Sharing My Point! Technical tips by Mike Henthorn.

Event ID 6872, error with incoming e-mail drop folder

2012-01-10T15:01:00.001-08:00

As you work to clean up your farm, one step is to review your Health errors and Windows Event logs.

ISSUE --

As you are going through your logs you start seeing errors stating that the incoming e-mail drop folder is not configured. Your environment is setup as.

Environment: SharePoint 2010 SP1 June 2011 CU.
You have implemented incoming email following this technet article.
You have e-mails making it to your libraries.

You know you have followed the appropriate steps, permissions and it makes it to the correct location. No additional errors are being seen in the ULS logs, or at least none that I could find.

Why are this error still showing up?

We are receiving the following error when processing incoming email.

Full error message:

User: domain\sp_farmadmin
Computer: SPAPP1.domain.com
Description:
The incoming e-mail drop folder is not configured. If automatic settings are being used, confirm that the SMTP service is running.

Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation" Guid="{6FB7E0CD-52E7-47DD-997A-241563931FC2}" />
<EventID>6872</EventID>
<Version>14</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>4</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x4000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-01-10T12:11:38.492769800Z" />
<EventRecordID>35421</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID="{3FD14B9B-4065-40CE-A347-7184796AC7EF}" />
<Execution ProcessID="64276" ThreadID="65616" />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>SPAPP1.xtra.com</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-21-2133076291-787694070-318601546-124014" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="string0">The incoming e-mail drop folder is not configured. If automatic settings are being used, confirm that the SMTP service is running.</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

I looked at the the following and verified that these all were done. Check.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff453924.aspx

Nothing was changing, we still get these errors.

RESOLUTION --

After further research on TechNet Forums I found this similar issue.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010setup/thread/7cf5d5e8-e5e4-48c5-b4ad-b029cacf9815

Taking this new information we deployed the October CU to our Test farm and this Event no longer appears in our Event logs. We are now scheduling this to go into production, cross your fingers.

To download the October 2011 CU, go here:

Thanks for the community and hope this helps you!

Using Managed Paths to create root Site Collection(s) – Option 2

2012-01-03T18:45:00.001-08:00

In my previous post on Creating Site collections at the root of your Web Application, we did this with the knowledge that you would not be hosting a site at the root (http://extranet.company.com), this provided us with the ability to have clean site addresses with out the breakout need of a managed path like, /sites/ or /personal/ or even /dept/.

But what if we did need to have a site at the root and at “/”. What now?

Well this is where being a SharePoint admin keeps you employed.. lol

In the previous post we removed the “Explicit inclusion” from our managed path. This is what breaks the ROOT site collection as SharePoint won’t serve up the root site collection with it set as a “Wildcard inclusion”, but it will server up anything underneath it. This means we have to go back to our managed paths and delete the “Wildcard inclusion” off of the root and change it back to an “Explicit inclusion”.
Remove the “Wildcard inclusion” “/”.
Add the “Explicit inclusion” for “/” back.
Now what do we do? This is where the management becomes more of a concern. We need to identify what new managed paths are that need to be defined for each of our our new site collection.
Go create a managed path for the new site collection with an “Explicit inclusion”. Example I named mine mikerules and miketest2.
Now lets create the new Site Collection.
1. Go to Application Management
2. Select Create Site Collection under the Site Collection Section
3. From the Drop down select the correct Web Application
4. Provide it a name
5. Under Web Site Address select the Drop Down and you will now be able to select “/”.
6. Put in the Name of your new site collection.
9. Pick your Template
10. Select Ok
11. Complete.
  1. Now you can create sites under the root.
If we test both the root and new site collection, we will find that they both now work.

Now lets use PowerShell to create the new “Explicit inclusion” Managed paths that we are looking to add

Open PowerShell (SharePoint 2010 Management Shell).
The PowerShell command to create a Managed Path: (Always run as Administrator)
- New-SPManagedPath
- Our New Managed Path “MikeRules”.
- New-SPManagedPath MikeRules –WebApplication https://portal.companyname.com/ –Explicit
- the – Explicit is what’s necessary to create a site on the root and have it render.
Look at you managed paths and you will see your new “MikeRules” Explicit inclusion managed path.

This method will now allow you to have Both the Root the Site Collection Managed path rendering at the same time. Remember that you now have to manage how and who can create these site collections and you need to know what name they will be each time.

Hope this helps.

Using Managed Paths to create Site Collection(s) at the root level of your Web Application – Option 1

2012-01-03T14:26:00.001-08:00

Do you always want to use /sites/ or /personal/ to create your site collections? Would you ever wanted to create a site collection off the root of your site such as http://extranet.company.com/PartnerName, only to find you can’t?

Well, If you don’t want your new site collection to be under /sites/ and need the ability to put in under (/).

Can it be done, why yes it can, but.. If you want to go down this road, you will NOT be able to have a site collection that resolves at the main root (http://extranet.company.com). This is a good approach depending on your particular requirements.

Here are steps that you can follow to update your managed paths:

First you will see that when trying to add a new site collection you are limited to only the managed paths available.
To add a managed path you can select “Define Managed Paths” from the link in the Create Site Collection screen, but you need to know what you are doing.
Or, you can go to Application Management, “Manage web applications”, Select the Web Application of your Choice and then select Managed Paths in the ribbon.
Going to the managed paths page, we see something like this.
By default, SharePoint 2010 adds a (root) “Explicit inclusion” to you managed paths for each Web Application created.
First step is to delete this “Explicit inclusion” from your Managed Paths.
Next, Create the new “Wildcard inclusion” / .. (select Add Path)
Now your new Path is available.
Now lets create the new Site Collection.
1. Go to Application Management
2. Select Create Site Collection under the Site Collection Section
3. From the Drop down select the correct Web Application
4. Provide it a name
5. Under Web Site Address select the Drop Down and you will now be able to select “/”.
6. Put in the Name of your new site collection.
8. Pick your Template
9. Select Ok
10. Complete.
Now you can create sites under the root “/” .
But remember, this approach leaves you with no main root site collection but allows you to easily manage site collections at the root “/” without having to have a managed path for each new site collection.
See Blog post Option 2 if you need both the root and “/”.

Hope this helps.

Session State Activation Steps

2011-12-14T13:49:00.001-08:00

Working with one of our developers, he has a webpart that requires session state. After looking for this command with PowerShell, I found others using “Enable-SPSessionStateService -Defaultprovision”. After running this, we still had issues with adding the webparts to an SharePoint.

The following was our error message. “System.Web.SessionStateModule” or custom session state missing a section in the web config.

Step 1:

Enable-SPSessionStateService –Defaultprovision
Note: Do this on each server in the farm.

Step 2:

Go to your Web Application in INETPUB (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\newsite.company.com80) Web.Config
Find "enableSessionState" change from false to true.

<pages enableSessionState="true" enableViewState="true" enableViewStateMac="true" validateRequest="false" pageParserFilterType="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationRuntime.SPPageParserFilter, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" asyncTimeout="7">

Note: Do this for each Web Application that you want this functionality to be available.

Step 3:

Next is to ensure that the “remove” and “add” lines exist in the modules section for Session is present.

Search For: <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
Verify the following exists: (Add if missing)

Between <modules..

<remove name="Session" />
<add name="Session" type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule" preCondition="" />

../modules> End of..

Note: Do this for each Web Application that you want this functionality to be available.

Why cant this just be as easy as just running a command.

Event ID 7043 - TaxonomyPicker.aspx

2011-12-14T06:00:00.001-08:00

Problem: On SharePoint 2010 you may run into the following error (Has been here since Beta).

Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed: Could not load type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.TaxonomyPicker' from assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.

It looks like this in your Application Event Log:

Resolution: You will want to rename "TaxonomyPicker.ascx" to "TaxonomyPicker.ascx_broken" so SharePoint does not try to recompile it each time the AppPool is started.

EDIT File Location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES
Note: This user control is never used within SharePoint and serves no real purpose.

There have been multiple posts on ways this can be fixed but the above seems to be the only way that it does not come back.

Thanks for stopping by.

SharePoint 3rd Party Content Migration Tools

2011-11-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

List of 3rd party Migration Tools.

XAVOR - http://www.xavor.com

1. SHAREPOINT MIGRATOR (XSPM) - Migrate data from WSS 3.0 to MOSS 2007, WSS 3.0 (Platform A) to WSS 3.0 (Platform B) or MOSS 2007 (Platform A) to MOSS 2007/2010 (Platform B).

Quest - http://www.quest.com/

1. Migration Manager for SharePoint - For Migrating SPS 2003 content to SharePoint 2007 Platform
2. File Migrator -For migrating content from file shares to SharePoint 2007 platform
3. Public Folder Migrator - For bulk migrations of Exchange Public Folder content to SharePoint 2003 or 2007 platform
4. Notes Migrator- For migrating Notes, QuickPlace and Domino.Doc application content to SharePoint
5. Office 365 Migration Suit- For migrating SharePoint Content from on-premise environments to the cloud

Tzunami - http://www.tzunami.com/

1. TD File Shares Migration -Migrate folder structures and files from any file share (local or network drive) to SharePoint 2007 Platform

2. TD SPS 2003 Migration - For migrating content from SPS 2003 to SharePoint 2007 Platform

3. TD SPS 2001 Migration - For migrating SharePoint 2001 to SharePoint 2007 Platform

4. TD Exchange Migration - For migrating Exchange Public Folders to SharePoing 2007 List and Libraries

5. TD LiveLink Migration - For migrating Livelink content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

6. TD DocuShare Migration - For migrating Xerox DocuShare content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

7. TD Documentum Migration - For migrating EMC Documentum Content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

8. TD eRoom Migration -For migrating migrating EMC eRoom content into SharePoint 2007 products

9. TD Hummingbird Migration - For migrating Hummingbird Document Management content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

10. TD Hyperwave Migration - For migrating Hyperwave content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

11. TD Aqualogic Migration - For migrating migrating AquaLogic Interaction content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

12. TD Lotus Notes Migration - For migrating Lotus Notes databaser and applications into SharePoint 2007 Platform

Metavis - http://www.metavistech.com/

1. ECM Migrator

SharePoint to SharePoint

eRoom to SharePoint

Livelink to SharePoint

MetaLogix - http://www.metalogix.net/

1. SharePoint Site Migration Manager- For migrating content from SPS 2003 to SharePoint 2007 Platform

2. Web Content Migration Manager for SharePoint - For migrating content from various below listed platforms to SharePoint 2007:

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002

Third-party enterprise WCM Systems such as Interwoven, Stellent, Vignette, RedDot, Percussion, and Tridion

All HTTP-accessible, home-grown, static, and dynamic websites

Documentum eRoom calendars, databases, file, and files with versions

3. FileShare Migration Manager for SharePoint - For migrating content from below listed platforms to SharePoint 2007,

Network File Shares

Personal drives

All web-based intranet and extranet document repositories

Enterprise File Sharing and Document Management Systems including: eRoom, Documentum, and Lotus Notes

4. SharePoint Migration Manager for eRoom - For migrating content from Documentum eRoom to SharePoint 2007

AvePoint - http://www.avepoint.com/

1. Doc Ave SharePoint Migrator - For migrating content from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007 platform

2. DocAve Public Folder Migrator - For migrating content from Exchange folders to their mapped SharePoint List and Libraries in SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007 platform

3. DocAve File System Migrator - For transfering the documents from traditional Windows-based file systems or networked file shares to online document libraries in SharePoint 2007

4. DocAve Documentum eRoom Migrator - For transfering the collaborative workspaces and document libraries from EMC Documentum eRoom to SharePoint 2007

5. AvePoint Website Migrator - For migrating the web content into SharePoint 2007 Platform

6. DocAve LiveLink Migrator - For migrating from Open Text LiveLink to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and WSS v3.0

Kapow Technologies - http://www.kapowtech.com/

1. Content Migration Module - The module acts much as an ETL tool, but performs the entire data extraction and transformation at the web GUI level. Kapow can load content directly into a destination application or into standard XML files for import by standard content importing tools. Therefore, any content can be migrated and synchronized to and between any web based CMS, CRM, Project Management or ERP system. Standard adaptors exist for major Content Management Systems e.g. EMC/Documentum, Interwoven, SDL Tridion, Oracle Stellent, IBM FileNet, FatWire,Vignette, SiteCore,CoreMedia, and Joomla. CRM systems supported include salesforce.com, Siebel and Oracle CRM, NetSuite, etc

Vamosa - http://www.vamosa.com/

1. Vamosa Solution for SharePoint 2007 - Migrate content from multiple sites, including all other content management systems and older versions of SharePoint and Microsoft Content Management Server to SharePoint 2007 platform

2. Vamosa Content Migrator - For migrating content from any source system to any target system

VitalPath - http://www.vital-path.com/

1. Path Builder- A Vendor-neutral solution communicates at the API level, unifying all aspects of different content management systems provides Repository consolidation services

2. Path Builder for SharePoint - Integrates more than 40 content repositories with SharePoint

Proventeq - http://www.proventeq.com/

1. Proventeq - Content Migration Suite - End-to-end solution that can migrate web content, documents and other digital assets from a wide range of sources (structured or otherwise) to a variety of target Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems

Will add more as I come across them, please let me know if you have any that I should add.

