Mind Mapping is used a lot these days in many situations – from setting up projects to emergency solution finding. One of the leading commercial products in this area is MindManager which I’ve been using in a very early version years ago and I loved it.

One of the features missing in most Mind Mapping software is the ability to collaborate. This is where SharePoint comes into the picture: Mindjet, the company behind MindManager, just announced MindManager for SharePoint.

Download a trial using the above link and share your experience here. We are Interested to hear what you think of the product and how it goes with SharePoint. We will update here with our own experience in a few weeks time.

This is not related to SharePoint but to the Microsoft Office suite: The Mac Business Unit at Microsoft has announced the new Mac Office version 2011. The software is expected to be available in late fall of this year (2010). As it is the tradition in the Mac BU, they don’t plan a public beta. Instead there will be a private beta on invitation only. However, from the publicity seen so far I’d expect a lot of information ahead of release time from Microsoft about their new product (they have improved a lot in that respect in the recent SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 launch preparation).

Major highlights of the new version:

1) Outlook is back on the Mac, retiring Entourage Mail and Calendar. Among other things this means Mac users are welcomed back to the Exchange user community.

2) Visual Basic is back as well, closing a gap between PC and Mac users created in the 2008 Mac Office version, and giving Mac developers (and users) the opportunity to extend the product on both platforms.

3) Compatibility increase between Mac and PC Office documents and functionality. This is big.

“Noting that roughly three quarters of their Mac users use Windows at least occasionally, Microsoft’s Mac team says it’s also working to make the new Office for the Mac more functionally compatible with the Windows edition.”

4) Collaboration improved by integration with SharePoint and other platforms, including real time online collaboration on documents (co-authoring).

5) User Interface – Ribbon Mac-like. As stated in PC World Microsoft’s Sr. Product Manager Microsoft’s Han-Yi Shaw said

“…that the Mac team at Microsoft worked hard to adopt Apple technologies while also making sure their product was recognizably Microsoft Office.”

Sources:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/189123/microsoft_announces_office_for_mac_2011.html

http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=10812

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3864736/Microsoft-Demos-Mac-Office-2011-at-Macworld-2010.htm

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222900108

As Joel Oleson says in a recent blog post:

You hear about all the new features in SharePoint 2010, but what isn’t there?

The SharePoint Team at Microsoft not only has added functionality, but also has retired features and code from the upcoming SharePoint 2010. Microsoft has published the list on MSDN.

As an administrator you might want to know the current space used by individual SharePoint sites, or you might need that information for planning purposes. For cases like this, Quest offers the Site Administrator Reporter in a free version. The setup installs a plugin on your computer (Silverlight, in case you are interested) and a service. The report generation then happens on a Quest server.

The reports gives detailled information on the space used for example by each site or by file types.

Note: At this point of time the setup cannot install the service on my main computer (Vista 32bit, Swiss German). It runs fine on a Win XP VM as well as on a colleague’s machine that is running Vista 32bit, US-English. I am working with Quest development on that issue and will update here as soon as the problem is resolved.

Update: The issue has been resolved.

Source: Joel Oleson’s Free SharePoint Reports with No Server Install

SharePoint Connections offer a one-day online conference for developers and administrators – SharePoint 2010: Bits from the Edge.

Two dates are available:

For participants in the U.S.: 16-February, 09:00am – 05:30pm EST (i.e., 15:00 – 23:30 CET).

For participants in Europe: 18-February, 09:00 – 17:30 GMT (i.e., 08:00 – 16:30 CET).

Check out the program and register. Thanks to the guys from SharePoint Connections.

The Microsoft SharePoint Team has published a clarification for which Operating System versions SharePoint 2010 runs on. So if you are wondering which of your (old) machines can take SharePoint 2010 without change, take a look at the Operating System Requirements of SharePoint 2010.

Branding of SharePoint sites (changing the design to make it look unique and fit the purpose of the site) is one of those topics you can (and need to) read a lot about. Part of the process (which this posting is about) is changing a design, in other words: you have created a page layout and it has been published, and now you need to make changes.

Heather Solomon published a very good write-up about the big trap involved and what to do about it: when you apply your custom design to a site, SharePoint takes the style folder with yourCustom.css file and creates a copy yourCustom.css file in the SQL DB for each site it is applied on. So when you have made changes to the original yourCustom.css file you need to replace its copies on each of those customized sites with the updated file.

