Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 4 and last)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi

Enterprise Architecture, IHS

9.    Selection of Technology

The technology aspect of a social-computing implementation compliments the social/cultural aspect and is also critical for a successful adoption.

There are three principles that define a good implementation:

1. Beneficial actions
2. Responsiveness
3. Simplicity

Tagging is a great example to explain these three principles. Using AJAX, the process of content tagging becomes extremely simple and light-weight. A sound user experience design complemented by the responsiveness and the ease of interaction encourage further engagement from end-users. As more content is tagged, all users benefit from this action as it makes content discoverable, organized, and helps identifying interests, credibility, and expertise. [4]

10.    Available Solutions

10.1    External

The following solutions are the most common platforms of external social networks:

1. Jive Software
2. Blogtronix
3. KickApps
4. SocialText
5. Telligent

10.2    Internal: NewsGator

Newsgator is at the forefront of social computing and the most elaborate solution with respect to integration with MOSS.

 The proposition of Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.5 is to introduce a Facebook-like social community for the enterprise to allow bottom-up innovation and increased productivity by driving “knowledge-sharing”, an evolution from collaboration and organization by “project-teams” or geography to communities based on areas of interest or focus. [7]

One of high-profile adopters is McCann, a global media company that helps companies like J&J, Coca Cola, and MasterCard in their digital strategy, consumer insight, and media planning (about $13 billion in annual billings with 90 offices in 66 countries, all using MOSS and Newsgator). [6]

It’s important to mention that McCann has taken this solution to the next level by allowing customers to access to these communities and contribute, hence providing a different perceptive. [9]

10.2.1 Summary of Features

 1) Colleague activity feeds, network building, social network graphs (recommendation, introductions, associations).

2) Content discovery by surfacing relevant information, tagging, and tag clouds for emphasis of “frequent” tags or topics of interest.

3)      Allow creation of ad-hoc communities with support for social bookmarking (shared bookmarks), rich discussion and collaboration capabilities, all based on an interest or a focus.

4)      Enhanced profiles (that extend My Sites).

5)       

10.    Samples Online Communities

10.1    By Topic - Thomson-Reuters

The Thomson-Reuters online communities are one of the most successful implementations of “business-oriented” social networks the author has come across. These communities offer the following features: [11]

1)      A Community is centered on one topic of interest, such as Carbon Market.

2)      It highlights announcements, events, sponsorship advertisements, jobs postings, top stories. It also promotes editors picks and most discussed postings or news.

3)      E-mail newsletters include snippets of content to drive traffic to the community. It’s apparent that navigation paths and click streams are recorded (how links with e-mail messages are crafted).

4)      The top section is reserved for promotion of premium content (shop). It also allows users to navigate to other communities.

5)      A survey section to elicit feedback and ideas.

6)      A user profile displays connections, education, and work history. It shows other members or colleagues with similar profiles and interests and offers the ability to send and receive messages.

7)      A user can invite others, create posts, subscribe to alerts, participate in surveys, ask questions, vote on or rate content.

8)      Each member can have a blog. Thomson-Reuters postings are promoted and can be easily identified. Any content can be voted and commented on and members can contact the author of a post.

9)      Cross-promotion is prevalent: “content you might like”.

10)   Featured contributors.

11)   Mash-up of related news from the Web or Reuters.

Note: built on Blogtronix.

10.2    By Product - ATG

The ATG community is a good example of a community that’s centered on a product. Some of the features it offers are: [12]

1)      Discussion forums around technology, business, or for feedback

2)      Ability to share documents, create a post, create or join a group

3)      Highlight of top participants, popular discussions, popular tags

4)      Track of things users read for easier access later on

Note: built on Jive Software

11.    Future Trends

11.1    Fremium: The New Business Model

Despite the fact that most of the social computing offerings are available free of charge, businesses have managed to create tremendous business value and generated new and sustainable revenue streams. Welcome to “Fremium.” [1]

Fremium is a business model that consists of “free” and “premium” offering. Another name that has been used to signify the importance of Web 2.0 and how business models are adapting to it is “Business 2.0” (there is a magazine with this name now). [1]

The way these models work is by providing a free service for the community at large while generating revenue from “value-add” services from a number of streams. These streams cover the costs of the free service offering.

