The SharePoint Redemption

PowerShell Script: Identify All Workflows in Your SharePoint Farm

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:18:00 +0000

The following script will return all Workflows currently associated within your SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010 farm using PowerShell and output it to a CSV file. It returns the URL of the site, Title of the list, Title of the workflow, and the number of currently running instances.

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") > $null 
$outputFile = Read-Host "Filename and location (i.e. C:\output.txt)"

$farm = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm]::local
$websvcs = $farm.Services | where -FilterScript {$_.GetType() -eq [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]} 
$webapps = @() 

$outputHeader = "Url;List;Workflow;Running Instances" > $outputFile

foreach ($websvc in $websvcs) { 

    foreach ($webapp in $websvc.WebApplications) { 
  foreach ($site in $webapp.Sites) {
   foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs) {
    foreach ($List in $web.Lists) {
     foreach ($workflow in $List.WorkflowAssociations) {
      $output = $web.Url + ";" + $List.Title + ";" + $workflow.Name + ";" + $workflow.RunningInstances
      Write-Output $output >> $outputFile
    }}
    } 
   } 
  }
 }
$Web.Dispose();
$site.Dispose();

It can also be downloaded from my Google Drive here: CheckWorkflowsInFarm.zip

Output Example:

Url;List;Workflow;Running Instances
http://intranet;Report a Problem or New Request;Notification Workflow for Bug List (Previous Version:4/13/2011 3:01:15 PM);0
http://intranet;Report a Problem or New Request;Notification Workflow for Bug List;0
http://intranet;Report a Problem or New Request;Notification Workflow for Bug List (Previous Version:4/13/2011 3:04:13 PM);0
http://intranet/contracts;PDF Doc Library;Send to Sales;0
http://intranet/contracts;PDF Doc Library;Send to Sales (Previous Version:6/4/2010 5:33:55 PM);0
http://intranet/contracts;Doc Library;DOC Approval (Previous Version:6/29/2010 3:55:22 PM);1
http://intranet/contracts;Doc Library;DOC Approval;0
http://intranet/contracts;Doc Library;DOC Approval (Previous Version:6/29/2010 3:49:51 PM);0
http://intranet/contracts;Doc Library;DOC Approval (Previous Version:6/29/2010 3:37:48 PM);0
http://intranet/contracts;Doc Library;DOC Approval (Previous Version:6/29/2010 11:18:26 AM);0

Converting a Web Application to NTLM from Kerberos

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Open Central Administration
Click on “Manage Web Applications”.
Highlight the targeted web applications.

Click on “Authentication Providers”.

Click “Default” next to Windows.

Scroll down and change IIS Authentication Settings from Negotiate (Kerberos) to NTLM.

Click Save at the bottom of the window. *This will take a few seconds up to a minute.
Close the Authentication Providers window.
Repeat for any additional web applications.

Insight to Acquire Ensynch

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:30:00 +0000

Insight Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ: NSIT) (“Insight” or “the Company”), a leading global technology provider of hardware, software and service solutions, has announced that its U.S. operating subsidiary will acquire Tempe-based Ensynch, a leading professional services firm with multiple Microsoft Gold competencies and solutions across the complete IT stack. Ensynch’s 2010 services revenue was $16.2 million. The transaction is expected to close within thirty days.

Full Press Release

PowerShell Script: Create Content Type, Assign Retention and Audit Policies, Publish Via Content Hub

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:02:00 +0000

First I need to make sure to identify the source of most of this script: Phil Childs at http://get-spscripts.com/. He has a great site with lots o' PowerShell scripts for SharePoint.

I needed a script that could read from an input file (this case I used a CSV) and create a Content Type, assign retention and audit policies to it, and publish it afterwards (this was on a content type syndication hub). I took several different scripts and cobbled them together for the following:



$SiteColl = read-host "What is the URL of the target site collection?";

$ParentContentType = read-host "What is the Parent Content Type?"

