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Random Office and SharePoint info

2009-11-07T03:11:53Z

Office SharePoint Technologies

· FAST meets SharePoint - What's Coming in Search for SharePoint 2010 There are two main enterprise search options coming with the SharePoint 2010 release.

· October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 The server-packages of October 2009 Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download.

· SharePoint 2010 Developer Center The SharePoint 2010 Developer Center is now live on MSDN. This new sub-site includes Getting Started modules, as well as a Beta version of the SharePoint 2010 SDK.

· SharePoint 2010 An overview of SharePoint 2010.

· Engineering SharePoint This blog post is about how the broader Microsoft Office team designs and builds SharePoint highlighting improvements for the 2010 cycle.

Microsoft Office System

· UI Extensibility in Office 2010 When introducing the Ribbon UI in Office 2007, we also introduced the RibbonX (Ribbon extensibility) model, a new way to programmatically customize the Office UI. RibbonX enables 3rd party developers and solution providers to build on top of the Ribbon by authoring custom tabs and groups, targeting scenarios unique to and optimized for their customers.

· The Magic of Background Removal Background Removal is a new feature in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook that makes the process of selecting and removing portions of an image quick and easy for any picture.

· Enabling password rules for Office 2010 This post introduces the new password rules feature in Office 2010.

· OCS: Office Communications Server Resource - User Forest Topology Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server R2 have two multi forest topologies that have been tested by and are supported by Microsoft.

· Speech Server (2007) runtime support on Windows Server 2008 The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Speech Server (a.k.a. Speech Server (2007)) runtime is now officially supported on Windows Server 2008, in addition to the originally supported Windows Server 2003 Platforms(listed at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb813400.aspx).

· Configuring XMPP Gateway with Jabber XCP 5.4 This article walks you through setting up the XMPP Gateway and configuring it to work with Jabber XCP 5.4.

· Excel: Introducing PowerPivot PowerPivot is the recently announced name of technologies this blog previously referred to by its codename, Gemini. This article describes why there is a need for such a tool, and briefly what PowerPivot provides.

· PivotTable Named Sets in Excel 2010 When working with PivotTables, you often come across scenarios where you want to work with the same set of items from the data over and over again.

· Outlook: Unified Messaging Improvements In Outlook 2010, we’ve added some cool new features to Unified Messaging, including Voice Mail Preview, protected voice mail, and Call Answering Rules to make the UM experience even more compelling. All of the features described below require an account on an Exchange 2010 server, and work with both Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010.

· Multiple Exchange Accounts in Outlook 2010 If you’ve worked with more than one Exchange account in Outlook 2007 or earlier, you may have resorted to using multiple Outlook profiles to access your additional accounts. No more, as Outlook 2010 supports connecting to as many as three Exchange accounts from a single profile.

· PowerPoint: PowerPoint on the Web: A New View of Your Presentation Today I’m going to give you a little background into the PowerPoint Web App Reading View.

· Introducing Broadcast Slide Show PowerPoint 2010 makes it easy to present on the fly to anyone, anywhere. Just send a link, and in one click everyone you invite will be watching a synchronized view of your slide show in their browser. You’ll never again need to email bulky attachments or make an announcement every time you change slides.

· Project: Project 2010: Introducing Web Based Project Editing Have you ever wanted to make edits to a project plan far away from your desktop installation of Project? Perhaps you were in a meeting and pulled up Project Web Access to show project status but hoped to capture updates directly in PWA as the meeting progressed. Maybe you have multiple stakeholders on a plan who want the ability to add tasks even if they aren’t responsible for the entire project schedule and don’t have Project on their desktop.

· Project 2010: Introducing User-Controlled Scheduling In Project 2010, we have introduced a new concept called "User-Controlled Scheduling". It's a collection of features designed to make Project a more flexible planning and schedule management tool. The idea is that you, as the project manager, can have complete control over when a task should happen.

· Visio: Introducing Visio Services At the SharePoint Conference, the Visio team unveiled Visio Services – a new feature of SharePoint 2010 that extends the reach of diagrams considerably.