SharePoint (Foundation, Project, Server) 2010 SP1 & June CU 2011

2011-06-29T22:02:00.001-07:00

Hello all, busy day in SharePoint land today. First the June 2011 CU came out yesterday, then last evening SP1 was released. From all the different Twitter conversation on how best to deploy SP1, between Todd Klindt and Spence Harbar and others, deploying the Foundation SP1/CU prior to the Server SP1/CU was the winner. I have outlined my steps below.

Tonight on my UAT environment I followed the below steps to update my environment so I can start testing out the new functionality.

First install all SP1’s before installing the June 2011 CU’s. From what I gather, all CU’s starting with August 2011 will require SP1, so get it in now.

First download all the bits and save them to a location accessible by your SharePoint server(s). (Links next to each product below, note, I have Office Web Applications 2010 & Project Server 2010 integrated into my farm and that info on the patches is included below, if you are not using OWA or Project Server 2010 just skip that step).

Microsoft Resources:

Complete list of all SP1 downloads: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2532120

Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers, and Related Products (CU’s): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee748587.aspx

Microsoft SharePoint SP1 (Foundation, Server, OWA & Project) (install order)

SharePoint Foundation 2010 (KB2460058) http://SP2010FoundationSP1
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2460045) http://SP2010ServerSP1
Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 (KB2460073) http://OfficeWebAppSP1
Microsoft Project Server 2010 (KB2460047) http://ProjectServer2010SP1

As usual, Run Through PowerShell: Run: PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait –force

Patching with SP1 went very smoothly, Farm is up and “Check product and patch installation status” shows “Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is installed (14.0.6029.1000). Now on to deploying the June 2011 CU’s.

June 2011 CU (install order)

SharePoint Foundation 2010, June 2011 CU: http://SP2010FoundationJune2011CU
SharePoint Server 2010 June 2011 CU: http://SP2010ServerJune2011CU
Project Server 2010 June 2011 CU: http://ProjectServer2010June2011CU

After installing the CU packages, you may be prompted for a reboot of your Server! Please don’t forget to run the PSConfig Wizard anyway, even after reboot so that all updates are applied completely and successful!

As usual, Run Through PowerShell: PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

During the PSConfig, applying the June CU’s showed that Task 3 of 4 completed 100% but Failed to start the “ProfileSyncronizationServiceInstance”.. Message stated to “Start it manually”.. Big gulp here, as Profile service has been so friendly in the past..

So after going to Services on server and selecting start (fill out password again) and selecting ok, I quickly jump to Server Manager and watched the Services.. One at a time the Forefront services stopped and…started back up.. WOW, in a very timely manor the Profile services were back online!

Now that my Farm is up, let’s go to CA and “Check product and patch installation status” shows “Hotfix for Microsoft Office Server (KB2536599) is installed (14.0.6105.5000).

In less than 2 hours I am all patched up and ready to go.

Good luck and thanks to all that provide exceptional guidance in the SharePoint community.

Happy patching!

Multiple Authentication (login) Prompts - Office Products with SharePoint

2011-02-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

How to remove the annoying multiple authentication prompts when opening Office documents from SharePoint (2007 or 2010), here are 3 items that will accomplish this task.

Browser configuration (IE)
Authentication requests when you open Office Documents
The one off quick fix (add a network location)

Item 1 is necessary for all SharePoint efforts, let’s get started.

1 - Browser configuration

When using Kerberos with Windows Authentication on a Domain, you need to have your site added to the browser’s “Local Intranet Zone” (Trusted works but “Local” Should be used and managed with GP), this allows windows to look at who is logged in and automatically sign you in after the first time in most cases. Most company’s handle this through Group Policies for all users. Also many companies do this already for their main domain. This way, all subdomains from company.com is recognized as a Local Intranet site.

Best Practice: Use the following through GP: [*.companyname.com] (Match( FQDN) Fully Qualified Domain Name)

Manually -

Open IE, Security, Local Intranet, Advanced.

Enter your FQDN (*.domain.net) (save out)

Also, the browsers following settings need configured. Medium-low is the default IE 7 & 8 setting.

Remember, using GP and adding to “Local Intranet Zone” usually means you are aware of this site and it is trusted in the organization.

**Troubleshooting note: I have seen users after this is set, provide the wrong ID or Password 3 or more times when trying to access SharePoint site, in these cases their IE browser goes to a blank screen, they cannot access the site. Go back into the above settings and temporally change to “Prompt for user name and password” after you are logged in, change it back.

2 - Authentication requests when you open Office Documents

Consider the following scenario.

On a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows 7, you do not configure a proxy in Windows Internet Explorer.

You use Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDav) to access a fully qualified domain names (FQDN) site

In this scenario, you are prompted to enter your credentials, even though the user account that you are using has sufficient permission to access this site.

For example, when you open a Microsoft Office file from a Microsoft Office SharePoint site by using 2007 Microsoft Office on a Windows Vista-based client computer that has no proxy configured, you are prompted for authentication.

Note MS states this problem does not occur on a Windows XP-based computer. (I have seen it cause the same behavior on XP even though MS says it does not)

Important This hotfix is included in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or a later service pack. However, you must still configure the “AuthForwardServerList” registry entry.

Note
For the full detail on this issue you can review the following Microsoft Knowledgebase articles.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/838028

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2019105

Resolution: First make sure you have completed the Browser configurations above.

After you apply this hotfix listed in the above Note (XP, Vista), you have to create a registry entry.

Note This registry entry is already in Windows 7, but you also need to configure the Value data for all 3 OS’s.

To do this, follow these steps: Create the following on all OS’s, (for XP, Vista, W7).

Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

Key-> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters

Example of registry location

Right click on the Parameters key, On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.

Type “AuthForwardServerList”, and then press ENTER.

Select the new Multi-String, Right click, On the Edit menu, click Modify.

In the Value data box, type the URL of the server that hosts the Web share, and then click OK.

Just add your address: Examples

Select Ok, Exit Registry Editor.

Note: You have to restart the WebClient service after you modify the registry for this change to take effect. A restart of the PC will also suffice.

What has just taken place:

After this registry entry is created, the WebClient service will read the entry value. If the client computer tries to access a URL that matches any of the expressions in the list, the user credential will be sent successfully to authenticate the user, even if no proxy is configured.

3 – The one off quick fix (add a network location)

If you cannot make the above changes but are tired of the prompts, the following is a quick way to pass your credentials so that Office thinks you are already connected.

To accomplish this; add the site you are trying to access to your windows explorer as a “Network Location”, and save “my credentials”, this way I bypass all prompt’s, at least till the next time I change my password, then this connection needs updated.

To map a Network Share”

Right Click on my computer, Select Add a network location:

Add network location Wizard is opened:

Select Next ->

Where do you want to create this network location?

Highlight Choose a custom network location, Next ->

Specify the location of your website:

Example: https://portal.companyname.com

You will be prompted for you credentials, at this time, supply your domain\username and then your password. Before selecting enter or ok, CHECK the box to remember my Credentials. This connection will be good for as long as your password is the same, if and when you change it, you will need to update this connection.

Name the connection what you want to remember it as, select next ->

You connection is completed, select finish.

Look under your computer and you will see your new connection.

Now when you access this site, and open a document, you will not be challenged for your logon.

Complete.

Hope this helps eliminate your annoying issues.

Configuring Advanced Search to use Managed Properties

2010-12-17T08:59:00.001-08:00

Step 1: Create managed properties

Use the following procedure to create managed properties.

Go to SharePoint Central Administration. Select Application Management, and in the left hand bar Under Shared Services Administration click on your Shared Services website (e.g. SharedServices1)
On the Shared Services Administration page, in the Search section, click Search settings.
On the Configure Search Settings page, in the Crawl Settings section, click Metadata property mappings. Check to see if your property already exisits. if so, you are good to go. if not, proceed to step 4.
On the Metadata Property Mappings page, click New Managed Property.
On the New Managed Property page, in the Name and type section, in the Property name box, type the name of the managed property you want to create.
In the Description box, type a description for this managed property.
Under The type of information in this property, select a property type.
In the Mappings to crawled properties section, select one of the following:
- Include values from all crawled properties mapped. Select this option if you want values from all crawled properties to be mapped. A query for a property in a document in which all crawled properties are mapped returns a result if any of the crawled properties that are mapped match the query.
- Include values from a single crawled property based on the order specified. Select this option if you want only a single value mapped. When multiple crawled properties are mapped to a managed property, the one that is chosen will be the first in the list that has a value for a given document. You can reorder the list by using the Move up and Move down buttons.
If you selected Include values from all crawled properties mapped, skip to step 12.
Click Add Mapping to add a mapping to the list.
The Crawled property selection dialog box appears. Configure the settings as follows:

On the Select a category menu, click either All categories or a specific type of document category (for example, Office or SharePoint).
In Select a crawled property, select a crawled property to map to the managed property that you are adding.
Because the list of crawled properties is likely to be long, you can type the name (or the first part of the name) of the property that you are looking for in the Crawled property name box and then click Find.
Click OK.

Repeat steps 9 through 10 for each additional crawled property that you want to map to this managed property.
On the New Managed Property page, in the Use in scopes section, select the Allow this property to be used in scopes check box if you want this managed property to be available for defining scopes.
Click OK.

Step 2: Customizing Advanced Search

Once this is done we can now proceed to step #2 which is to modify the Advanced Search page so users will see the property. Here is a screen shot with the Advanced Search page, at the bottom you can see that you can search based on properties.

But by default only the standard SharePoint properties are available in the search as can be seen in this screen shot.

In my case I wanted to add a property called "Defendant". This is a Site Column associated to my Liability Document Library where my Custom Content Type called "Liability Library" has many Site Columns. In order to do this I needed to modify the XML of the Advanced Search Web Part.

To do this.

Go to the Advanced Search Web page.
From the Site Actions menu select Edit Page.
Select "Modify Shared Web part" from the Edit menu on the search web part.
Expand the Properties section and then click on the XML in the Properties box. You should be able to expand the view of the XML by clicking on the ... button.
Add the property you added in the MetaData Mapping above to both the PropertDef and PropertyRef sections of the XML.

There will be 5 Entries (6 if you want it to be part of all results).

These sections cover the Advanced Search for Result types: "All Results, Documents, Word Documents, Excel Documents, PowerPoint Presentations".
Example: <ResultType DisplayName="Documents" Name="documents">
Note: Adding New ResultTypeDisplayName example "PDF" would add a new Result type item.

1 in PropertyDef

<PropertyDef Name="Defendant" DataType="text" DisplayName="Defendant"/>

4 in PropertyRef

<PropertyRef Name="Defendant" />

This is the XML with my additions:

Once this is done and the web part is saved, you should be able to go back to the Advanced Search page and see your property in the list of properties available for search.

Now you can should be able to search based on metadata in your custom column.

Configure Adobe PDF iFilter for SharePoint Server 2010

2010-12-15T14:00:00.001-08:00

Steps to install and configure PDF iFilter on SharePoint Server 2010.

For the majority of my Client I will implement (Free) Adobe iFilter (x64), unless there is a need for high number of PDF’s and the client wants to purchase FoxIT.

**See how to do 2007 in my past post.

Apart from updating the registry settings required to update GUID for .pdf, remaining steps are similar to those of 2007.

