Tag: Sharepoint 2010

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Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 and VMWare Error


I installed Sharepoint 2010 on a Virtual Server last week, set up some new site collections and then when I came to use it, got a very strange error:

”The trial period for Sharepoint Foundation has expired”

Strange because this wasn’t a trial and because it wasn’t Sharepoint Foundation…it was full server 2010!

I did a little searching round the web and saw something on the Microsoft forum that suggested it might be related to Windows Web Server. I checked and yes, our System Admin had built the VM with Windows Web Server…but than itself was weird…why did he do that?

I went downstairs and asked him…he didn’t make a web server, it was Windows Server Std 2008 R2 but by the time it got to me, it had magically morphed into a Web server…WTF?

The media being used was from MSDN and contained Std, Ent & Web in one image and you choose which one you want during the installation. The Sys Admin built a Svr Std machine, converted it to a VMWare template, deployed it again and gave it to me…and there was the problem. We tried again and this time, COPIED it to a template (rather than converting) and hey presto, it all worked perfectly. The VM was a Svr Std box and, after re-installing it, Sharepoint 2010 was up & running straight away Smile

I don’t know if this is a known problem and perhaps it seems really obvious to some, but it had me stumped for a while so I thought I’d share it on here…just in case.

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BPOS 2010 aka Wave 14


BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), Microsoft’s Online Services offering has been somewhat successful over the last year or so, but it is about to become a much more robust platform. Over the next few months the “Wave 14” rollout will begin, with an aim to being completed by the end of 2010.

The biggest update is that the products will match the versions that are available to purchase “on-site”. That is, BPOS will offer Exchange 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 with near feature parity; removing one of the biggest hurdles to BPOS adoption…at least in my experience.

However, there are a number of other additions and improvements coming…

Identity and authentication has been an issue for many people, as this whole area is quite clunky & “un-modern”. As Program Manager Dan Kershaw says:

“the password policy isn’t configurable, you can’t use the same credentials used inside the company for single sign-on with BPOS so admins have to maintain separate credentials, there’s no two-factor authentication and no role-based administration”.

The fact that Microsoft recognise these limitations is great as that means they’re also working on fixes. The update will bring:

  • Password Policy controls
  • Five admin roles
  • Federated ID’s w/ 2 factor authentication for single sign-on
  • New Admin Console
  • Service connector for managing Pcs & apps.

 

Powershell is definitely the way forward for 21st century system admins and, while it can be used for certain things with the current iteration of BPOS, more is coming soon.

I covered off some of the new features of Sharepoint Online 2010 in this post but now there is more information on what’s coming for Office Communications Online (OCO) over the next year.

Currently OCO gives IM and presence, along with peer to peer video, only within the customer’s domain. One of it’s biggest limitations is the inability to “federate” with on-premise OCS servers…this slightly puzzling block will be removed with Wave 14.

It’s said there will be “full integration” with Exchange & Sharepoint, both on-site and online.

This will lead to:

  • using the calendars on Exchange/Sharepoint to determine someone’s IM availability
  • voicemail in Exchange Online
  • IM functionality in OWA 2010.

One of the biggest questions people have is whether Office Comms Online will have VOIP/Voice capabilities.

"it might be more than a year later," says Ziv Fass, Senior Product Manager in the OCS team "but it won’t be years".

From a reseller AND a customer point of view, the updated versions of Microsoft’s Online Services will be a real benefit to us all.

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Office Web Apps on Sharepoint 2010


I’ve recently started building the demo server for our stand at the BETT show 2010 and it’s been a fantastic experience! Installing server 2008 R2 was a breeze and Sharepoint 2010 went on with just one (easily fixable) issue related to a missing hotfix. Once I’d got those up and running, I decided to get Office Web Apps installed…that too, was pretty easy…although I had the help of a great Technet article and a blog over on MSDN to guide me.

First of all, the technet article to installation is:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee695758(office.14).aspx#bkmk_install_standalone

As you can see, I was putting it on a standalone server – for ease of demonstration if nothing else 🙂

The initial steps are few and simple but nothing appeared to be working. However, if you scroll a little down the page, you’ll see a bunch of

Powershell

scripts like this one:

$machinesToActivate = @(“contosoapp1”,”contosoapp2”)
$serviceInstanceNames = @(“Word Viewing Service”, “PowerPoint Service”,
“Excel Calculation Services”)
foreach ($machine in $machinesToActivate) {
foreach ($serviceInstance in $serviceInstanceNames){
     $serviceID = $(Get-SPServiceInstance | where
         {$_.TypeName -match $serviceInstance} | where
         {$_.Server -match "SPServer Name="+$machine}).ID
     Start-SPServiceInstance -Identity $serviceID
}
        }

image

As the note above shows, these Powershell scripts are only required in certain instances…and of course, I had that instance 🙂 Luckily, just copying the scripts from Technet and pasting into the Powershell window worked perfectly…which was good!

At this point I could see that everything was where it should be and services seemed to be running etc, so I headed over to the demo site I’d set up to test it. Unfortunately I kept getting an error message…so back to Bing, where I found this extremely helpful post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/archive/2009/11/18/9924525.aspx

I had a read through and quickly saw the problem. It was simple and obvious but had confounded me for about 45 minutes (don’t say it!)…it was:

“Activate “Office Web Apps,” listed under SharePoint’s Site Collection Features, on each site collection for which Office Web Apps should be available.”

So that was the missing step…activating it inside Sharepoint…D’oh! Homer Simpson

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Microsoft BPOS: Sharepoint Online 2010


Sharepoint 2010 is due for release around April time 2010 and the Online version will become available through BPOS around September time I do believe.

When the 2010 version of Sharepoint (and Exchange & OCS) hit online, they will be SO much more fully features than the current 2007 versions; they will in fact be almost the same! This will be especially notable with Sharepoint as their is a large disparity at the moment:

Read Comparison of Sharepoint Server & Sharepoint Online

Sharepoint Online 2010 will include all the Business Intelligence (BI) aspects such as:

  • Excel Services
  • Forms Server
  • Dashboards
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

and more 🙂 As a BPOS Partner this is great news…the BI features are becoming more interesting to more people and not having these features can be quite a big barrier to Sharepoint Online adoption. That’ll all change next year which is great news 🙂

Licensing

Wave 14 will bring some changes to the BPOS licensing too…there will be Standard and Enterprise USLS…just as there are for the on-premise CALs.

However, the split of features between the 2 will be decidedly different. The Enterprise CAL will include:

FAST Enterprise Search

There are also rumblings that it will include some part of, or ways of linking to, Microsoft’s Data Warehousing technology “Project Madison”. This would certainly fit with the BI capabilities inside Sharepoint…

I’ll be doing a post dedicated to Madison soon so keep your eyes peeled for that 🙂

This is all great news, for partners, customers and Redmond as, come H2 of 2010, Sharepoint Online will be a formidable challenger in the world of S+S/SAAS BI and should be pretty great. I, for one, am excited 🙂

Props to W Cornwill for the Britney pic!

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A few Sharepoint 2010 tidbits


A few more bits of info about Sharpeoint 2010 have come out of TechEd through blogs and tweets.

The 2 big ones are:

Groove is to be renamed “Sharepoint Workspace Manager”. I think this will help drive an increase in people using this technology as currently, most people don’t know that Groove & Sharepoint can be used together.

Sharepoint 2010 is going to be 64bit only-and will require a wholly 64bit environment I.e. “64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 to run. It also will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005”.

Another point is that it won’t support Internet Explorer 6 but will be “targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems. In addition we’re planning on an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows Operating Systems”.

All info via Mary Jo Foley

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