$CTGroup = read-host "What Content Type Group Should These Be Created Under?";



$CTList = Import-Csv ContentTypes.txt 



ForEach ($item in $CTList){ 

$Record = $($item.Record)

$Description = $($item.Description)

$Property = $($item.Property)

$Period = $($item.Period)

$PeriodType = $($item.PeriodType)



$site = get-spsite $SiteColl

$web = $site.openweb()

$ctypeName = $Record

$ctypeParent = $web.availablecontenttypes[$ParentContentType]



<# Create Content Type #>



$ctype = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPContentType($ctypeParent, $web.contenttypes, $ctypeName)

$ctype.Description = $Description

$ctype.group = $CTGroup

$ctype = $web.contenttypes.add($ctype)

write-host $Record : "Content Type Created" -foregroundcolor green;



<# Set Retention and Audit Policies #>



if (($Period -ne "IND") -or ($Period -notcontains "MAX")) {

$contentType = $web.ContentTypes[$Record];[Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.InformationPolicy.Policy]::CreatePolicy($contentType, $null);

$newPolicy = [Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.InformationPolicy.Policy]::GetPolicy($contentType);

 $newPolicy.Items.Add("Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Expiration",

 "<Schedules nextStageId='3'>"+

 "<Schedule type='Default'>"+

 "<stages>"+

 "<data stageId='1' stageDeleted='true'></data>"+

 "<data stageId='2'>"+

 "<formula id='Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Expiration.Formula.BuiltIn'>"+

 "<number>"+$Period+"</number>"+"<property>"+$Property+"</property>"+

 "<period>"+$PeriodType+"</period>"+

 "</formula>"+

 "<action type='action' id='Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Expiration.Action.MoveToRecycleBin' />"+

 "</data>"+

 "</stages>"+

 "</Schedule>"+

 "</Schedules>");

 $newPolicy.Items.Add("Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.PolicyAudit",

 "<Audit>"+

 "<Update />"+

 "<View />"+

 "<CheckInOut />"+

 "<MoveCopy />"+

 "<DeleteRestore />"+

 "</Audit>");

 $newPolicy.Update();

 write-host $Record : "Retention Policy of" $Period $PeriodType "assigned." -foregroundcolor yellow;

 write-host " ";

 }

else{

 write-host "No Retention Policy Required" -foregroundcolor DarkCyan;

 write-host " ";

}



<# Publish Content Type #>

$Publisher = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy.ContentTypeSync.ContentTypePublisher($SiteColl)

Write-Host "Publishing the content type.";

$Publisher.Publish($ctype);



}

The import file had the following formatting:



Record,Description,Property,Period,PeriodType

Billing,Billing for Completed Invoices,Document_x0020_Date,6,years

Record = Name of Content Type
Description = Populates Description Field of Content Type
Property = Internal Name of Field to Base Retention Policy On
Period = How Long of a Retention Period
PeriodType = Years, Months, Days

Maybe I will work on adding exception handling on the next go around.

Jeff

PowerShell Script: Add a Site Column to Multiple Content Types

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:36:00 +0000

I needed to add a single column to multiple content types but couldn't add it to the parent because not all of the child content types needed this new column. PowerShell to the rescue!

Obviously I created the site column first... Then I used an import file and a ForEach loop to read each content type in by Name.



<# Gather variables #>

$siteColl = read-host "What is the target site collection?";

$fieldToAdd = read-host "Which site column should be added the content types in contentTypes.txt?";



<# Import from external CSV file #>

$CTList = Import-Csv contentTypes.txt



ForEach ($item in $CTList){ 

$TargetCT = $($item.TargetCT)

$web = Get-SPWeb $siteColl

$ct = $web.ContentTypes[$TargetCT]



<# Get link to the columnn from web #>

$spColumn = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFieldLink ($web.Fields[$fieldToAdd])



<# Add the column to the content type #>

$ct.FieldLinks.Add($spColumn)

$ct.Update()

}

<# Dispose #>

$web.Dispose()

Jeff

BCS, PeopleSoft, and the SharePoint User Profiles

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:04:00 +0000

I was trying to import PeopleSoft data into SharePoint User Profiles using a BCS connection to an Oracle view that was provided by my DBA. The only field that existed in both environments was “NTUSERNAME”. Although not the most ideal, this would work as they are unique in their environment (Single Domain/Forest). I had the connection working and returning data to a list so I thought I was home free. I went into the ForeFront Identity Manager Client and made the change to my BCS Management Agent so that “NTUSERNAME” from PeopleSoft was matching up to the Metaverse “username” field populated by “sAMAccountName” from AD. Figured I was good to go. Kicked off a full synchronization and a whopping two accounts matched up out of almost 2000 expected.

<INSERT DAYS OF BANGING HEAD AGAINST WALL>

We started to look and see what was different about these two accounts. Using TOAD we ran the query that was providing the View and looked for the two accounts. Strangely enough they were lowercase and all the others returned were UPPERCASE. I hit up my Identity guys and they said that shouldn’t matter in a Join. For giggles though, I had my DBA re-write the query so it returned ALL values in the NTUSERNAME field as lowercase. I ran a full synchronization and they came over like a champ!

