SharePoint Daily for September 23, 2008

Chris Dooley — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:08:00 GMT

Top News Stories
SharePoint: Pros and Cons (iWRBlog)
Sorry to bang on about content management again, I do have better things to do with my time, honestly. It's just that a bit of news caught my eye again at the tail end of last week. A lot of noise is made by commentators about the impact of SharePoint on the industry. You certainly can't talk about content management, or ECM, these days without mentioning Microsoft's disruptive product, but you certainly can talk until the cows come home about whether it's a full ECM solution or not.

Microsoft Takes Its Newest High-Performance Computing Platform to the Street (MarketWatch)
Microsoft Corp. today announced it has released to manufacturing its newest server -- Windows HPC Server 2008, giving Wall Street firms an easy-to-deploy, cost-effective and scalable high-performance computing (HPC) solution. Today's event kicks off a series of global launch activities in the coming weeks to support the new product.

Cisco Buys Jabber, Hopes Employees Will Like Using Corporate IM (Silicon Alley Insider)
Cisco's (CSCO) acquisition engine rolls on: Its latest buy is Jabber, a Denver-based company that makes enterprise Instant messaging and "presence" software -- the ability to tell if your coworkers are online, at their desk, on their phone, out to lunch, napping, in a meeting, etc.

Updated Collaboration Tool Debuts for Aerospace and Defense Supply Chain (Supply & Demand Chain)
Aerospace and defense industry supply chain solution provider Exostar has announced the general availability of its ForumPass4 product, which offers business tools for sharing information internally and with their partners, suppliers, customers and other third-parties to ensure that complex programs and projects with global constituencies remain on schedule and on budget, while sensitive documents and data receive protection.

Oracle OpenWorld: A View From the Cheap Seats (ZDNet)
While Sam Diaz and Mike Krigsman are slaving away in the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld I get the pleasure of observing from the comfort of my office in downtown Hicksville, Spain some 5,500 miles away. Once more, Oracle dropped the ball for us lowly bloggers but by the power of live video streaming, Twitter and eventtrack, I get to follow the nuanced action as seen by the crowd. It’s not the same as being there of course but it does provide another view - one from the cheap seats.

Oracle's 'Beehive' Approach to Market Share (InternetNews)
Oracle's got a new stinger to use against Microsoft's market share with Exchange Server and SharePoint products, thanks to its BEA acquisition.

Q&A: Microsoft Launches Windows HPC Server 2008 at Leading Wall Street Event (WebWire)
At the 2008 High Performance on Wall Street event, U.S. Capital Markets Industry Solutions Director Craig Saint-Amour and Director of HPC Marketing Group Vince Mendillo discuss how Microsoft’s new high-performance computing server can help financial services firms uncover and analyze risk.

11 Reasons Why Community Platforms Create Better Results (Social Computing Magazine)
The release a few days ago of Telligent's newest product, Community Server Evolution, a platform aimed squarely at the intranet and Enterprise 2.0 markets, got me thinking about the business possibilities and opportunities they enable for those that use community platforms. While much of the discussion around community platforms focuses around technology, instead, let's talk about what community platforms can do for your business.

Microsoft Drops Hints About New Unified Communications Offerings (ZDNet)
The Office Communications Server (OCS) team at Microsoft has been relatively quiet since it launched OCS 2007 last fall. But it sounds like that silence may be ending soon, with information imminent on the expected OCS Release 2 (R2), a new conferencing service and new business-focused communication services for mobile phones (codenamed “Rouge”).

Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' Ad Images Made on Macs (Network World)
Several digital images that Microsoft has posted on its Web site to trumpet its new "I'm a PC" ad campaign were actually created on Macs, according to the files' originating-software stamp.

Around the Blogosphere
Best Practices Conference Recap (Bob Fox's SharePoint Blog)
This week I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Best Practices Conference down in Washington DC. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this event was received and at the attendance and overflow of registration for a new event such as this. The folks at MindSharp did a fantastic job ensuring everyone's satisfaction in the sessions. In some cases the rooms were tiny and they added additional sessions so that those that couldn't get into the room had the chance to attend the sessions. Nice Touch guys!!

