Finding that right resource to help you when you most need it is never easy. Back in my days supporting DPS 6 and TPS 6 Systems for Honeywell, people would often ask how I would find something in a dump, from a trap message or from a customer description. My answer to them was simply, the best support professionals don’t know all the answers off the top of their head, but they know where to look to get the answer. Back in my day the complete set of manuals for a DPS 6 system with TPS 6 installed was probably only about 30 or manuals. Compared to the Microsoft product range, it’s minute. So now I keep track of where things are, like people ask about certification. I don’t know all the requirements or options for some certifications, but I do know that MSL produces a Learning plan for most of them and I know where those live and that will give me the answer.

One of the teams I’ve been working on recently has a project on surfacing information to help IT Pro’s find the right places to get the information and resources they need. I’m helping identify those places and that information. Over the years I’ve clocked up thousands of mouse miles trawling MSCOM, TechNet and MSL looking for stuff, I’m trying to bring that experience and knowledge to the forefront and share it.

The new page lives on TechNet, we’ve tried to keep it simple in the first edition. We will be updated the information on a monthly basis.

So have a look at Explore Your True Potential. We're Here to Help

Let me know what you think. What sort of information should we be surfacing?

There are currently many misconceptions surrounding the Cloud and what it has to offer. The team I work on set out to help you becoming more knowledgeable. We think that once you get straight answers to questions about the Cloud you can also help guide others to a better understanding, thus take informed next steps to enable your organization to reap its benefits.

To start we’ve just created a new page to provide plain answers to some of the questions about the Cloud along with the resources to go into more depth.

The new page is on TechNet and looks behind the misconceptions we’ve heard. For example, “If my organization uses a Pubic Cloud service like Windows Azure my role becomes less technical!” Do you think this is true or not? The answer to that questions is on this page.

Have a look, feel free to comment on this post and we can have the discussion.

Files are tricky things. They are very good at hiding within the file system. Well that’s how it seems to me. If I’m honest, the file does hide really, I just forget or confuse the one I’m looking for with another one. Usually the name, so I end up starting at the top of a folder structure knowing the files was a .docx or .xlsx file. Genius! Fortunately Advance Query Syntax helps me out.

You can use AQS from the search box on the Start menu or from within Explorer, the syntax is the same. AQS is part of Windows Desktop Search and is part of Windows 7 by default. I’ve included a link to version 4.0 below for those not on Windows 7.

What AQS allows you to do is use some of the 300+ attributes that files can have to tag them. So for example, recently I changed managers and I know my previous manager sent me a document about year end stuff. I know I saved it somewhere in My Documents, but where? Using AQS I can open My Documents and type

authors:cslotta

into the search box. Now I get a list of all the documents with the Authors property set to my managers name. The AQS syntax is made up of

attribute:value

combination. As I mentioned there are hundreds of attributes to choose from. The trick with attributes is understanding how to enter them. For example

Modified:12/08/10

DateModified:12/08/10

Date Modified:12/08/10

are all equal. The rule of thumb is to remove the space from attributes, as in the second one above, or like “Date last printed” becomes “Datelastprinted”.

The value part of the syntax is very flexible and allows for a number of operators. Say, for example, you want to see how many files you have in a folder structure over 250mb, to find those enter

size:>250mb

The are some predefined sizes you can use, they are not as granular as the example above.

Using size:Gigantic is similar to the example above, but will return more results – if there are files in the 128mb to 250mb range in the folder.

You can take this example further and search for files within a size range. The next two examples are equivalent.

size:>=10mb <=20mb

size:10mb..20mb

The “..” signifies a range of values, for example

datemodified:1/7/2010..1/8/2010

specifies a date range. Depending on where you are in the world read it as all files modified in July or all files modified between January 7th and 8th. Either way, its a date range. You can also search for two specific dates, for example on my machine with the UK date format

datemodified:(1/7/2010 OR 1/8/2010)

Searches for a file modified on either July 1st or August 1st. You can use the AND operator too. The next examples are interesting and taken from the documentation.

authors: (Charlie AND Herb)

authors: Charlie AND Herb

They look similar, but return completely different results. The first example looks for files that are authored both by Charlie and Herb, the second example looks only for Charlie as the author, then looks for Herb in the file name or any other file property. So a Resume document called “Herb Resume.docx” authored solely by Charlie would only appear with the second example.

As a note, when using AND, OR or NOT, they must appear in uppercase in the query.

Let’s look at some other operators now. if you are diligent in maintaining file properties, a useful search maybe to find files that do not have the properties you expect populated.

authors:[]

This search returns all the files who's authors property is empty. Another nice option is how search recognises certain keyword values. Such as these values related to dates.

