Due to a change in the package configuration introduced after SharePoint 2013 RTM the March Public update is a mandatory requirement in order to install subsequent SharePoint Updates.

In this article, I will show you step-by-step how to install this first public update for SharePoint Server 2013 in a CloudShare Environment.

Links for Downloading the Public Update Bits

First thing you have to do is download the public update bits and read carefully the related KB article describing the problems and issues fixed by the update:

• SharePoint Foundation 2013 public update bits & KB article:
  • http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=36987
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2768000
• SharePoint Server 2013 public update bits & KB article:
  • http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36989
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2767999

For a SharePoint Server 2013 RTM environment, you do not need to download and install the SharePoint Foundation public update. Just install the one for SharePoint Server.

Installing the SharePoint Server 2013 March Public Update

As you will see, installing the March public update for SharePoint Server 2013 RTM is quite straightforward:

• Once you have download the bits, double click in the .exe file and accept the Microsoft Software License Terms.

• Once you have accepted these terms, the installation process will start. Since this process will take more than a couple of hours, be patient and use this “free time” to do other productive things

• After some waiting, you will be asked to reboot your server. Just do it.

• Once you have rebooted your server and it’s up again, run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.

• As always, click the “Yes” button in the warning message about what services have to be started or reset during the configuration process.

• In the next window, simply click the “Next” button in order to start the configuration wizard.

• At this point, just wait some minutes until the wizard has done all the configuration steps.

• In the last Configuration Wizard window that appears, click the “Finish” button.

• Once the configuration ends, open the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration in order to check everything is working fine. In the home page of the Central Administration, just click the “Check product and patch installation status” in the “Upgrade and Migration” section.

• Finally, simply check that the public update has been applied to your server. As you can see in the below screenshot, the update has been applied to some of the core services of your SharePoint 2013 farm.

And that’s all about installing the March Public Update for SharePoint Server 2013 in a CloudShare environment. Happy CloudSharing!

Let’s take a few steps back. We are all very busy. We barely have time to do our primary tasks, let alone look forward and plan a few steps ahead. For me, evaluating a new technology is always something I worry about, especially when it comes to enterprise-scale software. Getting started setting up the necessary hardware, installation, and configuration all require time I do not have. Furthermore, there’s always something that goes wrong. Always.

Why is this relevant? SAP released a powerful in-memory database in 2012 that has become a game changer. It enables dramatically accelerated analytics, business processes, predictive analysis, and sentiment data processing – all on a single in-memory computing platform. This is exactly the platform businesses need today to stay competitive and leverage the latest and greatest technology available. SAP collaborated with CloudShare to deliver this ground-breaking new technology to developers, so you can explore SAP HANA immediately. You don’t need to install or configure anything to get started. It only takes 60 seconds to get your environment on this platform up and running, including SAP HANA Studio Developer Edition. You can use it all in the cloud, or use a local installation and connect to the cloud. You can collaborate with your colleagues, backup your work, and ultimately deploy to production when you are ready.

How does this magic happen? Using cloud-based technology SAP has enabled complete SAP HANA environments in the cloud. You can access your instance in less than a minute. It’s simple. Powerful. Efficient.

To see for yourself, we’ve prepared a short video to show you the process. The truth is that it will probably take you more time to watch the video than it will to spin up your SAP HANA environment! Check it out for yourself today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-zTU0DesKM

Microsoft recently released the SharePoint Color Palette Tool. This is great news for SharePoint designers!

Are you familiar with the situation where you want to customize your SharePoint site, but you’re not sure which colors are the right ones to pick?

Microsoft recently released the SharePoint Color Palette Tool to help with that. The color palette tool provides an option to pick the right colors for your SharePoint site and color palette functionality for use with SharePoint designs.

There are many online color palette services, but what’s different about the SharePoint Color Palette Tool is the ability to preview the result on a real SharePoint team site without modifying any CSS files.

The software prerequisites for using the SharePoint Color Palette Tool are:

• Internet Explorer 8 or higher
• .NET Framework 4.5

You can download the tool from the Microsoft Download Center.

This is where Sysprep comes into the picture. We have been using Sysprep to prepare images since Windows XP as it allows us to generalize the critical system GUIDs, and when the image is launched, post-Sysprepping it will create new GUIDs and allow you to re-register the system. While this has always been a recommended practice for deploying the same VM over and over, it has not been a required function until Windows Server 2012.

