Install Sharepoint in Active Directory Account Creation Mode

Install Sharepoint in Active Directory Account Creation Mode

1. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.0
Enable ASP.NET 2.0
You must enable ASP.NET 2.0 on all servers.
Enable ASP.NET 2.0
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
1. In the IIS Manager tree, click the plus sign (+) next to the server name, and then click the Web Service Extensions folder.
2. In the details pane, click ASP.NET v2.0.50727, and then click Allow.
2. Install SQL 2005 server
Configure surface area settings in SQL Server 2005
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, point to Configuration Tools, and then click SQL Server Surface Area Configuration
In the SQL Server 2005 Surface Area Configuration dialog box, click Surface Area Configuration for Services and Connections.
In the tree view, expand the node for your instance of SQL Server, expand the Database Engine node, and then click Remote Connections.
Select Local and Remote Connections, select Using both TCP/IP and named pipes, and then click OK.

3. Install WSS 3.0
Run Setup on the first server
1. On the Read the Microsoft Software License Terms page, review the terms, select the I accept the terms of this agreement check box, and then click Continue.
2. On the Choose the installation you want page, click Advanced. The Basic option is for stand-alone installations.
3. On the Server Type tab, click Web Front End. The Stand-alone option is for stand-alone installations.
4. Optionally, to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 at a custom location, select the Data Location tab, and then type the location name or Browse to the location.
5. Optionally, to participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program, select the Feedback tab and select the option you want. To learn more about the program, click the link. You must have an Internet connection to view the program information.
6. When you have chosen the correct options, click Install Now.
7. When Setup finishes, a dialog box appears that prompts you to complete the configuration of your server. Be sure that the Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard now check box is not selected.
Before running "SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard" Prepare the Domain Controller.
Create an organizational unit (OU) for the user accounts
1. On your Active Directory server, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. Right-click the Active Directory domain name, click New, and then click Organizational Unit.
3. Type a name for the organizational unit.
For example, name the organizational unit "sharepoint_ou" for simplicity.
4. Click OK.
Delegate permissions to the organizational unit
1. On your Active Directory server, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. Right-click the new organizational unit, and then click Delegate control.
3. In the Welcome pane, click Next.
4. In the Users and Groups pane, click Add.
5. In the Enter the object names to select box, type the user name that you are planning to use for the administration application pool identity, and then click OK.
6. Click Next.
7. In the Tasks to Delegate pane, select the Create, delete, and manage user accounts check box and the Read all user information check box, and then click Next.
8. Click Finish.
9. Start "SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard". Follow the Farm Installation instructions
10. When you arrive at: “Completing the Sharepoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard”, select Advanced.
11. On Advanced Settings Page select “Enable Active Directory Account Creation Mode” and enter the Domain name and the organizational Unit Created before (Sharepoint_ou for example).
12. Now you can go back to the Server Farm installation document and continue the configuration steps.
13. After creating a “New Sharepoint Application” remember to use the command “iisreset /noforce” so that you leave your environment ready for the next step.
14. Now you may click on the link “Create site Collection” and the result should be an ERROR: “The Page cannot be displayed because your server’s current configuration does not support it. To perform this task, use the command line operations in Stsadmin.exe.” and that is a good sign… Now you have to execute the following command:
C:\PROGRAM FILES\COMMON FILES\MICROSOFT SHARED\WEB SERVER EXTENSIONS\12\BIN>STSADM -O CREATESITE -URL HTTP://servername -OWNEREMAIL User@Domain -OWNERLOGIN WindowsDomain\Windows Account
Substitute Servername, e-mail, WindowsDomain and WindowsAccount according with your implementation.
15. It’s important to notice that this command will effectively send an e-mail, so you should already have configured the SMTP Server on the “Operations/Outgoing E-mail Settings” Page.