Relative dates: Today, tomorrow, yesterday

Multi-word relative dates: week, next month, last week, past month, or coming year. The values can also be entered contracted, as follows: thisweek, nextmonth, lastweek, pastmonth, comingyear.

Days: Sunday, Monday ... Saturday

Months: January, February ... December

Try these examples:-

datemodified:yesterday

datemodified:January
 
Finally, before I let you go play with this, just a reminder that you can use the * and ? operators. For example, in my case sometimes I put my full name into the author field, other times Word uses the alias I entered. To find both variations:-

 authors:alan*

The area I’ve not covered here is the natural language query, I’ll cover that another time.

Related Links

Install Windows Search 4.0

Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax

Related books

Al these publications cover the material in this post.

I’m a bookworm, I’ll admit that upfront now. I like the printed word.When I had my office in Redmond I had so many books on shelves it allegedly kept my room temperature a couple of degrees higher than those offices around me. So we are talking quite a few books.

But recently I’ve changed. I’m moving to ebooks. Why? I was chatting to a friend of mine, she works in the publishing industry, about the publications her company had on offer. She mentioned that she was increasingly using an eReader*, I commented that I was not convinced and couldn’t see myself using one, previous experiences with so-called ebooks, was one factor. She didn’t go off into a long sermon on how I was behind the times, she simply said go try one and see for yourself.

I was still not convinced, until recently at another friends house I found they had been given an eReader* as a gift. So I started to use it and was pleasantly surprised. The readability of the screen surprised me, the paper effect these devices achieve is very easy on the eye, I was certainly thinking I could get on with these. So with this thought in mind a new opportunity to try another device came my way. A colleague had just bought a different model. This had to be a sign, and not missing the chance, I tried theirs. Needless to say, I was now on well on the path to purchase.

What finally tipped the scales was another friend working for O’Reilly. I have a large number of MS Press books and until recently ebooks to MS Press were PDF. I tried PDF on an eReader and while it was ok, wasn’t the experience I was after. My O’Reilly friend pointed out that following the move of MS Press distribution to O’Reilly, one of the side benefits was the inclusion of ePub formats in their offerings. She kindly provided me the ePub version of the books whose PDF I was trying so I could compare side-by-side. The experience was exactly what I had hoped.

Armed with eReader"* and ePub copy of the book I was off to the park to see if reading in daylight outside was better than using a laptop. The results of all these tests are that now I’m a convert. It wasn’t quick and I was looking for that reason not to go this route, but in the end all the things my original friend had told me about these devices where true.

One of my main criteria for this format change was the availability of MS Press books. The experience of using the PDF versions of these books on other devices had been a factor in my reluctance to change. But O’Reilly have done a very good job in making them available in other formats.

• Whenever possible they provide them to you in four DRM-free file formats — PDF, .epub, Kindle-compatible .mobi, and Android .apk — that you can use on the devices of your choice.
• Their ebook files are fully searchable, and you can cut-and-paste and print them.
• They also alert you when they have updated your ebooks with corrections and additions.
• Also, in the event that something happens and you no longer have access to the ebooks you purchase locally, you get lifetime access to ebooks you purchased through oreilly.com.

Now the proud owner of an eReader I’ve been researching the places that I can download books. Beyond the obvious retailers, I’ve found my local authority runs an eLibrary service. I now find myself looking at titles that I may not have considered previously. I can now carry 1 book or 1000 books with me anywhere, switch between them easily all without the cumbersome weight I used to carry. A far cry from the days of carrying 10-15 books in the back of my car to events on the off chance I get a question I need to research.

If you are like me and sceptical about these devices and the quantity of books available for them, I’ll repeat what my friend told me, “Go try one for yourself”, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*I’ve not mentioned makes or models here on purpose. Try different models and see how you get on. I did, and that is how I ended up with the model I’ve have. You can download software to read and mange books on your PC, like Adobe Digital Editions, you can also use ADE to transfer ebooks to devices too.

Also look around at the books sites, for example O’Reilly have most of their publications, especially their new ones, available in 4 formats. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Borders, Waterstones and WH Smiths are all making ebooks and readers more generally available, most will also let you try them in store.

SQL Bits 7 – the wonders of SQL is now open for registration.  This event takes place at York University, York, UK from 30th September to 2nd October.

The event is over 3 days

• 30th September is the paid for training day featuring the likes of Brent Ozar from SQL Skills in the US, Buck Woody from Microsoft and UK MVPs such as Chris Webb and Chris Testa O’Neill. This event costs £250.
• 1st October is the paid for conference day,  featuring some of the speakers from the training day but across multiple tracks in a conference style format. This event costs £125.00/
• 2nd October is the free community day where the content is voted and put together by the community. This is free to attend.

Note: There are various discounts on the site and bundle prices for attending all three days.