Social-Point http://www.social-point.com Fun in SharePoint Land. Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:45:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 SharePoint Conference: Conversations 3 http://www.social-point.com/?p=292 http://www.social-point.com/?p=292#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:36:00 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=292 In this third video from SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas – I visit with John Ferringer.  John recently published a book on SharePoint 2007 Disaster Recovery with Sean McDonough.  John shares with me some of the things that excite him in SharePoint 2010 including:

  • SharePoint Online – Features and Restrictions
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Search

John can be reached on twitter at: twitter.com/ferringer.

]]> http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=292 0 SharePoint Conference: Conversations 2 http://www.social-point.com/?p=288 http://www.social-point.com/?p=288#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:00:55 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=288 This is the second of my video interviews from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference held in Las Vegas last week.  In this interview you will meet JD Wade (@jdwade).  JD talks about some of the things he has been seeing in the new version of SharePoint which was debuted at SPC09 including:

  • The impact on infrastructure in 2010
  • The impact the underlying OS has on 2010 behavior
  • How SP 2010 can be used in global deployments
  • Performance Point
  • Service Applications
  • Claims Based Authentication
]]> http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=288 2 SharePoint Conference: Conversations http://www.social-point.com/?p=284 http://www.social-point.com/?p=284#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:27:31 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=284 In keeping with the SharePoint Street-talk series I started a few weeks back – I did a few video interviews with different SharePoint professionals while at SharePoint Conference 2009.  Here is the first of those interviews where I interview Chris Geier with K2.

]]> http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=284 0 Migrating a SharePoint 2007 Blog to 2010 (Part 2) http://www.social-point.com/?p=280 http://www.social-point.com/?p=280#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:43:59 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=280 Welcome to the 2nd of a 2 part blog series on migrating a SharePoint 2007 blog to SharePoint 2010.  This is a continuation of a previous post where I migrating Joel Oleson’s blog which we host to here at Rackspace to SharePoint 2010.

Recap of the upgrade steps:

  • Acquire another server
  • Install SharePoint 2010
  • Perform a “preupgradecheck” on the old server
  • Install any prerequisites on the new server
  • Migrate the Content DB
  • Apply the new look and feel
  • Apply Joel’s theme

    •  

    In the previous post I took you through as far as Migrating the Content DB where we attached Joel’s 2007 content database to a newly built SharePoint 2010 Foundation Server (note the new naming conventions).

    Apply new Look and Feel

    So at this point everyone is excited to open a browser and take a look at the new site.  The only problem is that once the browser opens and renders the site – there isn’t any change to how the site looks…what’s up with that? 

    In this new version of SharePoint, Microsoft has shipped all of the CSS and Masterpages from 2007 to help ease the transition of sites in 2007 to 2010.  In fact what they have also done is increased the delineation of SharePoint responsibilities from the IT Pro and the rest of the SharePoint user base.  The beauty of this is that at this point my role as the System Admin is complete – Joel’s blog is now running on 2010 – mission accomplished.  It would be at this point that I would had the site over to Joel and his designer to decided when they wanted to apply the 2010 look and feel.

    Being that it is my role to help Joel with these things as well (and it helps me with more info for blog posts), I went ahead and completed the process.  You see inside: Site Actions > Site Settings under “Title, Description, and appearance” there are these radio-button choices at the bottom of the screen:

    • Keep the previous SharePoint user experience.
    • Preview the new SharePoint user experience, but let me return to the previous user experience.
    • Use the new SharePoint user experience, and don’t ask me again.

    image

    Note: If you are tracking along w/ your own DB and following my steps, you may find that you can’t log into your site collection… why you ask?  Because if you have built your new farm in a new domain – you have just restored content from an old domain with old domain users.  Go add yourself to the Site Collection Administrators in Central Admin.

