Angus Logan : Moved from Old Blog

New Website for MCMS + SharePoint Goodies that don't come out of the box

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:40:00 GMT

Mark's added some new sections to his blog: MCMS Plus & SharePoint Plus; not finished yet but watch that space.

Mandatory Reading - Domino System's Whitepaper on employee productivity with SharePoint

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:39:00 GMT

Mark Harrison has blogged about Domino System's (not the Pizza company!) whitepaper on employee productivity and how they increased it with their implementation of SharePoint Portal Server. It is not a technical whitepaper but I think it should be mandatory reading for architects right up to CIO/CTO.

See Mark's posting here or download whitepaper directly from here.

SQL Reporting Services Packs for CRM/Exchange & Financials Sample

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:33:00 GMT

Finally some product centric reports. Looks great for the products & for SQL Reporting Services.

SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for Microsoft CRM
Download this set of six predefined CRM-based reports and a sample database that let you easily visualize and author managed reports to support key sales activities. - I am excited about this because using Crystal Reports in Microsoft CRM is not a pleasant experience; but I would like to see how their support agreements stay intact with users directly querying the database (this isn't allowed in some other Microsoft products eg. Content Management Server)

Reports Included

Account Chart - Shows a doughnut chart of revenue grouped by Account, Industry, Salesperson, State/Province, Status, or Territory. You can also filter the report to show the groupings for only the top n accounts.
Account Details - Shows detailed account information. This report lets you group the Account Details by City, Industry, Salesperson, State/Province, Status, Territory, or ZIP/Postal Code. You can also filter by the first letter of the Account Name, and view results in the document map.
Customer Account Details - Shows detailed account information for a single customer. This report has the same layout as the Account Details report, and it is a subreport linked to the Pipeline report.
Knowledge Base List - Shows a list of knowledge base articles by subject. This report is organized in a table to show what articles exist for each subject and the count of articles by status area for each subject area.
Lead Summary - Displays a summarized list and chart of lead information. This report includes a chart to show the percentage of leads by Salesperson, Lead Source, or State/Province, followed by a table that displays a detailed list of leads grouped by the selected parameter.
Pipeline - Shows details about potential customers that are in the pipeline. This report includes a chart embedded into a table, as well as attributes of the opportunities. The report can be sorted ascending or descending by a number of fields: Customer, Close %, Est Close, Est Value, Salesperson, and Status. This report is also linked to the Customer Account Details report.

SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for Microsoft Exchange
Download this set of 13 predefined Exchange-based reports and a sample database that let you easily visualize and author managed reports for e-mail administration.

Reports Included

Current - All Mailboxes (By Folder) - Shows folder statistics over all folders. Tip: Be on the lookout for especially large mailboxes.
Current - Folder Tree Sizes (By User) - Shows the folder tree and size of items contained within each folder of a specific user's folder. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: Find the largest folders and the largest items so you can free up space.
Folder Tree Sizes (All) - Shows the folder tree and size of items contained within each folder for all user's folders since the last extraction. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: Find the largest folders and the largest items so you can free up space.
Outgoing - Sent E-mails for User (Plain Table) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Tip: The highest send the most e-mail, which often correlates to the hardest workers.
Outgoing Sent E-mails for User (With Graph) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Tip: The highest send the most email, which often correlates to the hardest workers.
Outgoing Sent E-mails for User (With Bar Chart) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: The highest send the most email, which often correlates to the hardest workers.
Outgoing - Busy Receivers of Our E-mail - The top 50 people who were sent email from members of our organization.
Incoming - Received E-mails for User (By Date) - Compares the number of items found in users' Sent Items box. Drill down for breakdown. Tip: The highest receive the most e-mail, they probably stress out the most.
Incoming - Busy Receivers of Incoming E-mail - Shows how many emails were received into peoples' inbox.
Outgoing - By Keyword - Examines the content of mail items to indicate which key phrases are being used by employees based on items in their Sent Items folders. Tip: Configure with your product names to see the e-mail activity by product.
Outgoing - Largest E-mail Senders - Shows the people who sent e-mail with the largest sizes.
Extraction Log (All Records) - Shows all of the Extraction Log records, including time to extract data from Exchange and store to the database for each user.
Extraction Log (Last Extraction) - Shows the Extraction Log records for the most recent extraction, including time to extract data from Exchange and store to the database for each user.

SQL Server 2000 Report Pack for Financial Reporting
Download this set of six predefined financial reports and a sample database that let you easily visualize and author managed reports to support key finance activities.

