Muhanad Omar [MVP]

SharePoint 2010 Sneak Peek Videos on http://sharepoint.microsoft.com

Muhanad Omar — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:02:42 GMT

Body:

Want to get a sneak preview of SharePoint 2010? Head over to http://sharepoint.microsoft.com NOW!! The Microsoft SharePoint Product Team has uploaded three videos covering SharePoint 2010 for IT Pros, Developers, and end-users. Each video is approximately 15 minutes and they all contain some really cool demos you won’t want to miss!

Enjoy!! :)

Category: SharePoint;Microsoft;SharePoint 2010

Published: 7/13/2009 5:02 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/101/sp2010_3_36181E68.png

SharePoint MVP for Another Year

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:07:37 GMT

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I’m a bit late on this post (11 days to be exact) but I just wanted to quickly thank Microsoft for renewing my SharePoint MVP Award for 2009-2010. The MVP Program has literally been one of the greatest programs I’ve ever been involved in, so thanks to all the great people that make it so amazing.

Congrats to all the new and renewed this year!

Category: SharePoint;Community;Microsoft

Published: 7/11/2009 1:07 PM

Why “Save as a Site Template” on Publishing Sites is not supported

Muhanad Omar — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:13:44 GMT

Body:

During today’s RSUG Meeting an attendee asked why the “Save as a Site Template” option isn’t available on SharePoint Publishing sites, or more specifically, sites that have the Publishing Feature activated. I know that Microsoft hides this option because it isn’t supported, but that didn’t really answer the attendee’s question. So after a quick search, I found a few articles/blog posts talking about this specific issue. Stefan Goßner has a post on this with some good info within the comments. He linked to this Microsoft KB article as being the only official document stating this action was unsupported, but still, no real explanation to why it’s not supported.

After some more searching, I found this article by Forest Marcia to have the best explanation to way saving a Publishing site as a template isn’t supported. Check it out, and if anyone has a better explanation, please please add it to the comments section of this post. Thanks!

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/14/2009 7:13 PM

Book Review: Professional SharePoint Designer 2007

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:58:27 GMT

Body:

Finally, a book (and a great one in that) covering SharePoint Designer! I recently finished reading Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, authored by MVPs Woodrow Windischman, Bryan Phillips, and Asif Rehmani. With Microsoft making SPD 2007 available as a free download, it’s important that users of the product understand how to use it properly.

The authors did an incredible job covering the aspects of SPD from multiple perspectives. I enjoyed how they even included sections on developing solutions with Visual Studio. It was apparent those sections were added with the intent on getting readers familiar with the various options and methods they have available for developing extended functionality outside SPD, so don’t be disappointed if you don’t feel it’s advanced enough – remember that this isn’t a core development book.

The one thing I loved the most about the book was the style of writing; the authors did a great job simplifying walking through the features of SPD without losing my attention. The level of detail and simplicity was balanced very well throughout the book. I learned a lot of things reading this book and I believe any user, no matter how good he/she is with SPD, can learn a new thing or two from reading this book as well.

SharePoint Designer 2007 is a tremendous and powerful software. With Microsoft making it available to download for free, users need to have a strong understanding of how to work with it, and more importantly, how to avoid running into problems with it.

Category: Book Reviews

Published: 5/10/2009 2:58 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/98/prospd_3_45FC3F7E.png

User Group Meetings & Events in May

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:54:30 GMT

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I’ll be traveling between Jordan & Saudi Arabia quite a while this month for community activities, so I thought I’d mention some of the things happening and where you can find me.

Date	User Group/Club	Location	Session	Speaker
May 6	JorDev	MIC – Jordan	Testing Principles Part 1	Ruba Khattab
May 7	IEEE Club	Jordan University	Introduction to SharePoint Server 2007	Muhanad Omar
May 13	Jordan SPUG	MIC – Jordan	SharePoint & Silverlight	Mair Swartz
May 14	Riyadh SPUG	MIC – Riyadh	Developing Multilingual Apps for MOSS	Ali Nimer
			Automating you SharePoint Installations using Scripts	Muhanad Omar
			Workflow Foundation & MOSS 2007	Amjad Issa
			Developing List Event Receivers in SharePoint	Jerry Yasir
May 20	Jordan SPUG	MIC – Jordan	TBD	Muhannad Abu-Obaid
May 20	SharePoint Geeks	Khobar	SharePoint Workflows in Depth	Fauzan Khan
			SharePoint & Silverlight 3 Integration	Emad Abdel-Aziz
			Using SharePoint Features Framework	Jerry Yasir
			Best Practices for Building a Scalable SharePoint Farm	Muhanad Omar
May 27	Jordan IT Pros	MIC – Jordan	Hyper-V Deployment & Best Practices	Hikmat Kanaan

Here’s a quick breakdown of the meetings/events I’ll be speaking at.

