Like on almost everything in life, there are different opinions on using site collection quota.

In his blog post “Controlling Sites Sizes with Quotas” Michal Pisarek proposes to use Site Collection Quotas and they should be one of the first things to be considered in your SharePoint Governance plan.
I do agree with him, but I also firmly disagree.

Why don’t I agree with the obsessive (IT) need to implement Site Collection Quota?

During a workshop I was delivering to the business key stakeholders for a SharePoint project (it was a workshop to gather business requirement for a SharePoint implementation) the topic of quotas presented itself. Without telling or asking anything about quota, the business representatives came up with this question. Technically it is not a question because the is no question mark in the sentence, it was more like a proposal or even a requirement.

“If our Enterprise IT strategy directs us to use SharePoint and use this tool to share files between countries and continents then we don’t need (read want) quotas.”
(They were at this moment not able to share information on file shares easily between different countries since file share servers are hosted in the office or country where the files were primarily stored)

Now, from an IT perspective this is a NO-GO because IT wants to (draconic) keep control on disk space consumption and storage capacity planning.

So my response to that was (I was also surprised of this statement, but understood exactly what they meant) asking them on how they can assure that only relevant information will be stored in their sites.
That old, outdated content will be removed. You know, people tend to start cleaning up disk space when they run out of it. And how can we make sure they will not have (too much) duplicates in their sites. And that’s for me the part where governance enters the discussion.

So what is a possible solution?

My solution is not just 1 solution. It is a combination of different solutions that can fulfill the business requirement (the need for “unlimited” disk space and freedom just like they now have on their file share) is not to use Site Collection Quota (or use a very big quota) and define content types (something you should always do on your SharePoint sites)

After defining the content types, you can configure retention policies on these content type. Just to make sure that legal documents don’t get deleted, after 2 years. And you probably don’t need to have your minutes of meetings available for 7 years in the production environment.

An extra step (and maybe a highly recommended one, although  I’m lacking real life experience with this as we speak (Jan 2012)) is that this retention policy actually moves files out of the SharePoint SQL database into another system. Like a tape or a BLOB. There are tools available on the market where you can do storage optimization and create rules that will move documents (or versions of documents) to a BLOB. So you offload these document from the underlying SQL database to alternate tiers of storage like a SAN. This will benefit the sizes and numbers of content database, but it is also a good thing for search and indexing. If you can keep the relevant content in your content databases lower, by off loading these files to BLOB, the overall performance of your database will not decrease (or decrease less) compared to when you keep all these files in the database.

Delivering Business value or loosing control over disk space capacity?

My point of view is that these solutions provide value to business users. Even though IT people will most probably freak out on the thought about not defining a quota, when you define the technical governance correctly and have the proper tools (like Docave Storage Manager from AvePoint  and Storagepoint from Metalogix) you’ll be able to provide a trustworthy solution.
Defining and configuring site collection quota requires less effort then defining  enterprise wide content types, retention policies combined with offloading the SQL server.
But I think it is worth it.

 

I also heard from the president of the BIWUG  that the #SharePint will be organized with actually pints :-)
So no #ShareCola or #ShareMinutemaid but actually real Belgian beer, hence a real #SharePint!

Doing a SharePoint project in a multilingual environment can be tricky. In this BIWUG session we will focus on how the new MUI (Multilingual User Interface) allows for multilingual collaboration scenarios.  We will show you how MUI and the SharePoint variations framework relate to each other.  Next to showing the out of the box features we will do a deep dive for developers explaining how to use the MUI framework in SharePoint custom solutions. The session will wrap up with some best practices and pitfalls as well as a round the table discussion to exchange ideas. 

<Update>

I heard there are some books that need a new owners. #bookGivaAway with special thanks to WROX.

</Update>

Agenda:

18:00-18:30 – Welcome and snacks

18:30-19:30 – SharePoint MUI – Part I  (Speakers: Andy Van Steenbergen & Joris Poelmans)
19:30-19:45 – Break
19:45:20:45 – SharePoint MUI – Part II  (Speakers: Andy Van Steenbergen & Joris Poelmans)
20:45 – … SharePint!

I hope to meet and greet you all there.
You can use the link here under to register.

