SharePoint Team Blog

PDF Files in SharePoint Online

sharepointblog@live.com — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:57:53 GMT

We are pleased to announce that we worked with Adobe to improve access to PDF files. You can now open PDF files directly in Adobe Reader – and the PDF file will remain connected to SharePoint Online. You can also edit and save your changes to SharePoint Online from the desktop. And further, you can now use versioning (check-in and check-out) with PDF files for better management and review. We have improved the experience while maintaining the level of security you expect from Office 365.

To take advantage of this update, do the following steps.

Wait for the update to the SharePoint Online service, which is in progress now.
Upgrade Adobe Reader to the version 10.1.2 client.
Add your SharePoint Online root URL/domain to the Trusted Sites security zone in Internet Explorer¹ (e.g., https://contoso.sharepoint.com).
Check the Keep me signed in box when you log in to a SharePoint Online site.

This SharePoint Online update is currently being rolled out worldwide along with several other new features.

Thank you for your feedback and patience,

The SharePoint Online Team

¹To add your root site to the Trusted Sites security zone, open Internet Explorer, browse to your root SharePoint online site, click Tools, and then click Internet options. Click the Security tab, click Trusted sites, click Sites, and then click Add.

SharePoint Online: Service Update

sharepointblog@live.com — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:34:22 GMT

The second update to SharePoint Online (SPO) since the launch of Office 365 (O365) is beginning to roll out worldwide. We want to share information about the new features that will be available as part of this service update.

Enterprise Readiness

SharePoint Online was initially scoped to scale to customers with fewer than 20,000 Active Directory entries (specifically user objects). This service update allows customers with up to 500,000 user objects to provision SharePoint Online. As a result, customers of any size can easily start using SharePoint Online. And in the future, you can expect even larger scale limits.

To learn more about how SharePoint Online meets the requirements of enterprises, please visit the SharePoint Online planning guide of Office 365 for enterprises. There is also a SharePoint Online planning guide of Office 365 for small businesses.

Recycle Bin Enhancements

Business is full of "oops" moments, and sometimes these moments can really slow down productivity. SharePoint Online now offers numerous levels of recovery no matter what gets deleted. Specifically, enterprise customers can now restore full site collections, in addition to sites, documents, lists, and list items.

This new feature is found in the SharePoint Online Administration Center. After the update is in place, you will see a new "Recycle Bin" button, which gives you the power to self-restore data—including entire site collections—with just a few clicks in just minutes.

To learn more about how to restore full SharePoint Online site collections, visit the SharePoint Online Support Resource Center article on this topic.

External Sharing Gets a Broader Reach

The days when external invitees had to use a specific domain-based email address are gone. Instead, external users can now use their business email address to authenticate when invited into an Office 365 customer's site collection. How does it work? It’s simple. External users just associate their business email address (ex: user@contoso.com) with the Windows LiveID system. Then, Office 365 customers invite their partners and clients to their external sharing sites by using their primary email account. As long as this email has been associated to the LiveID system, the external user can sign in with their primary user name and associated password.

To associate a business email user name to the Live ID system, go to https://idsignup.live.com, select "Use existing email address:" and follow the instructions.

You can learn more about how to use external sharing within Office 365 for small businesses or within Office 365 for enterprises.

PDFs

Office 365 users wanted a better, more connected and governed experience when it came to working with PDF files within SharePoint Online document libraries. Thanks to your direct comments and active voices in the Community forums, PDF files will now open directly into Adobe Reader without requiring that it be downloaded first. The PDF remains connected and stored in your SharePoint Online document library as you view and edit the file. You can even check it out like other Office documents.

After the SharePoint Online environment has been updated, users must have the latest Adobe Reader version (10.1.2) installed: http://get.adobe.com/reader/

The SharePoint Online service description will also reflect all of the new features and changes.

Our goal is continuous innovation to enable collaboration from anywhere, with anyone, on any device. We hope you enjoy these new features and if you’re not yet using SharePoint Online, try it now risk free for 30 days!

Thanks,
The SharePoint Team

What’s New in SharePoint Online: November 2011 Update

sharepointblog@live.com — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:13:00 GMT

Our first update to SharePoint Online (SPO) since the launch of Office 365 (O365) became generally available on June 28, 2011 is now complete worldwide. We thought it would be a good time to share information about the new features and fixes available as part of this service update. On a broad level, this update enables greater reach to both people and external data, while at the same time increasing the number of supported devices and Web browsers. We also added some self-management recovery capabilities. But there’s a lot more, too.

Business Connectivity Services

At SharePoint Conference 2011 (Oct. 3-6) in Anaheim, CA, Jeff Teper (Corporate Vice President of SharePoint engineering) announced, “Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is coming to SharePoint Online by the end of this calendar year.” Available now to all Office 365 midsize and enterprise customers worldwide, BCS in SPO enables them to connect to external data sources via Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web Services endpoints in both read and write modes.

Now, you can design solutions that extend collaboration capabilities that include external business data, such as line-of-business (LoB) applications that sit behind customer firewalls, or are being transitioned to the cloud (think SQL Azure). Best yet, you can download SharePoint Designer 2010 for free to help make the connections.

And for BCS experts, SPO now also supports external lists and data columns, the Business Data Catalogue (BDC) service for WCF connectors, and the Secure Store Service partitioned at the tenant level within customers’ SharePoint Online Administration Center. What is not yet available: external data search, rich client integration, profile pages and direct connectivity to SQL Azure without a WCF endpoint.

Want more information? Check out Steve Fox’s (Azure CoE) informative blog post. In addition, we’ve recently published new SPO BCS related documentation on MSDN:

·   Introduction to Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Online

·   What's New for BCS in SharePoint Online

·   SharePoint Online Developer Resource Center

External Sharing

BCS is all about breaking down the boundaries to external data. Now let’s turn to breaking down the barriers when you work with people. This service update adds support for working with people who are not part of your company, such as vendors, trusted business partners, and customers. With these external sharing capabilities, a company can invite external users to view, share, and collaborate on their SharePoint Online sites. This feature is turned off by default, but a SharePoint Online Administrator can enable external sharing for the whole company. Then, individual site collection owner administrators can decide if they wish to share externally.

