Elaine van Bergen's Microsoft Skewed View of the World

The site collection could not be restored.

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:58:00 +0000

I ran into an issue the other night doing some reorganising of site collections in a production wss 3.0 instance. I was moving sites from one web application to another using backup and restore (mergecontentdb's only works in the one webapp).

On one particular site when running stsadm -o restore I received
"The site collection could not be restored. If this problem persists, please make sure the content databases are available and have sufficient free space"
Based on the error message I did the usual checks and discovered there was no issue with free space.

Then I looked at the site collections listing page which gave me a clue.The site I was trying to restore was already listed there but when I tried to load it the site didn't work. I've seen similar behaviour when a previous restore has stopped part way through.
To resolve I did the following:

Detach and Reattach each of the content db's , this removed the site collection listing from CA but the error still occurred
I then ran stsadm -o databaserepair against the database's and it removed a bunch of orphaned records.

After that I was then able to restore the site without issue. So it looks like that error message can mean a previous partial restore of the site exists in the content databases already and needs to be cleared.

Configure, Customise, Code SharePoint deck

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:06:00 +0000

Late last week I had the great opportunity of presenting at the ANZ SharePoint Seminar with Joel Oleson.
My slide deck from the session I presented on configuring, customising and coding on SharePoint without breaking the system is available here
It covers some of the major governance items that you need to be aware of when making changes in your environment to meet business requirements.

SharePoint Seminar's with Joel Oleson

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:29:00 +0000

Quick plug for the up and coming event:

ANZ Sharepoint Seminar with Joel Oleson
SharePoint Morning with the Experts: Sydney and Melbourne
Join international and local SharePoint experts in Sydney and Melbourne and learn how to master your SharePoint environment. Hosted by Quest Software.Plus, you can learn tips and best practices to help you overcome your most difficult SharePoint challenges during a panel discussion with SharePoint experts and bloggers such as Joel Oleson, Kathy Hughes, Adam Cogan & Elaine van Bergen.

Details here:
http://australia.quest.com/events/listdetails.aspx?ContentID=9780

Access Denied when adding web front end

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:29:00 +0000

Recently I was building a virtual SharePoint environment to do some testing.
It consisted of one WFE and an application server running search server express. The build went fine until trying to add the WFE to the farm.
The error returned was access denied. I checked everything that I could think of that was permissions related with no luck. Then I realised that SSE installs WSS SP1 automatically and the WFE that I was trying to add was just plain WSS. Silly mistake to make, but easy to make when your building a few machines in a rush.
Turns out permission denied can just mean that the server being added is not at the same patch level as the rest of the farm. Once it's at the right patch level it joined the farm fine.

Next MOSSIG 25th Feb - Using Office and SharePoint

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:42:00 +0000

The next MOSSIG is on the 25th of Feb with Adam Cogan presenting on Using Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007.

Here's the summary of the session:

SharePoint 2007 and Office (and Outlook, Excel and even Access 2007 etc) have had an enormous amount of work done in this version and they work together beautifully. SharePoint 2007 to many is a web version of Access. Come see Adam Cogan show you how you have a lot of options including:

using SharePoint data in your Access solution
using Access to report on your SharePoint data
upsizing your access data to SharePoint and then continue with Access as the frontend
upsizing your entire Access solution to SharePoint and then finish using Access as your platform

In addition we will look at using SharePoint data in other Office applications.
More details on MOSSIG here

Welcome Julian van Bergen

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:55:00 +0000

Finally had enough spare time between changing nappies to get back to the blog to announce the arrival of Julian Yanos van Bergen.
He was born naturally at 9:12 on the 14th of Jan weighing 3690g.
His arrival was a bit rocky as he had the cord wrapped round his neck but that was all sorted out pretty quickly but the great hospital staff and after a bit of oxygen he was fine. While the experience wasn't as smooth as last time it was still wonderful to meet the new little guy.

