SharePoint Dan

If you’re not able to attend SPSTCDC but you’re still interested in following what’s going on, consider checking out the Live Blogging stream that is being hosted by Women in SharePoint’s DC group.

The link is available here:

http://womeninspdc.org/pages/live-blogging

If you’re still interested in attending, there will be onsite registration. More information about this stellar event can be found here:

http://www.spstc.org

So you’ve deployed an updated solution to your SharePoint 2007 or 2010 farm and you need to recycle the application pool associated with the web application that the solution is deployed to but you don’t want to take down the entire SharePoint farm? No problem, just recycle the single application pool that’s associated with that web application using a quick little command from command shell.

For those running SharePoint 2007 on Windows Server 2003 / 2003 R2:

cscript c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a "%SharePointApplicationPool%" /r

where %SharePointApplicationPool% is the application pool that needs to be recycled. Note that iisapp.vbs resides within %systemroot%\system32\

For those running SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 on Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2:

appcmd recycle apppool /apppool.name:%SharePointApplicationPool%

where %SharePointApplicationPool% is the application pool that needs to be recycled.  Note that appcmd resides within %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv

The alternative for this of course is just to go in IIS Manager 6 or 7, select the application pool associated with the web application that requires recycling and recycle the pool manually through the UI.

References:

• Recycle an Application Pool on Demand (IIS 6)
• Recycle an Application Pool on Demand (IIS 7)

In today’s world of SharePoint consulting and engineering, there are certain competencies and thresholds that need to be met prior to being able to enter into an engagement that is profitable to both the individual providing services and the organization receiving services. Similar to medicine, SharePoint engineers and consultants have practices and firms that they are a part of. They do not necessarily know all there is to know about SharePoint when they start off, nor do they have the same expertise in every area of the product but rather they have a foundation of knowledge that they all take on as a core foundation of knowledge.

The Problem – How do we truly measure an individual’s acumen in the SharePoint Products and Technologies landscape?

With the SharePoint Products and Technologies continuing to expand and absorb capabilities within the Microsoft stack, it is a bear to think that a certification can truly qualify an individual and provide depth and insight into what they truly know and how they would react when presented with a real world problem. The purpose of this article is to examine the Microsoft certification process in relation to SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2010.

The Current Certifications – There are five available for both SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint 2010. Two of these exams are for IT Professionals that deal more with the core infrastructure at the collaboration platform level of WSS and SPF; the other more at the application level of MOSS and SPS. Similar to the IT Pro exams there are two for Developers that are aimed at the individual code level solutions using WSS and SPF in addition to application server solutions leveraging the capabilities of MOSS and SPS. On top of these four exams there is the Microsoft Certified Master. Coming soon there will be a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 end user certification (Microsoft Office Specialist – 77-886).

Similar in opinion to Mark Rackley in his post “The Real Value of Microsoft Certification in SharePoint” at the SharePointHillBilly.com regarding Microsoft certifications, it’s frustrating when reading someone’s bio and finding that they’ve been certified in several Microsoft technologies only to come to find that they’ve read every book that’s been written to learn the theory of the product and the how to from a distance. Further, knowing that there are certification question and answer dumps available further infuriates SharePoint professionals as their knowledge becomes devalued and treated like a cheapened commodity of knowledge.

So what’s the benefit of an MCTS or MCITP – As an individual that maintains proficiency in a technology, they have various options for how to formalize this body of knowledge. By going through the certification process, it further legitimizes their knowledge. Further, as an individual that possess certification, from a perspective as a business partner, it provides greater avenues and channels to pursue opportunities that may not otherwise be available.

What about those folks that are using the brain dumps – it only lessens their value to go through the certification process with information that they’ve memorized. While it might open up opportunities to them and their business, winning contracts away from more deserving groups of technologists that just have not formalized their certifications they are only hurting themselves. As organizations become entangled in engagements that they lack the expertise in performing the work required, they will either have to a) hire individuals that are not certified that have real world experience, b) start learning the actually competencies and objectives that were called out as a part of the certification, lowering their return to their customer and slowing down their delivery or c) turning to another organization to subcontract the work out. In a worst case scenario it would mean retracting their bid for the work after they had started the work and have it go back out for rebid by the customer that was looking for someone to provide services.

This not only diminishes the organizations competency in a particular area but when it comes time for the organization to hand out customer reviews to be sent back to Microsoft as a part of the partner program to validate their competencies they’ll be downgraded.

What about that MCM thing? Well it’s a tough program and as my esteemed friend Mark Rackley stated, it goes to the extreme of requiring an individual to attain certification in all four areas as well as go through a registration process. Going through the registration process does not automatically mean an individual is admitted though as the MCM program has apparently tuned into the fact that some individuals don’t quite have the real world training and wouldn’t be able to make it through the three weeks of deep exposure to SharePoint. Again, similar to going to medical school, the application process weeds out those that may not actually have the foundation of knowledge that is required to be successful in a training program that helps to push an individual toward mastery of a wide variety of skillsets.