· Using a Visio Process Repository We frequently speak with Visio users whose organizations need to manage collections of process diagrams. Many of these users are employing basic methods such as storing these documents on network file shares.

· Automatic Page Sizing in Visio 2010 When you start a new diagram, you typically begin with a single drawing page that is the size of a standard piece of printer paper. Many diagrams grow beyond the size of a single printed sheet. Visio 2010 adds a dynamic page sizing capability that responds as you draw, so you no longer have to manually adjust your page size to your diagram.

· Word: Introducing Word Automation Services We've heard from many customers trying to perform server side conversions of Open XML files (.docx) into fixed formats (PDF and XPS) using the Word desktop application, and that's what motivated us to create Word Automation Services.

Travel Time for Outlook 2007 & 2010

2009-11-03T17:55:47Z

Very cool accessory for putting in that travel time between meetings…Testing it now.

Travel Time for Outlook 2007 & 2010

Office and SPS links and resources

2009-10-06T23:19:38Z

Office SharePoint Technologies

· Support end-user productivity with the Productivity Hub The Productivity Hub is a downloadable SharePoint Server 2007 site collection that is pre-populated with over 300 pieces of content about Office programs (including SharePoint Server!). The content includes videos, documents, and PowerPoint slides. It’s a great solution for organizations that block Internet access—including access to Office Online — but want to support end-user technology needs.

· How we did it: Speeding up SharePoint.Microsoft.com SharePoint.Microsoft.com is a critical communications channel for SharePoint. We wanted to provide visitors with a rich and helpful experience and at the same time educate them on what SharePoint can do for their businesses. The site leverages our industry-leading web content management platform, and provides useful content and resources to the visitors. In addition, we also recognized that there were fundamental Internet challenges that needed to be overcome in order to improve page loading time, especially for our global visitors.

· Patching a mirrored farm with minimal downtime For administrators of large SharePoint server farms, a newly-published article describes how to update server farms that use database mirroring, while incurring minimal perceived downtime for users. This solution is for enterprise customers who have high-availability needs and infrastructure.

· Announcing the release of patterns and practices Developing SharePoint Applications guidance Patterns and practices has released a new version of guidance for building collaborative applications that extend your LOB systems. The guidance helps customers accelerate constructing advanced applications through examples and documentation.

· Fast Tip: Add the Checked Out To column to your SharePoint library

Microsoft Office System

· Trusted Documents This post will give you some insight to the Trusted Documents feature, a simple enhancement that improves the user experience when interacting with security features.

· Office Web Apps Coming to Windows Live We are making available Excel, Word and PowerPoint Web Apps for a select group of Windows Live users as part of the Office Web Apps Technical Preview.

· OCS: Released: OCS 2007 R2 Deploying Certificates document We have released a document that we believe many of you have wanted to see for quite some time. One document that covers the certificate requirements for Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

· Access: Access 2007 hotfix package now available

· Jump start new Access databases with a custom blank database template There are certain features that virtually every Access database application includes. Certain tables like people’s names and addresses, certain forms for managing lookup lists and many to many relationships, custom splash screens, and on and on.

· Excel: Performance Improvements in Excel 2010 In this release of Excel we spent dedicated research and development resources on improving performance. In addition to the usual optimizations and tuning efforts we make post “code complete”, we spent time during the development milestones researching, designing, and implementing performance features beyond algorithmic tuning. Follow up article here.

· Easy (and Even Fun!) Data Exploration: Introducing Excel 2010 Slicers New to Excel 2010 are slicers, which are visual controls that allow you to quickly and easily filter your data in an interactive way. They float above the grid, like charts and shapes.

· New and Improved Solver In Excel 2010, we have made a number of improvements to Solver that make it easy for beginners to get started and more advanced ones to find solutions to all types of problems. The purpose of this post is to review the improvements to Solver, and so assumes some familiarity with the tool.

· New Functions Bring New UI In this post I will describe the UI changes we have made to help users take advantage of these improvements in Excel 2010. In addition I will also talk about the backward compatibility experience for the new function library.

