Search Server 2010 Beta

With all the new Office applications currently available in beta don’t overlook the next version of Search Server Express. You can download Search Server 2010 beta from:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dfd0cfac-f52c-4c02-a972-0e4f1c4e7977&displaylang=en

 

You will need a 64 bit operating system, but unlike SharePoint Foundation 2010 it says that Search Server Express 2010 will run on Windows 2003 and 2008.

 

Here’s what the new version looks like after you install it.

 

image_4_08BFA2B7

 

Doesn’t look like much does it? But I have spoken many times about the power of search WITHIN a business, so don’s be fooled by the appearance. If you click on Advanced you’ll see:

 

image_6_08BFA2B7

 

which really doesn’t look much different from Search Server 2008 below:

 

image_8_36ACF56F

 

I’m currently working out what the differences are and will post any information that I find here soon.

 

Again, don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of Search Server, it is something most businesses really need and best of all it is a free download!

Big news day

The first bit of news is that Microsoft is officially killing off Essential Business Server (EBS) which was sorta a bigger version of Small Business Server. The announcement came as a surprise to many and disappoints some who have been building a business around a product that suits larger businesses. Some of the reasons for the death of EBS?

 

“midsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness.”

 

so says the Official Microsoft EBS blog.

 

Next bit of news is that Microsoft plans to release Office and SharePoint 2010 on the 12th of May which was announced on the SharePoint Team blog.

 

Even though the Official Microsoft EBS blog says, discontinuing EBS:

 

“will not impact any other Windows Server products and solutions, including the next version of Windows Small Business Server (SBS)”

 

you gotta wonder eh? It certainly only seems like a matter of time before that which instigated the demise of EBS starts to white ant the SBS end of the market. Most IT people will tell you that what happens at the larger end of town ultimately end up filtering down to the smaller end.

 

Almost two years ago now, in this blog, I speculated that SBS 2008 would be the last version of SBS we would see. I still believe that is the case, however I believe we may see something called “SBS” which really isn’t. I’m not going to split hairs on what ‘being SBS’ actually is, because I will still content that the fate of SBS will be the same as EBS. It will take longer to eventuate because the SBS product has a longer history and greater support base but it will happen in the end.

 

The imminent release of Office 2010 further marks a march to cloud computing and change in the landscape. Why? Because not only will Microsoft make available a version of Office available for free download but it will also have versions (including a free one) available via the web.

 

Office and SharePoint 2010 will survive because they can go to the cloud, EBS didn’t because it couldn’t. As I said, I reckon that the same logic applies to SBS, it is going to struggle as a product to survive a move to the cloud. Personally, I wouldn’t be betting my business on SBS at the moment.

 

On the other side of the ledger I think that it is good for Microsoft to reduce the number of products it sells and focus more of its energy on making those that sell well better. If all the resources from EBS get thrown into SBS to make it something better, then that can only be good? Microsoft needs to do what it believe is right for its business. At the end of the day that is going to burn some people who believed in the EBS product but in all my travels I have never seen an EBS installation and have only heard of one actual client who had installed it. Now I will readily admit that I am not as well travelled as other IT Professionals and I probably move in the limited circles of the ‘S’ in SMB, however I would have expected to have seen and heard more of EBS in all the time it has been released.

 

To say that current IT trends are not having an effect on customers and resellers is naive. Technology people need to appreciate that many aspects of traditional IT are being commoditized and perhaps sadly coming to be the domain of accountants rather than technicians. Someone told me once that change takes longer than you think to occur but when it does it ends up being much greater than you could have imagined. I certainly wonder what even the next 12 months will bring. The only certainty will be change but the uncertainty is just how much.

 

When a volcano erupts it can reek some of the most drastic changes on our environment, causing, flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes, solar winter and so on. Yet at the same time the earth that is brought to the surface during a volcanic eruption is some of the most fertile. In a nutshell every change brings threats and opportunities, what the end result becomes is only determined by a reaction to these events. A rational person appreciates that if they can’t change their circumstances then they can only react to the circumstances they find themselves in.

 

As much as I appreciate people will suffer because of the loss of EBS, I also see great opportunity in the changes that are brought to the IT landscape. It is up to myself to determine how best to exploit these for my business, because quite simply they are a fact of life and will always continue to be so. I may not like them but in the end I’ve just gotta deal with them.

SharePoint Lists webinar

Sign up for the next CIAOPS webinar now

 

100311 – Learning to use lists

 

This webinar will teach you all about SharePoint lists. You’ll be shown the many different forms of lists that are available including how to create your own custom lists from Excel spreadsheets. You’ll  find out which type of list is the best to use in each individual situation. You’ll see how to customize lists and connect lists to applications like Outlook and Access. Finally, you’ll learn how to display lists on a dashboard page and link information for instant updates.

