Community Kit for SharePoint 2.0 Pre-Release announcement

This CKS 2.0 Pre-Release contains the following:
Enhanced Blog Edition Beta 1
Enhanced Wiki Edition Alpha
ChatterBox AJAX Beta
Tag Cloud

Prescan.exe Download and Information.

Overview
Before you can upgrade to Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, you must run the Prescan.exe utility against your existing Web sites. This pre-upgrade scan tool scans your sites and reports issues, allowing you to fix any errors before you perform an upgrade. If you have not successfully run this tool and you attempt to upgrade your environment, when you attempt to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration wizard, the wizard will exit and prompt you to run the tool. We highly recommend that the server administrator run the pre-upgrade scan tool before the upgrade and resolve any problems that can be resolved before scheduling the upgrade.

Latest updates in documentation:

· Operations Manager 2007 Design Guide is now available at http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/d/74deff5e-449f-4a6b-91dd-ffbc117869a2/OpsMgr2007_DesignGuid.doc

· MP guides now include: SharePoint Portal Server, Information Worker, and SharePoint Services. Authoring guidance is also included. See the “Management Pack Guides” section below. For the latest list of 2007 MPs and guidance go to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/mom/catalog/catalog.aspx?vs=2007

Bill Gate's speech at Harvard

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

Hands On Labs from MMS 2007 are live on TechNet

System Center Operations Manager 2007: Advanced Topics Virtual Lab
TechNet
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6949282

System Center Operations Manager 2007: Introduction Virtual Lab
TechNet
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6949283

System Center Operations Manager 2007 Technical Walkthrough

Want to get a better understanding of how to architect, deploy, administer, and operate Operations Manager 2007? Walk through this online course designed to help you get ramped on using Operations Manager 2007.

All about Ops Manager and MOM

MOM 2005
The Windows Server Base Operating System MP 05.0.3500.0010 finally re-released and is available via the download site! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e553062f-bd85-4772-8037-8b91f457b710&DisplayLang=en

Operations Manager 2007
First hotfixes released to resolve the following issues have been released
1) Reporting setup fails in a disjointed namespace has been released, and the KB article is still awaiting publication. KB article reference is 936481.
2) Memory leak in the backwards compatibility script module which affects converted MP’s. KB article is still awaiting publication. KB article reference is 935896. (Hotfix also applies to Essentials)

Need to know
If a customer upgrades from Operations Manager 2007 RC2 to EVAL RTM, and then attempts to run the Licensing wizard to upgrade to the volume license, the upgrade will fail with the error “The Licensing Wziard was unable to successfully apply the license. Please check the log for more details”.
A private hotfix is available and should only supplied to customers who did install RC2->EVAL RTM. An internal KB article will be available shortly detailing the location of an updated Licensing Wizard which will correct the problem. If you should have a customer experience the problem in the mean time, please contact me.

The following MP’s have now released:
Microsoft Print Service Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=35d1fece-867b-4a0c-8642-57e84e327018&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft Windows File Replication Service 2000/2003 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6f5f8e56-6a35-4909-bb8f-968ee95a8f17&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft Windows Group Policy 2003 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52459150-85bd-4acb-90be-2ee5df18e1a8&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft Windows Server 2000/2003 DHCP Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2694e87c-76e0-417b-ad0f-5897e46fff88&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e7bfee42-2d3c-4810-97f8-4d89d7428a5f&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6803aa1d-0578-4d7d-bc2f-9600f0440d92&DisplayLang=en
All rely upon the following backward compatibility MP update to be applied first:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=655cdd06-861e-4342-99b2-8a81e09f6546&DisplayLang=en


Essentials 2007
Hotfix for Essentials install failure when installing Reporting feature where the DNS suffix is differs from the domain FQDN. KB article reference http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=937831
Note: A secondary problem has been found with customers experiencing the same issue attempting to install Essentials using a remote database server. A QFE request is currently active (MOM Escalation 3164)

The following documentation for Essentials has now been released to the Web
Operations Guide http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dbf51282-1784-4b9f-abd1-e2b5cb12f1a8&DisplayLang=en
Migration Guide http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9a7d0a52-4380-46a8-ba80-729ae2cc8cba&DisplayLang=en

Some cool virtual labs for ITPros

Windows Server 2008 Virtual Labs
Come experience the next major release of Windows Server. Test-drive new and improved features and functionality in the Windows Server 2008 release, including management, network protection, and improvements to Terminal Services. New labs will continue to be added and updated to the series so check back frequently.