May 7 – IEEE Student’s Club, Jordan University

I’m really excited for this! I love working with students, and this would be the first time I go back to my university since I graduated, so hopefully I can meet with some of my old professors while I’m there. Here’s the session abstract:

“Introduction to SharePoint Server 2007: Join Muhanad Omar, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), to learn the ins and outs of SharePoint Server 2007. Get familiar with it’s features, capabilities, and how to work with it as a end-user, designer, administrator and developer. Jumpstart your professional career with knowledge on the fastest growing server product in Microsoft’s history.”

May 14 – Riyadh SharePoint User Group Meeting, MIC

I have a 30 minute slot during this meeting where I’ll be talking on how to automate a SharePoint installation using scripts. I thought this would be a good follow-up topic after my STSADM talk last month which went pretty well. My good friend Amjad Issa will also be presenting on workflows, so make sure you don’t miss this meeting! It’s a long drive but totally worth it, I promise :)

May 20 – SharePoint Tech Days 2009, Khobar

This is actually a Microsoft sponsored event being hosted by a fairly new SPUG in Khobar (Saudi Arabia) called “SharePoint Geeks”. My session is titled “Best Practices for Building a Scalable SharePoint Farm”. I’ll be talking about farm topologies, server roles, security, scalability, farm maintainability and DR… all very important topics!

So if you’re in the area, please pass by; it’ll be tons of fun! And if you can’t make it, spread the word :)

Category: Jordev;Community;JSUG

Published: 5/3/2009 1:54 PM

Recap: Riyadh SharePoint User Group April Meeting

Muhanad Omar — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:33:20 GMT

Body:

Thanks to the Riyadh SPUG for putting this together and inviting me to speak. I had a great time! You can download my slide deck from here. Here are the links I mentioned during the session (also available in the slide deck):

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment. Thanks again for everyone who attended!

Category: Community

Published: 4/17/2009 11:33 AM

Speaking at the Riyadh SharePoint User Group on April 16th

Muhanad Omar — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:43:19 GMT

Body:

If you’re in Riyadh, swing by the Microsoft Innovation Center at the Al-Yamama University this Thursday, April 16th, and attend what promises to be a great UG meeting for RSUG. I’ll be presenting a session on STSADM, covering what it is, how it’s used, it’s benefits, and how to extend it.

Here’s the meeting agenda:

Session	Speaker(s)	Start Time	End Time
Welcome Note	Ali Nimer / Jerry Yasir	12:45 PM	12:50 PM
How to use SharePoint Variations with WCM	Ali Nimer	12:50 PM	1:20 PM
Break		1:20 PM	1:45 PM
Custom Field Types for SharePoint 2007	Jerry Yasir	1:45 PM	2:30 PM
STSADM - a SharePoint Administrator's Best Friend	Muhanad Omar	2:30 PM	3:30 PM
Q/A and Giveaways		3:30 PM	3:45 PM

Oh yeah, the giveaway is a freakin’ Xbox 360! How cool is that!! To register, click on the following link and fill out the form – http://rsugapril.eventbrite.com/

Category: Community

Published: 4/14/2009 9:43 AM

Get your copy now, SharePoint Designer 2007 is FREE!

Muhanad Omar — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:24:41 GMT

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Yes, the rumors were true – you can now download SharePoint Designer 2007 for absolutely free! Go to http://www.microsoft.com/spd and get your copy now. The direct download link is here. If you want the entire story behind this move, Asif Rehmani SharePoint MVP and co-author of Professional SPD 2007, has a great post covering everything you need to know. Check it out here.. “SharePoint Designer 2007 now available for Free”

Category: SharePoint

Published: 4/2/2009 12:26 PM

Congrats to the New and Renewed MVPs of Jordan

Muhanad Omar — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:00:40 GMT

Body:

Congratulations to friends Mohamed Saleh for getting his Visual C# MVP renewed, and a big congrats on newcomer Mohammad Daoud, the first Dynamics GP MVP in Jordan! And of course, congratulations to everyone else around the world who received the MVP Award! Be very proud!! :)

Category: Community

Published: 4/1/2009 6:00 PM

JSUG April Virtual Meeting: Enterprise SharePoint Workflow with SharePoint MVP David Mann

Muhanad Omar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:13:21 GMT

Body:

I’m really excited about this one!! We had 75 members sign up for the webinar on the first day registration opened, so it looks like it’s going to be another great meeting for JSUG. Big thanks of course to David Mann for taking time out of his schedule to present to JSUG. Anyway, here are the details…

Topic: Enterprise SharePoint Workflow: Building & Managing a High-Performance Workflow Environment
Speaker: David Mann, SharePoint MVP
Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Your Desk

Session Abstract

Workflow in SharePoint is an exciting new capability. By now, most people have conquered the basics. However, as organizations have increased their usage of SharePoint, they have found that these workflow basics don't meet their needs. What they need is the ability to run thousands or tens of thousands of workflow instances on documents and list items across their farm. What they find is that the out-of-the-box settings and basic workflow development and management operations are not sufficient.

