Victus pro Scientia Opus -- Food for the Knowledge Worker

Lync Pro Tip: "An Error Occurred During the Lync Meeting" with External Users

If you have ever encountered this error, you may find this post helpful. It frequently occurs when one tries to join an external meeting, and one's Lync (server) does not permit access by the external party who sent you the meeting request, or vice-versa. 

By default, if you have Lync installed locally, clicking on the "Join Online Meeting" hyperlink will try to initiate the meeting using your Lync client.  If your Lync administrator has enabled external access via federation or other means, this error will occur.

Fortunately, a simple workaround exists:

1.  Right-click the link in the original invitation, and "Copy Hyperlink"

2.  Paste the URL into a new browser tab

3.  Append the suffix "?SL=1" to the URL

4.  Join your meeting via the Lync Web Client

The "?SL=1" switch in the URL forces the meeting/session to use the web client, rather than the local client.

There are, or course, some limitations to using the Web Client vs the local client, but if your local client cannot access the meeting, this is a simple, quick workaround you can try so that you can participate in Lync meetings with external parties.  You can also use this tip to help external parties to connect to Lync meetings that you set up, and it's remarkable how much more productive we can be when the first ten minutes of a meeting aren't occupied by "Can you see my screen? etc.)

MEC-ing Towards Ecstasy

This week, I had fun (don't tell my bosses, but I get paid for this) facilitating a series of hands-on workshops for clients and prospects.  They are jointly sponsored by Microsoft and partners like my firm, and are designed to give attendees a hands-on experience with the latest wave of Microsoft technologies. 

They were once called the Customer Immersion Experience (this Catholic-school boy can't help but to arch an eyebrow at THAT baptism metaphor), and are now called the MEC, or Microsoft Experience Center.  There are multiple editions and versions of the MEC, but this one features the newest version of Office, Office 365.

I have attended and delivered many of these sessions, and find them useful to our clients for a variety of reasons:

1.  They are business-oriented.  The content is directed toward business users,  not developers or IT professionals.  These are people who apply technology to solve business problems, not whose job it is to manage IT.  The content is more oriented toward business productivity than platform optimization.

2.  They are experiential.  Attendees get assigned a role in a "day in the life" script that shows how Microsoft technologies are used on a day-to-day basis by knowledge workers. There is also enough slack built into the sessions' schedule to allow attendees to play, experiment, and explore scenarios that are of particular relevance to them.  In so doing, attendees learn not only about how Microsoft technologies enable them to work differently, they can also learn about the limitations of these solutions as well.

3.  They are hands-on.  Microsoft ships ten laptops (pretty kickass Lenovo Yoga touch-enabled convertible tablets)  and ten headsets for integrated voice and video communications, and we build time into the day for experimentation, learning and play with new apps, capabilities, and devices.  This also includes showing how other devices like Surface tablets and other mobile devices like iPads use the  technologies we're using.

4.  They are turnkey.  The original edition of CIE/MEC required that customers come to a Microsoft Technology Center to attend a MEC session. In generation 2, the Mobile MEC, Microsoft had to ship computers and voice endpoints along with powerful servers capable of running virtual instances of all the required server technologies:  a domain controller, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, etc.  In the same way that computing pioneers look at ENIAC, then their smartphones, and shake their head, I do the same now that the server-side work can all be provisioned and run in Microsoft's cloud.  We can provision and manage full-featured environments (with data populated) in about 24 hours for the new Office 365 MEC, without shipping servers around.

All in all, if you're considering making an investment in Microsoft technologies or seeking better return on what you already own, the hands-on workshops and MEC scenarios are a great way to see how your knowledge workers can improve their productivity and save money via the latest Microsoft has to offer.

 

Five Stages of Microsoft Partnership

I spent some time with a colleague this week discussing how partners work with Microsoft, and it's a conversation I've had in many shapes and forms for almost 15 years with many Microsoft partners in partner briefings, conferences, advisory  boards, executive round tables, and other less formal venues (ie/eg, over beers).  Having built much of my career around partnering with Microsoft, I have strong opinions about this "dance" that we do, and if you know me at all, you know that I am generous about sharing such opinions. :-)

So, please find here a reasonably informed but informal, slightly tongue-in-cheek but generally based in reality, take on partnering with Microsoft:  an ersatz "maturity model," if you will.  In this case, I need to be crystal clear:  I speak for myself and myself
only on this one:  this by no means reflects the opinions (or even the experience) of any of my employers over the last 15 years.

