Thomas Resing's Blog: Tom Resing's Collaboration Blog, page 4
July 27, 2015
Try the Jive-x Community Manager App on BlueStacks
There’s a new Jive app in the Google Play store this month. A version is coming soon to iOS, too. If you’re like me and can’t wait to see whats in the new Jive-x App for Community Managers and don’t have an Android device, here’s a workaround.
BlueStacks
The BlueStacks App Player available for PC and Mac allows you to run mobile apps from the Android platform.
Jive-x App for Community Managers
The Jive-x App for Community Managers was announced a month ago with the 2015.2 Jive Cloud Release that also includes Support Center.
After you install the Jive-x app from the Google Play store, you can run it in BlueStacks in full screen or in it’s own window. You can see BlueStacks running windowed in Windows 7 below. I’m showing the Jive-x app description, “Connect, Communicate, Collaborate”, from the store app.
Moderation and Notifications
BlueStacks even allows you to see notifications to apps as they come in.
The Jive-x app presents notifications for the inbox and both user and content moderation.
The interface is streamlined for the Community Manager moderation on-the-go need.
You can read more about the Jive Cloud 2015.2 release in the Jive Community.
May 12, 2015
Video: Map Your Office 365 SharePoint Masterpage Library from Windows Explorer
As a followup to my post earlier this year on mapping your SharePoint Masterpage Library, there’s a new option. Bruce, from webucator, made an easy-to-follow, 3 minute video showing the steps visually.
Webucator has a whole series of YouTube videos on SharePoint available for free. And they are just an example of the quality of their instruction and instructors available for on-site and online SharePoint training.
Let me know what you think of the video in the comments or by twitter, @resing.
April 13, 2015
4 iPhone Tips for Americans visiting Paris
We celebrated my wife’s birthday in Paris, France this year and picked up some travelling tips along the way. If you’re thinking of going to France, speak English and not much French, some of these tips might help you plan for your trip. Buy the Global Plan, Download the Cell Provider App and the CityMaps2Go App and Paris Guide before leaving so you don’t get charged by your cell provier after arriving in Paris.
Note: This article is a slight departure from my normal technical articles. Readers of my web collaboration tips may enjoy some of the technology related tips.
On Mobile Phone Service in France
My wife and I both activated temporary French mobile service on our respective providers. Mostly, we did it for emergency and to cover what we expected were unavoidable accidental uses of mobile services while we had our phones on for 5 days in France. For example, my wife got the mandatory voice mail each day from the elementary school for the 3 school days my daughter missed. I got a series of Easter texts from family.
Tip 1 : Temporary Global Cell Plans
With the Global plans turned on, these calls and messages cost less than they would have without. In addition, the 100 MB of data came in handy for short bursts of helpful research on the go when we couldn’t find WiFi hotspots. I paid a one time fee of $30 for the AT&T Global Passport Plan that covers 30 days of travel and doesn’t change your regular plan in other ways. It inlcuded unlimited messaging, 120 MB of data and $1/minute calling. My wife paid a similar fee on Verizon which only included 100MB of data. Both were supposed to include WiFi service. Don’t count on it.
Tip 2 : Don’t Count on WiFi
We didn’t find many WiFi hotspots in Paris, even with the suggested AT&T and Verizon Apps which were included with the Global plans and were meant to help find hotspots.
The Hyatt WiFi was great. Other than that, Starbucks seemed to be the only reliable place to get WiFi. The museums had wifi to download their apps only. Le Pain Quotidien advertised Wifi and it didn’t work well.
We got by with the WiFi at those few places we could find it, the 220MB of combined data we did have, used in a pinch, and one very handy app.
Tip 3 : Get CityMaps2Go
My wife found the CityMaps2Go App on an promotion, so we had the paid version for free. Can’t speak to the free version, but the version we used costs $4.99 in the iOS App Store.
