The new Developer marketing boy. : Office

Office 2010 Beta Available via MSDN

chlong — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:56:33 GMT

If you are an MSDN subscriber, Office 2010 beta is available for download.

If you’re interested in exploring the developer investments in Office 2010, visit the Developer Centre.

SharePoint 2010 is also available via MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

There’s plenty of Office + SharePoint 2010 content on Channel9 as well.

Happy New Year and New Job

chlong — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:21:24 GMT

Where has 2009 gone so far? I can still remember Christmas lunch looking at the Easter Eggs on the supermarket shelves. Bad news for the waist line as I still haven’t lost the extra weight from having the baby… unlike my wife.

Just before Christmas, I accepted a new job in the Partner Technology Specialist (PTS) team and started mid-January. I’m focusing on our Information Worker technology, such as SharePoint and Unified Communications. Another new chap to Microsoft, Jason Clarke is responsible for our Core Infrastructure products & solutions. Together we cover the “North” with our main remit being to help mid-market customers understand our respective technology set as well as helping making Partners more successful.

I really enjoyed my time as an ISV Marketing Manager and in many ways will be really sorry to leave it. This new role though will allow me to closely with customer and partners though which I’m really excited about.

Top 10 things I’ll miss:

Working with our agencies – together we created a new brand for ISV communications, to help make it stand out from the crowd. We still had to use Partner Program orange though in some of our work. Small steps…
Partner-TV – our partner video blog which I’m still going to be dabbling with…
ISV Royalty Licensing – we signed up many new partners to the program this year allowing ISVs to integrate our technology into theirs and really saw some success.
Communities, including the .NET Clusters. Huge thanks to Ellen, Alastair, Eddie, Faith, Ian and Martin for their support :)
Innovation Day Tour across Australia – I did two of these and saw most of the country’s capital cities. Huge thanks to the DPE boys for the comedy… you know who you are. The team used Mesh to pull our presentations together and for backups… Mr Kordahi though used the power of Mesh against me. I didn’t appreciate that with Mesh you give other people the power to make changes and during the last presentation, an ‘extra’ slide was added to my deck. As I turned to look at Michael & Andrew, I was faced with a camera. A great end to a successful road show.
Australia Partner Conference as the ISV track owner… although I’ll still be involved this year from a PTS angle.
Web Agencies and Partners – Silverlight is still on my radar though as it integrates with MOSS :)
Software + Services – I still get the play with our online services which is great for demonstrations.
BizSpark for startups – working with David Sajfar providing tools + software to start up companies.
Working with the various virtual teams, including the other Partner Marketeers, DPE, Hosting guys; Partner Account Managers, the Regional teams, Corporate and many, many others.

Prep for the new role:

It’s been fun developing my knowledge which a month ago was about the 100 level for most of our stuff. I’m going deeper and should be around 250 by the end of the month… our partners are truly the experts though as they make all this stuff work.

I attended the electronic version of our technical training event in Seattle
The day before I officially started, I delivered a 3 hour presentation on what is SharePoint to the Large Account Resellers… poor guys
I have been involved in a number of partner and customer workshops articulating the value of our business productivity stack
I’ve been playing with the “Demo show case” which I remember my old colleague, Chris Parkes, was a huge fan of. Pretty cool resource of virtual PCs for partners, rather having to create your own
UC learning paths to learn more about the latest release of our unified communications offering
What’s coming in the future: Office 14
I’ve learnt so much about customer’s really opinion is of us, which is really refreshing and eye opening

It’s been great fun so far learning about this new side of the business and I look forward to working with you with my new hat on.

Finally, a huge thanks to Julia; Nick; Sarah; Sarah; Sarah; Mike and Kim (save the best to last) for their advice; support; humour and leadership.

Positive changes to the Open XML standard

chlong — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:02:26 GMT

Brian Jones blogged recently about the latest round of proposed changes to the Open XML standard. If you read the status report released by TC45 you'll see that there have been some pretty significant changes proposed so far, and you'll see more are on the way. Here's a link to the TC45 report: http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/New%20set%20of%20proposed%20dispositions%20posted.htm

Here's a list of some of the changes that were proposed in this batch:

