The slightly-wince inducing news though is that Idera had a little fun with the whitepaper’s title: “New Features in SharePoint 2010: A Disaster Recovery Love Story“. Oof. I guess I’m a romance author now, or perhaps a bromance author…

Any ways, please go check it out and let me know what you think. As far as I know it’s free to download from Idera, but you will probably have to log in (and create an account with them if you haven’t already). I know that means that it’s technically not free since you’re giving them your contact info, but if you’re like me you’ve probably already danced that dance in several other places for similar kinds of info, so go for it!

And in case you need some further incentive, here’s a broad outline of some of the content we cover in the whitepaper:

• RPO/RTO – if you want to know DR, you’ve got to know these!
• PowerShell and SharePoint 2010 DR – PowerShell FTW
• Configuration Backups
• SQL Server Database Snapshots
• Unattached Content Database Recovery
• SQL Server Database Mirroring
• Search DR Improvements
• Read-only Databases Improvements
• SharePoint Native Backup/Restore Improvements
• Site Recycle Bins
• DR Considerations around Service Applications, Remote BLOB Storage, and Business Connectivity Services

If you’re wanting to know more about what’s new in the DR story for SharePoint 2010, this whitepaper is definitely for you. And it makes a great companion Christmas gift to a fresh new copy of the SharePoint 2010 Disaster Recovery Guide!

John

• Let’s start with the word from Microsoft’s Windows Live Team Blog. Basically, Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Live services suffered an outage last night, and while the blog post doesn’t mention it, it looks like it impacted Office 365 users as well (judging by news reports and the flurry of posts that subscribers made to the Office 365 Community forums): http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/09/08/current-hotmail-and-skydrive-issues.aspx
• The Office 365 Twitter account seemed to be doing a good job of providing status updates on the outage and interacting with customers, check it out for a timeline on the event and for a pretty good ongoing source for quick status updates on the service: http://twitter.com/#!/office365/669_quotunable_to__cannot_remove_domainquot_error_in_office_365.html
• Several news outlets picked up on the outage as well, such as the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14851455
• And The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/09/microsoft_cloud_outage/
• And The Telegraph (I’m not sure if the heavy UK coverage is because they’re several hours ahead of the US, or if its a bigger deal over the pond): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8752156/Millions-of-Hotmail-users-cut-off-by-Microsoft-cloud-failure.html
• Information Age has a very good article connecting some dots between the Live/Office 365 outage and power outage issues that were occurring up and down the West Coast of the US last night: http://www.information-age.com/channels/the-cloud-and-virtualization/news/1653788/global-office-365-outage-coincides-with-us-power-cut.thtml
• One of ZDNet’s bloggers makes some good points about this being a bit of an ongoing problem for Office 365, and the need for Microsoft to build up some goodwill in the near future if they want to instill confidence in the solution: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/microsofts-office-365-outages-pile-up-growing-pains-or-uptime-issues/57680
• Nice quick summary of various tweets about the outage from the blog LiveSide.net, as well as good points about this happening to other cloud service providers during the same window as well: http://www.liveside.net/2011/09/08/hotmail-msn-office-365-live-com-sites-down/
• Here’s another rundown of the issue from an Australian blog, SBSFAQ.com: http://www.sbsfaq.com/?p=3078
• Finally, a great read from the LooksCloudy.com blog that really makes some good points and opines that Microsoft needs to think about doing a better job of setting expectations about such a new service: http://www.lookscloudy.com/2011/09/over-promise-and-under-deliver-thoughts-on-microsofts-cloud-outage-last-night

My final thoughts on the matter: all in all I’m more concerned about the mechanisms (or lack thereof) Microsoft has set up for customers to stay up to speed on the status of their services than the stability of a platform that is still very young, especially one so completely dependent on so many disconnected systems (platforms in multiple data centers across the world, DNS, internet connectivity, power connectivity, etc). I’m not letting them off the hook for the issues, especially if this is a trend rather than growing pains. But in general, I think they need to focus as much as having a single simple, coherent, effective, and LOUD way for customers to know about the status of their service as on its stability. I know there are status pages, as well as things like the Twitter account (which was a good tool, and probably the source I’m going to check first for stuff like this from now on), but the perspective I’ve heard from customers and partners is that the information provided right now is either too hard to find and/or understand, or is not current. This isn’t exactly an easy problem to solve (since email would be the natural mechanism and at the same time one that can easily impacted by an outage), but Microsoft need to tackle it now rather than later.

