SharePoint Daily for February 12, 2009

Top News Stories
Microsoft Bolsters SharePoint's Enterprise Search (Redmond Developer News)
Microsoft rolled out two new enterprise search products on Tuesday at its FASTforward'09 event in Las Vegas. The company unveiled FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business. Both products use search technologies from FAST Search & Transfer, an Oslo, Norway-based company that Microsoft acquired in April for an estimated $1.2 billion. FAST apparently had good search technologists but lousy accountants. Norwegian authorities raided FAST's Oslo office in October over accounting irregularities.

Former Softies Aim to Make Office work Like Google Docs (ZDNet)
Two former Microsoft employees have started a company aimed at making Microsoft Office more like Google Docs — at least on the online-collaboration front. DocVerse — a stealth startup formed by Shan Sinha, a former Microsoft SharePoint and SQL Server strategist, and Alex DeNeui, also formerly involved with SQL strategy at Microsoft — has begun offering beta invitations to a few hundred interested testers.

Bad Economy Good for Cloud Computing, Microsoft Exec Says (ENT News)
A weakened economy will serve as a catalyst to push enterprises from on-premise computing to accessing services over the Internet cloud, according to Microsoft exec Doug Hauser, who delivered an address on Wednesday at the Thomas Weisel 2009 Technology and Telecom Conference.

An Overview of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 White Paper (ZDNet)
Today's business requirements---such as security, disaster recovery, and mobility---are more extensive than ever before. To meet these requirements, Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 has extended its reach beyond simple e-mail to increase user productivity and keep information close at hand, while being flexible enough to meet your organization's administrative model. This white paper delivers an overview of Exchange Server 2007 and describes how this next generation of Exchange Server helps increase user productivity and administrator efficiency while fulfilling your evolving business requirements.

No News is Good News for Microsoft PowerPoint in Office 14 (ZDNet)
PowerPoint 2007 offers a lot of surprises to us when she made her debut with ribbon coat and SmartArt accessories years ago, however, those tremendous changes lead a lot of problems, such as incompatibility. Since Office 14 is going its way from alpha to beta at Microsoft labs, my only expectation on potential PowerPoint 14 is the full-featured Web presentation.

Microsoft Kills Windows 7 Beta (InformationWeek)
Microsoft on Tuesday officially ended the download program for the trial version of the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system. "Special thanks to everyone who is beta testing Windows 7," wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger, in a post Monday that warned of the shutoff.

Internet Explorer 8 (Release Candidate 1) (LaptopMag)
Even in beta, Internet Explorer 8 garnered a high rating, thanks to its smartly organized interface, fast speeds, and a few innovative features. Release Candidate 1—one of the last iterations before the browser’s ready-for-prime-time version—improves on earlier versions by expanding its privacy and stability options, as well as streamlining the user interface. Are these improvements enough to get those who have abandoning IE for other browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Chrome to come back? Probably not, but IE 8 RC1 proves that Microsoft is still very much in the game.

Around the Blogosphere
A Tribute to the Humble “Leave Form” - Part 7 (SharePoint Magazine)
Welcome to edition 7 of this seemingly never-ending tribute to the humble annual leave (vacation) form. This is getting to be like the “Friday the 13th” series of movies - they never stop! First up, I want to categorically state that, as a heterosexual Australian male, I have a few stereotypical personality traits . I enjoy beer, kung-fu movies, Burger Rings, Vegemite and Tim-Tams, love the cricket (especially playing India) and most importantly of all, I do not read instructions. Period. I think that ignoring the RTFM rule is a characteristic of all of humanity but Australians in particular seem to celebrate this trait as something endearing.

Simplifying SharePoint Server Roles (Joel Oleson)
There is so much unnecessary confusion over server roles in SharePoint.  Let me take the opportunity to simplify these roles, so you can see it is much much simpler than it is made out to be or even that original design. SharePoint roles are really a description of what services are running on the server, and because of the past we've overcomplicated the way we think about servers roles, app servers, tiers, topologies, and farms.

