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May
10
Published: May 10, 2012 09:05 AM by
Brian Alderman
The International SharePoint Conference in London is such an amazing event! If you haven't had the opportunity to attend this conference yet, you should definitely plan on going to the next one. The Combined Knowledge team really knows how to put on a conference that includes speakers from around the world, unbelievable after hour events, and sessions that always get rave reviews.
In my session I had the privilege of working with John Holliday and Agnes Molnar. Our topic was 'Building a Records Management Solution', with the key word being solution. Many sessions will 'touch' on a specific topic, or focus on a particular theory. However, these sessions walked the attendees through a detailed records management solution. We began with the best practices for making sure your file plans contain the information necessary to support a real-world SharePoint records center deployment, configuration, and implementation. The majority of my presentation was what I enjoy doing the most… DEMO's. I did a full demonstration on the SharePoint farm level record centers components, how to configure the records center, and finally how to route a document to the records center where it would reside during its retention period. We also provided information on how to improve searches on records and automate business processes by creating workflows for these records.
You didn't have to go too far to meet some really great speakers that are experts in the SharePoint field. It was great to see many of my colleagues and make the acquaintance of many new ones. These are the conferences where personal and professional connections are made. I am already looking forward to their next conference, being held April 15-17 of 2013.
International SharePoint Conference
Feb
22
Published: February 22, 2012 22:02 PM by
Brian Alderman
I am excited to be presenting again this year at the fourth annual SharePoint Conference London 2012 which has been re-designed to now deliver solutions using as much time as necessary to cover a complete topic. What is new for 2012 is that there are sets of sessions that are structured to work together in certain scenarios during the 3 days to build a complete solution. For example: Imagine working with data through business connectivity services and then taking that data and aggregating it through various aggregation web parts in a publishing environment. We will be getting the various IW speakers to work together and create these end to end scenarios so you can see the full picture and enable you to go back to your work place with all the information you need to get it done.
This year I will be presenting on the topic Building a Records Management Solution which is a four-part solution within one of the three Information Worker tracks, designed for the end users and what they can actually do with SharePoint's functionality. We will examine capacity planning and security WRT building a "records farm" derived from the information contained in the file plan. Depending on the classification and routing strategies that have been identified in prior sessions, we'll identify the major issues and show how the provisioning plan changes based on which strategy is chosen.
The International SharePoint Conference London 2012 will be held at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre which is a premier venue uniquely situated in the shadow of Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye.
Follow this link for more information about this conference: International SharePoint Conference
Feb
19
Published: February 19, 2012 21:02 PM by
Brian Alderman
Document ID's are useful when you want to associate a metadata property to a document, or document set, which can then be used to retrieve the item regardless of where it is moved within the site collection, or even moved to a document center or record center.
The first step necessary to configure this functionality is to activate the Document ID site collection feature. You then run the Web Application specific timer jobs (Document ID assignment and Document ID enable/disable jobs) to assign a Document ID to every new Document and Document Set created. If the document or Document Set already existed they will be assigned a Document ID the next time they are updated.
Note: After activating the Document ID feature you should modify the default prefix, (because no-one would be able to remember this randomly generated prefix) for the generated Document ID's. This is accomplished by accessing the Document ID Settings option within the Site Collection Administration category of Site Settings. This prefix must contain 4-12 letters and numbers.
However, when you attempt to activate the Document ID site collection feature you may receive an Access Denied error.
This error is generated if the Create Subsites permission has been removed on the web application that contains the site collection that you are trying to activate the Document ID feature on.
To resolve this error you need to allow the Create Subsites permission for the web application. This can be done via Central Administration->Manage Web Applications->Web Application name ->User Permission. Within the Site Permission category check the Allow checkbox for the Create SubSites permission.
You will now be successful in activating the Document ID site collection feature on all site collections within the Web Application.
Dec
04
Published: December 04, 2011 23:12 PM by
Brian Alderman
Data redundancy provides you the capability to recover your SharePoint data quickly and without any data loss. There are several ways to provide data redundancy to assist in business continuity; SQL Server clustering, database mirroring, and SQL Server log shipping are just a few of these ways that are managed by the DBA’s in your SQL Server environment.
