TiGra Networks

South Wales Small Business Specialist Group

TiGra Networks is working towards formation of a user group aimed at technology consultants and resellers in South Wales who specialise in solutions for the smaller business. With support from Microsoft initially, the group aims to provide a forum for IT companies to network, discuss their industry and provide partnering opportunities. The group should also facilitate communication with product vendors and help us to influence those vendors.

This initiative is inspired by an international movement of small business specialists who have formed similar groups both here in UK and abroad mainly in USA and Australia. Microsoft is supporting several group launches around the UK in the coming weeks and has already helped to launch groups in London, The Midlands, Scotland and Ireland. It is hoped that these groups will help us all to become better at what we do, which in turn will benefit our customers, while Microsoft gets to raise awareness of its Small Business Specialist initiative, part of its Partner Programme.

The group will be known as South Wales Small Business User Group and the target launch date for the group is the first half of November. Those interested in participating at any level are invited to join the group’s mailing list where the final date and venue will be announced. To subscribe, please email: SWSBUG-subscribe@tigranetworks.co.uk

Tim Long
Technology Consultant
TiGra Networks

Further Information

About TiGra Networks 

Background

There is a worldwide trend for small business consultants to form collaborative groups. Originating mainly in USA and Australia, the idea is just beginning to take off in UK with the recent formation of groups in London, Midlands, Scotland and Ireland, with several others in the planning stage. These groups happened ‘organically’ elsewhere but for some reason the UK has been slow to take up the idea. Robbie Upcroft is on loan from Microsoft Australia and is tasked with growing the small business community here in the UK.

Microsoft obviously sees this as a symbiotic opportunity for them to improve the quality of their partners and thereby sales of their small business products, however the groups are fiercely independent are in no way controlled by Microsoft. The group format, aims and objectives are completely up to us, the members. Many technology providers (including TiGra Networks) tend to focus on Microsoft Small Business Server, but the group will not be limited to Microsoft products and technologies.

Aims and Objectives of South Wales Small Business User Group (Preliminary)

The idea behind the groups is to provide a forum run by technology consultants for technology consultants. Some of the things we might do:

• Host presentations by guest speakers from various vendors and organisations and by group members.
• Facilitate face to face meetings with vendors to allow us to give feedback and influence their products.
• Meet other technology providers and learn from their experiences.
• Provide opportunities for members to partner with each other, where they have complimentary skills.
• Unstructured time for discussion and networking.

I see the group as primarily a forum for technology consultants and resellers, not necessarily for end users, though many of the most successful groups worldwide do have end users attending. I would not rule out the possibility of end users attending but it is certainly not the primary focus. This makes it easier to talk about things like profit margins, prices and other things that we might not want customers to hear.

Getting Started

Microsoft has offered to provide a venue and a buffet for the first few meetings. Robbie will probably want to attend and speak on Microsoft’s position with regard to the user groups, why Microsoft is supporting the formation of these groups and what support we can expect from them.

Target date for first meeting: Monday 7th November, probably around 6pm to 8pm. Venue – TBA – probably somewhere near M4 J32 or in Cardiff.

1. Introductions round-the-table, who we are, what we do.
2. Robbie Upcroft on Microsoft’s involvement in user groups in UK
3. Communication – web site, mailing list, etc – what do we need?
4. Group Discussion - What do we want from our group?
   • Who may attend?
   • What will we do?
   • When will we meet? How often? What time?
   • Where will we meet? Same place every time? Funding?
   • Why do we need a user group?
5. Agenda for next meeting – any volunteers to do a presentation or organise a speaker?
6. Date, time and venue of next meeting.
7. Close meeting – time for discussion.

Is Windows XP's firewall good enough?

This discussion arose on another group that I am a member of. I was saying that "bolt-on" firewalls annoy me because I don't think they add any value and they generate a lot more "noise" in the form of pop-up dialogs that the user has to respond to. Someone responded that the Windows Firewall offers only a "one way" protection while most third party offerings are "two way". The correspondent offered a link to Andy Rathbone's web site that makes this point with clarity:

"...these connections start from inside your computer, Windows XP's firewall wouldn't catch them. It lets *any* program inside your computer connect to the Internet whenever it wants. But a two-way firewall alerts you whenever any of your programs start an Internet connection, letting you authorize or refuse the connection."

There is clearly room for debate on this matter, however there are philosophical issues that mean this is not a black-and-white argument. For example, Christian Huitema, Microsoft's Director of Wireless Networking, makes the following point:

"...most users do not understand the difference between incoming and outgoing connections. They will say yes when asked whether Internet Explorer may connect to the Internet, they will say yes when asked whether Outlook may connect to the Internet, and they will also say yes when ask whether the file sharing service should accept connections from the Internet!"

