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Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

AJDalholm — Sun, 20 May 2012 18:11:00 GMT

Name: Anders

Twitter handle: none

Blog URL: none

Current Microsoft certs: MCSA: Messaging and MCITP: Enterprise Administrator

Certification goal: MCSE: Private Cloud

Start date (MMMDDYYYY): 15/05/2012

Anticipated achievement date (MMMDDYYYY): Hopefully at TechED 2012

Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

miguel_avh — Sun, 20 May 2012 05:59:00 GMT

Name: Miguel Villagran

Twitter handle: @miguelavh

Current Microsoft certs: MCSE (2000/2003), MCITP:Server Administrator

Certification goal: MCSE:Private Cloud

Start date (MMMDDYYYY): 05/20/2012

Anticipated achievement date (MMMDDYYYY): 07/20/2012

Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

ifiok — Sun, 20 May 2012 01:33:00 GMT

The road to the PC cert has commenced.

Got 825 on 70-659 yesterday.

cant make it to Teched so have to shift my target to later in the year.

However I wish to remain a member of this forum

Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

Victor Zaidi — Sat, 19 May 2012 19:14:00 GMT

Name: Victor Zaidi

Twitter handle:@captaincheers

@devicvantstad

Blog(in dutch) URL:http://Viczaid.bolgspot.com

URL:victorzaidi.worldpress.com

Sites : http://www.Belgianbeerday.com

www.belgianbeerweekend.com

Twitter : @Captaincheers

@devicvantstad

Current Microsoft certs: None, just trying & understanding and comprehensing the new technoligies

Certification goal: MCSE: Private Cloud

Start date : Started feeling the oppertunities and chances in april and May 2012 after a "Sabatical" (burn-out-downie-ripped-off) winter.

Anticipated achievement date : I hope Jul 30 2012

Good luck everybody , have a good one

Victor Zaidi

Vzw Captain Beerheart Foundation

Groenplaats 15

B-2000 Antwerpen

Belgium

+32 492 198 303

viczaidi@hotmail.com

info@belgianbeerday.com

www.belgianbeerday.com

www.belgianbeerweekend.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: b2ladmin@microsoft.com

To: viczaidi@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: The Introduction Thread

Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 06:00:08 -0700

Re: The Introduction Thread

Replied to by rob98506

Name: Robert Zane (Rob)

Twitter Handle: N/A

Blog URL: N/A

Current Microsoft Certs: MCSE (NT 3.51, NT 4.0, 2000, 2003), MCSA (2003)

Other Certs: PMP, ITILv3, CISSP

Certification Goal: MCSE: Private Cloud

Start Date (MMMDDYYYY): JUL012012

Anticipated Achievement Date (MMMDDYYYY): AUG312012

Note: Currently working on MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator on Windows 7

You can view this thread online. To unsubscribe from only this thread, mute the thread .

Name: Victor Zaidi

Twitter handle:@captaincheers

@devicvantstad

Blog(in dutch) URL:http://Viczaid.bolgspot.com

URL:victorzaidi.worldpress.com

Sites : http://www.Belgianbeerday.com

www.belgianbeerweekend.com

Twitter : @Captaincheers

@devicvantstad

Current Microsoft certs: None, just trying & understanding and comprehensing the new technoligies

Certification goal: MCSE: Private Cloud

Start date : Started feeling the oppertunities and chances in april and May 2012 after a "Sabatical" (burn-out-downie-ripped-off) winter.