Log shipping not only provides data redundancy, but also provides entire server redundancy being an entire server (usually referred to as the secondary server) is hosting a duplicate copy of your SharePoint database content and all the SQL Server configuration settings. This can be helpful if you need to quickly failover to this secondary server in the event your primary server fails. This server can also be used to perform DBCC (Database Console Commands) to verify the integrity of your SharePoint database content so it doesn’t just sit their idle waiting for a failure to occur.
To configure log shipping you stand-up a second server that mirrors the configuration of your primary SQL Server and then create automatic shipment of transaction logs from the primary server to the secondary server. You can use the following steps to configure SQL Server log shipping of your SharePoint content databases:
1. Go to secondary SQL Server (we’ll call it SQLBackup) and create a folder called LogShipping and share it as LogShipping
2. On the primary SQL Server (we’ll call it SQLPrimary), open SQL Management Studio, and add the SharePoint farm account to the security logins and map the user as a dbo of each SharePoint content database.
3. Make sure the SQL Server Agent is started and configured to automatically start on both the SQLPrimary and SQLBackup Servers.
4. On SQLPrimary locate and right-click on the SharePoint content database and click Properties.
5. Select Transaction Log Shipping, and then select Enable this as a Primary database in a log shipping configuration.
6. Click Backup Settings and use \\SQLPrimary\LogShippng and c:\LogShipping
7. Change Schedule to 5 minutes, and then click OK.
8. In the Secondary Database section, click Add and then click Connect and connect to SQLBackup. Ensure your SharePoint content database is selected as the database for log shipping configuration.
9. Select the option: Yes, generate full backup and create secondary database.
10. Click Restore Options and type c:\LogShipping on both fields.
11. On the Copy Files tab use \\sqlBackup\LogShipping, and then change the schedule to 5 minutes
12. On the Restore Transaction Log tab click Standby Mode (read only when restored) and make sure the Disconnect users checkbox is selected or transaction logs will not be applied later. Click OK.
13. Select Script Configuration and choose Script Configuration to clipboard, open Notepad and paste.
14. Click OK, and then click Close after completion.
15. Go to SQLBackup and refresh the databases to see your SharePoint content database exists in standby / read only mode.
16. In the event the SQLPrimary SQL Server fails you can simply modify the SQL Alias to point to the SQLBackup SQL Server so it now responds to all SQL Server requests after the failure of the SQLPrimary server.
Sep
15
Published: September 15, 2011 14:09 PM by
Brian Alderman
It has been a crazy summer but I have been feverishly working at providing you an outstanding educational experience during your visit to Anaheim during the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Conference. I, along with several other experts will be presenting additional educational sessions during your visit to Anaheim.
Mindsharp is offering ten SharePoint 2010 sessions throughout the week from some of the top SharePoint experts in the world. If you would like to learn even more during your lunches and breaks visit Mindsharp located at booth 323 in the Exhibit hall for more tips, tricks, and best practices about SharePoint 2010. Some of the topics that will be presented during the conference include:
Aligning SharePoint Implementations with Business Strategy – Bill English
Dynamic Integration Between Business and IT using SharePoint 2010 – David Gregor
Optimizing SQL Server for SharePoint 2010 – Brian Alderman
Improving SharePoint’s Performance - Ben Curry
Managing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in SharePoint 2010. What it is, why you should, and how you can – Jay Simcox
Introducing SharePoint Tools in Visual Studio 2010 – Todd Bleeker
Building Better Choices: Using Managed Metadata to Create Managed Choice – Timothy Calunod
Business User Adoption – Kay McClure
Create a Reusable Workflow in SharePoint Designer 2010 – Tamara Bredemus
Extending LINQ to SharePoint to the List’s Attachments and Property Bag – Nancy Brown
In addition to several SharePoint 2010 sessions, Mindsharp has invited O’Reilly to co-host a free book-signing event for the first 100 people beginning at 12:30 on Monday October 3rd. In addition to myself, Bill English, Todd Bleeker, and Penny Coventry will be signing our SharePoint books.
But wait there's more, if you stop by our booth and provide your business card we will give you three SharePoint 2010 posters on:
SharePoint 2010 Permission Levels and dependencies infrastructure
SharePoint 2010 Central Administration and Configuration Job Aid that provides information Service Applications, Content Types and the List Ribbon options
SharePoint 2010 Information Architecture & Design Overview that shows how to obtain an ROI on your information and investments.
