Happy New Year, what’s in store for you in 2011

First off, I wanted to wish all my followers a very happy new year.  2011 is shaping up to be a killer year for small businesses.  There is so much new Microsoft technology coming out to make business more efficient, it’s hard to keep tabs on it all.  I also wanted to apologize to my followers about my lack of posts.  I’ve just returned from a 5 week paternity leave and before that, I was getting my stuff in order.

First, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard edition as Released to Manufacturing (RTM!).  This release is pretty exciting and signifies a number of different milestones both internal to our team, and external to the public.  Let’s focus on the external. 

SBS 2011 Standard offers small businesses a completely on premise solution to run their business, including the new Exchange Server 2010 with SP1, SharePoint Foundation Services 2010, and the coveted Server 2008 R2 base operating system, bringing security to a new level.  If you’re familiar with SBS 2008, then you’re in luck, because this product brings a bunch of new functionality, but the learning curve will be super short for you, but it still has enough meat in the product to keep it interesting.

For example, the New and Enhanced features of SBS 2011 Standard are:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard as the base OS, with it’s added security and speed over the 2008 base platform
• Exchange Server 2010, with SP1 brings greater reliability and performance to your small business.  In addition to many additional features like resource sharing (my personal favorite)
• SharePoint Foundation 2010 makes using SharePoint even easier!
• WSUS 3.0 with SP2 to help you manage patches with ease
• The new version of Remote Web Access (formerly Remote Web Workplace), with movable widgets.
• A redesigned http://companyweb
• Improvements into automated domain management
• An updated Best Practice Analyzer (BPA)

So it’ll be a few short weeks more before you can get your hands on this baby, just keep in mind the system requirements if you’re already procuring a machine for it.  Exchange needs more RAM than you’d probably think about it.

And coming the first half of this year, is the highly anticipated Windows Small Business Server 2011, which ties to Office 365, a true hybrid in the server market.  You can obtain the public beta for SBS 2011 Essentials here (with a new public preview coming soon!).

Also coming this year is Windows Storage server codename “Breckenridge”, which provides a client backup engine for your SBS 2011 Standard or SBS 2008 installs.  It’s like a win-win situation in 2011.

Finally, for media hounds, Windows Home Server “Vail” is coming as well, which uses Silverlight to stream videos and pictures out to the web, or DLNA 2.0 to stream it inside your home, backup your home PCs, your server.

All three of the above will also leverage an ecosystem of add-ins to extend the functionality of the server of your choice.  As I said, an exciting 2011.

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Announcing the next releases of Windows Small Business Server

Today we (as in our fearless leader Kevin Kean) pulled the lid off what our team has been working on for the past few years. Two new versions of Windows Small Business Server. That’s right. TWO new versions.

From a traditional standpoint, we’ve continued the single-server mantra with Windows Small Business Server “SBS7”. This version includes updates to all the major products in SBS, such as Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010 SP1, SharePoint 2010 Foundation, WSUS 3.0, and SQL 2008 R2 (with Premium edition). These new versions provide our customers with security and management. We also included a brand-spanking new version of Remote Web Workplace! This version of SBS will continue to support the familiar 75 users

The second version, code named Windows Small Business Server “Aurora” is the new edition of SBS. It’s cheaper than SBS7, and is even a lighter weight “first server” option for small businesses as is a hybrid server delivering both on premise services, as well integrates with the cloud. It also includes PC Backup, and server backup/restore capabilities. The same new version of Remote Web Workplace! This version of SBS will support up to 25 users.

“Aurora” also brings a key new functionality of add-ins to drive integration between new and existing on-line services with Aurora. Developers can find the SDK on Connect. We have been working with a lot of partners with SBS Aurora such as Symantec, Level Platforms and Disk Keeper are all making statements this week around plans to integrate products with SBS Aurora. HP is not only showing SBS Aurora in their booth at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, but has a sneak peek at http://www.facebook.com/CoffeeCoaching. And you’re sure to hear more as we get closer to releasing the preview.

You can sign-up to be notified when the Preview of these servers are available over on the SBS Connect website.

It’s nice to finally be able to talk about the products I’ve been working on for the last number of years!

[Official Blog Post on the Official SBS Blog]

[First discovered review of SBS7 and Aurora, by Paul Thurrott]

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The Next Wave of Productivity – Office 2010

Wow, it’s hard to believe that Office 2010 is here already.  I’ve been running different forms of beta for just shy of a year!  In fact, I can’t even consider running Outlook 2007 anymore, as the new Outlook 2010 makes me sooo productive.  The new Outlook ribbon, the detailed calendar views, the ability to import my Facebook internet calendar directly into Outlook (2007 did it, but one-time only, 2010 will continuously do it, keeping me up to date). 

