Three Bears IT Consultancy

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

If you’ve ever arrived at an important meeting or presentation to realise that you left your USB memory stick on the kitchen table, then LogMeIn can come to your rescue. Likewise, if you’re planning to set up a remote IT support team, LogMeIn can help. If you’re tired of popping three doors along to give Mr Jenkins IT support every time he installs something free from the Internet, then again LogMeIn is your saviour.

LogMeIn is a web based service which allows you to take remote access of any machines on the LogMeIn network via your standard web browser – Firefox users need to install a plug-in.  Essentially, you sign up to a free account on the LogMeIn web site, open your emails to confirm your identity and install the application from the web site.  Subsequently, install the application onto all the machines you need to connect to – premium versions of the software also allow remote connection to iPhones and other similar devices.

Once installed, LogMeIn runs as a background process in your taskbar.  Open to console and get access to any machine running the application which you’ve registered against your account.  Premium versions give you the option of transferring files from your remote computer to your local computer, but users of the free version can just load up a web browser/Microsoft Outlook and email them across.

Three Bears IT support a range of systems and users utilising this technology and in the current economic climate, it pays to reduce both your carbon footprint and expensive travel costs.

Continuing from our previous post regarding free resources for planning your implementation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, please find below links to further resources relating to deployment, operations and system security.

Deployment

Deployment for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers installing and configuring Office SharePoint Server 2007 in a new deployment.

Installation guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007
This guide provides the information you need to successfully install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to a stand-alone computer or simple server farm.

Design and build sites for Office SharePoint Server 2007
This guide provides prescriptive guidance that can help you and your team build custom enterprise sites by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 — such as company-wide portal sites or Internet presence sites.

Upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Deploying Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1
Changes in Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 and instructions for deploying the service pack.

Operations

Administering enterprise search for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Includes guidance and procedures for configuring and maintaining search features in Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Document management guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers document management features that you can use to control the lifecycles of documents in your organization.

Records management guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers general records management planning considerations and guidelines for configuring Office SharePoint Server 2007 .

Web publishing and planning guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers features you can use to implement the structure, navigation, and appearance of Web sites and to control how your sites are authored, approved, and published.

Security

Security for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Describes how security is implemented in Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Whether you’re planning your first implementation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) or are on your thirty first, Microsoft have released a range of resources which should make the planning process easier.  Primarily aimed at MOSS virgins, the guides, worksheets and white papers are still a useful reminder to seasoned campaigners of the functionality available as standard with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Due to licencing issues, we cannot reproduce the information to download directly from our site, but we’ve provided handy links below to some of what we consider to be the key documents when planning your implementation.

The main thing to comprehend is that there is a great deal of groundwork to be done prior to implementation of SharePoint; simply installing the software and expecting people to use it shall not solve your document or records management issues.  As the first developers of web sites found out, the “build it and they shall come” model does not apply here … build it and they might come, but they need encouragement and a reason to use the system.

SharePoint implementations (as with all business change projects) should be business led and not technology or IT led.  Members of Three Bears IT are currently working with the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Leeds to deliver a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server solution for seven schools to meet issues surrounding collaboration with local NHS Trusts/hospitals and securely sharing documents and data with external partners, organisations and funders.  Case study coming soon …

Getting Started

Getting started with Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers basic information about the capabilities of and requirements for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Planning Stage

Information Worker Competence Center – Achieving Business Success with your Collaboration Infrastructure
Outlines the functions an Information Worker Competence Center should include and in return what contributions to business success you should expect.

Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007, part 1
Covers topics such as planning sites, planning for certain features such as forms and search, and planning for managing documents and records.

Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007 , part 2
Covers topics such as determining hardware and software requirements, capacity planning, and planning for security.

Planning an extranet environment for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Covers planning recommendations for deploying Office SharePoint Server 2007 in an extranet environment.

Internet presence scenario ( Office SharePoint Server 2007 )
Provides an end-to-end scenario that outlines how to plan, design, build, and maintain an enterprise’s Internet presence Web site based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 . This scenario focuses on the design, creation, and deployment of an Internet presence site in a large enterprise.

Best practices for developing accessible Web sites
Provides information about designing and developing accessible Web sites in Office SharePoint Server 2007 . This document is intended for users who are familiar with Office SharePoint Server 2007 , ASP.NET, and .NET development.

