and now… THE NEXT BYTE

SQL Server 2012 Topics to Discuss:

1. Which new features will have the biggest impact for SharePoint?
2. Why is the filetable so important?
3. What are the pricing considerations?

Microsoft recently released the newest version of its premier enterprise database management system, SQL Server 2012. This update contains many new and significant features from the current release, 2008 R2. Many of the features are notable improvements over 2008 R2 and there are so many that we couldn’t possibly do justice to them in one article.

In fact, we won’t even try. Instead we’ll focus some of the feature updates that will have the most impact on Microsoft SharePoint, since, after all, SharePoint hosting is what we do here at Fpweb.net.

SQL Server 2012 key features (in no particular order):

1. AlwaysOn
2. Contained databases
3. The FileTable feature (*not a datatype)
4. Core-based licensing

1. AlwaysOn is perhaps the most important new feature in SQL Server 2012. It advances availability beyond mirroring. The AlwaysOn feature groups designated databases into a primary availability group. Each primary availability group is then hosted on up to four secondary availability replicas. Each secondary replica group is hosted on a different node of a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFG). Each node is hosted on a different server. The primary replica sends transaction log records to each of the secondary replicas at the database level. This update can be either synchronous or asynchronous. Each secondary replica updates its databases independently of the other secondary replicas. Each of the replica groups is evaluated as to its health independently of the other groups.  And each of the secondary replicas can be configured to support read-only access.

So in an AlwaysOn setup, any given production database can be duplicated (in real-time) in up to four other databases, each of which can be read-only. WSFG monitors the health of each of the resource groups to determine which are healthy and which may be compromised. The WSFG then determines which secondary replica group becomes the primary – in case an unplanned failover event takes place.

In a nutshell, AlwaysOn can provide significant protection against data loss by maintaining up to four copies of the production database. Each of the four copies can be available for reporting purposes. Obviously, given the broad set of options there are a significant number of different configurations for synch/asynch, read-only, and no-access availability (in this case, “no-access availability” is NOT an oxymoron).

2. A Contained Database is a database that is isolated from other databases on the server. In effect, a Contained Database is also independent from the database server for the purposes of metadata and authentication. This means the database can be backed up and restored to another database server without having to change owners, schemas or other typically server-level functions. These credentials are contained within the database itself, providing for much faster and simpler database restores when appropriate. And a database can either be entirely or partially contained. Again, a whole spectrum of configuration options are available.

Imagine being able to restore a backup to another server and having it immediately operational. No “sp_change_users_login”. No ensuring all domain-authenticated logins are valid on the destination. No ensuring all user-defined functions and datatypes are in place and current. Just restore and and you’re ready to login!

3. The FileTable feature. Some database admins might (mistakenly) refer to this a data type. It is a data field which can store, process and retrieve O/S level directories, sub directories and files in each. The access to the files and directories is controlled by the SQL Server via its standard authentication. If a user or application has SQL Server access permissions, then the data can be access and updated directly at the operating system level, bypassing SQL Server once the users are authenticated. The files can be remote blob storage—RBS. As RBS is possibly the faster document access method available in SQL Server, this has tremendous promise. Previously users have been reluctant to use RBS, especially in a shared environment. That’s because RBS then required o/s access permission, possibly even local admin rights to be used.

With FileTable this has been solved because SQL Server controls the access.  If a would-be user has no permissions to the data, then they cannot even see the data. Using this new FileTable feature is going to require extensive testing but could prove crucial to SharePoint systems and Web Apps.

4. Core-level pricing. SQL S2008 R2 Enterprise was licensed according to the number CPU processors in the server farm. However, Microsoft has amended its licensing terms for the SQL Server 2012 version. Instead of CPUs, licensing for SQL Server 2012 is based on cores.  In the modern age of parallel computing, most CPUs nowadays have at least two, if not four or more, cores. As a result, this seemingly minor change in the licensing terms has the potential to double the cost of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition. But with the addition of significant new features, upgrading is probably well worth the investment for most enterprise IT departments.

SQL Server 2012 is a new product, and we haven’t had the opportunity to perform thorough tests on the relationship between this new version and SharePoint 2010. But in the coming weeks and months, Fpweb.net SharePoint Experts will be reviewing these new features in-depth. So don’t worry. We’ll continue to keep you updated on the progress of SQL Server 2012 and new insights about working with SharePoint and SQL Server.

As always, feel free to post any questions or comments you may have.

Until the next byte,
Don

Recently, I found myself in a situation that required me to move a SharePoint 2010 Web Application from Claims Based Authentication to Windows Based Authentication. Searching online for tips on how to do this yielded few results other than Microsoft says this cannot or should not be done. Well, I’m someone who has to prove this the hard way, so I tried anyways; and with a little help was actually successful. And if I’m being honest, it wasn’t even as large an undertaking as I thought it would be.

I’ll walk you through the process, but as stated above, please don’t perform this in a production environment.

