SharePoint TIFF indexing

One of the greatest features of SharePoint and Search Server Express is their ability to provide full text searching for a range of documents. They achieve this via something known as an iFilter. Out of the box both SharePoint and Search Server will do most Microsoft Office documents and common file formats (i.e. .txt, .html, etc). With the addition of some custom iFilters and some configuration you can also get them to index Adobe PDF’s, Zip files and so on. For information on configuring these additional document types see www.wssops.com.

It now seems that Microsoft has made available an iFilter for TIFF files via this download:

Windows TIFF IFilter Installation and Operations Guide

It would appear however that the TIFF iFilter is part of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 rather than a separate download. None the less I think this represents some very powerful new functionality for SharePoint.

How is that? Consider all the network copier/faxes that are now in businesses. Wouldn’t be nice if you could automatically have a document scanned and delivered to a SharePoint document library? Well that is already possible, but what if now all those scanned TIFF documents could also be fully searchable without any further interaction? It certainly seems that provides you are running SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 R2 and the TIFF iFilter is enabled.

Imagine that, you could scan in a whole swag of you existing paper documents, have them sent directly to SharePoint where they could be saved and indexed. Also imagine if you could have all your faxes sent to a SharePoint library where again, they could be saved and indexed. The more I think about this the more powerful it becomes I reckon. Don’t forget that SBS 2008 has inbuilt faxing reception to document libraries. So if SBS 2008 R2 ever becomes available then the integration of this TIFF iFilter is going to be a huge boon I reckon.

So what do you need to make this happen? Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint installed. Excuse me while I go off to do some testing.

Outta play

With all this talk about swine flu and the mixed messages that are coming for public officials maybe it’s time to step back and have a look at the bigger picture here. What would happen if you really got sick and couldn’t work for say three weeks?

If you are employed then generally that isn’t a worry since sick leave is part of the benefit of being employed, however what happens when you own and operate a small business? If the business is dependent on you and you get sick then typically the whole business stops. Unfortunately, both you customers and competitors don’t, so you would probably spend extra time worrying about these even when you are sick rather than worrying about getting better.

Before you drive your car anywhere you generally know you have a functioning spare tire on board to cover unforeseen emergencies. It wouldn’t be much use to hit the road without one now would it? It is also too late to think about having a spare tire when you get a flat isn’t it? Preparation is the key but do you apply the same logic to your business?

If you were to get sick or be taken out of action for a few weeks what contingency plans do you have in place? What funds do you have in place to tide you over? Whom can you rely on to help you with the work that you can no longer do? You may have income protection insurance but have you taken steps to protect your income?

Prior to any personal outage you need to build a business support network, people whom you can trust to cover for you in a pinch. You want to start making those connections as soon as possible because you never know when you may need them. Next, you probably need to consider your documentation. Do you have your business and customer information recorded in such a way that it is easy for someone else to get up and running? You have have all the help in the world but if they have to keep coming back to you and asking you questions what good is that? Also, how much of a financial buffer do you have to tide you over any downturn? What do you actually need financially to pay all your business and keep the business operational?

The hope is that you will never have to implement your ‘emergency’ plan but that should never stop you from working on one and working on it on a regular basis. Developing contacts, documentation and buffer fund all take time so the sooner you start building these up the more valuable they will be in the any unforeseen circumstances.

When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain, before the rain.

One year on

I am proud to announce that my SharePoint Operations Guide is now one year old. How it has grown from that initial release. Firstly, I want to take the opportunity to thank all the subscribers, without whom the Guide would not be where it is today. I’d especially like to thank the small group of foundation subscribers who supported me back in May 2008. Without you especially standing up early to support me, the Guide would probably still be sitting unfinished in some folder on my computer.

Before I start waxing on lyrically about the Guide I’ll just let you know that in recognition of this milestone I’m making a special offering. During the month of May 2009 you can not only get Chapter 2 free but also you can purchase the Guide for only $249. That’s a throw back to the initial release price and a $50 discount over the current price. To do this simply send me an email (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll send you Chapter 2 and a special redemption code that can be used until the first of June 2009 to obtain a discount. This is a special offer that will not be repeated, so if you are interested in learning how to install, maintain and migrate SharePoint then take advantage of this offer before it expires.

So a full year, wow! When I look at the Guide now I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been able to achieve. It now stands at over 1,250 pages, the DVD includes 4.2 GB of information, there is a Linkedin group for subscribers and those interested in the Guide plus more. I’m happy to say that I’ve still got plenty of ideas for additional content so the Guide is only going to keep growing. I’ve even come up with a logo:

Looks familiar doesn’t it?

I’m always keen for people to let me know what would be a good addition to the Guide or to contact me (director@ciaops.com) if they have any questions about Windows SharePoint or the Guide.

Once again, I thank all the existing Guide subscribers and I look forward to working hard for another twelve months to make the Guide even better.

Hypothetically speaking

If you aren’t aware, probably the biggest hosting company in Australia, WebCentral, is still having a major email outage (been over 30 fours for some people now). Now I don’t want to speculate why this has happened or how people need to understand that email is not a guaranteed method of delivery. What I do want to focus on is a business opportunity for a smart operator.

