Moss News & Articles

It was only four months ago that Mimosa Systems (news, site) released NearPoint for SharePoint. Today the vendor launches a major version of its solution for archiving, eDiscovery and business user productivity, NearPoint 4.0.

With many new features and functionality aimed at putting some pep in the step of the eDiscovery process, NearPoint 4.0 enhances content management, archiving and data capture.

With SharePoint 2010 quickly approaching, it is probably safe to say that interest in this Microsoft product-zilla is not likely to go away.

Companies like Colligo (news, site) take full advantage of market conditions and keep churning out products that (hopefully) make SharePoint experiences more enjoyable and productive. Please meet Colligo 4.0.

Just a quick note that Microsoft has released a fix for the expiration date issue that came with SharePoint (news, site) Service Pack 2.

In case you have forgotten, Service Pack 2 came with a nice little bug: a product expiry date is accidentally triggered, effectively rendering production licenses into trial licenses.

Microsoft did offer a temporary approach to resolve the issue while they worked on the hotfix.

Now the hotfix is available and there are two ways to install it:

• Install before you install Service Pack 2: This prevents the bug from occurring when you do the Service Pack 2 installation.
• Install after you install Service Pack 2: For those who already have the Service Pack installed, this will resolve the issue.

The actual Service Pack itself won't be updated for another 4-6 weeks.

Head over and download your hotfix now:

• For x86: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/5/2F51AB71-1325-49D2-9CB9-18DEC4780E99/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
• For x64: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/B/5BBD34A9-C528-42B0-8A5F-9A8997B25C32/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x64-glb.exe

There are a few different solutions available to backup and restore your SharePoint content, but not all of them enable the restoration of a single document, MetaLogix's Selective Restore Manager Pro for SharePoint however, does.

When we first looked at the new MetaVis Technologies (news, site) tools for SharePoint, we knew there would be a lot of interest from enterprise struggling to manage and control their SharePoint implementations.

These tools which include taxonomy support and metadata management for SharePoint -- both MOSS and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 -- are any SharePoint architect's dream, helping with the creation, deployment and management of SharePoint sites.

Today they are generally available to the public and CMSWire caught up with Steve Pogrebivsky, MetaVis CEO and Co-Founder, to check on how the products are being received.

Inmagic (news, site) has bolstered its social knowledge management platform with SharePoint interoperability features. Who doesn't want to connect to MOSS nowadays?

You may be one of the many organizations who uses SharePoint on a daily basis for collaboration and document management. But not everything you need to do your job is located in the SharePoint content repository, nor should it be.

The days of a single content repository are over. Now come the solutions that enable you to leverage a central interface to manage and work with content from multiple repositories. ASG Software Solutions (news, site) provides you this ability using SharePoint as that central interface.

Step by step, from version 5.0 to now 5.1 -- while still embracing all things SharePoint -- Clearview (news, site) announced updates to its enterprise CMS.

They include a new Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services-based API, Business Process Management (or Workflow in Clearview's terminology) module and a number of less substantial (yet important) enhancements.

Equilibrium (news, site) is a company pushing for a slice of the rich media ecosystem developing around SharePoint. They are just one of many companies finding both innovative and obvious ways to leverage SharePoint as a platform. Let's have a gander at their approach.

Microsoft kicked off the Memorial holiday weekend with a bang. Many organizations installing the latest service pack for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) (news, site), found a nice little -- make that big -- bug.

During the installation of Server Pack 2 for SharePoint 2007, a product expiry date is accidentally triggered, effectively rendering production licenses into trial licenses. Hmmm, not good.

Microsoft was quick to respond with an apology and somewhat comforting news that this bug will not affect how SharePoint functions until the expiry date has passed (180 days from the service pack install). They also said it will have no impact on customer data, configuration or application code.

While a hotfix is in the works, you can now get a manual workaround to resolve the problem. Note this was the most popular link in the blog announcing the bug. The fix requires SharePoint Admins to re-enter their product licenses numbers in the Convert License Type page in Central Administration.

The bug affects Office SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express, but not Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Microsoft is still encouraging organizations to install the service pack. You just also have to apply the manual fix to the expiration date at the same time and you'll be on your way.

Luckily for Microsoft, the solution to this bug is relatively simple. Still, one has to wonder how it got in there. Microsoft doesn't release service packs for SharePoint very often and we would have expected this one to be fairly stable.

In our February article entitled Under the Covers: Alfresco's SharePoint Services (WSS) Killer we looked at Alfresco's (news, site) take on providing basic document and collaboration services for free. Alfresco's project is called Alfresco Share. 

When we posited that Alfresco Share was after SharePoint Services' marketshare, it sparked a bit of chatter -- some positive, some not so much.

Voices in the SharePoint camp said that the two solutions should not be compared, that SharePoint  was a platform -- much more than a simple collaborative document management solution, whereas Alfresco was only providing some services.

While we believe the comparison was fair, we also agree that there's more to SharePoint than immediately meets the eye. By the same token, there's more to Alfresco than just Share, much of which we eluded to in the article.

Is it worth it to look at a side-by-side view of SharePoint and Alfresco from a platform perspective? Is it possible that one is significantly better than the other? Maybe, but the answer you get may not be the one you expected.

It's no secret that SharePoint (news, site) is one of the most widely used platforms for collaborative document management. It has enjoyed an impressive grassroots growth pattern that has pleased Microsoft, but made many IT managers a little nervous -- especially in light of ongoing regulatory compliance pressures.

Open Text (news, site) has spent a great deal of time looking at how SharePoint functions in typical Enterprise CMS scenarios. Understanding both its strengths and weaknesses, their Microsoft Solutions Team focuses on differentiating fact from fiction when it comes to what SharePoint can do.

In a conversation with Lynn Elwood, Open Text's Microsoft Solutions Product Manager, we picked up some insights worth sharing.

With the number of on-premise SharePoint installs going no where but up, one has to wonder why Microsoft has also gone to the trouble of building an online (SaaS) version.

In an interview with Redmond's Director of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), Tom Rizzo indicated the move was in part to reach new customers and grow revenue more efficiently -- keeping up with the Joneses also comes to mind.

SharePoint Online isn't for everyone. While it offers a nice bit of functionality that will support many organization's collaboration and document management needs, there are some things you can't do and you should be aware of these before you sign up.

 AvePoint has once again beefed up its mission to protect and serve! SharePoint, that is. Focusing more on the protection side this time around, the infrastructure and management solutions provider has released two new compliance and platform protection tools: Content Shield and SharePoint Antivirus.

When SharePoint first came to market it was called an Enterprise Content Management System. Since then, its actual use has varied widely. Many say it's not a complete ECM platform because it lacks a number of important Enterprise CMS capabilities.

ECM provider Open Text (news, site) has built a strong partnership relationship with Redmond. Drawing upon that and broad field experience their latest analysis aims to separate fact from fiction.