Kathy Hughes, MVP

Australian Community SharePoint Conference – it’s a wrap for Year 2010

Kathy Hughes — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:53:00 GMT

[Long post!]

Two weeks ago, the conference I’d been helping organize came to fruition and was held here in Sydney over two days – 16^th and 17^th June. The conference has since been referred to by many as one of the best and most successful SharePoint conferences ever held! The conference, in its first year here in Australia, had in excess of 600 attendees, it attracted speakers like Arpan Shah from Microsoft in Redmond, Todd Bleeker from Mindsharp (USA), Michael Noel (USA and author of the upcoming SharePoint Server 2010 Unleashed book by SAMS) and numerous other well known and respected international and national SharePoint experts and speakers. Delegates who attended the event travelled from all around Australia, including Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra.

Debbie Ireland – SharePoint MVP from New Zealand (SPEvents) – was at the helm of organizing the Australian (and New Zealand) event/s – this year also saw the second New Zealand conference, held over in Wellington the week prior to the Australian conference, and which saw a 25% increase in attendance on last year’s conference! Debbie, and her team from New Zealand, did an absolutely outstanding job in organizing the conference, conference logistics and behind the scenes project management – it was a pleasure to meet and work with them – and I look forward to working with them and supporting them in future like endeavours. It was also a pleasure to work alongside the other conference organizers (both Australian and New Zealand), including James Milne (Brisbane), Mark Orange (NZ) and Brendan Law (Melbourne).

We had a fantastic line-up of sponsors – we also received favourable feedback from delegates on our conference sponsors, including the fact that exhibitor stands were easily accessed throughout the conference and session breaks. See the conference sponsors page here: - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/sponsors.htm. Plus, a huge thank you to those sponsors who provided the prize draw prizes for both Day 1 and Day 2.

So, what made the conference a success? I believe the fact that (1) we (the key organizing team) all worked as a team – with a shared vision - from the outset and throughout the 6-7 month period leading up to the event; (2) we are all SharePoint experts (or SharePoint subject matter experts and actively working with (and in) SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 and related technologies), so we had a good feeling for the market and what people would be interested in, and we carried out market research from the outset; (3) we had a good assortment of topics and allocation of speakers; (4) we included a number of tracks to suit all audiences, including business, technical, Voice of the customer (real-life implementation scenarios) and vendor-specific sessions – this attracted a diverse group of people – many from the same company/ies who saw having the multiple tracks of real benefit - including System admins, developers, designers, business analysts, project managers, CTO’s and CIO’s and other business stakeholders – having such a diversity of tracks and people allowed for cross-pollination and sharing of information all at once!; (5) it was a ‘community focussed’ event and we had the SharePoint community behind us who greatly promoted the event and provided support throughout the two days, with the likes of a User Group Community Booth (the go-to spot for SharePoint questions and post-session follow-up) which was manned by the Australian and New Zealand SharePoint community throughout the entire conference; (6) We had Microsoft’s full support, both as a sponsor and as a community-focussed supporter, from the outset; (7) the venue – the Hilton Hotel – was the perfect venue, in terms of location, rooms and comfort – I constantly heard very positive feedback about the food – FOOD is an important part of any IT event! (8) The sponsor/exhibition area was well laid out and easily accessible to delegates throughout the conference; (9) the Ask the Experts panel – this was a great way of winding up the conference on the final day and we encouraged several international and local speakers to get involved and to include a good cross-section of SharePoint skills – including admin, developer and infrastructure.

This post is by no means the first, or only, post-conference write up. We’ve (the organizers) received numerous congratulatory e-mails and feedback; I’ve included a couple of links below:

Craig Bailey (@craigbailey) – convenor of the popular ‘Sydney Business and Technology user group’ and who attended the conference - provided a great post conference review - http://www.craigbailey.net/australian-sharepoint-conference-review/ (thanks, Craig)

IDM – our media sponsor and partner throughout the conference – also wrote a good post-conference review - http://idm.net.au/article/007910-australia-sharepoint-conference-schedule-return-2011 - interestingly, this article cites the percentage of female conference attendees at 25% - a vast (and welcomed) contrast to that number usually seen at IT events.

Also, a big thank you to Rose Stamell, Microsoft, for organizing the wrap-up networking drinks for MVPs and Speakers at The Hilton – it was a nice way for the conference speakers to reflect on the conference and discuss SharePoint goodness. Plus, a big thank you to Emantra Hosting Solutions (Australia) – and Mark Rhodes – for providing and hosting the main MYSPC SharePoint 2010 site used throughout the conference and provisioning and hosting the individual delegates trial SharePoint (server) 2010 sites.