This app works a lot like Google Maps or iOS maps with one important difference. It works entirely offline, so you don’t need cellular data or WiFi to know where you are. If you used my tip above and have your global cellular plan on, you get the GPS position for free. On our iPhones, we could launch the app anywhere, anytime and not only find our exact position on the map but also the exact direction we were facing!
I can not tell you how handy this one app alone was in Paris. I had a number of other tourists ask my for help finding something they were only blocks away from with no other way to find it than asking for help. While that can be fun in it’s own right, it happens way too often, for me, and there isn’t always someone willing to help that knows the place you want to go.
Make sure to download the Paris guide after you download the app and before you leave home. It has all the maps, like this one below and articles about museums, monuments and even some restaurants.
Note that the Google Maps app also works a little in offline mode. This can be handy because I never found a way to list step by step directions in CityMaps2Go. I had some success mapping a route using the Metro on Google Maps while at the hotel or a Starbucks and then following along without data later. Be warned though, it was also easy to loose the directions with one click too many in the wrong direction, so it might be useful to snapshot the screen by holding the power button and the home button at the same time. Then you can find the directions offline in your Photos App.
Tip 4 : Turn On Cellular Data Selectively
I’ll give full credit to this tip to the birthday girl. My wife told me on the plane while we were waiting to depart to turn cellular data use off on all my apps before going to Airplane Mode for the flight. After landing, while monitoring your data use (Dial *3282# on your phone to get your up to date global data use in MBs after landing), selectively turn on cellular data for apps you feel you need to use.
Here’s how:
From iPhone Settings, go to Cellular, then scroll down until you see “Use Cellular Data for:” and then a list of all of your apps. Next to each app, you can see the amount of data it’s used since you last reset the data statistics – if you ever have. I toggled off all of the big data hogs, then hit “Reset Statistics” on the bottom of the list. That way I could monitor after landing to see which apps were using the most of my precious few MBs of data service. One surprise? “System Services” which you can’t turn off, including iTunes, used 48 of the 112 MB I used while in Paris. I guess there’s only so much tuning you can do!
Bonus Tips – Other Apps
DuoLingo – Learn French
While quite a lot of people speak at least some English at most of the major tourist attractions and restaurants, learning a little French couldn’t hurt. I recommend the free app Duolingo. I studied French for a week before leaving the US and so did my 7 year old daughter using this app.
Uber – Cheaper and More Convenient than Taxis
Uber is very active in France. Download the app and toggle it on for cellular data usage. It’s not a data hog. While we took at least one Metro ride a day and walked for miles every day, we also took at least one Uber each day, including to and from the airport. One huge benefit of Uber is that you can enter your destination into the App. That, combined with the automatic payment through the app made it really easy to use the service even when the drivers spoke little English. Voila!
New to Uber? Your first ride is free, up to $20. Claim your ride with my invite code, n3yon. https://get.uber.com/invite/n3yon
Yelp – Find Nearby, Well Rated Restaurants
I use Yelp all the time when travelling. In the US, almost every restaurant has at least a few reviews. I normally aim for 4 star or above ratings with the more reviews, the better, for accuracy. It’s common to find the best restaurants in the US have more than 100 reviewers. In Paris, not every restaurant was even listed. However, the few restaurants we visited that did have more than 20 reviews with a high rating were all excellent, including two tiny restaurants that were almost empty but delicious and very resonalbe with great service. As we’re all vegetarian, one was Italian and one was Indian, beacoup options for entrees sin viande (does that mean without meat?)
United Airlines App – Watch Movies on your iPhone
We still have an iPod. If you download the United App to your iPhone, iPod or iPad before your flight, you can watch movies on-demand for free on some United flights, including one of our international legs. We forgot to download it on some of our devices, so we were limited to the one, my phone, which did have it since I’m a United frequent flyer.
Other airlines’ apps might have something similar, but I’m not sure. On our other flight, we didn’t need the app because the movies were on the seatbacks. I think that’s how a lot of the planes are.