Please note: External users may sign in to the service using a Microsoft Online Services ID and/or a Windows Live ID. Live IDs may include @Live.com, @Hotmail.com and @MSN.com user names, plus regional derivations.

For more information:

· Learn more about how to use external sharing within Office 365 for small businesses or within Office 365 for enterprises

With the release of Windows Phone 7.5 codenamed “Mango,” Office 365 users can now access list items and work on documents stored in SharePoint Online lists and document libraries—in addition to email, calendar and contacts. This new support applies to all Office 365 plans, including those for small businesses and professionals (http://-based) and enterprises (https://-based).

For more information:

· Read the original Windows Phone TechNet blog post when Office 365 support was announced at TechEd 2011.

· Watch this video to see how easy it is to connect Windows Phone 7.5 to Office 365 services.

Better connections

In addition to earlier versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, SharePoint Online now officially supports Internet Explorer 9 and Chrome. No matter which browser you prefer, you’ll get a better experience. Just launch your favorite browser. Then, hit your favorite SharePoint Online team site or intranet company site, work with Office Web Apps, and more.

Connections to other services are also better. For instance, Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers can now take advantage of the rich SharePoint Online document management functionality directly within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application. As a result, users can create SharePoint Online Document Libraries dynamically within CRM—when and where they are needed. Companies can also add Document Management capabilities to entities such as Accounts, Opportunities, Cases or even custom entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

For more information:

· Get high-level details in the blog post here,

· Get more technical details in the blog post here.

Recycle Bin

Lastly, SharePoint Online makes it easier to recover from accidental deletions. This service update gives site collection administrators more control by significantly improving all site collection recycle bins. In other words, you can now restore an entire sub site (or document, list, library, etc.) within a few clicks, and within a few minutes.

Fixes

This update to SharePoint Online also includes numerous fixes. Many of these fixes were driven by customer feedback and Office 365 Support requests. We’re listening and appreciate your feedback. Some of the key fixes include:

Companies using SharePoint Online for small businesses will no longer be able to delete their root site—a great benefit considering that this offering is based around a single site collection.
SharePoint Online-based Public Websites will no longer prompt unauthenticated users for credentials on their mobile devices.
When Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed “Mango” was released, customers that applied a vanity URL to their Office 365 tenancy could not connect to their SharePoint Online site via the “Locations” section of the Office Hub. Now they can.
The “-my” root site collection—the parent site collection to all of a tenant’s My Sites—has returned to the SharePoint Online Administration Center within the list of site collections. It is again possible to allocate server resources, assign owners, and now this site collection cannot be deleted.

The SharePoint Online service description has been updated to reflect all the new features and changes.

The boundaries continue to break down; ever closer to collaboration from anywhere, with anyone, on any device. We hope all who are already enjoying the service will like all the new capabilities of SharePoint Online. And if you’re not yet using the service, try it today risk free for 30 days! To the Cloud!

Thanks,
The SharePoint Team

Business-critical processes with SharePoint and SQL

sharepointblog@live.com — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:45:08 GMT

SharePoint 2010 provides the ability to connect to backend business systems, surface business data in SharePoint and make it accessible by, and useful to, employees across the organization. Almost every company of significant size uses ERP and CRM solutions to run core business processes. Over time, companies have developed detailed practices around using such systems to support vertical disciplines within the organization (e.g. product planning, financial performance management, supply-chain management, etc.), yet challenges remain with regard to driving visibility and collaboration, based on business data, across different disciplines and teams. These challenges stem from the fact that only a fraction of employees are licensed and trained to use those backend systems, and from the high cost and complexity of integrating such systems across different functions and teams.

With SharePoint and SQL, once the relevant business data is surfaced in an enterprise-wide collaboration platform, several benefits can be gained; first and foremost, access to the data that underlines core business processes can now be viewed, analyzed and acted on by any employee in the organization (based on business priorities and permissions granted). With the relevant business data readily available, better decision making, quicker and more effective exception handling, and faster time-to-market can all be achieved. In addition, users are able to interact with the business data through a user interface they are already familiar with instead of having to switch between multiple user interfaces which are oftentimes not as user friendly.

Interestingly enough, training-related cost reductions do not count for the bulk of the TCO reductions that could be achieved by implementing backend data connectivity with SharePoint. The more significant source of such efficiencies is the impact related to reducing business risk; as more functions in the organization are exposed to the business data that is related to their daily responsibilities, and as workflows are implemented to support cross-team exception handling and problem solving, more and more of the risk associated with the underlying business processes can be mitigated, leading to more efficient processes and to reduced operational costs.

To learn more about the benefits related to enable business-critical solutions with SharePoint and SQL, click here.

SharePoint Conference 2011 – A Week In Review

sharepointblog@live.com — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 09:13:52 GMT

It’s hard to believe that SharePoint Conference 2011 just wrapped up. Most of the attendees are on planes back to all corners of the world, laden down with knowledge and swag and plans to meet again in Las Vegas next year.

We kicked off Monday with a great keynote by Jared Spataro, Jeff Teper and Kurt Del Bene, including announcements about integration with Office 365, the Certified Architects Program for SharePoint and an interactive donation for NetHope. Of course one of the highlights was the on-stage live demonstration of the failover of a 14-Terabyte SharePoint database – in less than 40 seconds.

We then kicked off the conference proper with more sessions than are possible to list in a single blog post. The SharePoint Express sessions in Microsoft’s booth proved extremely popular, with most of them turning into standing-room-only events. Videos from most sessions have already been posted on MySPC for attendees to download at their leisure to review.

Tuesday evening was another huge event – the Disneyland party, where we got to let our proverbial hair down (and Mickey Mouse ears out) for a few hours. We heard through the grapevine that one attendee rode Star Tours no less than 8 times that night. If you heard of anyone riding it more, let us know. We want to know if there are bigger geeks out there than we are.

