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Sharepoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 2

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) provide the latest updates to Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and to Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007.These updates include two main categories of fixes:

• Previously unreleased fixes that were made specifically for this service pack. In addition to general product fixes, this includes improvements in stability, in performance, and in security.
• All the public updates, security updates, cumulative updates, and hotfixes that were released through February 2009.

Overview of Service Pack 2 improvements

• Improved stability and security of the overall product.
• Improved reliability of Web site backup.
• Improved restore functionality.

How to obtain and install the service packs

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 2

The Office SharePoint Designer 2007 SP2 is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download this service packs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=88EFF285-0B92-45ED-979B-65AA22304DD6 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=88EFF285-0B92-45ED-979B-65AA22304DD6)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2

The Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 SP2 is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download this service pack, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1980414E-FE98-4A7C-B3B5-F852FDAB0533 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1980414E-FE98-4A7C-B3B5-F852FDAB0533)

Service Pack 2 for Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 has been released

 

Installation Steps

To keep all the files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following packages need to be applied on all servers in the farm. Service Pack 2 contains all fixes released through February of this year, so customers can install it directly on RTM build of the products.

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
2. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack (if applicable)
3. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007
4. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 Language Pack (if applicable)

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or "psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.  The version of content databases should be 12.0.0.6425 after successfully applying these updates.

 

 

Overview of Service Pack 2 (SP2) improvements (Office servers 2007)

Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• Improves the performance and stability of the content deployment feature and of the Variations feature.
• Adds a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool. This tool provides the following functionality:
  • Lets a SharePoint administrator use the Variations feature to scan a site for errors, report the errors, and fix certain problems.
  • Finds and repairs missing peer relationships and corrupted entries in the internal variations relationships list.
  • Handles the propagation of large volumes of variations content in a more manageable way.

Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access services

• Fixes Open Snapshot so that snapshots open more reliably, even if there is no SharePoint root site.
• Fixes display issues that cause calculations to appear incorrect in some cases.
• Improves connections to cubes by using .odc files in non-English cases.
• Improves the performance of programmatic scenarios.
• Fixes conditional formatting in Mozilla Firefox browsers.
• Improves support for generating Excel Web Access Web parts on new sites.

Microsoft Office Groove Server (64-bit version only)

• Office Groove Server 2007 Data Bridge now limits the number of file-sharing workspaces to 64 to make sure that all workspaces can be synchronized. This limit applies only to newly added file-sharing workspaces. If you already have more than 64 file-sharing workspaces, you can continue to use them.
• Improves synchronization reliability.
• Groove Server 2007 Manager can be installed and run with SQL Server 2008.
• Improves the Groove Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) connectivity and auto-activation functionality.
• Improves error reporting in the Groove Relay Server.
• Improves the robustness of Groove Relay Server.

Microsoft Office Forms Server

• Improves performance of large browser forms on InfoPath Form Services, both for memory usage and for page load time.
• Improves reliability of Forms Server and of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server by addressing the previous behavior in which an upgrade of an administrator-approved form template triggers an IIS reset.
• Improves the Digital Signature functionality for InfoPath Forms Services.

Microsoft Office Project Server

• Modifies the queue service to prevent it from using large volumes of memory over long periods.
• Improves the performance of certain database table indexes.
• Improves cost resource functionality. For example, the server now correctly handles tasks that have material or work resources assigned to the same task.
• Improves certain areas such as resource plans, build team, and the server scheduling engine.

Microsoft Office Search Server

• Improves the reliability and stability of WSS crawl, of SharePoint crawl, of crawling through a very large corpus, and of backup restore.
• Introduces a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint administrator tune the Query processor multiplier parameter. For example, the Query processor multiplier can be used to tune the query performance for SSP indexing content sources that have highly restrictive permissions and many duplicates.
• Improves the accuracy of searches that involve numbers. For example, there is additional support for large numbers in which a comma is used to separate every three digits (for example, 1,000,000), for numbers that are between 9 and 40 characters, and for numbers that are separated by spaces.

Platform support

• Provides full support for Windows Internet Explorer 8.
• Provides level 2 browser support for Mozilla Firefox (versions 2 and 3).
  • For more information about browser support levels, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101945391033.aspx (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101945391033.aspx)

• Provides support for Windows Server 2008.

