Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog

December 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

December 2009 Cumulative Updates are available for download for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Cumulative Updates will now always be available at the Update Center

For additional download information and detailed descriptions of the December 2009 Cumulative Update visit the Updates Resource Center for SharePoint Products and Technologies at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx.

Additional Resources

Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers, and Related Products

Operating System Requirements of SharePoint 2010

We've seen some confusion in the newsgroups and elsewhere on the versions and editions of Windows that SharePoint 2010 will run on. This post is meant to clarify some of the most common questions we have seen.

SharePoint 2010 will support only 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  SharePoint will not install at all on 32 bit Windows, or any earlier version of Windows  such as Windows Server 2000 or Windows Server 2003.

SharePoint is not supported on 'Server Core' installations of Windows Server 2008 and R2. The Server Core installations of Windows server do not contain some of the components required for SharePoint to be configured or run.

To make developing for SharePoint 2010 easier, it is possible to install SharePoint on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista SP2  and Windows 7. Note that running production environments on these OSes are not supported and it will not be possible to upgrade deployments running on client versions of Windows to future versions of SharePoint.  Instructions on installing SharePoint 2010 on client versions of Windows are a bit more involved and we recommend reading the instructions at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx.

* Small and Essential Business Server editions of Windows install SharePoint as an optional component.

** Support for specific editions of Windows 7/Vista are yet to be finalized, but are likely to be 'Business'/'Professional' editions and above.

The list above is meant for informational purposes only. The official list of system requirements for SharePoint 2010 is located at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx and includes additional details on prerequisites and other optional components.

Umesh Unnikrishnan

Program Manager, SharePoint

Try System Center Operations Manager Management Packs for SharePoint Server 2010 Beta and SharePoint Foundation 2010 beta

Management Packs allow users to monitor SharePoint 2010 with System Center Operations Manager. SharePoint Foundation Management Pack and SharePoint Server 2010 Management Pack enables monitoring of SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Search Server 2010 (These is separate management pack for FAST search), Project Server 2010 and Office Web Apps. Once management pack is imported to System Center console, based on console configuration it automatically discovers what SharePoint bits or servers are installed in the environment that is being monitored and start monitoring those components.

These 2010 management packs will be released to System Center Operations manager catalog and will also be released to web along with SharePoint 2010 RTM.

Out of box experience

SharePoint Management Packs monitors all prominent services, Shared Services, SharePoint Health Analyzer rules, Web Applications and SharePoint Servers. In SharePoint 2010 you can use it to monitor both physical (servers and services running on those servers) and logical (Shared Services, Web Application etc.) of SharePoint. You can monitor multiple farms, and even fix some issues automatically by running out of box tasks. You can also write your own tasks using System Center Wizard or Windows PowerShell script to enable this self-healing.

Primary takeaway of SharePoint 2010 MP is depth and breadth of monitoring and rapid detection and resolution. Here’re the improvements compared with the previous product.

These numbers illustrate significant improvements over 2007 management pack. 1200% and 300% change in number of classes and discovery represents improvement in depth and breadth of monitoring. Change in number of monitors indicates improvement in granularity of monitoring that enables quick isolation of issues. Detailed knowledge articles represent rapid diagnosis and resolution. Did you also notice knowledge articles are on TechNet, which means we will be able to improve these articles based on your feedback even after release!

In 2007 you can just monitor, one farm with multiple servers and some services. Diagram view below reflects a typical 2007 monitoring. Anything that is crossed was not available in 2007 management pack and remaining had limited depth of one additional level.

In 2010 you can monitor multiple farms, multiple servers, services, shared services, SharePoint Health Analyzer rules (Which saves you a trip to central admin which also means that System Center Operation Manager console is your one stop shop for all monitoring requirements) and web applications.

Server Monitoring

Service Monitoring

Share Service Monitoring

SharePoint Health Analyzer monitoring (One stop shop for both native and external monitoring)

Web Application Monitoring

Download Management Pack Beta for SharePoint 2010

SharePoint Foundation 2010: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=43d5ee9a-b9a6-441d-a35e-8a7b9b15e20c

SharePoint Server 2010: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=c8a9d749-b7a8-412a-b2db-f3e464ed3fcf

SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series: Part 2 - Using the New SharePoint Lists

Hi!   I'm Jason Morrill, another Program Manager on the SharePoint team.   I wanted to write a bit about what it feels like to use SharePoint lists with the new user experience.   If you've got a SharePoint site sitting around, I'd encourage you to open it in another window and follow along as I talk about things.
Let's start by just browsing to a document library with no content.

The first thing you'll notice is that we've moved some of the navigation and menus around.   The stuff right in the middle (Site Name > Document Library > All Documents) is your current location.   You can click on the Site Name to get back home, and you can click on the view name (All Documents) to switch to another view.   Above the title, you see there's a black row - this is where you go to access all your commands. I’ll talk more about that later.   Below the title, you see the list view items.   Right now there are no items, so let's fix that.  

