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10/03/2010

The Adelaide SharePoint User Group March 2010 Meeting

Greetings and Salutations

This Month will see Paul Turner and Marc Soester show off the latest Microsoft has to offer with SharePoint 2010.

This week was also a exciting week with the announcement of SharePoint 2010 to be launched on May 12, 2010 and with RTM in April. SharePoint 2010 is almost here, how exciting!

Also, The first ALM Australian ALM conference is being held in Sydney on April 13 & 14 to coincide with the launch of Visual Studio 2010! If you are interested, please come and see me as I have more information about the conference.

Turning to Windows SharePoint Services v3 & Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the latest cumulative update, the February package was released. More information can be found here.

Also, If you are interested in attending the SharePoint 2010 Ignite Training for Developers we currently have a couple of people interested. The more people who show support and willingness to come, we might be able to get this session down in Adelaide Also. If you are interested, please contact Paul Turner.

Lastly, SharePoint Saturday is looking at being in April, after the RTM of SharePoint 2010. This year’s SharePoint Saturday will see Brian Farnhill co-organising it. Brian has an excellent track record with SharePoint Saturdays. Brian is responsible for SharePoint Saturdays in Sydney and Melbourne and also a bit later on this year, Brisbane. Stay tuned, more information will be coming shortly.

On 1 last thing, Please be aware that Service Pack 1 for WSS v3 & MOSS 2007 is being retired form support on the 24^th of April. More information can be found here.

See you at this month’s user group meeting next Tuesday!

March Meeting Information

This month will see Paul Turner show off some SharePoint 2010 and the potential for using it as a core software platform and long overdue, Microsoft MVP in MS Project, Marc Soester who will be showing of the new features of Project Server 2010 and how it is integrated into SharePoint Enterprise. Furthermore Marc will introduce how Projects can be managed in SharePoint without Project Server 2010

This month will also see the catering service of Craig Parham Catering who is the independent contractor for Microsoft Innovation Centre.

If you plan to attend the festivities, can you please ensure to reserve your place by clicking here. This will help with catering and ensures everyone gets enough to eat.

When & Where:

· When: Tuesday, 16^th of March

· Where: Microsoft Innovation Center Auditorium

· Address:

Level 2, Westpac House

King William Street, Adelaide

(Map – Entrance is actually on Currie Street)

· Door Prize: SharePoint Book Pack

o Entry is your evaluation forms and you must be present at the time of the drawing to claim your prize!

Agenda:

The agenda for this month’s activities are:

· 5:30PM – Arrive, Relax and Network

· 6:00PM – Welcome, Introductions, Australian Computer Society – Daniel Brown

· 6:15PM – Paul Turner - 10 reasons to use SharePoint 2010 for your next development project

Explore the potential for using SharePoint 2010 as a core software platform to design and develop new systems. This presentation is focussed on features that make SharePoint 2010 a compelling platform and how you can get ROI fast!!

· 7:00PM – Marc Soester - Project and Project Server 2010 – A true SharePoint Solution

This session will outline an overview of the new features of Project Server 2010 and how it is integrated into SharePoint Enterprise. Furthermore Marc will introduce how Projects can be managed in SharePoint without Project Server 2010.

Participants will get an understanding of the new features of Project Server 2010 and how MS Project can co-exist with SharePoint without the need of Project Server.

· 7:45PM –SharePoint Forum, Questions & Door Prize

Your chance to provide feedback direct to the SharePoint team in Redmond @ Microsoft!

· 8:00 PM(ish) –Meeting Close and move to the Grand Chancellor for refreshments and for continued forum and questions.

If you plan to attend the festivities, can you please ensure to reserve your place by clicking here. This will help with catering and ensures everyone gets enough to eat.

Posted at 4:50 PM by Daniel Brown | Category: ASPUG | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Paul Turner & SharePoint 2010 at the Adelaide SharePoint User Group March Meeting!

This month’s second speaker at the Adelaide SharePoint User Group is our very own long time speaker Paul Turner, who will be presenting “10 reasons to use SharePoint 2010 for your next development project”.