S E V E N Years of Sharepoint

comprehensive round trip of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server creation lifecycle………..
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/12/28/7-years-of-sharepoint-a-history-lesson.aspx
by: Joel Oleson (Senior Technical Product Manager for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server)

A good article on Sharepointpug group

A good article on Sharepointpug group

Persian Language Pack for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 After localizing WSS and during the process of working with MOSS we found that some features we need in our projects are more suitable planned in MOSS, so when we decided to apply the MOSS, the first step is to have a Persian version, a procedure we have experiences about it in case of WSS, but main difference is the vast amount of work we should do to approach this idea.As past experiences we do not have enough support by Microsoft for Persian Language Pack, on the other hand we were implementing some projects so we were in lake of time and ought to do this job through our other projects implementation. Localizing MOSS was a delicate work need time managing and especial attention to get an acceptable translation , so we review the words and strings many times although we were testing the words and strings translated in a practical environment so that we encounter the problems and remove them before presenting and implementing the Persian Language Pack as a product. Overall now this product is ready to use and we have done our best wish to achieve the best.
See also:
http://www.sharepoi ntsolutions. ir/en-uk/ products/ Pages/MOSS. aspx
http://www.sharepoi ntsolutions. ir/en-uk/ products/ Pages/WSS. aspx

How to Debug JavaScript in Internet Explorer (I.E )

1)Installing Firebug Lite


Add this script in your page


Insert this line of code into any page that you want to contain Firebug lite:


http://getfirebug.com/lite.html


2) Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

A nice White Paper on Measuring the true impact of job scheduling software

By
TechTarget.Com


How much of an impact does automated job scheduling and workload
automation software truly have on cost savings, operational
efficiency, down time, and productivity?
Read this white paper to learn how much of a measured cost change
various IT managers reported in a survey on job scheduling
technology.
Click here to download:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/4152630/1709793
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ABOUT THIS FEATURED WHITE PAPER SPONSORED BY CA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The use of automated job scheduling typically helps to bring
automation and centralized control to the execution of the steps
needed to execute business workloads and processes, these include:
** Efficient operations
** Cost savings
** Delivering required services levels
** Application integration
** Communicating status to IT operations and users
This white paper is a summary of the results of a study that set out
to prove how much of an impact automated job scheduling and workload
automation software tools really have.
Download now to learn how much cost savings IT managers across 14
organizations reported in the areas of higher availability, including
changes in downtime, improved IT efficiency, and increased user
productivity.
Read this white paper here:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/4152632/1709793

Setting up SSL for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Simple guidelines to setup the SSL (https) for WSS v3

1. In WSS server, start SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.
2. Click Application Management tab, then Create or extend SharePoint Web application link.
3. Click Extend an existing Web application link .
4. Select the Web Application (SharePoint Site) which you want to extend by click on the drop down box next to Web Application.
5. Enter the Port number you wish to used. For SSL you can used the standard port number 443.
6. Used Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) = Yes .
7. Select the required Zone .
8. Click OK button to extend the site.

You might need to change the access mapping to reflect the URL if your WSS is going to publish to the Internet. the path are Central Administration > Operations > Alternate Access Mappings

Next step is to setup your IIS SSL Certificate.

1. Start IIS Manager.
2. In IIS Manager the newly extended site (SSL) is available. Right click on the Site Name, select Properties.
3. Select Directory Security tab, click Server Certificate... button.
4. Follow the Certificate wizard to install the certificate for your new site.
5. Click Edit... button.
6. In Secure Communications windows, Checked Required secure channel (SSL).
7. Checked Required
8. 128-bit encryption.

