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Welcome to the SharePoint Foxhole > SPFoxhole Blog > Categories

10/27/2007

Microsoft SharedView

A couple months ago some of us were notified of a beta product called Tahiti. We were all sworn to secrecy J about this and the veil has finally been lifted… last Monday actually so feel free to ping me back and call me a slacker on the lack of posts the past few weeks… Work and travel do occasionally get in the way and to those that have given me such good feedback on my screencasts No worries… I will continue to put some more together right after TechEd. In the mean time I want to tell those that have not seen this yet that the product that was codenamed Tahiti has been released to the public under a new name and its now called Sharedview. Personally I liked the name Tahiti and think the "Shared" portion of this may confuse people to thinking this is part of the Sharepoint platform… well in a way it is… Since Sharepoint is part of the Office Platform they are related in a way I guess.

Sharedview is Microsoft's latest Office product and after testing this product the past couple months I am giving it a two thumbs and both big toes UP.

So what is this product that I'm raving about do…. In the beginning I was chastised by Lawrence Liu (just kidding he didn't yell at me) for calling this Live Meeting Lite but in effect that is what most of you will look at it as? The product is for one is FREE and I believe it will be a free release when it leaves Beta but don't quote me on that just yet.

Key Points:

  • Share a session with up to 15 people
  • Share your desktop or connect to others desktops during your session by giving Control
  • Share applications such as Word , Excel , PPT, Visio etc with the users in the session via a Handouts Tab.

Possible Scenarios:

  • If your like me you don't have access to a LiveMeeting account and you want to provide Demonstrations to your clients. FREE Product HERE J Nuff Said
  • You get a call from a client or relative stating that there MOSS farm (Clients J) or PC is suffering the sniffles and you can go in and take a looksee.
  • You want to hold a brainstorming session with members of your team to show off your Lab system and run through scenarios with them.

Ok the list could go on and on but believe me this product is very cool and useful.

What are you waiting for?? More? Go get it yourself and give it a try.

One thing to note is that if you did happen to be in on the "Tahiti" testing period you will need to uninstall that before you install SharedView.

 

Guess your all chomping at the bits now…. You can find some helpful information at http://www.connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=94

And you can download the bits here

 

Posted at 2:05 PM by Bob Fox | Category: Product Reviews | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)
Hot New Offering from IDevFactory for Admins

Last evening I received an email from Ethan Bertsch from iDevFactory announcing the release of a new offering called the SharePoint Work Acceleration Toolkit 2007 or SWAT for short. I was asked to beta test this a while back and because of workloads I put it on the back burner to get to when I could get to it but after reading the email from Ethan and then looking at the iDevFactory websites description I got excited. It takes a lot to make me do a double take look on a product but I did a triple on this one. I simply had to have it right then and there.

Mind you I spent about an hour with this product late last evening and this post will not cover everything the product offers but what I can tell you from my perspective so far is that it is solid. Basically this tool takes you where the SCA wont. Meaning if you really need to get deeper with your environment you need to move from the SCA (SharePoint Central Administration) and into the Stsadm world. Think of this as a sort of in between place to go to… so if you can't get something accomplished in SCA and are not overly comfortable in running commands then this tool is for you. Hell, I love working with Stsadm to accomplish most of my admin tasks…. Todd Klindt will tell you the same thing (but the lad keeps going on and on about it….. he has issues) We can make it talk and walk via the command line. This product does make life a lot simpler though with having everything about your environment displayed in front of you. So what are my favorite features so far from my short time with it?

  • Tree View of Site Structure (including Security inheritance)
  • Diagramming of Sites and saving them out to a file (then import to Visio)
  • MOST FAVORITE FEATURE thus far: a SharePoint Log reader. Hey I know there are easier ways but forever I have opened the logs in Notepad and read them that way….. this is why im wearing glasses at my young age J SWAT has a preview window for opening your log files and it even allows you the ability to filter which will make troubleshooting your environment that much easier. It's funny but they don't really talk this up much in the documentation.

So what else does it do? Glad you asked…

  • Site Diagramming
    • Show a Site Structure as a Diagram
    • Save a Site Structure Diagram as a Image
    • Save a Site Structure Diagram as a SVG file (for importing into Visio)
    • Print a Site Diagram
    • Drag and Drop the design of a Site Structure
  • Generate Test Data and Sites
    • Generate Random Sites for Testing
    • Auto Populate Lists/Libraries with Test Data (including Documents)
  • Work with Sites
    • Show a Site Structure in a Tree View (including security inheritence)
    • Create a Site Collection
    • Export and Import Site Structures
    • Backup and Restore Site Collections
    • View and Interact with site objects (Lists, Users, Roles, Features, Events, etc..)
    • Delete Sites and entire Site Structures
  • Work with SharePoint Features
    • View Feature Status in Farm and on a Site
    • Install and Uninstall Features
    • Activate and Deactivate Features
  • Work with SharePoint Solution Packages
    • Install and Deploy Solution Packages
    • View Solution Deployment Locations (Servers and Web Apps)
    • Deploy, Retract and Delete Solutions
  • Work with SharePoint Jobs
    • View Job Status
    • Add and Schedule Jobs
    • Enable and Disable Jobs
    • Force Execution of Jobs
  • Work with Event Receviers
    • Install Event Receivers for Sites and Lists
    • View and Manage Event Receivers
    • Delete Event Receivers
  • Work with Web Parts
    • Add (Deploy) Web Parts to multiple sites/pages
    • Replicate Web Parts
    • Delete Web Parts from multiple sites/pages

 

Oh did I mention? The total price for this product is only $149

So what else can be said…. iDevFactory doesn't stop here. They also have what appears to be a nice offering in the reporting sector called the Universal SharePoint Manager as well but I have not had the time to investigate this (hint hint can I get a copy to test guys?) Im kidding…. The company offers fully operational Trial Versions of their products so fire off a request and give the products a shot.

 

Enjoy!!

 

 

Posted at 1:58 PM by Bob Fox | Category: Product Reviews | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)
BambooSolutions Calendar Review
Posted at 1:45 PM by Bob Fox | Category: Product Reviews | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)