The easiest way to accomplish updates is using the following setup from the beginning:

1) Place yourCustom.css file in a folder that is accessible from all sites, e.g.,
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1031\styles\yourCustom.css.

NOTE: This would be the setup for a German speaking site. For U.S. replace 1031 by 1033.

2) In the folder containing your customized design (and which will be copied), i.e.,
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\THEMES\YourTheme\
place a theme.css file with the following content only (yes, just this one line):

@import “/_layouts/1031/styles/yourCustom.css”;

The bottom line is: You don’t have to worry about any SharePoint mechanics here – you use standard CSS technology by importing an external css file each time a pages is called. This way any design change is applied the moment you update the one original css file.

If you haven’t started using PowerShell yet, it’s time to get going: Microsoft not only has retired stsadm for SharePoint 2010 administration tasks (and replaced it with PowerShell), but also builds on PowerShell in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server (with more to come).

SharePointChick (her name, not my idea) Mirjam van Olst has written up a few tricks you probably won’t find in training materials like that and that are very useful. Thanks for that Mirjam.

Highly recommended: Download and install PowerGUI which makes creating PowerShell scripts so much easier by providing intellisense and debugging capabilities. Check out the basic tutorial (and find more on their website).

Further resources:

• Some handy PowerShell commands to deal with Windows (not SharePoint related)
• Top 25 Windows PowerShell commands for administrators by Jonathan Hassell
• Detailled technical information on Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) (note: navigation sidebar does not open in Firefox)
• http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/ Windows PowerShell blog
• http://www.pwrshell.net/ – PowerShell community

The beta versions of the 2010 Office and SharePoint product range have been out for a few weeks now and people start running into issues (that’s what a public beta phase is for).

One of the issues with SharePoint Designer 2010 is that this version will not allow editing of SharePoint sites running on WSS 3 or MOSS 2007. That is very unfortunate but it seems there is no way around it.

So the next question is what you need to do so that you can continue working in both environments WSS 3/MOSS 2007 as well as SharePoint 2010. Matt Groves read the documentation and found out what Microsoft has to say:

SharePoint Designer 2010 only connects to SharePoint 2010. To connect to SharePoint 2007 and earlier sites you must continue to use SPD 2007. If you elect to install both applications side-by-side, you must download the 32-bit version of SPD 2010. Please also note that 64 bit Office applications will not run if SPD 2007 is installed; 64bit Office 2010 applications should only be used if not connecting to SharePoint 2007 servers.

Note to self: We are moving from a 32-Bit into a 64-Bit world and installing new software from now will take some more planning than just download and start Setup.exe.

Further ressource: The Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog

Microsoft has done a lot within the last few years in several of their products to increase security and at the same time maintaining a stable environment. This also is true for SharePoint 2010 expected to be released in the first quarter of 2010: The developers have added what’s called a ‘Sandbox’ so that SharePoint Web Parts cannot interfere with the rest of the SharePoint environment.

Say a section of your Intranet  is experimental only (but you want to run in production environment) or if you are an administrator and you want to make sure that there is no connection between that section and other parts of the Intranet, you can have that section (e.g., a Web Part) run in its own little universe, called a Sandbox.

Corey Roth gives us a straight forward report of his troubles in getting the sandbox to work in the first place and what he did to fix the problems. Thanks Corey.

This is a personal post – to let you know that you should not expect any new posts here over the next week or so.

Over the last few months I have been busy setting up a conference together with my wife and a few friends in Rotterdam, the Netherlands for this coming weekend. Social Entrepreneurs and Change Makers are coming from all over the world and we are all very excited. If you are interested and want to find out more, pls visit http://www.EuropeanSummit.org and if you want to chip in a few $ you can help us bring eight young African women to Rotterdam who at the moment are on a six month Fellowship at King’s College, London – every dollar is appreciated.

One of the great changes coming with SharePoint 2010 to the end user is a wider choice in browsers and platforms. Next to its latest Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Microsoft now supports Firefox 3 and Safari 4 – and not only on Windows, but also on the Mac (and as far as I know Firefox on Linux is supposed to work as well).

