Microknowledge

Speaking at Microsoft "Best of SharePoint Conference" on February 1, 2010

January 2010 is almost finished, so I'd like to remind my readers that I'll be speaking at Microsoft's "Best of SharePoint Conference" all day event on Monday, February 1, 2010.  I'll be co-presenting "SharePoint Applications and Forms Services in SharePoint 2010" along with my former colleague Chris Bortlik - now of Microsoft. 

There will be many other topics and speakers from Microsoft and partners throughout the day.  Other topics include:

• Business Productivity
• Social Computing
• FAST/Enterprise Search
• SharePoint for Internet/Extranet Sites
• PowerPivot/Project Gemini/SQL 2008 R2
• ECM for the Masses
• Hands On Labs

If you're interested, please contact me or aducille@kma-llc.net for an invitation.  Thanks.   My next speaking engagement, in case you're wondering, is Managed Metadata and Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010, at SharePoint Saturday Boston on February 27, 2010.  Stay tuned... 

January 2010 Update: SharePoint 2007 Internal Version Numbers

Happy New Year!  Last month, Microsoft released its bimonthly December 2009 Cumulative Updates for SharePoint.

Again, if you ever need to confirm which update/revision of SharePoint you are running, without accessing the binary files themselves, these version numbers correspond to the version numbers reported in SharePoint Central Administration.  You can find this by going into the Operations tab, and under Topology and Services, select Servers in Farm.

Also, as promised by Steve Ballmer in his keynote at the 2009 SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft has also added a new section to TechNet to help with identifying current required SharePoint patch levels - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx (Thanks, Steve!)

SharePoint 2007 Version/Release	Microsoft Support KB Reference	Version Number from Central Admin	Release Date
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 December 2009 Cumulative Update	KB977026/KB977027	12.0.0.6524	15 December  2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 October 2009 Cumulative Update	KB974988/KB974989	12.0.0.6520	27 October 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 August 2009 Cumulative Update	KB973409/KB973410	12.0.0.6514	25 August 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 June 2009 Cumulative Update	KB971537/KB971538	12.0.0.6510	20 July 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 April 2009 Cumulative Update	KB968851/KB968850	12.0.0.6504	30 April 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 SP2	KB953334/KB953338	12.0.0.6421	28 April 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Cumulative update	KB956056/KB956057	12.0.0.6327	16 September 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Infrastructure Update	KB951695/KB951297	12.0.0.6318	15 July 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix	KB948945	12.0.0.6303	21 February 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix	KB941274	12.0.0.6301	31 January 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix	KB941422	12.0.0.6300	26 February 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 SP1	KB936984/KB936988	12.0.0.6219	8 December 2007
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Security Bulletin MS07-059	KB942017	12.0.0.6039	9 October 2007
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 August 24, 2007 hotfix package	KB941422 (updated)	12.0.0.6036	24 August 2007
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 RTM [Released To Manufacturing]	N/A	12.0.0.4518	16 November 2006
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Beta 2 TR	N/A	12.0.0.4407	2006
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Beta 2	N/A	12.0.0.4017	2006

 

Configuring the SharePoint 2007 SP1 People Picker

Hi.  There’s some information out there already about how to use a feature introduced in SharePoint 2007 SP1 to control and configure the SharePoint people picker.  I thought I would add some context about WHY you might need to do this.

We have a client in transition from its old domain to a new one at some point in the coming year.  The current SharePoint site lives in the older domain, however, since both old and new domains are currently trusted, and are fully populated with user accounts, users are seeing duplicate entries in SharePoint when they assign permissions or select users in the web site.

In the Shared Service Provider, user profile import is only set to pull from OLDDOMAIN, so NEWDOMAIN is already excluded from imports.  We could use the stsadm property peoplepicker-onlysearchwithinsitecollection to prevent users form the new domain from creating profiles, but that step has been deferred for now.  (It will probably be done immediately prior to cutting over the new domain.)

