One part of SharePoint deployments that sometimes tend to fall on the way side is planning and providing a viable and practical option for recovering data in the event of a server failure. In most cases when a solution architecture is proposed with SharePoint you need to consider the following options in order to formulate a viable and practical backup and recovery option. Not only should you plan these it should be tested out and the steps required and the times taken to do an actual recovery noted so that your team is familiar with what to expect should the need arise. Depending on the type of solution being deployed and the impact it may potentially have on the business you may need to add availability as part of your solution architecture. This post however will showcase how you can successfully create and test a mock recovery pla ...[Read More]

Mark Orange (SharePoint MVP) will be presenting on Thursday 25th September at the Wellington SharePoint User Group. Compliance is too often approached from a control and punish focus, adding another layer over an already stretched workforce.  Compliance is best achieved when it is the side effect of good business processes and tools, not another burden on end users. MOSS provides many tools and features to support a wide range of compliance issues, and the focus always starts with usability and accessibility to support broad user adoption. When we talk about compliance within organisations today it is very contextual. What compliance means to the marketing and communications team is different than the legal team, which is different than the operations team and so on. So let’s take a look at some scenarios and see what MOSS brings to ...[Read More]

Over last few months I've been reviewing and helping a few customers deploy SharePoint. One of the things that surprised me is that in some cases where the x86 binary of SharePoint has been installed on x64 capable hardware. It's an easy oversight especially if you grab the MSDN or a previously downloaded copy of the setup files. Make sure that you download the latest x64 version of the installer with service pack 1 if you are doing a new install. You should only deploy on x86 based hardware if there is a very compelling reason to do so. Here are the links for the required WSS and MOSS installs. For a WSS only x64 install : Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 with Service Pack 1 For MOSS x64 install: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 x64 edition (Note that the link contains the RTM version and a version bundled with Service ...[Read More]

Photosynth allows you to synth multiple photos together and create an immersive view. I just tried this out with a few photos I took while in Motueka. Check out my Synth.> http://photosynth.net/ Really cool! Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos. Photosynth was inspired by the breakthrough research on Photo Tourism from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research. This work pioneered the use of photogrammetry to power a cinematic and immersive experience. Technorati Tags: photosynth,photos,random,live ...[Read More]

It is with a very sad heart that I have to say farewell to a dear friend whom I have known for a long time. Patrick Tisseghem of U2U Belgium has passed away. Patrick has written numerous books on SharePoint and was a great teacher. My thoughts and condolences goes out to his family and friends. Mike Fitz sums up what Patrick meant to the SharePoint world. He was one of the foremost people who started the journey and inspired a lot into getting into SharePoint development. Farewell Patrick...You will be missed. ...[Read More]

Thanks to everyone who came to the SharePoint sessions at TechED. This year we had some great speakers from overseas and some of the best local SharePoint speakers. You can now download the session slides that I co-presented with Ben and Joel via the below links. OFC 315 - Why Findability Should Be an Organising Principle for Your SharePoint Server 2007 Deployment (ZIP 1MB) OFC 375 - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Governance: From Chaos to Success in Ten Steps (ZIP 4MB) For those of you who missed TechED and want to know more about these sessions I will be presenting these at the NZ SharePoint User Groups in the coming months. You can join one of the regional groups via the link. Be sure to check out Joel's and Ben's blog for more resources. If you are planning SharePoint check out my previous posts on SharePoint Planning ...[Read More]