Office Communications Server 2007 Public Beta Virtual Labs
Experience Office Communications Server 2007 through this series of Virtual Labs. Take a hands-on walk through topics such as installing, deploying, configuring, and enabling users in Office Communications Server 2007.

System Center Virtual Labs
Take part in these Virtual Labs and experience how the Microsoft System Center family of leading IT management solutions helps you proactively plan, deploy, manage, and optimize your IT environment.

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 - (an off line blogging tool) - (with SharePoint 2007 support!) now available

The Windows Live Writer team just announced the availability of Beta 2 of their excellent offline blog writing tool, which now has support for the blog functionality in WSS 3.0 and consequently MOSS 2007. I’ve been using a pre-Beta 2 build of the tool to write and post blog entries here (a Community Server based blog) as well as my own blog (a MOSS based blog) for a few weeks now, and it has worked very well.

HTTP security filter - Exchange Publishing

Steven Hope, formerly with Microsoft Consulting Services, put together a fantastic document on how to configure the HTTP security filter for a number of Exchange Publishing Scenarios. You can find that document at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/isa/2004/plan/firewall-exchange2003.mspx

I was made to think ISA Server must never be a domain member for security reason.

Until i had to configure a complex ISA 2006 with SharePoint and Exchange publishing.
Read Debunking the Myth that the ISA Firewall Should Not be a Domain Member and you will change you mind too.

A quick guide to locking down the SMTP Virtual Server in Exchange 2003

Stop Spam From the Inside by Locking Down SMTP

I was having this issue in one of the exchange servers i was working. Saw this huge amount of outgoing message queues.

Verified that the content was was only of bad emails outgoing, i then decided to wipe out all the pending email files (.eml) in "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot\vsi 1\Queue". You need to stop the SMTP Virtual Server before you do this.

/Gill

SEA 2007 is coming in Sept

Tech•Ed SEA 2007, Microsoft’s premier & largest annual conference in the South East Asia region, focuses on newly released products such as of Microsoft Office along with content about upcoming releases such as Windows Server code name "Longhorn". For four days in September, you can get technical training, information and resources to help you build, deploy, secure, mobilize, and manage solutions.

Tech•Ed SEA 2007 features:

• More than 120 breakout sessions
This year’s event will feature even more speakers from Microsoft Corporation allowing you to hear about your favorite technologies from the sources who develop them. Create a personal learning program from 6 technical tracks with more than 120 breakout sessions.
•
• Hands-on experiences
Tech•Ed offers opportunities to evaluate products both from Microsoft and from 250 of our most important industry partners. Additionally, based on attendee feedback from last year, we will be more than doubling the number of Instructor Led Lab sessions as well as introducing a whole host of new self-paced Hands On Lab content.
•
• Networking with your peers
Walking around Tech•Ed are more than 2,000 minds just like yours. 2,000 IT pros and developers to meet. 2,000 opinions to consider. Add to the mix Microsoft product team members and industry gurus and you will immediately see why a Tech•Ed crowd is like no other.
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Tech•Ed is a one-of-a-kind experience!

Good SharePoint Upgrade Articles and Posts

HP Whitepaper on SharePoint Server Performance

This is a good read for performance tuning a SharePoint. It written by HP using HP hardware, but it gives you a very good idea of how to capacity and performance tune your MOSS 2007 architecture.

A good guide to improving performance of MOSS 2007 via caching.

How can I make my web site faster with caching ?
http://blogs.msdn.com/ecm/archive/2006/11/08/how-to-make-your-moss-2007-web-site-faster-with-caching.aspx

Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites

What are Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites?

Every job role is unique and demanding. As people work to drive business outcomes, they have to balance the complexities of interacting with multiple systems, tracking goals, and relating to surrounding processes. IT organizations have been seeking role-based solutions that can provide information workers with common interfaces to access priority information.
Role-Based Templates for SharePoint My Sites are custom templates, designed for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the My Site functionality, and tailored to

Deploying Windows Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Step-by-Step Guide

Brief Description
Deploying Windows Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Step-By-Step Guide provides instructions for deploying Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) with Service Pack 2 environment.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7bab2321-71e6-4cf2-8bcd-0880e0d1cda3&DisplayLang=en

How to run host podcasting on SharePoint 2007

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/05/14/people-ready-podcasting-at-the-asia-pacific-sharepoint-conference.aspx

From the SharePoint Team Blog: Top 17 case studies for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and several new MOSS-based web sites

Really good reference for MOSS 2007 implementations.
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/05/03/top-17-case-studies-for-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-several-new-moss-based-web-sites.aspx