The syntax used to “lock” people picker to the current domain and exclude the new one is:

stsadm -o setsiteuseraccountdirectorypath –url http://sitecollectionurl -path "DC=OLDDOMAIN,DC=com"

Also, if the service accounts being used are in a different Active Directory Organization unit than that specified above (and currently they are not), administrators using those accounts may be blocked from editing the site collection.  The stsadm settable property peoplepicker-serviceaccountdirectorypaths, not needed at present, may be needed in the future as an advance step for migration to the new domain.  (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263012.aspx)

If we were using this, the syntax would be:

stsadm -o setproperty -url http://sitecollectionurl -pn peoplepicker-serviceaccountdirectorypaths -pv "OU=SharePoint Administration,DC=OLDDOMAIN,DC=com”

In addition, we used the Server Admin Tools adsiedit.msc to confirm the distinguishedName AD naming context for relevant OUs and containers.  For SharePoint/SQL types without much grounding in Active Directory, ADSIEdit is a highly powerful tool (careful!) that lets you peek under the hood at all the information tracked inside each object in AD.  Highly essential.

This may or may not be my last post before Christmas 2009, so happy holidays, and thanks for reading! 

Download the SharePoint 2010 Beta Today!

Earlier today, Microsoft released the beta version of SharePoint 2010 to MSDN subscribers at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx?pv=42:393.  As expected, this is a 64 bit only release.  The MSDN release comes after last month's wildly successful SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas, and precedes availability of the fully public beta later in November 2009.

Also a reminder, I'll be co-presenting KMA's SharePoint 2010 Preview, along with colleagues from KMA, at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, Massachusetts on December 17, 2009.  Hope to see you there!

SharePoint Search Engineering - Fixing a Broken Query Server

We were seeing errors when a new MOSS query server in a medium sized SharePoint 2007 farm would not connect into the indexing topology and being to receive index replications and updates.  As a result, unless there was another query service available, users would get the message “The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service.”    As a recovery step, the query role was transferred back to the primary index/crawl server while a permanent resolution was implemented. Dropping the problematic server from the farm and re-adding had no immediate effect.  

The specific error which is seen in SharePoint Search Administration is:

Could not connect to server VPSPQ101 for application PrimarySSP.  This error might occur if the server is not responding to client requests, the firewall or proxy configuration is preventing the server from being contacted or the search administration Web service is not running on the server.

And at other points during recovery, query servers would remain in intiializaiton mode indefinitely with any results.

The ultimate fix for this was found by replacing the self-signed SSL web certificates on all farm servers.  It is believed that these certificates, used to encrypt some intrafarm communications, became corrupted during .NET Framework system software updates.  

The fix can be performed using a command line tool (“SelfSSL.exe”) included as part of the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56FC92EE-A71A-4C73-B628-ADE629C89499&displaylang=en ]  The exact syntax of the selfSSL fix is:

selfssl /s:951338967 /v:1000

Further details on this technique can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962928 .  (The additional .NET Framework 3.5 updates outlined in that article were not required to restore our SharePoint query servers.)  Hope this is helpful!

November 2009 Update: SharePoint 2007 Internal Version Numbers

Last week, Microsoft released its bimonthly October 2009 Cumulative Updates for SharePoint [http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/10/29/october-2009-cumulative-update-packages-for-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx]

Again, if you ever need to confirm which update/revision of SharePoint you are running, without accessing the binary files themselves, these version numbers correspond to the version numbers reported in SharePoint Central Administration.  You can find this by going into the Operations tab, and under Topology and Services, select Servers in Farm.

The October CU contains an enhanced version of the STSADM -preupgradecheck feature to test your system's readiness for SharePoint 2010.  Almost essential if you are planning to migrate in SharePoint 2010 after its release next year.  This update, like most before, also requires Service Pack 1, at a minimum, as a prerequisite.