If you are developing SharePoint interfaces or you are an administrator responsible for your company’s SharePoint environment, here is one thing to consider when planning the upgrade: SharePoint 2010 and Internet Explorer 6 don’t go together well – or as Microsoft puts it: this combination is not supported.

If for some reason you want to leave the (initiation of the) browser upgrade in the hands of the users, Randi Disgrill has an easy way to show users a message that makes them aware of the need to upgrade. Two words of caution though: I recommend not using this solution, when the users actually cannot upgrade the browsers themselves (huge potential for massive frustration knocking at your door), and I definitely would add a “do not show this warning anymore” option or show the message only once a day.

When you are a web designer or programmer asked to make design changes to make the presentation a bit more interesting, one of the not so good things about WSS 3/MOSS 2007 is the HTML code generated. The point is that the code exists of a long list of nested tables – not the best setup for easy manipulation by programmers and designers.

When word about SharePoint 2010 came out earlier this year, this was one of the things I was hoping to be addressed … and it is. Andrew Connell confirms that in SP 2010 there are no tables. We’ll see in the final product (remember that Andrew’s post is based on beta code!), if there actually are no tables anymore anywhere.

So maybe we will see something similar to one of my favourite web projects (CSS Zen Garden).

If you are in a transition phase from one world to the other (Lotus Notes to SharePoint or the other way ’round) or you have co-existence of both, you often will need to access one world from within the other.

Rishi shows a relatively easy way to access SharePoint lists from within a Lotus Notes application. This is a one-way option only via SharePoint’s RSS option.

The relationship between Microsoft and Apple has been changing over the last 20+ years, from close friendship to big time enemies, from collaborative partners to supportive business partners. And whereas the personal relationship between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had quite an impact over many years, these days everyone is mostly interested in which company allows what on the other’s territory: Apple has created smooth integration of the iPhone with Microsoft’s Exchange server (even though IBM had been a much closer ally with Apple than Microsoft), and Microsoft’s Mac divison is putting quite some effort into Mac support.

When it comes to SharePoint, Mac users so far were pretty much out of the picture:

• Internet Explorer (for Windows) is the only browser supported for the current version of SharePoint. However, Safari and Firefox (on the Mac as well as Windows) work surprisingly well with MOSS 2007. Not that I would recommend a client to roll out this combination in production, but since my own computer  happens to be a MacBook Pro, I more often than not am surprised how far I get with this setup.
• Microsoft Office 2008 (the Mac version of Office) is the main product Microsoft offers for its Mac-based clients. Since SP2 (version 12.2.0) Office for Mac includes Document Connection for Mac, which allows basic SharePoint integration for Mac users.
• So far offline use of SharePoint content is supported poorly even on Windows and with SharePoint Workspace 2010 (the file-artist formerly known as Groove) Microsoft takes a big step forward. However, SharePoint Workspace 2010 will not be made available on the Mac. According to ZDnet UK the Mac BU at Microsoft is working on a separate product that will allow Mac users to work offline with files stored on a SharePoint site, i.e., while not being connected to that SharePoint server.
• With SharePoint 2010 Microsoft will (officially) support not only Internet Explorer 7 and 8 on Windows, but also Firefox and Safari on both Windows and the Mac. Depending on who presents that information there are slight variations, but in New Orleans during Microsoft’s Partner Conference in July 2009 I was promised by a product manager that all versions of Firefox (Linux even?) and Safari will be fully supported.

So where does that leave us? Microsoft obviously is sersious about including the Mac community as user clients and that’s good news:

• Organizations can opt for SharePoint as collaboration platform and are not stuck with Windows only for their users. Said in another way: organizations that so far would not even look at SharePoint because of its missing Mac support will now have a closer look.
• SharePoint more and more is being used in Extranets and while administrators can control (read ‘dictate’) which browser to use internally, that approach does not work so well with outside partners.

With Lotus Notes still going strong (with a long history of Mac support) and Google Wave coming up (working on the Mac via browser), Mac support for SharePoint can be expected to grow.

What’s your Mac experience with SharePoint?

When I was introduced to developing on the SharePoint platform, I learned that I have to develop on a server that has SharePoint installed. Since I am a mobile worker, that means I have to get a Virtual Machine set up on my notebook with Windows Server (at least 2003), MOSS, Visual Studio, and some other parts, alltogether quite a heavy package in terms of space and performance – and licensing.