Video: A Look At Microsoft Surface And Its Uses (Michael Gannotti)
While out in Seattle for TechReady 8 one of the event features that captivated many attendees was the use of Microsoft Surface. There were a number of these stations set up where users could interact with the systems, play games on it, or even access a custom built application that delivered sales and marketing materials to help arm attendees in sales efforts. It was pretty cool stuff and in this video we catch up with a few attendees who show and discuss the system and their experiences with it as well as plans for harnessing its power in various scenarios.

Analyzing SharePoint Usage (Mark Harrison)
This white paper will help administrators gather and analyze Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies usage and performance data.

FAST-forward Your SharePoint Search (Real SharePoint)
Microsoft just announced (yesterday) that they are finally solidifying plans of integrating FAST (Fast Search and Transfer) enterprise search technology into SharePoint. You might recall that Microsoft had spent $1.2 billion on acquiring this Norwegian company just a little over a year ago. It’s great to finally hear from Microsoft how they plan on leveraging this asset to improve the overall search platform within SharePoint. Yes, this is not gonna be fully integrated into SharePoint until the official release of the next version of SharePoint, but it’s definitely something, along with all the additional Office 14 enhancements, that we are all looking forward to.

Small SharePoint Deployments (Joel Oleson)
One thing I haven't posted about is the small deployments.  Yesterday I talked to someone deploying SharePoint for 15 users.  Now that's a different set of challenges.  I ran into them after going through my Governance deck, which I'm sure overwhelmed them a bit.  By default I think in terms of enterprise scale and perspective.  That's actually one reason I have enjoyed co-presenting with Shane Young (who's moved on to presenting with other people lately, but he is an early founding member of my fan club.) for that reason.  Shane deals with the small businesses all the time.  I enjoyed getting his perspective as it applied to the SMB.  A question was asked yesterday about a default preconfigured installation of SharePoint for small business.  I had no idea.  If there is such a thing I would be interested in it.  I hope they aren't running basic mode, otherwise I would have a hard time suggesting it's usage.

The One Best Practice to Rule Them All - Part 1 (Clever Workarounds)
This is a post or three that I have really been looking forward to writing, and it is a long time in the making for various reasons. Some of you, after reading it, will no doubt wonder if I have been taking magic mushrooms or something similar, but if the feedback from the SharePoint Best Practices conference is anything to go by, then maybe a couple of readers will have the same sense of realisation and clarity that I had.

Around Bamboo Nation
Bamboo is a GOLD Sponsor of the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Psst! Have you heard??? Bamboo is proud to be a GOLD Sponsor of this year’s highly anticipated Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, taking place at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas this October 19-22. In addition to partnering with Microsoft as a GOLD Sponsor of the show, we are looking forward to leading a session during the week which will feature exciting updates about SharePoint, Bamboo Products, technologies, and Labs.  Stay tuned for more details!

Saving a Template Directly to a SharePoint Document Library (The Bamboo Team Blog)
In response to an earlier post about how to Create a New Content Type in SharePoint, I recently received a question regarding the manner by which such new document templates are saved.  Specifically, how to set up a new template so that when an end user saves it, it's saved directly to the document library by default.  As posed by seb283, the question was: When I am done creating the Content type I need, created a list and added the content type to the list, I have a nice New button opening a template I would like the end users save in this particular library.

Translation for Bamboo's Non-Web Part Products (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Last year (wow, does time fly!) I wrote a blog post about the ability to translate Bamboo Solutions Web Parts by updating XML files in the WPResource directory.  Since then, Bamboo Solutions has expanded our portfolio by leaps and bounds, and not just in the area of Web Parts but also in Custom Columns and Application Pages.  With evolution come challenges, and ours involved how to provide the same functionality of product translations while providing the flexibility to our end users which resulted in new translation methods for the following products: Alerts Administrator, My Alerts Organizer and SharePoint Custom Columns.

