A noise word, or stop word, is a term the search engine ignores in end-user search queries.
Why would you want to remove a user's search term? Here are several usage cases.
Each language has its own list of noise words. The English SharePoint® Server 2010 noise words are: a, and, is, in, it, of, the, to. When a search contains only noise words no search results are returned and an error is displayed.
"Your query included only common words and/or characters which were removed. No results are available. Try to add query terms."
A couple of other questions come to mind:
What if you want to include noise words in your search? Disable the “Ignore Noise Words” option in the Search Core Results web part.
Can you change the default noise words file? Yes, and configuring the noise words file can greatly improve the effectiveness of your user searches. You can find out more by reading Manage stop word files (SharePoint Server 2010).
Lastly, remember some words can have a secondary meaning. Which may explain why you can’t find the Information Technology department when you search for it.
To learn more about this and other topics for SharePoint developers, navigate to the Microsoft Learning | FAST University Learning Portal at www.fastuniversity.com and register for the Enterprise Search for Application Developers course or contact an Education Consultant for more information at [email protected].
By Cindy Staley
Hi all,
Microsoft Learning is pleased to announce the release of the English ILT course: 10554A: Developing Rich Internet Applications Using Microsoft® Silverlight® 4.
This course covers intermediate and advanced topics required to develop professional Silverlight 4 applications that can be deployed to the Web, Windows desktops, and Windows Phone 7 devices. The course will include hands-on labs that comprise approximately 50% of the classroom time and enable the student to learn Silverlight 4 programming within a variety of real-world scenarios.
Course Description
This 5-day ILT course will teach professional developers the advanced programming skills that are required to create real-world Web, Windows, and Windows Phone 7 solutions using Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010 in either Visual Basic or C#.
Audience
The target audience for this training course is professional developers who have experience with XAML (either through WPF or Silverlight), a limited amount of Silverlight development experience, and experience working in Visual Studio 2010. This audience is interested in learning to develop advanced Silverlight 4 applications using Visual Studio 2010.This course is intended for developers who have programming experience using either Visual Basic .NET or Visual C# and who understand the concepts of object-oriented programming. This course is designed for developers who are comfortable using Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2010.
Course Syllabus:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=10554A&Locale=en-us#tab1
Note: This course is available for download on the MCT Courseware Download Center and will be available for order by Learning Partners on Sep 7th, 2011.
Thanks and hope you enjoy the course.
Regards
Amith
Are you one of the almost 3,000 MCPs who have recently created a profile at Elance.com? If so, don't forget to associate yourself with the MCP group via your Virtual Business Card. You can follow the below steps to make the connection:
1) Login to Elance and access your Profile. On the right side of the page, click on ‘Join Groups’
2) Find the Microsoft Certified Professional Group and click ‘Join This Group’
3) Insert a link to your MCP Virtual Business Card in the comments box and click ‘Join Group’
Elance will verify that you are a MCP and, once verified, you will be added to the MCP group on Elance.
If you do not already have your MCP Virtual Business Card, please go here.
If you have any questions, please email Elance at: [email protected]
Some MCTs have experienced issues with not being able to see/access the MCT Forum tab on the blog. We believe that the issues have been fixed; however, I need your help in confirming this. For those of you who have experienced problems with seeing and accessing the Forum, would you mind dumping your cache and logging in again. If you're unable to see the tab, respond with as much detail as you can. And, if you can now see the tab, let me know that too, eh? Thanks for your help and patience as we try to figure this out.
Don't miss the opportunity to learn more about how to join the MCP group on Elance! There are thousands of posted projects that need your Microsoft Certification skills. Learn how to create your profile, respond to proposals, and get paid! There are several onboarding sessions to help you get started:
Sign-up for an Onboarding Session
Go here to sign-up for your free contractor account.
Remaining onboard sessions:
· Elance MCP Training – 7th session
08/25/2011 09:00 AM (Pacific)
08/25/2011 06:00 PM (Pacific)
· Elance MCP Training – 8th session
08/26/2011 11:00 AM (Pacific)
· Elance MCP Training – 9th session
08/29/2011 08:00 AM (Pacific)
There are over 2k MCPs who have already created a profile and hundreds who have already submitted proposals for projects - get started now!
