SharePoint 2010 Beta is now available for download. The pre-release (BETA) version is for evaluation purposes only.  Upgrade from the BETA version to the final release version of SharePoint 2010 is NOT supported by Microsoft. You can view the pre-requisites for installing SharePoint Products on TechNet. The most important one is that you will need Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) 64bit for SharePoint to be deployed with a min of 8GB of memory to test and evaluate the Beta. Read hardware and software requirement article on TechNet Developers can install SharePoint for development purposes on Windows 7. Below is a list of links to obtaining the downloads SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta (Formerly Windows SharePoint Services) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=906c9f5a-6505-4 ...[Read More]

Please refer to my previous three posts on Upgrade Planning for SharePoint 2010 – These previous posts outline some important scenarios for your upgrade planning process. SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning Part 1, SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning Part 2, SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning Part 3. In this post I’ll outline the supported scenarios for your SharePoint 2010 upgrade from SharePoint 2007 and how to determine a best approach for your upgrade. I have been working with a few clients who are currently on SharePoint 2007 and are looking to upgrade to SharePoint 2010. So I will try and provide some real world data as part of this post. If you’ve been following my post series I outlined the steps and the approach to move your SharePoint 32bit farm to 64bit since SharePoint 2010 is only available and supported in 64 bit Windows Server ...[Read More]

Via Ryan Duguid and the MSFT SharePoint Blog. The Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0 is now available for download. This new version provides some key new features as listed below. Key Features in the AKS v2.0 The AKS v2.0 introduces the following: Smart Control adapters which greatly reduce the amount of custom configuration previously required for AKS control adapters. The Web Part Zone Control Adapter, a special Smart Adapter that modifies the output of SharePoint so that it does not use tables for layout of the Web parts. HiSoftware’s Compliant Code Engine (HCCE) to assist organizations in creating code that is compliant to standards-based HTML or XHTML. Additional requirements under Canadian Common Look and Feel 2.0 (CLF 2.0) guidelines. Examples of remediation to comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Fren ...[Read More]

Just today I got a question via my blog. Can you recommend any classroom based SP 2007 training- Wellington. Needs to cover lists, libraries, workflows, pages, customisation, reuseable content etc - chris knight Sure thing. First up in Wellington (New Zealand) I can only recommend this guy > http://mctalex.blogspot.com/ Alex Dean. Alex has already done two presentations at the SharePoint User Group and he has a wealth of Knowledge in terms of development practices in .Net and SharePoint. If you are interested in attending any of the following courses make sure that Alex is conducting these. 50049A: Architecting Web Content Management Solutions with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (2 days) 50064A: Advanced SharePoint 2007 Development (5 days) Both of these above tracks should give you a very good starting point as a Sh ...[Read More]

Hope everyone has had a great Christmas/New Year celebrations and holidays, I haven't been able to blog as much lately due to various reasons and will try and get into the habit of doing at least one useful post per week. Last year was an interesting one during which I travelled to Seattle twice (SharePoint Conference 2008 and MVP Summit) and did quite a bit of travelling around New Zealand as well. It was also when I decided to become my own boss and started life as an independent consultant. So far so good, it has been an interesting 8 or so months with some exciting projects and great clients. Thanks to everyone who has helped me in various stages. So what's been happening in the SharePoint world then? WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint Microsoft Released the WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) Toolkit for SharePoint back in Decembe ...[Read More]

So we've come to the end of the year and just when you though that you'd wait for a while before updating SharePoint again we have a new update. Well actually this is quite important since from January if you still have note moved to at least service pack 1 for SharePoint you'll be told by MSFT support to get your deployment upgraded. So what's in this update. (I haven't had time to test these out in length but here is a round up anyway) Like I mentioned in my previous posts these updates provide the base framework for future enhancements and are related to stability and performance. Refer to my earlier post about how to apply the updates. Blog post about December SharePoint Cumulative updates from the SharePoint team blog. Please note that if you are installing/deploying a brand new SharePoint farm make sure that you include all t ...[Read More]

Thanks to everyone who came to my session at the Christchurch SharePoint User Group and Matt (Btw Matt is doing 1 post a day about SharePoint related development until Xmas!), and Gary for organising the event. This post is aimed at covering off some key points which I  wanted to clarify. I introduced a planning framework and wanted to clarify that I use this depending on various factors and the engagement that I am doing. Initiation or Pre-deployment should answer questions related to your existing infrastructure and how you manage these. This is the stage where you will spend some time analysing your current processes and also how you may need to establish some ownership and guidelines to what you want to achieve in the longer term with your SharePoint deployment. Governance and Capacity planning can be a lengthy exercise if no ...[Read More]

OK, I know that a lot of SharePoint deployments out there have not even upgraded to Service Pack 1. Previously I blogged about why you should upgrade to Service Pack 1 and that any new SharePoint farms being deployed should be using the SP 1 MOSS/WSS build. Microsoft has made a recent announcement that service pack 2 will be made available soon. I don't have a definite date yet. Let me highlight to you why you need to ensure that you have a proper process in place to update and manage your existing SharePoint deployments. When I talk about "deployments" I refer to your DEV > STG > PRD environments and that all of these should be patched and updated so each one has the same service pack and hot fix levels. One of the issues that you may have is that in order to update your existing SharePoint servers you will have to sc ...[Read More]