Hola,
Last week, I read in a DL a question about how to show something cool, provide value and without custom code. Well there are many scenarios in SharePoint that empower final users in order to do this.
I instantly thought about WebSlices. As a microformat you can "decorate" your markup and include fast and easy additional funcionality to yourself or your colleagues (or even your users! :)).
What would I use to do it? Well I would start thinking in webparts that can be customized vis XSLT, or those that can render custom HTML. A quick list:
Which will you choose? it will depend on your requirements (performance, data scope, skills). Here I will show the minimal implementation. From here you can build a custom page that leverage updates and notifications.
One MOSS challenge ;), would be to create a service that centralized these results!
I will use the federated results webpart, but configured to render synchronously.Why?, because as you will face with the RSS Viewer webpart, you can't notifiy the client after "document ready" and you should implement "Alternative Display Source". I tried without it, and I faced some strange behaviour (sometimes the webslices icon appeared, but the Favorites Bar is not capable of showing the preview).
So it is just as easy as following the steps described at Subscribing to Content with Web Slices and (for this example) change:
A picture is worth a thousand words:
Other scenarios?
Finally, if we add code into the requirements, I would like to test a more dynamic solution:
Ciao!
Hi,
Yesterday I was asked about migration paths for Access applications. Yes, there are still a spread active group (usually at the department level).
I have worked with several alternatives, however at the end you should consider four main requirements:
and the requirements of your organization.
I would recommend you create some Proof of concepts and evaluate which is best for your enviornment.
With this you may come to some conclusions:
In those scenarios, you may need other tools as Reports migration into Reporting Services or migration from previous versions of MS Access.
Finally, you should think in coexistence, and look for strategies or third party solutions to get this.
I received a question about SLAM, this may work well with some applications, mixing [1,2] and [3,4] scenarios; so you really design a SharePoint solution and sync with a database model.
Is there any third party tool that may help me to the overall process?
There is no magic tool, so besides the tools linked; you should review Partners directory.
Or pehaps just wait to some preview of Office 2010 and check if there are some specific improvement in the integration with MS Access.
Namaste!
Hi again,
Last months this has been one of our main tracks we have been working on. As useful reading in order to get previous concepts, you may start reading the Plan for redundancy guide. Here you will get the idea that there are several roles that can be redundant, and others not; and traditional ways to set up server redundancy.
Here I will point out, that although it is said that Index rol is not redundant, you can achieve multiple index servers roles in different SSPs indexing the same content with a cost:
(some details in the next guide [Single farm with two SSPs section] and more complex scenarios)
In this scenario you could move manually your Web Applications from one SSP to another, in order to get updates from that index server (remember that you really get results from your queries servers); under a power outage, server crash or index corrupt.
How can you meet a specific level of availability?
We do have a guide on this (complemented with the whitepaper about mirroring), quite complete so I would not comment much on it. Just that content updates may be evil. In our scenario content was queued in order to update the main farm after failover.
I would take the summary as my own:
"Carefully review your availability requirements. The higher the level of availability and the more systems you protect, the more complex and costly an availability solution is likely to be.
The costs of attaining availability should be evaluated based on business needs. Not all solutions within an organization are likely to require the same level of availability. You can offer different levels of availability for different sites, different services (for example, search and business intelligence), or different farms."
Yes, but I would like something easier, is it possible?
One of the many good things of our platform, is that we boost an ecosystem of partners so you will find a lot of scenarios extended. I have not deployed myself these solutions (I did more on the backup scenario), but you may contact each of them and find the best for your needs:
and always a good reference, the old Joel blog
Ok, but I would like something really easy...
Well :) (not really HA), SharePoint is a ASP.NET application at the end (yes SharePoint IS a platform, so if you are using it from within other technology this will not work for you), so you may follow ASP.NET steps to tell your users in a friendly way that you are updating or changing the platform.
It is true that from the guides available, they indicate to stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC) on all Web servers; but as long as you achieve the objective (Disconnect users from the server farm) with other options, why not using the app_offline.htm?
What is the app_offline.htm option? it is a new feature included in ASP.NET 2.0 (time ago :)). This basically will let ASP.NET 2.0 to shut-down the application, unload the application domain from the server, and stop processing any new incoming requests for that application, sending back all requests for dynamic pages in the application to the app_offline.htm page.
Some reading I would recommend:
Finally, it would be great to have a solution to be deployed in order to be able to activate a feature in your sharepoint farm and copy that file in your web applications. isn't it?
Bye!