June 2007 - Posts
I recently came across this, and it rocks!!!
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2006/12/08/tips-to-enable-sharepoint-intranet-search-using-windows-desktop-search-3-0-rtw.aspx
Desktop Search is becoming more and more a focal point for many service providers. Google, Yahoo, Live/MSN all have desktop search, and then Vista has it straight from the Pearl… Google recently pressured Microsoft to open up the Instant Search feature to allow them to be the desktop search engine of choice. Having seen Vista search and SharePoint Search in action, I am a big fan. How many times have you been looking for something and all you knew was that it was an email from joey@friends.org or whoever…Windows desktop Search, and Vista Instant Search are fully featured and allow for searching and refining searches down to the nth degree. It's a little disgusting how good it is. My wife Googles here, Googles there, Googles everywhere. Plus she has Yahoo here there and everywhere, now she wants a MAC and an iPhone!!! What is wrong with her?!?! ;-)
Anyway, Joel, listed above has documented a very kool little trick, that ain't so little, in terms of possibilities. Check it out. And while you are at it, ask Live.com search to find more Windows desktop search and Live Search tricks and tips. They are out there and they get very kool. I even followed one and made a special Live Toolbar button that searches our website. I don't think I publish it, but it is VERY KOOL!!!
Later!
So today I took and passed the 70-630 Exam, Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. We are working to complete the Information Worker Competency. The 70-630 and 70-631 (WSS3) exams are qualifiers for the Search, Portals and Collaboration, and Enterprise Content Management and Forms Specializations as part of the Information Worker Competency. We would also need to submit some customer references and there ya go…
Well it's not as easy as all that, but we are on our way. One of our goals for this year was to earn this competency, and we are on the way. We have been using MOSS and WSS for a couple of years now internally, and deployed several WSS sites, initially as part of the SBS installs, but secondarily as auxiliary systems for clients. We have a couple of Partners lined up and some additional client opportunities in the hopper, that we are looking to implement additional SharePoint Solutions, including some enterprise search and Business Data Catalog…
On another note, Abbie and I planning a couple of Summer time Seminars around MOSS and WSS, targeted primarily at the Partner base, but we may also offer a client facing info-seminar in the coming months. Look for more news about that and other stuff! This is exciting for us!!!
-bill
A couple of days ago, Vlad put up quite a post about the loss of community: http://www.vladville.com/2007/06/why-are-we-losing-these-great-community-resources.html and perhaps a seepage of skills out of the community.
Interesting, and I see where he's going with it. This leakage can be stopped, but it takes involvement and commitment. With kids out of school, and the summer heat, it can be real difficult to get out and contribute to the community. But let's make it a point to participate in the next couple of months, if not for the community, then for your business. There's an upcoming DFW-SBS users group meeting next Thursday @ Microsoft, in Irving. We'll be having a business meeting @ 5:00 pm, Dinner around 6:30 pm, and technical content @ 7:00 pm. The technical content will be provided by Stephanie Doakes from Microsoft and she'll be discussing Systems Center Essentials.
Other upcoming opportunities include the SBSC Symposium the day before WPC in Denver, Microsoft Across America (including TS2) in early August in San Antonio and Corpus Christi (we did Corpus last summer it was GREAT), as well as events in Little Rock, AR on June 28th, and more. There are also online events to attend. Practically weekly, Charlie Ramirez hosts events on Wednesday mornings (8:00am). That's just some of it, there's also content and events on various Yahoo groups, there's a Sharpoint User Group here in DFW, and a ton of other ways to get plugged-in-to the community. And let's be clear, the SBS Community is all over the world. Through the technology we are intrinsically linked from Ireland to Indonesia to Indiana. It occurs to me that bridges I cross have been crossed before somewhere, by someone, and will be crossed again somewhere by someone. That's when I look for support, and why I actively participate in Users Groups, Yahoo Groups, Open Source Communities, and Newsgroups.
There's so much opportunity to plug-in, so get involved. Post a blog, ask a question on a forum, answer a question, send Vlad a suggestion about Shockey Monkey, on second thought, post a feature request on support.ownwebnow.com. Call a competitor and go to lunch or have a coffee, talk shop.
