SharePointBabe

Why managed metadata sucks

2011-10-10T19:51:00.002+02:00

Why is it that you often start doing things in SharePoint that you find really useful, and when you have almost reached your goal - the whole idea just falls? This happened to me when I setup a taxonomy for a department, we built the trees and deployed them to the libraries. All looked really good and we should start adding files. And when you setup a new intranet, you usually have a lot of files you want to upload at the same time to the libraries. No worries, I told them to upload all files and we would add the metadata tags through the datasheet view. NOT! That did not work and we also got a readonly message. Embarassing... So well sorry, you will have to edit the files one by one. Well that is not a realistic scenario. Then the column filtering was messed up, it is not possible to filter on metadata tags that are cascaded. And also, in the datasheet view the values have got a number and a hashtag in front of the value.
Sigh!!

And yes, I know that managed metadata is very useful for many other situations, but when it comes to using it in libraries where you need to frequently update metadata tags, then it is not useful.

Please send me all your argues to convince me that I am wrong!! Because I really like the concept of managed metadata.

SP1 and June CU installed

2011-09-12T18:28:00.000+02:00

Always a challenge to install service packs, and today (after having a snapshot of my new SP installation) I installed, in the following order:
SP Foundation SP1, reboot
SP Server SP1, reboot
Run Config wizard, reboot
Restart USP - worked (but you need to have the farm admin account in Local Admins group)
New snapshot
CU for Foundation, reboot
CU for Server, reboot
Run config wizard
Config wizard failed
Powershell and force upgrade
Config wizard successful
USP - failed to start the service
Knew it!
Found that the FIM (Forefront Identity Manager) groups locally were empty
Added the farm admin account to those groups
Now the USP started
Could run the full sync again
Imported all profiles and imported the AD pictures (thumbnailPhoto property) as well, nice!
Will try to remove the farm account from the local admin group tomorrow and run a full sync
Then find out which of the FIM groups the farm account needs to stay in, one by one
New snapshot
Done.
Not too bad.

Unattended service account

2011-09-12T16:38:00.003+02:00

I have setup a new SP 2010 server farm this week, and it all went very well actually. But if you use the correct account settings and configure most of the things manually (like the dreaded UPS) then everything should work just fine. There are some messages in the Health Analyzer that needs to be taken care of though, unless you've done this a couple of times. You'll learn :) One of them is if you create some of the service applications that are dependent on the Secure Store, for instance Performance Point or Visio. Then you need to setup an unattended service account.

The warning in Health Analyzer:

If you click on that warning, the following message is displayed:

Go to your Service applications, click on "Secure store service":

You'll get a message saying that you have to generate a key:

Look in the ribbon right above the message, and you have a button called "Generate new key":

You are prompted to enter a passphrase (this will be used for adding new secure store service servers or if you need to restore this service):

Then you are told that there are no target applications in this service, no shit! Let's create one then :)
Click on "New" in the ribbon:

Now add the name of your target app id, for instance "Visio" or maybe the name of your external data source, add a Display name, contact email, target application type (which decides HOW your users should authenticate - as them selves or as a group, I selected "individual") and then just click "Next":

Add the account name and password that connects to the external source. The "masked" means if you wish to mask the characters, and of course we want that for the passwords. Click "Next":

Add the adminstrators of this target application and you are done!

But, later you also need to "Set" the credentials of the users who should have access to this secure store:

Passed exam 70-667!

2011-09-01T09:19:00.001+02:00

I am proud to announce that I passed exam 70-667, configuring SharePoint 2010. Which gives an MCTS title. It was not so hard, some questions were really easy actually. But of course, when you have worked with a product since 2003, you should know some stuff about it!!

