MOSS Products pricing

Need information about the pricing of the MOSS products in each of its categories.
Read along...
Servers ____________________________________ Estimated Price
Office SharePoint Server 2007 .............................. $4424
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Standard ...... $8213
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Enterprise ... $57,670
Office Forms Server 2007 ................................... $4424
Client Access Licenses ______________________ Estimated Price
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard CAL .................... $94
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL ..................$75
Office Forms Server 2007 CAL ...................................... $54
Office SharePoint Designer 2007 .................................. $187
Internet Facing Sites _______________________ Estimated Price
Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites ......... $40,943
Office Forms Server 2007 for Internet sites .................. $22,118

Source: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX102176831033.aspx

Ever heard of Silverlight !!!

Huh, seems like nothing to do with technology stuff...
But strangely though, you won't believe Microsoft has adopted a fascinating way of grabbing your attention.
Unlike, Mac guys, who name something like Jaguar, Tiger, Leopard, etc. to their OS, Microsoft is in the blues with Vista and now Silverlight.
Silverlight, in essence, is a cross-browser, cross-platform plugin for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web solutions.
It offers a very flexible programming model that can supports any of the JavaScript, Visual C#, Visual Basic, and other languages.
So now you know about Silverlight. Go ahead and download its 1.1 version currently available.
Want to have a quick look at what Silverlight has to offer, check out the Tim Sneath's blog, who has several short webcasts for Silverlight:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/30/silverlight-screencasts.aspx

Cool stuff from Microsoft !!!

Definition for 'ExecuteAction' not found in InfoPath assembly

Today I came across a kind of weird error, which really should be handled by InfoPath Team.
I had created a InfoPath 2007 browser enabled form with just the following two controls:
- A checkbox.
- An Optional Section with few textboxes.
My intention was to show/hide the optional section based upon the check box selection.
So, when I select the checkbox, the section would show up and hide when unselected.
To implement such a simple logic, I had the below code fragment in VSTA from one of the Microsoft Labs:
//*******************************************************************************//
public void chkStatus_Changed(object sender, XmlEventArgs e)
{
// Write your code here to change the main data source.
if (e.NewValue.Equals("true")) //if selected
CurrentView.ExecuteAction(ActionType.XOptionalInsert, "group2_2");
else //if not selected
{
XPathNavigator node =
MainDataSource.CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:group2",
NamespaceManager);
CurrentView.SelectNodes(node, node, "CTRL5");
CurrentView.ExecuteAction(ActionType.XOptionalRemove, "group2_2");
}
}
//*******************************************************************************//

But when compiled in VSTA, it throws the below error:
'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.View' does not contain a definition for 'ExecuteAction'.

Found a relevant resolution at this location:
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2007/05/17/how-to-integrate-the-net-framework-sdk-documentation-with-vsta.aspx

But it talks about changing the Forms compatibility, which I donot need.
Instead, I must agree, that there is a multiple existence of the 'Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.dll', one of 47KB and other of 59KB.
So I got this resolved by removing the refrence of this (47KB) dll and adding it back again from the other location with 59KB.
Compile it again...and I have my browser enabled form back again, compiling successfully.

Suggestions for InfoPath Team:
- Keep a single copy of this DLL ('Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.dll').
- or Modify the reference to the Dll whenever the Compatibility checkbox is selected/unselected to point to the correct DLL.

Hope this is helpful to someone getting the same error.

It was great getting my MCTS !!!

Today I cleared my MOSS Configuration exam (TS 70-630).
It was indeed cool.....eh......but you need to be really thorough.

Having seen so many of the guys getting this certification in a quick row, made me really think for it. And not to mention that my employer needs this as much as I do.

Was a good experience and I would suggest any of you to take an attempt at it who has at least worked (hands-on) six months on MOSS, else it would be a disaster.

And not to forget, the Transcender really helps!

Good Luck!!

Creating a Publishing site under a Team site

In general, to publish a site feature, you would use the command line as follows:

STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename Publishingsite\feature.xml
-url http://

This command line also installs the Publishing Layouts and Publishing Resources features that are required for a publishing site.
Also, this installs the feature at the site collection level when you activate this feature from the Site Features link on the site's Site Settings page.
Installing and activating the publishing site feature creates the standard lists needed for publishing (Documents, Images, Pages, Site Collection Documents, Site Collection Images, Cache Profiles, Style Library, Reports List, Reusable Content, and Workflow Tasks) and populates the Master Page And Page Layout Gallery with the 13 additional master and layout pages used in publishing sites. It also adds 14 new management links in Site Settings.