11.2    Semantics Web: Web 3.0

The following excerpt is taking from: Social Semantic Web: Where Web 2.0 Meets Web 3.0 [14]

Emerging Web 3.0 applications, driven by semantic web technologies such as RDF, OWL and SPARQL, offer powerful data organization, combination, and query capabilities.

The social web and the semantic web complement each other in the way they approach content generation and organization. Social web applications are fairly unsophisticated at preserving the semantics in user-submitted content, typically limiting themselves user tagging and basic metadata. Because of this, they have only limited ways for consumers to find, customize, filter and reuse data. Semantic web applications, on the other hand, feature sophisticated logic-backed data handling technologies, but lack the kind of scalable authoring and incentive systems found in successful social web applications. As a result, semantic web applications are typically of limited scope and impact. We envision a new generation of applications that combine the strengths of these two approaches: the data flexibility and portability of that is characteristic of the semantic web, and the scalability and authorship advantages of the social web.

The following excerpt is taken from: Wikipedia 3.0, the end of Google [15]

The Semantic Web requires the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords. However, the Semantic Web, which is still in a development phase where researchers are trying to define the best and most usable design models, would require the participation of thousands of knowledgeable people over time to produce those domain-specific ontologies necessary for its functioning.

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 3)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi
Enterprise Architecture, IHS

6. Potential Obstacles

According to the Burton Group, one of the major obstacles for implementing social networks is the uncertainty with regards to the business case and ROI.

From the research they have done, most of the discussions were mainly around the business case, metrics, policies, roles, participation, and cultural dynamics.

Perception of the intended solution is very important to the success of the initiative. Some companies have shied away from the term “social” altogether or used terms such as “online communities” or “corporate social network”. [2]

Another obstacle is the change in the mindset. In order for such initiatives to be successful, individuals need to be actively participating to keep the content fresh. This may seem as “yet another system to access to do my job.” [2]

The Burton Group report stressed the importance of making these initiatives relevant to the business and presenting them in a way that garners people’s support. This requires a careful management of perception and the engagement of other groups earlier in the project. “Governance should be outlined from the beginning. Policies need to be established or updated. Usage procedures need to be agreed upon. Groups such as HR, Legal, Compliance, and Security are vital in ensuring the success and the sustainability of such projects.” [2] Having them engaged early would create a sense of ownership. It may even be wise to underscore the value such solution may bring to these groups and have them become one of the earliest adopters.

In any case, such an undertaking requires multiple sponsors across the organization. As the benefit of social networks or online communities can be hard to ascertain, a proof of concept may be critical in providing tangible results for SMART goals; specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

7. Ensuring a Successful Adoption

7.1 Before Implementation

As people are the consumers and will guide the requirements process, the technological solution is more about providing the right tools for the desired context. [3]

The following is a list of best practices for successful social-network implementations (internal and external):

1. The need to engage legal, HR, security, and compliance teams earlier in the process to address any “loss of control” concerns but without stringent policies and guidelines that will discourage participation. [2]

2. Garner acceptance from management by providing a business case and articulating scope, goals, and purpose.

Note: it’s often hard to quantify the return of investment (ROI) in internal social network implementations. Metrics, such as adoption rate, number of active (and also passive) users, or reduction in e-mails (numbers and size) is often used to gauge the success of such an implementation.

EMC, for example, is using an internal implementation on Jive software to gain the expertise for launching an external-facing community. [17]

Another metric for measuring value is how much such an application would help process improvement.

3. Finding the first champion.

As a white paper by NewsGator puts it, the champion provides “the needed push at the beginning of the project to keep usage up and discover more advocates among users. The champion needs to keep helping and encouraging users until this initial base of power users is created.” [3]

A champion can also be very influential in putting together the business case. As possibilities for process improvements are identified, a business case will be much easier to put together.

4. Identifying the initial group of adopters, such as a research group or customers of a product.

Amy Shuen, the author of Web 2.0 Business Strategies, describes the initial adopters as those who “provide the critical momentum that powers the whole system.“ [1]

5. Setting modest expectations. [17]

6. Providing tools that are easy to use to contribute content and establish channels for providing feedback.

7. Encouraging openness of communities and knowledge sharing between employees and avoiding “gated communities.” [17]

Internal implementations have some unique criteria for success: [2][3]

1. Tackle the business and cultural issues that may be raised and create a positive perception based on analyzing inhibitors, advantages and the perceived-value of such an implementation.

