Office System - David Overton's Blog

I'm sorry to be so blunt. I get asked about this quite often, so thought I would write it down. The problem is that the Office 2007 applications will only run in a Terminal Server environment if volume licensing media and a volume license keys are used. Unfortunately the MAPS kit does not include volume licensing media, which means that the Office 2007 can not be used in a TS environment. There are some options on how to move this forward, which are: Acquire the Premium edition of MSDN via the Microsoft Open License Program. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa700832.aspx or For their own business use, Partners could purchase Office 2007 via the Microsoft Open License Program or one of the other volume licensing programs. Some people have commented that the same restrictions were not in place for the beta of Office 2007. It is worth noting that the beta code for Office 2007 software was created without regard to the channels that it will later be sold or distributed in. For this reason, Office...

Someone asked me how to do this and I discovered that you can't have a negative discount percentage, negative quantity or negative price. So this makes it impossible to do... well, no, but it is not quite as easy as we would like. To make it work you need to create a Product and Service csv file to import to make it work. Here are the step by step instructions on installing it and using it. Installing the trade-in items Go to the BCM menu and select the Product and Services menu item Press the import button at the bottom of the dialog to get the screen shown on the left Create a csv file on your desktop called tradein.csv (start / run "notepad %homepath%\tradein.csv") Copy and paste the text below into the text file and save Trade In (10000), Trade in, -10000 Trade In (1000), Trade in, -1000 Trade In (100), Trade in, -100 Trade In (10), Trade in, -10 Trade In (1), Trade in, -1 browse the csv file on your desktop and press import Job done Using the trade-in items in an opportunity Now we have these...

I thought I would repost this as it is a very often asked question. Eric who posted this has said as much as can be said today. I hope to be able to break silence soon on more :) The statement for me that has the most interest as many partners don't think about it is " Embracing Live Services". I can honestly say I don't know the details here, but for all those nay sayers about online / live / Software plus Service etc, this is another loud gong that the world is changing! Also, just one of those side notes, Exchange 2007 does not include Outlook anymore (Exchange 2003 did), so your customers must buy Outlook / Office to use Exchange outside the web based views. What is going to be in "Cougar?" There have been a few questions floating around about "Cougar," the next version of Windows Small Business Server, and what it will include and be based on. I thought I would post some of the information that is publicly available to help address some of these questions: Based on the...

Once again the Small Business Ignite Tour is coming out and this time it is Exeter. You need to sign-up quickly, so go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/training/ignite/default.aspx?id=Exeter and sign up for the Small Business Tour (as opposed to the tour with a date in the past). If you do not know about the Small Business Ignite Tour, then this is the rough agenda: Introduce just how big the business opportunity is in the land of small business Introduce the topics of Flexible Working and Collaborative Business as these will be the basis of marketing campaigns this year from Microsoft into small business customers Demonstrate technologies that you can deliver to give your customers the benefits they demand - such as : working from home or on the road, using the tools in SBS, Windows XP or Windows Mobile Sharing files between workers, customers and suppliers in a natural and secure way using WSS and Office When to consider a hosted solution and when to consider SBS How to stop searching and start finding...

While I am on holiday I thought I would forward these items for the developers out there. The http://blogs.iis.net blog looks awesome for IIS7 information, including videos and the other MSDN information demonstrates how to develop SharePoint tools. Application support Is Your Application Platform People-Ready? Complete the Self-Assessment and Find Out Take the Application Platform Infrastructure Optimisation assessment to measure the effectiveness of your current infrastructure in platform-agnostic terms, and compare your application platform infrastructure against industry best practices and the latest IT research. http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/appplat/ac/apio.mspx Inspect Your Gadget http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bb498012.aspx Today, the Windows Vista Sidebar hosts Gadgets built from HTML, JavaScript, and potentially ActiveX controls. Because Gadgets are HTML, they are subject to Cross-site Scripting style bugs. These bugs are extremely serious because script in the Sidebar is capable...

We are publishing a long list of mini-presentations, aka the virtual conference on 26th September. You will be able to hear loads about Microsoft, our plans and products from the managers and people in the know. Below are just some of the items I think might be of interest to you. For a full list, go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/partnerconfere... on or after 26th September. Some of the topics include: Karl Noakes introduces the Virtual Partner Conference. David James from Henley Management College talks about what successful businesses are doing today outside of our industry and within it. Hear a discussion between Nigel Montgomery of AMR Research and David James of Henley Management about the UK market trends, opportunity areas and how you can align your business to take full advantage. Steve Marsh talks you through the 2007 Microsoft Office System, addressing key areas including personal productivity, communication and collaboration, enterprise content management and business intelligence. Exploring...