UPDATE: As I come across additional links on the outage, I’ll try to post them here. Probably won’t provide as much commentary on them, but at the same time I’m looking to provide links that do give something beyond the ones I’ve already listed…

• WinRumors.com also mentions the outage, and there’s several comments on the post as well, so it’s getting attention: http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-recovering-from-hour-long-hotmail-skydrive-and-office-365-outage/

John

• Let’s get it started with a little point/counterpoint on the subject of Office 365 on mobile devices. First, here’s a nice official post on the Office 365 Community blog about what mobile operating systems are supported with Office 365 and what you can do on them: http://community.office365.com/en-us/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/archive/2011/08/01/office-365-mobile-experience-part-1.aspx
• And now the other side of that story, here’s an interesting article from Infoworld.com about what the term “supported” means when it comes to mobile devices on Office 365 and how it impacts users. He makes a very valid, and important, point so I recommend reading it closely (to me, the most important part of understanding Office 365 is being able to speak to what it can’t do as much as what it can, so that you’re better able to be proactive instead of reactive) : http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/dont-be-fooled-office-365-basically-useless-mobile-903
• A big selling point for Office 365 is all the different ways that it can be integrated with existing IT investments, allowing for hybrid identity management solutions (I’m working on a rundown of all the permutations in this blog, stay tuned ), Exchange, and Lync. While all the hybrid options are great, they also lead to a lot of questions and confusion about what they can and can’t do. This is a helpful FAQ breaking down calendaring differs and integrates between Exchange Server 2010 SP1 and Exchange Online: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/exchange-2010-sp1-and-exchange-online-office-365-calendaring-faq.aspx
• I love the idea of using SharePoint Online as an extranet, it’s a use case I’ve talked about since the early days of BPOS. SharePoint MVP Corey Roth has a good post up on the new “external user” functionality in SharePoint Online with Office 365, a new feature that provides some of the capabilities you’d like to see in an extranet: http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2011/08/10/how-to-share-sharepoint-online-sites-with-external-users-office-365.aspx
• I saw this status update on Twitter a few weeks back and for some reason it both caught my attention and amused me. I haven’t checked to see if what she’s saying is correct or not (so take it with a grain of salt), but part of me has to think that Office 365 has arrived as a platform if its starting to attract some of the frustration/attention/vitriol that we see so regularly with SharePoint : http://twitter.com/#!/kat_woman/statuses/101662902993432577
• Again on the subject of hybrid solutions in Office 365, we have a post from the TechNet blog of Neil Johnson (aside: is he a nerd about rock ‘n roll, or a nerd that rocks n’ rolls?) about sharing Availability data between Office 365 and Exchange Server: http://blogs.technet.com/b/neiljohn/archive/2011/08/15/office-365-hybrid-deployment-exchange-rich-coexistence-sharing-availability-free-busy.aspx
• I’ve said it before, I’ve said it again: I definitely drink the Office 365 Kool-Aid (I think it’s fruit punch if you’re wondering) but I do try to keep an eye on and present the view from the other side of the fence as well, which is why I’ve got this article from Business Insider about 10 reasons to go with Google Apps. Editor’s note: check out the article’s comments for some good opposing viewpoints to consider: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-reasons-for-choosing-google-apps-over-microsoft-office-365-2011-8
• Since it’s almost the holiday weekend, I’m wrapping it up quick today with a final, very important, resource. Microsoft has put out a free eBook on Office 365, go get it! Because it’s good, AND ITS FREE. You don’t have to pay anything. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Get it! It’s free: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2011/08/17/free-ebook-microsoft-office-365-connect-and-collaborate-virtually-anywhere-anytime.aspx

Happy Labor Day!

