Collabshow.com

A very interesting shift has happened over the past year prompting a change in the SharePoint community resulting in an evolving paradigm shift.  SharePoint, the fastest revenue generating product in Microsoft’s history (I talk more about that momentum in a recent SharePointForAll welcome post) has a seriously strong and tight community.  This started first by common bond among those struggling to deploy and develop the product building up our first generation of MVPs.  The evolution has continued this past year in an explosive growth in the community, and a shift into exponential growth while maintaining the close knit community due to 5 things.  1) The broad adoption of major consumer social networks by SharePoint folks connecting thousands of us – blogs, twitter, facebook and a bit of linked in too.   2) Key Microsoft SharePoint community advocates leaving the mothership and integrating into the community  3) SharePoint Saturday – a free no holds barred community event driven primarily by the community for the community (code camps as well)  4) Best Practices Conferences – a non Microsoft conference that brought together the technical and community leaders in a big way like no other 5) SharePoint User Groups – connecting with others with the same challenges in a show and tell manner, providing the local to global connectivity

1 – Social Networking – Twitter – A year ago Lawrence Liu was a lone voice (I know there were others, but just follow my line of thinking) shouting in the darkness praising microblogging and essentially halting his other blogging activities and telling the community to follow him there for the latest and greatest.  A few MVPs created accounts, with a handful using them, but the community wasn’t really yet there.  It was a start.  About 6 months later a few of us took another look at it and found something.  The SharePoint community was there, but small.  We had to band together and build our little community and make lists to help find each other.  The lists really helped us find new faces and new people. Facebook helped us find each other based on who we knew and who we had in common.  The blogging networks helped us find what Mike Gannotti was doing with his cool videos.  It also made us get a lot more personal with each other for good or worse.  We know what each other are doing throughout the day for over a year now.  Many blogs were added to the fray over the last year, but I’ve seen the social networks help us continue those conversations and filter through the best content.  Many have dropped RSS feed readers over the recommendations of posts and news content via twitter.

2. SharePoint Big (Visible) Names Leave Microsoft – Mike Fitzmaurice, Lawrence Liu, Joel Oleson, Mike Watson – Why did that happen? It didn’t happen for one reason.  My perception: It was a non launch year and each of them wanted to spread their wings.  Each LOVED SharePoint, each was a major contributor for the community, and each had their own reasons.  What resulted was the community realized they couldn’t tie their perspectives and knowledge to one person at Microsoft.  It made a lot of people look inward and give more clout to the community, more trust in the user groups, more trust in MVPs and community leads.  It made them realize it wasn’t Microsoft or TechNet that would tell them exclusively how to design and use the product, they’d have to figure it out by leveraging the community.  Community became very important as this shift would make a difference to all of us in the community. (Understand there are still hundreds of great people working on the product(s).  We are well served by Dave Pae, Chris Johnson, Richard Riley, Tom and Arpan.  They just don’t have too much to say until SharePoint Conference. 😉

3. SharePoint Saturday – Michael Lotter, Susan Lennon, and Kevin Israel (Team System MVP) the three founders of SharePoint Saturday, none of which are SharePoint MVPs would build an organic following that would make a huge positive impact on the community in the U.S.  Affecting nearly all regions, SharePoint Saturday brought 150+ people together at each free event and provided access to experts with choice.  Despite your local background you could propose a session and be chosen.  The first SharePoint Saturday in Virginia beach brought in speakers from around the U.S.  It’s sponsorship from vendors would guarantee it’s success model.  Last week’s SharePoint Saturday in D.C. had over 50 speakers at the dinner, and a few had flown in on their own dime (not from SPSDC) from Georgia, North Carolina, New York, Seattle, Texas, and San Francisco.  The locals could get high quality end user content, admin, and developer content across multiple tracks.  It was the speaker lists and the speaker dinners and comradare that would have its influence on the community.  The twittering made everyone feel like they were there.  MVPs and other speakers at the conferences had built their names and reputations from their blogs and on twitter.  Every SharePoint Saturday was a mini reunion and gathering of the SharePoint minds. http://www.sharepointsaturday.org