But a day later he had to get carted off to the special care nursery due to rash and a suspected infection which was making it hard for him to stay warm. He had to stay in there for the rest of our hospital stay while the did lots of blood tests and other checks which was horrible to watch and worried the hell out of both Greg and I.

Fortuanely he came through all the tests just fine and has been doing well at home with the rest of the family now. Over the last month he has been slowly getting used to his loving brother Victor being a bit to enthusistic with the hugs and kisses at times and generally settling in well with family life.

Also for the curious Yanos is a family name from the hungarian side of Greg's family.

SharePoint FullTextSQLQuery Malformed Query with 10+ conditions workaround

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:06:00 +0000

Recently a colleague of mine hit some trouble with using the SharePoint 2007 Search API and I was tasked with doing a bit of investigation into a work around.
What we were trying to do was create a custom search page that has a meta-data property on it that can be multi-selected. It has almost 200 options in it and the user can select a combination of these to filter the search by.
This worked fine with a few selected but somewhere around 10 selections the query started returned the error 'Malformed Query' as soon as it was executed.

The search was performed against a custom scope and custom managed properties. After a bunch of investigation it appears the issue is solved if you tick the "Allow this property to be used in scopes" option. After selecting that for the field/s that you need to have as conditions with 10+ options the query processes fine each time.

This sounds like a bug to me as we are not actually using the property for defining a scope, but the server we are running on is update to date with current patches and hotfixes so looks like one that is yet to be fixed, luckily the work around is easy :)

The below sample shows the query and code being used with a few field name changes.
Query was like the below but with lots more OR'ed values for Field 1:

SELECT Field1, Field2, ModifiedBy, Created FROM portal..scope() WHERE \"SCOPE\" = 'Custom Scope' AND (ContentType = 'ContentType1' OR ContentType = 'ContentType2') AND (Field1 = 'test' OR Field1 = 'test2' )

Code:
FullTextSqlQuery sqlQuery = new FullTextSqlQuery(site);
sqlQuery.ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults;
sqlQuery.QueryText = sql;
sqlQuery.TrimDuplicates = false;
sqlQuery.StartRow = startRow;
sqlQuery.RowLimit = rowLimit;
ResultTableCollection results = sqlQuery.Execute();

Exam 74-674 - Delivering BVPS

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:29:00 +0000

Firstly in case you don't know what BVPS is you can read more on it here.
To be able to deliver a BVPS engagement you need to complete Exam 74-674 first, which I passed on Monday.

Several people have since asked me what to study for the exam, so here is a post on my views.

Firstly I had a bit of head start on it as I was lucky enough to deliver a beta engagement here in Melbourne with assistance from Microsoft and Value Prism Consulting so I got to learn how to deliver an engagement first hand. This of course is the best preparation possible but presuming you don't get a chance to do this then the below info I hope will help a bit.

The first thing you should do is look through everything on the resources page for BVPS here

Then think carefully if you have the right skill set. If you consider yourself a techie do not sit this exam. The skills you need for this are much closer to the BA skill set. However if you consider yourself a "traditional" BA this is probably also not for you either. The ideal skill set is someone that can do process analysis but then also map this to solutions in the office system. You need to be able to do this quickly both in the exam and during a BVPS engagement so it helps if you can do both of these things yourself with minimal assistance. Have a look at the sample agenda's and consider if you can map a existing process, future state process, come up with a high level solutions for doing this with the office system including value propositions etc in those kind of timeframes. This is not easy !!

