Service Pack 1 Announced for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010

There was some big SharePoint news released today from TechEd North America 2011. Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 is scheduled to be released at the end of June. Initially, Service Pack 1 will be offered as a manual download from the Download Center and from Microsoft Update and than 90 days after release will be made available as an Automatic Update. The service pack will include all Public Update and Cumulative Update releases to date as well as the following new changes:

• Outlook fixes an issue where “Snooze Time” would not reset between appointments.
• The default behavior for PowerPoint "Use Presenter View" option changed to display the slide show on the secondary monitor.
• Integrated community content in the Access Application Part Gallery.
• Better alignment between Project Server and SharePoint Server browser support.
• Improved backup / restore functionality for SharePoint Server
• The Word Web Application extends printing support to “Edit Mode.”
• Project Professional now synchronizes scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists.
• Internet Explorer 9 “Native” support for Office Web Applications and SharePoint
• Office Web Applications Support for Chrome
• Inserting Charts into Excel Workbooks using Excel Web Application
• Support for searching PPSX files in Search Server
• Visio Fixes scaling issues and arrowhead rendering errors with SVG export
• Proofing Tools improve spelling suggestions in Canadian English, French, Swedish and European Portuguese.
• Outlook Web Application Attachment Preview (with Exchange Online only)
• Office client suites using “Add Remove Programs” Control Panel, building on work from Office 2007 SP2

For more information on the upcoming service pack visit the Microsoft Office Updates website and The Microsoft Office Blog.

A Microsoft SharePoint 2010 FileNet Connector Question

Question

An anonymous visitor asked "I heard that the Microsoft SharePoint connector doesn’t work with SharePoint 2010. Are there any other connectors out there for FileNet and SharePoint 2010?".

Answer

You are indeed correct. Microsoft’s “Microsoft Enterprise Search Indexing Connector 2008 for IBM FileNet” does not work with SharePoint 2010 due its 64-bit architecture. In fact, the connector does not work for SharePoint 2007 64-bit environments as well. You can read more about know issues with the Microsoft Enterprise Search Indexing Connector 2008 for IBM FileNet at http://office.microsoft.com/download/afile.aspx?AssetID=AM102769721033.

All is not lost. There are two alternative connectors for you to try. IBM has a connector called “IBM Content Collector for Microsoft SharePoint” that supports WSS 3.0, SharePoint 2007, and SharePoint 2010. Since SharePoint 2010 only comes with a 64-bit architecture this mean that this connector should work for SharePoint 2007 64-bit environments as well. As the IBM’s website states, their connector:

• Collects and archive content from Microsoft SharePoint document libraries, wikis, and blogs; collects and archive SharePoint documents into Content Manager Enterprise Edition as well as FileNet Content Manager.
• Enables common rules and policies from a common administration console - across all content including Content Collector for eMail and Content Collector for File Systems
• Classifies documents and content using metadata, rules or Classification Module
• Optionally maintains original document properties in Microsoft SharePoint libraries when replacing collected content with a shortcut and automatically removes shortcut documents from Microsoft SharePoint once those documents have been deleted from Content Manager Enterprise Edition or FileNet Content Manager.
• Optionally maintains Microsoft SharePoint security settings when storing collected information in Content Manager Enterprise Edition as well as FileNet Content Manager.
• Dynamically declares collected content as a record using Enterprise Records
• Adds agility to the ability to respond to litigation, investigations, audit and information inquiries using eDiscovery Manager and eDiscovery Analyzer

The second connector for you to explore is called “Longitude FileNet Connector for SharePoint and FAST Search” that is offered by BA Insight. As the BA Insight’s website states, their connector:

• delivers a feature that allows organizations to replicate content from any source repository into a SharePoint site, SharePoint list or SharePoint document library. The replication preserves the integrity of the source data, and allows administrators to apply appropriate governance over legacy content via SharePoint.
• enables the instant, fully-formatted preview of any and all content returned in a search, regardless of its file-format or source location. Full hit-highlighting and a dynamic graphical hit-map make assessing the relevance of these search results swift and efficient, while a fully-integrated, Silverlight-driven workspace empowers knowledge workers to act upon relevant search results with speed and precision.
• maps users, groups, and role-based identities and security schemas from any non-Active Directory based system, and also optionally enables real-time security checking to ensure rigorous adherence to all permission and access protocols.
• maintains a calculated-change log that securely monitors activity on connected systems. By leveraging this index, connected systems are prevented from being over-burdened by repeated search queries and full-crawls, thereby ensuring optimal performance and real-time accuracy of search results.
• can quickly merge and link metadata from multiple systems based on common keys to create a single, data rich record.
• enables 'simulated' crawls, which provides the administrator the ability to test the impact of any configuration change, and see the result as the simulated crawls runs.

For more information about IBM's Content Collector for Microsoft SharePoint visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/content-management/content-collector-sharepoint/. For more information about BA Insight's Longitude FileNet Connector for SharePoint and FAST Search visit http://www.bainsight.com/sharepoint-ibm-filenet-connector/Pages/features.aspx and http://www.bainsight.com/sharepoint-fast-search-connectors/Pages/features.aspx.

I hope that I was able to provide you with some options to investigate. If you come across any additional connectors or solutions for SharePoint 2010 integration with FileNet please let me know in the comments below.

A SharePoint Owstimer.exe & .NET Runtime Question

Question

An anonymous visitor asked "Does owstimer.exe host a .NET runtime (Common Language Runtime)?".

Answer

The short answer is yes. The SharePoint Timer Service (owstimer.exe) is a Windows service. Services in Windows must be created in a Windows Service application project or another .NET Framework–enabled project that creates an .exe file when built and inherits from the ServiceBase class. The owstimer.exe was likely compiled using managed as an .exe assembly unmanaged code that runs outside the Common Language Runtime (CLR), but has code that starts the CLR automatically by using the mscoree.dll when the .exe is executed.

For more information about Windows services visit Introduction to Windows Service Applications.

For more information about hosting the Common Language Runtime visit Hosting the Common Language Runtime.

For more information about SharePoint’s owstimer.exe visit SharePoint 2010 Architectures Overview and Creating Custom Timer Jobs.

Thank you for your question and please feel free to follow up with any additional questions you may have about the SharePoint Timer Service.

~The 14 folder