I’ve been using it exclusively for work, and the features are amazing, but I hear (and can’t wait to try) that it has some social connectivity for personal use.  Can’t wait to get it on my home PC!

Join Microsoft & Steven Elop at the virtual launch!

Click the graphic above, to add to your calendar, then watch Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announce the launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on May 12, 2010 at 11 a.m. EST. The live Microsoft keynote focuses on the next wave of productivity that delivers:

• End user productivity across the PC, phone and browser
• IT choice and flexibility
• A platform for developers to build innovative solutions

Join the virtual launch event with Microsoft executives, product developers, partners and customers to:

• Find out how peers and partners are already seeing benefits to their business by leveraging the next wave of productivity.
• Submit your questions through live Q&A.
• Participate via blogs, tweets, social media networks, commenting, and more.

View on-demand breakout sessions showing how Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 meet the unique challenges people and businesses are faced with today, and provide the solutions they need for tomorrow.

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Embedding Live SharePoint Data into an Excel Spreadsheet

[This post courtesy of Chris Almida]

Windows Small Business Server includes Windows SharePoint Services by setup by default.  We use SharePoint daily at Microsoft to collaborate as a team.  One of the greatest benefits seems to be sharing a spreadsheet or List of items.  The beauty of SharePoint is multiple people can work on it at the same time.  Unlike with Excel, if you put it on a share, only one person can open it in Read/Write to make changes, or if you’re e-mailing it around, knowing which version has all the information in it.

With a SharePoint List, multiple people can work on different sections of a spreadsheet, but this causes the problem of what if you want the power of Excel behind your data to do graphing, or calculations on that data?  Well, you can build an Office Connection to download the latest data each time the spreadsheet is opened!

It’s super straight forward, here’s how (at least with SharePoint v3 UI):

On the SharePoint site

1. Navigate to the list you want to update from within Excel.
2. In the top right-hand corner of the sheet drop down the View box and choose Create View.
3. In the page that shows, choose a Datasheet View.
4. Give the view a friendly name so you can find it, for this demonstration let’s just call it “Datasheet View”, and click OK.
1. Feel free to scroll down and apply any filters to strip data out depending on the purpose of the spreadsheet you’re building.
5. Once you’re looking at your new Datasheet view, you want to go to Actions and then choose Task Pane. A task bar will open on the right (you can also use a little gray arrow on the right if you want).
6. click Query List With Excel, and Excel will automatically open

In Excel

1. Choose to Enable the Data Connections (as for security reasons they are typically blocked, but we trust our Internal SharePoint site, so it’s ok).  Once you Enable the data connection, all that Data goodness from SharePoint comes flying into Excel, ready to be worked with.  If you wanted a one time connection, you’re done and you can stop now.  If you want to create a connection you can use over and over again, continue on.
1. If an Import Dialog shows, make sure it says New Workbook at the bottom
2. Let’s go and Export the Office Connection so we can use it over and over again
1. On the Data tab of the ribbon, click on Connections
2. On the Work Book Connections pop-up, you’ll see a randomly named connection, ensure it’s selected and click Properties
3. Give the connection a friendly name under Connection name as I have done above.
4. Select the Enable background refresh and Refresh data when opening the file.
5. After you’ve made these changes, switch to the Definition tab and at the bottom, click Export Connection File.  Save this file with a well known name in a well known place.  I use the Connection Name I defined earlier as the file name as well, then click OK.

Using the Saved Connection in a new Excel file

1. Now that you have the connection to SharePoint saved as an Office Connection, simply open a new or existing excel spreadsheet, and select the A1 cell (the headers will come in with the connection, straight out of SharePoint!
2. Click on the Data tab and click Existing Connections and then Browse for More … and navigate to the saved Office Connection.
3. On the Import Data  select OK, and the Data from SharePoint just seamlessly Jumps into the Spreadsheet.

Now every time you open that Excel file, it will re-query the SharePoint site for the latest data.  Updating data only in one place saves time and energy.  You can program Excel to make calculations on the data, graph the data and show the data in different pivots as you see fit within Excel.

As a side note, my manager uses this remote data methodology to also download tables from the Internet for his fantasy baseball league to help him make his weekly picks!  If anyone generates a spreadsheet as sophisticated as his, let me know….. No, I can’t give his out, because I don’t have it!

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