Hi folks, I'm busily preparing for TechEd2007 and one of my session is developer focused  about Workflow in Microsoft Sharepoint.

This will be where all my slides and sample code will be shortly :)

See you soon.....

If you're like me and run a few virtual machines each day, then running them with ease is key I reckon.

Generally I've found on dual core machines etc. virtual server makes better use of multi-cpu based hosts than what Virtual PC2007 does (VMWare vs VPC is another debate :)

The only draw back is that I've always had to setup this IIS based website and it gets painful, particularly on a laptop etc. when all sorts of things get installed and uninstalled etc. IIS sites sometimes stop working and thus your only lifeline to the running virtual machines.

Well VMRCplus is the answer! (This used to be an internal MS tool which it looks like they've released to the public)

YOU DO NOT NEED IIS with this baby - it uses the COM Api behind the scenes.

Grab it here........

VMRC PLUS

Some features to wet your appetites:

• Direct control of local or remote instances of the Virtual Server service. IIS and IE browser are no longer required!
• Tabbed interface to quickly jump between Virtual Server hosts and guest VMRC sessions.
• Reusable saved states: this feature allows users to preserve a particular saved state and return to that state at any time.
• Multiple guest selection supported for startup/shutdown/save/display.
• Browse button navigation for media, hard disk images, ISO images, .VMC files, etc.
• Drag and Drop support for .VMC files, ISOs images, VHD and VFD files.
• Resizable desktop support for guests running Virtual Machine Additions (maximize VMRC window supported).
• Limited cut and paste of text from host to guest (only).
• A built-in utility to take JPG screenshots of running guests. Useful when filing bugs.
• Built-in error notification with Virtual Server eventlog viewer.
• A Virtual Networks Manager and Virtual Disks Manager that cover all features.
• Keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl-S to save state a guest).
• Create multiple guests at once.
• Create guest from parent (or multiple guests)!
• Automatic reconnect to a designated Virtual Server host.
• Toolbars in both Guest and Console Manager for quick access.
• Unlimited number of guests.
• Maximum of 32 Virtual Server hosts.
• Sorting on columns of guests so you can sort based on status and multi-select.
• Automatic detection of Virtual Machine Additions and notification.
• Detection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

There's the whole suite of products on here now! From 2004 to R2 (you thought I was going to say BTS2000!!!! ....I try to push that out of my mind)

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/roadmap/default.mspx

Whether it's BTS04 or 06 - you can always generate the schema behind the magical binding file from the following command (courtesy of Mark Berry):

xsd.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006/Microsoft.BizTalk.Deployment.dll" /type:BindingInfo

-Mark Berry

Pretty cool - thanks Mark. (obviously change '2006' to '2004' if on BTS 2004)

You now have an XSD that corresponds to all the options in your Binding File.

Enjoy!

We've got a decent PDF IFilter from found on the MS IFilter Blog.

The IFilter team have been busy and while this IFilter is by a third party, I believe it has under gone some internal MS testing.

One of the things I've had trouble with in the past has been Native Adobe Compression within PDFs. In the later versions of PDF writer/distiller etc. when outputting a PDF, one of the options is to select the amount of compression (a slider bar from memory).

I was onsite and noticed that out of the 400 PDFs in our 'test' folder, around 50 were not being properly indexed (only filename, filesize, location etc were 'extracted').

All of these 50 documents had PDF compression set to 'high' (there were 4 different compression settings)

You may or may not have to add the work around below - Foxit have updater their installer.

---- snip ------

Long awaited 64-bit PDF IFilter finally available.

Finally we have a 64 bit PDF IFilter - surprisingly the solution is not from Adobe or Microsoft, but from a company called Foxit Software.The IFilter is compatiable with the following Microsoft products: Windows Indexing Service, MSN Desktop Search, Internet Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Site Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology.

 There's one simple workaround to get the filter running on 64 bit MOSS 2007. The steps are given below.

1. Install Foxit 64bit PDF Ifilter. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/

2. Add a pdf extension in MOSS search settings

3. Open regedit, locate [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

4. Change the default value to {987f8d1a-26e6-4554-b007-6b20e2680632} .

5. Recycle the search service: net stop osearch
                                              net start osearch

6. Start a full crawl to index your pdf documents :)

Years ago we struggled when clients surfed to web pages, to try and get any sort of information out about them.

To get more info, we would present a little page with some client script to determine ('mine' being the operative word) their capabilities (cookes, script, even had access to Navigation History etc etc)

I was recently contacted by a site and part of the request I was presented with my User_Agent string for my initial request.

HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; Tablet PC 2.0; InfoPath.2; FDM)

Who can determine the most out about this machine?

So your default User Agent strings *do* tell alot about the software you're running. We can modify this, but you run the risk of websites etc. not interacting fully with you (and I know how much we all love our Ajax!)

Over the times parents have named their kids many things...but I do feel sorry for this little girl being called Vista.

A father called his daughter Vista....does this mean the son will be called 'LongHorn' and who knows about upgrades, boyfriends and remote offsite camping trips.

Wonder no more why so many people change their names over in the US.

Monday's tidbit.

MOSS and reporting services integration......

After installing SQL2005 SP2 and SharepointRS.msi (Sharepoint 'extensions') you're left to do a 'small' amount of configuration. Basically telling the MOSS environment where to find the Reporting Services Server.

Previously this has been a difficult step - almost a journey of discovery. Here's the answer.

From Central Admin->Web Application->Reporting Services Configuration Integration

From below the 1st box always gives grief - the label title and the description seem to indicate different things.

So just to put this to bed - the Web that you have ReportingServices installed - point off to the ReportService WebService - you're good to go!