Tobias Lekman

Configuring SMTP relay to Live Mail for SharePoint 2010

When developing SharePoint solutions, you normally use a virtual image locally or hosted on a Cloud service. If you wish to use outgoing emails you normally require an Exchange server. Instead, I am now installing relay to my live.com account hosted by Microsoft.

First, I activate the SMTP server feature on the server via Server Manager:

I then open the IIS 6.0 Manager, connect to the local SMTP server instance and configure the properties of the relay server.

Under Access select Relay and select the “All except the list below” option

From Delivery, click Outbound Security and enter your Live ID credentials and check the TLS encryption option.

Under Advanced set the smart host address to smtp.live.com.

Last, configure the outgoing email settings from the Central Administration site under System Settings/Outgoing Email Settings.

SharePoint, WCM and the Magic Quadrant

I was recently turned to a post about the Magic Quadrant for CMS where Microsoft and SharePoint was nowhere to be seen. Emails were sent. Lync was flaring.

I often get the question how SharePoint compare to EPiServer (who has a strong hold of WCM in Sweden) but the focus is only on what EPiServer can do – not what SharePoint can do that WCM products can’t. The point is – you cannot compare Microsoft SharePoint as a platform with products such as EPiServer or SiteCore.

When looking at the Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals and Enterprise Content Management, Microsoft (and SharePoint) are in a clear leading position.

WCM versus ECM

There is a clear difference between WCM and ECM and the term “CMS” adds even further confusion.

By definition, web content management (WCM) is for controlling the content of a website through the use of specific management tools based on a core repository. This includes content creation functions, such as templating, workflow and change management, and content deployment functions that deliver prepackaged or on-demand content to Web servers.

ECM contains WCM and also document management, records management, image-processing, social content and workflow/business process management.

Much more than WCM

SharePoint 2010 is so much more than web content management. If you only need web content management, will never require ECM features and trust Gartner on this, go for SiteCore. But if you would require the possibilities to add business process management, DAM, e-forms, document composition, advanced search, information archiving and packaged application integration; then SharePoint is for you!

“…Microsoft SharePoint takes hold in an organization, users naturally begin exploring its suitability for a wider range of content management applications and its potential as a replacement for existing solutions. Essential considerations for this category include abilities to manage rich metadata, enable full life cycle control, allow easier migrations from other repositories, network drives or file servers, and to bring some analytic or business intelligence-like capability to unstructured data overall. Understanding how content relates to larger enterprise information management disciplines will also become critical.”

Source: Gartner

Resources: Building a Private Cloud for SharePoint 2010

In short; a private cloud is an on-premise, virtualized farm that can automatically grow to cater for your needs. The key here is automated. Simply creating an over-sized static farm and allowing applications to run here is not the same thing; that’s traditional hosting.

In addition, a hybrid cloud is where the private cloud also uses public cloud services, such as Office 365,

Private cloud architectures are becoming popular and a large amount of good resources are out there for you right now. Why not take a look?

Private Cloud For the Technical Decision Maker

Microsoft has published an excellent overview of the different types of cloud service models and their impact on investment, governance, level of control and the challenges a business might face.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/cloud/hh147296.aspx

MOF Infrastructure and Planning Design Guide

Microsoft has release a whitepaper guide on how to use the Microsoft Operations Framework for service management of a private cloud. Available now after registration on the Microsoft Connect site.

https://connect.microsoft.com/site14/Downloads

Optimizing SQL Server for Private Cloud

SQL Server 2012 codename “Denali” contains many service-optimizations for cloud services. Microsoft has released a poster and a guidance on how to optimize SQL server resources for a private cloud deployment.

Full article: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/cloud-computing/private-cloud.aspx

Video: How to Build a Private Cloud

Chris Henley discusses “the emergence of a private cloud as the logical next step in virtualization and the amazing benefits that you can get by automating IT services in your organization”.

Video: http://blogs.technet.com/b/chenley/archive/2011/08/15/how-to-build-a-private-cloud-part1.aspx

Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions

Finally, Phil Wiklund has released a book on cloud deployments for SharePoint. I found out about the book while attending Phil’s session at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Anaheim (read my recap of the session). The book is very well written and I recommend it to anyone in the process of planning or deploying cloud solutions.

Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions, available from O’Reilly

Converting C# to PowerShell

I found a great tip from Paulo Morgado around generating PowerShell from C# code.

.NET Reflector has an array of add-ons on CodePlex, and one of these is the PowerShell add-on that allows you to disassemble code directly into PowerShell.

In this example, I am opening the method ChangeAccountPassword from the SPUtility library in SharePoint:

I can now change targets from C# to PowerShell.

When you need to convert helper methods from C# to PowerShell or if you’re new to PowerShell syntax, this tool is really helpful!

SharePoint Conference 2011

This year’s conference was great and provided everything; sunny weather, interesting speakers, great parties, cool swag giveaways from the exhibitors and most of all a great amount of information.

It is a humbling feeling to look back over the crowd during the opening keynote and not being able to see the end of the room for the 7500 or so attendees. Even more so when considering the million people strong SharePoint community that is out there today!

During the event, I did some guest blogging on SharePointEduTech which is hosted by Dave Coleman. I wrote a few pieces around the sessions that I enjoyed the most.

SPC223: Deploying SharePoint 2010 in Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud Architectures

The conference sessions has had a few ups-n-downs but there has been a couple that really stood out. Phil Wicklund’s session on Cloud deployment options for SharePoint however was excellent. I had prepared for the conference with a sheet of questions, most of which was targeted to this session, and all of them were covered off the bat in the actual session.

SPC102: Drive Adoption and Get Users Excited About SharePoint

This was the first session I attended at the conference and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I had been registering for some pretty heavy technical sessions and this was not it. It was however one of the most useful ones that I can take home with me and use in my everyday projects.

SPC373: Performance Tuning SharePoint 2010

Eric Shupps, the “SharePoint Cowboy”, held an intense session focusing on performance tuning SharePoint 2010. It was filled with live demos and Eric’s usual high energy. It also contained a great amount of helpful tips and tricks for improving performance on your farm installation.