Author: rich_gibbons

Microsoft Licensing, products, Cloud, and more!
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Outlook/Sharepoint Problem


I had a funny little issue with my PC at work that took me a fair while to figure out today. I’d set up a new Site Collection in Sharepoint and connected it to Outlook (something that I’d never done before) and it was excellent…I could see all the different documents (Excel sheets, Word docs etc) in Outlook just as I could in the portal…nice 🙂

However after a while I noticed that Outlook was taking it’s time to send mails etc and then when I tried to swap to another application-it all went wrong! Apps started “not responding”, hanging, the works…a quick CTRL+SHIFT+ESC and Task Manager showed OUTLOOK.EXE on 99%…WTF!!! I killed the process tree and restarted Outlook but to no avail…I rebooted my  machine too but it was useless; my processor was maxed out.

I started turning off add-ins in the Trust Center and then noticed 3 search/index related processes in Task Manager so I killed those and disabled indexing of the Sharepoint list I’d created. This was bound to work so I closed and re-opened Outlook and it was on 37%…not brilliant but better, then all of a sudden BOOM-99% again…holy maxed out processor Batman!

After having a look online I became pretty sure that it was related to .PST files but I was equally sure that I didn’t have a .PST file so that left me in something of a conundrum! However I went off to have a look anyway in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\<PST File name>

and what I found was interesting. While there was no Outlook .PST there WAS a Sharepoint List .PST…I deleted that and lo and behold, Outlook started behaving again (I also deleted the list from Outlook).

While I was happy to sort the problem out and be able to use my PC properly again, I am sad that I seemingly can’t have Sharepoint lists in Outlook 😦 Perhaps if I’d left it for a while the indexing would have finished and calmed the processor down but I just don’t have time for that…if anyone’s got any ideas please let me know!

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You are Daft Punk!


Nice One to Steve for this-become a mini-daft punk with your keyboard!

iDaft lets you make Daft Punk stylee tracks just by pressing buttons…I like YHIKOS…try it for yourself here.

idaft

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MS Windows Mobile Ad


This new advert for Microsoft Windows Mobile phones is pretty good. Bright, fun, young, funky, girls, scooters, music but with benefits to business too-a good all rounder.

Having said all that, I’m not 100% sure it will bring over many new customers-more likely it will just make us existing customers feel a bit cooler 😉

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IE 8 Video


This new video for Internet Explorer 8 was introduced at MIX 09 (the MS Web conference) and it’s pretty fantastic…the “Gentleman” is quality!

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HTC Diamond Extra Features


I’ve had my HTC Diamond for about 8 months but have just discovered some extra features!

I was listening to some music (Happy Mondays I think) in Windows Media Player and the track started jumping all over the shop-backwards, forwards, back again and so on. It took me quite a while to figure out that I’d be absent-mindedly running my thumb around the circle in between the home, call etc buttons…and this was the cause. A circular motion similar to how one controls an iPod will move the track forwards or backward in  5 second blocks. I find this to be very handy…

I thought that was the end of these hidden extras but no. If you do the same thing while viewing photos, you can zoom in and out of them-this also works for pictures inserted in to OneNote Mobile…again pretty cool.

The final effect of this is that it can zoom in on text messages and make the text bigger, should you need it.

Perhaps these aren’t HUGE extras but they’re pretty neat and useful…and help show just how advanced the Diamond was/is 🙂

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Microsoft BPOS Trials available


After Monday’s Cebit announcement, the customer trials of MS Online (BPOS) are now available here. You can also see the pricing too…

Here you can choose to trial Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Live Meeting Online or the complete BPOS suite (including Office Communications Server Online).

The trial is up to a maximum of 20 users and will run until General Availability (sometime in April) and then a further 30 days. If you choose to turn it live and purchase subscription, the systems will simply carry on working so you won’t have to reconfigure anything 🙂

At £10.04 per user per month for the entire suite, MS Online can really help business increase productivity and cut costs at the same time…go check it out!

