SharePoint for Squirrels - by Natalya Voskresenskaya [MVP]

Migrating from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013

2013-06-14T08:49:00.003-07:00

I recently have done a migration from SharePoint 2007 straight to 2013. This called for a White Paper ;-) I've posted it on Discover Technologies site. here is an abstract and a link to download it. Hope you enjoy it!

SharePoint 2007 provides a great collaboration platform, but as the business matures, so should the platform. Now-a-days companies that invested heavily in SP 2007 are now developing a SharePoint strategy may be confused regarding migration to SharePoint 2010 and or 2013. Needless to say, an upgrade to a newer version is a great undertaking for IT. However, besides the IT involvement, there is also training and end-user adoption. Training and end-user adoption are budget intensive and during this period end users are not as productive as they used to be while working within the old, familiar version of the platform. Companies are looking for a way to migrate to SP 2013, the latest version, however, being 2 versions behind means going through 2 phases of migration as well as end user training and adoption. Even though, from a technical and Microsoft supported perspective, there is no option to jump from 2007 straight to SharePoint 2013 without using third party tools, there is an option to cut the cost and the effort of migrating to the latest 2013 version by almost half by first migrating to 2010 as an interim migration utilizing a trial license for 2010. You can accomplish this without purchasing full version of 2010 and skip the associated end user training and adoptions steps. Even though there is an established method of upgrading from 2007 to 2010, this approach is often not a viable option due to the difference in the hardware support for each version. If 2007 version was supported on 32 bit servers, 2010 is only supported on 64 bit environments. In this case, an upgrade is just not an option and attaching the database is the only supported way of moving to 2010. In moving from 2010 to 2013, a database upgrade is the only officially supported option.... Download it from here

Preparing for Exam 70-583

2012-08-14T12:22:00.001-07:00

I was recently studying for the Exam 70-583 and wanted to share my experience and study information that I used. First of all, if you are Microsoft partner then you can also use this link http://assets.msleap365.com/content/lpguid/htmh/D5107A83DB7D4A2BAE48234748525C51.htm

The most helpful information from this Microsoft resource was the technical pre sales and architectural guidance sections. The other VERY helpful resource from Microsoft is the “Learning Plan for Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications (Exam 70-583)”

This learning plan is intended to help developers gain the knowledge and skills required to design and develop Windows Azure applications, and ultimately to prepare for Microsoft exam 70-583.

http://learning.microsoft.com/manager/LearningPlanV2.aspx?resourceId=30f78dea-f126-4b01-82eb-52cbc908e4ec&clang=en-US&cats=d4e8e42c-3d5a-4a6e-915d-d99556a49bd7

you can login with your live ID and add those classes to your learning, this way you can access the training videos. When I was watching them I would pause on slides, they do not keep slides up all the time and some slides they will show only for few seconds even though slides have helpful information. Here is the list of Microsoft online free video trainings

Session 01: Windows Azure Overview
Session 02: Introduction to Compute
Session 03: Windows Azure Lifecycle, Part 1
Session 04: Windows Azure Lifecycle, Part 2
Session 05: Windows Azure Storage, Part 1
Session 06: Windows Azure Storage, Part 2
Session 07: Introduction to SQL Azure
Session 08: Windows Azure Diagnostics
Session 09: Windows Azure Security, Part 1
Session 10: Windows Azure Security, Part 2
Session 11: Scalability, Caching & Elasticity, Part 1
Session 12: Scalability, Caching & Elasticity, Part 2, and Q&A

Along side with the post from BuckWoody, who compile a very comprehensive list of resources that he used for preparation (I did not read books he was referencing though), you will be all set for the exam http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/31/certification-notes-70-583-designing-and-developing-windows-azure-applications.aspx

Good Luck

SharePoint 2010 Search – change the style of hithighlighting

2012-06-13T08:56:00.001-07:00

I recently had to change the style of hit highlighting in the search center from the default bold style like testing to testing as it is being displayed in other search engines. It is very simple to accomplish this effect by going to the search results page and setting it in edit mode. Next click edit on the “Core Results Web Part”.

In the edit web part menu, under "Display Properties" uncheck "Use Location Visualization" and click on XSL Editor.

Copy and paste the XSLT into editor of your choice and locate the following section.

<xsl:template match="c0">

</xsl:template>

Replace it with:

<xsl:template match="c0">

</xsl:template>

Save the page and you will notice the new style taking effect.

For the sake of consistency, perform the same steps for you people search results web part.

Enjoy :-)

Technorati Tags: SharePoint Search 2010,search customization

Making the Best Search Choices for your Organization–Session

2012-04-02T10:52:00.001-07:00

There is an GR8 SharePoint Conference going on in PA, on April 5th. This is a unique from the perspective that none of the selected presenters are presales representatives from a 3rd party product company but rather proven consultants that have real-world experiences working with many SharePoint vendors and solutions. Each partner has been carefully chosen because of their vast experience and success at assisting customers achieve their business goals through the planning, design, deployment and management of the topic they are presenting.

