What is the Productivity Hub?

The Productivity Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection. It comes packed with over 300* pieces of content, including videos, documents and PowerPoint slides. This gives you a great start at building a learning community behind your firewall.

Microsoft has developed the Productivity Hub to help you optimize your Microsoft end user training plans, and is provided at no cost.

The Hub centralizes Microsoft’s end user training content while providing a great use case for using SharePoint Server throughout your organization. It removes the need for you to have to find, centralize and publish Microsoft’s free end user training to an internal site; we have done the work for you. You can customize the Hub to fit your branding and needs. The flexibility and rich feature set of SharePoint Server 2007 allows you to add web parts, remove web parts, and add your own content to the Hub.

The Hub highlights the best features of SharePoint Server 2007, while providing you with end user training for the newest versions of Office, SharePoint, and Windows.

The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking features to engage end users. It also offers training for “coaches” or power users internal to each customer. Coaches can help reduce the burden on training and helpdesk staff by adding another level of support. 

The Productivity blog is another way to give your end users ongoing Tips and Tricks – and the blog is where you will find out about new content for the Hub. You can either keep the RSS feed on your Hub home page, or put it on a hidden page and reuse the blog content in your own internal SharePoint blog.

Benefits to you:

•Helps reduce costs: Streamlines training and helps reduce training overhead. Acts as a tool for training departments and IT.

•Multiple learning paths: Includes learning roadmaps, coaches, forums, searchable content and more.

•Helps increase productivity:  Accelerates 2007 Office system use through a learning community.

•Drives adoption: Ongoing access to training enables deeper use and helps create new power users.

•Ignites collaboration:  Encourages self-help through the coach program. 

•Proof of concept: Provides a vision for collaborative learning – leading to collaborative work.

I was recently asked by a customer how to create a library or sites as a template so that you can reproduce them for a bunch of similar activities. Here is how to create a document library as a template. This can be done with all libraries, I just used the example of a document library in this instance.

Build the library in the fashion that you would like and then go to the library settings and select -> save document library as template

Which gives you the ability to save the basic structure and the content that is associated with the library. Note the include content checkbox.

Which will give you the following screen, noting that you have completed the task.

Return to the menu that creates libraries and the sample library becomes a template that you can choose from.

BTW, in SharePoint 2010 we introduce the ribbon as a way of surfacing features in SharePoint, it becomes a lot easier to work with the features in the libraries.

Enjoy

I thought that blogging with Word would have made it easier and by virtue of that I would be more inclined to post items.  it really is easy and convenient so all of the blog postings to date were done with Word. 

My problem has been with including screen cap’s in the blog posts.  That experience has not gone as well, so I am now posting on Live Writer, which has been allot better about posting images, but poorer on the basic authoring capabilities.

So far i am very impressed, it would be nice to be able to leverage the authoring capabilities in Word, it is a much better tool for building content.

The public update for the Service Pack 2 expiration date issue is now available for download. 

The update can be applied before or after Service Pack 2 installation.  If the update is applied prior to installing Service Pack 2 it will prevent the expiration date from being improperly activated during installation of Service Pack 2, if it is applied after Service Pack 2 it will remove the expiration date incorrectly set during installation of Service Pack 2.

The update is applicable to all of the products that this issue affected (see the list in the KB linked below).

Installation instructions and download links for x86 and x64 are available in this KB: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620

The direct download link for x86 is: https://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/5/2F51AB71-1325-49D2-9CB9-18DEC4780E99/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x86-glb.exe

And for x64: https://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/B/5BBD34A9-C528-42B0-8A5F-9A8997B25C32/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x64-glb.exe

The Product Group is working on updating the existing Service Pack 2 download package. Will let you know when it comes out.

Build the library in the fashion that you would like and then go to the library settings and select -> save document library as template

Which gives you the ability to save the basic structure and the content that is associated with the library. Note the include content checkbox.

Which will give you the following screen, noting that you have completed the task.

Return to the menu that creates libraries and the sample library becomes a template that you can choose from.

BTW, in SharePoint 2010 we introduce the ribbon as a way of surfacing features in SharePoint, it becomes a lot easier to work with the features in the libraries.

Enjoy

This post was submitted using the Word 2010 Blog template.

Office Info - One stop shop... (Updated 4/2/2009)

Hi there, I've been with Microsoft for almost 12 years now and, have been supporting customers with their Office efforts since day one.    I recently started a new role as an "Office Client Technical Specialist" and found that there is a ton of great information out there to help folks ramp up or learn more about Office 2007 but, the problem is, it's EVERYWHERE'. :-)  So,  I ended up creating my own favorites list to make it easier for me to organize all of these links and to share with customers.    The links you will find on this blog are my favorite links (and will be updated), which I share with customers each day in an effort to help them ramp up on the Office 2007 Client applications.  Feel free to send me your favorite link if you feel it would benefit others.

MIGRATION AND PLANNING
=========================

• System Requirements
• Migrating to the 2007 Office system
• Introduction to the Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM)
• Download the OMPM
• Deploying the OMPM
• IExpress Technology (referenced in the Deploying OMPM link above)
• Analyze the OMPM Report
• Migrate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files
• Migration Issues
• Planning for Migration

COMPATIBILITY
==============

• Compatibility mode in the 2007 Office system
• Office Compatibility Pack
• Deploying the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

DEPLOYMENT
=============

• Video – How to Deploy Office
• Setup Architecture
• Deployment for the 2007 Office release
• Consolidated update process 2007 Office system
• Create different configurations - Office 2007
• Office Customization Tool (OCT)
• Local Installation Source

TRAINING
=========

• History of the Ribbon (must see, buy pretty long!)
• Chris Bortlik's Blog - End User Training
• Office Web casts (Click link and pick a product… TON's of webcasts to choose from)

  - NEW - TIPS AND TRICKS VIDEOS by Brent-

  • Intro to new User Interface
  • Word 2007 - Tips and Tricks
  • Excel 2007 - Tips and Tricks
  • PowerPoint 2007 - Tips and Tricks
  • Outlook 2007 - Tips and tricks
  • Office 2007 and Windows Vista – Better Together
• Quick Start Cards - (Brainstorm Inc.)
• Office 2007 Training Home Page
• Fluent User Interface Resource Center
• Get Started Resources & Search Commands Tool
• Office 2003 to Office 2007 Command Mapping Guides
• Enterprise Learning Framework
•  Many Enterprise Customers have Software Assurance benefits and therefore can tap into the below addes resources...
  • Home Use Program
  • E-Learning
  • Training Vouchers

EXCEL SERVICES
==============

• Excel Services Introduction
• Excel Services Video
• Excel Services – Key Scenarios
• Excel Web Services walk thru

DEVELOPER
===========

• Developer Reference - Office 2007
• Developer Roadmap - Office 2007
• Fluent UI Dev
• OBA Samples
• Open XML Developer Map
• What's New and what's changed in 2007
• OBA Composition Reference Toolkit Version 2.0

OFFICE - GENERAL
================

• File format reference
• IRM Office
• Suites - Features
• Trust Center
• What's different in Office 2007 ?
• XML file formats
• Office and Sharepoint - Better Together (Whitepaper) 
• Feature Comparison of Exchange 2007 with various Outlook clients