2. Encourage “self-monitoring” and develop a policy for inappropriate content without impeding adoption. This would likely be different for customer-facing implementations.

3. Understand the need for an “element of enjoyment” to encourage adoption within the enterprise.

4. Looking at existing business processes used by internal adopters and how the social-network implementation aligns with it.

5. Integrate with existing systems so it doesn’t appear as yet another system or task than employee has to access.

6. Considering new incentive systems to encourage and recognize participation.

7.2 After Implementation

One interesting observation about social networks is that they are self-evolving and provide persona-driven content. The more content there is (and participation), the more relevant content is surfaced, and the more meaningful relationships and associations are deduced and introduced, which further drives adoption and more knowledge-sharing over the life span of the community.

The Sustaining Communities of Practice white paper succinctly puts the characteristics of a community in the sustained performance phase as:

1. “Measurable progress against community objectives or creation of new objectives when launch objectives are met;
2. Changes in measures such as member numbers, content numbers and other quantifiable issues;
3. Activity that demonstrates learning;
4. Work processes being modified to take advantage of knowledge sharing and collaboration capabilities;
5. Taking action on lessons learned, forum topics and comments to knowledge objects to keep community content fresh;
6. Communications to community membership;
7. Shifting focus to knowledge innovation—better answers to new and tougher problems;
8. Articulating community value through success stories;
9. Knowledge sharing behaviors recognized in people development; and
10. Active and involved leadership.” [4]

In addition to the above, in order for the community to remain effective, it requires a dedication of resources (people, time) and support (management, adoption).

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 2)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi
Enterprise Architecture, IHS

4. Significance of Social Computing
4.1 Why Social Computing?

The true value of communities stems from the collective intelligence of participants and the on-going interaction and collaboration. “People are no longer just consumers of content and applications; they are participants, creating content and interacting with different services and people,” said Betsy Palkowsky, a senior strategic marketing manager at IHS.

4.2 Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence is “the knowledge found in employees’ heads and in the databases and unstructured documents found across the organization.” [1] This is absolutely critical for an organizations with a large number of employees, partners, and customers.

As more people contribute their knowledge, be it by tagging, providing feedback, or adding content, more people will embrace these solutions. Participants become the owners of key knowledge even as “individual experts and content providers come and go, reducing the potential danger of demographic shifts or business cycle changes.” By having that information available, productivity can sharply increase as “people can quickly find critical information and subject-matter experts.” [1]

4.2.1 Examples of Collective Intelligence

4.2.1.1 Stumpmedia
Stumpmedia: http://www.stumpedia.com/

Stumpedia.com, as indicated on the website, “is a social search engine that relies on human participation to index, organize, and review the world wide web.” [19]

4.2.1.2 Twine

Twine: http://www.twine.com/

“Twine is a new way for you to collect online content – videos, photos, articles, Web pages, products - and bring it all together by topic, so you can have it in one place and share it with anyone you want…it helps you collect information in a new, highly personalized, convenient way. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.” [20]

Amongst the features of Twine are: [20]

Uses semantic understanding to “get to know you.” It automatically learns about your interests and makes connections and recommendations tailored to you.

It organizes your content by topic for easy tracking and sharing.

Find other people with similar interests.

Personalized recommendations.

5. How can Social Computing Help?

5.1 Internally
5.1.1 Capture Knowledge

The knowledge that employees, past and current, have about business processes, projects, or practices is very valuable. Documentation in its traditional sense has always been lacking and it’s always difficult and frustrating for new employees to get up to speed.

Surveys in the industry have shown that “70% to 80% of executives at large companies are worried about the coming brain drain from retiring workers.” According to the same surveys, “fewer than 20% [of these executives] have done anything about it.” [Fortune, July 19, 2006]

It’s therefore, important to encourage adoption of social computing tools and integrate them as part of a daily process for the benefit of current and future employees.

5.1.2 Expertise Location

The Burton Group summarizes that as “who knows what and who knows whom.” [2]

Employees tend to look for external resources for assistance (search engines, blogs, discussion forums, or network of professionals). This often involves a substantial amount of time and cost in searching for a solution or implementing a solution without the knowledge of an expert (who may already exist within the same company). [3]

Having a knowledge pool to draw from and the ability to easily identify experts becomes critical. Social computing tools, by virtue of captured metadata or deduced patterns from users’ actions, can easily help in identifying these experts.