Do you use OneNote 2010? We need your help! The OneNote 2010 MOS beta is about to open and we need participants. We are excited to bring OneNote 2010 to our Microsoft Office Specialist line up for the first time. Please be sure to review exam details including audience profile and skills measured on our exam detail page.
The beta will run starting Monday, September 12 through Tuesday, October 4, 2011. Check here to see if a test center near you is participating. Interested but don't see a nearby test center? Please email Certiport's beta coordinator, Stacey Tilley, at [email protected].
Please note the beta exam is in English only.
UPDATE: This survey is now closed. Thanks to all who took it!
We need volunteers to help us design Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) Exam 373, Mobile Development Fundamentals.
We've collected initial information about relevant tasks and compiled them into an Objective Domain (OD), or exam design document. The OD includes a description of the MTA certification, the target audience for this exam, and a list of content areas, or functional groups, that begin with a single number. Below each functional group is a set of objectives, each of which begins with two numbers (e.g., 1.1) and includes a scoping statement (“This objective may include but is not limited to”).
Your feedback on this OD will be used to revise and finalize it. Exam questions will be written to each objective, so it’s important that the objectives be appropriate for the audience level, relevant, and clear. Your feedback on the OD is an excellent opportunity to influence the exam and help us get the design right!
We’re using a survey tool to facilitate the collection and organization of comments about the OD.
Please use the following link to access the survey and provide your feedback:
http://microsoftlearning.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_20mcGcXgTA7gPg8
Please note that this privacy statement applies only to the MTA 373 OD Review Survey. It does not apply to other online or offline Microsoft sites, surveys, products or services.
Microsoft is committed to protecting your privacy. This survey does not request or collect any personal information from you nor does this survey use any cookies or other technologies to track your responses to the survey. Your responses to this survey will not be linked to the contact information previously collected by Microsoft. Your answers will be reported in aggregate with those of other respondents.
Note that if you’re running Internet Explorer 9, you’ll need to enable Compatibility View to complete the survey.
Please provide your feedback by eod PST Friday, August 26th, to ensure that it is included in the finalization of the OD.
Thank you for your help! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me ([email protected]).
I am often asked: If I will only be working with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, do I need to attend the SharePoint 2010 search training? The answer is yes, absolutely.
FAST Search builds on and extends the SharePoint search platform. By first understanding what SharePoint offers you can take advantage of those capabilities and then add on the new FAST Search features. Take a look at some of the topics in the SharePoint search classes:
All of the SharePoint search topics are helpful for FAST Search, and every topic will teach you foundational concepts that apply to both products. So what FAST Search for SharePoint topics are covered? Here are a few.
As you can see, these topics are designed to highlight some the high-end capabilities of FAST Search. When you add these features onto what SharePoint Search provides you have a very powerful search application with refinement, advanced querying, specialty content processing, and customized ranking.
So when you are considering FAST Search training remember you are not just trying to understand FAST Search but SharePoint Search as well. Your knowledge of both products will help you make sound decisions on which product’s features better meet your business needs.
For more information or to register for a class, please contact MSL | FAST University at [email protected].
By Leo Souza
Career Opportunities: Announcing New Opportunity for MCPs
Microsoft Learning is working with Elance, an online employment platform for freelancers and consultants, to help MCPs find work in the cloud. An MCP group will be created on the Elance platform and validated through your Virtual Business Card.
Microsoft partners and customers are looking to hire MCPs for remote contract based hourly and statement of work (SOW) work. Contractors have earned more than $US450 million to-date through Elance. Thousands of projects that are perfectly suited to MCPs are available on Elance now.