This session will explore why focusing on your workflow subsystem is important, and cover the needs of a large scale workflow environment from the farm level down to individual workflow design specifications. Learn why all workflows need to be looked at in light of performance and scalability as well as how to build workflows that scale in an environment that scales, monitor workflow processing and overcome common obstacles. This session assumes a thorough understanding of the basics of SharePoint workflow and how to develop new workflows in Visual Studio. This introductory material will not be covered.

The session will be heavy on code and demos. It will assume a familiarity with SharePoint administration, development and an understanding of basic performance/load tuning and testing.

Registration

Registration is only available to JSUG Members, and seats are limited, so hurry up and register now!
http://www.jordansug.com/Lists/April 29th Virtual Meeting/Registration.aspx?Source=/Pages/Go.aspx

Category: JSUG

Published: 3/31/2009 4:13 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/92/JSUGLogoMedium_3_5C7ECB34.png

Tip: How to delete the default Shared Services Provider (SSP)

Muhanad Omar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:49:21 GMT

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Here’s a quick tip for anyone new at administrating MOSS 2007.

When attempting to delete the default SSP through Central Administration, the “Delete” option is grayed out. To work around this, run the below command using STSADM.

stsadm –o deletessp <SSP name> –deletedatabases -force

The “–deletedatabases” parameter is optional. The “–force” parameter is required when deleting the default SSP. It’s optional when deleting any other SSP, and is used to force the timer job to complete the deletion.

Category: SharePoint;Administration;STSADM

Published: 3/31/2009 3:49 PM

Ferrari.com goes live on MOSS 2007!

Muhanad Omar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:21:08 GMT

Body:

One word – Sexy!!

>> Official web site
>> Preview video (a must see!)

Category: SharePoint

Published: 3/30/2009 12:21 AM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/90/ferrari_6_3CEF079B.png
http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/90/ferrari2_3_3CEF079B.png

Now that’s FAST!

Muhanad Omar — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:44:45 GMT

Body:

*Completely unrelated to FAST Search*

I thought I’d show off my current internet speed :) Pretty sweet huh?

How many years do you think it’ll take for this speed to be the standard speed offered by ISPs?

Category: General

Published: 3/18/2009 9:44 AM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/89/MOHESpeed_3_70A46800.png

Good luck Spencer Harbar on the Microsoft Certified Master program!

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:02:57 GMT

Body:

Just wanted to send a shot out to friend and fellow SharePoint MVP, Spencer Harbar, wishing him the best of luck during the next 3 weeks. To those who don’t know, Spencer is currently the only SharePoint MVP enrolled in the MCM SharePoint program, which officially starts tomorrow. If you catch him online or on twitter, please wish him good luck. To all the others currently enrolled, good luck as well! Make us proud, mate!

Category: General

Published: 3/14/2009 3:02 PM

Microsoft Support Lifecycle for MOSS 2007

Muhanad Omar — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:57:00 GMT

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Last night at our monthly user group meeting I was surprised that the majority of the attendees didn’t have the Infrastructure Updates installed on their production environments. What was even more shocking was that some still didn’t have Service Pack 1 installed!! Now that’s just bad! Some of the concerns and reasons I was hearing for not having SP1 installed were…

“What if it screws something up?”
”My environment is doing just fine, why do I need to install SP1?”
”SP2 is on the way, I’ll just wait for that.”

In cases like these I like to use a scare tactic, more specifically, those two words everyone loves to hear…“NOT SUPPORTED”. If your SharePoint Server farm does not have Service Pack 1 installed, your product support lifecycle has officially ended as of January 13, 2009. (references below)

- http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&p1=11373&x=5&y=10
- http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps#Office

So to summarize – if you don’t have SP1 installed and your farm breaks, Microsoft will not support you until you get SP1 installed on all your MOSS servers. While you’re at it, apply the Infrastructure Updates – they’re extremely important – then take a look at the Cumulative Updates and see if they apply to your environment (they most probably do). If they do, get them installed right away. As of now, you can actually download the Uber Packages of the February Cumulative Updates and get all the updates after SP1 including the Infrastructure Update in one package.