Navigation paths, click-streams, and feedback provided by users (comments, tags, forwarded links etc.) can also provide an indirect and accurate way to locate expertise.

5.1.3 Innovation

As more users are contributing and collaborating on content, whether actively by adding content or passively through click-stream feedback, content can be indexed and quantified for other purposes such as marketing, complementary service, and products. As more people share their insight and add new knowledge to the pool of existing knowledge, geographical and organizational boundaries will become less visible, which further drives innovative solutions.

5.1.4 Collaboration and Community Building

Social networks provide an excellent means for interaction and fostering relationships.

There is empirical evidence that social networks can increase productivity and efficiency. A Baseline article (Social Software’s Culture Clash – February 21, 2008) lists a 25% reduction in email attachments at one company and a 10% increase in productivity at another company based on implementing wikis. [3]

These networks take collaboration to the next-level where users can start sharing their insight, best practices, and past experiences. The knowledge captured will not only help in building relationships that transcend geographical or organizational boundaries, but also help new colleagues adapt to their new roles.

5.1.5 Recognition

One of the reasons employees would contribute is the desire to be discovered and recognized. It helps project managers and executives to discover new ideas and identify people with passion about certain subjects. [1]

5.2 Externally

There are numerous benefits for offering online communities for our partners and customers:

1. Directly elicit feedback from our customers.
2. Serve as a promotion vehicle for existing or new products and services.
3. Analysis of passive contribution (click-streams and navigation paths) can provide insight into our customers’ interests.
4. Create new sources of revenue by providing premium services.
5. Once a model is built and tuned, it can be easily replicated and adapted for all products and services.
6. Help reduce product support costs by having customers help other customers and providing a knowledge-base.
7. Allowing users to add meta-data around our offerings can greatly enrich the value of our content.
8. These communities can serve as a testing ground for new releases.
9. Customers can share stories about our products and services that may drive purchases from other customers
10. Customer voting on content can give us direct access to our customers’ pulse and may give us insight into usage patterns and valuable information on what products should be further enhanced.
11. Communities may become a great source of attracting talents.
12. And finally it’s another way to gauge customer delight.

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 1)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi
Enterprise Architecture, IHS

1. Executive Summary

From the research the author has done in this discipline, few companies have fully embraced social networking. Companies, however, have a vested interest in becoming a leader in providing other venues for collaboration and interaction with colleagues and customers.

Social computing allows organizations to capture the collective intelligence of internal and external customers and augment the value of their offerings in a way that will lead to innovative solutions, increased productivity, and will enhance their ability to empower customers and provide them with insight that impacts world markets and shapes companies’ future.

The challenges that lay ahead of such initiatives would likely not be IT-related, but rather ensuring that the right processes are put in place, the right teams are engaged, and that constituents have a common understanding of objectives and expectations, with articulate scope and achievable goals. It’s likely that the strategy for internal versus external communities will be different, although the underpinning principles are the same.

The concept of social networks is straight-forward and the potentials are, indeed, endless. And so, as we move from Web 2.0 to the Web 3.0 technologies in the next 5-10 years, it will be imperative that organizations put forth a vision and a strategy that will realize their potential. Social networks are indeed a “growing necessity”, said John Oechsle, CIO at IHS.

2. Introduction


With the advent of the Web 1.0, if such versioning is appropriate, where establishing internet presence (profitable and non-profitable) and making information discoverable, be it by SEO, marketing, or other means, research has continued to explore new ventures and create exciting opportunities that change the way we live, work, and interact.

The new Web, Web 2.0, is about users and what they have to offer. It’s their collective input and the spirit of sharing that’s the trademark of the new Web. It has opened the doors wide-open for businesses to adapt to and adopt these technological and social changes.

While collaboration tools were an evolution to e-mails and hallway conversations, they often suffered from a short-life span where collaboration sites become stale content repositories and fade away as soon as projects conclude.

Some of the popular Web 2.0 tools are blogs and wikis. Blogs have transformed to become a source of documentation, support, or a means to establish authority and credibility. They have remained more of a one-way information-delivery vehicle with minimal interactions. Blogs are here to stay and can certainly continue to serve as a means of communication and information dissemination.

Wikis are an informal community-owned documentation where a number of users can co-author or co-review text. Wikis have served as knowledgebases with collective ownership.