John

• There’s a free webcast coming up on August 30th on Office 365, looks like it’s pretty introductory and targeted for businesses looking to find out what Office 365 is, rather than anything deeply technical but may be worth a look: http://www.bitwizards.com/Events/Webinars/Business-Insights-Webcast–Office-365-Essentials
• Rene Modery has a really helpful post on a housecleaning activity you may want to go through if you’re closing out an Office 365 account or transferring a domain from one account to another, removing a domain from your account: http://www.modery.net/1_moderynet_–_share-manage-govern/archive/669_quotunable_to__cannot_remove_domainquot_error_in_office_365.html
• Infoboo has a quick review of Office 365, it highlights some good points to consider about where it does and doesn’t fit for some businesses: http://www.theinfoboom.com/articles/ms-office-365-microsoft-flies-into-the-cloud/
• If you’re working with Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM product and thinking about how to integrate it with Office 365, this video from Microsoft is a good place to start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOlygiUbz9E
• It’s no surprise that Office 365 is going to be compared pretty frequently to Google Apps, here’s one to take a look at from ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/saas/google-apps-vs-office-365-your-choice/1357
• Paul Schnakenburg over at 4sysops.com has a very extensive (8 parts!) review of Office 365, which I think is especially useful since he covers content from the perspective of an IT administrator rather than a business user: http://4sysops.com/archives/series/office-365-review/
• Here’s a quick blog post I found on TechNet that has two helpful PowerShell CMDLETs for enabling Mailtips in Office 365: http://blogs.technet.com/b/danielkenyon-smith/archive/2011/08/09/enable-mailtips-office-365.aspx
• TechNet’s German blog has a lot of good BPOS/Office 365 posts up, here’s a very nice look at Lync Online (it’s posted in German, so you may need to use a translation tool of your choice): http://blogs.technet.com/b/germany/archive/2011/08/09/office-365-und-lync-online-call-me.aspx
• Really interesting series of posts by Chris Grist on how he’s creating a simple CRM solution in SharePoint Online: http://chrisgrist.net/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=15
• This post at the Office 365 team blog does a nice job of highlighting some differences to consider between Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Online: http://community.office365.com/en-us/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/archive/2011/08/05/product-insights-deploying-exchange-your-way.aspx
• I really like how this post tries to bring perspectives on “the Cloud” down to earth: http://www.lookscloudy.com/2011/08/the-cloud-is-not-an-opportunity
• A few weeks ago Network World hosted a debate on Office 365 versus Google Apps and invited a major player from each product to contribute to the discuss, along with the general Internet community. Now that the dust’s settled on the discussion a bit, seems like a good time to check it out: http://www.networkworld.com/community/tech-debate-office365-apps?t51hb
• I’m going to wrap things up with another administrative look at managing Office 365, a really important perspective I try to spend a lot of time thinking about: http://www.simple-talk.com/content/article.aspx?article=1333

Enjoy!

John

• Managed IDs – these are also known as “MSO IDs” or “Cloud IDs”, accounts which you create directly in Office 365 and manage there as well.
• Federated IDs – these are accounts based in a local Active Directory environment that you manage. It requires that you configure federation between your AD and the Office 365 Cloud, but allows users to log in with accounts they’ve already been using and maintain a single username and password for both on-premise and Cloud systems.
• DirSync without Federation – As my friend Mike Holcomb pointed out in an comment on my intro post, there is a third option available: synchronizing accounts up to Office 365 via DirSync without configuring AD Federation. It is less complicated to configure than AD Federation, but only synchronizes accounts to the cloud, not passwords.

To me, the options available for account management with Office 365 are a really big reason why it can be such a compelling option for a wide range of businesses of all sizes. There really is a lot of flexibility in how you can choose to create accounts, take advantage of existing identity resources you may already be using, as well as provide a low-friction experience for your end users that doesn’t require them to track multiple accounts and passwords. Now, that’s not to say that it’s perfect, but in general I think it’s a compelling selling point for Office 365.

Please keep in mind that the info I’m providing here is meant as an introduction to the topic, and that there’s a good chance that it will change and develop over time as Office 365 matures. For the most up to date information on accounts in Office 365, you should definitely refer to the excellent Office 365 Identity Service Description document available for download from Microsoft, it should be considered your authoritative and current source.

