Listing all sites per variations - an STSADM extension solution
A little while ago, we ran into an issue with the Variation label creation process; it was ending successfully without creating everything. To make matters worst, it wasn’t picking the missing sites/pages with the Synchronization Timer Job.
So it was very difficult to figure out what was missing in a particular variation except by browsing to each pages and figuring out if the page was missing. While we only had 150 sub-sites, it could create 10 or 140 of them.
New RSS Feeds for Office and SharePoint Developers
RSS feeds changed the strategy that lots of people use to learn about new things. As developers we are faced with a bulk load of emerging software development technologies and products and sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the cool things you can do. RSS feeds help you discover the latest news from multiple sources and bloggers and learn more about new products and technologies. You can use Outlook, Windows Live, Windows Vista Sidebar, or other programs to subscribe to your favorite RSS feeds.
I’ve been posting for the last couple of months links to just published content for the MSDN Office Developer Center to help you keep up with new Office and SharePoint developer content. Today I am very happy to announce that we finally automated our RSS feed generation process. We have an internal tool that we use to track all our content publishing queue and workflow and we extended it to generate RSS feeds for Office and SharePoint. This will allow us to provide you weekly updates on new articles, code samples, videos, new pages, announcements, and fresh news related to Office and SharePoint development.
There is a lot of really powerful integration between SAP and MOSS and the awareness about this is really, for some reason, quite low. We’ve talked about integrating LOB data into SharePoint with the Business Data Catalog but there are some specific capabilities to SAP when brought together with SharePoint that make an enterprise solution rich, user-friendly, and seamless.
To give you a quick overview of the BDC, it’s a way to bring LOB data into SharePoint without writing any code. You just define your entities with an Application Definition File (ADF – of type XML file) which you upload into the SharePoint Central Administration and then reuse throughout your portal as a shared service. You can then surface that LOB data as SharePoint lists, web parts, enterprise search, lists, user profiles and custom applications. It uses either SOAP to connect to the LOB system if it’s a traditional one like SAP, or ADO.NET if it’s a database system like SQL. In my previous blog post, I mentioned that the latest version of the SDK made available a tool for authoring the ADF file so that you no longer have to work with straight XML.
Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 Sizing and Configuration tool by HP (New!)
The HP ProLiant Sizer for Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 is a downloadable tool (includes update notification) that assists the user in selecting the optimum HP ProLiant Server, HP BladeSystem and HP Storage configuration for collaboration and document management environments based on user requirements. The tool solicits data or uses built-in defaults to determine the optimum solution, based on the Office SharePoint Server 2007 best-practice configurations and supported growth paths.
The zip contains an executable. Run that and answer a few questions about where to install the tool. The install procedure will first install the SharePoint 2007 sizer, and then the (required) StorageWorks (SAN) sizer which allows the MOSS sizer to generate detailed storage solutions. Once installed, run the SharePoint sizer - that’s it.
Improving MOSS Search Relevancy
Recently I’ve been investigating the effects of changing the relevancy of MOSS search. If you are interested in this, you might want to check this out:
Evaluating and Customizing Search Relevance in SharePoint Server 2007
After you through reading the article, you can download a cool tool to help you test your relevancy adjustments Search Relevancy Tool.
Farms, Web Apps, Site Collections, Sites - what is configured at what level?
I have been a bit slow getting started with my blog but here it is my first post! 
This post covers what features and other items are configurable at each level - I do not believe this list is complete. Therefore if you have more to add to this please comment on my blog or email me…
SharePoint Records Management Virtual Lab
Microsoft have posted up a virtual lab
to showcase the Records Management capabilities. The lab basically took you through:
- creating a new records center
- creating some Document Libraries for Financial Reports, Contracts, and Product Development Files. All with some custom metadata, retention policies and audit policies.
- creating record routing for each Content Type.
- configuring Central Administration to map a SharePoint instance to the Records Center
- applying a Document Library to a newly created Content Type e.g. Financial Reports
- submitting a Document to the Records Center
Deploying and Supporting Enterprise Search
Locating the appropriate information or people in an organization can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Without enterprise search services, employees at Microsoft might:
- Spend countless hours duplicating effort on multiple projects and teams.
- Be unaware of critical information produced by other employees.
- Make business or technical decisions with incomplete or inaccurate data.
Creating and deploying a Custom Site Definition as a feature
Ok, so you really don’t develop a custom site definition as a Feature in the WSSv3 sense of the word ‘feature‘, but you can create a solution package which contains all the needed pieces for the custom site definition, including any Features you want activated on the site when it’s first created.
While there’s plenty of documentation around creating custom site definitions out there, I figured it would be beneficial to explain the steps needed to create the solution and deploy everything as a a single entity into WSSv3 as a WSP.
For this example, I’m going to create a custom version of the Team Site template without any significant changes because I don’t want to deep dive into how to create a custom site definition.  I’m then going to add a Label control to the default.aspx and populate it’s value in a new code-code behind class for the default.aspx page that’s not included out of the box.
