SharePoint Buzz

SharePoint 2010 Beta Installation Roundup

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:22:00 GMT

Many bloggers are posting their SharePoint 2010 Beta installation experiences, and I have collected all the posts that I could find for my reference as I setup my SharePoint 2010 development rig:

Jie Li’s SharePoint 2010 Pre-Requisites Download Links and Installation Notice for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta
Eric Kraus’ Automated SharePoint 2010 Install with PowerShell
Tom Resing’s A SharePoint 2010 Install Experience
George Khalil’s Installing SharePoint 2010 Beta on a Windows 2008 R2 Server
Alpesh Nakar’s SharePoint 2010 Installation
UK SharePoint Team blog’s Installing SharePoint 2010 beta 2 on a single machine
Sahil Malik’s SharePoint 2010 Development Environment – Practical Tips
Dave McMahon’s SharePoint 2010 – A First Install using Local Accounts
SharePoint Team Blog’s Path to User Profile Synchronization success in SharePoint 2010 Beta
Rehman Gul’s post on SharePoint 2010 Configuration Wizard Errors on Windows 7
Geoff Varosky’s SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 Installation and Configuration Visual Tour
Travis Nielson’s SP2010: Fixing User Profile Application Service Connection Error
SharePoint Admin Wiki’s How to Install SharePoint 2010 Public Beta on Windows Server 2008 R2
Bill Baer’s Common Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Installation Issues and Resolutions
Becky Isserman's SP2010 Knock Out Edition: What You Need to Know…
René Hézser’s Installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7
Anthony Grace’s Install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 2008
Kylie Richardson's Installing Office Web Apps in a Standalone SharePoint 2010 environment
Jopx’s Installing SharePoint Server 2010 Dev Box
Chakkaradeep’s Quick Installation Guide for SharePoint 2010 Beta2
Àlex Peláez’s Installing SharePoint 2010 Beta 2

If you are still deciding between Windows Server or Windows 7, then make sure you read OS Environment Comparison for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Evaluation. Also don’t forget to read the Installation notice for the SharePoint Server Public Beta on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows 7 from the MS SharePoint Team Blog and SharePoint 2010 Beta Release Known Issues.

I’ll also point out all the Microsoft links as well:

Please comment below if you have know of another Installation walkthrough that I might have missed.

Calgary SharePoint User Group – Monday, November 23, 2009

SharePointBuzz — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:02:00 GMT

Come and join us for our debut Calgary SharePoint User Group meeting! Bil Simser (Twitter: bsimser) will be presenting An Intro to SharePoint 2010 tonight!

Description: Come join us for the debut gathering of the Calgary SharePoint User's Group and enjoy an introductory presentation by our own SharePoint MVP Bil Simser as he presents the hot new feature set of SharePoint 2010! Food and drink will be provided during meeting.

Location:
Room 214, 450 1 Street SW (The TransCanada Building), Calgary, AB
- Second Floor next to Sunterra

Time:
11/23/2009 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM

Please join us for SharePint afterwards!

Download! SharePoint 2010 Beta

SharePointBuzz — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:34:00 GMT

Kurt DelBene just made it official today at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), that Microsoft is unveiling the public beta of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office Web Apps for businesses and Office Mobile 2010 – source MS Press Pass. The Microsoft SharePoint Team blog has also made it official, that the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta and more are available for public consumption.

Download Microsoft SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta today!

According to Mary Jo, Microsoft is aiming to launch the final version of all of these Office products, as well as SharePoint 2010 by May/June 2010 - source: ZDNET

Installation Notes & Walkthroughs

The route I plan on taking is developing on my development rig. Here are some links on how to install and some installation notes for SharePoint 2010:

Make sure you read the hardware and software requirements before installing
Setting up a development workstation running SharePoint 2010 – learn how to install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7; remember, this is NOT SUPPORTED for production.
Jie Li has also posted his Installation approach for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta
Read Sahil’s post on SharePoint 2010 Development Environment – Practical Tips
Thanks to Spence Harber, for pointing out this post by Neil Hodgkinson Single Server Complete Install of SharePoint 2010 using local accounts
SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 Installation and Configuration Visual Tour
UK SharePoint Team posts Installing SharePoint Server 2010 beta 2 on a single machine

SharePoint 2010 Beta Links

Here are the public links for downloading SharePoint 2010 beta:

The MSDN subscription links were available on beautiful Monday, November 16, 2009 morning:

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office Web Applications 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office Search Server Express 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office Visio Premium 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office Visio Premium 2010 Beta (x86) - (English)

FAST Search Server SharePoint 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office Project Server 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

Office Project Professional 2010 Beta (x64) - (English)

If you are a MSDN subscriber, go ahead straight to MSDN or TechNet to collect your SharePoint 2010 downloads!

Historical Perspective

We can all remember back to the year 2006, when very little documentation was available during the beta release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. 3 years later and you can see a momentum shift in how Microsoft works. They are not only releasing tons of documentation but from my perspective are changing the way they build their products. They have listened to feedback from the community and have incorporated many of these requests into Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. I, for one, look forward to working with my clients on upgrade and fresh installations. I don’t doubt as we all get more familiar with the product, that we’ll find quirks and issues in the new beta release. I also don’t doubt that Service Packs and future product releases will fix those shortcomings. But I do know and have trust in the mother ship, also known as Microsoft! Let’s be thankful and provide positive criticism / feedback when its necessary.

