• Explorer was not very user friendly to me.  I love doing everything in detail view, and it seemed like not matter what I did Vista was trying to guess the way I should be viewing my folders.  I downloaded and used a third party Explorer tool.  Anyone have Norton Commander for Vista?
• Driver support was poor.  I don't blame Microsoft for this, in fact I'm not blaming them at all, just mentioning what I didn't like.
• Administrator Dialogs.  This really started getting on my nerves.  I can understand maybe the first time I try to do something an Admin should you ask me if I really want to, but can't I check a box or something so I won't get asked over and over.
• Memory usage.  This was just out of control.  When I finally gave in Thursday night, I was running Visual Studio and Outlook plus one Virtual Machine in VMWare.  I was using my entire 2GB of RAM and was paging like crazy.  I went to bed mad, leaving it like that.  I got up Friday morning to shut it down and get to the office and I was using less than 1GB.  Seems over 1GB of garbage was collected overnight.  To compare (and I tested the multiple time), when I went back to XP, the same tasks had me using 700MB of RAM, leaving me plenty for other tasks and no paging.
• Networking pains.  This could be an entirely different list, but to keep it short I'll just say I had a lot of trouble with my VPN working correctly, and the Private/Public network thing is just plain annoying, especially when Vista would guess which one it thought I needed and switch it when I rebooted.  Many times Vista would also disable my network adapater without asking.
• Permissions.  This was crazy, and I never could figure out many of my issues.  One was with one of our own software application.
• Visual Studio.  Now of all things you would have thought this would have worked with no problem.  A known issue with Microsoft was VS and Vista working together.  I had decent luck until I installed SP1 for Visual Studio... beware, you have been warned.

That's all I can really think of right now.  Will I go back to Vista?  Of course I will, we all will eventually, but for now I'm going to focus on being productive with XP.

Chris

Something I've been meaning to talk about for quite some time and something that I have always has a personal interest is supporting XPS (XML Paper Specification) in the KnowledgeLake products. I have been interested in XPS since its early beginning as code name Metro, which I discovered when I was looking for a replacement for both TIFF and PDF a couple years ago. I made a push last year to get as much XPS support as possible into our 2007 products and stopped short of making it our standard image format only because of the lack of a standard for markup inside XPS documents. </P

I've blogged previously about XPS at my old site:

http://support.knowledgelake.com/CS/blogs/cappys_blog/search.aspx?q=xps&p=1

Back to the point of this entry and that's to talk about the support for XPS that we have included in our 2007 products. Since we combined the feature of Desktop Capture and Capture into one single capture product for 2007, we still have the Email document available. Instead, however, of being able to just Email in the native format as well as TIFF or PDF, we can now also Email captured images as XPS files as well.

Also within KnowledgeLake Capture 2007 we added the ability to set the output format to an XPS file. Capturing documents works the same regardless of the output format, but when saving to the hard drive, SharePoint or Capture Server the format can be XPS, as well as TIFF, PDF or the native format supported by your scanner.

KnowledgeLake Capture Server also delivers XPS support, but in the form of a plug-in that converts documents to XPS as well as PDF within the capture path. Plug-ins work with files destined for specific Content Type, Document Libraries and Site in SharePoint, so you could configure Capture Server to convert all Invoices to XPS and convert all Purchase Orders to PDF. Capture, though customer plug-ins, can also release documents to virtually any storage mechanism, allowing us to create XPS documents from images for almost any system in the world.

The final product in which we added XPS support to was KnowledgeLake Print. As I talked about last week, Print gives users the ability to print documents directly from SharePoint Search results without needing to open the document. XPS is a supported format for Print, and in fact uses the entire XPS Print Ticket when a user asks to print an XPS document.

For more information about XPS, you can check out the following sites:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/default.mspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification

http://blogs.msdn.com/andy_simonds/

Regards,

Chris

Release Candidate 1 for most of our 2007 product will be released over the next couple days and one of the major products that will be up is the new KnowledgeLake Imaging Server 2007. If you were familiar at all with our 2003 based products you probably know that KnowledgeLake specialized in turning SharePoint into a true imaging system, and if you enjoyed what was available before you're going to love what's in store for this version. In addition to all the great new ECM features of SharePoint (that could be worth a couple posts at least) we have completely redesigned our new Imaging Server.