Anticipated achievement date : I hope Jul 30 2012

Good luck everybody , have a good one

Victor Zaidi

Vzw Captain Beerheart Foundation

Groenplaats 15

B-2000 Antwerpen

Belgium

+32 492 198 303

viczaidi@hotmail.com

info@belgianbeerday.com

www.belgianbeerday.com

www.belgianbeerweekend.com

---

Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

rob98506 — Sat, 19 May 2012 12:59:00 GMT

Name: Robert Zane (Rob)

Twitter Handle: N/A

Blog URL: N/A

Current Microsoft Certs: MCSE (NT 3.51, NT 4.0, 2000, 2003), MCSA (2003)

Other Certs: PMP, ITILv3, CISSP

Certification Goal: MCSE: Private Cloud

Start Date (MMMDDYYYY): JUL012012

Anticipated Achievement Date (MMMDDYYYY): AUG312012

Note: Currently working on MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Administrator on Windows 7

Blog Post: RTM’d today: Windows Phone 7 Development Internals

Devon Musgrave — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:28:00 GMT

We’re pleased to announce the release to manufacturing of the book Windows Phone 7 Development Internals, by Andrew Whitechapel, who is a senior member of the core Windows Phone Application Platform team. This book covers the breadth of application development for the Windows Phone 7 platform (both the major 7.0 and 7.1/7.5 versions and the minor 7.1.1 version). The book shows how you can build compelling and useful applications for Windows Phone, while providing detailed technical insights into the design of the application platform itself, which will help you build applications that are consistent with the strategic vision for Windows Phone. While you can build both XNA and Silverlight applications for the Windows Phone platform, this book focuses on developing Silverlight applications using Visual Studio.

Each chapter covers a set of related features. For each feature, the book provides one or more sample applications, and walks you through the significant code (C# and XAML), so you can understand both the techniques and the design and implementation choices that you have in each case. The book calls out potential pitfalls and provides scenarios where you can typically make performance or user experience improvements. An underlying theme of the book is not only to conform to the UI design guidelines, but to also to the notion of a balanced, healthy phone ecosystem. The book is available now in a Rough Cut version here: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145336651.do.

This book is scheduled to be available in print and e formats in just a few short weeks in June, 2012.

Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

olivier.vermeir — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:10:00 GMT

Name: Olivier Vermeir

Twitter handle: @olvr_vrmr

Blog URL: www.lao-tzu.be

Current Microsoft certs: MCTS AD, Exchange 2010, Sharepoint 2010

Certification goal: MCSA, then MCSE

Start date (MMMDDYYYY): May 15, 2012

Anticipated achievement date (MMMDDYYYY): July 15, 2012 for MCSA, Oct 15, 2012 for MCSE PC

Blog Post: Instant Replay: Tweetchats with Liberty Munson, May 16-17

Veronica Sopher (Microsoft Learning) — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:49:00 GMT

We had the pleasure of featuring our Psychometrician Liberty Munson on two tweetchats this week! For each one-hour chat, she was the voice behind @MSLearning. Our Twitter followers asked many great questions about certifications and exams. Liberty shared fascinating, behind-the-scenes facts about our exam development process, and also offered exam prep tips. Missed the tweetchats? We've got you covered. Simply replay them below and take notes. (Did you spot the picture of her dog Zenith?)

And... Liberty has joined the 21st century and started her own Twitter account! You can follow her @LibertyMunson, and chat her up about work, reading, outdoor adventures, etc.

This week's tweetchats were inspired by our community's wonderful responses to the Ask a Certification Expert (ACE) video series. You can find the entire playlist here. Subscribe to our channel while you're there because more new videos are coming! Got a question you want to have answered in an ACE video? Post it in a comment below, and you just might get an answer + a shout out in our next video!

Replay of the May 16 session:

Replay of the May 17 session:

Forum Post: Re: New Blog Post -- "I’m now a SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master"

limssd — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:01:00 GMT

Congrats ! Is it self-sponsored ?

Forum Post: Re: The Introduction Thread

andre.thompson — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:52:00 GMT

Name: Andre Thompson

Twitter handle: @thompsonandre

Blog URL: andrethompson.blogspot.com

Current Microsoft certs: MCP, MCSE

Certification goal: MCITP

Start date (MMMDDYYYY): MAY172012

Anticipated achievement date (MMMDDYYYY): DEC012012

Blog Post: Narayan's transformation

Lisa Sheffield — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:02:00 GMT

The DPE/MSL Scholarship has turned a new leaf in Narayan's life. A rural youth from Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, Narayan comes from a background of extreme hardship. However, with the support of Microsoft and NIIT, he is receiving technical training, soft skills, and a paid internship to allow him to gain the skills and experience to follow his dreams.