    Apply Joel’s Theme

    Once you select “Use the new SharePoint Experience…” you will see an immediate change as your are dropped back in Central Admin – you have the new admin features and layout available!  As you go back to your home page, you will see the new theme applied as well.

    image

    Now Joel’s page has the new look and feel but all of his styling is gone.  This is because the default.master is being fed from the “uncustomized” version of the page which is located on the WFE.  To get Joel’s styling back, all we have to do is open SharePoint designer and re-apply the page created by Heather Waterman.

    image

    Once that’s done, you are good to go:

    image

    So there you have it: Migrating a SharePoint blog from 2007 to 2010.  In future posts I’ll dig a little deeper into each of these areas – this post was meant to give you the “big picture” of the process.

    Please feel free to comment below with any questions about the process or reach out to via email or lastly – view some of my SharePoint information over at my employer’s site: Rackspace!

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=280 2     Migrating a SharePoint 2007 Blog to 2010 (Part 1) http://www.social-point.com/?p=270 http://www.social-point.com/?p=270#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:19:04 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=270 Some of you may already know that we host the blog site for Joel Oleson at Rackspace.  Well Joel was going to be giving a talk at the recent SharePoint Conference on the new world of SharePoint administration in SharePoint 2010.   As part of that talk he (and Mike Watson) were going to touch on migrating sites from SharePoint 2007 to 2010.  So we came up with this idea that we should migrate his current site live to one running on SharePoint 2010.  This post talks about that migration and some of the things that I needed to do in order to perform this migration.

    First of all, let’s understand the outline of what needed to be accomplished:

    • Acquire another server
    • Install SharePoint 2010
    • Perform a “preupgradecheck” on the old server
    • Install any prerequisites on the new server
    • Migrate the Content DB
    • Apply the new look and feel
    • Apply Joel’s theme

    Sure seems simple enough, right?  In the end it wasn’t all that hard – but there were a few “gotchas” along the way.

    Acquire Another Server

    Why did we need another server?  There were 2 reasons: Because we wanted both the 2007 and 2010 site to show up simultaneously and because the old hardware was running on 32-bit architecture.  As you may remember – SharePoint 2010 requires a 64-bit OS to run.

    Install SharePoint 2010

    This part was simple enough and to be honest, was another reason why we needed a second server.  For this demo, we had already in stalled the bits for 2010 and we couldn’t make this site live before Monday as the NDA from Microsoft was still in place.

    Perform an “stsadm –o preupgradecheck”

    I can’t stress enough the importance of doing this on your 2007 SP2 (or later) site.  This goes through your current site and checks all dependencies to ensure you are ready to go.  Here is a screen-capture from Joel’s:

    PreUpgradeCheck-screen-capture

    Install any Prerequisites on the Server

    This means that any packages (WSP’s, Features…)  that are installed on the source server need to be installed on the target server.  In Joel’s case, this included the Community Kit for SharePoint.

    Confession: I forget to do this the 1st time I attempted the migration and the upgrade on the content DB failed.  Good thing I had another copy of the source content DB (you should too!)

    So off to codeplex I went and downloaded the install files.  It is certainly nice when a package comes with an INSTALL.BAT but guess what? Any and all of those install files out there have to updated if they drop any files in

    c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\*

    Know why???  Because in SharePoint 2010 the install directory changes to:

    c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\*

    After updating their install.bat, all worked well.

    Migrate the Content DB

    Part of this step does including creating a new site collection.  It doesn’t much matter what template you use, as you will be detaching and deleting it’s database.  Once you have it created, go into central admin and delete the content DB from the WEB app.

    Now, when I made a copy of Joel’s production DB, I just made a SQL Backup of the content.  I could have copied the MDF and LDF files and moved them to the new server.  But being lazy and only wanting to move one file, I opted for the “backup” method.

    So now over on the 2010 server I opened SQL Studio and performed a “restore” of Joel’s content db.  Note: you may need to either kill SQL connection or just restart the SQL service. 

    Now that I had a copy of the Content DB on the new SQL server, it is was time to connect it to SharePoint 2010.  To do this, you have to use the command line as the GUI interface can not handle the upgrade.  Open a CMD interface and navigate to the BIN directory:

    c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin

    and perform the following:

    stsadm –o addcontentdb –url enter your url –databasename enter your db name

    The system will churn a bit, give you a little progress info… and hopefully you’ll see a 100%.  Now it’s time to navigate to your site and enjoy the goodness of the migrated site.  The reality is, you will not see any change!  This is actually a good thing – you see SharePoint 2010 does an amazing job of enhancing the line between the IT Pro and the Designer/Developer role.   We will talk more about this in the next blog post! 