For now, I’d like to leave you with a few links:

SharePoint 2010 Resources

SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Models

SharePoint 2010 Product Details

Channel 9 Developer Training Videos Online

SharePoint 2010 Developer Roadmap

Accessing External Data

SharePoint 2010 Security

Services Architecture

Enterprise Content Management

Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SharePoint 2010

Developing Workflows with VS 2010

There are so many videos that these were hand picked and I highly recommend you check out the other videos as well.

For more information on SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 please check out:

My SharePoint 2010 Development Rig

SharePointBuzz — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:39:00 GMT

For everyone who attended SharePoint Conference 2009 or kept an eye on twitter, know that Microsoft announced that the SharePoint 2010 Beta will be available in November 2009. In order to prepare for that, Microsoft has done a great job to provide us with plenty of SharePoint 2010 information before the Beta is even released!

I purchased new hardware in the hopes of hosting multiple virtual machines and hope that this setup works flawlessly. If any of you have advice, please feel free to contribute with your comments. In preparation for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, my development rig had to meet at least the following:

64-bit Processor
4 GB RAM for a single server

These were my basic requirements and then I started looking at what the requirements were for SharePoint 2010. The minimum requirements for SharePoint 2010:

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 64-bit operating system with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 64-bit with SP2 or SQL Server 2008 64-bit
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with SP1 installed

I also wanted the ability to be able to fire up multiple virtual machines to mimic my clients farm configuration as closely as possible. Hardware is ever changing and I wanted a reasonably powerful machine but I still had to have a budget for building this machine: $4000.

After reading Andrew Connell, Andrew Woodward (21apps), Reza Alireza and Eli Robillard’s posts on what they were using to host similar configurations, I went with the an Intel Xeon based server machine with 12 GB of memory and a RAID10 configuration. This machine was massive to say the least! It runs fairly fast and is super quiet!

My SharePoint 2010 Development Rig specifications are as follows:

Case
- ANTEC TITAN 650 SERVER CASE
Power Supply
- Corsair 850W
Motherboard
- Asus Z8NA-D6C
2 CPUs
- Xeon E5520 (2.26ghz / 8MB/ Quad Core with HT)
2 Heat sinks
- Xeon STS100C Heat sinks
2 RAM kits
- OCZ 6GB DDR3 kits
Video
- NVIDIA 7200GS 512MB
Main Hard Drive
- Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
Hard Drive
- 4xSeagate 500GB in RAID10
DVD-Writer
- LG 22x

UPDATE: No rig post is complete without a couple of pictures.

In my upcoming posts, I will configure SharePoint 2010 environment. If you have any questions, please post them in the comments below.

Additional Resources:

Microsoft’s recommended hardware requirements for SharePoint Server 2010
A nice upgrade to my virtualization rig – look ma… no fans!
How to Build a SharePoint 2010 Development Machine (Part I)
My Dev Rig – The story so far

Canada's First Look at SharePoint 2010

SharePointBuzz — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:02:00 GMT

If you are in Toronto & Mississauga this week, then you are luck to get Canada's First Look at SharePoint 2010.

Mississauga SharePoint User Group
Monday, October 26, 2009: Rob Windsor is presenting An Overview of SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 is being unveiled this week at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. This session will provide an overview of the product with a particular focus on what’s new for developers. The tools included in Visual Studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010 make developers more productive and new hosting options for SharePoint solutions provide more flexibility in deployment. This talk will cover the new designers, explorers and templates and overall developer experience for SharePoint 2010. Along the way we’ll see several of the enhancements to the end-user experience including the ribbon, in-place editing, and the new page and dialog interface model.

For event details and registration click here.

Toronto SharePoint User Group
Wednesday, October 28: First Looks at SharePoint 2010 Presented by Savash Alic (Microsoft Canada) Principal Specialist, Ent Sales – SharePoint (MOSS, WSS, MCDBA, MCSE certified, MBA)

Join TSPUG for a special meeting on the last Wednesday of October where Microsoft’s Savash Alic will present Canada’s first look at SharePoint Server 2010. Savash is a SharePoint loyalist who is dedicated to the product since its’ very early days in 2001 implementing solutions. He has been selling SharePoint in a technical capacity for the last 4 years at Microsoft Canada however he is a technologist at heart who started his professional career in ’94 and worked at several Microsoft Gold Partners delivering and managing projects.

To attend, please send an RSVP to Susie.

Sources:

How To Install SharePoint 2010 Beta on Windows 7

SharePointBuzz — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:29:00 GMT

Quick post: Windows 7 has been officially been released today, and it brings lots of features.

If weren't able to attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 or keep up with twitter, then you might have missed that SharePoint 2010 can be installed on Windows 7. This approach is obviously recommended for Developers and for production.