So, here’s how I did it: First we can see that a Web Application is in Claims Auth through Central Administration, using the Authentication Providers as seen below:

Now, I did manage to find some helpful Powershell script that will “revert” Claims to Windows, and ran this using Powershell ISE. The script can be seen below:

$setcba = Get-SPWebApplication "http://YourSiteURL"

$setcba.UseClaimsAuthentication = 0;

$setcba.Update()

This will set the Authentication Provider to Windows Authentication, but is a bit misleading as this is the only place it changes it. This means that we aren’t even close to finished yet.

Take a look below to see that in the last step, we were able to change the Authentication Provider:

However, the Web Application still doesn’t ”know” that it has been changed in its configuration. To update this, we’ll head to the web.config file for this Web Application. To change this successfully let’s compare a web.config file of a Windows Authenticated Web Application to that of a Claims Based, as seen below:

Windows:

Claims:

So we can see above that the web.config now needs to be altered to use Windows Auth, and we’ll do so by simply plugging in the correct value. Now a quick IIS reset will reload the web.config and we are almost back in business.

You may notice that you can no longer login to the site. This is because of how the User table in SharePoint has recorded the Users. They will still be in the site, but in Claims format as seen below:

(the I:0#.w| portion signifies Claims Authentication)

We will need to add the “Windows” version of the account, (in this case Elow\Sp_Search), back into the site. Depending on how many Users you have, this can be quite tedious. First, you will want to re-add the appropriate Users into the Policy for Web Application, which is found on the same page as the Authentication Provider in Central Administration.

Now, for the Users added to the Site Collections, we will need to “migrate” the Users into themselves using Powershell. You can also re-add them manually, but then you would lose any Alerts or Permissions assigned to the User. By migrating the Users from their Claims based format into the Windows format, you will be able to keep your Users’ configurations intact.

If you need help migrating Users, you can find many articles concernting this topic, but below are a couple that I found in five minutes of Google searching:

http://blog.helloitsliam.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=54: basic migration

http://blog.sharepoint-voodoo.net/?p=68: A unique scripted migration function that I have yet to test but seems promising.

Hopefully this saves you some time and/or effort, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.

Special thanks to my colleague Andy Milsark who helped contribute to this article.

SharePoint Co-Authoring and Office Web Apps

This is the last post (at least for now) in my ongoing series on document collaboration in SharePoint 2010. For this post, we’re going to take a look at co-authoring and Microsoft Office Web Apps. SharePoint’s co-authoring feature provides the ability for multiple persons to work on the same document simultaneously. This greatly decreases the life cycle of a document as many people can contribute their portion without waiting for someone else to finish.

In a time-crunch, co-authoring can also be used as a sort of quick editing tool; multiple people can review and perform group editing on a document.

Andy Milsark has already provided a quick look at co-authoring Word documents in a previous post. Please take the time to review his blog as well. As was mentioned in his post, co-authoring is a feature available in SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. Unfortunately, you cannot use co-authoring in either SharePoint 2007 or Office 2007. You can, however, use co-authoring with SharePoint 2010 Foundation, SharePoint Server Standard, or SharePoint Server Enterprise editions.

The required technologies depend on what type of documents you want to co-author. For example, Word documents can be co-authored immediately after installing SharePoint, with no other add-ons needed.

Office Web Apps provides the ability to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files directly from the browser, freeing users from having to have the client application installed locally. This means users can make most edits and changes from a remote location. They can even use their mobile phones to view (but not edit) documents. This enhances connectivity, and permits users to continue working on critical documents regardless of their location. Office Web Apps is a great add-on for SharePoint that increases productivity and efficiency. It should almost be mandatory for any business with traveling employees or employees that access SharePoint information from multiple devices.

Some Office documents will still require the Office client because certain features are not available in Office Web Apps. Some documents and features that still require opening the Office client are:

• Documents protected by Information Rights Management (IRM).
• Copying formatting inside a document.
• Tracking changes in a Word document.
• Macros are disabled in Office Web Apps.
• Updating external tables or query tables in Excel.

Versioning and Check Out

Before continuing, let me point out the check-out/check-in requirements of co-authoring. In order for co-authoring to work, SharePoint version control features must be disabled first. If you require check-out, edits can only be made by the first person to grab the file. Everyone else is effectively locked out. To ensure check-out is disabled:

1. Navigate to the document library.
2. In the ribbon bar, click the Library tab.
3. Click Library Settings.
4. Click Versioning Settings.
5. For the last option, Require Check Out, make sure it is configured to No.

Although versioning with co-authored documents may appear exactly the same as versioning single author documents, it is not. True, the end result is the same. However, how it gets there is slightly different. If you were the only author of a document, a new version is created every time you click Save. So if you’re like me and impulsively click <ALT>-F+S then you can easily have eight versions of a document. In a co-author scenario, SharePoint does not create a new version whenever a document is saved. Rather, it creates a new version based on a definable time (the default being every 30 minutes).

Some tips when using versioning and co-authoring:

• When working with Word 2010 and PowerPoint 2010, it is recommended to use both major and minor versioning.
• For libraries containing OneNote notebooks, it is recommended to only enable major versioning. If minor versioning is enabled, synchronization errors could occur that prevent changes from being made.
• Whenever versioning is enabled, it is always recommended to specify a maximum number of versions SharePoint saves.

