007. For each type of customization, the author provides recommendations on whether to support the customization at various levels of IT service and provides details on the potential support issues.

Sample governance plan – Mark Wagner, MCS
Use this governance plan template to create your own enterprise governance plan, including defining governance roles and responsibilities, operations policies, training, and resources.

Logical architecture model: Corporate deployment – UA: Brenda Carter
With these sample models you can better plan out how many farms, how many SSPs, and how many web applications you need.

Tools:

http://www.codeplex.com/governance
This workspace includes various community tools and solutions. Tools are featured here:

MS IT Site Delete Capture 1.0 – This event handler deployed as a feature, will simply backup the site to a specific location on disk before the site or site collection is deleted making it easy to retrieve sites that are deleted by mistake. This simple tool provides manageability saving time and money allowing IT to focus on more important tasks.

MS IT Site Life Cycle Manager beta 1 – This tool helps you notify owners of sites where sites are no longer in use and automates the locking and backing up and archiving of sites that are no longer needed. This helps remove the "junk" reducing storage needs and hence optimize search results.

Links to various partners and free tools including programmatically enabling auditing with code samples from Ted Pattison on MSDN.

Blogs

Microsoft provides BPEL 2.0 in WF - BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP

Kailash — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:57:05 GMT

From Paul Andrew's Post: http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2007/02/25/Microsoft-provides-BPEL-2.0-in-WF-_2D00_-BPEL-for-Windows-Workflow-Foundation-March-CTP.aspx

In March 2007 Microsoft plans to release a CTP of a set of BPEL activities for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). This will be called BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP and the CTP release will implement the BPEL 1.1 specification. The final release of BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation will implement the OASIS BPEL 2.0 standard and is planned for release in Q4 of calendar year 2007.

The download will be separate from the .NET Framework and it will be required for developing BPEL based workflows in Visual Studio. The same download will provide runtime operations for executing BPEL based workflows. It will include a set of BPEL activities for Windows Workflow Foundation that will implement the BPEL standard. Import and export tools are provided so that BPEL can be loaded into the XAML format used by Windows Workflow Foundation and vice versa. Visual Studio is not required for the import/export but developers will benefit from using the workflow designer that runs in Visual Studio 2005.

This release shows the extensibility in Windows Workflow Foundation. No changes were required to the Windows Workflow Foundation codebase to support these new activities and other Domain Specific Languages (DSL's) could be also implemented on Windows Workflow Foundation through this extensibility.

How does this announcement affect the support for BPEL in BizTalk Server?

The next major version of BizTalk Server will be built on Windows Workflow Foundation. This was announced back when Windows Workflow Foundation was first disclosed in September 2005. BizTalk Server will be able to take advantage of these BPEL activities at that time to also allow for BPEL 2.0 support. At that time both Windows Workflow Foundation and BizTalk Server will support BPEL 2.0.