Federating Windows 7 Search with SharePoint

Ian over at WSSDemo has put up some sample code for federating your Windows 7 Search with SharePoint.  Given how quickly SharePoint is spreading throughout businesses I can see this being very useful indeed, especially as it includes file preview.

I’ve included the sample XML below, but please head over to Ian’s blog, there’s some good stuff over there.  You’ll have to excuse the dodgy code format – the blog doesn’t like displaying code!  Fortunately Ian’s hosting the .osdx file here.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns=”http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/” xmlns:ms-ose=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/”>

<ShortName>WSSDemo Site</ShortName>

<Description>Search the Ian Morrish Sharepoint Demo site.</Description>

<Url type=”application/rss+xml” template=”http://www.wssdemo.com/search/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}&amp;start={startIndex}&amp;s=WSSDemo%20Content”/>

<Url type=”text/html” template=”http://www.wssdemo.com/search/Pages/Results.aspx?k={searchTerms}&amp;s=WSSDemo%20Content”/>

<!– Win7 M3 syntax –>
<ms-ose:locationProperties> 
<ms-ose:property name=”TreatLinkAsEnclosure”>-1</ms-ose:property>
</ms-ose:locationProperties>

<!– Win7 Beta syntax –>
<ms-ose:ResultsProcessing format=”application/rss+xml”>
<ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>-1</ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>
</ms-ose:ResultsProcessing>

</OpenSearchDescription>

The sample code point Windows 7 at WSSDemo.com, however you can change that to your own Sharepoint servers.  Head over to Ian’s blog for more info.

So, what is Enterprise Architecture?

Yesterday I spotted a post from Server Management magazine titled ‘What is Enterprise Architecture?’.  It’s a good question, it’s something I’ve been asked more than once.  The answer they gave (in a round-about way) is:

Using one of the more general descriptions I’ve heard, you could say that EA is the Big Picture of the Enterprise, now and in the future. If that is the case, then truly knowing that picture is probably impossible for any individual person.

If I said to you “What is the World?” the question would have almost no meaning. You cannot know what the world is, you can only have a viewpoint onto the world, which is tainted by your personal experiences, your areas of expertise, and your natural biases. So, while the world continues to exist, a true Big Picture of it is inherently impossible.

No wonder architects argue about what EA is. So if I’m asked today what Enterprise Architecture is, probably my best answer would also be my most enigmatic. “It is whatever the Enterprise needs it to be”.

They are right that Enterprise Architecture (EA) represents the big picture, and it does need to be whatever the business needs it to be.  For me however such vague descriptions do nothing to help EA or its practitioners.  If businesses are to invest scarce resources on EA, and IS in general, then I reckon the Architects better have a pretty good description of what they do and what the business will get from it.

In many cases when people talk about Enterprise Architecture they mean Enterprise IS Architecture.  The objective being to better align the IS to business objectives.  In it’s purest form EA can extend that scope out into the business to align non-IS business processes to try and get the most benefit for the organisation.  For a lot of companies that’s a step to far, although there can be fantastic benefits it represents a huge business change so EA remains a primarily IS lead initiative.  At least at first.

So how would I describe EA? 

For me Enterprise Architecture is a framework that helps a business guide decisions on investment and design.  It acts as a link between the overall business strategy and the specific IS strategy.  By specifying processes, standards and interfaces, and defining common IS services, it can guide the design, implementation and operational of IS to best support the objectives and strategy of the business. 

Most importantly EA can’t be static – you can’t just ‘do’ an EA and leave it.  It has to be a living part of the business/IS so it can evolve over time with the business.

Office Communications Server client for iPhone

I’m on an Office Communication Server (OCS) course this week so I was just doing a bit of digging around to see what clients are available. 

For Windows there are the usual Office Communicator and Live Meeting clients that will be used by the vast majority of users.  There’s also Messenger for Mac which provides access on Apple clients,  and supports all the IM and conferencing functionality.  For Windows Mobile phones the Communicator Mobile client does presence, IM and integration with the telephoney side of OCS. 

