July 2011 Blog Posts
I finally got around to getting myself a new network tune box. Those of you who know me will be aware I am somewhat of a muso and I have a distinctly uncompromising stance when it comes to “better sound”. For a while I was using a Squeezebox Duet, which is OK but leaves a lot to be desired. So the hunt for a proper network tune box commenced about this time last year. I’m not interested in a all in one media player, I want a dedicated device for tunes and that doesn’t need a television to control. Seriously,...
It’s that time again folks, Conference craziness season is back with a vengeance after the summer. When is it *not* conference season I hear you chuckle! Anyways, I have the privilege of speaking at a number of events between now and the end of the year. It’s always a great deal of fun to meet folks at conferences and hear about their SharePoint experiences. I look forward to seeing you one of the following events. TechReady 13 25-29 July - Seattle, WA http://www.mytechready.com/ This event is for Microsoft employees only....
One of the most common conversations I have with customers, partners and random SharePoint consultants is around the creation of SharePoint Server 2010 User Profile Synchronization Connections. These guys are the key link, or connection string if you will between the User Profile Service Application (UPA) and the connected directory services. A very common complaint is the inability to automate their creation using Windows PowerShell. The good news is that Service Pack 1 (SP1) introduces a couple of new cmdlets which help in this regard. This post looks at these cmdlets and also details why they might not be all...
One of the most common complaints about the User Profile Synchronization service in SharePoint Server 2010 is the time it takes to perform synchronization runs or “sync” for short. This is due to a number of factors not least of which is that by leveraging Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) SharePoint now effectively includes a metadirectory. This is a good thing. However if you are just doing import then there is a huge increase in the time it takes over previous versions which were simply performing an ADSI query and inserting the results into a database. It’s very important to...
You may have noticed a few new Windows PowerShell cmdlets included with SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Get-SPProfileLeader, Add-SPProfileLeader & Remove-SPProfileLeader. These cmdlets are causing a little bit of confusion, so this short post explains them and the problem they are intended to address. First up, they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Organizational Profiles. The term “leader” here is somewhat misleading (no pun intended!). What this is all about is User Profiles and People Search Relevance. One of the key pieces of data that SharePoint Server Search uses to drive relevance in people...
One of the best new feature areas of SharePoint Server 2010 was the social computing capabilities delivered by the User Profile Service (UPA). Tags, Ratings, Activities as well as enhancements to the My Sites infrastructure allow enterprises to deliver rich “social” applications with the out of the box capabilities. Furthermore by using these features as building blocks a new class of composite social applications have become possible, enabling the enterprise to leverage social computing for both business benefit and end user happiness. Of course, as with many aspects of SharePoint 2010, with great power comes the need for responsibility...