Collabshow.com

In my continued pursuits to connect with the SharePoint community around the globe, and recent attempts to connect with SharePoint LATAM, I’m excited to announce two new venues…

I’ll be speaking at TECHED Brasil!  Last year this was the largest Microsoft event in LATAM!

This is my first Teched in South America, but my second speaking gig there (remember SPC Peru 2009? I do!).  I have two sessions lined up for Teched Brazil.  It’s going to be great to finally connect with that community.  Teched Brazil in Sao Paulo is the other Teched in the Americas, and the only one in South America.  You can tell from the Teched Brazil site that it really caters to Portuguese speakers.  Here’s a little bit of information on the conference:

O TechEd deste ano ocorrerá nos dias 13, 14 e 15 de Setembro de 2010, no Expo Center Norte,

Expo Center Norte
Endereço: Rua José Bernardo Pinto, 333, São Paulo – SP

São Paulo, Brasil

· 190 sessões técnicas de alto nível, divididas em 16 trilhas técnicas para Profissionais de TI e Desenvolvedores

Estamos certos de que sua participação irá enriquecer ainda mais o conteúdo técnico do TechEd Brasil 2010, portanto desejamos convidá-lo a ministrar a palestra abaixo

I bet there will be 1600 to 2000 attendees.  Definitely looking forward to the hundreds of SharePoint folks.  I hear they had around 200 at their SharePoint events earlier this year.  Follow my tweets and post event blog.

Teched Brazil

Here are my sessions at Teched Brazil.

Track: OSP – Plataforma Office e SharePoint
Sessão: OSP306
Título: Anatomia das implantações de SharePoint que falharam (Anatomy of a Failed SharePoint Deployment)
Descritivo: Nós vamos caminhar por 10 histórias sobre SharePoint que exploraram o melhor dos piores e entender como algumas configurações pode levar a implantação para o fracasso. Joel Oleson vai trazer seus 10 anos de experiência com o SharePoint e dar exemplos do mundo real de como evitar falhas de implantação.

Sessão: OSP302
Título: Atualização para SharePoint 2010 (Best Practices Upgrading to SharePoint 2010)
Descritivo: Upgrade no SharePoint nunca foi melhor. Nesta sessão vamos aprofundar nas ferramentas de preparação para a atualização e depois nos métodos de atualização diferentes. Você aprenderá como os métodos híbridos podem lidar com a maioria das situações. Não só vai sair com dicas e truques, mas também com as melhores práticas na atualização e migração.

follow @techedbrazil on twitter #Techedbr

I’m hoping to visit some user groups and Quest customers while in the region either in Sao Paulo or Rio.  Definitely reach out!

SharePoint User Group in Lisbon, Portugal

The other event I’m doing is a visit to the Comunidade Portuguesa de SharePoint (SPugPT) in Portugal.  The plans are still coming together, but currently looks like it will be on September 29th.

“I’m Rodrigo Pinto, CoFounder of the SPUGPT SharePoint Portuguese User Group here in Lisboa, Portugal.

I’m in sync with Antonio Lage, SharePoint MVP, and we are thrilled, of you coming to portuguese lands.

We are starting to prepare the event for the 29th of September.”

I’m definitely looking forward to my trip.  I’m taking some time off for a family trip to Cancun, Belize and Guatemala.  Not sure if I’ll be able to meet up with any SharePoint folks out there, but definitely will continue to practice my Spanish.  After I get back I’ll be working on my Brazilian Visa and laying out my trips in September.  See you soon! 

Let me share a few of the great Portuguese SharePoint Resources I’ve come across:

Portuguese Community Hubs:

CanalSharePoint – Maior comunidade de tecnologia SharePoint do Brasil

Comunidade Portuguesa de SharePoint SharePoint Portuguese Community Site

Bloggers & Contacts

Thiago Cruz Soares – Brazil SharePoint MVP

Helio Sa Moreira De Oliveira Filho – Brazil SharePoint MVP

André Lage – Portuguese SharePoint MVP (who lives in Switzerland and blogs in Portuguese & English)

Rodrigo Pinto – Portuguese Enterprise SharePoint Architect & Co Founder of the SharePoint User group in Lisbon

Ricardo Magalhães – SharePoint blogger from Portugal. Portuguesa blog mixed with some english.