This is fine!!! Now you may go ahead and start creating sites and sub-sites with the publishing features (if activated at that site level). But what if you need a publishing site below a team site.
This can be achieved.
If your site collection started as a WSS3.0 template, first use STSADM.EXE to "activate" the Publishing Resources and Publishing Layouts features at the site-collection level, but do not activate Publishing in the features listed at the Top Level Site Settings.
Then use STSADM.EXE to activate the Publishing Web feature on the sub-Web-site URL, and in the Site Settings for that site, activate Publishing.
The command-line examples are as follows:
STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename publishingresources\feature.xml
-URL http://extranet/sites/SiteCollection2/
STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename publishinglayouts\feature.xml
-URL http://extranet/sites/SiteCollection2/
STSADM.EXE -o activatefeature -filename publishingweb\feature.xml
-URL http://extranet/sites/SiteCollection2/SubWeb1/

Try this to have a publishing site below a team site.
Good Luck!

MOSS in a Mobile Device

Among several new features in MOSS 2007, a fairly interesting one is the support for Mobile devices.
MOSS 2007 uses "mobile views" to provide built-in support for mobile devices. To view a site in mobile mode, use the following:
http://siteurl/_layouts/mobile/default.aspx.
A shortcut for the same is: http://siteurl/m, provided the Site is mobile enabled.
If not, in this case you may see a "page not found" kind of error, you may enable this feature using the below command:
stsadm -o activatefeature -name MobilityRedirect -url http://siteurl/
By default, the redirect feature is supported for any Web site that is based on standard STS site definition.
This feature for redirecting users to the mobile home page can be found in the following directory:
Local_Drive:\12hive\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\MobilityRedirect
(I'm sure you know what I mean by 12hive :-), for those newbies it is the new location on the file system where you install MOSS. In default install location, it is:
Local_Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12)

Every list and library in MOSS 2007 or WSSv3 is capable of hosting ‘Mobile Views’. These are standard views of lists or libraries that an administrator has defined as being mobile enabled. You can also view individual list items in mobile form.
To mobile enable any list/views, use the same interface that is used to modify the views, filters, groups etc. as shown below:

Working with Cache in MOSS 2007

Quite often we wonder about the configuration when our web sites performance go down and our users start complaining about the slow traffic.
Let me go through a series of postings to understand and implement the caching option available in MOSS 2007.
In real scenarios we may have external-facing sites with the below types of user access:
- Available to the public with anonymous user access

- Only available to some authenticated users like the subscribers, etc.

- Available to both anonymous and authenticated users.

I’ll start with the first one, assuming that we have an open site with an anonymous access setup.
We would start by enabling the output cache for the site collection. To use this feature we need to activate "MOSS Publishing Infrastructure feature" in the site collection features if we have a Team Site. But if we have used a Publishing Portal or Collaboration Portal site template, this feature should be enabled by default.
We have the option to create our own Output Cache profile, but I would try to demonstrate by using one of the existing ones.
1. Click Site Actions->Site Settings->Modify All Site Settings
2. Click "Site Collection Output Cache Profile" under the Site Collection Administration column.

Open the Public Intranet (Purely Anonymous) list item by clicking on it to have the details of the profile visible. There are quite a few settings on this cache, but the key ones for our discussion are Checking for ACL, Vary by User Rights, Duration and Check for Changes. This cache profile is intended for the part of your web site where the content is publicly available. Therefore, the settings for checking ACL (i.e. permission) and vary by user rights are off to optimize performance. When the page is cached, all requests to that page are served from the cache. The cache expires after the specified duration (e.g. 180 seconds), and then the updated content is cached for the next set of users.

So go back to the Site Actions->Site Settings->Modify All Site Settings.
-Click "Site Collection Output Cache" under the Site Collection Administration column.
-You will see the "Site Collection Output Cache Settings" page.

-Enable the Output Cache checkbox.
-Set the anonymous cache profile to Public Internet. This will allow anonymous users to take advantage of output caching for the entire web site.
-Check the two boxes in the page output cache policy section so that you can override specific section of the sub sites or web pages later.Once you have done these steps, output caching is now enabled for the entire site collection, using the specified cache profile for anonymous user.

