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I’ve been in hyper conference mode lately. 

Boston SharePoint Saturday

Avoiding Newbie Mistakes: 10 Steps to Successful SharePoint Deployment (AKA SharePoint Governance)

SharePoint Fundamentals: Back to Basics

Best of SharePoint Conference

SharePoint Governance: 10 Steps to Success to Successful Deployment

Chicago SharePoint User Group – CPSPUG

SharePoint Governance: 10 Steps to Success to Successful Deployment

Wisconsin SharePoint Users Group -WISPUG

SharePoint Governance: 10 Steps to Success to Successful Deployment

NY SharePoint Saturday

Avoiding Newbie Mistakes: 10 Steps to Successful SharePoint Deployment (AKA SharePoint Governance)

SharePoint Fundamentals: Back to Basics

I’m working on a The SharePoint Twitter Crashcourse Deck for an upcoming user groups and SharePoint Saturday DC… Should be fun!

Also next Thursday I’m joining up with Dustin Miller to do a webcast on Accelerated Deployment which will include a demo of the Quest Webparts.

The more I look into the future of where things are going with information the more I see documents and files as a mechanism for portability.  It’s about rendering a document in a certain way and less about the information.

What is a document?  Is it that restrictive format that has a bunch of text in it with all that formatting to make it presentable?  Sometimes they get corrupted.  Not so much as the late eighties, but really what is a document is it the file?  Is it the format?  Is it the information inside of the document that is what really defines it?

The .Doc and .DOCX today is simply a description of the text and layout of the information in the file.  The binary .doc format is restrictive and proprietary.  The .DOCX and it’s future supports a more open way of reaching in and grabbing the data and displaying it with different layouts, fonts, and other fanciness.

As we start to look at file types as portability and display and not about the information that is contained in the document, you can see why it’s much more attractive to see things rendered on the web with a Wiki or in a blog.  Not only is it not read only, but it is alive.  The information can easily be changed and manipulated.  With Google docs and the new Office Web Applications, Word, One Note, Excel and PowerPoint.  Using these rich applications on the desktop will be like using Live writer to produce blogs.  It’s simply the offline rich authoring experience and viewing experience that is what the word processor is and it’s not about creating the .DOCX or the .PPTX but about the information.  Editing, or updating can easily be done online or through the thin or rich client.  The thin client will be to simply create the text and manipulate the look and feel (fonts), but with my limited design abilities I’d more likely to inherit someone’s more superior template and inherit their designs and fonts.  The best table editor ever has to be Excel. 🙂  It’s such a versatile application.  It will likely take a lot longer to eliminate or make Excel a commodity on the web, but what happens in word is becoming a commodity and most of what most people need you can now achieve in a web editing experience.

The .PPTX and the .DOCX will be used for portability and passing on the information, but how long will we really want that?  Sharing our intellectual property is something we want protected.  If we really want to share the information we’re going to want to squirt it into the ecosystem of the web where it can have a life and continue to live… or take a snap of it and produce a PDF or XPS.  A format where it has captured the essence of where it lives.

I wish I had the stats, but I think you could easily qualify that information put into a blog will be more likely to be read over and over again and quoted much more easily and even rendered 5-10X as fast.  Putting information into a .doc is like throwing something in a closet.  The closet might get opened again, now put it in a folder and it’s like putting it in a filing cabinet in a closet. Nest those more and more and it’s likely to never be read again.  SharePoint to the rescue and search might make those stats more likely to be found.  Meta data and all that jazz will again increase the likelihood of it being read again.

Compliance is a driver still, but that niche is getting pushed aside as businesses are trying to simply survive.  Compliance itself will need to find a place in this paradigm.  It will find itself built into the policies of SharePoint as a service or any SaaS solution.

There is a paradigm shift happening with the things that the social world brings to document management and collaboration.  The social tagging, social networking and information sharing and what I’m finding is document formats are becoming counter intuitive to the online sharing.  I know this is a stretch, but those of you who are involved in what’s happening in the interwebs will eventually stretch to the corporation, and major transformations are happening.  You might think this is going to take 20 years and the recession or whatever we’re calling this will slow it down…  The Opposite is true.  The recession will increase the need to produce and consume information more quickly and have less reliance on more heavy weight document management.  Those requirements will be sucked up by more agile systems with systems figuring out what needs to be archived or more highly managed.  The workflows themselves will be more automated and seemless again much less heavy weight.