Wednesday night we had our Ask the Experts session followed by the annual SharePint event at ESPN Sportszone. Both were well-attended, and the SharePint crowd agreed to reconvene on Thursday night to continue the party.

Another big star at SharePoint conference was the SharePoint monkey (whom some of the attendees suggested we call Franklin after the rumored return of a certain television comedy show). Twice a day attendees “found the monkey” in exchange for prizes, and on Wednesday afternoon we had the world’s largest (and to our knowledge only) monkey fling, where around 70 people shot monkey slingshots into the air, creating a heck of a spectacle.

SharePoint Conference 2012 will be the next time we all get to meet, and it’ll be in Vegas next November! You can imagine that there will be plenty of great things to see and do, and of course, a whole new parcel of places to find the monkey. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

NetHope uses SharePoint to help 33 Leading Humanitarian Organizations share best practices.

sharepointblog@live.com — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:30:17 GMT

When natural disasters occur, the ability to coordinate relief efficiently and effectively is critical. Responders are faced with a challenging environment that includes increasing complexity of inter-agency coordination, damaged and limited communications infrastructure, outdated or paper-based mapping/topography information, and difficulty in disseminating information quickly (both between the various response participants and the public). These challenges have been compounded by the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters as well as deepening global inter-dependencies occurring in the last decade.

One organization that is helping these countries tackle the digital divide is NetHope. Formed 10 years ago, NetHope is a nonprofit collaboration of IT leaders from 33 leading international NGOs that serve tens of millions of people each year in over 180 countries and that manage more than $30 billion (U.S.) in aid. NetHope members currently use SharePoint to share information, technology resources and best practices across their organizations in order to better support healthcare, education, agriculture, natural resource management, emergency response and microfinance programs. By fostering partnerships between NGOs as well as socially responsible corporations and foundations, NetHope leverages the power of collaboration and technology to scale humanitarian relief, emergency response and conservation programs to reach more people in need.

While NetHope has been using SharePoint and Microsoft technologies for more than five years, the non-profit consortium is migrating to Office 365 to take advantage of the advancements in collaboration, information sharing, and productivity offered by SharePoint Online and Lync Online.

Pooling knowledge and other resources amongst NGOs increases their ability to scale programs and reach more people in need. These organizations need to work around the clock, often providing as many as 20-25 programs simultaneously in different parts of the world. From providing health programs in sub-Saharan Africa to dealing with flooding in Pakistan to helping to resolve conflict in the Middle East, NetHope is looking to SharePoint Online and Lync Online to better connect its members, share resources and solutions, and improve responses to natural disasters, famine, and war.

NetHope and Microsoft together believe that technology can accelerate change and help to address some of society’s most pressing problems. Watch this video to see how NetHope, World Vision and SharePoint are working together:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/Videos.aspx?VideoID=32

Welcome to Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011!

sharepointblog@live.com — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:29:14 GMT

As the sold-out SharePoint Conference begins in Anaheim, California today, businesses continue to adopt SharePoint 2010 at an unprecedented pace. Microsoft will reflect on ten years of redefining collaboration and look ahead to where the cloud and a growing SharePoint ecosystem will take the product next. Here are a few things we’ll be talking about this week.

SharePoint is a thriving business, and one of the biggest products at Microsoft - its success speaks for itself:

In 2008, SharePoint surpassed $1 billion in revenues - the fastest product at Microsoft to reach this milestone, and it continues to grow at double-digit speed.
More than 125 million people in 66,000 organizations have SharePoint.
Over 62 million SharePoint 2010 licenses have been sold.
More businesses chose SharePoint than all other vendors combined as their primary collaboration tool to share information inside and outside their organization.

SharePoint has a vibrant ecosystem, and today there are endless options for the SharePoint platform.

More than 700,000 SharePoint developers.
Currently 1,000 ISV solutions for SharePoint 2010 and another 1,000 in development.
This year alone, Microsoft trained more than 93,000 partners on the SharePoint platform.

New SharePoint certification program designed to take customers’ SharePoint deployments to the next level. Today, Microsoft announced there’s an addition to the suite of Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) certifications: MCA SharePoint. Through a rigorous review board and exam process, the MCA program helps the highest-achieving IT architecture professionals distinguish their expertise with Microsoft server technologies, including SharePoint solutions for enterprise customers. Learn more about the MCA Program here.

SharePoint and Office 365, deliver enhanced collaboration and productivity tools in the cloud. Office 365 is not just about creating documents. Whether you’re a mom-and-pop shop or the largest global corporation, it’s what you can do with your information that matters. Office 365 provides tools to create, share and collaborate using the Office productivity suite, email and calendar, shared documents, team workspaces, IM, online meetings and video chat. Businesses using SharePoint Online and Office 365 are already reporting impressive results.

Business Connectivity Services come to SharePoint Online. Microsoft plans to expand the business critical services delivered by Office 365 and Azure and make moving to the cloud even easier for customers. By the end of the year, the first round of service updates to SharePoint Online since Office 365 launched will be complete and will enable customers to use Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to connect to data sources via Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web Services endpoints. BCS lets customers use and search data from other systems as if it lives in SharePoint—in both read and write modes.

For more information about the SharePoint Conference and a replay of today’s keynote, please visit the SharePoint Conference virtual press room at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office/servers/ And enjoy the conference!

Top 5 SharePoint Conference Sessions

sharepointblog@live.com — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:00:33 GMT

Are you having trouble deciding which sessions to attend while you are at the SharePoint Conference next week? With more than 300 sessions we thought we would try to help shed some light on your decision making. The lists below show what your fellow conference goers are most interested in attending based on calendar additions.

Feel free to use this as a guide of what to attend -- or for those of you looking to choose your own track, what not to attend. For a complete list of sessions, click here

With only days to go we hope you are as excited for SharePoint Conference 2011 as we are. Stay tuned in the coming days for more SPC 11 information right here on the SharePoint Team Blog.