Install and configure Adobe’s PDF iFilter on SharePoint Server 2010.

Install Adobe PDF iFilter 9.0 (x64 bit) from here.
1. This only needs done on the SharePoint Servers that will run the Search Service (also install on your failover or backup server).
Download Adobe’s PDF ICON file from pdficon.gif (<-Opens in new window, then right click on icon and save)

Do this on ALL SharePoint Servers
Copy Your new PDF ICON (pdficon.gif) to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\”

Add the following entry in docIcon.xml file.
1. Do this on ALL SharePoint Servers
2. Location: “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML\”
  - **Make a backup of the DOCICON.xml file before modifying.
3. Locate the <ByExtension> section
  - Scroll down through the Mapping Key= “alphabetically” to the “P’s”
  - Be careful here, additional spaces added can mess up other ifilters.
  - Insert the following new key.
  - <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon.gif"/>
Now let’s add the PDF file type to SharePoint, on the Manage File Type page under your Search Service Application.
1. Go to Central Admin
2. Manage Service Applications (Under Application Management)
3. Select your “Search Service Application”
4. Next, on the left navigation, Under Crawling, Select File Types
5. Review MS file types and make sure you still see that they have an Icon associated (if missing then you docIcon.xml is the problem)
6. Select “New File Type”
7. On this screen, add the “pdf” extention and select ok
8. Look down your list, you should now see your file type.
9. This step is complete.
Now to edit the “Registery”

Do this on the SharePoint Application Server that will be executing your crawls.
Open registry by typing regedit on the Start

Navigate to the following location’s.

“\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension”

“\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\”

Right-click Extension, a menu will appear.
Click New--> Key to create a new key for .pdf. See screen shot below:
Enter “.pdf” and save key.
Now add the following GUID in the default value as shown in the figure below.
Right click on Default and select Modify
Add this GUID as your Value data: {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}
1. Leave the brackets, will look like this.
Select ok.
This step complete.

Restart the SharePoint Server Search 14 & SharePoint Foundation Search V4 service.
1. Start, Administrative Tools, Service
2. Restart “SharePoint Server Search 14 & SharePoint Foundation Search V4”
Perform a “FULL crawl” to include PDF files.
1. Search Service Application
2. Content Sources
3. Select your Local SharePoint source, right click and on the drop down select “Start Full Crawl”.
PDF iFilter is successfully configured.
1. Now you can search for the content of PDF file.
2. Complete
Troubleshooting “SharePoint Unable to crawl content of specific type of files even with correct IFilter installed”. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2018558
Next, Download and install “Microsoft Office 2010 Filter pack” Just download, and run it on your same servers as you did for the above.
Remember, SharePoint Server 2010 provides out of the box search support for .ZIP files.

How to Remove a Bad Web Part from a SharePoint page

2010-12-12T17:33:00.001-08:00

Symptoms

If a Web Part is not properly deployed or if a user closes the web part, the page may fail to display when you add the Web Part to a Web Part Page or the load on the page may cause the page to crash.

Resolution

In such situations, as was the case with SharePoint 2003, 2007 and still with 2010, you can append “?Contents=1” to the Web Part Page’s URL.

For example, http://portal.companyname.com/default.aspx?contents=1. The Web Part Maintenance Page will displayed and from there you can delete the offending Web Part(s).

SharePoint 2010 Add-ons to go..

2010-09-15T12:30:00.001-07:00

Here are a few nice add-ons you can use in your deployments, most are from CodePlex.

Administration:

Projects:

Web Parts:

Training:

Productivity Hub Solutions

PowerShell:

SharePoint Admin Tools (Free)

2010-09-14T18:14:00.001-07:00

Here is a nice list of Administrator tools that have been found to work great in SharePoint deployments, upgrades and administration.

Idera SharePoint performance monitor is a free tool that enables easy monitoring of critical performance counters for SharePoint, IIS and Windows Operating Systems.

Monitors SharePoint performance in real-time
Easy to read graphical console
Sends email alerts when issues arise
Runs in your system tray

Great little tool, SharePoint Log Viewer. The most advanced and easy to use viewer of MOSS/SharePoint/WSS/Foundation ULS logs located on Codeplex.

The SharePoint Feature Administration and Clean Up Tool which you can download from the Codeplex site, find Feature Definitions across Site Collections and Sub sites. Locate any faulty features and provide you with the ability to remove them altogether. Great tool for preparing for upgrades or environment replication.

Clicking on the Find Faulty Feature in Farm should hopefully return the following “No Faulty Feature was found” message.

SharePoint Manager 2007 can also be downloaded from the Codeplex Site and it helps you understand the SharePoint farm topology.

SharePoint Manager 2010 can be downloaded from the Codeplex. The SharePoint Manager 2010 is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property. It also enables you to change the properties.

Bamboo SharePoint Analyzer from Bamboo Solutions. Similar to that of SharePoint Manager 2007, this utility also does a great job is listing everything you need to know about your SharePoint environment and your entire farm topology. This is a free download and should be installed as part of any SharePoint Farm deployment.

These tools will also greatly assist in replicating your environments for your SharePoint 2007/2010 deployments.

The “SharePoint Service manager” let's you start and stop all the SharePoint 2010 services provided by on Codeplex. (SharePoint 2010)

Office Web Application Event Errors: Event ID 3760 & Event ID 5214

2010-07-14T11:58:00.001-07:00

Cannot Open Office Documents after OWA has been installed and configured.

Error message of this type showing an Id but no other general errors

After multiple troubleshooting attempts an error showed up in the Windows Application Event Viewer

Event ID: 3760:

Fist I looked at the Account in SQL and it did not have any access to the portal content db, my first thought was that the Farm account should be elevating the services account to the proper level, but it looks to not be working like that.

My first attempt was to provide read access for the services application to the portal DB.

Next Event ID 5214 Error message: (Read was not enough, but it helped me know that this was an access/permission issue.

So, I quickly provided the sp_servicesapps account Owner access against that content DB, surprise, that was it, everything was working.

With that said, I did not think giving that account DBOwner was the correct level of permissions when all it needs to do is execute a get command. So I changed the level of rights back to be a DB_DataWriter and tested it again, it worked.

So a quick review:

Service Account used for the OWA services (PowerPoint, Excel, Word Viewer need to be able to execute a SQL command against the Web Application DB that you are trying to open/view your Office document on.

Example: Portal site http://contoso.com has a Content DB of wss_content_contoso_db

Application Pool account: domain\sp_portal

Your Service application is using a separate account of domain\sp_servicesapps

This account needs at least DB_DataWriter access to the wss_content_contoso_db to be able to open Office Documents.

Hope this helps you overcome this issue, if you have any feedback on this or a better resolution please let me know, thanks

Install SharePoint 2010 Beta using local computer accounts

2009-11-19T20:42:00.001-08:00

Are you looking to Configure SharePoint 2010 and you would like to use your full SQL 2008/R2 instead of SQL Express? If you select the Complete install option for your build and you are trying to use your local computer account instead of a Domain account, you will have to use PowerShell to complete this step.

When installing SharePoint 2010 the main install will complete no problem. Issue comes when you run SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard and try and use your local account to create the farm.

Configuration Wizard with local account.

Results in the following error:

When you install SharePoint 2010 you will also have a SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (PowerShell Cmdlets) installed and located under Start All Programs in the SharePoint 2010 folder.

Launch the SharePoint 2010 management shell, we will use the “New-SPConfigurationDatabase” command to allow us to specify a none domain credential for the farm while configuring the base setup. Type the command at the cursor and press enter.

Fill in each when you are prompted, after you complete these steps (will take a few min to provision) you will be able to validate the farm has been created by look at SQL, you will find a new configuration database and an admin content database (you will see that the new DB includes the GUID).

Next start SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard to complete the installation, you will be prompted to Modify the server farm settings, select do not disconnect from the farm and next through the wizard.

Configuration successfully completed.

Clicking Finish will launch central admin website, after agreeing to report back customer experiences to Microsoft you get your first look at SharePoint 2010 central admin. Prompted to login and with the local account I am in.

SharePoint 2010 is now installed, you will now be prompted by CA asking you how you want to finish configuring your farm, you can use the wizard or select to manually configure later? I'll select the wizard so Walk me through the settings for this example.

With this being my Demo,tual I will also use the local admin account that I am using for the farm account (MS2010-BETA\Administrator).

I am also selecting all Services so I have them available to me.

Next - Processing as it configures all services (and creates the DB) for each.

So the processing ran into errors.

I read these as we are not within a Domain and do not have AD? Not sure but proceeding.

Select next.

Now you are asked to create you first site collection.

I will use a Team site for my first site collection. Select Ok

Complete, view What's been configured. Select finish.

Complete, you are now in CA. As a note, during this process I have been using Firefox 3.5 web browser, pretty cool.

My new Team site.

Up and running! Good luck.

Microsoft Office 2010 “Beta” Products available to the Public!

2009-11-19T19:00:00.001-08:00

The Beta release of Office 2010 Product stack marks the closing of the Technical Preview program. Going forward, please visit http://office.com/beta for product downloads, articles, product information and links to forums related to Office 2010. There, you can download and install the latest pre-release version of Office 2010 client software and experience the exciting new features we have added to server products such as SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Server 2010.

You can also visit TechNet Forums, where you can post questions, comments, and thoughts about your experience with Office 2010 Beta products, at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums

The complete list of Office Beta bits available and the URL to the downloads:

Office SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 Beta (formerly WSS)
Office SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta
Office Business Contact Manager 2010 Beta
FAST Search Server SharePoint 2010 Beta
Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
Office Project Server 2010 Beta
Office Project Professional 2010 Beta - x86, x64
- Project 2010 Reference: Software Development Kit
Office Search Server Express 2010
Office SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta – x86, x64
Office Web Applications 2010 Beta
Office Visio Premium 2010 Beta – x86, x64
- Visio 2010 (Beta) Viewer
- Visio 2010 (Beta): Software Development Kit
Microsoft® Silverlight™ 4 Software Development Kit Beta
Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1

Thank you Microsoft Office 2010 Team!

October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

2009-11-18T20:49:00.001-08:00

The server-packages of October 2009 Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. October 2009 Cumulative Updates introduce more rules on Pre-Upgrade Checker, which can help customers to prepare the upgrade of their SharePoint farm to SharePoint 2010.

Download

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974989
Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974988

Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974989
Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974988

Installation Recommendation

Please note: Start from April 2009 Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.

The version of content databases should be “12.0.6520.5000” after successfully applying these updates.

SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 released to TechNet & MSDN subscribers 11/16/09

2009-11-16T19:06:00.001-08:00

Well today Microsoft has released Office SharePoint Foundation Server and Office SharePoint Server 2010 along with the remaining 2010 Product stack all available for download to TechNet & MSDN subscribers.

Keep in mind that these are all 64-bit only: The rest of the system requirements can be found here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx).

Visit the SharePoint 2010 TechCenter on Technet for all the documentation you need.

These are a few installation notes that you will want to be aware of.

Use the prerequisites installer to install the prerequisites. Don’t try to set things up manually, as you will forget a step, install a wrong version, forget to install a particular prerequisite, or otherwise mess up the installation.
- Server 2008 R2 Prerequisites
SQL must be running the the following:
1. Cumulative update package 3 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 or
2. Cumulative update package 2 for SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1
Setup will not run unless you have previously installed the following Server 2008 hotfix
1. For Windows Server 2008 with SP2, see FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=160770).
2. For Windows Server 2008 R2, see FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231) (Not yet available)
If you plan on running Access Web Services, it requires SQL Reporting Services to be installed, and it is MUCH easier to set up SQL Reporting Services integration with SharePoint if you install it BEFORE installing SharePoint (otherwise you’ll have to run through some manual configuration)

Final note: This is a beta and it is NOT the RTM version. Use it in a lab, use it in a test environment, do not use it in production. It is very unlikely that you will be able to upgrade it to the RTM version once it is released next year.

The complete list of Office Beta bits available:

Office SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 Beta (formerly WSS)
Office SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta
Office Business Contact Manager 2010 Beta
FAST Search Server SharePoint 2010 Beta
Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
Office Project Server 2010 Beta
Office Project Professional 2010 Beta - x86, x64
Office Search Server Express 2010
Office SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta – x86, x64
Office Web Applications 2010 Beta
Office Visio Premium 2010 Beta – x86, x64

Lots to learn, get started.