Note: Enabling debug cache information in the cache profile lets a comment to be left at the end of the HTML markup of the web page indicating if output caching is enabled.

Something like:

Helpful for debugging purposes, and not really mandatory.

So have this implemented and see the difference in the traffic throughput of your web site.

I'll come up with the later posts (series 2 and 3) as and when I get time. Watch out for it !!!

What has Bill Gates to offer as a latest Technology

The latest from Microsoft !!!!

Bill Gates has announced a new vision from Microsoft Stacks which may open a new window towards the Unified Communications.

Announcing the availability of Microsoft RoundTable, an advanced video and VoIP conferencing device that provides a 360-degree view of a meeting room, along with wideband audio and video that tracks the flow of conversation between multiple speakers. With RoundTable and Office Live Meeting or Office Communications Server, meeting participants in different locations will be able to converse and share information as if they were in the same room. RoundTable also enables companies to record meetings for later use.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2007/10-16unifiedcommunications.mspx

Download Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD

You may try MOSS 2007 free for a complete month!!!

The fully functional pre-configured VHD provides you a trial software and automatically expires after 30 days.This is a preconfigured virtual machine contained within the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format. Virtual Server 2005 R2 is required to run this VHD. Please refer to the system requirements section for more details.
System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Vista; Windows XP

This VHD image requires Virtual Server 2005 R2 to be installed on your system. Please refer to the Virtual Server 2005 R2 System requirements page here.
In addition to the System Requirements for Virtual Server 2005 R2, you will need additional disk and memory resources for running the virtual machine. This VHD is pre-configured to use approximately 10GB of hard disk space and approximately 512MB of memory.

Download Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 VHD

Enhance your MOSS User Interface with RAD Controls

It seems that SharePoint development is going to be far more simpler than today.
SharePoint is now having a left and right kind of support from third party vendors as you may read below.

The RadControls for ASP.NET brings in the whole lot of available features from within the context of a rich text box to your SharePoint 2007 projects. You can easily incorporate all the Telerik ASP.NET UI products into Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.

This tool from Telerik is available to be downloaded from this url:
http://www.telerik.com/products/sharepoint/

The good point is that these controls seamlessly integrate in both MOSS and WSS. All MOSS 2007 Publishing sites as well as all WSS v3 based sites, including sites created using the Team Site or Blank Site site template can benefit from the enhanced UI which Telerik controls provide.

Telerik RadEditor can be used in the following scenarios: • rich-text filed control in SharePoint forms (in Lists, Wiki, Blogs etc.) • rich-text editor WebPart • Web Content Management (publishing HTML filed) scenario.

Getting the tabbed drop-downs on a team site in MOSS 2007

The tabs on any portal is a standard feature today of any portal.
The Team sites also provide this feature...as with the Publishing sites, but you may need to configure the site to see this working.

1. Create a Blank Team Site (say "Home Site").
2. Create another sub-site under the "Home Site". Click Site Settings -> Create -> Select "Sites and Workspaces" under Web Pages.
3. Provide a Title and URL (say "SubSite A").
4. Select "Yes" in [Use the top link bar from the parent site?] under "Navigation Inheritance".
5. Click Create.
6. The "SubSite A" may not appear on the top link bar, depending your settings.
7. Now click on the "Home Site" on the top link bar.
8. Click Site Actions -> Site Settings -> Navigation.
9. Select the checkbox "Show subsites".
10. Click OK.

There you are !!!

You should now be able to see the "SubSite A" along with the "Home Site" on the Top link bar.

Happy Navigating !

But one more sec...we are not yet done.

Try to do the same by creating a sub site "Subsite B" within the "Subsite A",

you would find that the new subsite appears as a drop down option on the "Subsite A".

Thats the whole story.

Welcome to the SharePoint World !!!

Welcome @ my blog Site.

Ever since I'd been into the 'SharePoint world', I had always felt the need of a blog, which is an efficient way to share information with various people working on SharePoint and get to know the hindrances and resolutions.

It's always nice to meet other SharePoint lovers on a blog.
I would take a moment before I start compiling my works on the blog.

Meanwhile, don't wait and loose time, start blogging.

Have a nice SharePoint moment!!!