Reports Included (to work with the FabriKam FinDBSample)

Balance Sheet - FabriKam, Inc. Balance Sheet by Fiscal Year and Current Period. This report illustrates the use of a table to group Account Balances to emulate a standard Balance Sheet.
IncomeStmtCurYTD-Company - FabriKam, Inc. Income Statement for the current month and year to date by Company, Fiscal Year, and Current Period. This report includes a table to display income statement line items and also displays drilldown features.
IncomeStmtCurYTD-Region - FabriKam, Inc. Income Statement for the current month and year to date by Company, Fiscal Year, Current Period, and Region. This report includes a table to display income statement line items and also displays drilldown features. Parameters let you filter by different dimensions.
IncomeStmtTrended - FabriKam, Inc. Income Statement by Company, Fiscal Year, and trended over periods. This report includes a matrix to display trends of different line items in an income statement. It also includes a chart that graphs Revenues trended over periods, which can be set with parameters. Drilldown and drillthrough features are also inlcuded.
Trial Balance - The trial balance is an arithmetic check of the double-entry system. It checks that both aspects of every transaction have been recorded accurately and that for every debit entry there is an equal value for its corresponding credit. The trial balance provides figures for the balance sheet including assets and liabilities.
Variance Report - The Variance Report contains actual, budget, and variance information for FabriKam, Inc. Variances are calculated by taking Budget – Actual for Expense items and Actual – Budget for Income items on the report. This report is sorted in descending order, with negative variances highlighted to aid the business community to identify which income statement line items have the largest absolute dollar value variance in the current period.

Some content & images have been copied from www.microsoft.com

Google's search just for Microsoft Resources

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:29:00 GMT

A client showed me Google's search specifically for Microsoft resources - its awesome.

You can see it at http://www.google.com/microsoft

A simple test is Search for Content Management Server

Generic Google - phht. Who wants to know about Vignette?
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=content+management+server&meta=

Google Microsoft - thats more like it!
http://www.google.com/microsoft?q=content+management+server&btnG=Google+Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1

Just for Kicks MSN Search - looks similar to Google's Microsoft search :) )
http://www.search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=SRCHWB&q=content%20management%20server

I can't find any description of exactly what it searches but it would be interesting to see exactly what it does...

Microsoft MVP Award

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:27:00 GMT

I just found out from Rose Stamell (MVP Program Manager, Australia & New Zealand) that I have been awarded the title of MVP for Microsoft Content Management Server.

I would like to thank Stefan Goßner and Christopher Walker (MCS Australia) for their nominations and Anne Wallace (Microsoft Corp) for getting me into MCMS in the beginning.

As I mentioned earlier I am looking forward to gaining access to the MVP Academy; MVP Newsgroups; having access to Rose Stamell as my MVP Lead; supporting the MCMS community; and promoting the MVP Program (not to mention the things under NDA that I won't be able to tell anyone about :) Only kidding I haven't seen the NDA yet; or maybe I have... not telling!)

Telerik radEditor v1.5 released

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:26:00 GMT

Improvement

Accessibility tabs in table and image dialogs..

Fixed bugs

Problem with user permissions for uploading / deleting images, flash files, media files, documents.
Problem with long images, flash, media, document paths stripped in dialogs.

Download it now

1 more sleep - The night before the MVP results.

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:24:00 GMT

I find out tomorrow if I have become a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Content Management Server.

I'd like to say I'm cool calm and collected but opportunities like becoming a MVP don't come around every day.

I'm extremely exited about the MVP Source Code Program that allows MVPs to access source of relevant products; and the MVP Academy that will help me keep on building on my skills and supporting the community.

My performance review is on at work tomorrow as well. Should certainly be an interesting day.

.NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003 caused "Server Application Unavailable"

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:22:00 GMT

Strange... I just applied .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003 onto my laptop and didn't reboot after the installation.

The next thing my local web server stoped serving .NET Pages & webservices etc - there were no messages in the event log.

Luckily a reboot saved the day.

Nice trap-for-young-players.

Anyway here's a list of bugs fixed by .NET Framework 1.1.

obout's ASP.Net Slide Menu - Its free and very cool

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:20:00 GMT

I stumbled across obout's ASP.net Slide Menu. Its all DHTML and they claim it works in: IE/Netscape/Mozilla/other browsers that aren't Windows based.

I'm looking at writing a navigation menu for MCMS using this control and I'll hopefully drop it onto GotDotNet.

obout have also written the ASP TreeView which is also totally free.

Microsoft ISV Buddy Program ... Easier than making real friends

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:19:00 GMT

What is the Microsoft ISV Buddy Program?
"The Microsoft ISV Buddy Program is all about connecting you, the Independent Software Vendor, with a Microsoft employee who will be your point person within Microsoft. It’s about putting a face to Microsoft and helping you get timely answers to your questions and requests. Through this 1-on-1 relationship, your Microsoft buddy will be able to guide you to resources and to help you succeed in building solutions on Microsoft platforms."

