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8/6/2008It's been three weeks now since the launch of the International SharePoint Professionals Association and I must say, it's living up to what it set out to do. I'm currently representing ISPA as a Regional Evangelist covering the Middle East region and so far there's been a lot of buzz over in this region. We're currently in the process of establishing the first SharePoint User Group in Saudi Arabia, which I believe would be a great success story for both ISPA and the Saudi community. Here's a list of upcoming SharePoint User Groups in the Middle East being launched through ISPA, as well as the ones already a member of ISPA. - Jordan SharePoint User Group
- Egypt SharePoint User Group
- Riyadh SharePoint User Group
- Iran SharePoint User Group
- Dubai SharePoint User Group
- Qatar SharePoint User Group
For a region that didn't have a single SharePoint User Group up until March 2008, this is a HUGE accomplishment! Big thanks to the ISPA board that made all this happen; Bob, Natalya, Darrin, Chris, and Spence Harbar. So if you're looking to start a SharePoint UG in your region, be sure to visit the ISPA official web site at http://www.sharepointpros.org and we'll be more than happy to help you out. For anyone in the Middle East, feel free to send me an email directly. 8/3/2008I mentioned this blog when it first launched, and I'm mentioning it again here just because it's that damn good! If you haven't already added this blog to your favorites, do it now! To the (Share)Point, a blog from the SharePoint IT Pro Documentation Team. Talk about some sweet posts, check out what they recently published these past two weeks: All four of these posts have some great content in them; my favorite being the one on Federated Search in Geographic Environments. Microsoft rolled out the Infrastructure Updates a few weeks ago, and included in them was Federated Search from Search Server 2008. This feature is quite nice. Yes it has some drawbacks, but it does have its advantages like managing each content store separately, giving you flexibility with how your search results are displayed. Ok, so to be honest, I haven't found much use to the Records Center in MOSS yet. Routing? Big deal. Audit and expiration policies? So what, we get that with any list. So what's the big fuss about Records Management in MOSS? Well, I don't know, but I'm hoping this documentation will help me find some use to it. There's gotta be something I'm missing. Anyway, enjoy the reads, and if your still wondering about the recently released Infrastructure Updates, check out this post. 8/2/2008The Jordan SharePoint User Group will be hosting three meetings during the month of August. Why are we doing this you might ask? During our last meeting on SharePoint Administration we discovered that the majority of the attendees were new to SharePoint (approximately 90%) so we decided to go ahead and dedicate an entire month for SharePoint newbies. Why are we packing everything in one month? Well, we wanted to hit all the basics soon and fast, and splitting each meeting up into different months was going to slow things down and keep the more advanced SharePoint Pro's waiting on the side. Of course, we'll eventually visit these intro sessions later in the future for the people missing out the first time around, but for now we think this is a good way to enable the Jordan SharePoint User Group to more forward with more advanced topics. We're starting off with a session for all audiences, mainly just introducing SharePoint, talking about its features and how it can help organizations build a more productive and collaborative working environment. Here's a list of all the meetings and their dates: - August 13 - Introducing SharePoint (Register here!)
- August 20 - Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers
- August 27 - Fundamentals of SharePoint Administration
A new approach we're taking for the first session is one suggested by fellow MVP and community stud Bob Fox. We've gathered a panel of speakers, 4 to be exact, each one specializing in different areas of SharePoint. In the beginning we'll be doing some demos and talks about SharePoint, and towards the end we'll open it up to questions. With the panel of speakers, we'll be able to target each audience (developers, admins, IW, decision makers). Details of our first meeting are as follows: Topic: Introduction to SharePoint Speakers: Mohammed Zayed, Microsoft
Abdurrahman Al-Husami, Raya Solutions
Muhanad Omar [MVP], Devosis
Tamer Nassrawin, Nuqul Group Date: August 13, 2008 Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Location: Microsoft Innovation Center For more details, click here or visit the JSUG home page at http://www.JordanSUG.com 7/20/2008Tony Lanni from AvePoint just added a great post to RealSharePoint.com on how SharePoint decides which content database to put a new site collection in. He really did a good job explaining how it works and how administrators can manually control the process. Be sure to take a look at his post if you're interested in this topic, which I'm sure most SP administrators are! One thing he did mention was the added control administrators get when working with AvePoint DocAve SharePoint Administrator. Using DocAve, administrators can specify which content DB a site collection is stored in upon creation. Moreover, you can then move a site collection from one content DB to another. I personally use DocAve on a day-to-day basis and love this feature! It really does save me a lot of time, especially when a client has many site collections and storage allocation is a big issue. Being able to select which content DB I want my site collection to be stored in from a simple drop-down list is much easier than manually getting around the round-robin method SharePoint uses. If you're dealing with a large amount of content databases and are looking for a simple and easy way to manage your site collections, then I recommend you take a look at AvePoint DocAve. 7/18/2008Microsoft recently released a much anticipated white paper on how to protect your SharePoint environment using System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. I just read through the whitepaper last night and it's honestly a must read. Some of the things DPM does for SharePoint include: - Restoring a SharePoint farm