Elance is free to join and offers you the opportunity to:
To get started, please register for one of the following on-boarding webinars:
Thursday August 18, 2011, 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time Friday August 19, 2011, 9 A.M. Pacific Time Monday August 22, 2011, 7 A.M. Pacific Time Monday August 22, 2011, 10 A.M. Pacific Time Monday August 22, 2011,6 P.M. Pacific Time Thursday August 25, 2011, 9 A.M. Pacific Time Thursday August 25, 2011, 6 P.M. Pacific Time
On-boarding will cover:
Note Elance is a third-party vendor. Microsoft is providing this information to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of this information does not imply endorsement by Microsoft of Elance, its site or services.
MCT Readiness returns after taking a month off during Summer. We will have two great sessions for our MCTs tomorrow:
We will be online from 8AM PST - 10 AM PST, MCTs you should have received an email invitation and of course you can find full information at the MCT Readiness site. We'd love to see you there tomorrow!
We need volunteers to help us design Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) Exam 374, Gaming Development Fundamentals.
http://microsoftlearning.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_088cFDftogQTpPu
Please note that this privacy statement applies only to the [Insert survey name/project number] survey. It does not apply to other online or offline Microsoft sites, surveys, products or services.
Please provide your feedback by eod PST Friday, August 19th, to ensure that it is included in the finalization of the OD.
Thank you for your help! This will be a better exam because of your input. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me ([email protected]).
Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles. One of the highlights of my experience was attending a session led by Romi Mahajan, Worldwide Director of Digital Marketing and Search at Microsoft, entitled “Expand Your SharePoint Practice with Solutions for Internet Sites.”
As an instructor on Enterprise Search technology for the past five years, I have had the opportunity to work with students on how to build search-driven applications across a wide array of industries, on either side of the firewall. However, Romi’s presentation still provided an “aha moment” for me, clearly showing the value of search to help deliver a solid digital marketing platform with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
Digital marketing allows for companies to keep up with their consumers, making sure that the right information about products and services is available at the right time across all channels in which the companies invest – web sites, mobile device marketing, and social media, to name a few. However, as with other enterprise computing tasks, managing and optimizing multiple platforms to perform these tasks can be a considerable challenge.
A well-thought out plan to digital marketing hinges on putting the user experience first, unifying your approach to management of Web Content, Digital Assets, Commerce, Analytics, and Social & Web 2.0 capabilities, as well as Search. According to a recent Gartner Report, “By 2013, more than 30% of the most popular websites will use search and content analytics to target content.”1
The good news is that the tools for your digital marketing solution may already be in your hands. The investment that many companies have made in SharePoint Server 2010 to power their internal sites to boost business productivity can also be leveraged for digital marketing. And the FAST Search for SharePoint Server 2010 component can help further engage your customers with an adaptive and interactive search experience, delivering dynamic navigation and flexible search results that gets your customers exactly where they want to go.
Learn more about how to get the most out of the search capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010 for your digital marketing needs by registering for a class on the FAST University Learning Portal www.fastuniversity.com or for more information contact a FAST University Education Consultant at [email protected].
By: Lawrence Kaye
1Gartner RAS Core Research Note, Mick MacComascaigh & Whit Andrews, 3 Dec 2009
Microsoft MVPs Rob Miles and Andy Wigley are back! Mobile application developers raved about the fast-paced, demo-rich original Windows Phone 7 Jump Start. Don’t miss out on the sequel:
Building Applications for Windows Phone Mango Jump Start is a two-day virtual class specially tailored for developers looking to build cool applications and games for the new Windows Phone Mango Platform. Mango is an important leap forward in Microsoft’s overall mobile strategy, and this event will help you reap get quickly up to speed.
Dates: August 23-24, 2011 Time: 8:00am – 4:00pm PST Duration: 8 hours/day, including hour lunch break Registration Link: http://bit.ly/Mango-Jump
Here's an overview of what Rob and Andy will cover:
Day One — August 23, 2011 | 8am-5pm PDT | Live online training • Building Windows Phone Apps with Visual Studio 2010 • Silverlight on Windows Phone – Introduction • Silverlight on Windows Phone – Advanced • Using Expression to Build Windows Phone Interfaces • Windows Phone Fast Application Switching • Windows Phone Multi-tasking & Background Tasks • Using Windows Phone Resources (Bing Maps, Camera, etc.)