Monday, October 3rd

SPC285	Understanding SharePoint Administration Part 1
SPC221	Work Smarter, not Harder! Top Ten Tips for Improving Productivity with SharePoint
SPC350	Got iPads, Android tablets, smart phones and Windows devices? Managing Office 2010 endpoints in an Interoperable and multi-device World
SPC216	Creating Beautiful and Engaging Web Sites with SharePoint 2010
SPC202	Attractive Business Intelligence: Dashboards, Pivots, Scorecards, KPIs, and Reports Using Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, PowerPivot, and SQL Server 2008 R2

Tuesday, October 4th

SPC310	Best Practices Around SharePoint 2010 User Profiles
SPC338	Developing SharePoint applications with HTML5 and JQuery
SPC307	Automating Business Processes with SharePoint 2010 (Part 1) - Using SharePoint Designer, InfoPath and Workflow
SPC391	SharePoint Workflow Best Practices
SPC215	Creating Awesome Dashboards with SharePoint 2010, Infopath 2010 and SharePoint Designer

Wednesday, October 5th

SPC308	Automating Business Processes with SharePoint 2010 (Part 2) - Using BCS, Word Automation Services (and More Workflow)
SPC296	InfoPath 2010 – Best Practices for Design and Performance
SPC329	Content Query WebPart: A Deep Dive on SharePoint's Swiss Army Knife WebPart
SPC203	Best Practices from the Field: Managing Corporate Metadata and Taxonomies with SharePoint 2010
SPC373	Performance Tuning SharePoint 2010

Thursday, October 6th

SPC3983	Business Intelligence Overall Architecture
SPC394	Taxonomy Based Content Targeting for a SharePoint Internet Site
SPC413	The Inside Scoop: How the SharePoint Dev Team Troubleshoots Performance and Reliability
SPC411	Security Design with Claims Based Authentication
SPC300	A Closer Look at SQL and SharePoint: Tips and tricks from the field

Get Social with SharePoint

sharepointblog@live.com — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:57:49 GMT

After months of planning, prepping, stressing (and a little “monkeying” around) it’s finally here – SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim, CA, USA.

We’re excited and we hope those of you attending this week’s sessions and activities are too. And for those unable to join us this year, don’t worry – our social media team will keep you updated on All Things SPC11.

Whether you will be joining us and the ever-present SharePoint Monkey at the conference or just soaking it all in online, we want to give you a brief overview what will be happening on the social front and how you can participate in the conversation:

Official Social Media Channels - Make sure to check them out and “like” or follow us if you haven’t already:

o Facebook SharePoint Main Page: http://www.facebook.com/MSSharePoint

o Facebook SharePoint Conference Page: http://www.facebook.com/wwspc

o Twitter Channel: http://twitter.com/SharePoint

o Twitter SharePoint Monkey Channel: http://twitter.com/TheSPMonkey

o YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/mssharepoint

o Blog: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/default.aspx

Twitter Hashtags - Be sure to use the #SPC11 hashtag for all tweets, and you can add a related event hashtag as well (we’ll be sure to let you know what they are.) Even if you aren’t attending but want to weigh in on the conversation, keynotes or anything else conference related, use the #SPC11 tag to be heard!

Foursquare Check-In Locations - We have set up several Foursquare check-in venues for #SPC11 and will provided some handy “tips” for you to download when you check-in at each marked location. The “Mayor” of each venue will receive a prize at the conclusion of the conference (hint: It’s a seriously great prize, trust us) J

“Find the Monkey” Contests – These fun on-site giveaways will be scheduled throughout the conference. Attendees will be notified via Twitter (make sure to follow us!) that the monkey is “on the move” -- the first 10 people who find him will receive a prize and pictures will be posted of daily winners on Facebook.

Monkey Fling “Flash Mob” - Everyone and anyone with a monkey “slingshot” toy will meet at a pre-determined location and “fling” their screaming monkeys into the air at once – the event will be captured on video and posted online for all to enjoy. For attendees who don’t have a monkey from the 2009 conference, we will have a “monkey giveaway” one hour prior to the Fling. Stay tuned to the SharePoint social media channels for more details!

“Man on the Street” Interviews - Don’t be shy, all interested conference-goers are welcome to participate in a simple “Q&A” style video and share your thoughts about #SPC11 on Monday, Oct. 3 and Wednesday, Oct. 5. We’ll let you know exactly where and when (or just look for the video cameras, they will be hard to miss.)

If you have any questions or need assistance during the conference, just ping us via Twitter or Facebook and a member of the social media team will be happy to help. And remember to use the #SPC11 hashtag whenever you tweet!

It’s going to be a busy and exciting week – thanks in advance for your participation and support. Let #SPC11 begin!

Guidance to Move to the Cloud on Your Terms

sharepointblog@live.com — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 06:29:48 GMT

Introducing the new whitepaper, “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365.”

hy·brid (n) - something (as a power plant, vehicle, or electronic circuit) that has two different types of components performing essentially the same function.
- Merriam-Webster.com

Are you evaluating how Office 365 fits into your overall communication and collaboration strategy plan, both today and into the future? Specific to SharePoint, are you planning for full cloud adoption within your firewall, or will you begin your move to the cloud with a mixed deployment across SharePoint environments – both on-premises and online within Office 365? To provide insight in this area, we’re excited to announce the new “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365” whitepaper - downloadable here: www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=154e9524-27a1-4c1f-b4ea-efeb0027b1bc

As of June 28^th, 2011, Office 365 introduced the ability to achieve single sign-on (SSO) via Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). Once established, this enables end-users to securely move between on-premises and online boundaries. The “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365” whitepaper provides step-by-step guidance for extending SharePoint and SharePoint Online beyond SSO – covering best practices for planning your cross-domain information architecture, direction for approaching security and compliance requirements, and insights on the ways branding & navigation play an important role in building a consistent end-user experience. The paper equally weighs a variety of business scenarios providing clear guidance about which deployment approach might make the most sense in your organization.

