Microsoft hones SharePoint update
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The first major revamp of the collaboration package includes overhauled support, search and update features.
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Microsoft on Tuesday laid out five new security bulletins, including three that address problems in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the massive security update rolled out in October, and one that fixes a vulnerability made public several weeks ago.
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Microsoft exec announces new tool designed to make patching simpler.
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(InfoWorld) - Welcome back to the great Office Server smorgasbord. Thereâll be a related review soon covering a couple of open source answers to SharePoint, including Liferay and Plone. And come October, youâll be seeing a fully graded review of the release versions of Office Communications Server and Exchange Server 2007. [ See our Special Report for parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series. ] Meanwhile, weâre topping off this four-part series with a look at how MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) and Project Server 2007 combine to give project managers a better handle on team management. Project 2007 This isnât a review of the Office Project 2007 client, but weâd be remiss if we didnât run down a few of its newer capabilities before moving to the server. The 2007 client incorporates the new ribbon-style UI contained in most of the other Office 2007 client applications. This is intended to make the UI easier to learn for new users and faster for experienced users, but weâre only lukewarm on its success in those endeavors. The new ribbon doesnât seem to decrease complexity as much as it simply reorganizes it. Features and concepts will still need to be learned, and experienced users will still need to figure out where those same functions are located in the new UI. Youâll find two basic flavors of the Project client (Project Standard 2007 and Project Professional 2007) bolstered by a third (Project Web Access 2007) once youâve installed Project Server 2007. Only Project Standard can be run as a stand-alone client application with full functionality. Both Professional and Web Access require Project Server on the back end -- Professional so you can access all its features, Web Access so you can access it at all. Standard and Professional carry most of the same features for basic project management, including project editing, all the calendar views and task creation capabilities, etc. Web Access really only allows Gantt chart views and task creation at this level, though if the OLAP capabilities provided in the new Project Server 2007 appeal to you, then Web Access is the only UI that will let your users access those features. Where Standard and Professional begin to differ is in team management. Only Professional gives project managers full resource management features, including team assignments, collaboration support, and specific things such as timesheets. Also, only Professional can make use of the capabilities provided by SharePoint when it and Project Server are combined for better back-end data access. Customizability, however, is a mixed bag, so shop carefully. You can customize Project Standard to a certain degree using Visual Basic for Applications. However, only Project Professional and Web Access can make use of the much beefier API offered by Project Server. Additionally, should project managers want to use the new Serverâs permissioning capabilities, they will have to turn to Professional and Web Access as well. Finally, Project Server can only be administered from the Web Access UI, unless youâve combined it with SharePoint, in which case it can largely be managed from SharePointâs central administration screens. For the most part, Microsoft has ensured that Project Professional is the required client version to make use of Project Server 2007. While the Web Access UI is somewhat functional, itâs really only good as an executive-style viewer of team project data and as a feature add-on to the fat client interface. Project Standard is good only for single-user project managers. Project Server 2007 and MOSS Architecturally, Project Server 2007 runs a middle road between Office Groove Server 2007 (which doesnât need SharePoint at all) and Office Forms Server 2007 (which is wholly contained in SharePoint Enterprise). Project Server is definitely its own entity, but one that can be enhanced in combination with SharePoint. Specific points of enhancement include integration with the Windows Workflow Foundation, document libraries, organizationwide search capability and team work site orientation. To clear some confusion right off the bat, however, MOSS includes a list feature called Project Tasks, which offers some Gantt-style features. This is an independent feature, however, and has no relation or connection to Project Server 2007. If you want to upgrade an existing Project 2003 server to Project 2007, you are in for some detail work. There are no easy wizards here. Migrating data is done via a special .ini file with a series of possible switch parameters that must be configured using a text editor. And, by the way, this step is mandatory. Youâre not going to get away with running a 2003 Project Server next to a 2007 Project Server and waiting until the data migrates itself through user interaction; Project Server 2003 and Project Server 2007 canât communicate, so the upgrade process is unavoidable. Once youâve upgraded, itâs time to connect your existing Project Server 2007 farm to a new or existing MOSS farm. This isnât just a straightforward matter of enabling communication between the two, however. Your first task in this scenario is to move your Project Server machines into the SharePoint domain