Technologies

As I’ve mentioned, Word 2010 allows co-authoring from a SharePoint library without additional configuration. Here’s a table that shows the requirements for specific documents:

Co-authoring is a perfect fit in today’s collaborative work space. It unifies multiple people and makes them strive towards a common goal of creating the best content possible.

Office Web Apps also fits nicely in today’s work place. As that line between home and work grows ever thinner, Office Web Apps accommodates a user’s need to finish a document from any computer.

Wrapping up the Document Collaboration Series

I hope you have found the information in this blog series helpful and that maybe it triggered an idea for you on how to improve your SharePoint experience. Document collaboration is a feature of SharePoint that is often the driving force behind SharePoint adoption.

However, too many businesses use SharePoint as a glorified file share. That’s not really document collaboration. Document collaboration allows multiple people to effectively create relevant content. SharePoint provides features such as versioning/check-in check out/Office Web Apps/co-authoring that allows you to provide them the tools to meet this common goal.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or the team by contacting Fpweb.net. As Microsoft certified SharePoint experts, we can make sure you get the most out of your SharePoint solution.

I found myself getting slightly annoyed the other day while talking with a friend. They run a small business and have yet to utilize social media to get the message across. They’re just a bit old fashioned and can’t be bothered to dive into this form of marketing. <Editor’s Note: Just to warn/relieve you, this post is not about social media; it’s about missed opportunities.>

I reasoned that Twitter and Facebook may seem trendy and self-indulgent to some, but what matters is that your customers are using it, and so are your competitors. It’s a free service – get on there and get your message out. Makes sense, right?

Time will tell if I win that battle, but it did remind me of a similar scratch-your-head scenario that still exists. Companies who still haven’t moved their SharePoint to a private cloud.

Now is the time

Recession. There’s your buzzword. Tossed throughout blog posts and newswires everywhere you look. Global economies are suffering and recessions are flaring up on every continent. And the blame is just as prevalent – tossed around at every politician and disaster in its path. But I’m not here to talk about how we got here; I’m just the guy trained in CPR and holding the life raft to get your business out alive.

I’m here to talk about moving your on-premise SharePoint infrastructure to the private cloud. Yes, it’s an economy only the Cloud could love. And that’s why you need to be…

Doing More with Less

I think we can all agree that whatever industry you’re in and whatever position you hold, you’ve been charged by your superiors or, for those at the top, your budget, to do more with less. The first time I heard this I looked down at the pencil in my hand and broke it in half. Bam! Two pencils. So I’m experienced at finding solutions. But sometimes the solution isn’t that simple; sometimes it takes more of a leap.

Businesses try different things to lessen the load, often starting with downsizing. Questionable. This may help the bottom line a bit, but it typically results in cracking the morale of the workplace in half and as the iconic film Office Space reminds us, “that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.”

So while I’m certainly no expert – mainly because being called a “pundit” sounds dirty – I am aware of a decisive, cost saving strategy that is readily available and usually comes gift wrapped on a silver plate. Your own private SharePoint Cloud. A fully customizable, highly accessible environment that runs fast, guarantees reliability and boasts securities most on-premise solutions can only dream of. All at a cost savings to your business.

And while I’d love to remain objective towards private SharePoint clouds in general, I have to zero in on Fpweb.net’s SharePoint Cloud because it distinguishes itself as a truly dedicated, managed service.

Yet some businesses hesitate to pull the trigger. I won’t be so naïve as to pretend it isn’t a big decision, but if you’re facing a crossroads within your company to do more with less, it’s a far more costly decision to change nothing. I’m here to remind you that you have the opportunity to be the invaluable employee who presents Fpweb.net’s SharePoint Cloud to your business.

And when your business begins to hesitate or point out ambiguous cloud concerns, feel free to blindside them with my…

Top 10 Reasons Fpweb.net SharePoint Cloud Hosting is a Perfect Fit for Any Enterprise:

1. Control: I consider this our biggest differentiator. Total server control in your private cloud. Fpweb.net offers you a flexible, full parity SharePoint that can be customized for any third party apps you desire. With full server access, you retain control of everything from licensing to integrations to scalability. We may manage your dedicated servers, but they’re still considered yours. And when we give you the control to scale your environment up and down, it gives you the peace of mind that your infrastructure will grow with your business.

2. Security: Yes, you can see your servers when they’re on-premise, but that doesn’t make them secure.  Fpweb.net data centers employ an aggressive security strategy that starts with cyber security and ends with physical security. Our facilities are SSAE 16 SOC I Type II certified – which means they’ve gone through an in depth, global certification audit that scrutinizes our control activities to make sure we have sound, secure controls and safeguards for all hosted data. We’re compliant ready for SOX, PCI, and HIPAA environments and our networks use redundant Cisco Intrusion Detection and Prevention systems. As for physical security, biometric security access and armed guards stand between your data and the rest of the world.

