Mart Muller's Weblog

The SharePoint "Page Viewer Webpart" that comes with the standard installation is a usefull application to display pages or sites in a Sharepoint environment. There is however a problem setting the height for this webpart when that page that is loaded in the iframe varies in height. In some cases scrollbars appear even if the height is set in webpart property. Our javascript guy has created a script that can be included in the iFrame page to set this height automatically depending on the page height.

There is one restriction with this script, the page should in the same domain as the Sharepoint environment.

Inlcude de following code (which is a first version) into the page you will load in the iFrame:

<script type="text/javascript">
        function resizeToFit(that){
                var objNode = (typeof(this.nodeName)=='undefined') ? that : this ;
                var objIframe = window.parent.document.getElementById('resizeToFit');
                var intScrollX, intScrollY, intWinWidth, intWinHeight, intMaxWidth, intMaxHeight;
                
                var intWhileCount = 0;
                do{
                    // scroll the document by 1 pixel
                    window.scrollTo(1,1);
                    // measure the scroll position            
                    intScrollX = (document.all) ? document.body.scrollLeft : window.pageXOffset ;
                    intScrollY = (document.all) ? document.body.scrollTop : window.pageYOffset ;
                    // measure window size
                    intWinWidth = (document.all) ? document.body.offsetWidth : window.innerWidth ;
                    intWinHeight = (document.all) ? document.body.offsetHeight : window.innerHeight ;
                    // if the scroll position is not 0
                    if(intScrollX>0){
                        // make the window larger
                        window.resizeBy(32,0);
                        // make the iframe larger
                        if(objIframe!=null && !document.all) objIframe.style.width = (objIframe.style.width=='') ? '64px' : (parseInt(objIframe.style.width) + 32) + 'px';
                    }
                    if(intScrollY>0){
                        // make the window larger
                        window.resizeBy(0,32);
                        // make the iframe larger
                        if(objIframe!=null && !document.all) objIframe.style.height = (objIframe.style.height=='') ? '64px' : (parseInt(objIframe.style.height) + 32) + 'px';
                    }
                    // count the steps
                    intWhileCount += 1;
                }while((intScrollX>0 || intScrollY>0) && intWhileCount<900);
            }
            function waitToFit()
            {
                setTimeout("resizeToFit()",100);    
            }
            
            onload = waitToFit;
</script>

Mike talks about all coming to PDC this september to see new things about Sharepoint. It's great to see Office has its own track this year which was of course something to be expected :)

"PDC05 offers six tracks:

• Presentation: Latest innovations in user experience technology: drill into "Avalon," ASP.NET 2.0, Internet Explorer 7, and integrating with Windows "Longhorn."

• Data & Systems: Advancements in data access, storage, and server technologies, including deep dives on SQL Server 2005, SharePoint® Services, and "WinFS."

• Communications: The infrastructure for connecting applications and systems. Go deep on new innovations including "Indigo," IIS 7, peer-to-peer, and real-time communications.

• Office: Developer features and technologies in the next versions of Microsoft Office System clients and servers.

• Tools & Languages: "Longhorn"-wave tools, languages, and application extensibility, and the latest on Visual Studio® Team System.

• Fundamentals: Platform advancements in "Longhorn" and .NET Framework that enable world-class applications, emphasizing security, compatibility, deployment, reliability, manageability, and performance. "

See the PDC Agenda or subscribe the PDC RSS Feed

Teun has written an article in the latest issue of Microsofts .Net magazine about Reporting over SharePoint lists with MS Reporting Services. It's a nice article and lucky for non-Dutch readers, he has translated it into English.

"As both Windows SharePoint Services and MS Reporting Services have been designed with extensibility in mind, it is not very hard to connect the two into one solution. Web parts are available to show reports from Reporting Services inside WSS sites. Using the technique shown in this article, you cn present the information available in your WSS sites through Reporting Services. As organisations increasingly organize some of their primary processes through WSS team sites, the importance of reporting over the progress of these processes will only grow. "

Do you want to meet other people from the SharePoint community? Are are you in Amsterdam during Tech-Ed Europe? I'm planning to have a Sharepoint Geek dinner or so called "Pint2Share" during Tech-Ed. So if you are interested, please let me know and drop me a line and I will arrange something during Tech-Ed at 5-8 July.

