The Sean Blog

Content Query Web Part on SharePoint 2010 supports multi-value lookup fields

2009-11-17T20:16:34Z

That is probably the geekiest blog title I have ever written. Sorry. This is just a very cool change between 2007 and 2010 that will probably never make it to a marketing slide, but which solves a frustration that I experienced with 2007.

Why is this important? Let me walk you through an applied example. Out of the box on SharePoint 2007, Blogs allow for only a single category. This, of course, sucks. If I write a post about installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7, I would like to categorize it as “SharePoint 2010” and “Windows 7”. The workaround is simple and documented (in a video no less) by Lawrence Liu (who has since moved on to Telligent) here: Configuring SharePoint to allow multiple categories per blog post.

This works great, but let’s say that the Sales, Legal, and Marketing teams at Contoso have all established blogs (with multiple categories) on their own web sites, and we would now like to aggregate some of their posts (any posts with a category of Foo) on the front page of our Intranet portal. To do so, we add a Content Query Web Part to the front page, set the scope to our site collection, and filter to show items when Category is equal to Foo.

While this works fine with blogs that only allow a single category, here’s what we get if the Marketing blog has a category of “Foo” and “Bar”.

Frustrating. Waldek Mastykarz (a SharePoint Server MVP out of the Netherlands) has some workarounds to this problem that include custom multi lookup fields or custom XSLT functions.

Enter… SharePoint 2010. First of all, right out of the box you can add multiple categories to a post. The UI below is what you get when creating a post through the web interface, but I still prefer using Windows Live Writer.

What does this do to content queries? Let’s add a content query web part to our front page.

As with 2007, set our source scope to the site collection, with a list type of “Posts”.

We’ll filter to only show blog posts where the category is equal to foo (as before), and we’ll also filter out those “Welcome to your Blog!” posts that nobody remembers to delete.

Voila! The content query (which is being run against a multi-value lookup field) successfully completes. Sweet!

* Disclaimer: SharePoint 2010 is in beta. I’m not on the product team, and for all I know this capability may or may not make it to RTM. This functionality qualifies for Jeff Atwood’s “works on my machine” certification.

SharePoint 2010 Beta available on TechNet Plus and MSDN

2009-11-16T19:16:30Z

The subject line says it all! I just logged into my TechNet Plus subscription, and Office SharePoint Foundation Server (formerly Windows SharePoint Services), Office SharePoint Server 2010, Project Server 2010, Search Search Server 2010, and Web Applications Server 2010 are all available for download. If you do not have a TechNet Plus subscription… GET ONE. There is a link on the front page of TechNet to sign up.

Get downloading! Keep in mind that these are all 64-bit only, so if you are virtualizing your test platform, you’ll need to use Hyper-V (or a comparable virtualization platform that supports 64-bit guests). The rest of the system requirements can be found here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx).

Visit the SharePoint 2010 TechCenter on Technet for all the documentation you need. There are 4 things I have run into on several test installations over the last few weeks that you will want to be aware of:

Use the prerequisites installer to install the prerequisites. Don’t try to set things up manually, as you will forget a step, install a wrong version, forget to install a particular prerequisite, or otherwise mess up the installation. I speak from experience here.
SQL must be running the Cumulative update package 3 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3, or Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1
Setup will not run unless you have previously installed the following hotfix (this should be automatically installed with a future version of the prerequisites installer)
1. For Windows Server 2008 with SP2, see FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=160770).
2. For Windows Server 2008 R2, see FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231)
If you plan on running Access Web Services, it requires SQL Reporting Services to be installed, and it is MUCH easier to set up SQL Reporting Services integration with SharePoint if you install it BEFORE installing SharePoint (otherwise you’ll have to run through some manual configuration)

I have some vacation coming up, which should free up some time to start posting screenshots and walkthroughs of the features that I most like about SharePoint 2010 (there are a TON of them). Stay tuned :)

Final note: This is a beta. As stable and awesome as it is, it is NOT the RTM version. Use it in a lab, use it in a test environment, do not use it in production. It is very unlikely that you will be able to upgrade it to the RTM version once it is released next year.

P2V Baby

2009-10-08T03:11:56Z

It just does not get any easier than this. Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell (Sysinternals gurus extraordinaire) have just published another amazingly useful (and free!) tool: Disk2vhd, which uses the power of Volume Shadow Copy Service(VSS) to turn your running version of Windows into a .vhd file for use with Virtual PC or Hyper-V. Just start up the tool, tell it which drives you want to convert, give it a destination (which can even be on a network share), and hit “Create”.