We believe you should move to the cloud on your terms and we encourage you to use the hybrid guidance and technical capabilities in this whitepaper to chart your cloud roadmap. The SharePoint team continues to plan and design for future hybrid scenarios and we are committed to supporting you every step of the way. We believe a thoughtful hybrid deployment plan will bridge gaps between existing investments, ease migration to the cloud and foster rapid, cloud-first innovation for your organization.

Enjoy the read,
The SharePoint Team

Related resources:

o   Prepare for single sign-on (SSO) – Office 365

o   The main Deploying Office 365 page

o   The Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises

o   SharePoint Online Planning Guide for Office 365 for enterprises

o   Exchange Online hybrid deployment and migration with Office 365

Microsoft SharePoint Director, Jared Spataro, to Host Live Chat on Facebook!

sharepointblog@live.com — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:15:58 GMT

Yes, our blog is typically a place for us to post technical tips and news, but in this case, we wanted to remind you about an exciting upcoming live chat that will be hosted by our Microsoft SharePoint Director, Jared Spataro!

And though this won’t be a technical discussion, we encourage you to bring all your questions related to the SharePoint business. Mark your calendars for this hour-long event happening Wednesday, September 14th from 12:30pm – 1:30p.m. PDT, GMT -7. And if you haven’t already, you should “like” Microsoft SharePoint on Facebook and RSVP for Jared Spataro’s live chat here.

Jared is looking forward to your questions -- hopes to chat with you then!

-Microsoft SharePoint Team

Jared Spataro on the Growing SharePoint Business: Exciting Times for Customers and Partners

sharepointblog@live.com — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:11:05 GMT

Hi, everyone! I’ve recently taken over as the lead on the SharePoint business and, with summer behind us, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I’ve met many of you over the last five years in my role on the SharePoint search and core product management teams. Your passion for SharePoint is one of the reasons I’m so excited about my new job—so I look forward to meeting many more of you over the coming (busy!) months. I also want thank the previous SharePoint lead, Eric Swift, for his leadership. Eric recently accepted a role leading world-wide productivity sales for Microsoft, so he will still be telling the SharePoint story along with the rest of our productivity offerings: Exchange, Lync, Office, and Office 365. Please join me in wishing Eric all the best in his new position!

It’s an exciting time for SharePoint and our customers. We continue to see double-digital growth for the business, and it’s rewarding to see how customers are using SharePoint to truly change the way they share information and work together. We launched Office 365 (including SharePoint Online) in June, and the uptake has been amazing – just two weeks post-launch, more than 50,000 organizations had already signed up to try the service. Already, we’ve seen many of our SharePoint 2010 customers evaluating the online version to reduce costs and complexity. We also had great conversations with our partners at the Worldwide Partner Conference. The energy at this event was infectious. This year, our partners told me they’re growing their SharePoint businesses and a big part of this growth is the new opportunities they see with SharePoint Online. Sky’s the limit! (Sorry, corny cloud joke. Couldn’t resist. J)

The SharePoint community is what makes this one of the most rewarding jobs at Microsoft. I will use this blog to provide updates on occasion and – as always – I want to hear your feedback! I hope to see you all in one month at the SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, California. My team has been working hard to get ready for the event, putting together an incredible conference packed with over 250 sessions, access to experts, and hands-on labs to ensure you’re getting the most from your SharePoint deployment. If you haven’t already registered, go to the SharePoint Conference site to sign up and learn more. In the meantime, please join me for my upcoming Facebook Live Conference on Wednesday, September 14 at 12:30-1:30pm PST (3:30 – 4:30pm EST). Register here!

Talk to you soon!

Jared Spataro

SharePoint Online Learning Materials for IT Professionals

sharepointblog@live.com — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:54:50 GMT

Are you an IT Professional looking to learn more about how SharePoint Online can help supplement your on-premise SharePoint 2010 Products deployment? We’ve recently put together a comprehensive set of learning materials that illustrate the benefits of SharePoint Online and how you can leverage its capabilities to bring additional value to your on-premise deployment.

Video Learning Series

Narrated Presentation

Exploring SharePoint Online for IT Professionals

Whitepaper

Microsoft SharePoint Online: An Overview for Enterprise IT Professionals

June 2011 Cumulative Update Refresh

sharepointblog@live.com — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:57:37 GMT

The June 2011 Cumulative Update has been refreshed with additional updates and fixes that resolve specific issues (see below) that were not included in the June 2011 Cumulative Update published between June 28th, 2011 and July 8th, 2011. We recommend customers install the latest June 2011 Cumulative Update to take advantage of these updates and fixes.

The latest June 2011 Cumulative Update will install on server farms with an existing June 2011 Cumulative Update installed, Service Pack 1 installed, or on environments where previous or no Cumulative Updates are installed. To learn more about updating SharePoint 2010 Products see the Updates for SharePoint 2010 Products Resource Center at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847.

Issues resolved in the June 2011 Update Cumulative Update Refresh:

• Install fails on environments with .NET 4.0 installed
• Some services do not start when the June 2011 Cumulative Update is installed on environments following a least privileged model

June 2011 Cumulative Update Downloads

SharePoint Foundation 2010

SharePoint Server 2010

Data Storage Changes for SharePoint 2010

sharepointblog@live.com — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:02:41 GMT

Today we are announcing two related changes to the way we describe data storage in SharePoint. First, by taking advantage of performance and reliability improvements in SP1 and by defining specific requirements for large data storage in SharePoint, Microsoft is able to increase the supported limits for data storage in SharePoint.

Additionally, we are announcing that the SQL Server FILESTREAM RBS provider is now supported for use with SharePoint so that lower cost iSCSI connected NAS disk can be used. This post outlines the new data storage support limits and guidelines for scaling to those limits and it defines RBS including the new FILESTREAM RBS provider.

