What is the 12/60 Hive?

You'll hear SharePoint veterans talk about and refer to the "12 Hive" or the "60 Hive" regularly.  Sometimes we forget that the term is not intrinsically clear to everyone.

 

The "Hive" concept was coined by Todd Bleeker during the SharePoint 2003 era.  His blog is currently called the "12 Hive".  So what does it mean?

 

12 Hive is the location where MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 install their files on the file system.  The same thing applies to 60 Hive which, as you may guess is the location of SPS 2003 and WSS 2.0 files.  They are:

 

12 Hive

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12

 

60 Hive

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60

 

Later
C

REAL Customer Service is dead. Long live the imitators…

Maybe it's all the rain we've been having, or the fact that old man winter gave us a sneak peak of summer and then came storming back, refusing to let go, that makes me more "sensitive"… more susceptible to getting really ticked off… whatever it is, it seems like April is my month for outbursts. What is it this time? The simple little concept of "customer service".

"Customer service" is everywhere. You hear about "customer service" every day. Most companies have a "customer service" initiative and/or focus. There are "customer service" training courses. There are statistical and analytical tools built around "customer service". There are even "customer service" gurus! The problem is… nobody seem to REALLY get it!

You would wonder what I mean by that and for a long time I didn't know myself. Over time though, as I experienced more and more of the wonderful "customer service" that companies provide me as a consumer, the ideas and thoughts began to crystallize in my mind. At first, I just knew that I was not happy with the corporate version of "customer service". It didn't feel like it meant anything to me when it actually should. I began to ponder this "customer service". If I wasn't happy with the world's version of "customer service", then what would my version be like? Before I could criticize and classify current "customer service", I had to develop and solidify my own impressions of what REAL customer service would be.

That took time and is in itself not completed process, but an evolving, learning process as new information affects my current perceptions and influences my theory subsequently. As such, I'm sure my theories and opinions will change over time, but I have gained enough solidity of thought to express my theory by now. As the title indicates, I don't believe that anyone actually knows or are in touch with what REAL customer service is anymore. Instead, we're left with some gray, lifeless imitators that shamelessly pass for "customer service" today.

First, let me begin by noting my most solid life experiences, the ones I cognitively am able to recollect, as examples of the total lack of REAL customer service…

We begin in May 2006 with the good old telephone company. AT&T and all the baby Bell's have a sure fire monopoly on land line phone service and with the high infrastructure construction cost, will maintain that for a long time to come. Note that I emphasized "construction" because as long as these companies have been in business, that cost has been recovered many hundreds or even thousands of time over. Anyway, as I noted back then, the VoIP companySkype had announced that they were offering free Skype Out calls to US residents to all of the US and Canada until the end of the year. I figured we would save almost $300 before Skype Out calls became charged calls again and we made the switch. Call quality over our trusty Linksys CIT200 phone was acceptable. At the time my plan was to switch right back to long distance with SBC (since taken over by AT&T or should I say they took over AT&T and took the AT&T name) but the absolute torture that I had to go through just to cancel our long distance option on our land line, left me feeling exploited.

Is it REAL customer service to make a loyal, paying customer pay additional fees to discontinue the use of a service for which they have no use?

Then there was the case where I was about to close on the purchase of an investment property. As you may know, part of that process involves securing insurance for the property. The first insurance company that I called, which was recommended to me by my former realtor, pulled up my insurance history and what do you know? It seems we had a claim recently. Well yes we did. We were burglarized remember? Well as a result of that single claim, they refused to even write me a policy on the new property.

Is it REAL customer service to totally distrust your prospective customer over something that was totally outside of their control?

As we come forward in time to the present day, we find the quality of "customer service" that is provided by cell phone companies. I've been suffering with crappy T-Mobil cellular service for far too long now… almost 3 years… 
Not part of "customer service", but just service quality in general, all the dropped calls have been driving me insane! I live in the city. I work in the city. Their maps clearly show that they have the city covered. So how come I religiously get my calls dropped as I'm traveling down Meridian Rd?!
I'm not nearly as heavily into the whole texting thing as most other people are, but I will send the occasional response to my wife's occasional txt. When the cell phone bill arrives, what do I see? But of course! $0.10 PER every single text message sent. Now I just KNOW that there are plans where texting is free! OK, if not totally free, like Revol, then at least the first 10 messages or so are free. But NO, here's a chance to charge the loyal, paying, sucker of a consumer another 50 cents so let's not let it pass by unexploited!

Is it REAL customer service to charge a loyal, paying customer for something seldom used that doesn't cost the provider anything to provide?

The final straw was this past weekend when we were driving my wife's car to the store. I noticed immediately that the "Coolant Low" light was on intermittently. I thought that was strange because just last weekend we had it into Sears for an oil change and a tire balance and rotation. On top of that, just this past week we had it in at the Chevy dealership to have the entire air conditioning compressor etc. replaced… a $1200 job! So surely one of those two would have at least checked and topped off fluids in the car right? My wife also mentions to me that the power steering isn't working as well as it used to. I checked the fluids and what do you know? Coolant is almost bone dry and power steering fluid needs to be added as well. Washer fluid is also low. We stopped and got what fluids we needed for the car on the way to the store.

