Use a calculated column to group list items by month

=CONCATENATE("(",MONTH([Column_Name]),") - ",CHOOSE(MONTH([ Column_Name]),"January","February","March","April","May","June","July","August","September","October","November","December"))

Why is SSP removed from SharePoint 2010?

SSP is shared service provider and that was available in MOSS 2007. 

In MOSS, there are certain actions that can only be performed only if you have created the SSP. for instance: BDC and User profiles.

Now we all must be thinking that why SSP is removed from SharePoint 2010 version? 

Lets assume that you are going to have different web application and you would only need to work with Excel services and do not want to use any other service that comes under  Excel services , but still just to use one  Excel service you need to create two SSP that means two separate databases.

And in SSP we did not have items which are in similar nature. They all performed different operations.

It is little difficult to deploy the SSP on servers.

Because there are too many services in one database, so it becomes difficult to scale it. It did not support scaling as we could not add any extra service to the SSP.

Now in SharePoint 2010 SSP has been replaced by Service Applications. These services are not groups under anything, they all run independently. In other sense, service applications provide a-la-carte options to choose from. Per web application, you can configure which service you want to consume.

You can also publish these services outside of the current farm so that these services can also be used elsewhere. You need trust relationship between those farms who wants to consume these services.

You can also write your own services and add that service to this service application.

Here service applications have their own databases unlike shared database in MOSS 2007 SSP.

You can use PowerShell commands to play around with these services.

Get-SPServiceApplication returns all  service applications.

Get-SPServiceApplication-name {servicename} to get the service object.

From there you can get all other properties related to the service.

Bottom line is SSP services are now split into individual services and can be consumed from web applications as and when needed. 

These services are:

Profiles, Audiences -> People Service App

Search -> Search Service App

Performance Point -> Performance Point Service App

Excel -> Excel Service App

Office Web Applications -> Office Web App

Visio Services -> Visio Service App

Word -> Word Service App

PowerPoint -> PowerPoint Service App

Project Server -> Project Server App

Here are some new services that have been introduced in the SharePoint 2010.

Access Services - Allows viewing, editing and accessing Access databases in a browser.

Managed Metadata Service - allows access to managed taxonomy hierarchies, keywords, and social tags for site collections.

Secure Store Service – Provides capability to store data (e.g. credential set) securely and associate it to a specific identity or group of identities.

State Service - Provides temporary storage of user session data for Office SharePoint Server components.

Visio Graphics Service – Helps to view Visio diagrams in a web browser.

Word Conversion Service Application – Allows converting documents into different formats.

I hope this will give you a basic overview about SSP repalcement