Now that we’ve set the stage, let’s take a look at each of the options above and take a look at why they can make sense for a company, as well as some of the considerations and drawbacks that also need to be taken into account when deciding which one is the best choice for an organization looking to move to the cloud…

Managed IDs

Managed IDs exist only in the Office 365 cloud, these are accounts that you create and manage in your Office 365 environment, without needing to create, configure, or set up any local Identity systems like Active Directory or Small Business Server. Managed IDs are perfect for organizations that want to limit their reliance on local IT systems, or don’t want to have any local servers or log-ins at all. They’re also great for organizations that are what we refer to as “greenfield” situations; just getting started with their infrastructure so there’s a clean slate when it comes to Identity solutions. That’s not to say that you can’t switch over to Managed IDs with Office 365 if you are already using something like Small Business Server or Active Directory, I’m just saying that there will be additional costs you’ll have to consider in transitioning to the cloud around moving over your accounts and training your users on using the new accounts. The issue of training users can be a big one that’s easily overlooked, especially if they’re already used to using a different system.

With Managed IDs, you have to remember that you will have little control over a lot of the policies that Microsoft is using to govern these accounts in Office 365. You do have more control with Office 365 than was available with BPOS, but you’re still going to have to accept some of the constraints that Microsoft has defined for Managed IDs and be ready to work within them. This includes set minimum and maximum password lengths, set password complexity and strength rules, 90 day password expiry duration, password history restrictions, and account lockout rules. One nice change from Office 365 to BPOS, you can actually disable password expiry for Managed IDs in Office 365 if you want.

Managed IDs also benefit greatly from the new delegated administration roles that can be applied to accounts in Office 365, something else that wasn’t before possible in BPOS.  Now you can assign a user rights to manage subscriptions and Managed IDS and/or reset passwords on Managed IDs without having to make them a full administrator of your Office 365 service.

One final item to consider in the area of managing Office 365 is that you have to have access to the Office 365 Administration web site (or have the Office 365 PowerShell CMDLETs installed locally) to be able to carry out your management activities. This may not be a big deal, given that a robust and reliable connection to the Internet is a big general prerequisite (in my mind) for using Office 365, but it’s worth noting, just in case.

Federated IDs

Federated IDs exist in a local account repository (at this time only Active Directory (AD) is supported, and while I don’t expect that to change, you never know), and are connected up to an Office 365 environment in the cloud via Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). (As an aside, “federation” is a term that comes up quite frequently in Office 365, but it doesn’t always mean the same thing depend on the context it’s used in) Federated IDs are user accounts that you create in an Active Directory domain running on your own servers and through that ADFS connection are recognized by Office 365 as a valid user account in the cloud.

If your organization already has an AD domain up and running (typically referred to as a “brownfield” scenario, the other side of the “greenfield” coin I mentioned above), then you should very seriously consider going with Federated IDs and ADFS instead of Managed IDs. Federated IDs allow you to continue to use your existing tools and policies to manage your accounts, giving you complete control over your security policies (password expiration, password complexity, etc.) and account lifecycles. It also provides your users with a seamless user experience, because they only have one account to manage and use to log in to your systems. Federated IDs can also be used in greenfield situations if your organization would prefer to have more control over the IDs you provision for your users in Office 365, but setting it up will increase the time it will take you to roll out Office 365 to your users.

While Federated IDs do provide you with a great deal more control over your accounts, you need to keep in mind that this is not without some drawbacks. The biggest one is that you’re going to need to continue to spend time to maintain and administer your local AD domain, so you won’t be making a “total” move to the cloud. For many large organizations with other local servers or applications that rely on AD, this probably isn’t a big deal, but that care and feeding is still something you need to remember to plan and budget for. Also, ADFS usually requires additional configuration and administration above and beyond normal AD management as well as likely necessitate additional servers (could be physical or virtual) to host both ADFS itself, which can be tricky (especially if you’ve never done it before) AND the Office 365 DirSync tool (this is required for Federation, but as shown below you can run it without Federation). Finally, it also places a premium on the availability of your Internet connection to Office 365, because if that connection goes down you will not be able to push up updates to your local accounts into the cloud and your users may not be able to log in at all.