Boom. You have a VHD that you can throw at Virtual PC or Hyper-V, load up the integration components, and you have a virtual machine up and running.

You can download it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

Description of the tool from the site:

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image. If the required drivers are not present, install them via the Virtual PC or Hyper-V integration components. You can also attach to VHDs using the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 Disk Management or Diskpart utilities.

Note: do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so, Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with the signature of the VHD’s source disk. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd runs Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and higher, including x64 systems.

Here’s a screenshot of a copy of a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V system running in a virtual machine on top of the system it was made from:

Windows 7 About Face

2009-10-05T06:33:05Z

The story from June 2008: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/et-tu-intel/

Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said.

The story today: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/10/97-percent-of-intel-testers-recommend-windows-7.ars

Following participation in Microsoft's Technical Adopter Program (TAP), Intel IT found that Windows 7 running on PCs with Intel vPro technology delivers the best productivity for our employees & the best managed solution for IT. After three months of trial with over 300 users, 97 percent of our test users would recommend the new OS to peers and Intel IT sees the potential to save $11M over the next three years. Because of improved employee productivity, reduced costs, ease of deployment and enhanced security, Intel IT is rolling out Windows 7 to early adopters this year and enterprise deployments starting early 2010. Authored by John Gonzalez (OS Product Line Manager, Intel IT), this paper describes these benefits and results of Intel's participation in the Windows 7 TAP.

In addition to the 97 percent statistic, Intel listed four other key results:

•Performance: More responsive for key tasks such as booting and launching productivity applications.

•Stability: Fewer users experienced blue screens.

•Application Readiness: No remediation required during evaluation; application readiness does not appear to be a roadblock to adoption.

•Total Cost of Ownership: Initial estimate of potential USD 11 million net present value.

Windows 7 – Customize your notification area

2009-09-01T18:46:52Z

Windows 7 does an excellent job of hiding the various notification icons that vendors (yes, even us) seem heck-bent on using to grab your attention in XP/Vista.

However, there may be some icons (perhaps Communicator or Windows Live Messenger) that you’d like to see all the time. You can change what shows up in this area the hard way (right-clicking on the taskbar, choosing properties, and then hitting the “Customize…” button),

or you can do it the easy way. Hit the little arrow to expand your notification area, and then just drag down the icon you’d like to show up all the time. It will even remember its position after a reboot

SQL Server 2008 Migration White Papers

2009-08-25T04:50:14Z

Just noticed these pop up on the Microsoft Download Center… some guides on migrating from various databases to SQL Server 2008.

Guide to Migrating from MySQL to SQL Server 2008
In this migration guide you will learn the differences between the MySQL and SQL Server 2008 database platforms, and the steps necessary to convert a MySQL database to SQL Server.
Guide to Migrating from Oracle to SQL Server 2008
This white paper explores challenges that arise when you migrate from an Oracle 7.3 database or later to SQL Server 2008. It describes the implementation differences of database objects, SQL dialects, and procedural code between the two platforms. The entire migration process using SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) 2008 for Oracle is explained in depth, with a special focus on converting database objects and PL/SQL code.
Guide to Migrating from Informix to SQL Server 2008
This white paper explores challenges that arise when you migrate from an Informix 11 database to SQL Server 2008. It describes the implementation differences of database objects and procedural code between the two platforms. Emulation of system functions is also discussed.
Guide to Migrating from Sybase ASA to SQL Server 2008
This white paper explores challenges that arise when you migrate from a Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere (ASA) database of version 9 or later to SQL Server 2008. It describes the implementation differences of database objects, SQL dialects, and procedural code between the two platforms.
Guide to Migrating from Sybase ASE to SQL Server 2008
This white paper covers known issues for migrating Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise database to SQL Server 2008. Instructions for handling the differences between the two platforms are included. The paper describes how SQL Server Migration Assistant, the best tool for this type of migration, can help resolve various migration issues.

Download the guides here.

Keep your desktop private

2009-08-11T06:08:26Z

If you do demonstrations or webcasts from your computer, used the desktop screen sharing feature on Office Communicator 2007 R2, or asked for remote assistance you may have inadvertently shown your desktop to your co-workers, a client, or the world.

If you keep a spotless computer desktop (or are using a clean Hyper-V/Virtual PC image for your demo), this is not a problem. If you store files that you would rather keep private on your desktop, how can you avoid this embarrassment?

Simple… just right-click on your Desktop –> View –> unselect Show desktop icons.