 

During this session I want to give the attendees a different view on Governance. Most probably (and hopefully) a view they didn’t thought at before. Yes, I’m talking about the softer side of a SharePoint deployment.

This is the sessions abstract : Stop thinking about features features features when talking about governance. When designing governance for a SharePoint implementation, a lot (not to say all) energy and words go out to technical stuff, SLA’s and not to the things that define the business value. And the business value is not only a perfect technically tuned and performant SharePoint farm (if that even exists).

This evening will start at 18:00 in the offices of Microsoft (Leonardo Davincilaan 3 , 1935 Zaventem).
If you are interested in this session and haven’t subscribed yet, it can get tough to get in. 74 people already registered for this session and it’s sold out.

 

There are 2 easy ways to do this. (I only discuss solutions without having access to a console on the server to execute STSADM command, nor use solutions that required Visual Studio). Besides these 2 options, you could also execute an STSADM –export of write custom code.

1. Create a template from your library with content
2. Create a template from your library without content and move the content using explorer view.

Method one has some restrictions and side-effects. First, the content of the library cannot be more than 10 MB. This limit is in most cases very restrictive, and therefore not the best solution. Also, you can do this only once, since every year the content will change, and you might not want the have a document library template in your template gallery for every year.
You can change the maximum value (10 MB limit) via “stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname max-template-document-size –propertyvalue xxxxxx” (xxx being the size in bytes). But hen again, (power)users don’t have acess to the console, so I don’t consider this an option.
We would also have an issue with the item level security since item level security is not maintained in a template.

The second solution is in my opinion a better, more flexible and stable solution.

1. Create a template from your library using this procedure:

Settings > Document library Settings > Save document library as template
Under the Permissions and Management > Save document library as template

Fill in File name, a Template name and a description for your template, and don’t select Include content. The Template name is the name that will appear when your want to create a document library.

That’s all for the creation of a document library template. This template will now be available when you create a new library or list and appears in the List Template Gallery at http://mySharePointSiteURL/_catalogs/lt/Forms/AllItems.aspx

1. Create a library based on the new template

The next step is to create a new library based on the template we you created in step 1

In the Quick Launch, click on View All Site Content (or click on Site Actions/View all Site content). This will direct you to the /_layouts/viewlsts.aspx page and shows and overview of all Libraries and lists in your site.

Click create and select the templatename (the one you created in step 1).
Fill in the Name and description and other information.
Once this library is created, validate that all columns exist. (via Document Library settings)

Open the newly created library in Windows Explorer View and open the document library with the source in Explorer view

Then select the documents that you want to move, (using Shift or CTRL and click the documents) and drag them to the destination library.

That’s it.

 

Requirements:
We have a list, where users can fill in a request to increase the quota of their site. The governance has decided that the IT department is responsible for the capacity, hence they need to be the approver of this request.
When a request has been approved, it should receive a unique approval number. The rest of the process is not relevant for this blog post.

Solution:
By using a combination of the ‘created date’ and the list item ID we can create a unique number. It was not required to use sequential number (was even preferred not to do this)

Setup:
In the custom list there are a lot of columns, but these are the once I have used to calculate a unique value for the approval number

Workflow variables:

ApprovalCalc : Text
ApprovalNumber: Number

Actions

In Nintex I created a Math Operation. It is configured to do “(Listlookup Current Item Approvalpart1) + (Listlookup Current Item ID)”.
This will result in having a number that is formed by  the number of days of the creation date (based on December 31 1899 being value 1) added with the itemID.
This value will be stored in the ApprovalCalc variable.
Then we have a build dynamic string action that build a string “STS- {WorkflowVariable:ApprovalCalc} and stored this value in the ApprovalNumber variable. (IT people wanted to have a prefix STS-).
The next action updates a list item called Approval_Number with the value of the ApprovalNumber variable and then other actions like sending emails and creating tasks is executed.

 

I then edited the list in Datasheet and found out that Nintex is using other numbers then SharePoint (or the Workflow Foundation) does.

Apparently Nintex uses these status indicators:

 

1. The first thing you need to do is to add a Content Editor WebPart
   
2. Click on Site Actions and then on Edit Page
   

1. Select the Web Part zone where you want to display the map
   
2. Scroll down to the Miscellaneous section and select the Content Editor Web Part and press ADD
   
3. Then click on the Edit / Modify Shared Web Part
   
   
4. In the right part of your screen the you’ll see the Content Editor Web Part details. You can set your own title in the title field under Appearance. Now you have to copy the code of your google/bing map into the webPart. Click on Source Editor and the editor will popup.
   
