Recently I have been working with a few clients to come up with solutions to a range of Search scenarios. As a result of this I learnt quite a bit about MOSS Search capabilities and overcame a few issues. In this series of posts I will highlight guidance for deploying enterprise Search with MOSS and some ideas that worked well in some situations. First up let's look at some guidelines for implementing SharePoint Search from an end users perspective. Typical end user requirements that I come across for Search is.. wait for it.. make it "google like". OK fair enough i'll just put on my everything google do we must follow hat and continue on.. Jokes aside I am going to highlight what MOSS Search is capable of and also actually that you can configure and implement Search to provide equal or better contextual results sets that m ...[Read More]

Get the picture? This is common place when it comes to SharePoint projects (or any other projects) that have gone off the rails and you are called in to review the project and why some things aren't really working as it was perceived should work. What makes things much harder is to tell a bewildered project manager and a project owner or sponsor that the project that they have been managing is not going to meet its deadline and potentially will not meet the organisations business goals they set out to achieve with SharePoint. Hey.. hold on a second..this is SharePoint it's easy right? It's from Microsoft and it should just work? Well think again.. SharePoint projects are not hard and they are not easy either. There is a saying that goes to say "you don't know what you don't know". Essentially it's no one's fault but typ ...[Read More]

This year TechEd 2008 is being held in Auckland from 1st to 3rd September. Darryl recently posted on his blog asking for what sessions you want to see at TechEd this year. And already lot of you have asked for a number of SharePoint sessions. So here is your chance to tell us what sessions and topics you want to see for SharePoint. If you have some favorite overseas speakers that whom you know and follow their blogs this is the time to ask Darryl and the MSFT folks to get them down to New Zealand. Do you want real world case studies or in depth developer SharePoint sessions? More IT Pro content? You can always suggest a topic. Give us the title and a blurb on what the session should cover and the best speaker for the session. You can drop an email to wlgspug@sharepointservices.net.nz which is our SharePoint User Group email address ...[Read More]

The next Wellington SharePoint User Group will be having a session on Wednesday the 30th of April at Microsoft Wellington offices. Topic: MOSS 2007 Role-Based MySite Templates To fully utilize the power of MOSS in a corporate environment, concepts such as Excel Services, Analysis Services and Business Data Catalogue are key to success. Courtesy of Microsoft we have seven templates at our fingertips to create My Site portals based around differing organisational  roles. Each template explores the information needs out of a slightly different perspective: Administrative Assistant, Financial Controller, Customer Service Manager, HR Manager, IT Manager, Marketing Manager and Sales Account Manager. In this session Alex Dean will be introducing three roles and show how the different technologies come together to increase productivity wit ...[Read More]

Last week I was in Seattle to attend the Global MVP Summit for 2008. This was my first year at MVP Summit and second year being a SharePoint Server MVP. I got in on Sunday night after about 16 hrs of travel time on 3 aircraft and traveling over 18,000 Kms from Wellington (New Zealand) to Auckland and from Auckland to Los Angeles and on to Seattle (US). I joined about 40 MVP's from around the globe in the annual Paint ball field trip!  Lawrence Liu has posted about what it means to be an MVP and specially what it means to be a SharePoint MVP. Some highlights from paintball Hiding behind the same wooden barrier and exchanging fire with Lawrence Liu at super close range over the top of the barrier, he got me on my thumb (which hurt like hell) and arm. Running towards a wooden barrier to take cover while Andrew and Shane was laying ...[Read More]

Typically in most default SharePoint installs the physical index used by the Search crawler is saved under "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Applications" there you will see a guid based folder and within that some other folders. You can change this location when you install SharePoint for the first time. It is in fact recommended that this location should be changed to a separate disk location such as "D:\SharePoint\Data\" This ensures that your server will not run out of C:\ drive space and will also give faster performance for your Search Queries. In a multi server deployment where a dedicated Index/Query server is used this should always be planned prior to installation. Mike Taghizadeh has this covered in his previous post "Estimate MOSS Disk space requirements" Typically after a b ...[Read More]

Most of the time I always come across common mistakes that has been incurred in the process of sites being branded or customising SharePoint. So here are some common mistakes that should be avoided. I am sure that there are many other best practices. I am keeping this to the context of branding SharePoint (MOSS) when it comes to Intranet sites and Internet sites. Use the existing OOTB master pages and style sheets! You should always start with the "Blank Master" from Heather Solomon she has all the information for designers and HTML/CSS integrators for customising and branding. Get the AKS 1.1 Kit if you need to ensure accessibility as part of your design. Or alternatively go to CodePlex ( http://www.codeplex.com/features ) and get the Publishing Site Feature which packages a blank master page and a publishing site free of ...[Read More]