DirSync without Federation

DirSync is a tool provided by Microsoft that was originally intended as a tool to be used to do short-term migration of user accounts from a local AD environment up to BPOS. Basically, the BPOS DirSync tool was a stripped down version of a product called Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS, which is now known as Forefront Identity Manager), which scanned through an AD domain and did a copy of all email enabled accounts into BPOS where they could be assigned a User Subscription License (USL) to be activated. This was seen as Microsoft as a way to help a company do a one-time migration of existing accounts into the BPOS cloud, or to be run during a brief period of co-existence if a migration could not be completed during a single window of time. But, as often happens with useful tools, Microsoft’s customers found that they usually preferred to make that period of co-existence permanent, managing their accounts with their existing AD tools and procedures, then copying them up to the cloud with DirSync.

The DirSync option is still available with Office 365, but there are a few things to keep in mind about it. It’s best suited for situations where you’re using some sort of a co-existence set up (either over a short period of time for a migration, or for the long term), but you also have to be careful because there are some situations where it is not supported for use (such as intermittent use solely for user creation, syncing multiple AD forests, or attempting to filter syncing to a scope smaller than all trusted domains). The other important aspect of DirSync to remember is that by default it is a limited, one-way synchronization from AD up to Office 365. One-way because it is not possible to synchronize objects from Office 365 back down to your AD domain, which means that you can only create new accounts in AD, you cannot create them in Office 365. Limited because only certain types of objects are sync’d (users, mail-enabled groups, security groups, and contacts) from AD to Office 365 and because passwords are not included in that sync, which means that users must managed their passwords in both AD and Office 365, as they must with Managed IDs. NOTE: there is some limited capabilities to write data from Office 365 back to AD through DirSync, but there is not much detailed information available from Microsoft on this feature, so I’d recommend treading lightly and testing heavily if you want to look at this.

For more information on what AD attributes are synchronized from AD to Office 365 by the DirSync tool, I’d recommend checking out this page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2256198

I’ve posted my slide deck online at SlideShare.net if for you to check out: http://www.slideshare.net/ferringer/establishing-dominance-sps-columbus-2011. If you have any questions about it or want more information, please just post a comment on this post and I’ll do my best to respond.

I got a request during the session to provide some additional links and info to build on the concepts I talk about in the presentation, so I’m going to do my best to list as many as I can think of below. This may not be a complete list, but I’ll try to add to it as I come across new info or think of items I’ve missed:

• This link provides a nice intro to Code Access Security (CAS) in .NET: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/930b76w0%28v=VS.90%29.aspx
• CAS, the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), and Bin Deployment with SharePoint: http://blog.henryong.com/2009/09/02/code-access-security-vs-global-assembly-cache-vs-full-trust-bin-deployment-for-sharepoint
• Here’s a quick blog post by my friend Geoff Varosky to get started with SharePoint Designer 2010 Governance, lots of good links in it too: http://gvaro.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/limiting-sharepoint-designer-access-in-sharepoint-2010/
• This blog post has a really good list of recommendations that I’ve used in the past to create a SharePoint Developer Guidelines document (I hope to eventually publish that actual document, but I need to do some scrubbing and re-work on it before I can put it out for public consumption) : http://johanolivier.blogspot.com/2010/05/suggested-sharepoint-development.html
• Take a look at the SharePoint 2010 Development Guidance project on CodePlex from Microsoft’s Pattern’s and Practices group, lots of great stuff to think about: http://spg.codeplex.com/
• This is a very good write up on the SharePoint 2010 Developer Dashboard from Steve Peschka: http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2009/10/28/using-the-developer-dashboard-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
• Fiddler is the best tool I know of for HTTP Debugging, and a must have for web developers: http://www.fiddler2.com
• Another crucial debugging tool is Firebug, although it does require the Mozilla Firefox browser: http://getfirebug.com/
• There’s a very handy development-focused edition of the Community Kit for SharePoint, CKS:DEV: http://cksdev.codeplex.com/
• WSPBuilder, a good tool for speeding up creation of SharePoint Solution Packages in Visual Studio (but know how to create a WSP by hand before you start relying on it!): http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/ (main download is for SP 2007, dig around for 2010)
• In general, there are a lot of great tools at CodePlex.com, check it out!
• If you’re working with CAML Queries at all, U2U’s CAML Query Builder is a must-have (there’s also another option or two on CodePlex if you want an alternative): http://www.u2u.net/Tools/wincamlquerybuilder/CamlQueryBuilder.aspx
• And another: Stramit CAML Viewer http://spcamlviewer.codeplex.com/ (this tool is great for looking for the CAML behind an existing item, while the U2U tool is best suited for building a new CAML query.
• Another must-have, SPDisposeCheck provides automated checking of your code to make sure you’re properly disposing of your SharePoint objects: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck
• A helpful development tool on CodePlex: SharePoint Manager http://spm.codeplex.com/
• If you don’t want to take the trouble of working up your own logging system for your application, take a look at the Enterprise Library from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648951.aspx
• TechNet article on SharePoint Solution Packages, how they work, and how to deploy them: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262995.aspx
• Intro to disposing objects in SharePoint 2010, the why and the how: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557362.aspx
• Not a bad article on the trouble with “Running with Elevated Privileges” and alternative approaches: http://mssharepointtips.com/tip.asp?id=1022
• A good general article: http://www.sharepointpromag.com/article/sharepoint/sharepoint-admins-work-sharepoint-devs-136094 “What SharePoint Admins Need to Know to Work with SharePoint Devs—And Vice Versa”
• Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx
• Check out the “Customization Policy” section of this TechNet page on SharePoint Governance: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263356.aspx
• For info on SharePoint’s APIs and web services, see the SharePoint SDK – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557253.aspx
• MSDN SharePoint Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default
• Best Practices section within that SharePoint Development Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff660756
• Great overall SharePoint Governance links from Bill Baer: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2010/09/02/governance-resources-for-sharepoint-2010.aspx