Museum Apps – Take the Exhibit Home with You
We visited the Palais Galliera to see the Jeanne Lanvin exhibit. At the museum, there was a WiFi hotspot. All it would allow us to do is download the companion app for the exhibit which is a nice way to follow up on the costumes and designs.
At the Louvre, there was a similar app.
February 10, 2015
Map your Office 365 SharePoint Masterpage library from Windows Explorer
Here’s a great tip I got from Randy Drisgill at SPTech Con Austin 2015.
You can map your masterpage gallery from Windows Explorer to make it very easy to work with SharePoint Branding projects.
Here are the steps:
Right click on your computer in Windows Explorer and select Map Networked Drive.
Paste in the URL to your SharePoint Online Site Collection you’d like to brand.
Note: your site collection must be in the Intranet Zone in your Internet Settings from Internet Explorer
Your site collection will open at the root of the folder structure. By default, my _catalogs folder was hidden. However, you can just type the folder name to to show the masterpages folder underneath it. For example, I mapped my SharePoint Online Site Collection root to the Z: drive, so I typed z:\_catalogs to browse to the masterpages folder.
And that’s it. Now you can upload Randy’s Starter Master Page and your other assets by drag and drop and copy and paste through Windows Explorer.
January 22, 2015
SharePoint 2016 Coming in 2015
Now that Office 2016 has been announced as the official name of the next version of Office, it’s safe to assume that SharePoint’s next on-premise version will also be named SharePoint 2016.
The announcements yesterday also confirmed that Office 2016 will be available in the second half of 2015. Considering SharePoint and Exchange releases normally occur about the same time as Office releases, it’s pretty safe to assume SharePoint 2016 will also be available before the end of the year.
What To Expect
Don’t expect the next version to get everything SharePoint Online has.
Microsoft has already said that functionality added to SharePoint Online in Office 365 may not be added to SharePoint outside of Office 365. We could call that SharePoint On-Premises. I think they’ll continue to refer to them as SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016. I wouldn’t expect Delve or Office 365 Groups to be delivered on-premises. I do expect some kind of effort to allow Delve, running in the cloud, to reach into on-premises servers.
Microsoft has refocused on cloud. That’s where the major investments are being made. This next release is meant to try to appease those who won’t go cloud yet. Tony Redmond says it well on his blog post.
Which brings me to the point that Microsoft has a lot of these [on-premises] customers and they have to be helped, supported, and kept interested or else the connection that exists between Microsoft and these customers might be broken.
I could be wrong, but I expect SharePoint On-Premises will get the minimum amount of functionality effort that the Microsoft SharePoint Product decision makes judges will do just that. Enough to keep the legacy customers supported and maybe enough to keep them interested.
Check Out the new (free) Touch Office
Besides, the cloud, another of Microsoft’s newest pushes is into software for devices. Look for free versions of all Office programs on all major device platforms soon. Like iOS, there may be paid upgrade options above the basic functionality. On iOS, that means buying Office 365 if you want to edit on the iPad. This way, even the devices push supports the cloud focus.
Along with Office 2016, Office for Windows 10 was announced. It’s the first touch friendly version of Office for Windows. And Windows 10 will run on phones, too. So Office for Windows 10 will finally bring Office to phones with Windows. It’s important to say phones with Windows instead of Windows Phone. Windows Phone is the current mobile OS from Microsoft. Windows 10 isn’t the same thing. Will there be a migration plan? We’ll see. For the sake of those that have bought a Windows Phone, I hope so.
Check out this 7 minute YouTube video showing the new Office for Windows 10 in action on a Surface. Looks a lot like the iOS version, so it should be pretty good.
More Reading
For more on Office 2016, read Mary Jo Foley’s article on ZDNet.
On Exchange 2016, see Why Exchange 2016 will be coming to you soon on WindowsITPro.com
December 16, 2014
Web Communication – It Gets Better
The quality of communication is important. Quantity is also important. Both effect your team’s productivity in different ways. Over the years, the tools available have dramatically increased our ability to communicate effectively. And, improvements are still being made.
