The IW Center

Each day this week, I will be providing new prodcasts on the various aspects of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Since so much is changing in the new release, I thought it might make sense to start with an overview of MOSS 2007. To do that, I went straight to the source...Tom Rizzo. Many of you may know Tom from his previous work on the Exchange, SQL or BizTalk teams. He now heads up the Office Server division of Microsoft, where he focuses on the comprehensive offerings on SharePoint.

In this prodcast, Tom outlines the 6 major investment areas for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. If you haven't seen the "SharePoint pie" that Tom refers to, this screenshot may help give a better picture of where Microsoft is enhancing SharePoint Server 2007.  Tom details new enhancements in the Collaboration area, like blogs, wikis and RSS support. HE also highlights major improvements to  the Portal aspects of SharePoint, such as improved MySites, social networking, and customization options. On the Search front, Tom mentions the ability to use MOSS 2007 to search back-end Line of Business applications and announced that we will be offering a new product that JUST DOES Search, called Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search.

Tom spends the second half of the discussion talking about the NEW areas for SharePoint, such as enterprise content management, business intelligence, and rich business forms via Infopath Forms Services.

If you want to get a good overview of where SharePoint Server is going, listen to Tom's prodcast...and then stay tuned for further drilldown on SharePoint Server 2007 every day this week.
Click the links below to play audio (31:50)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

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

To fully understand SharePoint, you need to know the difference between Windows SharePoint Services "v3" and SharePoint Server 2007. So, I spent some time on the phone with Bob Sutton, who is the Lead Product Manager for WSS to find out.

In this prodcast, Bob talks about the core features of version 3 of Windows SharePoint Services. He highlights the new functionality, such as recycle bins, easier navigation, item level security, and numerous other improvements. Bob also highlights the new templates that are available and the new workflow capabilities enabled through the Windows Workflow Foundation.

Listen to this prodcast, get excited and download the SharePoint trial version today!

Click here to play audio (24:05)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

It seems like everybody is talking about records management these days...or at least everybody's asking about it. With all of the government regulations, concerns about customer privacy, and company confidentiality, a good records management system is a critical part of most enterprise architectures.

I recently spoke to Manish Sharma, a Senior Product Manager in the Office division. He focuses on the enterprise content management solutions built inside of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

In this prodcast, Manish discusses how a document, email or other type of data can now be stored inside of SharePoint as a "record" with policies which define not only how long the document should be active, but what to do with the content once it expires. He highlights how the Windows Workflow Foundation can make automatic routing of these pieces of content a breeze, with pre-defined templates for approval processes and other "out of the box" scenarios. Manish also discusses third party solutions which compliment Microsoft's offering, providing specific functionality for key vertical scenarios. Finally, he also discusses how the other "management" types (web content management and document management) relate to records management within MOSS 2007 and where we've invested in new features and enhanced functionality.

For those of you who have been waiting for the new release to see records management become a fully supported solution...listen to this prodcast and start evaluating Beta 2 of MOSS 2007.

Click the links below to play audio (18:57)
WMA Version
MP3 Version
For more information on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, please visit the Microsoft website.

A few of the past week's prodcasts have touched on the new workflow engine that Microsoft will be shipping soon, so I thought it would be interesting to have a deeper drill-down on the subject.  I put out a few feelers to the product team to see who might be interested in doing an interview. Paul Andrew, a Technical Product Manager for the Windows Workflow Foundation, formerly code-named "WinOE", graciously accepted my invitation and spent some time with me on the phone recently. For those of you who follow Paul, he has co-authored a book on the subject which you can order from Amazon here. Paul also maintains a blog on the Windows Workflow Foundation, which you can read to get even more infomation.

In this week's prodcast, Paul gives an overview of the new Windows Workflow Foundation, which is part of the developer platform inside of Windows. He touches on some of the Microsoft products which will utilize "WF", such as Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Speech Server 2007,  and many others. Paul stops short of saying "WF" will be THE SOLE workflow engine from Microsoft going forward, but he does say that that's the goal. Paul highlights some of the workflow templates that will ship inside of SharePoint Server 2007, such as routing workflows from within document libraries.

Later in the interview, Paul gives many examples of how the new engine will benefit developers, since it's part of the .NET Framework 3.0. Paul also mentions third party companies like SourceCode K2 and Captaris who are going to be incorporating the Windows Workflow Foundation into the next versions of their products.

If you'd like to hear more about Microsoft's overall workflow strategy and hear examples of how the 2007 wave of IW products will incorporate human workflow, listen to this prodcast.

Click the links below to play audio (22:59)
WMA Version
MP3 Version

More than a decade ago, when I was working as a Microsoft Certified Trainer at a local training company in Raleigh, I was sent to learn a new Microsoft product called "FrontPage 1.0". Microsoft had recently acquired a company, Vermeer Technologies, whose only product was the website development tool. I was literally in the first class Microsoft taught to the public on the course, and it was one of the reasons I ended up a Microsoft. I flew out to Redmond to attend the course and then spent time on the Microsoft campus. Less than a year later, I was hired by Microsoft in Atlanta to be a Systems Engineer supporting NT and Exchange. Boy, how time flies... 

So I've followed Microsoft Front Page over the years, as it "grew up" in the web development space, evolving from Version 1.1 to FrontPage 97, then 98, 2000, 2002 and the current version 2003. If you've had a chance to pull down Beta 2 of Office 2007, you know that FrontPage as a product is not in the bits, so I thought some of you might be wondering where it is.
Jerome Thiebaud, a Senior Product Manager in the Office division, spent some time with me recently discussing the future of Microsoft FrontPage. Although FrontPage as a product is being retired, it is being replaced with two different products; Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Expression Web Designer.

SharePoint Designer 2007 In this prodcast, Jerome talks about when you would use which tool and the intended audience for each of the two new products. He spends most of his time discussing the new SharePoint Designer tool...highlighting new customization options, support for master pages, graphical workflow tools and the ability to deploy "no-code" applications using SharePoint Designer's new data view web parts.

If you need to customize a SharePoint site or are just a long time FrontPage user like me, listen to this prodcast to hear about where Microsoft is heading with it's web development platform.

Click the links below to play audio (23:11)

WMA Audio

MP3 Audio

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