There is a track on portals and collaboration at TechEd Europe this year which might be very interesting to attend.

Sessions:

• Creating Rich SharePoint Clients with Access 2003  
• Deploying, Administering and Updating SharePoint Sites and Portals 
• Developing Site Definitions and Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 
• Developing with SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Outlook and Exchange: Advanced Integration
• Getting Back to Normal: SharePoint Backup and Disaster Recovery 
• Live Communications Platform: Architecting, Deploying, and Building Custom Solutions 
• Live Communications Server 2005: A Technical Overview 
• Live Communications Server 2005: Deploying in the Enterprise
• Maximizing SAP with SharePoint and Other Microsoft Technologies 
• Microsoft Office Communicator 2005: A Technical Overview 
• MS IT: SharePoint Products and Technologies: Performance and Capacity Planning Best Practices and Lessons Learned
• Project Server 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003: Integrating with Line-of-Business Solutions
• Project: Collaboration with the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management Solution and Windows SharePoint Services
• SharePoint Portal Server 2003: Best Practices for an Implementation
• Vertical Industry and Role-Based Templates for SharePoint Products and Technologies 

See the tech-ed site for more info and other tracks.

In our weekly '15 minutes of sharing knowledge' at Tam Tam, my colleague Stef did a small presentation on a book he is reading called Working Knowledge. In this book, knowledge management is described like a market where people are selling knowledge to customers that consume knowledge. There are traders that enable the transaction between those two. Kind of interesting point of view.

There are also some examples that describe how and where this transaction of knowledge is done. And, this is not a real surprise, it turns out that most of the sharing is done at the watercoolers, coffemachines and company's cafeteria. Places where people meet and talk.

So, SharePoint Portal is basically just a tool to provide a environment to manage and share knowledge. The interesting question in this presentation was: Should we, as a technical partner for implementing solutions such as Sharepoint, advise to our customers to create fysical meeting point where knowledge workers can meet and talk, which has nothing to do with Sharepoint, but which has everything to do with sharing knowledge?

Should we start selling watercoolers as well? My personal opinion is that it IS part of knowledge management and therefore we should be able to use it. What are your thoughts? Are there other examples as well that you have experienced in knowledge management situations? I would like to hear them!

Patrick and the mysterious CAML girl 'Karine', are talking about they have released version 2 of the U2U Caml query builder tool.

"So, what is new in v2?

• You can now choose whether you work in object model or in Web services mode. It means that you now can use the app on the SharePoint machine itself and on a client accessing the SharePoint content via the Web services.
• When working with the object model, you can only query for content. If you opt for Web services mode, you can query but also now update content in a SharePoint list using CAML.
• You now also have the possibility to make use of parameters and give these parameters a value at runtime when using the CAML Server Helper to execute the saved CAML query string. "

I've used version one a lot and it's very usefull in building queries. This version looks promising as well, so good work!

Via Tech News and Michael some interesting passages about the future of Office:

"Takeshi Numoto, a senior director of Microsoft Office System, said that the Office team is looking at how best to incorporate peer-to-peer collaboration capabilities from recently acquired Groove Networks Inc. into Office 12. The new version of Office will allow corporate users to securely connect with a trusted partner outside their companies` firewall to share documents."

...

"In addition, Office`s Excel component will let users create real-time visual dashboards and score cards directly from the data in spreadsheets and then share that business intelligence in a central Microsoft Office SharePoint portal site or work space, Numoto said."

...

"Office of the future

* Existing PowerPoint design templates to be increased and elevated and allow more customization

* Inclusion of peer-to-peer collaboration capabilities from recently acquired Groove Networks

* Excel will let users create real-time visual dashboards and score cards directly from the data within their spreadsheets

* An Office 12 deliverable will let central archival or expiration policies be created against certain document types"

Read full article

Pedro Serrano just told me he is working on a project called CaveDigital XML Form WebPreviewer webpart. It enables you to display infopath forms in SharePoint. It's currently in beta but it looks promising and usefull!

From their website:

"This SharePoint web part increases the value of your enterprise investments on SharePoint and InfoPath technology by allowing users without InfoPath to view the contents of forms on their web browser.

CaveDigital XML Form WebPreviewer can also be used in .NET web applications development, by being available as a Web User Control. This allows you to extend your investment to other applications, for instance, your Corporate Internet WebSite.