So let's have the discussion. What do you think about the Windows XP firewall? Why do you think it is or is not good enough? Post your comments and let us know what you think.

Coming Soon to a SharePoint Near You...

Some interesting things reputed to be included in the next version of Windows Sharepoint Services... (stolen from Dustin Miller's Sharepoint Blog)
Also see Richard Scoble's video on Channel 9.

UI / UX

• Built-in breadcrumb trails, Quicklaunch on every page, Tree-view navigation of sites built-in
• Pages will derive from “master pages“, meaning that you could re-skin an entire SharePoint site by modifying just one template file
• More professional out of the box themes
• FrontPage can directly edit each site's CSS file(s)
• Workflow built-in all over SharePoint, with tight integration with Outlook 12 tasks, FrontPage-based workflow creation, some browser-based workflow creation
• Individual documents can have document-specific workflows
• Item-level security on lists and libraries
• FrontPage has evolved further into a SharePoint designer tool (I read that as: the only SharePoint designer tool), and apparently, ghosted/unghosted pages won't be a problem any longer
• Recycle bin with user and administrator restore features for document libraries and list items
• InfoPath forms can be filled out with only a browser when published as (to?) a SharePoint site (even with FireFox)
• Customizable and extensible search (and search API), including “did you mean“-type search term corrections (Update: It appears this is an SPS vNext feature)
• Lists can be viewed on mobile devices
• The UI is “security sensitive“, meaning that you won't see the button to add an item unless you have the rights to add an item
• Lists support multi-value lookups
• Gantt charts for “Project Tasks“ list type
• Alerts are considerably more powerful, support more filters/RSS integration
• AJAX (Atlas) used generously throughout UI for a better cross-browser experience
• “Welcome menu“ for users (login/logout/change user/edit profile/etc links in one place)
• Apparently, unghosted pages will be cached better, and will remain attached to their “Master Page“, negating much of the performance/caching problem there is today (that didn't seem all that earth shattering, actually)
• Document policies (retention period, archiving rules, audit logs)
• Folders supported in any list (not sure why that was even on their radar)
• Version history can be configured to keep last n records
• Sites' UI can be localized without deploying a new site (multilingual UI)

Integration

• All lists and libraries have RSS feeds, and each list's feed can be customized to include whatever fields you'd like
• Event list RSS feeds include iCal files as enclosures
• Each site has a master “aggregating“ RSS feed
• Outlook 12 can perform 2-way online/offline syncronization of the following list types:
  • Contacts
  • Events
  • Tasks
  • Discussion Lists
  • Document Libraries (!)
• Discussion lists can create their own e-mail alias in Active Directory, allowing you to e-mail that alias to automatically archive that e-mail (and its attachments) to a SharePoint discussion list
• ALL lists and libraries have version history capability, and only “diffs“ are stored (differences from one change to the next)
• Access treats SharePoint sites as honest-to-goodness data sources

Developer and Administrator-oriented news

• Existing web parts will “just work“ in the new SharePoint web part page framework
• Site definitions/templates will ship in the box for blogs and wikis (blogs can be built directly on your “My Site“!)
• All lists and libraries will have synchronous event handlers (not sure how these work with other interfaces to SharePoint data, like OM, WEBDAV, SOAP, etc., if the event handler has to raise an exception)
• List/library version history is exposed programmatically by way of the OM
• Multiple “content types” (sets of metadata, or “metadata templates“, if you will) for document libraries and lists, that include view information, workflows, bound events.
• FrontPage can edit workflows
• Business Data Catalog (datasource catalog on steroids, apparently) -- What's new is that you can use members of this catalog as fields in lists; in other words, a list can have a lookup that's bound to a SQL Server table, a web service, or any other source that exists in the Business Data Catalog 
• XML Schema Documents (XSDs) will be made available for many of the CAML-based ghosted template/config files
• The “STSFLTR“ ISAPI filter is gone, SharePoint sites are “native“ ASP.NET 2.0 sites.
• You'll still need to use the SmartPart (or something of its ilk) to use ASP.NET 2.0 web parts on your SharePoint sites
• Form templates are better defined in XML (they're there now, just without any real easy way to modify them)
• Less XML-based configuration, more UI-based “features“ that can be turned on/off or modified to webs, sites, IIS virtual servers or entire server farms with one click
• SPTimer is given a boost, allowing you to write your own plugins that get executed at their own defined schedules/criteria/etc
• UI toolbars/menus/etc can easily be modified, with those modifications also “security sensitive“
• SPDataSource class, SharePoint sites exposed using IDataSource (sweet)
• SPGridView, a SharePoint-look-alike DataGrid (with sort/filter/group/etc baked right in)
• SPDataQuery class, which uses CAML (set as a property, why not a param to a method?) does cross-site searches, easily binds to SPGridViews or other ASP.NET databound controls
• SharePoint Web Parts' base class is a Web Control (still no designer, though; you'll need to use SmartPart for that)
• v2.0 -> v3.0 is considered an “upgrade“, not a “migration“
• Security providers supported, no more AD authentication requirements (forms-based security, anyone?)
• “Feature Definitions“ (which sounds an awful lot like existing definition configuration types, but expanded a bit) allow you to enable/disable kits of functionality, i.e. a “Feature Definition“ that contains lists, web parts, event handlers, content types (those metadata “templates“ mentioned in another part of this post)
• Custom column indexes in lists
• Trusted event handlers can easily impersonate identities
• Policies can be set for content expiration based on values/metadata/workflow status for documents, and content can be moved to recycle bin (or, one would assume, deleted or archived) based on the selected metric