Just throwing it out there in case I can save anyone else from a world of frustration…

Jeff

Oh Site Directory, Where Art Thou?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:56:00 +0000

According to a colleague, he thought he saw something somewhere that stated there were issues during upgrades with the Site Directory template they came up with for 2010 so they just removed it...

But there is hope! Some MCS UK guys created a solution and placed it out on CodePlex. This site directory solution has a few sweet features like scanning for new sites and deleting old ones that are missing (including being able to configure how many times a site must be missing before being removed).

http://spsitedirectory2010.codeplex.com/

There is a good install guide up on the CodePlex site (make sure to take the time to walk through it).

There are multiple features that are installed and need to be enabled at the site collection and site level with the SP2010 Site Directory solution. Make sure to enable them on the site/site collection you wish to display your Site Directory. Once you enable those you get a list called “Site Listings”. This list will be populated with the information grabbed by the Site Scan Timer Job.

Once those features are enabled, go to Central Admin and make sure that the solution is deployed to the Central Admin web app also (or else you get an Admin Pages error). Configure all the settings for both scan and delete. Then go to the Timer Jobs and manually kick off the Microsoft.MCSUK.SPSiteDirectory2010 Scan Job. This will populate your list.

You get one web part (that I could find) to work with. It displays the current sites information:

Not really a Site Directory per se. So, I then added a Content Query Web Part and configured it to point to the “Site Listings” list. This new CQWP is sweet. You can tell it what column to use for Title, Description, Link, and Image. I configured it for the following:

We now have a web part that acts more like a Site Directory.

Thanks again to MCS UK team for putting this solution together!

Jeff

Custom Alert Templates - Larger Font

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:12:00 +0000

For those of you who do not feel like going through the entire alerttemplates.xml file I recently had to do it for a client who wanted larger fonts in the emails that were sent out for alerts and notifications. I changed all fonts to Tahoma 12pt except for the Header which was already large enough. Nothing fancy. Just throwing it out there.

NOTE: Never modify the alertstemplates.xml directly. Make a working copy and use it with the stsadm command.

Drop the file onto your server and run the following stsadm command:

Syntax: stsadm -o updatealerttemplates -url {sitecollectionurl} -f {CustomAlertTemplate XML File}
Example: stsadm -o updatealerttemplates -url {sitecollectionurl} -f C:\customalerttemplates.xml

Remember, this is per site collection and you have to re-run the command each time you update the template as it stores the alert format in the database.

MSDN Description of Pre-defined Alert Templates: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb802738.aspx

Download My Customized Template

SPC 2009: SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Part 1: Fundamentals

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Upgrade Part 1 Fundamentals Break-out session notes from SPC 2009.

NOTE: New content just uploaded to TechNet for Upgrade Scenarios HERE.

Upgrade Scenarios

Supported Scenarios:

In-Place Upgrade
Database Attach Upgrade:
Content Database
Profile Service Database
Project Service Database
Singlie Click Install – SQL Migration
Windows Internal Database > SQL Express 2008 + File Stream RBS

Unsupported

Upgrade from earlier than WSS v3 SP2 or MOSS 2007/SP2
Direct upgrade from WSS v2/SPS 2003 or earlier
Side by Side installation
Gradual Upgrade

Upgrade Prep Tools

WSS v3/MOSS 2007 SP2

Farm Insight

Pre-Upgrade Checker
stsadm –o EnumAllWebs (Now includes the features that are installed in a Web)
SPDiag V2

Customizations gathering

stsadm –o ExportIPFSAdminObjects

SharePoint 2010

Farm Insight

stsadm –o EnumAllWebs
SPDisg 2010 (TBD)

Content Database Insight

Test-SPContentDatabase

Pre-Upgrade Checker Command

Command: stsadm –o preupgradecheck [-localonly]

Details

Reports farm and server data

Identifies useful farm information
Identifies current or potential issues

Modes

Load server + farm databases (default)
Local server only

Makes no changes to environment or data (Yes! This was a huge complaint with going from 2003 to 2007)
Introduced in SP2; improved in October 2009 CU
Not required like it was for upgrading from 2003 to 2007 but still highly recommended

Rules Files (Partial List)

Informational

Farm Servers, Databases
AAM Configuration
Lists Site Definitions, Features, Web Parts, Event Receivers
Installed Language Packs
CAML views/CAML content types

Issues

Missing Site Definitions, Features, Assemblies
Data orphans
Modified content databases

Command outputs an easy to read HTML-based file

Test-SPContentDatabase Command

Content database insight from O14
Complements pre-upgrade checker report
Reports data from server/database paring