With apologies to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, here are the Five Stages of Microsoft Partnership:

Stage One:  Denial 
Why on God's green earth would we want to partner with Microsoft?  They need to bring us some leads, then we can talk.  It just feels like a tax, with no immediate evident return.   We can't make any headway without being asked to fill out some form containing information about my company that Microsoft should already know.  What are they bringing to us, besides a long list of acronyms?  We don't know or care about the difference between an SSP and a TSP.

Stage Two:  Despair
Wow, this program is dauntingly comprehensive, and our organization really doesn’t have our act together.  If I were Microsoft, I wouldn't be bringing opportunities to us.  We have a long way to go to meet the requirements and guidelines, and to avail ourselves of all the benefits of the partner program.  We understand the segments of Microsoft, however, and know which one(s) our business should be aimed at, and we've identified some key people in those segments with whom we need to connect.  It just feels like a long way up from here.

Stage Three:  Hopeful Performance 
We have seen the value of the program, are executing against it, if unevenly, and we have a plan to monitor and improve our execution,  The Microsoft team has started to take notice, and our organization is either managed or on a path to becoming a managed partner.  We're using software entitlements to get/stay current on our own productivity
technologies.  We have started to speak in sentences with two or three Microsoft acronyms in them without batting an eye, and understand the different licensing mechanisms (e.g., OEM vs Open vs Select vs Enterprise Agreement) that Microsoft uses in my segment, and why that matters.

Stage Four:  Soaring Execution
We and our Microsoft partner team have executed against our plan, we are considered a "go-to" partner in at least one Microsoft competency or segment.  One or more people on our team has a "purple badge" as  a Virtual Microsoft employee, and we're jointly crafting sales and marketing programs with Microsoft team members.  We're making sure we bring a nice outfit to WPC, because we expect to be on stage receiving a Partner of the Year Award, and/or sitting for a photo shoot so that Microsoft can use our image in their
stock photography.  We also know enough to prioritize our Microsoft investment in the most "partner-friendly" individuals/teams, (ATUs/STUs, individual sellers, and segments) and avoid wasting time with the others.*  We know very precisely, by late summer, when annual plans are finalized, what the incentive structures and goals are for our key points of contact at Microsoft. 

We have, un-ironically, used sentences like "Is the new TSP for SMS&P aligned with APIO and goaled on SQL Azure POCs?"

*Like everywhere else, there is a bell-curve of partner-friendliness among Microsoft team members, and we're attuned to it.  A Partner Account Manager who can help you focus on where to invest, and perhaps as importantly, where not to waste your time, is an incredibly valuable resource, all along this lifecycle, and at this stage in particular.

Stage Five:  Devolution/Plateau
We have been a Microsoft partner long enough to train new Microsoft team members in Microsoft's own structure, organizational dynamics, and programs. We continue to perform at a high level, but have rested on our laurels a bit.  We lack the vision to ascertain which changes are critical, or the agility to embrace seismic changes in
Microsoft's partner model, margin model, deployment models, etc.  We fail to adapt to where Microsoft is headed next, so we double down on what got us to Stage Four.  We get the sense that Microsoft has begun to favor more "up and comer" partners, and too many of the "best practices" we espoused with Microsoft have been adopted broadly, killing
any competitive advantage we had against other partners.

Note:  The best partners, of course, maximize their time in Stage Four, and/or create what some investment banker-types call "a liquidity event" prior to ever reaching Stage Five.

I've learned two key lessons in my time as a Microsoft partner:

1. There's money to be made as a Microsoft partner.  It's not always easy -- Microsoft is a large, complex organization even in the midst of its own reorganization, and even the friendly dragon can obliterate a whole village with one swipe of its tail.  As with most partnerships, there are two key types of assets that make it work:

a. Programmatic/systematic:  forecasts, Partner Sales Exchange, events in a box, training opportunities, conferences and other events,etc.

b. Personal:  the people who interact with Redmond, developing product and go-to-market strategy, and the people who interact with Microsoft's customers in the field, at the regional sales organization level.