4. Best Practices Conference – Ben Curry and Steve Smith drove for a conference that would not be political, it would not be about getting the regular TechEd Micrsoft speaker list, but would break the trend and go after those in the community who knew.  Sure it was a paid conference, but Ben and Steve took it as their responsibility to track down those in the community that were recognized as having something that people wanted to hear.  The emphasis wasn’t on the speaker skills, but on the knowledge of the individual.  In our community it’s great if you can get 10 top notch speakers at an event, but both Ben and Steve were looking at 50-60 of the top speakers and talent in our community and it made a difference.  These events had impact on the community by helping establish the community and providing them the platform to share their knowledge.  While Microsoft was invited, these conferences were primarily driven by the community for the community with the knowledge of the SharePoint social network by Ben and Steve.  There’s another one coming up in DC in August. http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com

5. SPUGs – SharePoint Usergroups – SharePoint Usergroups can now be found on every populated continent and Michael Noel have discussed efforts for Antarctica. In my travels I’ve visited Usergroups and communities around the world and one thing I’ve found in common is the thirst for knowledge and the thirst for community and collaboration.  These people need answers, they feel like they are alone, and they light up when they find someone who knows their struggles.  The SharePoint community exists globally and locally.  That’s the exciting part.  The SharePoint Saturday has brought it local and elevated the locals in the community and united them with the national and global SharePoint community.  Everyone has a voice and everyone has a right to be heard.  Their ideas are just as important to be heard and considered as the next persons.  The ISPA at http://www.sharepointpros.org was established to help promote the community.

So where are we?

This paradigm shift has taken the focus of the expertise of the product group the exclusive voice on the product.  As well it’s landed on the MVPs and SharePoint community leadership.  I don’t know how best to describe this community leadership bucket, but if you spend sometime both in the blogs and on twitter you’ll surely find it.  There are a lot of good people in the SharePoint product group and we hope to hear from them in November, but I think they’ll realize we’ve all changed.  This 2010 SharePoint wave is going to be different this time around due to our integration with the social networks and the tight knit community.  Expect to find a lot more sharing and a lot more community.  We’ve evolved.

That’s the amazing part.  We are really getting to know not just a handful of people.  We are all essentially getting to know and conversing with hundreds and some of us thousands.  It’s amazing.  Wild thing is this shift toward a broader base and the more distributed voice with real personality will continue.

In the last month I’ve had a few design sessions and conversations where more than just WSS and SharePoint Server are involved in the deployment.  In one customer it was wild… MS CRM, Performance Point, and Project Server plus the normal MOSS stack.  They were going to do it all in one farm with a bunch of app servers and even add a SQL Reporting server and SQL Analysis server.  It gave me a headache looking at their diagram. 

In an hour I had them with the same amount of production hardware, but in 4 farms.  SQL on the backend for storage was changed hardly at all.  I also added a more robust virtual dev and test environment to mimic the new designs. Was pretty sad.  <Update> Reporting Services with SharePoint Integrated mode is much better and has good deployment guidance on TechNet at Deplyment Planning for Reporting Services with SharePoint Integrated Mode which includes high availability solutions.</update>

Why so many farms?  Can’t project server live with MOSS?

7 Reasons I don’t install Project Server on SharePoint Server

1. The SharePoint database rules and Projects reporting capabilities and flexibility (history) – I’ve achitected, administered, and troubleshoot Project Server off and on since 2002.  The expectations around installing funky service packs and running analysis cubes and massaging the database and connectivity has a history with me.  I’ve had cool aid conversations around list scalability and the project databases with the project team.  They are drinking more cool aid than they use to, and the uptake of Project as a commodity has REALLY come a long way.