I’d also like to send a big THANK YOU out to the folks who worked so hard to make SPS Columbus happen this past weekend (organizers, speakers, sponsors, attendees, and volunteers!), it was a great time and I really appreciate all of your efforts and the opportunity!

John

I’ve posted my slide deck online at SlideShare.net if for you to review at your leisure: http://www.slideshare.net/ferringer/sharepoint-2010-development-best-practices-spufw-8172011. If you have any questions about it or want more information, please just post a comment on this post and I’ll do my best to respond.

I also reference several tools and resources throughout the presentation that I wanted to make sure I provided to everyone, so here they are:

• First and foremost is the SharePoint 2010 SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=12323
• I mentioned in the presentation that MSDN has a ridiculous amount of great content on SharePoint Development that you need to take a look at, I’d highly recommend starting with the MSDN SharePoint Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/default
• There’s also a Best Practices section within that SharePoint Development Center, given the title of this presentation I figure it’s worth calling out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff660756
• Fiddler is the best tool I know of for HTTP Debugging, and a must have for web developers: http://www.fiddler2.com
• Another crucial debugging tool is Firebug, although it does require the Mozilla Firefox browser: http://getfirebug.com/
• There’s a very handy development-focused edition of the Community Kit for SharePoint, CKS:DEV: http://cksdev.codeplex.com/
• WSPBuilder, a good tool for speeding up creation of SharePoint Solution Packages in Visual Studio (but know how to create a WSP by hand before you start relying on it!): http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/ (main download is for SP 2007, dig around for 2010)
• In general, there are a lot of great tools at CodePlex.com, check it out!
• If you’re working with CAML Queries at all, U2U’s CAML Query Builder is a must-have (there’s also another option or two on CodePlex if you want an alternative): http://www.u2u.net/Tools/wincamlquerybuilder/CamlQueryBuilder.aspx
• On the client-side of things, Marc Andersen’s SPServices library is a great wrapper for combining jQuery and SharePoint’s web services: http://spservices.codeplex.com
• Another must-have, SPDisposeCheck provides automated checking of your code to make sure you’re properly disposing of your SharePoint objects: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck
• Virtualization is a key tool for developers (it’s not just for admins!), and VMware Workstation is just about the best option available: http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/
• If VMware Workstation’s price tag bothers you, you’ll love VirtualBox’s (hint: free): http://www.virtualbox.org/
• If you don’t want to take the trouble of working up your own logging system for your application, take a look at the Enterprise Library from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648951.aspx