Day Two — August 24, 2011 | 8am-5pm PDT | Live online training • Application Data Storage on Windows Phone • Using Networks with Windows Phone • Windows Azure and Windows Phone • Notifications on Windows Phone • XNA for Windows Phone • Selling a Windows Phone Application
What’s a “Jump Start” Course? | Training specifically designed for experienced developers and technologists whose jobs demand they know how to best leverage new, emerging Microsoft technologies. These advanced courses assume a certain level of expertise and domain knowledge, so they move quickly and cover topics in a fashion that enables teams to effectively map new skills to real-world situations. Jump Starts combine timely, real-world content on new technology with engaging and often humorous delivery from expert and charismatic presenters.
Hope to see you there!
I would like to share this wonderful story, I’ve been talking with one of our MCTs Tone Shelby. Tone is a great MCT on SQL Server and she is also a very proud mother. Especially now that her son Brian is about to become an MCT too. It’s been great chatting with Tone and Brian and I wanted to share some of their comments and stories.
Tone: “I knew Brian was destined for something since turning 1 year old i can remember doing taxes and Brian wanting to have a copy of his own tax form and a calculator so he could help me. 2 Years later, Brian got one of those blue bigfoot battery operated trucks for Christmas. These need to be assembled and he got a screwdriver and told his dad ‘put it together or I’ll do it, I can do it myself.’ Soon he got his vTech child desktop and before I know it he’s at my 286 with a screwdriver upgrading it to a 386. At that time, Brian’s 6 years old. In ninth grade, his principle asked him to help install the printers at the school and his teachers would call him after hours for asking to stay after school today to show them how to do something or provide some computer support. Next, Brian wanted a programming kit. One day we were playing a game with 007 in it and 007 have a space gun - Brian had ‘simply’ got it from another game using that programming kit he got from me.”
Brian – like any other son – is slightly embarrassed by his proud mom. Here’s what he told me:
Brian: “When I reflect on those stories, I think about just how good my mother is now with SQL and BI solutions and remember that we all had to start somewhere in this industry. Some sooner and some later than others. It's all about what you are willing to learn and your level of interest, plus the availability of training and materials to further yourself. Coming first from the standard user point of view through to the IT professional gives someone like her the unique ability to truly 'see' what the computer user expects and needs from a BI solution.”
Well, I think Brian will be a fantastic MCT!
That's right, Microsoft MVPs Rob Miles and Andy Wigley are back! Microsoft Learning hosted a Windows Phone 7 Jump Start (plus an update course) last year and it was an absolute smash. Mobile application developers raved about the fast-paced, demo-rich approach, the timeliness of real-world content on new technology, as well as the engaging and often-times humorous delivery. Now that "Mango" has made such a huge splash in the industry, we've asked them to put together another great course.
This two-day live virtual class, Building Applications for Windows Phone Mango Jump Start, is specially tailored for developers looking to build cool applications and games for the new Windows Phone Mango Platform.
Dates: August 23-24, 2011Time: 8:00am – 4:00pm PSTDuration: 8 hours/day, including hour lunch breakRegistration Link: http://bit.ly/Mango-Jump
Mango is an important leap forward in Microsoft’s overall mobile strategy and the developer community has taken notice. Now is the time to embrace the “tile-and-app” UI and reap the rewards Mango provides your development team and user community. Here's an overview of what Rob and Andy will cover:
Day One — August 23, 2011 | 8am-5pm PDT | Live online training• Building Windows Phone Apps with Visual Studio 2010• Silverlight on Windows Phone – Introduction• Silverlight on Windows Phone – Advanced• Using Expression to Build Windows Phone Interfaces• Windows Phone Fast Application Switching• Windows Phone Multi-tasking & Background Tasks• Using Windows Phone Resources (Bing Maps, Camera, etc.)