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLgUsu1z67Q&feature=youtu.be]

Blog Post: Quick news: Programming Windows, Sixth Edition, now available

Devon Musgrave — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:09:00 GMT

A quick note to let you know that our special-offer period for Charles Petzold’s Programming Windows, Sixth Edition, has begun. From May 17-31, you can order the ebook for $10, and you’ll receive three versions of the ebook as it is developed over time. You can read about the offer and find a link to the purchase page here.

Wiki: MCSE: PC Study Resources

Anonymous — Thu, 17 May 2012 04:15:00 GMT

List of study and exam prep materials, compiled by group members.

Wiki Page: MCSE: PC Study Resources

Veronica Sopher (Microsoft Learning) — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:15:00 GMT

Useful Video Content

MMS: FI-B307 – Cloud Clustering: Leveraging System Center 2012 for Continual Availability in the Private Cloud
MMS: FI-B318 - System Center 2012: Managing Multiple Hypervisors, VMware and Xen, and How They Fit into the Microsoft Private Cloud

Private Cloud Jump Start Videos

System Center 2012 Unified Installer: The Screencasts - via Kevin Remde's blog

Lab setup -- Build a Blistering Fast Windows Server for <$1K, with parts list and videos! - via Jeff Guillet's blog

Forum Post: FREE exam study guide for Exam #70-659 TS: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Virtualization

Keith Mayer — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:43:00 GMT

To assist you with getting prepped for Exam 70-659 as part of your journey towards Private Cloud certification, this month I pulled together an exam study guide that I'm making freely available to use as you see fit. Several IT Pros have reported that this study guide really helped them target the specific areas of the exam where they needed to spend the most prep time, so I wanted to share it with all of you as well.

Feel free to pass along to anyone within your community that you feel may benefit from this study guide. And … let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.

Here's the link where you can download the study guide: http://aka.ms/Prep70659

System Center 2012 exam study guides are my next work-in-progress! :-)

Keith

http://keithmayer.com

@KeithMayer

Blog Post: RTM’d today: Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Business Connectivity Services

Devon Musgrave — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:34:00 GMT

We’re very pleased to announce that Penelope Coventry, Brett Lonsdale, and Phill Duffy’s book, Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Business Connectivity Services has shipped to the printer!

Put your enterprise business data to work with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services—and create valuable business solutions with your team. Led by SharePoint experts Penelope Coventry, Brett Lonsdale, and Phill Duffy, you'll learn how to access external data from several sources and make informed decisions based on what you retrieve. Unlock your enterprise data and increase your productivity, using code and no-code solutions! You’ll discover how to connect to enterprise data with Microsoft SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio; access line-of-business data, data from Microsoft SQL Server®, or data from web services; create, read, update, and delete data records using Business Connectivity Services; build external data lists through your web browser; view your data lists in SharePoint, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Outlook; search your external data lists and work with them offline; design business solutions using SharePoint Designer list composites; and enhance user profiles or social experiences with Business Connectivity Services.

The book will be available via online retailers around June 25. In the meantime, here’s more information about the book:

Contents at a Glance

Chapter 1: Making SharePoint the Central Hub for Business

Chapter 2: Introducing Business Connectivity Services

Chapter 3: Creating and Maintaining Business Connectivity Service Applications

Chapter 4: Defining External System Connections Using SharePoint Designer

Chapter 5: Creating External Lists and Using External Data in Lists and Libraries

Chapter 6: Building External Data Dashboards

Chapter 7: Using External Data with Office Client Applications

Chapter 8: Finding Information from External Systems

Chapter 9: Using External Data in User Profiles

Chapter 10: Exploring SharePoint Online and External Data

Chapter 11: Using Client-Side Code and External Data

Chapter 12: Building Server-Side BCS Solutions

Appendix A: BCS Model Infrastructure

Introduction

Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Business Connectivity Services helps small and medium-sized businesses as well as bigger organizations put their business data to work with Business Connectivity Services (BCS)—and create valuable business solutions. Use Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, or Microsoft SharePoint Online (part of Microsoft Office 365 cloud services) to unlock data and increase productivity.

