SharePoint and Content Deduplication
Posted: February 21, 2012 Filed under: Discoverability, Search, SharePoint, User Experience 2 Comments »Let me start off by saying that in this short posting, I don’t intend to provide or discuss any solutions, that specifically address de-duplication of content in SharePoint. But rather explore the idea, that duplication of content is often mistaken for a problem its not, and that while de-duplication may seem like the most logical solution; it may really cause more problems then it solves.
I believe that when the topic of duplicate content comes up it generally revolves around content discovery, primarily the impact that duplicate content has on search results. While duplicate content is quickly pegged as the culprit, it’s really more of a discoverability issue around authorative content. Removing duplicate content may not really be the solution, but perhaps effectively surfacing authorative content by reconfiguring search result page(s), fine tuning your search configuration, and doing a better job leveraging refiners and scopes.
As a user who sometimes copies documents and presentation from other areas into my own collaboration or personal sites, I wouldn’t be in favor of a solution that automatically removes my copies. I believe that in trying to remove duplicate content, you’ll quickly find many such users, and you may ultimately find yourself trying to change too much about how your users get work done.
Of course, discoverability may not be the issue you are trying to solve with de-duplication, in which case it may ultimately have to do with storage. If so, it may point to a bigger issue around information architecture, lifecycle management, and content expiration… But I’ll leave those topics for another time in the interest of keeping this posting short.
Office 2010 Migration Guides
Posted: September 9, 2010 Filed under: Office 2010, Planning, Training Leave a comment »Microsoft has made available 6 migration guides to make it easier for users transitioning to Office 2010. Whether you are new to Microsoft Office or upgrading from a previous version, each guide provides useful information such as; the most frequently used commands, how to use the Ribbon, the Quick Access Toolbar, the File menu and the Office Backstage, and using Key Tips.
There is a migration guide for each of the core Office products; Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Access. Each put together based on feedback from users.
Check them out at:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/office-2010-migration-guides-HA101982272.aspx
Announcing Exchange Active Sync Support for Hotmail E-Mail, Calendars, and Contacts
Posted: September 1, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »The Windows Live Blog just announced exchange support for Hotmail E-mail, Calendars, and Contacts. Check out the announcement at
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/08/30/hotmail-now-supports-push-email-calendar-and-contacts-with-exchange-activesync.aspx
Office 2010 Web Apps on Facebook
Posted: July 16, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »By now you’ve probably heard the news that the Office 2010 Web Apps are available for all Windows Live Customers, essentially anybody with a Windows Live or Passport ID. If you haven’t heard, logon at
http://www.live.com
and check out the “Office Link” in the top menu or go directly to
http://office.live.com
.
Click here for the original announcement.
What you probably haven’t heard, is that the Office 2010 Web Apps are also available in Facebook via the “Docs” application; from where you can easily create, upload, and share your MS Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) with your friends, or everyone for that matter.
You can even designate your friends as editors, and collaborate on documents, worksheets, or presentations. Once you are done, you can easily post it to your wall and share with everyone. All via your Web Browser.
I’ve uploaded several presentations to “My Facebook Docs” for you to check out (you must be logged in to Facebook).
Consumer Reports recommends against buying iPhone 4
Posted: July 13, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Consumer Reports arrived at this conclusion after testing three devices purchased at three different retailers, and testing them in a controlled environment. Their findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4′s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.
Check out the posting at:
Changing SharePoint 2010 Managed Account Passwords with PowerShell
Posted: April 28, 2010 Filed under: Administration, Powershell, SharePoint 2010 1 Comment »A SharePoint 2010 Managed Account, is essentially a Service Account whose credentials are managed by SharePoint, which can automatically change the password of the account based on a given policy / schedule. Check out the posting “Managed Accounts” in Bill Baer’s Blog for more detailed information.
While most of the configuration of managed accounts will likely take place in Central Administration, at some point you may need (or simply prefer) to change the password via PowerShell. Personally, I ran into the need, as my farm account password had been changed and the Central Administration site would not run.
I used the following PowerShell script to change the Managed Account password.
$ver = $host | select versionif ($ver.Version.Major -gt 1) {$Host.Runspace.ThreadOptions = ReuseThread"}Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShellSet-location $home
$inManagedAcct = Read-Host 'Service Account'
$managedAcct = Get-SPManagedAccount $inManagedAcct
$inPass = Read-Host 'Enter Password' -AsSecureString$inPassConfirm = Read-Host'Confirm Password' -AsSecureString
Set-SPManagedAccount -Identity $managedAcct -NewPassword $inPass -ConfirmPassword $inPassConfirm -SetNewPassword
Click here to download the PS1 file. You may need to remove the first few lines that load the SharePoint PowerShell snap-in, if you intend to run the script from the “SharePoint 2010 Management Shell” console.
Outlook 2010 Cool Feature – Notification of Automatic Reply before sending out email
Posted: April 9, 2010 Filed under: Cool Feature, Office 2010 Leave a comment »Yet another fantastic feature of Office 2010, more specifically Outlook. If you’ve ever spent any significant amount of time, writing an urgent e-mail to someone in your organization only to find out after hitting the “Send” that the recipient is out via an “Automatic reply”; then you’ll love this new feature.
Outlook will automatically let you know that you will receive an “Automatic reply” from the moment you specify the recipient.
Its these little details that make all the difference.
SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) – Breakdown of Authentication Modes and other Security Considerations
Posted: April 5, 2010 Filed under: Business Connectivity Services, Security, SharePoint 2010 Leave a comment »The Microsoft Business Connectivity Services Team Blog is quickly becoming one of my favorite SharePoint blogs. Their most recent posting, Authenticating to Your External System, does an excellent job of breaking down the available authentication modes available.
Security is one of the most important things to consider when connecting to external systems using Business Connectivity Services, and this article is a great place to get started. Check it out at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/bcs/archive/2010/03/12/authenticating-to-your-external-system.aspx
Office 2010 – Share / Save to SharePoint Feature
Posted: March 31, 2010 Filed under: Office 2010, User Experience 1 Comment »I’ve been using MS Office 2010 as my primary office productivity suite for quite some time now and have been very pleased. It’s very clear that a lot of thought was put into the products; not just focused on added functionality, but making them more intuitive, really improving the user experience. So many features come as second nature, that you don’t even realize that they are new. Until you are stuck with a workstation with a previous version of Office installed.
One such feature is the “Share” menu, with the option to “Save to SharePoint”. The following screenshot is from the MS Word 2010 Menu after creating a brand new file… complete with Recent Locations.
May not seem like much, but try living without it after you’ve had it for quite some time.
True, we’ve had “My SharePoint Sites” within the “Save File” screen in previous versions. But its never quite worked as expected… you had to explicitly be a “Member” of the site (not through an AD group), the profile import had to be working just right, after you were made a “Member” of the site it may not have shown up on your list until the following day, and a slew of other things. You could also say that we had “My Network Places”, but that required a certain level of proactivity that often times you just don’t have.
Nothing in Office 2010 was my idea… but to whoever’s idea this feature was; Thanks for keeping my experience in mind.