Search

Our team probably spent more time working on Search than any other single thing we built. For the most part we only used the previous version as a minimum requirement, but didn't reuse any of the code or even stick with the same architecture. For starters we decided we needed to take better advantage of the SharePoint Search engines so we built a provider model that allows us to use MOSS Search, WSS Search or for that matter any third party engine if found one we like better. Since we are based on the new SharePoint Search engines, we can do cross site queries and scale along with SharePoint instead of being reliant on CAML exclusively.

The user interface uses two web parts, one for building queries and the other for executing the queries against providers and to return results. Queries can be built and saved to be used anywhere in SharePoint. Web part pages can be built to specifically execute a saved query or allow parameters to be entered to allow custom searching on pre defined columns.

The builder web part can exist in two different modes as shown by the screen shots, one for building queries and one for simply executing saved queries.

Viewer

Much like the viewer that was released last year, the new viewer actually has a new architecture that will allows us to sell an SDK in the future to allow the thin viewing and annotation capabilities to be sold by themselves. The KnowledgeLake Image Viewer was the first of its kind providing a true thin, zero footprint viewer that does not require Java, ActiveX or Flash. Besides the standard viewing and annotating, the new viewer allows SharePoint columns to be edited, bookmarks to be added to pages on large documents for easy searching. These bookmarks can also be saved as hyperlinks to allows specific pages to be Emailed to others for easy access to document information.

Integration work has also been done into SharePoint and Office Workflow allowing workflows to be worked or started directly from the viewer interface. The idea was to make working with images inside workflows as easy as the Office client applications.

Finally, we added integration into our new networking printing to allow images to be easily printed without having to deal with the limitations of printing from a browser.

Index

Probably the feature that is the most useful, yet hardest to explain is KnowledgeLake Index. The concept is two-fold, first users on ramping documents into SharePoint needed a quick way to add documents without having to think about Sites, Libraries and now Content Types. KnowledgeLake Index simplifies this into one item called a Document Class, so far example when you want to scan an invoice you simply select the Invoice class and the applications know exactly where to put the captured image as well as what index values to ask the user for.

The second purpose was to allow more detailed column definitions within SharePoint. Using Document Classes, columns can have Input Masks, lookup values, validation to external tables and even the ability to auto populate based on information and lookups from other columns.

Print

Also known as network printing, this is a common feature of most legacy imaging systems. It allows printing to be off loaded onto servers (basically spooling) so machines don't have to wait for print jobs to finish. With modern equipment this need dwindled, but with the introduction of the browser as the Image Viewer, printing once again became a burden as browsers aren't very good tools for printing. Print resolves this problem by having a server to the work of retrieving the original image and printing it as it was meant to be.

KnowledgeLake Print also has the ability to print most Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), both the new formats as well as the old. TIFF, XPS and PDF files are also handled in addition to other image formats like JPG and PNG. These file can simply be printed from search results without ever opening a viewing application.

That's probably enough for now. I'll write more about each feature in addition to Export, Import and some upcoming features such as Scan in the near future.

Chris

The product wheel keeps turning here at KnowledgeLake and Monday our new KnowledgeLake Capture Server Beta 1 was released. There are many new features and improvements in this version compared to the previous. Probably the biggest change is this version has been the addition of Web Based Indexing and Batch Import. I'll spend some time in this post to quickly go over some of the major changes, but first a quick overview.

KnowledgeLake Capture Server 2007 is due to be released on February 19^th, two weeks after our other 2007 products. This product started out about three years ago as a simple way to spool released to SharePoint from our Capture product. The need for a more robust application quickly arose and we released the first version of Capture Server last January, which is still the basis of the current platform. The idea of the platform is that batches can enter from almost any point, and then a series of steps can be applied to them according to the Document Class each document in the batch belongs to. The out of the box steps included multipage/single page TIFF conversion, Adobe Capture integration to convert images to full text Image+Text PDF documents, release to SharePoint and some other miscellaneous steps.

Web Indexing

Web Indexing is a new feature for our 2007 product that allows documents to be indexed using a web browser rather than requiring our workstation product, KnowledgeLake Capture. Users get permissions to specific caches from an administrators using Active Directory security and then the user selects the Document Classes from those Caches to index. Web Indexing uses the same platform as our Image Viewer, which will even allow annotations to be placed on images before they are saved to SharePoint.