Harry Jones and myself will be presenting there the following session:

Making the Best Search Choices for your Organization–Session

There is an increasing demand for IT to deliver better search capabilities. As users evolve with technology, they rightfully expect a greater experience from search than simply finding a document. Consequently, organizations that still view search as merely a search box and a list of results, are in real danger of losing competitive edge and potential streams of valuable revenue.

During this session, Arcovis, one of Microsoft's top search partners, will arm attendees with the tools needed to navigate the various decision points in both selecting and applying their Enterprise Search platform. Topics will cover choosing the right platform (SharePoint vs. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint), examples for monetizing Search, using search to drive operational and business intelligence, Search as a service and more.

Attendees will leave with the tools they need to make the right decisions for their organization as well as examples on leveraging search within their company.

Please join us at the conference or just come by to say Hi. Please use the following registration link, if you use this link organizers will know who referred you to the conference http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3107621981/Arcovis/11615147849

Here is more information on the conference, speakers, location and more http://www.gr8technologyconferences.com/Pages/philadelphia-20120405-Agenda.aspx

Enjoy

I hope to see you there.

Enterprise Search Summit 2012

2012-04-02T08:51:00.001-07:00

Two years ago, I’ve conducted a workshop with Jeff Fried, Miles Kehoe and Mark Bennett at the Enterprise Search Summit 2011. This was my first time at the Search Summit and I’ve surely recognized the value and the great experience that it has provided to me personally and to all others attending the even. This year I urge you to attend it as well. Here is more information on the event, speakers and discount.

Early Bird Registration Ends April 13!
Register today to save $200 off the regular rate!
You only have until April 13 to take advantage of our early bird discount! Enterprise Search Summit is the premier event in enterprise search - we'd love for you to be there! Don't miss your chance to attend and save off the cost of your registration!

5 Reasons to Attend
You won't want to miss this spring's Enterprise Search Summit and your chance to learn from the leading minds in the industry. We've compiled a list of 5 reasons why you should attend Enterprise Search Summit to erase any doubt in your mind that this is the place you want to be May 15-16.

1. Excellent speakers
We have a full program featuring the best of the best speakers in the enterprise search industry! Learn from the experiences of leading organizations and gain expert insights from the search world. See a full list of speakers here.
2. Networking opportunities
Enterprise Search Summit brings together an unparalleled group of search experts, vendors, and practitioners. Network at breakfasts, lunches, coffee breaks, the welcome reception, and in the Enterprise Search Showcase. See the conference program for break times and showcase hours.
3. Enterprise Search Showcase
For two days only, the Showcase features the top companies in enterprise search and offers attendees the opportunity to explore new developments in product and service solutions. Admission to the Enterprise Search Showcase is also FREE with the purchase of a full-conference pass!
4. In-depth Pre-conference Workshops
Join us for a series of workshop sessions on Monday, May 14, featuring discussions about taxonomies, project management, search platforms, text analytics, and more! See the schedule of pre-conference workshops and descriptions here.
5. Learn from Real-World Implementations
Enterprise Search Summit features representatives from leading companies such as Sematext, Search Technologies, Raytion, and many more, who will share real-world examples of search implementation and their experiences. See a full list of speakers and companies here!

The Venue

Hilton New York
1335 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
The Hilton New York is the official conference hotel for Enterprise Search Summit. The hotel is located on Avenue of the Americas (6th Ave.) between West 53rd and West 54th Streets. 53rd street is west bound and 54th street is east bound.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Search Summit

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Architect’s Guidebook

2012-04-02T08:38:00.001-07:00

I’m happy and excited to announce that the “SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Architect’s Guidebook” is available now.

I was honored to become a contributor to this great book. It was a real pleasure to work with the Authors Brian Wilson, Reza Alirezaei, Bill Baer, Apran Shah along with such contributors as Matt Rantlett, Paul Olenick, and many other great names in the industry.

This book is great for all SharePoint!!! Get your copy

Enjoy

Thesaurus in SharePoint 2010 Search (SharePoint Shop Talk Question)

2012-02-23T07:56:00.001-08:00

I wrote this quick blog entry about last week’s discussion on SharePoint Shop Talk. The question is documented below in orange. I believe this would be a good blog entry because the situation that cause this question is fairly common and the approach to this is not necessarily the best practices approach. Also from the response from the audience it appears that people found it insightful.

By the way, do not hold you breath, I’m not going to answer the technical details of this question:

This is kind of a long post, but mostly because I want to make sure all of my details are in it. I mainly am looking for answer for the first two questions. The third is just a bonus!

