Bill Baer /bɛːr/

Microsoft Ignite will open the window to our vision, strategy, and future for SharePoint and provide a first look at most recent developments with SharePoint Server 2016. From the business value for organizations looking to modernize their workplace and infrastructure to the technical value it will deliver to IT Professionals and Developers as well as new hybrid investments for those customers looking to enrich their existing investments with cloud innovation. With Microsoft Ignite just around the corner, it’s time to look back and provide a little historical SharePoint information.

We just posted a new Virtual Migration Environment for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Project Server 2003 customers looking to migrate/upgrade to Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Project Server 2007. Overview The Virtual Migration Environment is a set of two virtual disks that provide Office Project Server 2007 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 environments, sample content, and scripts design to assist customers with upgrade and migration from Office Project Server 2003 and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Project Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

December 2009 Cumulative Updates are available for download for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. For additional download information and detailed descriptions of the December 2009 Cumulative Update visit the Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx. Additional Resources Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers, and Related Products

Conference season is upon us and it’s gearing up to be a great way to close out the year - join me at the 2009 Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center October 19th through October 22nd, 2009 or for those locally and can’t make the conference join me at the 2009 Pass Community Summit with Burzin Patel November 2nd through November 5th, 2009 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle.

I recently was asked about the possibility of implementing Windows Rights Management Services with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a resource forest, or otherwise, the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment was in a forest other than that where the users reside (login forest). In this particular scenario, a one-way non-transitive trust was implemented, which provided an isolation boundary between the resource and login forest. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is generally supportive of the resource forest concept (see posts tagged Cross-Forest Hosting) however, with the Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) cluster in a forest other than that of the resource forest, problems will surface in that SharePoint will need to obtain a RMS user certificate / RAC (from the /_wmcs/certification pipeline) that is trusted by the RMS Licensing pipeline(s) configured in SharePoint 3.

[To avoid common pitfalls and keep your Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment available and performing well, follow these best practices based on real-world experience from Microsoft Consulting Services and the product team.] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb736746.aspx

The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help administer and manage Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=263cd480-f6eb-4fa3-9f2e-2d47618505f2&DisplayLang=en

The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Infrastructure Update has been officially released. The update includes both improvements in core functional scenarios such as Office SharePoint Server Search with the introduction of S2 in addition to management enhancements resolving core customer issues such as scalability and performance improvements to support search incremental crawl (WSS), patch and upgrade of WSS server farms where a large number of host header-based site collections are implemented, support for Kerberos authentication to access SSP Web services, and more…

I was just browsing Mike Fitzmaurice’s blog and I’m glad to see he continues to dissuade direct database access with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. All too often I’ve seen what was conceptually a good idea, result in performance, scalability, and manageability problems long term. While initially an otherwise simple SELECT statement, yes, even read, may be perceived as non-intrusive, problems later down the road may be compounded by what was offered as a “simple means” to getting a particular task accomplished.

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

The SharePoint Products and Technologies Protocol Documentation has been recently published to MSND which includes technical specifications for Microsoft proprietary protocols that are implemented in SharePoint Products and Technologies. Read more…

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I’ve spent the past several days in Portland, Oregon speaking at a SharePoint Products and Technologies governance event and completely neglected to post any information on the now released Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1. For more information visit: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/12/11/announcing-the-release-of-wss-3-0-sp1-and-office-sharepoint-server-2007-sp1.aspx.

Slipstream is a common term used at Microsoft to define the merging of patches or updates into the original installation sources of a program. What are the benefits of slipstreaming…. Creating a slipstream image reduces the operational overhead required to introduce a specific build of software to include Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and/or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 into an environment. For example, if an organization has standardized on a specific set of updates and/or patches that will be applied in a given configuration, these updates and/or patches can be included in the original installation sources and subsequently installed with the source application.

Web applications are the foundation of a SharePoint Products and Technologies server farm and host the root site collection, root and subordinate webs. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 used the term Virtual Server to designate a Web application also known as a Web site in Internet Information Services. A root site [collection] is the term commonly applied to the what is the uppermost site collection within a server farm or otherwise referred to as the top-level site collection or alternatively portal site collection.

Of the many benefits of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0/Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, often overlooked is the native support of mobile devices through embedded mobile site URLs and mobile views. Mobile views permit both viewing and updating Lists and Document Libraries from a mobile device. When considering leveraging mobile views, you should carefully consider the restrictions on length and size of some parts of a list or library. Limitations Rendering and performance are considered in mobile views, therefore it is important to understand the limitations imposed by these considerations when implementing Lists and/or Document Libraries, for instance many common fields should have a character limitation of no greater than 20 applied, these include List and Document Library titles and names, and List and column name titles.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has received U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2 certification. The 5015.2 standard on which the Department of Defense certification is based serves as the benchmark for government and corporate organizations that manage records and documents and is endorsed by the National Archives and Records Administration. Read the entire article here.

One of the most common questions I receive is how to co-host traditional “team” and personal Site Collections (My Sites) within an individual Web Application in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. While possible, there are several important steps that you should be aware of. The public profile page is a document specific to the SPSMSITEHOST site template (My Site Host); unless a My Site Host is defined in the server farm, public profile pages will not be available to users.

When preparing to deploy an Internet accessible Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 web farm security is the forefront of discussion and planning. To provide a brief insight into securing SharePoint Products and Technologies, I’ve decided to finally consolidate, compile and make available some of my notes. Hopefully this will be of benefit in helping others understand the method by which SharePoint Products and Technologies communicate and a high-level security overview. Internet Information Services (IIS) is the obvious first candidate for preparation and discussion –we’ve concluded IIS will be configured to use both basic and Integrated Windows authentication methods, basic allows credentials to be transmitted unencrypted and secured by SSL.

I received an inquiry this week asking how to migrate an existing Site Collection as a subsite of a new parent Site Collection without having the availability of SMIGRATE in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007/Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The answer are new STSADM parameters, import and export, which has been made available in STSADM. The import/export feature is based on the new Content Migration APIs; Recycle Bin state and alerts are not included in STSADM -o export - the requirement that the new Site Collection or subsite exists, remains as with previous versions of STSADM when using the restore parameters.

Historically alternate access settings provided a mechanism to identify the different ways in which users access portal sites; in MSIT we’ve taken that practice one step further and leverage alternate access mappings (AAM) as a means to identify problem web front-ends in a NLB cluster. As an example an NLB (network load balancing) cluster may be bound to a VIP (virtual IP address) with a mapping of foo, where the hosts are foo1 and foo2, by leveraging alternate access mappings we can DIP test foo1 and foo2 both independently and through the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) Web Sites and Services Management Pack.