Documents aren’t dead, but I do expect major shifts in how we look at files and their limitations for true collaboration and information sharing and portability. 

<updated>

What is typical today will be changing.  It will take a long time to end what is the doc and that process.  What do you think?

Let me give you an example

Information use to be on paper (still can’t kill those 100%) we called those documents

Then we were required to digitze that information and scanned all that in remember OCR into PDF

Next Step is content management systems, essentially getting stuff in rows and columns rendered in web UI

More and more we’ll see stuff in Blogs, Wikis, and web rendered pages of various types backed by publishing systems.

Don’t worry it will take a long time to kill the Document Management system 🙂 and what we call a document will continue to evolve.

Then the mandandate whs to put it in pdf

Spence Harbar’s Document is *not* Dead

Mike Watson’s Nod of Agreement – Doc is Dead Get use to it

Dan Usher’s Doc is going to be around for a while

</updated>

Thanks for attending the Admin Fundamentals webcast.  We had a good crowd.  Sorry about my voice 🙂  I woke up a bit hoarse.  You can download the SharePoint Admin Fundamentals deck. If you’ve already registered is will automatically skip that step or you can login.

It was great having Adam Woodruff.  The demo of the new auditing and security features of Site Administrator was quite impressive.

I got a number of question throughout the deck…

Q: You mentioned the new version of SharePoint – do you have any more information on Sharepoint 14 (?) like projected release date, major changes etc?

A: I mentioned it in the context of it being 64 bit as revealed by the product teams, and the importance of purchasing 64 bit hardware.  I don’t have any information that I can share around release or changes.  There were some announcements at PDC, but the best place to learn about SharePoint 14 or vNext is at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas in October.  http://www.mssharepointconference.com

Q: Would WFE only be good for a DMZ server to allow access to some items through an Intranet that users can access from public IP’s?

A: The WFE Only is a special binary installation which doesn’t include Query or Index binaries.  It is a common installation mistake.  It was designed for Internet DMZ deployments where people have very large farms of over 5-7 servers with 2 dedicated servers for WFE, and 2 dedicated servers for query.  I’d recommend using ISA or IAG rather than deploying in this configuration.

Q: So if the Index Server Fails, what is the process of moving/copying the index file from a Query server back to the Index server when it comes back online ?

A: When the Index is rebuilt and has recrawled or is ready to propagate… it will propagate the index to the query server automatically. Problems can occur if the index fails during propagation.  In this case the query server will error on search requests until the propagation is complete.

Q: Is the Index server what is considered the Applications server or the first server that is deployed?

A: In most architectural diagrams you’ll see the application tier as a middle tier.  The order of deploying the servers doesn’t matter.  The consideration is starting with one that runs central administration as the first server deployed.  You aren’t restricted from running central admin on one server only.  It is quite common to run central admin on more than one server.

Q: Questions on Site Collections as related to content databases.

A: Not sure I understand the full scope of the question, but it’s important to understand you can have one or more site collections in a content database, but you can’t split a site collection across a content database.

Q: 1) Can you specify which content database a site collection will be provisioned to ? 2) Can you break up a very large content database into multiple databases after the fact, when it has grown out of control ?

A: The ability to split up sites across databases is possible at the site collection level.  So yes you can split up your site collections across databases.  The most granular is one site collection per content database.  Even after the fact you can do this.  Using STSADM.EXE you can export site collections into a file which can be restored into a new content database.  Quest has just released a beta of a product called the Migration Manager Reorg Wizard to split up your site collections and move content between databases.

Q: Can I post these reports to a SharePoint Site?

A: The reports can be saved.  SQL reporting services SharePoint integration mode allows you to save the reports to a document library.

Q: What considerations are required for upgrading servers to 2008?

A: Both WSS and SharePoint Server 2007 support Windows Server 2008 with the post SP1 slipstream version.  You should upgrade SharePoint to the latest rollup prior to upgrading your servers.  I recommend the documentation on the SharePoint Windows Server 2008 Information Center on TechNet.

Q: Is the licensing for site administrator a per-WFE basis?

A: Yes, please contact a Quest sales rep for more detail.

Q: What does Site Auditor give you that can’t do with built-in MOSS auditing? Looks cool.