File upload issue with SharePoint and Server 2008..

2009-11-13T07:40:00.001-08:00

A few months ago I built out a new SharePoint 2007 SP2 environment for a client on Server 2008 SP2. We then migrated their content DB’s from their x86 32bit environment to this new x64 bit environment, this process went as advertised. The new environment was put in production and was working like a charm.

The issue reported was with uploading files.

First thing looked at was any size limitations on the files they were trying to upload. Looking at the base configurations for file upload it was set at the default of 50mb. This was tested by uploading a simple text file, worked fine. After working with the end users on the issue it was identified that they were uploading files over 30mb, seemed like anything under that size worked fine but over that it acted like the file was overly large and would time out..

Very frustrating, all configurations were fine, even increased timeout session through IIS and that did not fix the issue.

After making that frustrating call to MS and working through these same troubleshooting attempts the issue was identified.

It appears that Windows Server 2008 is the culprit.. MS has a Knowledgebase Article ID: 944981 that resolved this issue, lets go through these steps.

Here is the KB articles on this subject:

KB 944981 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/944981
KB 925083 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925083/
KB 942074 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942074/

The change required are all manual.

Make the change to the web.config here: “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\(for each web app)”.
Do this on all WFE’s, also make sure to increase the size accordingly in Central admin.

Thanks to Todd for his input to this post.

Steps for Setting up a Local SQL Alias on a SharePoint Farm

2009-11-13T07:36:00.001-08:00

Problem
If you have an old SQL database server and you want to change the server that the farm points to for all databases including the config database. All you have to do is install the SQL client tools on each server (Should already be there). Setup Alias's with cliconfg.exe and create an aliases that says the old server name = the new server name.

If you are using named instances this works as well. Just create an additional Alias with the \instance name included. You have to create two aliases when you have instance names involve because some SharePoint functions operate directly with the SQL server (Central Admin Functions), and some need the instance name specified.

Solution
By using an alias, we can keep the application configuration the same, but tell the operating system to look somewhere else for the database. One proviso is that once an alias is created, it is set at the operating system level. That means if we have two applications which connect to MySQLServer on that computer, once the alias is created, both will be re-pointed based on the alias. You can create an alias using one of two utilities:

SQL Server Client Network Utility
SQL Server Configuration Manager

Steps to setup a local SQL Alias on your SharePoint Environment

Perform following steps before creating your alias or moving the SharePoint databases to new SQL server instance.

Quiesce the SharePoint farm
Stsadm -o quiescefarm -maxduration 15 <15 = duration in min that you need to have DB unavailable>
This locks the Farm DB’s for a set period of time. for users who are accessing it, and will not allow any more to connect to the sites in the farm.
Backup all the database on old SQL server (OldServerA\i1) (i1=instance name)
Restore all the databases on new SQL server (NewServerB\i1)
Stop all the web sites in IIS Manager (Start/Stop each site that is related to this SharePoint farm)
If this is the entire farm, from a cmd use iisreset /stop
Stop the services on all the Web Front Ends (WFEs) and Application Servers (Start>Run > services.msc)
- Note, this is all services that can be used in your farm, note what state each of the following is in before disabling, this will be needed when you restart the services.
- Microsoft Single Sign-On service
- Office Document Conversions Launcher service
- Office Document Conversions Load Balancer service
- Office SharePoint Server Search service
- Windows SharePoint Services Administration service
- Windows SharePoint Services Search service
- Windows SharePoint Services Timer service
- Windows SharePoint Services Tracing service
- Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer service

Next create the alias on all the SharePoint WFEs and Application servers

Start > Run > cliconfg.exe
Note: you need to have admin rights to run SQL configuration manager command line tool

First enable what protocols you need:

Select TCP/IP Enable>>

Select Named Pipes Enable>>

Next, Click on Alias Tab>Click Add

For Server Alias: This is old Server Name

Network Libraries need to select TCP\IP

Connection Parameters: Server Name: This is new Server Name

Uncheck the Dynamically determine port

Click OK

Next, Click Add again

If you use Instance add a Second Entry

For Server Alias: This is old Server Name \ Old Instance Name

Network Libraries need to select TCP\IP

Connection Parameters: Server Name: This is new Server Name \ New Instance Name

Uncheck the dynamically determine port

Click OK

Final results will look similar to this.

Click Apply and OK

Restart the services (Start>Run>services.msc)

Remember what you had documented above and enable those that apply

Start the web sites (Start>intemgr>Start each site that related to SharePoint)

If you used the iisreset /stop above, now use iisreset /start

Make sure all Application Pools are up and running.

Look at the sites in IIS

Open Central Admin

Validate access to CA

Open Home Site

Validate access to all your sites.

Alias has been created.

One note, you can open SQL Server Configuration Manager and see your new alias.

Hope this helps.

Office SharePoint Server Event ID:6102 Launcher Service

2009-07-15T08:36:00.001-07:00

If you have Install Windows SharePoint Server and have a problem with LoadBalancer.RegisterLauncher Failed like below:

Event ID: 6102

Source: Office SharePoint Server

Type: Error

Description: LoadBalancer.RegisterLauncher failed: Unable to connect to the remote server.

Resolution:

Changing the service account of the Document Conversions Load Balancer Service
- Go to Central Administration/Operations/Security Configuration
- Select “Service Accounts"
- Select Component to update
  - Windows service dropdown
  - Select Document Conversion Load balancer Service
- Next, Select an account for this component
  - Predefined
    - Select Network Service
- Select ok

You should be good, follow up by checking your events.

Hope this helps.

SharePoint 2010 first look now available

2009-07-13T20:42:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has released a sneak peek into SharePoint 2010.

Go to http://sharepoint.microsoft.com and view the videos.

There are three different videos:

**about an hour of footage.

My first look at SharePoint 2010.

As they stress several times in the video, this is beta so there is a good possibility that some of the details will change between now and the release. Microsoft did not state what features will be available in the different versions of the product (WSS, SharePoint Standard, SharePoint Enterprise).

Some highlights from watching the footage:

Ability to perform an action on multiple documents at the one time (like check-out or delete)
Many UI operations are now asynchronous, so you can get on with the next task without waiting for your last command to complete
SharePoint gets the Ribbon - You can also turn off the Ribbon if you want to maintain the same UI as the current product
The text formatting toolbar no longer floats AND it stays visible at the top of the page. In the current version this toolbar disappears as you scroll down through your text.
Unattached Content Database Recovery. It should make disaster recovery a lot less of a disaster!
SharePoint Workspace - could this make Groove relevant again? It gives you the ability to take part of your site offline and sync back up when you are next connected?
Central Admin - logging to SQL AND can be extended to include your own log entries.
Browser support for Firefox and Safari

Next, changes coming to the wheel.

MOSS 2007	SharePoint 2010
Collaboration	Sites
Portal	Communities
Search	Search
ECM	Content
Business Process and Forms	Insights
Business Intelligence	Composites

I think these new sections are less intuitive than the past.

Sites
- Share information seamlessly and securely with employees, partners and customers.
Communities
- Empower people to work together in new way
Search
- Find people and information anywhere
Content
- Manage content from creation to disposal
Insights
- Make informed business decisions
Composites
- Rapidly create dynamic business solutions

There will be more to come, like a kid at Christmas…

Can’t wait to get my hands on this and kick the tires.

SharePoint Versions, Which Version are you!

2009-06-30T20:02:00.001-07:00

I've been asked several times, how do I know what version number I have, where do I find the version number?
Is my version WSS 3.0 or is it MOSS 2007? Is it Standard or Enterprise? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

So, to help you and help give me a place to look back at, here's a post I hope you find helpful.

Lets identify your version number you have installed

Option 1, In Central Admin, look at the Servers in Farm as it will tell you what version you have running.

Central Administration > Operations Tab > Servers in Farm

2. Option 2, In the GAC, right-click on the DLL's for SharePoint and examine the Version tab of the Properties of the DLL

What license level is your MOSS is install? Standard or Enterprise License?

To determine whether you are running Standard or Enterprise, you can look in Central Administration where you would convert the current license.
- Central Administration > Operations Tab > Convert License Type

Do I have WSS or MOSS?

To determine whether you have WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007, look to see what Services are running in Central Administration. You'll notice some services missing if you are running WSS, specifically Office SharePoint Sever Search.

Central Administration > Operations Tab > Services on Server
- WSS:

MOSS:

Do I have 32-bit or 64-bit SharePoint?

When you have a 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003, programs that are 32-bit are installed into a separate directory. So, you can take a look at the file directory to see where your SharePoint installation has been installed:

32-bit applications are in: \Program Files(x86)
64-bit applications are in: \Program Files

SharePoint 2007 Version's, KB Numbers: (UPDATED 9/10/2010)

This is the big list, take the information that you identified above and see where you are, then see where you need to go to be up to date.
MS Update Center for full WSS 3.0 & 2007 CU updates: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx
Note: Starting with the August 2010 Cumulative Update Service Pack 2 is a requirement.

Order	Platform	Update	KB info	Version #
24	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	August 2010 Cumulative update	KB2276472, KB2276474	12.0.0.6545
23	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	June 2010 Cumulative update	KB983310 ,KB983311	12.0.0.6539
22	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	April 2010 Cumulative update	KB981042, KB981043	12.0.0.6535
21	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	February 2010 Cumulative update	KB978395, KB978396	12.0.0.6529
20	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	December 09 Cumulative update	KB977026, KB977027	12.0.0.6524
19	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	October 09 Cumulative update	KB974988, KB974989	12.0.0.6520
18	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	August 09 Cumulative update	KB973399,KB973400	12.0.0.6514
17	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	June 09 Cumulative update	KB971537, KB971538	12.0.0.6510
16	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	April 09 Cumulative update	kb968850, kb968851	12.0.0.6504
15	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	SP2 (RTM to SP2)	kb953334, kb971620	12.0.0.6421
14	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	February 09 Cumulative update	kb961755, kb961756	12.0.0.6341
13	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	December 08 Cumulative update	KB960011, KB960010	12.0.0.6335
12	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	October Cumulative update	KB957691, KB957693, KB958567, KB958569	12.0.0.6332
11	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	August Cumulative update	KB956056, KB956057	12.0.0.6327
10	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	Infrastructure Update	KB951695, KB951297	12.0.0.6318
9	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	post-SP1 hotfix, WSSv3/MOSS Blackout rollup	KB948945, KB948957, KB948947	12.0.0.6303
8	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	post-SP1 hotfix (MOSS)	KB941274	12.0.0.6301
7	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	post-SP1 hotfix (WSS)	KB941422	12.0.0.6300
6	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	SP1 (RTM to SP1)	KB936988, KB936984	12.0.0.6219
5	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	October Security update	KB942017	12.0.0.6039
4	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	August 24, 2007 hotfix package		12.0.0.6036
3	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	RTM		12.0.0.4518
2	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	Beta 2 TR:		12.0.0.4407
1	MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0	Beta 2:		12.0.0.4017

Remember, if you are at RTM or even SP1, all you need to do is install SP2 to catch up!

Hope this helps!

SharePoint and AJAX, web.config oh my..

2009-06-30T13:56:00.001-07:00

Codeplex project to AJAX.

Codeplex had a project that you could run but it only worked in one server environments, not very efficient.
As of 6.25.09 this project has been updated, fixed that is, you can thank JD Wade for contacting the codeplex project creator and working out the bumps prohibiting this from working on multiple server environments.

Here is the link to download the updated project, what a time savior!

Codeplex Project: http://ajaxifymoss.codeplex.com/

Project Description
stsadm commands for adding/removing needed web.config entries to MOSS Web Applications for ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 extensions.
After getting tired of manually following all the steps on Mike Ammerlaan's blog for integrating ASP.NET AJAX with SharePoint 2007, I figured that using the SPWebConfigModification object to add and remove the needed entries to the web.config file would be a better way to go.
Check out the Releases tab to download the zip file with the WSS Solution Package and WSP deployment command. Once you deploy the WSP, you can use the new stsadm commands to add/remove the AJAX entries.

Make sure you install SharePoint Service Pack 1 and the ASP.NET AJAX Framework.

ASP.NET AJAX is not supported in SharePoint unless SP1 is installed.