I know there are a lot more, and hoping to get to know you!

Downloads

SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server Language Packs

Forums & Discussions

Linkedin Portuguese SharePoint Discussions

Canal Sharepoint Brasil – SharePoint Discussions in Portuguese

Webcasts & Resources

Portuguese Decks on Slideshare – Comunidade Portuguesa de SharePoint.

André Lage Microsoft Webcast on "Sharepoint 2010" (Portuguese)

SPUGPT – Sharepoint Portuguese User Group « Tech Talk PT

Good luck to Owen Allen, Former Sr. Product Manager at Microsoft.  My good SharePoint friend Owen Allen is on to bigger and better things.  He was in the latest round of layoffs at Microsoft.  He had been most recently working with the SharePoint Partner ISVs.  That partner team was really stripped down with this latest round. 

He’s got a great attitude and is very upbeat.  I wish him the best of luck.

A couple of recent success stories from the MS Layoffs in the SharePoint World… who stayed in the SharePoint World.

Bob Sutton – Director of Sales and Alliances NINTEX

Jerome Thiebaud – VP Marketing K2

Fascinating to see these guys on products that compete, but great to see these awesome guys stay in the SharePoint world!

Here’s the linked in profile for Owen Allen.  I know he’s looking for something cool.  I’ve been working with Owen for years since CMS was being incorporated especially with his work with the Puget Sound SharePoint User Group and as a PAC WEST TS.  He is a into ECM, CMS, and huge on Business Development.  Say hi to him at WPC. 

Good luck Owen!  We’ll be watching your career.

I’ve seen a lot of confusion with various people’s approaches to Windows PowerShell.  Customers are First there’s the aversion to Windows PowerShell as a "language” and something that will take time, a class, and tons of ramp up.  Many decide to put it off until they are forced to learn it for something.  Let me give you some practical guidance so you can start to approach it and understand it’s not all that bad…  As you work your way through this blog, you’ll also find resources from other bloggers that will help you consume Windows PowerShell without getting overloaded.  The key to remember is take as much as you want, but eat only as much as you take… or something like that.  Just don’t over do it, that’s what I’m trying to say.  There’s a lot of goodness here in Windows PowerShell, don’t be overwhelmed.

The way I see it there are a Good 3 levels of SharePoint & Windows PowerShell skills that need to be approached in different ways.  I’ve broken it down so it can be more easily digested.

Level 1 – The Beginner/Newbie Using Cmdlets

Newbies to SharePoint 2010 who are trying to learn how to use Windows PowerShell with SharePoint should NOT just go out and buy a book on Windows PowerShell or simply take a class.  At this level the biggest bang for the buck is learning the SharePoint specific cmdlets.  There are more than 500 cmdlets and by simply gaining control of learning how to get into the help and being able to find examples and successfully adding parameters is mastery at this level.  First you need to be able to do pretty much most of what you can do in STSADM then work your way up to running things you don’t have available.

Pretty much most of what you’ll do at this level you can find in TechNet in the SharePoint commandlet sections.  When you start finding mastery over the commandlets and can find your way around, then you need to start looking at the next level.  The things to watch out for are syntax and making sure you’re testing things out first.

Most of what you’re focusing on at this level should be pretty specific to SharePoint cmdlets while anything you learn about Windows PowerShell will obviously make life easier and help you in the next level.

SharePoint Powershell Commands and Cmdlet References

• PowerShell Command Reference on WSSDemo 
• SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Cheat Sheet – PowerGui (Dmitry Sotnikov)
• TechNet: Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010 reference
• SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Cmdlets Reference – (Dmitry Sotnikov)
• SharePoint Solutions: SharePoint Help — Groups — SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Reference

Resource Articles and Blogs for more information at this level:

• Richard Taylor: Powershell for SharePoint Admins: The Real Primer
• Podcast: Eric Kraus’ SharePoint/.NET Blog: Using PowerShell to Support SharePoint
• iLove SharePoint: PowerShell & SharePoint – Quick Start
• MSDN: Introduction to Cmdlets for the SharePoint Management Shell

TechNet: Spend 30 minutes with Todd Klindt in this getting started video to see how the SharePoint Commandlets can make your life easier. Also dig into Todd’s blog: Using PowerShell to set up a test environment

Level 2 – Advanced – Scripter and Parser

Now that you’re comfortable running the commandlets you can now start to approach learning how to grab a list of sites or webs and those as variables into a second commandlet.  You can Also pass an XML list of sites or webs and set configurations or pull configuration.  My recommendation would be to be working in your test farm, and use this to first try to read data for reporting purposes and then work your way up to changing configuration such as read locking sites and then trying to change quotas, something that was a pain that has become more simple.