which unfortunately means you will need to take the SharePoint farm down for this operation. The Project Server 2007 disks will need to install files on each SharePoint Server with front-facing client functionality. Once installed there, each of those instances will need to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies wizard. After that, youâll need to decide which of those machines will become actual Project Server application servers. Only on the Project Server application servers will you need to enable the Project Application service from the Central Management console. This all sounds involved, but Microsoftâs documentation makes it a fairly easy step-by-step process. The tricky part is managing your planning process properly so you know which services need to be enabled and where. Once all that work is completed, youâre still not done. Now, SharePoint is going to want to control the management of all team work sites. So the team sites youâve configured under Project Server will need to be migrated to the MOSS machine as well. After that, youâll also need to unhook Project from its internal configuration manager and wire it into SharePointâs equivalent. Again, Microsoftâs docs make this a fairly simple set of steps, but if youâve got a choice, installing Project Server within a SharePoint farm right from the start is easier. Finally, all the clients who were looking to Project Server for their team sites will need to be pointed at the new sites running off SharePoint -- thatâs the easiest part. You will need to remember that any clients looking to access Projectâs SharePoint features will still need to have the Office Project Professional 2007 client installed. We suppose thatâs reasonable given the nature of Microsoft, but we were actually hoping to see some included viewer functionality within SharePoint that would allow non-Project client users at least to see certain Project files even if they couldnât alter them. Even with the Web Access UI, however, that doesnât seem to be possible. New interfaces and features So after all this installation hassle, what does Project Server 2007 really give you? First, it smartens up your Project Server team work sites. These now have access to SharePoint-managed permissions, document libraries, communication capabilities, and search indexes. SharePoint users will be able to access Project data, not just to simply manage projects but also as part of SharePoint workflows. On a more granular level, we also enjoyed the new Project Web Access look and feel, which can run off a stand-alone Project Server or off a SharePoint Project application server. This has been updated to meld nicely with the new SharePoint UI. Microsoft has also updated the Project Server permissioning system. Administrators now have control over a number of new features, including calendar and Web views, feature add-ins, and specific data views. Itâs a powerful new set of security controls, but administrators will have to endure a learning curve to take full advantage of it. Microsoft has also taken a number of features from Project Server 2003 and beefed them up. Youâll find deeper Outlook integration via the new Outlook Add-In. This gets installed on a user-by-user basis via their Web Access accounts and amounts to a smarter Outlook sync feature. Once installed, it allows users and administrators to use Outlook as another interface for Project. That means project line items can show up as tasks or calendar items and be tracked all the way back to Project Server. Outlook can also act as a timesheet interface with its data again tracked by administrators via Project. Reporting is the recipient of another big upgrade when using Project Server 2007 because its reporting capabilities can now make use of data gleaned from not just Project clients, but also Project work sites and SharePoint work sites and document libraries. Users then get the ability to arrange that data in whatever reporting front end fits their needs: Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007, or Excel 2007. Install the Cube Building Service and your users will be able to access Microsoft SQL Analysis Services to build OLAP-style views for deep drill-down on Project data. This can be viewed using Project or using PivotTable features in Excel. Moving from project to project also gets a boost with customizable templates. Project Server comes with several out-of-box project templates, but these can be edited for specific needs or even created from scratch. Templates cover look and feel for users on the client as well as what they see on the team work site and even what they might see in outside applications such as Excel. Even better, templates run right down to the individual field level, meaning that a template can actually map data relationships between a task field in Project 2007, for example, and a reporting field in Excel. Out-of-box templates cover basic project types for a variety of vertical industries, such as construction or technology R&D, but can easily be tweaked for more specific tasks. This lets your company build a library of templates that project managers can use to quickly get a project moving. There are more features in Project Server 2007 than we can fully cover here (new cost and budgeting features, for instance, as well as slick integration with Office Project Portfolio Server). But as a stand-alone upgrade to Project Server 2003, itâs already worth the trouble. Combined with SharePointâs capabilities, it can be downright amazing in its integration of project management functionality and tracking in projects that never had these benefits before.
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Microsoft will resume rolling out Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Wednesday when it starts pushing the massive update to business users via Windows Automatic Update and the Windows Update Web site.
