June 2007 - Posts

New WSS 3.0 Whitepaper on TechNet

On June 20th, Microsoft published the following whitepaper on TechNet.  Hopefully we got many of you excited about the possibilities of WSS in our Q4 (Spring) TS2 events so now you have another resource to help you get WSS implemented for your customers. 

Windows SharePoint Services Document: Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Under the Hood

This white paper describes how Microsoft developed the Application Templates, identifying best practices for how to work with core capabilities within both Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, with the goal of empowering customers and partners to create their own applications.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C49A6B00-E0AA-4102-B585-B25CD3CBB383&displaylang=en

Posted by ronaldg | with no comments

SharePoint Community Kit announcement

Check out the link below for information on something called Community Kit for Sharepoint (CKS) v2.  This link is from the The official blog of the SharePoint Product Group so you may want to make it a favorite for future reference.  The CKS incorporates the following tools: Enhanced Blog Edition Beta 1, Enhanced Wiki Edition Alpha, & ChatterBox AJAX Beta.  Each of these tools is apparently designed to help you enhance and extend the functionality of the corresponding built-in features in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (e.g. the Enhanced Blog Edition for the WSS Blog feature and the Enhanced Wiki Edition for the Wiki feature) as well something called Chatterbox to enhance the chat functionality.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/06/18/community-kit-for-sharepoint-2-0-pre-release-announcement.aspx

Posted by ronaldg | 2 comment(s)

Top 10 Partner Engagement Activities

One of my colleagues (TS2 teammate Steve Deming) came up with this excellent "Top 10" list of things a partner can and should do to deepen their engagement with Microsoft as well as fully leverage the resources that Microsoft provides to our partners.  I can tell you from experience and feedback from partners across the US (I do informal polls on this at many of my TS2 events) that those who are making the effort and taking advantage of these resources are being more successful than they would have been otherwise.

1) Properly register your business and your employees at https://partner.microsoft.com

2) Sign up for the weekly partner newsletter http://www.microsoft.com/security

3) Sign up for the security newsletter

4) Contribute to a local user group; www.microsoft.com/mindshare

5) Subscribe to the ActionPack

6) Join the Small Business Specialist Community

7) Keep a list of FREE Microsoft support resources: 1-866-PC-SAFETY, Business Critical Support, Regional Partner Support

8) Order the Sales Toolkit from www.ms-gearup.com

9) Participate in live, local Microsoft events: www.microsoft.com/events

10) Attend a monthly sales and a monthly technical webinar: www.msreadiness.com

 

In addition to the Top 10 above (how about a "top dozen"), I would encourage all of you to check out the webcasts we've done on Managed Services (thru msreadiness link above) and also check out the Small Business Assessment Toolkit which you have in your Action Pack or can download from the MS Partner Program portal (first link above).

Posted by ronaldg | with no comments