Microsoft Online Launch

Dan Holme
Office & SharePoint Pro
Community Manager

Microsoft Online Makes a Big Splash in the Services Pool
If you, like many others, have been watching the development of "Software as a Service" (SaaS), "Services Oriented Architecture" (SOA), "Web 2.0" or whatever the latest buzzword might be; and if you've been waiting to see who sinks and who swims in the big swimming pool of offerings—stand back, because Microsoft just dove into the pool with a very big splash.
Today, at its Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft announced the final details surrounding its enterprise-class service offerings under the Microsoft Online brand. I've been working with clients and Microsoft technologies for long enough to have seen some strike outs and some grand slams and, folks, I believe Microsoft Online falls squarely into the latter category. In fact, I think Microsoft Online's "debut" this week will be a turning point in the way we all view our enterprise and our technologies moving forward.
This week, I'd like to discuss and analyze the pricing and licensing of Microsoft Online. In future columns, I'll share the technical details and my experience migrating my business to the service.
A Brief History of Microsoft Online
If you haven't been following the development of Microsoft Online, let me catch you up quickly. Several years ago, Microsoft purchased Placeware, rebranding its flagship online conference application as LiveMeeting, thus entering the SaaS market. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft began offering hosted Exchange services to large enterprises. Microsoft also released its customer relationship management suite, Dynamics CRM, as a hosted model. Now, with 10 million seats licensed for Exchange hosted services and more than 50 billion messages per month, Microsoft is extending its services to enterprises of all sizes.
Microsoft Online entered beta testing last spring, offering Exchange, LiveMeeting, and Office SharePoint Server. Today, Microsoft announced the pricing and channel model that will move Microsoft Online into general availability. I met recently with John Betz, Director of Product Management at Microsoft, to discuss the final details of the offering.
Betz explained that Microsoft Online will provide, out of the chute, Exchange, SharePoint, and Live Meeting services, to support email, conferencing, and collaboration scenarios. Later this year, Office Communications Server (OCS) will be offered as Office Communications Online to fill out the picture with IM and presence awareness. Although subscribers can select any one or more of these ‘pieces,' there is obvious synergy to leveraging the entire suite, particularly when combined with Office 2007 end-user applications. Therefore, Microsoft is offering the "bundle" of Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and (eventually), Office Communications as the Business Productivity Online Suite.
Licensing and Pricing
Today's announcement includes a new licensing model, called the User Subscription License, or "USL." Each user who will access Microsoft Online services requires a USL, but you don't need to purchase USLs for every user in your enterprise. So, for example, you might host the mailboxes for your remote sales force on Microsoft Online and acquire USLs for those users, while supporting internal users with more traditional Client Access Licenses (CALs). One of the great features of the USL is that a USL can be used both with Microsoft Online external services as well as with internal services. So a user with a SharePoint USL can access SharePoint on Microsoft Online and your intranet SharePoint servers—a SharePoint CAL is not required for that user.
The first question on our minds these days is, of course, cost. So let's cut to the chase. The baseline cost of a USL for the Business Productivity Online Suite is $15 per month. That means, for $15 per month, a user can have access to Exchange, SharePoint server, Live Meeting and, when released, Office Communications Online. And, in the background, ForeFront and Exchange Hosted Filtering are managing the data hygiene of your Exchange and SharePoint data stores.
The $15/month USL is the baseline for the suite. Each piece can be licensed separately if you wish: $10/month for an Exchange USL, $7.25/month for SharePoint, $2.50 for Office Communications and $4.50 for Live Meeting. Each USL includes a storage allocation: 1GB per USL for Exchange storage and 250MB per USL for SharePoint, and additional storage can be purchased for $2.50 per GB per month.
Betz anticipates that Microsoft's current Exchange and SharePoint server customers will begin to mix-and-match and migrate to hosted services, so it created a Step-Up USL that can be used by Software Assurance (SA) customers. SA customers already pay, effectively, a per-user cost for an application such as Exchange. They can purchase the Step-Up USL and convert that SA license to a USL. As an example, an SA customer with a 1000-seat Enterprise agreement will pay approximately $7.53 per user per month for the Business Productivity Online Suite.
Of course, the theory is that by moving to a mixed or hosted model, which Microsoft calls "Software Plus Services," you can significantly reduce the total cost of implementing and supporting a complex IT service. No more worries about storage, spam filtering, upgrades, redundancy, or disaster recovery. Microsoft's 13 global datacenters (growing to 20 next year) are highly scalable, and a customer's Microsoft Online services are replicated to two distinct datacenters to provide redundancy, and the service guarantees a 99.9 percent SLA.
I was quite surprised to learn from Betz that Microsoft is also offering its online services in a super-trimmed-down model, called the "Deskless Worker." This model is designed to support infrequently connected users. Exchange services include Outlook Web Access (OWA) access only, and SharePoint services provide full access to SharePoint sites but no additional storage allocation. Pricing is $2/month per service, or you can purchase the Deskless Worker Suite, consisting of both the OWA and SharePoint site access, for $3/month per USL.
My "Take" on Today's Announcement
So now that you know the facts, let me tell you what I think about today's announcement of pricing: Wow. When Microsoft started talking to me about this service, I had a target price in mind, and this beat that target handily. I know what several large organizations pay for email and SharePoint service, and even at the "retail" price of $15/USL, before any volume discounts, this is a screaming deal. I've been running my business on an Exchange service hosted by a Microsoft partner, and I can vouch for the fact that TCO, and "total headaches of ownership" have been greatly reduced.
I think this offering will change the landscape, simply by the magnitude of Microsoft's presence in the services market, and will accelerate what I believe is the inevitable transformation of IT organizations away from being plumbers and utility providers toward being a strategic asset for the organization. I see far too many very smart people in IT fighting fires and troubleshooting technology, when their brain power could be applied to much greater value if they could get their heads above water and work to align technology with the strategy and objectives of the enterprise.
What Else You Need to Know
You can learn more about Microsoft Online by visiting the Microsoft Online website. The site is extremely well designed, and you'll find it easy to learn about the services and to set up a trial. Once you're ready to purchase the service, you can purchase it directly from Microsoft or through a partner—the pricing is the same either way. Partners will offer value-added services, the most obvious of which would be Blackberry support, but we will likely see a proliferation of partner add-ons that wrap around Microsoft Online.
There are several questions I'm regularly asked about Microsoft Online, so let me answer them briefly. First, Microsoft Online can replace or complement your existing infrastructure. For example, you can host Exchange servers internally and leverage Microsoft Online to serve mailboxes for a subset of users. Your internal Exchange servers would simply forward the messages to Microsoft Online. There is no direct integration of the internal and hosted servers, yet, so you cannot replicate mailboxes or public folders between internal and hosted servers at this point. Microsoft is aiming at "Server-To-Service" feature parity in future versions of its products.
Second, SharePoint Online is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) Standard edition, so it does not support Excel Services or InfoPath Forms Services. It also does not offer My Sites or Enterprise Data Search—that is, SharePoint Online will not index your internal data stores or SharePoint sites. It will, of course, index all of your SharePoint online sites. SharePoint Online is thus targeted at this point for intranet and collaboration scenarios, but that's where I see most clients trying to implement SharePoint currently, so that's not a bad thing.
I only have so much "space" to discuss today's pricing and licensing announcements, and I will be working over the next few days and weeks to migrate my business to Microsoft Online. I will certainly report on my progress and success. But I have no doubt that it will be successful—I've seen a number of Microsoft "launches" and this one looks very solid and very promising. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, Microsoft's Software Plus Services model is likely to play an increasingly important role in the strategic and tactical decisions you make for your IT organization.
And, although I'll be the first to slam Microsoft for half-hearted products and over-hyped value, I'll also be among the first to say, in this case, "Wow." I expect to see a lot of spin from Microsoft's competitors as they try to find ways to detract from the capabilities of Microsoft Online. But it seems to me to be just what we need, right now: secure, reliable, low-touch, and a price that probably can't be beat with internal resources.
'Til next time,
Dan Holme
danh at intelliem dot (top level commercial domain)