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Microsoft executives said they are working hard to finish up its&#160;Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office Project 2007, an update that some users have been waiting for before deploying the most recent version of the software.SP1 will update Project Professional 2007, Project Server 2007 and Project Portfolio Server 2007, said Keshav Puttaswamy, group program manager at Microsoft, speaking during the Microsoft Office Project Conference in Seattle on Monday.It will primarily fix bugs and improve stability and performance, said Mike Angiulo, general manager of the Microsoft Project business unit. It will also enhance some cache features, he said.While the conference might have been an ideal venue for announcing the release date for SP1, executives said they&#39;ll wait another two or three weeks before disclosing that information.Office Project 2007, the most recent version of the project management software, became&#160;available earlier this year. But as with other new Microsoft software, some customers have been waiting for SP1 before deploying it.Christopher Ludlow, director of project management at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, in San Diego, said he is waiting for SP1 before migrating to Project 2007. The system integrator he works with advised him to hold off because their experience was that Project 2007 is glitchy and unstable, he said.If SP1 fixes those issues, he&#39;s interested in some of the new features of Project 2007, including a reported improved network responsiveness that may mean he doesn&#39;t have to rely on Citrix for remote access.Microsoft executives touted some other new features in Project 2007 at the conference. One of the most important updates in Project 2007 is that it can support many more users than it could previously, said Angiulo. Technology consulting firm EDS has one of the biggest deployments of Project 2003, with 8,000 users, he said. &quot;They were driving the limit of what you could get out of it,&quot; he said.Microsoft and EDS put together a scalability lab to test volume users of Project 2007. They supported 40,000 users, he said. EDS has a goal of growing to 60,000 users.Angiulo also promoted the integration of Project with other Microsoft software, such as Outlook and Excel. Because many businesses use Office software, that integration sounds helpful to Ludlow.But some of the integration is forced, which is turning other businesses away. Jan Tervonen, vice president of technology at Seattle medical technology company MRS, currently supports Project 2003. She started the upgrade to 2007 but backed out when she learned that it required the newest version of SharePoint. She wasn&#39;t ready for that upgrade yet.On Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is scheduled to address the conference, and he&#39;s expected to describe future planned enhancements to Project, including deeper integration with Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. In addition, future versions of Project will support earlier stage projects that aren&#39;t yet fully defined, he&#39;ll say. Those features are part of an overall strategy at Microsoft to try to expand the use of Project beyond project managers, he&#39;s expected to say.
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Microsoft Corp. has released a major update to its server operating system designed to make the product more stable and secure.
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Microsoft announced a major support upgrade, clearer road maps for its Dynamics range of business applications and new financing.
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The June collection of Microsoft patches are upon us, and the company has announced four updates. Two of those are rated as 'critical.'
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The Microsoft Download Centre has been updated with some graphical improvements on both the search, listings and item pages. Crucially in the new look download centre many application downloads are now being
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Microsoft has released an update for the firewall included in XP service Pack 2 (SP2), to cure a serious vulnerability that could allow files to be shared by other Internet users.
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September&#39;s batch of Microsoft security patches was trimmed Friday, as Microsoft announced that a planned update to its SharePoint collaboration software would not be released this month.
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Adobe updates its Web development tool with support for Microsoft .Net.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will release six groups of security patches next week, including three critical updates for Windows and Excel users. The critical updates will fix bugs in many different versions of Microsoft's products, including the latest versions of Excel, Windows XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003, Microsoft said Thursday in a note on its Web site. Online criminals have used flaws in Excel and other Microsoft Office products in limited attacks over the past year. Typically, the attacker will e-mail the victim a maliciously encoded Office attachment. If the document is opened, the hacker can then gain access to the victim's computer. Microsoft isn't releasing further details on the flaws it's fixing until Tuesday, but it rates an update critical if it fixes a vulnerability that could be used by a hacker to remotely install unauthorized software on a victim's computer. Three other less-critical updates are also planned for next week's "Patch Tuesday" security fixes. They include "important" updates for Microsoft Publisher 2007 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 as well as a fix for Windows Vista. In descending order of severity, Microsoft rates updates as critical, important, moderate, or low.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has released a test version of its new Forefront Security for SharePoint software designed to support upcoming versions of Microsoft's portal software. The beta code, released Thursday, gives administrators a way to plug as many as five antivirus scanning engines into SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Services 3.0 in order to root out malicious or unwanted documents. The product is based on theÂ Antigen softwareÂ Microsoft picked up in its June 2005 acquisition of Sybari Software. Another Sybari-based product, Forefront Security for Exchange went into beta in July. This latest SharePoint release features a new Microsoft Antivirus engine, performance enhancements, and better management features. It also comes with better support for languages other than English. "Until now we've only had English versions," said Joe Licari, director of product management for Forefront. "This release will localize in 11 languages including Japanese and Chinese." Microsoft is tying the rollout of Forefront Security of SharePoint to the release of its SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Services 3.0 products. The commercial version will be available for download by year's end, and then on DVD during the first quarter of 2007. The beta release can beÂ downloaded here. Â
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In sharp contrast to last month&#39;s barrage of critical patches, Microsoft has offered up just one &quot;important&quot; fix for users to implement in its scheduled round of security updates for November.
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Microsoft this week updated an administrative tool for delaying Automatic Update and Windows Update rollouts of Windows XP Service Pack 2 from four months to eight months.