Benefits:

Microsoft Partners, Developers and Resellers: now you have the answer to your clients when they ask you about «users who don't have InfoPath».

Also, as an End-User, imagine you have to review several dozens of forms, and for each one you would have to fire up your InfoPath client application (and wait for it to load). With this web part, you won't need to. Just WebPreview them.

And what about when part of your employees don't have an InfoPath client application available for them to use? They can always WebPreview them.

Pre-Requisites:

1. Windows SharePoint Services or
2. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

3. XML Form template created using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003

Licensing:

• €490.00 / server license.
    * No media kit. "

From Neowin:

"The test version of Windows Server 2003 R2, which is built atop the code from the SP1 release of last month and supports both 64-bit and x86 systems, sports streamlined versions of several management systems, including branch and remote server management, access management and storage management.

Try Windows Server 2003 R2, the update version of the award-winning Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), that extends your connectivity and control.

View: Register to download the beta software
View: TechNet Windows Server 2003 R2 TechCenter"

Via Patrick and Lars:

"Lars Fastrup reports that Ontolica for SharePoint is now available as v2.2. Ontolica is an search add-on for SharePoint created by Navigo Systems. Download a trial here.

The new features are:

WSS search integration.

Support for the French language besides English, German and Danish.

All UI texts are now customizable.

New “This folder” search scope in document libraries.

New XSLT template with SharePoint drop-down menu on document titles in the portal search resuslts.

New XSLT template for presenting portal search results in a document library style.

New search dialog that supports multiple search scope selection.

Fully customizable search dialogs through XML+XSLT and optionally .NET plug-ins.

Context sensitive search scopes (Allows you to have different search scopes in different areas or sites).

Plus many small improvements. "

I've been playing with ASP.Net 2.0 and WebPart development and it's cool to see the whole web part concept running in a standerd asp.net website. A problem with asp.net 2.0 was that Sharepoint wouldn't run. A problem with SharePoint was that it wouldn't run on asp.net 2.0. With Windows Server 2003 R2, including WSS SP2, this issue should be fixed. Time for me to test it!

First I had to install of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1. After completing this installation, the R2 update can be added, which is finished real quickly. Great to the the WSS 2.0 component is now standard in the W2k3 installation.

Asp.Net 2.0 is installed and can be assinged to the Sharepoint web in the IIS Manager to anable asp.net 2.0 on the sharepoint site.

Using the STSADM.exe tool the SharePoint sites can be upgraded: stsadm.exe -o upgrade -forceupgrade

Changes are made to the web.config file of Sharepoint to manage the System.Web.UI.WebControlWebParts namespace that is used with asp.net 2.0 webparts.

Great to see that the SharePoint site is running on asp.net 2.0 now. When creating new virtual servers, one of the options that is added is to choose between NLTM and kerebos authentication.

Right now, I'm experimenting with asp.net 2.0 webparts, so more screenshots and code about that on a while.

Heather Solomon talks about the what should be improved in Sharepoint V3 on Surveys:

• Response Permissions
• Submit Button
• Improved handling of graphical representation of responses
• Default view should be ... the survey
• Improve the Rating Scale Question Type

I do agree with this, keeping in mind that there are some other things that could also use improvement like the discussionboard. Serge has done a good job with the Macaw Discussionboard list template, but there might be some more work to do.

Most of the Sharepoint lists user interfaces should be learned to use. For example, the "Save and Close" buttons are at the top, instead of at the bottom. For a new Sharepoint user this can be confusing. This is however done consistantly everywhere in SharePoint. Microsoft's goal is to make this a default way of working, now and in the future. It's not a surprise why the interface of for example MS Word hasn't changed that much since 1995!

Ofcourse, the SharePoint UI has some points of discussion and I like to listen to what is bad about the SharePoint UI, but I mostly like to hear the improvements like Heather does. There is still lots of work to do for the SharePoint community to improve V2, right? ;)

Some more Office 12 talk on News.com:

"The company is still not discussing the specifics on most of the features it will add with Office 12, but it is promising to have the productivity software suite ready by the second half of next year. The company is also talking about some broad areas that it sees as ripe for improvement, including enhanced collaboration. Among the other key areas are individual productivity, finding business information and managing corporate business documents.

"There are things that are still hard as well as things that have gotten harder," Microsoft Group Vice President Jeff Raikes said in an interview."

