Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Cool tool for Outlook 2007:

"Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that saves you time finding email conversations, contacts and attachments.

After a quick install, you’ll see the new Xobni toolbar appear in Outlook – and suddenly information will become much easier to find. When a new email arrives, the sender’s full communication history appears in the Xobni sidebar, including past conversations, attachments and contact details. Xobni also includes a blazing fast email search tool."

• Lightning fast email search.
  The email or person you’re looking for appears as you type
• Email analytics.
  Rankings, graphs, and statistics detailing how you and your contacts use email
• Navigate your inbox by people.
  Discover email’s social network – quickly identify a contact’s manager, business partner, or assistant
• Your personal assistant.
  Schedule appointments with a click of a button – Xobni automagically finds open slots in your busy schedule.
• Hello, threaded conversations.
  Email how it was meant to be read, with conversations in context
• Quick attachment discovery.
  Historical attachments available instantly without searching
• Phone numbers extracted from emails.
  Contact details pop into the sidebar – never search for a phone number again

LINK: http://www.xobni.com/ 

The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help administer and manage Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. 

Overview
This tool pack is oriented towards helping SharePoint administrators with complex or demanding tasks—and we will have updated releases several times each year.  Each release of this kit will include new or improved functionality to make managing SharePoint easier and less time consuming.

This first release contains two very useful tools which are both supported on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  The first tool, called "Batch Site Manager", adds new functionality through Central Administration.  From the new "Move, Lock, and Delete Site Collections" page on Applications Management you can schedule bulk operations against site collections in the farm—including moving site collections between content databases!  The second tool is actually a new command in STSADM called "updatealert". This command will refresh all alert URLs in a specific site collection, which is extremely important should you change the URL of a web application or after an upgrade.

Download

• x64 Architecture
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F8EEA8F0-FA30-4C10-ABC9-217EEACEC9CE&displaylang=en
• x86 Architecture
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=263CD480-F6EB-4FA3-9F2E-2D47618505F2&displaylang=en

Other Links

• Announcement (Sharepoint Team Blog)
  http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/04/30/announcing-the-first-release-of-the-microsoft-sharepoint-administration-toolkit.aspx
• Detailed Whitepaper (MSDN)
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=117212&clcid=0x409

The Microsoft Support Lifecycle blog site (http://blogs.technet.com/lifecycle/default.aspx) is now available.

As most IT Professionals are aware, the Microsoft Support Lifecycle is the set of policies that governs the length of support for all Microsoft products, or as described by the Microsoft Lifecycle web site, "provides consistent and predictable guidelines for product support availability when a product releases and throughout that product’s life". 

The goal of this blog is not to replace the main http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle web site as the authoritative source for information on the policy.  Instead, the goal is to use this blog as an informal communication mechanism to supplement the site and answer some common questions.

LINK: http://blogs.technet.com/lifecycle/

FREE Labcast – Enterprise Search with SharePoint 2007:
Join us for this one-day labcast to gain a greater understanding of MOSS 2007’s search capabilities. This labcast training is made up of five modules that include a combination of lecture and hands-on virtual labs.

What is a labcast? An online training that provides a hands-on virtual lab where you can perform tasks yourself with step-by-step guidance from Microsoft professionals, giving you experience-based knowledge on the MS product.  If you face challenges walking through your lab, our instructors can virtually share your view and take control of your lab to literally guide you through the process.

At the end of the class you will be able to design, configure, and manage a basic Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 search solution. You will learn how to improve the end-user experience and the results returned by their search query, connect and access external content sources, and extend the out-of-the-box search capabilities. Topics such as relevancy tuning, protocol handlers and customization are covered and followed by hands-on virtual lab. (200-300 level training).

Attendees will receive one copy of Inside the Index and Search Engines: Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 by Patrick Tisseghem and Lars Fastrup.