Title: 10 reasons to use SharePoint 2010 for your next development project

Abstract: Explore the potential for using SharePoint 2010 as a core software platform to design and develop new systems. This presentation is focussed on features that make SharePoint 2010 a compelling platform and how you can get ROI fast!!

If you wish to come, all you need to do is register to reserve your place and to help with providing catering.

See you next Wednesday the 17^th of March, Kick of time is 5:30!

Posted at 4:21 PM by Daniel Brown | Category: ASPUG | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/03/2010

Marc Soester to present at the Adelaide SharePoint User Group March Meeting

Marc Soester, National Manager of PMO and the sole Microsoft MVP in MS Project in Australia has been locked down and confirmed to present at this months user group meeting!

Marc’s session will outline an overview of the new features of Project Server 2010 and how it is integrated into SharePoint Enterprise.

Furthermore Marc will introduce how Projects can be managed in SharePoint without Project Server 2010

Participants will get an understanding of the new features of Project Server 2010 and how MS Project can co-exist with SharePoint without the need of Project Server.

Who Should Attend?

IT Professionals, Developers, Team Managers, Project Managers and everyone who is interested in Microsoft Project Server.

To Register to attend the Adelaide SharePoint User Group March meeting and see Marc present, please click here (be sure to select the right meeting!) and fill out the details as these numbers are used to for catering figures.

Posted at 7:15 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: ASPUG | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/03/2010

SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010 Launch Date announcement!

There has just been an exciting announcement from Arpan Shah, Director of SharePoint at Microsoft.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 will be officially launched on May 12, 2010 with Release to Manufacturing sometime in April!

The original blog post is up at : http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/03/05/sharepoint-2010-office-2010-launch.aspx

Exciting times!

Enjoy your weekend.

-Daniel

Posted at 12:57 PM by Daniel Brown | Category: SharePoint | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/03/2010

Exchange 2007 – Cannot find a suitable Domain Controller?

Check DNS on the exchange server!

Recently When i was at MVP summit, I had a DC fail with my FSMO roles on it. Not a problem, transfer the FSMO roles over to the other DC (really a BDC LOL) reboot and up she come.

However as the DNS did not switch over, Exchange was failing to start with the error the it could not find a suitable domain controller, yet it could (what appeared to be) auth against the DC.

Low and behind, because the DNS server was down and Exchange uses a fair bit of DNS, it was actually telling me that it was unable to locate the DNS server to lookup the Domain Controller.

Corrected the DNS in TCP/IP settings, a quick reboot (easier with exchange) and it instantly came back up!

So check your DNS - Lesson learnt!

Posted at 12:18 PM by Daniel Brown | Category: What the? | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

26/02/2010

Be aware of upcoming SP1 retirement for WSS v3 & MOSS 2007

As Joerg just posted, Service Pack 1 is nearing end of life which means its more than time you get Service Pack 2 installed onto your SharePoint environment!

You can read Joergs original post here.

Come the 24th of April, 2010 if your running only Service Pack 1, then you’d be running an unsupported environment!

You can see the WSS Lifecycle here: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=12200 (Cool)

For MOSS: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=11373 (Not so much filled in, but the info is there).

Now, of course there are reasons why you would delay a service pack installation, for example if it breaks a legacy Line of Business (LOB) application. There are exceptions.

But the exceptions should NEVER kill a service pack installation.

If your unsure what service pack/version or would like to organise a Patching & Maintenance plan, please feel free to contact me at daniel@danielbrown.id.au

Posted at 10:16 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: SharePoint | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

25/02/2010

SharePoint Feb 2010 CU is out

Just a quick one, the February 2010 Cumulative Update for SharePoint is out (WSS & MOSS). Links can be found @ http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2010/02/24/wss-and-moss-february-2010-cu.aspx

Once I’ve installed the on my TEST environment, I’ll post a update.

For those of you who would like to know the process on how to create a new installation ISO of SharePoint, please refer to my post on Slipstreaming the SharePoint October 2009 Cumulative Update (Just the file names have changed!).

I was asked if it was worth the effort to slipstream every CU into a new installation media, or just reverse the process to Service Packs.

Personally, due to the amount of installations and deployments I do in virtual, production and demo environments, for me it is always handy.