Compare against a specific web app
Identifies current or potential issues:

Data orphans
Missing site definitions
Missing features
Missing assemblies

Can show table sizing metrics

Scan O12 and O14 content databases
Makes no changes to the database(s)

Windows PowerShell Upgrade Cmdlets

Note: B2B – Patching Upgrades,V2V Version to Version Upgrade

Upgrade-SPContentDatabase

Content database B2B/V2V upgrade
Common Scenarios:

Initiate/resume content database B2B upgrades
Resume failed content database V2V upgrades

Upgrade-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

Search Service Application Instance B2B upgrade

Upgrade-SPSingleSignOnDatabase

O12 data to Secure Store database V2V upgrade

Feature Upgrade Capability

Optional Capability
Version Ranging for B2B or V2V Upgrades
Declarative Feature Upgrade Activities (Final list for RTM, stated that there “may” be more in the future)

ApplyElementManifests
AddContentTypeField
MapFile

Custom Code Feature Upgrade

CustomUpgradeAction Activity
SPFeatureReceiver.FeatureUpgrading
Assembly in GAC

Visual Upgrade Capability

Stay in O12 UI (default) or move to O14 UI

O14 ships O12 Master pages and CSS
UI Preview capability (Recommend to perform limited changes will in preview mode)

Farm admin or site admin controlled

Web level settings and OM

Some items not O12 compatible:

My site host
PWS site collection
Report Server web parts

Patch Management Capability

Patching state insight

Patch management UI
Patch reporting PowerShell UI
Patch status health rules

Backwards compatibility mode (This is awesome! No need to upgrade the entire farm right after patch install)

Binaries can be ahead of the database(s)
Defer upgrade for short period of time
Not intended for long duration

Downtime Mitigation Process

WSS v3/MOSS 2007 SP2

Read-only databases
Parallel upgrade farms
Gradual Upgrade

SharePoint 2010

Read-only databases
Parallel upgrade farms
Single farm, multiple upgrade sessions
Content database attach with AAM redirection

Upgrade Logging/Status Reporting

Upgrade Logging

New – One upgrade log per sessions
New – Upgrade errors only log
New – Fixed upgrade log schema

Upgrade Status Reporting

Improved – Upgrade status page (This is SO much better. It provides a lot more information during upgrade compared to the 2007 version. It will also show all concurrent database upgrades.)
New – Upgrade status history
New – Command line progress indication

Upgrading a MOSS 2007 Farm

Each SSP upgrades into:

A Search service app
A User profiles service app
An excel service app
An application registry back-compat service app
A new managed metadata service app

Web application association are preserved

a proxy is created for each service app

New databases are created

SPC 2009: Scaling SharePoint 2010 Topologies for Your Organization

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:13:00 +0000

This is a recap of what I could capture during the Scaling SharePoint 2010 Topologies for Your Organization Session. The big change here is around Service Applications. It allows you more flexibility when scaling your architecture. I will add a follow-up post later covering the migration piece they glanced over in this session as I am attending the migration deep-dive session.

Service Architecture Recap

Flexible Deployment Model
- Improved Security Model
- Claims Based Authentication

Cross-farm communication via web services

Service Isolation
- Each service app uses separate database and optionally separate app pool.
- Support for multiple service apps for a service with different accounts and databases

Multi-Tenancy
- Some Service Apps can be partitioned to handle multiple tenants

Choosing an Architecture

Consider both logical and physical aspects

Start with a logical architecture
- Consolidated vs Distributed

Build it out as a physical architecture

Scale out as needed

Logical Topology Considerations

Business Needs
- Organization many need isolation between respective services (ie. HR, Legal, etc)

Regulatory Restrictions
- Geopolitical
- Regulatory

Information Architecture
- Architecture of web sites influence association to Services

Physical Topology Considerations

Scale
- Scale-up/Scale-out needs influence physical topology

Link Latency
- Host services close to users and content

Directory Architecture
- Host services close to directory for better auth

Scaling Services – Option 1

Scale within the farm

Scale-up

Scale-out on each tier
- Add WFEs for content servers
- Additional app servers for computer-intensive services
- Scale SQL for data-centric services

“Affinitize”
- Specific web apps to WFEs using NLBs
- Services on specific app servers

Scaling Services – Option 2

Multiple Farms

Split services into separate farm
- Security boundary
- Usage/scale
- Political/organizational
- patching flexibility

Multiple services farms
- Geo-distributed
- Load
- Split search out first

SPC 2009 - Enterprise Search Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:41:00 +0000

***UPDATE***
Updated with content from Enterprise Search Deep-Dive Session.

Just attended the Enterprise Search Overview for SharePoint 2010 at SPC2009. It focused a lot around the FAST integration with SP2010. Below are some quick notes I took. Obviously I was not able to capture everything, but there is some cool new stuff coming out...