You’ll find working with the developer dashboard in Windows PowerShell isn’t just simply turning it on off or on demand, you now have a lot more control over it.  I’d encourage you at this level to start looking at the custom commandlets that people have built, and look at scheduling tasks and using Windows PowerShell to script the creation of a farm.  Look at THE Script To Retrieve Effective SharePoint Permissions Has Arrived for example.  Writing and/or using scripts can definitely make your life easier in cases of disaster recovery for all sized farms, but also for making your job more automated.  If you can run a script that would take hours to do manually, now you’re seeing the power.  The things to watch for are performance.

You can definitely benefit from reading blogs and others scripts at this level.  You can also find some awesome scripts put together to configure farms, install and customize services.  Look at the scripts that Zach Rosenfield has PM’ed like SPModule for scripting deployment of 2010 farms.  The books that are being written on SharePoint and Windows PowerShell will definitely help you get better.  All these skills you’re learning here will benefit you on scripting for Exchange and visa versa.  That Windows PowerShell class you’ve been eyeing up can make you better at this level.

When you start working with multiple farms, the Windows PowerShell sometimes is where you have to dive to really get into the guts and configuration of things like configuring service apps.  Even as something as simple as the import after doing an export requires powershell.

Resources:

• Bill Baer: PowerShell and SharePoint Automation Examples
• Join the Discussion on: SharePoint and PowerShell Forum on PowerGUI
• Power of PowerShell and the SharePoint Snap-in | SharePoint 2010 – WSS 2010
• PowerShell and SharePoint – Bob Mixon – Mastering SharePoint
• SP 2010: How to create a PowerShell Snapin – Part 1 – Tobias Zimmergren’s thoughts on development
• Marwan Tarek’s blog [MOSS MVP] PowerShell and SharePoint 2010 love story
• Tom Resing: PowerShell SharePoint Features Comparison

General Windows PowerShell Resources:

• Windows PowerShell (Windows Server 2003 R2 Technology Center)
• Windows PowerShell Getting Started Guide
• Windows PowerShell SDK
• Windows PowerShell Managed Reference

Level 3 – Expert – The Commandlet Creator

I think most who think of SharePoint Windows PowerShell think of this level.  They think “Woah, I have access to the Object Model, that’s crazy!”  At this level that’s the gist of it.  The newbie shouldn’t even mess with trying to create commandlets until they know what they’ve got.  They also need to understand at level 2 what happens when you pass one to another.  At this level on the other hand we want to fill in the gaps.  We want to see what’s happening in the community of creating commandlets that can make our lives easier.  As is on the pyramid, the top is where the fewest are, but it’s also where the greatest power can come and few there be that find it.

One of these people up there is Gary Lapointe.  He obviously helped us out a ton with his stsadm commandlets, and now is showing us the way with his mad skills with Windows PowerShell.  I do argue that it’s most likely developers that will be able to help us out the most here.  People who hang out on codeplex and like digging into the object model.  While there may be those that say, hey now the admins have access to the object model, it’s most likely again that a developer will write the commandlet that will get us what we need.  All that talk of concern around memory leaks applies at this level.  You haven’t had to worry about that too much until this level.  Now you have to follow some dev best practices.

I am anxious to see community around this level and make our lives easier in areas where the product team didn’t think we had to go.  Will be interesting to see what we get.  One such project on Codeplex is SharePointPsScripts which includes scripts such as Get-Installed-Farm-Solutions, spReportOrphanedSites, Delete-SiteCollectionAuditEntries.  Don’t be afraid to join the fun!