The programmatic things often need to happen (check that box!), but it's the personal relationships with the right people in the organization, as with most partnerships of value, that will make or break you as a Microsoft partner.  Don't ever miss an opportunity to wisely invest in these relationships. 

2. You've got to stay attuned to, not just how Microsoft makes money now, but also what their sellers are "goaled" on each fiscal year.   In so doing, you'll learn a lot about their priorities.  While it can be costly to be too early in the market with Microsoft's products and services (see:  PerformancePoint v1, Windows Mobile until about 2009 or so, Dynamics AX in about 2005-2006, etc.), it can put you out of business to be too late.

Overall, the magnitude of the Microsoft opportunity for partners, even in challenging times, has been enormous for a long time, and Microsoft is distinguished in its attention to a robust partner "ecosystem."  I have many times likened Microsoft to a battleship:  it takes a long time to turn the ship, but once it trains its guns on a target, it tends to obliterate that target. 

If you know where you are on this continuum, and what opportunities and threats to look out for, you can create a lot of value to your clients, your community, and your investors. 

Happy Partnering!

Microsoft WPC 2013 -- Big Data Themes

The second of the four official themes around which Microsoft organized content at this year's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) was Big Data.  In a world containing "an internet of things" where 90% of all of the world's on-line data has been created in the last two years (per Ballmer's keynote, evoking Al Gore-ish hockey stick graphs), Microsoft seeks to stake out high ground in the world of big data.

Microsoft's strategy for Big Data is oriented around two key themes, as related in the keynotes:

1. "Unite the world's data" via Bing, Azure Data Marketplace, and Hadoop, which Microsoft has embraced with surprising alacrity.

2. Provide the best, most familiar tools for business insight (Excel and SQL Server).

The best Big Data content of WPC 2013 was not typical keynote bloviation, however:  Amir Netz's breathless demo of PowerBI, a new suite of BI tools for Office 365, was perhaps the highlight of the entire conference.  He showed, in about 12 frenetic minutes:

• natural-language search for data sources inside (private) and outside (public/commercial data sources such as the Azure data marketplace) the firewall for queries
• use of PowerView to visualize and animate BI reports
• using mobile devices to consume BI
• visualization of data sets, using popular music, a topic a global audience can relate to, using animation of a time series of data ("king of the hill" view to explain changes over time)

Unfortunately, the data supported Jason Mraz (>?!) and Mariah Carey in best song/artist queries, so it's hard for me to get behind the empirical results, but the demo was exciting and exhausting due to Amir's relentless and infectious energy.  I have to admit that at first I was put off by his somewhat "out of breath" delivery, but he grew on me, and the combination of his enthusiasm and humor with the visually beautiful data visualization of PowerBI ultimately won me over.  This is "must see TV," WPC-style:

Microsoft WPC 2013 -- Cloud Themes

[Note:  This is the second in a series of articles about Microsoft's recent Worldwide Partner Conference, written from the point of view of a long-time partner.]

The first major theme of WPC 2013 was the cloud, and how Microsoft has adapted the company to compete in the cloud. 

In Steve Ballmer's keynote, he discussed data points such as Microsoft's deployment of ONE MILLION servers in support of cloud applications. Per Ballmer, only Google and Amazon have deployed more, and Facebook and Yahoo are close, but no one else has deployed more than 100,000.  But it's not only about scale.  Microsoft also competes on the following themes:

• Microsoft acknowledges that not every enterprise application is well-suited to a multi-tenant public-cloud architecture, and continues to offer best-in-class hybrid options using tools like Windows Azure, Windows Server, System Center and StorSimple for deploying and managing systems across both internal and external data centers.  Microsoft has uniquely invested in public, private, and hybrid cloud computing, and remains differentiated from its competitors. It's hard to debate their contention that no other company can currently execute on this, but it's perhaps a more interesting question how long that point of differentiation will matter.
• Microsoft continues to provide a combination of public/private cloud infrastructure and tools with the world's leading business productivity applications (Office 365, the fastest-growing application at Microsoft and the fastest application to $1 Billion in Microsoft history*, and Microsoft Dynamics).

A great demo followed during Satya Nadella's keynote, showing off Microsoft's cloud story:  Information Rights Management using Exchange (on Office 365), using PII (Personally Identifiable Information) protection, Bing maps, and social connectors, providing secure access to business content across devices using cloud services like the above and SkyDrive Pro.