Allowing for ISO-8601 Dates: ECMA-376, the original Open XML standard adopted by Ecma, assigned a unique numeric value to each date in a spreadsheet, in order to improve the speed of date calculations. Based on the comments received from some National Bodies on this issue, DIS 29500 will be updated to allow date values to be stored using the format defined by the ISO 8601 standard.
Internationalized handling of weekdays and weekends: ECMA-376 allowed for a week that begins on Sunday or Monday, but not a week that begins on any other day, such as Saturday. Ecma is proposing a comprehensive range of options for what is defined as the first day of the week, and what is defined as the weekend.
Language tags: ECMA-376 used a set of integer values to identify the language applied to regions of a document. Ecma is proposing that the language tags specified in the DIS should instead leverage an internationally recognized practice for representing languages, IETF BCP 47. IETF BCP 47 is a Best Current Practices document that incorporates use of the ISO 639 standard for languages, ISO 15924 for scripts, and ISO 3166 for regions. This proposal directly follows recommendations from National Bodies in several countries.
Page Borders: ECMA-376 included support for a variety of graphical elements that could be used as page borders. Several National Bodies noted that this closed list of graphical elements was not sufficiently diverse and global in its contents. Based on that feedback, Ecma is proposing to change the Open XML standard to allow for custom page borders. This will enable implementers to determine the best option for including borders relevant to their applications.
Usage of ISO standards for grammars: ECMA-376 used its own notation for defining the grammar for some of the more advanced functionality, such as spreadsheet formulas and word processing fields. Several National Bodies noted that the existing grammars in ECMA-376 are non-standard and were not fully described within the DIS. In response to this concern, Ecma proposes to revise the notation for spreadsheet formulas and fields to use an existing ISO standard. Formula notation will now use ISO/IEC 14977:1996 – Syntactic metalanguage – Extended BNF. This proposal improves the ability for implementers to test and validate conformance to the specification.

Brian also says in his post, "I was surprised to hear from a number of people that they were skeptical TC45 would accept any changes to Open XML. TC45 is excited to work closely with the national bodies and investigate what the best solution would be to these issues (including of course changing the specification). While its tough news in certain ways for me as an Office developer; it's great news for me as a TC45 member. We had made some design decisions within TC45 that many of the national bodies disagreed with, so we took that feedback into account and came up with proposals we think will address the national bodies concerns.

Jan van den Beld, former head of Ecma international, had a post this morning talking about his thoughts on the progress we've made so far: http://janvandenbeld.blogspot.com/2007/12/number-of-proposed-dispositions-for-nbs.html.
Jan is impressed by the progress made, and also shares his thought on how many comments per page you would typically expect to get.
We still have a ways to go, and those of you following along know there are a number of other contentious issues we haven't finalized on yet (but we're getting very close). I'll provide more detailed explanations of many of the responses over the coming weeks, and I'm sure you guys will find those interesting.

Technorati Tags: Open XML

SharePoint the Facebook for Business?

chlong — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:45:48 GMT

I was looking up the link of Lawrence Liu's blog for a partner I met yesterday and noticed this entry about will Microsoft become the Facebook for the Enterprise? It's this article that has been making its rounds internally at Microsoft so Lawrence blogged it.

Lawrence being one of the Microsoft SharePoint guys believes this will be in the form of SharePoint... and I'm inclined to believe him. I'm sure there will be plenty more information at the SharePoint Conference in March.

There are plenty of examples of web sites built on MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) 2007, check out some of these lists:

Some other news on SharePoint:

Office Service Pack 1, SharePoint SP1 and More: In case you missed it The Office System Service Pack 1 was released today! The SharePoint team blog has a comprehensive posting on it with links to all the content. They also have several other excellent postings.
Announcing the Release of WSS 3.0 SP1 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1
Re: the Office Live Workspace Beta
Announcing New System Center Operations Manager 2007 Packs for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007
Performance recommendations for storage planning and monitoring
HP and F5 Whitepaper on Configuring BIG-IP LTM with Web Accelerator for SharePoint Deployments

Joel Oleson has also had a number of interesting postings over the last few days.

Some other recent cool postings I came across:

Vlog Mashups in SharePoint for Team Building, Fun, and PR... plus the CW Smallville Example
Accessibility Kit for SharePoint v1.0 - Mark Harrison worked really hard to push this

Need some training?

