April, 2010

You can use incremental percent complete values for simple checklist tracking. Here are my recommendations on when and how you might do this without falling into the "precision is not accuracy" trap of project management. You Are Now 4.65% Done Reading This Post That statement is precise but not necessarily accurate. I've previously discussed some of the problems of tracking progress by percent complete. Recording percentage complete per task is easy enough in Project; the Tracking toolbar includes handy incremental completion buttons, and if 25% increments are too vague for your needs, you can record any percentage value you wish in the Update Tasks dialog box. No, the issue with tracking progress this way is that it may suggest to the project manager and project stakeholders a higher...

Bob Muglia will be speaking at 8:30 AM Pacific Time this morning. Watch it here . And here’s lots of information about the developer tools Microsoft is releasing today. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 are available today.

We hope that you know about I. M. Wright’s “Hard Code,” by Eric Brechner (Microsoft Press, 2008). Eric Brechner is Director of Development Excellence in Microsoft’s Engineering Excellence group. I. M. also writes a monthly column, and the column for this month can be found here . The podcast for this month’s column is 8 mins 34 seconds and is here . Here’s the beginning: “Hey, you’re the new guy!” Marvelous. You’ve transformed from a useful, relevant, sought-after authority to a roadside attraction. Whoever you were before, whatever value you used to embody, whatever accomplishments you might have achieved, now amount to nothing more than marketing hype. Your new co-workers may be outwardly curious and pleasant, but inside they are skeptical and wary. Look, most people are nice. They want you...

Sara Peyton, pr manager at O'Reilly Media, here. As you may know, O'Reilly Media now promotes and distributes Microsoft Press books through their strategic alliance that went live on December 1, 2009. It's my job to promote new Microsoft Press books and provide review copies to qualified reviewers. So if you're interested in reviewing Microsoft Press titles, I want to hear from you! I'm happy to provide review copies whether you write for newspapers, magazines, blogs, or for retail outlets like Amazon, Borders, or Barnes & Noble. All you have to do is drop us a note at press@oreilly.com and let us know which Microsoft Press titles you're interested in, as well as where you plan to post your review. For those who prefer ebooks, we can provide many Microsoft Press titles in four...

Ever wish that you could find information about a technology in just one place? TechNet is trying to grant that wish. A beta version of the Microsoft Desktop Player is available now at www.microsoft.com/click/desktopplayer . With this application, you can search for resources specific to your role and technology. It’s still in beta, so I noticed that some of the Webcasts were a little fuzzy. However, it’s a great start at compiling resources from all over Microsoft to help you find information and instruction. To test it, I queried using the following criteria: I’m an IT Pro Looking for resources on Exchange Server 2010 In my role as an enterprise administrator Focusing on development My query returned a slew of great resources: 12 Webcasts 7 Podcasts 6 Learning Plans Depending on what you...

Today we’d like to share an excerpt from one of our upcoming books: Inside Microsoft SharePoint 2010 , by Ted Pattison, Scott Hillier, an Andrew Connell. We’ll publish this book in July 2010. You can learn more about the book here: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780735627468/ . The excerpt is an introduction to the topic of “sandboxed solutions.” Enjoy: Sandboxed Solutions are SharePoint Foundation features that are deployed into a partially-trusted environment referred to as the “sandbox.” The sandbox is designed to bring greater stability to the SharePoint farm by restricting actions that may cause performance, security or other problems. It does this by limiting the functionality accessible to custom code solutions through the use of code access security (CAS) policies and restricting access...

A couple of weeks ago we gave you a snapshot of upcoming titles . Here’s a quick update on those titles: First up is William Stanek’s Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administrator's Pocket Consultant, Second Edition , which we’ll be shipping at the end of March. It updates this book for R2. William rocks on, obviously. [UDPATE: We indeed shipped this title on March 29. 2010. More info here .] Next is Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner’s Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 , which will be a free ebook and which updates for R2 this free ebook (no longer available for download). The ebook should be complete around April 14. We’ll tell you about it on the blog as soon as it’s available. [UPDATE: On schedule to RTM next week, on April 14.] Next is George Shepherd’s Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Step by Step ...

You’ve probably noticed that we mention our book survey more and more on our blog. It’s an anonymous survey via which you can give feedback about any of our titles. It’s short, direct, and designed to let you spell out in as much detail as you like what you like and don’t like about a title. (The survey is here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/booksurvey . All you need to get started is the book’s ISBN or title.) Well, this is a short post to tell you that we have gathered all the information you gave us in the survey between January 1, 2010, and March 31, 2010, and we’re scrubbing the data and diving into your feedback. (By scrubbing the data, I mean deleting entries not related to Microsoft Press books. Also, we can’t use survey responses that are incomplete. So, if someone gets through...

The registration for the 2010 Scripting Games, to be held via the TechNet Script Center opens today. Once again, we are partnering with the Windows PowerShell MVP’s and are using their PoshCode script site to upload and to showcase the Scripting Games entries. So how do the 2010 Scripting Games work? Well, I am not going to repeat the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that were published a few weeks ago on the Hey Scripting Guy! Blog. But I will say that you should review the FAQ, and you should definitely review the 2010 Scripting Games Study Guide . Even if you choose not to participate in the 2010 Scripting Games, you should bookmark the 2010 Scripting Games Study Guide—why you may ask? Well, for one thing, I spent nearly two days rounding up study resources for the 2010 Scripting Games ...