Until today I hadn’t really looked into what other clients were out there.  One interesting one I found is called WebMessenger and provides an LCS and OCS client for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symian, Palm and apparently the iPhone.  It sounds great at first glace, but it seems like it requries additional backend components (I could be wrong, I’ve not gone into any detail).  Not really ideal, quite what they’re doing over and above the standard OCS edge roles I’m not sure.  But, if you need an iPhone or Blackberry client it might be worth a look.

With MS’s recent moves to make their products a little more platform independent, hopefully they’ll port Communicator Mobile to the iPhone at some point.  Whether Apple and the networks will want them to enable all the VoIP telephoney features I don’t know, but just contacts, presence and IM would be useful.

Update:  Since this post another OCS client for iPhone has been released, I’ve written an updated article about it here: iDialog Office Communications Server Client for iPhone

Using 2D Barcodes

I was just looking though the stats for this blog (thanks for reading!) and noticed that one of the search queries that lead here was:

‘How can we use 2D barcodes for cinema?’

Seeing as I have half an hour spare I started thinking about it a little.  There are a few obvious things I can think of…

Film Posters– Put barcodes on film posters that link people to more information.  Seeing as the clients are likely to be mobile phones, trailers might be pushing it as you can’t guarantee bandwidth; but reviews, character profiles, cast profiles, ‘making of’ features etc. would all be worthwhile.

Bookings – Cinemas could use barcodes on film time posters and leaflets to link people directly to booking forms.   Averts in newspapers could include links to the local cinema times and bookings.

Promotions – Barcodes could be used for promotions or competitions.  You could put them on the back of tickets to link people to a loyalty scheme.  Links to competitions could be put on popcorn or pick-n-mix packets.

Online Content – With devices like the XBox and PS3 now in many homes and able to download movies and content from the web, how about using barcodes to help purchase and schedule downloads of content while away from home?  You might be able to set your xbox to download a new film release from an advert on the Tube.

2D barcodes would seem to have hundreds of uses.  I recently had a conversation about them at work and we thought of a few good uses in just a couple of minutes.  One example would be Asset Management.  Stick a barcode on the assets you need to look after so that when one of them breaks down the end user just needs to point their camera phone at it to log a call with the helpdesk. 

I guess the success of the technology will depend on a standard comming to the fore and client software being pre-installed on devices by vendors and networks.   As useful as barcodes could be, I doubt the mass market will make an effort to download and install the software.

Live Mesh Desktop… A pointer to a cloudy future?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a fair amount of thinking and work about how desktop computing will be delivered in the future.  I doubt we’ll be seeing the end of full-fat desktop and laptop computers anytime soon, but change is definitely in the air.

Within the enterprise thin provisioning of desktops is gaining pace.  Virtual desktops offer significant benefits in utilization, management and energy consumption.  Taken further, blade workstations such as HP’s can also offer performance benefits.  Especially in a world where data is increasing centralised and the workforce increasingly mobile.  The technology now allows true ‘desktop as a service’ solutions to be offered.

But what about the consumer and small business world? 

I’m a big fan of Live Mesh.  I now use it on all of my PC’s and the work Mac to keep a single view of my working docs.  One thing that I’ve always wondered about though is the Live Desktop.  It’s undoubtedly useful as a server side copy of my files but why make it look so much like a desktop?  Is it just to deliver a similar user experience?

image

I would love to see the Live Desktop gain some application functionality.  We already know that browser based versions of the Office applications are on their way with the Office Web applications.  We also know that MS has a huuuuge amount of computing capacity at it’s disposal in the Azure platform. 

Could the Live Desktop (or something like it) be used to deliver a web desktop with both storage for data and the applications to open and use it?  With the capabilities that are coming over the next year or so I can’t see why not. 

Looking at what’s now possible with remote desktop protocols like HP’s Remote Graphics Software (RGS) it may even be possible to take that further and present a desktop running real applications.  It may not be something we’ll see in the short term but many of the components you would need are in place:

– Significant amounts of computing power in the cloud – yep
– Broadband to the end-point – getting there… but yep
– Efficient display protocols – yep
– People storing data in the cloud for fast access – yep
– Virtualisation layers to protect the host environment – yep
– Application virtualisation to protect the host and other apps – yep

It’s going to be an interesting 18 months I reckon.