I have a SP 2010 Standard farm (1 app server, 1 WFE, 1 SQL) with out of the box search set up. I am trying to edit our Thesaurus file to help our employees find what they are searching for……

I followed the TechNet instructions editing the files at

\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Data\Applications\GUID\Config, where GUID of the new Search service application, and nothing I try seems to work.

I noticed that the path where I am editing the files (which is the only folder under Applications) is:

D:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Data\Applications\8340232b-513b-4ed8-81f4-50a1980af0f0\Config

However, if I run the powershell command: Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

The guid returned is: 9ea80497-bf69-4ead-b14e-5188c7cecf03

Should I have a folder in the applications patch that matches my Search Service Application guid?
In Central Admin, when I look at my Search Application Topology, under Index partition ... property store, it shows Query Component 2 = my WFE and Query Component 1 = my app server. However, the above path is only on my app server so that is where I have been changing the files. Is this normal to have both app and WFE showing.
Is there a way to either exclude views or set weight on one view, to prevent same result being returned multiple times with different views.

As I mentioned above, I’m not answering the technical details here, but instead asking a question back: “Why this approach?”. Adding/editing thesaurus file to achieve the goal is not the best option here. SharePoint 2010 Search has such functionality as keyword management and best bets.

Keywords are search terms that users type into a search box when executing a query. When a user query includes a keyword that you have configured, the search results can provide a definition for the term together with links to recommended locations or documents at the top of the search results page.

You can define keywords, provide synonyms (words that closely relate to the keyword), and create Best Bets (links to featured documents or locations for the specified keyword), to provide a relevant set of search results for popular search terms. Synonyms are useful and specifically in this particular case when the requirement and the whole idea for editing the thesaurus is to use several search terms to find the results that match the same concept and content

When you create a keyword, you can also provide a definition of the keyword that appears in search results. When keywords have synonyms and associated Best Bet links, they help guide users to recommended resources. The list that is updated when a site collection administrator creates keywords and adds synonyms is called a thesaurus. The thesaurus for SharePoint Server 2010 is compatible with the thesaurus for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

You can delegate the creation of keywords to Site collection administrators to create keywords at the site collection level. This is a better way of implementing and maintaining the required functionality then modifying thesaurus files directly.

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010 search,SharePoint Shop Talk,thesaurus

The infamous : Property doesn't exist or is used in a manner inconsistent with schema settings (SharePoint Search and FAST)

2012-01-09T12:24:00.001-08:00

I bet we all have seen this error from time to time. This usually happens when you create new managed properties and try to expose them on the search center, but it can also happen is cases when always. There is a check list:

1. Make sure that the managed property has been added to the managed properties and mapped to crawled properties

2. After adding managed properties start the crawl

After ensuring that the managed property has been created and populated with values, ensure that your web parts are referring to this managed property and the name is not misspelled. if you still get this error, it might be because the SharePoint Query components are not updated. Restart the IIS on the query servers, to resolve this error.

With FAST, there are also additional thing that can go wrong. In some cases you can see this error on OOTB Fast search center as well and in can be inconsistent if you have multiple query servers. This is indicative that the query servers got out of synch.

The Index Schema defined in SharePoint Central Administration at the Query SSA's FAST Search Administration section is stored in SQL Server, and deployed to FAST Search through a timer job. It's possible that not all steps of the deployment occur, leading to a newer schema in SharePoint / SQL than the FAST qrserver is using.

It is easier to restart QR components to get them back in synch than to find the one out of synch and re-synch it.

Here is what you can do to resolve it:

Open up the FAST Search for SharePoint powershell and run the following on each QR server.

(Only do the ones that exist from the list from nctrl status)

nctrl stop qrserver qrproxy search-1

nctrl start qrserver qrproxy search-1

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: SharePoint search 2010,FAST search for SharePoint 2010

The Past, Present and Future of Search: A Round Table Discussion

2012-01-04T10:38:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year! We are excited to announce our next meeting, a Round Table Discussion. Sign up now

SUBJECT
The Past, Present and Future of Search: A Round Table Discussion

Last month, The NY Enterprise Search User Group celebrated its Two Year Anniversary. This month we would like to take a look back at past talks, hear how user group members are currently using Search, as well as the group's vision of the future of Search.
Carlos Valcarcel Technical Solutions Professional at Microsoft, Natalya Voskresenskaya SharePoint MVP & Search Engineer along with Paul Olenick SharePoint and Search Engineer at Arcovis will lead a Round Table Discussion around Search.
Take a trip down memory lane here: Past Meetups

ABOUT THE LEADERS
Carlos Valcarcel has been in software development since the mid-80's working in financial services, insurance and technology....Read More.
Natalya Voskresenskaya has been working in the field of Information Technology for over 10 years. With experience in design, architecture...Read More.
Paul Olenick is a Sr. SharePoint and Enterprise Search Consultant for Arcovis (Gold Partner and Microsoft V-TSP) where he leads projects for large enterprise customers across multiple verticals...Read More.

