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Just in case you missed it, Microsoft is hosting a Virtual Summit on May 16, 2017. Last year during the Future of SharePoint event, several announcements were made pertaining to SharePoint’s next iteration. This year it’s a follow up on where we’ve been and where we’re going next.

For more information on the event, check out the Microsoft blog post here – “Announcing the SharePoint Virtual Summit”

Feel like skipping the blog post and going for the registration page, click on over – https://resources.office.com/ww-landing-sharepoint-virtual-summit-2017

I’d like to thank those that were able to attend my session on “Getting Started with Office 365” this past Saturday at #SPSBurgh, also known as SharePoint Saturday Pittsburgh. The event was well prepped and hosted in downtown Pittsburgh. It was great to engage with attendees as well as to see friends of old that I’ve not seen for nearly two years (wow it’s been that long?)

If you’re just getting started with Office 365 or thinking about what all is involved, this session is for you.

Just in case you’ve been spending too much time configuring your content types or building SharePoint farms in Azure, you may want to quickly go register for the Microsoft Office Group’s “The Future of SharePoint” event that’s taking place today (May 4).

More details about registration are available here – https://resources.office.com/en-us-landing-the-future-of-sharepoint.html?wt.mc_id=5000792

This morning at 4:21 AM Eastern I was greeted by a pleasant surprise with an update in the iOS App Store alerting me to version 1.6 of the various Microsoft apps for Office (PowerPoint, Word, Excel). In the change notes the first item listed is “iCloud Support” meaning that now you’ve got three options for your file source – Office 365, DropBox and iCloud.
That’s pretty swanky all things considered. And even upon opening the app it gives you a little reminder of what new things are in store for you as seen here:

When you actually go into the app and click on the ellipsis, you’re greeted with your iCloud location as an option or source of data. Note that you’re given a view of the folders available as seen here:

As you can see I don’t see iCloud all that much… 🙂

More goodness pertaining to this new capability as well as other data source providers (Box, SalesForce, Citrix) in the Office Web Applications available here in the Microsoft Office Blogs:
http://blogs.office.com/2015/02/17/new-cloud-storage-integration-office/

For more about the Cloud Storage Provider program check here – http://dev.office.com/programs/officecloudstorage

If you’re not able to attend SPSTCDC but you’re still interested in following what’s going on, consider checking out the Live Blogging stream that is being hosted by Women in SharePoint’s DC group.

The link is available here:
http://womeninspdc.org/pages/live-blogging

If you’re still interested in attending, there will be onsite registration. More information about this stellar event can be found here:
http://www.spstc.org

So often I seem to find case studies out there that discuss technical problems that have been successfully executed against leveraging SharePoint as a platform, or how to perform specific tasks – there are a slew of awesome blogs out there that are chocked full of information to assist IT Pros, Developer and Architects.  But what about the Business Executives?

There aren’t too many blogs out there that talk about the business applications of SharePoint in terms of case studies, though there are a handful that touch the surface and dive in a particular area.  And there are sessions at conferences now and then that really get into the softer side of SharePoint implementations and the success they’ve achieved – but again they’re far and few between.

Well, if you happen to be in the Washington DC Metro area on 8 October 2010, I’d suggest you check out “Executive Insights: How Three D.C. Organizations Achieved Work Management Success”. It’ll be hosted over at the Ritz Carlton Tyson’s Corner with several great speakers discussing the business value of SharePoint implementations, the approaches and methodologies taken and the return on investment. Featured speakers include Arpan Shah of Microsoft, Marie-Michelle Strah, PhD of Aquilient, Joe Snyder of Video Gaming Technologies, Matthew Fritts, MPH of Samueli Institute, and Bill English of MindSharp.

Definitely an event worth considering as an executive, technology officer, business analyst or decision maker in the SharePoint field.

Everyone’s getting in the game of cumulative updates… even the Outlook team, releasing patches pre-SP2.  Looks like the Outlook product team has been fairly busy with fixes and improvements with the Outlook client.

Check out the Outlook Product team’s blog for more information in the article “Announce the February Cumulative Update for Outlook 2007”.

I’ve downloaded the update and can say that Outlook 2007 seems a lot more responsive and seems to be a little more stable than previously.  Key information…

Outlook 2007 SP2 delivers performance improvements in four major areas:

• General Responsiveness
  SP2 reduces I/O disk usage and UI response time.
• Startup
  SP2 removes long operations from initial startup.
• Shutdown
  SP2 makes Outlook exit predictably despite pending activities.
• Folder/View Switch
  SP2 improves view rendering and folder switching.

Probably the biggest thing for me is the Shutdown speed.  While the process may continue to run in the background for synchronization purposes, over all I’ve noticed that it disconnects from Exchange more elegantly and closes down rather than lingering waiting for a connection to disconnect.

Download available through Hotfix Request.

KB 968009 – Outlook 2007 Improvements in the February 2009 cumulative update

KB 961752 – Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): February 24, 2009