As Jeff Teper (Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, SharePoint Server) points out in his SharePoint 2010 article under ‘Development’ on the SharePoint Team blog:

5. Development on Windows 7 – We now support development on Windows 7 and Vista client machines. Although it isn’t a supported configuration for production, we heard you that you want to use it as a development environment.

This is big and I know many people have been looking for that for a long time! Thanks Microsoft.

While people in Las Vegas are going into their third day of the conference, those who didn’t go can still benefit from videos of keynotes and interviews. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/sharepoint/Default.aspx and http://www.mssharepointconference.com/Pages/videohighlights.aspx.

The conference obviously is about SharePoint 2010 for the most part and search terms develop an interesting (and to some extent unexpected) pattern.

As expected a lot of informationabout SharePoint 2010 has already been coming out with a lot (!) more to come over the next few weeks and months. A public beta has been announced to start some time in November 2009. You might want to pre-register yourself to be notified (NOTE: if you don’t get the link for pre-registration to work, open it in Internet Explorer).

Jan Tielens has done it again: Jan has created an addition that makes every SharePoint developer’s life easier and richer with a very simple idea (not so simple to implement, I guess). If you want to use jQuery on a SharePoint page, so far the standard way was to add a Content Editor Web Part on each page and include the jQuery code in there (that’s the short version).

With Jan’s SmartTools jQueryLoader we can now very easily add new code to a page without having to go through those extra hoops: you add your code to a SharePoint Document Library (which is set up when you install the jQueryLoader) and define on which page that code should be included. jQueryLoader does the rest.

We will report back here as we have gathered some experience with the new library. Thank you, Jan.

Further resources:

• Download SmartTools jQuery Loader from Codeplex.
• Jan has created a short video showing the deployment and some sample scripts.

If you ever wondered how SharePoint came to life you might be interested in the story Jeff Teper – Corporate Vice President, SharePoint Server, Microsoft – has published on the SharePoint Team Blog. In addition he gives an interesting insight into Engineering SharePoint.

Further read: Office 2010 Engineering Blog

cmswire reports from the (still running) Microsoft Project 2009 Conference, that the Project Server 2010 (now merged with Portfolio Server) will be based on (and integrated with) SharePoint 2010:

Project Server 2007 was built on WSS3.0 (didn’t know that actually), but Project Server 2010 is built on SharePoint 2010. Which means you need to have a full SharePoint installation if you want Project Server 2010. What you get though is a nice integration with SharePoint Lists and other collaboration features. Even the interface is the same.

This is for developers, especially those who’s job it is to create interesting, appealing and well working user interfaces for SharePoint.

Heather Solomon has compiled an excellent listing of all stylesheet elements used in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.

And then you don’t want to miss ‘Heather’s “Oh Crap I Missed That!” List‘ (yep, that’s her official headline).

As Maik van der Gaag reports, the recently released Windows 2008 Server R2 requires Service Pack 2 (*) of SharePoint Server to be integrated in the install of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. Maik also gives instructions on how to get the job done. Beware however to do any of those steps before doing a full backup.

(*) NOTE: SP2 is a release for the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) as well as MOSS.

More resources: The Microsoft SharePoint Team again provides an excellent collection of associated information.

This is for the German speaking community:

Heise Developer untersucht in  Die Wahl für das Web – ASP.NET, Ajax oder Silverlight? die verschiedenen Technologien zur Entwicklung von Webanwendungen. Der Artikel ist der siebte einer zehnteiligen Artikelserie über “… am häufigsten gestellten Fragen, die .NET-Entwickler beschäftigen”. Quintessenz des Autors:

Wenn man jedoch eine Intranet-Anwendung will, die aussieht und funktioniert wie eine Desktop-Anwendung, ist Silverlight gegenüber dem Paar aus ASP.NET und Ajax die bessere Wahl. Denn wozu sollte man sich noch mit JavaScript plagen, wenn man bessere Ergebnisse in kürzerer Zeit in Silverlight erzielen kann? ASP.NET plus Ajax ist die erste Wahl für das Internet, wobei man mit grafischen Spielereien sparsam umgehen sollte, außer wenn man ganze Säle voll mit JavaScript-”Fricklern” und große Budgets hat.