· Outlook: Multiple Exchange Accounts in Outlook 2010 Connect to more than one Microsoft Exchange account simultaneously. If you’ve worked with more than one Exchange account in Outlook 2007 or earlier, you may have resorted to using multiple Outlook profiles to access your additional accounts. No more, as Outlook 2010 supports connecting to as many as three Exchange accounts from a single profile.

· PowerPoint: Animation Painter In PowerPoint 2010 we’re introducing the Animation Painter. Just select an object with animations, select the “Animation Painter” button on the Animations tab, and with a single click you can transfer the all the animations and settings to another object. If you double-click the painter button, you’ll be in “Sticky Mode” so that you can paint multiple objects sequentially.

· Project: Tips and Tricks: Create a report instantly with Project 2007

· Project 2010: Introducing the Ribbon The Project 2010 user interface has been completely revamped this release based on the Office Fluent or “Ribbon” UI. The Office Fluent UI represents a dramatic departure from the overloaded menu and toolbar design model of previous Project releases. Project’s extensive capabilities are now organized into logical, easy to find groups that help you accomplish actions efficiently rather than choosing features.

· Visio: Inserting and Deleting Shapes in Visio 2010 Diagram maintenance is a task that everyone performs, and many users spend much of their time in Visio maintaining existing diagrams. We realize that a fair amount of the time you spend maintaining your diagrams is spent in the mechanics of the task, rather than achieving the goals of updating the concept the diagram represents. There are some clear gains we can effect to make your life easier as you go about editing your diagrams.

· Word: Co-authoring (i.e. Simultaneous Editing) in Word 2010 In Word 2010, we're working to make co-authoring as natural as solo-authoring. Here's how…

Why You Can’t Trust Google

2009-09-24T22:57:28Z

Om makes some terrific points here. I was without my computer for over an hour the other day – installing win 7. Even though my smart phone was shoing me my email – I felt naked and scared. I do most of my work through email and other applications. How can anyone trust these guys?

Why You Can’t Trust Google

Gmail follies and Google's enterprise pitch | Cloud computing - InfoWorld

2009-09-10T01:44:09Z

Wow – 9 outages in one year. It really makes one think…Is it truly enterprise ready?

Gmail follies and Google's enterprise pitch | Cloud computing - InfoWorld

Random bits and announcements…

2009-09-03T19:40:57Z

Office SharePoint Technologies

· Announcing the Fourth Release of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit This is our last planned offering of new features and functionality for this toolkit that services both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3.0. That said we do plan to release a separate new toolkit for SharePoint 2010.

· 10 Essential Resources for SharePoint Developers

· SharePoint Community Portal This is an experiment. Yes, we are "eating our own dogfood" by using our product (Office SharePoint Server 2007) to power our new community portal, which shall be your starting point for the worldwide SharePoint community.

Microsoft Office System

· Volume Activation Starting in Office 2010, all volume editions of Office client software will require activation. What’s great for administrators is that Office has adopted the Windows Software Protection Platform (SPP), which means that most of what you have learned (or will learn) about Volume Activation for Windows applies to Office as well.

· Evolving the Backstage View For those of you who are dogfooding the Technical Preview build, thanks for all of the great feedback you’ve sent us so far on the new Backstage view! We’ve been getting a lot of requests for a sneak peak at the design changes that we’ve been making to the Backstage view since the Technical Preview builds have been released. I’ll talk through some of these changes in this post.

· OCS: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 - Web Scheduler Now Available for Download The Web Scheduler provides a basic scheduling experience. See the blog post for main features.

· Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat QFE and SDK Complete More than 8 months in the making, we're pleased to announce that Group Chat QFE1 is released as has the Group Chat SDK. This is a strategically important release, as it provides key features and performance enhancements that elevate OCS Group Chat to an enterprise grade product.

· Access: Create flexible Excel exports with on-the-fly SQL I’ve been using SQL statements in temporary Access tables to extract data to Excel for some time now (simple data dump). This approach results in an easy-to-maintain, easy-to-use architecture that the client really appreciates.

· Write expressions faster with fewer errors The Expression Builder sports new features and simpler UI in Access 2010. You will spend less effort thinking about syntax and available functions/properties because IntelliSense features provide all the information you need as you type.