    On to: Part II

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=270 1     A Few Good Links http://www.social-point.com/?p=265 http://www.social-point.com/?p=265#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:31:17 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=265 Microsoft posted a few good links today (at least, I found them today). One is on using virtualization for SharePoint servers. Check it out here.

    The other article has a bunch of SharePoint 2010 “Posters” that you can download. Check them out here.

    Lastly, there is the new “forums” page that Microsoft hosts.

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=265 0     AvePoint/Microsoft Live Blog: Storage Optimization http://www.social-point.com/?p=263 http://www.social-point.com/?p=263#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:05:55 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=263

    12.11

    Tony just showed their file-share connector product for SharePoint. This is really slick stuff. This connects a file share to look/feel/manage right in SharePoint. Great product!

    12.01

    DocAve Extender is fully integrated into the SharePoint platform. Fully accessed/Managed in SharePoint.

    12.00

    Tony is announcing the DocAve Extender. Storing content out of SQL but keeping all meta-data in place.

    11.59

    (Slide) What does SharePoint 2010 offer OOTB?
    No archiving tools
    EBS extended to include RBS
    - Available only in SQL Server 2008 SP2
    - Only accessible via API
    BCS extended to allow for easier connectivity with legacy data systems

    11.58

    Tony is back to show another demo.

    11.52

    2010 is improved but:
    - Lack of global management across multiple farms/environments;
    - Security-trimmed delegation of administration

    11.50

    AvePoint really does have a good story around “global farm” deployments.

    11.46

    Now they are demo’ing the replicator product. Very cool solution for keeping farms in sync.

    11.41

    Tony just demo’d restoring a SharePoint farm from the Rackspace Cloud.

    11.37

    Tony is now showing a demo of restoring a farm from the Rackspace cloud!

    11.27

    Question was already asked: Will DocAve support Amazon? NO – just Rackspace!

    11.27

    Tony is getting ready to talk about the ability to use Rackspace Cloud Files with DocAve.

    11.22

    Tony is quoting Shane Young, MVP. Everything from site-collection down is End-User responsibility. Everything else is the admins work: Organization, Farm, WEB App, Content DB, IIS metebase, GAC, Hive, SSP, SSO, Solutions, Features, Workflow, WEB Parts, Master pages/design, index, search, admin config db.

    Yeah, that’s a lot. MS has no solution around this. It’s all about a 3rd party app.

    11.19

    Tony Lanni with AvePoint is now speaking.
    Question: Is there still a need for a 3rd party util with the additional capabilities in 2010?

    Answer: YES- one reason: all the bits that exist outside of SharePoint.
    - IIS, Index, Multi-Farm, DDL’s…

    11.15

    What DocAve Manager brings to 2010
    - Perform change in test environment
    - Ability to compare environments
    - Deploy to appropriate farms
    - Product reports of all changes

    11.12

    Out of the box solutions in 2010:
    - Deploy/roll-back solutions (packages)
    - Activate / deactivate features
    - More VS2010 integration

    What’s missing?
    - Granual control of rights (delegation), design elements, content, and customizations
    - DDL, GAC files, Customizations, Workflows, IIS config

    NOTE: These are still HUGE gaps!

    11.09

    Very important to keep a test environment – and keep it up-to-date.

    11.08

    AvePoint Backup/Recovery tools: easy to backup and restore content to create a “test” environment.

    11.07

    Tony from MS and Tony from AvePoint are on stage.

