Keeping Relevant to Evolving Technology

Over the past 20 years, Microsoft Certifications have continually stayed relevant to the needs of technology professionals and the companies that employ them. Let’s look at some of the ways they’re keeping the certifications themselves relevant to changing technologies.

And speaking of changing technologies, IT departments all over the world have heard the news:

A private cloud delivers fundamentally new capabilities that represent a generational paradigm shift in computing.

from the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform website

By pooling resources across the datacenter and the enterprise and offering an elastic and usage-based self-service model, a private cloud solution simplifies deployment, maintenance, and cost, while increasing agility and power.

And this paradigm shift in computing means a paradigm shift in the skills IT professionals will need to configure, deploy, monitor, and operate private cloud solutions of today—and tomorrow. The increased capacity and capability of Private Cloud solutions means that IT Professionals and Developers will need to have a new and broader set of skills.

Microsoft Learning is addressing this need for new skills by ensuring it offers training and certifications that enable IT Pros and Developers to develop and validate their skill sets across this new range of skills with a focus on specific technology solutions.

One example of this effort is the recently announced private cloud certification. Available as a Beta release in April, the certification starts with the foundation of current Windows Server 2008 exams, and adds two new System Center 2012 exams, currently in beta.

Get started today by heading over to the Microsoft Private Cloud Certification Overview page. That’s where you can prepare and practice for the certification, sign up for our upcoming Private Cloud Jump Start course, and get a head start on your private cloud certification by starting your MCITP Server Administrator certification.

SharePoint 2010 Products: Upgrade and the Fabulous 40 Application Templates

Many of us have used the "Fabulous 40 templates" that were created for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Some of these templates were created as site admin templates (.stp files) and some as server admin templates (.wsp files). Microsoft is not releasing new versions of these templates for SharePoint 2010 Products. Also, .stp files are deprecated and can't be used to create new sites when you upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Foundation 2010.
So, what do you do when you want to upgrade?
Sites based on these templates should upgrade, but you'll want to try out your upgrade in a test environment before you upgrade your production environment so that you can catch any potential issues. Definitely use the pre-upgrade checker to identify any issues (some people have seen problems with custom workflows or CAML-based views in the templates). However, after upgrade, you won't be able to use STP files to create new templates.

Type of template	Can I upgrade sites based on this template?	Will I be able to use the template after upgrade?
Site admin (.stp file or site template)	Yes	No
Server admin (.wsp file or solution package)	Yes*	Yes*

*There are issues with a few of the .wsp files after upgrade. In particular, after upgrading, some customers are unable to create new sites based on the following templates: Absence Request and Vacation Schedule Management, Call Center, Help Desk, IT Team Workspace, Knowledge Base, and Physical Asset Tracking and Management. If you have trouble using any of these templates, you can post an issue in the SharePoint 2010 – Setup, Upgrade, Administration and Operation TechNet Forum at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010setup/threads, or contact Microsoft Product Support.


So, what do you do if you're using an .stp file and you want to continue using it after upgrade? You can convert the .stp file to a .wsp file manually. To do this, in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007, create a site based on the template, and then upgrade the site to 2010. Then, follow this procedure:

1. On the Site Actions menu in the site, click Site Settings.
2. On the Site Settings page, under Site Actions, click Save site as Template.
3. On the Save as Template page, enter a file name and Template name and then click OK.
4. The site template is saved as a WSP file to the Solutions Gallery for that site collection and you can create new sites based on that solution.

TechSolutions has already converted some of these templates to 2010 for you. Take a look at http://techsolutions.net/Blog/tabid/65/EntryId/17/Fab-40-Templates-for-MOSS-2010.aspx.

How to Facilitate Project Collaboration with SharePoint

MSPFM: How to Facilitate Project Collaboration with SharePoint from Dux Raymond Sy on Vimeo.

Script installations to save time and maintain consistencies

As SharePoint gets more and more complex, the use of scripted installations is essential to maintaining consistencies in your different staging environment. With the introduction and tight integration of PowerShell in SharePoint 2010, PowerShell has taken scripted installations to a whole new level. You should always use a scripted installation to not only save time, but to make sure that your installations look the same, allowing you to easily set up a new farm in case of a disaster.

There are a number of scripts out there to help you get started. The codeplex project AutoSPInstaller is a very good resource: http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com

Awesome SharePoint-powered Sites

Great article from TopSharePoint awesome list of SharePoint-based websites that really stand out.

 

SharePoint : Choose Cloud or On-Premises?

Determining whether to use SharePoint Online instead of on-premises SharePoint can be complicated.Here’s a simple set of questions to help determine if SharePoint Online makes sense

Question	Yes	No
Are you already using custom-coded SharePoint solutions, such as third-party tools or in-house Visual Web Parts?	0	3
Are you free from strict geographic control and accountability for your SharePoint content ?	4	0
Do you already have SharePoint engineers on staff?	0	3
Do you have a limited IT capital budget, but significant IT operating budgets?	1	0
Do you have a mature, on-premises installation of SharePoint 2010?	0	3
Do you have access to dedicated SharePoint developers?	0	2
Do you have as many or more users outside your corporate network as you do inside the firewall?	3	0
Do you need to downsize or eliminate physical servers and data centers used with SharePoint?	3	0
Do you need to migrate off a legacy installation of SharePoint 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0?	3	0
Do you need to rapidly set up a pilot or proof-of-concept SharePoint site, independent of any current usage?	3	0
Do you project growth to a very large content pool over the next year (500GB or more)?	0	2
Do you use or need to use SharePoint-hosted business intelligence solutions such as Performance Point?	0	2

Add up your scores, and see how you match up:
32: You are probably already on SharePoint Online or Office 365.    