UPDATE: I’ve gotten some good follow up info from Stuart Pegg, so I wanted to go ahead and get it added to the post:

• A helpful development tool on CodePlex: SharePoint Manager http://spm.codeplex.com/
• And another: Stramit CAML Viewer http://spcamlviewer.codeplex.com/ (as Eric Alexander pointed out, this tool is great for looking for the CAML behind an existing item, while the U2U tool is best suited for building a new CAML query.
• Finally, if you’re a user of the Chrome browser, there are developer tools built right into it very similar to what Firebug and the IE Developer Toolbar provide, so it can provide you another option for debugging CSS and JavaScript from the client perspective.

Again, thanks to everyone who came out this morning, I had a great time and hope you did as well.

John

• Wednesday, August 17th, I’ll be presenting to the SharePoint Users of Fort Wayne, Indiana on “SharePoint 2010 Development Best Practices.” The meeting starts at 7:30 AM EDT, and is held in downtown Fort Wayne at the offices of Aptera, one of the group’s sponsors. I’m planning on the presentation leaning more towards the beginner side of SharePoint Development, focusing on helping a developer new to the platform getting started the right way to ensure better long term success. I’m also excited about this because its an area of SharePoint that I haven’t spent the majority of my time thinking about, so it’s a great way to challenge myself to move outside my comfort zone and expand my range a bit. There may also be an element of “Admin Eye for the SharePoint Development Guy” to this as well, because as a proper administrator I just can’t see myself passing up an opportunity to warp some developers either!
• Saturday, August 20th, I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio for SharePoint Saturday Columbus, delivering “Establishing Dominance: How to Put Your Developers Right Where You Want Them, and Have Them Love You for It”. SPS Columbus is a FREE day long event organized and delivered by the SharePoint community, and a great way to pick up a lot of information about SharePoint (from a ton of people way smarter than me) in a very short time. This time my target audience is IT Professionals and Administrators, and I’ll talking about how to prepare your precious SharePoint environment for those nasty developers, keep them from burning the whole place down, and all the while fall over themselves thanking you profusely for “helping” them so much

I’ll post links to the published slide decks here in as well, but not till after the events (can’t go giving the punchline away, can I?). I hope I’ll see you there!

John

• Something Microsoft does a pretty good job of is pulling together several different tools and platforms to provide compelling solutions. In this video on the SharePoint Get the Point blog, check out how you can host an Access database in SharePoint Online and update it from your Windows Phone 7 mobile device: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=495
• I’ll be the first guy to admit that I’m drinking the Kool-Aid when it comes to Office 365 and am much more likely to link to articles that laud Office 365 over Google Apps. And since that’s the case, why not go ahead and let you read a pretty blatant one? In all seriousness though, I like the rational and real world approach the author takes to the differences between the two options: http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/30/why-microsofts-office-365-will-clobber-google-apps/
• SharePoint MVP Corey Roth has been playing with SharePoint Online a lot recently, and has some good stuff you should take a look at. Last month he posted a really interesting write up on how to add SharePoint Search capabilities to the public site you can create with Office 365, and it’s definitely worth a look: http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2011/07/21/office-365-how-to-add-search-to-your-public-facing-web-site-with-sharepoint-online.aspx
• Remember those links I’ve been posting to lately about how to migrate from BPOS to Office 365? Well, I should have been mentioning this sooner, but you’ll want to take them with a grain of salt of five… Don’t believe me? Here’s the definitive word from Michael O’Neill, the czar of MSO’s BPOS to Office 365 Transition Team: http://blogs.technet.com/b/msonline/archive/2011/08/07/transitioning-from-bpos-to-office-365.aspx
• SharePoint tool vendor Lightning Tools now has a solution that allows you to synchronize a list between an on-premise SharePoint farm and a site collection running in SharePoint Online, which could be pretty handy (especially since it can go either up to the cloud or down from it): http://www.lightningtools.com/blog/archive/2011/07/26/office-365-integration-with-sharepoint-intranet.aspx
• Here’s another helpful article on how to make some changes to that public site you get with Office 365 from Martin Hatch: http://www.martinhatch.com/2011/07/how-to-add-contact-us-gadget-to-your.html
• Email is a challenge for many organizations because of all the laws and regulations that require them to govern their email systems in specific ways or retain specific emails for longer periods of time (known as a Legal Hold). Well, Exchange Server and Exchange Online in Office 365 have some excellent functionality built right into them to assist organizations in those efforts: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/77005
• Getting started with Office 365′s “Professional” or “P” SKUs? Here’s a good article on how to configure your account to use your company’s own domain for its accounts, a critical first step for anyone starting off with Office 365: http://www.theemailadmin.com/2011/08/using-office-365-plan-p-with-your-companys-domain-name/
• Dux Sy is one of the most dynamic and engaging presenters I’ve had the opportunity to see in person, and the SharePoint community is lucky to call him one of our own. Because he’s also so self-less with sharing his outstanding content (there’s video available of almost every presentation he gives, pretty much right after he’s done delivering it), he’s also a SharePoint MVP, a very deserving award. This is a GREAT presentation he recently gave at SharePoint Saturday New York City on successful Project Management with SharePoint Online: http://www.vimeo.com/27160309
• Finally, here’s another of those “tea leaves” posts that Mary Jo Foley does pretty well looking at how Microsoft’s move to embrace HTML 5 and Javascript will impact the developer story in the next version of Office, codenamed “Office 15″. This plays into the ongoing HTML 5 versus Silverlight discussion that’s been going on, and has real implications for development in the next wave of both SharePoint and Office 365 in addition to the client tools: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-focus-on-html5-and-javascript-for-office-15-extensions/10266