How to obtain and install the service packs

This service pack update is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download the service pack, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082)

 

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082)

 

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01C6A3E8-E110-4956-903A-AD16284BF223 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01C6A3E8-E110-4956-903A-AD16284BF223)

 

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66C5026F-9F47-4642-8378-2526918009FA (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66C5026F-9F47-4642-8378-2526918009FA)

 

Overview of Service Pack 2 improvements (Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0)

 

Some big areas of the improvements that the Windows SharePoint Services team wanted to highlight:

• Faster, more reliable content migration and data backup and restore
• Reduced memory consumption
• Smoother upgrade experience
• Significant database performance adjustments
• Updated integration for forms authentication
• Advanced permission management
• Helpful administrative tools
• Expanded browser compatibility

How to obtain and install the service packs

This service pack update is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download the service pack, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B)

 

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B)

 

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=085E5AC8-58F6-4CF9-8012-33B95EE36C0F (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=085E5AC8-58F6-4CF9-8012-33B95EE36C0F)

 

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2C2B6CAF-B46D-45EB-AC4D-DEAAA48C3A2C (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2C2B6CAF-B46D-45EB-AC4D-DEAAA48C3A2C)

My Presentations @ Microsoft Days 2009 (Sofia, Bulgaria)

Here are my presentations from MS Days:

Microsoft Citizen Service Platform or how to deliver high efficient solutions for the Public sector and Business

SharePoint Development with Visual Studio 2008 (VSeWSS 1.3)

I would like to thank for the support to Paul Andrew and James Brown

Special thanks to Doncho Angelov and Alexander Miloev for the pics :-)

   

Sharepoint 14 and SP2 for 2007 Office servers

Microsoft Sharepoint 14 is now Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2010. It no longer be “Office Server” and MOSS… too bad!

“The primary reason why we took Office out of the name - lots of folks associate the name Office with the Office client. We wanted to take the opportunity to reestablish the Office name and brand to be synonymous with the client suite.”

Perhaps, the next version of WSS should be just WSS v4 ?!?!?

 

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System

When: 28 April 2009

What:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

• An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.

• SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.

• Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.

• A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services

• SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.

• Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.

• Some display issues have been addressed.

• Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Groove Server

• Improved  synchronization reliability.

• Groove Server 2007 Manager will install and run with SQL 2008.

• Groove’s LDAP connectivity and auto-activation functionality have been improved.

• Error reporting in the Groove Relay Server has improved significantly.

• Groove Relay Server has improved robustness.

Forms Server

• Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.

• Browser rendering of various controls, such as the 'cannot be blank' asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

Project Server

• Better memory management in the queue service.

• Performance to certain database table indexes is improved.

• Resource plans, build team, cost resources, and the server scheduling engine have improved.

Search Server

• Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.

• Backup-restore has been improved.

• A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.

• Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

Great… Sharepoint Designer is now free

Starting on April 1, 2009, SharePoint Designer 2007 is free for download.

Letter to SharePoint Designer Customers

Free Download

Watch the video where Tom Rizzo and J.R. Arredondo discuss these changes and provide some insights into what is coming in the future.

Get the video

SharePoint Commerce Services for Commerce Server 2009

The latest edition of Commerce Server 2009 has been announced. It includes OOB interoperability and integration with MOSS 2007.

Commerce Server 2009 comes with OOB default website that exists within SharePoint. It includes more than 30 web parts and controls:

• Management: Inline Product Editing, Channel Configuration and more
• Profiles: Registration Wizard, My Profile, Credit Card, Address and more
• Marketing: Advertisements and discounts, Ratings and Reviews
• Search: Search Box and Search Results
• Orders: Add to Cart, Shopping Cart, Order Details and more
• Catalog: Site Map, Product Query, Product Details and Images Viewer

In addition to Web Parts you can use all standard MOSS features, customize the site with Sharepoint Designer and use all publishing capabilities.

Sharepoint Commerce Services can be used with ASP.NET enabled web sites, but you will loose the following functionalities:

• Content Management
• Search
• Workflow
• Versioning
• and others

If you choose to use WSS 3.0 instead of MOSS 2007, you will loose:

• Multi language support
• Publishing (WCM)
• OOB workflows
• Enterprise Search