3. Recovery: Think of it as a backup plan. In case of a major incident, you have to be prepared with a business continuity plan. That starts with getting your data offsite. Fpweb.net has multiple options to meet your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) so that, in the case of a disaster, we can spin your data back up as specified. You don’t get a second chance at recovery so make sure you make the right decision with the right company the first time.

4. Reliability: While we’re on the topic of business continuity, Fpweb.net’s high availability keeps your site running. We make it easy to rely on our fast network by backing it up with a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement guarantee.

5. Performance: How about an environment built to your specific needs, performing beyond your expectations? Fpweb.net’s expertise extends to SQL Server where our database administrators design and build your SQL with best practices and the latest performance tuning techniques, leaving you with a SharePoint infrastructure tailor made for performance.

6. Expertise: Increase your I.T.’s technical agility. When you host your SharePoint with Fpweb.net, you’re placing our talent on your team. What I mean is – you’ve just given your I.T. staff a Super Shredder dose of SharePoint knowledge. We mean it when we say, we got this.

7. Experience: Fpweb.net has been around since the beginning, but even though we’re the pioneers of the SharePoint Hosting industry, we haven’t been sitting on our hands. Over the last decade our Microsoft certified support staff have built countless SharePoint farms and encountered and resolved every imaginable SharePoint issue.

8. Flexibility: 100% customizable SharePoint. Thanks to the previously mentioned full server access, you have the control to customize licensing, integrations and scalability.

9. Cost Savings: The savings come from every direction. Fpweb.net can mitigate your licensing costs, maintenance, upkeep, upgrades and overall I.T. costs. Fpweb.net’s flexibility extends to our predictable billing so you don’t have to worry about equipment failures or surprise costs.

10. Trusted Advisor: It never stops with Fpweb.net. After your SharePoint environment is built and deployed, we stay on the job. We handle all your SharePoint questions and even recommend appropriate software or integrators to help you build a solution or develop a new app. You can rest easy knowing that should any issue arise, your diligent SharePoint support is a phone call, a tweet, or an email away.

It’s a bit pitchy, yes, but I’m not telling you anything that isn’t true! These differentiators set the pace of your SharePoint environment. Fpweb.net’s SharePoint Cloud is the difference that your company needs to do more with less.

As you consider an alternative to your on-premise infrastructure, and everyone begins to simultaneously point you in the direction of private cloud hosting – contact Fpweb.net. In this economy, in this back and forth recession, it makes sense.

Don’t let a tired business plan or an old fashioned I.T. structure stop your company from seizing the advantages of Fpweb.net’s SharePoint Cloud.

I recently finished a SharePoint 2010 claims authentication project and came across an issue with user information stored in the user information list. We are using ADFS 2.0 and using email address as the unique identifier and identity claim. When user accounts are created in the user information list when assigning them permissions through our custom claims provider, email address is saved as the display name and there is nothing saved under the “Work e-mail” field.

I was not able to click on “My Settings” and edit the fields because the User Profile service was provisioned. Even after I deleted the User Profile service, I could not edit these fields through the SharePoint UI as you can see below.

Thanks to Brian Cartmel, I was able to figure out the powershell code to update a user’s information in the User Information List:

Add-PSSnapin microsoft.sharepoint.powershell -ea continue

$site = Get-SPSite "https://www.hostedsharepointatfpweb.net"

$web = $site.RootWeb

$list = $web.Lists["User Information List"]

#the account is using our trusted ADFS Identity Provider

$i = $list.Items | where {$_["Account"] -eq "i:05.t|prod adfs provider|anemailaddress@blah.com"}

$i["Work e-mail"] = " anemailaddress@blah.com "

$i["Title"] = "Andy M" #Users Display Name

$i.update()

$web.Dispose()

$site.Dispose()

According to my research each site collection has a User Information Lists which is separate from user profiles managed by the User Profile Service in SharePoint 2010 Server. This is a hidden list which you can see by navigating to http://yoursharepointsite.com/_catalogs/users/detail.aspx

Happy SharePointing!

References: Brian Cartmel – Update ‘System Account’ user information on a stand alone SharePoint installation

Join Chris Schwab, SharePoint Engineering Director for Fpweb.net, and Caroll Ford, Managing Partner and SharePoint Practice Owner for Innovative-e, Inc., for an in-depth look into the Human Resources “temptations” or mistakes that organizations make when it comes to understanding the roles necessary to successfully implement and maintain a SharePoint portal, as well as knowing what skills are essential to the various roles. Key topics in this FREE webinar include:

• Discussing the different roles that are required to successfully implement a SharePoint portal
• For each role, learning the appropriate technical and soft skills necessary to form a winning team
• Selecting the “right” people for a SharePoint team
• Understanding how SharePoint governance guidelines and policies interact with the team selection and success
• Managing a cross-functional team that consists of IT and business people who may report through different structures

Please register FREE to attend this featured SharePoint webinar.

You will be sent a link to obtain your unique attendance URL the day before or morning of the event.

