Over the past few months, weeks, days I have been involved in planning, architecting (is that a word?) migrating and implementing various SharePoint environments for multiple organisations. These included building brand new MOSS environments and WSS V3 environments as well as some disaster recovery situations where a "few" Beta2TR installations had expired unexpectedly. Shane Young and Zac has these posts on how to upgrade to Beta2TR to RTM. One of the most recent migrations that I carried out with my team was a migration of a medium WSS V2 farm to a new WSS V3 farm. The organisation used WSS V2 as the primary collaboration platform for teams and document management. When we were engaged by this organisation the first thing I recommended doing was to do an audit on the existing WSS V2 environment to determine the current se ...[Read More]

Last week at the Wellington SharePoint User Group I did a repeat presentation on the customisation options available for changing the look and feel of SharePoint based sites. There were about 50 people at the session. The presentation slides and the resources are available here. http://www.chandima.net/Blog/Articles/Presentation.aspx The options that's available for customisations are Browser based SharePoint Designer based SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio One of the things I would like to highlight to everyone on the subject of customisations and my experience with working on several SharePoint projects is that planning for customisations will need to be made right from the beginning. This is very important for projects that will use SharePoint as a web content management platform. If your site is being designed a ...[Read More]

My presentation slides from the SharePoint conference and the related resources are now available for download.   I have created an article page and outlined how the demos can be setup on a new site collection. You can view the article here.   SPCAPAC ...[Read More]

Latest offering from Microsoft to work from anywhere and collaborate with remote users. With SharedView you can: Microsoft SharedView Beta is a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate. Using SharedView, you (or anyone else in the session) can share your Desktop or an application. The sharer has initial control of a shared application or desktop, but any session participant can request control at any time so everyone can actively contribute. The sharer can immediately take control back by simply clicking the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard. Not in control? Relax! Even if you are not in control, you still have a voice. Each participant has a personalized pointer to use to point out specific items ...[Read More]

I would personally prefer a ZUNE! :-)   But... the guys at Mindscape are real "ueber cool" and they have their Open Beta program and you have to try it out!   So head onto http://www.mindscape.co.nz/blog/?p=26 Signup and get testing!     ...[Read More]

While we were at the SharePoint coneference another very important event was happening over in Redmond. The Microsoft CEO Summit 2007 was attended by over 100 of the top CEO's of the world.   "Companies attending the Summit represent combined annual sales of $3 trillion and 11 million employees worldwide. Forty-five percent of attendees hail from Europe, Asia and Latin America."   Some of the top attendees Bill Green, Accenture Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Inc. Didier Bellens, Belgacom Group Neville Isdell, The Coca Cola Co. Jim Sinegal, Costco Wholesale Corp. Michael Dell, Dell Inc. Meg Whitman, eBay Inc. Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Schneider Electric SA Shin Bae Kim, S K Telecom Co. Ltd. Carlos Felices, Telecom Argentina SA Ron Sargent, Staples Inc. Gordon Segal, Crate and Ba ...[Read More]

The SharePoint Asia Pacific conference is a wrap. J The three days I was at the conference went so fast. Angus Logan and his team from Microsoft Australia did a remarkable job of co-ordinating the event. Here are some stats from the conference. Over 600 attendees from all over Asia Pacific and as far as Sri Lanka (Dhammika Weerakoon from Millenium IT) Over 60 sessions in 2 days Over 45 presenters from the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand One big "Yeehaw SharePoint" party – Photos on Flickr Best attendee of the conference – Paul Quirk of Intergen he attended 18 sessions in two days including a lunch time sessions – good on ya mate! Mike Fitz, Jason Morrill and some others including myself had a few 'demo' problems because of our laptops crashin! Amount of coffee, energy drinks and beer consumed unknown J ...[Read More]

I Just attended the keynote speech given by Derek Burney, Mike Fitzmaurice and Ryan Duguid. Derek is the GM of the SharePoint Platform and Tools group responsible for the development of the Windows SharePoint Services platform and its associated development tools. Mike Fitzmaurice is the Technical Product Manager responsible for promoting application development on Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Ryan works at Microsoft New Zealand as a Technical specialist. Highlights of the keynote for me Analysts Gartner, Forrester and AMR research all say that "SharePoint is a serious platform" Vibrant partner community who deliver solutions on top of SharePoint E-week report "SharePoint Server 2007 Is an (Able) Jack of All Trades" Community of experts and developers Visual Studi ...[Read More]