The SharePoint Content Database Data Size Limit

With the release of SharePoint 2010 SP1 and some new guidance we are changing the supported data size limits for SharePoint content databases. Prior to SP1 the content database limit was 200 GB for collaboration and 1 TB for document archive. The content database size includes both metadata and BLOBs regardless of where the BLOBs are located and use of RBS does not bypass or increase these limits.

The new guidance for supported content database size details outlines specific guidance for SharePoint administrators as the data size grows. If this new guidance is followed SharePoint can support up to 4 TB of data in all usage scenarios and has no imposed size limit for document archive scenarios. The details are in the TechNet document SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits and the primary changes are:

For a SharePoint content database up to 200 GB there are no special requirements and this limit is included for consistency.
For a SharePoint content database up to 4 TB you need to additionally plan for the following two requirements:

Requires disk sub-system performance of 0.25 IOPS per GB, 2 IOPS per GB is recommended for optimal performance.
Requires the customer to have plans for high availability, disaster recovery, future capacity, and performance testing.
And you need to review additional considerations in the TechNet Boundaries and Limits article.

For a SharePoint content database over 4TB specifically for a Document Archive scenario you are required to additionally plan for the following:

SharePoint sites must be based on Document Center or Records Center site templates and must be an archive scenario where less than 5% of content is actively read from each month and less than 1% of content is actively written to.
Do not use alerts, workflows, link fix-ups, or item level security on any SharePoint objects in the content database. Note: document archive content databases can be the recipient of documents as a result of Content Routing workflow.

Other specific limits changes being made at the same time:

A new limit of 60million items in any one SharePoint content database
The specific 5 TB limit per SQL Server instance has been removed. Instead you should work with a SQL Server professional to plan for database storage.

Please review the full TechNet Article SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits document. We have also published a guide on SharePoint 2010 scalability here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=223599. In the near future we will publish a test report of large scale testing that supports these new size limits.

The Value of Remote Blob Store with SharePoint

RBS (Remote Blob Store) is a set of standardized APIs that allow storage/retrieval of BLOBs (binary large object data) outside of your main SQL database where a dedicated BLOB store is desirable. RBS uses a provider model for plugging in any dedicated BLOB store that implements the RBS APIs. RBS was introduced in SharePoint 2010 and providers can be installed into SharePoint and are used to store BLOBs. Documents in SharePoint document libraries are BLOBs and with RBS they can be stored remote to the SQL Server database. This commonly means the BLOBs are stored on the same machine as SQL Server though they may be on a network connected SQL Server machine.

Above are two diagrams showing common architectures for SharePoint using RBS. Both show the RBS Client Provider which is installed on the SharePoint Web Front End. The left diagram shows the generic RBS implementation where a third party has implemented RBS to access their storage. The right diagram shows the SQL Server FILESTREAM RBS provider which stores blobs in the Windows file system.

By storing BLOBs outside of the SQL Server database there can be certain advantages such as:

· RBS enables SharePoint Foundation 2010 running on SQL Express to store more data than the SQL Express limit of 4 GB. In SQL Express 2008 R2 this limit was increased to 10 GB.

· Some operations can be performance optimized with average blob sizes over 1Mb. This result is from tests with the SQL RBS Provider. Ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc949109(SQL.100).aspx

· There could be storage optimizations with potential disk space and disk cost savings from differential backups or tiered storage.

· We have completed testing on the SQL RBS FILESTREAM provider which can enable iSCSI connected storage for RBS use. Using iSCSI allows for the use of lower cost NAS storage.

· Other potential data optimizations may be developed by ISV’s using the supported public RBS APIs and SharePoint APIs.

There are a few things to be careful with when implementing RBS:

· Backup strategy must be carefully considered. Both document metadata and document BLOBs must be backed up at exactly the same point in time. This means any third party backup solution needs to be capable of restoring both the SQL database used by SharePoint and the BLOBs used by SharePoint as a set where no variance occurs which would have the database reference BLOBs that are not available from the same backup.

· RBS is most likely to be used for document archive scenarios where documents are written and not updated. BLOBs in RBS are never updated once they are written; instead a new BLOB is created for any update. BLOBs are immutable, old BLOBs are garbage collected later. You can read more about RBS garbage collection in this article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff628583.aspx

· RBS providers are required to return the first byte of data in a request in 20ms. This applies for all requests between SharePoint and the RBS provider storage layer.

· The SharePoint database is not intended to be read from or written to except by SharePoint. RBS providers don’t have separate access to the data. This includes direct access to blobs. Ref: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841057/en-us

· Performance may decrease for smaller BLOB sizes when using RBS. This is also shown in the “FILESTREAM Storage in SQL Server 2008” article referenced above.

· There are many RBS providers available and customers should evaluate them for suitability for their implementations.

Additional Documentation from Microsoft on RBS in SharePoint

TechNet Documentation RBS Links:

· Plan for RBS (SharePoint Server 2010) [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff628583.aspx]

· Overview of RBS (SharePoint Server 2010) [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748649.aspx]

· Maintain RBS (SharePoint Server 2010) [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff943565.aspx]

Q & A

·  Q: How come you couldn’t provide these increased data limits when SharePoint 2010 launched?

·   A: We have learned more about how customers implement document archive solutions on SharePoint in the past 12 months. Now by providing specific guidance around data size scaling and focusing supportability around those we can have an increased data size limit for SharePoint and avoid having a data size limit for the document archive scenario.

·   Q: What is the new data size limit for document archives on SharePoint

·    A: There isn’t a data size limit, though the new guidance factors for building supportable large scale systems must be followed. If the additional factors are not properly addressed then the lower supportability limit applies.

·   Q: What if I really need more than 4 TB on a SharePoint farm and it isn’t document archive?

·    A: You should use a scale out topology. This involves having multiple content databases in a single farm and spread sites out amongst them. Each content database can grow to 4 TB by following the guidance.

·  Q: What if I had incorrectly assumed the 200 GB limit could be avoided by moving BLOBs to a Remote Blob Storage provider thereby reducing the amount of SQL Server stored data for SharePoint?

