A few weeks back I blogged about the availability of two QFE's that fix 60+ issues in the content migration API as well as (aka: WSS 3.0) and content deployment (aka: MOSS 2007). Now the KB articles have been published that include mode detail on these QFE's:

» Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package: May 20, 2008
» Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package: May 20, 2008

Funny how so many of these media stories and blog posts out there focus on Bill Gates leaving Microsoft last week and not nearly as much as dedicating more of his time towards his foundation. I think this is a fantastic move all around... for Microsoft, their customers, the Gates Foundation and the world. I don't know Bill or never had the chance to meet him or can claim to know him so I won't say that it's good for him.

Change is a good thing... it is almost always a good thing in my mind.

Microsoft needs a work over. It's grown huge and feels pressure from it's own weight. I love seeing companies like Intuit, Google and Apple frustrate Microsoft because it just fosters more competition... this always is a good thing for business and consumers. Prices come down and we get better and better stuff! Just think... years ago you couldn't pull up an intersection of an overhead view of a business park before you left on a trip. Now use your mapping engine of choice: Google Maps or Local Live. But to have good change, you need to have a change in the blood too. Is Ozzie the right choice? Only time will tell... but if not, someone else will get a shot. I'm not saying the Bill couldn't have done it, but new ideas and a fresh perspective only helps. I know how my perspective on Vista and Windows 2008 has been changed a bit after using Apple's Leopard OS on my Mac (one of the sub-goals of getting a MacBook Pro).

So Bill is now spending most of his time with his wife Melinda at the Gates Foundation. It's a massive organization that can do tremendous good. Look at their endowment... with Warren Buffett's contribution of $37B (in 2006 dollars, likely to be worth much more over the life of the gift), is a staggering $67B+ (again, in 2006 dollars). This dwarfs all other foundations such as Carnagie and Ford by a long shot. The Gates Foundation can have an even bigger impact on world health than one country! This man has made such a different in the business community and lives of every day people (and help create a career for me and I suspect 90%+ of my readers). What's really cool though is how the foundation is run. There have been countless articles about it (my favorite come from Fortune, the Wall Street Journal & Wired), but a few things that stuck with me:

• First and foremost, Buffett's gift stipulates the money MUST be spent in Bill & Melinda's lifetime. No hoarding the money for future things... you've got the spend it or give it back/it stops flowing.
• A vast number of large foundations simply try to exist and not spend their money... 28 of the 30 largest spend less than 5% of their assets!
• Bill & Melinda personally review every grant request in excess of $40k. But it's how they do that that is cool. They both do their research, reading and taking notes. Then they go for a long walk without notes, computers or charts and have a conversation about it. The idea: if they can't have a detailed conversation about it without their notes, they don't know it well enough to make a call.
• They don't try to invent new things. Instead they find things that work but are challenge by scale. For instance if someone has come up with a great educational program that works great for the inner city of some major metro, but only has the resources for 5 schools, they jump in and inject cash to scale it way up.
• It's run like a relentless business. Performance is measured just like marketing and products in a for-profit business. If something isn't performing, it's nixed.

There is so much more... I just can't wait to see what things the Gates Foundation tackles. It's really inspiring and I can see it being so much more rewarding to make a significant difference in the world. Good luck Bill!

Last December (12/2007) I ditched my Dell D820 and made the jump over to a MacBook Pro. Its now been just over six months since I made the switch and thought I'd pass a few thoughts off to those who are considering making the switch.

First, I still love this machine. The only regret, and I'm not sure if this is really a regret, is that I went for the 15" over the 17". I do love the 15" form factor, but after seeing a few friend's 17" MBP's at the MVP summit and other events, I'm just blown away by the screen real estate. Just unsure if I'd have enough room on a plane to get some real work done with a 17". Either you go, the horsepower is impressive... this is still one of the most performant machines I've seen that doesn't ship with a portable chiropractor (only 5.4lbs for the 15" version).

I also love the peripheral story for MBP's. The power supply is tiny compared to all the other PC based laptops I've owned. What's better is that you have two cables: if you only need a short distance, just use the brick... but you can snap off the plug piece and tag on the longer 3-pronged cable for an additional 5-6 feet. When you travel overseas (which I haven't done just yet with this machine, but will later this year), you can just swap out the plug without using some massive brick converter. Spare batteries are also much smaller.