Should loopback be disabled on your SharePoint server (2007 & 2010)

2009-06-29T05:48:00.001-07:00

This has come up so many times over the past few months that I wanted to ensure anyone standing up a server going forward implements this change.

KB896861: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861
KB926642: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642/

What is the issue?
Windows Server 2003 SP1 introduced a loopback security check. This feature is obviously also present in Windows Server 2008. The feature prevents access to a web application using a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) if an attempt to access it takes place from a machine that hosts that application. The end result is a 401.1 Access Denied from the web server and a logon failure in the event log.

Unfortunately 401.1 is not really helpful as this error code means there is a problem with the user credentials. Of course, the HTTP spec doesn’t know about security features in a vendor’s implementation so there can’t be a HTTP error code for such a feature. This can lead to much banging of the head on the desk. It’s one of numerous causes of the 401.1 which are nothing to do with invalid credentials (e.g. attempting to use Kernel Mode Authentication with domain account in IIS7).

What this means is that when you browse a SharePoint Web Application which uses a fully qualified domain name from a WFE in the farm you will get a 401.1. This is very annoying on a development box, or when testing locally, or in other SharePoint specific scenarios (more on those later).

Method 1: Specify host names (Production environments)

Note We recommend that you use this method for all your Production servers.
To specify the host names that are mapped to the loopback address and can connect to Web sites on your computer, follow these steps:

Step 1: (New Guidance 4-2-2010)

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanserver\Parameters
Right-click Parameters, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type DisableStrictNameChecking, and then press ENTER.
Right-click DisableStrictNameChecking, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the SERVER.

Step 2: (Reopen Regedit)

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0
Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER.
Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer (FQDM of each, example mhenthorn.com, http:// not needed), and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, no further steps needed.

Note: Anytime you create a new web application, come back to this entry and add the new FQDN.

Method 2: Disable the loopback check (Development environments or Troubleshooting)

Note: Use this only if you wish to disable Loopback all together, using this will allow you to access sites on the local server and is generally used for Development servers. This will need to be enabled and disabled as needed if you are troubleshooting in production and need to access the sites on the local server.

Follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer

Thanks to Bob Fox and Spencer Harbar on the updates, see more details at their following blogs posts.

Harbar.net = http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/07/02/disableloopbackcheck-amp-sharepoint-what-every-admin-and-developer-should-know.aspx
Bob Fox = http://www.spfoxhole.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=141

Complimentary Event: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 Key Benefits

2009-06-25T17:57:00.001-07:00

Hello all,

I will be Presenting on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 Key Benefits at the below event, hope to see you there.

What:
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP 2 Key Benefits
    Join us for an in-depth look at the new key benefits as a result of the new service pack. Topics that will be covered include Microsoft Forms Server, how MOSS & Microsoft Excel and Access Services fit together, Groove and more!
When:
    Friday, June 26th; 10am-noon
Where:
    Premier Knowledge Solutions Learning Campus
To Register:
    Visit www.clicktoattend.com and enter code 139072
Limit of two registrations per company, please

SharePoint Service Pack 2 Update

2009-06-25T17:47:00.001-07:00

The public update for the Service Pack 2 expiration date issue is now available for download.

The update can be applied before or after Service Pack 2 installation.

If the update is applied prior to installing Service Pack 2 it will prevent the expiration date from being improperly activated during installation of Service Pack 2, if it is applied after Service Pack 2 it will remove the expiration date incorrectly set during installation of Service Pack 2.

The update is applicable to all of the products that this issue affected (see the list in the KB linked below).

Installation instructions and download links for x86 and x64 are available in this KB.

KB Article: http ://tinyurl.com/kb971620

Download link:

32bit: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/F/5/2F51AB71-1325-49D2-9CB9-18DEC4780E99/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x86-glb.exe

64bit: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/B/B/5BBD34A9-C528-42B0-8A5F-9A8997B25C32/office2007-kb971620-fullfile-x64-glb.exe

Updating the existing Service Pack 2 download package with a new package that includes this fix will be released within the next 4-6 weeks.

Index PDF documents on SharePoint using Adobe PDF IFilter 9

2009-06-10T16:54:00.001-07:00

Using the SharePoint Search you can find documents based on their filename, metadata or content within a document. By default the content of Office documents is indexed by the SharePoint crawler, but PDF files are not crawled. To add support for PDF files you have to add an IFilter which the SharePoint crawler uses to read through PDF files and add the information to the search index.

To obtain an IFilter for PDF you can download the free PDF IFilter available from Adobe which does exactly what you need and what this post is all about.

Getting Adobe IFilter 9 to work with SharePoint

In earlier days you were required to download Adobe's IFilter as a separate file. Since Adobe 8.0 it is included within the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader products. The current version of Adobe Reader is 9.0 includes an IFilter that is compatible with the latest PDF implementations.

To enable PDF indexing use the following steps:

Download Adobe Reader 9.0, which includes IFilter 9.0.0.0, from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
Download the Acrobat PDF Picture, to display in front of PDF search result items, from http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html
Add the PDF file type to the Extensions List for WSS search by editing the registry
- Start regedit
- Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\{Random GUID}\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList
- Add PDF to the list as a new String Value. Use a new high value e.g. if 37 is the highest value, use "38" as the key with the value "pdf"
Add the Acrobat PDF picture to the SharePoint templates directory. Copy the Acrobat PDF picture called pdficon_small.gif in the 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\IMAGES folder, e.g. %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES.
Bind the Acrobat PDF picture to the PDF file type
- Open the 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\XML\DOCICON.XML file
- Find the <DocIcons.ByExtension> part
- Add the following mapping:
  <mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon_small.gif" OpenControl="" />
Change IFilter mapping in registry
- Start regedit
- Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
- Add (or modify) the .pdf key
- Add a Multi-String value with value {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} or modify if another GUID value already exists.
- Open the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\
- Add (or modify) the .pdf key
- Add a Multi-String value with value {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} or modify if another GUID value already exists.
Add the Adobe Reader folder to the environment path variable
- Right Click on My Computer
- Open Properties
- Open the Advanced tab
- Go to the Environment variables
- Edit the Path variable
- Add your Reader folder to the Path list, e.g. C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader
Restart the Search service by restarting your server or executing the following commands:
- Run: net stop osearch
- Run: net start osearch
Crawl the PDF documents
- Existing PDF documents that were crawled before the Adobe PDF IFilter has been installed are not indexed during an incremental crawl. You have to edit each existing PDF file to trigger the crawler to reindex the file during an incremental crawl. It´s easier to run a full crawl after you have installed the Adobe PDF IFilter.

Now all PDF documents are crawled you can query on content inside a PDF document.

How to access SharePoint calendars through Microsoft Outlook 2007

2009-06-10T16:27:00.001-07:00

The first step to use SharePoint calendars in Microsoft Outlook is to create a SharePoint calendar or list. Lists in SharePoint are typically used to store the same types of data that you would include in a spreadsheet.

To create a new list, open your SharePoint 2007 site and go to the Document Center. Next, click on Site Actions and choose Create from the menu . You will be taken to SharePoint's Create page, which lists several available document libraries and lists. Choose the Calendar option and you will be prompted to enter a name and description for the calendar that you are creating.

Click on Create to produce the calendar. You can now access your calendar by going back to the Document Center and selecting the newly created calendar. Figure A shows the SharePoint calendar that I selected from the column on the left. I named the calendar SharePoint Calendar.

Figure A. You can access a calendar by selecting it from the Site Hierarchy portion of the Document Center.

Once you've created a SharePoint calendar, you can add appointments to it. Click the New button and you'll be taken to the New Item page. On this page, which has a look similar to Microsoft Outlook, you can enter the date, time and various details of your appointment (Figure B).

Figure B. The New Item page lets you enter the date, time, and details of your appointment.

Next, you will export the calendar to Microsoft Outlook. Remember that anyone who can access your SharePoint site can access your SharePoint calendar. When you export the calendar, you're exporting the calendar's contents to your copy of Outlook -- not to everyone's Outlook calendars. Users who want to link the SharePoint calendar to their Outlook calendar must perform this action on an individual basis. Choose the Connect to Outlook command from the Actions menu. The pop-up message shown in Figure C will appear in Outlook. This message asks if you want to import the SharePoint calendar.

Figure C. Outlook asks if you want to open the calendar.

Before choosing Yes or No, click Advanced. This will cause Outlook to display the screen shown in Figure D.

Figure D. When you click the Advanced button SharePoint displays the SharePoint List Options dialog box.

If you don't want the calendar opened on other computers that you might use Outlook on, you can select that now. There is also an option to update the calendar according to the publisher's recommendations. You must make sure that this option is selected. Click OK then Yes, and Outlook will open the SharePoint calendar. The SharePoint calendar is not merged with your calendar (Figure E). Instead, the two calendars open simultaneously. Outlook doesn't give you the option to merge the calendars, but you can always view the calendars in overlay mode if you need to see a consolidated view.

Figure E. Outlook displays both Outlook and SharePoint calendars.

Cool isn't, good luck!

How to access SharePoint document libraries in Outlook 2007

2009-06-10T16:16:00.001-07:00

If you've worked with Microsoft SharePoint document libraries, you know that even though the SharePoint Web interface works well, it can be difficult to use. In my own environment, I tend to lose the SharePoint window among other open browser windows or I accidentally close the browser window in which the SharePoint interface is running.

You don't have to access a SharePoint document library only through SharePoint's Web interface since Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 has a high degree of integration with Microsoft Office 2007. For example, you can access SharePoint document libraries directly through Microsoft Outlook.

Although there are no obvious mechanisms within Outlook 2007 to link it to a SharePoint document library, the process is simple. First, go to the SharePoint document library and click on the Actions menu (not on the Site Actions menu).

Figure A. Choose Connect to Outlook from the Actions menu.

When Outlook opens, a dialog box will ask if you want to connect the SharePoint document library to Outlook (Figure B). You can choose between Yes, No and Advanced.

Figure B. Confirm that you want to connect Outlook to your SharePoint document library.

Clicking Advanced gives you the option to change the name of the new folder that you've created in Outlook and provide a description of the folder (optional).

By default, the new folder is named after the document library being attached to Outlook. I decided to attach a document library named Documents to Outlook. This document library is located within SharePoint's Document Center. Therefore, the folder in Outlook is called Document Center – Documents.

The Advanced dialog box also contains a check box you can use if you want to prevent the new folder from being displayed on other computers you use.

Lastly, you'll see a check box that indicates that the subscription should be updated according to the publisher's recommendations. This setting, which is selected by default, doesn't do much in a corporate environment. Its original intention was to prevent content providers from canceling the subscriptions of users who choose to download updated content too frequently.

Click Yes and Outlook will create a new folder named SharePoint Lists that it will place in the Document Center folder beneath it (Figure C).

Figure C. Outlook creates a new folder that is linked to a SharePoint document library.

At first glance, this figure looks like a typical Outlook screen. But you're actually looking at a list of documents within your selected document library. The various metadata columns show you who changed the document, who has a document checked out, when the document was most recently modified and its size.

You can now open a document by double-clicking on it. When you do, Outlook will ask if you want to open it, or if you want to save a copy of it to your computer.

Remote Access Card (DRAC) Install & Configure on Dell PowerEdge 2900

2009-06-10T16:02:00.001-07:00

So I have been working on a client installing new servers for their SharePoint environment, one item I have never done is the install and configuration of a RAC/DRAC card. After “Binging” and “Goggling” for information on installing this in a Dell I was having no luck, spent time all over Dell’s site until i gave up and made the call to Dell support. Well we were able to get this one pretty quickly when I had all the correct information/documentation as it did not come with the cards.

Here are 3 very useful links around the Dell PowerEdge 2900 and RAC

Dell™ Remote Access Controller 5 Firmware Version 1.40 User's Guide

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/drac5/om55/en/ug/index.htm

Installing System Components

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe2900/en/hom/html/install.htm#wp1078987

Installing and Configuring the Software

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/drac3/ug/drac3c30.htm

This is a brief section within Dell™ PowerEdge™ 2900 Systems Hardware Owner's Manual that shows where to install the card.

Installing a RAC Card

CAUTION: Only trained service technicians are authorized to remove the system cover and access any of the components inside the system. See your Product Information Guide for complete information about safety precautions, working inside the computer, and protecting against electrostatic discharge.