Day Two — August 24, 2011 | 8am-5pm PDT | Live online training• Application Data Storage on Windows Phone• Using Networks with Windows Phone• Windows Azure and Windows Phone • Notifications on Windows Phone• XNA for Windows Phone • Selling a Windows Phone Application
What’s a “Jump Start” Course? | Training specifically designed for experienced developers and technologists whose jobs demand they know how to best leverage new, emerging Microsoft technologies. These advanced courses assume a certain level of expertise and domain knowledge, so they move quickly and cover topics in a fashion that enables teams to effectively map new skills to real-world situations.
Help us spread the word with this suggested tweet:Mango Jump Start Aug. 23-24! Register for LIVE & FREE expert-led training from @RobMiles & Andy Wigley #wpdev http://bit.ly/Mango-Jump
Last week I had the opportunity to meet students congregated from around the globe in San Diego, CA to compete for World Champion titles in Microsoft Office applications. These students are wicked fast at taking the Microsoft Office Specialist exams, which are used in the competition. Seriously. Typically these students pass the competition level exams (which are tougher) with perfect scores and complete the exams in as little as ten minutes. Simpl amazing. You can read about all of the champions in this press release. It was particularly amazing to watch the students' and their instructors and parents' reactions as the winners were announced in each of the categories - Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2010, and Excel 2010. I had a goosebumps moment looking at all the winners up on the stage and realized, these are our next generation of power Office users. How in the world will I ever keep up?
One student's story is particularly exciting. Rebecca Rickwood, a student of Sawtry Community College near Cambridge in England, was offered a job with a training company called Course Academy paying $170,000, specifically as a result of winning the Excel 2007 World Champion title at the competition. She's 15 years old and a student at Sawtry Community College near Cambridge. Of course, she's expected to finish college first! You can read all the details in a ZDNet article located here.
If you are a student, or have a student that uses Microsoft Office with amazing skill, you might consider participating next year. We'll be in Las Vegas for the 2012 final competition event, and I'd love to see you there! This will be an event where what happens in Las Vegas won't stay in Las Vegas!
Microsoft® FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint® has specific operating system requirements that have to be set in order for the software to install and run successfully. Listed here are 6 ‘must have’ requirements that can easily be overlooked. If these operating system requirements are not set you will have problems installing FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and/or your system could become unstable with time.
Required Permissions
1. Ensure that the user who runs the installer is a member of the Administrators group.
2. Create a domain user for running the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, for example fastuser. Do not run FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint as a local administrator or a domain administrator. To simplify the process of adding more search administrators, create a domain group. You will later add this group to a local group named FASTSearchAdministrators on every server in the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint deployment.
3. Add all users who will administer the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint installation to this group.
4. The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint user (example: fastuser) must have dbcreator permissions in SQL Server for the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint administrative database. For detailed steps, see Set up permissions for Microsoft® SQL Server® (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint).
Daylight Savings Time (DST) Turn off automatic adjustment of Daylight Savings Time in the system to avoid query timeouts. If DST adjustment is enabled, query timeouts may occur for a brief period around midnight on the date of DST adjustment.
Synchronize clocks between servers Servers on FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 must have synchronized clocks.
IP addresses must be static IPsec (Internet Protocol security) will be configured in the firewall as part of the installation. Make sure that all servers have static IP addresses that do not change.
Automatic updates Servers running Microsoft Windows® frequently get unattended updates. We recommend that you turn off automatic updates. Any updates should be made in a controlled manner after a controlled shutdown of FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. It can take a long time for indexer nodes to recover after any unattended restarts of the servers.
Anti-virus configuration FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint can run on a server that has anti-virus software installed. However, we strongly recommend that the FAST Search folder is excluded from scanning. This is to prevent the anti-virus software from falsely identifying FAST Search data files as malware and quarantining them, and to ensure optimal performance.
For more information on software requirements and other topics for IT Professionals, attend the Microsoft | Learning FAST University instructor-led course Enterprise Search for IT Professionals. To register online visit www.fastuniversity.com or contact an Education Consultant for assistance at [email protected].
By David Codrington