There are some drawbacks to generalizing a system that you are trying to deploy. For example, once a server has been registered in a SharePoint farm that server cannot be expected to interoperate properly once generalized. Translation: you can’t join a SharePoint server to a farm, then do a generalized Sysprep, and expect the new server to be a member of the farm. It is going to have an understandable identity crisis.

For this reason, you will want to do your generalized Sysprep after installing SharePoint and its patches, but BEFORE doing your PSCONFIG. This will allow you to redeploy the image, set the computer name, set a domain and then run PSCONFIG to join the server to the farm. On average this process will take about 15 minutes or so.

Here is how you actually perform a generalized Sysprep:

1. Get your image where you are happy with it

Patch your OS. Install the software that you want to be able to have ready to go.

2. Take a snapshot of your VM

This will allow you to return to the operational state you are currently in when you finish Sysprepping the image.

3. From command line run: “c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe”

4. Choose the option to “Generalize the system”

This is going to remove the GUIDs from the registry and allow you to create new ones upon boot. This will also remove the license key information and require that you re-register with Microsoft when you use the image. This will allow sharing of an image with others without the fear of the licensing police coming after you.

5. Choose the option to shut down the machine when complete

6. Click Ok

7. Once the VM is shutdown make a copy of the VM

It is a good idea to store this in a location so that you remember what the VM is. It is also a good idea to rename the VM folder and files so that you know that this is a generic image. You will want to give the files a new name each time you redeploy them.

8. Revert to your pre-Sysprepped snapshot

As previously stated, this will return you to where you were before you started this exercise with an image ready to deploy on.

I hope that this is as useful for you as it has been for me.

As I described in my last entry on the CloudShare Community blog, Microsoft has provided for SharePoint 2013 development the Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012. The tools are not only really great and powerful for developing SharePoint artifacts, but also to debug them. In this article I will show you how to debug an application deployed to a SharePoint Online site by using the Windows Azure Service Bus.

Configuring the Windows Azure Bus

In order to debug an autohosted application (Note: This is the name for applications deployed to SharePoint Online in Office 365), you need to create a Windows Azure Service Bus namespace in your Windows Azure subscription:

• Navigate to the Windows Azure portal available at: http://windows.azure.com.
• Once logged in to the Windows Azure portal, go to the Service Bus section.

• Create a new namespace by pressing the “CREATE” button at the bottom of the page. Provide a name for it and select a suitable region (West Europe in my case).

• Once the namespace is ready and active (the activation takes a few seconds), you need to edit it and copy the connection string to the service bus. Just press the “ACCESS KEY” button at the bottom of the page and select the connection string information.

• Just copy this connection string to the clipboard and you are ready to go to the next level: configure your SharePoint Application project to use the Windows Azure Service Bus when doing remote debugging.

Configuring the SharePoint Application Project

In Visual Studio 2012, create an Autohosted SharePoint Application and add some code to it. In order to be able to remotely debug the application:

• Through the solution explorer, go to project properties and click the SharePoint tab. Scroll down the SharePoint configuration options until you find the “Enable remote event debugging” option. Just check this option and the connection string to the Windows Azure Service Bus:

• Save all the changes, press F5 and wait some seconds until the application is deployed and installed in your SharePoint Online site. Once you access the application, you will see how the debugging is working and how your break points are reached.

• For more information about remote debugging using the Windows Azure Service Bus, please read this great post in the Office & SharePoint Apps blog.

And that’s all about how to enable remote debugging to a SharePoint Autohosted application with the Windows Azure Service Bus. Happy CloudSharing!

Each week I talk to a few different MVPs, partners, or others on the CloudShare team about blogging for us and I get asked the same questions -  How much should I write? Do I need to include pictures? How do I know people will want to read what I’m writing about?  Unanimously everyone says “I’d love to blog, I just don’t have the time to sit down and write”.  Isn’t that the truth!

Last week Lydia Bronze shared her technical blog writing tips.  This week I’m following that up with marketing best practices to go with that.  After all, who doesn’t have their own blog, or write for their company’s blog today?

Here’s my list of blogging best practices I’ve learned over the years:

• Know your audience – write about things they care about or will help them get their work done (don’t just blog about your latest press release or the product you sell).
• Keep it simple – 250 words or less is enough. You can write more if you have more to say, but less is enough too.  If people want to know more they’ll let you know and then you have an idea for starting your next blog post.
• Use social media – make it easy for readers to share your article on Twitter and Facebook. And use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to let people know you have a new blog post.
• Refer to other news articles, slideshares, blogs, videos – include hyperlinked text linking to 2-4 other pages on your website or third-party pages with info related to your post.
• Mention trends or interesting comments made by thought leaders in the space – industry analysts, journalists, etc.
• Include an image – but only if it pertains to what you wrote about. This keeps it interesting for readers.
• Ask a question at the end of your post to encourage comments and engagement.