Announcements
Losing Productivity or Profit Due to Poor Document Management Processes? The Doctor Is In!
You are invited to attend a "therapeutic" session to learn more about leveraging your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server investment! In this Web seminar you'll learn about a solution that enables small, midtier and global organizations to optimize their business processes through certified technologies and solutions for paperless automation. Learn how your business can capture, deliver, manage, and share quantities of vital documents. Register today!

http://windowsitpro.com/Downloads/Index.cfm?fuseaction=ShowDownload&uuid=898f68ce-b5b2-427e-a9c8-9028c35f5eb3

SharePoint Replication Tips
Many leading organizations look to Microsoft SharePoint as an essential online collaboration platform and enterprise-wide content repository. In order to provide continuous, reliable information access to geographically dispersed audiences, you must deploy a high-performance content replication strategy. This Webcast discusses key considerations for ensuring a successful SharePoint replication strategy.

http://windowsitpro.com/Downloads/Index.cfm?fuseaction=ShowDownload&uuid=4c5fdfa9-f209-4cb0-a422-407b3158aaca

The Shortcut Guide to SQL Server Infrastructure Optimization
As companies find more uses for SQL Server, there are inevitably more SQL Server installations to deal with. This eBook share some new techniques for optimizing your SQL Server infrastructure and explores why so many organizations aren't really optimizing their SQL Server platforms.

http://sqlmag.com/ebooks/index.cfm?fuseaction=ebook&ebid=e0c1dfe3-c117-44d9-9d48-6dd7a0a003b7

