Microsoft Lync is one of those fantastic products that I yearn for. It cross cuts the entire communication eco-system and gives you fantastic integration across the Microsoft stack including SharePoint and the Office application suite, however much to my dismay we don’t use Lync in my place of work and instead use the mediocre Cisco CUCM. To this end, my only experiences with Lync in a real-world ‘anger’ situations are when participating in calls hosted by other companies using Lync, Microsoft themselves being the main player for me.
For a long time now, there has been speculation of a Lync Client for Windows Phone 7 being released and this week it finally hit the marketplace not only for Windows Phone 7, but also for Apple iOS devices, Android and Symbian.
The app looks great in the screenshots, showing the features on offer well, however one huge feature is missing for me. The ability to use the app as a Lync Attendee Client: See Lync offers two different clients. The full blown corporate use client and the Lync Attendee Client. If you use Lync in a corporate scenario you will have the full client, however if you are like me and only use Lync to participate in sessions hosted by others, you use the lighter Lync Attendee Client which doesn’t require credentials and is designed around guest access.
Sadly, the Lync Client app for the mobile handsets released this week is only suitable for full client use scenarios as told by the app guidance notes in the Windows Phone Marketplace:
IMPORTANT: Microsoft Lync 2010 for Windows Phone requires a Lync Server or Office365/Lync Online account and will not work without it. If you are unsure about your account status, please contact your IT department.
He being me, I decided to install the app and try it anyway, but sadly the prescribed guidance was correct. This was a sucker-punch to me, and I think it will limit somewhat the ability for people to use the Lync Client. My only hope is that a separate client is released which does give you the ability to participate in Lync sessions as a guest.
If you are lucky enough to use Lync in a full deployment, you can get the app for Windows Phone 7 from http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/9ce93e51-5b35-e011-854c-00237de2db9e.
by richardjgreen on
December 13, 2011
tagged in Android, Cisco, CUCM, IOS, Lync, Office, SharePoint, Symbian, Windows Phone 7
Today wasn’t the greatest day for me in one respect. Unfortunatly I flunked my 70-236 Configuring Exchange Server 2007 exam for the second time, and strangely, with months more Exchange experience under my belt (and I mean that because we’ve faced our share of issues and undertaken our share of mini-projects on infrastructure engineering since my last attempt), and with loads of preperation, I actually scored roughly 75 points lower than my first attempt.
I purchased a three exam pack through Prometric earlier in the year which expires December 31st 2011, so I’ve got to try and get two exams passed before the end of the year still, with MDOP being my next exam and still undecided on the third, but Exchange better look out, as once I’ve done my two remaining in the pack, I’ll be going back for my MCITP for Exchange Server 2007 and 2010.
The concession in all of this is a feeling of self-enlightenment. Tomorrow, my trusty laptop will be going back to the office from home so that I can re-deploy it with SCCM to install my yummy new SSD disk (I would clone the disk, but I have a feeling BitLocker might not accept that too kindly). To make sure I didn’t loose any data, I hooked up my VPN this evening and made sure that all of the data on my laptop was safe and sound on the file servers and work, and then I turned my attention to OneNote.
I’m an avid OneNote user, and will use it over written notes whenever I possibly can. Being a Windows Phone 7 user, I also enjoy the OneNote integration in the phone giving me super access to my personal notes. I quickly realised that through the course of migrating through various working practices at work, I had one notebook in my SharePoint 2010 MySite and another locally on the laptop, and then a third in the Windows Live SkyDrive cloud. I’ve just combined them all into my SharePoint 2010 MySite notebook and I feel great for it.
Unification for the win 
by richardjgreen on
October 18, 2011
tagged in Exam, Exchange, MCITP, MDOP, OneNote, SCCM, SharePoint, SkyDrive, SSD
Last night we completed a SharePoint 2010 at work and after all the testing, we deemed the upgrade a success, however coming into the office this morning, we received reports from some users that they were unable to open some of their Excel spreadsheets stored in various Document Libraries.