So what’s the value? So if we look at certifications being attained by individuals that have real life, hands on experience in some capacity, then we can look at these exams as being a foundation of knowledge and vocabulary. During the interview process, leveraging the learning objectives that are related to an exam should provide a starting point for where a candidate may be coming from in their interview for a position. If the individual does not seem to have an idea of any of the underlying knowledge related to the learning objectives then either a) they’re having a bad day or b) they’ve moved out of the technical expertise into more of a technical manager role that is no longer hands on and have lost their ShareFoo or c) they went through and deceived themselves through the use of test aids.

This foundational knowledge presented by the certifications provides a basis that allows for further collaboration among SharePoint professionals and allows for a greater ability to work toward solutions. When a developer is speaking a different language or an administrator doesn’t understand a core concept then it slows down the solution development and implementation. Having a team work together and teach one another to get certified further helps the team to produce results.

Bottom Line – Encourage your team to get certified, have a common body of knowledge that leverages the learning objectives of the certification exams – teaching one another through hands on experience. Don’t deceive yourself and your customers by presenting yourself as someone that you’re not though – keep it real.

Bottom Bottom Line – Get it on like Donkey Kong. ‘nuff said.

I encourage you to read Mark Rackley’s post on this topic as well to get a well balanced view of the SharePoint world regarding how certifications are viewed.  Mark brings a different angle which I agree with on several levels - http://www.sharepointhillbilly.com/archive/2011/05/14/the-real-value-of-microsoft-certification-in-sharepoint.aspx

With SharePoint 2010, there’s a new functionality that allows for developers to create solutions that are scoped at the site collection level with a limited portion of the SharePoint API. Better yet they can deploy these solutions without bothering their IT Pro brethren. This is awesome! Course it bypasses some of the governance that you might have in place regarding solutions deployment. Course it is possible to turn them off or block certain ones.

There have been several great discussions by Sahil Malik, Jeremy Thake, Srini Sistla, Mike Watson and many others about the power of Sandboxed Solutions. All great points regarding their power – and trust me, in many ways it’s a game changer in delegating the ability to devs to write extensible code that can do more than what SharePoint Designer was ever meant for.

There are some considerations to think about however… and if you’re wondering, “Well what are they?” then I recommend hopping on over to MSDN to read more at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231562.aspx

A closing thought though… if you’re looking for complete freedom with your solutions and have the need to arch across site collections… then you need something that’s freeing and non-restricting. So for those of you that are studying for your SATs or GREs, you could use the analogy that Sandboxed Solutions are to Briefs as Farm Solutions are to Boxers.

Happy Developing!

For those of you that have known me for a while, you know that I absolutely deplore coffee. I’m not quite certain if it’s the tasty, the acidity, the smell, I’m not quite certain what it is but I deplore it.

Well, similar to wine, if you have bad wine, you basically never want to drink it ever again. If you drink good wine, you relish in the flavour and how it can have such vibrant taste.

In high school I would go and drink Irish Crème Cappuccinos at Starbucks, not because the taste was all that great but because it contained “Irish Crème”. Boy was that a mistake that stunted my growth and kept me from being the 6’8” man that I’d hoped to be.  Okay, just kidding, but seriously, I definitely am not much of a Cappuccino kind of guy. Why ruin the goodness of a shot of espresso with perfectly good crème and sugar that could be used in a baking process for something else?

For me I stumbled into the vibrant taste of coffee this past August. I decided I was going “cold turkey” with diet coke and was just going to switch back to purely water. This feeble attempt lasted for a few weeks before I was finding myself, while incredibly clear (drinking more water always tends to make things more clear) that I was falling asleep – maybe that’s a good thing? I was however finding that in the morning without caffeine I could be a grouch (though I’m sure that some of my closer friends had other names for it ).

So after conferring with myself, I decided I would give Starbucks drip coffee a chance. Besides there was a  Starbucks drip coffee machine downstairs in the building that I worked in that was complimentary to anyone that worked there. So I gave Pike Roast a try. Not too bad, but not something that grabbed me and made me say, “Oh you’re amazing.” The flip side was that the caffeine definitely was helping me to be a little more alert and the grouchiness was fading little by little. So I moved on to Bold and found that there was definitely a love affair in the making. The only caveat – it just didn’t have the right flavour to it. But how could I justify the cost I asked myself? Even as a Starbucks Gold card holder, it was still $2 a cup and required a stop by one of the several dispensaries in the area. Further more for days when I wasn’t feeling the Bold, I did have the alternative Café Americano but still, at $2 a cup without a second job, it was going to become financially burdensome to keep up this caffeinated habit.