Turn off the system, including any attached peripherals, and disconnect the system from the electrical outlet.
Open the system. See Opening the System.
Remove the cooling shroud by pulling the release latches outward from their securing tabs and lifting the shroud out of the system. See Figure 3-20.
Remove the filler plug from the system back panel. See Figure 3-23.

Figure 3-23. Installing a RAC Card

5. Angle the RAC card so that its NIC connector inserts through the back-panel RAC card opening. See Figure 3-23.

6. Attach the card to the expansion-bay bracket:

Position the RAC card on the expansion-bay bracket so that the plastic standoff at the back of the bracket inserts into the notch on the edge of the RAC card.
Carefully press the back end of the card onto the two plastic standoffs until the clips on the standoffs snap over the card edges. See Figure 3-23.

7. Attach the ribbon cables to the RAC card connectors and to the RAC connectors on the system board (see Figure 6-2):

NOTICE: Be careful when attaching cables to the system board that you do not damage the surrounding system board components. Be particularly careful that you do not push or bend the system capacitors near the connectors.

Connect one cable to connector 1 on the RAC card and to RAC_CONN1 on the system board.
Connect the second cable to connector 2 on the RAC card and to RAC_CONN2 on the system board.

8. Reinstall the cooling shroud.

NOTICE: Never operate your system with the memory cooling shroud removed. Overheating of the system can develop quickly resulting in a shutdown of the system and the loss of data.

9. Close the system. See Closing the System.

10. Reconnect the system to the electrical outlet and turn on the system and attached peripherals.

11. When booting up Enter the System Setup program (Ctrl+E) and verify that the setting for the RAC card has changed to reflect the presence of the card. See Using the System Setup Program. Configure your IP address at this time.

After booting up you will need to install the correct software.

Software needed for the Dell PowerEdge 2900 is “OpenManage Server Administrator” application, (File Size: 135 MB)

Download the following: http://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/OM_5.5.0_ManNode_A00.exe
**After you extract this from the zip file go to the windows folder and run setup.exe.

The software itself is more so there to help configure the DRAC initially. By initially, all that you would need to do is give this an ip address when the system boots up (Control E)."

After this you can simply plug in the ip address of the DRAC in a new browser and that should be about it

The default credentials to login is “root/calvin”

I hope this help.

Window’s Server 2008 Roles and Feature prerequisites for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)

2009-05-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

All,

I found a script out on Mark Garcia’s blog that you can use to add just the appropriate roles for MOSS on Server 2008, this helps keep the attack surface low as possible by only installing what is needed. It is GREAT to have in your bag of tricks.

Attached is the xml file, place this on the C:\drive, then run the process outlined below.

1. Right click on command prompt and select run as administrator

2. From the command prompt run: servermanagercmd -ip mossbase.xml -whatif first to see what is already installed

3. Now you can tell what is missing from your prerequisites and that your XML file is valid. You are ready to install now so run:

Servermanagercmd -ip mossbase.xml

And that is it. All the MOSS 2007 prerequisites are installed on Windows Server 2008 and you are now ready to install MOSS 2007.

Great job Mark!

WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007 SP2

2009-04-28T09:28:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has now released Service Pack 2 for MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0. These changes are laying the foundation of the next version of SharePoint — which if you haven't heard has just been officially named: SharePoint 2010

Service Pack 2 includes all security updates, cumulative updates, and hotfixes that were released through February 2009. At this time we are waiting on MSDN to issue a complete SharePoint and WSS install that will include SP1 and SP2. With that said please remember that if you have a new installation you can download and install MOSS and WSS with SP1 included, once installed you can then install SP2 prior to running the Configuration wizard. Now on to a few high level improvements.

Overall Improvements

A new Command Line to run against your SharePoint server farm environment. It will tell you if you are ready to upgrade to the next version of SharePoint (SharePoint 2010) and also provides some best practices and recommendations for your existing implementation
SharePoint will now have support for a broader range of browsers including Firefox
Forms-based Authentication has some major improvements

Improvements for Additional Services

This is a just a selection of some of the things coming in Service Pack 2:

Enterprise Content Management: Along with improvements to the performance and stability of content deployment and the variations feature, there is also a new STSAdmin tool that will run against sites that use the variation feature and report any errors
Forms Server: Now you will have less problems with your large browser-based forms, seeing them load faster and suck less memory.
Excel Services: Easier configuration of Excel Web Access web parts, issues have been resolved with respect to security, calculations and rendering as well as display issues.
Search Server: Improvements to backup and restore, the reliability and stability of large corpus crawls and the accuracy of searches involving numbers.

Issues fixed, Excel download for both WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007:

Microsoft Offices SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 Changes.xlsx: Issues Fixed
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 Changes.xlsx: Issues Fixed

KB Articles:

Description of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (SP2): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953334
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 provides support for host header-based site collection crawls: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;968786&sd=rss&spid=12200
Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack SP2: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;953338&sd=rss&spid=12200
After you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2, the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 database can be auto-defragmented: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;968785&sd=rss&spid=12200
No SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 2 .msp files are installed if you have the Stswwsp1.msp file in the Updates folder: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;968283&sd=rss&spid=11373

Service Pack 2 will update the following:

Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007
Microsoft® Office Project Server 2007
Microsoft® Office Forms Server 2007
Microsoft® Search Server 2008
Microsoft® Search Server 2008 Express
Microsoft® Office Groove® Server 2007, 64-Bit Edition

DOWNLOADS:

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS 3.0)

Service Pack 2 ( x 86 ) for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B
Service Pack 2 ( x 64 ) for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B
Service Pack 2 Language Packs ( x 86 ) for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=085E5AC8-58F6-4CF9-8012-33B95EE36C0F
Service Pack 2 Language Packs ( x 64 ) for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2C2B6CAF-B46D-45EB-AC4D-DEAAA48C3A2C

Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)

2007 Server Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 ( x 86 )
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082
2007 Server Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 ( x 64 )
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082
Microsoft Office-Server 2007 Language Pack Service Pack 2 ( x 86 )
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01C6A3E8-E110-4956-903A-AD16284BF223
Microsoft Office-Server 2007 Language Pack Service Pack 2 ( x 64 )
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66C5026F-9F47-4642-8378-2526918009FA

Other Service Pack 2 improvements.

IE 8 is now a Level 1 supported browser
Mozilla Firefox V2 and V3 have been added to the Level 2 supported browser list
SSP databases are no longer deleted when running the following command:
Stsadm –o deletessp –title <SSPTitle> -force
Stsad, -o migrateuser is improved when migrating from one user to another user who has been deleted from the SharePoint site
Improved error messages and permissions handling in the Business Data Catalog
The Profile Change Cleanup job should no longer cause the transaction logs to grow to a large size
Long URLs are now logged correctly by Usage Analysis
A sub-site owner who has no permissions to the top level Team Site is able to make sub-sites under his own site
Search stability and speed is improved
Forms-Based Authentication search is now supported by search.asmx
You can reinitialize a query server for only 1 SSP so that you have zero search downtime:
Stsadm –o osearch –reprovisionindex –ssp <sspname>
Backup and restore of search has improved
If a crawl is stopped, the next crawl will be forced to do a full crawl even if an incremental crawl is set

Good stuff, will update as I learn more working with SP2!

Increase file upload size.. Don’t forget IIS timeouts..

2009-03-24T09:16:00.001-07:00

So as I was working on uploading a 90MB video to MOSS, I first had to increase the upload size from the default 50MB.

First, follow the Below Steps:
Open Central Administration

Open Web Application General Settings

Select the proper Web Application that you want the change on
Scroll down, Change the Maximum Upload Size to Required Size
Upload File size can be up to 2 GB, default is 50mb. (I set mine to 100MB)
Select Ok, Now you have changed the upload file size.
Test, upload a large file to verify.

Now I tried to upload a 85MB file, the file, error..

What did I miss.. oh.. IIS timeouts.

Now I need to Increase IIS timeout settings..

Open IIS, select the Website you use, mine SharePoint Portal, right click and view properties.

So depending on you network or internet speeds, you may need to play with this setting.

Default setting is 120 seconds, for this 89MB file to upload I had to try it a couple times since i was coming across the internet.

Final was 16 min to upload from my location, so the timeout was set to 1000 seconds.

I had to reset IIS for the site after the change was made to take effect.
**Now if you are making this change to only users accessing through your local internal network you can probably se this to a lower number. Test for your setup.

Hope this helps you, thanks.

How do I make SharePoint show only Active AD Accounts?

2009-01-27T14:36:00.001-08:00

Issue: Employees have left the company but still show up in your "profile db", "People Search Results" and in the "People Picker".

Step 1: Edit your Profile import process.

Go to CA (Central Administration)
Click on your SSP (ShareServices)

Under "User Profiles and My Sites" Heading

Select "User Profiles and Properties"
Select "View Import Connections" (This is also called Manage Connections)
Now edit your existing Connection "EnvironmentADName" (example)

Edit the User Filter: under Search Settings

Note: This string will import only Active AD accounts into SharePoint profile DB.
(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))

Select ok.

Go back to "User Profiles and Properties"
Start a full import.
Now you have cleared your User profiles
1. To validate, select View user profiles (look for someone that has left but you know still was there)
2. You can also View import log, here you will see profiles that were removed from the crawler.
At this point I still noticed that I still could see results in People Search and in the People Picker. (frustrated)..
1. So what next, did I miss anything..
2. I ping good friend and SharePoint guru JD Wade. (http://wadingthrough.wordpress.com/)
3. JD pointed out that I needed to update the people picker.
  1. So here we go..
How to update people picker.

JD pointed me to Brendan Griffin's blog (http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=66)
I followed this but as I like detail I have expanded on it.
Stsadm is your friend here.
1. Go to a command prompt
2. Go to the hiv 12/bin (so you can run stsadm.exe)
  1. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN

Now, identify your web app that you want this run against, mine http://portal. (replace with yours)
Now run this command:

stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfilter -url http://portal –pv (!userAccountControl=514
Note: Do not copy past, you need to type this out.

So are we done.. No.no.no..
1. Now run a full search (crawl), I found this necessary to clean up search results even known that I ran a full profile import.
One note, I ran an IIS rest against the web app before I did a full crawl as I was impatient, so not sure if it was needed but all works as needed.

Now, my next issue.. How to remove user accounts that were provided permissions to a Site.
As JD help clarify, the SharePoint Profile Database and the Site User List are two entirely different things.
Now to figure out what it will take to clean up the Site User Lists now that they are out of the other places..

Thanks JD and Brandon for your info.

Home Virtualzation Rig!

2008-12-24T17:00:00.001-08:00

As I work to better my knowledge on Virtualzation technologies, as a Consultant I have found that testing on a laptop even with 64bit leaves a lot to be desired. Today I start my journey to research hardware requirements for a Home Virtualzation Rig that will be able to support either VMWare ESX or Microsoft's HyperV.

As a father of 4 and working as a Consultant my budget for such extra activities are limited, so for this effort I set a budget of $1k, with that said here is my goals.

My Goals: To be able to build and maintain a Virtual Infrastructure running on either VMWare or Microsoft's Virtualzation platforms, ESX or HyperV. This environment will be able to run and maintain a medium SharePoint Server Farm (2 WFE's, 1 Index/Application), 1 Domain Controller with Active Directory and with SQL Server 2008 and Exchange 2007 all running on Server 2008 if possible. I want to be able to test patching and general administration/architecture to support SharePoint implementations and current clients.

After researching both VMWare and HyperV, I started looking at pre built server class machines from Dell and HP, I determined that the cost on these exceeded my budget so I headed down the build it yourself path. These are the hardware items that I purchased through www.newegg.com, being the holiday season I was able to get these at a great savings.

Item Description NewEgg URL
Case
ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UB Black /Blue Aluminum Bezel , SECC Chassis
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119047
Power Supply
600W ATX12V v2.01 SLI , Rosewill RP600V2-S-SL-S, Certified CrossFire Ready Power Supply - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182062
Mother board
ATX Server Motherboard, ASUS P5BV-C/4L LGA 775 Intel 3200 - Retail - ECO Quad-LAN 1P Server Board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131228
Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373
Memory
8GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220227
CPU
2.4GHz Intel Xeon Quad-Core Processor - Intel Xeon X3220 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 105W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117127
DVD/CD
SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - ASUS Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 40X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135183

I was able to piece together the above items for under $800.00.