The final and complete edition of the end-user Office SharePoint Server 2007 training is now available in the "Download Center". The training comes with rich set of videos, tutorials and articles that help end users learn the basics of SharePoint's workloads.
It is available as two editions:

Portal Edition: built on the Microsoft SharePoint Learning Kit, the Portal Edition must be deployed onto a SharePoint Server site by a server administrator. It includes a reporting function that allows an administrator/trainer to track learners' completed training topics. The content is compliant to the e-learning standard SCORM 2004.
Standalone Edition: can be installed by an individual and easily accessed from a desktop icon. It does not allow customization or reporting, but give customers the ability to view the training before they deploy the Portal Edition on a SharePoint Server site

Need more info on Web Content Management? MOSS Web CM - real world customer experience

We recently released two MSDN articles that address some key topics in Web Content Management. This guidance is based on real world customer experience. It addresses customer and partner questions on customisation and performance when using SharePoint technology in customer-facing publishing solutions.

Office Business Applications Marketplace

chlong — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:10:52 GMT

One of our technology pushes with ISVs is to develop Office Business Applications (OBA). What started with SAP / Duet is now resonating broadly across our ISV community. The site www.OBACentral.com is a great place for additional information and receives plenty of visits every month with 187 OBA solutions currently available.

I think it's worth while saying that this shouldn't replace Solution Profiler, but complement it and although it's more admin, I think it's worth listing your solution in both places.

Background

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference in Denver, Microsoft announced the OBA OnRamp program for partners. As part of this program, www.obacentral.com was launched to provide a place to learn about available partner OBA solutions and services.

Checkout the following infoWorld story for associated coverage: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/10/MS-launches-OBA-partner-program_1.html

If you are a partner that has an OBA solution or service offering (or are in the process of building one), visit the site to have your solutions listed and enhance your website with this snazzy little icon:

Technorati Tags: Office Business Applications, Microsoft Partners

More Partner Training for BPIO-U

chlong — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:36:39 GMT

If you are considering developing solutions around SharePoint, Office, Unified Communications or Business Intelligence think about attending this training... if you are wondering what BPIO-U is, it stands for "Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization University".

BPIO University 2 Day Workshop - Sales Track for Partners

This 2 day interactive workshop – targeted at Partners participating in the BPIO Campaigns – has as its outcomes:

to provide an overview understanding of the BPIO Campaign
to provide some relevant sales and marketing knowledge/skills/processes to assist Partners generate and convert leads relevant to the BPIO Campaign
point Partners towards a range of resources to assist them to capitalise on the opportunity provided by the BPIO Campaign.

By using tools made available by Microsoft to work with customers to understand their current level of optimisation, Partners can work with their customers to plan a path to achieve the highest level of business productivity infrastructure optimisation.

The BPIO University targets a number of solution areas including:

unified communications
collaboration
enterprise content management
enterprise search
business intelligence

This course will also supply you with all of the materials and tools you need to expedite the sales process and close deals faster.

1 Day Jump-Start on Collaboration (MOSS), Enterprise Content Management and Search - Technical

The Jump-start is an interactive training session which provides you with the technical introduction and understanding of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), Enterprise Content Management and Microsoft Search from an architectural and solution overview perspective. The session is an Instructor led “chalk & talk” and does not include any hands-on technical labs.

These sessions are ideal if you are a technical person needing to cross train your Microsoft skills and gain an understanding of how these technologies work together in an overall solution. These sessions are led by an experienced ‘in the field’ instructor to give you the fast track introduction and guidance you need as part of your skills enablement roadmap.

Audience: Technical Pre-sales, Architects new to these technologies, Technical Consultants & System Engineers needing to cross train.

Technical Level: 200

Topics covered:

A lap around the architectural landscape – The Microsoft 2007 Office System
Understanding MOSS 2007 – features out of the box
Collaboration Overview
Understanding Enterprise Content Management – what this means to your business
Enterprise Search capabilities
Architecting a business solution so that its data is included in the Enterprise Search experience
An overall solution summary

1 Day Jump-Start on Unified Communication (Exchange 2007 and Office Communication Server) - Technical

The Jump-start is an interactive training session which provides you with the technical introduction and understanding of Unified Communication, Exchange 2007 and Office Communication Server from an architectural and solution overview perspective. The session is an Instructor led “chalk & talk” and does not include any hands-on technical labs.

Audience: Technical Pre-sales, Architects new to these technologies, Technical Consultants & System Engineers needing to cross train.