· A: We recommend that you upgrade to SharePoint 2010 SP1 and follow the new guidance for the total size you have. Consult the company you purchased your RBS provider from to ensure they are tested with SharePoint 2010 SP1. If you have a deployment that falls outside of the new and old limits we recommend you to contact Microsoft Support and request a supportability review. This is a paid support review and the support engineer will be able to tell you if your current implementation can be supported or if changes to reduce the data per content database are recommended.

· Q: Since NAS is supported, does the SQL Server RBS FILESTREAM provider allow use of a network share to store BLOBs on?

·  A: No, NAS must be connected using iSCSI and appear as a local drive on the SQL Server machine.

·  Q: Will the content database size limit or the 20mS TTFB limit be enforced in the software?

·  A: No. These are support limits that we recommend customers stay within for best performance and in order to get the best support from Microsoft. They are not hard boundaries that are measured by the SharePoint software.

·  Q: Where was the old 200 GB limit detailed on TechNet?

· A: It was listed on the SharePoint Capacity Planning Boundaries and Limits page on TechNet. Whilst RBS and BLOBs were not previously specifically called out, the limit of 200 GB was clearly stated for a SharePoint Content Database which includes metadata and BLOBs. This article has been updated for the new limits and to list RBS to be more explicit and to avoid any future misinterpretation.

·   Q: Can a large document archive have multiple SharePoint sites collections?

·   A: Yes. However our guidance is that if you have a site collection over 100 GB, it should be the only site collection in a content database.

·   Q: Can a large document archive have multiple document libraries?

·   A: Yes. You can have multiple document libraries with different permissions set.

·  Q: Is SharePoint 2010 SP1 required to take advantage of these new content database limits?

·   A: No. The limits apply to SharePoint 2010 regardless of whether SP1 is applied. However due to improvements in SharePoint 2010 SP1 you are strongly encouraged to install it.

Jared Spataro on Office 365

sharepointblog@live.com — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:41:34 GMT

Hi everyone, I’m hoping you had the chance to catch Steve’s Office 365 announcement in NYC this morning. This is a really important milestone for the SharePoint business, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to talk to you more about Office 365 and SharePoint Online.

Ten years ago, the SharePoint team started with a simple goal—to help you share your work with others. Over the last decade, we’ve experienced tremendous growth. We’ve sold more than 100 million licenses and have grown the product into a recognized leader in collaboration, content management, search, and more. As a part of Office 365, SharePoint Online represents the next chapter of our story and will make it easier than ever before to share your work with the people that help you get things done.

There’s so much packed into Office 365, but there are three things I wanted to highlight:

1. First, you’re going to love the way Office 365 makes you more productive. The combination of Office, Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint gives you everything you need to get your work done more efficiently.

2. Second, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to get started. Until now, world-class collaboration solutions like SharePoint required setting up your own servers and installing the software. Office 365 changes the game by putting a world-class productivity infrastructure just a click away.

3. Finally, there’s an army of people ready to help. We have an amazing partner ecosystem and with the release of Office 365 we’re partnering in new ways with service providers like Bell Canada, Telstra and Vodafone to serve businesses of all sizes.

Get Started Today!

Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, the best way to learn about Office 365 and SharePoint Online is to experience them for yourself. Here are a few ideas to get started:

· Try it out - If you didn’t sign up for the beta back in April, check out the Office 365 site and try it out today.

· Move your My Sites, Team Sites, and Intranet Sites online – Once you’ve seen what it can do, you’ll want more. For immediate cost savings, consider moving your My Sites, Team Sites, and Intranet Sites to SharePoint Online. Use the SharePoint Online planning guide for Office 365 to help you develop a migration strategy.

· Customize and extend – SharePoint Online has a lot to offer right out of the box. But you can also customize and extend it to meet the needs of your growing business. Simplify routine processes using forms and workflows. Manage tasks and schedules with team sites. Track business performance with dashboards and reports. Check out the Developer Guide for more ways to make SharePoint Online work for your business.

Office 365 is an incredible value for customers and a fantastic opportunity for partners. It’s a significant milestone for the SharePoint business, and I hope you’ll take some time to see what it can do for you. The journey to the cloud will be an exciting ride for all of us, and I look forward to sharing more with you in Anaheim at the SharePoint Conference in October.

Thanks,

Jared

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download

sharepointblog@live.com — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:37:42 GMT

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download

Service Pack 1 includes stability, performance, and security enhancements that are a direct result of your feedback.

IMPORTANT NOTE

It is strongly recommended to install the June 2011 Cumulative Update immediately after the installation of Service Pack 1. The June Cumulative Update includes several important security and bug fixes that are not included Service Pack 1.

Installing Service Pack 1

Prior to installing Service Pack 1 you should carefully read the known issues and release notes at

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2532126

Service Pack 1 includes all fixes released through April 2011 so it can be installed directly to RTM builds of SharePoint 2010 Products, or any prior Cumulative Update.

Install the service packs in the following order on every server in the farm.

1. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010

2. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Language Pack (if applicable)

3. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010

4. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010 Language Pack (if applicable)

The SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard or "psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” should be run once on every server in the farm following the final update installed.

The version of content databases will be 14.0.6029.1000 after successfully installation. For more in-depth guidance for the update process, we recommend reviewing the following articles. These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates and identify known issues (and resolutions).

Prepare to deploy a software update for SharePoint Foundation 2010

Install a software update for SharePoint Foundation 2010

Prepare to deploy a software update for SharePoint Server 2010

Install a software update for SharePoint Server 2010

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I install Service Pack 1 on RTM builds of SharePoint 2010 Products?

A: Yes, Service Pack 1 can be installed directly on RTM builds; however, we suggest you install Service Pack 1 then apply the June 2011 Cumulative Update.

Q: Do I need to run psconfig after the install of every package?

A: No, apply all of the available packages then run psconfig - the database will only be updated once, to the newest version.

Q: Do I need to run psconfig on every machine in the farm?