Leonardo Souza, Senior Technical Instructor at FAST University/Microsoft is a professional with thirteen years experience working with Microsoft...Read More.
Michael McCabe currently works as an Information Architect for Gig Werks and focuses on the SharePoint product. He has 18 years experience...Read More.

Drive with FAST search for SharePoint 2010 installation is running out of space

2011-12-27T10:07:00.001-08:00

On one of the projects I was seeing recurring behavior where “D:\FAST Search\data\ftStorage\sequences” folder quickly fills up with files like storage_6a.data , storage_cd.meta thus causing the drive to run out of space. That location is used to store index (“fixml”) information used for fault tolerance (ft) in a backup indexing row. We have deleted these files at some point since there was an environment health issue as well, hoping that fixing the environment issue was to blame for causing this folder to fill up, but it came back again and quickly filled up the drive. In searching for the cause of the problem here is what was found.

1. It’s likely this is happening if one or more servers are configured as a “secondary” indexing row. See this example from a FS4SP deployment.xml file:

</searchcluster>

The options are to disable the secondary/backup indexer(s), or add more disk space to the backup row.

If the data was deleted in this folder, it’s likely the backup index data is out of sync, and will need to be resynchronized with this procedure:

“Synchronize the primary and the backup indexer servers (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint)” - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg482028.aspx

2. In our case the box that had this issue was not configured as a secondary row, but was a primary row.

The deployment.xml has not used row 0 as the primary row (which is required, ref http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff354931.aspx#element_searchcluster)

This caused the ftstorage files to neither be placed on the intended server, nor rotated and thus eating up the disk space.

Here is an example of the deployment

<document-processor processes="4"/>

<content-distributor id="1"/> <indexing-dispatcher/>

</host>

</searchcluster>

Once the IDs were reconfigured and then I ran Set-FASTSearchConfiguration on the admin box as well as the non-admin. The issue went away

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST Search For SharePoint 2010 reconfigure,deployment.xml

NOINDEX Handling by FAST and SharePoint Search

2011-12-23T09:25:00.001-08:00

Just recently I had to go through troubleshooting of content being indexed by FAST and/or SharePoint Search and wanted to share experience and some collected wisdom.

Here is the case, very common: the client has branded master page that includes menu navigation items, these items were being indexed. Where in case of searching for “Vacation form” would bring every page that is using this master page with menu items, simply because link to vacation form was included into the navigation menu on this master page. After the client included ”noindex”, which works for FAST as well as for SharePoint it seemed to work. Few weeks later when I came onsite, I noticed that the Search SSAs for SharePoint as well as for FAST had their content sources misconfigured and without even knowing the client was using just SharePoint search for everything. At this point I’ve reconfigured the content sources so only “people” search is being server by SharePoint search and the rest of the content is searched by FAST. This is when we have noticed the same problem where menu items were being indexed again without respecting the NOINDEX tag. Once we purged the index and reindexed everything again, it all worked.

Here are the tags and the explanation of how they work:

1) <meta name="robots" content="noindex" /> : Supported using both crawlers, although differently. FAST crawler will drop these items. SP crawler will not drop the items, they will be dropped by the FAST pipeline. But the result is the same for both.

2) <noindex> This text will not be indexed </noindex> : Not supported regardless of crawler.

3) <div class =”noindex”> This text will not be indexed </div> : Supported. This is transparent to both crawlers, will be filtered in the FAST pipeline.

4) <span class =”noindex”> : Supported by FAST Search back-end but not SharePoint search.

5) SP crawler fix to ensure that the <meta name="xxx" content="noindex" /> was passed to the FAST pipeline (KB 2276336)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2276336

Part of the August 2010 CU.

Hope this helps to others.

Enjoy Holidays!!!!

Technorati Tags: sharepoint search,fast search for sharepoint,noindex tags

Technorati Tags: Fast search for sharepoint,noindex,sharepoint search

FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 administration screenshots (Central Administration)

2011-10-10T15:00:00.001-07:00

Many times I get a question as to how granular can you make the administration of the FAST, what administrative options each level provides and what does it look like.

In the previous post I shared screenshots of administrative interfaces that are available to site collection admins. In this post I wanted to share the screenshots of Administration UI for FAST from the Central administration.

Search Administrators have the ability to control the following settings:

Here are some screenshots with explanations.

