Innovative Technology Weblog

This website is about innovative technology. LinkedIn (u might have heard of it…) has been pretty innovative in pissing it’s users off recently….

First the (unapproved) possible usage of profile pictures and more, now it appears LI has decided to spam my activity feed with job postings.

job spam

 Cheerz,

Martijn

With System Center Update Publisher (SCUP) Microsoft provides a platform for adding 3^rdparty updates to your conventional WSUS updates. Until last week SCUP 4.5 was available for adding 3^rd party software, driver and BIOS updates to a WSUS server. With SCUP you can either use a catalog file to import multiple updates from a vendor’s website at once or just simply add your own update packages to SCUP to deploy it in your enterprise environment as they were Microsoft updates. Now, with SCUP 4.5 there were some issues which are resolved within SCUP 2011. Some of the issues include the following:

• Limited configuration options for download behavior (i.e. metadata only vs full content)
• Expired updates cannot be removed from the updates server easily
• Approval and publishing updates requires multiple steps to be taken

With SCUP 2011 you now have a so called ConfigMgr integration. This integration option can be used to regulate download behavior for an update. In general you probably want clients to download only metadata from SCCM/SCUP if only a few clients request an update. When the number of clients increase it would be better to download full content so that clients will use common distribution points instead of an internet location to download the update to avoid unnecessary bandwidth utilization. With the thresholds you can regulate this now.

Expiring and removing updates properly was a hell of a job if an update was removed from a vendor’s catalog. In SCUP 2011 you can use a new Software Update Cleanup Wizard for this. So now, expiring a software update that exists on the update server but is not in the SCUP repository is an easy job.

SCUP 2011 has a Publish tab where you can bundle updates that you want to deploy to your clients. This is a new feature that makes it somewhat easier to manage and administer the SCUP update repository.

What I like the most about SCUP is that you are able to deploy software with the WSUS functionality available. In large enterprise environments normal software distribution requires lots of steps to be taken by various departments for each individual software update. These steps include scripting, testing, configure SCCM packages, collections, advertisements, etc. New software updates like Adobe’s Flash Player are being released very rapidly. It requires that you’ll have to execute the same procedure over again to deploy it in your enterprise. Using SCUP and Adobe’s update catalog instead will save you a lot of time.

Installing drivers, BIOS, hardware utilities and firmware for instance on Dell systems is an easy job using SCUP. Minor disadvantage is that you will need the OpenManage client running on client systems to provide some necessary WMI classes. These extra classes will be used to identify the hardware peripherals. WSUS uses this information to compare with the catalog logic rules:

With SCUP you can use the logic which comes with the catalogs to deploy a software update bundle that include multiple updates at once. Compare the logic within the catalog with the queries you normally use in SCCM collections for grouping the client systems what you’ll need for targeting the software.

You can also create your own updates. As an example i’ve added the Google Chrome browser installer as a required update with Adobe Flash Player as a prerequisite .

Happy updating!!!

Douwe van de Ruit

European event on mobile strategies and App development  - March 7 & 8, 2001

- An impression -

The 7th and 8th of March were an inspiring two days on mobile application strategies and development. The event was held on the Westergasfabriek terrain in Amsterdam. Target audience: C-level management, consultants, developers and enthusiasts. In short a very broad audience indeed. As Daniel Erasmus, the host for the keynote speeches, put it in one slide: Development + Business = Magic

Being a consultant and app-enthusiast myself I had to divide my attention between the DevCamps, entrepreneurs present and keynote speeches.

Read the rest of this entry »

My last post was on the new Windows Live Workspaces if I am not mistaken… since then a lot has happened including the final releases of the new Office 2010 suite. As you all know this includes both a new SharePoint version as a new client to work with that serverplatform. Microsoft has pushed the integration into the right direction this time…. One of my favorite features (besides the CQWP, but that was already available in 2007) are the new co-authoring features in the Office 2010 family.

For now co-authoring is enabled/available for:
- Word
- Excel
- OneNote

More info from Microsoft on this topic can be found at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff718249.aspx (Co authoring overview in SharePoint 2010)
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_office_word/archive/2009/09/09/co-authoring-in-word-2010.aspx  (Co-authoring ie simultaneous editing) in Word 2010

Recently I had the proper use case to actually use this feature for its proper duty!  Together with a few colleagues I was responsible for answering a large RfP under ‘some’ time pressure….. Everyone in college or in business who has had to work together on a document knows the caveats….. how to keep up with versions, how to merge the different additions, how to share the latest version….
Have you ended up with a merged document containing changes from more than 2 authors? Was it fun judging all those changes in that rainbow of colors? Bet it was…..

I’ll leave the general description of the co-authoring feature to the Microsoft dev team and instead will focus on the practical use of this nice feature. Some prerequisites:
- SharePoint 2010
- Word 2010 client
(this applies to the Word co-authoring of course… Excel is a bit different and I’ll hope to get to that later when I have to make a joint business-case . Also, checkin/checkout should be disabled.

So, where do we start? Well, in a SP workspace with a document in it….

And how? U could click on the document name, and then in the view choose edit in word (co-authoring in web app version not supported I believe…. Note to self: test that too…) or just call function menu and choose edit in word.

Ok, so then you are busy with multiple people in a document… the catch is that you might be editing the same document,but not the same section ! Word locks the area in which an editor is working for other users until the editor saves the changes to the server, thus releasing the sections and sharing the updated results with the other authors.

But, it is possible to comment in the section someone else is editing… not the same I agree, but perhaps usefull. However, the other user would have to save (and u too) to synch the changes and make them visible. Until then Andy wont see the comment…

Its easy to see where the other user(s) are editing. A bracket appears indicating the locked section. Commenting as said is still possible, editing isnt (see notification in bottom left corner) My section locking bracket appears differently, as seen below:

If you have a small document, or you have a writer going through it like a berserker touching every paragraph you might get something like this:

All sections locked until Andy saves the document, synching the changes and releasing them to me, the other author…
From the backstage view it is possible to see who is editing the document, and send them a message. A quick image:
 

An overview of users (and the ability to send them an IM via integrated OCS) is also available at the bottom of the screen…

When both users try to save at the same time the second one is blocked…. Wait a few seconds and try again… Oh yeah, the indicator on save button indicates available updates…

Thats all for now folks ! Enjoy your co-authoring and remember to save often ! No sectionsquatters !!!

Ciao,

Martijn

ps: Thnx to www.twitter.com/@awdhaan for testing this feature together with me….