5. Paste your source (which you can find somewhere on the google of bing page (mostly under embed in website) Copy the HTML code
   1. For Google :
      
   2. For Bing:
      

You can of course customize your map by clicking the customize and preview link.

1. Paste the HTML code in the Editor and click on Save
   
   
2. Then depending on ‘where’ you created this page, you need to click on Exit Edit mode in the right corner (under Site Actions) or Check in and Share Draft on the top of the page

Note: If you are doing this from within a HTTPS site, you will get a popup when you access this page to inform you that some information that is displayed isn’t secure and it will ask to display the secure data. If you select yes here, the map will be displayed, of you choose no, it won’t be displayed.

 

I didn’t document my shipping list for 2010 so I can’t do a retrospective, but I’ll not make that mistake twice. So for all my loved ones, all people that know me, and also all readers of my blog I will have a shipping list for 2011. But it will be a SMART Shipping List. SMART stands for

While I know not my whole shipping list will be SMART, I’ll try to create an as SMART as possible list.

Participate more in the SharePoint Community

By creating blog posts, tweeting, present at the BIWUG. This is a continuous process and is easily measurable by the number of blog posts and presentations I delivered. I would like to present the first time at the BIWUG before the summer holiday.

Find and have more peace of mind.

While I understand and realize this is a really difficult objective, I have put it on the SSL. I would really like to have more peace of mind, and need to rebalance my work life with my family life. This will not be easy since I will participate more in the community and insist on participate more in my family life. I’ll know when I have more peace of mind when I’m more relaxed, happy in life and not too stressed. And I would like to reach this by what I will (try to) ship in 2011 Valentine’s Day.

Lose some weight and do more sport.

I would like to weight around 73 to 74 kg again (that’s about 161 lb). My current weight is around 76 kg (167.5 lb) now. To get that result I’ll eat healthier and will start running again. This year will not be a marathon-running year, but I would like to set a good time for 10 km (6.2 Miles) by September. And that good time would be around 50 minutes.

Get certified CMAS 2* diver

There is a relation with the previous objective and this one. Although you don’t need a real good condition, I see that if I look at a lot of other scuba divers, I’m pretty sure that it will help. My target date to have the certification is September, but I must assure myself that I’m a 2* worthy before summer holidays.

Read more books.

This year I would like to read 1 book every 3 weeks. I might read more, at least that’s what I hope, but I set the limit of 1 book per 3 weeks to have a achievable objective. I consider audiobooks also as a book and since commute quite a lot (about 3 times a week for 2,5 hours), this seems like an achievable target.

Do a SharePoint 2010 project.

While I’m working on a very interesting project at this time (preparing the global deployment and starting up SharePoint governance) in the chemical sector, I would like to do a SharePoint 2010 project. The timeline is very clear, it has to be this year, and I mean to start it, not to deliver it.

Get back on the GTD train, be more productive.

While I am convinced that GTD (Getting Things Done®) is a very good system to manage my actions, I fall of the train regularly. This year should be the year that I stay on board and actually become a good GTD practitioner. I’ll do my best to stay on board by rigorously do my weekly review since I discovered this is my weak point. I’ll perform the weekly review every Friday after lunch. A part of this weekly review is cleaning up inboxes, so an extra sub-objective is to achieve on a regular base #inboxzero.

 Use Bing as a default search engine.

While Google rocked for ages, Bing seems to be a good alternative. So starting this week, I am using Bing as my default search engine. I will force myself to use Bing for at least 1 month.

 

I have organized the books in 3 levels. The fist one are books for non-developers and non IT-PRO. They are high level SharePoint, organizational or quit generic. The second one are books for IT-PRO’s, and the third one are books for (power)users of SharePoint but also related software like Office 2010 and Infopath. I don’t have a chapter dedicated to development books, since I don’t know really much about development, hence I can’t add these kinds of books to my ‘wish list’.