2. Service Pack and Integration testing (perceived?) – Around RTM I was working with Boris on the project TPM side who spent years in Europe on Project 2003.  He was just down the hall.  We’d have long conversations around templates, integration, and even spent time together talking about lists, GUIDs, and web app challenges.  The service pack testing and integration was one where I saw obviously the WSS integration testing, but the time spent on cross testing with MOSS seemed to come late.  There likely is some cross testing with MOSS, but this is where I start to get nervous about environments.  There’s a lot of test cases that will never make it in.  Don’t expect the SharePoint Server team to do cross testing with Project Server, and the Project team, what are they testing?  They are testing their bread and butter.  You know where I’m going.  Every service pack there is complexity around order of patching and what includes what.

3. If you’re on MOSS and you add Project Server it’s not much of a Lights on (It is the other way) – Many people would expect wow I’ll get all the project stuff that I can now integrate with my SharePoint collaboration sites.  Those project templated sites can be just as easily accessed from another farms with the data viewer web parts.  That Project template is nice, but does it really add what anything you need to your collaboration sites?  You tell me.  Love to hear responses to this.  I don’t see how you couldn’t get the same with a cleaner admin experience having it on a different farm.  (I can see getting the auditing, workflows, and web publishing features to light up if you were planning projects.)

4. Performance Footprint – Project is quite intense with it’s query and analysis structure.  I would suggest keeping those databases on different physical drives while I think sharing the high availability SQL environment is fine in most cases.

5. Portal GUID issues – Do some research on site to site migrations and disaster recovery with Project server and you’ll find it is actually a different kind of app.  They have some unique challenges and run some unique STSADM commands.  This next level of troubleshooting is one where you really may want to limit the exposure.

6. Future Upgrade challenges – Ok, so you’ve been running Project Server 2007 and MOSS 2007 for years and now you’re ready to go to 2010.  Hmmm.  Now complexity is really exacerbated (extreme).  Do I need to say more?  Those using project have these timelines and the collab people are ready for the platform yesterday to take advantage of X and Y.

7. Specialty Expertise – Try finding a the UBER Architect/consultant who can do EPM Enterprise Project Server and SharePoint Server.  You thought the SharePoint guys bill rates were high.  HA! (Now add the CRM, and Performance Point requirements to your project and try to find someone… Talk about jack of all trades and expert of none.  Sorry wild crazy consultant guy who doesn’t sleep.  You do rock! …but we all know you don’t have availability ‘cause you don’t even twitter and share your integration experience.)

Having had experience working with the project server team for the last 5 maybe 6 years.  My history tells me they aren’t drinking the full SharePoint list cool aid.  They’ve come a LONG way.  I give them a ton of credit.  From where they were in project central and in that whole evolution.  It’s this history that teaches me a lesson of their evolution of their database structure and analysis and comfort level of publishing schemas and encouraging people to do reporting on the databases.  It’s a different world despite the fact the great hooks built on WSS.  The middleware integration around features isn’t as mature as you’d expect.  The idea of features is awesome and if you find something that you need, it likely isn’t that much of a challenge to track down that piece of functionality and get it over to your collab environment.  I worked on a hosted design of project server with a contractor back in the 2003 days.  I installed a service pack on that environment and had to run a batch script over a hundred times (we were hosting one of the largest project server hosted deployment with over 100 databases).  My time in the trenches troubleshooting the connectivity to the “orgs” that we were hosting on project server had a different sort of middleware feel to it.  I’m happy to see them come to the commodity hosting game and take advantage of SharePoint scale and ease of supportability from where they’ve been.

One consideration is not what Project brings to MOSS, but the other way around.  What does MOSS bring to Project Server?  Maybe that’s a better way to look at it, and actually might be the route still of getting say auditing and deeper workflows and ECM on your Project sites.  Still you might want to keep your collab and other portals separate.  I came across a BDC project on Codeplex to pull in data from Project Server.  You could do that with 2 farms or not.

What about performance point?  The argument isn’t as clean, but yes I’d recommend the same until the next version. Usually a performance point box doesn’t need high availability, but could definitely get away with virtual servers.

