SharePoint WorX

Installing SP1 on SharePoint 2010

2011-09-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

I recently installed SharePoint 2010 SP1 on a multi-server farm. There are a number of gotchas to be aware of, including commands to run to upgrade your server after installation.

I'm personally impressed with how Microsoft have packaged both the SharePoint Install files and service pack installs. They are intuitive and user friendly. However you have to take note of the following:

1. In a multiple server install i recommend that you install your service pack in sequence, starting with the application servers then the Web Front ends. The service pack will prompt you to restart the boxes after install. Restart the boxes in sequence. At this point note that the boxes are not upgraded with the Service Pack yet.
2. To see that your boxes are not installed, log on your Central Administration

Click on check upgrade status, under Upgrade and Migration to see the status on your upgrade.

As you can see above to upgrade your farm you need to run the command and is not stsadm -o upgrade. It is replaced with psconfig.exe -cmd upgrade see the figure below.

SharePoint 2010 Labs

2011-04-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

The guys at technet have put together a series of labs for SharePoint 2010, check the info here: http://technet.microsoft.com/sv-se/office/sharepointserver/bb512933(en-us).aspx

Perform Partial Name search in SharePoint 2007

2010-08-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

A lot of questions have been raised whether MOSS 2007 can support wildcards, suffix matchings, grouping of query terms, or logical operators. The truth is most of these deficiencies is not as result of the SharePoint engine but the fact that Out of the Box Web Parts do not expose these functionality on the User Interface.

A typical scenario when performing people search in SharePoint, users would like to search with partial names, like: You type in Bra on the search Box and you expect the search results to return: Bradley, Bramley, brambley, Brandon.
In SharePoint out of the box, there is no Web part that supports this. You basically have to type in full names like: Bramley to get any results.

To work around this issue follow this thought process:
On the people Search Web Part (Out of the box), type in your criteria, ensure you are using partial name not full name.

It will display a Peopleresults page. Note the URL displayed on the browser.

Then click on Search Options. Perform the same search again. Again enter the partial name in first name box, then perform search again.

Note that the search will launch PeopleResult page again. This time it places your search criteria in “ ” This is the source of the problem, see the figure below.

If you remove the “ ”. Meaning you just have FirstName:bra in the box and search again. The engine will return the results we want, it will work just as fine. At this point note the URLs:
If you type in your search criteria in the first name box, SharePoint will launch the following URL: http://servername:9090/SearchCenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=FirstName%3A%22Bra%22
Do you the same for the last name, the following will be launched
http://servername:9090/SearchCenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=LastName%3A%22Mae%22
Again it looks the problem is on the front end not the engine.
Solution: create a custom Web Part with 3 controls: firstname, Lastname and Search button.
Now you WebPart Solution should look as follows:

When the user clicks on Search, the Web Part will pass the text to the URLs below
When Search Button is clicked: Pass the inputs to this urls: http://servername:9090/SearchCenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=FirstName%3A%22inputText%22 for the first name. http://servername:9090/SearchCenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=LastName%3A%22LastNameInput%22
For the last name.

A typical method for Search will be:

void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string getURL = string.Empty;
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(lastNametxt.Text.Trim()) && !(string.IsNullOrEmpty(firstNametxt.Text.Trim())))
{
getURL = string.Format(Properties.Settings.Default.SearchURL+"FirstName%3A{0}", firstNametxt.Text.Trim());
}
else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(firstNametxt.Text.Trim()) && !(string.IsNullOrEmpty(lastNametxt.Text.Trim())))
{
getURL = string.Format(Properties.Settings.Default.SearchURL + "LastName%3A{0}", lastNametxt.Text.Trim());
}
else if (!((string.IsNullOrEmpty(lastNametxt.Text.Trim())) && (string.IsNullOrEmpty(firstNametxt.Text.Trim()))))
{
getURL = string.Format(Properties.Settings.Default.SearchURL + "FirstName%3A{0}%20LastName%3A{1}", firstNametxt.Text.Trim(), lastNametxt.Text.Trim());
}
SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
{
this.Page.Response.Redirect(getURL);
});
}
In your settings file define your searchUrl as : http://servername:9090/SearchCenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k=
Please note you can simply hardcode the URL as: http://servername:9090/SearchCenter/Pages/peopleresults.aspx?k

In the Web part above you can simply type names like: Bra to return all related names such as Bramley, Bram, Brad,bradley, brandon and so on. In fact Bra* and Bra will return the same results.

I hope this saves someone time. I will look at the possible of packaging this solution.

Fixing 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machines issues

2010-05-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has made available the VMs for testing or training on SharePoint 2010. There are few challenges setting up some of this, especially if you do not have enough resources. This post aims to share some light on some of the issues discovered. Again if you not familiar with the VMs referred to here please click here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=751fa0d1-356c-4002-9c60-d539896c66ce&displaylang=en .