I just got off the phone with a partner and fellow SBSC. We were discussing upcoming events and what not, and I asked about putting together a BBQ or something for our Local SBS Chapter (DFW-SBS). We discussed it a bit and I think I'm gonna put out some feelers in the community about this. So here goes…
We need a location, probably central to the Dallas - Fort Worth area.
We need a date and time, I am thinking evening on say a Thursday.
We need some sort of entertainment. OK, I am lost on this one…
So given these options, perhaps a Rangers Game is in order. Another thought might be around Lone Star Park, in Grand Prairie. Well, I am not yet sure of what it could be. Based on where I live an F.C. Dallas Game would be perfect. I love F.C. Dallas, the location is good and they almost always play at night. Or perhaps there's the Frisco Rough Riders, they have an option for a Business Entertainment Suite @ $1450 w/beer and wine. That can't be right?!?! I went to an event out there a couple of years ago, it was great, they had dogs, burgers, wine and beer, Air Conditioning, and more. It was a ton of fun and quite productive, before the beer kicked in!!!
So looking around at www.fcdallas.net and http://rangers.mlb.com they also seem to packages, with little to no detail. Anyway, think it over and let me know if you have any thoughts on it.
While working on a Proof of Concept for some integration between QB Enterprise 7.0 and MOSS 07 I've been monkeying around with the QODBC drivers. Enterprise comes with QODBC and so it ought to let me in there to look at tables, views and stored procedures. I took to doing just that, and each time I would load the ODBC driver and try to connect with like SQL Query analyzer, the whole SQL server would crash.
So now I went through the trouble of updating to R7 of QuickBooks Enterprise 7 and the latest QODBC Driver. Initially all looks well but I'll need to put it under some stress to see how it really performs.
So I just ran a simple select statement against the Customers table (129) rows and it took 6 minutes 21 seconds. That's not exactly blazing fast. I'll see if I can't make it a bit better.
The goal out of this is to create some Business Data Catalog tools that connect to QuickBooks data and allow for us to leverage that investment. We are looking to do this for several customers, especially those that, for example, may have employees don't need to interact with the QB data but rather just need to see a customers' balance or address and contact info.
So, on the second pass it only took 2 minutes 48 seconds. That is still unacceptable. I'll just try loading all that data into SQL and querying against that…
Thanks to some resources at Intuit, I was able to get some guidance and what not to get this far…be sure to consult this site: http://www.qdeveloper.com.au/
-bill
Great, so I got Vista installed yesterday evening. I tried updating last night after installation, but no dice. So I figured what the heck, I just did some pretty good surgery on it, I'll let it rest, and do it's update thing overnight at its regularly scheduled interval. Fast forward to this morning, I wake up bright and early (read: 9:30) and race down stairs (more like stumble) and look in on the Tablet. Nothing new, no update, nuttin!!!
Those who know me really well, know there's just a couple of things I really despise. The first is Printers, I hate 'em, they don't work and when they do, they just whine and complain about 'give me paper' or 'I need toner', wha wha wha. They are worse than little children!!! The second, and for the purposes of this tirade, more irritating, thing I really hate is troubleshooting piddly stuff. Troubleshooting drivers is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Let's stick with that analogy for a moment. WHAT'S SO FREAKIN' IMPORTANT ABOUT THAT NEEDLE IT AIN'T DIAMOND ENCRUSTED. IS THERE SOME RUN ON NEEDLES AT THE LOCAL EVIL EMPIRE (read: wal-mart, but then you knew that one already didn't you)? NEEDLES ARE ALL OF ABOUT A DOLLAR OR SOMETHING!!! Argh, it just kills me, why am I looking for a freakin' needle, I'll just get a new one and get on with it!!! Fortunately I did not just fall of the turnip truck (do ya like the agrarian references? nice huh?). So like searching for needles in haystacks, I try to add some logic to the fold…
First let's divide up the haystack into smaller haystacks, and search them one at a time. Normally that would be enough, but then I add another bit of logic to all this missing impossible…so this needle probably weighs a bit more than the surrounding hay, and given the jostling and agitation the hay(stack) has been under, let's start looking at the bottom of the various haystacks. Confidence is high as I start digging!!! Low and behold what's this?!?! Insert amazed emoticon here à
This Tablet is part of an SBS R2 Domain. What's more I have Group Policy set to get updates from the SBS Server rather than the Microsoft Updates. Huh?!?! What if I connect to the SBS Server via, oh I dunno, I'm just spit-ballin' here, the VPN? Yea, I'll do that, because following the freaking M$ Knowledgebase articles has gotten me this far, but I am starting to see bricks!!! Connect up the VPN and just when I should expect WHAMO, brick wall, nuttin'!!! in fact, what's this??? Insert amazed emoticon here à
UPDATES ARE FLOWING LIKE WATER OVER NIAGRA FALLS!!! Could it be happening?!?! Yes, yes, yes, Oh this is the greatest day of my life!!!
