The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac : Links

SharePoint 2010 IT Pro Resources

Shane — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:52:32 GMT

So admittedly my blog has been very quiet for a while. That is because I have been knee deep in 2010 for longer than I care to remember. I am been creating new materials and I have even been traveling the country doing the SharePoint 2010 IT Pro Ignite tour. Five extended days of IT Pro training put on by Microsoft. Todd and I have had the privilege of both writing and teaching parts of this class along with some really great folks at Microsoft, both MCS guys and Product team. Hopefully most of that stuff will make it to TechNet one day for your learning pleasure. Until then here are some of the other materials the team at SharePoint911 has created for Microsoft to get you going.

IT Pro Reviewers guide: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262881(office.14).aspx

Experiencing the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 User Interface (E-learning): http://www.microsoft.com/learning/_silverlight/learningsnacks/SP10/snack02/Default.html

Managing and Troubleshooting with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (E-learning): http://www.microsoft.com/learning/_silverlight/learningsnacks/SP10/snack03/Default.html

Series of videos on 2010 IT Pro features by SharePoint MVPs: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518660.aspx

Once you get through all of that I am sure you will be chomping at the bit for that Beta that will show up in November. Be sure to preregister for the beta here. http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/try-it/Pages/Trial.aspx Oh yeah, that site is running on SharePoint 2010.

And finally if you are looking for full scale 2010 training to get you on the road to being kick butt at 2010 look here. http://www.criticalpathtraining.com/Courses/Pages/SharePoint2010AdministratorsSurvivalCamp-Agenda.aspx Todd and I writing this course as we speak and it will be available for web and inperson delivery starting December 7 with a webcast and then December 14 in sunny Tampa Florida. Come join in the fun.

Shane

SharePoint Consulting

SharePoint Administrator’s guide to not screwing up :)

Shane — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:53:18 GMT

On the SharePoint IT Pro documentation team blog there is a wonderful new paper out with some fancy name; we will call it the SharePoint Admin Guide. The paper was written by the team at SharePoint911 with guidance from Brenda C. at Microsoft.

The idea of the paper is it quickly touches on all of the considerations and gotchas a new administrator needs to watch out for. Things like common installation mistakes to what consideration for branding and development you need make. The idea is not for the paper to tell you in great detail everything you need to know. Instead, the paper makes sure you don't encounter the "I didn't even know about that" issue when you server farm. Of course if you want deep details then we reference all of that material also.

Anyway, go download it and read, I promise you will like it.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Congrats to a new SharePoint MVP Randy Drisgill

Shane — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:38:43 GMT

Randy Drisgill aka The MOSSMan was awarded his MVP on Jan 1. You can find his blog here http://blog.drisgill.com/. I know several other MVPs were awarded or renewed but Randy is special because he works for me at SharePoint911, so in lieu of a raise he gets pimped on my blog.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Prepare for the future: Windows 2008 and 64bit

Shane — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:48:04 GMT

New Year = New work for you. As I look into my crystal ball for 2009 I see Windows Server 2008 and 64 bit servers in your future. Why? If for no other reason than the next version of SharePoint will be 64bit only and I know you are looking forward to test driving it whenever it shows up. Todd and I have spent quite a bit of time discussing the items below so I thought I would share some of the thoughts we had.

64 bit

You are probably a lot like me and think 32 bit vs. 64 bit? No big deal, everything is the same you just get to use more memory. Yeah… on the surface that sounds great but in reality not the case. In reality, the software world is still very new to this whole 64bit thing and sometimes we are the ones who suffer. An example is simple things like ifilters for Search. For the longest time we didn't have a reliable, free 64 bit PDF ifilter. This caused more than one SharePoint deployment to be changed in mid project because no one checked; they just assumed it was available. The point is until you do a project top to bottom in 64 bit you are going to be under the false assumption it will all just work. Did you know the VSeWSS (Visual Studio Extension for SharePoint) only work in 32 bit?

Now luckily for us the current version of SharePoint runs in both 32 and 64 bit so this is the time to play. In a perfect world you would have two test farms, one for 32 bit and one for 64 bit, and then you could try everything twice. You probably also know that you can mix and match the two architectures in the same farm, while this is true try to proceed with caution. While they can be combined you cannot mix a role. So for example if your web front end (WFE) is 32 bit then you shouldn't add a second WFE that is 64 bit, this is unsupported. But you can have a 32 bit WFE and 64 bit Index server with no problems.