· Excel: Excel 2010 – Now With More Bits! For this post, I will focus on the work we did to make a 64-bit version of Excel. 64-bit Excel, simply put, is for building really really (really) big workbooks. 64-bit Excel is for those who want to work with large data sets and get past the 32-bit Windows address space constraint.

· Safety First: Office 2010 Protected View When you open workbooks downloaded from the Internet in Excel 2010, you’ll enter into the new Protected View. While in this mode, Excel runs in a “sandbox,” which means that you are now better isolated from any malicious code that could be contained within the file. In the past, you had to decide if you trusted the author/origin of the document before viewing the contents. Now, with Protected View, you can make a more informed decision before exposing your computer to potential vulnerabilities.

· Outlook: Multiple Exchange Accounts in Outlook 2010 For everyone using the Outlook 2010 Technical Preview, there are a number of improvements for working with multiple Exchange accounts.

· Meeting Requests with a Preview of your Calendar Handling meeting requests usually involves two important steps – reading the meeting request and checking your calendar to see if you’re available. To save you time, Outlook 2010 simplifies that process and combines those steps into a single experience with the Calendar Preview.

· PowerPoint: A Brand New Slide Show... For PowerPoint 2010, we are making the biggest visual update to Slide Show in nearly a decade. PowerPoint's graphics engine is completely rebuilt using DirectX. Everything in slide show (text, shapes, animations, and more) is rendered in full 3D using your machine’s graphics card.

· Optimizing Your Media for the World In PowerPoint 2010, media you insert from your hard-drive is embedded directly into your presentation unless you specifically choose to link. From now on, you only need to worry about a single file - the presentation

· Project: Project Server 2007 Report Pack II – “The Top Reports” Passing along some great info…Report Pack II for Project Server 2007 has been released! This is great news because it addresses A) WHAT reports you should run in your Project Server 2007 environment, and B) WHY you should run them. It includes 40 Management and Governance reports, designed by top Microsoft consultants who deploy and enhance the Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution for customers regularly.

· Ask a Project PM: Resource Leveling Here’s the first video in our interview series, “Ask a Project PM.” In this interview, Bonny Lau, Program Manager for Microsoft Project, fields your questions on resource leveling.

· Tips and Tricks: Create Deadline Dates Deadline dates are handy way to alert you to problems in your schedule, but they are often overlooked.

· Visio: The Office Fluent UI in the Visio 2010 Technical Preview The Visio 2010 user interface has been completely revamped this release based on the Office Fluent or “Ribbon” UI. The Office Fluent UI represents a dramatic departure from the overloaded menu and toolbar design model of previous Visio releases. Visio’s extensive capabilities are now organized into logical, easy to find groups that help you accomplish tasks efficiently rather than choosing features.

· Word: Co-authoring – Where We are Coming From In this post, I'll focus on cutting-edge collaborative authoring, give a brief history of the types of collaborative authoring investments we've made in the past, and touch on some recent authoring trends that influenced our deep investment in cutting-edge collaborative authoring in Word 2010.

Gmail outage: Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank - Computerworld Blogs

2009-09-03T08:09:39Z

Kicking someone when they are down isn't really my style. I try to find ways to give my customers the most compelling value for their productivity needs. Yes – all software goes down. But what most people want is choice. They want support to answer the phone. They want service. They know it when they see it. Total value…

Gmail outage: Microsoft laughs all the way to the bank - Computerworld Blogs

My evil iPhone | Salon Life

2009-08-24T20:15:14Z

<<WARNING>> The linked article below has some NSFW words that might offend. The humor is worth it even if you are slightly offended…

I’ve owned several Macintosh’s in my lifetime. In fact – if it weren't for the Mac, I probably would never had gotten into computers in the first place. But the times I first brought it into my workplace – I knew I was asking for at least a little hassle or abuse (or both). But I knew that going in…

What does that have to do with the iPhone? I have several top level executives at my customers I support INSISTING on using an iPhone in their enterprise. Is that wrong? Other than the security problems or lack of push email, I guess not. But they are now coming to me and demanding that because their iPhone isn't syncing, it must be the fault of ours. It has to be Active Sync or Exchange. It cant be anything wrong with the iPhone? Read this article…

I love the line “The phone is worse than an orchid; it's a high-maintenance techno-girlfriend whose demands are inscrutable and impossible to meet.”