Do You Administer SharePoint? Would You Like to Test the Newest Version of SharePoint Designer? (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Microsoft's User Research Group is conducting a study for SharePoint product and technology. This is a great opportunity for SharePoint IT Administrators to test out the newest version of SharePoint Designer and have a direct impact on the design. The study will be based in Redmond, WA during the week of March 9, 2009.

Microsoft Updates
Performance is poor when you try to generate a custom audit report for a SharePoint Server 2007 site (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
Performance is poor when you try to generate a custom audit report for a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site.

Error message when you add a new variation label and try to create the hierarchy: "The variation system failed to pair up pages http://kbalertz.com/958302/Error-message-variation-label-create-variation-system-failed-pages-because-their-Content-Types.aspx and /ja-JP/web/Pages/default.aspx because their Content Types do not match" (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
After you change the content type of the Default.aspx page used as a variation hierarchy on an Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you add a new variation label and try to create the hierarchy. However, you cannot create the hierarchy. Also, the following error message is logged in the Variation logs:

Error Message When You Complete the Upgrade From an Earlier Version of GroupBoard Workspace to GroupBoard Workspace 2007: "Upgrade completed with errors" (KBAlertz - Microsoft Knowledge Base Article)
You perform an in-place or gradual upgrade from an earlier version of GroupBoard Workspace to GroupBoard Workspace 2007. However, when the upgrade is complete, you receive the following error message: Upgrade completed with errors. Review the upgrade.log file located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Logs\Upgrade.log. The number of errors and warnings is listed at the end of the upgrade log file.

SharePoint Events
February 12, Online, What's New from Bamboo
February 13, Online, Become Your Company's SharePoint SuperStar!
February 17, Adelaide, Australia, Adelaide SharePoint User Group Meeting
February 17, Irving, Texas, DFW SharePoint Server Community
February 17, Milan, Italy, SharePoint Administrators Summit
February 18, Brisbane Australia, Brisbane SharePoint Users Group
February 19, Columbus, Ohio, Central Ohio SharePoint User Group
February 19, Falls Church, Virginia, PMI Washington DC - Skyline Luncheon
February 19, Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville Office Geeks
February 19, Louisville, Kentucky, Kentucky SharePoint Users Group
February 20, Online, The Fundamentals of SharePoint Dashboards in WSS
February 21, New York, New York, SharePoint Saturday
February 24, Christchurch, New Zealand, Christchurch SharePoint User Group
February 25, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
February 25, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
February 25, Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland SharePoint User Group
February 25, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group 
February 26, Phoenix, Arizona, Arizona SharePoint Professionals Group
February 26, Online, What's New from Bamboo
February 27, Online, Create a Master Calendar in SharePoint
February 27, Online, 7 Ways to Leverage SharePoint for Project Management Success

March 3, Chicago, Illinois, The Chicago Microsoft SharePoint Business Strategies Group
March 4 Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
March 4, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
March 11, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
March 11 Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
March 12, Online, 'What's New from Bamboo?' Webinar Series
March 14, Boston, Massachusetts, SharePoint Saturday
March 18, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
March 18, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
March 23, Baltimore, Maryland, SharePoint .Org Conference
March 25, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
March 25, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
March 26, Online, 'What's New from Bamboo?' Webinar Series

April 1, Online, SharePoint Project Management Webinar
April 1, Online, SharePoint Administration Webinar
April 6-8, London, England, SharePoint Best Practices Conference
April 6-8, Montreal, Quebec, SharePoint Summit 2009
April 9, Online, 'What's New from Bamboo?' Webinar Series
April 23, Online, 'What's New from Bamboo?' Webinar Series

* Please contact Chris Dooley (chris.dooley@bamboosolutions.com) to include your event in our listing.

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