However I would recommend that as part of your Patch/DR plan, that you always have an ISO of the exact version of SharePoint which is in production.

This means, that when this ISO has installed, the version should match exactly the SharePoint version of your production environment.

Honestly, at 3am after in a disaster recovery situation, the last thing you want to be doing is waiting for the patches to download!

With a slipstreamed package, The the updates are applied during installation of SharePoint. “Installation Completed” in this context means “Installation of SharePoint and to the version you want is completed”.

P.S. Notice how TEST environment is bold!

Posted at 10:30 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: SharePoint | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

21/02/2010

InfoPath & InvalidOperationException

Yet again, working here in Seattle on a clients InfoPath form and came across issue which I’d thought I’d share! The InvalidOperation Exception!

Operation is not valid, because of the current state of the object.

Come again? The same code used to update fields, all of a sudden didn't work! After wracking my brains, I remembered that setting a value can cause this issue when it is done in a BEFORE event. I.e OnChanging.

A quick debug showed that the CanEdit property is set to false! So I moved the code into the OnChanged event handler and sure enough success! The field now updates without a hitch!

Posted at 2:37 PM by PHYSICS\Administrator | Category: What the? | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

InfoPath cannot open the selected form

Well this is a helpful error message with InfoPath! The form was working beautiful until i decided to add some code behind, no matter what language, as soon as I did it, wham “InfoPath cannot open the selected form”.

At least I can say it was consistent, though Visual Studio Tools for Applications and Visual Studio Tools for Office, on launch it would always being up the window. If I removed the code (via Tools->Form Opens->Programming) it went back to working.

This is only 1 of the possible reasons for the above dialog box, there are a magnitude of situations where this popup can appear.

So what’s the catch? Security & Trust!

As soon as I changed it to full trust, the form (with code!) would load and I could continue on!

CAUTION: ONLY SET FULL TRUST ON A FORM IF YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DUE TO FUNCTIONALITY, REQUIREMENTS OR SECURITY!

Full Trust is like opening the door for someone AND giving them the keys. You wouldn’t give a normal user domain administrator rights, unless their is a need right? InfoPath Forms full trust is the same!

Posted at 10:53 AM by PHYSICS\Administrator | Category: What the? | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/02/2010

SharePoint Conference Registration site is now Live!

Please see www.sharepointconference.com.au for details and to register for what will be Australia's biggest SharePoint event of 2010. Come and learn from expert local and international speakers, network with your peers and learn all about BOTH Microsoft SharePoint 2007 and 2010.

We look forward to seeing you there!

More to come this evening when I can sit down and do a good write up, this event is going to be massive and full of great information!

Posted at 11:09 AM by PHYSICS\Administrator | Category: Event | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

30/01/2010

The Adelaide SharePoint User Group Meeting

Greetings and Salutations,

Wow, it’s already the end of January 2010; I swear these years are just getting faster and faster!

February’s User Group meeting will be held on the 9^th of February 2010 and not on the usual date. This is due to me traveling to the United State to spend a Week on campus at Microsoft Redmond for the Microsoft MVP Summit.

If you have any questions, queries or alike in regards to SharePoint 2010, I’d be more than happen to try and get an answer directly from the people involved in the development of SharePoint!

If you are interested in getting the “SharePoint 2010 Ignite Technical Training for Developers” here in Adelaide, we are looking at needing 6 or more people for Microsoft to run the course. For more information please see the website, or please feel free to email me and I can put you in contact with the right people.

The other big news item for this newsletter is the planning for our next SharePoint Saturday event which is currently pencilled in for May of this year. As time progresses I’ll be sending out more updates, the call for speakers and sponsors. Please stay tuned!

See you at this month’s user group meeting on February 9^th, 2010!

January Meeting Information

This month will see Daniel Brown take to the stage to give an in-depth overview of SharePoint, What is its capabilities, what has it been used for and what can it do, the presentation will then follow on into the second presentation of the night, also by Daniel on Customising SharePoint and the ways to go about building a real life application which is built using SharePoint.

This month will also see the catering service of Craig Parham Catering who is the independent contractor for Microsoft Innovation Centre. This is brought to you by Daniel Brown.