View Previous Webinars:
http://innovative-e.com/innovation/presentations/Pages/default.aspx

WEBINAR SERIES SCHEDULE

January
“5 Risky SharePoint Executive Engagement Temptations”
Tuesday, January 31 at 2:00pm ET
Presenter: Mike Taylor, Innovative-e, Inc.
Sponsor: Susan Hanley LLC

February
“5 Risky SharePoint Governance Temptations”
Wednesday, February 29 at 2:00pm ET
Presenter: Tim Cermak, Innovative-e, Inc.
Sponsor: CloudShare

March
“5 Risky SharePoint Temptations for IT Leaders”
Thursday, March 29 at 2:00pm ET
Presenter: Dux Raymond Sy, Innovative-e, Inc.
Sponsor: Fpweb.net
Register: http://ittemptations.eventbrite.com/

April
“5 Risky SharePoint Training Temptations”
Friday, April 27 at 2:00pm ET
Presenter: Eoin Callan, Innovative-e, Inc.
Register: http://trainingtemptations.eventbrite.com/

May
“5 Risky SharePoint Human Resource Temptations”
Wednesday, May 23 at 2:00pm ET
Presenter: Caroll Ford, Innovative-e, Inc. 
Sponsor: Fpweb.net
Register: http://hrtemptations.eventbrite.com/

June
“Executives Beware: 5 Risky SharePoint Temptations for Executives”
Thursday, June 21 at 2:00pm ET
Presenter: Dux Raymond Sy, Innovative-e, Inc.
Register: http://execbeware.eventbrite.com/

About Fpweb.net

Fpweb.net provides enterprise SharePoint hosting. Fpweb.net has become the global leader in hosted SharePoint solutions by showcasing an unmatched level of experience and dedication along with unrivaled expertise. That’s why our cloud solutions are trusted in over 80 countries. Save time and money with total server control in your SharePoint private cloud.

About Innovative-e, Inc.

Innovative-e Inc., is a business consulting and technology services company that helps clients achieve tangible business results with Microsoft SharePoint technologies. Offerings include business process consulting, executive briefings, application development, training, project management solutions, systems integration and support. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Innovative-e is known for thought leadership in the areas of applying SharePoint technologies to improve Project Management and for developing and promoting best practices for implementing SharePoint solutions (SharePoint for PM and PM for SharePoint). Innovative-e has locations in Atlanta, Georgia, and Reston, Virginia, with technology delivery centers in Sri Lanka. For more information about Innovative-e, visit http://www.innovative-e.com.

In the last post of this series, we looked at major versioning in SharePoint 2010. In this one, we’re going to look at including minor versioning, as well as the content approval process.

These features are useful if a document will go through several iterations before being published. For example, an employee handbook may have quite a few collaborators and editors. However, before being distributed or made available company-wide, an HR manager will need to approve its contents.

So let’s take a closer look at how versioning and content approval would work in this scenario.

The first step is to configure the library:
1. Similar to before, navigate to the library and choose the Library tab.
2. Click Library Settings.
3. Under General Settings, click Versioning settings.
4. Under the Content Approval section, choose Yes.
5. Under the Document Version History section, choose Create major and minor (draft) versions.

6. Under the Draft Item Security section, choose Only users who can edit items. If you leave the default setting, then only the user who submits the document and the approver will be able to view the document while in draft mode. By setting it to Only users who can edit items, members of the team can edit the document, but those with read only access to the library will be unable to see the document until it is published.

7. Click OK.
When you navigate back to the library, you’ll notice a new column, Approval Status, has automatically been added.

So now when a member user uploads a document, it is automatically assigned Draft status.

Notice that other users with edit rights can see the document (the user name in the upper right-hand corner indicates what default SharePoint group the user belongs to):

Whereas those with only read rights can’t see the document:

So those with edit rights can continue editing the document without fear of someone viewing a draft copy. With every save a new minor version is created. After all the edits have been made the document needs approval from a user who has Approve Item permissions. To submit an item for approval, an editor simply has to:

1. Navigate to the document library.
2. Use the Edit drop-down for the item and choose Publish a Major Version.

The item is now placed in a pending status.

Now when a user with Approve Item permissions navigates to the document library, the Edit menu they see for the item is different.

They will be able to determine what documents need approval by the Pending status. So the user could use the Approval Status column to filter for all items in Pending Status.

Another way to provide a quick means of knowing items in Pending status is to simply create a document library view.

Not surprisingly, to approve or reject the item, the user would choose Approve/Reject. Upon doing so, the following is displayed:

These options are all self-explanatory, so I’m just going approve this item.

Once the item has been approved, it is now visible by those who have read access to the library:

As you can see, using content approval is a good way to ensure the correct version of a document is available. Another typical use-case is legal contracts. Legal documents frequently demand several drafts before a final copy is executed.

Content approval will minimize the risk of someone obtaining a draft version of a legal document. This obviously is important, as it can be potentially catastrophic if the wrong document is disseminated.

The next article of this ongoing series will focus on SharePoint “Co-Authoring”. This is an exciting feature of SharePoint 2010 allowing multiple users to edit documents simultaneously. Stay tuned!