Administrators have a lot of control over the indexing itself, with the ability to completely modify Document Classes including external database lookups and validations for any field. Developers can create custom indexing Web Controls if more specific customization is required however.

In order to place batches into Web Indexing, manual steps are now allowed in Capture Server. This allows a step to be created and put into the flow of any document classes, which will require manual intervention for it to move on. Just like automated steps, there is a complete API for developing custom manual steps.

Batch Import

Another new feature of KnowledgeLake Capture Server 2007 is the ability to create import jobs. There are two out of the box import plug ins available, one for comma delimited files, and the other for watching network directories. Custom plug-ins can also be written using the extensive API. Using the out of the box plug-ins allows Capture Server to create batches from Fax Server, Multi Function Devices and just about any other interface possible.

The concept behind batch import is to create batches that will be worked by Capture Server. Each job has the ability to associate batches with particular document classes so they will move along the correct capture paths.

Branch Capture Server

Branch Capture Server isn't really part of the KnowledgeLake Capture Server 2007, but a separate product. It's worth mentioning though because it extends Capture Server into branch/remote offices anywhere in the world, without requiring a full license of Capture Server at those sites. Branch Capture Servers job is to simply release batches captured at remote offices to a Capture Server in a timely, friendly basis. It can be configured to only use a specified amount of bandwidth and to only release batches at specific times, which works perfectly for offices on slower connections to the home office.

Capture Server Monitor

The last feature I'm going to talk about is the new Capture Server Monitor. This is an application that allows complete control (not including configuration) over Capture Server via the browser. One of our primary focuses for the 2007 product line was to improve usability and moving the monitor from a desktop to a web application is a major improvement. Included in the new monitor is the ability resubmit and delete batches, execute import jobs, view events logged in the Application Log and monitor Branch Capture Servers. Not available during Beta 1 are also a set of reports that allow managers to see exactly what is going in during the capture process as the Audit Trail also monitors scanning stations.

That's probably enough to talk about for one day. I'll be posting information about all of our 2007 products in the next week or so.

Chris

Recovery from yesterday took a few hours this morning. I just kept saying "must learn to pace myself"… however today wasn't the day. Several of us planned a trip to Isla Mujeres for a day of riding scooters and golf carts around the island and drinking Coronas. The fun really started at lunch which we had on the very southern tip of the island at a lighthouse. We ate Fajitas, Tacos, El Super Nachos along with a nice spread of Corona and Pacifico. The view was amazing, and you'll see that by the pictures I'm uploading. After that we rode/drove to Playa del Norte where we spent the afternoon swimming and hanging around another swing bar, which ended up with some interesting photo opps.

You can catch a ferry downtown to this island for an all day trip. Get to the ferry about 9:15am, for a 9:30 ride and then take either the 3:30pm or 5:30pm back to the mainland. Don't miss the 5:30 however all you'll be finding a place on the beach to spend the night.

See you all soon,

Chris

For those of you familiar with KnowledgeLake, you probably know every year we take a company retreat down to the Caribbean to something we call Club KnowledgeLake. Being this close to our release it's a little crazy this year, but it seems we are on track to release our 2007 products on February 5^th. I know I've promised to blog more about them, and I'm going to start right after I spend a week getting sun burnt and drinking margarita's. Posts this week will probably bore the non KL folks who keep up with my space, but for those who are coming down in a couple days, I think you'll enjoy.

Day 1 was uneventful, which is perfect for a vacation. The Moon Palace looks as good as ever and had no signs of the hurricane damage from 2005. I heard they lost all there palm trees and had to replant, but you'd never know it. The rooms are great, recently remodeled (as if they weren't nice enough before) and has the addition of new décor plus wall mounted flat panels. Not sure why you'd want to watch TV when there are food and drinks at the pool, but you never know.

We spent the day at our usual spot at the swing bar, and sipped some nice rum drinks and Dos XX all day. Okay, to keep from gabbing too long I'll just post some picks of they day.

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to Darrin Bishop who was recognized as a WSS MVP last week. It's great to have people like Darrin on our team here at KnowledgeLake. You'll find his blog here: http://support.knowledgelake.com/CS/blogs/darrin_bishops_workbench/default.aspx.