Installation order for MOSS 2007 updates:

WSS 3.0 Service Pack 1 – x64, x86
MOSS 2007 Service Pack 1 – x64, x86
WSS 3.0 February Cumulative Update
MOSS 2007 February Cumulative Update

After applying these updates, your Farm Version should be 12.0.6341.5000.

Category: SharePoint

Published: 3/12/2009 1:57 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/87/support_3_107CFB15.png

MVP Summit 2009 – The Experience

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:23:12 GMT

Body:

I’m sure most of you have been keeping up with the thousands of tweets this past week about the MVP Summit (keyword #mvp09). A total of 38 hours of traveling to experience 4 days of Summit was totally worth it! The chance to meet the majority of the SharePoint MVP community, which I have only previously known through email, was by itself a great experience. Add to that the face-to-face interaction with the SharePoint Product Group on Microsoft campus for 2 full days, a day of Paintball with the MVPs (~44,000 rounds of paint!!), SharePint, and finally seeing Steve Ballmer live, made this week one to remember forever!

Thanks for everyone who made this week happen. I’m truly HONORED to be a part of the SharePoint MVP family and the MVP community as a whole. Here’s to a great year!

UPDATE (3/7/09): The SharePoint Paintball crew – picture courtesy of Darrin Bishop.

Category: Microsoft;Community;Conferences & Events

Published: 3/6/2009 9:23 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/85/paintballcrew_3_1E411901.jpg

JSUG March 2009 Meeting: MOSS Enterprise Search

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:40:01 GMT

Body:

The Jordan SharePoint User Group will be holding it’s next Monthly Meeting on March 11th 2009. Details are below. I look forward to seeing you guys there!

Topic: Enterprise Search in SharePoint and what’s coming in SharePoint “14”
Speaker: Mohammed Zayed – Microsoft Corporation
Date: Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Microsoft Innovation Center

Session Abstract:
Enterprise Search from Microsoft helps you connect people with the information they need to fuel decisions, define purchases, increase productivity – and drive desired outcomes. SharePoint Enterprise Search is a market-leading solution enabling you to deliver engaging search experiences throughout the enterprise – to help your customers get what they want, help your employees get their jobs done, and help your teams and partners collaborate more effectively. Customization needs for Enterprise Search should not go out of the scope of what SharePoint massively offers. We will go through the configuration of Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Search, as well as look at Microsoft’s recent announcements around Performance Point Services and FAST for SharePoint.

About the Speaker:
Mohammed Zayed is a Technology Solution Professional for Microsoft Corporation. His focus lies in SharePoint Products and Technologies, and has aided in the success of many enterprise SharePoint deployments within Jordan and Lebanon.

RSVP:
http://www.jordansug.com/Lists/March 11th Meeting/New.aspx?Source=/Pages/Registration Success.aspx

Category: JSUG

Published: 3/6/2009 9:40 PM

Recap of Michael Noel’s visit to Jordan

Muhanad Omar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:23:04 GMT

Body:

I got in contact with Michael Noel around 2 months ago through good friends Todd Klindt and Joel Oleson. Michael, in case you didn’t know, is the author of some of the top selling SAMS Unleashed books – to name a few: SharePoint 2007 Unleashed, Windows Server 2008 Unleashed, Exchange 2007 Unleashed, ISA Server 2006 Unleashed, and the list goes on and on. Yeah, he’s pretty smart :)

Anyway, Michael volunteered to speak at the Jordan SharePoint User Group on December 15th, and since he was here for about 3 days, we decided to the “Joel Oleson Tour”. I’m officially calling it that from now on; if you want to see the best of Jordan in 2 days, ask for the Joel Oleson Tour!

We started with a small drive around the city, shisha (aka hooka) at a cafe in Sweifieh, then topped it off with some great Lebanese pastries for dinner. At 4 AM we were off to Petra! Of course this time I was much more prepared than the time I went with Joel. Before the trip I made sure to change all 4 of my tires; didn’t want another flat in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and most important, I actually took the right directions with me :) So instead of the *awesome* 9 hour drive to Petra with Joel, it only took a swift 3 hours with Michael. I hope you’re reading this Joel! Good times, good times.

Petra, even for the second time, is still INCREDIBLE! You can’t not be impressed by this beautiful city. My little brother Bilal tagged along with us; it was his first time visiting Petra. Poor guy practically collapsed from exhaustion towards the end. Of course, the first thing you HAVE to see in Petra is the Treasury; they say it received the second highest number of votes for the new 7 Wonders of the World. Check out the picture to the right to know exactly why… just look at that piece of art; simply fantastic.