What I would then suggest if possible is try running a mock enagement ideally get some buy in from your company and try it internally for real. Some things to focus on that I think are important:

Work out how to determine what the right process is to analyse. Look for the key important factors such as business impact, availability and buy in from stakeholders among other things. Also pick something you can analyse during the timeframe, this may just be a piece of a larger process.
Map the current process without jumping into solution at all. The idea is not to solve the problem yet but to work out what the current situation is.
Work out what can be changed at a process level to improve it. Listen to the users in order to do this, they generally have plenty of suggestions for what will likely work in this space, although not all will be possible/realistic. Also don't bite off too much , small incremental changes often work better than one sweeping change.
Map this to solutions using parts of the Office System i.e. know when to use Performance Point vs. Portfolio Server or SharePoint etc. Also make sure you are not reinventing the wheel, often the solution is just using something the customer already has in a better way.
Determine the high level value propositions for the business. Make sure they map to the goals of the business and align with what the stakeholders have told you. Know how to work out figures to back up your business case.

That's a lot of what you need to be able to do to deliver a BVPS enagement and hence what you need for the exam, but the training material has fine detail.

The exam itself is a bunch of case studies each with a set of questions. Normal exam advice applies here i.e. make sure you read the case study and questions very carefully, small details can change the answer a lot.

Hope that helps. Good luck :)

UPDATE

The zip file of training material on the BVPS site has been updated and now includes sample exam questions among other new resources so make sure you download it again.

First Day Back at OBS

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:15:00 +0000

For those of you out of the loop my last day at SDM/DWS was last Friday and today was my first day back at OBS. There will be plenty more posts on what it is like at some stage later as I get working on projects with the team but first here's a blog post to answer a couple of the questions that I keep getting asked.

Why did I leave SDM.
There are many reasons but a large one was that I want to work at a company that is less large corporate and is filled with people who are passionate about leading edge technology, especially SharePoint.
I think it's the nature of a large hugely profitable business like DWS (which SDM is now part of) that while there are people employed there that do fall into that category, there are many more that are just there to work their 40 hours. DWS works out really great for a lot of people and I've talked to plenty of happy DWS customers too, but it just doesn't suit me. I think just looking at the careers pages on the two websites makes it easy to pick a lot of the differences between DWS and OBS

Am I sad about leaving.
Absolutely ! I've worked with some really great people and on a lot of very interesting projects.
I'm looking forward to trying to keep in touch with a lot of the people online and offline.

Why go back to OBS
OBS when I worked there was a great company, but in many ways was also quite different to what it is now. The good things about the company have stayed and many of the problems which made me leave have been resolved as you'd expect given I have been away for almost 4 years !
Basically OBS has everything I was looking for which is best summed up by the guiding principles, these are not just empty statements up on a website but actually reflect how the business is run right from the top down. Simply put no where else I've seen yet has such a great bunch of really skilled people in the areas I'm interested in all together in the one place.
There are still some challenges to work through but that is the same for any business the most important thing is they have the right people, the management backing and structure in place to continue to improve in the areas that are needed.
All up I'm very excited to be back :)

It's almost Movember

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:05:00 +0000

An ex-collegue of mine Stuart Holding just pinged me an email as he's once again participating in Movember. It's a great cause and really good fun watching the progress as the "Mo's" develop across the month click the below button to find out more about it.

Great post on Finding and Growing Great SharePoint Talent

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:16:00 +0000

Arpan Shah has just put up a good post on finding and growing great sharepoint talent here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans/archive/2008/10/16/finding-and-growing-great-sharepoint-talent.aspx
I've been struggling to explain this exact stuff in a way that can be understood to people less familar with SharePoint lately so great to see a blog post from the product team doing exactly that :)

Off to Mossig on Wed

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:11:00 +0000

I'm heading off to Mossig on Wed.

Will be good to see another session from a new presenter:

MOSS and Search server, getting all the results in one place by Joshua Haebets, nSynergy

Plus

Increasing business productivity by making good use of OpenXML, SharePoint Events and Word Content Controls. (Take 2)Ed Richard, SharePoint Solutions Principle – Stargate Global Consulting – MVP SharePoint

More details here http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/MOSSIG/Lists/Events%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=22&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esharepointusers%2Eorg%2Eau%2FMOSSIG%2Fdefault%2Easpx

I'm alive :)

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:58:00 +0000

Yup, ok it's been a long time between blog posts.

