April 13 2009 Note from the Editor

Greetings, I hope you have had a chance to respond to our customer satisfaction survey which closes on April 17th. I am looking forward to your feedback and continued dialogue. It is truly exciting to see so many people engaged through our site and newsletters. Thank you! With the announcement last month of the availability of Internet Explorer 8, there's one question you need to ask yourself: Is my Web site ready? To that end, we've pulled together a few key resources: TechNet Virtual Lab: Preparing for Internet Explorer 8 – Application Compatibility Internet Explorer Compatibility Center Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit For IT Professionals How Do I: Use the Internet Explorer 8 Meta Tag – HDI video & fact sheet There's also a great third-party IE8 compatibility wizard from ArtinSoft, which automatically upgrades a Web site to render correctly in IE8 without breaking compatibility in older browsers. And for testing Web sites with different IE versions on Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista, get the Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images. Speaking of preparation, your developers should check out the Silverlight 3 beta, a preview release which introduces more than 50 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video performance and quality improvements, and features that radically improve developer productivity. Note that this is a developer release, meaning there is no “go-live” licensing and the end-user runtime is not available. The tools available in this release are intended for software developers only. Yes Virginia, There Is an Upgrade Path Still think there isn't an upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7? Check out the TechNet Edge video on Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta. Find out how you can have a fresh install of Window 7, with all your XP files and settings, completed in 30 minutes. Building robust internet sites with lower costs and increased efficiency Microsoft SharePoint 2007 for internet sites provides unique out of box capabilities that makes development and maintenance easy, efficient and at much reduced cost. Find out more... Tip-o'-the-Day TechNet Magazine continues its month of daily Exchange Server 2007 tips. Here are some of the Exchange Server tips you'll find on the TechNet Magazine site: Prevent Internal Servers from Being Filtered Set Deleted Item Retention Time on Individual Mailboxes Easily Change a User's Alias and Display Name For tips on other products, including Windows Vista and Windows 7, check out the TechNet Magazine Tips library. . Finally, if you haven't checked out the TechNet Flash Feed blog yet, swing on by and see how easy it is to get news updates as they happen, often several times a day. You can also follow the updates on Twitter. Ahmer Hasan Head of Server & Tools Business, Microsoft Gulf

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Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Insiders Guide to Microsoft's Hypervisor
Preorder your copy of this practical guide. Written by Microsoft employees, this book shows you how to implement key virtualization scenarios, and demonstrates how Hyper-V can be used to reduce cost and eliminate the complexity of a server infrastructure by consolidating workloads to a small number of machines.

Labcast: Exchange Server 2007 Labcast Series (Part 2 of 4) (Level 200)
April 2, 2009, 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
This labcast covers compliance and retention using Exchange Server 2007 RTM, and using the Management Console and Shell.

Labcast: Application Compatibility and Managing Your Office Clients with Group Policy (Level 200)
April 6, 2009, 6:30 A.M. Pacific Time
For assessing application compatibility, you will learn about the Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM), a package of tools designed to help administrators during the planning and testing phases of a 2007 Office system deployment.

On-Demand Webcast: Virtualization Solutions in Branch Offices (Level 300)
We look at how to apply the technologies we have seen so far in the webcast series to provide branch offices with a secure environment, running the applications they require while still being highly manageable from a central location.

Try Microsoft DPM 2007 Online on TechNet VLabs
These labs guide you through a series of simple activities to appreciate the basics of DPM alongside one or more workloads. Current vLabs include:

• Technical Introduction to DPM 2007 SP1
• How to Protect SQL Server with DPM 2007 SP1

Download the Free LANsurveyor Express Plug-in
LANsurveyor Express can automatically create network diagrams for you within Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007. It's valued at US$499, but for a limited time only, it's free.

	How Do I: Configure and Manage the Recycle Bin 8 Minutes The Windows SharePoint Services Recycle Bin provides a recycle bin facility to the users of your site, including a multi-level restore capability available to site collection administrators. Join Hilton Giesenow as he describes how to configure and make use of the Recycle Bin.
	How Do I: Install and Configure Microsoft Office SharePoint Server? (Part 1) 15 Minutes 13 seconds Join Hilton Giesenow as he covers installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) onto a SQL Server environment using Active Directory for authentication. In this first part, we look at installing and configuring the MOSS instance, and in the second part we will look at finishing the installation and configuring the farm.
More "How Do I?" Videos

Commerce Server 2009 Releases
Whether you're a developer, IT professional, designer, marketing manager, merchandiser, or customer service representative, you'll enjoy the new page templating features, the fast and easy information editing, and the smooth content management with workflow approvals provided by Microsoft SharePoint Commerce Services.

