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I was always amazed when attorneys first got Outlook 2007, they quickly uncovered that well known bug when trying to print search results from the Tools -> Instant Search -> Advanced Find feature in Table Style.   It’s almost as if they were trying their best to stump the product.

What they may not have realized is that even though the Advanced Find option is listed under the new Instant Search menu, it is really the old iteration of Outlook searching.    There are a couple of workarounds, including copying the Advanced Find search results into a new subfolder, and then printing that folder in Table Style.  However, the best thing they can do is use the Instant Search bar of their mailbox itself.  The syntax of this search can include metadata criteria in addition to keywords, and when using Cached Mode with Windows 7, the search truly is instant.

Outlook 2007 Instant Search

The other nice feature is the suggestion to search All Mail Items if you aren’t happy with the results.    And printing in Table Style from these results works like a charm.

So what about Outlook 2010?  Is this still a bug?  No!  So did Microsoft fix it?  No!  Looks like they simply removed the File menu options in the Advanced Search dialog, so you can’t print from here.   They are sneaky like that…..   See for yourself:

Outlook 2010 - Advanced Find

In summary, for your email searching needs, you should advise your users to begin using the Instant Search feature.  The Advanced Find is dying a slow death.

SharePoint 2010 can be easily deployed to a single box with local administrator accounts using the standalone, out-of-the-box install, but this forces you to use SQL Express 2008 (which comes with SharePoint).  What if you want to do a complete farm install on the box, but stick with local accounts?  Then this becomes a lot more tricky.

The complete install, using the configuration dialogs, will not let you enter local accounts, and will force you to use a domain account.  The best practice seems to be to promote the server to a domain controller, and use domain accounts, however this might not be possible or desired if you’re working in a DMZ, or on a development machine.  Also, you might want to do the complete install so that you can leverage the 10 GB data limit and remote BLOB storage in SQL 2008 Express R2, rather than being stuck to the earlier version of SQL Express which comes with SharePoint.   Luckily, there’s some ways to bypass the domain account requirement by using PowerShell scripting to set up the environment.  I found two helpful blog posts below which get you part of the way there, and I’ll help clarify some of the missing pieces.
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In an announcement today, World Software Corporation — makers of the Worldox document management system — shared the news that their latest release now supports Office 2010.   According to my notes here, this makes them the first DMS vendor in the legal space to officially support integration with Office 2010.

There are a few caveats.  At this point, only 32-bit Office 2010 is supported.  No word yet on 64-bit support, but they say it’s coming.   You also need to be running the latest version, Worldox GX2, and you should contact Worldox support to download the updated integration files.

After running into a couple issues with the iManage IDOL 8.5 SP1 release in our production environment, I was able to complete the index build using the 8.5 SP1 P1 release that was released last week.   Our initial errors were found in our Content Engine logs referring to a lack of free disk space, even though we had successfully had our IDOL 8.5 (pre-SP1) index on the same volume earlier.  In any case, I added some space and then recrawled using 8.5 SP1 P1.  I’ve read some similar reports on user forums, so if you have a smaller volume for your IDOL indexer, just keep this in mind.
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Clients complain about the multiplicity of law firm extranets, all different but not better, and the nuisance of maintaining passwords for each one. Can a group of firms collaborate to steer development of a tool useful to all, to build the “extranet as FedEx”— a common facility that many firms and their clients can use, in the interests of both economy and convenience? Is it true that firms compete on the quality of content, not the shape of envelopes?
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In SharePoint 2007, menus in some master pages opened behind page content and Flash animations.  However, there was an easy fix which was to just locate the css style for the dynamic menus, and change the “z-index” property to a high number.  This same fix does not work in 2010 however, and to make matters worse, the menus on the default master page in 2010 always open behind Flash videos.  (The built-in Silverlight web part in 2010 does not have this problem, but I suspect there are still many people who will have home pages with Flash content.)
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When upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, you’ll need to upgrade your master pages (if they’re customized) to take advantage of the new features in 2010, such as the ribbon.  The first question is to decide if you want to keep the current master page and add all the new controls in, or to start with a new 2010 master page and customize that.  We decided to start with a new master page based on the 2010 master page, v4.master, and customize that.  Here’s some resources I found useful when creating the new custom master page for our site.
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As many of you may have heard, Autonomy officially released iManage 8.5 SP1 on Monday.   This has been an eagerly awaited release for months now, and firms are looking to implement this pretty quickly.    Here are the modules that have 8.5 SP1 releases thus far:

• WorkSite Server (with and without Caching)
• WorkSite Clustering Service
• WorkSite IDOL Indexer
• WorkSite Communication Server for Exchange
• FileSite, OffSite, DeskSite, Email Management for Outlook clients

Our initial review is under the fold.

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With Office 2010 being unleashed on the world, many customers are asking when their DMS products will support it.   No need to ask around, because we’ve gathered the official stances for some of the major vendors.

• WorkSite iManage 8.5: “We will look to certify/support Office 2010 within 90 days with the current 8.5 Worksite clients and later”
• Open Text eDOCS DM 5.3:  “We will release v5.3 beta this summer and the final release is scheduled to be launched in late September”
• Worldox GX2:  “Office 2010 integration files should ship within 30 – 45 days of the official general release of Microsoft Office 2010″
• Microsoft SharePoint 2010:  “Come on, we’re Microsoft.  It’ll work day one!” (Disclaimer: NOT a real quote)

So as of right now, it looks like Worldox may win the horserace to support Office 2010.  As soon as official release announcements are made, we will be sure to test functionality in our research lab.  Of course, simply supporting integration with the application doesn’t mean that the DMS product will be able to leverage any of the extra features of Office 2010, such as the Backstage view or simultaneous editing (which requires the document live on SharePoint 2010).