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As mentioned in my previous blog post about the Exchange 2010 RPC Client Access Service and the ClientAccessArray, Exchange’s dependence on the Client Access Server (CAS) role has increased dramatically in Exchange 2010.  This is because, in Exchange 2010, on-network Outlook MAPI connectivity now connects to a mailbox through the CAS role via the RPC Client Access Service.  As a result, high availability of the CAS role is crucial since any failure of CAS could affect Outlook client connectivity.  For smaller implementations or those where the limitations of native Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) are not a major problem (please see my previous blog post for more information), NLB can work well.  The process for configuring NLB is fairly straightforward and I’ve outlined the steps below.

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The SharePoint 2010 Beta has finally been released, and this article will just give a few tips to make the installation smoother if you decide to install.  The first step is to choose which version to install.  It’s being released as two versions–An Internet facing version, for organizations that will use it to create public web sites and extranet sites, and an Intranet version, for internal corporate intranets.  Both versions will support and incorporate all of the features available in SharePoint 2010.
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One of the most anticipated new features of Microsoft’s upcoming Office 2010 release is the ability to perform simultaneous editing on documents – in other words, allowing two authors to work on a document at the same time.   Those of you who have used Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 are already familiar with the concept.   A OneNote 2007 file can be placed onto a network share, and multiple people can access the live version.   I’ve personally found OneNote’s co-authoring functionality an extremely valuable tool for note-taking during a group meeting or brainstorming business ideas.

Office 2010 brings this concept to Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.  For a  preview of the look and feel, check out this Microsoft Office Word Team Blog post.

However, in the legal industry, the transition to allow simultaneous editing is not as simple as you may think.    Even after leading DMS products such as Open Text eDOCS DM, Autonomy iManage, or Worldox announce their compatibility with the Office 2010 platform, companies and firms won’t be able to just upgrade to 2010 and start editing documents simultaneously.   These systems are built on the idea of one person accessing a live document at a time — check it out of the system, work on it, check it back in.   So let’s assume developers did re-write their code.  Even that wouldn’t be enough for this functionality to work.  According to what we’ve heard from Microsoft, the simultaneous editing will likely require working in either a Microsoft-hosted cloud, or having SharePoint 2010 on the back-end.    This doesn’t mean that a migration from a DMS product to SharePoint is necessary, but it could mean that the DMS vendors would have to support a SharePoint document repository.  Open Text has already hinted that their releases in latter half of 2010 may support this.

As an aside, the whole idea of checking-out and checking-in documents has been ingrained into the minds of all attorneys, paralegals and administrative assistants for more than 20 years.   It won’t be easy to shake, and it might not even be accepted in the legal vertical.   Anyone know of any attorneys out there interested in this feature?

Autonomy iManage and OpenText eDocs both have protocol handlers for SharePoint, which enable the SharePoint Enterprise Search engine to index documents stored in the DMS, while keeping the documents in the DMS.  Many people haven’t been aware of this and thought you had to migrate all of the documents into SharePoint to search them, or to use an enterprise search engine provided by the DMS vendor.  However, these protocol handlers can provide the best of both worlds by allowing you to continue managing documents in the current DMS, while taking advantage of Microsoft’s FAST enterprise search indexer to index the DMS content, SharePoint content, file shares, web sites, Exchange public folders, and other enterprise systems.  Security trimming is preserved by the protocol handler, so users will never see documents in the DMS that they don’t have access to.  The protocol handlers both support Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

More information on the OpenText eDocs SharePoint integration and protocol handler can be found here:

http://www.opentext.com/download/livelinkdownload.html?path=product/microsoft/ot-clmsp-edocs-po.pdf

More information on the iManage SharePoint protocol handler can be found in their partner portal, by filtering the list of products to “SharePointProtocol Handler.”  Note that you need a partner login account to download the documentation and release notes.

http://worksitesupport.interwoven.com/WorkSite/scripts/portal.aspx

Both vendors also offer a comprehensive set of web parts to drop into a SharePoint environment to view and manage their documents from within a SharePoint site.

For those of you keeping up to date with your Open Text eDOCS DM environment, you may have experienced the following issue with version 5.2.1 CU3 (and possibly other versions).   When using DM Extensions, the new Save User Interface built into DM 5.2 may take up to 20 seconds or longer to render, causing annoying delays when saving documents.

Open Text recently posted a simple resolution for this issue.  From the Open Text Knowledge Base:

This issue can be resolved by moving two files on the client computer.

1. Navigate to the following folder:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\Framework\root\Hummingbird\Extensions

2. Move the following two files from the above folder to a safe storage location; do not delete the files as they may be needed for future logging or troubleshooting purposes:

Hummingbird.DM.Extensions.Logging.Logger_SN__Version_5.2.1.0.cs
Hummingbird.DM.Extensions.Logging.Logger_SN__Version_5.2.1.0.mof

3. Restart DM Extensions.

DM 5.2.1 CU4 was recently released, and this particular issue is not listed in the Fixed Issues documentation.  We’ll see if a future update resolves the issue entirely, but the steps above can be a simple way to immediatley improve performance if you are seeing this behavior. 

For customers and partners, the Open Text Knowledge Base and software downloads can be accessed here.

Microsoft has just announced that Exchange 2010 is now globally available!  Please read more information at the MS Exchange Team blog at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/11/09/453096.aspx. 

Exchange 2010 binaries are now available for download.