SBS Midlands inaugural meeting

TiGra attended the inaugural meeting of the SBS Midlands group. We felt that the group went very well and found its own direction very naturally. There are already some interesting items on the agenda for the next meeting and we may even try to get back up there.

A couple of photos of the attendees:
http://community.tigranetworks.co.uk/photos/swsbug/picture60.aspx
http://community.tigranetworks.co.uk/photos/swsbug/picture61.aspx

We tentatively plan to launch the South Wales group in early November. So far we have about 5 people interested (including us) but would prefer a few more.

Acer Tavelmate C311 Tablet PC

The Acer C311 is a convertible notebook/tablet PC, sometimes known as a "spindle" in the industry because the screen rotates on a spindle. Fantastic! It is so cool to sit in a meeting ans scribble notes on the screen in OneNote. I am totally in love with the concept of the tablet PC. For those times when its easier to type, just swivel the screen and use it as a conventional notebook. Surely the best of both worlds.

Battery life is about 4 hours with a new battery with the option of adding a second battery in place of the DVD drive.

While I love the concept of Tablet PC, the model that I received refuses to stay in Standby mode. When the lid is closed or the system is idle for a period of time, it is supposed to go into standby mode and then after a further period of incativity it should hibernate. When I first received mine, it would not go into standby at all. Activating the lid or manually selecting standby would go through the motions, that standby light would blink instantaneously then the system would wake up again immediately. I called Acer tech support and to be fair, I was impressed with their service. They arranged for the device to be collected and seven days later the same unit was returned to me having had the main board replaced. A quick test seemed to indicate the problem was fixed. THe unit would not go into standby and stay there - or so I thought, until one day I closed the lid and placed the unit in my bag and went travelling. When I got to the other end of my journey, the battery was flat as a pancake. How come? Further investigation revealed that the unit was now staying in standby for about 5 minutes, then waking up again and staying awake until the battery went flat. No standby, no hibernate. In fact, the system will never go into standby unless I force it manually and it always wakes back up after a few minutes.

Obviously this is no good. Power management is somewhat important in a mobile device. The unit is again on its way back to Acer and I will be without a mobile computer for another seven days. So my initial enthusiasm for the coolness of Tablet PC is somewhat tempered with the disappointment of having to have my brand new PC repaired. Twice. I will try to follow-up here and let y'all know how the situation pans out.

South Wales Small Business User Group

TiGra Networks is currently looking into the possibility of forming a user group in South Wales. The aim of the group would be to serve as a forum for Microsoft Small Business Partners who support IT for the smaller business. Microsoft does not seek to run or control the groups but is offering to help get them started by funding venues, providing speakers, etc.

Grace and I attended the inaugural meeting of the London group this week and we may attend the Midlands group when it starts in the coming weeks. We will then look at starting a similar group in South Wales, probably based (at least initially) in or close to Cardiff.

We would very much like to hear from Microsoft partners in the South Wales area who may be interested in participating either as an attendee or by getting involved in the running of the group. I'm sure that partners will find these groups are a very useful resource and I really hope that we can reach a critical mass and make the idea a reality in our area. If you're interested at any level, please make yourself known to us.

Having attended the London meeting, my thoughts on some of the things the group might discuss:

• How to solve particular technical problems
• Understanding the technology we are selling
• Product presentations and demos
• How to sell solutions to small business
• Case studies
• Vendor presentations
• Time for unstructured discussion and "geek sessions".
• Study group for 70-282 exam and the Small Business Specialist certification