SharePoint 2007 Version/Release	Microsoft Support KB Reference	Version Number from Central Admin	Release Date
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 October 2009 Cumulative Update	KB974988/KB974989	12.0.0.6520	27 October 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 August 2009 Cumulative Update	KB973409/KB973410	12.0.0.6514	25 August 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 June 2009 Cumulative Update	KB971537/KB971538	12.0.0.6510	20 July 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 April 2009 Cumulative Update	KB968851/KB968850	12.0.0.6504	30 April 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 SP2	KB953334/KB953338	12.0.0.6421	28 April 2009
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Cumulative update	KB956056/KB956057	12.0.0.6327	16 September 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Infrastructure Update	KB951695/KB951297	12.0.0.6318	15 July 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix	KB948945	12.0.0.6303	21 February 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix	KB941274	12.0.0.6301	31 January 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix	KB941422	12.0.0.6300	26 February 2008
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 SP1	KB936984/KB936988	12.0.0.6219	8 December 2007
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Security Bulletin MS07-059	KB942017	12.0.0.6039	9 Octoer 2007
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 August 24, 2007 hotfix package	KB941422 (updated)	12.0.0.6036	24 August 2007
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 RTM [Released To Manufacturing]	N/A	12.0.0.4518	16 November 2006
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Beta 2 TR	N/A	12.0.0.4407	2006
MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Beta 2	N/A	12.0.0.4017	2006

 

SharePoint 2010 Server - Infrastructure Recommendations

I’ve gotten to look at SharePoint 2010 for a few weeks now.  Here are some key thought points about its server infradstrucuture:

· SharePoint 2010 offers a new central service application called the Managed Metadata Service.  MMS lets an IT professional delegate this service to a knowledge manager, who can then use it to define a library of content tags and hierarchies to share across your SharePoint farm.

· SharePoint 2010 will be a 64 bit only platform.  Direct upgrades from 32 bits servers to 64 bit servers will require some advance prep work.  The basic requirements:

o   Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 X64

§  SQL Server 2005 x64 SP3 CU3

§  Or

§  SQL Server 2008 x64 SP1 CU2

· On the client side, Internet Explorer 7/8, Firefox and Safari will all be supported.  However, IE6 will not be supported, so IT shops that had been deferring that upgrade should plan accordingly.

· SharePoint 2010 will provide a server based version of most Office applications – Office Web Access, or “OWA”.  [It's going to be hard to stop thinking only of web access to Exchange as “OWA”!] In part, this enables simultaneous multiuser editing of Office documents:

o   Excel in OWA, not client

o   Word/PowerPoint on client only if file opened from a shared document library

o   OneNote client or OWA

· The 2007 Shared Services Provider has been broken up.  Each of its elements is now a “Shared Service Application”, and you can mix and match them singly or in groups, as needed, to match your farm’s actual needs.  [No need to deploy Visio Services if you don’t use it.]

· Site subscriptions are a new element.  Site subscriptions are groups of site collections, and you can delegate administrative control over a range of sites as a result.  Although this was designed for shared hosting providers in a multitenant environment, this could also prove useful in large decentralized enterprises.

· There is some support for more granular restores from a content database backup.  Administrators will be able to browse the backup and identify a list or library to pull out without attaching and mounting the entire database.

Highlights from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 - Day One

Greetings from sunny Las Vegas.  Some highlights from the first day of the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009:

Steve Ballmer announced the public beta of SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, (and Project Server 2010) will be available for download in November.    The final RTM release dates will be sometime in the first half of 2010.

Other news:

· Microsoft has launched a new site for SharePoint 2010 at http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/Pages/default.aspx.  SharePoint 2010 Forums are open on TechNet and MSDN.  There’s also additional SharePoint 2010 beta information on TechNet at  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee428287(office.14).aspx

· Microsoft also announced SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel (Client) and SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint (Server).  PowerPivot is the result of “Project Gemini”.  Briefly, it allows users to access millions of rows of data from Excel or SharePoint.  Further details at www.powerpivot.com

· For developers, SharePoint 2010 now runs on Windows 7 and Vista.

