Home - Larry Kuhn

8/28/2008

Internet Explorer 8 together with MOSS 2007

It is here, and it works!

I am authoring this post using IE8 Beta 2, and I'm very happy to report that things are looking great. I've been anxiously awaiting this ever since I got my first glimpse of IE8 back before the developer preview release came out. Because I work with clients and have to ensure that I don't impede my productivity I hadn't felt comfortable installing that previous release of IE8 on my day to day computer. But as I worked with it in my lab environments, the appeal was becoming overwhelming. Today I get to scratch that itch.

Give it a try, I don't think you'll be disappointed:

IE8 Beta 2 has launched in English, German, Simplified Chinese and Japanese right now, and another 21 languages will become available in mid-September. You can download IE8 Beta 2 now at http://ww.microsoft.com/ie8.

The IE team has prepared a number of videos that allow you to get a feel for the new IE8 experience before you take the plunge. Check out the videos here and then download the product, and try it out.

Posted at 4:33 AM by e83d332f2093a668d4907e17534cb8a2 | Category: IE8 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

8/22/2008

SharePoint User Group update

It seems that the url for the group's web site has changed:

Find it here now: https://ug.culminis.com/sites/chicagosharepoint/default.aspx

It looks like the next meeting will be:

September User Group Meeting: Business Data Catalog

Downers Grove

9/25/2008 1:00 PM

Posted at 12:57 PM by e83d332f2093a668d4907e17534cb8a2 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Photosynth is now open for business

I have blogged about this technology in the past and am excited to see that they have at long last opened up the ability for you to upload your own photos and create your own synth's.

Click on over to http://photosynth.net to try it out.

You can follow the progress of the team on their blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/photosynth/

Posted at 5:54 AM by e83d332f2093a668d4907e17534cb8a2 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/30/2008

Announcing One Stop Shopping for SharePoint Readiness Materials

Sometimes it feels like problem with trying to get up to speed on SharePoint is that there's so much great information spread across so many different sites that you don't know where to look. Wouldn't it be handy is someone compiled searchable and focused list of links? Well, the folks over in our Commercial Technical Support organization have been doing this for a while now for their own internal use, but now they are sharing the wealth, in the form of a new site: SharePoint Learning Resources. Enjoy.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/readiness

Posted at 5:34 AM by Larry Kuhn | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/25/2008

New whitepaper on Workflow and SharePoint

Here's a shout out and recommendation to go read a great new whitepaper written by two of my consulting colleagues Ali Mazaheri and Daniel Odievich. You can find the link to the whitepaper and lots of other great information over on Ali's blog:

Ali Mazaheri : New whitepaper on Workflow and SharePoint

Posted at 6:32 AM by Larry Kuhn | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Alternate definition for "MOSS"

This is a shout out to my customer, Scott, who has been "earning the billboard" these past few weekends. He has decided that MOSS really means Much Overtime on Sunny Saturdays.

Posted at 5:06 AM by Larry Kuhn | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/11/2008

What's Up with SharePoint?

Let's suppose your job requires you to answer the above question. Over and over again. Here's how to get a quick read on the situation.

1. On each of your SharePoint servers, install LogParser: Download details: Log Parser 2.2

2. On the desktop of each server, create a file called WhatUpWithSharePoint.cmd and set the contents as follows: (of course, you'll will need to adjust the paths if you have not stuck with the default locations for Log Parser or SharePoint Logs).

"C:\Program Files\Log Parser 2.2\LogParser" "SELECT * FROM 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS\*.log' WHERE message LIKE '%%Error%%' OR level = 'Exception' OR level = 'Critical' ORDER BY Timestamp DESC " -i:TSV -o:DATAGRID -e:10 -dtlines:600

Update 5/25/08: Added -dtlines parameter. As a commenter noted, the EventID column can contain both numbers and letters. If the first 100 rows contain only numbers, LogParser will infer Integer data type, which leads to parse errors when it eventually encounters letters further on in the file. Picking a bigger number for -dtlines can avoid this.

3. Double click to run it and you'll see something like this:

Of course, this doesn't give you the answer, but it gives you a good idea of where to begin to look. Once you spot things that look suspicious or related to current concerns you can revise the sample query I listed above to zero in on particular areas of the logs. Typically you would want to further enhance the WHERE clause to pinpoint specific Category, Level or time ranges of Timestamp. LogParser.chm in the LogParser install directory is there to help you.

Happy Mothers Day, btw...

Posted at 1:03 PM by Larry Kuhn | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

5/2/2008

Mesh is what Groove should have been, and more

Disclaimer: what follows in this post is my personal opinion. It may or may not be consistent with Microsoft product strategy...

