Eli Robillard's World of Blog.

Search: are you willing to manage it as an application?

2012-02-03T15:58:00Z

The question was asked, "how hard is it to configure FAST and what does that effort give you?" The none-too-helpful answer is that with every search product you get what you give. FAST happens to have more substance so logically there will be more to configure than some alternatives, and you can get more out of it in the long run and continuously grow its ROI as you learn its ropes. First ask what you're searching for - know your corpus. How large is the corpus, how many users will you have in years...(read more)

Revisiting an 8 year old post on cookies and opt-in

2012-01-31T16:59:00Z

Common Sense and Opt-In: http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2003/05/08/6680.aspx Eight years ago I wrote a brief piece on cookie management proposing that preferences be remembered by default with an opt-out option. The part that got the most feedback was this: The act of remembering preferences in the form of cookies is not gathering information on surfing habits. If the issue is the perception of privacy, then educate your users about cookies. If you care about privacy, provide a button...(read more)

Thoughts on SharePoint Application Pools, Recycling and "JIT Lag"

2012-01-30T17:28:00Z

What are Application Pools? Application Pools are a .NET construct, and each pool represents an instance of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) executing managed .NET code. Each application pool in IIS hosts one or more web applications, and the recommendation is to stay under 10 pools per server. This recommendation was made in 32-bit days, and other considerations like 32 vs. 64-bit, available RAM, and I/O (bandwidth and disk usage) really take over as you add application pools. With some planning...(read more)

Toronto SharePoint Camp 2011 - Thank-you!

2011-11-16T21:09:00Z

The 5th Annual Toronto SharePoint Camp was last Saturday and it was another terrific success. Thanks to the TSPUG executive committee and the small army of volunteers who made it happen, and to the smiling faces of this year's 200+ attendees for making it all worthwhile. BIG Congratulations to the recipient of our first ever Toronto SharePoint Community Champion Award : Brian Lalancette . Brian was nominated by members of TSPUG and selected from all nominees by the TSPUG Executive for his tireless...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 and Canada

2011-11-09T22:39:00Z

I love my Samsung Focus and I don't know why it isn't the most popular phone in Canada. WPCentral reported today on the lacklustre support of Canadian carriers for the WP7 platform. Basically, even if you've been sold on the platform or a particular phone by a friend, review or foreign marketing (because there's none here), you're likely to be stonewalled by sales people. People who see my Focus love its speed, its easy fast UI, the fact that you can get a second battery, and the fact that you can...(read more)

SharePoint 2010 Workflow for Multiple Items (Architecture)

2011-03-16T16:14:00Z

I had the question today of whether SharePoint 2010 supports workflow on multiple items, since Groove's workflow apparently supported multiple items and that model disappeared when Groove Workspaces were amalgamated into SharePoint Sites and SharePoint Workspace (the client utility). It's a great question, the short answer is that yes, it's possible. You could brute-force it in 2007 and that strategy should still carry over to 2010, and 3 new features (that I can think of) support multi-item scenarios...(read more)

Drag and Drop for SharePoint

2010-12-02T22:54:00Z

Fellow Infusionite Oguz Demirel just published a super-cool CodePlex feature that makes any SharePoint library drag-and-droppable, introducing: Drag & Drop for SharePoint . The Codeplex page has screen shots and all that, but I have to rave about the simple coolness of it all. Just like in Explorer you can draw a box around the files to pick. Then you can either drag them: onto a folder in the library, to another library in Quick Launch, or to a Parent folder by dragging them up to the breadcrumb...(read more)

How to: Build a Server Core Domain Controller

2010-11-11T00:00:00Z

When I started putting together my standard virtual machines for development and demonstrating SharePoint 2010, I wanted to have a domain controller that I could share and use for any new image. That way I don't need to continually recreate my service accounts and test users every time, which means the effort I put into creating AD groups and populating user properties is also re-used. Why server core? Server core flavours of Windows Server don't provide a UI, and are usually used to build specialized...(read more)

This weekend: SharePoint Saturday Toronto

2010-11-09T16:07:00Z

Wow, this Saturday offers 21 sessions in 3 tracks, all for free . Given the billable rate of this speaker list, this has to be the best bargain you'll see for a while. And I'm going to go ahead and reveal a secret here - attendees at SharePoint Saturday will be eligible for a great discount on the SharePoint Summit , coming to Toronto this January 31 through February 2. The only catch? You need to attend to get the discount. But I'm sure you wnat to be there anyway, this is a world-class event and...(read more)

Fix available to protect SharePoint servers from ASP.NET vulnerability

2010-09-28T18:04:00Z

Today the fix shipped to remedy a cryptographic ASP.NET vulnerability. The update is listed as Important , and it is strongly recommended that this security update be applied to all IIS servers including those hosting SharePoint and other ASP.NET applications. Though the greater risk is to public-facing servers, all servers should be protected. The fix was announced as a Security Bulletin: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-sep.mspx A webcast will be held this afternoon to describe...(read more)

How to protect SharePoint servers from the ASP.NET vulnerability

2010-09-21T15:57:00Z

On Friday an ASP.NET vulnerability was announced at an Argentine security conference, Microsoft posted Security Advisory 2416728 within a few hours, and by early Saturday morning Scott Guthrie described steps to mitigate ASP.NET sites against the vulnerability . Scott also posted a FAQ about the vulnerabilty that describes steps being taken towards a permanent solution, and how to detect attacks by monitoring server logs. Monday the SharePoint Products and Technologies team posted Steps to protect...(read more)

Toronto SharePoint User Group: Tonight Cancelled, Next Meeting: June 16

2010-05-19T19:43:00Z

Apologies all, notification was to go out sooner but apparently we're having technical difficulties so please help spread the word: The May meeting (tonight) is cancelled, leaving you free to enjoy the summery Toronto evening. Enjoy! Next month on Wednesday, June 16 , TSPUG is back with not one, but two , count'em two presentations: First up will be Matthew Pakula from AvePoint talking about their terrific tools for MOSS 2007 and SPS 2010. Then I will reveal the secret toolkit I use to help companies...(read more)

The relative effort of SharePoint 2010 vs. 2007

2010-04-29T16:12:00Z

SharePoint 2007 was the best demo-ware ever. It’s like going to the pet store and seeing a great dog that does backflips all kinds of tricks – and it really is a smart dog and it does all those tricks – but when you get it home you realize that what you need is a dog that gets the paper. SharePoint 2007 can be trained, but is fundamentally a platform where Microsoft's priority was to get the infrastructure right – to make it trainable and extensible. Because it was great demo-ware it caught on like...(read more)

Register Today for the Toronto SharePoint Camp: Saturday, March 20

2010-03-05T15:35:00Z

The third annual Toronto SharePoint Camp will deliver over 20 sessions by the best Canadian and international SharePoint experts on a wealth of topics. Whether you're a developer, server administrator, architect, power user, or business sponsor; whether you're learning about SharePoint for the first time or a seasoned pro; whether you're migrating, developing, designing, or planning; this is the event for you! FREE Registration includes lunch. Thanks to our wonderful Diamond and Platinum sponsors...(read more)

Toronto SharePoint Camp 2010 - Call for Speakers

2010-01-18T16:29:00Z

The third annual Toronto SharePoint Camp is scheduled for March 20, 2010 . To be considered, please read the Call for Speakers ( attached to this post , below) and submit your abstract(s) using the form provided by midnight on Friday, February 12. This year we plan to add one room and expand the number of sessions slightly from about 20 to about 25. As in past years while everyone is welcome to submit more than one abstract for consideration, each speaker will be selected for a single session in...(read more)