Despite the great advantages these tools offer, they are lacking the networking element. Social networks transcend geographical and organizational limitations and connect individuals, groups, and content in communities where knowledge is reserved and new ideas are born and shared.

3. Web 2.0 and Social Computing


3.1 What is Web 2.0?


According to Tim O’Reilly (who is credited with coining the term), Web 2.0 is “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.”

Web 2.0, as was pointed out in the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in 2004, is about building contexts for interactions rather than applications. [1]

3.2 Social Computing

Social computing and social networks are one of the manifestations of Web 2.0. These concepts are seen as an evolution to collaboration tools. According to Wikipedia, it’s defined as “an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems.”

Networking sites, content tagging and filtering, picture-sharing, online auctions, and prediction markets are all examples of social computing. [18

Given the plethora of solutions available, management teams have realized the benefit of such tools within the confines of the enterprise, or as an offering to customers. “I want Facebook for the Enterprise” or “Can we use Facebook?” is a common starting point and it signifies the awareness and the need for a context for interaction for colleagues and customers alike.

All enterprise social network solutions comprise individuals, groups, content, and the relationships among those three. Individuals, the adopters, are central to social computing. Their active participation is a cornerstone for the success of any social-based implementation. [3]

Individuals organize in groups with common interests, goals, or expertise. Existing groups invite individuals to partake in the conversation and the level of activity expands virally.

Content is represented by the contribution of individuals and groups, such as documents, shared bookmarks, or discussions. This content is where the business value lies.

3.3 Tagging as an Example of Social Computing


Tags are, in a way, a form of metadata; descriptors and pointers by which people can find content easier. In some cases, tags are as important as the content itself and tend to augment the quality as it helps to drive search.

Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr, emphasized the importance of tags as: “The job of tags isn’t to organize information into tidy categories. It’s to add value.” [1]

Tags, whether done visually through a set of existing tags (aka guided tagging), or by allowing users to add their own, significantly improve the quality of service provided to end users. It improves the quality of search and allows for better categorization of data, a process that continues to improve as the acceptance and participation levels increase. As an example, 85% of the photos on Flickr have user-added metadata. [1]

References

1. Shuen, Amy (2008). A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and Strategies Behind Successful Web 2.0 Implementations. O’Reilly Media, Inc.

2. Gotta, Mike (2009). The Burton Group. Field Research Study: Social Networking Within the Enterprise.

3. NewsGator (2008). Social Computing in the Enterprise.

4. Vestal, Wesley (2006). Sustaining Communities of Practice.

5. Engmann , Brad (2008). Blogtronix. Communities & Education: Connecting People, Sharing Knowledge & Driving Interest.

6. SharePoint Magazine. NewsGator Social Sites. Retrieved 12/21/2008:
   
   http://sharepointmagazine.net/products/newsgator-social-sites

7. NewsGator. Webminar. Delivering ‘Facebook for the Enterprise’ with SharePoint. Webminar. Viewed 12/21/2008:
   
   https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/playback/Playback.do;jsessionid=5ED52AD41DCF13B50D485F6EF4F7B57E.lax11
   

8. Network World. Firm builds a social network woth SharePoint, NewsGator RSS. Retrieved 12/21/2008:
   
   http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/080108-firm-builds-a-social-network.html
   

9. Conversation with Christy Schoon, NewsGator Marketing, on 12/22/2008.

10. ZDNet. Atlassian, NewsGator hook into SharePoint. Retrieved 12/21/2008:
    
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6627

11. ATG Community. Retrieved 03/18/2009:
    https://community.atg.com/index.jspa

12. Carbon Market Community. Retrieved 03/20/2009:
    
    http://communities.thomsonreuters.com/Carbon/

13. Gavin , Scott: Meet Charlie: What’s Enterprise 2.0. Retrieved 02/28/2009:
    http://http://www.scottgavin.info/
    

14. Social Semantic Web: Where Web 2.0 Meets Web 3.0. Retrieved 03/27/2009:
    
    http://tw.rpi.edu/portal/AAAI-SSS-09:_Social_Semantic_Web:_Where_Web_2.0_Meets_Web_3.0
    

15. Wikipedia 3.0, the end of Google. Retrieved 03/27/2009:
    
    http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/wikipedia-30-the-end-of-google/
    

16. Facebook Announces Facebook Connect for iPhone. Retrieved 03/26/2009:
    
    http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Facebook-Announces-Facebook-Connect-for-iPhone-215329/
    

17. Conry-Murray, Andrew (2009). Can Enterprise Social Networking Pay Off?

18. Social Computing. Wikipedia. Retrieved 03/28/3009:
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_computing

19. Stumpmedia. Retrieved 03/13/2009: http://www. Stumpmedia.com

20. Twine. Retrieved 03/13/2009: http://www.twine.com/

Upgrading to iPhone 3GS: What you need to know

OK. I just upgraded to the new OS (3.0) after a number of failed tries.

