Chris and Daves SharePoint and Tech Blog

At Twynham we always find the best way to start a new SharePoint project is to get it drawn out, preferably by the end user. This can come back to us in many forms from a pencil and paper sketch through to a fully blown Visio diagram.

I stumbled across this video that shows off Expression SketchFlow, it does look really really good for rapidly prototyping sites or applications/web parts.

This should help us pin down exactly what the end user wants and avoid all those ‘tweaks’ that turn into requirements!
Like to trial here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Sketchflow_Overview.aspx

I’m giving it a try myself at the moment and will update this post with screen shots and my thoughts.

 As I have said I previous posts myself and Alan Richards have been giving a series of presentations on SharePoint 2010 and virtualization, this is an ever evolving presentation thanks to questions we get asked and one of those questions was the licencing model for HyperV so I thought that through this post I would explain the licencing of your Guest Windows servers OS’s on HyperV and the different licencing options you are presented with depending on the host version of Windows that you choose to run your HyperV environment on.

 As I stated in a previous post on licencing SharePoint 2010 for education in the UK the subject of Microsoft licencing is always a lively discussion and so it proved with that particular post but from the research I have done I think the licencing model for HyperV is pretty cut and dried (Well let’s hope so.)

Windows Server 2008 Standard

 This version provides you with a single free licence for your HyperV guest windows server operating system.

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

 The enterprise edition of Server 2008 allows you to run 4 guest Windows server instances free from additional licence costs.

Windows Server 2008 Datacentre Edition

 With the Datacentre version the licencing model for the host is slightly different in as much as this version is licenced per processor (Not cores but physical platters) so a single quad core processor would only require 1 Datacentre licence but does provide the best value for large HyperV environments, as this version of Windows server provides you with unlimited licences for your guest Windows server operating systems. The Datacentre version was at one point only available as an OEM product when purchased with hardware but that changed in October 2006 and is now available through your normal licencing channel.

 I have provided below a simple table to help with your decisions on which version of Windows server to run in your host HyperV setup.

 Myself and Chris along with Darren White presented a session entitled “Our Journey To SharePoint 2010 Land” at the SUGUK meeting in Southampton on June 24th so i thought i wiould do a quick post to share this presentation with you, We tried to make it entertaining as well as informative hence the pirate themed presentation. WE hope you enjoyed it and see you again at the next meeting.

Dave And Chris

If you are using the Office Web apps in SharePoint 2010 then you may come across this error…

“This workbook cannot be opened because it is not stored in an Excel Services Application trusted location.

To create an Excel Services Application trusted location, contact your system administrator.”

If you happen to be the system administrator and you’ve turned to google bing google to find the answer hopefully this blog post will help you out!

I believe this error is most likely if you are going over SSL as the default trusted location is just http://

Jump into central admin (please ignore my heath analyzer!) and goto Manage service applications.

Click on Excel services Application.

Then click on “Trusted file locations”

You can see that http:// is already there, so you could just add https:// or put in a url to a specific location

Fill in the boxes, I also ticked the trust children box.

Once you have done this go back to your Excel document and it will open up in the browser! Nice.

Myself and Alan Richards have so far given 3 presentations at the SharePoint 2010 in Education events organised by Mike Herrity and due to popular demand we have now put on another 2 events in September and October with 3 more dates penciled in for May 2011. We have been listening to the feedback we get so i have also included our updated presentation you can also follow the day on twitter by following the hashtag #SPEDU

 Myself and Alan Richards have so far given 3 SharePoint 2010 in Education presentations on using HyperV to host your SharePoint 2010 environment and we have be amending the presentation as we go thanks to questions and comments from the attendees, well the presentation we gave yesterday in Manchester was the first time we have been asked about monitoring our HyperV farms.

 This question was asked by a VMware user who wished to save money year on year and switch to using HyperV, but one of his concerns was the switch would deny him the use of the VMware monitoring tools which apparently are superb. So I thought over the next couple of posts I would cover 2 of the tools available to monitor and administer your HyperV environment. The second post will cover System Centre Virtual Machine Manager but I thought I would start with a free tool.