Been a litle busy multi-tasking, work has been pretty hectic and been a bit pre-occupied working on putting together this little guy too.
He's set to arrive Jan 9, so will be off work Jan and Feb.
Also started to use twitter to try and keep track of things when I don't have time to do a full blog post.
More work based news soon !

Don't implement mysite. What ???

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:49:00 +0000

Was recently on a client site and was asked to comment on some advice given at a SharePoint training course by the expert running it. The users had been told not to implement mySite for at least 6 months after the main portal as users will waste a lot of time playing with it.
I found this really interesting as this goes directly against my opinion and what I have seen work well in other implementations.

I completely agree that you have to be careful when implementing mysite, for example using quota's is particularly important and recognise a certain amount of training is crucial.
Also have worked with places that have delayed the addition of mysite for up to a month after the main show to make sure they have their support and training story in hand.
But have never considered time users spend customising their site as wasted or seen any where wait 6 months before adding it in !

The way I see it is that a mysite is a key place for users to learn about how sharepoint functions, plus providing them with their own area gives them a sense of ownership and helps keep them coming back. Why this is not a good thing to implement just baffles me.

Was also interesting to hear in the remix keynote all about how crucial it is becoming to allow your employees to connect more informally via social network for knowledge sharing etc and this comment reminded me how it's not only the corporate management types that need a lot of education to make this happen.

Anyone out there share the no mysite opinion or agree with me, very interested in hearing your arguments for and against.

Workflow special @ Mossig

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:43:00 +0000

This months Mossig is all about workflow, should be a really interesting discussion on the pro's and con's of different workflow products on the market vs. the out of the box stuff.
There is a good range of people on the panel to discuss it but I'm a bit biased seen as I'll be involved :)
Details are here http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/MOSSIG/Lists/Events%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=16.1.4&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esharepointusers%2Eorg%2Eau%2FMOSSIG%2FLists%2FEvents%2520Calendar%2Fcalendar%2Easpx

SDM are hiring for SharePoint/.Net roles

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:38:00 +0000

Been flat out lately haven't had much time to blog. One thing that will help me being less busy is some resume's coming in from some of you fine SharePoint folk out there.
SDM are looking for fill roles in the SharePoint and or .Net space in both Melbourne and Sydney.
If your interested or know someone who is leave a comment (won't get published as it's moderated)

Office System Forum 2008 - Melbourne

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:29:00 +0000

The folks at MOSSIG have organised Office System Forum 2008 at Latrobe University on the 2nd of May.

There are some great speakers organised with the keynote being Mike Fitzmaurice (Microsoft) and presentations later in the day from some of our local Microsoft people including William Cornwill.
A lot of great content will be covered and best of all it's free.

Places will go quickly and are limited so go to the Office System Forum website to learn more and register.

Congrats on MVP Ed

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:45:00 +0000

Ed Richard who is instrumental in running MOSSIG also got an MVP award this morning.
Congrat's Ed, his post is here

Ed on Office: Look what I found in my inbox this morning

Congrats Aaron ia a Groove MVP

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:36:00 +0000

My colleague Aaron Saikovski has just been awarded a groove MVP after lots of hard work out in the community.
Congrats Aaron , his post is here

MOSS Sp1 install disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:15:00 +0000

I've installed service pack 1 for MOSS numerous times now and has been pretty painless, until one install on a client site last week.
As usual I ran the wss 3.0 sp install, cancelled the config wizard, ran the MOSS sp install and then let the config wizard run.
The trouble started when it got to step 8 of 9 and failed.
The error was reported as "An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException was thrown. Additional exception information: Failed to upgrade SharePoint Products and Technologies."
I did a quick search and found this article http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/91649a7e-6b5a-4e5a-9ee5-51951f4b857f1033.mspx?mfr=true , tried the fix suggested to no avail.