A: We’ve added custom events with easy reporting capabilities.  The built in ones would require you to build reports.

Q: If you have sprawl right now and you set a policy, what happens to the sites that violate the policy?

A: We enforce the policy after the policy is set.  So if you have a site collection with 10 sites, and you setup a policy where people can only have 5, it won’t delete the existing ones, it just enforces no new ones, and the new site collections would have max of 5.  You can set a policy for site depth and it won’t impact existing, just prevent new creation which would violate the policy.

Q: Can I restrict NT Authority/all authenticated users to be added to sites by site owners?

A: You can determine or locate someone doing this and fix it, but you can’t enforce it.  Security explorer would allow you to dump it and replace it.

Q: What kind of custom webparts are available in quest? Is there a content query webpart that can span site collections?

A: There will be demos of the web parts in the next webcast in this series.  You can read more about Quest webparts.  All of the Quest web parts work cross site collection.

Q: We’re running Site Admin 3.1 with Recovery Manager 2.7 – I am not seeing the Security Auditor feature. Does it require a special installation?

A. You should have it.  It’s in 3.1 in Site Administrator in the distributed package, you’ll see a folder called security auditor latest version of it is 1.1.  It will be rolled into the installation in the new version.

Q: No question, just comment. Thanks for this awesome presentation. Very helpful information for me as I plan/develop my environment.

Q: Reports used by the Site Admin module for example on the Security Auditor, does it use SQL Server reporting or MOSS Reporting services?

A:  SQL Reporting Services native mode or integrated mode.  You can use the web parts.  Note the SQL Reporting services is free with SQL 2005.

Q: can you recommend a good site for building a site step by step?

A: TechNet has a deployment center that is focused on providing links for helping you get started along with an installation/deployment guide.  There is some good content on MVP blogs with screen shot installation instructions.

Q: Hi, This is Anand. My site collection size is approaching 15 GB pretty fast. I see a recommendation from your blogs that beyond 15 GB dont try to take only STSADM Site Collection Back Ups. What other options do I have? Can I believe in the Content Database Back Ups Only?

A: I would recommend a dedicated database for site collections which HAVE to grow beyond 15GB or to split the sites into multiple site collections.  You can do database backups only if you have a tool like Quest’s Recovery Manager which allows you to recover a site or site collection from a database.

Q: Does MOSS Reporting services mandates the install of MOSS on SQL Servers?

A: SharePoint Server Enterprise edition contains a reports center which does not require SQL Reporting Services.

Q: Thanks Joel. This was helpful.

I don’t know if you can summarize and resummarize and recap capacity planning content enough.  I’ve been working on the deck for the webcast this week on Admin Fundamentals and tried to roll up the entire contents of the capacity planning deck and my talking points into one chart.

Before we get into the chart we need to revisit a fundamental SharePoint term: Site

The Most Confusing thing to get over is what is a Site vs. Site Collection…
(Let me help you with the decoder ring!  Can you believe I had this discussion with a couple of MVPs this week?)

SITE

Site = Web = Spweb aka subweb

A site is a web is an SPWeb to developers, and a Subweb to old timers or subsite to those just trying to use something to distinguish it from a site collection.

STSADM a Site is a Web; in the stsadm interface you may type stsadm -o enumweb to enumerate a list of sites for a site collection

In the Site Settings UI the site is most often referred to as a site, for example the ability to create sites and workspaces would be referring to sites within the site collection.

In the Central Admin UI it would be referred to as a web.

Spweb = to a developer they would iterate through a list of spwebs for an spsite.

SITE COLLECTION

Site Collection = SpSite = Portal = Sometimes referred to as a Top Level Site

Really the site collection is the container for sites or webs. I won’t get into it’s special properties.

STSADM = Site stsadm -o enumsites would give you a list of site collections in a web application

Central Admin = Site Limiting the number of sites in a database is limiting the number of site collections per database

Developers Site = SPSite would be the equivalent.  The Spsite would be the container and would have spwebs on the inside.

In the end user UI, for example when configuring the ability to create sites or site collections from the site directory, but this isn’t always the case.

Containment Capacity Guidance

Tons more detail and perspective in the SharePoint Key Capacity Info

Reorganization is a popular topic these days in relation to SharePoint Optimization techniques.

