User Profile Replication Engine Released

Microsoft has released a "User Profile Replication Engine" which can synchronize user profile information between Shared Service Providers on different farms within an enterprise.The Engine must run with pretty serious privileges on both the source SSP and the destination SSP(s), which means some negotiation about accounts and privileges between (e.g central IT services and a department which has its own SharePoint farm.

However, we finally have an approach to avoid multiple profiles for one user between central farms and departmental farms.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc663011.aspx

The User Profile Replication Engine is part of the SharePoint Administrators Toolkit version 2.0:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508851.aspx

Silverlight and SharePoint

From sharepointdiscussions@yahoo.com: this looks like a good resource on Silverlight for SharePoint.

------ Forwarded Message
From: Devin Rader <devin@mindwhip.com>
Reply-To: "sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com"
<sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:21:10 -0400
To: "sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com"
<sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com>, <sharepoint@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [sharepointdiscussions] silverlight & sharepoint


There is a bunch of great info on SharePoint + SL2 here:

http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16420

The first video walks you through creating and deploying a basic SL2
webpart.

Devin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Akshaya M"
To: sharepoint@yahoogroups.com, sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sharepointdiscussions] silverlight & sharepoint
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:51:55 +0530

hi,

has anyone worked or has integrated silverlight component with
sharepoint
and deployed as a webpart if so can u please suggest me appropriate
steps.
i.e deploying via .XAP method nad the normal dll method.
thanks for all ur suggestion.

--
Regards-
Akshaya..

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Content Deployment Options Compared

It appears on the surface that SharePoint is intended to be used as a "live site" technology, where content is developed in the same place where it is published. For collaborative teamsites, this is often an appropriate model, since team members can generally be trusted with "half-baked" content. For content that is published outside the team, the built-in "publishing" feature (option) provides an extension of the develop-in-place model which hides draft content from readers until it is "approved".

However, there are many scenarios where develop-in-place is not appropriate; for example, when there is code involved as well as content, or where massive changes need to be coordinated to avoid large numbers of "did I update that link to the new page" questions. In these cases, some method of migrating content from a "development" server to a "production" server (or perhaps to some intermediate "staging" server) is needed.

Chris O'Brien, a Microsoft Most Valued Professional, does a thorough job of comparing the options in this blog post:

http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2007/10/stsadm-export-content-deployment.html

Load Balancing Central Administration

Ben Curry from Mindsharp says there's no need for multiple instances of Central Admin on a farm, because it's easy to construct one on a working node if the regular one fails.

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Benjamin D. Curry"
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:23:21 -0500
To: "sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com"
Subject: RE: [sharepointdiscussions] Load Balancing Central Administration

by executing " "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server
extensions\12\bin\psconfig.exe" -cmd adminvs -provision -port 12345
-windowsauthprovider onlyusentlm" on any server in the farm, you are 2
minutes from having Central Admin on any server farm member. So, I generally
only have it on one server in the farm.

hth,

Ben Curry, CISSP, SharePoint Server MVP
Mindsharp
http://mindsharpblogs.com/ben

From: sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of lazybugger76
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 2:52 PM
To: sharepointdiscussions@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sharepointdiscussions] Load Balancing Central Administration


So I have read a couple of articles that say you cannot load balance
Central Administration. Is this really the case? If so, if I lose my
Central Administraion server are there any better ways to have
redundancy then manually moving it to another server?

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated

Thanks
Matt

Authentication Zones and Alternate Access Mapping

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261995.aspx

In the course of developing a model corporate deployment, this Technet
article does the best job yet of explaining authentication zones and
Alternate Access Mapping.

Useful SharePoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities

Check out "Useful SharePoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities" on
CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/SPDActivities. Includes (as of 8/21/08):

• Send Email with HTTP File attachment - Allows sending emails with attachments retrieved using a web request
  
• Send Email with List Item attachments - Allows sending list item attachments as files attached to an email
  
• Start Another Workflow - Starts another workflow associated with a list item
  
• Grant Permission on Item - Allows granting of specified permission level on a spicified item
  
• Delete List Item Permission Assigment - Allows deleting of specified permission level assigment for a given user
  
• Reset List Permissions Inheritance - removes any unique permissions assigned to an item by inheriting list permissions
  
• Is User a member of a SharePoint group - Checks if a given user is part of given sharepoint group
  
• Is Role assigned to User - Checks if a user role is already assigned on the current list item
  
• Lookup user info - allows to lookup properties in site's user information list for a given login
  
• NEW! Copy List Item Extended Activity - Allows copying/moving list items and files cross site.
  
• NEW! Send Email Extended - Enhaced version of the OOTB activity. Allows you to specify the sender. Also does not break links in body.