Is it REAL customer service to provide only the services you charge for when a couple of seconds in time and a couple of pennies in goods would save your loyal, paying customer from possible damaged or even worse?

So I've listed my short list (what I can remember) of gripes here depicting my doubt in "customer service". So if that is "customer service", what do I see as REAL customer service?

REAL customer service is where the service provider actually CARES about more than just the service consumer's financial purse.
REAL customer service is where the service provider ACTIVELY looks out on behalf of the service consumer.

REAL customer service would have been if SBC/AT&T would have allowed me to drop long distance from my bill WITHOUT any fuss or any additional charges instead of driving my blood pressure through the roof.

REAL customer service would have been if that insurance company (the name eludes me) had acknowledged the fact that there was a claim history and maybe write a probationary policy with higher premiums for the first year or two instead of flatly denying coverage.

REAL customer service would have been if T-Mobil would have looked at my accounts, noted that we don't have a current contract, noted that our outdated contract can be changed to something much better that could INCLUDE the first couple of text messages for free instead of just sitting back and collecting the cash.

REAL customer service would have been if any of the companies that serviced our vehicle that week had simply taken 10 seconds to check the fluid levels and generously topped it off for us. Heck if you really wanted to build some good will you could even put it on the bill, but NOT charge for it. Simply note it as FREE.

My conclusion has been that REAL customer service is meeting someone's need, BEFORE they even become aware of it. That doesn't mean meeting needs that don't exist. The needs are real, but we all have busy lives and don't always know that we have these needs. Having these needs met without us having to worry about it and before we even notice it would only build greater loyalty in consumers.

Alas, we are left with the grand imitators of "customer service" and as a result, consumer lash back occurs. I believe it occurs more frequently than companies know. In my case, SBC/AT&T lost our long distance business for good. The intention to go back was spoiled by the drama encountered by leaving. As a result, we still have our Skype service and if audio quality is low, we use our cell phones instead.
The insurance company that wouldn't write me a policy lost my business and instead, I approached our current insurance agent, Vince "Chip" Felton of State Farm. Chip and State Farm has been nothing but good to us and deserve all the praise and loyalty that we can give them. Chip actually is one of the very few people I've found who knows the meaning of REAL customer service. He'll review our insurance status and policies annually and will contact us when he finds a way we can save money or improve protection at no additional cost. Besides that, he's just a great guy!
T-Mobil is also losing our business… probably forever! Instead, we're moving over to Revol. Why? No fuss billing. For a flat fee of $37 per month each we get UNLIMITED txt, UNLIMITED pics (what would T-Mobil not be charging us for THAT?), UNLIMITED minutes and UNLIMITED long distance. That's right. For one flat fee you get to use the phone as much as you want. Isn't that how it should be?
We don't have options for vehicle service but I'll be talking to my client reps and expressing my extreme disappointment.

So given some of the options we leveraged, is REAL customer service really dead?

Maybe not quite yet, but the flame is dwindling very, very fast amidst a vast sea of "customer service" darkness…

Later
C

How do I? – Solve the “No indexers” problem in SharePoint Central Admin

If you're in SharePoint Central Admin and you're either trying to commence a gradual upgrade or create a new Shared Service Provider, you may encounter a situation where you have to assign an indexing server to settings, but none are available. In the case of the gradual upgrade upgrade, the screen will look something like this:

The problem is that indexing was not assigned to a server properly. If you have a single server, it probably was never configured and if you have a server farm, the index server might not be configured correctly. Follow these steps to remedy your situation:

1.  Begin by clicking the "Operations" tab in the top horizontal menu bar.

2.  Now, in the "Topology and Services" section, click the "Services on server" link.

3.  By default the current server will be listed with all its services. If you have a single server environment, you can skip step 4.

4.  If you have a server farm, click the server name to change to the indexing server.

5.  Ensure that the "Office SharePoint Server Search" service is running. If it is not running, start the service by clicking the "Start" link under the "Actions" column.

6.  Once the service is running, click the "Office SharePoint Server Search" link itself.

7.  In a single server environment, you want to be sure that in the "Query and Indexing" section, both the "Use this server for indexing content" as well as the "Use this server for serving search queries" check boxes are selected.

8.  In a server farm, in the "Query and Indexing" section, ensure that only the "Use this server for indexing content" check box is selected for the Indexing server. On the web front end server, ensure that only the "Use this server for serving search queries" check box is selected.

9.  Enter your contact email address.

10.  Enter the user ID of the services account that will be used to process search for the entire farm in DOMAIN\USER format. This is normally the same account as the content access account.