Be sure to stop by and say hello and enter your business card in for a drawing for a free Mindsharp.
I look forward to seeing everyone in October...
...Brian
Jul
27
Published: July 27, 2011 09:07 AM by
Brian Alderman
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 was recently released which resolves several ‘undocumented features’ also known as fixes for issues reported about SharePoint 2010. Service Pack 1 includes fixes that were not release prior to this service pack, as well as general product fixes that provide improvements to security, performance, and the stability of the product.
This service pack includes all of the product updates that were release through June of 2011 which includes the cumulative updates through April 2011. Yes that is correct only through April of 2011, which means it does not include the June 2011 Cumulative Update. So what does that mean you need to do to update your SharePoint Server 2010 farm? Lots of installations!!!!! But before you begin be sure to check out the release notes and side effects of SP1 as described in KB2532126.
Caution: Always test the installation of this and all updates in a non-production environment prior to deploying it to your production environment!!!!!
To add service pack 1 to your entire farm you have to perform the following installations on each server in your farm:
1. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010
2. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Language Pack (if applicable)
3. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010
4. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010 Language Pack (if applicable)
5. Run the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard or "psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” on every server in the farm following this final update.
Note: Upon completion of the service pack 1 installation extravaganza, the version of content databases will be 14.0.6029.1000.
But wait there’s more, Microsoft strongly recommends that you install the June 2011 Cumulative Update immediately after the installation of Service Pack 1. This June CU includes several important security and bug fixes that were not included in Service Pack 1.
If you have already installed the June Cumulative Update, you can install SP1 using the steps previously described.
Note: Upon completion of the June 2011 CU, the version of the content databases will be 14.0.6106.5000
Now for some good news, in addition to providing fixes to the product, the service pack also includes some great improvements in the following key areas of SharePoint 2010:
· Improved support for Internet Explorer 9.
· Recycle bin: Lets you restore a site collection or a web that was deleted.
· Remote Backup Systems (RBS) and shallow copy can decrease downtime and increase efficiency by moving pointers to databases instead of moving databases. The New Shallow Copy functionality with the Move-SPSite CmdLet enables moving site collections between content databases without moving the underlying unstructured data, i.e. Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint Presentations, etc.
· You can see which folders are taking up valuable space with the improved Storage Management (StorMan.aspx) feature in site settings.
· Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2011, Code Named "Denali”
· A more robust Search Host Distribution service that improves error recovery and performance during the search crawl.
· Adds backup and restore functionality to recover deleted site collections and webs.
Well, let the fun begin and for more information on your SharePoint 2010 Service Pack endeavor, click this SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 link for more information about service pack 1 for SharePoint Server 2010.
Did I tell you that I highly recommend that you:
Always test, test, test the installation of this and all updates in a non-production environment prior to deploying it to your production environment!!!!!
Jun
29
Published: June 29, 2011 10:06 AM by
Brian Alderman
While doing a demonstration in one of my SharePoint Administration Core Technologies classes, I discovered I wasn’t able to create a new site using the Team Site template within one of my web applications. However, I was able to create a new site using the blank team site template. Oddly enough this was the day after I had completed a demo on how to block file types for this web application.
I thought about the file types that I had blocked the day before and I remembered that I had entered in four file types; wmv, avi, mp3, and png. Knowing the implementation of blocked file types prevents those files from being uploaded, or downloaded, into SharePoint I started checking to see which file type may prevent the Team Site site template from being used.
I opened up a Team Site and noticed the picture located on the top right side of the site. I guessed this picture may be one of the four file types I blocked. Thinking about the four I blocked that may impact the use of the Team Site site template, I guessed it may be the .png file type was being used to add that picture during the creation of the site when using that template.
I went back and removed the .png file type from being blocked for this web application and again tried to create a site using the Team Site site template and sure enough it worked fine. I felt it is important wanted to share that file types that are blocked for a web application include files that are not just those directly uploaded but those that are also uploaded as part of a site template, such as the Team Site site templates or features.
Be careful what file types are blocked per web application to avoid issues with the use of templates and features.
May
02
Published: May 02, 2011 14:05 PM by
Brian Alderman
When creating a web application in SharePoint 2010 it will communicate with SQL Server that the supporting content database needs to be created. Sometimes the creation of this SharePoint database is created with a not so ‘friendly’ database name because it contains a ginormous GUID as part of the database name. When accessing these databases using PowerShell it can become challenging to specify the name of the database within the PowerShell command.
