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. Additional blog posts from Mike Walsh are available at mindsharpblogs.com/MikeW.
	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. Open Specifications Community Webcast: The missing link in SharePoint projects Thursday, May 17
	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

Edgar Olougouna
	Edgar Olougouna is a Senior Support Escalation Engineer serving in the Open Specifications Documentation Support Team. He assists licensees and customers in achieving interoperability using the Microsoft Open Specifications. Prior to joining the team in 2008, he acquired expertise in mobile messaging services and in-depth knowledge of related network protocols.

Sreekanth Nadendla
	I am an escalation engineer in the Open Specifications Documentation Support Team. Before joining Microsoft in 2006, I was doing software development implementing B2B solutions using VC++/COM, XML and Java. I have supported Data Access Technologies in SQL Server group for the first 5 years. I have Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science.

All Moderators

Open Specifications Forums

Windows Protocols
Discuss technical content and implementation of the Windows (including .NET Framework) protocols described in the Open Specifications.

Using the Open Specifications
Ask questions about the Open Specifications documents, their organization, language conventions, and references.

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 File Formats
Discuss technical content and implementation of the .doc, .xls, .xlsb, .ppt and .pst 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 Exchange Server, Outlook, SQL Server, and Internet Explorer.

Office Open XML File Format Implementation
Discuss issues related to the implementation of the Open XML file format (e.g., ISO/IEC 29500) in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This forum is for discussion of the Microsoft implementation of the Office Open XML file format – for questions about the format itself, you may want to visit the forums on OpenXMLDeveloper.org.

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

RemoteFX Conference - April 10-11, 2012, Redmond, WA
Exchange RPC and Windows Identity Protocols Plugfest - April 16-20, 2012, Redmond, WA
Taipei Communication Protocols Plugfest - May 2-4, 2012, Taipei, Taiwan
Windows File Sharing Protocols Plugfest - June 18-22, 2012, Redmond, WA
Windows RDP Protocols Plugfest - September 5-7, 2012, Redmond, WA
SNIA.org SDC and SMB Plugfest - September 17-20, 2012, Santa Clara, CA

Plugfest Information

Plugfests occur regularly and cover a number of topics relevant to companies implementing the Microsoft Open Specifications. Plugfests include interoperability testing of the attendee's own systems implementation with the relevant Microsoft products. Participants can expect the following:

A hands-on event where attendees can test their implementations against Microsoft products, run protocol test suites against their implementations, and compare protocol behavior to similar Microsoft products.
Group presentations by members of the Microsoft product 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 anyone interested in attending. The schedule of upcoming plugfests is available here. For more information about plugfests or to register for an upcoming plugfest, please email the Microsoft Open Specifications team at protocol@microsoft.com.