Chris Pratley (Microsoft's Group Program Manager for Office Authoring Services) mentions it's now possible to blog directly from OneNote via a connection with Word 2007, which has some late-addition features that let you use it to create blog posts directly. Gone is the messy Office markup/HTML gobbledy-gook, as the code if cleaned up and made quite basic. Finally! I've blogged from OneNote using the email integration capability in the (distant) past, but this makes it much more practical and "real."

• Chris Pratley mentions blogging from OneNote 2007
• Joe Friend's description of blogging from Word 2007
• Download and try Office 2007 beta version yourself

Bonus Track!
Also - Rob Bushway at GottaBeMobile.com has a quick audio interview with Chris Pratley - lots of great information there. Chris discusses small software teams and the many benefits of staying small and focused. While a small team means high demand, it also means agility and a powerful sense of ownership and intimate knowledge of the codebase. Chris also discusses the use of Ink in OneNote and why they didn't use the basic Ink control in the OneNote 2003 release, as well as what they're doing with ink in the new version.

I've been testing the Office 2007 beta releases for awhile now (without blogging about it really), ever since the Beta 1 version came out. Just the other day Microsoft released Beta 2 and it's significantly improved. Outlook is snappier and lots and lots of bugs are fixed across all the apps. Plus the new OneNote is just sweet and the integration between OneNote 2007 and the awesome new version of Outlook is greatly expanded and improved.

Chris Pratley, program manager for OneNote, tells all on his blog entry, "OneNote 2007 and Outlook: Best Buddies."

"When we did 2007 planning, it was clear from our user surveys that anything we could do to integrate better with Outlook would be most welcome. So here it is, my long-awaited post on all the great things OneNote can do with Outlook (and some additional goodies at the end)."

Read all the details here.

Overwhelmed my the sheer volume of email and the work assignments and stress that go along with it? Help is available. Microsoft's Leadership Forum event for June 8th will be "Getting to Zero in Your Inbox."

Link to register for the LiveMeeting event - http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4949828

Speakers:

• Sally McGhee, Founder / Managing Partner
• John Wittry, Executive Consultant, McGhee Productivity Solutions

• How to Get to zero e-mails in your inbox
• How to Use a clear focus on your objectives to manage your e-mail inbox
• New and effective ways to prioritize your day
• To Free up at least an hour a day

The Office 12 system release has been formally named "Office 2007" by Microsoft. I'm running Beta 1 software and it's quite interesting and looks like some great changes. The new Outlook is terrific in design. I can't say anything (per NDA) on the server side of things, but prepare to be wow'ed.

Anyhow, here is a list (from Microsoft) of the MS blogs that cover the Office 12 components. If you know of any others, please post them in the comments.

Microsoft® Office Access What's New in Access 2007 (Eric Rucker)   Microsoft® Office Excel® What's New in Excel 2007 (David Gainer)   Microsoft® Office FrontPage What's New in FrontPage 2007 (Rob Mauceri)   Microsoft® Office OneNote® A User-oriented View of OneNote 2007 (Chris Pratley) OneNote General (Owen Braun)   Microsoft® Office Outlook® Outlook General (Will Kennedy, GM) Outlook Tasks and Time Management (Melissa MacBeth) RSS/Search/Sharing (Michael Affronti) Outlook Programmability (Ryan Gregg)   Microsoft® Office Project What's New in Project 2007 (Dieter Zirkler)   Microsoft® Office Publisher Publisher 2007, XPS and more (Jeff Bell) What's New in Publisher 2007   Microsoft® Office Visio Visio 2007 (Eric Rockey)

Microsoft® Office Word What's New in Word 2007 (Joe Friend)   Microsoft® Windows SharePoint Services Windows SharePoint Services (PJ Hough) Document Management, Workflow, & Records Management (Rob Lefferts)   Office 2007 New User Interface Office 2007 New User Interface (Jensen Harris)   Office 2007 New XML File Format Office 2007 New XML File Format (Brian Jones)   Publishing XPS Documents Publishing XPS Documents (Andy Simonds) Publisher 2007, XPS and more (Jeff Bell)   PDF Support in Office 2007 PDF Support in Office 2007 (Cyndy Wessling)   TechTalk with Steven Sinofsky TechTalk with Steven Sinofsky

Microsoft has posted information regarding which apps will be included in each of the Office 2007 product suites, as well as pricing for the packages and individual apps/servers.