Well, what about next year’s event? We hear you and planning is already underway for next year’s (2011) Australian SharePoint Conference. Thank you to all those conference attendees who completed the preferred conference location survey during (and post) the conference – even those who cheekily completed the survey multiple times! J At this stage, Sydney is the favoured location. In terms of next year’s conference dates, based on feedback received from this year’s event from Microsoft, sponsors and delegates, next year’s conference looks to be 8^th and 9^th March, 2011, at The Hilton Hotel. Keep an eye on the conference site – http://www.sharepointconference.com.au for further updates. Now is the time to start planning to attend! Also, if you are interested in attending next year’s New Zealand event, then keep an eye on the New Zealand conference site – http://www.sharepointconference.co.nz – for updates, including dates and location.

If you are interested in speaking at next year’s conference, then initial speaker interested is being captured via http://spevents.co.nz/AUSPC2011/default.aspx - simply visit the site and complete the Speaker Registrations survey by clicking on the link in the left-hand column. Similarly, if you are interested in speaking at next year’s New Zealand SharePoint conference, then visit http://spevents.co.nz/NZSPC2011/default.aspx and complete the Speaker Registrations survey.

Hungry for more SharePoint information now? In terms of other SharePoint events happening between now and next year’s SharePoint conference, here’s a list of some of the events happening here in Australia:

SharePoint Saturdays Australia: Sydney (7^th August - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/sydney); Canberra (18^th September - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/canberra); Melbourne (16^th October - http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/melbourne) – they are FREE but you need to visit the registration sites shown in order to register for each event.

SharePoint Saturdays globally (some of these happen as online events!) – see http://www.sharepointsaturday.org for a full listing of SharePoint Saturday locations.

TechEd Australia – will include a number of Office and SharePoint tracks - http://australia.msteched.com/ - up on the Gold Coast again this year (2^nd year running at the same location!). Don’t forget about user group registration discounts for TechEd AU - if you are involved in a UG then you should ask your UG leader for further details. Unfortunately, I will not be attending this year’s TechEd due to a number of existing Sydney-based commitments.

Office DevCon, Sydney (will include both Office and SharePoint tracks) – http://www.officedevcon.com.au – FREE plus a two-day weekend event – but you must visit the registration site in order to register for the event so we can properly cater for all for both food and space.

Australian SharePoint user groups – see http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/default.aspx - for a user group location near you. SharePoint user groups are a great place for meeting other SharePoint enthusiasts and experts!

SharePoint MVP online chats hosted by Microsoft – these chat sessions happen on a monthly basis (as of writing this blog post) – see details of the latest chat session - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/06/17/live-chats-to-learn-more-about-sharepoint-with-the-mvp-experts.aspx – and are a great place to ask your SharePoint questions, ranging from administration, development, infrastructure and design.

SharePoint 2010 MSDN forums – a great place for asking (and answering) SharePoint 2010 questions - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/sharepoint2010.

SharePoint 2007 MSDN forums – questions and answers specific to the SharePoint 2007 versions - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-AU/category/sharepoint

PLUS, Microsoft has announced their SharePoint 2011 conference, happening over in Anaheim, California, in October, 2011 - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/06/08/save-the-date-sharepoint-conference-2011.aspx.

2010 – it’s a wrap!

Trivia: Interesting SharePoint Tag Cloud Properties

Kathy Hughes — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:58:00 GMT

Here's something you don't see when adding the SharePoint 2010 Tag Cloud Web Part via the Web interface - exposed via SharePoint Designer 2010. I'm glad to see the tag 'kangaroo' included!

SharePoint 2010 workflows and Visio 2010 which Version

Kathy Hughes — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:10:00 GMT

Today, when I installed the Visio 2010 RTM product, I was struck with the decision around which version to use. I had two keys - one for Visio Professional and the other for Visio Premium. I didn't recall seeing those options while working with the Visio Release Candidate.

I received my answer from the MSDN Visio blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/visio/default.aspx - which includes a useful matrix of functionality between Visio 2010 versions Standard, Professional and Premium. If you plan on using Visio 2010 for creating and working with SharePoint workflows, then you'll need to install Visio *PREMIUM* 2010, which includes the option for SharePoint Workflow Template.

SharePoint Designer 2010 RTM 32Bit Benign Error during Installation

Kathy Hughes — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:53:00 GMT

Scenario: You attempt to install the SharePoint Designer 2010 RTM 32-bit (x86) on a Windows 7 x64-bit operating system and the installation fails, with the dialog shown below:

The Windows application event log shows the following error:

Product: Microsoft Office Office 64-bit Components 2010 -- Error 1731. The source installation package for the product Microsoft Office Office 64-bit Components 2010 is out of sync with the client package. Try the installation again using a valid copy of the installation package 'Office64WW.msi'.