New IIS Extensions
Recently at MIX09, we announced new IIS Extension releases, including RTW versions of FTP Service 7.5, WebDAV 7.5, IIS Administration Pack, Windows PowerShell Snap-in for IIS, and IIS Application Request Routing V1. IIS Extensions add value to the Microsoft Web Platform by enabling server administrators and hosting providers to more easily deploy, publish, and manage Web applications and Web servers.

Understand Virtualization's Impact on Your Business
The Virtualization Self-Assessment Kit brings together some of our best resources to help you understand the specific impact virtualization will have on your business. You will be able to clearly see the cost savings you'll be able to achieve, as well as the impact virtualization will have on your infrastructure.

Download the Newest Platform Solutions Blueprint Poster on BI & Search
Make sense of it all at once. The Platform Blueprint Solutions poster is a one-sheet color diagram providing IT managers a comprehensive view of the key technology solution areas within their IT environment.

Hey Scripting Guy...

• How Can I Search Active Directory?
• How Can I Search Active Directory Using Windows PowerShell and the LDAP Search Filter?
• How Can I Search Active Directory and Produce a Report?

See previous comics in the TechNet Flash Web-based archive.

• How to return uniqueidentifier initialized with NEWSEQUENTIALID() function to the .NET client

• After you apply hotfix package 956056, a file that has the offline attribute set cannot be crawled by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Description of the Project Server 2007 hotfix package (Pjsrvapp.msp, Pjsrvwfe.msp): March 6, 2009
• Web console hotfix package for System Center Operations Manager 2007
• FIX: Problems occur in the Create Unit Tests wizard when you create a unit test for a method in a solution that contains a GDR project, a Silverlight project, or a WIX project in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

• Dependency monitors indicate an incorrect state on a System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1-based computer
• Changes to DNS server behavior after you install the security update for DNS server
• Windows Server 2008 system cannot start in a dual boot system with Windows 7 system
• An application may stop working unexpectedly on a Windows Vista SP1-based or a Windows Server 2008-based computer

See a selection of new Knowledge Base articles on the TechNet Web site. KB articles feature an Article Translations box in the right column. You can select a language from the drop-down list and read the article in the selected language.

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CIO Scorecard Fosters Strategic Performance Management Culture
March 26, 2009, 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Find out how the CIO Scorecard at Microsoft helps to strategically align the organization with corporate and fiscal objectives, manage organizational performance, and demonstrate the value of IT across the enterprise.

Webcast: High Availability with Cluster Shared Volumes (Level 300)
April 2, 2009, 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time
In this webcast, we provide an overview of the new Cluster Shared Volumes code-name "Centipede" failover clustering feature in the Windows Server 2008 R2 code-name "Windows Server 7" operating system.

More Webcasts

Download New Forefront Security for Office Communications Server Trial
Help protect your instant messaging environment by blocking malware and out-of-policy content in IM conversations and file transfers with Forefront Security for Office Communications Server. The new release supports Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise and Standard Editions, as well as OCS 2007 R2.

Security Center

Webcast: What is Thrive? (Level 100)
Looking at the issues, challenges, and industry from an IT Pro perspective, Thrive provides resources and pragmatic guidance to enable IT Pros to thrive in these challenging times.

Webcast: Securing the Virtual Environments (Level 300)
In this webcast, we look at the four main solutions from the previous webcasts and cover some best practices for ensuring your virtual environment is secure.

More on-demand webcasts...

Preparing for Internet Explorer 8 - Application Compatibility
After completing this lab, you will be better able to add custom HTTP response headers to Web sites and a SharePoint 2007 installation for Windows Internet Explorer 8 compatibility, and use conditional comments with Web sites and with a SharePoint 2007 installation to target markup to a specific Windows Internet Explorer version.

Using Accelerators and Web Slices in the Enterprise with Internet Explorer 8
After completing this lab, you will be better able to use Web Slices and Accelerators in IE8 and learn how they can be used in the enterprise, and also you will learn how to develop Accelerator- and Web Slice-enabled services and content.

More Virtual Labs

The TechNet Flash is full of pointers to in-depth technical information that we encourage subscribers to forward to friends and co-workers. If you've received this issue from someone via e-mail and would like to receive the free TechNet Flash newsletter biweekly, all you have to do is register.

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