Who Should Read This Book

The book is aimed at business users, project managers, architects, administrators, and decision makers who want to create solutions that are required to create, use, share, and find information using Microsoft SharePoint 2010 websites, where the information is not stored in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SQL Server content databases. Led by SharePoint experts, you’ll learn hands-on strategies for deploying business solutions that integrate data from business applications and databases using BCS.

Who Should Not Read This Book

The book is not aimed at developers; therefore, it does not cover in detail the creation of server-side code using Visual Studio. However, it does contain examples of client-side code, such as XSLT, JavaScript, and jQuery that can be incorporated into business solutions using tools such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 to present and manipulate data exposed when using BCS.

How This Book Is Organized

This book provides a comprehensive look at the various SharePoint features you will use. It is divided into three parts.

Part 1: Planning and Maintaining Business Connectivity Services

This part provides an introduction to Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and why you might want to use it. It details BCS terminology and the tasks a SharePoint server administrator and business owner need to complete to enable users to present the external data within SharePoint websites.

Chapter 1, “Making SharePoint the Central Hub for Business,” reviews how organizations have changed over the last 20 years with regard to business data, and how these changes led to organizations having pockets of data throughout their business processes. The chapter then explains how BCS can provide a uniform method of accessing data for all stakeholders in an organization.

Chapter 2, “Introducing Business Connectivity Services,” introduces the types of solutions you can create with BCS and how you can plan and extend BCS. This chapter explores the BCS architecture and how it is divided into four layers: external system, connectivity, presentation, and tools.

Chapter 3, “Creating and Maintaining Business Data Connectivity Service Applications,” first explains the SharePoint service application architecture and its effect on the deployment of BCS. The chapter then breaks down the server administration tasks to create and configure a Business Data Connectivity (BDC) service application, explains the security options, outlines how to configure the Secure Store Service, discusses modifications to the BCS throttling settings, and details the administration of BCS in a tenant environment.

Chapter 4, “Defining External System Connections Using SharePoint Designer,” helps you hook up external data with SharePoint and Office applications with the creation of an external content type (ECT). The chapter explains that while you can use other tools to create an ECT, SharePoint Designer provides you with a wizard to easily define the BDC model, ECT, BDC objects, and operations that you are allowed to perform on the external system.

Part 2: Presenting External Data

In this part, you’ll learn how to extend the user experience to display and manipulate content from an external system in Office 2010 client applications and websites built on top of SharePoint 2010.

Chapter 5, “Creating External Lists and Using External Data in Lists and Libraries,” explains that the preferred method of displaying data from external data sources is to use external lists. The chapter helps you use both the browser and SharePoint Designer to create external lists, and finishes by showing you how to use external columns in SharePoint lists and libraries.

Chapter 6, “Building Business Data Dashboards,” explores how to build business data dashboards using Business Data Web Parts and other Web Parts, and how to configure them in an effective way.

Chapter 7, “Using External Data with Office Client Applications,” helps you use external data within Microsoft Office applications, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint Workspace, and Microsoft Access, as well as how to modify external list forms with Microsoft InfoPath Designer 2010.

Chapter 8, “Finding Information from External Systems,” provides tools and strategies that allow organizations to provide their users with the ability to search for all relevant business data, whether it is stored within SharePoint SQL content databases or outside SharePoint. This chapter explains the search options available, depending on the version of SharePoint 2010 that you are using.

Chapter 9, “Using External Data in User Profiles,” explains how you can use BCS to populate user profile data that exists elsewhere within your organization and explores how this benefits an organization when using SharePoint 2010 features such as people search and audience targeting. This chapter also explains how you can use Duet Enterprise to connect SharePoint 2010 and SAP solutions.