Resolution: Ensure you have removed *ALL* earlier Beta and Release Candidates from your machine, including Office 2010 and Visio 2010. In my case, I still had Visio 2010 32-bit Release Candidate installed on my machine. Once I completely removed it, the SharePoint Designer 2010 RTM 32-bit installed successfully.

Update: Australia SharePoint Conference, Sydney, Australia

Kathy Hughes — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:23:00 GMT

http://www.sharepointconference.com.au

16^th and 17^th June, 2010, The Hilton Hotel, Sydney, Australia

With the pending public release of SharePoint 2010 (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/04/16/sharepoint-2010-reaches-rtm.aspx ), things in the SharePoint world are really heating up.

Conference planning is well underway and I’d like to share some exciting updates, as follows:

Conference keynote delivery by Arpan Shah, Director at Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA) who owns Technical Product Management for SharePoint Products and Technologies.

An array of great speakers, including our very own Todd Bleeker from Mindsharp, USA, among top notch international and local speakers - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/speakers.htm

A great line-up of sessions, ranging from business to technical, and covering SharePoint document management, social and collaborative features, business intelligence, design and workflow - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/agenda-business.htm

SharePoint deployment case studies - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/agenda-voice.htm

Vendor sessions provided by conference sponsors - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/sponsors.htm - covering product demonstrations - http://www.sharepointconference.com.au/agenda-vendor.htm

A community hosted SharePoint user group booth where you can mingle and network with SharePoint community minded folks and SharePoint MVPs and ask your SharePoint questions, and learn about the SharePoint community throughout Australia and how to get involved.

Free hosted SharePoint Server 2010 site for conference attendees – thanks goes to Emantra Hosting Solutions Australia (http://www.emantra.com.au/ ) and to Mark Rhodes (http://www.msexperts.org/blogs/mark/ ) for making this possible

A chance to win a free ticket to the conference by attending the upcoming SharePoint 2010 launch event - http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/MOSSIG/Wiki/SPOLaunch.aspx

Finally, you can read further about the conference in the latest online conference article, featured in IDM - http://idm.net.au/article/007775-sharepoint-australia-conference-preview.

Data and Content Crunching with SharePoint 2010 Presentation

Kathy Hughes — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:02:00 GMT

Presenting at Sydney (Australia) SharePoint User Group, Tuesday 16th February, 2010, from 5:30pm onwards.

Come along to discover the capabilities of how to work with data sources and discover some tips and tricks on how to make your SharePoint sites come alive and for some REST'ful insights!

Further details and registration at http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/Sydney/default.aspx

SharePoint Conference 2010 Sydney, Australia

Kathy Hughes — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:39:00 GMT

16th and 17th June, 2010, The Hilton, Sydney, Australia

Don't miss the Australian SharePoint Conference for 2010, proudly sponsored by Microsoft and leading partners, and organized by members of the Australian and New Zealand SharePoint community. For details and registration, visit the following site:

http://www.sharepointconference.com.au

Unexpected Error in 2010

Kathy Hughes — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:38:00 GMT

If you happen to see the error message "An error has occurred" when attempting to open your SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 site, then check the Microsoft Geneva Claims to Windows Token Service is started. In SharePoint 2007, the same error message usually points to either a Web service or SQL service being stopped.

Configuring User Profiles in SharePoint Server 2010

Kathy Hughes — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:30:00 GMT

[cross-post from www.kathyhughes.com/blog/]

Note: I've added the necessary links relating to SharePoint Server 2010 prerequisites, along with instructions for configuring the user profile synchronization service, at the end of this post.

Now that Beta 2 is out many of you will be installing and setting up new SharePoint 2010 environments and getting to know the product intimately ;-) However, I've seen a number of posts around issues when attempting to setup and configure the User Profile Service or User Profile Synchronization Service. I too had some issues with this service during my installation so I thought I'd share my experience here and also my eventual workaround so that it may help others.

First off, my environments consists of several physical and virtualized servers. I never use a standalone installation since that's not a fair indication of how people will use the product out in the real world and I need to fully test things like authentication scenarios. So in my initial test setup, I had x4 servers. All servers are running Windows 2008 R2 and the domain is Windows 2008 R2 (Windows 2008 R2 functional level). Server one is my DC/Exchange 2010/DNS/DHCP, etc; server 2 is SQL 2008 (patched as per pre-requisite requirements on Ji Lie's blog); server 3 is my main application server, including SharePoint Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 B2; server 4 is currently where I have a number of legacy systems.

I initially ran my 2010 install under my domain admin account. However, I'd set up a separate farm account in my AD and given that account the necessary replication permissions (per Dave Pae's instructions) and subsequently added that account as the farm account during install. The installation had an issue toward the end, where it couldn't fully deploy the user profile service. The error message suggested a timeout issue, but I wasn't convinced that it had completely failed.