11.  Enter the password of the services account.

12.  Scroll further down to reveal the remaining options on the screen.

13.  For the "Indexer Performance" setting, the default should be "Partly Reduced". This is a good setting to use initially and it can be changed later as you experiment with performance settings.

14.  If you have a single server environment, ensure that the "Web Fron End Crawling" section has the "Use all web front end computers for crawling" option selected.

15.  For a server farm, change the "Web Front End Crawling" setting from "Use all web front end computers for crawling" to "Use a dedicated web front end computer for crawling". The Indexing server should be showing up in this drop down. If it is not, select it from the drop down.

16.  Click the "OK" button to continue.

17.  If you have a web farm, repeat these steps for the web front end server but set it instead to "Use this server for serving search queries".

Once completed, the Indexing server should show up in your assignment screens as expected.

Later
C

Lotus Notes... how rude!

OK, OK, I'm getting on my soapbox about Lotus Notes again!  My company uses Lotus Notes for the most part but there is a group on an Outlook pilot.  Of course I'm in the pilot group! :-)

Anyway, I can endure Lotus Notes, only barely, when it's tucked away in a corner where I only have to use it every so often.

So it happened that I found myself the unfortunate victum of a Lotus Notes 7 upgrade push.  The upgrade was pushed out to my laptop and the most obnoxious dialog window was displayed right center OVER all my work.  Try and move it and it just jumps back to the center spot.  Of course it's modal so you can't hide it either.  That effectively rendered my work ability useless for the duration of the installation.

Now granted the dialog window might have been from the tool used to push the upgrade, but then again maybe not...

That was one iritation to deal with, but what I found this morning, just blew me away!

I go ahead and fire up my laptop this morning and want to start Outlook, my DEFAULT email application right?

WRONG!

Lotus Notes had BOLDLY and WITHOUT my permission just replaced Outlook as my default application.

First it removed Outlook from the Start menu:

And then secondly, Oulook has to reset itself as the default email and calendar application:

Now is it just me or didn't Microsoft get sued over setting IE as the default browser without the user's consent?

If I go running to the FTC, will they sue IBM and make them stop doing this?

Later
C

DESPERATLY needed SharePoint Branding class is coming!

Heather Solomon, of Solomon Creative, has joined forces with Dustin Miller, of SharePoint Experts, to provide something that has been sorely lacking...

A SharePoint Branding class/bootcamp!

Man, this is GREAT news!  I intend to personally attend the debut class and hopefully bring along some of my coworkers in the SharePoint world.

For more information on the upcoming class, see:

http://www.sharepointbootcamp.com/sharepoint_branding_bootcamp.htm

Later
C

Fooled again!

Well, for the second year in a row, I fell for somebody's April Fool's joke!

This time around it was Andrew Connell who won the honors with his Enhanced STSADM Utility that I totally fell for and believe, even helping to drive people to it myself.

Of course Dustin Miller set it up perfectly to make the whole thing more believable.

Last year I bought Schoble's post saying he's going to Google.

It just makes me wonder... am I just that gullable?  After some soul searching I have to say... YES. :-)

OK, beladed New Years resolution... NEVER ready ANYTHING on April 1st and NEVER, under ANY circumstances post or comment on ANYTHING dated April 1st.

I think that might help keep me out of trouble, don't you?

I guess we'll have to wait a year to find out...

Later
C

Complete MOSS licensing info – Updated (04/04/07)

If you are unsure of SharePoint licensing, this is the place to get all the information you heart may desire:

For some pricing quotes, please see the following page, but PLEASE NOTE that pricing is always subject to changes and discounts so please work with your Microsoft rep to get your specific and actual pricing figured out:

Additionally, this Excel spreadsheet has a good feature comparison and may also be useful.

• http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT102011901033&CTT=5&Origin=HA1019780331033

If the above link no longer works, you can always get it from the Downloads section. 

<UPDATE 04/04/07> Fellow MVP Spencer Harbar has discovered a good discussion on licensing that was burried in Microsoft’s “Planning and Architecture for Office SharePoint Server” documents.  He’s graciously extracted the applicable sections here. If you’re interested, you can download the original Part 1 and Part 2 documents. As always, if these documents are no longer availabe, you can get them from the Downloads section.

Cheers
C

DESPERATELY needed SharePoint Branding class is coming!

Heather Solomon, of Solomon Creative, has joined forces with Dustin Miller, of SharePoint Experts, to provide something that has been sorely lacking…

A SharePoint Branding class/bootcamp!

Man, this is GREAT news!  I intend to personally attend the debut class and hopefully bring along some of my coworkers in the SharePoint world.

For more information on the upcoming class, see:

Cheers
C

AC's SPSiteFix utility RTW's!

As Dustin hinted a little more than a week ago, AC has released his utility for fixing publishing sites.

TESTERS NEEDED!

Go and get it from AC's Site and help the community test this puppy out!

Thanks for releasing this Andrew!

Later

C