After the Treasury you basically need to choose what you want to see. You definitely can’t cover all of Petra in one day; it’s just impossible; maybe if you’re Indiana Jones, but other than that, no way, it’s just too big. We decided to take a different route than the one I took with Joel. With Joel we basically rode some really tired/tortured looking donkeys (poor things, check out the one in the picture below; he hates his life so much it’s actually trying to hide) and headed directly to the Monastery. Michael and I voted against the donkeys and walked our way through. Unfortunately we couldn’t go up to the Monastery; my brother and I were pretty much dead on energy and to get to the Monastery we had to walk up 900 steps… yes, 900!! Michael went around and took some more great pictures while my brother and I took in some sun. After 4 hours we headed back to the car and off to Amman (actually, first we got ripped off at the Movenpick for dinner, then we left to Amman. We got them back by stealing a bunch of cookies though).

The morning of the UG meeting Michael and I went to the one and only Dead Sea; instant floatation. The water is so salty that even if you tried to push yourself down, it wouldn’t work. Which of course means, don’t ever shave before swimming in the Dead Sea… and in Michael’s case, trust me when I tell you that it’s REALLY salty instead of tasting the water yourself and finding out the hard way lol. And then there’s the Dead Sea mud; you gotta do the Dead Sea mud! Even after 10 times (like in my case) it’s still very awesome to mess around with. Michael did the “mud in the hair” thing like Joel; looks cool right?

We had about 170 people register for the UG meeting; that’s huge! Unfortunately since we had to change the location of the meeting last second, some people got lost and never came to the meeting. We did end up with 100 though, which is still very good! We even had a few people come from outside Jordan to attend.. first time that’s happened. Michael presented “Building the Perfect SharePoint Farm” which was very well taken by the audience. All-in-all it was a great meeting; probably the best JSUG has had yet.

Thanks for visiting Jordan, Noel. Hope you had a great time!

Category: Community;General;JSUG;Life

Published: 12/25/2008 7:59 AM

Fujitsu integrates with MOSS 2007 Across Entire Document Imaging Scanner Line

Muhanad Omar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:22:10 GMT

Body:

A friend of mine just shared this story with me so I thought I’d pass it on. Fujitsu has partnered up with KnowledgeLake to provide image and document scanning capabilities directly into MOSS 2007 through their entire scanner line. This definitely opens up more opportunities for ECM and tighter BPM within MOSS.

Read the full story here: http://www.fujitsu.com/us/news/pr/fcpa_20081217-01i.html

Category: SharePoint;ECM

Published: 12/23/2008 6:43 PM

The Employee Blogging Platform by zevenseas

Muhanad Omar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:21:11 GMT

Body:

Daniel McPherson of zevenseas started a series of posts a couple months back on building an Employee Blogging Platform. I just finished reading all four parts last night and I’m quite impressed at what the guys were able to build out – definitely a big leap from the OOTB SharePoint blog template. Add to that that it can scale, aggregate posts based on criteria, perform exceptionally well, and it’s built on SharePoint so you get with it all the other cool SharePoint features – look’s like it can be a real competitor. Check it out…

And hey, looking for some cool free web parts and solutions? Take a look at these…

Quick Alert web part – quickly let’s a user create alerts; works on anonymous users as well
Choice Column Filter web part – the name says it
Tagged Links – <update> ~~tag clouds, great for blogs~~ complete social bookmarking solution </update>
Link Conductor – URL management tool

Category: SharePoint;Blogging;Web Parts

Published: 12/21/2008 6:28 PM

“VMware Tools is not supported on this guest OS” error message when trying to install VMware Tools on Window Server 2008

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:51:32 GMT

Body:

So I decided to give VMware Server 2.0 a try today and I already got my first error.. woohoo!

Here’s how my current setup looks like:

Host OS: Windows Vista 64-bit
VMware: VMware Server 2.0
Guest OS: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 32-bit

Obviously from the looks of this error message, VMware doesn’t support installing VMware Tools on Win2k8.; which is weird since this wasn’t the case with VMware Workstation 6. And we definitely don’t want to run our VM without the tools, unless you enjoy pressing Ctrl+Alt every time you want to release your mouse from the VM. So how do we fix this? Simple, make VMware think that our guest OS is supported :)

Before making any changes, make sure you VM is turned off. Now open your VM’s vmx file in Notepad (this is the file that stores all your VM’s configuration settings) and look for the property “guestOS”. This should be set to “longhorn” by default. Simply change that to “winnetenterprise” and save the file. Now VMware thinks your guest OS is Windows Server 2003 Enterprise instead of Windows Server 2008. Turn your VM back on, wait for it to load up, and then click on “Install VMware Tools…” from the web admin interface.

So there you have it – you’ve successfully tricked VMware into installing VMware Tools on an unsupported OS. Once the installation is complete, you can go back to your vmx file and change the “guestOS” property back to “longhorn”.