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=263 1     Steve Balmer Keynote Live Blog http://www.social-point.com/?p=259 http://www.social-point.com/?p=259#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:08:44 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=259

    12.02

    SharePoint server for Internet Sites-
    - Priced to make is accessible

    End User Empowerment in SP2010 and Media integration via Silverlight, FAST

    End User Empowerment
    - Ribbon now is Web Content Management
    - Support WCAG and XHTML compliance
    - One Click Page Layout (very dynamic: no more “one time choice)
    - Lots of work to support cross browser rich text editing. Full fidelity between office client and WEB content editor
    - Community work built into everything
    - Media player built right into SP 2010 (ribbon changes context based on what you click on)
    - Supports skinning for the media player

    Search
    - navigation built on search content
    - Integrated Spell Checking (right click)
    - FAST Navigation: click, sliders, very rich silverlight goodness

    12.01

    SharePoint for Internet Facing Sites
    - Showing a graphic with many sites that use SP for their Internet site: I see at least 3 that are hosted at Rackspace!
    - SP Not originally designed to be a WCM framework for Internet Sites – but they’ve worked hard on changing this.

    Examples That he is calling out:
    - Kraft: Consolidated over 200 WEB Sites. End users can contribute content w/o IT involvement
    - Volvo: 36 Languages, 70 Countries. Global repository they used to keep brand consistency

    Steve leaving and Tom is coming back again.

    11.58

    SharePoint for Internet Facing Sites
    - Showing a graphic with many sites that use SP for their Internet site: I see at least 3 that are hosted at Rackspace!
    - SP Not originally designed to be a WCM framework for Internet Sites – but they’ve worked hard on changing this.

    Examples That he is calling out:
    - Kraft: Consolidated over 200 WEB Sites. End users can contribute content w/o IT involvement
    - Volvo: 36 Languages, 70 Countries. Global repository they used to keep brand consistency

    Steve leaving and Tom is coming back again.

    11.51

    Cloud Slide: Choice, Depth, Proven

    Choice: run on prem or in SPOnline
    Depth: Lots (not all) of SP services available online
    Proven: States that lots of business using it today (eh)

    11.50

    Tom is now gone and Steve is Back

    Cloud Comments:
    He agrees the Cloud is important and sees mixed environments coming.
    - Will want to “move things” to the cloud
    - SharePoint ONline is the name of the service that MS Opperates that provides SP Services in the cloud
    - Over a million users in SP Online
    - 7k Partners
    - Updating SP Online quarterly
    - Glaxo Smith Klien: moving 100,000 users to the SPOnline

    Designed to give “choice” – mix and match between what is on-site and what is in SP Online

    SP2010 provides a much greater depth of features in SPOnline (almost all of the end user)
    You will get a “range” of new dev features in SPOnline

    11.46

    (This is really a sleepy audience)

    Sandbox Solutions
    - quick deployment, deploy to SharePoint either on prem or SharePoint online
    - New Solution UI: can throttle Sandbox Solutions based on CPU, Memory…
    - Still support WSP’s
    - New UI in SP is very “AJAXy”

    (It’s always sunny at the SharePoint Conference)

    11.43

    Deploy to SharePoint:
    - Creates Feature for you
    - Deploys to SP for you
    - Updates WEB.Config for you

    NOTE: New UI for deploying WEB parts to SharePoint.

    Built into SP 2010 is a developer dashboard
    - Shows all info about what it took to build the “page”.
    - Great diagnostics
    Audience loves this

    11.40

    Tom is creating a WEB part in VS2010
    - Mapped Folders to SharePoint (virtually)
    - Adding an image to the new WEB part that is fed from SharePoint (cool bits)

    Adding code to a button

    Deploying the WEB Part to SharePoint right from VS2010

    11.38

    Visual Studio 2010 (can now be developed on Windows 7)
    - Lots of SharePoint bits integrated into Visual Studio
    - Visual WEB Parts
    - Server Explorer can now traverse SharePoint server info
    - Create Features and Packages built right into VS2010
    - You can deploy to SP right from VS2010

    11.36

    SharePoint designer will create the CRUD opperations.

    Read/Write BCS is one my new fav things in SharePoint (So glad we can talk about this stuff now.)

    SharePoint content can now be shown very richly inside of the Office Client (outlook, word…)

    Tom is showing how he is editing a Contact in Outlook being edited which is actually part of SharePoint which is the external DB… very, very cool stuff.