Chapter 10, “Exploring SharePoint Online and Connecting to External Data,” helps you to connect SharePoint Online, which is part of Office 365, to external data. It compares the use of BCS SharePoint Online with dedicated SharePoint Online and with an on-premises installation of SharePoint 2010. The chapter finishes by describing how to build a SharePoint Online BCS solution.

Part 3: Extending the Out-of-the-Box BCS Functionality

In this part, you’ll explore the options you can use to extend BCS.

Chapter 11, “Using Client-Side Code and External Data,” introduces the SharePoint 2010 Client Object Model and how you can leverage client-side code to create solutions to greatly extend how your organization works with line-of-business (LoB) data.

Chapter 12, “Building Server-Side BCS Solutions,” introduces the use of Visual Studio to build SharePoint solutions, how to use Visual Studio to build solutions that execute code on SharePoint servers, as well as how to use Visual Studio to create and deploy BDC models.

The Appendix, “BCS Model Infrastructure,” describes the BCS metadata object hierarchy and details the relationships among commonly used metadata objects.

Assumptions

This book assumes that you have a working knowledge of SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 client applications. If you need to learn how to use SharePoint 2010, we advise you to read the following two books:

· Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Step by Step by Olga Londer and Penelope Coventry (Microsoft Press, 2011)

· Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple by Johnathan Lightfoot and Chris Beckett (Microsoft Press, 2010)

About the Companion Content

We have included companion content to enrich your learning experience. The companion content for this book can be downloaded from the following page:

http://go.microsoft.com/FWLink/?Linkid=248519

The companion content includes the following:

· The BDC model project used in Chapter 12, “Building Server-Side BCS Solutions.”

· BDC model .bdcm file referenced in the Appendix, “BCS Model Infrastructure.”

Forum Post: Setting up MOC classrooms through automation with SCCM 2012,

libermanmark — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:20:00 GMT

Hi All, I'm writing in order to investigate the automation of classroom setups regarding Microsoft Courseware courses delivered through SCCM.

We already have the server ready to go and we would like to store the images, complete with fully prepared MOC courses, as deployable images stored in SCCM - (2012 to be precice), which we can then be subsequently deployed to students desktops at the push of a button. (Sounds nice, doesn't it!)

Whether this is done by distributing the whole desktop (Server 2008 - Hyper-V enabled - with embedded and un-activated Virtual Machines of the MOC courseware) or if there is a way to distribute just the courseware (Virtual Machines included) onto an existing students Server 2008 R2 training machine, is what I would like to hear your ideas on.

The big issue we need to find a workaround for is the licence expiry of imaged deployments - specifically, the 10-30 day activation window which once the course is prepared and ready to deliver - then imaged and stored for deployment - the licence is still counting down the days since the installation and will probably only be good for a single course - which basically defeats the purpose of taking an image in the first place.

I've seen so many setups varying the delivery method - from Ghost, to Altiris to manual setups for each course - all of which take to much time. Just as an example, the Courseware Library course 10747 (SCCM 2012 Beta) which requires a dozen virtual machines, not to mention the couple of dozen Base files that have to be extracted, executed and installed in order to get the course running - takes days of effort to setup a one week course. This is time we feel could be optimised with SCCM and better used elsewhere - such as preparing for our students to receive a more beneficial learning experience.

How good would it be to set up a free (Learning Partner sponsored) automated delivery solution which delivers any course to any desktop in a 5 minute copy process.

Would love to hear your ideas - or if any of you have done this already - please share.

Forum Post: Web site design

Anonymous — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:46:00 GMT

Yes ... the design is clearly needed to be changed :) The dark green color would fit perfectly xD

Forum Post: Re: Beta MOC Course 10751AB: Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud with System Center 2012– Feedback

Pernille Whited (MSL) — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:46:00 GMT

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for the various feedback for 10751A, all comments have been sent to the dev team who is triaging them. Stay tuned on the generic System Management blog for more info on the final release of this course.

Thanks

Pernille

Wiki: Jump Start: Virtualization Exam 70-659 - Wiki

Anonymous — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:46:00 GMT