Quest has recently launched a beta of a new product designed around reorganizing your data.  This tool is called the Migration Manager Reorganization Wizard.

"The Reorg Wizard beta provides essential site reorganization and restructuring tools for SharePoint 2007 administrators allowing them to:

·         Move SharePoint sites within the same SharePoint 2007 server farm

·         Promote parts of a site tree to a new site collection on the same or different web application

·         Optimize SharePoint database storage by moving site collections between content databases

·         Perform cascaded site deletes to finalize the site move or roll back a failed operation"

I plan to get a demo of this tool and evaluate it and provide feedback here.

I like to think about SharePoint as a tree and see this process as a pruning process where the Tree itself is not structurally sound if it gets too tall (long urls) or too thick and stunting growth (too much in one database).

You’ll have to let me know what you think.

This last summer when I was in Australia I was chatting with Adam Cogan and he was saying I should be a regional director.  He started talking about giving feedback to the product team and at levels of detail that was very impressive.  I had assumed he was an FTE after his intro that he was a Microsoft Regional Director.  Twenty minutes later after hearing about his customers, and feedback sessions, and then hearing about SSW and the work he was doing I had to stop and ask.  So you work for Microsoft?  No, I work for SSW as a chief architect.  Woah.  So what is this regional director title?  How is it different from MVP?

Jonathan Goodyear on Regional Director Demistified explains… “So, how do you become an RD? There’s really no simple equation. The title isn’t strictly merit-based like that of MVP, and Microsoft doesn’t often create new RD positions. The term of an RD is two years, but there is no limit to the number of terms a particular RD can serve. An important point of note is that while MVPs are not obligated to do anything, RDs carry a great deal of responsibility. Microsoft expects RDs to connect with their customers and developers on a regular basis. This large responsibility can cause turnover; but this is a good thing, because it adds fresh insight, ideas, and motivation to the entire program. Microsoft has also been known to hire some RDs who are able to fill a particular internal need they have. When a new RD is needed, Microsoft turns to nominations (both internal and external to the program).”

Microsoft Regional Director is an “unbiased third-party evangelist of Microsoft products and services”

A more detailed explanation can be found on TheRegion.com and http://www.microsoftregionaldirectors.com/

“Regional Directors are members of an elite, worldwide group of technology thought-leaders known for their national and international speaking tours, their authorship of books, articles and blogs, and their business acumen. Regional Directors are well-versed on the totality of the software industry. They are recognized for their achievements in communicating the benefits of emerging technologies…

Regional Directors aren’t Microsoft employees–they’re independent developers, architects, trainers, and other professionals who provide a vital link between Microsoft and the developer community.”

“Microsoft Regional Director Community, small number of developers, architects and speakers honored by Microsoft for their great contribution to the Community of ICT professionals using Microsoft platform and tools. Microsoft Regional Directors are acting as a "liaison" between Microsoft Community and Microsoft as a company, often leaders (popular called “evangelists”) in implementing new technology and ideas and speaking about them at conferences. RD’s… are people that have great visibility not just in Community but also in Microsoft, especially when there are great efforts to make existing products better or to provide feedback on future product design and functional specification.

Also, RD’s are often engaged as independent consultants on various projects because they have deep knowledge of Microsoft platform and tools, even before it is publicly available through special private beta or TAP programs.” from Tomislav Bronzin (Congratulations Tomislav!)

“There are now over 3,100 MVPs in 75 countries worldwide, covering more than 75 technologies… 50 RDs in the United States, and approximately 130 worldwide. The word “Region” in the title doesn’t equate to any particular boundary, though. Rather, it is based on the population density of Microsoft customers and developers.” What is an MVP Anyway by Jonathan Goodyear

Microsoft has some broad information on the Microsoft Regional Directors program as well.

You can Search for a regional Director in your region: Find a Regional Director based on technology

Here are a few names I recognized.

Adam Cogan; Tim Huckaby; Tripp, Kimberly; Palermo, Michael; Campbell, Richard;

So why am I writing about the RD program?  No announcements 🙂  I just am spreading along the news about this fabulous program, and hope we can get some really strong SharePoint advocates in the program. (Like Kimberly Tripp is for SQL.)  Yeah, I wouldn’t reject something like this.  Looks like great stuff.  I’m really happy to see Microsoft puts such good time and money into a program like this that *really* contributes to the community and customers.