SharePoint books for non-developers or IT-PRO’s

SharePoint books for IT-PRO’s

SharePoint 2010 and related products for the (power)user

 

Anyway, for everybody who didn’t attend Tech-Ed Europe, or who would like to see sessions (s)he didn’t follow, there a lot of presentations and sessions available online at the Tech-Ed website.

SharePoint and Office specific presentations can be found via this link : http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/Tracks/OfficeSharePoint

Or an overview of all sessions : http://www.msteched.com/2010/Europe/Browse

Have fun watching these presentations and I hope you learn some things :-)

 

The pre-conference workshop was delivered by Dan Holme ( and the topic was : “SharePoint Collaboration Masterclass”. It was an interesting session with a few new items for me but it definitely triggered some ideas.

Dan talked about the “administrator jumpstart”. Basically he explained which accounts you better create (actually you’ll need them) before you start installing and configuring SharePoint 2010. Also it is a best practice to use Powershell scripts to install and configure your farm(s). Especially when you have an Acceptance, Pre-Production and Production environment, by scripting the installation and configuration, you can be sure that they are installed and configured the same way. Another interesting point he mentioned, was that the Cumulative Updates are handled differently in SharePoint 2010 then in SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Now, when you have SharePoint server 2010 installed, you don’t need to install the CU OF SharePoint Foundation prior to the installation of the CU for SharePoint Server. So you can install the SharePoint Server CU directly. This will save some time and reboots.
Also, when you don’t configure the outgoing email settings, all the features that use this (like alerts) will not be activated on you sites.

After the first break, the subject was Creating the Collaboration Application. Interesting to hear was this advice. Don’t use (or configure) Claims Based authentication, unless you are really sure you will need/use it.
Dan also mentioned that it is a best practice to use A record in your DNS server setting and not C Names.
When creating your top level Site Collection, the Publishing Site might be a very good choice if you would like to brand your sites. (via the masterpages). The publishing site has more masterpages ‘installed’ and this would make it easier to apply some custom branding on these sites.  Oh yes, of course when you used the Publishing Site template, you will not be able to create a subsite other then another Publishing site,unless you activate these Site templates in the Look and Feel section / Page Layouts and Templates. You can access these pages via the Site Settings.
Today, there were no sacrifices done to the Demo Gods, so some of his demos didn’t work well. Like the one where Dan would show how you can adopt users by creating shortcuts in the Network Locations. But he explained it pretty good.

After Lunch Security was the topic. Claims based authentication can store extra attributes  or properties, so you can use these properties to target content . (For instance country)
Dan also told you don’t need to extend WebApplications anymore when you want to use multiple authentication providers.
Another best practice explained. To allow a user (even a visitor) to see a certain site in his or hers Mysite, you can create a new “default” group. You give this group very restricted permissions on the site, and you add ALL the site users to this group (besides the other groups like members or visitor). By doing this, these users will see the site appear in their MySite. Oh yes, small remark, this will only work with individual user rights, not when adding an Active Directory group.

Dan also gave a demonstration of the Office integration and SharePoint, but again, the demo gods weren’t our friends.

After the break, Dan talked, while you could really see him fighting his jetlag, about the Remote BLOB Storage . What I remember and noted was that the default RBS (Filestream provider) can only use local drives, and that you can also use AvePoint DocAve extender for this. A good advice was that when you use SQL backup, you should also backup your BLOB location manually. This is not needed when you use the backup procedures in Central Admin, and I presume third party tools will also tackle this.

The last topic was Managed Metadata and the Taxonomy living together with the Folksonomy. Dan also showed the metadata based views and filters.

We had a really nice chat after the session, with some additional Q&A, and then I went out to diner with Marcel Franke. Because diner took more time then I thought, I wasn’t able to attend the DIWUG session.
Arriving back at my hotel I saw Karine Bosh (MVP and also known for some of us as ‘The CAML girl’) and I sacrificed myself to go out for diner with her, although I just drank a few Grimbergen beers, but we had a really nice conversation about SharePoint, U2, Phil Collins and job satisfaction.

 

When I was searching for some Nintex video’s on Youtube, I found this very nice video of Mike Fitzmaurice explaining with his well known and recognizable voice what Nintex Workflow 2010 is.