Sustainable Compliance: How to reconnect compliance, security, and business goals
Large enterprises are seeking ways to actively streamline their compliance activities, operationalize their security management programs, and gain value from automating and integrating both. Unfortunately, streamlining compliance activities has not proven to be simple. Download this paper to get started reducing the impact of compliance programs on your resources.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Whitepapers/Index.cfm?fuseaction=ShowWP&WPID=c748c2a5-dce9-4784-a10e-030925aa32b9

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A very attractive article on Google Search by Mark Wagner's

A very attractive article on Google Search by Mark Wagner's

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MSTechnologies/message/5

http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/1009.aspx

INFO-IE: Ensuring your website is ready for Internet Explorer 8 - IMPORTANT

Please consider this as an important read. Consistent with Microsoft efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft will be releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most standards-compliant way by default. Giving top priority to Web standards interoperability allows us to help web developers and designers drive toward the ideal of "write once, run anywhere", freeing up more time to innovate rather than modify content for different browsers. This commitment also addresses several development and design pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases.
However, browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended. This creates a call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in Internet Explorer 8. As such, we have provided a meta-tag usable on a per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compatibility with Internet Explorer 7. Adding this tag instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render content like it did in Internet Explorer 7, without requiring any additional changes.
We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there will be a beta release in the third quarter of this year targeted for all consumers. To learn more and get started, please follow the step-by-step instructions located at the following link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=120024 .
Additional Resources
The following links provide additional information you may find useful:
· Internet Explorer 8 main site: http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8
· Internet Explorer Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie
· Internet Explorer Developer Center: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx
· Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit (for web designers and developers): http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/default.htm
· Microsoft Interoperability Principles: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx

Microsoft identifies tools to address SQL injection attacks

Microsoft is alerting customers to several tools that could bolster Web application development in the wake of a rising number of SQL injection attacks targeting faulty code in websites.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1318731,00.html?track=NL-102&ad=641700HOUSE&asrc=EM_NLN_3916392&uid=1709793

By Robert Westervelt, News Editor
24 Jun 2008 SearchSecurity.com

The Problem with IT Project Management (an Article by ZapFlash)

