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

SharePoint Rule #1: Do Not Modify SharePoint System Files

There are few reasons why you should never modify SharePoint system files located within the C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\Microsoft Shared\\Web Server Extensions\\14 directory. The appeal of modifying SharePoint system files is that you can make broad sweeping changes to your SharePoint environment from the file system. With the exception of XML configuration files, modifying SharePoint system files can cause serious functional and supportability issues.

With SharePoint 2003 developers used to routinely used to modify system files to extend SharePoint functionality. Although modifying the system file solved the immediate need, it also caused serious long term issues. Many companies adopted a no patching policy because cumulative updates or services packs would overwrite customized system files causing code errors that would cripple the SharePoint environment. Additionally, receiving support from Microsoft in these situations was also difficult because the modification to the SharePoint system broke support agreements.

To alleviate these customization issues, Microsoft developed the solution framework as part of SharePoint 2007. The solution framework, still available in SharePoint 2010, allows developers to bundle their custom code and components for extending SharePoint within a single file called a solution. A solution file can be added to a SharePoint environment by server administrators. A solution can have multiple code modules called features. Each feature can be activated or deactivated to provide specific functionality to a server farm, web application, site collection, or sub-site. The power of SharePoint solutions and features is that new custom functionality can be extended and layered on top of the SharePoint platform and then removed as necessary. This allows developers the ability to customize SharePoint, still receive support from Microsoft, and to retract custom functionality as needed.

There are a lot of innovative ways to get around SharePoint to make the system do what you need it to do. You can use components such as site definitions, web definitions, list definitions, content types, field types, field rendering controls, master pages, page layouts, delegate controls, event handlers, workflows, feature stapling, web parts, user controls, server ribbon, claims providers, service applications, InfoPath, Silverlight, and http modules. If you find yourself reaching to modify the 14 folder remember not to touch it. It may take additional effort to come up with a solution, but in the longer run it will save time, money, and stress.

Amazing SharePoint Twitter Feeds To Stay Connected

Staying up to date with all the latest information and news about SharePoint can be hard. There are so many sites and blog postings each day and it takes time to search though them all to find information that is relevant to you. That is why I follow Twitter feeds to get current information about SharePoint that other people have found interesting. I let other people do the searching for me and in 140 characters or less determine if I should take the time to read an articles. Not only does it save me time, but I get exposed to all sorts of hot SharePoint topics through Twitter conversions.

Below are amazing SharePoint Twitter feeds that I follow to stay connected with latest SharePoint information and news:

• @the14folder: Where everything you need to know about SharePoint lives. This site's official twitter feed.
• @SharePoint: Tweets from the Official SharePoint product group.
• @SPIdentity: Tweets from the development team for the Identity platform in SharePoint.
• @OfficeBI: Tweets from the development team for the Business Intelligence features in SharePoint.
• @SPSocial: Tweets from the development team for the Social features in SharePoint.
• @SharePointECM: Tweets from the development team for the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features in SharePoint.
• @sharepointdev: Tweets from the development team for the SharePoint software development kit (SDK).
• @Office: Tweets from the Office product group.
• @MSDN_Office: Tweets about the latest news about Microsoft Office and SharePoint code samples, downloads, SDKs, references, articles, videos, and tools for developers on MSDN.
• @ucteam: Tweets from the Microsoft Unified Communications Team.
• @SPConf: Tweets from the Official Microsoft SharePoint Conference.
• @Channel 9: Tweets from Channel 9 about Microsoft technology and products including SharePoint.
• @SPSideshow: Tweets from Channel 9 specifically about SharePoint and Office development.
• @MSDN: Tweets from MSDN site team.
• @msdnblogs: Tweets about the latest articles written on MSDN blogs.
• @TechNet: Tweets from TechNet site team.
• @technetblogs: Tweets about the latest articles written on TechNet blogs.
• @silverlight: Tweets from Microsoft Silverlight site team.
• @codeplex: Tweets from Microsoft's open source project hosting site called Codeplex.
• @AndrewConnell: Tweets from Andrew Connell a SharePoint God and considered to be one of the most influential SharePoint enthusiast and Microsoft Most Valuable Person.
• @JoelOleson: Tweets from Joel Oleson a highly respected and influential SharePoint Microsoft Most Valuable Person (MVP).
• @meetdux: Tweets from Dux Raymond a self proclaimed SharePoint sensei in project management for SharePoint.
• @AndreaBichsel: Tweets from Andrea Bichsel a MSFT SharePoint search writer.

What Twitter feeds do you follow to stay connected with the latest SharePoint information and news? Leave a comment below or send a reply to @the14folder on Twitter. I would love to hear your suggestions.