Month: May 2009

Jerry Yasir

Speaking at SharePoint Techday – Khobar


Last Thursday I went to Khobar which is 450 Kilometers away from Riyadh in the eastern side of Riyadh.  I was there to present at SharePoint Techday that was organized by SharePoint Geeks (the only SharePoint User Group in that region).  Although it was a long travel of around 4 hours but we were able to reach there around 9:45 PM (You can calculate at what time we started the travel :)) I presented "Advanced SharePoint Feature Development" topic and got a feeling that everyone loved it.  I was pretty fast as I had only 1 hour for 4 full demos for Feature Development.  I loved every bit of it and hopefully the audience (Around 80) has enjoyed it allot.  Most of the attendees were basic level SharePoint pros so I have to make my session less technical which I hope I was able to do it.  Lets wait for the face book.

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another point to share is that Muhanad Omar was unable to make to the event so My fellow RSUG Lead Ali Nimer presented "using Variations in Web Content Management"  very nicely and audience liked it allot.  Fauzan Khan who is the lad of SharePoint Geek’s presented "Developing SharePoint 2007 Workflow’s with Visual Studio 2008" which went quite well.  Another session was from Emad Abdul Aziz (Lead XAMLLight) who went on to present "Silverlight and SharePoint 2007".  It was a good try but the bad thing was there was no Silverlight developer in the audience so he made it really basic for audience.  He made interesting demo with a Story board.

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Jerry Yasir

FW: Attention: Important Information on Service Pack 2


Few days back I saw this error message on my notebook that My
SharePoint Serve installation is going to expire in few days.  So I thought I
have installed a trial version by mistake but looking at the blog given below
has shown me the real thing.  Read this and make sure you do the needful very
soon.

 

Feed: Microsoft
SharePoint Team Blog
Posted on: Thursday, May 21, 2009 11:51 PM
Author: sptblog
Subject: Attention: Important Information on Service Pack 2

 

We take product quality
seriously and make every effort to avoid and resolve issues that adversely
impact our customers.  Unfortunately, we have recently discovered a bug
with Service Pack 2 (SP2) that affects all customers that have deployed it
for SharePoint Server 2007. 

During the installation
of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means
SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after
SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the
normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes.
Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not
affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render
SharePoint inaccessible for end-users.

We are working to release
a hotfix to automatically fix this issue. A manual work-around is currently
available and involves customers re-entering their Product ID number (PID) on
the Convert License Type page in Central Administration.  For more information
and detailed steps please read this KB article. (The KB link is
not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

We want to assure our
customers that this issue does not impact data integrity or their SharePoint
deployment in any other way.

For your convenience,
below are some answers to questions that you may have and we will update this
blog post with a link to the hotfix as soon as it’s available.

We apologize for any
inconvenience this issue may cause you.

Jeff Teper
Corporate Vice President
SharePoint.

Q&A

Which products are
affected by this?

Applying Service Pack 2 to any of the following products will result in this
issue: Office SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007,
Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.

Windows SharePoint
Services 3.0 is not affected by this issue.

What can I do to fix
it?
To work around this issue customers will need to re-enter their Product ID
numbers (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central
Administration.  Please see this KB article for detailed
steps. (The KB link is not currently active, it will be available within the
next 48hrs) 

Customers can also wait
for the hotfix (available for free from http://support.microsoft.com) to
resolve this issue.

Product ID numbers (PIDs)
can be retrieved by logging into the Volume
Licensing Service Center.

Note: For Search Server
2008 Express the only way to resolve this issue is to apply the hotfix.

What is Microsoft
doing to fix it?
Microsoft is working on a hotfix and public update for the product. We will
update this blog post with details and a link to the hotfix as soon as it is
available.

Do I need to update
all of the servers in my farm?

No. The Product ID number only needs to be entered once.

What if I haven’t
installed SP2 yet but want to? What should I do?
You can continue
to plan for and install Service Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2007 with the
additional step of re-entering your Product ID number after the installation
is complete by following the instructions in this KB article. (The KB link is
not currently active, it will be available within the next 48hrs)

Does this issue impact
anything else?
The issue only activates the product expiration date. The activation of the
expiration date does not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until
the expiration date passes, at which point SharePoint will be inaccessible
for end-users. This issue does not affect customer’s data, configuration or
application code.

I can’t find/don’t
know my original PID, where can I find it?
Product ID numbers (PIDs) can be retrieved by logging into the Volume
Licensing Service Center.


View
article…

Jerry Yasir

Riyadh SharePoint User Group Meeting – May 2009 Recap


So finally we have successfully conducted our May meeting for Riyadh SharePoint user Group.  Riyadh SharePoint User Group has proved to be successful in getting people attention and time for attending our events.  They not only learn SharePoint for free but also take lot of gifts from Microsoft.  This time I was really doubtful on the number of attendees but my doubt was cleared when I saw around 40 People attending our event.  This event was special for me because for the first time we have spent almost 30 minutes discussing some questions asked by the attendees.  Ali Nimer again did fantastic work by starting the meeting with first session about Multilingual Development for SharePoint.  Later Muhanad presented an interesting session about scripting SharePoint installations.  There was no demo in his session but information was very useful.  I did my Event Handlers session and demo and later Amjad finished it off with his workflow session.  He was unable to do any demo because his VM crashed ;}.  But overall everything went very well.  Later there was a draw for XBOX and one of our regular attendee Alla Barqawi won it.  There were so many interesting giveaways that were given to the audience and for the first time almost everyone has something to take home 🙂

Now we have to plan our June 2009 Meeting so I am planning something new.  There will be change in the presenters this time as many of our fellow SharePoint Developers wanted to get involved in presenting so I will try to give chance to some new presenters.  Ali Nimer will surly continue with something interesting to continue. 

I will upload the pictures for the event tomorrow in fellow up blog.  The tentative date for the next month meeting is 18th of June 2009.

Update

Event Pictures are available below.

Public Meeting 6 – May 14 2009

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Jerry Yasir

April Cumulative Update Package


Download Information

VAI SharePoint Team Blog

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850

Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851

Detail Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968850

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968851 (Link not live yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

  1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  2. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007
  3. April Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  4. April Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Please note: Start from April Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

Cool Picture for understanding Service Packs and Updates.

updatetimeline

Read Full Article…