Central Administration – Content source configuration

Central Administration – Configure authoritative pages

Central Administration – Content Source overview

Central Administration – Crawl log

Central Administration – Crawled Properties (Metadata)

Central Administration – FAST Content SSA overview

Central Administration – FAST Query SSA overview

Central Administration – Managed Properties (metadata fields)

Central Administration – New Crawl rule

Central Administration – URL Blocking

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST Search Aadministration

FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 administration screenshots (Site settings)

2011-09-07T14:20:00.001-07:00

Many times I get a question as to how granular can you make the administration of the FAST, what administrative options each level provides and what does it look like.

In this post I wanted to share the screenshots of Administration UI for FAST from the site collection admin level as well as Central administration.

Site collection administrators have ability to provide administration for:

Best Bets
Visual Best Best
Content promotion and demotion
User context

You do not need to make your business folks (that would be more suitable to customize the search experience) Search Admins and give them access to Central Administration site where they can become quite dangerous. you can get access to the following administration areas through the site settings page on the site collection level.

Here are some screenshots with explanations.

Site collection – Site Settings

Best Bets configuration

Keyword, Phrases and Synonyms configuration

Add site demotion

Add site promotion (boosting content from a site)

Add user context

Manage Use Context

Add visual Best Bet

In the next post I’ll put the screenshot of administrative interfaces that are available for the Search Admins from the Central Administration site

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST Search for SharePoint administration,best bets,visual best bets,user context,site demotion and promotion.

SPC 2011 : Making the Move to SharePoint 2010 - Search First

2011-08-03T16:49:00.001-07:00

I’m speaking at the SPC in Anaheim, California in October. SPC had be always to me THE SharePoint Conference to attend. If you still did not register you might be missing the most important SharePoint event of the year.

If you are there, check out my session that I’ll be doing along side with Mark Stone (Microsoft) and Harry Jones (Arcovis) and learn one upgrade strategy for 2010 that no one told you about.

Here is the session abstract.

Most of us have heard about the enhancements and power offered by SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search, but many do not realize they can take advantage of it before upgrading their 2007/MOSS environment. In this session we will cover how to leverage Search for SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint today as part of your organizations roadmap to 2010. We'll demonstrate the integration of SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint Search 2010 from the end-user perspective and discuss the many benefits “Search First” offers to an organization and their users.

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/pages/sessiondetailsShort.aspx?sessionguid=90a461cd-d717-45be-b09b-c82a1f9fefdc

Technorati Tags: SPC 2011,Search First,SharePoint 2010 upgrade

Why Social Networking on SharePoint 2010?

2011-08-03T16:32:00.001-07:00

I recently wrote an article on social networking on SharePoint platform and wanted to share it with you.

The SharePoint 2010 platform offers a wide variety of core features including document management, records management, BI, search, workflow and social networking to name a few. Microsoft and its partners have done a great job of showcasing the value of these features and have shared strategies to help organizations take advantage of them. However, of these core features, it is my observation that the Social Networking aspects of SharePoint 2010 are underutilized by customers and therefore the full potential of their implementations are not realized.

The most common objection I have seen to the notion of social networking within the enterprise has to do with a misconception that social networking platforms are not productive in the work environment. I often see is a misguided comparison made to Facebook and other external social networking sites which management views as time-wasters. Other barriers to adoption include uncertainties about allowing uncensored comments by users, a difficulty in justifying the investment and the struggle involved with getting buy-in from the business.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking,SharePoint 2010 Social Networking

Social Sites Demo on next Shoptalk: June 27th, 2011

2011-06-27T07:40:00.001-07:00

Social Sites for SharePoint 2010
presented by: Rich Blank from News Gator

By integrating Social Sites directly into your SharePoint 2010 collaboration deployment, you can focus on delivering value to your users and unifying your technology infrastructure while fully leveraging your SharePoint social network - instead of building custom applications or learning and supporting additional technologies. Increase adoption among stakeholders, streamline communication, improve employee recruiting and retention, and boost overall productivity with Social Sites 2010.
Speaker Bio
For over 15 years, Rich Blank has worked with hundreds of organizations evangelizing, architecting and delivering social computing, collaboration & content management solutions. His passion is helping organizations change the way people connect, share information, and manage knowledge and his expertise includes information & systems architecture, end user adoption, governance, business process improvements, and technology strategy. Rich is a featured MS SharePoint expert and regular blogger on AIIM.org (Association of Information & Image Management) writing about collaboration, ECM, and social business. He's also has been invited as a guest speaker at the 2008 IT & Business Alignment Conference, 2010 SharePoint Summit, and regional SharePoint User Groups. He currently works as a Solutions Engineer for Newsgator and has held past senior technology and management consulting roles at EMC and IBM. Rich obtained his MBA from Babson College and BBA from the University of Michigan, and is a certified PMP and Six Sigma Green Belt. You can read some more of his insights on his personal blog: www.pmpinsights.com, follow him on Twitter: @pmpinsights, or connect with him on LinkedIn: www.richblank.com

SharePoint ShopTalk is a live, dynamic, discussion held weekly amongst SharePoint Professionals. It is an excellent source for users who need to discuss challenges or are looking for answers to pressing contemporary SharePoint questions. All are welcome to take advantage of this forum that features leading experts in the field.
You may register today and join the SharePoint ShopTalk Group on LinkedIn to submit questions prior to the event. You may also tweet your questions to @spshoptalk as well as ask questions live! We encourage participants to send questions in advance so our panel of experts may answer at their highest capacity.
For this event, you may also tweet your questions to pmpinsights & NewsGator.