What about Reporting Services SharePoint mode?  Definitely separate for HA.  If not HA then if you’ll never be HA, then ok, you can keep them together.  That’s for the smallish environments.

Other dynamics applications?  Today – keep ‘em separated.

Isn’t this all contrary to the Small Biz Server Mentality – Yes. I’m not a fan of the Exchange/DC/SharePoint all in one.  I think it’s crazy.  Definitely crazy now that we have virtual server technology.  No reason to mix these things.  Put ‘em all on the same host sure, but keep ‘em separated.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Ask me again in 2010.  What’s your story!!??

Oh by the way… Is it support to run these together?  Yep.  Here’s the articles on TechNet that prove the answer is yes.

Deploy Office Project Server 2007 with Office SharePoint Server 2007
Deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 to an existing deployment of Project Server 2007
Deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office Project Server 2007 to a new environment

Apparently Christophe (The MAN on Project) did a talk on the better together story in Barcelona.  I hope he’s not mad at me for this post.  Deploying Project Server 2007 in an Existing SharePoint Server 2007 Farm.  No hard feelings Christophe, I’m happy to talk about SharePoint at your Project Conferences any time.

I find that Nilesh says it was “interesting and a real challenge to implement” in reference to a MOSS and Project install experience.

Reading through blogs on the topic to find some nuggets I love this question.  Brian Smith from Project Server’s Product Support’s answer makes is sound so easy.  Thanks Brian.

# re: Project Server 2007: Deploying Cumulative Updates

we have an environment where initially WSS and MOSS have been implemented and patched to IU, then Proj Svr installed +  SP1 (Office Svrs IU can not be run 2nd time) Which Feb CU patch should we use?

 BriSmith

Hi Matt,

You need both the WSS (961755) one and the MOSS Server one (961756) – this will cover for WSS, MOSS and Project Server. Brian.

Brian’s latest post on failures in step 8 of config wizard helps to bring out the scariness of wierdness in patching.

SHayden did a scary blog on “Forcing uninstallation of Project Server 2007 or MOSS 2007” (He rebooted to early and couldn’t even run psconfig?)

As the world of SharePoint grows so do the characters and personalities in the game.  A recent tweet from Dan Lewis, a great SharePointer that I met at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach which included a reference to a SharePoint comic.  Little did I know he had a an series of them.  After reading ALL OF THEM and ROTFL and many LOLs… I was anxious to help him promote his work and volunteered to host a Cartoon if he’d make one for me.

Without further ado…

SharePoint Comics

by Dan Lewis

If you have been following me in the U.S. this past week you would be ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing.)  If not you’d wonder what’s so funny?  Last week I came back from a crazy 3 week tour across Florida, Europe, and even frickin (excuse my French) Egypt! (Egypt is awesome, I HIGHLY recommend it!)  As I was flying out of Luxor I was picking up my carry on which was filled with various granite carvings of Ramses and a god of protection for women and children at home, and threw out my back.  So while I was recovering I ended up doing a couple of my in person sessions, virtually… including Birmingham Alabama SharePoint User Group and Atlanta SharePoint Saturday.  I’m sure it was a surprise for those that were there to hear my voice.  Dan says it best in the cartoon above.

Here’s my “10 Steps to Successful Deployment” and “SharePoint Admin Fundamentals” decks if you were at either of those sessions.

Thanks again Dan!  Thanks for keeping us smiling. Keep it up!

I was looking at my blog traffic to figure out what countries give me the most love (by visiting my blog) where I haven’t yet had a chance to reciprocate (visit them).

So here’s a break down of recent visits by country with three columns, 1) – percentage of overall traffic, 2) User Group of Conference Visit (ever) 3) A visit that could have been vacation

Essentially I want to see the world and a lot of the world wants to see me, so why not???

The most surprising is how I’ve been neglecting India and had been neglecting the UK.  I think I need to spend more time with those folks as well.  Maybe those once a year Teched/IT Forum events aren’t enough.  The best practices Europe in the UK event definitely went off well.  I’m definitely interested in your feedback on where you think I should visit.