Perhaps I should have known that I was destined to enjoy Coffee through the enticement of the Ray Charles Starbucks card that I’d received when I bought a copy of the Ray Charles album “Genius Loves Company” (what can I say, I’m the genius and coffee is the company? ). Which further makes me laugh since whenever I go to Starbucks and hand them this card they all look at it and wonder where I had gotten such a card – primarily since it’s coming up on being seven years old and not readily available. The other typical response is that it’s the coolest or cutest card they’ve ever seen. I even had one barista try to take it when it zero’d out so to speak… yeah that didn’t happen

Anywhere, where does that leave me? Besides having to beat people away from my Ray Charles Starbucks card? Well after a little market research looking at the Tassimo coffee pots as well as the Flavia and Keurig machines I did an analysis of requirements and alternatives. Not to say that I didn’t look at all the different coffee machines out there, but I was looking for something that would be low maintenance, single serving, easy to operate under the influence of next to zero sleep. At least those were the requirements. The alternatives of course were to become more disciplined at going to bed earlier, learn to live on uber-man schedule where I sleep thirty minutes every few hours or to take up something else and after all I’ve read about smoking it just didn’t seem like a good idea

So I bit the bullet and pulled the trigger and ordered a Keurig coffee machine and a box of samples of different Kona coffee k-cups. I’ve ended up sticking with Timothy’s Kona Blend Coffee as I’m a sucker for Kona coffee having actually liked the way it smelled as a kid growing up in Hawaii.

But that’s not to say that’s the only coffee k-cups that are magnificent… I’ve definitely found a delight with what is known as “Jet Fuel” from the Coffee People. It’s a strong, dark blend with a taste that is distinct – and free of carcinogens no less which makes it all the better. Plus after taking a some to work to share with colleagues, one of them definitely seemed to think that it made the peppermint mocha mix used as an additive in their coffee that it made the peppermint taste even stronger – can you go wrong with such goodness?

Perhaps, but that’s also why I have an alternative to the Café Americano – Timothy’s Espresso blend. While it’s not a one for one replacement it comes darn close from a taste perspective. And for those late nights where you’re looking for the taste, there’s good ole Timothy’s Espresso blend decaf – sure there’s a little caffeine, but nothing that a little Kerberos documentation won’t do to push you to dream land.

So where does that leave me in the morning? Typically thinking to myself, “Decisions, decisions…” especially with the influence of the Starbucks thermos, the Panera coffee cup and the Jet Fuel conveniently edging itself toward the Keurig machine. There are definitely mornings where I’m looking for comfort and not really the kick of an after burner through Jet Fuel which leads me to the Kona or another favorite, the Nantucket Blend. Either of which provides that nice and warm flavour with a gentle nudge that wraps its arms around you and reminds you that even though it’s a jungle out there, you’ve got your emotional blanket to take with you

Similar to other documents, Microsoft has released a second update this month pertaining to Upgrading to SharePoint 2010. Similar to other docs, no change log is included with the document – break out your compare documents to find out the differences.

The document is available in two flavours, doc and pdf and available here for download:

Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 – Version 3, Released 17 January 2001

In case you downloaded the Group Policy for Microsoft Office 2010 earlier this month, Microsoft has updated the documentation, still available in your favorite three flavours of doc, pdf and xps.

Group Policy for Microsoft Office 2010 Version 2, released on 17 January 2011

Unfortunately a change log page is not included within the document, thereby preventing us from knowing exactly what changed.

Back in June 2010, Microsoft released what was known as the Productivity Hub for SharePoint 2010. It was a site collection that Microsoft provided that could be extended out for end users to visit to acquire knowledge on how to use SharePoint.  Great resource if you were short on training components and looking for assistance but weren’t able to find their IT Pro (who was probably hiding somewhere no doubt, fearing for their lives). Further for those that are looking to engage and foster adoption of the Information Worker’s in your business, the productivity hub is key to gaining their buy in and helping them to truly dive into the SharePoint platform to make it their tool set.

The best part of the hub in my opinion is the ability to customize it and add additional modules that meet your organization or business unit’s needs to ensure that your implementation is actually serving them from a business perspective rather than just humming away as another file share replacement.

Well, like most technology solutions, there are updates and enhancements.  On 17 January 2011, Microsoft released such an update for the Productivity Hub for SharePoint 2010. So, if you’re looking to just download and implement with the content packs – fear not, it’s simply and easy by just heading over to the Microsoft Download Center at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4aaa9862-e420-4331-8bc3-469d7bae0ff1

However, if you’re feeling crafty and are looking to customize this product, it’s available on CodePlex from the team that created it (thanks RedTech!) at:

http://productivityhub.codeplex.com/

The key enhancement to the Productivity hub in this case is that of the customization documentation to provide guidance when crafting the Hub for your implementation’s UX.