Information about SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Azure, Mobility and Productivity from the Computer Information Agency
Just came across this site from Microsoft promoting the benefits of SharePoint:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/iusesharepoint/landing.aspx
and all I can say is well done Microsoft. You’ll find a number of short videos to chuckle at but they do get the message across about what the benefits of SharePoint to average users. All the videos are worth watching.
You’ll also find pointer to more helpful information such as tutorials and download about SharePoint.
Great site. Bravo Microsoft, bravo!
You’ve read the walkthrough, now see the video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRwO6zlVVOs
You see the installation of the service pack and the command line options required to complete the update. I’ll also show you where the logs are located in case you get into problems and need to check them out.
Here’s a couple of good videos that gives you an overview of how Office365 will work with SBS Essentials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVQz3KufpwQ
This first video shows you how you can manually set up the integration between SBS Essentials and Office365. At the moment, this is the option you’ll have to use until the Office Integration Module (OIM) for Office365 becomes available.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4O4LZ6UFEg
This video shows you the current (pre-release) Office Integration Module (OIM). It has some nice features and integrates nicely with SBS Essentials. Importantly, it doesn’t provide any AD synchronization, it simply allows you to easily administrator Office365 from the SBS Essentials console.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2-dVLwYraU
This video shows you how to integrate your custom domain with SBS Essentials. You will note that the Office365 servers need to become your DNS name servers. This means you’ll have to use Office365 to edit or add any records you have for your domain. The video shows the example of setting up the remote access URL on Office365.
If you are planning to install SBS Essentials and integrate it with Office365 then I’d suggest you take a few moments to have a look at each of these videos, after which you should have a much better idea of how it all integrated together.
Here’s a walk through of the installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010 Service Pack 1 on a stand alone server not connected to a domain with a default install of SharePoint Foundation 2010. I’ll look at doing something for SBS 2011 Standard soon.
The first thing you’ll need to do is download the Service Pack 1 file which can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26640
Right mouse click on the file and ‘Run as administrator’
Next, accept the license terms at bottom.
The Service Pack will now commence installation.
You will receive a message indicating the process is complete. However, all that has happened that the binary files have been updated. You need to now apply the update to SharePoint Foundation 2010 manually. This is because now you must manually run PSCONFIG after installing SharePoint 2010 patches on ANY server that SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed on.
To check to see whether the Service Pack has been installed correctly, firstly run the SharePoint Central Administration. Select System Settings and then Manage servers in this farm.
Note the Configuration database version. Unless it is 14.0.6029.1000 Service Pack 1 has not yet been applied to the SharePoint farm.
To apply the downloaded update to the SharePoint farm run a command prompt as an administrator.
Change to directory c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin and execute the following command:
PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures
You should see the process complete 6 stages in total like shown above.
If you now check the version of the configuration database in Central Administration as shown previously it should be 14.0.6029.1000.
One of the additional features that Service Pack 1 provides is the ability to view the storage usage on a site. To see this go into your site and select Site Settings. You should now notice a new option under Site Collection Administration called Storage Metrics.
As you can see from the above screen shot, this now gives you a break down of exactly where space is being used in your site.
If nothing else this is a great reason to install SharePoint Foundation service Pack 1.
Yeah! Office365 is finally here and everyone can enjoy the benefits of upgraded versions of Exchange, SharePoint and online communications using Lync. if you missed it, I recently ran a 60 minute Office365 for SMB webinar (mainly focused on the Australian market) that is available for paid download if anyone is interested at:
http://www.pagebloom.com/content/product/o/92160/p/1103227
In the webinar I speak about the fact that I consider Lync and SharePoint to be the two greatest opportunities for the SMB market. Firstly, neither produce really has much exposure to SMB clients. This means there is a whole raft of business issues that can be addressed by these products.
Lync allows SMB businesses to benefit from remote and teleworking, which not only improves productivity but also employee retention as they work more flexible times and reduce unnecessary travel to name but two benefits. SharePoint now allows the ability to create intelligent forms, thereby reducing paper but also allows viewing and editing of Office document via a web browser using Office Web Apps.
There will obviously still be teething problems with Office365 but I would expect to see the service continue to improve at a very fast clip. Now all I’m waiting for is the next version of Windows InTune.
I’ve published in this blog previously annoyances I’ve had with Windows Phone 7. However, I continue to see Windows Phone 7 as a good (although currently weak) alternative in the mobile space. As such I continue to keep an eye on upcoming developments, of which I have been recently reading about the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7 known as Mango.
The following article:
http://www.winrumors.com/windows-phone-mango-overview-outlook-phone-calendar-video/
Is a worthwhile read about what new features are coming. The article contains two videos which cover these additions quite nicely and are well worth a minutes to view.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5g7tHxwmQ
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFl4la6LdU
However by far the video that interests me the most is this one:
http://www.youtube.com/user/winrumors#p/a/u/1/4liR0XntUFA
Why? Because it cover the Outlook and phone features which is what I need more as a business user. I also like the new calendar features which makes a big difference to using the phone. If you are a business user of Windows Phone 7 I’d suggest you watch this last video.
Overall it seems to me that Microsoft has taken on board the feedback it has received so far and will deliver a very worthwhile update to the platform. This certainly give me a lot more faith in platform going forward with two important caveats, that being that this update will be available soon and work on my existing device. My understanding is that the Mango update will be out in September and will work on existing devices. I’ll be keeping my finger crossed but am very happy to see the Windows Phone 7 platform advancing
One of the best cloud based apps that I know and use is Evernote. It is a bit like Microsoft OneNote in that it allows your to keep notes and then have those notes sync’ed across a number of different devices.
Personally, I initially used Evernote to sync study information between my different Windows PC’s initially. However I soon graduated to using it on every device, including the web and iPad. One handy application of Evernote was when I wanted to take a screen capture of a customer’s machine I could do so directly using the web based version of Evernote. Once that was done I knew that when I returned to my office that screen shot would be synced with my desktop. Very, very handy.
The one place that Evernote was missing from was Windows Phone 7 (which I adopted recently). This made me wonder whether the Windows Phone 7 platform had a future simply because an app like Evernote is everywhere else. However, have no fear, Evernote for Windows Phone 7 is now available from the marketplace and like on all other platforms is free.
If you have never looked at Evernote then I strongly recommend you do as it is truly a great example of a cloud based application and besides that I have found that it can really improve your productivity.
1. Trapster.com
This app allow you to track road hazards. More importantly it allows you to track things like red light and speed cameras, school zones and mobile police radar traps. It also allows the tracking of accidents and allows you to enter anything you see to share with other users.
I think the most handy feature is the fact that it warns you both audibly and visually about an upcoming ‘hazard’. I find this very handy when travelling during school zone times as a n audible prompt that a zone is approaching can be very handy as well as saving you getting fined.
2.Waze.com
This is free GPS that works on most devices. It offers the standard stuff like turn by turn navigation but what I really like is the ‘community’ idea where users can report road issues and have that alert other users.
I have only been using this for a short while but it seems to work pretty well. I like the concept of getting ‘rewards’ and ‘points’ for contributing to the information. However, I will say that it is very easy to get distracted by trying to contribute and should only be done with caution. It is probably as bad as SMS’ing while driving so don’t do it! However, when you are stuck in traffic letting others know to avoid the area is a great concept.
What I have found that works well is to run Trapster and then let it run the background with the audio prompts about hazards while having Waze open for navigation. I’m sure there are plenty of features of both of these apps that I’ll discover over time but I gotta say they are working for me.