• 2007 Microsoft Office Suites
• 2007 Microsoft Office System Pricing Overview

In Word .doc format:

• 2007 Microsoft Office System Packaging (.doc file, 344 KB, February 2006)
• 2007 Microsoft Office System Pricing (.doc file, 300 KB, February 2006)

Want to create some of your own holiday cards and stationery? Hey, might as well get started now. Head over to Office Online and download templates for:

• Greeting cards
• Recipe cards
• Mailing labels
• Meal menus
• Gift labels
• Banners
• That dreaded Family Holiday Newsletter

There are content categories for holiday cards in general, Christmas, Hanukkah, and lots of others, too.

Lots of stuff there to use and customize. Enjoy.

Lots of service pack and patch announcements the past couple weeks, and here's another one of note. Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 was released the other day, and it contains a number of fixes and important enhancements.

Better support for Windows Mobile devices (push technology with Windows Mobile 5, for example - which stands a chance of giving RIM a run for it's money eventually if the devices keep getting better) and incorporation of the Sender ID protection from spam, enhanced security, better offline address book support and even enhanced mailbox store sizes (75GB per store).

Webcasts are available here, and a top-ten reasons to upgrade list can be found here. The latest information about Exchange Server can always be found on the Exchange web site.

SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003 Service Pack 2 is now available to be downloaded. It contains a significant number of important security fixes and enhancements as well as changes to improve performance and stability. Several previously released fixes and those from the previous service pack for SPS are included in this release.

• Download the SPS SP2 files
• Description of SPS Service Pack 2
• List of issues fixed in the service pack (note than some fixes must be enabled after applying the service pack by changing a registry key)

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) Service Pack 2 was also recently released. It is also a roll-up of the previous service pack and previously released (post-SP1) fixes, plus it includes some new fixes.

• Download the WSS SP2 files
• Description of WSS SP2
• List of issues fixed in WSS SP2

Finally, Version 1.7 of the WSS Administrator Guide has been updated to reflect changes in WSS SP2

Brian Jones posted an item about the announcement this weekend of the fact that Office 12 applications will all support PDF as an output format natively. This might not seem like much to some, but in reality it's a big deal:

"The PDF support will be built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio, and InfoPath! I love how well this new functionality will work in combination with the new Open XML formats in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. We've really heard the feedback that sharing documents across multiple platforms and long term archiving are really important. People now have a couple options here, with the existing support for HTML and RTF, and now the new support for Open XML formats and PDF!"

More here.

Microsoft today released SP2 for Office 2003, which can be downloaded via Office Update, or you can grab it here and you can read about it here.

In addition, OneNote 2003 SP2 was also released today - read about it here, and download it here.

One of the notable features in my book is the Phishing protection update for Outlook:

Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 Phishing Protection and Junk E-mail Filter

SP2 contains a new Phishing Protection feature to be used with the Outlook Junk Email Filter. Phishing is the luring of sensitive information through e-mail, such as passwords and other personal information, by an attacker masquerading as someone trustworthy. Phishing attacks can result in a user divulging sensitive information, including financial information, that can result in a loss of privacy or money. Phishing e-mail is hard to identify, because attackers make their e-mail appear genuine and often mimic recognizable e-mail sent out routinely by legitimate organizations such as banks and credit card companies.

To enable phishing protection, you need both Office 2003 SP2 and the latest Outlook 2003 Junk E-mail Filter Update. Once both are installed, Office 2003 SP2 has phishing protection turned on by default.

For best results, we recommend you regularly download the latest version of the Outlook 2003 Junk E-mail Filter Update. To determine whether you need this update, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (872976): How to obtain the latest Outlook 2003 Junk E-mail Filter.