Technical Level: 200

Topics covered:

A lap around the architectural landscape – The Microsoft Unified Communication story
Understanding Exchange 2007 – features out of the box
Unified Messaging Overview
Understanding Office Communication Server – what this means to your business
Integration with Exchange 2007
Office Communication Server capabilities and architecting a solution
An overall solution summary

1 Day Jump-Start on Business Intelligence and Performance Point Server

The Jump-start is an interactive training session which provides you with the technical introduction and understanding of Business Intelligence and Performance Point Sever from an architectural and solution overview perspective. The session is an Instructor led “chalk & talk” and does not include any hands-on technical labs.

Audience: Technical Pre-sales, Architects new to these technologies, Technical Consultants & System Engineers needing to cross train.

Technical Level: 200

Topics covered:

A lap around the architectural landscape – The Microsoft Business Intelligence story
Understanding Performance Point Server 2007 – features out of the box
Architecting Performance Management solutions
An overall solution summary

MOSS Portal for Aussie Information Worker Partners

chlong — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:32:41 GMT

Saw this on Siatro's blog (who is Siatro below) about how you demo a live Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) environment whilst you are on a customer site.

Have you ever wished you could demo a live MOSS environment without having to wheel around large VM's?

Have you ever considered leaving a Web site with your customer to play with after you have done your pitch?
Have you considered doing a PoC on your customer's premises without having to go through the rigmarole of touching their IT infrastructure?
I have been working with Emantra, one of our top MOSS, Exchange and OCS hosters, on an idea to provide Australian partners with an IW competency a hosted MOSS environment at no charge. Partners can use this to do online demos, create custom sites for their customers as well as do PoC's. Emantra have told me they'd be happy to provide this service to the Microsoft partner community and the infrastructure has been provisioned and ready to go.
If you are interested, call 1 300 728 953 to register.
I hope you find this useful!
Siatro

Steve Iatropoulos (aka Siatro) is an Information Worker Technology Specialist (IW PTS) and is looking for feedback on this service, so feel free to ping him an email.

Technorati Tags: MOSS, Microsoft Partner

Resources for the Office Developer

chlong — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:29:44 GMT

Thanks to Darren Strange for circulating this list:

BDC

High-Level

Click-through demo on BDC and Excel Services

Lower-Level

Using the Business Data Catalog and Smart Tags with the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Office Interactive Developer Map
Latest MOSS SDK download has an Application Editor which allows you to author ADF files with a UI rather than creating XML on the fly
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms563661.aspx
Visual How-To Center
How Do I…
MSDN Virtual Lab: Office Business Application Reference Application Pack for Manufacturing Plant Floor Analytics
A good book - “Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007” by Patrick Tisseghem

OBA

High-level

OBA Overview .doc and .docx
OBA Case Study: Epicor sought to increase the reach of its applications to more workers and provide access to its applications within the context daily business activities (.docx and .wmv)
OBA Momentum Book – Customer Success Stories (.pdf)

Websites

www.OBACentral.com - A repository of OBA resources with a database profiling partner OBA solutions. Solutions developers can join the Microsoft Partner Program and submit their OBA solutions to OBACentral.com. More information here.
www.microsoft.com/office/oba
http://msdn.microsoft.com/oba
MSDN Office Architecture site

SOA & BPM

Video of Steve Ballmer talking about Software + Services in Office 2007 = OBAs
Click-through demo on CRM and Workflow
Using the Business Data Catalog and Smart Tags with the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Click-through demo on BDC and Excel Services
Recorded Webcast on Building BI Solutions using Excel 2007 and SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
Building Custom Solutions with Excel Services video and transcript.
Webcast on SharePoint Server and BI

Application Development

OBA Development Overview .docx and .doc
OBA Architecture Overview .docx and .doc
Video talking about the 2007 Office System Platform with demo of an OBA
http://msdn.microsoft.com/oba
MSDN Office Architecture site
Recorded Webcast of what’s new in development for the Office System clients
Recorded Webcast on the Overview of Development Technologies for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Developing with InfoPath forms using VSTA and VSTO recorded webcast
Recorded webcast which describes how you can build SharePoint workflows using SharePoint Designer
Developing SharePoint Workflows using Visual Studio extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation recorded webcast
Office Interactive Developer Map
2007 Office System Developer Posters
2007 Office System Logical Architecture Diagram

Data Management

Compliance Features for the 2007 Microsoft Office System White Paper
Item-Level Auditing with SharePoint Server 2007 Code Sample and White Paper
Custom User Site Provisioning Code Sample and White Paper
Click-through demo on CRM and Workflow
OBA/VSTO Starter Kit: Integrating 2007 Office System with SAP using VSTO 2005 SE

Technorati Tags: Office Developer, OBA, BPM, BI, Application Development, Data Management, UX

BPIO University

chlong — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:35:39 GMT

If you are in a pre-sales or sales role and are talking to technical or business decision-makers, BPIO U will arm you with information and tools you need to drive your revenue. If you are a technical expert and support Microsoft Office Systems solutions, BPIO U will give you the technical expertise to deliver business and technical value to your customers.