While I don’t like forcing an install any anyone, I’m going to use the Visual Studio 2005 project template I created which will take care of most of the tricky pieces that are required to create and deploy the solution This thing really does make custom solution development using Visual Studio for WSS a snap. Please download it and check it out.
Once you’ve installed the Visual Studio project template correctly, create a new project using the MOSS Solution Builder Project template. For this example, I named the project Example.CustomSiteSolution.
Planning updates to your WSS/MOSS server farm
Installing update (hotfixes, public updates, service packs) for WSS and MOSS can be a challenging tasks. Especially as a rollback in case that a problem occurs can be very expensive as it requires the restore of a backup as uninstall of hotfixes or service packs is not possible.
To help administrators plan such a task Microsoft has now published specific documentation:
- Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
- Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Important change to MOSS 2007 for Internet Sites (MOSSFIS) licensing
For those of you who know me, you know I love the technology AND the business side of SharePoint. So, when we discovered that some of our licensing was hampering your deployment architectures, we immediately got to work remedying the situation. For those of you who know how our licensing works, you know that you couldn’t deploy an Intranet and Extranet in the same SharePoint farm because of the licensing. However, we built SharePoint from a technology standpoint to run Intranet, Extranet and even Internet sites all in the same farm, even on the same server! We worked lots and lots of special deals to help customers get changes to their individual licenses but that didn’t help our broad community of customers.
A couple more MOSS Sites in the wild
Just spotted these …
http://clubcar.ingersollrand.com/Pages/default.aspx
http://irutilityequipment.irco.com/Pages/home.aspx
Don’t panic! Site migration disparity is an elution…
OK, I’ve spent the last year of my life buried in SharePoint migrations. I’ve learned many, many things and even wrote my “Step-by-Step – A REAL world upgrade of a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS) farm to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)” document to help others out who had to fight through the process. One thing I had not noticed before but just picked up on is related to WSS site migrations. If you look at the following screen print…
No Left Navigation when new web part pages are created in sharepoint
Creating web part pages or basic pages on the fly in sharepoint is pretty easy just with a click of a button 
But here comes a little set back you won’t get to see the left navigation menu when you view the page 
But here comes a solution for this you will notice that the page’s layout and design are all inherited from the master page
but the side navigation is not.
Howto configure sql express to allow remote connections
This is fifth in the series - MOSS Scripted Installation.
In previous posts, I wrote about pre-requisites and a brief overview on config.xml. Next we saw, how MOSS 2007 could be installed silently with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.
It was a small step. This post is about allowing remote connections to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. If you ever need to move sql database, attach pre-configured database or detach existing database, you will need to enable remote connections in sql server 205 express edition. It is disabled by default.
Compliance Checklists for SharePoint :
More Compliance info :
Shiny new MOSS 2007 site from Content & Code!
Bandwidth planning for MOSS & HW Sizing
Positioning Microsoft Office SharePoint - Part 1
It is a great experience to sell SharePoint products & services for the past 4 years till now, let’s dive deep on how we can position Office SharePoint Server in a presales scenario. Where & How:
Where and how you would come across this product, based on my experience you would come across MOSS when there is a following requirement in an organization
• Collaboration & Social Computing
• Enterprise Search
• Portal (Intranet / Extranet)
• Document Management
• Knowledge Management
• Business Intelligence
• Content Management
• Business Forms & Process
• Workflow
I’ve been getting some curly questions around InfoPath of late due to our organisation already using various other products in this space. It’s great to compare these feature for feature to get a better understanding of what they do and what things can be done in them.
I found a good post with a video of InfoPath features. It basically describes hooking up a form to a SQL Database Table for querying orders for a customer and updating them. It does illustrate how quickly it is to build this interface up in InfoPath. If you were to do this in ASP.NET or WinForms, you’d take a lot longer than that! It includes validation etc. also which is great!
SharePoint for development revisited
Well the discussions go further from the two big guns (Andrew Connell and Joel Olsen). The key takeaway was “not to reinvent the wheel”. The SharePoint platform does a lot of things out of the box that traditionally you’d spend days writing, for example, CRUD data access layers and database schemas that can now be implemented using SharePoint Lists and the SharePoint API. The other key areas are direct integration with back-end systems such as Active Directory ,BDC, Excel Services and Form Services.
Interestingly he does mention that if it is storing more than 5000 records a day that he would recommend it being stored in a separate database. Even with this, you can still use the SharePoint platform to be the presentation layer and take advantage of the deployment of the solution as a series of web parts etc. and all the underlying security model, navigation and everything else that is inherited from .Net 2.0 and ASP.NET Frameworks. Further on this, Digital Wave recommend that you don’t let the native support dictate application requirements.
Sharepoint 2007 Document Libraries Capacity Planning
I got thrown a real curve ball today at work from one of our Technical Solutions Architects. He was querying if they moved 200Gb worth of files from a file store into SharePoint how big would the SQL 2005 database be?
