We had a meeting today to discuss what we should do prior to escalating a ticket to Microsoft. There’s obviously a lot of troubleshooting that Tier 2, Tier 3, and Engineering should do prior to an escalation to Microsoft, and all of that due diligence, but I wanted to put together an escalation checklist that goes beyond it. Kudos to Microsoft Support and Microsoft PFEs.
As my regular readers know, I’ve been traveling a lot this year. I’ve now been home for two weeks, which is more than the last two months combined. Being away from home so long, I’ve neglected the infrastructure of my home office and of the tools I use on the road.
The last time I did a “tools I use” column, I got a tremendous amount of positive feedback, so I thought I’d summarize some of the current and upcoming changes in my own technology stack, for whatever insight it may provide to readers. So we’ll look inside my home office, inside my carry-on luggage, and up to the cloud to see one combination of infrastructure that works for a seasoned road warrior.
WINDOWS HOME SERVER 2011
Axceler today announced that Seattle-based Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism, received Microsoft’s prestigious Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award in the category of SharePoint Server. Microsoft announced on January 1 the quarterly recipients of the MVP Award, which recognizes exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who foster free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real-world experience with users and Microsoft.
It is always fun to get back on site after a couple of days off work. SharePoint 2010 is like an annoying little critter, if you’re not there to cuddle with it it will do the most strange things.
I currently have a support case open regarding some issues with crawled properties (I hope that will be another story to tell another day) and went into the Search Service Application admin pages in Central Admin to check some things. When poking around I noticed that the incremental crawl hasn’t been run for a few days – actually it stopped working on the 31st of December last year (sounds like ages ago now :-).
Each Web Content Management (WCM) platform has a sweet spot and making the right technology decision really depends on what is at the heart of your online business model. Understanding the business model for your website is fundamental in understanding whether Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is the right WCM platform for you.
Should the website provide brand awareness? Should the website connect people with people, products or services? Should the website drive revenue directly through online commerce? These are just some of the questions that should be asked, but are so often overlooked, before deciding on which WCM platform suits your requirements.