If you plan to attend the festivities, can you please ensure to reserve your place by clicking here. This will help with catering and ensures everyone gets enough to eat.

When & Where:

· When: Tuesday, 9^th of February

· Where: Microsoft Innovation Centre Auditorium

· Address:

Level 2, Westpac House

King William Street, Adelaide

(Map – Entrance is actually on Currie Street)

· Door Prize: Books, T-Shirts & More!

o Entry is your evaluation forms and you must be present at the time of the drawing to claim your prize!

Agenda:

The agenda for this month’s activities are:

· 5:30PM – Arrive, Relax and Network

· 6:00PM – Welcome, Introductions, Australian Computer Society – Daniel Brown

· 6:15PM – An Introduction of SharePoint – Daniel Brown

Daniel will give an overview and introduction into SharePoint capabilities, what it is capable of and what has been done in previous installations and customisations of SharePoint Environments

· 7:00PM – Customising SharePoint – Daniel Brown

Following on from the previous topic, Daniel will look at and discuss the possible ways to customise SharePoint and build some real world working examples on stage!

· 7:45PM –SharePoint Forum, Questions & Door Prize

Your chance to provide feedback direct to the SharePoint team in Redmond @ Microsoft!

· 8:00 PM(ish) –Meeting Close and move to the Grand Chancellor for refreshments and for continued forum and questions.

If you plan to attend the festivities, can you please ensure to reserve your place by clicking here. This will help with catering and ensures everyone gets enough to eat.

Sponsorship

Currently the Adelaide SharePoint User Group is looking for sponsors to fund catering for the event.

By being a sponsor, you are entitled to a range of benefits and advertising though the user group. If you or your company is interested in sponsoring the User Group, please contact Daniel Brown on 0419 804 099 or via email at daniel@danielbrown.id.au

Posted at 9:56 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: ASPUG | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

22/01/2010

Heard about the latest vulnerability in IE6? Info Session & Links

Resources related to this alert

· Microsoft will host a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins:

Title: Information about Microsoft January (OOB) Security Bulletin (Level 200)

Date: Thursday, January 21, 2010, at 1:00 PM Pacific Time (U.S. & Canada).

URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032440627

· Security Advisory 979352 – Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/979352.mspx

· Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 979352: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979352

· Issue Landing Page: http://www.microsoft.com/security/updates/ie.aspx

· Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/

· Microsoft Security Research & Defense (SRD) Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/srd/

· Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mmpc/

· Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/sdl/

(Daniel: Seriously though.. IE6….. 2 newer versions since then… its time to upgrade anyway!)

Posted at 9:23 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: General | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

19/01/2010

Adelaide SharePoint User Group January Meeting

Howdy all,

Just a quick reminder that the Adelaide SharePoint User Group meeting will not be meeting this month (due to the proximity to Christmas, New Years, etc) and will resume next month!

Adelaide SharePoint User Group Website: http://www.aspug.org.au/

See you Next Month!

Posted at 12:47 PM by PHYSICS\Administrator | Category: ASPUG | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Canberra SharePoint User Group

A bit of a trip to go to, however if you are interstate, Check out the Canberra SharePoint User Group!

SharePoint User Group 20/01/2010 Meeting
Installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 and an Introduction to Visual Web Part Design in SharePoint 2010

First, Ishai Sagi, a SharePoint MVP from Extelligent Design will demonstrate building a developer machine for the SharePoint 2010 beta on Windows 7. This will cover the list of pre requisites, installation process and configuration required to get to a working developer box on your desktop, from a blank Windows 7 machine (64bit).
Then, Brian Fanhill, who was also recently awarded the SharePoint MVP award, will demonstrate how the Visual Web Part Designer in visual studio 2010 can be used to create web parts for SharePoint 2010.

If you intend on coming, please let us know by registering for the event – how else would we know how much pizza should we get?

Call for speakers!

As always, we are looking for speakers to come tell us what they had done with SharePoint, or teach us something new. If you want to present, please reply to this email with the details of what you want to present about. Next month’s presentation is still up for grabs!

Call for logo!

Got some graphic talent? We need a logo!