For the readers who are not familiar with Nintex workflow, it adds a drag-and-drop workflow designer, connectivity and advanced workflow features to the Microsoft SharePoint document management and collaboration platform, empowering business users and IT Professionals alike to quickly and easily automate business processes; from a simple leave approval request, to complex integration across external applications and data sources.

The slogan of Nintex is “Worklfow for everyone™” and if you ask me, that’s what they bring

I would like to add or emphasize a really important reason why Nintex Workflow is IMO “better” then a custom development workflow. Release management. When a Visual Studio workflow is ready for production and a WSP (SharePoint Solution) file is produced, you have to go to he release management procedures and processes, and they can be quite hard with SharePoint.

The moment my SharePoint 2010 environment is up and running , I will start to experiment with Nintex Workflow 2010, and if time allows me, I’ll even post about that :-)

 

During the SharePoint Evolution conference SPEVO held in April of this year, my memory was refreshed of something that was said during one of the analyst sessions in the SharePoint Conference 2009 (SPC09) in Las Vegas.
The SPEVO was actually the SharePoint Best Practices Europe Conference, but because of the launch of a new version called SharePoint 2010 there were not a lot best practices to share on SharePoint 2010. BUT the organizers of this conference really got the message I’ll talk about in this blog post. They organized a IW (Information Worker stream) In fact, they organized even 2 parallel streams. Well done Steve Smith!

During a session from Symon Garfield, he explained why 70% of all projects fail. There are several reason, like unclear requirements, scope changes. One of the main failure reasons is that a SharePoint project can’t be driven only by IT.
SharePoint is a business driven product. IT can install, deploy and support it, but it can not solely drive it toward long term success.
You also need to have a good user adoption plan, and some corporate guidelines (let’s call them governance) to make sure that when people really start using SharePoint, it doesn’t get a maze where you can’t do or find anything. If you take a look at the Microsoft Press books, about 99% of the SharePoint books are technically focused. There is a lack of business side books. (Thank you Michael Samspon for representing this 1%)

During that analyst panel session at SPC09 there was a discussion about having a third pillar next to the Developers and IT PRO’s. The name was not specified, but lets call this group Functional people, or Functionals.  For me, but also for all SharePoint projects in general, I thought that was good, no even great news.

But until now, nothing has changed. From Microsoft’s opinion you are or a developer, or an IT PRO.There is no new group. Or you write code, or you have access to Central Admin.

A good example of this are Ignite Sessions. They are organized for IT Professionals and Developers, but not for Functionals. Even with such a huge release of  SharePoint 2010, where a lot extra power is provided to PowerUsers, and it very important to have that link between Business and IT.

Or the Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Developer and IT Professional Learning Plan.

In my first conversation with Karine Bosch (a Belgian SharePoint MVP) right after a BIWUG session  we were talking about what we did in the SharePoint world. When she explained what she does I replied, “Oh, you’re a code sh|tter”, without being disrespectful. That’s good because we need SharePoint code writers I replied, (you can also read developers)  to cover non ‘Out Of The Box’ functionality , When I explained what I do, I summarized it with “I’m a document sh|tter”. And We also need them (I guess). Actually that’s also what Karine confirmed.

That’s why in my humble opinion that Microsoft is acting wrongly. Until now, they don’t provide any special documentation or support for these Functionals. Besides some sales and marketing information on how SharePoint will make your organization more productive, there is no specific information for the Functionals. They are just twilights. They act the “Build it and they will come” way.
And they should pay attention to this, because otherwise SharePoint might become one of these “Oooh darn, it’s a SharePoint” applications.

That’s also why I am so happy that guys like Michael Samspon, the author of Seamless Teamwork, a book on using SharePoint from a business perspective, Raymond Dux Sy , the author of SharePoint for Project Management: How to Create a Project Management Information System (PMIS) and Paul Culmsee take a different approach on SharePoint. I will do my best to provide useful information like these guys do in their blogs, webcasts, books, … That will be my way to contribute to the grey twilight zone that Microsoft can’t fill.

On the other hand, I must admit that I know a few, but just a few guys that are good at coding, have a good knowledge of the the Out Of The Box functionality of SharePoint and are able to talk to the business and translate their requirements to SharePoint functionality. These are the golden egg chickens…

But to conclude, what I’m trying to explain is that Microsoft, and the Microsoft partners will be judged by their clients (the business) based on the return SharePoint gives to the business, not on it’s nice technical gracefulness.