New Capabilities:

Increased Scalability over MOSS 2007

Multiple Crawlers

Query: Partition and mirror the index

Sub-second latency scaling to 100 Million documents

Rich Content Processing

Wizard driven installation

Full Fault Tolerance

Native 64-bit: hyper-v support

Powershell Support

SCOM support

Full search reporting

Search Product Line:

Search Server 2010 Express (Still Free)
- Basic Search

SharePoint Server 2010
- Intranet-wide search, people and expertise search

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
- Visual experiences, extreme adaptability and Advanced Content Processing

Scalability:

Multiple Indexers (Yes! True redundancy!)

Indexers are stateless crawlers and do not store a copy of the index. They crawl, index, and immediately propagate to Query Servers.

Index Partitioning

Query Mirroring

Multiple Property Databases

Admin Database + Admin Component (equivalent of SSP database in MOSS)

Crawl Distribution
- Built-in load balancer distributes hosts to crawl databases
- Crawlers crawl content that is covered by crawl database
- Default configuration can be overwritten using host distribution rules

Query Distribution
- Low query latency if all index partitions are equal in size
- Distribution by hash of documentId
- Crawlers partitions indexed data and propagate to query servers

Multiple scale-out options now, including multiple crawl databases on the same SQL server or multiple SQL servers

Engine Enhancements

Support for regular expressions in Crawl Rules

Native support for crawling case sensitive repositories

Ability to prioritize Content Sources to distribute crawler resources

New Crawl Policy to define how crawler treats error conditions

Low indexing downtime (Search now only pauses for approx. an hour during backups)

Extensibility Enhancements

*Note: Protocol handler API still supported

Change web part properties - no code
- Modify XSLT
- Modify config XML
  - Refinement Panel - control metadata available for refinement
  - Advanced Search - control metadata available for advanced search queries

Extend OOB web parts programatically
- All OOB web parts are public (Sweet!)

Connector Framework
- Support for attachments
- Item level security
- Crawl through entity associations

Inline caching for better citizenships

Richer crawl options
- Regular full crawl
- Time stamp based incremental crawl
- Change log crawl + deleted count
- Change log + delete log crawl

Ricker Manageability

Consolidated admin UI dashboard

Automated service password management through "managed accounts"

PowerShell support for scripted administration

Built-in system health monitoring, support for SCOM monitoring and alerting

Built-in and extensible search analytics

Seach Site:

Native Wildcard Search

Type-ahead search box (aka Query Suggestions)

Search Results Page New Features:

Metadata Extraction

Refinement Panel
- Filtering by Results Type, Site, Author, Modified Date (displayed in a separate panel kind of like federated results)
- Suggested Searches

Did you mean?

FAST - Search Results Page Additional New Features:

Thumbnail of document appears with each result (This is awesome!)

Preview documents within the search results window

View in Browser Link

Similar Results

Refinement Panel (In addition to items listed above)
- Dynamically generate metadata from documentation for filtering (Metadata fields do not have to be populated first

Rich Text Best Bets (including images)

Federate Results directly to desktop

People Search:

"Address Book Style" Search
- Phonetic name matching
- Nickname matching

Refinement Panel
- Filtering on Focus, Job Title, Past Projects, Interests

Vanity Search (Self Search) - When a user looks themselves up in People Search
- Help People Find Me Appears
  - Results return the users profile seen by others in the search results. Also returns some metrics including the number of searches that led to them and keywords

Additional Drill-down for Each User
- Browse in Organizational Chart
- View Recent Content

Connectors:

Indexing Connectors

Supports the OpenSearch Standard for Federation

Reporting and Administration:

Greatly Refined

Search Administration dashboard (looks much like the one added with MOSS 2007 SP2) is web part based and can be easily customized

Error log reporting will now allow the administrator to select a specific item and decide whether to remove the item from the index or re-crawl.

There were also several web analytics enhancements for more robust reporting.

More later.

Jeff

SharePoint 2010 Beta Release in November

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Attending the SharePoint 2009 Conference in Las Vegas, NV USA. Steve Ballmer announced this morning that SharePoint 2010 Beta will be released in November 2009. No specific date in November was given.

