Available Technology - For Professionals

In my last post I talked about Visio 2010 and how we are seeing tools which can drive a lot of business value by representing data in intuitive ways through SharePoint. I raised the concern about once you see the data the next question is how does technology empower action. The answer involves several aspects and perhaps the most important one of which is role based security. The question comes down to this, if I want to share information with my boss and co-worker and give them the ability to perform different actions, how is this done using SharePoint?

It appears that the answer today for SharePoint 2010 is that role based security is still a weakness.

This provokes another question. Is it time for Microsoft to create a role based security model which is robust and can be leveraged to empower action oriented interactivity with the data and business process? The answer should be a sound barrier breaking "YES". Here is why.

We now have the pieces of the puzzle coming together to empower business users to not only see the information which is important to them but then take action on that information. Being able to trigger a SharePoint Workflow within the right security context should be a skill that is achievable for the average SharePoint user. Consider this, the SharePoint User is now not only consuming data but also re-purposing it for the use of others. Setting the conditions under which others in the organization might or might not be able to trigger a specific workflow should require skill and knowledge yet still be simple enough that a user could do it without being a developer. To do this from a user's perspective with only a few clicks, one should be able to select anyone who works on my team can do a "follow up call" workflow but only my manager can "approve expenses" workflow. This is role based secuirty and is not present in SharePoint 2010.

And so SharePoint 2010 will lack the deep security model which is required to leverage the full power it offers to users.  The Achilles' Heel of developing a solution will be the need to create your own role based security model to supplement this weakness in SharePoint 2010. There maybe 3rd party products out there that help with this short coming.

Folks on the SharePoint team, please talk to the CRM team about their role based security. Although it is not the whole solution, it would be great to leverage a unified role based security model.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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A few years ago Microsoft started talking about 'Model Based Programming' which would bring software development skills to the masses by making it easier to conceptualize program flows, decision paths and layout key functional areas while intuitively reflecting business processes. Visio 2010 is shining light on this important avant-garde vision. And it is doing it in a manner that seems so intuitive to regular folks that it is hard not to see the value.

Software developers and network admins were not the only users of Visio and as the Visio team looked at the other Personas, one can't help but deduce that the Visio team was among the first to see the power Model based design. In fact, one should have been able to predict that Visio would be the place where model based programming would first surface. I confess I didn't not see it. And so emerges another Microsoft product with ground breaking and important new features.

Still, I wonder if Microsoft understood Visio is the natural tool to put Model based programming in the hands of the masses. Looking around the help files, we can see that Visio can be used to create, import or export a Microsoft SharePoint Workflow,  which is the engine which puts Model based programming into effect.  Is it possible the team put these technologies together without understanding that they are the basis of Model Based programming? I believe, they understood perfectly well.

In fact if you look at the Visio Team blog, they talk about The Visio Graphics Service for SharePoint 2010. I recommend you spend some time on the blog since the Visio team is doing an exceptional job of laying out how this product is putting together a triple play of technologies that is sure to be a winner for business value.

A sample SharePoint / Visio mashup shows a Supply Chain Dashboard with real time data linked to the components of the supply chain.

So, the Visio team has shown how decisions are better informed by the data being represented graphically through SharePoint 2010 using the Visio Graphics Service, but I have yet to see how they have  built in the functionality to empower people to act on that data. This of course would be the ability to launch a workflow through a right click on the diagram which would leverage an underlying security model to empower certain actions based on roles. Too much to ask? Maybe so. Still, for those who know Dynamics CRM offers this type of functionality, seeing information is only half the battle but empowering action is where the battle is won.

As we look toward how the technology will impact business, I believe the impact will be impressive. The tools exist to give businesses tremendous value and once again Microsoft Partners will be essential in helping companies leverage the technology to maximum effect. I look forward to spending more time working with the new version of Visio 2010, and team thanks for a job well done.

 Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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To get the Office 2010 Beta: http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx

Microsoft officially released the Office 2010 beta at WPC in July. This exclusive to partners and other influencer release ended yesterday as Microsoft made the beta of MSO-2010 available to the world.

Early reports are Office 2010 removed some of the feature not liked in Office 2007 while keeping and adding the features people loved. From my own experience I am prepared to move from 2003 which had remained my primary Office application platform although I have been using Visio and Project 2007.