Enjoy!

John

• I love coming across posts that make cool stuff easy (PowerShell is a very common factor in meeting that criteria for me), here’s one from Office 365 MVP Loryan Strant on how to enable calendar sharing between two organizations within Office 365: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2011/08/08/mvps-for-office-365-establishing-calendar-sharing-between-office-365-customers.aspx
• Here’s another one that covers lots of ground I like working with: monitoring your Office 365 environment with an on-premise System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 server thanks to a newly released management pack. This is a great example of how the Cloud and Office 365 don’t make in house IT obsolete, it just changes the playing field and makes you look at things differently! http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2011/07/29/monitoring-office-365-using-operations-manager.aspx
• I saw this blog post this morning and it reminded me of the email thread that went around several years ago that compared Microsoft Windows to GM cars on each side of the equation. This time the author is comparing Office 365 and Google Apps against each other if they were cars (not to give it all away, but I don’t think it bodes well for Google Apps when the author likens it to a Trabant… http://clouddiscussions.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/weekend-special-if-google-apps-and-office-365-were-cars/
• It’s never good to have to remove functionality from a product, but at least Microsoft is willing to admit when something in Office 365 isn’t working the way they want it to. Last month they removed the ability to chat with Windows Live Messenger accounts from within the Lync Online service: http://community.office365.com/en-us/b/office_365_technical_blog/archive/2011/07/14/notice-temporarily-removing-lync-connectivity-with-windows-live-messenger-in-office-365-for-professionals-and-small-businesses.aspx
• I’m of the opinion that everyone wins when Mike Watson is blogging, so it’s great to see him back at it with a new blog. On top of that, he’s talking about some great stuff with Office 365, like this really strong look at why Microsoft needs to figure out what it’s doing with Silverlight because it fills a very important need for Office 365 development that just isn’t there yet from HTML5/JavaScript (since it seems like that’s what Microsoft is about to abandon Silverlight for): http://jmikewatson.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/why-silverlight-ambiguity-is-a-bad-thing-for-office-365/
• I’d say that this one is best described as “SharePoint Online for the IT Guy” Lots of good links from the SharePoint Product Team’s blog for IT Pros looking to learn more about SharePoint Online: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=990
• Rene Modery has been doing a lot of great writing on Office 365 lately, if you’re interested in the platform I’d strongly recommend subscribing to his blog immediately. He’s done a really informative three part series on how to modify the look and feel of the public web site that comes with Office 365, here’s a link to the first post: http://www.modery.net/1_moderynet_–_share-manage-govern/archive/660_modifying_the_design_of_your_office_365_public_homepage-part_1.html

That’s it for now, hope they’re helpful!

John