Important Details about WSS SP2 and MOSS SP2 and Changes to Future Support Related Docs

While these days I would suffice to tweet a simple URL and say hey new details about Office System/MOSS SP2 announcement and leave a good link to the source in a tiny URL like http://tinyurl.com/apr28sp2 and call it good, but unfortunately I’m still not seeing enough penetration to leave good content like this to not be explained in better detail in a post.  I’d even skip it and leave it to a tweet if the message was on the SharePoint Team blog, the place where we’ve all grown accustomed to seeing these type of announcements.

Now I’m seeing what looks like really good details on Microsoft Update blog with details on the OSE blog.

Microsoft Update Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mu

Office Sustained Engineering Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering

"Last October, we announced the upcoming release of the 2^nd service pack for the 2007 Microsoft Office System and the 2007 Microsoft Office. Today, we’re happy to provide both a formal release date, and more details on what you should expect to see in SP2."

This section in the post relate particularly to the SharePoint Products and Technologies:

"Changes that impact the server products

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

· An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.

· SP2 offers support for standards-based documents formats and compatibility with a broader range of Web browsers.

· Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release."

I do like the language while vague in that it addresses availability and stability issues as well since it has some info on upgrade readiness, I see that it will be required for upgrade.  So it will be best to include it in your planning.  As always you need to test it first.

I do fully expect to see more details around the SP2 release and more official information from the SharePoint team around it’s release, but do find some valuable information around the documentation which is quite relevant to how we can expect to see details from this team on KBs and service packs.  Pay particular attention to the fact that they have *heard* your feedback and are making significant changes… (I quote from the MU blog)

1. Gone are the days of the long-winded or too sparse knowledge base articles that do little to describe what’s included in the actual service pack

2. More user-friendly and informative KB’s

3. Technical information still exists, but it has been pulled from the main KB articles and now will live on TechNet

4. Spreadsheet listing individual bugs that were fixed across all of our products

(close quote)

More details later when we see links to the documentation, KB, and the actual bits.  They say the Apr 28th.  Interesting to see a date.  We’ll see.