Add Alerts to All Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:48:00 +0000

I recently had a request from a client that would allow them to automatically display a Notification on all Sites and Pages. This was easy enough to do because I was already stapling a custom page layout to the publishing infrastructure along with a custom Master Page and CSS. The Master Page was altered to include a pointer to a hidealert.css file residing in a document library I had created on the root site. The Page Layout was then altered to include an IFrame that loaded an HTML file called alert.htm sitting in the same document library on the root site. When the editor renamed the file to something other than hidealert.css (recommended to rename it to showalert.css) the IFrame would appear with the alert.htm contents. Below are the files, description and code:

Master Page - Load hidealert.css

Description: Custom Master Page that had one additional CSS file being loaded to easily turn the Alert visibility on or off. This also enabled it to be done by a content editor with no IT involvement.

Page Layout

Description: Code to Load IFrame. The code was placed above one of the web part zones so they would dynamically slide down if the IFrame loaded.

hidealert.css

Description: CSS to Hide Alert IFrame When Not In Use

.alert
{
display:none;
}

alert.htm

Description: HTML to Appear in IFrame (includes javascript to resize IFrame to match)

</head>
<body onload="resizeToFit();">

This is a test

</body>
</html>

The content editor was given instructions to rename the CSS file from hidealert.css to showalert.css and add any custom HTML code between the <Make Changes> comment lines in the alert.htm.

Jeff

Hide Custom Actions

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:34:00 +0000

I recently learned about hiding items in SharePoint using the HideCustomAction element. I had requests to hide items such as the Site Theme, Site Features, and Site Collection Features in Site Settings (I hide all three in my example below). It is as easy as creating a feature with two XML files.

NOTE: This will remove the links only. Users will still be able to manually browse to the pages if they know the full URL. This is not a replacement for security!

Feature.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Feature Id="af6215af-f836-4a09-aa3b-8685981d478f"
Title="Hide Custom Action Links"
Description="This feature currently hides: site features, site collections features, and site themes."
Version="1.0.0.0"
Scope="Site"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<ElementManifests>
<ElementManifest Location="HideCustomActions.xml" />
</ElementManifests>
</Feature>

HideCustomActions.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
<HideCustomAction
GroupId="SiteAdministration"
HideActionId="ManageSiteFeatures"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings"
/>
<HideCustomAction
GroupId="SiteCollectionAdmin"
HideActionId="ManageSiteCollectionFeatures"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings"
/>
<HideCustomAction
GroupId="Customization"
HideActionId="Theme"
Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings"
/>
</Elements>

John Holliday has a great list of all of the Custom Action IDs on his site: http://johnholliday.net/resources/customactions.html

Jeff

Programmatically Apply a Master Page and Theme to Specific Managed Path

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:29:00 +0000

I recently had a request from a client that required programmatically applying a master page and theme to all new site collections (and sub sites) under a specific managed path. I created a feature to deploy the master page and one to automatically apply the master page (ensynch.master) and theme (ensynch_theme) on site creation. This was done by stapling the feature at the farm level to the required site definitions. Using an IF statement I was able to apply the master page and theme settings to all site collections (and sub sites) created under the managed path. In the example code below the managed path is called MANAGEDPATH.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace Ensynch.SetCustomMaster
{
public class ChangeMaster : Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiver
{
public override void FeatureInstalled
(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
}
public override void FeatureUninstalling
(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
{
}
protected string EndOfURL(string url)
{
    return url.Substring(url.LastIndexOf("/") + 1);
}
        public override void FeatureActivated
        (SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            SPWeb CurrentWeb = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;
            if (CurrentWeb.ServerRelativeUrl.StartsWith("/MANAGEDPATH"))
            {
                if (CurrentWeb.IsRootWeb == true)
                {
                    CurrentWeb.MasterUrl = CurrentWeb.ServerRelativeUrl + "/_catalogs/masterpage/ensynch.master";
                    CurrentWeb.CustomMasterUrl = CurrentWeb.ServerRelativeUrl + "/_catalogs/masterpage/ensynch.master";
                }
                else
                {
                    CurrentWeb.MasterUrl = "/MANAGEDPATH/" + EndOfURL(CurrentWeb.Site.Url) + "/_catalogs/masterpage/ensynch.master";
                    CurrentWeb.CustomMasterUrl = "/MANAGEDPATH/" + EndOfURL(CurrentWeb.Site.Url) + "/_catalogs/masterpage/ensynch.master";
                }
                CurrentWeb.ApplyTheme("ENSYNCH_THEME");
                CurrentWeb.Update();
                CurrentWeb.Dispose();
            }
        }
        public override void FeatureDeactivating
        (SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
        {
            SPWeb CurrentWeb = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;
            CurrentWeb.MasterUrl = CurrentWeb.ServerRelativeUrl + "/_catalogs/masterpage/default.master";
            CurrentWeb.CustomMasterUrl = CurrentWeb.ServerRelativeUrl + "/_catalogs/masterpage/default.master";
            CurrentWeb.ApplyTheme("none");
            CurrentWeb.Update();
            CurrentWeb.Dispose();
        }
    }
}

Jeff

VMware and SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:27:00 +0000

So it looks like Microsoft is finally providing support for virtualization products. I have included some links specific to VMware since I had to perform some research for a client.

