SharePoint – Microsoft Certified Masters, and why I should care

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A couple of weeks ago, the first batch of MCM: SharePoint were announced.

Curiously, I went to see what it takes to be a SharePoint master.

 

Initially, I had assumed that it was just going to be a higher level of certification after you’ve completed the 4x MSTS: SharePoint certificates.

First reaction was: woah US$18,000?  Hmm… sounds a bit crazy.

Realizing that it is a 3 weeks training course made the money side more acceptable.

Seriously, if a company will send their top SharePoint architect on a 3 week full time training, US$18,000 – this must be some serious crack.

 

But then starting to read about what they say after completing the training

http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/05/07/reality-check-microsoft-certified-master-for-sharepoint-2007.aspx

It begins to dawn on me that this is not your average level yet-another-certification.

 

It is a massive amount of work, time, effort.  In fact I would argue that the money aspect quickly went out the window with the shear amount of work that’s required to actually make it, and pass it at the end.  If you can take that much time off from client work to get through the course, by all means go for it!

 

Here are more materials.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/Sharepoint/default.mspx

 

So finally, what does this all mean for me?

 

For now, as a personal goal - I’ve decided to chew through the pre-reading list.

http://www.dynamicevents.com/MCM/MCMSharePointPre-Reads.pdf

They even provided a nice checkbox column for me to tick them off as I go…  nice!

I think if I can get through these 81 documents before SharePoint 2010 comes out it’d be awesome!

Migrating from Windows Live Spaces to SquareSpace - outline

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This is going to be a series of blogs, and hopefully release source code for getting your blog out of Windows Live Spaces.  I want to split this into two major sections, and then have a few trailing articles discussing the differences and things as I encounter them.

 

First Half: Export your blog data out of Windows Live Spaces

  • No export option
  • MetaBlogAPI – documented on MSDN
  • Export to some sort of format: XML?  MoveableType?
  • Cleaning the data
  • Exporting comments?

Second Half: Import your blog data into SquareSpace

  • Using a format that SquareSpace understands
  • Unhappiness with documentation – regarding DYI imports
  • Imported Blogs go under a new journal
  • Migrating content between journals

Extended Time:

  • Release code
  • Gotchas
  • Data cleaning
  • Pictures

SharePoint: Groove assimilated by the Borg (aka SharePoint)

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Prepare to be assimilated by the Borg.

http://blogs.msdn.com/groove_development_team/archive/2009/05/13/makeover-for-groove-sharepoint-workspace-2010.aspx

...Groove is getting a new name as of the coming release of Office 2010. Please welcome SharePoint Workspace 2010!

The name makeover is in concert with the direction the product is going. SharePoint Workspace will provide easy access to SharePoint content (or content from any server that implements the publicly documented protocols) in an effort to provide a seamless online/offline experience.

 

Groove SharePoint Workspace and OneNote will appear in Office 2010 Professional Plus (yes that’s the name... it’s a bit ridiculous).

Regardless, Groove has always been a pretty niche product – people that have used it liked it. Other people didn’t understand what it did. Now that it gets this re-branding I think there will be a lot more interest in this product and the offline capabilities. Good move on MS.

My colleague Marlon always complains to me that he can’t get his docs from SharePoint when we put our SharePoint on maintenance...  I’m sure he’ll be happier now.

 

jliu

What am I looking for in SquareSpace

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Going to spend this next week seriously giving SquareSpace a twirl.  I'm looking for:
  • Easy maintenance
  • Import from spaces.live.com without doing something really stupid
  • Better traffic tracking - compared to Windows Live probably anything is better
  • Comments with OpenID

 UPDATE:

Maintenance - I seem to be able to make the changes I wanted - looking for info in the FAQ / forum is awful though.

From Windows Live Spaces to SquareSpace - ended up writing my own MetaBlogAPI export for Live Spaces to MoveableType txt format, then get squarespace to import it.  Again the help dialog is bad and it wasn't clear why things weren't working - have to go back to import page to see the error.

Traffice tracking - I know it was better already

No comments with OpenID - I think in this generation if you have to force someone to create an account in your particular blogging system just to comment - there's something wrong about it.

SharePoint - service pack 2 thoughts

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SharePoint service pack 2 came out a couple of days ago, for some reason I was really excited about it and even woke up checking twitter regarding any news…  It was surprisingly empty.

Anyway, over the last couple of days I’ve had a good whirl and here’s some thoughts – both mine, and heard over the grapevine.

 

Authentication — Improvements to forms-based authentication, authentication for Web applications, and the Business Data Catalog.

MSDN is saying that when Forms authentication is used SharePoint “should” do a better job at letting client (Browser) remember the password.

I’m hoping this means I don’t need to re-enter my password a billion times.

 

Database performance and integrity — Improved database performance and integrity by automatically rebuilding database indexes with a timer job. 

Self checks are good

 

Interoperability — Improved support for standards-based document formats and compatibility with a broader range of browsers level 1 and level 2 browser support.

IE8 enters level 1 browser support – the rich text editing should get fixed

FireFox2/3 enters level 2 browser support

 

Read-only content databases — Improved user experience by automatically configuring site collections as read-only when the content database is configured as read-only.

Again a good thing

 

Stsadm command-line tool — In addition to operations for pre-upgrade scanning and variations analysis and repair, several operations are improved and new operations added to better support farm administration.

stsadm –o backup will now issue a stsadm –o setsitelock prior to the backup, unless otherwise stated.

This means that sharepoint administrators no longer need to do this in two steps.

stsadm –o deletesite now supports a force argument that allows orphaned site collections or orphaned sites to be deleted.  Only time I’ve seen an orphan site is when we had a bad import that failed halfway.

 

Pre-upgrade scanning and reporting — An Stsadm operation that enables you to scan an existing farm and its servers to verify that they can be upgraded SharePoint Products and Technologies "14".

stsadm -o preupgradecheck

is only to check against future versions of SharePoint 2010.

 

Variations analysis and repair — An Stsadm operation that enables farm administrators to better manage and perform necessary operations against variations.

There’s a quite bit of work for variations.  This isn’t an area where I’ve had a lot of experience.

 

Merge Content DB bug fixed

Yay

 

Breaking Changes:

Areas web service removed

There’s some impact to Nintex Workflows – there’s an interim fix that they’ve released, as well as a patch coming out within a week.