Did you know SharePoint Server 2013 supports new site collection provisioning modes. This means you can choose which version of SharePoint Server a site collection should be provisioned in when it is created. It is designed to minimize the impact on users of upgrading to a new version of software,

You can for example elect that any new site collections created in a SharePoint Server 2013 environment are provisioned only in backward-compatible SharePoint Server 2010 mode to cater for unsupported browsers for example or in SharePoint Server 2013 mode.

Optionally, you also can allow end users or site collection admins to choose which version is most appropriate for their individual and business needs.

In addition, page rendering coexistence helps ensure your customizations will continue to wo...

As a speaker at SharePoint Connections Amsterdam 2013 we get to give out a discount code, making the ticket price 10% cheaper. The event takes place at the 19th and 20th of November. You can find all the information about the event here:

http://www.nccomms.com/Sharepoint_Connections/Home.aspx

I can offer you a 10% discount on the super early bird price:

My speaker code is SP273.  By all means abuse it and pass it around!

Spencer Harber has a new article on Technet, and it’s a fantastic explanation of how (and more importantly when) to use host named site collections.  I won’t repeat any of what he has already said, as it’s very well described.

Go read it:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc424952.aspx

Office Web Apps Server is a new Office server product that delivers browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. It compliments SharePoint 2013 very well, but if your unfamilair with it, there is a fair bit of learning to go with it.  Office Web Apps can be used on devices such as Windows Phones, iPhones, iPads, Windows 8 tablets, and Android devices.

Ddeploying OWA takes some complex planning.  Microsoft has deployed Office Web Apps Server by using a topology that can support 200,000 users and based on our performance tests, an Office Web Apps Server, with two Intel Xeon processors (8 cores), 8 GB of RAM, and a 60 GB hard disk, should support up to 10,000 users where most of the usage is viewing...

If you are a Dev, IT Pro or a SOLA this is of interest.  If you happen to be an EA then acquire the knowledge to challenge the facts presented to you by your team by getting a head start on understanding the complexities of moving from solutions to the app model.

Join Senior Product Marketing Manager, Keenan Newton, and special guest Partner Director of Apps Program Management, Robert Lefferts on May 20, as Microsoft kicks off a new site centered around migrating SharePoint solutions to apps.

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032553224&Culture=en-US&community=0&n=3

Been having an issue with mysite themes in a demo rig I have configured.  Oddly the ribbon is showing no color, therefore the links to skydrive etc. are showing as white on white (took me a while to spot it was there at all).

Anyway – it is possible to re-theme the mysite by manually activating design gallery (I was logged in as administrator but you can change that to any mysite user name) via the following URL and pick a new theme

http://servername/mysitehost/personal/administrator/_layouts/15/designgallery.aspx

Got it I thought, silly me!

Whats odd is, that the newsfeed doesn’t adopt the changed theme, so I’m stuck with a partially working and mis-themed 2013 setup and I have no idea how it got broken to begin with.

One to file as a bug with Microsoft methinks!.

The new site policy options in SharePoint 2013 ar a vast step towards better and enforcable governance.by allowing retention policies to be applied, or even retrospectively applied to sites and site collections.  This means automatic site deletion or closure (technically read only mode) on a defined retention schedule similar to what you can usually do with a document or record.

This is going to become one of my favourite blog posting to refer to about this subject and I love the positive way it’s written:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/archive/2013/03/28/site-policy-in-sharepoint.aspx

Remember, it doesn’t excuse you from having to formalise this policy opportunity as part of a wider governance requirement with the business and ensure it is what you want to see happening autom...

A new set of conceptual videos that describe SharePoint 2013 authentication processes are now available:

• Windows claims authentication in SharePoint 2013
• Forms-based claims authentication in SharePoint 2013
• SAML-based claims authentication in SharePoint 2013

These videos step you through the details of claims-based authentication for user access to a secure SharePoint resource.

Got to be worth a watch given how darned confusing this space can be!

The entire blog post about them and a whole set of test guides is here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/archive/2013/04/16/new-sharepoint-2013-authentication-process-and-test-lab-guide-overview-videos.aspx

At the preview release of SharePoint, stretched farms were not supported.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(v=office.15).aspx#hwLocServers

This is set to change with recent announcements from MS at least allowing limited support for a stretched farm.  MS it would seem have been doing some testing on performance and capacity boundaries and will support a limited set of stretch farm topologies under the definition of distributed topologies. All of these topologies are based on a prerequisite of minimal (< 1ms) latency between components of the farm.

This is important, as it means:

• No support for geographical stetched farms, so you cannot span cities and geographies with single farm topology elements
• Recognition of Support if the logical data center is comprised of one or ...

If you do not  have access to an account manager at MS, then you have to best guess licensing for SharePoint 2013.  If you do that, then you need to base your guesstimates on the Microsoft Open License without software assurance.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/

It is usually more cost effective to have software assurance but only if you want to maximise all the benefits of the Assurance programme.

So, for on-premise SharePoint 2013 without assurance, you need to start by considering what your user base looks like and consider a few standard architecture questions?

• How many users will you have?
• What does their profile look like (heavy search, light collaboration for example)?
• How many are internal?
• How many are external?
• What features do I need to exploit?

This is...