First, the fact that I needed to back-up my iPhone first ticked me off. It took iTunes more than 12 hours and by the morning it was just half-way done. Since I can't live without my iPhone, I was looking for a way to skip this step.

So how do we by-pass backup? Apparently, I just needed an insider tip :)

Before we start, please make sure you have iPhone fully synched up with iTunes (you'll see why at the end)

1) Close iTunes.
2) If you have windows Vista, navigate to C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes.
3) Make a copy of iTunesPrefs.xml.
4) Open the original fle in a text (or XML) editor (no WORD or wordpad!).
5) Search for "user pref".
6) Under the first DICT for the User Preferences section, enter the following:

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>
<data>
dHJ1ZQ==
</data>

7) Save the file.
8) Open iTunes and connect your iPhone if you haven't already.
9) Assuming you have already downloaded the latest OS file (about 230 MB), install the software.

It took me about 15 minutes to finish the upgrade.

Here are the gotchas (so you don't get scared):

1) When you start your iPhone, you'll notice that all your applications are GONE! Fear not, as all your apps are still available on subsequent pages (note the white dots that indicate the number of dashboard "pages" you have). If they are still not there, you just need to synch your iPhone with iTunes.

2) If you look under Messages (used to be SMS), you'll notice that you just see phone numbers, no names. If you go to Contacts, you'll see that probably most of your contacts are gone! Just be patient and let iPhone finish synchronization :)

Good luck!

MOSS: Render Failed Error for Custom View

I recently created a custom view in MOSS with a column using the Checkbox (Yes/No) data type. The view was filtering on that column (is equal to Yes).

I later changed the data type to Choice and provided Yes and No values. The view failed to render and displayed the error:



I modified the view (the filter was changed to "is equal to 1") to change the filter to Yes again and that fixed the issue.

I've never seen the render error before, so here you have it.

Building My MOSS Farm: Part 1

Few months ago, I bought a serious Intel Core 2 Quad (4 cores, that is) with 2.83Ghz and 8GB of ram. It's a 64 bit machine with 120GB of 10,000 rpm for the C drive (makes all the difference, believe me) and additional 500GB drive. The plan? Not a nuclear bomb, but to build out a 4-server MOSS farm.

In these series, I'll chronicle the build and configuration process.

1) I will be using my MSDN subscription for the software.
2) I decided on installing Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 (64 bit, of course).
3) I am going with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition.
4) MOSS 2007 SP1 + February update.
5) I will be using VMWare to host my farm. So why not Virtual PC 2007?

Reason 1: Although it's free, I was so disappointed that 64-bit guest machines are not supported. Are you kidding me?!
Reason 2: VMWare just rocks. You'll see why soon.

Approach

1) Build a base machine with all updates and patches + .NET framework 3.5 SP1.
2) Clone this machine for the 4 servers in the farm.

MOSS Farm

Server 1: App server, i.e central administration + indexing role
Server 2: Database server
Server 3: Web server 1 + query role
Server 4: Web server 2 + query role

To be continued...

MOSS: Deleting Web Application in Central Administration Fails

If you have a Web application in MOSS (or WSS) and you try to delete it from Application Management --> Delete Web Application, you get the following error:

This operation uses the SharePoint Administration service (spadmin), which could not be contacted. If the service is stopped or disabled, start it and try the operation again. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication.UnprovisionIisWebSitesThroughAdministrationService(Boolean deleteWebSites, String[] serverComments, String applicationPoolId) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication.UnprovisionIisWebSites(Boolean deleteWebSites, String[] serverComments, String applicationPoolId) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.DeleteWebApplicationPage.BtnSubmit_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

Reason? The user logged in is not an administrator on the Web server. Check out this KB article.