Kudos to these guys: Fabrice Romelard, Stephane Eyskens, Marc Lognoul, Reza Alirezaei, Nicolas Schmitt, Christophe Rit, Sergey Zelenov, Patrick Guimonet for their contributions.  Also people to ping for help 🙂

Other people you need to get to know are Zach Rosenfield – Microsoft SharePoint Program Manager – He has spent a lot of time not only in 2010 but also in 2007 to help people write tools to help automate administration.  His resources on SharePoint and Windows PowerShell on his blog are great.  It’s to his credit the SPModule for New-SharePointFarm and New-SharePointServices for automating creation and provisioning.

Resources for this level:

• SharePoint Chick: General PowerShell tips for SharePoint gurus and PowerShell newbies
• Simple steps to get going with PowerShell and SharePoint – SharePoint Development Wiki – SharePoint Dev Wiki
• MSDN: Key Concepts for Writing Cmdlets for the SharePoint Management Shell
• PowerShell und SharePoint 2010 Hilfe Dateien – Michael Greth [SharePoint MVP] – SharePointCommunity
• MSDN: Development Guidelines for SharePoint Foundation Cmdlets
• MSDN: Error Handling for SharePoint Foundation Cmdlets

Downloads:

• SharePoint 2010 Products scripted deployment SPModule .zip file – The SPModule.zip file is a sample Windows PowerShell module related to SharePoint 2010 farm installation and configuration.
• Free PowerShell scripts for managing SharePoint: Idera PowerShell scripts
• Download details: Windows PowerShell Help for SharePoint Server 2010
• The Codeplex Resources: SharePointPsScripts

Looking for even more resources?  Check out Topsy, my favorite topic based search engine on top of twitter… look at the awesome resources on “SharePoint and PowerShell”

First you should see the official word by viewing the webcast from MS:

Jean-Francois LeSaux, EPM Lead Architect, Microsoft Corporation, Project Server 2010 – Coexisting with SharePoint Server 2010.

Webcast Agenda:

• The Challenge
• Deployment Scenarios Pros and Cons
• Deployment Procedures
• Resources

Then I want you to consider these arguments:

Sure now Project is build on SharePoint Server Enterprise edition adding tons of value to the already existing service apps, BUT…

If you have Project as a service in your main farm you’re going to have to worry about 1) Licensing 2) Performance 3) Patching and the synchronization of the testing of patching of SharePoint Foundation

Licensing – It’s in the farm, but you can do different things for different web apps and even in tenant admin you can come up with some creative ideas.  If you later change your mind it can be very tough to split sites that were based on project site templates.  Some will want to do collab on standard license and run project on enterprise licenses.  Another challenge.

If you’re going to be doing a collab farm I’d push you to put your project in a farm that’s focused on analytics and PMM type stuff. Will reduce the complexity and dependencies.  Even though you can do fancy shmancy stuff in SharePoint 2010 with tenant admin the administration is in powershell and might be more complex than you think.

Performance – Project 2010 on top of the other dozen services is something to think about.  Yes you can put it on it’s own app server(s) but if you’re doing that wouldn’t it be better as a service app that can be consumed by a web app that needs projects services?  What about that template… You’ll have to think about that.

Patching – I am one to keep things clean.  It’s one thing to run SharePoint Server Enterprise farm with Project and another to have a collab farm, portal farm, power pivot, performance point, and as an after thought throw project in the mix.  It’s a lot to add to complexity and it’s the dependency that I’m thinking about here.  Now you’re watching for the SharePoint Foundation patches, and the SharePoint Server Patches and the Project patches, and then there’s SQL and of course all those Windows ones, but the more you’ve got the more you have to be careful of. For small and medium business I have less of a problem here.  It’s the enterprises that are turning it all on and then wondering why things are slow, and wondering why the patches are having issues and are having deeper longer sessions to troubleshoot.

Dependencies on upgrade… that’s worth it’s own consideration.  Think about that one for a while.  If one web app wants to be upgraded, but the project one isn’t.  You’re waiting.  There’s no coexistence in 2010… will there be in vNext? 

My $.02

I did put a few thoughts together for 2007.  While things have changed including all the service app stuff, I’m still reluctant to combine “the rest of the SharePoint content” with the “structured Project Content” in most cases.  Curious to hear your thoughts.

More EPM Webcasts:

• All upcoming and recorded webcasts and podcasts can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/epm.aspx