Topics covered include:

1. MOSS 2007 Search Overview 
2. MOSS 2007 Administration
3. Customizing and Extending MOSS 2007 Search
4. Search Server 2008
5. Using the Business Data Catalog to Index LOB Data

Tamir Orbach Bio:
Tamir Orbach is a Search Solutions Specialist with Microsoft Mid-Atlantic States District and is based in the Washington DC area. Tamir works with Microsoft clients in the Mid-Atlantic area spanning from Pittsburgh, PA to Richmond, VA to help them utilize the software they already own in order to establish an effective Enterprise Search environment.

Prerequisite:
Before attending this course, students must have moderate understanding of Windows® SharePoint® Services V2 or V3 and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Registration:
If you are a customer of mine, and are interested in attending this labcast, please contact me directly for registration information.

Microsoft invites you to an exclusive training opportunity.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Labcast
Join this FREE one-day labcast to learn the new and exciting features of Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server 2007. During this labcast, we will  show you how to prepare for an Office SharePoint Server 2007 implementation, going through the planning and designing for non-functional requirement then walk through new features.

This virtual training event will also provide a hands-on virtual lab environment, where you can perform the tasks yourself with step-by-step guidance from Microsoft professionals, giving you experience-based knowledge of Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Topics covered include:

• Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Deployment Planning
• Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Site Planning and Design Fundamentals
• Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Site Customization

This course is for IT Professionals who are experienced with Windows® operating system and Office technologies looking to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Prerequisites
To get the most from this course, you will need:

• Experience with Windows client and server operating systems.
• Experience installing, configuring and supporting Microsoft Office System technologies

Registration:
If you are a customer of mine, please contact me for details on how to register for this event.  Because it leverages hands-on virtual lab resources in our datacenter, there is a limited capacity of attendees possible.

Interested in a single economical product for all remote access capabilities, including:

• SSL/VPN
• IPSec VPN
• SSTP VPN
• Remote application publishing
  (including built-in provisions for Sharepoint Server publishing, OWA publishing and other applications)

…that’s the new Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG).

DESIGNED FOR SHAREPOINT
Especially for customers with Sharepoint Server technology, UAG is designed from the ground up to provide secure remote access to these internal corporate resources without compromising security and most importantly, providing an optimized, fast experience for end users.

END POINT SECURITY SCANNING
UAG will provide a complete security assessment of the end point being used to access published corporate resources and additionally provide cache clean up to ensure the security of corporate data.  It incorporates all the capabilities of Microsoft’s Network Access Protection (NAP) technologies to ensure that only secure devices and authenticated users can access network resources and that no data is compromised during or after the sessions.

THE UPGRADE FOR IAG2007 OR ISA2006
Microsoft will provide an easy product and licensing upgrade path from IAG 2007 or customers using ISA 2006 for remote access to Forefront UAG, and IAG customers that have or buy Microsoft Software Assurance can be confident of receiving strong value with Forefront UAG. 

There will be a public beta of the product available later this year.

READ MORE: 
http://blogs.technet.com/forefront/archive/2008/04/29/microsoft-announces-its-next-generation-secure-remote-access-solution-the-forefront-unified-access-gateway.aspx

The SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool helps you discover unmanaged SharePoint sites in your network and inventory site content on an ongoing basis for reporting.

———————-

The wide availability of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and the explosive popularity of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 in enterprise environments, combined with the widespread use of online collaboration tools have resulted in a proliferation of SharePoint technologies that sometimes escape the notice of IT.

SharePoint servers that are not managed by IT often host business-critical Web sites, applications, documents, and processes. It is vital to the health of the organization that these servers are brought under corporate IT management and oversight.

The SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool allows IT professionals to inventory all of the computers in the network and identify servers that have SharePoint installed on them. The information gathered by the tool is used to generate reports that give IT the information it needs to bring the servers are under its control. This allows the resources of the ever-changing SharePoint environment to be optimized and adjusted as needed.

When you download the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool, the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool Setup Wizard opens automatically.

The SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool Setup Wizard installs the following files in the <localhost>:Program FilesSharePoint Asset Inventory Toolbin folder:

• VRAWizard.exe 
  This file is the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool Wizard, which runs the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool.
• SharePoint Asset Inventory Toolkit Guide.doc
  This is the user guide for the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool.
• Readme.txt file
  This file contains information you may need in order to install or operate the tool.

The SharePoint Asset Inventory Toolkit comes with a guide that includes:

• An overview of the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool.
• Directions for installing the tool
• Basic “how-to” guidance for using the tool to select the inventory method—Active Directory or IP Range—and to scan your SharePoint servers
• Descriptions of the data collected by the tool
• Directions for generating reports from the collected data
• An appendix that describes how the tool collects the data

BETA:  https://connect.microsoft.com/programdetails.aspx?ProgramDetailsID=1600

The Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager reports on end-to-end service health of managed line of business (LOB) applications, from both the back end and the end user perspectives.

• Program Start Date  4/4/2008
• Program End Date  7/1/2008
• Nomination Start Date  4/21/2008
• Nomination End Date  7/1/2008

IT departments have ever more sophisticated tools at their disposal to monitor the performance of applications that make the organization run. These tools, despite their sophistication, follow traditional monitoring, which is server-based. As long as the server is in good health, the assumption is that the service is good too.

Standards for performance and availability of line-of-business applications are commonly defined in service level agreements (SLAs). The ability to maintain SLA standards can be affected by multiple server and client software components as well as variations in network speed and quality across an organization. This makes SLA compliance difficult to measure in large or geographically dispersed organizations.

The Service Level Dashboard for System Center Operations Manager 2007 is a new Solution Accelerator that addresses IT Service Managers’ need to measure and report SLA compliance for line-of-business (LOB) applications. It does this by deploying a small number of agents in the enterprise network to provide an accurate sampling of all the different conditions under which the business application operates. It then collects and interprets the data, and displays the results in a dashboard—a single Web-based user interface. A top-level view provides SLA status reports on all monitored applications for IT executives. Drilldown views for IT administrators provide insights into component-level problems that can cause an application to be out of compliance.

To read an Executive Overview of this new Solution Accelerator on TechNet, click here.

BETA:  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8816402

Check out the beta of the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool which combines Windows Workflow with Windows PowerShell to automate the update process of virtual machines (VMs) stored in a Virtual Machine Manager library.

Virtual machines may be left offline (stored in a non-operating state) for extended periods of time.  Storing virtual machines in this manner conserves resources when the server capacities of the virtual machines are not needed.

However, offline machines do not automatically receive operating system, anti-virus, or application updates that would keep them compliant with current IT policy. An out-of-date virtual machine poses a risk to the IT environment. If deployed and started, the out-of-date virtual machine may be vulnerable to attack or may be capable of attacking other network resources. Therefore, IT groups must take measures to ensure that stored virtual machines remain up-to-date and compliant. At present, these measures involve temporarily bringing the virtual machines online, updating them, and storing them again.

Future image updating solutions may be able to update virtual machines while they remain offline. Until such solutions become available, the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool provides a way to automate the process of deploying, updating, and storing virtual machines.

For more details, see the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool Executive Overview.

Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool – Beta
Program Information
The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool allows you to automatically activate virtual machines parked in a library to update their operating systems one by one using System Center Configuration Manager or Windows Server Update Services. (If you have already signed up, please click the link to YOUR DASHBOARD. In your Dashboard, click the SOLUTION ACCELERATORS link.)

• Program Start Date 4/3/2008
• Program End Date 8/1/2008
• Nomination Start Date 4/1/2008
• Nomination End Date 8/1/2008

BETA:  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8816426

I got this from our Exchange Specialist.  If you’re a customer of mine, find this information useful, and want to talk with him, send me an email and I’ll hook you up.