    Tom is now moving on to Visual Studio 2010

    11.33

    (Sorry: internet on the AT&T 3G card is extremely BAD)

    Steve has now left the stage – Rizzo is back to show some demos.

    Tom is going to show demos with BCS, Developer Productivity, Sandbox Solutions

    1st: BCS: Business Connectivity Services
    - showing a DB in SQL of customers
    - Opening SharePoint designer (will continue to be free in 2010)
    - Navigation is SPD is new.
    - External Content Types: data that is external to SharePoint
    - External SharePoint will show up as a “list” in SharePoint: Full Read Write!

    11.29

    What are they trying to do w/ the product? Help you respond quickly to business data.

    SharePoint is a product that can help you get more done w/ less than with any other product on the market today.

    11.26

    Steve is states he is very excited about SharePoint “Workspaces” – being able to use SharePoint content outside of the network (offline sharepoint).

    Gates/Balmer Comparison: I don’t get the passion from him about the product like I saw from Gates.

    11.23

    New Capabilities:
    - UI
    - Ribbon
    - WEB App Companions

    Integrate them into SharePoint.

    Better cross browser experience.

    (Magical Unified Infrastructure. “Magical” Count = 2)

    11.21

    Steve: “SharePoint is kind-of Magical”

    He is excited to see SharePoint become the “face” of so many other things – even in the residential space.

    11.20

    Steve is states he is very excited about SharePoint “Workspaces” – being able to use SharePoint content outside of the network (offline sharepoint).

    Gates/Balmer Comparison: I don’t get the passion from him about the product like I saw from Gates.

    11.18

    Stating that SharePoint is at the center of all innovation at Microsoft.

    SharePoint Beta 2 available in November (not at the conference, kiddies).

    11.17

    Talking about how we need to evolve technology to be more portable and accessible in meetings like this. He was surprised to see there weren’t that many people w/ screens on. (note: guess he didn’t see my iPhone).

    11.15

    He is touting how MS technology stretches from the Enterprise, datacenter, PC, TV, mobile….

    11.14

    Note on the economy: IT is what is going to propel their businesses further and out of the current state.

    11.13

    Steve was out running and ran into the ShareRunners!

    11.09

    Tom Rizzo is currently on stage giving a big “welcome” to everyone. About to show a video of all the sites running on SharePoint.

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=259 0     One Day Out http://www.social-point.com/?p=257 http://www.social-point.com/?p=257#comments Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:24:33 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=257 So we are one day from the beginning of the “big show” in Las Vegas – the unveiling of SharePoint 2010. When I booked by conference attendance 4 months ago I, like most people didn’t know exactly what our schedules would look like.

    Now, one day from boarding the jet that will take me to Las Vegas my schedule is packed:
    Sunday
    - Travel
    - 4:00 “Tech Check” for my portion of the Joel Oleson preso on Monday
    - Welcome reception

    Monday
    - Morning Key Note address. I’ll be live-blogging from the event!
    - Present in Joel Oleson’s session on SharePoint 2010. Come see what we are up to in there!
    - Exhibit Hall
    - Partner Party

    Tues Day
    - Exhibit Hall
    - Morning Sessions
    - Lunch
    - AvePoint Session – this one is a must for anyone involved in System Administration of SharePoint. AvePoint and Rackspace will be announcing a new partnership as well as some innovative SharePoint integration technologies
    - Exhibit Hall
    - Customer Dinner

    Wednesday
    - More of everything! I’ll finish the rest of these details as they firm-up!

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=257 0     SharePoint Conference – Keynote – Live Blog! http://www.social-point.com/?p=255 http://www.social-point.com/?p=255#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:53:38 +0000 Jeff DeVerter http://www.social-point.com/?p=255 Here is a sad-sad tweet I received this morning from a friend on Twitter:

    I’m not going to be at SPC due client circumstances. :-/

    ( name hidden to protect the innocent)

    If that’s your situation as well – then check back here Monday morning at 9:00 PST and I will be live-blogging from the event. I’ll do my best to catch as much as possible and post it here.

    ]]>     http://www.social-point.com/?feed=rss2&p=255 3