There are six general steps required to rename the database:
1. Take the database offline and remove it from within SharePoint
2. Backup the Database (in case there are problems)
3. Detach the database from within SQL Server
4. Rename the database files and name of the database
5. Attach the renamed database
6. Add the renamed database back to Web Application
SharePoint:
1. Central Admin->Application Management->Manage Content Databases
2. Choose the correct Web Application using the dropdown on the right side of screen
3. Click the name of the database for which you want to change the name
4. Click from Ready to Offline in the Database Status dropdown
5. Click checkbox next to Remove content database (This is not going to delete the DB in SQL)
6. Click Ok on the warning popup box indicating sites will no longer be available.
7. Click Ok
SQL Server:
1. Locate and right-click on the current database name in SQL Server Management Studio
2. Click Tasks, then click Back Up… to open the Back Up Database configuration dialog box
3. Verify Backup Type is Full, and that ‘database’ is selected within database component. Make a note of the location of where the backup file will be created, then Click Ok to complete the backup of content database
4. Right-click the current database name in SQL Server Management Studio and click Properties, then click Files, then locate and note the Path of each file located in the details pane of the Database Properties window. (you will be renaming these files later)
5. Right-click the current database name in SQL Server Management Studio and click Tasks, then Detach…
6. In the Detach Database dialog box, select the Drop Connections checkbox and click Ok
Note: The current database name will no longer be available in SQL Server Management Studio
Windows Explorer:
1. Open Windows Explorer or My Computer and locate the path of the database files you noted in the earlier step.
2. Locate the files you noted earlier and right-click the files and rename to reflect the new database name. (It is best practice to keep the default file extensions of these files)
3. Close Windows Explorer and return to SQL Server Management Studio
SQL Server:
1. In the left pane of the SQL Server Management Studio, right-click Databases and click Attach…
2. Click the Add button and locate the directory that contains the .mdf file you previously located in Windows Explorer and click on it to highlight it. You will see the .ldf file was also added to the files associated with this database.
3. Click the filename in the Attach As area within the Databases to attach section and specify the new database name to be seen in SQL Server and SharePoint
4. In the details pane of the Attach Database dialog box, under the Current File Path section, locate and change the old file names to the new file names for both the .mdf and .ldf files. Then click Ok.
SharePoint:
1. Central Admin->Application Management->Manage Content Databases:
2. Choose the correct Web Application using the dropdown on the right side of screen
3. Click Add a Content Database
4. Type in the new database name in the Database Name box and click Ok
Congratulations, you have now successfully renamed the SharePoint content database and all of its associated files.
Oh don’t forget to delete the backup you created in the earlier steps and say bye to those GUIDS!
Apr
18
Published: April 18, 2011 20:04 PM by
Brian Alderman
Information Management policies are not new to SharePoint 2010 but they have been greatly enhanced to provide additional functionality making them more powerful than ever. Similar to SharePoint 2007 the IM policies can be assigned at a library or content type, but new to 2010 they can also be assigned at a site collection. Also similar to the 2007 Information Management (IM) policies there are four configurable settings for the policies; Auditing, Barcodes, Labels, and Retention (which used to be called expiration in 2007). Regardless of where you define the IM policies, the configuration of these settings are the same as 2007 except the retention setting where they made great improvements.
Within the retention setting of an IM policy you can now set up multiple stages that can be configured based on metadata date property which defines the life cycle of the document. For example, you can configure stage 1 to perform an action based on the Created Date field and then define a second stage to perform a different action also based on the Created Date field or a completely different date field. There are three configuration options that can be defined per stage, these three options are:
Event - Specify the event that activates the stage based on a date property
Action - Specify the action that takes place during that stage
Recurrence - Optionally, force the action to occur repeatedly (not available for all actions)
The Event is where you define what date property is going to trigger the action defined. This event is configured using a date property that indicates the number of days, months, or years that have passed and initiates one of the actions discussed below to occur.
Next, where I think they made some great improvements, you choose one of the following Actions to be performed during the stage of the retention policy that you are configuring (what a great improvement from what we had to choose from in 2007; which were delete or trigger a workflow):
Move To Recycle Bin - Moves the item to the site collection recycle bin.