Voila! You have an empty desktop. (Check this option again to bring the icons back)

Add a buffer to that email you wish you hadn’t sent

2009-08-07T19:43:54Z

We have all sent e-mails that we later regretted (usually that regret comes seconds after hitting the “send” button). If you are running Outlook along with Exchange, you can occasionally recall/replace the message. However, message recall doesn’t tend to work if you:

Wait too long to recall
Sent the e-mail to a distribution list
Sent a really really stupid email that you would give anything to get back

If only there were a way to add a delay of just a few minutes between hitting the “send” button and having the bits actually hit the wire.

Fortunately, there is! You can do it on a per-email basis using the following steps:

In the message, click Options.

Under Delivery options, select the Do not deliver before check box, and then click the delivery date and time you want.

If you are like me, however, you do not remember to check this box before sending a regrettable e-mail. So, let’s setup a global delay for all e-mails.

On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts, and then click New Rule.

Select Start from a blank rule.

In the Step 1: Select when messages should be checked box, click Check messages after sending, and then click Next.

In the Step 1: Select condition(s) list, select any options you want, and then click Next. (For example, you can have the delay only apply to e-mails you send to a particular Distribution List or a specific co-worker)

If you do not select any check boxes, a confirmation dialog box appears. Clicking Yes applies this rule to all messages you send.

In the Step 1: Select action(s) list, select defer delivery by a number of minutes. Delivery can be delayed up to two hours.

In the Step 2: Edit the rule description (click on an underlined value) box, click the underlined phrase a number of and enter the number of minutes you want messages held before sending.

Click OK, and then click Next.

Select any exceptions, and then click Next.

In the Step 1: Specify a name for this rule box, type a name for the rule.

Click Finish.

Voila! you now have <whatever number you picked> minutes to go into your outbox and edit the email to include a forgotten attachment, rephrase your scathing attack on someone’s integrity, or delete the e-mail altogether until you have had time to sleep on your reply.

Unnecessary Complexity

2009-08-05T20:13:25Z

If you are a long term Windows user, you right-click everything. That right-click menu offers a lot of options, and it is comforting to see everything that you can do at any given time. Heck… you can often Shift-right-click and get even MORE options.

There is an interesting place within Windows where the right-click adds much more complexity, and I’ll bet you’ve been using it forever :)

Safety removing hardware (for safely removing external hard drives, USB keys, etc).

Tell me if this sequence of actions looks familiar… You right-click on the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the system tray,

You get the “Safely Remove Hardware” window, where you select the USB Mass Storage Device” and hit Stop.

Next comes the “Stop a Hardware device” window that has your single device listed in 3 different ways. Select one, hit “OK”, and your device is finally ready to unplug from your computer.

A mere right-click, left click, left click, left click, left click, left click.

If only there were a better way! It turns out there is, and it has been staring you in the face the whole time ;) Simply LEFT click at the very beginning, and you can directly remove the device without having to navigate through a ton of windows.

It’s that easy. (I believe this behavior goes back several versions of Windows, although I’m not going to move off of Windows 7 to check for you ;)

Good news… In Windows 7, both left AND right-clicking gives you the same menu :)

Add Bing to your site

2009-08-01T18:23:15Z

Just saw this over on The Road to Know Where, and is really quite nice… You can run through a quick wizard over on the Bing Site Owner site, and it will generate some HTML that you can past on your site to add a Bing Search Box that will search both the Internet and your site.

The search box powered by Bing provides a fast, customizable search solution for your website or blog. Visitors to your site can search the entire Web, just your site, or any sites that you choose.

Basic Search Box - Displays results on the Bing website. Searches a single site that you specify, or the entire Web.
Advanced Search Box - Displays results on your site. Searches multiple sites you specify, the entire Web, or applies a Bing Macro.

Get it here: http://www.bing.com/siteowner/

Binging Twitter

2009-07-02T15:43:32Z

Wow, that sounds kind of dirty…

I am proud to say that I have managed to make it this far without joining the time sink that is Twitter (although watching CNN, you’d think that it will eventually replace speech as the primary form of human communication).

Anyhoo… Bing just added a pretty cool feature: searches of Twitter tweets. Just search for any given Twitter user name + twitter, and you’ll get their picture and last two tweets.

IT Infrastructure Threat Modeling Guide Released

2009-06-23T10:00:00Z

The Solution Accelerators team is at it again, releasing the IT Infrastructure Threat Modeling Guide, which provides an easy-to-understand method for developing threat models that can help prioritize investments in IT infrastructure security. This guide describes and considers the extensive methodology that exists for Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) threat modeling and uses it to establish a threat modeling process for IT infrastructure.

