Look familiar?

Now where have I seen that face before? I’m proud to say that I’ve been profiled in a recent CRN (Computer Reseller News) article called “CIA man is an agent of change”. The article covers some of the history about my starting off on my own as well as my current thinking on the state of business as a technology reseller. For those who read this blog then there should be no major surprises (always nice to be consistent eh?).

One of the things the article didn’t cover is how I’m generally bullish about moving technology into the cloud via hosted services (especially email). Although detractors can point to many valid problems and challenges these are no different from those facing any previous instance of technology and because of this I am extremely confident that they will be overcome. As such, my advice to resellers is that at the very least you need to be aware of what hosted technology can provide rather than locking yourself into only on-site infrastructure. But then that’s a whole ‘nother article isn’t it?

Have a read of the article and let me know what you think (director@ciaops.com).

June release

The June update for my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide is now ready for subscriber download. This month, amongst other things, I’ve included a few more tutorial section including:

– Taking files offline with Outlook 2007

– Creating a wiki and linking with Outlook 2007

– Mapping a Network Place

The Guide is fast approach 1,500 pages and now includes a full text index allowing you to locate the information you need quicker.

After our May birthday special the price has now returned the normal price of $299, however during June I’ll be offering the Guide for $99.67 a month over three consecutive months. I hope this term payment option makes it a bit easier for people who have been considering the Guide but just couldn’t afford the total purchase price in a single month. This way, for less $100 over 3 months you’ll get access to all the benefits of the Guide as well a full annual subscription.

At this stage the 3 month part payment option for the Guide will only run during June 2009 so hurry. Also, don’t forget that I have a number of other incentives if you recommend the Guide to others. Even if you aren’t a subscriber I’ll reward you if someone takes up a subscription on your recommendation.

For all the information about the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide go to www.wssops.com.

Issues with SharePoint SP2

For anyone who’s applied SP2 to a SharePoint Server site (not Windows SharePoint Services tho’) you should check “Attention: Important Information on Service Pack 2” from Microsoft. Basically if you have an affected installation your license has been reset to a 180 day trial. There are some work around for some versions of SharePoint but there is also a patch on the way.

Windows SharePoint v3 is unaffected but Search Server Express 2008 is affected. Don’t understand why as Search Server Express is also a free download from Microsoft, but given this is the work from Microsoft you need to ensure that you install any forthcoming patch so the product won’t expire.

Hopefully not a major issue but certainly something that would worry some very large SharePoint installations. Luckily as SBS 2008 is powered by Windows SharePoint there is no issue.

Wiki home page

When you create wiki in Windows SharePoint the first thing you normally do is delete the two default items that SharePoint creates for you. You then start populating the wiki with your own items as show below.

This means that when you click on the link for your wiki you will be taken to a list of items like that show above. However, what happens if you want to come to a landing page and from there select different options to perhaps make it less confusing for users?

All you need to do is create a new item in your wiki called ‘Home’, like shown above. Now whenever anyone click on the link for the wiki library they will see the ‘Home’ page displayed.

If you click on the name of the wiki in the breadcrumb navigation at the top of the page (in this case Knowledge Base) you will again see all the items in your wiki.

So to create a default landing page for your wiki simply create an item called ‘Home’.

SharePoint 2007 Unleashed review

Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Unleashed by Colin Spence

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was disappointed that this book was more focused on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) than Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). I also believe it includes things that shouldn’t be included in a SharePoint book like Windows Services Update Server (WSUS), Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) setting up a VPN etc. Given they are all applicable in some way to a SharePoint installation I believe if the book is about SharePoint it should be focused in SharePoint.

Also like many books on SharePoint I felt that this book simply covered what is in the menu options without venturing further beyond. Again, like many other books on SharePoint I believe that it has attempted to cover too much material and as such doesn’t get to the depth that would make it a worthwhile read.

In summary I would only rate this as an average book on SharePoint but below par if you were only looking at Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). I think many of these type of book about SharePoint need to go it more detail about actually creating content to solve a problem. Even if it is only as an example it greatly improves the readers knowledge of the product, rather than simply working through all the menu options.
View all my reviews.

SMBITPro presentation

Did a quick SharePoint presentation last night to the Sydney SMBITPro group. I have posted the slidedeck up on my SlideShare for download.

Apart from the six secrets of selling SharePoint which I have covered in a previous blog post I made the following analogy:

Word = is a tool for entering information

Excel = is a tool for calculating information

Browser = is a tool for viewing information

Outlook = is a tool for sending information

Google = is a tool for finding information

Then

SharePoint = is the one tool to rule them all

Thus

SharePoint is Lord of the Tools!

Silly I know but a good way to pitch it to clients who don’t appreciate what SharePoint can do for them.

As always, if you have some feedback I’d love to hear via director@ciaops.com.

Selling SharePoint

I’m giving a SharePoint presentation at the upcoming Sydney SMBITPro meeting. Part of that presentation will be about the ‘Six secrets of selling SharePoint’. As such I have created a short document covering this document that you can download from here.

In summary when looking to implement a SharePoint solution remember the following:

– Start small.
– Solve a problem.
– Keep it simple.
– Seek a champion.
– Show the possibilities.
– Search.

For more details download the document (in PDF format) or view it below and let me know what you think.

Six Secrets of selling SharePoint

View more documents from Robert Crane.

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.