Expanding Sharepoint on the Web

In a previous article I talked about how we, at CCM, have taken our Internal WSS 3.0 (Sharepoint - Free Version), and are now publishing the Church Calendar to the Internet in a live fashion using Web Services.  Yesterday was a great day for us when our programmer completed our second Sharepoint on the Web project.

One of my big pet peeves is that data should always be current and we shouldn't have to enter it more than once.  Our staff directory on the web always seemed to lag far behind all our other systems.

So enter Sharepoint.  We had already been keeping all our staff contact information in a WSS list, so to me it's only natural to connect that data to the web site as well.

After some frustration and little work we now have a fully functional staff contact list that is searchable, and always up to date on the website.  Thanks to Richie the programmer (who I am encouraging to start a blog and share more howto) for getting this all online.

Check out our new Staff Contact List on the CCM Website!

Cool Tool: Xobni

Xobni is totally changing the way I look at email.  This really cool tool that indexes and analyzes your email flow both in and out.

Check it out...  Find out who you email the most!  Find and track how many emails you send and receive from each contact.  This is a really cool analytics engine and indexer for Outlook...

www.xobni.com

VMWARE ESX Host Backups: Easy and Free

I don't if anybody remembers, but about a year ago, one of our really cool Dell servers decided to go belly up.  Now mind you it was our *most* redundant server.  The raid card blipped out and wrote bad data across 2 disks of our raid 5 array, thus destroying the array.  We were pretty good about backups, but the bad news was that this array contained all of our VM Hosts.  Now the data for each host was safe because we did per VM backups of exchange, databases, etc....but the fact remained that we just lost 8 VM's all of which would have to be rebuilt by hand, and then restore the data to each of them.

Not the end of the world, but the next 36 hours were full of caffeine and very painful.

Introducing ESXpress.  This software has revolutionized the way we backup our ESX server.  It automatically backs up each VM Full Host every night.  We do a full backup of the Host on Thursdays and it does block level Delta's the other nights of the week.  We have the system configured to compress and backup to our live backup server using FTP.  Basically it requires very little room on the ESX Server and it finishes our backups very quickly at night.

THE BEST part is, it can be installed and configured in about 10 minutes, and you don't need a VMWARE degree to get it done.  All you need to do is visit their site and download the package.  They have an 8 minute video that will walk you through the entire installation.  The only other thing needed is a place to dump the backups.  I tried some of the options, but we opted to install an FTP server on our Backup box and then it was easy as pie.  Configure EsXpress to dump to that FTP Server, and wait for results.

WARNING: Make sure you keep track of how much disk space this uses.  In the FREE mode the system doesn't automatically clean up old backups.  If you buy the basic LE license you get the added feature of it cleaning up the backup folder...Very nice, very worth the money.  They offer a 15% discount for Non-Profits.  This means the basic LE license is around $425.00.  I will tell you we have run the free version for about 6 months with no problems, but we are going to purchase the Pro Version next week to take advantage of faster backups, and also to gain the advantage automated cleanups.

National Day of Prayer

Today is the national day of prayer...  Keep our country in prayer today!  Churches and organization all over the country will be meeting at noon to pray for the nation!

Laminin

I was sent this email this morning about a Laminin.  Laminin is a cell adhesion protein in your body, but the really cool this is the shape of this cell.

This brings Colossians 1:17 to a whole new life. "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."  This protein holds cells together.

Almost like Jesus Christ stamped you and I with "Made by God."

 

Here is a video from GodTube where Louie Giglio talks about meeting a molecular biologist who introduced him to Laminin.  How Great is our God!

 

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=152b5103d741aca61093

 

 

Be Blessed Today!

Budget, Budget, Budget 2008

Well, it's that time of the year again.  Today wrapped up round 1 of the budget.  I am trying to get some fresh ideas and insights from God about what we need to do and what we can wait to do this year.

In that vein, what's the coolest idea everyone has for 2008-2009.  I realize some of you may have already done your budgets back in January, but we run from July-June, so we are heavy into the Budget right now!

2008 will be a year of simplifying for us.  We are looking at a lot of projects on how we can further use technology to simplify the many process around here.  Our Sharepoint Calendar Project, is one of these.  We are moving away from 12 calendars and moving (very quickly) towards 1 master calendar with lots of views.

This is just one of the projects.  If you want, share your coolest project...

The NEEKO Project

About a month and half ago my wife and I did what we said we would never do...Get a pet.

 

So everyone was totally surprised when I wanted to get this little guy.  This is Neeko - the name came because my darling wife thought he looked like a Nicholas, but the Greek (not geek) in me wanted something more fun...Thus NEEKO!

 

We have been busy the last 6 weeks with potty training and general training, but as of this moment he has learned the following:

• Sit
• Lay Down
• Paw (our version of shake hands)
• Rollover
• Come

Maybe not as exciting as a new server, but he has definitely changed our world. Neeko has been a huge hit at the office.  He loves to visit the server room and chew (DOH) on Cat 5 cables.  My staff loves him, so do I.

 

More to come this new endeavor in our lives.