 So I would like to introduce you to the best free HyperV monitor that I have found, it is written by Tore Lervik MVP and is just a desktop gadget that is one of those rare breeds a piece of software that does exactly what it is designed for just monitoring your HyperV servers no more no less, This gadget just sits on my desktop and lets me know in a visual manner what activity is happening and more importantly for me how much memory I have available on my HyperV host servers.

The tool is currently on version 5.2 and some of the features are

VM CPU Graph

Wake on LAN support

VM RDP (If the host is running 2008 R2)

Multilanguage support

I cannot tell you how useful this gadget is, so why not download it and give it a go you will not regret it the download can be found at http://mindre.net/post/Hyper-V-Monitor-Gadget-for-Windows-Sidebar.aspx

Dave

Yesterday I gave a presentation about branding at the SharePoint Education event organised by Mike Herrity at Microsoft Reading. It’s the same presentation I gave at the last event, this time going solo without Matt. The slides from this 1st presentation are here.

I’ve had quite a few request for links to resources etc so I will start to build a list here. If you have any more then just leave a comment or tweet me @crmckinley

http://www.codeplex.com/ -microsoft open source developments

http://www.wssdemo.com/default.aspx – sharepoint examples

http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/ – useful blog, including blank masterpage

http://www.widgetbox.com/galleryhome/ – 1st of a google search for ‘free widgets’

The best SharePoint designer book I’ve found is this one, it may be 2007 but much of the theory still stands true in 2010.

A few more (with thanks to Derek @workerthread)

Sam ‘pinkpetrol’ Dolan

http://mosshowto.blogspot.com/2010/06/sharepoint-2010-wiki-customizing.html Customising Sharepoint 2010 Wiki team sites

http://www.heatherwaterman.com/blog/default.aspx Heather Waterman

On the 8^th June 2010 Microsoft made available via their online Live service the office 2010 web Apps, these online apps are only available in the UK, US, Ireland and Canada currently but on the 15^th June will be online for the rest of the world. These are the same applications that are available to SharePoint 2010 users Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint

     The only differences that I can see between the SharePoint 2010 version and the window live versions are in the backstage (File) area with some more options online such as the share command button giving you the ability to share a workbook via your sky drive with other people.

Online Version

 

SharePoint Version

These Web Apps are a great extension to the cloud offerings from Microsoft and gives everyone the use of Microsoft Office for free. Now I realise that these apps do not contain the full functionality of the full office suite but for creating a quick document where you do not have office installed i.e. internet café or your internet enabled phone these are just perfect.

 I expect the big question is how do these compare too Google apps? Well I think that is a whole new post comparing the 2 so that will be coming soon….

Dave

   Last year I was lucky enough to be asked to speak at the learning gateway conference in Birmingham and this year myself and Chris will be speaking at the conference, this year also looks bigger and better. The conference itself will be based in London at the Church house conference centre . This year the conference has been split into 3 tracks:-

Building and maintaining The Learning Gateway

• Understanding SharePoint 2010
• Branding
• Patching SharePoint and Preparing your SharePoint 2007 for 2010
• A Look At Live@edu
• Virtualization

User Adoption

• 2010 Social Networking Features
• Encouraging user adoption & quick wins
• SharePoint 2010 for Education
• Integrating InfoPath Forms
• SharePoint Learning Kit

School Stories

• Parental Engagement
• How we drove adoption
• Hosted SharePoint
• How we use our in-school SharePoint
• Replacement of the File Server

I will be running a session on installing SharePoint 2010 and SQL 2008 in a virtualized HyperV environment and Chris’s session is focusing on branding your SharePoint 2010, Speakers so far confirmed include

Alan Richards

Alex Pearce MVP

Chris Rothwell

Neil Hodgkinson

Mark Leighton

Richard Willis

Steve Smith MVP

And still more to be confirmed.

The cost for the day is £150 per delegate more details can be found at the conference website and if you do get along please pop into mine or Chris’s session and say hello.

 Dave

 Today I received an email from Microsoft stating that the next Worldwide SharePoint conference will be held in Anaheim California October 3^rd – 6^th 2011. Now I have been lucky enough to attend 2 SharePoint conferences so far and I can tell you they really are superb events so start saving and save the date and hopefully see you there. More detail can be found here