After some diagnosis, it turned out that the problem only effected Office 2007 and Office 2010 XML format documents and that original format Excel documents from Office 2003 and documents saved in the 2003 format were unaffected.
After initially suspecting the problem to be linked to the new Excel Services Application in SharePoint 2010, I worked to resolve the configuration of the Excel Services Application which we had left previous un-configured due to it not being required currently, however the problem persisted.
Whilst searching TechNet for the error code we were receiving I encountered a page entitled “Configure the Default Behaviour for Browser-Enabled Documents†(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837425.aspx) which details how to manage the behaviour of SharePoint for launching web compatible documents.
SharePoint 2010 features various web-enabled services and can be configured to use Office Web Apps, which is a hosted version of the applications available via Office Live WebApps. The default behaviour for SharePoint 2010 is to attempt to launch web compatible formats using the web based application, however as this is not configured in our environment the error appeared.
The resolution to the problem was simply enabling the Site Collection Feature Open Documents in Client Applications by Default. Once enabled on the Site Collection to apply the setting to all child sites, SharePoint began prompting the users to open the file with their client side installations of Excel as per the SharePoint 2007 behaviour.
by richardjgreen on
August 27, 2011
tagged in 2007, 2010, Behaviour, Browser-Enabled, Client Application, Documents, Excel, SharePoint, WebApp
Today, I was investigating the management and control of the Outlook Social Connector via Group Policy, using the Office 2010 ADM/ADMX files from Microsoft.
Two of the settings of interest for the Outlook Social Connector are the ability to control which social connectors are displayed, and which are automatically loaded without user interaction. Whilst looking online, a Microsoft Forum thread appeared in my results with the ProgID for some of the available connectors, however they were missing a big one – Facebook.
Looking in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry hive on my machine, where I have the Facebook connector installed, I found it, so here is a list of the currently available Outlook Social Connector ProgIDs which can be used (semi-colon seperated) in the Group Policy Management Console to configure the behaviour.
SharePoint – OscAddin.SharePointProvider
SharePoint – OscAddin.SharePointProvider.1
LinkedIn – LinkedInSocialConnector.LinkedInSocialProvider
MySpace – MySpace.OSC
Windows Live Messenger – OscAddin.WindowsLiveProvider
Facebook – OscAddin.FacebookProvider
Facebook – OscAddin.FacebookProvider.1
I hope this helps you all.
by richardjgreen on
August 5, 2011
tagged in Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Outlook 2010, Outlook Social Connector, ProgID, SharePoint, Windows Live
After successfully upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, I noticed that the icon for PDF documents was missing from my Document Libraries. As part of the installation process, SharePoint 2010 installs itself to a folder called 14 to designate its version number as SharePoint 2007 used a folder number of 12. It was apparent that nothing was migrated from the 12 folder as as a result any modifications will be lost.
- Download the PDF icon. Visit http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html and download a copy of the small 17×17 PDF icon.
- Copy the icon to Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES
- Open the DOCICON.XML file in Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML
- Add the following line to the DOCICON.XML file:
<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdf16.gif"/>
- Save DOCICON.XML
- Open a Command Prompt and type iisreset to reset the IIS Application Pools
You will now have beautiful looking PDF icons in your document libraries in SharePoint 2010.
by richardjgreen on
August 24, 2010
tagged in 2010, PDF, SharePoint
As a SharePoint Administrator, you will see a plethora of updates released overtime to resolve numerous issues as well as add new functionality, however SharePoint does not make patching very easy or intuitive for a newcomer.
Patches for SharePoint Server 2007 are actually two-fold although you will find it hard to locate a source which tells you this definitively. SharePoint Server 2007 is a combination of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). When you come to patch SharePoint installations, you need to install updates for both components, and you need to install the WSS updates first.
The second thing to note is that all SharePoint updates of late are cumulative – You can jump straight to the latest and greatest without needing to install previous updates, so long as you have a service pack installed. All of the recent Cumulative Update packages from Microsoft have a minimum requirement of Service Pack 2 for WSS and MOSS.