Even outside of the SharePoint/Administrator space 64 bit is becoming more prevalent. My new Dell M4400 is running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Why? The laptop supports 8 GB of RAM and to take advantage of that you need 64 bit. The downside to this is for a lot of hardware the 64 bit drivers are not as readily available or they are not as stable as their 32 bit counterparts. Then once you do a get a stable deployment of Windows on your laptop you may find not all of your software works. For a long time Cisco didn't have a 64 bit VPN client, that was very painful. Eugene Rosenfeld has a blog post on Why I hate x64 which points out some oddities when it comes to software, some have been fixed others have not. The key thing here is you would have never thought of these things not working until you committed to running 64 bit.

I realize after reading this it is easy to think this 64 bit thing sucks, I should just avoid it. No. You need to take this knowledge and embrace it because sooner than later you will find yourself running 64 bit servers. Would you prefer to learn them now while it is a side thought instead of being knee deep into a critical project, trying to meet a deadline and discover such things?

Other Random Reading – Making the Move to x64

(This is funny but I am having this same conversation on Twitter right now completely unrelated to this post.)

Windows Server 2008

Another false assumption – I know EVERYTHING there is to know about Windows Server 2003 so I am already an expert at W2k8. Wrong again. You may be able to figure out things fairly quickly but there are a lot of little things that are different. For a SharePoint admin IIS 7 != IIS 6 no matter how badly we want it to be. Example? I tried to setup SharePoint and Kerberos on a Windows 2008 box and a few hours later I found the new check box I needed to deselect in a post from Spence. :( Did you know that W2k8 has a 28 MB file upload limit baked in? I didn't until the first time I encountered it. Windows Server 2008 WFE will not allow large file uploads The list goes on and on.

Now this stuff does not mean W2k8 is bad, just different. And until you dig your claws in and play A LOT you aren't going to learn these little differences. I have been trying to blog the differences as I have encountered them but there are more to come.

Another random thought about W2k8 is our dear friend Hyper-V. If you see the use of Hyper-V in your future you need to start with it early and often also. It is not the next version of Virtual PC or Virtual Server so experience with those products will not help. Hyper-V is faster but at a cost of having to learn again how to build and configure things. Even more annoying, most of your W2k3 VHDs will have to be reactivated when you move them to Hyper-V. Very rude. Once again, you aren't going to find the nuisances until you try.

My challenge to you

Find yourself a box you can install Windows Server 2008 64 bit on with Hyper-V. Then in Hyper-V create a virtual Windows Server 2008 64 bit box. Now add SQL 2008 and then MOSS 2007 SP1 + the December cumulative update. How did that go? I am sure it wasn't easy but I promise you will have learned plenty along the way and at the end you will have a nice play ground for testing against. Hell, then be sure to update your resume with all of the new skills you just acquired. :)

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Installer/Uninstaller help

Shane — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:45:08 GMT

This isn't just SharePoint but just general server/pc help.

Way to often people call/email/IM me about problems uninstalling software, usually after the uninstaller crapped out half way through the process or they hit cancel because it was taking too long to run. Or the reverse of that the install went belly up. They then end up in some limbo state of the software is only kind of there and they can't remove it. Well my first advice is format the box but, nobody likes that. So the second piece of advice is to run the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 This awesome little tool will show you everything that has been installed by the Windows installer and will allow you to remove any of those files. Not the actual program but all of the behind the scenes files that make the install possible. With those out of the way you can typically rerun your installer/uninstaller and do the job right.

I know when alpha/beta testing Office and SharePoint in the past this tool was a must.

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

A free admin webcast by me

Shane — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:53:00 GMT

Just click on the pretty link of me. You do have to register to see the webcast. The description is:

At a recent SharePoint conference, Bill Gates claimed that "SharePoint is the fastest-growing server product Microsoft has ever had." What about your organization? Is SharePoint beginning to get out of control? Some of the most common challenges administrators face today include: poorly managed permissions, uncontrolled growth of sites and site collections, limited visibility into user activity, depleted or poorly utilized SharePoint resources, and the need to centrally control users, sites and site collections. In this hands-on webcast, Microsoft SharePoint MVP Shane Young will discuss the top ways to manage a rapidly growing SharePoint deployment so you can help manage to your organization's governance policies. Topics covered include: permissions management and analysis, log files, monitoring and analyzing drive space, trend analysis, database maintenance, solution packages, data management and rearrangement, and activity monitoring and analysis.

Sounds like fun? i thought so. It is the quickest rundown of all of these things you will find.

Let me know what you think.

Shane - SharePoint Consulting

Book: Essential SharePoint 2007

Shane — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:33:16 GMT

If you are looking for the perfect book to give those non-technical people such as Business Decision Makers (BDM) or you need more help on the planning/design side of your SharePoint project this is the book for you.

One of the few books devoted to MOSS that actually covers governance, roll out, goals, and the other "soft" topics. After it gets you through the reasons for and direction of your SharePoint project then at a medium level it covers some of the key features you need to plan for. I really feel you could hand this your non technical leaders and get them up to speed in short order.

Great book! Get your copy here.

Shane – SharePoint Help

My SharePoint must have FREE add ons

Shane — Sat, 19 May 2007 15:21:10 GMT

So I get this question a lot from people who are new to WSS v3 or MOSS 2007. What stuff should I be putting on my server? I am guessing they aren't the only ones that want to know. Odds are you found this post by searching the web. Well if you are looking for my recommendations on things you should install when you first deploy SharePoint you are in luck. The list is below with some real world details to go with it. And don't forget all of these are FREE!!!

In no particular order they are:

Microsoft IT's site recycle bin feature
Smiling Goat's RSS Feed Reader web part
Mondosoft's Wildcard search feature
Tony Bierman's Central Admin link feature

Microsoft IT's site recycle bin feature

You can download this from CodePlex here. This is just to cool. One of the most common reasons that administrators end up doing restores is someone trying to delete an item or a list accidently deletes their whole site. While SharePoint out of the box has a great two stage recycle bin this does NOT capture deleted sites. In comes Microsoft IT. Thanks to the work of Bill Baer and Joel Oleson they have made available for public download the site recycle bin feature.

This tool, after a bit of a cumbersome install, adds a configurable feature to SharePoint that once activated watches for a site to be deleted. Before a site is deleted a backup of the site is made and stored on the file system in the location of your choice. Now if you get that frantic phone call needing the site back you can just go to your folder, find the bak file, and do the necessary restore. This makes for happy users! Also, this feature can send emails notifying the administrator of the site that it has been deleted successfully. Sometimes this helps to raise the red flag they did something wrong.

Smiling Goat's RSS feed reader web part

This is old faithful. I used this back in v2 of SharePoint and loved the product. Many thought after the inclusion of an RSS reader out of the box in MOSS this part wouldn't be necessary. Nope. The out of the box reader leaves something to be desired. My biggest complaint? It can only read its own SharePoint RSS feeds if you are using Kerberos authentication. Since 90% of my customer do not use Kerberos this kind of sucks (for a lack of a nicer way to put it).

With a quick download from CodePlex here you can deploy and be up and running with this web part in minutes. Once you are up you can start consuming those RSS feeds without the fear of authentication methods. Remember that adding simple RSS feeds for company relevant news or other information is a great way to keep your site dynamic giving your users a reason to come back.

Mondosoft's Wildcard search feature

I had my doubts about this one. MOSS search is pretty darn cool and flexible out of the box. I didn't think installing another tool would do anything but add confusion. Was I wrong. This tool is amazing for something they are just giving away. Sometimes I wonder if the posted the wrong bits for download. ;) The most important thing to remember about this web part? It is leveraging SharePoint's own search engine, it is not replacing it or changing it.

I am going to do a nice long article of this one soon. Just trust me and get these bits running on a test server and be amazed.

Tony Bierman's Central Admin link feature

I love Tony. I mentioned to him that I really missed the fact that MOSS did not have a link straight to central admin for administrators like SPS 2003 did. So he took a break from writing commercial software for SharePoint Solutions and wrote me this handy little feature. You can download it here. Thanks again Tony!

So this is my list, what is your list? Let me know in the comments section about any must have FREE install for SharePoint. I have a couple others but they are commercial so I will leave them out for now. I just want to know what awesome FREE tools you think the whole world should know about?

Shane – SharePoint Help

Random Friday SharePoint Issues, Links and New Bloggers

Shane — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:28:44 GMT

I have been piling these up for a while so I thought I would throw a post with all of them to get this information out.

A new KB has been released

For No results are returned in the search results when you search for people by site membership SharePoint Server 2007 which is a pretty quick fix to a common search issue.

Do you know how to keep up on the latest SharePoint KB articles without having to go to the SharePoint Support Center (or WSS Support Center to look for them?

Via RSS of course. Microsoft publishes most of their KBs by product now. You can find the complete list here. But since we just care about SharePoint here is the link to the two RSS feeds for them.

MOSS 2007 Latest Articles

WSS v3 Latest Articles

I finished my latest training class

I co-authored a 3 day SharePoint administrators class for SharePoint Solutions called SharePoint 2007 Jump-Start. This class is focused at IT professionals who are looking to learn the ins and out of setting up and administrating SharePoint 2007. We also spend some time diving through the various features out there. I really like the class and the first group we had go through it had good things to say so I guess we done good. If you need some SharePoint 2007 training I would recommend coming and spending a couple of days with me.

