By Dan Holme
Office & SharePoint Pro
Community Manager
SharePoint: What Do YOU Think?
It's conference season, and I'm lucky enough to be representing our community in several events, including the upcoming SharePoint Pro Live events in several cities in March and April. At these events, I'm speaking on the "State of SharePoint." I certainly have my opinions, but what I really value are yours. What do you think about SharePoint's role in your enterprise? What are your experiences? Your trials and tribulations? Your hopes? I'm curious: • What do you wish someone had told you about SharePoint "earlier" (so it wasn't so painful to learn yourself)?
• What have you learned that you want to share with others?
• What are the biggest gaps in the product?
• Where is SharePoint delivering the biggest value for you?
• What were the easiest and the hardest things for you in your learning curve?
• I'm definitely interested in the technical, but I am even more interested in the "meta"--the business, the strategy, the governance, the process... I don't want to start a religious war or a whine-fest, nor do I want to produce a bunch of sugar-coated schlock. I'm interested in real, constructive thoughts from you. I'll assemble my experiences and opinions, and yours, and present them to you at these upcoming events and through this newsletter. Please come to my new SharePoint blog and tell me what you think! Sixteen months into the SharePoint (V3/MOSS) lifecycle, and on the dawn of Office 14, I think it's time we pooled our thoughts! Developer Tip: Windows Server 2008 as your Personal OS
If you're developing for SharePoint, unfortunately you are stuck developing on a Windows Server box running SharePoint, or on a desktop running Windows Server in a virtual machine (VM). After the recent release of Windows Server 2008 (which I love by the way), a number of posts on the Internet have addressed how to run Windows 2008 on your personal machine (e.g. your laptop). That makes sense for a lot of reasons, including the ability to run SharePoint locally and to use Hyper-V to run VMs (assuming your hardware supports it). So if you're running Windows 2008 as your main OS, you should definitely search Google--there are a lot of guides to making it work, and everyone agrees you can do pretty well with it--and the rest can go in VMs, right?
There are two things I've run into that are harder to find answers to online (not impossible, just harder) so I thought I'd bring them to light here.
First, of all things, the Windows Live applications don't install on Windows 2008. Go figure! The "Windows" in "Windows Live" I guess doesn't mean all versions of Windows... though it should. Even more interesting: The apps run, they just don't install. So I found that if I took my Windows Live Writer folder (out of Program Files) from my Windows Vista laptop and copied the folder on to my Windows 2008 box, it just worked! Slick! The second problem is one I've not yet found an answer for, so I'll throw it out to the community. As soon as you enable Hyper-V, you can no longer put your laptop to sleep. That's a big deal, particularly for me. There's got to be some kind of hack. Let me know if you find one! Question of the Week: Dealing with Multiple Uploads to Document Libraries
I'm asking a lot of you this week, aren't I? So here's a common scenario: A user uploads multiple documents to a document library. The library may have multiple content types, and when you upload you are not prompted to identify the content type to associate with the document. How do you work with this problem? I have an answer (it's actually in the Document Library chapter of my new book, Windows Administration Resource Kit: Productivity Solutions for IT Professionals), and I'll share it with you in the next week or two. But let's assume (because it's a safe assumption) that 70,000 experienced SharePoint brains know more than I do! I'd like to find out if your solution is better than mine before I show my hand. So if you've come up with a great solution, shoot it to me (danh at intelliem dot top-level-commercial-domain). I'll be sure to give you props and shout outs if yours solves the problem more effectively! I know this is a problem many of us face. Let's solve it.
New Premium Content on Office & SharePoint
Gayle Rodcay, our superstar editor, recently added a number of premium articles to the Office & SharePoint Pro Web site. These are top-notch articles with lots of great information to share, from the recent issues of Windows IT Pro magazine, now available for your reference and reading pleasure, free! Check them out on the Articles page, toward the bottom of the SharePoint tree. Well, I'm off to polish up the sessions for the SharePoint Pro Live event, which debuts in its first city, San Diego, in just 8 days. Til next week (St. Patty's Day!), make a strong SharePoint! Until next week, all the best! Dan Holme danh at intelliem dot (top level commercial domain) |