As I wade through the massive quantity of things that a MOSS 2007 installation seems to think that you need to do before you can actually start using the darn thing (and wishing I was back in relatively simple WSS-land until I realise that I actually like challenges [my chess "career" was laden with me getting into terrible positions and then waking up and fiddling my way out of them - until that is I reached the heights of the Hungarian Premier League (board 5 for the two of you who care) when that wasn't quite good enough].

Well in MOSS there are challenges enough to keep anyone busy reading up stuff before daring to proceed (although "configuring" workflow was a simple matter of accepting all the defaults and pressing OK - even I could manage that, although the subsequent editing of the item to mark it "Completed" was something new as I'd just deleted them before [Oops!]) however [finally reaching the point ...] Microsoft haven't made is as straightforward as they could.

I've noticed before (but now I have a very clear case where this applies) that the order they say you should do the Administrator Tasks in is odd to say the least.

Anyway here's a crass example:

I'm looking at a list headed with Incoming E-Mail Settings (Order 2) and followed by Outgoing E-Mail Settings (Order 3), so Microsoft expect you to first set the incoming E-mail settings and then the outgoing e-mail settings?

It certainly seems logical that you should do Step 1 before Step 2. But not in Redmond it would seem where they presumably walk around all day with umbrellas up when it's not raining rather than following the rest of the world's Step 1: wait for rain; Step 2: put up umbrella.

Anyway. Follow the Redmond order and see where it gets you ...

Try to do Incoming E-Mail Settings. Oh look. "The SMTP service is not installed"

and where do you install it ?

in Order 3 of course (Outgoing E-Mail Settings)

At least that's what it seems like to me as Outgoing E-Mail Settings is asking me for the Outbound SMTP server and anyway if Order 2 required the SMTP Service to be installed shouldn't that have been listed as Order 1 ?

P.S. Down in the list at Order 5 is "Central Administration application pool account should be unique." Now they tell me! So I went to the page they suggest and I find I have three application pools (:80; for MySites; for a Publishing Site) and it doesn't indicate which of those is being used for Central Admin. I suspect :80 even if I don't really understand why it let me do this at all. Surely it would be a simple check "can't use this, it's being used for Central Admin" or vice versa "You can't use this, you must use a new one for Central Admin" depending on which came first. Now as the names of all those Application pools reflect the ports they use, I want to create a new one for Central Admin use to reflect its use, and I bet that's going to be impossible. Just it seems as impossible as finding where I can create a new Application Pool at all. Search, Mike, search! You like challenges, remember.