These items are on the way, I will continue with additional posts as I work through setting this up, stay tuned and Merry Christmas!

In my next post in this series I will walk through the build of the hardware with pictures along with planning my strategies as I start with HyperV for this environment.

Updating your SharePoint 2007 environment .

2008-12-23T12:59:00.001-08:00

Well here we go, MS has now moved the updates to a much easier update process.

Starting with the December Cumulative Update for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 you only have 4 installs necessary. Beyond the fixes and improvements, this new update process is an effort to help SharePoint administrators keep all files in their SharePoint installations as up-to-date as possible. This post will guide you on how and when to update, and the background of this new update model improvement.

--Information provided by the SharePoint team blog--

December Cumulative Update Steps & Suggestions
[IMPORTANT UPDATE 12/21: Please read the highlighted instructions below before starting your installation.]
Remember, you do not need to install these updates unless you are affected by the specific problems described in the KB articles.

**These cumulative updates will be rolled into Service Pack 2 that will be released early spring 2009.

To keep all the files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, we recommend that customers install updates in the following sequence:

**Note: Hold off running the Configuration Wizard until you have completed the install of all 4 of these.
**Update all server in the farm, do not proceed with the next update until you have completed the update on all server.
**Infrastructure update is included in the December Cumulative Update, no need to install it separately.

->Stop the (WWW) World Wide Web Publishing Services to keep your users off the server.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line.

**This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.
**The version of content databases should be 12.0.0.6335 after successfully applying these updates.

For more in-depth guidance for the update process, we recommend that customers refer to the following articles.

These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates, identify known issues (and resolutions), and provide information about creating slipstream builds.

Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx

Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx

The detail of December Cumulative Update (CU) for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 can be found here:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package: December 16, 2008 (The link will be active soon)
Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package: December 16, 2008 (The link will be active soon)

MORE INFORMATION:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/17/announcing-december-cumulative-update-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx

Thanks to the Microsoft SharePoint Team for these new improvements.

Installing Adobe PDF iFilter and registering the PDF Icon for SharePoint 2007 (Moss/WSS)

2008-12-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

A Few Quick Notes on iFilter and SharePoint

Out of the box SharePoint will index many types of content. This includes a lot of popular file formats (.ppt, .docx, .doc, .xlsx, .xls, etc...). A list of these file types can be found here. You'll notice that a pretty popular file type (.pdf) is NOT in this list. In order for PDF files to be indexed and searchable by the SharePoint search engine, the SharePoint administrator needs to install an "iFilter" which helps SharePoint search within PDF files. This is similar to how SharePoint searches within Office files, Autodesk files, etc.

Adobe now bundles a 32-bit PDF iFilter with Reader and Acrobat products. That means that if you install Reader or Acrobat on a SharePoint server running 32-bit Windows, iFilter will be installed automatically. You may then need to do an additional step of registering that iFilter with SharePoint, but it's easy to do that.

More and more users are installing SharePoint on a server running 64-bit Windows. For those users, Adobe released on 12/10/2008 the new free 64-bit iFilter which supports SharePoint.

Get the 64-bit iFilter here

For those who need just the 32 bit iFilter, Adobe has v6 or just install the latest Adobe Reader or Acrobat product.

You can download the 32bit v6 Adobe PDF iFilter here.

These step's will walk you through installing the iFilter and registering the PDF icon in SharePoint.

Step-by-step implementation.

Stop the IIS Admin Service: Start->Run->Services.msc->Locate the IIS Admin Service and stop it.
Install your iFilter (x32 or x86) on your indexing server.
1. Adobe 32bit v6 PDF iFilter here.
2. Adobe 32 bit Reader, Acrobat here
3. Adobe 64-bit PDF iFilter here
Install this GIF () or any icon of your choosing to (All WFE) "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES"
*Icon can be found here (use 17 x 17 one): http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html
Edit the DocIcon.xml file at "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\Template\Xml\DOCICON.XML" and add the following text under the <ByExtention> tag.

<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon.gif"/>
Recycle the application pool of the Shared Service Provider OR do an IISRESET if you're lazy.
Open the SSP Admin site (Central Administration->SharedServices1). Click on Search Settings->File Types->New File Type) and add a pdf file type.
Perform a full crawl on content sources. Search Settings->Content Sources and Crawl Schedules, click on the Content Source you want to perform a full crawl on. Check the Start Full Crawl check box at the bottom and then click OK. Wait for the crawl to finish.

You're done! PDF content should start showing up in searches now!

Troubleshooting

There's been a couple of machines I've done this one where I've had to manually register the PDF IFilter dll (regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Adobe\PDF IFilter 6.0\PDFFILT.dll") and then recycle the SSP site before the icon would show up. Usually in these cases I also had to do another full crawl after manually registering the PDFFILT.dll. It's probably a good idea to define a new content source with a small set of content (a couple of small pdfs in a document library).

I also sometimes get errors of the form when indexing large PDFs:

The file reached the maximum download limit. Check that the full text of the document can be meaningfully crawled.

This is because the maximum document size by default is 16 MB. You can increase it with instructions found here.

Hope that helps.

Gartner releases Magic Quadrants Updated for 2008

2008-10-07T18:45:00.001-07:00

Gartner has released 3 updated Magic Quadrant reports which relate to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Specifically they have released the 2008 versions of.

You can find links to these reports on the Analyst Relations section of Microsoft’s web site. Microsoft is in the leaders quadrant for all 3 of these reports. If you have been tracking these over the years, you will have noticed a consistent move towards the top right hand corner each year. This years results really show the strength of the Microsoft platform in each of these cases, by leaping over many of their traditional competitors in each of these capability areas.

MOSS Downloadable 30 Day evaluation VHD

2008-10-06T06:24:00.001-07:00

If you are looking to evaluate Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can download a VHD here.

You can download a VPC here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=67f93dcb-ada8-4db5-a47b-df17e14b2c74&displaylang=en&tm

It'll work for 30 days, needs 10Gb of space, 1Gb of RAM and Virtual server 2005 R2 to run.

Technorati Tags: Training,MOSS,SharePoint

SharePoint Books

2008-09-23T18:32:00.001-07:00

As I was searching for information on WCM, I came across Mike Walsh's blog, Mike has an outstanding list of Books specific to SharePoint.

Nice list Mike Walsh!

Check out his list..

http://wss.asaris.de/sites/walsh/Lists/WSSv3%20FAQ/V%20Books.aspx

Enable incoming and outgoing email in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007

2008-09-23T17:06:00.001-07:00

Set up outgoing email in MOSS 2007

Outgoing email in SharePoint Server handles alerts, invitations to sites and notifications such as workflow, tasks, etc. Setting up outgoing email is straightforward and can be done via SharePoint Central Administration -> Operations -> Topology and Services (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Set up outgoing email through the SharePoint Central Administration -> Operations -> Topology and Services screen. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

From the Operations tab within Central Administration site, click on Outgoing Email Settings. You'll then see the From address, which can have any email address (real or fabricated) that you want to place here; and Reply-to address, which requires that a valid email address is set (Figure 2). Make the address meaningful to users who will receive email to avoid confusion about where the email was sent from. This can be considered vanity email from your MOSS environment.

Figure 2. The Outgoing Email Settings tab displays the "From address" and "Reply-to address" fields. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

Figure 3 shows the location of a "vanity" address in an email. Some call this an alias, but I hesitate using this term because the address doesn't point to anything.

Figure 3. This screenshot shows a SharePoint vanity email address. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

Setting up outgoing email in SharePoint Server 2007 is relatively simple, and requires you to obtain only the SMTP address you want to use, and which account or distribution list alias you want to use to receive mail. If you're running an environment with hundreds or thousands of users, and your email address is Administrator@litwareinc.com, you will receive all undelivered email. To avoid this, have the Exchange Server administrators create a distribution list and add SharePoint administration or support team members to the list, and then assign it an alias.

Set up incoming email in MOSS 2007

Enabling incoming email in MOSS provides the ability to route messages and attachments to a list or SharePoint library directly. There are two ways to set up incoming email in MOSS. I like to call them "Super Mode," which incorporates the use of Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft Exchange, and "Simple Mode," which requires that basic SMTP is enabled on the Web front-end (WFE) server or WFEs in a load-balanced configuration.

When incoming email on a list is enabled in "Super Mode" (AD and Exchange), an email address is created and placed into an organizational unit (OU) within AD automatically. For this to occur, your environment must be running Exchange 2000 or greater. To enable "Super Mode":

Open Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) and create an OU to act as a holding container for List email addresses that are created.
Enable SMTP on the WFE server(s).
Open Central Administration -> Operations-> Incoming Email Settings.
Fill in required fields and click OK (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Configure incoming email settings in SharePoint using the "Super Mode" method (AD and Microsoft Exchange). (Click on image for enlarged view.)

In Step 1, we created an OU in Active Directory. As Figure 5 shows, the top red arrow points to where you will place that name. When lists are enabled for incoming email they will locate this setting and place the list's email address in the proper container. This also makes it easier to find email accounts because they are all in one place, and not scattered throughout other OUs.

Figure 5. The SharePoint Directory Management Service supports for the creation and management of email distribution groups from SharePoint sites. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

If the second red arrow in Figure 5 was set to No, you would need to request that the Directory Services team manually create the distribution group, instead of allowing users or site owners to do so.

NOTE: This method only works if your environment is running Exchange Server 2000 or greater.

Set up incoming email in MOSS 2007 without Microsoft Exchange

If you don't have Exchange Server running in your environment, you still can have users send mail to SharePoint lists directly using the "Simple Mode" method (i.e., enabling basic SMTP on WFE servers). In Figure 5, we selected Yes to use SharePoint Directory Management Services ("Super Mode"). If we selected No, which is the default (Figure 6), we use a limited version of the email capabilities.

Figure 6. Allow SharePoint users to receive incoming email without Microsoft Exchange. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

This configuration will work with SMTP without requiring much additional input (Figure 7). All of the work is done within SharePoint Central Administration along with Active Directory and the IIS SMTP service.

Figure 7. This configuration uses SMTP with little input required. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

Viewing this from a site perspective, you can create or enable incoming email in two ways:

During library creation
After library creation

You only need to supply the name that you want to use for the email and provide that to your list users. For example, I'm going to create a Disaster Recovery Library and name the address DR.moss.litwareinc.com. To enable this, go into the Document Library Settings for this library and select Incoming Email Settings (Figure 8).

Figure 8. Supply a name that you want to use for the SharePoint library email and share it with users. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

If I go into Microsoft Outlook and draft an email (Figure 9) to send to this library, both the email message and the attachment appear. I also can group these in the root folder according to email subject or email sender.

Figure 9. Sending outgoing Microsoft Outlook email to the SharePoint library includes the message and the attachment. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

When the mail is sent, the library receives the mail and groups it according to preferences set in Email Grouping, as shown in Figure 10. Both the attachment and email are captured.

Figure 10. Set Email Grouping preferences to group Sent messages in the SharePoint library. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

Improve SharePoint 2007 design and navigation with managed paths

2008-09-23T16:56:00.001-07:00

Managed paths give Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 administrators a powerful, yet easy mechanism for building a corporation's collaboration environment. But proper planning that includes an understanding of the needs of all business groups is crucial to the execution of a successful SharePoint design and taxonomy structure.

This tip explains what managed paths are, the benefits of using them, and how to define and implement managed paths in a Microsoft SharePoint 2007 portal.

Using managed paths can help clarify the design and navigation of a Microsoft SharePoint 2007 implementation. Managed paths aren't new; this functionality was also available in SharePoint 2003. They may seem unfamiliar, however, because administrators don't always use them. This is unfortunate because managed paths are a great way to help improve the structure and usability of a SharePoint portal.

There are two types of paths that you can manage: included and excluded. When you define a managed path, you specify it in the URL namespace that will be used in a Web application. For example, using an explicit inclusion, you state that http://server_name/team is a site collection, but no site collections will exist below it. However, using a wildcard exclusion lets you specify child URLs under http://server_name/sites7/, which can be site collections.

Two different types of managed path inclusions are available in SharePoint: explicit and wildcard.