24-31: You are a strong candidate for SharePoint Online. Study carefully and understand some of the functional tradeoffs of the platform. SharePoint Online doesn’t support the following:

• Deployment of custom solutions that require direct access to the server, such as Visual Web Parts. It does support sandboxed solutions, however.
• PowerPivot
• SQL Server Reporting Service Integration
• Business Connectivity Services (originally this was a blanket restriction, but a slipstream release in 2011 added support for access to web services-based remote data in O365 BCS).
• FAST Search Server Integration
• Web Analytics
• Site collections greater than 100GB

10-23: You are somewhere in between. Understanding the platform advantages and tradeoffs is essential to figuring out your cloud strategy. Odds are good that you may use a hybrid approach in which parts of your SharePoint world remain on premises, with other aspects living on Office 365.

0-9: If SharePoint is already living in your data center, it’s probably in the right place.


Office 365 and SharePoint Online lack features relative to on-premises SharePoint, this isn't expected to be a permanent situation. If we project forward through the next release of SharePoint, we can forecast a time when the on-premises and cloud versions of SharePoint provide nearly identical functions.
What will make it really interesting comes after that – when new features start showing up in the cloud before they are bundled into the next major SharePoint on-premises release. A cloud-hosted SharePoint offering with better functions and simplified ease of operation will be a hard combination to deny for many current on-premises users.

Project Management Process Interactions, PMBOK 4th

My Profile, Microsoft SharePoint Forum :)

Large List Throttling over 5000 items in SharePoint 2010

If you are planning to upgrade from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 -
you might want to consider your users that have list view lookups of over 5000 items and/or data column lookups of over 8 lookup columns. In SharePoint 2007, it was recommended not to go over 2000 list items to prevent poor performance on your farm.

In SharePoint 2010 throttling is enabled by default (This is configurable however in Central Administration). Throttlng is set to not display list view lookups of 5000 items or lists that have over 8 lookup columns.

The reason for this out of the box throttle is that if you are doing a lookup in SQL on less than 5000 rows, SQL executes a row level lock. If you execute a lookup with over 5000 items SQL executes a table lock which can potential impact all your site collections in that one ContentDB.

Here is a clever a SQL script to help audit your farms for these large lists and over 8 lookup columns - so you can warn your customers if they have any lists that will be throttled after you deploy SharePoint 2010.

SELECT

t3.fullurl [WEBURL],

t1.tp_title [LISTNAME],

COUNT(t1.tp_id) [ITEMCOUNT],

ISNULL(MAX(t4.lookupCount),0) [lookupCount]

FROM DBO.alllists t1

JOIN DBO.alluserdata t2 ON t2.tp_listID = t1.tp_id

JOIN DBO.webs t3 ON t3.id = t1.tp_webid

LEFT JOIN

(

SELECT siteID,listID,COUNT(listID) [lookupCount] FROM dbo.AllLookupRelationships

GROUP BY siteID,listID HAVING COUNT(listID) >= 8

) t4 ON t4.listID = t1.tp_id

WHERE t1.tp_title != 'User Information List'

GROUP BY t1.tp_id,t3.siteid,t3.fullurl,t1.tp_title

HAVING (COUNT(t1.tp_id) >= 5000 OR MAX(t4.lookupCount)>= 8)

ORDER BY 1;

SharePoint 2010 Chart Web Part

To get started, first you need an Enterprise version of SharePoint 2010.  Assuming, you do have an Enterprise key, you then need to activate the SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection Features.

This adds the chart web part (among other things). Then edit any page and add a Chart Web Part. You can find it under Miscellaneous


When you add it to the page, it uses some dummy data and displays a simple bar chart.


At this point, you might be asking yourself “What kind of data can I bind this to?”. By clicking Data & Appearance, you will see the following screen which leads you to links to customize the appearance or bind to data.


We’ll start by going to Connect Chat To Data. Look at these great options we have to choose from.


We can connect to another web part, a list, an external content type (looks like they need to update the BDC wording they have there), and to Excel Services.

What I did is I created a new custom list to contain Sales information. I used an External Data field to allow the user to pick a product from the external content type and enter in some sales data in a field.


This is the list we are going to use on our chart. On the next step of the wizard, we are allowed to pick a list. Note that it also allows you to choose other sites in the collection as well.


The next step allows you to filter your data first if you are so inclined.


The Chart Web Part has a ton of configurable options. On this last step is where you will start seeing some of them. The main thing to set here is your X and Y fields. You can also specify something to group by as well.


Once you finish this last step, you’ll get something that looks like this.


So, what we have here is a chart bound to data coming from a database (via external content type) and a SharePoint list. Pretty cool, right? I think so. It gets better though. What if your boss doesn’t like bar charts? No problem. There are tons of chart types to choose from. Just click on Data & Appearance again and then Customize Your Chart. Look at all of these built in chart types you have.



On the next step, you can further customize the chart you choose. It has some nice pre-built color themes and you can customize the size and what not. It also gives you a live preview as you change settings.



Here is what my new chart looks like.