Open Specifications Community

Welcome to the Microsoft Open Specifications developers' home on MSDN.

Open Specifications MVPs

	Mike Walsh I maintain the two Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) FAQ sites (www.wssfaq.com and wss.collutions.com) which both started off as a single weekly text (FAQ) message to the SharePoint Team Services newsgroup. I am also active in the SharePoint newsgroups (some would say "too active"). My main challenge at the moment is keeping those WSS FAQ sites up-to-date with FAQ items and links to other items on WSSv3 and the other 2007 products. WSS FAQ additiona and changes CLXXVII - 1st to 7th November 2009 Note: All of the addresses of the KB / Articles - 2007 Products / MS / Non-MS Articles below were valid at the time I added them to the WSS FAQ site... More... Saturday, Nov 7
	Andrew Woodward I have been a SharePoint Consultant since Tahoe. Now Principal Consultant at 21apps, a small consultancy with an emphasis on providing community support and expert consultancy around the expanding MOSS 2007 platform. I am a regular trainer covering SharePoint development and BI for Combined Knowledge. My work has over the past few years been focused in the Education arena. I am currently implementing agile development techniques whilst developing an educational application based on SharePoint, the SharePoint Learning Kit and delivered through Silverlight UI. Listening, Speaking, Training and SharePint Sunday, Nov 8
	Dmitry Streblechenko Dmitry has written several development tools for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. They are available at http://www.dimastr.com/. He is active on the Outlook forums.

Featured Moderators

John Dunning
	John Dunning is a Senior Escalation Engineer on the Open Specifications Documentation Support Team with expertise in various protocols, user mode and kernel mode debugging and the .Net Common Language Runtime. John has been with Microsoft since 1995.

Obaid Farooqi
	Obaid Farooqi is a Senior Support Escalation Engineer on the Open Specification Documentation Support Team. Obaid has experience in network protocols. Obaid is getting up to speed on Microsoft Protocols like SMB and SMB2. Obaid joined Microsoft in 2008.

All Moderators

Open Specifications Forums

Windows Protocols
Discuss technical content and implementation of the Windows protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Using the Open Specifications
Discuss technical content and implementation of the Office protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Using the SharePoint Products and Technologies Protocols
Discuss technical content and implementation of the SharePoint Products and Technologies protocols described in the Open Specifications.

File Services
Discuss technical content and implementation of Server Message Block (SMB) protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Using the Exchange Server Protocols
Discuss technical content and implementation of the Exchange and Outlook protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Using the Office Protocols
Discuss technical content and implementation of the Microsoft Office protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Office Binary File Formats
Discuss technical content and implementation of the .doc, .xls, .xlsb, and .ppt Office binary file formats.

Using the Microsoft SQL Server Protocols
Discuss technical content and implementation of the SQL Server protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Documentation on Standards
Discuss technical content and implementation of certain standards as they are implemented in Microsoft's high volume products.

Interoperability Scenarios: Technical Questions
Discuss implementation of technical scenarios around interoperability.

Office Open Document Format Implementation
Discuss technical content and implementation of the Office implementation of the ODF 1.1 standard.

Open Specifications Events

Tech Ed EMEA - November 9-13, 2009, Berlin, Germany
Interop NY/Web 2.0 - November 16-20, 2009, New York, NY
Professional Developers Conference - November 17-19, 2009, Los Angeles, CA
Active Directory Plugfest - January 18-21, 2010, Redmond, WA
Certificate and IPSec Plugfest - March 2010, Redmond, WA
File Sharing Plugfest - May 2010, Redmond, WA

Plugfest Information

Plugfests occur quarterly and cover a number of the windows protocols. Vista and Windows Server 2008 systems are available for testing. They also touch upon interoperability with the protocols implemented in previous versions of Windows as well as the attendee's own systems implementation. Participants can expect the following:

A hands-on event where attendees can test their server product(s) against Microsoft Windows clients, and also compare behavior to reference implementations of Windows Server.
Group presentations by members of the Microsoft protocol development teams.
Opportunities for both general Q & A and 1:1 sessions with development team members.
Technical support personnel available to assist.

Plugfests are open to everyone who is interested in attending. To receive your registration form for the next Plugfest, please email the Microsoft Open Protocols team at protocol@microsoft.com.