Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Initiatives are taking shape. I expect a big bang launch somewhere around PDC 2008. Earlier I blogged about the whiff I got about Microsoft’s offering for developers in the cloud by looking at the list of PDC 2008 sessions. Today I will look at what it takes to get started with Microsoft Online Services.

At present you can access Microsoft Online Services beta by using your Live ID. The home page for MOS (Microsoft Online Services) says that there are three services available:

1. Microsoft Exchange Online
2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Online
3. Microsoft Office Live Meeting

Clicking on the registration link takes you to Microsoft Online Customer Portal where you can user your Live ID to sign in for a trial. The customer portal is a place where you can track your subscriptions to different services offered by Microsoft Online Services or sign up for trials and most likely sign up for new services.

After signing in you are presented with a wizard where you are asked for some personal information like name, address, phone number etc. The second screen collects your company information. The third screen is just a confirmation screen.

Now you are signed in and you are taken to your portal which looks like this

This is where you can view/modify your subscriptions and trials. You will notice a link at bottom left which says "Buy Now". Clicking this does not do anything because there isn’t anything to buy at present. Remember the service is still in beta.

Signing up for trials is straight forward. Just click on the Try Now button and you are taken to a screen where you can enter a promotional code if you have one and a domain name. Microsoft creates a web address based on the domain name you enter here. At present you can enter any domain name you like. But the service is not provisioned  until there are some verification checks done. Microsoft will send an email confirming the status of trial.

Note that I have entered a bogus domain name for my company. I wonder what my confirmation mail will say. This is what my Manage Subscription page shows. You can see that my service status is In Queue.

These services are currently only available in US. I used a fake US address just to look at the portal screen. I assume that my trial application will be rejected. But that’s cool. The service is still in beta and I was just testing it.

I think that overall design and workflow of the signup process is simple and intuitive. There are minor quirks which I am sure will be taken care of in coming days. I am looking forward to these services being available in Australia. I am quite keen on hosted SharePoint and how we will get around the evils of Active Directory.

While working with SharePoint VPC Image I got an error when I imported an Excel file for a custom list. The error says

"This workbook has lost its VBA project, ActiveX controls and any other programmability-related features."

The reason this error occurs is because VBA is not installed. To fix this go to Add/Remove programs and click change for Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007. Office setup dialog will popup. Click on Add or Remove Features radio button and expand Office Shared Features and make Visual Basic for Applications to Run from My Computer. This should fix the problem.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

Microsoft has realease a bunch of important updates for SharePoint. These updates are highly recommended by SharePoint team. Of course they should be installed into production after thorough testing on non-production environments.

You can find more details here.

If you are looking for self-study help with SharePoint then there is not shortage of books. Currently I am reading Inside WSS 3.0 which is a great book. However there are many titles available and a lot of them have good ratings on Amazon. Here is a list of SharePoint/MOSS books I know about.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices by Ben Curry, Bill English Read more about this book…

Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Pro Developer) (Pro Developer) by Ted Pattison, Daniel Larson Read more about this book…

Professional SharePoint 2007 Development (Programmer to Programmer) by John Holliday, John Alexander, Jeff Julian, Eli Robillard, Brendon Schwartz, Matt Ranlett, J. Dan Attis, Adam Buenz, Tom Rizzo Read more about this book…

Beginning SharePoint 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007 (Programmer to Programmer) by Amanda Murphy, Shane Perran Read more about this book…

SharePoint 2007 User’s Guide: Learning Microsoft’s Collaboration and Productivity Platform by Seth Bates, Tony Smith Read more about this book…

Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) by Andrew Connell Read more about this book…

Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences From 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs (Programmer to Programmer) by Robert Bogue, Adam Buenz, Andrew Connell, Stacy Draper, Luis Du Solier Grinda, Todd Klindt, Jason Medero, Dustin Miller, Shane Perran, Joris Poelmans, Heather Solomon, Nick Swan, Jan Tielens, Mike Walsh, Shane Young Read more about this book…

Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 by P. Tisseghem Read more about this book…

Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 Inside Out by Errin O’Connor Read more about this book…

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Inside Out by Jim Buyens Read more about this book…

Technorati Tags: SharePoint

Visual Studio 2008 Extensions For Windows SharePoint Services are now available for download here. Few things to keep in mind are that these extensions can only be installed on Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 Server. There is also a small note on the download page which says that "Microsoft does not offer technical support for these extensions". I say what’s going on? C’mon guys why can’t these extensions be installed on Vista or XP? Further if these extensions are not supported then where is the supported dev environment for SharePoint? Visual Studio 2005 is not an acceptable answer.

Found an awesome Technical discussion guide titled: Addressing Sarbanes-Oxley Challanges Using the Microsoft Office System. A good read for SharePoint enthusiasts.

In January 2007 Microsoft acquired a company called Stratature with a motive of stepping into the lucrative MDM (Master Data Management) market currently dominated by IBM camp. Microsoft’s MDM effort is code-named Bulldog and will be part of the overall SharePoint universe in some form when it is released. An announcement has been made about a CTP which will be available in third quarter of 2008. At present a Technology Preview is available by requesting one. You can find more details here.

If you are interested in MDM you might be interested in visiting these links:

Kirk Haselden

Roger Wolter

MDM Page At Microsoft