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010 Social Networking,SharePoint Shoptalk

Error installing FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

2011-06-20T11:29:00.001-07:00

I’ve ran into a lot of installation errors in my experience, but this one definitely deserves a separate blog post. During the installation I’ve got the following error

06/13/2011 11:25:23 AM Warning Utility.Execute - "D:\FASTSearch\bin\ResourceStoreInstaller.exe" StdError - resourcestoreinstaller.exe - C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe SET config "ResourceStore" /section:requestFiltering /verbs.allowUnlisted:false /commit:apphost - ERROR ( message:Unknown attribute "verbs.allowUnlisted". Replace with -? for help. )

06/13/2011 11:25:23 AM Warning Utility.Execute - Return code for binary "D:\FASTSearch\bin\ResourceStoreInstaller.exe" is not 0. This may indicate that binary didn't execute successfully

And the FAST failed to install.

Let me step back a little bit, the installation was fairly simple, just 2 servers. And knowing the FAST hungry for resources reputation we usually recommend to beef up the servers as much as possible. The 2 servers were actually physical machines very powerful with about 16 CPU cores registered. That was the problem!

Christian Holslin shared his experience here, otherwise I’d be chasing the problem for hours. http://www.thesharepointblog.net/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=815f255a%2Dd0ef%2D4258%2Dbe2a%2D28487dc9975c&ID=48

Too many CPU cores, or logical CPUs can produce the failure for the installation as the CPUs compete for access to the web.config file.

TO resolve this problem do the following:

Before you attempt to run the configuration wizard, from the command line, run Mdconfig command:

1. Go to advanced tab

2. Under advanced go to “boot”

3. Select 4 processors

4. Restart the machine. Repeat this process for all servers in the FAST farm.

Once the installation process is done, revert your changes for the number of registered CPUs back to the original amount of registered Cores following the steps above.

You will be all set

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST search for sharepoint 2010 installation

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search isn’t just for SharePoint 2010–presentation is available

2011-06-10T08:08:00.001-07:00

Most of us have heard about the enhancements and power offered by SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search, but many do not realize they can take advantage of it without upgrading their 2007/MOSS environment. In this session we will cover how to leverage Search for SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint today, demonstrate the seamless integration of SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint Search 2010 from the end-user perspective and discuss the many benefits “Search First” offers to an organization and their users.

Here is a link to the presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/natalyvo/share-pointesug-searchfirst61011

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: Fast Search For SharePoint 2010,Enterprise search,SharePoint 2010,SharePoint Search,SharePoint 2007

Opportunity for Senior SharePoint Consultants

2011-05-26T07:56:00.001-07:00

Arcovis is seeking Senior SharePoint Consultants to join its team of SharePoint and Enterprise Search experts. This position offers the opportunity to work with leading minds in the industry, exposure and access to Microsoft account and technical teams, C-level executives at fortune 100 companies, as well as broad industry exposure. This is an excellent opportunity to learn new technologies, latest trends in the industry, and develop influential relationships. For more information see the full job description.

Technorati Tags: Job Opportunity

SharePoint FEST, Denver–May 19th session: Integration of the SharePoint Search 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 with SharePoint 2007 portal

2011-05-15T08:00:00.001-07:00

I’m speaking at the SharePoint Fest in Denver on May 19th. I’ll be presenting on one of my favorite topics, here is the session topic and the abstract:

Integration of the SharePoint Search 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 with SharePoint 2007 portal

With the release of the SharePoint 2010, Microsoft had release the true enterprise search solution, FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 (FS4SP). But what about companies who have invested heavily in 2007 implementations and while planning to upgrade in the future want to take advantage of FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 now. This session covers the integration of SharePoint 2007 and FAST search for SharePoint 2010 and benefits from the business and end-user perspective that Search 2010 brings into the 2007 portal solution.

The session is going to be informative to everyone and not just IT Pros and Devs, it will also include demos.

Come and say Hi. I’ll see you there

Technorati Tags: SharePoint Fest 2011

FAST Search: the infamous “Failed to initialize session with document engine: Unable to resolve Content distributor”

2011-04-26T12:06:00.001-07:00

In the numerous FAST configurations the error above is the most common and one that I wanted to share my experiences with. There is a number of issues that might be causing this error and renders FAST Search unable to crawl. This issue can be from the initial configuration of FAST, but can also be introduced later on if you modify the deployment.XML and reconfigure FAST.