Permanently Delete - Deletes the item without sending it to the recycle bin.
Transfer To Another Location - Transfers the item to a Send To location that has been configured at the Web application level in Central Administration.
Start A Workflow - Starts the specified workflow for this stage.
Skip To Next Stage - Proceeds to the next retention stage without any modifications.
Declare A Record - Declares the document as a record and begins a record retention policy stage if one exists.
Delete Previous Drafts - Deletes all previous drafts of the item.
Delete All Previous Versions - Deletes all previous versions of the document.
Recurrence is the final, but optional, configuration option that is used to define how often the preceding action is to take placed during this stage. In this area you specify the number of days, months, or years that you want the specified action to take place within this stage.
If you are familiar with SharePoint 2007 you will quickly see how the SharePoint 2010 IM policy settings have been greatly improved by configuring several stages and the behavior within each stage.
Mar
27
Published: March 27, 2011 17:03 PM by
Brian Alderman
After the SharePoint configuration database, the Central Administration database is the most important database that SharePoint uses, and unless you perform a command-line installation of SharePoint, it uses the default database name along with a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID).
This can be challenging if you want to write scripts that reference this database using its default database name. The following steps should be used with extreme caution, but if you follow them exactly, you can rename the default Central Administration database to a more user-friendly database name.
1) Log on to your SQL Server with an account that has full access; ideally, you should use the same account that you used for your SharePoint installation.
2) Open the SQL Server Management Studio interface and locate the SQL Server instance that contains your SharePoint Central Administration database. The database name will be something similar to SharePoint_AdminContent_<GUID>. Right-click the database name and choose the Rename command from the shortcut menu to enter edit mode. Then press Ctrl+C to copy the existing name of the database for later use. Click anywhere outside of the database name to exit edit mode without changing the name.
3) While still in SQL Server Management Studio, back up the existing SharePoint_AdminContent_<GUID> database by right-clicking the database name and then selecting the Tasks command. Select Back Up to open the Back Up Database dialog box. Use all of the default settings on this backup screen and then click OK.
4) After a successful back up of the database, restore the information from the backup that you just performed to a new database having a user-friendly database name such as CentralAdmin_Content_DB. You perform the restore by right-clicking the existing database name again and selecting the Tasks command from the shortcut menu. Select Restore and then Database to open the Restore Database dialog box. In the To Database section, type in the new user-friendly database name and then click OK at the bottom of the dialog box.
5) Return to SharePoint Central Administration and under Application Management, click Manage Content Databases.
a) Select the SharePoint Central Administration v4 Web application using the Web Application drop-down list to refresh the screen with the SharePoint_AdminContent_<GUID> database name.
b) Click the SharePoint_AdminContent_<GUID> database.
c) Use the Database status drop-down option to change the status from Ready to Offline.
d) Important: do NOT select the option to remove the content database.
e) Click OK.
6) Log on to the server using the account that was used to provision the database. (Usually this is the farm user account that you used during the installation of SharePoint 2010).
7) After opening the command prompt, perform the following steps.
a) Type cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\14\BIN\ to change the directory to the SharePoint 2010 root so you can run the STSADM commands.
b) Delete the original Central Administration database, the one with the GUID that you copied earlier, using the following command (be sure to specify the UrlOfYourCentralAdministration and NamedInstanceOfYourSqlServer for your SharePoint installation names).
stsadm -o deletecontentdb -url http://UrlOfYourCentralAdministration:portnumber -databasename SharePoint_AdminContent_<GUID> -databaseserver NamedInstanceOfYourSqlServer (or just the name of the SQL Server if there is no instance name for the SQL Server).
c) Associate the newly created database (the one created in step 4) with your Central Administration using the following STSADM command (again be sure to specify the UrlOfCentralYourAdministration and NamedInstanceOfYourSqlServer for your SharePoint installation names).
stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http:// UrlOfYourCentralAdministration:portnumber -databasename SharePoint_AdminContent_DB -databaseserver NamedInstanceOfYourSqlServer
8) Return to Central Administration. Under Application Management, click Manage Content Databases and refresh the page to verify that your Central Administration Administration database reflects the new database name specified in step 4.
Note: After verifying the new database name is displayed as the Central Administration content database, you can delete the database backup you created in step 3.
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