An interesting theme that was touched on in a few keynotes and demo scenarios was the toggling between personal and work content and devices with just-in-time provisioning and de-provisioning of applications and infrastructure.  Expect to see more about this, as it's a great challenge to serve up content, not only to the right person on the right device, but also to the right persona -- how will one's "work" self and "off-work" personae be maintained separately, or are they destined to bleed into one in a future where the lines between work and play are slowly erased?

* I think that Microsoft's claims about Office 365 being the fastest Microsoft product to exceed $1 Billion in revenues should be taken in context, given that Office 365 represents the combination of multiple server products in a hosted package:  Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint.  This feels more like a reallocation of revenue from one set of Microsoft products to another.  I would be more interested to see the NET growth in Microsoft server products (combined on-premises, private cloud, third-party hosted and Office 365) so that, not only as a partner but as an investor, I can see whether Office 365 is simply cannibalizing Microsoft's traditional business or is actually accretive (yes, I work at an accounting firm, and need to start using words like this again) to Microsoft's overall product revenue.

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 – A Partner’s Reflections

Last week Microsoft convened its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), educating, listening to, and entertaining about 16,000 of its top partners in Houston, Texas.  This was my sixth WPC, and my 14^th year as part of the Microsoft partner community, and I processed the week’s events and write this  series of blog posts from this point of view.

I waited a week to write these blogs because it gave me time to not only make up some of the work that I fell behind on by attending WPC, but also because it gave me time to process, consider, and connect what I learned at WPC (especially in light of the major Microsoft re-organization that occurred the day after the end of WPC).  Many short-form, real-time observations were available via the tweetstreams that I and many others kept up the whole time, but this is designed to be long(-er) form prose.

A few themes emerged at this year’s event.  First and foremost was Microsoft’s reinforcement of its reinvention as a “device and services” company.  As necessary as this appears to be in light of new business models, it’s a tumultuous transition, as evidenced by Microsoft’s recent stock performance.

The other themes were orchestrated by Microsoft, via their organization of conference content into the following tracks:

• Cloud
• Big Data
• Enterprise Social
• Mobility

The Vision Keynotes were grouped with device keynotes this year, making for a marathon 3.5-hour Monday morning Vision Keynote-a-palooza.  I’ll cover some high-level highlights here, then post individually on the themes above in the coming days.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer opened WPC with some highlights of the fiscal 2013 year just ended and some data points about how Microsoft is providing “High Value Experiences” for customers and partners, including:

• 90% of Microsoft’s revenue was represented by the assembled partners at WPC, and they collectively are projected to have grown 6% year-over-year on a $650 BILLION Microsoft business
• The release of Windows 8, the biggest single overhaul of Microsoft’s core desktop operating system since Windows 95, and the “Hey, we listened!” upcoming release of Windows 8.1
• Success of Windows Server 2012 for private cloud and virtualization (winning market share vs VMWare, a point underscored by COO Kevin Turner in his Wednesday morning competitive brief during the “Value Keynotes” section of WPC)
• Dynamics CRM in the Cloud – winning share from Salesforce (although I am looking for some statistics to support this – Ballmer underscored a recent defection of a key SFDC employee to Microsoft's CRM team, and Turner’s data points on this seemed to be more centered on growth than on share, with some jabs at SFDC’s lack of profitability)
• Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – providing growth and progress in public and private cloud (cross-referenced to Amazon Web Services competitive story in Turner’s keynote)

I will drill a bit into each of the four conference themes above, and provide a summary of other miscellaneous impressions of WPC.  Watch this space for more updates in coming days and weeks.

Tip of the Week: Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax

I have espoused David Weinberger's views and approach to storing information for quite some time ("Everything is Miscellaneous"), and as I get more used to Windows 7 and Office 2010, I'm finding that I'm using metadata and searching more than ever to quickly find content stored on the web, my organization's network, and my own computer.

I recently came across an excellent article from Microsoft about Advanced Query Syntax.  It captured my interest, and I expect to use it frequently to make my search queries more precise in the future.