That’s all you need to get started!  It doesn’t really take much to build a killer blog, and you’ll be surprised how a couple paragraphs where you write as if you’re having a conversation with your readers can have an impact.

If you blog, what have you found works best?

Would you like to blog for the CloudShare Community?  If so I’d love to hear from you.  Email me at sonya@cloudshare.com.

At the beginning of 2012, we started the CloudShare Community blog to help us tell the story of how people are using CloudShare, engage in conversations with you, and keep customers up-to-date on our new features, products and services. We’ve seen it as a golden opportunity to learn more from our readers and allow you to tell us exactly what you’re interested in. We enjoy sharing knowledge and experience with you and the community at large.

Through the blog we’ve been able to reach a diverse audience worldwide. We have grown the monthly number of visitors to our blog by 1266% (that’s not a typo)!

Posts on our blog have spread organically to Microsoft TechNet forums, MSDN forums, StackOverflow, Twitter, LinkedIn, Scoop.it!, Paper.li and in tens of thousands of private blogs, seen by hundreds of thousands of business professionals.

How Did We Do That?

We believe the more beneficial content available online, the merrier. Therefore, the key to a successful blog is content. Successful blog content should be well-written, relevant to the audience reading, easy to understand and contain useful information readers can benefit from.

Starting with this post, and another next week, we’ll share some useful tips for writing successful content on your blog. Today I’ll focus on best practices for successful technical blog posts. Let’s begin!

Always Search Online for Your Topics

Are you working on a new task you’ve never done before and can’t find any decent articles with detailed steps for getting started? This is a perfect opportunity for writing a successful blog post!

Last year, I had to install a demo server with SharePoint, PowerPivot and PowerView features. At the time, I hadn’t done that before. When I Googled those key words I couldn’t find any clear detailed documentation of the installation and configuration process. That made me work a little harder to learn what to do so I could write this blog post.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one longing to find an article about this topic. This post was read by hundreds of people each day, significantly increasing the amount of traffic to our blog.

Each time you have an idea for a blog post, Google the topic to get an overview of the quality and amount of articles that have been written about it. This will help you evaluate the post you’re about to write.

Document Everything You Do

This habit started years ago, when I started a new job. A former co-worker quit the company giving short notice, taking all of his knowledge with him. This is when I decided that anywhere I go, I’ll document everything I do.

I’m a huge fan on knowledge-sharing. If you document one task a week, you’ll gain plenty of ideas for new posts. I’ve learned that a highly detailed post, explaining even the most common tasks, can be extremely useful for mentoring younger colleagues, for instance.

Note that how-to’s and troubleshooting posts get the highest number of hits on most search engines.

Don’t Second-Guess Your Audience

Do you usually write about Linux? SharePoint? Business Intelligence? Try writing about new topics.

When you write about something you specialize in, you may be concerned you’re “stating the obvious” and skip some important steps for those who are not familiar with the topic.

You don’t always have to write about something you know well. By writing about something new to you, you may bring a new fresh point of view on the topic that your readers will appreciate.

Blog as You Learn Something New 

You have no idea what Dynamics CRM is? Good! Learn about it and document the whole process.

That gives you the benefit of expanding your knowledge and learning practical ideas, while giving your readers access to that useful information.

No Such Thing as a Post That’s Too Long

There are many complex and long processes when it comes to information technology. Don’t let the complexity discourage you. If you can’t simplify the process, it doesn’t mean you should give up on writing a post about it.

Don’t be concerned that your post is too long. If you have to document a long process, try to use more screenshots rather than words. Actually, the longest post I ever wrote is one of my most popular posts.

Follow Your Stats and Comments

I am a statistics addict. I follow search engine terms and referrals on a daily basis. This helps me learn more about my readers and gives me an opportunity to find other blog topics of interest I could write about.

If you want a better relationship with your readers, constantly ask yourself these questions:

• Who are my readers? What do they do? (Are they Solutions Architects? Developers? Business users?)
• How did my readers reach my blog? (Search engines? Forum threads? Other blogs referring to my posts?)
• What are my readers searching for? (What keywords are they searching on most often?)
• Did they find the information they were expecting to see? (If they didn’t – that’s an opportunity to write a new blog post.)

