So, you’re called in to a large organization that is wanting to do a consolidated MOSS rollout for an enterprise intranet.  You’ve been warned that due to some rather “relaxed” attitudes toward server deployments, there are a number of pre-existing WSS servers scattered throughout the enterprise that should be migrated toward the central platform.

You’ve got a day or so to pull an inventory together, and by the way: The guy who knew where all these servers are is currently vacationing in the Swiss Alps.  What do you do?  What do you do?

Download the SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool on a server that has wide-ranging visibility and permissions and let it do the work:

The SharePoint Asset Inventory Tool allows IT professionals to inventory all of the computers in the network and identify servers that have SharePoint installed on them. The information gathered by the tool is used to generate reports that give IT the information it needs to bring the servers under its control. This allows the resources of the ever-changing SharePoint environment to be optimized and adjusted as needed.

There are only three (3) things you need to have installed on the host server to make the magic happen:

1. SQL 2005
2. SQL Server Reporting Services
3. .NET Framework 2.0

Go forth, be inquisitive and crafty!

So, you need an online, collaborative environment to work on documents, keep track of tasks and appointments and keep your team up to speed on the latest happenings in the Penske file.  Your group has a mix of Office applications, ranging from XP to 2003 to 2007, and you don’t have the budget for a MOSS 2007 Server – yet!

What do you do?  Head on over to http://workspace.office.live.com and sign up for the free public beta of Office Live Workspace:

As pictured, this is in essence a mini-SharePoint style collaboration site allows you to work with and share Office documents among a team of peers that you can invite to the space.  Similar to SharePoint, you can create collaboration workspaces by selecting from a list of templates that best suit the type of project you want to facilitate:

Selecting the Project Workspace template yields a site like the following:

Note that the site is pre-populated with a cache of pro-forma documents, ie. a slide deck for the Project Post-Mortem, and a Word doc for the proposal.  You also have on the right side an Activity Panel to see who is engaged on the doc, along with running commentary from team members and a link to share the doc with others.

However, the best part of Office Live Workspace is how it seamlessly integrates with your desktop Office apps via the Office add-in.  This component adds a menu item to your app UI for publishing your docs directly to your workspace:

For XP and 2003:

and 2007:

If you’ve always wanted to work collaboratively with Office applications, yet don’t have access to a MOSS 2007 server, this is an ideal way to get some exposure and experience the benefits of SharePoint without the cost.  What’s even more compelling is how Office Live Workspace is not just for business – as you can see from the array of workspace templates, it’s an ideal solution for school projects, trip planning, and household tasking.

Give it a try – it’s a compelling offering over what the “other guys” are doing… ;-)

Fresh today:  At the SharePoint 08 Conference in Seattle, Microsoft has released a guidance “blueprint” around using Silverlight for an enhanced user experience in MOSS:

The Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint is source code and guidance for developers describing how to use Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies together in business applications and Internet Web sites. SharePoint applications that use Web Parts can now be built using Silverlight user interface elements. This capability enables a fresh look at data exposed through SharePoint Products and Technologies using the modern graphics capability in Silverlight.

It's important to note that this is not a new supported Microsoft product and doesn't necessarily represent future product direction it works with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Silverlight 2.0. However we think it will be extremely useful for customers building the latest generation of SharePoint sites. It's a sample that directly enables the use of Silverlight with SharePoint. This is being implemented as more than a sample since Blueprints also include guidance for developers that is integrated into Visual Studio and the completed blueprint will be released on CodePlex soon.

• Silverlight Blueprint for MOSS (MSDN2)
• Webcasts, demos and more