Fact is, unless you're developing from scratch, there hasn't been a whole lot of help out there in terms of building apps on top of Windows SharePoint Services in order to enhance business.

Until now, that is.

Last week, Microsoft released 30 new application templates that enhance WSS and let you use the platform to solve more problems and meet more needs common to business. And these are out-of-the-box applications, not just starting points, although knowledgeable people could certainly use them as a beginning for something bigger if they like.

This is exactly what we need more of - help extending the platform without having to do it all ourselves. This is the kind of thing that makes SharePoint viable for smaller businesses that can't or don't want to take the time to customize from the ground up.

You can see them all in action, live and for real, at Bil Simser's public SharePoint site (found via Mark Harrison).

Also - for help installing them all, check out Raphael Londner's weblog post.

Here are the new apps, and they are no slouching solutions - these looks to be some solid business templates:

Scenarios Available for Download

Absence and Vacation Schedule Board of Directors Case Work Management Change Management Classroom Management Competitive Intelligence Employee Activities Site Employee Timesheet and Scheduling Employee Training Event Coordination

Expense Reimbursement Help Desk HR Programs and Services IT Developer Team Site Legal Document Review Workflow Loan Initiation Management Marketing Campaigns Meeting Management New Product Development Performance Review

Professional Svcs Contracts Professional Svcs Site Project Team Site Public Official Activity Public Relations Work Site Publication Editorial Review Recruiting Resource Center Request for Proposal Management Room and Equipment Reservation Travel Request

Over on the Microsoft Office Assistance web site, there's a great video of Chris Bertelson - an long-time Microsoft employee with lots of experience demonstrating software - navigating his way around the features available in Office OneNote 2003.

• If you've never seen or used OneNote, this video will show you all kinds of cool things, and gives a great idea of what OneNote is all about.
• If you're already a OneNote user, don't skip this one! Be prepared to see all sorts of great things that you can add to your personal toolkit to make you a OneNote power user.

This 45-or-so-minute video (see links below) should be mandatory training for OneNote users. It's that good.

I use OneNote every day on my Tablet PC as well as my desktop machine. One thing many people don't realize is that OneNote is not just a Tablet PC application - In fact OneNote was initialy conceived and designed before the Tablet PC was born, and it's a great program for desktops and laptops, too.

Chris covers some serious ground in the video:

• Watch Microsoft OneNote Tips and Tricks (256K) (optimized for broadband viewing.)
• Watch Microsoft OneNote Tips and Tricks Video (110K) (optimized for dial-up viewing.)
• Download the OneNote Tips and Tricks follow-along Word doc

And if you want even more detail, check out the webcasts:

The Webcasts of this demo are available on demand. These are generally more in-depth than the demos because they include audience interaction and questions and answers. You can watch them on your own schedule.

• Microsoft Office System Webcast: OneNote Tips and Tricks - Level 100
• Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks Part I - Outlook - Level 100
• Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks Part II - Word and Excel - Level 100
• Microsoft Office System Webcast: Tips and Tricks Part III - OneNote, Visio, InfoPath and PowerPoint - Level 100

Microsoft just announced that Office 12 files will all be XML-based.

XML: It's not just for InfoPath anymore... From Microsoft Watch:

The new Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats will be designated as .docx, .xlsx and .pptx , respectively. Microsoft is referring to the family of new formats as "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats."

Microsoft is committing to publish the forthcoming XML formats and make them available under the same royalty-free license under which the current Office 2003 file formats are. Licensees will be able to integrate these formats into their servers, applications and business processes "without financial consideration to Microsoft," according to the Redmond software vendor.

Awesome - this is big news, and while some will undoubtedly scoff, this is a great move in a good direction. Integration, integration, integration - EXCELLENT!

Shane has started a weblog covering how to customize a SharePoint web site to create a site that provides some form of content management, etc. The first few posts are up, and it looks like it will be a detailed, step-by-step tutorial for people who want to learn something about SharePoint customization.