Here is the list of the most common ways of resolution and is in the order of :

1. Secure the connector by running

.\SecureFASTSearchConnector.ps1 -certPath "path of the certificate\certificatename.pfx" -ssaName "name of your content SSA" -username "domain\username"

replacing the necessary parameters with the values for your environment. Here are the detailed instructions http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff381261.aspx

2. Check if the domain and user name is reflecting the details of the user running the SharePoint Server Search 14 (OSearch14) service. The user account running Server Search 14 service should be the same as the user name used to secure the connector.

3. Make sure that the content distributor URL is the same as in the Install_Info file located within your FASTSearch folder or the same as in the fastsearch\etc\contentdistributor.cfg file – sometime that might be the issue is the value in the install_info file is not the same as the cfg file, use the URL from the CFG file.

Hope it helps.

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST Search Crawl,FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

New York Enterprise Search User Group celebrates its Two Year Anniversary

2011-04-11T16:29:00.001-07:00

The New York Enterprise Search User Group celebrates its Two Year Anniversary by welcoming back the speaker who started it all, Nathan Treloar!
We hope that you will join the festivities, bring a friend as we end the year on high note and a look into the future of Enterprise Search!

DECEMBER MEETING - Wednesday, December 14th 5:30PM

SUBJECT
Video Search and the Rise of Time-coded Metadata
Searching video certainly isn’t a new thing. Youtube has been with us for years now, after all. But when it comes to emerging trends in video search, both on the Web and in the enterprise, there are signs that we are entering a new age. The time-coded nature of video and the ability (or lack thereof) to search and navigate *inside* video content represent a new frontier for search that is only just now coming to light.
In this interactive, demo-rich presentation, Nate Treloar, VP of Strategic Markets for RAMP, will walk through the latest trends in video search and show how the rise of time-coded metadata is changing how people discover and engage with online video.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nathan Treloar, is VP of Technology for Strategic Alliances at RAMP where he is responsible for expanding RAMP’s industry leading Content Optimization solutions into new markets. Prior to RAMP, Nate was the Principal Search Technology Evangelist in the Microsoft Enterprise Search Group and held responsibility for the group’s technology innovation and evangelism programs.
Nate came to Microsoft through the acquisition of FAST, where he was Senior Vice President of Technology and a member of the leadership team that took FAST from an entry level player to a leader in the enterprise search market. In a career spanning more than two decades, Nate has held key executive positions for search, text mining, publishing, and knowledge management software and solutions. He has advised hundreds of world’s largest companies and government agencies on applications of search and search related technologies.
ADDRESS
1290 Avenue of the Americas, Sixth Floor NY, NY 10104

SharePoint ShopTalk Announces New Video Blog! and new panelists!!

2011-03-21T15:36:00.001-07:00

Join us for the next SharePoint ShopTalk: Thursday, March 24th 12:30PM - 1:30PM EST.

You may register today and join the SharePoint ShopTalk Group on LinkedIn to submit questions prior to the event. You may also tweet your questions to @spshoptalk as well ask questions live! We encourage participants to send questions in advance so our panel of experts may answer at their highest capacity.
Sign up for this month's Panelist Spotlight - "Tips & Tricks" 3.31.11:
Integration of SharePoint Search 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 with SharePoint 2007 Portal

SharePoint ShopTalk Announces New Video Blog!
View last week's upload: .NET Developer Learning SharePoint
New Videos are posted every Thursday!

We look forward to hearing from you as well as the continued sharing of SharePoint knowledge.
Audio Call-in Number: (760) 569-0111

Audio Passcode: 724468#

Click here to register for the next SharePoint ShopTalk.

FAST Search for Internet Sites (FSIS) Deep Dive–April 13, 2011

2011-03-21T15:35:00.001-07:00

I’m happy to announce the Enterprise Search User Group meeting for April. Save the date

This session will provide a technical deep dive of FAST Search for Internet Sites focused on the main components: Content Transformation Services (CTS), Interaction Management Services (IMS) and the Enterprise Search Platform (ESP). Learn what the main components are and how they work together to give you one of the most powerful search platforms on the market. We will build an end-to-end experience with a focus on explaining how the different components work and interact.

SPEAKER
Runar Olsen, is a Senior Architect with Microsoft's Enterprise Search Practice. At this time with Microsoft he has been involved with large scale and complex internet site deployments, and recently focusing on the new Enterprise Search 2010 product lineup. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from the Norwegian University of Tromsø (UITØ).
In this talk Runar Olsen will provide a technical deep dive of FAST Search for Internet Sites focused on the main components: Content Transformation Services (CTS), Interaction Management Services (IMS), and the Enterprise Search Platform (ESP). Learn what the main components are and how they work together to give you one one of the most powerful search platforms on the market. We will build an end-to-end experience with a focus on explaining how the different components work and interact.

