Free PowerShell e-book

At the recent SharePoint Saturday in Phoenix Arizona, I learned about this free resource from Tom Wisnowski…

“Mastering PowerShell” by Dr. Tobias Weltner, PowerShell MVP is available for free download at PowerShell.org/Mastering-PowerShell.pdf.   It is a 567 page PDF book.   There are lots of other resources on the PowerShell.org site, check it out SharePoint admins.

 

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SPSaturday Phoenix SharePint Options

Taking it upon myself to research online a bit, I found the following locations to be potential location options for SharePINT during the upcoming SharePoint Saturday Phoenix.  Not being a local I can’t recommend any that are not larger chains.   Also, since I have not seen nor heard of anyone else coordinating this, I will volunteer myself and get things rolling.  If anyone out there has started down this path, speak up!  I am flexible and have no desire to add stress or complexity to what should be a fantastic weekend.

This list is in rough order based on proximity to the SPSaturday hosting site.  PLEASE post comments if you are attending SPSaturday PHX.

SharePint Location Options

Lobby Bar – Arizona Grand Resort

7777 S Pointe Pkwy W, Phoenix, AZ

(602) 438-9000‎

Phantom Horse Grill – Also Arizona Grand Resort I think

8000 S Arizona Grand Pkwy, Phoenix, AZ

(602) 431-6476‎

Monkey Pants Bar & Grill‎

3223 South Mill Ave

Tempe, AZ 85282

(480) 377-8100

monkeypantsbar.com‎

Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant‎

420 S Mill Ave # 201

Tempe, AZ 85281-2870

(480) 736-0033

gordonbiersch.com‎

Four Peaks Brewing Co

1340 E 8th St # 104, Tempe, AZ

(480) 303-9967‎

fourpeaks.com

Copper Canyon Brewing & Ale House

5945 W Ray Rd, Chandler, AZ

(480) 785-1928‎

ccbrewing.com

Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery

14205 S 50th St, Phoenix, AZ

(480) 598-1300‎

rockbottom.com

Arizona Roadhouse & Brewery

1120 E Apache Blvd, Tempe, AZ

(480) 929-9940‎

Green Week and Technology

This week is Green Week, so I thought I would post on that theme. There are growing numbers of discussions and activities in technology that are green related.

I have always felt that using technology to improve efficiency, increase the ease in finding information (ie knowledge management), managing content, and simplifying or tracking business processes made sense – and are green.

Why?

Because we can better see the impact on our society and planet when we point out and acknowledge that we are trying to act in a responsible manner.

Because when we can see the projects that do impact the planet around us it is easier to remind ourselves that we need to protect the environment that sustains us.

Because when we are sometimes so focused on ROI we miss the Social Impact; we miss the Social Responsibility;  we miss the Goodwill that is often achieved by projects that DO pay attention to these things.

The other night I caught a small portion of a documentary on TV.  It was about Coke in South Africa. One subtle  point they made was that when apartheid violence was at its height most foreign companies moved out.  Coke chose a different path.  They found a multi-racial group that was willing to buy the distributorships and remain in the country.  South African’s found that during this upheaval the only refreshment to be found was Coke products.

After things settled down, Coke donated to local re-building causes.  The locally owned Coke distributors started expanding by “shipping” product via wheel barrel and hand carts.  South African’s took note of this and have truly embraced this company and brand.  Coke is visible everywhere now in South Africa.  This is all due to a vision beyond standard ROI.  It displayed Social Responsibility that has paid off in Goodwill in a big way…and I might venture to say it has paid off in dollars that were hard to account for in ROI.

That story has nothing to do with SharePoint directly.  However, if the thought process can shift so that some SharePoint projects can move forward, allowing the technology to help solve real problems or streamline real activities …then we can see SharePoint grow as a green tool.

For more coherent information on Green technology, check out these news links:

CNNMoney.com: Green Technology Report

CNET News: Green Tech: Intel sees Opportunities in wind, electric cars

SharePoint Magazine: Go Green with SharePoint

Business Week: Green Technology Innovators

InfoWorld: Intel invests $10 million in green technology companies

Breakell Inc – Green SharePoint (General contractors building green and using SharePoint for a community website to promote green actions)

10 SharePoint 2007 Admin shortcuts

Shortcuts that can help you get to pages you need when working on your SharePoint 2007 sites.