Category: Windows Server 2008;VMware

Published: 12/20/2008 7:51 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/81/vmwaretoolserror_3_5DF1B9B9.png

An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException was thrown while applying the SharePoint Infrastructure Updates

Muhanad Omar — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:45:10 GMT

Body:

I was building out a new medium farm the other day and applying the various SharePoint updates, when I received the following error after installing the Infrastructure Updates and running the Config wizard:

“An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException was thrown. Additional exception information: Failed to upgrade SharePoint Products and Technologies.”

Going through my log files, I realized the exception was being thrown for the following reason:

“The access control list on C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\template\layouts\Web.config could not be modified because the path could not be located in the file system.”

After a few Google searches, I found the solution in the “Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007” article on TechNet (go figure). The reason this was happing was because my farm still didn’t have any Web Apps provisioned so the Web.config file which was supposed to be in the 12\template\Layouts folder was missing.

To resolve this, simply copy the Web.config file in the 12\Config folder and paste it into your 12\templates\Layouts. Now run the Config wizard again and everything should work smoothly.

Category: SharePoint

Published: 12/19/2008 2:45 PM

JSUG November 5th Meeting: SharePoint Web Part Development, Part 1

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:26:36 GMT

Body:

The Jordan SharePoint User Group will be holding a 2-part series on SharePoint Web Part Development for the month of November. The first session will take place this week on Wednesday, November 5^th. The second session will be the following week on Wednesday, November 12^th.

Meeting Abstract

Are you interested in learning how to develop custom functionality for SharePoint? Want to learn how to develop and debug custom Web Parts? During this session, Jamil Haddadin, Senior Software Developer for STS, will discuss the basics of Web Part development and walk you through the methods and techniques to develop and debug custom Web Parts for SharePoint. This session will be the first of a 2-part series. The first part of this series will cover the fundamentals, while part 2 will focus on more advanced techniques and practices.

Meeting Details

Speaker: Jamil Haddadin, Senior Software Developer, STS
Title: SharePoint Web Part Development, Part 1
Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Microsoft Innovation Center, Royal Scientific Society, Information Technology Building, 3^rd Floor

To register for this meeting, click HERE and kindly fill out the registration form.

Category: JSUG

Published: 11/2/2008 2:26 AM

.NET gets a new logo

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:39:37 GMT

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So what do you think? I personally like it. The blue is part of the new Microsoft “wave” Looks cool – it’s time for a change. The new logo will be showed off this week during PDC. Click here for more info.

Category: Microsoft

Published: 10/26/2008 2:39 PM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/78/new.netlogoh_3_0E90ADAB.png
http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/78/new.netlogov_3_0E90ADAB.png

Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference 2 Announced!

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 01:02:42 GMT

Body:

It’s official! The second Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference has been announced! The first one took place in mid September in Washington DC and based on some of the great feedback, part 2 of this conference seemed to be coming just around the corner. This time it’ll take place in San Diego, California from February 2 – 4, 2009. For more information click here. To register click here. Hurry up, seats are selling fast!

Category: Conferences & Events

Published: 10/18/2008 8:43 PM

My New Blog RSS Feed

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:42:37 GMT

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If you happen to subscribe to my blog RSS feed, please replace the feed you currently have with my new one – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MuhanadOmar. This way I can better track my visitors/readers (I don’t know why I’ve waited this long to do so)

Thanks.

Category: General

Published: 10/11/2008 8:39 PM

JSUG October 2008 Meeting Recap

Muhanad Omar — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:53:51 GMT

Body:

The meeting went great! We had a nice turnout and almost everyone was participating during the session. A lot of questions were asked and I enjoyed how everyone got into the discussion and pitched in their opinions. I really feel we’re progressing as a group now and I hope it’ll only get better from here. Thanks for everyone who came out and I look forward to seeing you at our next meeting.

You can download my slide deck from here.

Category: JSUG

Published: 10/10/2008 3:50 AM

How to enable Windows Search on Windows Server 2008

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:23:56 GMT

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If you’re using Windows Server 2008 as your host OS then you’ve probably realized by now that when working in applications similar to Outlook which utilize Instant Search, that Windows Search isn’t installed by default, like it is in Vista. Installing it is very simple.

Click on “Server Manager”
Scroll down to the Roles section and click “Add Roles”
Select “File Services”
Select “Windows Search Service”
Choose the drives you want to index, and then click OK

Category: Windows Server 2008

Published: 10/4/2008 12:19 PM

JSUG October 2008 Meeting

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:46:22 GMT

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The Jordan SharePoint User Group will be hosting its next UG Meeting this upcoming week on October 8th, 2008. Details are below.