The VM 2010-7a is in a saved state. The memory assigned to this VM is about 5120MB. This might be a little more than what you have on your environment. And obviously if you have no enough resources on your environment, you will get an error as shown below.

Now to change the memory for your new VM first delete your saved state by following the steps below. With your VM Manager open, select your VM then click delete saved state.

Then click on the settings

Click on the Memory, and change the settings. Hope you at least have about 4Gig of RAM. Then you good to go.

Issues installing SharePoint 2010 Beta on Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2

2010-03-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys

I thought I should share some of my experiences on installing SharePoint 2010. As you know the product is not released yet, there is also limited installation information. I have recently after so many workarounds managed to install the Application on Windows Server 2010 R2, with SQL Server 2008 R2. The install was kinda buggy.

Well this is where I started.
1. Click on the SharePoint Installation file.
2. Installing SharePoint 2010, you need to install a number of prerequisites software. So to save yourself time, especially if you are connected to the internet. Click on Install software prerequisites

3. The following screen will display

4. Click Next, sharePoint will download, prerequisites software as shown above. But if your VM, dev machine is not connected to the internet, you will have to manually down these pieces software from the internet.

5. You may get errors such as the one shown below:

6. Do Panic, download the necessary prequisites, (You can ignore SQL 2008 R2 Reporting Services SharePoint 2010 Add-in, this is an optional component)when done, install SharePoint 2010
7. At this stage, your installation should go fine.
8. After installation run the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard
9. If your configuration do not complete successfully, open the log file. Search for errors in the files. If you find anything like this:
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Entering function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Resource id to be retrieved is PostSetupConfigurationFailedEventLog for language English (United States)
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Resource retrieved id PostSetupConfigurationFailedEventLog is Configuration of SharePoint Products failed. Configuration must be performed in order for this product to operate properly. To diagnose the problem, review the extended error information located at {0}, fix the problem, and run this configuration wizard again.
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Leaving function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 ERR Configuration of SharePoint Products failed. Configuration must be performed in order for this product to operate properly. To diagnose the problem, review the extended error information located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS\PSCDiagnostics_3_28_2010_8_29_10_549_2104834801.log, fix the problem, and run this configuration wizard again.
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Entering function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Resource id to be retrieved is PostSetupConfigurationFailedUserMessage for language English (United States)
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Resource retrieved id PostSetupConfigurationFailedUserMessage is Configuration of SharePoint Products failed. Configuration must be performed before you use SharePoint Products. For further details, see the diagnostic log located at {0} and the application event log.
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Leaving function StringResourceManager.GetResourceString
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Entering function TaskDriver.OnTaskDriverStop
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Sending a task driver stop event: TaskDriverEventArgs.EventCriticalityType error, TaskDriverEventArgs.EventType.stop, Configuration of SharePoint Products failed. Configuration must be performed before you use SharePoint Products. For further details, see the diagnostic log located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS\PSCDiagnostics_3_28_2010_8_29_10_549_2104834801.log and the application event log.
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Entering function TaskDriverStateChange.Enter
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Acquiring the writer lock to change the state
03/28/2010 08:47:58 6 INF Current state of the task driver is neverrun. You want to change it to stoppedrunning

10. Do not panic, again, check if you have Geneva Framework installed (the version should be 1.0.x and above). If not download it from here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/6/6/866E86E1-2264-4C80-836A-92F3F3A3B1AB/release/MicrosoftGenevaFramework.x64.msi. See the comments by Bill Baer: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/b3d31931-9d6b-4b68-8f7b-d8df55601beb/
11. After installation,try to configure SharePoint using the command tool. Open you command window. Navigate to your hive directory (%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\BIN\) psconfig.exe -cmd configdb -create -server app1 -database SharePoint_Config_Contoso -user contoso\mossfarm -password P@ssw0rd -admincontentdatabase Central_Admin_Content,

The above command created a server farm on a SQL Server instance named app1, with a configuration database named SharePoint_Config_Contoso. It also created a content database and embedded site collection for Central Administration

Special thanks to Ben Curry of this site:http://www.mindsharpblogs.com/ben/archive/2008/03/08/4411.aspx please note if you are installing as a single mode, remove the -user, and password attributes.
10. Now After the server farm is created, you need to provision Central Administration on at least one server in the farm. Yes, you have created in SQL Server, but you must still provision an IIS server to render the content. For this example, we will install on app2, the first server in the farm
psconfig.exe -cmd adminvs -provision -port 8090 -windowsauthprovider onlyusentlm
11. Administration, you need to install all services associated with your installed server role. We installed an APPLICATION server, so we should get all services installed.
psconfig.exe -cmd services install
12. Next, and VERY important, is setting the security on registry settings and the file system. If you do not do so, your installations will complete correctly, but you will have miscellaneous errors until the end of time, remove the installation, or until you simply run the command to fix your farm.
psconfig.exe -cmd secureresources
13. Now you almost done, test your central administration by browsing to http://servername:8090
14. At this stage your central administration should open successfully.
Please make sure that the account you has dbcreater and securityadmin roles in SQL.
You good to go.