The below 3 x 1-day technical jump-starts and 1x 1-day sales jump-start sessions, that are instructor-led training will teach you how to position the 2007 Microsoft Office system in business conversations with customers—driving to a higher close rate.

Title: 1 Day Jump-Start on Collaboration (MOSS), Enterprise Content Management and Search
What: The Jump-start is an interactive training session which provides you with the technical understanding and knowledge of MOSS, Enterprise Content Management and Microsoft Search solutions. The session is Instructor led and “chalk & talk” and do not include any hands-on technical labs.

The training provides in-depth coverage of the planning, design, and architecture issues involved in deploying MOSS 2007, Enterprise Search, and Enterprise Content Management

REGISTER NOW https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events/register/home.aspx?levent=799160&linvitation
Title: 1 Day Jump-Start on Unified Communication (Exchange 2007 and Office Communication Server)
What: The Jump-start is an interactive training session which provides you with the technical understanding and knowledge of Unified Communication, Exchange 2007 and Office Communication Server. The session is Instructor led and “chalk & talk” and do not include any hands-on technical labs.

The training provides in-depth coverage of the planning, design, and architecture issues involved in deploying for Microsoft Exchange, Office Communications, and Unified Communication solutions.

REGISTER NOW https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events/register/home.aspx?levent=371999&linvitation
Title: 1 Day Jump-Start on Business Intelligence and Performance Point Server
What: The Jump-start is an interactive training session which provides you with the technical understanding and knowledge of Business Intelligence and Performance Point Sever. The session is Instructor led and “chalk & talk” and do not include any hands-on technical labs.

The training provides in-depth coverage provides in-depth coverage of the planning, design, and architecture issues involved in deploying Microsoft Office Performance Point Server 2007 and Business Intelligence solutions.

REGISTER NOW https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events/register/home.aspx?levent=723236&linvitation
Title: 1 Day Jump-Start on Sales Track for Partners
Attend the Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization University (BPIO U) 2008 and increase your 2007 Microsoft Office System revenue; learn how to sell 2007 Microsoft Office Systems to your customers; increase your companies’ Microsoft Office System technical expertise.

REGISTER NOW https://www.local.microsoft.com.au/australia/events/register/home.aspx?levent=383016&linvitation

2008 Office Developer Conference

chlong — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:58:18 GMT

Dates and location for the 2008 Office Developer Conference have now been announced with Bill Gates delivering a special keynote presentation in sunny San Jose (opposed to sunny Seattle).

When: February 10-13, 2008

Where: San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA

Who: 2000 developers and architects who build solutions on the Office platform (Office clients, servers, and services)

ODC 2008 will bring together architects, developers, industry technical experts, Microsoft insiders and key partners in a public forum for the first time! Together, we will redefine what it means to be focused on Microsoft Office development, exchange ideas on how to continue innovating in this ever-changing space, and share best practices on how to craft the next generation of Office Business Applications. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will deliver a special keynote that is not to be missed.

See you there,

- The 2008 ODC Team

Answers to some Frequently Asked Questions about the conference:

Who is the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference for?
Those involved or interested in using the Microsoft Office system (clients, servers, and services) as an application development platform. For example, people in technical roles e.g. architects, developers, designers, and technical managers.
Who can attend?
The conference is open to the public.
Is this the first time for this conference?
No, Microsoft has held this conference three times in the past (2004, 2005, 2006). However, those conferences were only open to a select group by nomination/invitation. This is the first conference that is open to the public.
Will it cost to attend the conference?
Yes, there will be a reasonable registration fee for the conference. For those that register early, we will have a special early bird rate as well.
How many people are you expecting?
We’re expecting between 1800-2000 attendees
Which products/technologies will this conference cover?
Obviously, the conference will cover everything in Microsoft Office system, including clients, servers and services, but business productivity applications don’t exist in isolation. More and more, we’re finding that people are using others parts of the technology stack and bringing together various technologies to make applications more compelling. So a great number of sessions will have topics involving Office application development in the context of leading-edge technologies such as VOIP, Silverlight, integration with third-party line of business applications, etc.
What tracks will you offer?
We are still finalizing the organization of the more than 60 sessions planned. Track information will be available as registration opens in October.
I’ve heard there’s also a SharePoint Conference. What’s the difference?
The SharePoint conference will take place in March 2008 in Redmond, WA. Unlike the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference, the SharePoint conference is primarily intended for those in IT who use, deploy, and configure SharePoint. If you are focused on SharePoint deployment you should attend the SharePoint Conference. If you are a SharePoint developer you should attend Office System Developer Conference. Here you will find the most information about how to develop solutions that not only build on the SharePoint platform, but also take advantage of the other technologies in the Office system.
Why didn’t you just have the conference at the same time/location with SharePoint Conference so people could attend both?
We did look into this but couldn’t make this happen due to lack of suitable space.
Who is delivering the keynote?
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will be delivering a special keynote presentation. Visit our site www.odc2008.com in October to find out more about the other keynote speakers!
Why did you choose San Jose instead of having the conference in the Seattle area?
We looked at several options. Lack of suitable space was a key factor. Also, average temps in San Jose in Feb are Low: 45°F (7°C) High: 63°F (17°C) with 2.84 in (7.21 cm) of precipitation, whereas in Seattle the averages are Low: 37°F (3°C) High: 51°F (10°C) and 4.09 in (10.39 cm). It wasn’t a difficult decision to make.
Who will present sessions?
Sessions will be presented by Microsoft experts and MVPs, as well as other industry/technical experts.
Will you have non-Microsoft staff presenting sessions?
Yes. If you or someone you know would like to present on a relevant technical topic, we’ d be happy to consider them, though slots are very limited. To submit a session idea, please send all relevant information to odcspkr@microsoft.com
Where can I find more information?
Our web site www.odc2008.com will have more information about the conference as it becomes available. Check back often or sign up to get notified!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Office System Developer Conference, Microsoft Partners

October Training Update

chlong — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:49:19 GMT

Want to ready yourself? Want to increase your profitability?

Visit the Training & Readiness Centre which aims at providing our partners with valuable sales and technical learning resources for Technical, Sales & Marketing people to:

Improve your knowledge of Microsoft’s industry-leading solutions
Meet your customer’s needs more effectively and
Increase their - and your - profitability

Sounds good? The Training for October includes:

Windows Server 2008: IT Pro

This 2 day Windows Server 2008 Essentials is intended for IT professionals and partners currently experienced on the technologies included in Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003. The course will focus on and discuss the following product scenarios and technologies: Centralized Application Access, Branch Office, Security & Policy Enforcement and Server Management. >>Register now!

Windows Server 2008: Developer

This two-day technical readiness event is designed to introduce developers to many of the new features of Windows Server 2008. As Microsoft prepares to release the most advanced version of their server platform ever, now is the time to start learning how to use many of the great enhancements in the applications you write and deploy. Learn how Windows Server 2008 provides a compelling application foundation and makes huge leaps forward in the area of Microsoft’s DSI (Distributed Systems Initiative) and DFO (Design for Operations). >>Register now!

MOSS: Developer Intensive

This four day course explores the development opportunities made available with the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. You will learn how to extend the Microsoft Office system client applications and how to leverage the new Open File Formats by writing custom code that reads, modifies, and generates Office documents in client applications, as well as server-side components. You will learn how Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services V3 (WSS) plays a central role as an extensible platform for building sites-based business solutions. >>Register now!

Unified Communications & Exchange Server 2007

Unified Communications solutions reduce the complexities of modern communications into a seamless experience by combining e-mail, instant messaging, voice and video into a single, intuitive system. They enable businesses to replace conflicting systems with a single, unified communications platform that leverages their existing data and telecommunications infrastructure. With the launch of Exchange Server 2007, the 2007 Office system, and soon-to-release Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft offers a comprehensive set of technologies enabling IT departments to deliver more flexible and more secure communications with simplified infrastructure that streamlines management and reduces total cost of ownership. >>Register now!

Forefront & IAG

With Microsoft’s best-in-class Forefront Security products, you’re in control of the new customer opportunities awaiting you. During this course, you’ll learn how the Forefront line of products offers customers peace of mind at the edge, on their servers, and on every desktop. Training will provide depth technical information on: Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG) 2007 , Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006, Forefront Security for Exchange , Forefront Security for SharePoint, Forefront Client Security. >>Register now!