Oh... having a FireWire 800 port is great for virtual machines (2x the speed of USB 2), but I'm real tempted to snag a new 16GB SSD ExpressCard34 disk for my VMs (only one I've found that uses the PCIe connection on the ExpressCard34 slot is a Delkin at a pricy $400, but that might be worth the perf when doing presentations). Read up on this thread I started for more info on how it works...

One small complaint: if Microsoft would just hurry up and release the WHS Power Pack that includes x64 backup support... I haven't switched to Vista x64 because of this. But it's so close, I think I'll go ahead and do the triple boot (Leopard, Vista x64 & Win2k8) that Spence details on his blog when my new MPB comes in. New one? OK... let me explain...

Now for the sad story (here come the "told-ya-so" emails from the Apple haters :))... appears my MBP has been a lemon. It's been in the local Apple store (or at the repair depot) three times since March. All the sudden, the laptop's keyboard & trackpad have died... hard. The first time it happened was the day after my last presentation at the SharePoint Conference in March. The second time was the evening of the last day of my class in NYC. Those two times bit me hard because I couldn't get into my machine after that happened. Both times the top plate was replaced and I was good as new after a few days... but I lost a lot of confidence so I picked up a portable bluetooth keyboard. What a good call... because the trackpad and keyboard died again less than 1.5 hours before my last presentation at TechEd IT Pro. I was pretty pissed... and the local store took me quite seriously. So I dropped it off on a Friday night before I headed out on a week-long vacation with the family. Over the weekend I reconnected with them and they said they can't be certain what the problem is. So, after the same thing has broken 3 times (granted the fixes were different each time so it isn't like they kept replacing the same thing over and over... I'm just sparing you some details), they have ordered me a brand new machine to replace my current one. I should have it within the next 10 days. Yes... that's annoying, but it isn't like this is some widespread problem.

Even with this lemon experience (hey, everyone has a bad device roll off the floor... it's how you respond to it) I highly recommend the MBP. At this point, it will definitely be my next laptop as well. I'm just hoping the Q4 / November MBP update includes support for 8GB of RAM!

When you're ready to take your organization into the wide world of SharePoint, your rollout and planning process can be quite daunting. Most training options revolve around the use of SharePoint such as lists, libraries, etc. What you don't usually find are classes that deal with the planning and adoption process.

Bob Mixon has a class, Mastering SharePoint, offered in a few different delivery mechanisms. It covers how to work with teams, manage projects, change management, governance, how to document and build an enterprise taxonomy; then build it in SharePoint.

Looking for some hard-core development training on building MOSS 2007 Web Content Management (WCM) / Publishing sites? I'll be teaching my class, WCM401: Developing Publishing Sites with SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management, three times over the summer months through the Ted Pattison Group in two different formats.

Can't get away from the office for a whole week? Can't travel? The week of July 21-25 I'll be teaching my WC-WCM401 class (which is slightly modified from the hands-on class) via Live meeting for only $995/person (discounts are available for multiple registrations). You get the same class as the hands on version (minus two modules) with the added convenience of not leaving the office / home! Register here.

Want a more interactive & rich experience? I'll be teaching my WCM401 hands-on class the week of August 4-7 in Irvine, California for $2,395. This class will be held in the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC), a state-of-the-art facility! Register here.

If California is too remote for you, I'll be teaching the same class the week of September 22-25 in the Microsoft MTC in Atlanta, Georgia for $2,395. Register here.

For those in-person hands-on classes in California & Georgia, we'll schedule a night or two for those interested to head out for dinner and drinks to shoot the breeze. If you've got a project you're working on and need help, this is a great time to bring some questions to the table outside of the classroom.

I'll be attending & presenting at the TechEd 2008 EMEA Developer conference in Barcelona, Spain the week of November 10-14, 2008. I'm real excited about this trip as I've never been to Spain! I've got a few sessions I'll be presenting:

• Creating & Debugging Custom Timer Jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Creating Custom Document Converters for MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites
• Don't Be a Tool, Be a Better SharePoint Developer through Tools!

You can check out the public list of sessions here as well as vote for the most interesting ones. Of course you want to start voting for the three above sessions... right? :)

[via ECM Team Blog]

TechNet now has two new pieces up on the subject of MOSS 2007 WCM. I had a chance to review these and find them to be quite helpful and recommend both:

» TechNet: Administering Web content management

» TechNet: White paper: End-to-End Content Deployment Walkthrough

I've long needed a single source to point people to when it comes to debugging and logging in SharePoint. I'm sure someone will say "oh look at my post" in a comment when this is read... please feel free to add comments to this post pointing to your debugging tricks.