Read the full article

I've had a good weekend, even without Sharepoint and the internet :) My Internet connection at home was not like it was supposed to be, so I was glad to be online again and seeing that a new blogger is blogging starting with a nice article about Web Part Caching. A subject that might be underestimated, so is good that modonovan is giving a clear overview about it:

"Web part cache – in memory:

1. Actually this just uses the ASP .Net cache object.
2. Items can be cached per user or per web part. In other words using this will not allow multiple instances of a web part to share the same cache, if you want this you must use ASP .net cache object directly or the caching app block. However, if you don’t want this type of uniqueness then this is great option.
3. When items are added to the cache the web part framework adds extra text to the cache item key so that it will make the key unique for either the user, or the web part instance.

Web part cache – in SQL Server

1. What happens here is that the object you choose to cache is serialised with the web part into the database, along with the rest of the web part properties. This is obviously not seen by the developer.
2. You object that you cache must be serialize-able. Obviously! And must be marked as such otherwise the web part framework will not attempt to write it into the DB.
3. Once again items can be cached per user or per instance of the web part, the same as the web part in memory option.
4. There are a couple of really good reasons why you might choose to do this. Firstly, because the cached content is the database all the web servers in the farm share the same cache and application recycle won’t remove your cached data. Unlike the asp .net cache, if a user is load-balanced between web server the user will see the same cached data. Secondly, you probably have more database storage capacity than memory.
5. Obviously this will be slower that an in-memory cache. How much really depends, you will need to do the appropriate testing. As mentioned earlier the downside of the choosing to cache web part data in SQL or in memory is that it applies to all web parts, therefore if you do this, you could have every web part cache living in the DB.

Caching application block

1. Developed by PAG group at Microsoft and all source code is made available to you. You can change source code as needed, however for this discussion I am assuming this has not been done.
2. In some ways this is similar to the ASP .Net cache object, however it has been designed to work in any .Net application not just web apps.
3. It stores all cache items in a hashtable, which will be lost if the application recycles. This is where a backing store could be used.
4. If a backing store has been configured then every time an item is added to the hashtable it is also added to the backing store e.g. a SQL Server database table. If the application recycles, the hashtable is lost. When the application starts the hashtable is pre-populated with items from the backing store. The backing store is not used as cache store so that many web server can share the same cache; the backing store is there to recover cached data when an application recycles.
5. You get advanced time expiration policies e.g. when an item is added to the cache you can specify that is expires on Monday at 11pm. More info on this can be found in the docs for the block.
6. You have control over the configuration of cache scavenging e.g. maximum number of items allowed in the cache, when items are scavenged etc
7. You can have multiple caches in one application with different settings e.g. one may have a backing store and the other may not.
8. Like using the ASP .Net cache directly, your web part could use this as the cache store.
9. In general I have not found this caching application block to be useful for web parts. If I was developing a smart client it would be something that I would look at."

Read full article

WikiSharePoint

I’ve been working on a project lately called Tam Tam WikiSharePoint; a set of SharePoint web parts which make it possible to create a Wikipedia-like application in SharePoint Portal Server or Windows SharePoint Services. The project is in beta, but I would like share it and invite you to use and test it!

The application is based on a thesaurus list, which is created automatically by one of the WikiSharePoint web parts. In this (Sharepoint) list, keywords, synonyms and variants can be inserted with a parent-child relation. This way, a thesaurus list can be filled which is searchable as well.

Results are editable by users with the edit rights. This way, the thesaurus list will be filled and updated constantly.



Features
WikiSharePoint Beta 1 comes with 3 web parts:

• Tam Tam WikiSharePoint, which creates the list for you if you like and displays the results.
  • Automatically create thesaurus
  • Finds other terms in the results and makes them clickable
  • Tooltips with descriptions
  • Shows path and more specific items
  • Terms editable form the result page for users with edit rights
  • Insert new items from the web part menu
• Search in WikiSharePoint, which is a control that searches the thesaurus.
  • Can be used on any area or WSS site, pointing to thesauri on other places as well
  • Can be used as search box in SPS

• Tam Tam WikiSharePoint Treeview, which displays the thesaurus in a tree view.
  • Displays all items in hierarchical way
  • Collapse and expand items
  • Edit items by clicking on them
  • Add new items from the web part menu

Installation procedure
WikiSharePoint Beta 1 can be installed the following way:
1) Download the Setup.CAB file download version 1.0
2) Install the web part package on the SharePoint server with the stsadm.exe tool:

   Stsadm.exe –o addwppack –filename setup.cab –force

3) Set the trust level to the right permissions in the web.config (for example: <trust level="Full" originUrl="" />)
4) Add the 3 web parts to the Area or WSS site on which you want to create the thesaurus list.
5) Create the thesaurus by clicking the link in the ‘Tam Tam WikiSharePoint’ webpart.