Details

Date: Thursday 11th March 2010
Time: 10:00am Sydney Time
Duration: 60 minutes
Cost: $10 inc GST
Level: 2 (Intermediate)
Prerequisites: None

Registration: To register send an email to director@ciaops.com.

 

Keep updated with CIAOPS events via our blog or newsletter.

Webinar preview on YouTube

With another webinar completed today you’ll find the first 9 minutes or so available as a preview on YouTube.

 

This webinar covered SharePoint document libraries in depth. It showed how to not only upload documents but also create additional meta data fields. Attendees learnt how to use SharePoint’s check in / check out features along with version control to provide better management of documents. They saw how to create different views of your data as well as understand how to sort and arrange the information for quicker retrieval. Most of all they were given an understanding of document libraries beyond the basics which will helped get the most from this powerful SharePoint feature.

SharePoint Document libraries in depth webinar (preview)

 

We also have a number of free webinars you can download if you want to get a feel for the style and content of our presentations:

 

Introduction to SharePoint – http://rapidshare.com/files/312292856/091112.avi

Basics of using SharePoint – http://rapidshare.com/files/312282952/091126.avi 

 

there are also others available for download including:

Basics of SharePoint Administration

SharePoint Questions and Answers 1

SharePoint and Office

 

which are available upon payment ($10) again through http://donation.ciaops.com.

If you wish to be informed of when new webinars will be available please sign up to the CIAOPS webinar email subscription list.

 

If you have any feedback on the webinars, suggestions, or topic suggestions please don’t hesitate to email director@ciaops.com. 

Guest reviewers wanted

After my recent productivity postings on www.sbsfaq.com (part 1, part 2 and part 3) the cat is out of the bag that I’ve just about completed a book about productivity. It will be called “Being busy is just an excuse” and I am aiming to have it out on April 1 (no joke).

 

Before then I’d really like to get some people to read it for me and let me know whether it is good or bad. I’m looking for constructive feedback. If it is good let me know why and likewise if it is bad then let me know how it can be improved. It is always difficult to develop something in isolation so I’m looking for some fresh opinions as to whether the book in its current form is ready to go to market.

 

If you think you have some spare time, can plough through about 70 pages or so in a few weeks and are prepared to give me some feedback I’d love to hear from you. Contact me via director@ciaops.com and we’ll take it from there.

Productivity Part 3

Here is a copy of the last of three guest posts that I’m doing for Wayne Small over at www.sbsfaq.com on productivity. You’ll find Part 1 and Part 2 there also

 

Many of the concepts developed here come from my upcoming book on productivity – Being busy is just an excuse.

The last two articles have hopefully given readers a starting point as well as destination, we now need to look at getting from the one to the other. This article will provide you with a some techniques that can be used to become more effective and productive to ensure you enjoy your life more.

Probably the biggest drain on productivity most people face is their email. It is normally the first thing they open every day and the thing they always have running. The problem is that your inbox is a priority list set by someone else and unless you take steps to manage it correctly it will steal away your time. The first major issue with email is that it promotes distraction. If your workstation dings, flashes a warning and leaves an icon telling you there is an email the temptation to go and see what that email is can be extremely overpowering. Chances are that the email wasn’t important but what has happened is that you have been distracted from what you were doing and now need to spend the time refocusing. Some studies show you can lose up to 15 minutes when a distraction like this happens and if you multiply that by a week or a month the lost time really starts to stack up. So, step one should be to turn off any email notification in your software.

Step two is that you should limit your email use to three or four times a day, say 10am, 1pm and 4pm. Don’t open your email in the morning until you have accomplished some other task because the chances of you finding something in your email to distract you is very high. When you do work on your email process your emails until your inbox is empty. When you go to your letterbox at the end of your drive you don’t take just a few items and leave the rest for storage do you? Why should your inbox box be any different? You need to process it to zero. This means you need to have a good folder structure in which you can move emails for later if needed. A good system is to have folders like, archive, hold and followup as a minimum in which you can place items from your inbox.

Another huge boost in productivity can be had with the use of multiple monitors, not just a single large monitor but actually two physical monitors. Studies have shown that productivity can be raised by over 38% by simply connecting up an additional screen. Having more screen real estate allows you to more easily ’spread out’ rather than constantly having to swap windows.

After you have finished with the socks you are wearing today you don’t rush home and wash them do you? No, you throw them in the hamper with other clothes and wash them all together. This is because it is far more productive and efficient to do things in batches. The same concept applies to much of the work you do. From the audit of your time you conducted in the first article in this series you should be able to see how you can aggregate work and make more effective use of your time. You should also be able to determine at what time these batches are most productive for you. If you favour doing your accounts in the morning, then schedule one day a week to do all your accounts rather than at random times throughout the week.