Comments are another wonderful way to get to know your readers. I’ve been asked lots of questions via blog comments, and it constantly gives me new ideas for future posts.

Get Inspired

Last but not least, read and get inspired!

Read the latest news, find relevant thought leaders, follow companies and other professionals. Read forum threads, read latest updates by your co-workers, discuss emerging technologies, cultivate a list of blogs you like to read and find inspiration in all of it.

Happy blogging! Coming up next week we’ll share useful tips for writing successful blog posts from a marketing point of view.

VMWare strongly recommends installing VMWare Tools on the guest operating system in order to prevent the loss of important functionality.

The VMware Tools package has various essential features such as synchronization of time in the guest operating system with time on the host, support for drag and drop functionality, copying and pasting between guest and host, and improved mouse performance in guest OS.

I decided to write this post for those who are not very familiar with Linux systems or prefer using Linux systems with GUI.

This is a short guide explaining how to upgrade (or install) VMWare Tools on the CentOS 6.3 operating system using GUI.

• In order to determine whether your VMWare Tools are up-to-date, navigate to the virtual machine in VMWare vSphere client -> Click on Summary tab -> General
• Right click on the Virtual Machine -> Guest -> Install/Upgrade VMWare Tools

• The Install/Upgrade VMWare Tools wizard will open. Click on the Interactive Tools Upgrade option. This will mount VMWare Tools installation files onto the server.

• Open your CentOS 6.3 virtual machine via console mode and log in. 

•  Right click on VMwareTools-8.6.10-913593.tar.gz -> Extract to…

• Wait a few moments until the Reading archive process is finished.

• Specify a folder to extract the installation files to.

• The extracting files from archive to the chosen folder process can take 2-3 minutes.

• Open the vmware-tools-distrib folder.

• Double click on vmware-install.pl 

• Click on Run in Terminal

• The Terminal will open up and run the script.
• Click on Enter after you receive the following message “Continuing this install will first uninstall the currently installed version. Do you wish to continue?”

• Specify a directory to install the binary files or click on Enter to use the default.

•  Specify a directory that contains the init directories or click on Enter to use the default.

• Specify a directory that contains the init scripts or click on Enter to use the default.

• Specify a directory that will contain the daemon files or click on Enter to use the default.

• Specify a directory that contains the library files or click on Enter to use the default.

• Specify a directory that contains the documentation files or click on Enter to use the default.

• Click on Enter to create the path /usr/share/doc/vmware-tools

• Click on Enter to invoke the following command.

• Choose whether you’d like to enable the VMWare FileSystem Sync Driver feature.

• Choose whether you’d like to enable VMWare Host-Guest Filesystem feature.

• Choose whether you’d like to enable vmblock feature.

• Wait until the the installation script finishes and closes up.
• Navigate back to VMWare vSphere client -> Click on Summary tab -> General

VMWare tools will now be Running and Up-to-date! 

Let’s start!

• First, you have to download the RTM version of the tools from this link which is a direct download of the Web Platform Installer 4.5.

• Since the Web Platform installer detects you want to install the Office Developer Tools, it first opens a window with information about the tools that you are going to install: version, download size, etc. Just click the “Install” button in this window.

• You will probably experience an installation error due to a missing prerequisite needed in order to install the tools: the Service Bus 1.0 Cumulative Update 1. Therefore, you have to close the installation process and download the prerequisite from here.

• Once you are done with the Service Bus 1.0 Cumulative Update 1, be sure to close any Visual Studio 2012 instances and restart the Office Developer tools installation process. In this case, the installation process will return an error message so the following components can be installed:
  • Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012
  • SharePoint Client Components
  • Workflow Manager Tools 1.0 for Visual Studio 2012 Core
  • Workflow Manager 1.0 Cumulative Update 1
  • Microsoft Exchange Web Services
  • Microsoft OpenXml SDK
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Tools for Office Runtime Language Pack
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Tools for Office Runtime

• The Web Platform Installer will download, configure and install all the components included in the RTM release of the Office Developer Tools.

• Once the tools are installed, a window will open showing all the components installed.

• Click “Finish” in the installation wizard, and you’ll need to restart your computer in order to be able to use the tools in Visual Studio. After this system restart, you can open Visual Studio 2012 and check out the RTM tools for creating SharePoint applications.

• And of course, you have all the templates related to SharePoint solutions ready to be used.

And that’s how to install the RTM version of the Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012.

Happy CloudSharing!