Version control is a critical feature for any enterprise-scale document collaboration platform. In SharePoint, the versioning feature automatically saves every version of a document. This allows multiple people to make changes to a document without the fear of overwriting a previous version. If necessary, you can always revert to a previous document versions.

Sometimes it’s necessary to revert if the most recent copy becomes corrupt or is inadvertently saved in a “messy” state. Versioning will also prevent the (disastrous yet all too familiar) scenario of “accidentally” saving over a live copy of a document. Compared to using a simple file share, the ‘roll-back’ versioning feature makes SharePoint a more reasonable and viable choice for storing critical corporate documents.

Versioning also allows you to use the ability to leverage content approval. This is useful if a document needs to be reviewed before it’s published “live.” For example, contracts typically need approval from a separate legal department or 3rd party law firm. Using content approval versioning features, documents must be reviewed and approved- by a user with sufficient privileges- before publishing or moving to the next stage of workflow. We’ll discuss more about the SharePoint 2010 content approval process in the next article in this blog series.

By default, SharePoint 2010 has versioning turned off. To enable versioning you must configure versioning on every library where you want versioning used.

How to access Versioning settings

From your document library, click Library and then Library Settings.

In the General Settings section, click Versioning settings.

For the purposes of this post, we’re going to just look at Document Version History section. There are three options available: No versioning, Create major versions, and Create major and minor (draft) versions.

First option: No versioning is the default setting and basically means only one copy of a document exists. If you overwrite that copy with a new copy, you cannot retrieve the older version.

Second option: Create major versions specifies numbered versions of a document using a basic number scheme (such as 1, 2, 3). When an existing document is saved to a document library, a new version is created. You can always revert to a previous iteration of a document by its version number.

Third option: Create major and minor (draft) versions uses a major and minor versioning scheme (such as 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1). Versions ended in .0 are major versions, often referred to as published versions. All other versions are minor (or draft) versions. So a document with a version of 2.3 means it’s the third draft from the second published versions. This option allows you to differentiate between published content and content in draft form that is not yet ready for public consumption. Major and minor versioning will be discussed in the next article of this blog series, as it is best used with content approval.

For now, however, we’re going to take a look at how major versioning works. So I’m going to go ahead and select Create major versions. Remember, you can use versioning in conjunction with the SharePoint document Check-In/Check-Out process.

After choosing Create major versions, return to the document library and upload a document. You can see from the screenshot, the version is 1.0.

A new version is created whenever the content or the metadata associated with the content is changed. So upon changing the value in the POAmount field, you can see the Version number changes.

And when I make a change to the document and save it back to the library, the version number changes from 2.0 to 3.0.

If I use the Edit drop-down for the document I can choose Version History.

The Version History screen displays the previous versions that are retained, as well as any metadata changes that were made. For example, in the following screenshot, version 2.0 shows the POAmount column and the value that it was changed to.

Version 3.0 does not display this information, because the actual document was changed and not the metadata.

Reverting to a Previous Version

Use the Version History screen to revert to a previous version. Use the Edit drop-down for the version you want to restore, and click Restore.

Reverting to a previous version replaces the current version with the old one. Click OK to proceed when the message box appears.

It does not delete the current version. It just creates a new version. So now my version history screen looks like this:

Version 4.0 is actually the same document and metadata as version 2.0 because I chose to restore that specific version.

Versioning and Storage Space

If you are using versioning, keep in mind that each version of a document is stored in the SQL Server content database. So in our example, there are actually four copies of this single document being stored in SQL Server. As you can see, this can exponentially increase your storage needs.
In the Versioning settings, you have the ability to limit the number of versions saved. It is recommended to use this option if storage capacity is a concern (and when is it not?).

As you can see, versioning is a significant feature for document management and document collaboration in SharePoint 2010. It allows users to make edits to content and metadata without fear of destroying an already live or published document.

SharePoint versioning also keeps track of who makes changes and when, and what metadata changes were made. This improves accountability and makes it easier to follow the changes of a specific document.

Next time we’ll take a look at major and minor versioning and how content approval ensures only approved documents are published and accessible.

“It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog World.”

Besides lending some pretty revolting imagery, the term’s purpose is to warn that society is looking out for itself, so beware.

It’s rare for a stranger or a company to legitimately look out for your best interests and cater to your needs.

Frustratingly rare. We’re programmed to enter any economic exchange (whether it’s buying clothes from a department store or purchasing *shudder* car insurance, etc.) with the mindset that if we aren’t careful, we’ll be taken advantage of. And it’s not our fault, because this is usually the case.

They know they can’t make money without customers right?

I’ve talked about Why Customer Service Matters before, because it’s critical to me. Go ahead and read that link. I’ll wait… In that case, my experience with United Airlines (with whom I’ve been a loyal, almost exclusive, flyer for the past eight years for some reason) was horrible. And when I confronted them about it, I got the standard ‘sorry and see ya later’ response. And that’s not good enough.

