Here I am back again, illustrating some of the interesting possibilities that SharePoint offers for Cisco people.

To recap my last post, I showed you a little perl script I wrote to get an IOS router or switch to dump its current configuration to a TFTP server. I then used one of several freeware TFTP servers to show how you can have a TFTP server save the captured file into a version enabled document library.

I then hit a snag in relation to using a Windows Service to do this task. In this article we will delve into this issue in more detail. In addition, I ended up delving much deeper than I intended. So, like my branding series, this is going to turn into a multi-part series too, covering some application development, configuration, security and governance issues. How many parts it will end up being is anybody’s guess!

This is a technically oriented series of articles for the most part, so for you people who like the governance and finance stuff, you may not get too much out of this one. Although this article (part 2) focuses on my issues and observations with the Windows WEBDAV client, if you are one of these people who have ‘special’ feelings when you see those pretty blue Cisco boxes like the image above, then you may find some useful content here. 🙂

SharePoint developers and architects may also find this of interest.

Continue reading “SharePoint for Cisco Fanboys (darn WEBDAV) – Part 2”

Cisco nerds! This series is just for you! I know that you think you’re way too cool for collaborative portals, especially a Microsoft one at that. Instead you are more interested in delving into the IOS command line, to perform arcane arts such as debugging that OSPF route redistribution into BGP or getting off on planning and implementing a large scale DMVPN solution. Maybe you’re into QOS and VOIP and simply dig all of those DSCP-COS mappings, class and policy maps and the like.

Although packets, cells and frames are your world, *nix is cool, Nagios is your idea of a portal and anything remotely connected to Microsoft fills you with contempt and is beneath you right? 🙂

Well if this is you, I do understand your point of view because I was you once, but after some therapy, I’m now out of rehab and doing just fine!

Having Cisco/general networking expertise will help you with this article, so depending on who you are, the amount of caffeine required to follow this will vary:

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement rating (for a CCNP or CCIE):  

CleverWorkArounds Coffee requirement rating (for a non Cisco person or CCNA 🙂 ):  

Continue reading “SharePoint for Cisco Fanboys – Part 1”

This one had me going for a while.

I was minding my own business doing a MOSS install. I successfully created the Office Server Search Service and onto the creation of the Shared Service Provider. Created the SSP and MySite Web Applications and then at the final step of creating the SSP, it bombed out after a long period of time with an error.

Reason: Windows NT user or group ‘MyDomain\MOSS_Search.service’ not found. Check the name again.

Continue reading “SQL Logins and AD Accounts can bite”

I’m still on holidays, and the cricket between Australia and India was great (despite the poor umpiring), thus this post will be brief by my standards!

A question I often get asked by clients is along the lines of “Do I have to upgrade from Office [insert old version here] to use the latest version of SharePoint?”

Microsoft technology evangelists (very nice people too I might add) often mention the “Fair, Good, Better, Best” mantra when explaining the intricacy of integration with Office client tools and the Office Server (SharePoint). You can read it for yourself via the latest version of the white-paper can be found here.

The content in this white-paper is good, but I’m amused at the choice of terms for the client and server combinations. IT Managers, if you want me to paraphrase the entire content of the article I can summarise it like this.

• Fair = Crap
• Good = Unbearable
• Better = Barely Tolerable
• Best = Good

Continue reading “"Fair, Good, Better, Best" or "Crap, Unbearable, Barely Tolerable, Good"?”

This is probably my last post for the year – winding down to the festive season 🙂 Thanks to all of you who’ve read my blog, it’s a good stress outlet for me and I hope that some of you have benefited.

So one final small post (by my standards) on whether there is truly such a role as a “SharePoint specialist“. To answer this, I propose we do this with an exciting new TV show called “So You Think You Can SharePoint?”.

What will happen is that all of us supposed “SharePoint specialists” will audition and be narrowed down to the final 10. Then each week, we demonstrate our SharePoint abilities in new and creative ways before a panel of expert judges who get to publicly humiliate us. Each week, one specialist gets voted off until we are left with our winner.

Original, huh?

So, why am on earth am I ‘borrowing’ from the TV show “so you think you can dance?”. Well, apparently, half the world thinks I look like Benji. (Seriously!)

Continue reading “SharePoint reality TV?”

A while back I tried to make records and collaborative document management an interesting blog topic by using death metal music to get my point across. Today I have another SharePoint related bone to pick with the world. Hmm, how to make it interesting?

Aha! … Kung fu baby!

(Apologies to all you people who’s work access blocks youtube – read this article at home).

(Back in the late eighties and early nineties, I used to go to the only Chinese movie theatre in town. Jet Li and Jackie Chan left me in awe, and I couldn’t understand why the western world didn’t get it. Such a pity that it took crap movies like Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon 4  to show the world what they were missing).

But, where was I? That’s right – SharePoint and company readiness.

Continue reading “"You’re not ready" – SharePoint kung fu”

Welcome to the fifth article in my series on fostering mutual love and respect between those know-it-all smartarse technical geeks and the guys who do their taxes!  This is the final SharePoint scenario that I will cover in this series, but there will be some more articles coming later, as we further look at the financial side of things.

To recap, the first article introduced the financial concept of discount cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return. Next, we discussed how I came up with the three scenarios and the assumptions and methodology behind valuing the scenarios, which placed a specific emphasis on costing the holistic view of governance. The last two articles, here and here, covered the first two scenarios, where we showed the circumstances where the project had a good outcome, and a not so good outcome.

So, for the last time around, we are going to take on a difficult SharePoint scenario. This is the scenario where SharePoint is used as the platform to build a custom web application.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO: Web Application Scenario – Part 5”

Welcome to the fourth article in my series that attempts to bridge the cultural divide between nerds and accountants. Unfortunately there are more differences to these two strange species than just fashion sense and whether a pocket calculator is in their possession. But despite being poles apart about what pushes their buttons, at the end of the day they are both trying to achieve a positive result.

The first article introduced the financial concept of discount cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return. Next, we discussed how I came up with the three scenarios and the assumptions and methodology behind valuing the scenarios, which placed a specific emphasis on costing the holistic view of governance. .

The previous article to this one was the first of these three identified scenarios, internal corporate collaboration. This time, we are going to take on a popular SharePoint scenario centered around web content management (WCM).

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO: WCM scenario – Part 4”

Hi. This is the third article in a series that attempts to explain some financial analysis techniques to non financial oriented IT people. My first two articles in this series were theory and background and this is the first of three scenarios that illustrates an example.

This first scenario is an example of SharePoint as a collaborative solution. It also happens to be the scenario that for my money, carries with it the most risk. But at the same time, SharePoint is well suited to this sort of solution if you follow my branding and document management wisdom 🙂

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO : Collaboration scenario – Part 3”

Hi, there.

It’s been a while since my last post but the whole issue of having a life and earning money kind of got in the way. In addition I have been procrastinating a little, because writing about technical and programming type issues for me are a lot easier to write, compared to governance, strategy and financial matters.

To recap on my last post, I wrote about a common technique used to assess the value of an investment. I discussed the time effect on money, the concept discount cash-flow and some of the related calculations like Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). If you have not read that article, I strongly suggest that you do so before continuing.

Continue reading “Learn to talk to your CFO in their language – Part 2”