Author: Peter Heydon

1% Solutions

As part of my professional development, I’ve recently been reading Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Consulting.  Weiss has a concept known as the “Tools for change, the one percent solution”, which is a premise that if you improve incrementally by 1% each day, in 70 days you will be twice as good as you previously work.  I see them as quick take-away messages that can be easily articulated, remembered, and practiced.

I decided that this would be a good line for some quick-fire blog posts, and build my own set of 1% solutions.  I also thought that I have the opportunity to focus on some technology sepecifc 1% solutions, as well as people and process based topics.

This is predominately a learning exercise for myself, so I look forward to any feedback or your own 1% solutions.

Diagnosing Problems with SharePoint Incoming Email

I was recently looking through some old notes about problems I had with incoming email with SharePoint. We had a process of scanning physical mail to departmental document libraries, and we had a success rate of just over 50%. Through a week of tweaking and testing, we sustained 100% successful delivery for several months.

I was using SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010, but I think the settings should apply for earlier versions. At the time of writing, I don’t have access to an Exchange installation to confirm settings. These are my rough notes, hopefully of some help.

  1. Check that the document library and contact is set to allow from all senders (network scanners were not regarded as authenticated users)
  2. Check the size limits on the SharePoint send connector (Exchange -> Hub Transport -> Send Connectors -> Properties -> Maximum message size (KB))
  3. Check the size limits on SMTP receiver on SharePoint (IIS 6 Mgr -> Properties on SMTP Virtual Server -> Messages tab -> Limit message size, Limit session size)
  4. Turn off SharePoint reading RTF documents from Exchange (Exchange -> Hub Transport -> Remote Domains -> Format of original message sent as attachment to journal report: -> Exchange rich-text format -> Never use)
  5. Check for potential mail routing problems (Exchange -> Hub Transport -> Accepted Domains -> Add domain for INTERNAL RELAY) – we noticed a couple of times the scanned mail tried to go external through our mail gateway – this was the last 1% of our problems.

Out of Hot Water (Part 2)

Last August, I blogged that our hot water system had died, and that I ended up having a Stiebel Eltron Heat Pump installed.  Six months on, time to take a look back and see how the system has been performing.

I listed a couple of requirements:

  • Larger than our existing system (140L), and from researching online, needed a minimum of 250L
  • Cost the same or less to operate (~$65 per quarter, tarriff 33)
  • Budget: $1500-2000 installed
  • Replaced as quick as possible

The Stiebel is a 300L unit, and is quite large.  Although we have not tested it through the winter months yet, we have not run out of hot water yet (this occurred frequently with the old, smaller unit).  The plumber also installed a thermal protection device, I had to max it out to 55º C for us to be happy with it.  A great idea with young children.

I was really looking forward to the next full bill cycle to see what kind of savings we would make.  Assuming that a standard electric unit of 300L capacity uses double the power of our old unit, I’m estimating hot water would cost us at least $120 per quarter.  I’m pleased to report that my electricity bill has dropped from $67 in August to $29 in January.  That’s about 32 cents per day for hot water!

The cost of the unit was more than what we wanted to pay.  Our rebates finally came back from the state and federal governments ($1200 total), and that helped soften the upfront cost.  If we save $90 per quarter compared to a similar electric unit, the additional cost of the Stiebel will be paid back within three years.

We also received excellent turnaround and service from The Solar Guys and installation was done within 48 hours.

There were also some reports online that this unit is noisy.  The hot water system is near our kid’s toy room, and I rarely hear it unless the windows are wide open.  The noise has never bothered us.

One other thing to note about the Stiebel is its performance during a recent loss of power.  With the recent flooding in Brisbane, out power was removed for about 24 hours.  During that time the hot water came out as per normal (about 18 hours after loss of power).  I was fairly surprised by how much heat was maintained.

Issues with SharePoint Content Deployment

SharePoint’s content deployment feature is a great way to manage content changes, and very appropriate for public facing websites.  However I do have three quick comments on the functionality:

  1. Binary changes – I’m aware these are not covered under the scope of content deployment, but I’ve had a lot of problems where people have deployed code to the authoring farm and not to production.  Very frustrating when you’re trying to publish a change at 5PM on a Friday afternoon.  I would like to see the practicality of having the ability to have these binary changes included with content deployment.  Better release management would also probably help.
  2. Needs a farm admin to publish – I’d like to be able to delegate this to a business representative to run the publishing job (ad-hoc).
  3. Random publish failures – Sometimes, the publishing job just doesn’t work.  Try again and all is well.  If it is a timeout, it’d be great to see this automatically reattempt.

SharePoint 2010 Exam 70-667 – Passed!

I completed today the Microsoft exam 70-667 – MCTS SharePoint 2010, Configuring.

For anyone who is interested, here is my study guide:

  • Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration by Todd Klindt, Shane Young & Steve Caravajal – an excellent resource and a must read.
  • SharePoint 2010 Technical diagrams – a very visual representation of many aspects of SharePoint, aids in understanding.
  • Downloadable content for SharePoint Server 2010 – these are downloadable guides, the Deployment and Operations ones offer fine level detail that you may need in the exam.
  • Install SharePoint Server 2010 in a lab environment, go through every possible option in Central Admin and understand what each component does.  This has a real help when I could visualise an admin screen while trying to answer a couple of questions.  Do the same thing for a site collection, ensure you enable every site and site collection feature too.
  • TechEd Videos – search for “SharePoint 2010” and watch as much as you can.  There is probably more that is not directly relevant to the exam than what is, so use your discretion to complement your study from the above sources.

Exam tips & other helpful information:

  • At the time of this blog post, the exam was 50 multiple choice questions, with 2 hours to complete.
  • Read the questions carefully.
  • Take your time – I completed in an hour, and used most of the second hour to review all the questions.
  • In some cases, you can use logical deduction to find the answer – knowing what isn’t right can lead you to the right answer.
  • I had ‘sourced’ online a couple of practice exams – I found some of the answers incorrect, and added confusion to the study I had already done.

Good luck!