The IW Center

Recently, I had a chance to interview Jerry Smith, a Marketing Manager within the Real Time Collaboration (RTC) Group within Microsoft. Jerry heads up the field readiness efforts for the Live Communications Server product, which is our enterprise instant messaging solution.
I've known Jerry almost as long as I've been at Microsoft (over 9 years). He taught a class that I took when I first started with the company. Through the years, I've seen him manage our Windows Datacenter offering, lead our technology specialist community and I was happy to run into him again recently.

In our interview, Jerry discusses how our real time collaboration products such as Live Meeting and Live Communications Server 2005 can help increase productivity of users in an enterprise. He debunks the myth that IM technologies are distracting and counter-productive and he mentions several customers who are using LCS 2005 today, including SAS and Lockheed Martin.

Click to Play Audio (27:45)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

For more information on Live Communications Server 2005, visit the Microsoft website.

It seems like everybody is talking about building a scorecard to measure performance these days. Last year, Microsoft came out with a solution accelerator around scorecards which was modeled around Microsoft Office. We had a lot of success with that offering, but we quickly realized that we needed an actual product with greater analysis and dashboarding capabilities, as well as a better platform for customizing and extending. So for the past couple of years, we've been working on the Business Scorecard Manager (formally code-named "Maestro") product.

Recently, I interviewed Oudi Antebi, Senior Product Manager for the Office Business Application division of Microsoft. A veteran of Microsoft for eight years, Oudi leads the product management for the Business Scorecard Manager 2005 product. We had a chance to talk about why scorecards are important, what differentiates our product from others in the market and touched on the release schedule and roadmap of the Business Scorecard Manager.

If you or your company is using the balanced scorecard methodology or are looking for ways to empower end users to make better business decisions, listen to this IW Talk interview and hear for yourself what we're doing in this space.

Click to Play Audio (16:06)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

For more information on the Business Scorecard Manager 2005 product, visit the Microsoft website.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dev Bala who is a Product Manager in the Windows Security Division of Microsoft. Specifically, he works on the Rights Management Services (RMS) technologies that allow you to assign rights and enforce usage policies for documents. If you've never seen an RMS demo, it's pretty amazing how easy it is to restrict an email so that nobody can forward it, print it, or copy and paste the content into another document.

In our discussion, Dev gives a background of why customers might want to use RMS, the technologies that are required, and some hints to what is coming in the next release of RMS. He highlights how RMS could used to create a solution to ensure HIPPA compliance for healthcare companies and how a manufacturing customer could use RMS to exchange data with suppliers securely. Dev also mentions a couple of case studies, including Merck and The Koehler Group.

Click to Play Audio (30:06)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

For more information on Windows Rights Management Services, visit the Microsoft web site.

I got my start in computers teaching WordPerfect 5.1 oh so many years ago. Once I made the change to graphical applications like Microsoft Word, I never looked back. As a result, Word has always been one of my favorite applications so I have been following the new version pretty closely. Microsoft Office Word 2007 is going to be a spectacular release and I was really looking forward to my interview with the Gray Knowlton, the Product Manager for Microsoft Word.

Many of you may know Gray, as I've interviewed him numerous times...he's also the product manager for Infopath and the OpenXML file formats. For today's interview, I asked him questions about how the way that people work is changing and how Microsoft Word is adapting to that change. Gray talked about the new UI, OpenXML file formats, and the integration of Infopath to automate document creation. In fact, it is now possible to create/output a Word document without ever even opening Microsoft Word. The possibilities are endless!
Listen to this prodcast and get excited about word processing again!

Click to Play Audio (21:50)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

For more information on Word 2007, please visit the Microsoft website.

Over a decade ago, when I was training users on desktop applications at a computer training company, my favorite classes to teach were on Excel 4.0/5.0.  I taught Intro, Intermediate, Advanced, and "Power-Users" classes, so I guess you could say I used to be pretty good with Excel.  However, as I moved into infrastructure (AD, Exchange, SMS), I began to forget all my acquired Excel "power" knowledge.  Whenever I launch Excel on my laptop these days, it takes me a while to remember how to write =countA() formulas or how to get my pivot table to do exactly what I want it to do.  Sadly, I learned recently that most people spend more time in Excel formatting the numbers then actually analyzing the numbers. 

Excel 2007 Screenshot   Hopefully, the new release of Excel will help alleviate that pain and put the power back in the hands of information workers. By providing enhanced graphing and formatting capabilities, dramatically easier to use pivot charts, and deep integration with back-end database systems like SQL Server and Business Scorecard Manager, Excel 2007 is not the Excel I once knew. It's better, easier, and much more powerful. The new user interface really shines in Excel and makes complex tools easy to use.

I interviewed Michael Worosz, who is the Product Manager responsible for Excel 2007 a while ago and thought it would be a good way to kick off "Excel Week" here at The IW Center. So this is the first of two prodcasts I'll post this week...this one is focused on the client application. Stay tuned as I'll soon be posting a second prodcast exploring the Excel Services components that will allow you to run Excel applications on a SharePoint Server.

Click the links below to play audio (25:11)
WMA Audio
MP3 Audio

For more information on Microsoft Office Excel 2007, please visit the Microsoft website.

When I interviewed Michael Worosz about Microsoft Office Excel 2007, we spent a few minutes talking about the Excel Services and I realized that we needed to cover that topic in much more depth. So I turned to Jeff Wierer, who is a Senior Product Manager in the Office Server division.

In this prodcast, Jeff outlines some of the reasons why there is a need to run Excel on a server, such as needing more scalability, enhanced security, and the ability to "maintain a single version of the truth". He highlights the three main components which make up Excel Services; Excel Calculation Services, Excel Web Access, and Excel Web Services.

Jeff gives an example of how Excel Services can enhance the security of important data. He details a new security right in Office 2007 called "view only". This allows an author to publish an Excel 2007 file to a SharePoint Server and specify that users are limited to viewing the file to Excel Web Access. Jeff also mentions how an author can publish JUST a chart, named range or single worksheet of a larger Excel file, so other users can't view the ENTIRE Excel workbook. 

If you currently run your business on Excel ( and who doesn't these days?), this prodcast will help you understand how Excel 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Excel Services will make it easier for you to do so.

Click the links below to play audio (27:03)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

For more information on Excel Services, please visit the Microsoft website.

In my role, the application that I use far more than any other is Microsoft PowerPoint. Creating new slide decks, "borrowing" cool slides from corporate executives, building stackand flow diagrams...that's my life. Although PowerPoint 2003 is a great tool, there are some very signficant enhancements coming in the new version. Due out by the end of this year, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 is going to drastically change how I personally get my job done.

To highlight some of the changes, I interviewed Jared Andersen, the Product Manager for PowerPoint. He talks about how the graphics engine, templates and clipart have been overhauled, the benefits that PowerPoint gets from adopting the new Office user interface, and how easy it is to now share PowerPoint presentations with other people. My favorite part of the discussion is when Jared outlines how PowerPoint slides can be saved to a 'slide library' in SharePoint and information workers can subscribe to individual slides to be notified when they change. Pretty cool stuff! For anybody who spends time in PowerPoint, this prodcast is for you.

Click to Play Audio (15:28)
WMA Audio
MP3 Audio

For more information on PowerPoint 2007, please visit the Microsoft website.