Google + vs FB

2011-07-15T17:46:00.002+02:00

I have registered my account on the new "Facebook killer app" (as media calls it), Google+. Can't say that I am too impressed. It is a quite simple UI, too large fonts (what will happen to that news feed when there are as many users as on FB?), not much happens in there and what is the real purpose of it - other then "killing FB"? One cool thing though, is "Circles" which means that I can add anyone I like without that person approving it, just to be able to follow them like on Twitter. So it has not that security restrictions like FB has. But still you can of course control who can read your updates and so on. I would like to be able to add my Twitter feed, and also add my blog feed to it so that all my networks are connected. Have not seen any functionality for that yet. Also, I was invited to join G+ with my private mail and not my gmail account and now I can't change that, which is really stupid. I would rather use my gmail account so the mail is connected.
Anyway, I will give it some time and see if it gets more interesting, but for now I prefer good old FB :)

Same blog, new URL

2011-07-10T17:17:00.002+02:00

My old blog url was miss-sharepoint.blogspot.com but that name was lame, so I have changed the URL to sharepointbabe.blogspot.com which is my aka - self announced of course, and I am sure it always bugs someone ;) I think it's an awesome name!
The downside of switching URL is that my followers are gone, and since there is no redirect function here you will only get a stupid message saying the blog does not exist anymore, and with no reference to this new URL.
But I hope you guys will find me again and hopefully come back to me!
Oh, and one more thing: I am working with SP2010 again... I love it :)
Have a great summer!

I'm just saying.....

2011-03-06T17:16:00.002+01:00

I really miss working with SharePoint 2010 and all the new fun stuff in there...

An error has occured in Excel Web Services

2010-08-18T09:00:00.005+02:00

So, Excel Web Services, if you really choose to use that feature and web part (I would not recommend it, there are so many other better solutions to display sheets!) then you might run into some issues. And it is really slow in performance. Well, it was up and running, and lots of users wanted it. Fine, no problems, added the trusted locations on the server and so on. Then one day it stopped and displayed this:

"An error has occured":

Don't you just love those instructive and informative error messages in SharePoint???

So, dug into Event Viewer and started scanning. Yup, there were errors but none of them related to this. Thought back of recent installations/changes to the environment and so on, and remembered that the web.config had been altered due to a third party web part installation. And that web part was never used, so I opened my web.config and went through the changes, and the only thing I could relate to this error was the proxy settings. So I changed the proxy setttings back from:

To this:

And yes, there was the solution (the customer does not use a proxy server, and if that had been the case then this error probably would never occure).

Script for SharePoint installation

2010-06-23T21:16:00.006+02:00

This weeks task was to setup a SP2010 medium server farm. It took half a day, and using this powershell script to install the index server was AWESOME! You must edit the files before you run them, to add your own db names, servers etc, but once that is done it's a really fast setup! And, it also gives your default SP databases nice names, not GUIDs! The only databases it doesnt setup names for, are Application Registry, BDC and Search dbs:

Link to script here, at Codeplex.

User profile synchronization error

2010-05-25T20:01:00.006+02:00

The crawl log in Search Administration returned the following error:

sps3://xxx could not be crawled

What you must do is to set permissions to the search account that you use for crawling the User Profiles.

Select User Profile Services (do not click the link, but highlight the application)

Up in the ribbon, click a button called "Administrators"

Enter the account that you use for search

Add the permission "Retrieve people data for search crawlers"

My first SP2010 installation, critical issues

2010-05-25T19:20:00.012+02:00

This week I have installed my first SharePoint 2010 server and it has been great fun and very interesting! It is a test environment so it's a small server farm setup. After having a connection issue with the SQL server (everything is closed and denied) it was a fast and easy installation. Well that was the smallest part...

Fired up Central Administration, and went through it step by step. Trying to memorize where to find everything =) When you have worked for years in MOSS then it is a bit messy... When most settings were ready, the red ribbon turned up and warned about the farm having "Critical issues". Clicked on the messages and there were some errors:

1) The server farm account should not be used for other services
Ah yes, of course, an old classic. Open "Manage service accounts" and change the account to the one you use for your services in general. Not the farm admin account or an account who is a member of the local admin group.

2) Accounts used by application pools or service identities are in the local machine Administrators group. ¨
Click on "Manage service accounts" and change all services that uses your farm account to a specific service account instead. That account should be a least privilege account. Like before..

3) The unattended service account application id is not specified or has an invalid value.
This means that you must generate a new key and configure the Secure Store Service.