Last week, Microsoft took the covers off of the Live Mesh Platform. There are some nice summary articles over on LiveSide.net. As I've gotten familiar with it, I have come to realize that the Mesh desktop and file synchronization features address most of my nagging concerns with Groove. Those were:

I don't like moving file into and out of Groove workspaces. I want integration at the Windows shell level (IOW, File Open, File Save dialogs should be able to see and directly manipulate all of my files). Groove "kind of" had this in the 2007 release with the "Groove Folder Synchronization" feature - but that feature seemed to compete with regular Groove workspaces. Mesh folders gets the integration done right at the file system/Windows Explorer level, and gets rid of the competition by having only one way to do it.
I always found the Groove account/identity mechanism to be cumbersome and redundant. In addition to being a pain for me, it also presented a serious impediment to "Grooving" with others. The whole process of obtaining and provisioning a Groove ID was too difficult. More than once after recruiting a work associate to think about using Groove for collaboration those good intentions would die on the thorns of this complexity, and it would fall back to "I'll just email the damn file to you." Mesh addresses this by basing identity on Windows Live ID. There is still a setup process here, but many people have been through it long ago and for other reasons, so this barrier is much less frequently encountered.
Related to the previous point, Groove IM/Chat is a bizarro universe in competition with "normal" MSN Messenger and OCS interactions. Now that everything is based on Windows Live ID, the redundant features can go away.
Files stored in the Groove workspace are essentially imprisoned and inaccessible to Windows Desktop Search. Because of the change I explain in point 1, this problem goes away.
If I want "access my files anywhere", I have to plan for it. I have to figure out where I am going to be and ensure that I have the workspace that contains those files replicated on a computer at that location. Now with one copy of a Mesh folder "in the cloud", I don't have to plan ahead - I just need a web browser.

Oh, and the "more" part - for now that's the mainly the "remote desktop through the firewall" feature, but I'm looking forward to exploring the API and to see what ISVs who build on the platform will bring.

Posted at 7:08 AM by Larry Kuhn | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/18/2008

Simplify List Item Approval using the Datasheet View - Part 2

One of my most frequently commented on posts has been Simplify List Item Approval using the Datasheet View. Most of the comments have been words of thanks, but a few have been words of frustration, along the lines of "I tried this but it doesn't work. Any ideas?"

Actually, yes. I have a few thoughts.

1. Perhaps you don't have permissions to approve comments?

2. Perhaps you're using the wrong view? It's an easy mistake - I did it again myself this morning!

3. Perhaps you're not getting the row changes to commit.

Let's examine each of these.

Permissions?

This is the first most obvious thing to think about, but I don't get very far with this train of thought. This is your blog, right? You are the site owner, so you will have these permissions (unless someone else took them away from you, I guess.) Things to check:

Is the Comments list using custom, non-inherited permissions? It should be - in an intranet scenario where all Commenters are authenticated users, and evaluate to being members of the site visitors group, which normally has no permission to add items to a site. In an Internet blog scenario, Commenters are anonymous visitors, and anonymous visitors normally cannot create any content on a SharePoint site. The Comment list of a blog is an exception to these rules, therefore it needs custom permissions. The blog site template should have taken care of this housekeeping at site creation time. But maybe someone went in there and messed with things. Double check that the site owners group has full permissions on the Comments list.
Here's more details on how to enable anonymous users to create comments: Behind the scenes of the “Behind the Scenes” blog

Wrong View?

The default view for comments list is "All Comments". Check out what's going on in the Datasheet status bar here, this one isn't going to work:

The only view that will let you update the Approval Status is "Approve/Reject Items". To make your life simpler you may wish to go into the list settings and set that one as the default view for the list.

Unsaved Changes?

Now, once you're in the correct view, make sure that you watch the icon in the left row header cell to see that your changes are committed. Pending changes look like this:

While the changes are being saved, the icon changes to double arrows:

Now, I kind of doubt that unsaved edits is the real because you should get prompted with the following message if you try to navigate away without saving your changes:

Those are all pretty obvious signals of what's wrong, but people haven't really mentioned those signals in their comments. So... maybe there's something else going on here that I'm not thinking of. If any one out there can figure out the mystery post a comment here and let's try to get to the bottom of it.

Posted at 6:40 AM by Larry Kuhn | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

Tip for viewing People Import Gatherer Log - Part 2

A while back, I created a post explaining how to filter the Profile Import Log. Here is a picture - perhaps worth as many as 957 words.

Change the hostname/path field to this:

spsimport://829dd501-3ad7-4e27-88a6-67721fab8d4a/litwareinc?cn=pat

and then you'll see this: