SharePoint world of ECM and Information Management

SharePoint Tip #5. Do you know “that Web App permissions override Site level ones”?

All permissions set at Web Application level, “Central Administration > Application Management > User Permissions for Web Application” will override the Site level permissions.

For example, your user with “Contributor” rights on the site level can’t delete anything, if you deny "delete" permission at Web App level. Source

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SharePoint Tip #4. Do you know “why Alternative Access Mapping (AAM) is necessary”?

Very often, depending on your infrastructure, URL of a web request received by IIS is not the same URL that the end user entered. This happens in reverse proxy publishing and load balancing scenarios. So, SharePoint needs a way to handle such URLs and return you right sites.

AAM tells SharePoint how to map web requests (for example, browsing to the homepage of a SharePoint site) to the correct web application and site so that SharePoint can serve the correct content back to you. It then tells SharePoint what URL the users should be taken to as they interact with SharePoint.

Current "SharePoint Tips and Tricks" series has been moved to its own "SharePoint SandBox" site, to leave the place for others SharePoint posts on this blog

SharePoint Tip #3. Do you know “that Visual Studio Extension can be installed on XP/Vista”

To have Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 3.0 to be installed on Windows XP or Vista (but only with limited set of capabilities, such as creating a Web Part project) add the string registry entry at

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0]
SharePoint=Installed

Current "SharePoint Tips and Tricks" series has been moved to its own "SharePoint SandBox" site, to leave the place for others SharePoint posts on this blog

SharePoint Tip #2. Do you know “why OOTB Roles must be customized”?

SharePoint has predefined set of OOTB permissions level, such as: Full Control, Contributor, Designer, and etc. But those permissions not always provide you desired functionality – its either too wide or very narrow.

Start out with a small set of users who have the fewest permissions possible, to avoid [Your_Headache = Number_of_Users X User_Permissions]  because out-of-the-box permissions levels either too liberal or they are too limiting

The most commons scenario of role customization you can meet is Design role in publishing sites. When you have an approval workflow and assigned specific user to “Design” role as approver you need to take into account that “Design” role has delete permissions. So, what actually happens, sooner or later, is that your approver accidently deletes what he needs to approve :) It’s not what you expect from him.

The solution for this is to edit OOTB permissions for Designer roles and to prohibit “delete items” action, or create new role. And pay attention to roles you are using in production system just to avoid such cases.

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SharePoint Tip #1. Do you know “what happens behind the scene when you create new Web App?”

When SharePoint creates a Web application the following actions happening behind the scene:

Web Ste:

• Creates a unique entry in SharePoint configuration DB for the Web App and assign GUID to that entry;
• Create and configures a Web application in IIS;
• Creates a root folder to store the Web application pages and associated resources;
• Creates and configures an IIS application pool;
• Configures authentication protocol and encryption settings;
• Assign a Default alternate access mapping for the Web app;
• Creates the first content database for the Web application;
• Associate a search service with the Web application;
• Assign a name to the Web application that appears in the Web application list in SharePoint Central Administration;
• Assign general settings to the Web application, such as maximum file upload size and default time zone;

Site Collection:

• Creates the top-level site based on a site definition;
• Sets general properties for the site, such as the site title and site owner;

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SharePoint Tip #0. Do you know…

Preceding to publishing my free eBook of “SharePoint Tips And Tricks” I’m starting the same category of my blog, where I’m going to publish tips and tricks about SharePoint which your might not know. I will cover different areas, like architecture, development, customisations, performance, security and etc.

I have about 150 different tips which I starting publishing from today. I wish it were daily based publications, but promise to publish 3 times a week, at least.

Have anything to add?! Send your tips to be published via this form

Australia only discount vouchers for MS Exams. Ask me one

I have several 10% discount vouchers on Microsoft Exams valid till March 31, 2009

Note that the limited time offer is valid in Australia ony  and for Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) exams only.

If you want to get one drop me a word via “Contact Form” page

Mirror: Australia only discount vouchers for MS Exams. Ask me one

SharePoint Managers Tools overview

In this post I’d like to review existed tools for the SharePoint management. The idea to create this overview appeared after I read that Bamboo solution shipped their own SharePoint analyzer. The first I thought was - “Why do we need another tool, if we already have SharePointSpy and SharePointManager?!”

So, let’s start comparing of three tools, which exist on market

1) SharePoint Analyzer from Bamboo Solutions

2) SharePoint Manager from CodePlex

3) SharePointSpy from EchoTechnology

and how those tools functionality differs.

Items	SharePoint Analyzer	SharePoint Manager	SharePointSpy
Farm setting	yes	yes	no
Farm servers	yes	yes	no
Logs for each sever in farm (IIS/SharePoint)	yes	no	no
Web App overview	yes	yes	yes
Web App on server	yes	yes	no
Central admin options	no	yes	no
Content DB site location	yes	no	no
AAM	yes	no	no
IIS settings	yes	no	no
Service instances	yes	no	no
Definitions export (list, content type)	no	yes	yes
Web Parts Gallery	yes	no	no
Account Security overview	yes	yes	yes
SharePoint DB overview	yes	no	no
Best Practices Analyzer	yes	no	no
Rating	(4 from 5)	(3 from 5)	(2 from 5)

Results: analyzing those tools I found that SharePoint Analyzer and SharePoint Manager provide you the richest functionality to manage your SharePoint environment. I can’t name the best tool, because those tools have different target audience and must be used together.

SharePoint Analyzer from Bamboo solutions provides rich and good, structured overview of your SharePoint farm for administrator/infrastructure perspective – detailed info about servers, web applications, logs, and etc. Good usability, grouping and detailed information across all your farm servers, but there are few useful info for developers.

SharePointSpy is absolutely different tool – it stays away from infrastructure, providing your deep info about sites, features, site definitions and etc., allowing your to export different schemas xml. Really powerful tool for developers, who need deep dive inside SharePoint stuff.

SharePoint Manager locates between administrator vs developer poles. It provides you almost the same functionality as SharePointSpy, but has a lot of information for infrastructure guys/administrators as well.

My choice: combination of SharePoint Analyzer for maintenance and SharePoint Manager for development. But, if those three tools were shareware, then I’d chose SharePoint manager for its balance between admin and developer functionality.

Mirror: SharePoint Managers Tools overview