4) Missing server side dependencies
Did not really understand WHAT was wrong... so what do you do? Google of course! And yes, I was not alone... Found this guy's blog with a solution that I found was hilarious! I thought he had forgotten to write down a step in this solution, but no - follow these steps and the error message is gone! =)
Click General Application Settings
Under Search, click Farm-Wide Search Administration
Under Search Service Application click Search Service Application
Run iisreset -noforce (don't forget to run cmd as Administrator or else you get Access denied)
Thanks to http://sharepointinsight.wordpress.com/

5) Verify that the Activity Feed Timer Job is enabled.
Well, just DO IT! Inside the timer job definitions, enable it.

6) Built in accounts are used as application pools or service identities
Again, change to correct account!

7) Validate the MySite host and individual MySites are on a dedicated web application and separate URL domain.
After a web application for MySite was setup, and some managed paths entered, this message disappeared.

The semaphore timeout period has expired

2010-04-01T10:29:00.003+02:00

I got this error message on my SharePoint farm backup (using the STSADM command
STSADM.EXE -o backup -directory \\srv001\sqlbackups -backupmethod full):

Object SharePoint_Config failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. SqlException: Write on "\\srv003\SP_Backup\spbr0001\0000001D.bak" failed: 121(The semaphore timeout period has expired.) BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

My first thought was that it conflicted with another backup job, so I moved the start time for the backup several times to see if that helped. Obviously it lost connection to the SQL server. But to move the start time did not help. I googled it but did not find anything helpful and after having analysed the Event Viewer errors and the backup log error, I saw that the error message was displayed almost immediately after the backup had started. And then I realised that maybe it had to do with the time limit for the backup job instead of a timeout against the SQL server. So, I increased the time limit in Scheduled tasks (which runs my bat file) with a couple of hours and then the backup went through without any errors.

Just one of those error messages that are hard to determine the right solution for....

How to restore a SharePoint site using SQL database backup

2010-03-19T13:14:00.001+01:00

This week I had to do a restore of a site collection using only SQL database backup. The customers hosting partner had not setup a SharePoint farm backup and had no test environment available that we could restore the database to, so they restored the database back to the SQL server into the production environment.
When I did an attach of the contentdb, SharePoint config would not let that database into the farm since it had the same GUID as the original database (of course, since it was a restore). We tried to run some querys on the SQL to alter the GUID, but without success. Performed these steps instead, which includes detach the original db, attach the restored db to the same web application, export the site that was deleted, detach the restored db again, attach the original db and import the subsite (which was the reason for the restore).

Iisreset /stop
Detach the current content db WSS_Intranet from the SQL Server (this is the original database)
Iisreset /start
Attach the restored content db WSS_IntranetRestored
Open the site you want to restore and copy the URL
Export the site Tools via stsadm –o export –url https://intranet/se/tools -filename d:\temp_backup\restore –includeusersecurity –versions 4 overwrite (where the syntax restore is a PREFIX for the backup files and NOT a filename you create)

Iisreset /stop
Detach the restored content db

Iisreset /start
Open Central Administration, enter Content databases, remove the restored db
Content databases, add the original content db
Attach the old content db

Iisreset

Import stsadm -o import -url https://intranet/se/tools -filename "d:\temp_backup\restore.cmp" -includeusersecurity -updateversions 2

Done!

SharePoint farm backup

2010-03-18T21:21:00.003+01:00

I think I have blogged about this before, but I cannot enough emphasize the importance of running SharePoints own backup together with your SQL database backup. Of course, some third party backup products might be able to restore in the same way as you can restore a site collection backup inside Central Admin, but it IS really easy in CA to do this. It's not that easy if you must restore a SQL database and add the content db to a new web application. What I want to restore is a single subsite inside of a sitecollection.
When using SharePoints restore option, you could easily restore a whole site collection to a new web app (either on a new server or the same) and access it by using http://server:portnumber, export the site (through stsadm or SPD) and then delete the restored web app again. Fast and easy.
But... I ran into a customer that was only using SQL db backup and some third party product, and they were only able to restore the SQL database so I had to create a new web application, detach the db that was installed default, and then add the restored db via STSADM and addcontentdb. I got a lot of errors, and it turned out that when I had attached the restored content db, and looked in "Content databases" it showed 0 sites! So, the db was attached but contained nothing. Will do a SQL hack to change the GUID to something else... and so on. A lot more work!!
So today I setup the farm backup with a .bat file and put it in Scheduled Tasks and made sure it ran correctly. Got this error:

"Object WSS_Content_MySite failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. SqlException: Cannot open backup device '\\serverxxx01\backup\spbr0000\0000001A.bak'. Operating system error 5(error not found). BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally."