6) Add new items to the list by clicking "add new entry" in the web part menu (the arrow in the web part title bar).
7) Search!

Mention that this is the first (beta) release of Tam Tam WikiSharePoint. Please report any bugs or suggestions to me to improve it.

Download Tam Tam WikiSharePoint here!

Update: Version 1.0 is released here

Nice article by Alex about how to create a Microsoft Self Installer (MSI) file to deploy webparts:

"Packaging and deploying a web part is not that easy but it looks nice and cool when you send your customer a MSI (Microsoft Self Installer) file. This article describes in a few steps what you have to do to create a MSI file. "

read full article

 

Microsoft published a KB article about which custom site definition scenario's are supported and which are not.

"This article contains information about custom site definitions in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and custom area definitions in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. This article lists scenarios that are supported and scenarios that are not supported when you customize site definitions and area definitions.

Supported scenarios

When you work with custom site definitions or custom area definitions, the following scenarios are supported:

•	To create a custom site definition or a custom area definition, you copy an existing site definition or an existing area definition, and then you rename and modify the new site definition or the new area definition. For more information about this supported method, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/spptsdk/html/tsptCustomExistingWebTemplate_SV01017467.asp?frame=true
•	You modify the .xml files and the .aspx files in a custom site definition or in a custom area definition before you create new sites or new portal areas by using the custom site definition or the custom area definition.
•	You deploy the custom site definition or the custom area definition. That is, you create new sites or new portal areas by using the custom site definition or the custom area definition. To modify the new sites or the new portal areas that you created, you use one or more of the following three supported methods: • You modify the site or the portal area by using the user interface in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or in Windows SharePoint Services. • You programmatically modify the site or the portal area by using the SharePoint Portal Server object model or the Windows SharePoint Services object model. • You modify the site or the portal area by using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. Note These three methods are also supported methods to use if you want to modify the Default.aspx page in the portal site. Microsoft does not support using other methods to modify the Default.aspx page in the portal site.

Unsupported scenarios

When you work with custom site definitions or custom area definitions, the following scenarios are not supported:

•	You modify one of the default site definitions or one of the default area definitions that are included in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or in Windows SharePoint Services. Microsoft does not support modifying the default set of site definitions or area definitions that are installed when you installed Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Additionally, Microsoft does not support modifying the .xml files or the .aspx files in the default site definition or in the default area definition.
•	You modify a custom site definition or a custom area definition after you deploy the custom site definition or the custom area definition. Microsoft does not support modifying a custom site definition or a custom area definition after you create a new site or a new portal area by using that site definition or area definition. Additionally, Microsoft does not support modifying the .xml files or the .aspx files in the custom site definition or in the custom area definition after you deploy the custom site definition or the custom area definition.
•	You modify the Webtemp.xml file or the Webtempsps.xml file that is located in the following folder: Drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Template\LCID\XML With one exception, Microsoft does not support modifying the Webtemp.xml file or the Webtempsps.xml file. The exception is the Webtemp.xml file. Microsoft supports modifying the Webtemp.xml file only if you want to hide a specific template. To hide a specific template, you modify the Hidden parameter of that template in the Webtemp.xml file."

Read more

From Techworld.com:

"Microsoft will release a new version of Office next year, Bill Gates said yesterday.

Its release next year has already been the subject of much speculation but it wasn't confirmed until yesterday. The last major version arrived in late 2003.

Microsoft officials have been coy about the next release, but Gates released some new details including that it will include improvement in workflow capabilities, rights management, advanced scheduling, document sharing and business intelligence.

"Those are areas where Office has gotten richer and will in the next big release, which is coming sometime next year," Gates said.

Nailing down the date to 2006 is good, said Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft. Still, Microsoft could provide more details to the general public on its product plans. Only a few customers who buy upgrade rights ahead of time are getting more information, under non-disclosure agreements, according Helm.