Topic: Fundamentals of SharePoint Administration, Deployment, and Operations
Speaker: Muhanad Omar, SharePoint Server MVP
Date: Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
Time: 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Microsoft Innovation Center

To register for this meeting, click here.

Category: JSUG

Published: 10/4/2008 2:41 AM

Attachments: http://geeksconnected.com/muhanad/Lists/Posts/Attachments/73/JSUG_3_3C9E83E6.png

Congratulations Natayla on receiving the MVP Award!

Muhanad Omar — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:47:18 GMT

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A huge congrats to Natalya Voskresenskaya on receiving her Microsoft MVP Award for Windows SharePoint Services. Many of you know her from her very popular blog, SharePoint for Squirrels. Natalya is also one of the board members of the International SharePoint Professionals Association. Her efforts towards ISPA have been amazing right from the start. So thanks Natayla, and welcome to the group! :)

Also, congratulations to all who got renewed this cycle, as well as the new ones to come on board. Here’s to a great year! For a complete list of SharePoint MVPs, click on the links below.

> Microsoft Office SharePoint Server MVPs
> Windows SharePoint Services MVPs

Category: Community

Published: 10/4/2008 1:42 AM

So many excuses for not blogging lately

Muhanad Omar — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:14:29 GMT

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It’s been well over a month now since I wrote a new blog post, and other than the fact that I’m pretty lazy, I do have some good excuses. I’ve been quite busy with ISPA this past month getting a few SUGs established in this region (Middle East) – the Riyadh SharePoint User Group being one of them. I’m pretty excited about getting this one up and running because I know a LOT of good SharePoint Pros in the area who are pretty anxious to connect with the rest of the community. The User Group is actually established as of now, but won’t be holding their first community meeting until after the Eid holiday. The real good news is that I’ll be in Saudi Arabia at the time so I’ll get the chance to meet with the leaders of the group, along with the rest of the community. I’ll actually be in Saudi until December, so hopefully I’ll be invited to speak at one of their meetings :) Should be lots of fun.

Speaking of which, since I’ll be out of Jordan till the end of the year, I won’t be able to attend any of the upcoming Jordan SharePoint UG meetings. Thankfully though, my good friends Mohamed Saleh, Tamer Nassrawin, Abdurrahman Al-Husami, and Jamil Haddadin will be running the show, so the UG will be in good hands :)

In other news… my really good friend Ayman Farouk is finally back in Jordan after 3 months working at Microsoft Redmond as a Software Engineer on the Windows Mobile Team. Words can’t express how proud I am of this guy – he truly is amazing at what he does and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Ok, now to the important stuff – my upcoming posts. I have two topics I’m preparing for – 1) Backup and Restore Scenarios and Best Practices, and 2) Database Maintenance and Best Practices. I’ve been hoping to blog on the first topic a while back ago but never had the chance. Look for these two posts being published sometime next week.

Category: Life;Community

Published: 9/24/2008 8:14 PM

Backup and Restore using STSADM

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 09:32:11 GMT

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There are three ways you can backup your SharePoint environment:

Using the Central Administration user interface
Using STSADM
Using automated backup scripts

I personally never use the first option. Through my experiences with backing up MOSS and WSS Farms, I learned that the best way to run a backup and restore is through the STSADM utility. Some may argue this, but I feel extremely comfortable with STSADM since I use it for almost all my SharePoint operations, so I tend to stick with it. Also, the admin interface failed me once when I was restoring an entire farm, whereas the STSADM utility has never failed me yet.

So what are the types of backups we can perform. There are two types:

Full backup
Differential backup

Before you create a differential backup however, you need to at least perform a full backup for the first time. Since this post is talking about how to run backup and restore using STSADM, I'm going to skip the instructions on how to do it through the admin interface; it's pretty much self-explanatory, so I'm sure you can figure it out yourself.

So here are the command lines you need to know to perform a backup:

To backup a site collection, use the following command line:

stsadm -o backup -url <URL of the site collection> -filename <name of the backup file>

To backup an individual database, web application, or entire farm, use the following command line:

stsadm -o backup -directory <UNC path or local drive> -backupmethod <full or differential>

Now that you backed up your farm, it's time to restore it. Use the following command lines to accomplish this:

To restore a site collection, use the following command line:

stsadm -o restore -url <URL of site collection> -filename <name of backup file>

To restore an entire farm, use the following command line:

stsadm -o restore -directory <UNC path or local drive> -restoremethod <overwrite or new>

So let's say now you want to migrate data from one SharePoint Server to another. You always have the option of using Export and Import, which I always like to use. Note that this tool will only migrate sites.

