Award Winner

Just in case you didn’t know, TechNet Magazine has won a number of awards in its relatively short lifetime. Last year, we won the Society for Technical Communication’s Excellence Award for our October, November, and December 2006 issues. How cool is that! We thought you might enjoy taking a look back at these winning issues—they’re filled with a whole lot of useful information.

Enjoy!

October 2006

Get into the Groove: Solutions for Secure and Dynamic Collaboration  Office Groove 2007 lets users collaborate dynamically and securely with people from around the world. Find out how the Groove client can fit into your organization. Yung Chou

Building an Emergency Operations Center on Groove and SharePoint Take an inside look at how Groove and SharePoint help the Louisiana State University Emergency Operations Center respond to disaster. John Morello

 Reveal Deeper Meaning: Powerful Exchange Server Analysis with LogParser There's a lot of useful data hidden in your Exchange Server logs. Learn to use LogParser to examine this data and improve your Exchange environment. Michael Higashi

 Fight Spam on Your Terms with Custom Weight Lists Explore the new features in Exchange Server 2003 SP2 that offer more powerful ways to stop spam from clogging up your network. Cam Frenette and Alexander Nikolayev

Achieve High Availability with Exchange Failover Clusters Don’t let your Exchange Server system go offline. Here’s a real Exchange solution that allows an enterprise to recover quickly from an e-mail outage. Mark Godfrey

Boot into RAM with Windows PE With added support for variable boot configurations, Windows PE has become even more flexible. Learn three different ways to boot into RAM and how this can benefit your next deployment. Wes Miller

Make Server Rollouts a Snap with Automated Deployment Services Intrigued by standardized images, faster rebuilds, and consistent supportability? Automating the deployment of servers offers benefits for any organization—big or small. Here’s what you need to know to get started. John Savill

Create More Flexible Office Deployments with the Local Install Source LIS can greatly simplify Microsoft Office support. This overview covers everything from deployment to maintenance to configuration considerations. Dean Yamada

 Master Your Domain: Build a Corporate Network at Home Want a home network that’s just as powerful as the one at work? Here’s an affordable solution to bring home secure messaging, shared resources, single sign-on, and everything else you’ve come to expect from your corporate network. Matt Clapham and Jesper Johansson

November 2006

10 Things You Need to Know about Deploying Windows Vista From more flexible image handling to a new boot loader, Windows Vista introduces some important changes for desktop deployment. Here’s a look at 10 ways Windows Vista can make your next deployment faster and easier than ever. Michael Niehaus

Protect Your PC with New Security Features in Windows Vista Developed according to the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle guidelines, Windows Vista offers a level of security not built into earlier versions of Windows. Take a look at the new and enhanced features Windows Vista offers to help you detect and prevent security threats. Justin Harrison

Achieve the Non-Admin Dream with User Account Control While limiting user privileges is a good way to help protect your systems, non-admin accounts can be inconvenient, introducing problems such as application compatibility issues. Windows Vista offers new features that make it easier for you to manage and support standard user accounts Alex Heaton

Enterprise Networking with Windows Vista Since the release of Windows XP, networking has changed drastically—users are more mobile, wireless networking is everywhere, and security threats are more sophisticated. Take a look at the innovations in Windows Vista that make networking simpler, more secure, and easier to manage. Jason Leznek

Getting Ready for Windows PE 2.0  Along with Windows Vista, a more powerful version of Windows PE will be released. This overview discusses the new features and capabilities found in Windows PE 2.0 and how these changes will affect you Wes Miller

Inside the New Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit Before you deploy a new OS, it's critical that you determine potential compatibility issues and solutions for the many applications your organization relies on. Here's an in-depth look at how you can access your software portfolio, determine the impact Windows Vista will have on applications, and find solutions for potential issues. John Melton

New Tools for Event Management in Windows Vista Windows Vista presents a giant step forward in enterprise management, offering a new and improved infrastructure and tools designed for event logging and tracing. The result is easier, more powerful ways to gather information and quickly perform troubleshooting. Val Menn

More Powerful Group Policy in Windows Vista The Group Policy infrastructure has been overhauled, delivering new management features, new policy settings, support for multiple local GPOs, and much more. This article looks under the hood at the many changes Windows Vista brings to Group Policy. Jeremy Moskowitz

December 2006

Upgrading Your Infrastructure to Exchange 2007 Whether your organization is large or small, a smooth transition to Exchange Server 2007 will require up-front planning. With the right game plan, you can avoid any service interruptions. Here’s a look at the steps you’ll need to follow when performing the upgrade. Kate Follis

Take Command with the Exchange Management Shell The Exchange Management Shell gives administrators a powerful interface for managing every aspect of Exchange Server 2007. Get an overview of how you can start writing scripts, integrating applications, and performing other powerful management tasks from the command line. David Strome

 Exchange & Outlook: Better Together Together, Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 represent a giant leap forward in communications and collaboration. Find out how as we dive into simpler configuration, improved search capabilities, Unified Messaging, and more. Michael Khalili

Never Out of Touch with Exchange 2007 Communication has just gotten more powerful than ever. See how the Unified Messaging and Outlook Web Access capabilities built into Exchange Server 2007 allow you to access all your messages in one place…from anywhere. Joshua Trupin

More Powerful Journaling in Exchange 2007 Exchange Server 2007 provides much more flexible journaling capabilities, making it easier to monitor specific user accounts and meet compliance requirements within a large organization. David Strome

Fighting Spam and Phishing with Sender ID E-mail authentication built on the Sender ID Framework (SIDF) is gaining wide adoption, providing a major advancement in the fight against spam and phishing messages. In fact, more than a third of the world’s e-mail volume is already authenticated and SIDF-compliant. Here’s how it works. Craig Spiezle and Alexander Nikolayev