The article contains query syntax to limit results by:

• common file properties (e.g., author)
• date ranges
• file size
• data store
• assorted file types (contacts, e-mails, calendar entries, documents, media)

So if I want to find, for example:

• PowerPoint presentations
• longer than 20 slides
• stored as attachments to my last week's e-mail messages,

I could use Windows Search, right from the "Start" button, to enter:

"store:mapi isattachment:true modified:lastweek slides:>20"

and get those precise results (see below). 

This precision will save me so much time that this article, for me, achieves "print-worthy" status, and will be tacked to my office wall for frequent reference.  I hope you find it similarly useful.

 

How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

I am working on a separate post about attrition and knowledge management, and was reminded of a favorite story from CompuWorks, a partner of KMA’s who specializes in training.  They were discussing with a client the value of having employees well-trained in the latest version of Microsoft Office, and the attendant increase in productivity it would bring.

The client asked, “What if we invest in training these people, and they leave?”

My quick-witted colleague from CompuWorks countered, “What if you don’t invest in training them, and they stay?”

Office 2010 Web Applications Preview

In this window between Microsoft's July Worldwide Partner Conference (with many Office 2010 previews) and Microsoft's October SharePoint Conference, I'm working to learn about Microsoft's Office 2010 applications.

A recently posted video shows an interesting aspect of Office 2010:  Office Web Applications that are positioned as an on-line companion to the richer Office client experience, for users with only a browser and needs for high-fidelity collaboration around Office documents.

Office Web Apps Video

Office 2010 Preview Site

Late addition:  ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley wrote a great article recently summarizing Ten Things To Know as Microsoft Office Web Apps go to testers. 

Office 2010 -- First Impressions

At last week's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, I learned a bunch of things, to wit:

• Microsoft has a HUGE wave of technologies poised to hit the market over the next 12 months (Windows 7, Office 2010, and many others)

• Microsoft LOVES to compete with the likes of Google, VMWare, Cisco, Apple, etc.

Notwithstanding these big, obvious themes, I was pleased to get my first look at Microsoft Office 2010.  Here are a couple of first impressions, formed via Chris Caposella's value keynote, some executive roundtable meetings, and a hands-on lab session with Office 2010 at WPC:

Outlook:

  The ribbon finally shows up in Outlook 2010, eating up some valuable screen real estate but also providing access to some interesting new features.  One is a "conversation view" that allows the user to group messages by conversation, and expand or compress conversations, very easily. 

My favorite new Outlook feature is a "Clean Up/Ignore" function that allows the user to quickly and systematically re-direct or delete messages in a thread -- it's also known as the message "mute button."  For example, once a thread gets unwieldy (5 reply-all's, 5 "please remove me from this thread" messages, 3 "me too" messages, etc.), a user can systematically trim out the chaff, keeping only the messages where a decision was made or action required. I remain curious, however, how this feature will handle branching of messages outward from a thread, and look forward to testing this feature in more depth.  

Another useful feature is the addition of a small, relevant snippet of a calendar view added to meeting requests so that the user can see his/her calendar from within the meeting request.

Excel: 

I'll likely write more about this in the future, but the addition of sparklines and a feature called "slicers" add more BI and data visualization capability to Excel, and the keynote demonstrations included a user easily working with a data set containing 1.5 million rows of data in a workbook via the SQL Server 2010/Excel 2010 integration previously code-named "Project Gemini."  

Word: 

One exceptional thing I saw demonstrated in Word actually applies to several of the Office products:  the ability for multiple authors to concurrently author the same document.  This is a frequently requested capability, and I look forward to demonstrating this when the SharePoint beta is set up in our lab environment.  For now, you can see this process via the demo in this video (note: fast-forward to the 54-minute mark).

 
[BP0VK] The Business Productivity Opportunity: The Next Wave, Your Customers, and You

PowerPoint:  

Other than the co-editing capabilities which I saw only in the context of Word but which I expect to be most valuable in PowerPoint, the most interesting new features I saw related to new tools for editing of pictures and videos from within PowerPoint.

In all of the Office products, the "Backstage" view replaces the combination of the Office button and the Document Information Panel as the place to see and manage metadata and other document properties.

There were several new features in Office applications like Access, One Note, etc., that I saw in demos but have yet to take for a test-drive.  KMA has the bits installed in our lab, so watch this space for more updates as we continue our testing and learning.  Meanwhile, check out this excellent image gallery that shows off the new user interface and other key features in Office 2010, and this overview [Download OfficeOverviewFS].