Deliver accessible solutions
Provides information and guidelines about the issues that organizations face when delivering accessible Web solutions, including those built by using Office SharePoint Server 2007 .

Plan and configure availability within an Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm
Provides information about planning and configuring availability within an Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm.

Governance guide for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that you establish in your enterprise to guide, direct, and control how it uses technologies to accomplish business goals. The articles in this guide will help you determine the aspects of your Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment to govern and include discussions of techniques for governing your enterprise’s SharePoint IT service and information architecture.

Not heard of BT Internet Rangers? You may not know the name, but you may well be familiar with the concept. This BT sponsored programme promotes intergenerational learning with the pupils taking the role of the teacher/tutor. Instead of tutoring peer groups or younger students, instead pupils devise and deliver training courses for grandparents.

The BT Internet Rangers site provides pupils with lesson plans, certificates and even example homework to support their learning and has examples of successful schemes from across the UK.

The scheme also provides an incentive to pupils by awarding prizes to the most successful Internet Rangers.

The site doesn’t seem to be regularly updated, but should provide you with a method of starting off a similar scheme in your area. Get in touch if you’re already taking part or are thinking of taking part and we’ll see whether can set up a support group via the site.

Cultured people that we are at Three Bears IT, we were listening to Case Notes on Radio 4 yesterday and a discussion surrounding the use of plain lanugage and metaphors when relaying often complex conditions and treatments to patients. Is the same applicable to the field of information technology and information systems?

Previous systems design methodologies have extolled the virtues of mathematical modelling for systems using a variety of set based and other notations. Natural language and plain English were often frowned upon, due to potential language ambiguities, but then how can the client be sure that the system design specification they are reviewing is what they actually asked for. A balance needs to be struck between ensuring that a robust specification is agreed, ensuring that both parties are aware of their responsibilities whilst also making the document accessible for extensive review.

The move toward agile systems and technologies seems to be a step in this direction. With the use of story cards to quickly and easily record high level requirements, end users are now able to directly interact with the development project whereas previous systems such as PRINCE2 often required all user requirements to be filtered through a central Senior User or user group.

Human civilisation has thrived upon the tradition of story telling and whilst titled such as Software Engineering and Computer Science give the impression of an old and noble tradition, the truth is that the levels of tolerance demanded within other engineering and scientific disciplines are not applied to systems design and development.

The use of mathematical notation is often a barrier to all but the most ardent of user groups and the whole industry is now beginning to take a long overdue step towards engaging with users in the most appropriate way for that individual. Like pupil based teaching, we can never achieve a situation where everybody’s requirements are always embedded within a system (even if the latest Windows 7 advertisements would have us think otherwise!)

Much better that we revert back to story telling and clear language to engage with the end user and to discern what they want from a system as well as how it should behave. The true science/engineering task is to take a seemingly disparate set of requests and to refine and merge them into a new system which everyone feels they have contributed to and which meets their current and future needs.

As promised, details of the updates due to hit Windows Update / Microsoft Update / WSUS implementations any time around now.

Beginning with Windows 2000 – there are critical and important updates for the operating system, plus critical updates for Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 users also have a string of critical and important updates, including critical updates for Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8.

Windows XP Professional 64-bit edition have critical and important updates as with it’s 32-bit cousin, with updates also for Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8.  It’s a similar story for Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1 and 2.  There are even updates for the as yet unreleased Windows 7.

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Server 2008 sees a mixture of moderate, important and critical updates plus updates for the relevant versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Versions of Microsoft Office affected include 2007, 2003 and XP with updates for standalone applications such as Visio, Visio Viewer, Project, Word Viewer, Excel Viewer and PowerPoint Viewer.  Microsoft Office Groove 2007 is affected, along with Microsoft Works Version 8.5, Expression Web 1 & 2 and the compatibility pack for Microsoft Office 2007.

The only server tool to be affected is Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005, including Reporting Services – all critical.

Microsoft Forefront Client Security 1.0 is the only security software to be updated via this release, but developer tools including Silverlight 2, Visual Studio 2003 (.NET), 2005 & 2008 are affected and even old Visual Foxpro for anyone still using this database technology.

On the whole, a wide range of updates across all supported operating systems, but thankfully not too much affecting server applications other than databases.  We’d be interested to hear any issues which you’ve found with any of the updates and will keep you posted on anything which we hear about …