Just for the record, here are my my questions to Microsoft.

What are your intentions to this issue? (When)Are you planning to setup a functional stream?

 

Michael is the author of the book  Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways, which I recently received from Combined Knowledge (many many thanks for that Zoé and Steve). I would recommend this book for everybody who is interested in empowering people and team with SharePoint.

But I don’t post this just to talk about this book. The reason I write this post is because Michael has launched a survey on Site Closure. And The survey will close on friday July 9th. So this is yet another last minute post…

His next book, SharePoint Roadmap Governance Themes, greatly expands on the governance chapter in SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration. Two themes have been explored to date — Site Creation Rights, and User Adoption Strategies — and there are reports available on both of those. The third theme for investigation is Site Closure Policy. In other words, what do you do with SharePoint sites when their useful life is at an end, however you define that?

As with the previous two reports, there’s a survey. If you have involvement in setting governance decisions for SharePoint at your organization, please take the survey now.

Respondents who complete the survey will receive a free copy of the research report, due for publication in July 2010.

The survey closes on Friday July 9 … so please do it now!! Thanks.

 

Monday, June 28, 2010 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM CEST

USPJ Academy invites you to the first open lecture of the academy. If you want to learn more about USPJ Academy, please visit our web pages at http://www.uspja.com/

Poor requirements can be attributed to failed SharePoint implementations. The key to successful SharePoint implementation is properly developing requirements. A lot of people know that this is important, however, only a handful of folks truly understand what it takes to do this right.

In this presentation, you will learn key techniques in effectively eliciting, analyzing, prioritizing, validating and documenting requirements for SharePoint projects.

In addition, participants will be able to identify:

• Key components of requirements gathering process

• Why requirements traceability is paramount in defining ROI in SharePoint projects

• Why having a well defined business case is necessary to effectively initiate requirements gathering

The primary audience for this class are executives, managers, analysts, consultants who wish to properly implement SharePoint and immediately reap its’ organizational benefits.

Participants will get presentation notes, checklists, and templates.

It’s a great lecture, held by one of the true masterminds of SharePoint project management, Dux Raymond Sy. (Twitter: MeetDux)

Register (no cost) on https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/729809009

 

Since May 8th the Information worker VHD files are ready to be downloaded. You can find them at the Microsoft download center

You can also download them with the Akamai download manager
(links updated at September 17th 2010)

• Virtual Machine 2010-7a parts 1-12
• Virtual Machine 2010-7a parts 13-22, SFV & Setup Guide
• Virtual Machine 2010-7b

The download is about 18 GB big.

This is the content of the VHDs:

Virtual machine “A” contains the following pre-configured software:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services
3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
4. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition
6. Microsoft Office Web Applications
7. Microsoft FAST Search for SharePoint 2010
8. Microsoft Project Server 2010
9. Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
10. Microsoft Visio 2010
11. Microsoft Project 2010
12. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2

Virtual machine “B” contains the following pre-configured software:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain
2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 “demo” users with metadata in an organizational structure. All of these user profiles have been imported and indexed for search within SharePoint Server 2010.
SharePoint Server 2010 has been configured in a “Complete” farm using the default SQL Server 2008 R2 instance. A default site has been created using the Team Site template at http://intranet.contoso.com/ and a FAST Search Center at http://intranet.contoso.com/search/.
As shipped virtual machine “A” requires image “B” for email. Running image “B” is optional.

 

–quote–

Today we reached an exciting engineering milestone- the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010!

RTM is the final engineering milestone and a major achievement for all of the internal teams who worked so hard to get to this point. As tirelessly as our engineering teams worked, we would never have reached this milestone without incredibly active participation from our customers and partners. More than 5,000 organizations and partners have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products, and the feedback that we’ve received from all these programs has shaped a fantastic set of products that I’m sure our customers will love.

Our Volume License customers with active Software Assurance (SA) on these products will be one of the first to receive the 2010 set of products. They will be able to download the product in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Dutch via the Volume Licensing Service Center starting April 27. Other languages will be available on a rolling timeline. Customers without SA will be able to purchase the new products through Volume Licensing from Microsoft partners starting May 1.

–End Quote–

Full article can be read via this link