If you get this error when trying to run backup in SharePoint Central Administration (or using the STSADM command for full backup) then you must do the following:

1) Logon to the SQL server and determine which account that runs the MSSQLSERVICE and add that account to your backup device (that is, the SHARE where you put your backup files) and give it "Edit" permissions.

VPN client for Windows 7

2010-03-11T09:41:00.003+01:00

I have installed Windows 7 and Office 2010 now, which is a big improvement from Vista! Though there are some applications that do not work with Win 7, like Cisco VPN. Yes, I am sure that someone has found a version and have done all the settings/regedit hacks that you must do, but really... So I found this VPN client, called Shrew Soft Inc! I needed to be able to import a pcf file, which works great with Shrew soft.

Error: Configuration file is not well-formed XML

2009-12-09T17:48:00.005+01:00

This error message occured on the IIS 7 on my SharePoint server this morning (running on win server 2008). How come? Well it all started with this: I was going to add an account on a site, but the AD did not reply, which forced me in to the server to have a look. Turned out that the SharePoint server had 0 KB left on C: drive! No wonder you can't do anything on the site... Found out that the inetpub\logs folder had grown to a whole 16 GB! Log files!! Crazy! Started IIS 7 and looked in the "Logging":

By default the settings are set to schedule Daily (!) and without limits. It has nothing to do with the usage logging in SharePoint because those files resides in the 12 hive under logs there. And those were "only" 4 GB. Entered a new path from c: drive to the E:drive that has more space, and clicked on "Apply".... and the IIS crashed. With this message:

Performed an IIS reset, same error message.
Restarted the server, same error message.

Panic! The IIS was dead.

Googled it, and found this article (thanks!!):
http://www.tekniken.nu/drift_och_underhall/forefront_saboterar_iis_7

So I looked inside the C:\Windows\system32\inetserv\config\applicationHost.config folder and the applicationhost.config file size was 0 KB so I renamed that one to old_applicationhost.config and opened the \history folder and selected the newest applicationhost.config file. Pasted it to the C:\Windows\system32\inetserv\config\ and performed an IISRESET. Phew.... it's all back again....

Steps for the future are:

- move all log files to the E drive

- config the IIS log settings and add a limit

Display week number in a view

2009-11-29T12:38:00.004+01:00

To calculate the week number in a view, enter following formula in a calculated column:

Replace the "Yourdatefieldhere" with the column that contains the date field you want to calculate the formula on. Thanks to http://lamahashim.blogspot.com/2009/10/sharepoint-calculated-field-week-number.html for the formula.

Swedish version
=HELTAL((Yourdatefieldhere-DATUM(ÅR(Yourdatefieldhere);1;1)+(TEXT(VECKODAG(DATUM(ÅR(Yourdatefieldhere);1;1));"d")))/7)+1

English version
=INT((Yourdatefieldhere-DATE(YEAR(Yourdatefieldhere),1,1)+(TEXT(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(Yourdatefieldhere),1,1)),"d")))/7)+1

More examples of view formulas here

Center align a div in IE 8

2009-10-06T10:18:00.002+02:00

Usually when I want to center align a div on a page, I use margin:auto auto and set my width to a specific width, like 940px in my stylesheet. But, this does NOT work in IE 8. So to make that work, use

width:940px
height:100%
position:absolute
left:50% (to tell that your div should start in the middle of the page)
margin-left:-490px (half of your div size)

Thanks to this site

Calculate date fields in SharePoint lists

2009-10-04T12:41:00.003+02:00

I wanted a custom view where the news are sorted per Year and Month, and then after modified date descending order. I created a new field called Year and used the following formula to calculate year which is really easy:

=YEAR(Created)

Then I wanted to get the name of the month instead of the number so I used this formula (this is the swedish version, use comma instead of semicolon in the english version):

=OM(MÅNAD(Skapad)=1;"Januari";"")&OM(MÅNAD(Skapad)=2;"Februari";"") and so on... You must put an empty "" after or else it will write the word "False" in your view =)

In English:

=IF(MONTH(Created)=1, "January","")