To export your sites, use the following command line:

stsadm -o export -url <URL> -filename <FileName>.cmp

To import your site, use the following command line:

stsadm -o import -url <URL> -filename <FileName>.cmp

So as you can see, these command lines are pretty easy. Why trouble yourself with a thousand clicks in the admin interface when you have this beautiful utility available :) In the next post, I'll talk about how you can backup and restore your SharePoint farm using Microsoft SQL Server Backup and Restore.

Category: SharePoint

Published: 2/10/2008 4:32 AM

ISPA Update in the Middle East

Muhanad Omar — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:35:43 GMT

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It's been three weeks now since the launch of the International SharePoint Professionals Association and I must say, it's living up to what it set out to do. I'm currently representing ISPA as a Regional Evangelist covering the Middle East region and so far there's been a lot of buzz over in this region. We're currently in the process of establishing the first SharePoint User Group in Saudi Arabia, which I believe would be a great success story for both ISPA and the Saudi community.

Here's a list of upcoming SharePoint User Groups in the Middle East being launched through ISPA, as well as the ones already a member of ISPA.

Jordan SharePoint User Group
Egypt SharePoint User Group
Riyadh SharePoint User Group
Iran SharePoint User Group
Dubai SharePoint User Group
Qatar SharePoint User Group

For a region that didn't have a single SharePoint User Group up until March 2008, this is a HUGE accomplishment! Big thanks to the ISPA board that made all this happen; Bob, Natalya, Darrin, Chris, and Spence Harbar.

So if you're looking to start a SharePoint UG in your region, be sure to visit the ISPA official web site at http://www.sharepointpros.org and we'll be more than happy to help you out. For anyone in the Middle East, feel free to send me an email directly.

Category: Community;ISPA

Published: 8/6/2008 11:32 PM

Get to the (Share) Point!

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:36:57 GMT

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I mentioned this blog when it first launched, and I'm mentioning it again here just because it's that damn good! If you haven't already added this blog to your favorites, do it now!

To the (Share)Point, a blog from the SharePoint IT Pro Documentation Team.

Talk about some sweet posts, check out what they recently published these past two weeks:

All four of these posts have some great content in them; my favorite being the one on Federated Search in Geographic Environments. Microsoft rolled out the Infrastructure Updates a few weeks ago, and included in them was Federated Search from Search Server 2008. This feature is quite nice. Yes it has some drawbacks, but it does have its advantages like managing each content store separately, giving you flexibility with how your search results are displayed.

Ok, so to be honest, I haven't found much use to the Records Center in MOSS yet. Routing? Big deal. Audit and expiration policies? So what, we get that with any list. So what's the big fuss about Records Management in MOSS? Well, I don't know, but I'm hoping this documentation will help me find some use to it. There's gotta be something I'm missing.

Anyway, enjoy the reads, and if your still wondering about the recently released Infrastructure Updates, check out this post.

Category: Microsoft;SharePoint

Published: 8/3/2008 3:33 PM

JSUG August 13th Meeting

Muhanad Omar — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:40:37 GMT

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The Jordan SharePoint User Group will be hosting three meetings during the month of August. Why are we doing this you might ask? During our last meeting on SharePoint Administration we discovered that the majority of the attendees were new to SharePoint (approximately 90%) so we decided to go ahead and dedicate an entire month for SharePoint newbies. Why are we packing everything in one month? Well, we wanted to hit all the basics soon and fast, and splitting each meeting up into different months was going to slow things down and keep the more advanced SharePoint Pro's waiting on the side. Of course, we'll eventually visit these intro sessions later in the future for the people missing out the first time around, but for now we think this is a good way to enable the Jordan SharePoint User Group to more forward with more advanced topics.

We're starting off with a session for all audiences, mainly just introducing SharePoint, talking about its features and how it can help organizations build a more productive and collaborative working environment. Here's a list of all the meetings and their dates:

August 13 - Introducing SharePoint (Register here!)
August 20 - Introduction to SharePoint for .NET Developers
August 27 - Fundamentals of SharePoint Administration

A new approach we're taking for the first session is one suggested by fellow MVP and community stud Bob Fox. We've gathered a panel of speakers, 4 to be exact, each one specializing in different areas of SharePoint. In the beginning we'll be doing some demos and talks about SharePoint, and towards the end we'll open it up to questions. With the panel of speakers, we'll be able to target each audience (developers, admins, IW, decision makers).

Details of our first meeting are as follows:

Topic: Introduction to SharePoint

Speakers:   Mohammed Zayed, Microsoft
                   Abdurrahman Al-Husami, Raya Solutions
                   Muhanad Omar [MVP], Devosis
                   Tamer Nassrawin, Nuqul Group

Date: August 13, 2008

Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Location: Microsoft Innovation Center

For more details, click here or visit the JSUG home page at http://www.JordanSUG.com

Category: JSUG

Published: 8/2/2008 1:34 PM