For more information see the Microsoft ISV Buddy Program.

How do I experience Seattle's traffic from Australia?

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:16:00 GMT

I saw a post new the CMS Newsgroup newsgroup mentioning WSDOT, which Washington State Dept. of Transport's website and its new and it was built on Microsoft Content Management Server.

There are a bunch of webcams pointed at all the major roads in Seattle and they have an image map (see right) that shows the intensity of the traffic etc.

Searching Content Management Server with SharePoint without using the content integration pack

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:13:00 GMT

A while ago Emmanuel Desigaud wrote a great step by step article on how to 'Integrate SharePoint Search into a CMS Site using a Webservice'.

I had to develop a Content Management Server solution using SharePoint as the search engine and here's a brain dump of the order to do things etc.

When Authoring your navigation / aggregation controls be sure to prevent them from showing when the User-Agent is "MS Search"
- Do this from the beginning!
- Setup a helper class and call a shared method
  - Public Shared Function ShowNavigationControls() As Boolean
    Return (HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers("User-Agent").IndexOf("MS Search") < 0)
    End Function
- Don't bind your navigation controls & don't display them when the result is false.
Setup a 'Crawl Page' similar to Stephen Huen's CMS Crawl Page article
1. I used a similar approach but the system that I am developing won't have thousands-and-thousands of pages so I created 1 posting called "SiteMap_Crawl" using its own template.
  1. On this template I looped recursively through the channels & postings from the root channel -> outputting all the Published URL's as Hyperlinks.
  2. This page had a ROBOTS meta tag of NOINDEX, FOLLOW; so the links were followed by not indexed.
2. on the footer of the homepage I added a hyperlink to the SiteMap_Crawl with a style="display:none"; so the link was on the bottom of every page (you could also only output the link if ShowNavigationControls (see above) was FALSE so the link would only be visible to the MS Search agent.
Configure the SharePoint Search content sources & index as well Emmanuel's article.
I then created a few user controls
1. Search Input
  1. Plain Textbox & Search Button & a checkbox for "only search this area"
  2. The event on the search button found the search results control from the page by ID (or redirects to the same page with ?search= Server.UrlEncode(theSearchString) ) and bound the search results.
2. Search Results
  1. Adds the 'search' value to a session variable so I can display the users 'recent searches'
  2. Simple procedure that generates the WebDav query
  3. It calls the http://sharepointserver/_vti_bin/search.asmx web service and gets back a DataSet.
  4. I then bound the dataset to a paged datagrid
  5. Also check if ?search=Your Search Text exists and if it does and there isn't a postback execute the search using this text as the input.
3. Show Users Recent Searches
  1. Check if the session variable exists for the Users recent searches
  2. Bind a datalist to output all the users recent search results (upto the last 10)
  3. Each recent search uses a link back to Search.htm?search= the recent search

2 MVPs + 1 Microsoft Guru - how can you refuse? (Content management server 2002 Book Announced)

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:11:00 GMT

Stefan Goßner (Microsoft MCMS Guru), Lim Mei Ying (MCMS MVP) & Joel Ward (MCMS MVP) have announced they are releasing their book Building Websites using Microsoft Content Management Server.

These guys ARE the Microsoft Content Management Server newsgroup support & their book is guaranteed to be excellent.

Its Expected October 2004 - but you can pre-order now.

From the Publisher's site
This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn’t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It’s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.

"Years of active participation in MCMS newsgroups and mailing lists mean that the authors’ hard-won experience puts them in the ideal position to tell you what you really need to know to master the system."

An example site is developed throughout the book, at every point providing clear and practical demonstrations of the relevant ideas. Once you have mastered the basics, the book leads you onto more advanced and powerful techniques, allowing you to get the most from this awesome system.

I was going to request a review copy but I think I'd get slapped for being a cheap-skate :)

Microsoft Announces General Availability of Virtual Server 2005

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:10:00 GMT

I heard at a Special Interest Group that Microsoft had just announced general availability for Virtual Server 2005...

I hate our MSDN Subscriber Downloads & Beta Place... Your always a few months ahead of the curve... Virtual Server is old news - good news... but old :)

The team I work in at Data#3 uses Virtual Server for everything. Because we are working on projects that require domain controllers; rapid provisioning of development environments; onsite 'build environments'; offsite UAT environments; virtual server rocks.