You can download Service Pack 2 for WSS and MOSS from the following links:
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) Service Pack 2
Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 2
At the time of writing, the most recent Cumulative Update for SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 is the June 2010 updates which you can download as follows:
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) June 2010 Cumulative Update
SharePoint Server 2007 June 2010 Cumulative Update
As a side note, for those planning an installation of SharePoint 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2, you must slipstream the Service Pack 2 components of WSS and MOSS into the DVD media to be able to complete the installation otherwise you will receive reports of an unsupported operating system and will not be able to proceed with the installation.
This time next week, I will hopefully be blogging about my experiences performing a SharePoint 2010 upgrade, so keep yourself posted.
by richardjgreen on
August 18, 2010
tagged in 2007, 2010, MOSS, SharePoint, Windows Server 2008 R2, WSS
Like any sensible SharePoint 2007 deployment, I’m keeping the one I am working on currently currently strictly HTTPS (SSL). The reason for this is that we have opened up the SharePoint deployment to the web. Not a public facing web with anonymous access for internet users, but accessible without VPN on the web for our field employees to use.
One of the problems I have faced up until now is that when SharePoint is configured for HTTPS connections the Non-HTTPS connections are dropped and faced with a 404 Not Found error, the least helpful of all HTTP error codes.
Struggling for a solution to such a simple request –Redirect non-secured traffic to the secure protocol I searched online and found after a little digging this helpful article from a SharePoint blog at http://www.os.com/blog/capture-and-redirect-http-to-https-with-sharepoint-2007/. Here’s the crux of it:
- Configure the SharePoint AAM (Alternate Address Mapping) so that HTTPS is the default protocol for the public URL.
- Edit the IIS Site for SharePoint and either change the HTTP port to a random number, or do as I did and delete the binding for the HTTP port.
- Create a New IIS Site called SharePoint Redirect
- Assign the New Site to HTTP on Port 80
- Add a Host Header to the New Site Matching the URL of the Site (Eg. sharepoint.company.com)
- Using HTTP Redirects, Create a Permanent (HTTP 301) to the HTTPS URL of the SharePoint deployment.
Done
PS: Don’t forget to allow HTTP and HTTPS through the external firewall though otherwise users will never hit the redirect rule.
by richardjgreen on
February 3, 2010
tagged in HTTP, IIS, Redirect, SharePoint
As my LinkedIn profile will kindly tell you, I’m working on a SharePoint deployment for Vocera to replace our current aged and disorganised ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system.
I was very confused one day to discover during my proof of concept and design stages that the indexing and crawling in SharePoint stopped working. I originally blamed this on myself for moving from an internal model to a external model by making some changed to the Shared Services Provider (SSP), however I discovered today this is untrue.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointsearch/thread/84f93fbe-f4a6-4683-b25b-b595b9006ad7
This most helpful Microsoft TechNet Social forum page explains how the cause is a .NET Framework 3.5 Family update that makes changes to the authentication model and providers in SharePoint.
Follow the instructions in the post from Sandeep Lad to resolve your issues.
by richardjgreen on
December 3, 2009
tagged in Fail, Microsoft, Search, SharePoint, TechNet
I got asked a question yesterday at work regarding the architecture of Windows Server 2008 R2.
Just for the record and to ensure anyone else to who may be interested knows, Windows Server 2008 R2 is available in two architectures:
- 64-bit (x64)
- Intel Itanium (ia64)
There is no 32-bit (x86) version of Windows Server 2008 R2, nor will there be 32-bit versions of any future Windows Server operating systems.
This move to a pure 64-bit architecture is also following suit in the server technologies and products including Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and more to come no doubt.
I would also anticipate that Windows 7 is the last client operating system to be available in 32-bit and I think that Windows 8 or however it manifests itself will also likely be a 64-bit only architecture operating system.
I don’t know what architect Microsoft Midori will be based on but that’s a totally different subject and one I don’t know anything about yet to comment on.
by richardjgreen on
October 7, 2009
tagged in 2008 R2, 64 bit, Exchange, Microsoft, Server, SharePoint, SQL, Windows, Windows 7, x64
