Bill Baer /bɛːr/

Search has become the primary means in the Enterprise for surfacing and locating information, as a result, it has become a mission critical component of SharePoint deployments. The rise in adoption of SharePoint 2010 in organizations has led to more customers seeking to leverage the benefits of the new search architectures, whether Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010 or FAST Search Server 2010, as part of their topologies. In either scenario…read more on the SharePoint Team Blog.

One of the most challenging aspects of maintaining a SharePoint deployment is understanding why certain events have transpired in the environment, often IT Professionals and Developers only have access to when an event occurred and are tasked with parsing Performance Counters, Event and Diagnostic logs, or executing Transact-SQL statements against the Usage database to put the what and why to the when. These tasks are typically accomplished through an array of tools such as Excel, Log Parser, SQL Server Management Studio…read more on the SharePoint Team Blog.

We’ve recently released the first administration toolkit for SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server 2010. The toolkit includes a new User Profile Replication Engine, a new Security Configuration Manifest, a new Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) Connector, and the Load Testing Kit (LTK). User Profile Replication Engine The User Profile Replication Engine was first introduced as a standalone application in later adminisration toolkits for Office SharePoint Server 2007 to replicate profiles between Shared Services Providers (SSP).

The 4th release of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit is now available for download and includes improvements in the SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (SPDiag), a new Permissions Reporting Tool, a new bulk Quota processing tool, in addition to the Security Configuration Wizard Manifests. The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit is an excellent suite of utilites aimed at the system administrator to assist in both isolating issues, understanding the overall environment they support, and making common administrative tasks more efficient and reliable.

I completely missed this one; the SharePoint Diagnostics Tool was recently released (included in the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0). The SharePoint Diagnostics Tool enables an administrator to simplify troubleshooting by gathering pertinent information about a farm and displaying it in a meaningful way providing a programmatic approach to locating and isolating issues in your environment. Find it and other great tools and utilities under Tools.

The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help administrateer (good catch A Mondale) and manage Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. This toolkit contains two new functions - the ability to perform bulk operations on site collections and a Stsadm operation to update alert emails after a Web application has changed URLs. Download x86 | x64

I was recently asked to deploy the ProClarity Viewer 6.3 for SharePoint Web Part - after downloading the package I realized that it was not offered in a deployable package, but rather a compressed archive of the .dwp, assembly, and resource files. The challenge became offering a user experience similar to the previous ProClarity Viewer version so I decided to package the Web Part into a reusable solution. For those interested or looking to create a deployable Web Part package I’ve documented the steps below:

Estimated release timelines for both Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 language packs has been posted the SharePoint Team Blog.

I was browsing for SharePoint add-ons and integration features this evening and came across this one from Dark Blue Duck; Scanning Enabler. The reason I decided to post on this particular add-on is that I could see the immediate value from the capacity to take desktop scanning to SharePoint Products and Technologies, seamlessly and transparently. The product specifications include key features, to include, integration will Doc and PicLibs, enabled at the Web Application level providing the functionality to all Site Collections and workspaces, supports custom metadata capture and workflow, and supports localization.