- Restoring a Content Database
- Copy to a network folder or tape for archival purposes
- Restore a Site Collection
- Restore a Site
- Restore an Individual Document
You can download the white paper here, or go to the DPM Homepage for SharePoint Protection and check out the other resources they have.  If you haven't heard already, the International SharePoint Professionals Association "ISPA" launched on July 16th. This is something huge for the SharePoint community worldwide. We now have one place dedicated to SharePoint. The International SharePoint Professionals Association (“ISPA”) is the first independent, community-run, not-for-profit organization designed specifically for SharePoint Professionals. ISPA is a professional association dedicated to the promotion and global adoption of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. The Association provides support and guidance to the community by establishing connections between SharePoint professionals and groups, resources, education and information. A big thanks goes to the 4 great people who started this effort-- Bob Fox, Darrin Bishop, Natalya Voskresenskaya, and Chris Regan. To have ISPA really impact SharePoint communities worldwide, they've established Regional Evangelists around the world (more than 50 so far) and I'm please to be one of them representing the Middle East region. So if you're in the region and are looking to start up a SharePoint User Group, contact me and I'll be more than happy to help and get you the support you need through ISPA. Official Web Site: http://www.SharePointPros.org
Announcing the International SharePoint Professionals Association 7/16/2008
TechNet recently launched a blog targeted to SharePoint IT Pros called "To the (Share)Point" http://blogs.technet.com/tothesharepoint/ The purpose of this blog is to: - Help you find relevant and/or new content on TechNet
- Highlight product features and associated content
- Let you know when Microsoft makes major updates to a content area
- Preview content for new releases as early as possible (even before it's published on the TechNet Library)
7/13/2008We all face issues with spammers adding unwanted comments on our blogs. With most blog engines, the comments will have content approval enabled, so even if a spammer adds a comment, it won't be displayed on the post. In SharePoint blogs, all comments are stored in the "Comments" list. This list doesn't have content approval enabled by default, so go ahead and enable it from the List Settings > Versioning settings. Even with content approval turned on however, this doesn't stop spammers from submitting comments. Usually, a user would go into their Comments list and delete any comments submitted by spammers. This wasn't a big issue for me before, but now I'm receiving over 100 spam comments a day! Going in and deleting all these comments has been a real pain for me, so I had to figure out a way to stop spammers from submitting comments all together. To do this, I simply added another column of type "Date and Time" to my Comments list, called it Today's Date, and required this field to be filled out. Spammers won't understand this as all they do is input random text. It's been a week now and I haven't received any spam comments, so I can safely say this method works :) 
A new community project is underway for the MEA region. It's called "Phoenix Community" Phoenix Community will offer communities in the MEA (Middle East & Africa) region the proper exposure and support for their user groups, leveraging the concept of "Community to Community". The full description and exact details of Phoenix aren't released yet, but it's main goal is to act as a "start" location for all user groups in MEA; a place where UG Leaders can profile their groups and report their activities. Mohamed Saleh [MVP], Amjad Issa, and myself were offered the chance to build the portal. The site itself will be built on, yup, you guessed it, SharePoint! Main reason for this is because 1) SharePoint is awesome, and 2) we really want to utilize all the great collaboration features SharePoint provides OOTB + scalability won't be much of an issue if the project decides to serve more than just the MEA region. The initial effort was started and is led by Microsoft DE and community enthusiast Samer Chidiac. I've had the great pleasure to work with SC for the past 2 years doing community work and MS related activities, and I really respect the guy for his innovative mind and passion for helping the community; the guy is a genius in every meaning of the word. The launch date isn't set yet, but it'll definitely be beginning of Q4 of this year, so keep your eyes open for the Phoenix!  Join the Phoenix Community Project Facebook Group here! |
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