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Exchange Server Tools

• Exchange Server Jetstress
  Verify the performance and stability of the disk subsystem before putting the Exchange server into a production environment.
  64-bit download | 32-bit download
• Exchange Load Generator
  Perform benchmarking, pre-deployment validation, and stress testing tasks that introduce various types of workloads into a test (non-production) Exchange messaging system. Simulate the delivery of multiple MAPI client messaging requests to an Exchange server.
  64-bit download | 32-bit download
• Exchange Server Stress and Performance
  Simulate large numbers of client sessions by concurrently accessing one or more protocol servers. Exchange Server Stress and Performance includes multiple modules that you can use to simulate several protocols and loads.
  64-bit download | 32-bit download
• Exchange Server Profile Analyzer
  Collect estimated statistical information from a single mailbox store or from across an entire Exchange Server organization. Use the collected data for tasks such as analyzing the performance and health of a server that has mailboxes.
  64-bit download | 32-bit download
• Exchange Public Folder DAV-Based Administration
  Use the Exchange Server Public Folder Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV)-based Administration tool (PFDAVAdmin) to perform various management tasks related to public folders and mailboxes.
  Download
• Management Pack for Exchange Server 2007 for MOM 2005
  A significant aspect of Exchange 2007 daily operations is to monitor the health of Exchange components. The Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack includes rules and scripts to monitor and report on performance, availability, and reliability of all Exchange 2007 server roles including Mailbox, Client Access, Hub Transport, Edge Transport, and Unified Messaging.
  Download
• Exchange 2007 PowerShell Script Resources
  The Exchange 2007 Community Wiki was created to enable rapid sharing of tips, tricks and FAQs for Exchange 2007.
  PowerShell Scripts | PowerShell Resources

————–

Exchange 2007 Pocket Administrators Guide
We can get you some copies of this book.  Very helpful/task-oriented book; not a lot of “fluff”.

Microsoft Exchange Team Blog
The Exchange Product Team maintains this VERY active blog.  LOTS of very good information here.

IT Showcase – Exchange Server 2007
IT Showcase is where you can get a view into Microsoft IT’s early adopter experiences, best experiences, and lessons learned from our own deployments of Exchange Server within our global enterprise. By leveraging our best practices, you can make decisions about how best to plan for, deploy, and manage Microsoft solutions in your own environment.

Exchange 2007 Help File (RTM) | Exchange 2007 Help File (SP1)
There is a lot of good information in this help file.  One of the best help files I have seen.  It’s almost on the level of being a Microsoft Press book on Exchange design, administration, etc., plus it’s searchable!

Exchange Server 2007 – RTM Evaluation Software
You can download both the 64-bit and 32-bit software.  They are both fully functional.  64-bit is the only one supported for production, but the 32-bit is ideal for installing in a virtual environment, or on a spare server for lab testing.

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1
Same as above for the RTM version of Exchange 2007. The SP1 download is slipstreamed, so there is no need to install RTM and then upgrade. Just go straight to the SP1 download, and install.

Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server SP1
Help improve the detection of viruses, worms, and spam in Exchange 2007 environments with this free 120-day trial of Forefront Security for Exchange Server.

Exchange Server 2007 Virtual Hard Disk
If you just want to get your hands on a working copy, without having to go through the installation, we are providing pre-configured installations of Exchange 2007 for use with VirtualPC or Virtual Server.  Last I checked, this was Beta code, so there would be some differences from the RTM version, but for the most part, it is a good representation of the functionality.

Exchange Server in Depth
This site collects Webcasts, Virtual Labs and Podcasts related to Exchange Server 2007.

Southern California Unified Communications
Our Unified Communications Specialists set up a public SharePoint site for our Southern California customers.  Chandler is a Unified Communications Technical Specialist, focused on Real-Time Communications (Live Communications Server 2005, Office Communications Server 2007, LiveMeeting).  Michael is a Exchange Messaging Specialist.  Their goal is to make this a useful resource specific to Southern California.  We put notifications of upcoming events, new things we have discovered about the products, etc.