Quality versus Quantity
A friend at a conference said to me, “[Our activity stream platform] at work is great! I ask a question and get all kinds of responses in the same day.” I replied, “That’s great! Finding answers at work can be so hard. Can you mark the correct answer so others can find it later?”
Enterprise Social Networking is full of activity stream providers. Many look and act a lot like the consumer tools. Post a status update and like other’s status updates. The most common complaint I hear about activity streams is the noise. The second is the lack of organization. Not far behind is bad search experience. All of these speak to the lack of quality in the tools.
An effective networked, electronic communication tool focuses on increasing the quality of the discussion. Without quality, the quantity of new status updates, comments and likes in the other tools quickly becomes overwhelming.
A Brief History of Networked, Electronic Communication
I love consumer social network tools. I can share my thoughts and experiences and get feedback from others. I’ve met a ton of new people through twitter and reconnected with old friends on Facebook. I just connected with a nephew who is on Instagram but not the others. A niece just posted an awesome graduation pic with my big sis in Australia. They don’t improve the quality of communication for me at work.
A photo posted by elle g (@woodesmusic) on Dec 12, 2014 at 10:27pm PST
In almost every company I’ve been employed or contracted by, email and Microsoft Office Documents are the primary form of electronic communication. Email was a revolutionary idea 40 years ago. Word processing doomed the typewriter 10 years earlier. Neither are the cutting edge communications tools we expect in businesses today.
I embraced the web 20 years ago. Immediately, I was fascinated with the rich form of networked, electronic communication possible. I used Yahoo to find information about my studies in Computer Science. I created a web page manually with HTML markup to share things I learned. But it was hard. Publishing on the web required learning syntax. That scares a lot of people.
Blogger introduced a new way. Predecessors, like geocities, allowed the average computer user to create websites, but without a purpose. Blogger’s focus on allowing anyone to publish regular articles on a subject drove huge new web publishing adoption. Unlike email newsletters, blogs allow discovery and archiving. They don’t rely on filling up other’s already full email inboxes. Today, even blogs seem so common place, we forget about them as a social change tool.
Discussion forums were another step away from the old technologies. On the surface, they replaced a once popular group communication tool called newsgroups. However, they also allowed some email distribution lists to move to the web. Newsgroups are mostly gone today. Distribution lists are close to extinct outside of businesses. Why do they persist inside large enterprises? Social web tools have always trailed the consumer space. Thus BYOS.
BYOS – Bring Your Own Social
The Bring Your Own Social movement is in play. Executives are demanding tools that allow them to communicate on internal web sites, with impact metrics, with social context, with personal profiles of the people they engage in discussion. Business units are not waiting for corporate IT to develop an enterprise strategy because they need improvement now! Human resources departments who need call deflection and better customer service ratings need tools today. Internal communications departments need publishing tools that are easier to use. I see this all the time with real companies. Just like CEOs and Business Units had to force IT departments to adopt smart phones and the cloud, they are doing the same with social, today. The great news is that the social tools are better than ever.
Where can you find the most recently answered questions by HR in your company? An electronic bulletin board perhaps? Maybe a physical one? Where I work, it’s a dynamic tile in the HR place on our intranet. You can have it, too. If you don’t yet, it’s coming.
November 13, 2014
My 2014 Community Activity Recap
Happy Holiday Season!
Did you see me speak in the last 12 months? If not, I haven’t been doing a great job letting you know where I’ve been. Take a look at this recap of activity to get an idea of where you might find me in the next 12 months.
I’ve been measuring my community impact on a 12 month basis from October to November. What do you think? Am I applying my talents and experience to the right places? Would you like to see more or less of my contributions in any of these areas? For example, next year, I’m thinking about doing more video webcasts and recordings.
