ClusterFunk

I work for ioko a Microsoft Gold Partner “of many years’ standing, and one of a very small number of organisations globally to hold eight or more competencies as part of our certification”. We have 11 competencies (we don’t do the other two, training and OEM ). Anyway that’s enough with the plug, I wrote these for submission onto the Microsoft small business portal  “top tips for website development” section. I am always amazed at the quality of the content on Microsoft.com and associated websites and I think that you should take a minute to have a good look round… 

Make effective use of Microsoft resources (1):
Use the Product Communities Web site. Each product has a community and many have details of MVPs  (Most Valuable Professionals) who have years of experience and enjoy helping. There is a huge amount of information, providing a fantastic resource and the advice available from hands on experience is invaluable. Check out http://www.iis.net/ for the IIS Community site with lots of news, tips, guidance and discussion. http://www.microsoft.com/communities/products/default.mspx

Make effective use of Microsoft resources (2):
Spend some time familiarising yourself with the tools available on Microsoft’s product and TechNet websites. There are some fantastic information and utilities available in the product specific resource kits. Tools such as Process Monitor v2 or TCPView are indispensible for diagnosing  break fix, debugging, security and many other activities.   

Process Monitor v2.01
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

TCPView
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx

IIS Diagnostic Toolkit
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9BFA49BC-376B-4A54-95AA-73C9156706E7&displaylang=en

Make effective use of Microsoft resources (3):
Take full advantage of Microsoft’s Virtual Labs. There are some wonderful training resources that let you familiarise yourself with a particular technology or process. This is particularly useful if your need to prepare to deploy a new technology or simply do some research. 

http://www.microsoft.com/events/vlabs/default.mspx