With Office 12, Microsoft is expected to release more server products designed for workgroup collaboration. Industry observers and analysts have speculated a new Excel server might be in the works, for example, but Microsoft has declined to comment. Existing server products in the Office System family include Project Server, Portal Server and Live Communications Server.

Microsoft originally planned to ship Office 12 alongside the next version of Windows, Longhorn. It is now likely to come before the much-delayed new OS."

From GotDotNet: "An extensions library for RSS support for SharePoint. This adds RSS functionality to any List."

Another RSS feeder for Sharepoint, this one also with a WSS SP2 (beta) build.

Download here

Alex is on a roll with two nice tips about customizing the WebPartMenu and ToolParts.

ToolPart
"When you use properties you only have a few possibilities. Checkboxes are used for booleans, Text fields are used for doubles, int, strings, etc and a dropdownlist is used for enumerations.

So why not create your own ToolPart with default and/or your own controls? It is even not that difficult. :)

I'm working on a BirthdayWebPart which needs some functionality to select through a dropdown box the contact list. But only enumerations are shown using a dropdown list. So we have to write our own ToolPart... "

 

Read more

WebPartMenu
This article decribes a method for adding an item to the menu of the web part. The menu of a web part can be found in the upper right corner.

In your web part you have to override the following member:

public class MyWebPart : Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart
{

 public override void CreateWebPartMenu()
 {
  base.CreateWebPartMenu();

  ...
 }
}

Read more

Microsoft announced a new office product for manage and use scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs), and perform deep analysis all within an intuitive, collaborative environment. Looks like Sharepoint will be used as platform (of course), like it will be for other Office products as well.

From the fact sheet:

'"Maestro" is the code name of Microsoft Corp.'s new server-based business performance management scorecard application. The new application leverages the power of the Microsoft® Office System to help organizations build, manage and use scorecards and key performance indicators (KPIs), and perform deep analysis -- all within an intuitive, collaborative environment. "Maestro" gives companies a broad view of business opportunities, through which employees can better understand business challenges, effectively shape solutions and quickly execute on their objectives. Decision-making happens across all levels of an organization, and empowering employees with powerful business intelligence (BI) solutions can help them have greater impact.'

...

"Integrating with easy-to-use tools such as the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, "Maestro" empowers end users to build, manage and use scorecards. At the same time, "Maestro" leverages companies' existing skills, technology and investments to help them get more value with less cost and time. "

Wow, great tool by James Milne which helps you customizing Sharepoint styles for portal and WSS: check out the Sharepoint Style Designer! Nice feature is the CSS part which enables you to get the stylesheet by email.

Via Patrick's blog and CRN some roumours about a 64-Bit Office 12 version with some interesting quotes:

"Erik Ryan, product manager of Microsoft Office SharePoint, said the company is planning 64-bit versions of Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server in the 'Office 12 wave.'"
...
"However, as Microsoft points out, the Office brand is now more than desktop apps. It now comprises servers such as SharePoint Portal Server and Content Management Server as well as services. And plans call for a new InfoPath server as well as a realtime analytics server as well."
...
"Some Microsoft sources say the company continues to look at an Excel Server as well, but said it has not been determined if it will actually surface as a SKU in and of itself.
"They may well bundle it with SharePoint," said one source familiar with the plans. "

This sounds like the circle will complete with WSS as platform and server products (SPS, MCMS, InfoPath Server, Excel Server??, Exchange??) on top of it. With the workflow (WinOE) story as part as the WSS platform, it will fit perfectly together in my opinion. Looks like a nice future (2006)!

Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 improves on the features of Live Communications Server 2005 by extending the federation model, enhancing functionality, increasing security, and improving performance and infrastructure support. These improvements include:

• Tools to enable Public IM Connectivity; the ability to add contacts, send instant messages, and share presence information with users of the three main public IM service providers MSN, AOL and Yahoo!.
• Enhanced federation, which uses DNS-SRV resolution to simplify connecting to federation partners.
• New optional spim filters for better control of unsolicited instant messages.
• Support Microsoft Office Communicator 2005.
• Support for multiple tree Active Directory forests.
• Improved server API performance.

You can get specific information about this update in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (897690): Description of Live Communications Server 2005 Service Pack 1.

Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 is available in two editions: Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition.

Download here