Highlights
21 in-person presentations at 16 events to a combined audience of around 1100 people. Helped organize 11 Tuesday night meeting of the San Antonio SharePoint User Group. SharePoint 2013 Inside Out last year has gotten great reviews and Microsoft Press delivered many copies to business users’ hands. Gained more than 1000 Twitter followers. My blog page views increased by 45% this year to an average of 12,000 views per month after migrating from SharePoint to WordPress on Azure.
Some recognition from Microsoft has been especially welcome. I received my second MVP award in January. Also, my MVA Jumpstart for SharePoint Developers and my TechEd presentation were recorded. The set of 7 new videos published to Microsoft’s Channel 9 have received more than 70,000 views. Thanks, Microsoft!
I’d also like to thank Jive Software. I love the people and the products of Jive and they’ve been very supportive of my SharePoint Community work.
Speaking Conference
SharePoint Saturday Chicago
November 2013; Topic: SharePoint for DBAs
https://twitter.com/SPSChicago
Triangle SharePoint User Group
December 2013; Develop a SharePoint App in 45 Minutes
Link: http://www.meetup.com/TRISPUG/events/149678912/
H-SPUG
February 2014; Blogs – From SharePoint to WordPress 4.4/5
Link: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/blogs-from-sharepoint-to-wordpress-tickets-9990296245
SATNUG
February 2014; Azure Web Sites 101 w/PHP and .Net Web Forms
Link: http://www.meetup.com/SATNUG/events/159467352/
CodeUP Coding Boot Camp
April 2014; Web Development Career Path
https://twitter.com/gocodeup/status/454680482723426305
SPTechCon San Francisco
April 2014; Topic (s): “SharePoint Administration: Talk the Talk” 3.7/5, “A Practical External Data Source Example” 3.9/5 and “Planning Site Content” 3.7/5
Link: http://sptechcon.com
Innotech San Antonio
April 2014; Topic: “Enterprise Social Panel”
Link: http://www.innotechconferences.com/sanantonio/
Microsoft TechEd North America 2014
May 2014; Topic (s): “A Practical External Data Source Example” 3.2/5
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014/OFC-B311#fbid=
H-SPUG
May 2014; Ask the TechEd Panel of Experts
http://events.chron.com/houston_tx/events/show/370452343-ask-the-teched-panel-of-experts
Pittsburgh SharePoint User Group
May 2014; Administration Talk the Talk and Planning Site Content
http://tomresing.com/2014/05/09/upcoming-speaking-events-may-and-june-2014/
SharePoint Fest NYC 2014
June 2014; Topics: A Practical External Data Source Example 4:20-5:20PM, 6/19 ~40; Develop a SharePoint App in 45 Minutes, 6/20, 10-11:10AM ~20 attendees; Keynote Panel – Hybrid SharePoint and Office 365 ~300 attendees
http://www.sharepointfest.com/NYC/
San Antonio SharePoint User Group
June 2014, Topic: Blogs: From SharePoint to WordPress
5 point average feedback from 12 attendees
San Antonio SharePoint User Group
July 2014; The New Azure SharePoint Farm Option
SharePoint Fest Denver
September 2014; Develop a SharePoint App in 45 Minutes, ~30 attendees; A Practical External Data Source Example, ~50 attendees
Austin SharePoint User Group
October 2014; A Practical External Data Source Example
https://www.facebook.com/Austinspug
InnoTech Austin
October 2014 Topic: Enterprise Social Panel
http://www.innotechconferences.com/austin
JiveWorld 14
October 2014
The When, Whys and Hows of integrating SharePoint with Jive, recording and slides
Jive and SharePoint – peaceful co-existence, recording and slides
SharePoint Saturday DC
October 2014; A Practical External Data Source Example
User Group Leadership
Role: Lead Organizer of the San Antonio SharePoint User Group since January 2009
This year we started a true organizing committee. Together, we recruit and coordinate the speakers and sponsors, help arrange the venue, dinner, giveaways and SharePint. Many speakers were authors, MVPs, MCMs or Microsoft employees.