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Canvas for OneNote


Microsoft Office Labs have come up with another excellent prototype “Canvas for OneNote”.

This let’s you visualise the different pages in a workbook, or even your different workbooks, from a Bird’s Eye view. This Office Labs video explains it very well but I can’t embed SoapBox here so head over to the Geek in Disguise and watch it here.

The software can be downloaded here and is marked as Vista only…although I’m sire it will run on Windows 7 too (something I need to test soon)…

If you’re familiar with PPTplex (another Officelabs invention) then this is pretty similar in that it lets you see everything all at once, rather than sequentially.

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Take screenshots on Windows Mobile


There have been quite a few occasions where I’ve wanted to screenshot something on my Windows Mobile device but I’ve always thought that to be impossible-how foolish I was it seems!

I found a great post from www.aboutonlinetips.com which lists 15 different free applications to do just that. You can find it here.

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Comparison of Sharepoint Server & Sharepoint Online


While Sharepoint Online is an excellent product and fits the bill nicely for the vast majority of customers, there are certain features it lacks when compared to it’s regular on-premise brethren; this is mainly down to the multi-tenant environment of the standard datacenters.

moss-online-comparison

Green = Sharepoint Online Blue = On Premise Server Only

As you can see, the Search & Business Intelligence sections are practically non-existent online which may put some people off. However if you need those features then you can utilise MS Online in it’s full Software PLUS Services mode and have an online AND an on-premise server together. It will be interesting to see if Sharepoint Online features more Search & BI functionality once “Wave 14” hits as Sharepoint On-Premise will have a whole raft of new features in these areas…

Microsoft state:

In the current release of the services, the following actions are not supported:

·         Use inline code, build coded workflows, or develop Office InfoPath forms with coded business logic.

·         Deploy features, solutions, pluggable authentication providers, Web Parts, site definitions, or other modifications that require deployment and configuration on the server.

·         Modify built-in SharePoint files, web.config settings, security policy, and other elements.

·         Make configuration changes that affect the Web server or the Microsoft .NET Framework.

·         Make changes or add capabilities that require a custom database or changes to the database schema.

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Microsoft BPOS Trials Announced


Today at Cebit, Microsoft announced the availability of trials of their Online Services-BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) in 19 countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom). This follows on from the US launch in November 2008.

BPOS is an online offering of some of Microsoft’s most popular software including Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Live Meeting Online and Office Communications Server Online, and it is something I am very excited about.

As a Microsoft Partner I envision that Microsoft Online Services will help more customers access the benefits of these MS technologies, particularly the smaller customers as they will benefit greatly from the lower costs, reduced/removed hardware and management costs and the ease of implementation. Having said that these are all attractive benefits to even the largest customer who can use them to increase productivity and reduce costs, something which is even more important in today’s economic climate!

A great example of this is the case study that MS released today of their work with GlaxoSmithKline and their adoption of MS Online Services. GSK are migrating 100,000 users from Lotus Notes over to MS Exchange Online with a number of users taking the “Deskless Worker SKU”-a new product that gives limited access to Exchange and/or Sharepoint for users who don’t need full access and is thus available at a reduced cost:

“The move to Microsoft Online Services will help GlaxoSmithKline cut operational costs by an estimated 30 percent and create a variable cost model that will provide increased flexibility in the future,” said Ingo Elfering, vice president of Information Technology Strategy, GlaxoSmithKline.

A blog post by GSK about why they swapped to BPOS can be found over at the MS Online Blog here. A great Q&A with the GSK CIO can be found here.

On a personal note, I’ve been trialling BPOS at work for a few months now and it is absolutely fantastic. It gives me a lot more freedom that a standard premise based solution as well as cutting down on hassle such as VPN clients etc. We’ve had great success talking to our customers about it and I think we, as an industry, will see a great take up of this new way to consume MS technology.

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