I found a TechNet post that links off to various articles around capacity planning. This one seems to be most relevant to content storage.
Database Management
Bill Bauer has a great post describing how he’s managed some fairly advanced MOSS 2007 implementations database growth by moving, repartitioning etc.
SharePoint and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF)
I was reading an article on WWF vs. LiveLink Workflow and reminiscing with my time working with WWF in beta on a big .NET project here in Perth. We came across some stumbling blocks with the persistence layer, which has been rewritten for SharePoint so that it stores it within it’s database natively.
One of the key criticisms of LiveLink Workflow was that it is written in it’s own language and not in a more accessible one such as Java or .NET. There’s been lots of promise of LiveLink and it’s newly acquired little brother eDocs (Hummingbird) being rewritten, but I’d have no idea of when this is going to be released. I guess it reemphasises the comments I made in a recent post around SharePoint being built in .NET and on one framework. A lot of the other vendors are built on various platforms due to them being acquired over time.
Deep Dive SharePoint 2007 Object Model
A big topic these days is about “Discoverability” and the .Net framework. Developers talk about how big the .Net framework has become with 2.0, 3.0 and now 3.5 frameworks. There a several ways to discover capabilities of a  framework. One way is word of mouth via blogs or developers you work with. Another is just searching through MSDN and Google. Finally, there is the Visual Studio object browser and of course Reflector. Last year when I was developing search solutions for both WSS and MOSS I realized that the SharePoint 2007 object model had expanded and changed. This was at a time when there was little or no documentation. Even now the documentation for the SharePoint 2007 object model leaves a lot to be desired. Since SharePoint 2003 I have used a “Discovery” tool named ClassMaster (http://www.certdev.com). This tool has enabled me to dive deep into the SharePoint object model and understand how to use SharePoint to its fullest extent.
Why won’t my site Quick Launch navigation accept relative URLs?
OK, so you’re trying to customize your site and then you try to add a relative URL to the Quick Launch menu.
You start by going to Site Action/Site Settings and then under the Look and Feel section, you clicked the “Navigation” link.
Editing the navigation as in this screen shot, you clicked “Add Link”.
MOSS2007 – Show InfoPath fields within CQWP (well attempt to)
I recently got asked a question regarding the viewing of InfoPath properties and fields within a CQWP. The question was specifically to do with “Administrator Approved” forms. Within MOSS2007 when you create a form you can either publish it to a document library, site content type or as an administrator approved form. When you publish the form you are able to specify what fields if any are promoted and become visible within the sites and libraries in SharePoint. In this post we will look at creating a very basic InfoPath form and then get the field values to render within a CQWP. Firstly we will look at creating a simple form. To do create the form you want and then select the “File, Publish” option. The following wizard will appear:
Update: Display “Append Changes to Existing Text†Fields in a Custom List Form Web Part
I want to thank Brian Hunsaker for pointing this out to me. I’ve posted several times about the difficulties I’ve had in the past with displaying text fields in custom web parts where the “Append Changes to Existing Text” option is turned on. An example of this is the comments field in the test issues list:
Relate to SharePoint as a Database - the two line up pretty well…
With all the talk about SharePoint as an application platform lately, I figured it might be good to post on the way I like to describe to SharePoint to clients.
Sure, you get a lot of neat features out of the box with SharePoint, but I’ve seen plenty of deer-in-headlight looks after people hear everything the product has to offer and the exponential amount of solutions that are possible when you look a little deeper. Even after conversing a great deal about what SharePoint is and how it can help an organization, there are always a few folks who have that ‘but… I don’t get it!’ look. Usually, it’s the business-focused people who understand the idea of SharePoint right away, but I’ve found that it’s the folks who are deep-technical in nature, but have been exposed to MOSS only through reading some articles and maybe been through a little training, who have a harder time grasping the SharePoint concept. Let’s face it, it’s a new way of thought for most techies.
One thing I heard in February 2006 struck a cord with me for some reason: ‘Everything in SharePoint is a list.’ Got me thinking. I did a ton of MCMS02 development, so I was used to performing app dev as using a robust API, and not heavily leveraging SQL. Couple that with the article Gathering MOSS in the August 2006 issue of MSDN by one of the newest members of the MOSS blogging community, Ted Pattison, app dev in WSSv3 clicked.
Almost every client that I’ve talked to about SharePoint has had at least some technical experience in their careers, and even if they haven’t, they probably are familiar with the way a database is set up, so why not have them think about SharePoint in way that they already understand?
Starter for 10 with SharePoint
echNet has developed the following pages in response to your feedback on the topics you want to read more about:
| • |
Before you Begin |
| • |
Migration and Upgrading |
| • |
Governance |
| • |
Interoperability |
0 Responses to “SharePoint 2007 link love 09-26-2007”
Leave a Reply