Link: http://sasug.net
Members: 838 members in mailing list
Meeting Schedule: 10+ Meetings a year
Approx Number of Attendees per meeting: 30
Forum Answerer
Answer questions in the SharePoint 2010 and 2013 forums
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/profile/tom%20resing%20mcm
Answer Questions and Editor on SharePoint.stackexchange.com
http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/users/2899/tom-resing
Answer SharePoint Questions and Editor on stackoverflow.com
http://stackoverflow.com/users/17063/tom-resing
Blogging
Tom Resing’s SharePoint Blog: http://www.tomresing.com
Reach: Blog page views increased 45% this year to 12K per month
I migrated my blog to run on Azure Web Sites in December 2013
Publishing
Co-author of SharePoint 2013 Inside Out published by Microsoft Press
Published: June 2013
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-SharePoint-2013-Inside-Out/dp/0735666997
Microsoft Press Blog Post: From the MVPs: Why SharePoint on Azure?
Published: June 2014
Videos/Podcasts/Webcasts
Microsoft Virtual Academy Jumpstart
December 2013; Developing SharePoint Server Advanced Solutions
1150 live viewers, 65% Very Satisfied
5 star review from 10 reviewers
http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Developing-SharePoint-Server-Advanced-Solutions
63,847 views
SMiLE Webinar 5: Making SharePoint Social
July, 2014
Social Media
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/San-Antonio-SharePoint-User-Group-1194427
https://www.facebook.com/spssanantonio
Other
Hands On Lab moderator at Microsoft SharePoint Conference, Answering questions about the Hands On Labs, March 2014
Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond, November 2013
September 29, 2014
A Great SharePoint Fest Experience
Last week was the 5th annual SharePoint Fest Denver. My first SharePoint Fest was SharePoint Fest NYC in June. Both were great events. The feedback I received from attendees of all 4 sessions at both shows was great and I’m looking forward to presenting at a third SharePoint Fest in Chicago in December.
If you haven’t attended a SharePoint Fest in your city when it comes through, I encourage you to try one. There were many speakers at both events I’ve attended that I’ve learned a lot from over the years.
Above: Same slide, two different cities. On the bottom picture, Benjamin Niaulin caught me with my Spurs championship shirt presenting the same slide in NYC that Katie Herd caught me presenting in Denver on the top.
Jive Software
In addition to speaking, I got the chance to meet some Jive customers and future customers at the Jive booth. I signed and we gave away 8 copies of SharePoint 2013 Inside Out.
Despite a strong history of great Microsoft integration, Jive only recently began sponsoring SharePoint events. Considering the announcement of Jive Connectors for Office 365 the week before, it was great timing. It’s great to see the SharePoint community learning about the Jive platform. They are very complimentary ecosystems.
BCS and App Model Reference
If you attended my session and would like to see the slide decks for reference, I’ve uploaded them to SlideShare and included them below.
If you did or didn’t attend and want more information, read OData BCS Code Sample from TechEd 2014. You can see the full recording of a session with related material from Microsoft TechEd North America 2014.
A Practical Use Of External Data Sources from Thomas Resing
Develop a SharePoint App in 45 Minutes from Thomas Resing
September 8, 2014
Is the Email From Your Bank? Really?
Chase sent me an email message today. Or did it really? The email message below (click to enlarge) has the Chase branding and physical address. Overall, it has a lot of the signs of a valid email including unsubscribe options. And, it’s slightly alarming. My online banking access is suspended? Someone in another country recently logged in? The fear the message stirs up compels me to act. I almost click the link before I start to think about it more.
Hint #1
Always check the address of the link before you click!
As I hovered over the link identified by the red #2 above, I noticed something strange about the address it was going to lead me to shown next to the red #3.
The text for the link in the email shows it going to chase.com but the link is actually leading to another domain, Myvnc.com. This is always a bad sign. When you receive a message asking you to log in to your bank account, make sure that the site you’re going to is actually your bank’s website! In this case, the phisher wants to collect my bank account number. I won’t click that link because who knows where it goes. It’s possible the site has been shut down already because these types of phishing campaigns rarely go to just one person and the scheme may have already been shut down. If I did go to the link and it was still operating, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a replica of Chase.com. The goal would be to collect Chase account numbers and maybe even passwords.