Navigating back to the Portal from your My Site

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/henkhooiveld/archive/2006/12/22/17182.aspx This is a common issue that comes up. When you create a my site by default you do not get a link back to the portal. UGH. So with these simple directions you can add it once for all of your users who haven't created my sites yet. For those who already have them??? Well, you will have to do it the manual way. So make this changes as early as you can.

Enabling Anonymous Access

I get access this one a bunch also. I just refer people to use Bil Simser's blog entry located here http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2006/09/25/Enabling-anonymous-access-in-SharePoint-2007.aspx.

Looking for community support?

I used to spend a lot of time posting in the SharePoint NewsGroups hosted by Microsoft. Well, the times are a changing and these days we do it all in forums. Here is a link directly to the SharePoint Products and Technologies forums. Check them out and see what you can contribute.

New SharePoint Bloggers

I think I am in hot water if I don't post these two blogs so check them out. First you have Not Just Another SharePoint Girl which is hosted by my wife Nicola Young. She has a pretty cool post on using SharePoint Designer to create a custom workflow and she promises more to come.

You also have the latest member of the SharePoint911 team blogging these days. The SharePoint Helpdesk is hosted by Stephen Wilson. Stephen is the man behind the curtain when you email help@sharepoint911.com for support. He has started posting the common questions he is seeing come into the helpdesk to his blog.

If you have some time check them out and provide them some link love.

I think that is all I have for now. Have a good weekend. I am going to try and write up some permissions issues I have ran into here shortly also.

Shane – SharePoint Help

Upgrading 3rd party tools

Shane — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:40:10 GMT

Jingmei Li wrote a handy little comparison of using Tzunami Deployer 2.01 and DocAve 4.1 Migrator for upgrading from 2003 to 2007 when the out of the box stuff just will not cut it.

Looks like both products have a trial download. Guess I will have to make time to play with these guys too.

Evaluate partner solutions that support migration from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007

Shane – SharePoint Help

Download the Office system trials

Shane — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 02:40:00 GMT

http://us1.trymicrosoftoffice.com/

Here you can download that trial of Groove 2007 or Microsoft Office 2007 Profesional or any of the Office client programs. They are so cool.

Shane

Downloads required to install SharePoint 2007

Shane — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:14:33 GMT

Just a quick post. I keep emailing these links to people so I thought I would write them down and just post them.

Prerequisites:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 180 day trial When you download this you will need to register to get a registration key (PID)

Windows SharePoint Service 3.0 For those of you who don't want portal product. No key required.

A good resource for install documents can be found on the SharePoint Team Blog

Hope this helps!

Shane – SharePoint Help

WSS v3 capacity planning doc

Shane — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 03:08:00 GMT

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/9994b57f-fef8-44e7-9bf9-ca620ce207341033.mspx?mfr=true

Thanks to Steve Caravajal for finding this gem. Not to exciting yet but shows Microsoft is doing their best to provide us with some real documentation in this version.

Shane - SharePoint Help

Automatic link to Central Admin in MOSS

Shane — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:19:52 GMT

I love the SharePoint community. It seems like all it takes is a little comment that something should be created or something else should be documented and someone is always willing to tackle it.

A few weeks ago I asked Tony Bierman if he could create a feature in MOSS 2007 that would give me a link straight to central admin. In SharePoint 2003 we got this automatically but in 2007 not so much. Well, lucky for all of us Tony was up for the challenge and nailed it quite impressively. Check out his article Custom Feature: Link to WSS Central Admin from SharePoint Site Actions Menu which includes the install for this cool feature. Thanks Tony!

Shane SharePoint Help

Free SharePoint 2007 Videos

Shane — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:36:57 GMT

Check out http://www.sharepoint-videos.com for video screen casts demonstrating WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 functionality such as Recycle Bin, Site Columns, Features etc.

Shane – SharePoint Help

SharePoint v2 vs. SharePoint v3 Features

Shane — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:21:00 GMT

Check out this posting from Steve Caravajal http://blogs.msdn.com/scaravajal/archive/2006/09/19/762603.aspx that has a link to an Excel spreadsheet with a heads up comparison of

Windows SharePoint Services v3
SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Office SharePoint 2007 for Search
Office Forms Server 2007
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard CAL – MOSS Standard
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL or for Internet Site

Great find!

1/24/2007 EDIT Here is a link to a web page view of essentially the same information. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/FX101758691033.aspx

Shane – SharePoint Help