Stop running this script

2009-09-25T17:55:00.003+02:00

If you connect a secondary data source to your InfoPath form, and connect to a udcx file which contains a large amount of data: then you might get this error message inside the form:

Very irritating! I did not find any solution to it, only that you can disable the script debugger in IE, but hey - we are talking clients here! I will not be able to edit IE settings on my users computers right =)

The solution to this issue was to import the sql table to a SharePoint list, and then lookup against that list. Error message? GONE! :)

Create your own search control

2009-09-21T20:29:00.004+02:00

I was looking for a way to get rid of the icon gosearch.gif in the Search Area in SharePoint:

There is no way to replace the image with a css class, the only thing you can do is hide it with a new class that is called td.sbgo img and add the display:none to it.

So you must create a new feature, which is really easy.

Copy the OSearchBasicFeature folder in the Feature directory in the 12 hive.

Rename to whatever you like, LisesSearch is fine =)

Edit the feature.xml file and add a new GUID (link here)

Edit the SearchArea.xml file and add the path to your own search button (I put an image in the IMAGES folder, actually I created a new folder beneath it where I put my own search image):

Rename the Control Id in this file to something else like "LisesSearch"

Install and activate the feature

stsadm -o installfeature -filename LisesSearch\feature.xml

stsadm -o activatefeature -id "YourGUIDhere" -url http://yoursitehere/

Now, in your masterpage just edit the Control Id of the aspcontentholder "PlaceHolderSearchArea" to your own Id (in this example LisesSearch).

Now (after some branding on the sbcell and sbgo classes) the search should have your own buttons:

Gert rid of those login prompts

2009-09-10T22:20:00.002+02:00

This post belongs to my issue described here which I have not found a solution to yet. Except from one of the issues: the login prompts!
When you run a Vista client against your SharePoint site that you have installed on a Win Server 2008 then you are in trouble. First thing: dont run Vista, but if you do, then you will have the following issues:

1) you get three (!) login prompts when you want to open, edit or modify stuff on your site
2) you cannot map network drive
3) you cannot open a library in explorer view

But, yesterday I laborated and found that there is a solution to nr 1 - the login prompts. If you stop the WebClient service on your Vista client, add your site as a Local intranet in IE and set your LAN settings in IE to "Automatically detect settings", the login prompts will disappear!!

If you don't set your WebClient service to manual then you have to stop it each time you restart the PC so remember to turn it off and not just stop the service.

I will register a case at MS to find a solution for the other issues.

Filter on secondary data sources in InfoPath

2009-09-03T22:54:00.005+02:00

I have built many forms in InfoPath 2007 and you always find new interesting issues to deal with =)

When you think you have found a brilliant solution, then you can be sure that there is an obstacle when it comes to web enabled forms. So it works with filter on data sources.

I wanted to drag and drop a secondary data source to my form, but I wanted it to show only values that matched a field value in my form. Let me clear: only values in the data source that belonged to the current user should be displayed in the repeating table. Easy, I thought and clicked the "Value" button and then the "Filter data...". Got this error message:

Hmm after hours of trixing with setting the field from other fields and so on, I disabled the web enabled layout. Now you may press the "Filter data..." button and set your filter. Web enable the form again, publish it and just press the "Ignore error messages" and continue with the publishing.... It worked!

So that error message is BS. I have saved the form, and all data remains in the form.

And now - a commercial break :)

2009-09-02T23:56:00.002+02:00

My good friend Tobias Zimmergren has released his awesome Forum product for SharePoint.
I hereby quote Tozit himself:
"The TOZIT SharePoint Discussion Forum solution is a product, or set of products, that makes the discussions in SharePoint become very intuitive and user friendly. It also adds on a bunch of features that doesn't normally exist in SharePoint's built-in discussion lists"
Have a look here, it looks really cool!!

SharePoint Saturday!

2009-08-19T19:59:00.003+02:00

On Saturday I will attend this seminar in Copenhagen, called SharePoint Saturday. http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/default.aspx Thanks, T, for the ticket =)
I will listen to Mike Watson and Tobias Zimmergren, and they will deliver, I am sure! Optimization and performance are things that I work with daily so it will be very interesting. Maybe I will post a summary.... maybe...