Hint #2
Always check the sender email.
In the email above, you can see the sender of this email is chase.com@bk.ru. .ru indicates a Russian domain. Nothing against Russians, but we know the country is a little less active in shutting down malicious internet activity, so this is an immediate warning sign alone.
Beyond the .ru domain name, here’s an even better indicator. Above is a picture of a valid email sent from Chase. Notice the from address is actually chase.com. From addresses can be faked, so this alone isn’t enough to prove this is a valid message. However, Gmail provides an extra layer of security. Notice next to #2, that Gmail identifies an email signature has been included that Gmail has verified. This second example message is signed by chase.com, so that’s a pretty good level of assurance it’s not someone trying to steal my personal information by Phishing.
Action #1
Report phishing activity
When you pick up signs like Hint #1 and Hint #2 that an email you’ve received is attempting to steal your personal information, let your email provider know!
My email provider, Google, has a special “report phishing” link available in every email.
When I click this link from the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner of an email it leads to a screen with a description of what phishing is.
Phishing is a form of fraud…
You can read more about phishing in Gmail Help on Unwanted or suspicious messages in the article Messages asking for personal information.
Reporting phishing helps your email provider identify these kinds of bad emails and help shut them down. It’s good for you and others who might have received this kind of message.
Action #2
Reporting Spam
Sometimes an email you receive isn’t trying to steal your personal information but it’s still not something you or anyone else would want in your Inbox.
When you receive an email from an unknown sender, instead of reporting it as phishing, report it as Spam. Gmail makes this option much easier because it’s much more common to receive spam than a phishing message. Reporting Spam separately from Phishing messages helps your email provider take the appropriate action. Spam is bad, but it’s not nearly as dangerous as phishing.
July 14, 2014
The New Azure SharePoint Farm Option
Today, for the first time ever from Microsoft, a new SharePoint farm on Azure from scratch is just a few clicks. This is significant in 2 ways. For one, Microsoft is showing renewed commitment to the on-premises flavor of SharePoint. Secondly, for anyone who’s ever wanted their own SharePoint 2013 Farm in the cloud on the cheap and easy, this is a great new option you didn’t have yesterday. Check out the new Azure gallery from http://portal.azure.com. Below is what the SharePoint Farm Template option looks like in the gallery.
SharePoint on the Main Stage
SharePoint had some of the spotlight at today’s Worldwide Partner Conference. First, Microsoft executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group, Scott Guthrie feature SharePoint in the new Azure demo (skip to minute 11 for the beginning of the SharePoint part). Later, COO Kevin Turner announced SharePoint is a $2 billion dollar business.
SharePoint got so much love in today’s Keynote, it reminds me of years past. Ever since, the cloud and Office 365 push by former CEO Steve Ballmer, SharePoint’s been pushed to the background as a brand. This renewed commitment may be a sign of change under new CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership.
How To
If you want to see some screenshots of the process of creating a Farm in Azure the new way, read SharePoint 2013 Farm in Less than an Hour–New Azure Portal and Azure Templates from MSDN blogs. With my first try, it took a little more lite 2 hours for my farm to get started. I’ll call it a first day glitch. However, once it was done, I was glad to see it had configured the farm for me. Even though it took a little longer than promised, it is still an impressive feat. The wizard created a new Active Directory server with a new domain and user accounts for me. It created a SQL Server with the correct ports opened and accounts granted security. Then it created the SharePoint server, connected it to the first two and configured the farm. And the first site collection was ready at the public address shown in the Azure Management Console. Pretty good!
Reference
Read a little more about the process in the Azure Documentation for SharePoint Farm:
Tom Resing's Collaboration Blog
- Thomas Resing's profile
- 19 followers