Alpesh Nakars has written a series of posts on how to prepare and how To Install WSS4 on Windows 7.

Until the release of SharePoint 2010 Beta, you can learn how to install SharePoint 2007 on Windows 7 / Vista [2]. Now there are some noticeable visible differences that you can expect but that's alright.

Look for more posts on SharePoint 2010 Beta on SharePoint Buzz.

SharePoint 2010 Beta Installation Roundup

Pre-register for the SharePoint 2010 Beta

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:07:00 GMT

Things have been pretty hectic at the SharePoint Conference 2009 with all the new changes and enchancements that are coming. It's been an amazing couple of days meeting so many of those part of the SharePoint Community.

From Steve Balmer's keynote we learned that the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta will be available in November 2009.

This is a quick reminder, if your interested, to pre-register for the SharePoint 2010 Beta.

If you aren't sure of the list of features, a complete list will be provided but here's a snippet from the press release:

A new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customization of SharePoint sites easy
Built-in support for rich media such as video, audio and Silverlight, making it easy to build dynamic Web sites
New Web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, enabling anyone to access SharePoint Server sites
Business Connectivity Services, which allow developers to connect capabilities to line-of-business data or Web services in SharePoint Server and the Office client
The addition of two new SharePoint SKUs for Internet-facing sites, including an on-premises and hosted offer
and more

Look forward to more info as we keep up the overload of information. In the mean time, follow us on twitter!

SharePoint Conference Day 0

justsharepoint — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:37:41 GMT

This is the happening place for all SharePoint Nerds! Yes we – the SharePoint Buzz Team are here to do Just SharePoint at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center starting from October 18, 2009

With 7000+ attendees, the registration line was going to be really long. Good thing the team registered first and then went in to check at the hotel. Otherwise we would be standing here in this long queue.

We met few people at the Welcome Reception and then headed over to the first Share Event of the Conference - #ShareIndian and then #SharePint!

It’s been a great start and we have met a lot of people already who are on twitter. Still not met all and we are looking forward to meeting them in the coming days!

Stay tuned for more SharePoint Conference updates and photos.

Honoured to Say I'm a SharePoint MVP!

SharePointBuzz — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:39:00 GMT

I received some great news on October 1, 2009 - I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 2009!

If you are not aware of the Microsoft MVP award program then here's a quick snippet from the site:

"Since the early 1990s, Microsoft has recognized the inspiring activities of MVPs around the world with the MVP Award. MVPs freely share their deep knowledge, real-world experience, and impartial, objective feedback to help people enhance the way they use technology. Of more than 100 million users who participate in technology communities, around 4,000 are recognized as Microsoft MVPs."

I am simply honoured to be receive the SharePoint MVP award. I hope I can continue to help the SharePoint community for the coming year!

I received the MVP gift just today and decided I should share this news with my loyal visitors. What did I receive? Why not check out the unboxing the Microsoft MVP Gift from another MVP.

Ideas to Increase End User Adoption

SharePointBuzz — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:50:00 GMT

As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. In the SharePoint world, it’s no different. For many SharePoint users, SharePoint gives you the ability to perform your function in more than one way. The first obvious barrier to SharePoint is the licensing costs. This post thankfully, is not about the different ways to develop or configure SharePoint. Rather this post is brainstorming different ideas to increase end user adoption.

The problem is not the technology platform but rather a paradigm shift on how end users work. In many large organizations, end users have become used to using email to share documents, storing multiple versions of documents within file shares and have multiple logins to view different data. SharePoint has become the platform to implement but don’t always know how to engage users and have them collaborating, communicating and participating.

I wanted to provide a place for different brainstorming ideas to be jotted down. You are welcome to contribute to the list. I’ll start with some of my ways to increase end user adoption:

1. In Person Training

a. Lunch and Learns / Workshops - provide free food during lunch hour and present on a different topic on a predefined schedule

b. Train the trainer – teach a small group of enthusiastic power users and facilitate training sessions where they each teach another small group

c. Training for Specific Role – training and workshops / labs designed around a specific SharePoint role

2. Text based Content

a. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) – provide a set of commonly asked questions and their answers

b. Tutorials – create an area where step by step instructions are provided on how to perform common SharePoint tasks grouped by roles. This tutorial area can either be a page(s) based site, wiki site, blog site or discussion board.

c. Blog – share company specific information on how to perform a task that is important or popular during that time. This could be related around company events (BBQ, Christmas party, etc.) or even around specific processes (request vacation time, retrieve payroll specific information, etc.)

3. Multimedia content

a. Podcasts – provide a site using the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint or your own home grown solution that has audio / video based content on how to perform common day to day SharePoint tasks or event specific tasks that users can motivates users to collaborate and share information on a SharePoint site

b. Videos – allow multiple departments to have an area where they can upload videos on how to use a site.

4. Community Oriented

a. Contests - ask users from every department to help name your SharePoint portal

b. Feedback – release a beta solution to your test environment / sandbox and ask users to provide feedback on it can improve or to share bugs that might have been missed

Depending on your organization, one or more of these ideas will help drive end users to adopt the SharePoint platform. What ideas have you used to increase end user adoption?