Top Ten Reasons published by Microsoft:

 Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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First thing to know about SharePoint 2010 is it is 64 bit only.

Huh, let's talk about 64bit a little. Exchange came out in 64 bit in the current version 2008 and I think Microsoft is going mainstream in support for 64 bit applications and operating systems. As a side note, a number of my family members are upgrading around Windows 7 and 64 bit is the choice for me in advising them. We are seeing more and more mainstream support for 64 bit and Acer to name one manufacturer is putting out mass market Home Premium boxes preloaded with 64 bit in Windows 7. I have run 64 bit workstation OS for three years as have everyone in our entire office. We knew then that we were ahead of the curve but now it feels like situation normal. This is different from the mixed feeling we saw about 64 bit computing in less than a year ago for average users. Hooray 64 bit is here! Over the next year I believe we are going to see the other side of the hockey stick with an upswing in the number of 64 bit OSs that are shipping both for consumers and administrators.  Server hardware has supported 64 bit for 3 years and by the time SharePoint 2010 ships 64 bit servers will be four years old. .Windows 7 may be the last OS to support 32bit.

Upgrade requirements

Source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617150(office.14).aspx#section1

So Office 2010 is around the corner and developers are upgrading their environments to support solutions they have built for previous versions of Office. The situation is your are supporting an new office version with a new version of Visual Studio and a new .Net Framework. So you want to know, what is this process going to be like for me.

I found this pre-release information to help people in the same situation as we are:
Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4bez6837(VS.100).aspx

Visual Studio 2010

How to: Upgrade Office Solutions

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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This is an early report of a fix to a problem which showed up in EBS at a client site.

First, I would like to say if you are facing this problem the fix will not be instantaneous because of a number of technologies at play.

The Problem

1) When a user goes to save a new SharePoint item such as an announcement, the page returns an error. As a result of the error, the item is not created. The page reports a Postback Error.

2) When a user uploads a document to SharePoint there is no problem. When the user then opens the document for editing  it is only available for read only. Changes to the document cannot be saved.

The Fix

 From the TMG console:

1. Select Firewall Policy
2. Right Click 'Allow Authenticated Users to access SharePoint services' and select Properties
3. The 'Allow Authenticated Users to access SharePoint services' Properties dialog will appear. Select the Paths tab
4. Click the Add Button
5. Using the default settings add a path for  /webresource.axd*
6. 
7. Click Apply and then OK to exit.
8. I suggest you run IISreset on the Management server where SharePoint is located by default..
9. Additionally you should wait fifteen minutes for TMG to update and start applying the path.

Since this is an early fix if I have updates over time I will report back. If you have different experience please touch base and leave a comment.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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So you have discovered that the EBS' Remote Web Workplace is the best thing since Captain Kirk. Users are using it everywhere. A frequent user request is to lengthen the timeout period before the application automatically logs out if the user is not active. As an administrator you have to realize that the reason this is in place is to protect the company and the indivudal employee. When you make this change you make it for everyone and therefore as an organization this decision has to come from the people who would fire you if information is lost or compromised.

Scenario:

An employee, Sharon is working from a remote location, in this case a school. Sharon uses a school computer to connect to RWW and to connect email, Sharepoint and some document folders. The power of RWW is that this is possible and that Sharon can do it when she needs it. Sharon is just about done the work she needs when a teacher asks for her help. Sharon thinks to herself, I have 30 minutes to get back to the computer to finish this off or it will log out. Sharon should log out before leaving her station.

She walks away to help the teacher leaving RWW logged in. Sharon is gone for 45 minutes and while she was gone Josh a good kid who is courious about computers walks by the computer and naturally glances at the screen. If Josh walks by at 27 minutes, he sees what ever Sharon was working on and has full access to email, document folders and all the power of RWW. Even good kids can be courious in this scenario. If Josh walks by at 33 minutes, RWW logged itself out at 30 minutes and the system is protected by the password. As it so happens Josh does walk by at 33 minutes and the system is logged out. Now think of the possibilities when you increase the timeout period for OWA and RWW.

How to:

To change the server time-out setting for Remote Web Workplace in EBS

1. On the EBS Messaging Server server, click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

2. At the User Account Control prompt, click Continue.

3. In the left pane, double-click the name of the server to expand the tree.

4. Double-click Sites to expand it, and then double-click Default Web Site to expand it.

5. In Default Web Site Home, double-click Session State.

6. In Cookie Settings, change the Time-out (in minutes) to the desired amount of time.

7. 

