Since I last posted on this James O'Neill has released an updated version of the library for Hyper V. He's now up to 1.00b over on codeplex.

There are a number of additions and amendments which caught me out initially as a parameter name had changed and caused my script to return all the virtual machines rather than just the one I expected... but the library is more complete and now I'm extending my collection of scripts for making the provisioning of test and staging servers more automated I expect that will be very welcome.

Schools, teachers and students can now access and download Microsoft development software Free of Charge!

This is via the Dreamspark Program:

The software available includes:

Nothing to do with technology, but intended to make you smile

A sign fixed to the wall of a room in Bedworth Civic Hall...

"This room has been redecorated - please do not fix anything to the walls"

As part of their ongoing commitment to delivering Sharepoint based solutions into the NHS, Novotronix are working closely with the Microsoft Healthcare team.

One of the key areas of Microsoft's initiative is the development of the NHS CUI MOSS guidance and solutions enablers.  The solutions enablers are a suite of Sharepoint sites, lists and templates for things such as Policies & Procedures, Meeting Management and ScoreCarding.  These solutions enablers complement the wider offerings that Novotronix already offer clients within the NHS.

More details & a full list of the solution enablers can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/nhs/content/articles/microsoft-healthcare-partners-trained-in-nhs-cui-moss-guidance-and-solution.aspx  

If you haven't already heard, I thought I'd just place a reminder... the full February cumulative update packages are now available. Full details on the SharePoint Team blog as usual. They have also included some clear instructions on creating a slipstream source for SharePoint installs with a completely current set of binaries.

Full details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/03/09/uber-packages-of-february-cumulative-update-are-ready.aspx

Slipstream details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/01/08/how-to-create-a-sharepoint-slipstream-using-the-latest-updates.aspx

I'm a bit late posting this, but as a reminder, Adobe has now released the 64 bit iFilter.

As a reminder, the iFilter is needed to enable the search engine to crawl and index content within PDF files.

Download the iFilter

Today, Microsoft and HiSoftware are pleased to announce the release of the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0.  The AKS v2.0 provides an accessible development framework and significantly reduces the level of effort and knowledge needed by customers and partners to improve the accessibility of SharePoint based sites and applications.

See http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/03/09/announcing-the-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-aks-v2-0.aspx for further details... 

Setting this up for the first time was a little challenging. I couldn't figure out why no matter what combination of settings and credentials I gave the search service it wouldn't crawl the public folders. I tried crawl rules, complex URLs, content access accounts, but eventually I gave up focusing on SharePoint options and started to look more closely at what was happening at the other end - what was exchange doing?

I had already checked the IIS settings for the public virtual directory and it showed that Basic and Integrated Windows Authentication were both enabled, so I next tried to hit the public folders URL with it in my local intranet zone so that windows would pass through my credentials automatically - just like we set up SharePoint all the time. Anyhow, I realised that no matter what I did with the IIS settings I couldn't get to the page without first entering my credentials on a form based login for OWA. I googled some more to find that although I was setting the authentication options in IIS, there are some additional settings in Exchange System Manger.

If you open ESM, then expand Servers, <server name>, Protocols, HTTP, you'll find the exchange virtual server, if you right click on the virtual server and select properties on the second tab there is an innocuous little box that says "Enable Forms Based Authentication".

So it didn't matter what I did in IIS Manager because it was overridden by the settings here. Well, someone helpfully pointed out in a forum that you can in fact create a second virtual server and set that to work without Exchange FBA. Yay! That's what I need, our existing users can keep their interaction the same on the current URLs, we'll create a new virtual server and set that not to use Exchange FBA, just Windows Integrated authentication and hopefully our crawl will work fine.

So the crawl has reached the end and 18,224 items are indexed and searchable in milliseconds. Lovely. I just need to make sure I've put all the settings back how they should be (you did make a note of all those changes you made as you fiddled in IIS, Exchange & SharePoint didn't you?) and once I'm happy that the URLs are accesible in the right places the job's done.

Via Mark Harrison.....

Commerce Server 2009 delivers the ability to increase your business reach by making it possible to sell via multiple channels by using an out-of-the-box shopping site, SharePoint Commerce Services, and the Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation. The new out-of-the-box shopping site leverages SharePoint Commerce Services, which provides a gallery of ASP.NET 3.5 Web parts and controls, a comprehensive e-commerce shopping feature-set, and technology integration between Commerce Server and SharePoint technologies. The Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation provides a new unified, extensible run-time programming model for Commerce Server, including new run-time e-commerce capabilities

Building a server today, I got caught by the loopback problem.

The search crawl logs don't index content and give a misleading

<message>

'Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.'

</message>

The support article by Microsoft will resolve this

This was annoying because the same thing caught me last time - and again I went looking at policies, permissions....argh!