When developers get tripped up with a nasty bug or something when building custom components in SharePoint, from Web Parts to server controls or even custom Features without a line of custom code (just loaded up with CAML)... well, effective debugging and logging can turn into being a developers best friend and get them out of a bind.

In my mind for you to be a SharePoint developer worth your pay, you must know how troubleshoot... heck... to be any kind of developer, you MUST know how to troubleshoot on your own. The trick is SharePoint can be quite daunting for those new to the platform and need a little help. Hopefully what follows will help you too!

Debugging Tips & Techniques

Attaching the debugger:
First and foremost, any SharePoint developer must be able to attach the Visual Studio debugger. Let's face it, unless you're using the VSeWSS or creating a workflow using Visual Studio 2008, F5 just doesn't work. You will have to manually attach the debugger. Well, it isn't that hard. Check out this post that shows you how to do it and also shows how to create a shortcut in Visual Studio.

Attaching the debugger to GAC'd assemblies:
"Why aren't my breakpoints being hit?!?!" Ever been there? Me too... what a PITA that is! What's going on? Well, the assemblies are in the GAC and the Visual Studio debugger can't see the debugging symbols (aka: *.pdb). Unless you've gone through the trouble of setting up a symbol store where all your PDBs are going, you'll need to put the debugging symbols in the same location as the assembly. The trick is finding the folder that contains your DLL in the GAC.

The c:\windows\assembly folder is not a real folder, it's a virtual folder. To get to the REAL folder, do the following:

• Start » Run
• %systemroot%\assembly\gac [ENTER]

This will open the GAC folder. Now, poke around until you find a folder that looks like this (you might need to jump up one folder and dive into the MSIL folder): [assembly file name -.DLL extention]\[assembly version in format of #.#.#.#]__[assembly public key token].

When you find that folder, open it up and you'll see your assembly. Copy the PDB file to that folder and then attach the debugger for some debugging joy!

Gimme my ASP.NET YSOD!
You've seen it... something errors out and all SharePoint says is "unknown error occurs." Great... thanks guys... about as helpful as "service engine soon" on my truck's dashboard. Arg! Not all errors are shown because that would be a security issue. So how do you get it? Just turn the callstack on and the custom errors off as shown in this post. Another awesome option is Ted Pattison's debugging Feature. Ted blogged it up here, but you can download it from his site here; you want the SharePointDebugger.zip file. This guy is a Web application scoped Feature that makes these changes for you.

Debugging Feature receivers & timer jobs:
These can be one of the toughest things to debug. They fire and sometimes are hard to catch or know if they blew past your breakpoint. "Am I even attached to the right process?" Even the most seasoned hit this. I've got a little trick I picked up along the way that helps. In my MSDN timer job article I show a technique of using an Assert (jump to the bottom, the section on Debugging Custom Timer Jobs). If you add the following code, a dialog will pop up on the server when it hits that line and will wait for you to address it:

• System.Diagnostics.Trace.Assert(false)

That gives you plenty of time to attach the debugger to the right process.

Debugging tools:
Walk, don't run, and get the following:

• Reflector: lets you peek into compiled assemblies.
• DebugView: look at everything you emit in the debug statements.
• Fiddler: HTTP debugging proxy letting you see all traffic on your machine.
• SharePoint Manager 2007: Don't go in the database... use this guy to see everything in your farm!

Debugging resources:

• Tess' blog: If it's broken, fix it you should - a fantastic title! Got some free time? Check out her awesome debugging demos!
• Vincent Rothwell's Debugging tips for SharePoint - ladies and gents, THE definitive source starting high level and going all the way into windbg!
• Debugging Microsoft .NET 2.0 Applications by John Robbins - low level stuff, but it all applies to SharePoint.

Logging Tips

LogViewer Feature:
All those log files in the [..]\12\LOGS folder are hard to look at... what a pain to read! I know... go get a browser-based viewer snapin by Scot Hillier. This adds a new link to the Central Administration Operations page that lets you pick & filter the log files. Download it from the CodePlex Features project.