I won’t just pick on United Airlines; I’ve got plenty of targets… I was in a small accident years ago when a truck decided it was old-fashioned to stop at red lights and slammed into a car which immediately rear-ended my car, completely ruining the Neil Peart drum solo playing on my radio. The truck drove off (if they didn’t want to stop before, why start now?) and left me with a damaged bumper that should easily be covered by my State Farm Insurance. You know, the ‘good neighbors’? Yeah, State Farm was there, but only to cover themselves. They refused my claim and upon a little investigation, I discovered they were also the carrier of the car that hit me and I guess they didn’t feel like paying out twice. Not like I paid for insurance or anything… The company didn’t care.

So I digress a bit to make a point, but only to qualify my hesitation to trust most company’s best interests of their customers.

Cue the Premium Care of Four Seasons St. Louis.

I recently received a complimentary one night stay at the luxury hotel in downtown St. Louis. It was earned through Fpweb.net’s employee motivation rewards program (every company should have some form of a rewards program to show appreciation for its employees. If you don’t have one yet, go ahead and set it up. I’ll wait…) I was excited but I had to wonder why such a nice gift was available. You can just as easily win me over with a bucket of Skittles… And here’s what our CEO Rob LaMear told me:

“I send our team to the Four Seasons so they can experience ‘premium care’ and what we are ultimately seeking here at Fpweb.net. Making people feel well cared for and anticipating their needs/wants. It’s something you talk about, but until you experience Four Seasons, Apple, Disney World, etc., you’ll never fully understand. All the little things add up to create raving fans.”

And then my perspective changed. So without further ado, here’s what I learned about business while kicking back at the Four Seasons:

1. Your actions directly affect the customer experience. Possibly one of the greatest powers you possess as an employee or a business is how easily you can change the direction of the customer’s experience. Kind words, extra attention, an unforced smile, etc. leave a positive impression. Ignoring an issue or just going through the motions because your shift ends in an hour or because the customer is irritable leads to an average or negative encounter. And average isn’t good enough. You have a product that most likely exists elsewhere, so what are you going to do to set your business apart? Almost always, this starts with the people. Be excellent for the customer and they won’t be able to stay away. And in that vein, keep in mind…

2. Nothing is set in stone. Be flexible. The situation at Four Seasons was simple. I was told by one gentleman upon arrival that parking was free. When I was charged for parking the next day, I explained my confusion and the polite receptionist promptly adjusted the price – she didn’t tell me that it’s company policy or there’s nothing she could do. There are variables to any situation and the most important variable is your customer’s attitude towards your business. Patrons and customers rarely find comfort from being told “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” Your business isn’t run by robots (yet) and there’s always a boss’s boss that can be contacted if a true problem exists. Show your customers that you are making every reasonable effort to please them. And similarly…

3. If you do make a mistake, don’t cover it up, fix it. Then fix your image. The missus and I dined at Cielo (the fancy hotel restaurant) and ordered from the four course tasting menu. After much deliberation, she ordered the short ribs which turned out to be 95% fat. Unfortunate and a slight hiccup to an otherwise amazing meal experience.  It’s not fun to return food. It involves being confrontational and having to wait for more food. Four Seasons was very apologetic. They made a mistake and they knew it. So they fixed it. But they didn’t leave it at that. They brought me a new entree as well so we would still be dining together and then the Mâitré D’ visited our table and paid for our drinks while we waited for the new food. Result. In business, you have to be transparent. If you make a mistake, don’t hide from it. Your customers know when you do. Instead, confront the problem that exists and explore every way to fix it. Do what it takes to make sure that your customers remember how well you handled the problem, not what the problem was.

4. Never mind the bells and whistles – win customers with quality, consistent service. Have you seen the Four Seasons St. Louis? It’s luxurious yes, but this isn’t achieved with a wide variety of restaurants and bars or a waterfall at reception. I suspect the minimal design was chosen because it tailors exclusively to a relaxed, spoiled experience and doesn’t bother with distractions. You don’t need a variety of choices if the choices you provide are quality. Invest in your company’s product and services and especially the people who stand behind them. When you do that, your business can…

5. Create a product or experience that stays on your customer’s mind. From the moment we stepped into the hotel, we were greeted by smiling faces, eager to help. Our city-view room was like a secret hideout catering to royalty or exceptionally clean people. I would have been perfectly content to stay locked in there for the duration of my stay… but then I wouldn’t have been treated to exceptional service from the bar staff as we reclined on the rooftop balcony sipping cold beers while looking out at the Arch and downtown St. Louis. Or enjoyed the cool evening outside for dinner while an attentive staff served us a delicious feast that led to further drinks beside a fire pit on the rooftop before bedtime. Yes, I’ll remember the hotel for its fine dining and amenities, but it was the people who made the difference. The staff legitimately looked after us and did whatever it took to make our evening memorable. And succeeded.

Turn your customers into fans!

So I think back to Rob LaMear’s comment that premium care is what we strive to accomplish for our customers at Fpweb.net, and I have to say I’m pleased with what I’m seeing and I hope our customers are too. We’ve surrounded ourselves with a staff that has pride for our product and makes every effort to put our customers first. We call it Customer Care and we have a department dedicated to it. Fpweb.net is a trusted SharePoint advisor as well as a leading SharePoint hosting provider, because our customers trust that we are using our extensive knowledge and experience in their best interest.

