28 February 2007

What Office 2007 Application are you?


Ever wondered if you had to be classified as an Office 2007 application, which you'd end up being? Well now you can find out for yourself. Head on over to http://www.ontheofficecouch.com and find out.
My analysis came up with Outlook 2007! J
Mmm… RSS was certainly the feature I was most excited about during the TAP, but some enhancements in its functionality is required to make it better.
So what are you waiting for? Go find out which application your are…
Later
C

21 February 2007

The Fab 40 WSS 3.0 Site Templates are now available!


The Fabulous 40 Site Templates for WSS 3.0 was just made available. The announcement was made on the SharePoint Team blog tonight. I have installed the latest 20 templates in addition to the first 20 to the WSSTemplates sub site available at http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog/WSSTemplates.
Logon credentials for full collaboration permissions are listed on the site. Enjoy! J
If you are having trouble installing the templates, Dustin Miller posted instructions that makes it a snap to deploy!
Later
C

20 February 2007

SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 released


If you use SQL Server 2005, you'd be interested to know that SP2 was just released.
For more, see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/servicepacks/sp2.mspx
There is also a VERY nice post about the integration between Reporting Services and MOSS/WSS on the SharePoint team blog.  For more on that see http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/02/19/microsoft-sql-server-2005-sp2-reporting-services-integration-with-wss-3-0-and-moss-2007.aspx

Later
C

Response from PC Magazine editor Jim Louderback


 emailed Jim Louderback last week citing my concerns over the omission of SharePoint in many technology reviews in which SharePoint plays such as collaboration and blogs.
Jim has graciously responded to my email thus:
From: Cornelius J. van Dyk
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 3:59 AM
To: 'Louderback, Jim'
Subject: RE: PC Magazine Reviews incomplete without comparisons to the obvious
Thanks Jim.  That's all anyone could really ask. 

Thanks
C

From: Louderback, Jim [mailto:Jim_Louderback@ziffdavis.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 11:16 PM
To: Cornelius J. van Dyk
Subject: RE: PC Magazine Reviews incomplete without comparisons to the obvious
Wow..  It's not an anti sharepoint bias, or anti msft bias.  I think we just don't look at 'em that way..

But we'll make sure and include them in the future...
I can't wait for their first review of SharePoint, hopefully something in the collaboration space… J

Later
C

19 February 2007

Coming up… after the break!


OK, so the title's a cheesy spoof on American Idol (you do watch Idol don't you? J) but in all seriousness, I'm currently working on a 3 part series detailing how I put this blog together and what you would need if you wanted to host your own blog with WSS 3.0.
This series has been long overdue and I promised to write about it. Gotta keep those promises! J
I'm hoping to publish the first part of the series sometime this week.
Later
C

17 February 2007

My letter to Jim Louderback… Editor of PC Magazine


I've been a PC Magazine reader for years, but recently I've noticed several reviews of tools and products in which SharePoint could be a contender e.g. Collaboration and Blogging. Unfortunately SharePoint was never included in any of these reviews. So I decided to write Editor Jim Louderback an email to politely point out the omission in hopes that SharePoint might actually get some representation in future reviews. My email to Jim is listed below…

Hey Jim,

I've been a faithful PC Magazine reader for many years, even when I felt "PC" Magazine was starting to become more of a "Mac" Magazine toward the end of Michael Miller's reign as Editor. I really welcomed the new changes in both look and feel as well as content that you brought to the table for PC Magazine as Editor.
Recently however, I've noticed more and more articles in PC Magazine citing certain types of tools, but not including the obvious in your comparison. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Microsoft MVP in the SharePoint space.) One such comparison a couple of issues ago was on "Collaboration Tools" yet the article failed to list SharePoint, and in particular Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (which is free) as one of the options.
I thought about responding at the time, but didn't. Now, in the latest issue (March 6, 2007) on page 38 you give the rundown on some free blogging tools. Blogger was listed as one of the tools as well as LiveJournal and Vox, but again, SharePoint was not noted. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 includes a site template specifically designed for blogging. In fact, my blog (http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog) is a SharePoint blog. I started my blogging career on Blogger, then moved to MSN Spaces, but finally went SharePoint because of the freedom and control it allowed me.
I was wondering if it was possible for the PC Magazine crew to include SharePoint in their review cycles. Microsoft has done a LOT with SharePoint especially in the latest iteration and both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) have made huge amounts of progress in many areas. I just don't think it would be prudent to do comparisons on tools and then leave Microsoft off the comparison chart. Certainly Microsoft plays a huge role in most software on the PC.
I trust that you'll be able to find the time to evaluate some of SharePoint's features and include those in future comparative publications listed in PC Magazine.

Sincerely
Cornelius J. van Dyk
Blog: http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog
RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cjvandyk

Let's hope we see some more SharePoint publicity in PC Magazine in the future! J
Later
C

15 February 2007

How do I? – Get a list of all users for each SharePoint site


If you're doing an upgrade of an existing SharePoint Portal Server 2003 farm to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 you will undoubtedly run into the need to identify all site administrators in your SPS 2003 environment. If for no other reason than to notify them that their Themes will be lost during the migration to MOSS 2007, you'll be in contact with these administrators.
The question is… how do you identify all the site administrators? If you only have a hand full of sites, it can certainly be done manually, but if you dealing with a huge farm and thousands of sites, this is not practical. That is exactly where TSQL comes to the rescue.
Now as you know, we are not allowed to directly update any of the SharePoint databases as this action would invalidate your support agreement with Microsoft and put your portal in an unsupported state. That doesn't mean we can't read from it. This little SQL query will deliver the results you are looking for:
USE SharePoint_SITESELECT w.fullurl, w.title, u.tp_title, u.tp_loginFROM webs w, userinfo u, webgroups gINNER JOIN webgroupmembership pON g.webid = p.webidAND g.id = p.groupidWHERE g.type 5AND u.tp_id = p.memberidAND u.tp_siteid = g.siteidAND w.id = g.webidAND w.siteid = g.siteidORDER BY w.fullurl
The WebGroups table defines all the web sites and they groups that was created for each. Joining it to the WebGroupMembership table provides us with the users that belong to the groups and from there we just have to get more user information and web site information from the UserInfo and Webs tables.
If you wish to get a list of other standard user groups, just change the "g.type =" part of the statement as follows:
  1. Guest
  2. Reader
  3. Contributor
  4. Web Designer
  5. Administrator
Once you have the list, you can dump it to a .CSV file and manipulate it from Excel.

You could also download my SQL script here.
Later
C

Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) Overview

The Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) is a powerful library designed to simplify the authentication process for applications that conn...