The Problem with IT Project Management
Document ID: ZAPFLASH-2008612 Document Type: ZapFlash
By: Ronald Schmelzer
Posted: Jun. 12, 2008
One of the most challenging aspects of Enterprise Architecture (EA), and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in particular, is that rather than address a discrete problem or set of problems in the enterprise, it attempts to address a range of interconnected and perplexing issues that have long troubled IT. Specifically, SOA approaches to EA address long-term issues of integration in environments of continued heterogeneity, application development in the face of continuous change, governance, management, and quality in environments of continuous complexity, increasing reuse and reducing redundancy across multiple IT initiatives, and organizational and methodology approaches that favor iteration over monolithic, waterfall-style approaches to development.
While none of these challenges are new, and in fact, many architects have a number of tools, techniques, and approaches at their disposal to address those issues, EA attempts to address them in a holistic manner, providing a consistent approach to use in the face of continued business and technological change. One of the biggest impacts of this holistic approach to IT management is that discrete IT project management is rapidly going by the wayside. This doesn’t signal the death of IT project management, but it does suggest that evolving approaches to EA require changes not just in technology and application development approach, but also changes in the way in which we manage the organization’s overall evolution given that it will become harder to distinguish between development of individual IT projects and advancement of individual IT resources.
The End of the Discrete IT Project
Most corporate IT environments have significant complexity. Even if the set of systems and applications are small in number, their interconnections, customizations, and dependencies quickly evolve into a morass of complexity referred to as the "IT rat’s nest". Into this environment of IT complexity, the business continues to impose their requirements and changes, resulting in the creation of yet more IT resources, interconnections, customizations, and dependencies. This web of complexity quickly becomes so thick that any change to one part of the environment, say a data schema changes, has ripple effects throughout the whole of the organization. Like a game of pick-up-sticks, nothing can move without moving the whole pile.
Yet, most companies still do traditional IT project management in which the requirements are defined and budgets set as if that IT project has no interaction with any of the other IT projects and resources that already exist in the company. In an environment where the web of complexity exists, the notion that you can pick up an "IT stick" without disturbing the rest of the pile makes no sense. One of the prime reasons why many IT projects go over time and budget is because the requirements that seemed simple turn out to be more difficult than anticipated. Some of the difficulty comes from imprecise definition of requirements, but the majority of the challenge comes from realizing how one requirement impacts the system as it already exists. "The Devil’s in the details", as is often said with IT project management, and the Devil is complexity.
Companies that have no plans to do any sort of heterogeneous application development or composition, or who have the time and budget they need to deal with constantly expanding projects in the face of continuously expanding complexity can afford to do discrete IT project management. But for the rest of us, any movement we make to try to bring the organization’s systems together into a predictable, composable, governed, loosely-coupled, and potentially reusable set of assets, or in other words, to apply any real Enterprise Architecture, will require that we stop doing IT project management in a discrete fashion and treat IT as a continuously evolving asset.
Lessons from Human Resources and Finance
Vendors, consultants, and end-users alike over-use and abuse the "Business-IT alignment" refrain without truly understanding what it takes to bring IT into alignment with the rest of the business. Simply facilitating the business requirements to IT implementation generation process is not enough to really turn IT into an asset rather than a cost center. Rather, what’s required is shifting the responsibility for the application of IT to the business and changing the organizational and funding model to reflect the role that IT has as part of the business, rather than as something that needs to be in alignment with it.
As a case in point, like IT, human resources (HR) and finance are two other assets of the business. A long time ago, companies realized that it made little sense to let each function of the business manage its own finances and human resources. Why should each business group do its own hiring, benefits administration, and office allocation when that role can be centralized for the purpose of efficiency and optimization? So too with finance – why should each role in the business manage its own cash flow, investment, and company-level reporting when it can be centralized for the benefit of the company as a whole.
The key insight here is not one of centralization, since many will claim that IT is also centralized as such. The requirement is one of separation of responsibilities. The HR and finance organizations are not in charge of figuring out how the people and money resources are used. They are simply in charge of managing them for the benefit of the company. It is up to each individual line of business and role to determine how to use the people and money available to it. So too with IT. The IT organization needs to move away from building applications on behalf of the business to providing services that the lines of business can use for their purposes. If we take this perspective of IT as a resource and IT management as management of the IT assets, then we can no longer think of IT project management in the same way.
In the game of IT pick-up-sticks, IT manages and creates the sticks such that when the business picks one up, the model is in place to deal with the iterative changes required. Note the nuance: business picks up the sticks, IT manages them. Say goodbye to discrete IT project management and hello to IT portfolio management.
IT Portfolio Management and The Continuous EA Funding Model
A full discussion of IT portfolio management would require more room than we have here in this ZapFlash, but the core concept is that the IT organization attempts to manage a set of continuously changing resources such that when a new requirement comes in, it doesn’t automatically spawn off a new development project. Rather, the IT organization leverages its growing "catalog" of IT services to meet the continuous needs of the business. Any requirement that is not fulfilled by the existing catalog will require either reconfiguration of existing assets, modification of existing assets, or new asset creation, in that preferable order. But even in the case of new asset creation, the project is the asset creation, not a project aligned with the specific business problem.
The Wikipedia entry on IT Portfolio Management further defines it as such, "the application of systematic management to large classes of items managed by enterprise Information Technology (IT) capabilities… The promise of IT portfolio management is the quantification of previously mysterious IT efforts, enabling measurement and objective evaluation of investment scenarios."
Many of you readers might be scratching your heads right now and wondering, "aren’t we already doing this?" Or perhaps you are saying, "I don’t get how this is different than discrete IT project management." If you are wondering that, then you haven’t yet experienced IT portfolio management, since to do IT portfolio management requires, in most cases, a fundamental change to the lines of IT control and budgeting. To attempt to do IT portfolio management in an environment where the funds are being allocated to projects is a recipe for disaster.
Indeed, changing the method of IT funding is one of the fundamental requirements for a move to a portfolio-centric style of IT management. In an environment where any new business requirement might require changes throughout the organization, it makes no sense to feed IT on a per-project basis. Rather, in an environment of continuous change, the IT organization needs to be provided a continuous, and steady, budget that provides for continuous changes on an iterative model. Each iteration will introduce new assets, versioned assets, and configurations of assets to meet the current set of business requirements. The IT organization then seeks to optimize its portfolio by minimizing the time between iterations, the amount of changes needed in each iteration, the total number of assets under management, and increasing the visibility the rest of the business has of the IT assets under management. In an environment of continuous change, IT needs a continuous funding model to enable to continuous value to the business.
The ZapThink Take
At the highest level of simplicity, all businesses need to manage only four resources in order to maintain success: money, people, technology, and supplies. All of these things are assets, and the organization reflects either the management of these assets or growing the customer base to use or contribute to those assets. IT is no different than finance or human resources. Just as the business doesn’t give HR or finance discrete budgets for specific business requirements, so too will it realize that it needs to treat IT the same way. Successful SOA, as part of the overall move to EA and the realization of composite, loosely-coupled, and potentially reusable IT assets, requires not just addressing the aspects of Service creation and management, but also successfully addressing IT portfolio management.