Another excellent habit to get into is to stop and ask yourself regularly throughout the day, what is the most important thing I need to do next? What should I be spending time doing to get the maximum return? This allows you to pause and refocus on what needs to be done because otherwise you could be wasting time on something that really doesn’t have much value.

In summary, there are plenty of simple easy ways that you can improve your productivity. However at the end of the day you must determine what works for you. This will no doubt take some trial and error but you need to view this as an investment that will be rewarded in the future. If you know what your goals are then determining a strategy to get there is much easier.

I take this opportunity to thank you for investing the time in what I have laid out here over these three articles. I would like to thank Wayne Small for providing me the opportunity to write something here on his blog. I hope that it was worthwhile and if you have any feedback, comments or questions on what I have talked about here please add them as comments on this post so everyone can benefit. You can also contact me directly via director@ciaops.com. You’ll find information about myself and my business at www.ciaops.com.

Cloud wars

Here are some interesting videos from both Microsoft and Google on their cloud based solutions:

Why Microsoft: Microsoft compared to Google – Total Value Overview

Productivity Part 2

Here is a copy of the second of three guest posts that I’m doing for Wayne Small over at www.sbsfaq.com on productivity. You’ll find Part 1 there also.

 

Many of the concepts developed here come from my upcoming book on productivity – Being busy is just an excuse.

In the last post I covered how there are three major tasks that you need to examine when seeking to improve your productivity. Firstly, you need an idea of where you currently stand. I covered this in the last part when I recommended that the best solution was to track exactly how your are spending your time. Next, you need an idea of how you are going to get to your destination and finally you need to know your final destination. In this second article I’ll look at determining where you want your productivity to take you, that is, your destination.

If you were financially independent and didn’t need to work what would you do? What would fill all the time  you currently spend working? When I ask that question of people many can’t answer it because they have been so busy working they haven’t even considered what they are working for. They have fallen into the trap of simply working for works sake. Likewise, when you ask people what excites them you typically get answers that are far removed from what they are doing or have done recently. This divide between desire and reality promotes frustration and stress. If you want your situation to be different from the way it is now, you are the only one that is going to make it happen.

Let’s say that you want to aim to work only 40 hours a week and leave the office by 5pm every day. That’s your goal, now you need to start working backwards to achieve that. You need to be ruthless in many ways and cull the items in your agenda which don’t allow you to achieve your goal. Likewise, you need to examine the other things you do and determine whether they can be done more efficiently. Given that you already have a detailed report of where you spend your time each week (from part 1 of this series) you should be able to determine whether you can achieve your goal. Remember it is all a matter of priorities, If you want to finish by 5pm then you need to be disciplined and stick to this goal.

Many people say that they can’t leave at 5pm because everyone else is still there in the office slaving away. My response to that is simple. What do you get typically paid for? How you do your work – or the end result? Most good bosses don’t really care how you get your job done as long as you get it done. If you can do it more efficiently than others why shouldn’t you reap the benefits? It is a sad state of affairs when we measure an employee’s worth by how late they stay in the office.  Who knows how much time those other employees in your office have wasted during ‘normal business hours’. If they have been fiddling on Facebook while you have been productive why should you feel guilty leaving at 5pm? Don’t let them dictate how you spend your time. They are just jealous that you are getting things done.

Now, just because you have created extra time in your schedule by removing bad an inefficient practices doesn’t mean that good and efficient ones are going to take their place. As I said earlier, if you didn’t have to work what would you do? What would you fill your time doing? I’m sure that most people can fill those initial hours with stuff that excites them but what about after that? Don’t you want to have more free time for the rest of your life? You need to look at how you are going to spend the free time you generate now and forever, not just for the next few weeks.

As I said in my earlier post, there is no doubt that you won’t be able to do everything you want to at the office if you plan to work 40 hours a week and leave by 5pm. However, you should certainly be able to do everything that you “should” be doing with some time left for some things that you would “like” to do. This will typically come at the expense of things that you “should not” be doing, but why the hell are you doing stuff that you “shouldn’t” be doing I ask you? Here’s the key, it is all around priorities, for remember, once you allocate your time you can’t recover what’s been spent.

So now with your current situation and your destination in hand all you need now is a plan to get from one to the other. That’s what I’ll cover in my final part which will give you some techniques to help you improve your productivity and give you more time so you can meet your goals and be able to do more of the things that excite you.

As always if you have any feedback, comments or questions on what I have talked about here please add them as comments on this post so everyone can benefit.  You can also contact Robert direct via director@ciaops.com. You’ll find information about myself and my business at www.ciaops.com.