8. Click Apply to save the changes.

To change the client time-out setting for Remote Web Workplace in EBS

1. From the Messaging Server

2. Open Registry Editor.

3. Open the following registry key:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WSSG\RemoteUserPortal\PublicTimeOut

4. In the Value data box, type the number of minutes that you want to elapse before the Remote Web Workplace session times out. (Must be less than 1440)

Note: You can create a .reg file with the following content to make the registry entry with the right spelling and location and a 60 minute timeout:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WSSG\RemoteUserPortal]
"PublicTimeOut"=dword:0000003c

Please use the preceding tips with care and diligence.

For more infromation please read this excellent SBS post by Chris Puckett,
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2009/06/15/how-to-configure-the-rww-timeout.aspx

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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There is a never ending source of learning in EBS and I wanted to document a solution we rendered for Michael Hensley around Single Sign On with TMG and EBS to deliver SharePoint without multiple prompts. Before Available Technology resolved the issues, every time a SharePoint page was loaded from the outside world through the Remote Web Workplace, the user was prompted several times for various reasons.

The first was because of unsecured content being presented through the https page. This caused a warning to fire for each bit of content that was coming from an http source.

The second was related to portal issues with TMG rules and the need to enable SSO in the SharePoint rule.

Issue 1: Security warnings for http content through https page.

The first issue was related a couple of logos which had been added to the internal SharePoint site, known as Companyweb, which referenced the public website for the organization. Although the native SharePoint tools had been used to reference these image resources, the images remained as reference to the public website resources. Every time the page was loaded internally or externally, the page would go out ot the Internet and retrieve the logo. Because the SharePoint site is used internally through *http*://companyweb/SharePoint  the issue was noticed. It was only in the context of remote secure access which uses *https*:// that the extra warning prompts were raised.

The solution was to add the logos to the Company Logos section of Companyweb and then reference those links as the image sources. In straight SharePoint talk, add the logos to the sharepoint site. The first benefit was that the Security warnings stopped which reduced the prompts by two per page load. The secondary benefit was a reduction in bandwidth consumption from their internal use of SharePoint which was referencing public websites. With 150 users using SharePoint extensively all day that is a big factor with every page load adding 10-50KB to their Internet usage. If the majority of users are external however, the solution might be to use a https:// reference to the external site.

Issue 2: Configuring the TMG SharePoint rule for SSO

From the TMG interface on the security server we selected the SharePoint Rule.

1. From the properties we selected the Listener Tab
2. and the External Listener from the Dropdown
3. Then we selected the Properties button.

From the External Web Listener Properties we selected:

1. The SSO tab
2. Enable Single Sign On Check Box was checked
3. Clicked the add button
4. added the FQDN for the domain including the prefix period ( . )

As a result non-domain joined computers can authenticate through the TMG interface when connecting to the SharePoint internal website and are only prompted for credentials once.

The net result was that we reduced all prompting to a single log on to TMG.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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There are a few areas which catch the us off guard when we plan to create a test environment. If you are going to repurpose hardware make sure you review this Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 information to make sure you have the required hardware and software.

Microsoft Official System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: A list of supported guest operating systems can be found here.

Processor: x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled.
Hardware Data Execution Prevention (DEP), specifically Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit), must be available and enabled.

Minimum CPU speed: 1.4 GHz; Recommended: 2 GHz or faster.

RAM: Minimum: 1 GB RAM; Recommended: 2 GB RAM or greater (additional RAM is required for each running guest operating system); Maximum 1 TB.

Available disk space: Minimum: 8 GB; Recommended: 20 GB or greater (additional disk space needed for each guest operating system).

DVD ROM drive

Display: Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution monitor.

Other: Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device.
Note: The actual system requirements will vary based on your system configuration and hosted guest operating systems.

Available Technology Minimum recommended configuration (For testing purposes only)

Processor: x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled.
Hardware Data Execution Prevention (DEP), specifically Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit), must be available and enabled.

Minimum CPU speed: Quad Core

RAM: Minimum: Minimum 16 GB, Maximum 1 TB.

Disk: At least four independant dirves or drive arrays. SATAII or SAS as available. RAID not required.

DVD ROM drive

Display: 1600x1200.

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology

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