Your licence for Office servers search has expired

2010-02-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

I came to work this morning and found complains from a number of my users who could not utilize Search functionality in SharePoint 2007 instead they will get this error: "Your licence for Office servers Search has expired".

Quickly to diagonize the issue I browsed into my central administration. Click on Operations -> then Convert License Type under upgrade and Migration. Well, if you see this "Office SharePoint Server Trial with Enterprise Client Access License" on current License area. You probably installed SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 2, described in the KB here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/971620.

Now what you need to do is to input the valid license click on OK. Then reset iis on all the web servers. See this blog for details http://blog.laksha.net/2009/12/sharepoint-your-licence-for-office.html. Then you good to go.

Wireless not detected on Windows Server 2008

2010-01-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

Folks as part of SharePoint 2010, I have recently i7CPU Intel based Labtop. Now this guy is going to be my development box for SharePoint 2010. I have installed Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. I want to Add Hyper-V on top of this OS. Well the concept is I'm gonna have VM with windows server 2003, another one with Windows Server 2003 which will run SharePoint 2007. The final VM I want to build needs to run all the latest technologies including SharePoint 2010.

Now back to the Installation of Windows Server 2008 on my labtop, I have noticed that the Wireless was not picking up any network connections. I checked Network and Sharing Center but did not see anything odd. After searching around on internet, I decided to check roles and features. I noticed that the feature call Wireless LAN Service was not installed. Hmm, this is the cause of the problem. I followed the following steps to address this issue.
go to start ->Administrative Tools->Server manager
Click on the features, then click on Add Features, scroll down and check Wireless LAN Service
Then click OK

As I'm creating SharePoint Dev machines from the ground up on the Hyper-V. I'm expecting issues along the way. Please check this blog.

Creating dedicated database for Site Collections in SharePoint and Complete Template Ids

2009-11-29T13:55:00.000-08:00

By default when you create a Web Application in SharePoint, a Database is created. What if you want a Site Collection under this Web application to be created with a dedicated database. This has proven to be a challenge in that you cannot use sharepoint central administration or the user interface for this purpose. Instead a command tool known as stsadm can be used. So browse to 12hive directory(%SystemDrive%\Program Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Bin )

Use this command: stsadm.exe -o createsiteinnewdb -url http://................... /sites/newSiteName -owneremail owneremailaddress -ownerlogin domainname\adminName -databasename dbName_Content -sitetemplate STS#1 -Title YourSiteName

Here is the explanation:
createsiteinnewdb - Creates a dedicated database
-url - A url to your site e.g http://servername:2222/sites/newSiteName
-owneremail - You have to provide this parameter, this the email normally for admin purposes e.g noreply@stmpserver.local
-ownerlogin - You have to provide this parameter, this is the owner or sharepoint administrator login details e.g mydomain\administrator.
-databasename - This is the optional parameter. If you don't provide this SharePoint will default names such as WSS_Content_0316f86a25cb4982b12d4f5ce833003f provide custom names such as GroupName_Content
-sitetemplate - This is important, you need to provide the template that you site is going to use. See a detailed list below.
-Title - This is optional, if you are building HR Site, provide the name such as Human Resource, this name will appear on the new site.

Web templates ID explained (WSS 3.0):

TemplateID Description
STS#0 Team Site
STS#1 Blank Site
STS#2 Document workspace
MPS#0 Basic meeting workspace
MPS#1 Blank meeting workspace
MPS#2 Decision meeting workspace
MPS#3 Social meeting workspace
MPS#4 Multipage meeting workspace
WIKI#0 Wiki
BLOG#0 Blog

(MOSS 2007)Additional Web Template IDs Include the following

BDR#0 - Document center—A central document management location for an enterprise
OFFILE#0 - Records center—A central location in which records
OFFILE#1 - managers can define routes for incoming files
CMSPUBLISHING#0 - Publishing site
BLANKINTERNET#0 - Publishing site—A site for publishing web pages on a schedule with workflow features enabled
BLANKINTERNET#1 - Press releases site
BLANKINTERNET#2 - Publishing site with workflow—A publishing site for web pages using approval workflows
SPSNHOME#0 - A site for publishing news and articles
SPSREPORTCENTER#0 - Report center—A site for creating, managing, and delivering web pages, dashboards, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
SPSPORTAL#0 - A starter hierarchy for an intranet divisional portal
PROFILES#0 - A profile site that includes page layouts with zones
BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 - Publishing portal—a site collection preconfigured for revision-controlled, secure content creation and publication

SharePoint document library treeview

2009-10-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Problem: One of the biggest problems with SharePoint document libraries is with the inability to navigate through documents in a large library. A dynamic Tree like structure, just like the file structure you have on the file share, an ability to collapse/expand tree view is needed. See the pictures below.

