BIFocal LLC

Month: September 2011

  • When was the last time I deployed that SharePoint solution?

    Ever have trouble remembering when you last deployed a specific solution?  Now, none of us would ever allow an environment to be uncontrolled and let people willy-nilly install solutions, but in the real world sometimes things slip through our well controlled documentation and we need a hand.

    For those of us with more than 5 farm solutions hunting and pecking for the last installed date can be problematic.  One of my colleagues (at this point I am forgetting who, so if it was you take a bow) helped me write a script to grab the information from SharePoint.

    Here is the script:

    a

    This will output the information to a text file on your C: called solutionlog.txt.  Remove the “ >> c:solutionlog.txt “ and it will display onscreen like this:

    b

    If you are in an environment that has continuous integration coming out of TFS or another like service, you can schedule this and have it email you the output on a regular basis. 

     

    spflogging

  • Apples and Mangos and Raspberries, oh my! A fun day of fruit…

    I spent a good portion of my day watching phones update today.  

    My iPhone 3GS had finally ground to a halt and I decided to go back to baseline and reimage it.  It took almost 2 hours for my iPhone to reinstall the base iOS and restore a backup, but at the end it is performing like a new phone.  I highly recommend doing that every 6 months to improve performance of your iPhone.a

    The really big news of the day however was that Windows Phone 7.5, affectionately known by everyone in the world as Mango, dropped today.  I spent all day checking my phone to see if I was one of the lucky who would be graced with the update sooner rather than later.  Sadly, I was not.  Not until after posting a sad message in response to Andrew Connell’s jubilant Facebook message saying that he had just gotten Mango installed did I find that there was a magic trick out there to make Mango appear.

    Reiterated from WPCentral: (proceed at your own risk)

    1. Connect your Windows Phone to a PC and launch the Zune software
    2. Click on Phone/Settings/Update. Allow the software to tell you whether an update is available. If so, skip this guide. If not continue to the next step.
    3. Click the update button again, and this time immediately disconnect your computer from the internet (some people have better luck waiting 1-2 seconds). Do this by pulling the Ethernet cable, disabling Wi-Fi, disabling your NIC, etc.
      1. I had the best luck disabling my NIC.  Trying to get the cable unplugged in just the right amount of time was proving tedious
    4. Wait 30 seconds or so and you should receive a notification that an update is available. This is 7392, the Mango pre-update.
    5. Now reconnect to the internet and continue with the update process through the Zune software.
    6. After 7392 is fully installed, you may receive a notification that another update is available. If so, install Mango now. If not, proceed to the next step.
    7. If the second update isn’t popping up on its own, repeat steps 3-5, causing the 7403 update to appear.
    8. Install 7403.
    9. Mango time! At this point, Zune should automatically start installing 7720, Mango. If it doesn’t happen automatically, force it like in previous steps.

    b 

    The entire process took about an hour and a half and I am very excited to go play with my new toy, as all of my developer friends have been flashing their pre-release bits in my face for some weeks/months now.

    Oh, the raspberries… they were a part of dinner.  I just needed a third fruit for the alliteration.

  • Breaking the silence–a personal note

    Some people have noticed the unusual lull in my posting.  Others are probably wondering why in the world they are still reading after the title doesn’t have anything to do with SharePoint.

    The out of the norm silence is due to several things happening in my personal world, which I normally try to keep out of my blogging, but since this has a direct correlation to my SharePoint community involvement I have decided to share it here.

    Since my vacation at the beginning of July I started to recognize that my involvement in the community and my desire to be more involved in SharePoint not just inside of my employer were not well aligned with my current career path.  My employer, while supportive, was not overly interested in my SharePoint community involvement and combined with other internal factors I realized that it was time for me to consider my career options.

    Like anyone who is considering a major life change I turned to my friends and family for advice, but I also reached out to my friends and trusted advisors in the SharePoint community and the response was overwhelming.  The support and advice that I received from colleagues around the community was amazing.  I am hard pressed to think of another group of professionals that are as impressively supportive and helpful of people (that they may have never actually met in person) as the SharePoint community.

    With the decision made that it was time for a change, I returned home to find a new SharePoint Users Group was starting in my area and I immediately dove in.  Now one of the organizers for the group we have made strategic moves to improve the community interaction here in New Hampshire, such as moving the meeting date and time out of conflict with our sister User Group down in Boston and getting some top quality talent to come and speak to our members.  We have also gotten sponsors for raffles, giveaways, and a new SharePoint Foundation 2010 site hosted by FPWeb.net that will come online later this month.  For more information about NHSPUG visit our site at http://www.granitestatesharepoint.org/

    I also got involved with SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire, which is this coming Saturday, September 24th in Manchester, NH at the Southern New Hampshire University Campus. You can still register for SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire by visiting our site at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/nh/default.aspx

    All of that made me feel great and really reconnected me with the community, but I still had to figure out what I really wanted to do from a career perspective.  That’s where LinkedIn came in.  I have always seemed to get between 5-12 linked in requests per week from recruiters and always ignored them.  I decided that it was time to hear what some of them had to say.  So I responded to 5 of them.  Almost instantly I got a call from a woman named Debbie Strevens from Workbridge Associates who claimed to have connections to every person in a power position in the Greater New England area and would find me the exact right for for me.  I chuckled a little bit internally after the call thinking, “Wow, she has some pitch but there is no way she can be for real.”  Turns out, she was. 

    A few months prior I had gotten some great advice from Christian Buckley of Axceler, whom I have come to respect and value as a friend and community contributor (and hopefully soon to be SharePoint MVP), which was “Sit down and write my own job description.  Before you look for a new career opportunity, know what you want.”

    I gave my job description to Debbie and in just under two weeks I had numerous competitive offers.  After much soul searching and long discussions with my wife I accepted an offer from Sentri, Inc. to be their new SharePoint Practice Director.

    While it was hard leaving what I had put my blood, sweat and tears into at my previous employer, I have been warmly embraced by Sentri and am truly excited to be working with a dynamic organization that is whole heartedly committed to Microsoft technology.  Sentri’s president, Philip Green, is famous for saying “At Sentri we put all our eggs in one basket, Microsoft Software.  Fortunately, this is one very, very safe basket.  We are Microsoft Technology Experts.”  It’s a pretty compelling statement to someone who has dedicated their career to Microsoft Technologies.

    Sentri has embraced and is fostering my commitment to the SharePoint community, encouraging my blogging (which will be cross posted on the Sentri site soon), speaking, and activities with the User Groups and SharePoint Saturdays.

    I am excited to be on a new career path that will allow and encourage me to follow my passion.  Expect more regular & diverse content in the weeks and months to come.