I seem to be being asked this a lot, so I thought I would pop up my simple answer: FrontPage has been both extended and then split into two products. We now have SharePoint Designer which is one child of FrontPage, but obviously ideally suited to modifying SharePoint (and OfficeLive) sites and then we have the “any type of web page editor” which is Expression Web. If you look at http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/fpwd_faq.mspx you will also see: How is Expression Web different from Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003? Expression Web builds on Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003 technologies to provide an unprecedented level of support for creating standards-based Web sites. Valuable feedback from customers like you have helped us create a new product that fully supports Web standards such as Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), cascading style sheets (CSS), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). If you are familiar with FrontPage, then you will find Expression Web easy to use. Expression...

Want to talk to Microsoft and hear where we see the market, opportunities and key technologies? Then get to one of these (there are even more dates on the web site) :-) We are taking to the road to see you, our partners! Jump in the driver's seat and join us to find out how we plan to get your business motoring. A top Microsoft technology and business team will map out the latest developments in the server and desktop markets and take you on the journey from market opportunity to technical 'how to' demonstrations. We'll get under the hood of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, along with the Office Ready PC, giving you detailed insights to get your business moving. And of course, we'll be outlining the route ahead for the new Windows Server 2008, with its built-in web and virtualisation technologies for increasing the reliability and flexibility of your customers' server infrastructure. Additionally we will be running exclusive SBSC pre-sessions at four of the locations...

I saw this over at Henrik's blog and throught it might be of interest to the SBSC community. I like this. While I discovered that demoing something like this using a free VoIP service was a bad idea, using OK quality phones delivers an amazing experience. Obviously we will not see Exchange 2007 embedded in SBS until Cougar ships, it can still be provided as a hosted service, on a 2nd machine or for a partner internally using the Action Pack copy that should ship next month (fingers crossed). For more information, pop over to Henrik's blog on the subject, including the link to the trial. Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Hosted Trial Like it was the case right after Exchange 2003 RTM, you can also sign up for an Exchange 2007 tempoary account… “Welcome to the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Hosted Trial web site. You can create a temporary account to experience the features of Exchange Server 2007 which will stay active for 5 days. Your account will be pre-populated with sample messages, calendar appointments and a...

Want to know how to create amazing work in PowerPoint – look at the PowerPoint team blog! The PowerPoint Team Blog : A Picture + 1000 Words… We learn best by examples. And the better the example, the better the results. That’s why its a pleasure to point you to a new group of PowerPoint examples that are stunning, inventive, evocative… simply beautiful. Nice enough if it stops there, but each and every one of these examples includes very detailed instructions on how you can reconstruct the design, and learn how to apply the technique to your own work. Animation for graphics and text, static text effects, photographic effects, new background techniques, Smart Art and transition effects… this is a holiday present come early for PowerPoint users. And they’re free! Get them here . Here’s a small sample, which of course does not include the amazing animated designs. And in case you’re wondering, this is the work of PowerPoint MVP Julie Terberg of Terberg Design . Julie...

I just found the MSDN Evaluation Center online today to give you evaluation resources that you might develop against. These include BizTalk Server, Office Communication Server, Office Enterprise , SharePoint Server, SharePoint Designer, SQL Server 2005, 2008, Express 2005 SP2, Windows Server 2008. I've pasted much of the content, but all the download links etc are country specific, so I have removed those. Click on the link above to get to download this stuff! MSDN Evaluation Centre Welcome to the MSDN Evaluation Centre, the central location for all Microsoft developer product trials and beta evaluations. Try a product before you buy it or test the latest beta to see what is in store for the next release. Start at the beginning of the evaluation process and follow the new products as they go through to the final releases. Remember to check back often as new products will be added as they become available. As you evaluate your software, we'll provide you with comprehensive and relevant insights and information...

From a Microsoft and Microsoft Partner point of view the press article below is great news. IT departments are finding users who are deploying SharePoint to get the benefits and the easy of use that SharePoint offers as well as developers who are building on SharePoint as an application Platform. I recently had a partner who told me that their belief was that Windows 32/64 was the desktop and server operating system, but they saw SharePoint as the web OS. Given the benefits that SP1 provides to SharePoint this is even more the case. http://napps.networkworld.com/news/2007/120707-microsoft-sharepoint.html The analyst firm CMS Watch is claiming the newest version of Microsoft ’s SharePoint is spreading “virally” throughout enterprises, catching IT departments off guard and introducing risks related to uncontrolled content and regulatory compliance . […] CMS Watch says viral proliferation of SharePoint is nothing new, going back to the 2003 version. But Pelz-Sharpe says the “problem is becoming acute now” with the...