If you’re looking for a wildcard search for Sharepoint 2007 look no further than Ontolica.  They have a FREE offering for this as a teaser.  Get it from http://www.ontolica.com/Ontolica%20for%20MOSS%202007/Ontolica%20Wildcard.aspx.

They also have a much more comprehensive (and expensive) Search offering.  Full details at http://www.ontolica.com/Ontolica%20for%20MOSS%202007/Ontolica%20Search/Feature%20Overview.aspx.

Microsoft’s Communicator 2007 is a fine piece of software.  It’s small, its fast, its amazingly stable, and it simply connects all other forms of technical (business) communications other than email. 

Its clear this is a very important piece of software to Microsoft’s future.

Having started with Windows Messenger and Exchange 2000 and worked through today’s Communicator, I am very impressed.  Our business just hasn’t been the same since we started with Messenger - its vital. 

I am exploring all of the telephony options with Communicator now (more on this soon) as well as other offshoots which I am still under NDA about.  I can say that Exchange 2007’s Unified Messaging with Communicator and Office Communications Server 2007, all of which we are running, is great stuff. 

So without further ado, your Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.0 can now run its own version of Communicator.  Yes its IM only at this point, but that’s just a start I’m sure.  Skype and Cisco has some formidable competition here.

Speaking of Cisco, I look forward to testing their Unified Personal Communicator (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6844/index.html) sometime soon to compare.

Grab Communicator Mobile 2007 from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2eea3e24-f216-4887-92b0-f37d942e26e0&displaylang=en and let us know what you think.

For the OCS admins, you’ll need to follow these instructions (http://blogs.technet.com/networking/archive/2007/09/06/communicator-mobile-beta-2-cannot-sign-on-to-ocs-2007.aspx) to allow Communicator Mobile access for your users.

Did you know spyware is typically the root cause of your computer running at a snails pace?

For the novice computer user, this may be difficult, but none the less follow along, you’ll learn something new!

The goal is to run a test on your computer and determine if any spyware is connecting out to the internet, which may cause your computer to slow down.

To run the test, open up your command prompt.
- Windows + R > “CMD”
- Enter “netstat -b 5 > log.txt” without the quotes and hit enter.
- Wait about 2-4 minutes and then press CTRL + C.
- Enter “log.txt” and notepad should pop up with the information captured.

Your log file will have a list of connection attempts to the internet that occured in the last 2-4 minutes. You log should read something like this:

Active Connections

Proto Local Address Foreign Address State PID
TCP computername:7904 ats-mda.dial.aol.com:5190 SYN_SENT 6592
[aolsoftware.exe]

TCP computername:7499 localhost:7500 ESTABLISHED 10668
[aim6.exe]

TCP computername:7500 localhost:7499 ESTABLISHED 10668
[aim6.exe]

In the log you’ll notice that each requesting “Application” is shown in brackets below the connection information. You can then use this information to determine any spyware that is talking to the internet.

Before you install the Unified Messaging Role in Exchange 2007, you’ll need to have the following updates already installed.

Windows Media Encoder 9 Series x64 Edition
Fix KB917312. Info on fix here.

All of the system and role requirements are listed in the Exchange 2007 System Requirements document.

After the UM role is setup, you can enable integration with Office Communications Server 2007 by running “exchucutil.ps1″ from the scripts directory of your Exchange 2007 install media/directory.  Run this from the Exchange Management Shell.  Then reboot your OCS server. Verify all is working by looking at the events with source “OCS Exchange Unified Messaging Routing” in the OCS category in your Event Log.

When building a Query-based Distribution Group in Exchange 2003/2007, the GUI does not allow you to filter out disabled users or hidden users.

This has greatly limited the effectiveness of such groups for my work, until now!

Using ADSIEDIT.MSC you can modify the LDAP filter easily to resolve this issue.

Steps:

1. start ADSIEDIT.MSC
2. under the Domain branch, find the group your created through the Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC)
3. double-click on the group
4. find the msExchDynamicDLFilter attribute and edit it
5. just in the last ‘)’ add the following: (!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)(!msExchHideFromAddressLists=TRUE)
6. go back to ADUC and find your group, and run the preview and make sure it works
7. fin!