Explicit inclusions include only the specific path you set. Use explicit inclusions if you want Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) to manage a specific path, such as /portal -- but not any sites below it, such as /portal/site.
Wildcard inclusions encompass any sites below the path you set, so you don't have to add them individually. Use this type of inclusion for Self-Service Site Creation -- when you want users to be able to create top-level websites underneath a specific path, such as /sites.

The benefits of using managed paths

To better illustrate the benefits of using managed paths, consider a medium-sized company that's preparing to launch a new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal implementation. The company plans to launch a SharePoint portal with a single Web application that provides users with one "top-level" enterprise site. The site will contain corporate information, news and enterprise search.

This company also has four divisions that will contain their own portal sites with numerous sub-sites residing below them (Figure 1).

Figure 1. SharePoint portal sites and subsites.

Portal can mean different things to different people. In this case, portal is used to classify a top-level site in a site collection. It could use one of the publishing portal templates or one of the Team Site templates.

Building a SharePoint taxonomy

Building a corporate taxonomy isn't a trivial task that should be put together haphazardly. It also shouldn't be built and decided on solely by IT staff or a dedicated group handling the Microsoft SharePoint environment. This process should involve representatives from various teams throughout the corporation. But this is often overlooked, resulting in the need to restructure the environment once it goes live.

In the aforementioned example, the top site in the portal (CompanyWeb) will function as the enterprise portal site where users can obtain corporate news, enterprise search, etc. You could choose to keep this structure within the same space, or site collection, but placing each division in its own separate space will allow for a separately administered security model. It also will allow for customization that won't affect the other divisions.

To begin building your managed paths hierarchy:

Open the SharePoint Central Administration site and enter the Application Management page.
Select Managed Paths. If this is a new installation, you will see a screen similar to that in Figure 2. Notice that two paths are defined already. These managed paths are created automatically. To add another managed path, enter the name you want to use. For example, if you want to create one for your Human Resources Division named HR, enter that inside the Path: box.
Figure 2. The managed paths screen lets you create another managed path.
Be sure that you're working with the correct Web Application. I have seen pages with numerous paths created, but managed paths weren't showing up when a new Site Collection was created. The problem was that the user created them in the wrong Web Application.
Specify the type of managed path (Figure 3). For example, I want HR to be listed as a top-level site that everyone can recognize and understand. The end result would be http://companyweb/HR . You would also do this for other divisions, such as IT, marketing and sales.
Figure 3. Select a wildcard inclusion or an explicit inclusion.

You aren't limited to using a single name in your namespace. You may want to bucket your organizations' structure based on other structures. For instance, I defined Administration and Development under IT. Administration may have several teams below it that require their own site collection, such as Directory Services, Help Desk and Web Admins. To facilitate this, you can create a managed path to include the Administration and Development namespaces, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Create a managed path to include specific namespaces.

Office 2007 Pack for Office XP/2003

2008-06-12T07:02:00.001-07:00

Working with a Client that still runs Office 2003 can sometimes lead to communication issues with project documents. MS released some time ago a viewer for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. They now have this in one Office 2007 Pack that you can install, here is more info.

Overview

Users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint please install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack. By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.

Instructions

To install this download:

Ensure your system is up to date by installing all High-Priority/Required updates on Microsoft Update (required for Microsoft Office XP and 2003 users).
After installing all High-Priority/Required updates with Microsoft Update, and restarting your computer, download Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats which is the file below.
Click the FileFormatConverters.exe program file and run it on your hard disk to start the setup program.
Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation.

To install Powerpoint Viewer 2007:

Ensure your system is up to date by installing all High-Priority/Required updates on Microsoft Update (required for Microsoft Office XP and 2003 users).
After installing all High-Priority/Required updates with Microsoft Update, and restarting your computer, download PowerPoint Viewer 2007 File Formats which is the file below.
Click the PowerPointViewer.exe program file and run it on your hard disk to start the setup program.
Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation.
To remove this download:
On the Windows Start menu, click Control Panel.
Select Add/Remove Programs.
In the list of currently installed programs, select Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system and then click Remove or Add/Remove. If a dialog box appears, follow the instructions to remove the program.
Click Yes or OK to confirm that you want to remove the program.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems:

Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP Service Pack 1

Recommended Microsoft Office programs:

Microsoft Word 2000 with Service Pack 3, Microsoft Excel 2000 with Service Pack 3, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 with Service Pack 3
Microsoft Word 2002 with Service Pack 3, Microsoft Excel 2002 with Service Pack 3, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 with Service Pack 3
Microsoft Office Word 2003 with at least Service Pack 1, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 with at least Service Pack 1, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 with at least Service Pack 1
Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003
Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003
Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2003

Save a document so that it can be opened in a previous version of Word, PowerPoint or Excel

If you save your document in the default file format in Office Word 2007, users of previous versions of Word must install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats to open the document. Alternatively, you can save the document in a format that can be opened directly in previous versions of Word but formatting and layout that depend on new features in Office Word 2007 will not be available in the previous version of Word.

Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then point to Save As.
Click Word 97-2003 Format.
Type a name for the document, and then click Save.

Microsoft Articles for just the viewers:

WSS 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 Post SP1 Updates

2008-05-27T15:13:00.001-07:00

This is a list of the post Service Pack 1 Hotfixes. Since I have been keeping this list as a reference I thought this may be a good item to share! These are the update packages.

Only if there was one Product page with all updates and fixes it would be much easier to keep up with!

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
941422 - 31-Jan-08
948945 - 21-Feb-08
949399 - 27-Feb-08
949956 - 17-Mar-08
950279 - 21-Mar-08
950484 - 27-Mar-08
952292 - 12-May-08
953749 - 16-July-08
SharePoint Server 2007
941274 - 31-Jan-08
945089 - 31-Jan-08
941653 - 31-Jan-08
942819 - 31-Jan-08
949402 - 27-Feb-08
950132 - 12-Mar-08
949955 - 17-Mar-08
950280 - 21-Mar-08
950292 - 21-Mar-08
950487 - 27-Mar-08

WSS 3.0 SP1 on Vista x64x86

2008-05-24T15:13:00.000-07:00

Bamboo has put together an installer that allows you to install WSS3.0 SP1 on Vista, both x86 and x64. This will allow you to develop on your workstation with all the power of a non virtualized environment.

Details: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/05/21/how-to-install-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-sp1-on-vista-x64-x86.aspx

Obviously, running SharePoint on Vista is not a supported environment by Microsoft, but..

So this brings up the question, should development be done on a workstation or on a development environment, time will tell?

Thanks for the option Bamboo!

Developing Workflow's in Visual Studio (VS2005)

2008-05-20T07:29:00.001-07:00

While working on a few projects for a client that required both Designer and Visual Studio workflow's, we struggled with the right resources that understood VS workflow's and SharePoint. Meaning I needed to come up to speed on the VS process to help identify the appropriate resource.

In my research I came across a great series on Developing Workflow's in VS provided by the SharePoint Product group, this is a great resource for those looking to understand the process and the development efforts.

Great Job SharePoint Team.

Part 1 - Workflow Objects and A Crash Course on Mechanics	Link
Part 2 - Planning Your Workflow: Two Things to Keep in Mind	Link
Part 3 - Five Steps for Developing Your Workflow	Link
Part 4 - Design and Bind Your Forms	Link
Part 5 - Code Your Workflow	Link
Part 6 - Deploy and Debug your workflow	Link
Part 7 - Summary and Final Thoughts	Link

SharePoint Videos and WhitePapers

2008-05-14T05:30:00.001-07:00

Have you seen these? I had these book marked, and I can tell you that the white papers are really really good. Resources for SharePoint are just awesome and this is one of them.

Title	Streaming Video	White Paper
Overview: Office SharePoint Server server farm architecture	-	Download
Overview: Configuring server farms	Watch	Download
Securing server farms	Watch	Download
Configuring performance options	Watch	-
Backup, Restore, High Availability and Disaster Recovery	Watch	Download
Operations and management	Watch	Download
Capacity planning	Watch	Download
Search architecture and configuration	Watch	Download

For additional Training & Video resources, take a look at Natalya Voskresenskaya's Blog where she has an expanded list.
http://spforsquirrels.blogspot.com/2008/05/free-sharepoint-online-training.html

SharePoint declarative workflow issues noted after install of SP1 (WF will not start automatically)

2008-05-14T05:18:00.001-07:00

Happy Friday to you all,

I have run into an issue where I couldn’t get a Designer workflow to start automatically on even a basic “send email when a new item is added” library. After diagnose why this was behaving this way I have found that this is now normal if you have installed SP1 (WSS & MOSS).

Microsoft article describes this behavior as a security fix! (Paragraph from article)

This behavior occurs because a security fix in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 prevents declarative workflows from starting automatically under the system account. After you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1, declarative workflows do not start automatically if the following conditions are true:

• The Windows SharePoint Services Web application runs under a user's domain account.

• The user logs in by using this domain account.

• The site displays the user name as System Account.

So, if you are logging on to a MOSS/WSS3 environment as the System account and building and testing your workflow, it will fail.

Test your workflow with a standard user account to verify functionality.

Here are the articles with fixes that will allow you to use the system account but you must change the application pool to use a different account.

My remedy is to use a different account to test with

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947284

http://kbalertz.com/947284/declarative-workflow-start-automatically-after-install-Windows-SharePoint-Services-Service.aspx

I have tested this, and my Workflow does function as built when logging in as a normal user account.

Yes, good STUFF…

More to come on how to change your service account if you built your environment using the farm/build account and what is required.

How to add and edit document templates.

2008-05-14T05:14:00.001-07:00

With SharePoint, there's a feature that helps with source control for document templates.
Using Content Types in combination with document libraries we can have a set of document templates that users can choose from, edit and save without over-writing the original document.

Here are the steps to implement this:

1. Create a Document Library
Name: Request Library

2. Within the site that contains that Document Library, go to Site Actions > Site Settings

3. Under the Galleries section, click on Site Content Types

4. Click the Create link at the top of the list.

5. Give your Content Type a name and description.

6. Under Parent Content Type choose:

"Select parent content type from: Document Content Types"
"Parent Content Type: Document"

7. If this is the first time you're creating a new Content Type, then you should choose to place it in a "New Group" and give it a meaningful name.

*We created a Group Called Helpdesk Workflow that will hold all Requests forms used in this library.

8. After creating the Content Type, you have the option of customizing some of the settings.
àClick on 'Advanced Settings.'

9. Choose to upload a New Document Template.

10. Leave the rest of the default settings and press OK.

**Now go back to the Document Library that we had created earlier. Within that Document Library:

11. Click on Settings > Document Library Settings

12. Under the General Settings Section, click on 'Advanced Settings'

13. If 'Allow management of content types?' is set to No, change it to Yes. Leave the rest of the settings, and click OK.

14. Under the Content Types Section, click 'Add from existing site content types'

15. Now you'll have the option of choosing the from the menus, the Content Type Group and Content Type that was created earlier. You'll want to add it to the list of 'Content Types to add:'

16. Go back to the Document Library, click the arrow next to the 'New' button and you should now have a new Document Template to choose from!
Click New from the menu "dropdown."

Now to update these existing Request Documents.

Go back to the Document Library. Click on Settings > Document Library Settings

2. Within the site that contains that Document Library, go to Site Actions > Site Settings

3. Under the Galleries section, click on Site Content Types

Look down the list of content types and select the Request you want to edit.
Under settings select Advanced settings.
In the site content advanced setting screen you will see the document name.
Under the document name there is a link (Edit Template) select this to edit.
Save as same name when changes have been completed, now the changes to the Template will be available for the next new request.

Item	Description	NewEgg URL
Case	ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UB Black /Blue Aluminum Bezel , SECC Chassis	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119047
Power Supply	600W ATX12V v2.01 SLI , Rosewill RP600V2-S-SL-S, Certified CrossFire Ready Power Supply - Retail	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182062
Mother board	ATX Server Motherboard, ASUS P5BV-C/4L LGA 775 Intel 3200 - Retail - ECO Quad-LAN 1P Server Board	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131228
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148373
Memory	8GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220227
CPU	2.4GHz Intel Xeon Quad-Core Processor - Intel Xeon X3220 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 105W Quad-Core Processor - Retail	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117127
DVD/CD	SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - ASUS Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 40X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe - Retail	http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135183