As you can see from the picture above, my graphic skills could do with some improvement. If anyone wants to open up photoshop and whip us a new logo for our newsletters and for our site, I would be sure to thank that someone in the next user group!

Just reply to this email and either attach a draft or a suggestion.

Want a presentation? We want to know!

If there was something you always wanted to know and there was no one to ask, here is your chance. Use the Request Presentation link on our web site to request a specific presentation topic, or a Q&A forum focused on a topic. Feel free! That is what a user group is about. Note – the link before wasn’t working right, so I am sorry if you clicked it and got a prompt for credentials. This is now fixed, and you can feel free to ask for presentations!

As always, the pizza is on us thanks to our gold sponsor UniqueWorld and we look forward to seeing everyone there!

To register to this event please click here
(it’s free, quick, guarantees and puts you in for the door prize)

The Canberra SharePoint User Group meeting is taking place on 20/01/2010. The User Group will be held at Microsoft, Level 2, 44 Sydney Avenue, Barton.

Please note that due to security reasons at Microsoft Canberra, attendees arriving after 6pm will not be able to get into the building.

Posted at 12:44 PM by PHYSICS\Administrator | Category: Event | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

7/01/2010

Windows 7 “Godmode”

Windows 7 “GodMode” Shortcut can give you a whole heap of settings of Windows, all accessible from a single location!

Its not exactly Godmode (IDDQD) but more of a launching pad for 232 options to change!

To get this feature on Windows 7, First create a new folder (I created mine on the desktop), then rename it to:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The icon should change to the same one as Control Panel which indicated your done. Double click on the folder and bask in the 232 glorious options!

Note: I tried this with Windows 7 x64 & Windows 2008 Server R2 x64, there are reports of it working on Vista, However there are some reports of this causing Vista x86 to crash, while x64 seems to be unaffected.

Posted at 9:04 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: Cool Stuff | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

23/12/2009

SharePoint December 2009 Cumulative Update has been posted!

That's right, A nice letter Christmas present from the SharePoint team in pushing out the December 2009 Cumulative hot fix batch.

Get them here:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – KB 977022 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977022
SharePoint Server 2007 – KB 977023 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977023
Project Server 2007 - KB 977028 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977028
Project Professional 2007 – KB 977266 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977266

If you are interested in creating your own installation media with the December 2009 Cumulative Update slipstreamed into the installation then check out my previous post here.

Merry Christmas!

Posted at 11:03 PM by Daniel Brown | Category: Cool Stuff | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

The Australian ALM Conference!

The inaugural Australian ALM Conference in Sydney will showcase both local and internationally renowned speakers talking about Application Lifecycle Management. The conference will include Microsoft Australia’s official local launch of Visual Studio 2010 and to help Microsoft celebrate this milestone release there will be a dedicated track focusing exclusively on Visual Studio 2010 related topics.

Some of our international speakers who will be speaking at the event include;

Sam Guckenheimer – Group Product Planner, Visual Studio Product Line, Microsoft Corporation
Tanuj Vohra – Partner Director of Program Management for the Visual Studio Test Business, Microsoft Corporation
Dr Ivar Jacobson – a father the Unified Modelling Language and the Rational Unified Process, Ivar Jacobson International

In addition to the keynote and 19 breakout sessions to choose from, attendees will enjoy a welcome reception and cocktail party on the first evening and have the option of registering for post conference training that will be running following the conference.

For more information, please visit www.australianalm.com.au

Posted at 8:54 PM by Daniel Brown | Category: Event | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

21/12/2009

SharePoint with Service Pack 2 released!

Microsoft have updated the downloads & installation packages of both Windows SharePoint Services v3 & The Trial download of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to include Service Pack 2 out of the box, already slipstreamed!

You can download Windows SharePoint Services v2 WITH Service Pack 2 from:

Also, the Trial Version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Service 2007 has also been updated to include Service Pack 2.

Keep in mind, that these are trial version, however it is key based. So I you do have a valid key, you can use these installation packages!

Also check out my guide on slipstreaming the October 2009 patch into the installation packages. (Hmm I guess that is now the Dec 09 update…. time to create another installation package myself I think!)/

Merry Christmas!

Posted at 10:47 AM by Daniel Brown | Category: SharePoint | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)