There is a Tool to accomplish this goal. Follow the steps:
1. Log http://spdoclibbrowser.codeplex.com/ ,
2. Click on download
3. Extract the zip file, look for DocumentLibraryBrowserCab1.3.1
4. Now log on your SharePoint server, click on start -> run, type cmd
5. Type: cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN
6. Enter
7. stsadm -o addwppack -filename c:\Package_DocumentLibraryBrowser1.3.1\Package_DocumentLibraryBrowser\DocumentLibraryBrowserCab1.3.1.cab
8. Now log on the central administration site
9. Click on Operations then Solution Management under Global Configurations
10. Click documentlibrarybrowsercab1.3.1.cab Click Deploy, choose the Web Application, see the figure below

Click OK. Then create a page, mount the web part, and fill in the details on the settings.

Additions to this Web site have been blocked

2009-08-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

This issue relates to SharePoint 2007

You trying to add, features, document libraries , lists, sites. The SharePoint system prevents you from accessing it. And you get the follwoing error:

Additions to this Web site have been blocked. Please contact the administrator to resolve this problem. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.CreateListFromFormPost(String bstrUrl, String& pbstrGuid, String& pbstrNextUrl) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.CreateListFromFormPost(String bstrUrl, String& pbstrGuid, String& pbstrNextUrl)

Resolutions:

Dont be silly. The error is because you have got site collection locks set on your site. Go to your central administration -> Application Management -> Site Collection Quotas and locks, and you'll probably find you have changed the setting to 'Adding Content Prevented'. (http:///_admin/sitequota.aspx). It should be set to 'Not locked

Troubleshooting some of the issues associated with Shared Service Provider (SSP) in SharePoint

2009-08-09T21:41:00.000-07:00

Problem:
Shared Services Provider could be a very complex subject. Troubleshooting some of the errors associated with SSP can take 1 or hours to resolve. One of this is when you click on Search settings, Usage reports, Search Usage Reports links in SSP you get this error: Unknown Error to Troubleshoot issues with windows SharePoint Services. See below

Cause:
SSP can be broken by number of things including failure to load some dlls, incremental crawl etc. This problem will normally affect your /ssp/admin/_layouts/searchsspsettings.aspx, /ssp/admin/_layouts/SpUsageConfig.aspx (Usage reports), /ssp/admin/_layouts/SpUsageSspSearchQueries.aspx (Search Usage Reports), etc
Resolution:
Still frustrated. The message above do not mean anything. To view detailed error message go to the SSP web application web Config like so.
1. Open on your IIS (start run inetmgr)
2. Look for your web application, right click -> click properties - >click home directory
3. Copy your directory, paste on run command to open it.
Find Web.config (Alternatively, you can find your web applications on c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories, look for the port hosting your SSP. find you web cofig.)
4. Search for callStack
5. Change the line callStack=”false” to CallStack=”True”
6. Now search for customErrors (), change the customErrors tag to (customErrors mode="Off")
7. At this point when you browse to the SSP search settings, you will find detailed errors, see the figure below.

Well now that makes sense to me. What this says is that you have dlls missing. The question is which one? The next steps show you how to find these dlls. You will use a tool called Fusion Log Viewer "FUSLOGVW.EXE." You may find this tool in one of the following locations:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\FUSLOGVW.EXE dated 9/23/2005 and C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\FUSLOGVW.EXE dated 11/7/2007
Please note for some obvious reasons you might not have this tool in the production environment. Copy the tool from your dev environment and paste in production. Follow the following post to complete the exercise : http://colinborrowman.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!5BE1E6D14CDF840F!264.entry?sa=198329881

SP2 update

2009-08-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

If you have recently downloaded and installed Service Pack 2 for MOSS 2007. The release that was available between April 28, 2009 and July 29, 2009 is buggy. A product expiration is activated incorrectly. Refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620. To check if you have the same symptoms after installation. Go Central administration -> operations, then under Upgrade and Migration click Convert License Type. on the Current License Type if you see the word Trial ("Office SharePoint Server Trial with Enterprise Client Access License ") , you need to install the latest update referred to in the KB article above.

Please note if you running SharePoint in a Multi-server Farm , you need to install the update in all your machines. And yes, you have to restart the servers.