If you visit the Whirlpool forums you find this outage is costing people real money. Here’s but a few examples:

i’m the poor IT admin for my company who uses webcentral for over 5 years now, my CEO is sending me txt every hr to check whether it’s back online, i’m still working on an instant backup plan now, tried to forward them to my other host, but looks like the webcentral email forwarding isn’t working as well, can someone help pls….!!

We are talking about several hotels who’s main booking engines had relied on WC for over 3 years. There is a significant loss of business from unconfirmed bookings. One stats showing 52% occupancy from the daily average of 80%+.. in dollars thats about aprox $9,000+/day per hotel. What a nightmare. The pointing began at us then we pin pointed at WC. We are red faced for ever suggesting WC. So much for the 99.5% server uptime guarantee claim.

Now, I spoke about how to use http://search.twitter.com in a recent post as a method of monitoring, in almost real time, what is happening with customers. Now let’s say, hypothetically speaking of course, you have a competing business. What would stop you also monitoring the same Twitter feed and then approaching each affected customer with an offer to change over to your business? Chances are pretty good that if can offer a solution a lot of people are going to jump ship right now since they are currently experiencing real pain and loss. With something like Twitter you can do just that!

If you step back and have a think about that and apply it to other areas then Twitter may be a great way to leverage some opportunities for very little cost. So while some may look at Twitter as a total waste of time, it is far more intelligent to learn how it can be added to your marketing toolkit to bring in more business. A good craftsperson knows it is not about the tool, it is how that tool is used. In this circumstance, I can really see how Twitter can be very effective if used correctly.

Separate SP2 downloads

The SharePoint SP2 might be available as a single download but if you are using the following you will also need these separate SP2 downloads:

SharePoint Designer – Download SP2

Microsoft Search Server Express – Download Office Servers SP2

As the last link says:

Install SP2 for Other Office Products
If you have other Office products installed, please be sure to update them as well.

Seems everything works better when they all have the same updates installed. Strange that! Happy updating.

All of these updates will be sent to Windows SharePoint Operations Guide subscribers as part of their May 2009 DVD update.

SharePoint SP2 is here

Microsoft has now made available Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint.

Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x86)

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x64)

Since these have only just become available I am yet to fully test them. I do also note that you can also download the complete installation of SharePoint v3 including Service Pack 2:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 with Service Pack 2

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 2

Windows SharePoint Operations Guide subscribers will finds these updates automatically on the upcoming May 2009 DVD release that is part of their regular update.

You will find that Office 2007 SP2 is also available.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2

Human digitizer

When you do a lot of research like I do on the Internet sooner or later you end up at Google Books. The idea is that Google wants to digitize every book ever printed and place it on the Internet so it can be searchable. Now this has lead to some controversy around copyright but generally seems to be proceeding.

The question is how can you actually go about digitizing every book. You have to scan in every page and then convert that page to text so it can be searched. As anyone who has ever used a scanner (or a fax for that matter) knows scanning something into a computer can sometimes mean illegible results. Generally, the only way to overcome this is for a real live human being to decide what the scanned text actually says. That could take years I hear you say, ah ha but you didn’t figure on the power of the Internet did you?

A huge issue on the Internet are programs (known as bots) that scan through web sites looking for emails. The bots report these emails back to spammers who add them to their list so they can send you more junk. Bots can also be used to automate the creation of web based emails and reply to forms – ah what a pain! To overcome this many sites use something called Captcha. This means that prior to any confirmation you are presented with some text that is difficult for a machine to recognize but hopefully not for a human. In this way the web page knows that the entry most probably came from a real human (assuming it was entered in correctly).

So what has bots got to do with Google Books and text recognition? You can imagine that there are many pieces of scanned text from books that needs to be viewed by a human being to determine what they are. So now it’s time for the Internet and Captcha to come to the rescue.

As you can see, a site I recently visited needed to verify I was a real person so it threw up this Captcha. However, note that down the bottom it says the words come from scanned books. So by typing in the text you are help to digitize scanned books.

So how does the Captcha know the correct word when the scanned word can’t be read you may ask? On the reCaptcha site you’ll find the answer:

But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

If you a more in depth explanation then check out the reCaptcha site where you’ll the answers in much more detail.

A good example of how the power of the Internet is being put to good use. Pretty clever eh?

All about attention

Just been reading a nice article,”Taking control of e-mail”, that provides a good summary of the issues around information overload. What I liked was the following quote:

“Attention is the bedrock to learning, memory, social connection and happiness”

So if you are allowing yourself to be constantly distracted by incoming emails then your attention is very low and chances are it is affecting more than just your productivity.

The article covers some of the basic steps to help remove the distractions of email and is therefore well worth a read. I’d also recommend you take a look at www.doemailless.com where you find additional resources if you are looking to improve your productivity.

At the very least I’d commend you to try some of the steps mentioned in the article and see whether it does help. I’m confident that after a few day you’d agree that even a small change can reap significant benefits.