Products and expertise will get you far in business, but creating genuinely positive customer experiences has to be the fire that’s lit underneath your business. Your fuel. Because it certainly will be the difference between whether or not you succeed.

(Do you have a customer service story to share? What is your business doing to set itself apart for the customer? We’d love to hear from you!)

SharePoint is a complex platform, so working with SharePoint often requires working with an array of non-SharePoint related software products

Sometimes SMTP can be a ‘pain point’ for SharePoint Administrators since it’s not directly related to SharePoint. But when you encounter email delivery problems in SharePoint, resolving the problem frequently involves SMTP troubleshooting. So where does one start in attempting to diagnose an SMTP error or a possible SMTP problem? On many occasions I’ve used Telnet for this purpose, and it has saved me a ton of time and effort. I will discuss the steps in detail in hopes that it can help someone else in similar circumstances.

We will essentially be using a well-known method of using Telnet to send an email, but utilizing it specifically to help diagnose SharePoint SMTP issues and uncover the root cause of any problems. Telnet is one of the best and most reliable tools for troubleshooting email problems in SharePoint because it saves time and narrows down the possible places that a problem may be occurring.

For this process, we will need four things:

1. The public IP address for the mail server
2. A valid email address that SMTP should be able to relay to (in this case this will be an email-enabled Library in SharePoint 2010)
3. An external mail account, such as a Hotmail account
4. Telnet client enabled on our local workstation

When I first started working with SharePoint, I would frequently encounter problems with email-enabled Lists or Libraries. The troubleshooting process would typically involve me sending an email to said List or Library and waiting for a Non-Delivery Report (NDR) when it didn’t work. This takes forever though, as your email will attempt to send repeatedly until it “times out”. As a result, this could take days to accurately troubleshoot. Using Telnet, we can get these same NDR codes, but have them returned immediately.

So for this walk-through, I have found our four requirements in advance:

1. Public IP for the mail server: 204.144.121.217
2. SMTP relay mail address: All@list17.sharepointspace.com
3. External email address: Elough13@hotmail.com (please don’t spam me)
4. Telnet enabled on my workstation

First, we’ll use Telnet to gain access into the default SMTP port for our mail server. If successful, this will tell us two things:

1. That SMTP is listening on the port
2. The port is opened in the firewall

The command looks like this below:

If you are unable to connect, then you need to check both #1 and #2 above before moving any further. We are assuming that neither of these problems exists in this case.

Once connected, you can essentially “craft” an email for the mail server. This is done by the following commands, (keep in mind that you cannot Backspace in this session, so any mistypes will require you to re-type the entire line):

You must first recognize the server by typing ‘ehlo’

Which will return the following:

Now that the formalities are taken care of, we can start our diagnostics.

First we will pick the email we are sending from – this is our external mail account that should be able to send emails to this server, (in our case elough13@hotmail.com), and use this in our session. See the following screen shot for the syntax, and remember to attempt to avoid typos.

Using mail from:elough13@hotmail.com tells the session what email address this email is “coming from” and is, in fact, mimicking what would happen if you actually send from this email address.

You can encounter problems in this step depending on your configuration. If you are returned an error, then this is where your troubleshooting starts and you should skip the next step and begin troubleshooting based on the code returned and the NDR list, (this can be found below just keep reading).

Now to tell the server where the mail is going, (in this case this is our email enabled List or Library):

Using rcpt to:All@list17.sharepointspace.com tells our mail server where this email will be sent to.

This step is typically where you will find any problems that are present. If this operation is allowed, then the 250 response above is returned. So, if a 250 response is returned when NO problems are detected, what is returned when problems ARE detected?  This is where the diagnostics come in. Here is an example:

Instead of using my List or Libraries address, we will attempt to relay to another server I know it will definitely NOT have permissions to relay to, elough@fpweb.net.

So we perform the same as everything listed above, except for the rcpt to, which we will use “rctp to:elough@fpweb.net” and are returned an error as seen below:

As you can see, not only are we told ‘Unable to Relay’, but the command returns an error (code 5.7.1) as well.

This error code will actually correlate to the same NDR code you would have received had you sent this email the “normal” way. A list I commonly use to correlate these codes can be found here:

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/939

In the reference, we find that error 5.7.1 indicates a permissions problem. The reference guide also offers some possibilities into where the problem may exist. This method can be used to troubleshoot virtually any SMTP error. And you’ll have a good starting point to narrow down the potential problem almost immediately. In this case, I would need to check the SMTP Relay permissions and would see that the mail server indeed does not have permissions to relay to the elough@fpweb.net email address.

*A side note is that I realize that 5.5.4 is not on the list of NDR response codes. This error is usually the result of a typo.

Now for fun you can use Data and type an actual email, but that tends to enter the realm of mischief more that goes way beyond diagnosing errors.

Happy troubleshooting! Have questions? Please leave a comment below.