SharePoint 2010, the new version of Microsoft’s successful collaboration platform, scheduled to be available in the first half of 2010 will require a 64-bit environment: a 64-bit Windows 2008 Server and a 64-bit SQL Server (for details see the SharePoint Team Blog). What are the consequences for you? Most organizations probably will fall into one of three situations:

1) You don’t have SharePoint set up yet.
2) You are running SharePoint 2007 on a 32-bit Windows 2003 or 2008 server building on a 32-bit SQL Server.
3) You are running SharePoint 2007 on a 64-bit Windows 2008 server using 64-bit SQL Server 2005 or 2008.

Re. situation #1: You have the advantage of the white canvas and ‘just’ need to determine the best use of this situation (see additional resources at the end of this post). You definitely want to start with a 64-bit Windows 2008 server, maybe even start with R2 right there – just get yourself clear on the implications of adding an Windows 2008 server R2 to your current environment (see also PC Mag’s review). Your SQL Server also should be 64-bit (SharePoint 2010 as announced will support the 2005 and the 2008 version).

Re. situation #2: Your first step should be to migrate from the 32-bit environment to a 64-bit Windows 2008 server. See Microsoft’s recommended way to Migrate an existing server farm to a 64-bit environment (Office SharePoint Server 2007). You want to do this well ahead of any SharePoint 2010 migration as you want to have a stable server environment before migrating the application platform. I’d suggest you run the 64-bit environment for at least three months before starting the SharePoint migration process.

Re. situation #3: You are in a very good position to start SharePoint 2010 roll-out when it is available, as you already have a reliable environment.

You might say that you don’t fit into any of these situations as you will run a mixed environment with just one SharePoint 2010 server for testing within a SharePoint 2007 farm building on a 32-bit Windows 2003 server – bad idea! From all I’ve heard this is not a recommended setup and may in fact not even be supported by Microsoft. In any case I would not recommend this setup as you cannot tell for sure if problems that might come up on the new 2010 server (and you want to expect at least a few oddities) stem from the new 2010-version & 64-bit setup, some configuration problems – or from the combination and incompatibilities between the two environments.

Note: If people in your organization still use Internet Explorer 6, you should plan on moving them – and the applications (!!!) they need and that for some reason cannot handle any newer version of Internet Explorer – to Internet Explorer 7 or 8 well before you roll out SharePoint 2010. While Microsoft is adding support for FireFox and Safari, Internet Explorer 6 will not be supported anymore.

Some additional resources:

• If you haven’t seen SharePoint 2010 yet or don’t know much about it, have a look at Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek videos – or if you don’t want to take the time to view the videos and just want the bare bones, read Craig Roth’s write-up of the three videos Overview, for IT Pros and for Developers.
• If you want to get some technical information before going ahead, check out the current version of the SharePoint Products and Technologies: 2010 (Technical Preview) Developer Documentation (keep in mind though that this is for the Technical Preview and may as well change for the final product).
• If you already are planning on migrating (or intend to migrate) to SharePoint 2010 as soon as it is available, have a look at Joel Oleson’s New Whitepaper – Preparing for SharePoint 2010 (checking Joel’s blog on a regular basis is a good idea anyway).

Microsoft has released the fourth edition of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit (the link goes to the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog). NOTE: the download has been removed temporarily as a problem with one of the files in the package came up. Expect the download to work again soon.

UPDATE (11-Sept): The install has been updated and the download is available as of 01-Sept 2009.

One of the main benefits of this update is an improved version of the SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (SPDiag) and a new Permission Reporting Tool that allows an administrator to find those sites where permission inheritance has been broken, i.e., changes in a top site are not taken over in sub-sites as the connection has been broken. The Microsoft Office site gives some detailed instructions on how to use the Permission Reporting Tool.

Update (29-Aug): Complete information on installation is available at Installing SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Office SharePoint Server), e.g.,

All previously installed versions of the Toolkit must be uninstalled before upgrading to the latest version.

Until SharePoint 2010 will be introduced at the SharePoint Conference 2009, you can find some exciting “sneak peek” videos at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/. Some of the features (for end users): A much more comfortable UI, completely asynchronous, with ribbons and in-place editing. Visio Services to display Visio documents on the web. Groove to take nearly the whole SharePoint offline. Business Connectivity Services (formerly BDC) is now read/write and integrated with Viso Services, Groove and things like mail merge in Word. FAST search.