This link from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909840 states that "In addition to the Microsoft hardware virtualization software products, support for third-party hypervisor technology is supported for hypervisor technologies that are certified by Microsoft through the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP)".

This link from VMware: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/whitepapers/new_msoft_policies.html states that VMware is SVVP certified as of August 2008.

This link from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006 states that "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Service Pack 1 and later versions are supported" in virtualized environments.

This link from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944987/ states that Microsoft and VMware have established a joint support relationship (although they do not guarantee performance).

And one more for good measure: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx

Updated: Antivirus Solutions for MOSS

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:46:00 +0000

I have rewritten this post now that there are more solutions available on the market. See links below:

Microsoft ForeFront for SharePoint (with SP1)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/eval/fssp/default.mspx

TrendMicro PortalProtect
http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/enterprise/portalprotect/

Symantec Protection 5.1 for SharePoint Servers
http://www.symantec.com/business/products/overview.jsp?pcid=2241&pvid=829_1

McAfee PortalShield for Microsoft SharePoint
It does not list SharePoint 2007 under the system requirements on their site but it does in the datasheet PDF so who knows...
http://mcafee.com/us/enterprise/products/email_web_security/portalshield_microsoft_sharepoint.html

Jeff

Exception occurred. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020009 (DISP_E_EXCEPTION))

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:10:00 +0000

I started running into this error when attempting to create a site collection in a different language. I would browse to Central Administration and choose a different language and immediately receive "there was an error in the callback". If I continued on and ignored the error I would receive "Exception occurred. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020009 (DISP_E_EXCEPTION))" after clicking Create. After lots of time wasted scouring the net I found a random post that said they ran into this error when they had a badly formatted webtempXXX.xml file.

http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1CC1EDB3DAA9B8AA!126.entry

I had missed a closing quote around my hidden parameter (looked like this: HIDDEN="TRUE). I fixed it, did an iisreset, and it fixed the problem.

Jeff

Redirect SharePoint Site to New Location

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:27:00 +0000

I recently had a request to move a SharePoint subsite to a new location under a different site collection. The site was moved over after performing the standard import/export stsadm commands. However, the customer also wanted the old location to perform an automatic redirect for anyone still pointing to the old location. I wanted to be able to do this without having hack up pages using designer (or other tool) or having to allow for code blocks within the default.aspx by opening my web.config up to vulnerabilities. I found the easiest way to do this was with Javascript and a Content Editor Web Part.

Add a Content Editor Web Part to the Main Page of the site.
Modify the Web Part and click on Source Editor.
Paste in the following code while changing the URLs to match your target.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">

</SCRIPT>
</HEAD>

<body>
Redirecting you to the new location. If you are not redirected, click <a href="http://sharepoint">HERE.</a>
</body>
</html>

I set the redirect time to 0, but you can set it higher if you like. 1 sec = 1000, 2 sec = 2000, etc.
Save the code changes.

The fun part of this solution is the fact that the code tries to load no matter what view you are in (i.e. Standard view, Edit Page, etc). So, if you have to make changes to the code you have to let the page load but then time a press of the ESC key to keep the Javascript from loading each time.

Jeff

WSU Windows Mobile Theme - Go Cougs!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:26:00 +0000

In the spirit of my alma mater, Washington State University, and the great basketball season they are having I am posting the Windows Mobile theme I created. It has the Cougar logo on the vertical today screen and a shot of Pullman with Bryan Tower on the horizontal today screen.

Download: http://cid-65b4663a2e1f48a3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/WSU%20Theme.tsk

Go Cougs!!

Jeff

Patch to Fix Presence in SharePoint and Outlook 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:19:00 +0000

I ran into presence not appearing in SharePoint or Outlook 2007 after my upgrade to Communicator 2007.

Microsoft recently released a patch to fix this issue.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1ad57f8f-78f7-45f6-a8c0-805936f46645&displaylang=en

Thought I would pass it along...

