Oh dear Microsoft

Ever wondered why Microsoft Office 2007 documents didn’t seem to appear in the search results of Windows Sharepoint Services? Hmmm, turns out, according to Microsoft “This problem occurs because a 2007 Office IFilter is not installed“.

Is there a solution? Well yes and no. Yes in the fact that there is this KB article, and no in the fact that it involves installing Word and hacking the registry of the Sharepoint server. Now we’re not too sure whether this happens on EVERY Windows Sharepoint installation or just in some circumstances but we can tell you that if it does the solution is sure nasty.

I think that perhaps it is a good idea to wait a while until Microsoft releases a proper patch for this problem. In the meantime we’ll have to check to see whether all our Sharepoint sites are affected.

More than 30,000 views

We’ve cracked more than 30,000 views of our technology videos on YouTube. That works out to an average of almost 850 per video we have posted (currently we have 34 videos available). Our most popular video is Getting started with Virtual PC, which has been viewed almost 4,000 times.

You’ll find all our videos at http://www.youtube.com/saturnalliance. As always we welcome any feedback or suggestions you on how to improve our offerings. also, if you would like to see us cover a particular topic in our upcoming video also please contact us.

Thanks to all those people who have taken the time to watch our videos, provide ratings and feedback. We hope that you’ll continue to watch what we upload.

WSUS causing SBS reporting issues

Seems like some update that WSUS pulls down automatically has caused an issue with the SBS reporting. We have seen something similar when there have been OEM issues with WSUS. For more information we suggest you take a look at the official SBS Blog posting. which should give you everything you need to know.

The solution appears to be that under WSUS 3.0 you force a resync from the console. since this can’t be done with the standard WSUS 2.0 on SBS 2003 R2, the best bet appears to be simply to wait for WSUS to resync with the server. Admittedly, it is a bit of fingers-crossed scenario but for the time being their doesn’t appear to be much choice.

In all honesty, can’t say that we like or use WSUS that much at all. There are far better solutions from third parties out there. True, you have to pay fro them but when you look at the additional functionality and flexibility it is well worth the investment.

Also reading Susan Bradley’s blog, seems that SBS R2 installations are not the only ones experiencing issues. See the following Computerworld article for the impact on enterprise users. And all of this the day before patch Tuesday – Yeah WSUS !!!

The Microsoft WSUS have now posted an official response to the WSUS issue. You can find it here.

Home server offerings are coming

Wanna see what people like HP will be offering Microsoft Home Server on? Click here for a multimedia demo of the Media Smart Server from Hewlett Packard.

Must admit that box looks really sexy, which it needs to be if it is going to succeed as a consumer item but will it succeed? Do most consumers really want the added complication of a sever at home? Don’t they really just want more disk space to save all their junk on? Today’s NAS (Network Area Storage) devices are becoming more sophisticated yet simpler to use because they fulfil just one need.
Now, sure there’ll be a market for home servers for the geekier consumers but on a wide scale? Hmmm..not so convinced yet. Now, I could certainly be wrong about this but I don’t see as much potential as some of the suppliers see (knowing the consumers that I know).
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly believe it is only a matter time before every home has its own server and perhaps this is just the first attempt at that offering. Much like the early days of Small Business Server, there will be plenty of challenges but you gotta get into the market before someone else does.
It will very interesting to see the prices of these devices when they hit our shores. I wonder whether they will make in time for Christmas? You gotta think so.

The day the guns fell silent

On the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month 1918, the guns finally fell silent to mark the end of the First World War.

It was a conflict that involved Australian forces and resulted in almost 60,000 killed and 153,000 wounded, most in the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. It is hard today for us to imagine the shocking conditions and strain that these men went through in the defence of their allies. Sadly, apart from Gallipoli, we don’t seem to truly provide such men with the recognition for their sacrifice that they deserve.

On this Remembrance Day we encourage you to stop and remember these men and all those who have died for their country in the vain hope that their conflict will be the war to end all wars. For those interested in the contribution of our troops during World War One in Europe, please see our web site at http://www.ciaops.com/guides/battle.

Lest We Forget.

Restoring with Shadowprotect video now available

We’ve added a new video that details the basics of restoring information using Shadowprotect on Small Business Server. You can view the video directly on YouTube by clicking here.

The video will cover the basics of restoring a single file using the Windows interface or restoring a whole volume by booting into the Shadowprotect environment directly from their bootable CD.

Look out for additional videos on Shadowprotect coming soon that will cver topics such as: complete server recovery, Exchange recovery, etc. As always, we appreciate any comments or feedback on what we have created.

Search Server Express – first impressions

We have managed to get Search Server Express installed on a test Sharepoint machine and we admit that we are a little disappointed. Why? Well, we thought that Search Server would integrate directly with Sharepoint. It doesn’t. It basically creates a seperate (Sharepoint-like) site on the machine that is used purely for searching.

This means that the existing Sharepoint integrated search functionality stays as is (from what we see so far). However, the Search service does search the Sharepoint content directly and you can extend it to search things like web sites, file locations and public folders. This is where the real power of the application is going to come into its own.

Imagine setting up Search Server to crawl not only your Sharepoint but also every data on your server automatically! This will be a godsend to finally be able to locate all those documents strewn out across server hard disks.

Apart from this what we like so far about Search Server is the fact that it is easy to configure, simple to add crawling locations as well as perform maintenance tasks like launching a full crawl. The Search Server admin site has plenty of information about the searching status and configuration which was alwasy something that was hidden in Sharepoint.

So initially we were disappointed the it didn’t integrate directly with Sharepoint but the more we use it the more we like it. Can’t wait for the RTM version now.

Sharepoint Search Server Express

One of the really cool features of Sharepoint has always been its ability to search through all the content on your site. Now Windows Sharepoint Services (ie the free edition) did a great job but not as much as the full blown Microsoft Sharepoint Server (MOSS, ie not free). The MOSS product search had far more functiinality and things like “did you mean”, “sounds like” and so on.

Well now Microsoft are making a version of this Enterprise Search available for FREE yes FREE. It’s called Search Server 2008 Express and you can find out more info by clicking here.

It looks really good and should be an excellent add on to Windows Sharepoint Services, however on the initial reading we think it may have trouble if installed with Sharepoint 3 on SBS. We will confirm this as we are currently in the process of test the Release Candidate which you can download.

We’ll post more information about what we find soon.