BizTalk Release 2

There have been some very significant enhancements to the BizTalk platform in R2. This Jumpstart has been designed as a fast pace, intense workshop to take highly proficient Partners across the new features of BizTalk 2006 R2. The course will explore new functionality such as WF and WCF integration with BizTalk, but assumes some existing knowledge in these areas. The course also explores the new EDI and RFID technologies.
*This is a level 400 workshop and not suitable for those who are new to BizTalk Server.* >>Register now!

Effectively Generating and Converting Leads with Microsoft Infrastructure Optimisation (IO) Campaigns

This 1 day interactive workshop – targeted at Partners participating in any of the OSYCI, BPIO or APIO Campaigns – has as its outcomes:
- to provide an overview understanding of each Campaign
- to provide some relevant sales and marketing knowledge/skills/processes to assist Partners generate and convert leads relevant to each Campaign
- point Partners towards a range of resources to assist them to capitalise on the opportunity provided by each Campaign. >>Register now!

SharePoint Conference 2008 Registration Now Open

chlong — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:03:13 GMT

The Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2008 is now open! Last years event was a huge success and was sold out very quickly. So if you would like to attend, click here to register today!

The event will showcase Microsoft’s market-leading SharePoint Products and Technologies, solution expertise and customer successes and will be held from March 2-6, 2008 at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center in downtown Seattle. The Conference is designed to educate you on every aspect of Microsoft’s SharePoint Products and Technologies with technical and business-focused educational tracks, an entire track dedicated to customer best practices sessions, the first-ever SharePoint Awards presentation, hands-on labs, peer networking opportunities and much more!

The fee to attend the Conference is $1100 USD, but if you are one of the first thousand to register, you qualify for the early bird discount rate of $800.
Register today and save over 25%!

The event will feature keynote addresses by Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation; Kurt DelBene, Corporate Vice President, Office Business Platform Group; and Greg LeMond; the first American to ever win the Tour de France.

The Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2008 Team | SPC2008@Microsoft.com

Technorati Tags: SharePoint Server, Microsoft, SharePoint Conference

I Hate My Website

chlong — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:45:43 GMT

Reading the Office Live blog, I saw this eBook (sponsored by Office Live), “I Hate my Website: 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website, Plus 9 Things Never to do” was released last week. If you are new to the web or want some practical advice on what you should do to improve hits to your site, take a look at this 54-page pdf which includes tips, techniques and tools to help you design an effective and engaging Web site, generate more Web site traffic, maximise search engine results, engage a Web professional, provide a more secure online experience, and much more.

Download your own copy today, click here.

Technorati Tags: Office Live, Web Design, SEO

SharePoint Goes Web 2.0

chlong — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:47:06 GMT

I'm been looking at this community kit for SharePoint for a while now and as Eileen says: more and more people are coming round to the idea of SharePoint Wikis and blogs, so the release of our web 2.0 "addon" (great marketing term eh?) is a really great idea for anyone who needs to interact with their customers.

This community kit for SharePoint consists of a set of to open up your site to a whole new set of features. Take Hawaiian Airlines for example. what a lovely site. Built in SharePoint. All they need is to add the blogs and wikis feature for customer feedback and they've got a truly interactive customer experience..

If you're interested in creating a community site using SharePoint instead of community server, here's a good place to start. And if it's other stuff you're looking for - go here to get the community portal with all resources in one centralised place...

Technorati Tags: SharePoint Server, Community Kit

MOSS 2007 Developer Courses in Australia

chlong — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:39:30 GMT

From Siatro:

A 4-day developer centric course has just been finalised for Melbourne, Brisbane & Perth based on the very successful Sydney one held this July (another is being panned for Sydney so I will blog it as soon as I hear about it). Please contact your partner account manager and ask them about the partner readiness offer (see below).

We are introducing a concept for partner skilling in Aus: we want to offer more courses to the partner channel for emerging products (ie non-Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) courses) and subsidised then at approx $395/day. If you are an MS Partner in Aus you can now pre-buy a block of training days which can take it down to $275/day. Bear in mind these courses are going to be geared to emerging products and not be the official curriculum; so these are geared for early adopters primarily. The feedback of these courses will eventually build the MOC.

If interested in pre-buying a pack of training course days, contact Sharmilla Gosai or your Partner Account Manager.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007