Add these to end of url for site or page to get to the page you need:

1. Save Site as Template: _layouts/savetmpl.aspx
2. Jump to Settings page: _layouts/settings.aspx
3. Site Template Gallery : _catalogs/wt/Forms/Common.aspx
4. List Template Gallery: _catalogs/lt/Forms/AllItems.aspx
5. Web Part Gallery: _catalogs/wp/Forms/AllItems.aspx
6. Master Page Gallery: _catalogs/masterpage/Forms/AllItems.aspx
7. Add web parts to any page: ?PageView=Shared&ToolPaneView=2
8. Manage your Alerts (2003 & 2007): _layouts/1033/MySubs.aspx (2003) and _layouts/SubEdit.aspx (2007)
9. Web Part Page Maintenance: ?contents=1
10. IISReset can get annoying, every time you deploy new functionality you hit IISReset, and you wait.

A much quicker way is to recycle only the application pool instead of issuing an IISReset. In order to recycle just the application pool, you can use the following command:

cscript c:\windows\system32\iisapp.vbs /a “[App_Pool_Name]” /r

Added bonus:

Application Pool Recycle Utility

This makes the pages load quickly after recycling the pool or doing an IISReset.

http://www.harbar.net/articles/APM.aspx

Handy Twitter Tools

Oddball post, but hey it is my blog so I can do what I want! ha!
Here are some handy twitter tools –

First the good ol hashtag (#) – for SharePoint people search #sharepoint, #moss, SPSaturday and watch for postings on conferences etc. such as #spc09
Look at Trends to find other hashtags or words you may want to follow.

Other Tools
http://www.twitblock.org
http://www.tweetdeck.com/
http://www.hootsuite.com/
http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/
http://twitpic.com/
and
99 twitter tools from Smashing Magazine

Fab 40 Help Desk Template screen shots

Here are a few quick screen shots to see how the Help Desk template looks without modification.  This site has our custom theme applied and some “demo” content added, otherwise it is OOTB (Out Of The Box).

Help Desk main page:

Fab 40 Help Desk Template

Service Rep Home:

Help Desk Service Rep Home page

Service Rep Manager Home:

Help Desk Service Rep Manager Home page

Support FAQ’s:

Help Desk Support FAQ page

 

Property Mapping for Profile Import

If you import your User Profiles from Active Directory (or LDAP, or anywhere)  into SharePoint then at some point you may want to make use of some properties available in that external system.   The default import connection in SharePoint maps several commonly used properties for you, in my case properties found in Active Directory.

When you go into your Shared Service Provider (SSP) in SharePoint 2007 and navigate to User profiles and properties found under the User Profiles and My Sites section, you can View profile properties to see what is available.

When I did this, and selected Edit from the drop-down on one of the properties I noticed that I could not see any way to map the property – that is I couldn’t set the Mapped Attribute.  I could see the Mapped Attribute column, and see that many of the default properties had Mapped Attributes, but could not change them.  Since I wanted to create a new Property and map it to an AD Property I had a problem with this.

What I learned was that this was a permissions problem, not because of how I logged in but because of how the Import Connection was configured.  So here is what you do if you have the same problem.

Go to your SSP, navigate to User profiles and properties and select View import connections to get to the  “View Import Connections” screen.

View Import Connection

Select your import connection, and click Edit, this will take you into the Edit Connection screen.  Scroll down to the Authentication Information section.

The Use Default Account radio button is selected, click on the Specify Account radio button to add your farm credentials – Account and Password.  This account must have at least Read access to your Active Directory and can be one of the accounts you setup to manage your SharePoint environment.  Click the OK button to save your changes.

Authentication for Profile Import Connection

You will be returned to the View Import Connections screen.  Navigate back up to the User Profile and Properties page and select View profile properties.  This time when you Edit a property you should see the Data source field to map and Enter field to map fields under the Source Data Connection in the Property Import Mapping section.

Property Mapping

Hurray, now your work creating properties and mapping them starts.  Those steps may follow at a later date.