WSS v3 exposed...

Finally we can talk about this stuff!!!!  I have been dying to talk to people about what is coming up in WSS v3 etc... and now we finally can.

Best summary of top level high impact features is over on Fitz's blog:

"FitzBlog : The Kimono Is Open, The Veil Is Lifted, The Gags Are Removed....."

Top 3 Features ranked by Me:

1. Re-Cycle Bin.  A 2 stage re-cycle bin.  That means a user can recover a deleted document.  If they purge that item from the Recycle Bin ... no problem ... there is a 2nd Admin only recycle bin.  This means around 90% of WSS related help desk calls in an organisation will be able to be resolved much  more easily.  No more going back to backup for a lot of these issues.

2. Content Types & Workflow.   These give you the ability to tag content with a content type ... and thus give it a standard set of Meta-Data and (more importantly in my view)  workflow.  Workflow is build on Windows Workflow Foundation (the team prefer WinWF as opposed to the other popular TLA that the wrestlers use) the new foundations for workflow in Windows.  I have seen this in action and it is great! There will be a designer for laying out simple workflows in WSS ... but more importantly a fully programmable (in Visual Studio 2005) model for building more complex and fucntional workflows.  Amazing stuff.  More here: https://www.windowsworkflow.net and https://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/building/workflow/default.aspx

3. Item level security.   Customers have been asking/complaining about this for a long time.  I am not personally as fussed about this feature as many ... but ... i know it will put minds at rest.  The most interesting/exciting part of this is however list item level security.  This will enable a number of different scenarios.  Best way of thinking about this is a database table with row level ACL security.  Quite exciting.

There are so many more features to talk about ... and with any luck i will be able to talk more about them over the coming months.  For now i just had to get these features off my chest.  We have been tight lipped about most of this up to now ... and it is so nice to be able to talk openly about them now.