A: Yes. Although database is already updated, the binaries on each server need to be set and permissioned using psconfig.

Q: Will there be a slipstream build including Service Pack 1 available for download?

A: At this time a slipstream build including Service Pack 1 is not available.

Additional Resources

To learn about what’s new in Service Pack 1 read the Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 whitepaper.

Learn more about installing updates for SharePoint 2010 at the Updates for SharePoint 2010 Products Resource Center

For a description of new functionality in Service Pack 1 see the Service Pack for SharePoint 2010 Coming Soon... blog post on the SharePoint Team Blog.

That’s Why I Use SharePoint

sharepointblog@live.com — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:24:03 GMT

Ever spill coffee on your computer only to lose important files, or end a document title with -version 6 only to send -version 5? Then SharePoint can help! This week, we launched iusesharepoint.com a new SharePoint website dedicated to inspiring everyday business users to do more with SharePoint 2010 by demonstrating how it can help make the work day just a little smoother. I Use SharePoint visitors will find humorous webisodes, how-to videos, quick reference cards, tips and tricks and success stories from everyday users.

Changing the way you work can be a challenge, so we have created two different adoption kits to help you and your organization get more out of SharePoint. In option A you will find a white paper on adoption strategies, a lunch themed SharePoint template, webisodes, show me how videos, a tips and tricks sheet and quick reference cards. The highlight of this kit is the lunch and learn site template where users can familiarize themselves with meeting workspaces, blogs, wikis, discussion boards on a topic is near and dear to everyone-Lunch. Option B is perfect if your organization already has an established resource hub to place all of the new content. With both kits you will find, customizable poster, email and table tent templates to drive users to these new resources.

Here's to an easier work week with SharePoint 2010!

SharePoint MVP chat; Wednesday, June 22nd at 9am PDT

sharepointblog@live.com — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:38:02 GMT

Do you have tough technical questions regarding SharePoint for which you're seeking answers? Do you want to tap into the deep knowledge of the talented Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals? The SharePoint MVPs are the same people you see in the technical community as authors, speakers, user group leaders and answerers in the MSDN and TechNet forums.

By popular demand, we have brought these experts together as a collective group to answer your questions live. So please join us and bring on the questions! This chat will cover WSS 3.0, MOSS, SharePoint Foundation 2010 and the SharePoint Server 2010. Topics include setup and administration, design, development and general question.

Please join us on Wednesday June 22nd at 9am PDT to chat with MVPs from around the world. Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/events/aa497438.aspx

Collaborate with Colleagues Using SharePoint My Sites

sharepointblog@live.com — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:46:26 GMT

This blog is post #3 in the Ten Days of Office series to celebrate the one-year anniversary since the release of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Tune in each weekday for new tips and tricks to get the most from your Office and SharePoint e experience.

On Wednesday, as part of the one-year anniversary celebration of Office 2010, my colleague Erik Jensen wrote a great post about one way that you can get the most out of Microsoft PowerPoint through the broadcast feature. Yesterday, Roby Kurian wrote about Outlook Social Connector, including how it can provide information from SharePoint My Sites. Today, I want to share one of the ways you can get the most out of the social capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 by promoting the use of My Sites within an organization.

There’s a lot of buzz today about social networking within an organization, and with good reason! According to Gartner, “It is no longer a question of if an enterprise should invest in social software, but when, from which provider and for what business purposes.” and by 2015, 40% of large enterprises will have a corporate "Facebook," for circulating both business and personal data. (Gartner, Predicts 2011: When Social and Business Processes Collide, November 19, 2010) When done right, enterprise social networking can be a very valuable tool in helping employees find colleagues with the expertise they need to solve a problem or better serve customers. SharePoint has included My Sites since the 2003 version, and today in 2010 they are better than ever at helping people locate one another and the critical business information they share, enabling everyone to do their jobs more efficiently and feel more connected across the enterprise.

Now onto the good stuff! SharePoint My Sites is only as valuable as the information people contribute, which you can do easily by leveraging tools such as tagging, document and photo libraries and colleague connections. So in an already busy work environment, how do you ensure your employees understand the value of My Sites? Below are some tips for driving adoption in your organization.

Identify a select group of early adopters who can spread the word about My Sites among their colleagues. Showcase them through email, a newsletter or an Intranet feature story, citing personal examples of how My Sites has improved their everyday work life. Also, reach out to the avid consumer social network users in your organization to become early adopters and promoters of safe, secure social networking inside the organization.
Use My Sites as a marketing tool inside organizations. For example, smaller teams within a larger organization can boost their profile by making sure their My Sites are completely utilized. Each team member can list expertise, share documents, tag material and update newsfeeds, making them easier to find in an organization. In fact, simply saving your documents to your My Site will make it much easier for people to find out what you know and benefit from your work. It is much easier to find files by looking up people in SharePoint.
Make My Sites your own. Custom skins that live on top of SharePoint allow organizations to brand My Sites, helping drive interest and loyalty. The theme might be for your department, role, or a corporate HR-sponsored initiative—whatever is most relevant for your business.
Incorporate filling out My Sites as part of an employee orientation. This helps quickly drive adoption and ensures employees know how to properly utilize the tool. Many of your new employees will already be familiar with these tools as consumers and successful job seekers.
Encourage high-profile executive involvement. When your executives share, they set the tone for everyone. Using the built-in blog on a My Site is a great way for executives to share trip reports, reflections on the business, and career development tips. This knowledge is shared more visibly and persistently than in email and encourages other employees to share their experiences as well.

We use My Sites widely across Microsoft, and from personal experience, it has helped me engage colleagues more quickly, locate expertise and find the information I need to not only do my job better, but be more efficient. When I can find the right contact for a customer by doing a people search, take advantage of colleagues’ presentation by finding it on their My Sites, or stay in touch with a colleague through their personal updates, SharePoint is enabling me to benefit from the power of social computing in the enterprise. That makes me more productive, effective and connected in today’s fast-paced world of business.

Christian Finn