SPSNY: 'Ask the SharePoint Experts' Session with Michael Lotter, Bob Fox, Geoff Varosky and Tony Lanni

John Anderson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:07:00 GMT

Saturday afternoon's "Ask the Experts" session at SharePoint Saturday New York was an informal affair, as is generally the nature of such open dialogues between an audience and a group of SharePoint experts. Representing the experts at the front of the room were Bob Fox, Michael Lotter, and two other gentlemen who, unfortunately, went unnamed and with whom I was unfamiliar. (Please folks, introduce yourselves to the audience next time!) Geoff Varosky, and Tony Lanni. Also in the room were Mark Miller and Dux Raymond Sy, the latter of whom participated in an exchange on migrating forms to SharePoint.

Some of the questions asked during the session, and the answers provided by the distinguished panel of experts, included:

Q: What's the sync process between content published to an Internet versus an intranet zone?

A If you extend your intranet to the extranet, they're basically mirror images, so it's a simultaneous publishing process.

Q: What would be your advice regarding data migration from Lotus Domino to SharePoint 2007?

A: Recommended third-party providers of SharePoint data migration products included Quest, AvePoint, and Metalogix.

Q: A follow-up to the above: In dealing with the forms in such a migration, would you recommend InfoPath or ASP.NET?

A: Given that each option has its pros and cons, the strong recommendation by all of the experts was that, if at all possible, you should wait for 2010 rather than migrating to 2007.

Q: How does 2010 support co-authoring of documents, specifically regarding its handling of versions?

A: The Office client, as opposed to the Web App, is required, and it tracks the changes made by both users and ultimately merges them via SharePoint Workspace. Only one author can be working on a given area of the document at a time.

Q: What are the limitations on the cross-browser support offered by SharePoint 2010?

A: Though specific limitations weren't listed, the different tiers of supported browsers were named. First-tier browsers are IE 7 and 8 (32-bit), Firefox 3.2 (32-bit), and Opera. Second-tier browsers are Safari, and the 64-bit versions of IE and Firefox. All other browsers fall under the third-tier category.

Q: Using the Microsoft Web Apps on a Mac, are there any limitations?

A: As long as you have the Apps, no.

Q: Will it be possible to upgrade content from a beta version of SharePoint 2010 to the release version?

A: Only if you're a) in the Microsoft Technical Adoption Program (TAP), or b) you're on the Release Candidate (RC) version ... which is currently limited to just TAP members.

Q: What are your recommendations regarding using backup and restore?

A: The only time I use Central Admin backup and restore is right before I push something to production.

Tune in tomorrow for my recap of Mark Miller's session on "Enhancing the SharePoint Interface with jQuery Solutions"!

Read the entire SharePoint Saturday New York series:

TechEd08: Ask the SharePoint Experts

John Anderson — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:13:00 GMT

The second* session I attended today was a lively Q&A with an all-star roster of SharePoint experts in front of a capacity (plus standing room) crowd. Included on the panel were some familiar faces from panels I'd caught previously (Joel Oleson, Doron Bar-Caspi, Todd Klindt, and Shane Young), along with some new faces, albeit with names which should be familiar to anyone active in the SharePoint space. These new faces included Andrew Connell, Ben Curry, and Dan Holme.

This was another session that lends itself to a bulleted presentation of my takeaways and, since it was briskly paced (at just 45-minutes), I wasn't able to catch everything, but here are the nuggets that I'm able to share:

Introducing himself, consultant Dan Holme shared the exciting news that in two weeks he's going to begin providing SharePoint support for the Olympics. As it turns out, every time you see a prepared-in-advance video during the Games this summer, SharePoint (and Holme) will have been involved in delivering that content. Pretty cool, huh? So, as Holme suggested, "think of SharePoint every time you turn on the Games this August."
Per Microsoft's Bar-Caspi, In a 64-bit environment, you don't need to set anything regarding sizes for Application Pool recycling, "provided you have enough horsepower."
Encryption for SharePoint is available out-of-the-box if SQL 2008 is running and enabled.
There is a fixed Kerberos-over-HTTP limit, and this is not a limitation of SharePoint as is mistakenly assumed. The fix involves the UDP packet size, and requires changes to server- and client-side, but it can be fixed.
Regarding server namespaces, host names, domain names, and names of your portals don't have to be the same ... and, in fact, shouldn't be the same, per Oleson.
Choosing his words carefully, Connell said, "in my opinion, the content type inheritance is a little flaky" in response to a code-related question.
If I understood correctly, it's possible to script a config database which will allow you to install SharePoint across a farm via a one-word (!) command. That scripting information is available on Ben Curry's blog.
Curry has a new book, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices, co-authored with Bill English (and with input from several of Curry's co-panelists on today's Ask the Experts session) due out next week.

* If you're wondering why I'm kicking off today's panel blogging with the second panel I attended, well, therein lies a tale. The first session I attended this morning proved to be the first one of the week to present an all-but impossible challenge for me to blog. Or at least to blog and also do any sort of justice to the content. This was the Extending Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer with Custom Controls, Web Parts, and Workflow Activities breakout session. Not surprisingly, it was the Web Parts component that was the hook for me to attend, but the Web Part portion was over in the blink of an eye amidst what was otherwise a pretty hard core code-centric demo with lots of talk of arrays, divs, assemblies, and the like. I'm going to have to cry "uncle" on this one, sorry.

The Bamboo Team Blog : Ask the SharePoint Experts

SPSNY: 'Ask the SharePoint Experts' Session with Michael Lotter, Bob Fox, Geoff Varosky and Tony Lanni

TechEd08: Ask the SharePoint Experts