This is when I started to get a little worried, this was a live production server and the service pack had brought it completely down, plus there is no way to uninstall it so it was pretty much fix or rebuild. I rang MS support who ever told me that it would be 48 hours before a SharePoint expert could ring back as they had a big queue of SharePoint problems which was not good news.

After a bit more searching I found you can actually run the upgrade at the command line.
It's a stsadm switch "stsadm -o upgrade -inplace -url http://intranet " this is heaps better than running the wizard as it actually gave quite details error messages in the log file. This is definitely a good thing to try if you are having trouble with the service pack.Turns out the problem was the sys admin had setup a dr server and was replicating the database out to it. This locked the schema from being modified. After deleting the replication and log shipping settings the upgrade worked :)

I'm still trying to find out if there is a better way to run a sp/hotfix on SharePoint with replication setup but so far MS support haven't given me an answer.

Navigation link to portal from mysite

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:59:00 +0000

One of the most common requests I get from customers as soon as mysites are enabled is how to navigate back to the portal. This is only a problem if you create mysites in their own web application as per Microsoft best practise recommendations which gives you better flexibility in terms of backup etc.
It's actually really simple to solve, you can just jump into the SSP and add a personalisation link without an audience so that everyone gets it.
This however has one problem it loads it still within the mysite menu structure so you still get the mysite tabs of myprofile etc but the central pane shows your main portal which gets confusing for users.
There is actually a really easy way to fix it just chuck a /# on the end of the url after and it then bounces it out of the mysite navigation frame.

My Job Role at SDM

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:43:00 +0000

As part of the DWS acquisition we have done a bit of a reshuffle.
Andy Neumann has moved up to be the state manager for the Victorian office leaving his current roles as national manager for EPM and IW.
Our resident project server guru, MVP and crazy german Marc Soester is now national manager for EPM and I'm national manager for the information worker team.
After the congrats the first question people keep asking me is how I feel moving away from implementing and coding on on top of MOSS.
The answer is simple as I'm not, I'll still be architecting and implementing solutions as per normal just for slightly less time per week.

Welcome to SDM Aaron Saikovski

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:18:00 +0000

Aaron Saikovski has finally announced on his blog he's joining the team here at SDM.
While I'm always excited about new people coming on board I've got to say I'm more excited than usual about Aaron starting with us.
It's the first time I've been involved in hiring someone who's blog I've actively read and is so well known in the SharePoint community !
Looking forward to the new work year kicking off on the 7th of Jan.

Happy Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:00:00 +0000

Been offline for a while spending some awesome time away with the family in Tassie.
Nice to have a quiet family break. We spent a bunch of time looking around Hobart and Launceston and visiting all the usual sites.

My favourite bit was a visit to Seahorse world , for some reason I'm fascinated with these creatures so I loved it as I even got to hold one. Victor also loved them and all the fish as well.

Victor was really well behaved the whole time even on the planes and in the hire car except for a massive tantrum when we tried to do a tour of the cadbury factory. The reason for the tantrum was because he had to wear a hair net and he really hates wearing hats, must remember to check if hats are required for activities in the future. Luckily we still got to go to the shop to buy cheap chocolate :)

Also had a good Christmas with Victor getting far to many gifts as usual. He still didn't quite understand what all the fuss was about though.

Just what I needed a bit of time to chill out before what will be a pretty huge start to the working year.

I hope you are all having a great holiday too :)

DWS announces intention to acquire SDM

noreply@blogger.com (Elaine) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:05:00 +0000

Here's the official press release to the ASX with details.
DWS looks likely to acquire my employer SDM which is very exciting news as it should help SDM grow more rapidly than we are currently able to.
It's very early days in the process so not sure entirely how it will work but so far it's all pretty positive :)
Update: Jan 3rd
It's officially completed, SDM is a DWS company