My thoughts on Communications and Collaboration space : WSS

TechReady4 (Seattle) and EMEA SharePoint Conference (Berlin)

OlegG — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:27:00 GMT

I would like to report on 2 events in one post.

First TR4, oh the great TR! Over 7,000 Microsoft Employees from all over the world gathered in Seattle to attend. Luis Camara Manoel and I gave several presentation and chalk talks around the SharePoint Template Upgrade Toolkit, and had a chance to mingle with the extremely diverse crowd.

One item of interest to me was finding out that Groove is not going away. There have been rumors on the "net" that Groove will not be present in the next Office release as a separate product. This is not true, Groove is not going away, and will be very much present in O14, and onward. I’m sure UI will change to fit better with Office UI, but product will not dissolve into other Office applications.

EMEA SharePoint conference was in Berlin, and I'd like to take this opportunity to say "thanks" to my boss for allowing me to participate. Over 2500 people attended, most of who were representatives of Microsoft Partners.

Luis and I presented on the SharePoint Template Upgrade Toolkit, and spent most of our “free” time talking to partners. That said we hardly had any time to see the city, which is on my TODO list for next time.

If you can read French, here is a recap of our session, including a few pictures.

http://blogs.developpeur.org/themit/archive/2007/02/14/sharepoint-conf-eu-day-3-upgrade-toolkit.aspx

Stay tuned for more!

Why pick MOSS over WSS?

OlegG — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:30:00 GMT

I’m sure this question comes up often, why pick one over the other. WSS is free, while MOSS comes with a hefty price tag. Here is a good link; http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/FX101758691033.aspx, but really what is it all about? In my humble opinion it’s about Search, enterprise search to be exact. I think any organization could benefit from MOSS, but with MOSS comes the price. Many times “free” of WSS is the right price, and enterprise level search is a "nice to have" along with other MOSS features. In the perfect world software would do what you need it to do, and cost what you can afford, and all search would be had by all.

Upgrade Toolkit for Windows SharePoint Services Sites and Templates Exclusive Preview

OlegG — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 20:35:00 GMT

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6013824

A little about the Solution Accelerator (from TechNet page)

“With the release of Windows® SharePoint® Services (WSS) 3.0, users who have created sites based on any of the original WSS 2.0 application templates offered on Microsoft TechNet or on other customized sites or site templates will want to upgrade them to work in the WSS 3.0 environment.

The Solution Accelerator Team (SAT) has created a solution accelerator that provides guidance and tools to enable IT Professionals to successfully upgrade their Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 custom sites and templates. The result: a set of custom sites and templates that will operate in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment. This toolkit also includes a set of upgraded Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 application templates.”

I posted about this SA before; it has recently finished production and went up on TechNet. At this moment this is the only place on WWW linking to the SA TechNet page, a sneak preview if you will. The team, and me personally, are looking forward to your feedback.

Upgrade Toolkit for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Sites and Templates Beta is available!

OlegG — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:25:00 GMT

WSS 3.0 is ready for the market, and with it a new quirk for the IT folks, how to upgrade existing Site Templates (.stp) files from WSS 2.0 to 3.0. Template upgrade is not supported through the product itself, though there are a few workarounds.

My neighbors (these guys are just across the hall) released a beta toolkit to help IT Pro upgrade their existing site templates to 3.0, which includes enabling new functionality, like master pages and the recycle bin.

Solution consists of guidance and a set of Application Templates for WSS 2.0 which have been upgraded to be compatible with WSS 3.0. If you loved one of the T33 templates and would like to keep using it, all you need to do is grab the new version from the toolkit, or read the guidance on how to upgrade your own site templates to 3.0. Solution also covers custom site upgrade, since the only way to upgrade a site template is to instantiate a site from it, upgrade, and then save a new site template.

WSS team has created a new set of Application Templates for WSS 3.0, which will address many scenarios covered by the original “Thrilling 33”, so if you are looking to roll out a brand new deployment these are definitely worth a look.

There are more details on the WSS official team blog.