Back to reality…the lesson here is, that if you have a Vista machine under SBS R2 WSUS Management, it may just need to connect or check-in with its den leader to find out if it is ok to talk to those big servers over at Microsoft holding the candy, saying 'come here little fellow, there's nothing to worry about' all while Ice-T is singing in the background: 'I'm your pusha'
Alas my little naïve Tablet is learning more about the world every day. Perhaps one day I'll be able to let it go over to Timmy's house to play Need for Speed without fear of what's out there, but for now, it's just one day at a time…
Well so far, a few bugs/issues but nothing major. I used a fantastic product called ShadowProtect Desktop edition from StorageCraft to image my TabletPC. Simple!!! And fast. Admittedly, I did this because the HD was too small for practical use. So small in fact that Vista would not load on it. So aftet the back-up image was created, I replaced the HD with a larger one and restored the old HD partitions to the new drive, using custom partition sizes.
After about 15 minutes, I was up and running. I have to say this is a fantastic approach to converting a HD. Or imaging a machine from one desktop to another.
So once I was sure the Tablet Worked with the new HD installed, I proceeded with the upgrade to Vista Business. Now that was no quick task. I started the upgrade and 2+ hours later it completed. I know it need to update and I need to get some drivers and re-install some apps, but for the most part we made it through so far. The best part though is that I have my old tablet, working like a champ on another HD, so if this experiment crashes and burns, I can always put the old drive in and it's just like nothing happened.
I spent the past week in Chicago, primarily, on Vacation. We spent a tremendous amount of time doing the tourist stuff. You know, riding trains, going to museums, etc. This was a great week. We went to the Planetarium, saw the world's most complete T-Rex, Sue, at the Field Museum, saw a train hobbyists greatest dream at the Museum of Science and Industry, and ate a huge burger at Weber's Grill. While these were the highlights for us tourists, I never stop being a business man. I spent an aweful lot of time studying the people and businesses of Chicago. I have to say that my impressions of Chicago, back when I was in college out in the Quad Cities, was a little jaded, I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer volume of opportunity there is here. Further I was amazed at how the people of Chicago have chosen to integrate technology in their businesses. While Dallas is such a Corporate Environment, Chicago is a family business environment. SO MANY SMALL BUSINESSES. From great food to hair salons to travel agencies, so many businesses here are Small Businesses that involve each and every member of the family. The kids, the adults, the grandparents, the cousins and third cousins twice removed, who knows someone that is roommates with…you get the picture, I hope. I was truly impressed to see so much technology integrated in these businesses. Point-of-Sale systems, integrated with Customer Relationship Management systems. Hand held Windows Mobile scanners at entries to museums. People on the METRA pulling out their laptops and windows mobile devices to catch up on email or the news or reports or whatever they were doing.
While Chicago is full of business, I was also impressed at how much time people spent outside, living. All the buildings seem to empty and turnover several times a day. We got the opportunity to go to a book signing, and the Borders Books on State filled beyond capacity, during the middle of the day. People from ALL WALKS OF LIFE AND THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH came in. In line around me were a Designer, Small Business Woman, a mom from New Zealand, and more. It was eye opening at how much commerce occurred not just from tourists but the citizens as well.
Perhaps I'll write up some more at another time, but for now I'll leave it at this, Chicago is a 24 hour place. Work happens ALL THE TIME, Life happens ALL THE TIME, and increasingly the line between work and not work is thinning. By the way…Check this out: http://www.microsoft.com/surface talk about blurring the lines…