A nice case study on experiences adoption TFS in a cross platform development team using Teamprise for Java developers

A recently published case study with Thomson Reuters on their experiences adoption TFS in a cross platform development team using Teamprise for their Java developers. It's a great testament to how the combination of these two products can work together to create a comprehensive ALM solution for a significant development team. I frequently get asked about how well TFS + Teamprise can meet the needs of a Java development team.

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002078

Microsoft Advisory: Changes to Daylight Saving Time in Morocco and Pakistan on June 1, 2008

Link:
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmac/archive/2008/05/30/advisory-changes-to-daylight-saving-time-in-morocco-and-pakistan-on-june-1-2008.aspx

Advisory: Changes to Daylight Saving Time in Morocco and Pakistan on June 1, 2008
Daylight Saving Time changes in Morocco and Pakistan (revised May 23, 2008)
Microsoft has learned of a change to the observance of Daylight Saving Time (DST, aka regionally as Summer Time) in Morocco and Pakistan that could impact customers using local time zones. We have news that Morocco will switch from GMT to GMT+1:00 beginning on June 1, 2008, and that the Pakistan Government will change from GMT +5:00 to GMT +6:00 June 1, 2008, at 12 midnight (local time). These changes may impact customers and partners in the regions who use local time zones, including entities engaged in business in or with the region.
Unfortunately, due to the short notice provided for these late breaking changes, we do not expect that product groups will provide updates incorporating these changes. The Windows organization plans to include these updates in the next release of the 2008 Cumulative Time Zone Update for Windows, scheduled to release in July/August 2008.
For manual remediation of the Microsoft Windows XP operating systems in mainstream support, Microsoft will provide an updating to the following DST and time zone manual update article with the changes for Morocco and Pakistan:

How to configure daylight saving time for Microsoft Windows operating systems
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387
We will publish additional information and links here as available. For general information, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/time.
We've also updated the information in the KB to indicate that Iraq no longer observes DST.
Nick.

Team System Widgets

Team System Widgets (a very useful resource)

This is a list of various Visual Studio Team System add-ins, add-ons, widgets, and extensibility solutions.

http://widgets.accentient.com/default.aspx

A nice white paper on Requirement Managemet with VSTS 2008

This white paper outlines how to use Visual Studio Team System for successful requirements management using Visual Studio Team System 2005 or Visual Studio Team System 2008. In addition, you can use this paper to learn about some of the challenges that Microsoft intends to address in the next release: Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario".

Requirements Management with Visual Studio Team System White Paper

Google conquered Earth so Microsoft went for space !!

Check out this link for Microsoft Worldwide Telescope, its space exploration from ur desktop, Microsoft does innovate stuff :)

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/experienceIt/ExperienceIt.aspx?exp=true
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-12WWTPR.mspx




Imran Khawar Bodla
Microsoft Professional Partner

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Overview

Introduction
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is a versatile technology that organizations and business units of all sizes can use to increase the efficiency of business processes and improve team productivity. With tools for collaboration that help people stay connected across organizational and geographic boundaries, Windows SharePoint Services gives people access to information they need.
Built on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services also provides a foundation platform for building Web-based business applications that can flex and scale easily to meet the changing and growing needs of your business. Robust administrative controls for managing storage and Web infrastructure give IT departments a cost-effective way to implement and manage a high-performance collaboration environment. With a familiar, Web-based interface and close integration with everyday tools including the Microsoft Office system, Windows SharePoint Services is easy to use and can be deployed rapidly.