Bamboo SharePoint Community Efforts Have Big Payoff (SharePoint Joel's SharePoint Land)
If you haven't spent any time over at Bamboo's community sites, you're really missing out. They've been working with a number of SharePoint MVPs and SharePoint experts on free content to really help the community. Let me give you a few examples...

60 MSDN SharePoint Class Community Content Articles Complete (SharePoint Shelter)
That’s right, 60 classes that were not formerly documented I have produced community content for which provides class description, usage examples, and more! Perhaps I might have touched on a piece that you have been interested on purpose or structure, in which case I hope these writings provide you with some insights :p

The Hidden Value of Communities (BinaryWave)
As someone who travels around the world speaking to community organizations of all types and sizes, I've often been asked, and even wondered myself, about the true value of community. Why do we do it? What benefits does it provide? Who gets the most out of it? And is all the effort really worth it?

SharePoint Evaluation VPC Image will expire 9/30 (Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)
If you’ve activated and are using the SharePoint evaluation image from http://www.microsoft.com/vhd you’ve hopefully noticed by now that it’s due to expire at the end of this month…!

Backing up MySites (SharePoint Blogs)
Around these parts, we use stsadm to backup SharePoint. The main site is no problem, since it consist of a single site collection because Content Types aren't sharable across site collections (grrr). But the MySites are a problem. Not that we have a turnover problem around here(!), but people come and go, and so do MySites. Since stsadm has to know which site you want to backup, how do you know what MySites are out there requiring backup?

SharePoint Performance Optimization: How Microsoft IT Increases Availability and Decreases Rendering Time of SharePoint Sites (Shared Points for SharePoint...)
After deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in the corporate production environment, Microsoft IT noticed opportunities to enhance performance, especially long page render times, and spikes in disk I/O and CPU utilization. By working to discover root causes, Microsoft IT identified areas of opportunity for performance optimization, including the back-end SQL Server storage subsystem, and front-end IIS servers.

Around Bamboo Nation
Workflows - Hope for the Best (Plan for the Worst) (The Bamboo Team Blog)
At last week’s SharePoint Best Practices Conference, I attended a session on implementing Enterprise Workflows in SharePoint hosted by David Mann, Microsoft MVP and author of “Workflow in the 2007 Microsoft Office System”. David covered several key workflow topics, including the capabilities/limits of the out-of-the-box workflow capabilities in SharePoint, the need for scalability in enterprise solutions, and an overview of workflow architecture. While topics ran the gamut from basic to technical, one of my favorite takeaways was actually one of the simplest ideas. Remember not to focus only on how a workflow is supposed to act, but also on how it can (and probably will) break.

Dashboard Templates for Project Portfolio Dashboard (The Bamboo Team Blog)
As part of Bamboo’s updated Bamboo Project Management Suite, our new SharePoint Project Portfolio Dashboard allows you to create a customizable dashboard that displays the critical info you need to track a project’s progress. Taking a glance at the settings for each of the many included charts and graphs, you will quickly notice that there are plenty of customization options for each chart, but did you also know that you can easily change which charts are displayed and exactly how they’re arranged?

SharePoint Information Management Policy Settings (SharePoint Blank)
Yet another area where SharePoint can make your document management easier is via its built-in Information Management Policy Settings feature. The ability to create and manage customized policies exists for the contents of any SharePoint document library, and once you know a) that it exists, and b) where it can be found, you'll find that setting up your own policies is a snap.

SharePoint Project Management: Better Handling of Multiple Project Sites (The Bamboo Team Blog)
I am fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss Microsoft SharePoint® with users at tradeshows, user group meetings and through phone and e-mail. Although each SharePoint implementation is as unique as the company behind it, almost without fail the solutions described include “project management” as part of the response. It is no secret that SharePoint provides powerful project management capabilities. Still, project management means different things to different people and “effective” project management is another thing altogether. SharePoint provides a strong collaboration environment to manage short and long-term projects, but ease of use alone does not guarantee successful project management.

