Service Pack 2 - April 28th

Service Pack 2 for Office Products, due to ship April 28th...

Check out here for more detail...

Changes that will impact SharePoint:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

• An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.
• SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.
• Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.
• A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services

• SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.
• Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.
• Some display issues have been addressed.
• Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

No More MOSS! Office title dropped...

Excerpt from Press release/Interview

"What happened to the Office piece of the name? We love MOSS. . . .

The first thing you’ll notice is that the MOSS acronym goes away with the new name since Office is no longer in the SharePoint official name. No one should worry that SharePoint doesn’t work great with Office 2010 since we removed Office from the name, just like people didn’t worry whether SharePoint was a great portal product when we removed Portal from the 2007 name.
The primary reason why we took Office out of the name - lots of folks associate the name Office with the Office client. We wanted to take the opportunity to reestablish the Office name and brand to be synonymous with the client suite. I say “Give the people what they Want” so everyone should immediately think of Microsoft Office = Office apps.

Don’t try to acronym Microsoft SharePoint Server to MSS since MSS is already taken by Microsoft Search Server. Just remember, SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint."

Gonna Miss MOSS!

February Update released!

February Cumulative Update (CU) released a couple of days ago... tagged the 'Uber' package...

info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/03/09/uber-packages-of-february-cumulative-update-are-ready.aspx

It installs on top of SP1 and includes the Infrastructure Update, and all hotfixes from SP1 onwards...

Great Installation Guide can be found here:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2009/03/12/install-guide-february-cumulative-updates-for-sharepoint.aspx

December Hotfix

Microsoft have released the December Hotfix package :

More info and download available here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959644

It provides a number of fixes including the Picture Library View flyout menu disappearing.

Haven't tested it yet, but will report back if I find anything...

SharePoint Infrastructure Update

A new UPDATE, not service pack! which contains a load of performance updates and fixes for WSS and MOSS.

This also includes a new Search Settings Interface and the federated search capabilities seen with MS Search Server/Exp 2008

Download links:

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)

AJ...

MOSS & WSS SP1 Quick Reference

Great Step by Step article on Installing MOSS/WSS Service Pack 1

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2007/12/14/how-to-install-wss-and-moss-sp1.aspx