If you’ve followed some of my previous posts and presentations on SharePoint upgrade or are about to plan an Upgrade the following Video (link below) would be of interest. The video is from the Microsoft IT team who conducted the internal Microsoft SharePoint upgrade. Some of the key points for any successful upgrade are discussed in the video: detect issues early by learning about the deployment communications with site owners/administrators no data loss minimal downtime Initial Best Practices and Lessons Learned from Microsoft IT SharePoint 2010 Upgrade (Video) Managing a Parallel Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 (Video) Upgrade Planning and Best Practices - TechNet Upgrade Resource Centre – TechNet Remember the more you know about the deployment the better the upgrade experience is. I’ve done many upgrades and it’s unique in e ...[Read More]

Since the release of SharePoint Server 2010 (RTM) in April 2010 the following Cumulative Updates have been released. Current SharePoint Server updates - latest to oldest highlighted. December 2010 – SharePoint Server KB 2459257 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459257/ December 2010 – SharePoint Foundation KB - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2459125/en-us October 2010 – SharePoint Server KB 2394320 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2394320/ August 2010 – SharePoint Server KB 2352342 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2352342 (Note that with this release there are additional updates for Project Server and FAST Search Server). June 2010 – SharePoint Server KB 983497 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983497 (Multiple) For most deployments which are operational these updates should (is recommended to) be applied on a regular ...[Read More]

A few people have asked me via email about where they should go to learn about SharePoint Foundation 2010 (SharePoint Foundation was formerly Windows SharePoint Services aka WSS). All of the links that are out there directly focus on the full SharePoint 2010 suite and rarely have I seen any SharePoint Foundation 2010 only resources. SharePoint Foundation 2010 as it’s name obviously suggests is the core technology for all of the SharePoint stack. Sure it may not have all the whizzy bang that comes with the ueber versions but implemented well it can be equally useful for your organisation. If you are on a tight budget this is your best option to try out if this kind of technology can be implemented in your organisation. Remember you still need to plan accordingly based on your scenarios you want to use the technology for your business. S ...[Read More]

Via the SharePoint ECM Team. Continuing from my post series about Records Management in SharePoint the following information outlines how SharePoint 2010 provides enhanced eDiscovery. How SharePoint Server 2010 supports eDiscovery There are two parts to eDiscovery in SharePoint Server: finding relevant documents, and restricting what users can do with the documents once they have been identified. A hold is a set of documents that might be produced as part of an eDiscovery request. Within SharePoint Server, you enable or disable the Hold and eDiscovery feature at the level of an individual site. This feature is enabled by default in a Records Center site, and is disabled by default in all other types of sites. The Hold and eDiscovery feature enables you to create and manage holds, to add items to a hold, and to use search to disco ...[Read More]

Continuing on from my last post here are some more details about In-Place Records management in SharePoint 2010. Using a Records archive vs in place records management in SharePoint 2010 In Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 you can manage records in an archive, or you can manage records in the same document repository as active documents. With the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 in-place approach, when you declare that a document has become a record, the record remains in place, but Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 now manages it as a record. For example, a document might get a different retention policy when it is declared to be a record, or users might not be able to edit it. Designing for in-place records management with SharePoint 2010 In Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 you can manage records in an archive, or you can use ...[Read More]

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]