Jeff

Crawling a Content Source Requiring Basic Authentication

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:07:00 +0000

As much as I fight basic authentication, there are still people out there who want to use it. SharePoint Enterprise Search can crawl a site requiring basic authentication through the use of Crawl Rules.

Browse to the Shared Services Provider page within Central Administration.

Click on Search Settings -> Content sources and crawl schedules.

I recommend adding the source as a new content source.

Once you have created the new content source return to the Search Settings screen.

Click on Crawl Rules -> New Crawl Rule.

Enter the path this rule will affect. Using wildcards is the easiest way to make sure the enter server is being crawled with the account specified.

Change the crawl configuration to 'Include all items in this path'. Specify other settings if necessary.

Change the authentication to 'Specify a different content access account'.

DO NOT CHECK 'Do not allow Basic Authentication'.

Click OK to save the settings and your new crawl rule will appear in the list.

Kick off a full crawl of the content source for the rule to take effect.

Simple I know. But I was hit up for this multiple times so I figured I would write a post on it.

Jeff

Who Doesn't Love Free Online Disk Space?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:38:00 +0000

So I was just playing around with Windows Live Writer to test it out for posting to my blog and discovered Windows Live SkyDrive. Free 5 GB worth of disk space and you can store personal files, share with your Live Messenger friends, or share out to the general population.

The interface is very easy to use.

Windows Live SkyDrive Site: http://skydrive.live.com/

SkyDrive Team Blog: http://skydriveteam.spaces.live.com/

SkyDrive Viewer from ScottIsAFool on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/SkyDriveViewer

Jeff

Hide Edit Page in Site Actions Menu

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:49:00 +0000

I had a request from a client to hide the Edit Page option under the Site Actions menu for all users without Full Control permissions. I performed the following steps to remove the edit page option for user's without the managesubwebs right.

Open the master page for the site.

Find the following lines of code:

       <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate runat="server" id="MenuItem_EditPage"
        Text="<%$Resources:wss,siteactions_editpage%>"
        Description="<%$Resources:wss,siteactions_editpagedescription%>"
        ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/ActionsEditPage.gif"
        MenuGroupId="100"
        Sequence="200"
        ClientOnClickNavigateUrl="BLOCKED SCRIPTMSOLayout_ChangeLayoutMode(false);"
        />

Add to the following lines to the code:
PermissionsString="ManageSubwebs"
PermissionMode="Any"

The code should now look like:
       <SharePoint:MenuItemTemplate runat="server" id="MenuItem_EditPage"
        Text="<%$Resources:wss,siteactions_editpage%>"
        Description="<%$Resources:wss,siteactions_editpagedescription%>"
        ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/ActionsEditPage.gif"
        MenuGroupId="100"
        Sequence="200"
        ClientOnClickNavigateUrl="BLOCKED SCRIPTMSOLayout_ChangeLayoutMode(false);"
        PermissionsString="ManageSubwebs"
        PermissionMode="Any"
        />

Save the master page and login with an account that does not have Full Control, but is not read only either... The Site Actions drop down should now resemble:

Adoption of SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff Holliday) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:46:00 +0000

This post is more in and around business analysis and adoption of SharePoint. Business units typically know they need some type of communication and collaboration tool (or an upgrade to an existing one), but have no idea what to ask for or how to get there. If SharePoint is just thrown up with no input from the End-Users you will typically have a very low rate of adoption. If the lines of business are included in the process they are more apt to use the solution once implemented. The following is a partial set of questions that I have found very useful when attempting to extract this information from lines of business.

What functionality exists in the current solution (if one exists) that you need in the new SharePoint solution?

Explain Metadata and how it works for organization and search. What categories make sense for metadata? (i.e. Risk Management might have: Claim Loss Reporting, Contractor Services, Emergency Assistance, Insurance, Risk Management Services and Travel Related Services)

Is a private departmental site needed with corresponding rights for storing sensitive data?

How many people can: add new content, change content or delete content? (Contributors) Who are they? Will content require approval?

How do they handle document versioning? If versioning is to be used, how many major and minor versions should be stored?

Do they have an established workflow for document submission / approval? Is this a manual process that can be changed into an automated one with workflow?

Have they thought about Site Administration? - someone needs to Administer the site

Do they have any look and feel requirements? Decide whether they will have the ability to change the look and feel or if a standard is going to be used from the top down.

Are there any standards that they have to conform to?

Is there a committee or someone controlling the content / look and feel?

Do they need any Managerial or Operational Statistics displayed on the site (i.e. KPIs)?

As I said before this is just a partial list. Feel free to submit your own ideas.

Jeff