Marc D Anderson has done some great work and published a jQuery lib on CodePlex that allows us to access the SharePoint Web Services from JavaScript.

As Marc points out, this is still an early version, however people already use it – successfully – in real life projects.

Thanks, Marc.

I’ve been waiting for this for quite a while. Common Craft who did the famous ‘Twitter in Plain English‘ did a version on explaining SharePoint in plain english.

This post is written with Windows Live Writer on Windows 7RC (in other words, there might still be some more bugs than to expect from a purchased product).

What’s good about it:

1) Writer supports popular blog formats other than Microsoft offerings, i.e., this blog is based on WordPress and I can post to it directly from Windows Live Writer.
2) When setting up a connection to an existing blog, Writer downloads the theme – and uses it for Preview of my blog post within Writer (*). Pretty cool.
3) While editing the blog post in Writer, drafts will be stored locally on your computer. However, you can upload the draft – as draft – to your blog site (that’s good if you don’t want to or cannot finish your blog post yet and want to continue working on it from somewhere else).
4) It’s free!

(*) Tech note: means they must have a PHP engine running on my computer as the preview also works when I don’t have Internet connection.

What’s not so good about it:

1) Interpretation of CSS differs, i.e., the line spacing done by Writer and that done by WordPress differ significantly.

…I’m sure I’ll find more as I work more with it 

In summary:

Writer is a nice little piece of software that works well and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Obviously, like with every other offline blogging software, this software has the disadvantages that come with writing offline:

• If you forget to upload your draft to the blog site, you cannot change anything until you are back at your computer – and have Internet access from that computer.
• Plugins and widgets that you can use online are not available offline.

Microsoft yesterday announced release to manufacturing of Windows 7 (and Windows 2008 Server R2).

Windows 7 will be generally available to customers around the world on October 22, and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be generally available on or before that date.

Earlier this week, Microsoft published Service Pack 2 for their Mac version of Microsoft Office. As Microsoft puts it:

The Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.0 Update contains changes that improve stability, reliability, and performance.
This update also includes a new application called Microsoft Document Connection. This application makes it easy to work with files that are located on a SharePoint site or Microsoft Office Live Workspace.

Caroline Marwitz from Windows IT Pro among other things points to a great offer from fellow Microsoft Partner Bamboo Solutions for any community-organized SharePoint User Group:

“SharePoint User Groups around the world now have Bamboo products at their disposal, free of charge”

Thank you Bamboo Solutions,  and thanks Caroline for pointing this out.

Wonder what the Oracle would say…

Fun movie, very cool … just, what was the point of The Matrix again?

LotusUserGroup.org has published a Strategic Coexistence Whitepaper (you need to register free of charge to download the paper) for the integration of SharePoint with Lotus Notes.

(…) companies are pulling in the reins on IT investments and finding ways to get more out of their existing infrastructures.

Mainsoft Corporation offers a strategic coexistence approach to enable the realization of such value. The company’s integration software and services deliver an intuitive experience on SharePoint, for Lotus Notes users, by combining the collaboration and document sharing capabilities of SharePoint with the email and instant messaging capabilities of Lotus Notes and Sametime®. Organizations can therefore deliver access to all collaboration and messaging resources through a single interface, without the high costs or risks of a migration.

Soon after Microsoft had released Service Pack 2 for SharePoint earlier this year, a bug was discovered that turned any legitimate SharePoint installation into a trial version that would eventually expire a few months later – just by virtue of installing Service Pack 2.

Recently Microsoft released an update that fixes that issue.

Every developer/consultant/provider at some point or another has to face the user’s concern of performance – no user (including myself) wants to wait for the system in front him to finish the work. Ok, well here is someone (Robert Bogue) who has taken on the topic and went into the details. This is the first of three articles.

This is not to say that I agree with everything he says or that he is right in every aspect (read this article in 5 or 10 years and you might be laughing about it), but this is some good stuff to consider and think about.

Thanks, Robert for the tedious work.

On 19-22 October 2009 Microsoft is going to host this year’s SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, NV.

We are expecting news (and code and beta releases) on the upcoming Office 2010 release as well as SharePoint 2010 due early next year. One product I am interested in in particular is SharePoint Workspace 2010 (the artist formerly known as Groove).

To find out more about the conference go to http://www.mssharepointconference.com/