A Matter Of Degree

Fun tool for Friday - Facial Recognition at MyHeritage.com

Facial Recognition at MyHeritage.com.  I will never look at Rupert Grint the same way again!

SharePoint presence icon / presence information does not appear

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007 (MOSS 2007) includes online presence information, so that if you are logged in to your IM account (via Windows Messenger) and your colleagues are also logged in (via Windows Messenger), you can see their status anywhere their name appears in your intranet or portal, and contact them in a variety of ways:

But what happens when you can't see the presence information for yourself or for a colleague whom you know has an IM account (via Windows Messenger) and is logged in?

Some say that you have to add the intranet site as a trusted site, and this may be a necessary step for success, but in my company's case it did not solve the problem.  It turns out that the IM address must match the employee's login address EXACTLY - i.e., if login is jdoe, IM address must be [email protected], not [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected] etc.  Microsoft spells this out here. 

In my company's case, only one of us has a login name that matches their IM address.  Most of the staff members have IM accounts that are tied to a personal e-mail account, so they can maintain their contact base if they change workplaces.  Some want to keep their IM accounts and their work accounts separate on purpose.  I would bet that this situation is the same in many organizations, in which case, how useful will this highly-touted presence feature really be?

Note:  you can, of course, create a second IM account that matches your current login, and switch to Windows Messenger if you weren't already using it, but unless you import all your contacts within the organization, you'll only see online presence information for yourself.

MOSS 2007 - Bug involving custom folder metadata when creating list or library from template

I discovered a bug in MOSS 2007 that occurs when you set custom metadata on folders in a document library, and then save the document library as a template.  When you create a new doc lib from the template, all your folder metadata settings are gone.

In my case, I created a custom folder content type, added it to a document library, then edited properties on the folders in the doc lib.  I chose my custom folder instead of the default folder, and then filled out the metadata fields I had included with the custom content type (which included a multiselect lookup type of field).  When I saved this document library as a template, and then created a new doc lib, the folders had reverted to the default Folder content type.  When I switched them back to the custom content type, the metadata fields were blank.

I tested to see whether this would happen with the default Folder content type as well, and it did.  I added a new metadata field to the default Folder content type (by adding a new field to the doc lib and keeping the "Add to all content types" field checked), edited properties on the folders, added data to the new field (which was a single-line-of-text type of field), then saved the doc lib as a template and created a new doc lib.  Again, the new metadata field was blank in all the folders of the new doc lib.

My developer colleague found that the settings are saved in the manifest.xml file; but due to the bug they are not getting passed to the new doc lib from the template.  Microsoft does not have an estimate on when this will be fixed.  If I get an update I will post it here.

Passing this along - Jott - Mobile note-taking and hands-free messaging

Jott is a free service that allows you to call a toll-free phone number, speak a message, and have that message transcribed & e-mailed to yourself and/or others.  You can set up keywords to identify the groups or individuals you want to contact, so that you can identify them with just one word when you make the call.  Jott's website describes the service and some use cases very cleanly and simply; click the "See how" links on their home page.

I learned about this from the Clutter Diet Blog and I'm planning to write the next Great American Novel this way.