Some links to keep:

• Team System Webcasts (great sessions on customising the work item types and process)
• Office Developer Webcasts
• Smart Client Software Factory
• Enterprise Content Management Starter Kit for Office 2007 (including sample workflows)
• Multi-Tenant Data Architecture

The last one should be of particular interest to anyone doing multi-tenanted systems (Doug?).

If you want to get up to speed with Analysis Services 2005 then the following resources may be of use:

Learning MDX Books

The first book, Fast Track to MDX, is an excellent starter and learning guide. The second, MDX Solutions, contains much more advanced topics.

Analysis Server 2005 Books

The first book is a beginner reference and guide to Analysis Services. The second, Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 provides a more BI focused approach that integrates reporting and analytics. The final book is probably the best as it is very detailed and provides guidance in relation to the Kimball method to creating data warehouses.

Project REAL

Project REAL is a best practices implementation for creating BI applications based on SQL Server 2005.

Webcasts and Online Learning

Kimball Webcasts on Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Course 2942: New Features of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Analysis Services
Course 2943: Updating Your Data ETL Skills to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services
Course 2944: Updating Your Reporting Skills to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services

Web Sites and Forums

Analysis Services Homepage
Microsoft Business Intelligence Homepage
Business Intelligence Developer Center at MSDN
Analysis Services MSDN Forum
Reporting Services MSDN Forum

It seems a number of people are having problems installing this service pack. There are a couple of solutions (here, here and here) that may work. There is also anecdotal evidence that exctacting the files from the SP executable using WinRAR andf running HotFix.exe manually may work.

Alternatively, I have found that the following works for me:

1. Download the service pack and start the installation by double-clicking the downloaded executable.
2. Once product enumeration is complete click Next at the Welcome page.
3. At the End User License Agreement page, check the box to accept the terms and conditions before clicking Next.
4. Select All Instances, Windows Authentication at the Authentication Mode page and click Next.
5. Click Install to begin the installation.
6. During the install you will be told about pending file operations. Click Yes.
   
7. A further message appears complaining about processes locking files. At this point, stop the SQL Server Full Text Search service and click Try Again. You may also need to click Try Again additional times depending on what SQL Server processes happen to be running.
   

We had a customer day this week where we get 50 to 60 customers along and tell them about all the cool stuff being released in the next year or so. Then we go and race around a kart track for a couple of hours. The picture is of me giving my presentation on Office 2007 System and SharePoint. I had a couple of demos on Windows Workflow and Excel Services to show plus some slides on the new XML file formats, Ribbon UI and other enhancements.

The results are in and we came 18th out of 60 in our class with a time of 13 hours, 48 minutes and 2 seconds. Not bad considering there was no wind, we missed the tides and 42 other boats retired. I took a few pictures which you can find in the gallery.

Quite a few hangovers too but not on our boat.

The wind has picked up and we are sailing again. A foul tide is against up though.

I see that Google Ads have picked up on the World Cup post below and started to show adverts to ticket sites. Please don't click the links. Because of the way ticketing is done this time it is very unlikey that a ticket bought from one of these sites will give you access to the match. The site that seems to come top at the moment was also on BBC news the other night for the same reason.

...or a frown. There is a little tool that you can use to send feedback directly to the Office team called "Send a Smile" which can be downloaded here. Basically a couple of task tray icons allows you to very quickly send good or bad feedback. More details on Joe's Blog.

Oh, and here is the Go-Live license...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/downloads/products/golive/default.aspx

Both Office 2007 and Windows Vista Beta 2 have been released. If you are an MSDN subscriber then you can pick up copies from subscriber downloads. If you are not then you can get Office from http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/preview and Vista from the Vista Customer Preview Program (coming soon but register here).

In addition, if you want to do development for Vista you will need the following (in order of install):

1. Install the BETA 2 WinFX Runtime Components from here.
2. [ONLY REQUIRED FOR VS2005] Install the Windows SDK BETA 2 from here.
3. [ONLY REQUIRED FOR VS2005] Install the VS2005 WinFX extensions (Visual Studio ‘Orcas’ May CTP) from here.
4. Install Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer May CTP (Sparkle) from here.
5. Install Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer May CTP (Acrylic) from here.
6. Install Microsoft Expression Web Designer (Quartz) CTP1 from here.
7. Install Erain’s ZAM3D from here.
8. Check out videos on the Expression Suite here.

For Office development you'll need:

1. Install the Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) June CTP from here.
2. Install the Windows SharePoint Services v3 SDK from here.
3. Install the SharePoint Server 2007 SDK from here.
4. Browse the SharePoint SDK documentation here.
5. Don't forget the new SharePoint Developer Center on MSDN.
6. Check out videos on SharePoint here (more to come later).

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1. The Groove SDK can be found here.

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