Ben There, Done That

Yes, I’m straying back into BI a little bit due to this announcement by Microsoft.  PerformancePoint is now include in the MOSS Enterprise CAL.  So, for all of you that have SharePoint enterprise and wanted to add dashboards and BI to your SharePoint farm, this is your chance as you can now get PerformancePoint for no additional cost!  This is an exciting move for Microsoft and one that I’m sure will excite a lot of SharePoint users and encourage the already quickly growing use of BI within organizations and companies across the globe.

admin PerformancePoint, SharePoint

Alright, I finally got around to this blog post that I’ve talked about a few times.  Next week I have the privilege of speaking the the SharePoint Technology Conference 2009 out in San Francisco, CA next week.  I’ll be co-presenting a couple of sessions with my boss, Errin O’Connor, and some other co’-workers. I will also be presenting one of my own sessions on navigation within SharePoint.  I’ll post my slide deck on my site as soon as I have it finalized…probably after I get back from the conference next week.  If any of you happen to be attending the conference hunt me down and say hello

admin Conferences, SharePoint, Speaking

I had a strange problem the other day with search.  I was working with a SharePoint install after stsadm had been used to move the search index.  There were quite a few errors being thrown including errors about the index when we would go in and set up content sources.  We tried resetting everything in the Search settings, deleting and recreating SharedServices, all new databases and running the configuration wizard again and checked all permissions.  All of this was done to no avail.  It appeared that no matter what we did, the farm wasn’t moving over/recreating the index files in the new locations.

Finally, we removed the search server from the farm, ran a repair from the Windows Add/Remove Programs and re-ran the configuration wizard to re-join the server to the farm.  We made sure than the new file location for the index files was still set, and continued to re-setup everything to enable search.  Bingo!! That worked!!  So, if you are having problems with your search server no matter what you try, give this a shot.

admin Search, SharePoint

The CTP of version 1.3 of the VS Extensions for SharePoint have been released.  You an see all the new features as well as a link to the download here.  One of the most helpful changes is that it can down be installed on a x64 Server running the x64 version of SharePoint.  The final release is scheduled for Spring of 2009.

admin SharePoint

Hardware/Drivers that Worked

- MacBook Pro, everything but audio…I’m still working on that

- I got my audio working thanks to a comment on this site: http://www.gearlog.com/2008/11/windows_7_on_a_macbook_pro.php.  The comment is by Shannon and is near the bottom of the page at the time of writing this.  The short story is you need to install RealTek HD Audio Codecs Driver 2.09 in Vista compatibility mode and running setup.exe as administrator.  Shannon listed more detailed steps.

- HP LaserJet 1012 (used the 1015 drivers), was flagged as needing troubleshooting, but it installed and printed a test page fine.

- Apple Bluetooth Keyboard

- Dell 2408WFP

- Logitech MX1000 Laser Mouse

- Sprint SmartView Sierra Compass 597, I had to install the SmartView Application and then manual go in and install the drivers from device manager.  The drivers are in C:\Program Files (x86)\Sprint\Sprint SmartView\SierraPackage\Drivers for a 64 bit OS.

- Epson Perfection V200 Scanner.  Again, the drivers didn’t automatically install, but I could go in and manually install them from C:\Program Files (x86)\epson\escndv\es007a and everything works just fine.

Software Installed and Working

- Skype

- Firefox

- Tweetdeck

- Office 2007 Enterprise

- Colligo

- Live Essentials

- Digsby

- Ardfry DNG Codec

- Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.2

- Adobe Reader 9

- LOGOS Bible Software

- iTunes 8.0.2

- Live Sync

- Live Mesh (appeared to disable Aero – this may be fixed after a restart).  I finally got around to a reboot.  This didn’t solve the problem. For now Live Mesh is uninstalled and I am getting by using Live Sync to keep my files updated between desktop and laptop.  I haven’t used the online desktop enough yet.  I’ll keep working on this problem.

- SnagIt 8.2.3

- WinRar 3.80

- DivX 7

- Nero 8

- VMWare Workstation 6.5

- Picasa 3

- Age of Empires III (with War Chiefs Expansion)

Software that Didn’t Install or Work

- Daemon Tools

- Cute PDF Writer

I’ll continue to edit/update this list as I install more software and play more with Vista.  But for now it’s bedtime.

admin Misc

Tonight at CES Steve Ballmer announced the availability of Windows 7 Beta and Windows Server 2008 R2 beta.  So, of course I had to go look for them.  Low and behold, there they were on MSDN.  I’m downloading my copy of both of them right now so I can start playing/testing.  For MSDN subscribers, Windows 7 Beta can be download here and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta can be download here. (Notice Windows Server is only available in 64 bit, finally, starting to “force” people to 64 bit…all I can say is, “It’s about time!”)

Ben Misc

I just ran across this article the other day thanks to a Twitter post by ferringer   http://www.macworld.com/article/137950/2009/01/officeupdates.html.  In summary of the article, Microsoft’s Business Until for Mac is going to be issuing some updates of Office 2008 and Entourage as well as releasing Document Collaboration Companion for the Mac.  This will allow user to better integrate there Mac with SharePoint and Office Live Workspaces as Microsoft moves more and more into Cloud Computing and Software as a Service.

Ben SharePoint

I’m kind of behind in my whole Happy New Years and Merry Christmas post so here it is…Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years!!  My holiday’s have been wonderful.  I spent some time up in MI with my family.  From there some time out to CO to spend Christmas will by girlfriends extended family and then back home to FL.  For New Years my girlfriend and I had some friends over that were in town for a couple of weeks.  We had a good time just hanging out and playing the Wii .  To ring in the New Years I attended the annual New Years Day party at my girlfriend’s parent’s house and I’m off to play TPC at Sawgrass on Friday.  So far 2009 has been going well.

I’m also looking forward to another year of SharePoint fun, hopefully getting to start with the beta of the next version of SharePoint as well is give Windows 7 a try (the beta comes out on Jan. 13).  I’ll also be presenting for at least on SharePoint conference this year, SharePoint TechCon 2009 in San Francisco.  I’ll have a post in the next couple of days with more details on the conference.

Ben "Office 14", Misc, SharePoint

Adam Buenz has an excellent blog post titled When Best Practices Aren’t Best Practices.  He goes into details about the over use of SharePoint “Best Practices” and "SharePoint “Governance”.  I think he is right on with what he wrote.  Head over to his site and check it out!

Ben SharePoint