Update: SharePoint 2010 Predictions

As I write this, I’m enroute to Microsoft’s 2009 SharePoint Conference.  In a prior post, Eight things to look for in SharePoint 2010, I promised an update on my predictions after last month’s preview of SharePoint 2010 in Atlanta.  Here’s how I did:

Where I was right

· Two way data exchange via the Business Data Catalog.  Microsoft has greatly enhanced what’s now called Business Connectivity Services, or BCS.  BCS adds three great new capabilities:

· Read write access to remote data sources

· Exposing remote SQL tables (and other sources) as editable, native SharePoint lists (so you can use datasheets, RSS feeds, etc.)

· Republishing BDC data to other application, such as Office 2010.  This means you could have a remote contact list in your CRM system, link it as an editable list in SharePoint 2010 and republish the list as a Contacts list in Outlook.

· Richer end user form design for SharePoint lists, and support for a relational data model, child grids, etc., without InfoPath  Mostly there – InfoPath is greatly enhanced as the non-developer interface for customizing list based forms.  This will certainly be available in SharePoint Server, although I’m not yet sure how this is supported in SharePoint Foundations (f/k/a Windows SharePoint Services [WSS] 3.0).

 

· Better tools for bundling and applying changes to existing objects that have already been deployed to production.  Definitely – all updates can now be easily packaged as WSP packages in SharePoint Designer 2010 as well as Visual Studio 2010.  You can now use Visio 2010 to design a simple workflow, extend it using Designer, and make detailed enhancements in Studio, all using a common interface to package the deployment

 

· In line editing of page content.  Simpler than ever to create and edit pages, using wiki syntax, and customize themes and brands all from the browser without needing to understand HTML, XML or CSS.

 

· Better Web 2.0 style social networking for the enterprise.  A big win – there’s extensive support for Twitter style microblogging, LinkedIn style expertise finding, Facebook-like wall posts, Digg/Del.icio.us tagging, ratings, etc.  You get the picture:

 

· Silverlight based native support for streaming media, especially video.  SharePoint 2010 adds supports for audio and video as managed content types, along with a Silverlight client to stream audio and video to the browser UI.

Still waiting

· Simpler debugging for web parts, especially ASP.NET  Probably, but I haven’t seen it yet.

 

· Real blog editing with better permalinking URLs for external sites and in line editing.    The editing’s better, but the permalinking is still pending.

 

· Improved security model integration between Project Server2010 and SharePoint 2010.  No information on this yet – as the Magic 8 Ball says, “ANSWER HAZY.  TRY AGAIN LATER.”

 

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more news from SPC 2009.

SharePoint 2007 August 2009 Cumulative Update v2 – Use caution

Microsoft has recently announced some potential issues in the August 2009 Cumulative update packages for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  These issues relate to a specific administrative technique of reattaching an older content database that was left detached during the update, although there are some workarounds.

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/09/14/important-be-careful-when-installing-wss-august-cumulative-update.aspx

Microsoft has pulled the original version of the update package and replaced it as of 1 October 2009.  The version number, for those of you who track SharePoint version numbers, remains 12.0.0.6514.  This revision only affects the “WSS” package – the original update package for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server remains unaffected.  Likewise, the four Project Server 2007 core databases are unaffected by this behavior.

http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/10/01/new-build-available-for-august-cu.aspx

This will only impact users who downloaded the August 2009 updates but haven’t yet deployed them – in which case you should visit the following link to get the revised version of the update.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;973400

In general, KMA doesn’t advocate immediate deployment of Cumulative Updates as soon as they are released, unless you are experiencing a specific problem.  Please let us know if you have further questions – thanks.

(By the way, the title reminds me of “Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday Edition” for packing multiple data and version references into a single title.)