Next, while still logged in as the domain admin account, I started the User Profile Synchronization Service on the Manage Services on server page in Central Administration. But the service hanged in the status of 'starting'. When I checked my Windows Services console, I could see that both the Forefront Identity Manager Service and Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service were set to 'Started'. So then I checked my Windows Application log and it was full of errors. I won't repeat those errors here, but you can see similar errors experienced by others in various posts on the 2010 forums, like this one started by Jeremy -http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010general/thread/8fffb030-c118-4e36-94ab-8601b25f3a97.

Next, I checked the account under which both the Forefront services were running and of course it was the farm account I'd added during initial installation. So my next attempt was to stop the User Profile Synchronization service which was stuck at a status of 'starting'. To do this, I used the PowerShell cmdlet stop-spserviceinstance [guid]. For those reading this post unfamiliar with PowerShell, you'll need to firstly discover the GUID for the user profile synchronization service before being able to stop it. To do this use the get-spserviceinstance cmdlet first to enumerate and access all the service GUIDS. I used:

get-spserviceinstance >file.txt to save them to a file on my local drive for convenience.

Next, locate the GUID for the user profile synchronization service (it'll probably show a status of 'provisioning' in PowerShell) and use the following command:

stop-spserviceinstance [userprofilesynchronizationservice GUID]

This will eventually stop the service and the status of the service on the SharePoint Manage services on server page will show a status of 'stopped'.

Also, the two Forefront services in the Windows Services console should be set back to a status of disabled.

Next I logged in as the farm account I'd assigned during install and the same account under which the Forefront services was running. I then attempted to start the user profile synchronization service using this account, but once again the service got stuck on a status of 'starting'. And my Windows application event log was full of Forefront errors once again along with some additional SQL access errors.

I think what happened was that by initially using my domain admin account to start the service confused everything along with the encrypted key used by the Forefront services.

So, next I decided to reinstall SharePoint Server 2010 but this time I used the domain admin account and I also installed it on my SQL box. This time, everything mostly worked though I still had a timeout error toward the end of my installation. But, I could then successfully start my user profile synchronization service and import user profiles from my domain.

IMPORTANT: once you've successfully started your user profile synchronization service you may still see a message on the User Profile Service Application page under Configure Syncrhronization Connections that the server is unable to connect to SQL or Search Service, etc. Make sure you have started your Search service back on the Manage services on server page and then do an IISRESET. Dave Pae mentions the IISRESET bit on his blog post. Once you've done this then all should be good to go and you should then be able to Configure Synchronization Connections and Start Profile Synchronization.

Finally, because the user profile service hadn't completely installed using the SharePoint wizard, once I had everything configure including services started and profiles imported, I needed to go back to my Web application and add my user profile service into the available Service Connections.

To do this, go to your Web application and click Service Connections in the ribbon. In the Configure Service Application Associations dialog you'll notice the checkboxes greyed out. To make them editable, from the dropdown at the top of the dialog select [custom] and then go check the User Profile Service Application (or whatever you've named your user profile service app) and click OK.

I realize using the domain admin account isn't best practice, but if you need to get things working in your dev or test environments then it worked for me. I'll be doing some further investigation but for now my user profile synching is working. Another thought is around which authentication protocol you're using. Initially I used NTLM. I've now switched to Kerberos. But I'm not convinced that switching to Kerberos in the beginning would have resolved my initial issue.

My only problem now is that my organizational browser isn't rendering properly with or without Silverlight so that's the next thing to tackle...oneday! ;-)

Here are some relevant postings:

Dave Pae has posted some instructions on the SharePoint team blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/11/18/path-to-user-profile-synchronization-success-in-sharepoint-2010-beta.aspx

Ji Lie posted some great instructions here http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/19/user-profile-sync-setup-in-sharepoint-server-2010-beta.aspx

plus

Beta 2 installation instructions

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx (great post and it also includes links to other great resources on his blog including a list of all the pre-requisites (important for isolated environments) - http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/10/25/sharepoint-2010-pre-requisites-download-links.aspx.

Importantly if you're running Windows 2008 standard SP2 then you'll need to install the hotfix at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=KB971831&DownloadId=7285

if you're running Windows 2008 RC2 then you'll need to install the hotfix at http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806

Presenting at Sydney SharePoint User Group 17th November 2009

Kathy Hughes — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:35:00 GMT

I'll be presenting a session on design and branding in SharePoint 2010 at tomorrow night's Sydney SharePoint user group (17th November, 2009, 6pm-8pm). It will be a similar presentation to the one I delivered at this year's Office DevCon and approximately 1.5-2hrs duration.

The presentation will cover new design approaches in SharePoint 2010, including theming, master pages and other rich client-side offerings.

See http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/Sydney/default.aspx for location and registration.