Collaborate Easily and Effectively
Windows SharePoint Services helps teams stay connected and productive by providing easy access to the people, documents, and information they need to make more informed decisions and get the job done. Enhancements in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 make it easier than ever to share documents, track tasks, use e-mail efficiently and effectively, and share ideas and information.
Provide a single workspace for teams to coordinate schedules, organize documents, and participate in discussions—within the organization and over the extranet.
Easily author and manage documents, and help to ensure their integrity with enhanced features including the option to require document checkout before editing, the ability to view past revisions and restore to previous versions, and the ability to set document-specific security.
Help people and teams stay on task with a variety of communication features that let users know when actions are required or important changes are made to existing information or documentation, including announcements, sophisticated alerts, surveys, and discussion boards.
Provide creative forums for brainstorming ideas, building knowledge bases, or simply gathering information in an easy-to-edit format with new templates for implementing blogs (also known as weblogs) and wikis (Web sites that can be quickly edited by team members—no special technical knowledge required).
Stay productive while mobile with enhanced support for offline synchronization through Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that users can use to manage document libraries, lists, calendars, contacts, tasks, and discussion boards even offline, and to synchronize changes when reconnected to the network.

Get Started Quickly
As a built-in component of Windows Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services makes it easy for IT departments to implement a dependable, scalable collaboration infrastructure with minimal administrative time and effort. Close integration of Windows SharePoint Services with familiar tools for authoring, publishing, organizing, and finding information, including the Microsoft Office system, helps users get up to speed quickly.
Simplify the creation and navigation of workspaces with the improved user interface and site creation tools in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 that provide easy-to-use templates, professional-looking site themes, and the ability to rearrange site navigation from within the browser.
Make it easy for users to get up to speed quickly by providing integration with familiar productivity tools such as those found in the Microsoft Office system—users can create workspaces, post and edit documents, and view and update calendars on SharePoint sites, all while working within Microsoft Office system files and programs.
Track work and tasks more easily with enhanced integration with Office Outlook 2007 that helps users organize calendars, tasks, contact lists, discussion boards, and meetings.
Customize workspaces with new application templates that provide custom scenarios for building workflows on the Windows SharePoint Services platform that address specific business processes or sets of tasks.
Implement a collaboration environment with minimal administrative time and effort, and with the flexibility to change deployment settings.

Deploy a Manageable Infrastructure
Deployment of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 increases control over and enhances security of your organization’s data and information resources. Reduce the dependency of business units on your company’s IT department for site provisioning, implementation, backup, and support. Whether you’re a contributor to a team site, a site owner, or a server administrator, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 provides better administrative controls for managing content, users, and sites so that individuals and teams can operate more efficiently and effectively.
Increase the security of business information with enhanced administrative controls that decrease cost and complexity associated with site provisioning, management, support, operations, and backup and restore.
Give IT better control over your organization’s infrastructure with new and improved services for controlling access to information and setting policies for site creation that enable security to be set as deep down as the item level.
Empower site managers and teams without compromising security by enabling them to initiate and control their own self-service workspaces and tasks, and manage the participation and access of others—all within parameters set by IT.
Provide a more robust document storage environment with document storage, recycle bin item retrieval, and version-control features built in to team workspaces.
Easily manage and configure Windows SharePoint Services by using a Web browser or command-line utilities, and enable a variety of custom and third-party administration solutions using the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Provide a Foundation for Web-Based Applications
With Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, IT professionals can tailor or extend the Windows SharePoint Services foundation to create new, efficient, Web-based tools and services specific to the organization, department, business process, or industry vertical. Through a highly customizable and extensible platform, companies can tie these new tools and services to existing line-of-business applications, capitalizing on existing IT investments and valuable information stored in back-end systems.
Manage business documents more easily with enhanced document library support and a common repository for document storage.
Use the Windows SharePoint Services platform to build rich, flexible, and scalable Web-based applications and Internet sites specific to the needs of your organization.
Take advantage of integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that expands the platform services and common framework for document management exposed by Windows SharePoint Services to offer enterprise-wide functionality for records management, search, workflows, portals, personalized sites, and more.
Use Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 to quickly and easily customize SharePoint sites and build reporting tools and applications tailored to specific tasks without writing or deploying new code.