This Week in Bamboo (Sep 14th - Sep 20th) (The Bamboo Team Blog)
For this week we released the patches for the following products:SharePoint Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator (SA05 R1.1.26), Password Expiration Web Part (HW23 R1.2.4), SharePoint Desktop Explorer (HW02 R2.0.28)

Mindsharp Best Practices Show Wrap-up (The Bamboo Team Blog)
Last week Bamboo Solutions was fortunate enough to be a Gold Sponsor at the Mindsharp Best Practices Show. Given it was in our backyard and we love the folks at Mindsharp, it was a no brainer for us to attend and a great opportunity to spread the word about what's new at Bamboo. As predicted, it was a great show for us, with many familiar faces and some new ones as well. Over the past 2-3 years, I've been about 7 different tradeshows all over the country, from Vegas to Phoenix to Orlando (lots of trips to Orlando) so it's been a lot of fun to see our progression in just a short time.

SharePoint Events
September 23, Franklin, Tennessee, Nashville SharePoint Users Group
September 24, Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland SharePoint User Group
September 24, Iselin, New Jersey, New Jersey SharePoint User Group
September 24, Melbourne, Australia, Microsoft Office System Special Interest Group
September 24, Roanoke, Virginia, Roanoke Valley SharePoint Users Group
September 24, Toronto, Canada, Toronto SharePoint User Group
September 25, Phoenix, Arizona, Arizona SharePoint Professionals Group
September 25, Wellington, New Zealand, Wellington SharePoint User Group
September 30, Christchurch, New Zealand, Christchurch SharePoint User Group

October 2, Kansas City, Kansas, Kansas City Office Geeks
October 7, Chicago, Illinois, The Chicago Microsoft SharePoint Business Strategies Group October Meetup
October 7, Grand Rapids, Michigan, West Michigan SharePoint User Group
October 8, Bloomington, Minnesota, Minnesota SharePoint User Group
October 8, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Colorado Springs SharePoint User Group
October 9-10, Tulsa Oklahoma, Tulsa TechFest
October 9, Puget Sound, Washington, Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group
October 9, San Francisco, California, San Fransico SharePoint Users Group
October 14, Southfield, Michigan, Southeastern Michigan SharePoint User's Group
October 16, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, Bay of Plenty User Group
October 16, Columbus, Ohio, Central Ohio SharePoint User Group
October 16, Louisville, Kentucky, Kentucky Sharepoint Users Group
October 21, Adelaide, Australia, Adelaide SharePoint Usergroup
October 21, Tampa, Florida, Tampa Office Geeks Association
October 25-26, Los Angeles, California, SoCal Code Camp
October 25, Orlando, Florida, MOSSmosis Orlando
October 25, Puget Sound, Washington, Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group
October 27-30, Los Angeles, California, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference

November 3-7 and 10-14, Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft TechEd
November 10-13, Las Vegas, Nevada, SharePoint Connections Conference
November 13, Atlanta, Georgia, MOSSmosis Atlanta

January 26-28, San Francisco, California, SPTechCon

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

Microsoft Updates
Watch this: Manage Site Navigation Settings (Windows SharePoint Services)
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides navigation that helps you to see where you are on a Web site relative to other sites or subsites. Site administrators can customize the navigation components of sites to provide flexibility for teams.

Watch this: Using Web Parts (Windows SharePoint Services)
Web Parts are the basic building blocks of SharePoint sites. They enable you to display and manipulate content on SharePoint sites and pages. With Web Parts, technical and non-technical users can customize a SharePoint site, store and keep track of documents, display content from many sources, display business data, show a report of business processes, or display news from a corporate or industry RSS feed, to name just a few possibilities.

Watch this: Managing Access and Security to a SharePoint Site (Windows SharePoint Services)
One of the most important jobs for a site owner in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is managing who can access resources. Permissions for a SharePoint site can be set up in countless combinations. This adds to the product’s flexibility, but it also places responsibility on site owners to understand how permissions work. Windows SharePoint Services uses Windows authentication to authenticate users. Site owners can either add Windows user accounts directly to a site or they can add user accounts to SharePoint groups, which have common privileges wherever they are assigned.

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SharePoint Daily for September 23, 2008