MEETING AGENDA
5:30 PM - Networking (Food and Drinks)

6:00 PM - News and Highlights

6:10 PM - A word from our sponsor

6:30 PM - Speaker Presentation

7:25 PM - Wrap-Up and Give-Aways

7:30 PM - After Meeting Social

ADDRESS
1290 Avenue of the Americas, Sixth Floor NY, NY 10104

To attend this meeting, REGISTER TODAY!

Security Reminder
Register at least 2 days in advance to secure a building pass, otherwise one will be created at building security which will stall your entry.

Behind the Scenes of the Contoso/ Consulting Search-Driven Application Demo

2011-02-07T16:59:00.001-08:00

This presentation promises to be one of the best “behind the scenes” on developing search-driven applications.

Do not forget to register for our Enterprise Search User Group meeting, held every second Wednesday of the month at:

1290 Avenue of the Americas, Sixth Floor NY, NY 10104

FEBRUARY MEETING - Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
SUBJECT
Behind the Scenes of the Contoso Consulting Search-Driven Application Demo
SPEAKERS
Richard Frenkel, CTO Ceonex has 30 years experience in the IT field, initially building systems for mainframes and later for the client/server environment....
Theodore Agranat, User Interface Architect and Design Manager is an accomplished manager of design and user interface architect. He has built the design side of Ceonex from the beginning....
Dimitri Ayrapetov, Senior SharePoint Consultant has seven years of experience in IT, with the past four years primarily working with SharePoint technologies....
Read more about our speakers here

This session will provide a technical drilldown of how the Contoso Consulting Search-Driven Application demo was built. The Search Driven Demo builds on the standard FAST Search for SharePoint web parts to create a "Search Driven Application": in this case a company Knowledge Center. The application includes "visual refiners" that present the information in standard text based refiners visually and allow user interaction, a visual "work area" to which specific items from the result set can be saved, and a power point previewer that allows PowerPoint presentations to be viewed and slides selected within the search results, among other customizations. The presenters will discuss the application architecture and custom development efforts required to build this custom Search-Driven Application.
Included in the drilldown will be:
• Brief run through of the demo to show the features
• Breakdown of OOB functionality, extended configuration, and custom developed controls
• Walk through of the custom graphical refiner controls (architecture and code)
• Customization of rendering components
• Implementation of “My Workspace”
• If time and interest allow we may also discuss the use of PowerShell to fully script the configuration of the demo application on SharePoint Enterprise, and how we customized the OOB visual styling.
As part of the discussion, the presenters will discuss pros/cons to the various approaches and challenges faced during implementation. The presentation will include technical drill down, but could be of interest to anyone interested in what is possible in customizing search or building search applications.
Register Today

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Search User Group,FAST Search for SharePoint 2010,Enterprise Search

SharePoint for Squirrels - by Natalya Voskresenskaya [MVP]

Migrating from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013

Preparing for Exam 70-583

SharePoint 2010 Search – change the style of hithighlighting

Making the Best Search Choices for your Organization–Session

Making the Best Search Choices for your Organization–Session

Enterprise Search Summit 2012

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Architect’s Guidebook

Thesaurus in SharePoint 2010 Search (SharePoint Shop Talk Question)

The infamous : Property doesn't exist or is used in a manner inconsistent with schema settings (SharePoint Search and FAST)

The Past, Present and Future of Search: A Round Table Discussion

Drive with FAST search for SharePoint 2010 installation is running out of space

NOINDEX Handling by FAST and SharePoint Search

FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 administration screenshots (Central Administration)

FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 administration screenshots (Site settings)

SPC 2011 : Making the Move to SharePoint 2010 - Search First

Why Social Networking on SharePoint 2010?

Social Sites Demo on next Shoptalk: June 27th, 2011

Error installing FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search isn’t just for SharePoint 2010–presentation is available

Here is a link to the presentation http://www.slideshare.net/natalyvo/share-pointesug-searchfirst61011

Opportunity for Senior SharePoint Consultants

SharePoint FEST, Denver–May 19th session: Integration of the SharePoint Search 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 with SharePoint 2007 portal

FAST Search: the infamous “Failed to initialize session with document engine: Unable to resolve Content distributor”

New York Enterprise Search User Group celebrates its Two Year Anniversary

SharePoint ShopTalk Announces New Video Blog! and new panelists!!

FAST Search for Internet Sites (FSIS) Deep Dive–April 13, 2011

Behind the Scenes of the Contoso/ Consulting Search-Driven Application Demo

Here is a link to the presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/natalyvo/share-pointesug-searchfirst61011