My evil iPhone | Salon Life

Office 2010: Tech Preview now, free Web apps in August - Ars Technica

2009-08-22T06:24:25Z

Nice little article about the upcoming release of Office2010. Shows some terrific features and screenshots of the new version.

Office 2010: Tech Preview now, free Web apps in August - Ars Technica

YouTube - Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

2009-08-14T20:44:42Z

Very very funny!

Google Apps Face Long Road Against MS Office in the Enterprise | CIO - Blogs and Discussion

2009-08-13T20:13:05Z

Great article from Shane. I enjoyed it and I think he covers some very important points. I think he gets to the root of the issue with this comment:

“But still, important company documents will still live on Google's servers, and that's a major security sticking point for businesses that won't go away anytime soon.”

My customers make machines that make chips and technologies for defense, super computers and other very strategic and critical systems for our country. Its really all about losing the most valuable asset a company has…Their Intellectual Property.

I also wanted to answer his question about where MSFT will make $$ from this. We approach this as an option to their Enterprise. We give the customer “choice”. So when you ask “How will we make money?” – by giving our customers a choice and terrific value.

Google Apps Face Long Road Against MS Office in the Enterprise | CIO - Blogs and Discussion

Google's campaign for Apps doesn't address the IT data elephant in the room | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

2009-08-05T05:41:31Z

I think this article crystallizes my feelings completely. I have been explaining to my customers why I would never want my data to reside in one place. They should want choices. I sometimes get the feeling that people over look the concerns and requirements of their enterprise for the sake of the “halo” surrounding Google. I cant understand where this emotional response to something so critical as a companies’ IP and data.

Google's campaign for Apps doesn't address the IT data elephant in the room | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Microsoft vs. Google: Office Web Will Kill Google Docs - Business Center - PC World

2009-07-16T00:22:40Z

Well said. I am starting to see my customers back away from Google. Especially in light of the security concerns. But as I've said many many times – we offer choices. Host it with us? Ok fine. Host it yourself (Web apps) – fine. Why would anyone wait for Google to release a true offline client?

David said it best - “Here's the double-whammy: The mere existence of an online Office suite is enough to send Google Docs to the great beyond. Why have "sort-of compatible" Google Docs when you can have "100 percent" compatible no-brainer online apps from Microsoft?”

Take a look at the future. Its here!

Microsoft vs. Google: Office Web Will Kill Google Docs - Business Center - PC World

Office 2010 In Preview, Free Web Versions Coming - Software - IT Channel News by CRN

2009-07-14T18:10:57Z

Terrific summary of some of the announcements coming from our partner conference. A few things that really set us apart from our Googly friends. An announcement of this importance – done at a hugely popular worldwide partner conference. Ever hear of something like that at Google? Nope. Partners are confused, frustrated and overall perplexed to their “status” in that universe.

Also – the choice. Not EVERYONE will be doing things on the public network (aka the Internet). Is not a matter of risking your credit card anymore. My customers have “business ENDING” critical IP within their network. They cannot afford to lose it or have it stolen. Some of them make machines that make chips that go into bombs or missiles. I'm guess the US government doesn't want them sending email through the cloud. So we give the customer choices…

Office 2010 In Preview, Free Web Versions Coming - Software - IT Channel News by CRN

Foothill High School student overcomes learning disability - Inside Bay Area

2009-07-01T20:50:44Z

I usually keep this blog to all things technical. But this story struck me personally. I am a huge supporter of the Barton program. Its is a significant reason both of my daughters are able to survive school. There are those who think that Dyslexia is “word blindness”, but they are unaware of the challenges and difficulties that these students face. I know their struggle. I am dyslexic too…

Foothill High School student overcomes learning disability - Inside Bay Area