Included in the guide are the following:

Chapter 1: IT Infrastructure Components

This chapter focuses on understanding the details of the components that the IT infrastructure threat modeling process will consider, including diagramming, identifying threats, mitigating threats, and validating all the information that is acquired during the process. The chapter discusses use scenarios, dependencies, implementation assumptions, entry points, and trust levels.

Chapter 2: The IT Infrastructure Threat Model Portfolio

This chapter describes how to populate the IT infrastructure threat model portfolio with relevant data about your components. The chapter includes information about prioritization and is essential for helping you mitigate threats with the greatest potential impact to your organization.

Chapter 3: Applied Example – The Threat Modeling Process

This chapter uses a fictitious organization's communications system as an example for the IT infrastructure threat modeling process. The rapid introduction of mobile devices into IT infrastructure could make such a system an ideal target for an attacker. You can use the SDL Threat Modeling Tool as described in this guide or another of your own choosing.

The threat modeling guide also discusses how you would use the Microsoft SDL Threat Modeling tool, and walks through some applied examples with our good friends at Fabrikam.

To download a copy of the IT Infrastructure Threat Modeling Guide, click here.

Related Resources

The following resources provide additional information about security topics and in-depth discussion of the concepts and security prescriptions in this guide:

How do you measure up?

2009-06-12T01:38:35Z

Cool Instant Answer on Bing… just visit and search for “<job> salary”

Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) Branch Office Guide Released

2009-06-07T20:08:18Z

If you are involved in a project to plan or upgrade Active Directory in your branch offices, you may have questions such as: What type of domain controller should I use for a given branch office? Does a given branch office even need a Domain Controller? What topology should I use? How do I monitor AD at the Branch Office location? Can I upgrade an existing 2003 Domain Controller to a Windows Server 2008 RODC? All these questions and more are answered in the new RODC Branch Office Guide, which explains how to plan, deploy, and administer read-only domain controllers (RODCs) in branch office environments.

This guide describes new features in Windows Server 2008 that can provide benefits for Active Directory deployments that include branch offices. It explains how to assess an existing deployment of domain controllers in branch offices to determine whether deploying read-only domain controllers (RODCs) in existing or future branch offices is appropriate for your organization. For more general information about how to install and configure an RODC, see Planning and Deploying Read-Only Domain Controllers. For more information about deploying an RODC in a perimeter network (also known as DMZ), see Active Directory Domain Services in the Perimeter Network (Windows Server 2008).

Get the Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) Branch Office Guide here:

TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd734758(WS.10).aspx
Download Center: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=153714

Free Technical Support for Windows 7 RC (for Microsoft Partners)

2009-05-22T21:08:31Z

The Partner Online Technical Communities are one of the best kept secrets at Microsoft. Actually, they are not a secret, but I keep running into Partners that haven’t heard that they have unlimited no-cost support break-fix, developer, and presales incidents for over 50 Microsoft technologies, including:

Microsoft Dynamics products
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Forefront security
Microsoft Intelligent Application Gateway
Microsoft Office products
Microsoft Office Communications Server
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft Silverlight and Expression

Microsoft System Center products
Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server
Windows Internet Explorer
Windows 7 RC
Windows Mobile
Windows Server
Windows Small Business Server (Windows SBS)

As you can see, Windows 7 RC was just added to the list. These are not newsgroups where you hope someone eventually comes along that has seen your problem before, the Partner Online Technical Communities are staffed by Microsoft employees that guarantee a response time according to the following table:

Response Time
Gold Certified Partners Certified Partners	4 business hours for break-fix queries 8 business hours for presales questions on any Microsoft technologies.
Small Business Specialist Community	4 business hours for break-fix queries
Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS)	8 business hours for break-fix queries
Gold Certified and Certified Partners with the ISV/Software Solutions competency Registered Members in the Empower for ISVs program Partners with the Custom Development Solutions competency Web Solution Partners⁴	8 business hours for developer questions related to Microsoft ASP.NET, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Expression, SQL Server, Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft Visual Studio, C++, and C#.
Registered Members⁵	1 business day for break-fix queries
OEM System Builder Partners	2 business days for pre-installation queries
⁴Microsoft Action Pack Special Edition Web Solutions Toolkit holders ⁵Registered Partners who do not meet the preceding criteria will receive a one-business-day response time.

Try out the Partner Online Technical Communities here: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40014662