Download: Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner

Microsoft has released a new diagnostic tool for network:

The Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner is a diagnostic tool that is designed for administrators of small or medium-sized networks (recommended up to 20 servers and up to 500 client computers) who want to assess the overall health of their network infrastructure. The tool identifies common problems that can prevent your network environment from functioning properly as well as problems that can interfere with infrastructure upgrades, deployments, and migration.
When run from a computer with the proper network access, the tool takes a few minutes to scan your IT environment, perform more than 100 separate checks, and collect and analyze information about the following:

• Configuration of sites and subnets in Active Directory
• Replication of Active Directory, the file system, and SYSVOL shared folders
• Name resolution by the Domain Name System (DNS)
• Configuration of the network adapters of all domain controllers, DNS servers, and e-mail servers running Microsoft Exchange Server
• Health of the domain controllers
• Configuration of the Network Time Protocol (NTP) for all domain controllers

If a problem is found, the tool describes the problem, indicates the severity, and links you to guidance at the Microsoft Web site (such as a Knowledge Base article) to help you resolve the problem. You can save or print a report for later review. The tool does not change anything on your computer or your network.

The Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner can be downloaded here.

Source: Microsoft Download Center

Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 to launch on July 10, 2009

Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 will be unveiled at a virtual launch event on July 10, 2009. Attend the event at www.seethelight.com on July 10 to watch the keynote sessions and see new in-depth sessions.

Stroll through the customer and partner pavilions in the Exhibition Hall or stop by 'The Visual Kitchen' TV show and watch the chefs as they dish up digital designs and development entrees as part of this exclusively produced online experience.

Project 2010 Technical Preview – Register now

The Office Project Team is looking for beta testers for the upcoming Project 2010 Technical Preview beta program, scheduled to launch within the next few weeks. According to their announcement:

We are taking nominations to participate in the Office 2010 Technical Beta program. We expect availability of our first beta release, known as Technical Preview, in the month of July. The team is excited to get feedback from our community that will help us make this a great release. Here is your opportunity to nominate yourself to participate in the program (space is limited). If you are interested in beta testing Project, please complete the following nomination form (you will need to log into Microsoft Connect with a Live ID).

Source: MSDN Blogs

Post-SP2 updates for SharePoint 2007 released

Microsoft has released the bi-monthly (June ‘09) Cumulative Updates for MOSS and WSS3.0.

Fixes for MOSS

Notes: An “uber-package” for MOSS has not been released yet. Either install all MOSS fixes or wait for the single-install package. “Language specific” fixes have to be installed for each language installed on your system.

KB972569 Global http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;972569

Issues resolved: In Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you start an out-of-the-box approval workflow and set a due date. As soon as the due date passes, you edit the workflow and then delete the due date. Immediately a task overdue e-mail is sent out to the approvers with the original due date. The approvers continue to receive a task overdue e-mail (referencing the original due date) weekly until the workflow is canceled, a future due date is set or the workflow is approved.

 

KB970948 Global http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;970948

Issues resolved: When you try to a create a Key performance indicator (KPI) item by using the "Indicator Using data in Excel Workbook" option and the Excel workbook has Unicode characters, you receive a "File not found" error message. When you click a link to a Report Center Dashboard page in your My Site page, you receive the following error message:  An unexpected error has occurred. When you use the spelling checker on words that do not include accented characters, the spelling checker does not suggest corrected words to include the accented characters. For example, you use the spelling checker to check the spelling of "telefono" in Spanish, and it results in no suggestions. The correct suggestion should be "teléfono" to include the accented "é." If you enable binary large object caching on a site collection intermittently you receive "File not found" errors when you open already cached files during the BLOBCache automatic background cleanup procedure. After you install this update, the probability of "File not found" errors caused by this race condition is minimal. If you copy some text into a Rich Text Edit control in Internet Explorer 8, click Save as in the File menu, and then click Cancel, you find that the text is pushed down the page. After you install this update, you can use the RichTextEditorShortcutEnabled property to control all rich text edit boxes. This includesthe AboutMe rich text edit box in My Site. For example: stsadm.exe -o setproperty -url http://portal/MySiteURL -pn "richtexteditorshortcutenabled" -pv "no" A federated search location can be configured to use "Common Cookie Authentication." However when this location is used on a site through the Federated Search Results Web part, the Web part is not shown. You use UserA account to create a page and then click Check In to Share Draft. Then, you delete the UserA account. After that, if you change to the All Draft Documents in the Manage Content and Structure page, you receive the following error message:  Unknown Error A search alert is added to inform you of any new results for a particular query term. However, after crawling a content source that contains many changed or new documents by using that query term, you find that the resulting alert e-mail only contains results for 10 of these newly crawled documents. You are never notified of the other document

 

KB970947 Language specific http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;970947

Issues resolved: Consider the following scenario: You copy text that contains smart tags from a document that is created in Microsoft Office Word 2007 or an earlier version of Word. You paste the text into a Content Editor Web part in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. You use the Remove Inline Styles feature to remove the inline styles. In this scenario, the text that is associated with the smart tags is removed

 

KB972562 Language specific http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;972562

Issues resolved: In a slide library, you have a slide that contains more than two commas in the file name. When you click Copy Slide to Presentation, PowerPoint 2007 does not start. Additionally, there is no error message.

 

KB972564 Forms Server Global http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;972564

Issues resolved:  Consider the following scenario. You use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. You design an InfoPath form that contains an ordinary rich text control and a read-only rich text control. The controls are linked to the same data source. You enter text that represents a URL to the ordinary control. The read-only control is updated with the same content. You open the form by using SharePoint, and notice that the URL in the read-only control is also hyperlinked. You click the link in the read-only control. In this scenario, the Web page that the URL points to is open in the control instead of in a new Internet Explorer window. Note This problem does not occur in the ordinary control.

Fixes for WSS

Notes: no information about the actual fixes has been released yet

KB971538 uber package


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;971538

KB970946 Global


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;970946

Source: MSDN Blogs

Forefront Service Packs released

Microsoft has released new service packs for Forefront products.

Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server with Service Pack 2: Help protect your Exchange server from viruses and other malware.

Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint with Service Pack 3: Forefront Security for SharePoint with Service Pack 3 helps business protect their Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 collaboration environments by eliminating documents containing malicious code, confidential information, and inappropriate content.

Contest: Get Your Photo on Bing.com

How would it feel to have your photo published on the Bing.com home page for a day?

Now you can do it by entering the Facebook contest. But hurry up, the contest will be available until July 16th, 2009.

The winning photo will be used on Monday August 3rd. 2009.

Contest rules can be found here.

Best luck to the participants! However, my personal favorite photo has already been published on Bing.

Source: Channel 10

Office 2010 Technical Beta testers for SharePoint Workspace (Groove)

If you haven’t already nominated yourself for the upcoming Office 2010 Technical Beta Program, don’t let the opportunity slip out. The SharePoint Workspace (ex-Groove) Team is looking for beta testers:

We’re pleased to announce that the SharePoint Workspace (Groove) team is taking nominations to participate in the Office 2010 Technical Beta program.

We expect to release our Technical Preview in the month of July.  The team is excited to get feedback from our community in order to help make this a great release. Here is your opportunity to nominate yourself to participate in the program. 

Space is limited, so if you are interested in beta-testing SharePoint Workspace 2010, please complete the following nomination form (you will need to log into Microsoft Connect with a Live ID).  We look forward to hearing from you.

And a tip for those that read posts to the end: the easiest way to get yourself nominated is by selecting the ‘individual’ option at the respective question.

Source: SharePoint Workspace (Groove) Team Blog