From his weblog: 

"This entry will likely span into a 4-5 part tutorial on creating a SharePoint site that looks like a 'real' website.

"I'll try and take things step-by-step in creating a "real website" and then converting it into a SharePoint site. I will keep it as simple as possible so that it's relatively easy to follow.

"For anyone that just wants to follow along and get their feet wet I will include everything I've used for the site creation, HTML/Graphics/CSS etc.

"This will be a fairly long post(s) but hopefully if there are a few people out there experiencing the SharePoint (Learning Pains) this should help you.

"I'm going to be fairly in-depth about the entire process of the site creation, covering everything from; brainstorming, what make's sense/what doesn't, sketching, creating the graphics, creating the site, styling the site and finally converting everything to a fully content-managed and dynamically driven SharePoint Site."

Sounds great to me - I've implemented a large number of SharePoint sites, and have done some amount of customization, but I am interested in reading Shane's guide and learning some more. He's also posted a list of what to expect from the tutorial:

Overview:

Step-by-Step guide on creating a SharePoint website that looks like a "real website".

Things to Cover:

• Why SharePoint? - Benefits of creating a site based on SharePoint
• Brainstorming - What's the purpose of the site
• Planning - Creating a site that works for both the end-user, and the owner
• Sketches - Laying the groundwork
• Graphical UI - Bring your sketches to life
• Initial Site Creation - Setting the stage w/ SharePoint in mind
• Creating a WSS "SharePoint Site" - The "basic" SharePoint site
• Setting up the dynamic elements - Lists, Libraries and all that fun stuff!
• SharePoint Conversion - Turning your site into a SharePoint Site
• Programming (without a) a Programmer! - Let's bring in those dynamic elements and create some nifty data-views
• Styling the site (CSS) - Styling the data-views and other elements to be visually appealing
• Styling the admin pages using "themes" - Step-by-Step on theme setup and customization
• Backing up your work - Using FrontPage 2003 to backup your work
• The Final Result! - See, that wasn't so hard now was it!

Engadget has a great little article about an Indy 500 racing team's use of OneNote on Tablet PCs in the race pits and planning stages. It's pretty cool what they're doing with technology in auto racing these days. Go check it out.

"... Robertson said they are now recording a driver’s spoken comments about how the car is handling as a Windows Media Audio file and can do a voice overlay within a OneNote document along with a track diagram to show where the car went fast or slow. Such OneNote documents can be instant messaged to engineers back at the garages and stored for future use ...

... He said OneNote is useful in creating reports and presentations that combine computer-aided design (CAD) drawings, data from the on-board data logging systems, and engineering notes with information gathered from various sources, such as photos of necessary parts from catalogues, on the Internet."

[Read the story at Engadget]

Lots and lots of SharePoint Portal Server related live webcasts coming up - here's a list of all the sessions (many are repeated):

Fri, 06 May 2005	TechNet Webcast: Getting Back to Normal: SharePoint Backup and Disaster Recovery (Level 300)	Live Webcast
Thu, 12 May 2005	See how the Microsoft Office System can dramatically impact work productivity through collaboration	Live Webcast
Mon, 16 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : SharePoint Services and Sites Architecture	Live Webcast
Mon, 16 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Behind the Scenes – Site and List Definitions	Live Webcast
Tue, 17 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Working With Web Parts	Live Webcast
Tue, 17 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Programming with the SharePoint Object Model	Live Webcast
Tue, 17 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : SharePoint Services and Sites Architecture	Live Webcast
Wed, 18 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Behind the Scenes – Site and List Definitions	Live Webcast
Wed, 18 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Working With Web Parts	Live Webcast
Wed, 18 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Programming with the SharePoint Object Model	Live Webcast
Thu, 19 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : SharePoint Services and Sites Architecture	Live Webcast
Thu, 19 May 2005	SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Site Development and Customization Workshop : Behind the Scenes – Site and List Definitions	Live Webcast
Thu, 19 May 2005