Here's the press-release:
REDMOND, Wash. -- Sept. 13, 2004 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability and pricing of Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005. Available in both Standard and Enterprise editions, Virtual Server 2005 helps customers reduce hardware costs and increase operational efficiency in three key scenarios: automation of software test and development environments; rehosting of legacy applications; and consolidation of production server workloads such as networking, directory infrastructure or departmental applications. As a key deliverable of the Dynamic Systems Initiative, Microsoft's vision for simplifying and automating the way customers design, deploy and operate distributed systems, Virtual Server 2005 provides customers with more flexibility and control in the provisioning of data center resources.

Microsoft Australia appoints Dimension Data Learning Solutions as trainer to Microsoft Business Solutions partners

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:09:00 GMT

Sydney, Australia – 14 September, 2004 – Microsoft Australia has announced Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS) as provider of training to Microsoft Business Solutions partners within Australia. DDLS delivers technical training and consulting services to more than 60 Microsoft partners that specialise in Microsoft Business Solutions Great lains®, Microsoft Business Solutions Axapta® and Microsoft Business Solutions Navision®.

“Training is fundamental to the success of our partners in delivering seamless value to our customers,” said Kerstin Baxter, Microsoft Australia’s Partner Group Director. “After a competitive evaluation, we chose DDLS for its established training management capabilities, nationwide infrastructure and its commitment to build expertise in Microsoft Business Solutions products,” Ms Baxter said.

To see more view the article by Computerworld.

MSIB Plus Pack now Freely Licensed and soon to be Open Source

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:08:00 GMT

I'm a huge fan of the MSIB Plus Pack - by Ioko & cScape funded by Microsoft UK - I've used it on several implementations.

Mark Harrison (Microsoft UK) announced on Friday night that it is now to be licensed free of charge (similar to the Telerik r.a.d.Editor deal).

I've checked www.msibpluspack.com and they haven't updated the content but if you are doing CMS Implementations you should definately check it out.

- Update 13 Sep 2004 - 11.56am -

Customers who already ordered the MSIB Plus Pack are not being charged and are being issued permanent license keys until the open source infrastructure is setup.
The MSIB Plus Pack is changing name to the CMS Plus Pack

SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2)

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:07:00 GMT

I'm loving all the new tools coming out for SQL DBA's - check out the SQL Server Best Practice Analyzer as well.

The Microsoft SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) allows you to collect information from instances of SQL Server, store this information, and run reports against the data in order to determine how SQL Server is being used.

You then view this data using SQL Server Reporting Services using "SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) Reports"

Overview
SQLH2 collects four main types of information:

Feature Usage – What services/features are installed, running and level of workload on the service.
Configuration Settings – Machine, OS and SQL configuration settings, SQL instance and database metadata.
Uptime of the SQL Server service
Performance Counters (optional) – Used to determine performance trends

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems - Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP

Download it from here

-by way of Darrell Norton's blog -

Telerik r.a.d.Editor 1.4 released

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:06:00 GMT

Telerik have released v1.4 of their r.a.d.editor MCMS Edition 1.4.

What's new:
New property: Text property.

Fixed bugs:
Problem: Problem with the flash dialog displaying only one flash file from each resource gallery folder.
Problem: Problem with binding the placeholder control to an XmlPlaceholder definition.
Problem: User permissions are taken into consideration for uploading / deleting images, flash files, media files, documents.

To download it go to:

www.telerik.com
Click Client.NET (top right)
Sign in or Register - you need a valid email address
Click My Licenses (left navigation)
Scroll down to 'radEditor for MCMS'
click Download

Running MCMS on Small Business Server 2003?

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:05:00 GMT

I did some investigation earlier this year and didn't get a response but... Javier Gomez [SBS MVP] just posted a link to the official line on running MCMS on Small Business Server 2003.

Mark Stanfill [MSFT] has said "Content Management Server is supported on SBS, but not recommended, as MCMS is not recommended to be installed on domain controllers in general (see CMS Installation Guide). You will want to ensure that SQL is fully patched and that MCMS SP1 is applied."

I am especially interested in getting this working to see if I could roll in 1 huge piece of hardware running:

Small Business Server 2003
SQL Server
Exchange
Content Management Server 2002 Standard Edition
SharePoint Portal Server (unfortunately not possible)
Windows SharePoint Services

To provide an out-of-the-box intranet solution for small business.

Then over time as the business grows you could look at migrating each service onto dedicated hardware in a phased approach.

Get Ready for SQL Server 2005 with Two New Courses

anguslogan — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 02:04:00 GMT

Ask your trainers about these 3-day courses, designed for database developers and database administrators who are experienced on SQL Server 2000 or 7.0 and want to "upgrade" their skills to SQL Server 2005:

Course 2733A: Updating Your Database Administration Skills to Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Course 2734A: Updating Your Database Development Skills to Microsoft SQL Server 2005

- from MCP flash newsletter -

I would be interested in finding out when the exams are available.