Scot Hillier's LogViewer Feature

Throttle Logging:
Let's face it, if you are debugging, you're only interested in what happened in the last few seconds or minutes on your server. You don't need a ton of log files. Plus, you need them to be much more manageable. Go Central Administration » Operations » Diagnostic Logging. On this page you can set the number of log files to retain and how long each one should run. I set the values on my dev machines to only run for 3 minutes and keep the last 5 log files.

You can also turn on verbose logging... this will make the machine slow down a bit, but you'll get a TON of data. This is great for debugging problems with Feature activation... sometimes it even points to the specific XML/CAML node that's causing the issue! Just a word of warning... don't leave verbose enabled on your production box... SharePoint turns into one chatty app and those log files fill up! But more data points is always better than less when debugging!

How I like to setup my logging when I'm troubleshooting on a development machine.

Hope this helps!

Yes sir-ee... one week of TechEd North America 2008 in the books and one to go. This past week was a blast... especially for me. I always love TechEd... the best parts are seeing old and new friends (which I think I'll pass on naming for fear of leaving someone off) and meeting customers working with SharePoint. I really wish I could have attended a few more sessions than I did, but such is life. Let me recap a few things and look forward to next week...

Pro MOSS 2007 WCM Development Book Released
I finally got to see the book I had been working on for the last 12 months. What you might not know is that was that Monday's book signing was the first time I got a chance to see the book. In fact, WROX hadn't had a chance to see the final product from the printer either! The give-away shipment was the first one to leave the printer. We knew it would arrive on Monday, just not entirely sure when. So I stopped by the booth early in the day and they said around 3p was when they expected it. Around 2:45p there I was hanging with some friends in the Office TLC area and saw a cart with a bunch of boxes go by. I think "ok, it's close... I'll go check it out" and sure enough I saw my name on the boxes. "Cool! I finally get to see my book!" So I walk over to the booth and awaited the first box to be cracked to hold my first copy. Then someone asks "are you signing them?" I look up and there were 70+ people waiting for it... of course I'll sign it! These people were waiting patiently for it... that's the last I could do. That's the scene I blogged about on Tuesday as did Jim, my guy at WROX (Katie is my gal / editor) at WROX. The scene was somewhat repeated on Wednesday & Thursday as blogged by Jim via camera phone (although it was a much more orderly line). I see someone has already taken one of the signed books and stuck it up on Amazon as a used copy for $80!!! Freaking hilarious. I'll be signing more next week on Thursday & Friday of the IT Pro week... most likely around lunch time.

My Sessions (OFC02-TLC & OFC307)
I had two sessions this week at TechEd:

• Don't Be a Tool, Be a Better SharePoint Developer through Tools! (OFC02-TLC)
  Thursday, June 5 @ 2:45p
• Building High Performance Solutions on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (OFC307)
  Friday, June 6 @ 1p

The slide decks & available code for both talks are up on my speaking page now. Thanks to everyone who came and filled out evals. I had a lot of fun delivering both talks and it wouldn't have been nearly as fun without you guys being so interactive and engaging. Hats off to you & a big thanks from me. I hope you learned something valuable!

Looking Forward to TechEd NA 2008 IT Pro
Next week Microsoft does it again with TechEd IT Pro week Tuesday-Friday. While I have two sessions I'm delivering late in the week, I won't be around the whole week. After being gone for the dev week and on the road teaching the following week, I just can't be gone a full week next week (damn, that's a lot of instances of the word week in one sentence!). One week away is hard on the family, much less three in a row. I will be down for SharePint on Monday night (more on that in a moment) for a short bit and then around all day Thursday & Friday. If you're looking to link up, best place to find me is at the SharePoint911/Ted Pattison Group booth in the expo (#1125) or in the Office TLC area.

SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night
Last week we did SharePint, our informal gathering of SharePoint professionals at BB King's club just a bit of a walk down from the convention center. We'll be doing it again at the same place next Monday night from 7p until whenever. Please feel free to come by and get your drink on, enjoy some great music, and meet fellow folks in the same line of work. Don't worry about talking shop... you'll get plenty of that all week. I'm going to drive down (from Jacksonville, about 2.5hrs away) for it but likely head out a bit early to make it home not too too late. But plenty will be there quite late... I know I can count on my guys Bob Fox and Eric Shupps for that. :)

This page provides resources for IT pros to help you plan and implement a Web Content Management (WCM) solution using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

» TechNet: Web Content Management Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007

If you are looking for developer information, check out MSDN:

» MSDN: Web Content Management Resource Center