To add an item to this library, you can click on the Add document button in the view. That button will always be available at the end of the current page, if you want to quickly add documents to this library. When you click it, you’ll notice that instead of navigating the entire page, we just put up a dialog asking you where you want to upload. This makes it faster to load and also easier to understand what’s going on. For this post, I actually want to upload multiple files – so go ahead and click on Upload Multiple Files. You’ll see something like this:

You can drag files onto the blue rectangle to add them to your upload list, or you can click on Browse for files instead to find the files in a windows dialog. Once you’ve picked them, click Ok and they will start uploading. When the page refreshes, you’ll see lot of items in the view. If you hover over one, you’ll notice that the row gets highlighted:

You can click on the dropdown arrow in the middle of the row to see a menu of commands for this document. However, you can also click anywhere else on the row (well, anywhere that’s not a link) to select the document. This will automatically open a menu of all the available commands for the selected document:

This menu is where you can find all the commands in SharePoint. Sometimes, it will open automatically (like when you select an item). But, if you want to open it manually, you can always click on one of the tab names. Once it is open, you can look through the various available tabs by clicking on their names. The names generally describe the thing the command affects, so if you click on Library you are looking at commands you can perform on the Document Library. Commands on the Documents tab are relevant to the currently selected document or documents.

When the ribbon opened, you might have noticed that it covered up the page title. We did that to save space, but if you ever want to get back to the page title, you can just click on Browse:

Changing ribbon tabs won’t change what items you have selected, so it’s always safe to click around looking for the command you want.

Now, go ahead and click back on the Documents tab and look through the available commands. You’ll notice that you can do all the familiar SharePoint actions from here. Go ahead and click on Edit Properties, and you’ll see the form pop up in another dialog. You can make whatever changes you want, click Save and we’ll drop you right back on the same page again, quick and easy.

In addition to just selecting one item, you can select multiple items. To do that, just click on the check box that appears on the left of each row when you hover over it:

Not all commands work on multiple items, and you’ll notice that the ribbon has greyed out commands that can’t be used. This multiple selection makes it easy to delete, check in and check out many files at once.

Once you’ve added enough items, the view will start to page. This means that you’ll need to click on the next page arrow at the bottom of the view to see more of what’s in the list:

You can control the number of items shown on each page from the Modify View page, which can be accessed from the Library tab (just to the right of the Documents tab we were looking at earlier):

In addition to modifying the current view, the Library tab also allows you to switch views and use the datasheet. You can also create new columns, connect the lists to client applications – like Excel, Windows Explorer or SharePoint Workspaces – and customize the list’s forms, workflows or other settings.

By looking through those commands, there’s obviously a lot more that can be done with SharePoint lists. But, with what I’ve shown above, you should be able to get around your lists and libraries with relative ease. Good luck!

Planning for Upgrade from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to SharePoint Server 2010

In order to upgrade to SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010, you must first be running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 at SP2 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 at SP2, respectively. For customers running prior versions of SharePoint, including Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003, this means that you must first upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 prior to upgrading to 2010 versions. Windows SharePoint Server 3.0 with SP2 is available as a free download, and trial versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 are available and supported for use in this upgrade/migration process:

SP2 Slipstream Downloads and Trial Versions

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (32-bit) with SP2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (64-bit) with SP2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9FB41E51-CB03-4B47-B89A-396786492CBA

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Trial Version (32-bit) with SP2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2E6E5A9C-EBF6-4F7F-8467-F4DE6BD6B831

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Trial Version (64-bit) with SP2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3015FDE4-85F6-4CBC-812D-55701FBFB563

Please note that the trial product versions are licensed for 180 days of use from the date of installation.

Upgrade Method

This upgrade process should be done using the Database Migration approach documented in the following links:

Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Determine upgrade approach (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263447.aspx

Determine upgrade approach [Windows SharePoint Services]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287821.aspx

SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 (pre-release documentation)

Determine upgrade approach (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263447(office.14).aspx

Determine upgrade approach (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287821(office.14).aspx

Note that this method is referred to as “Database attach upgrade” in pre-release documentation

Please note that there are manual steps involved in this upgrade path in order to maintain some configuration information, as documented in the links above.

Example Upgrade Sequence

The upgrade documentation above should be referenced for full detail and information, but the following illustrates an example of an upgrade sequence for moving from Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010.

1. Prepare Farms

a. Set up a small, temporary farm running Office SharePoint Server 2007

b. Set up full SharePoint 2010 farm and verify that it is configured and running correctly

2. Upgrade content from 2003 to 2007

a. Detach the content databases from the 2003 farm and take the 2003 farm offline

b. Attach the content databases to the 2007 farm and upgrade them

c. Verify the content has upgraded and that the 2007 farm is working correctly

3. Upgrade content from 2003 to 2007

a. Detach the content databases from the 2007 farm

b. Attach the content databases to the SharePoint Server 2010 farm and upgrade them in parallel

c. Verify the content has upgraded to SharePoint 2010 and is working correctly

4. Start serving requests on the SharePoint Server 2010 farm

Again, this is just an example for illustration: for full detail, including all steps and important considerations, please review the existing and pre-release documentation linked above.

Additional Information and Notes

Please note that SharePoint Server 2010 Beta cannot be upgraded to the final release version (RTM). Any use of these steps or guidelines with any pre-release version of SharePoint 2010 should be for testing/evaluation only.

This upgrade path will necessarily mean a move from 32-bit OS architecture to 64-bit OS architecture. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 were supported only on 32-bit operating systems, as opposed to SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, which are supported only on 64-bit operating systems.

The database platform selected for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 should be consistent with the planned platform for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. For example, if SQL Server 2008 will serve as the database software for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 trial versions you should maintain that version for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to avoid downgrade support limitations such as SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2005. For additional information on SQL Server 2008 downgrade rights see:

SQL Server 2008 Licensing Frequently Asked Questions

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/licensing-faq.aspx

How to set Replication Directory Changes

In November, we posted guidance to help setup User Profile Synchronization for those evaluating SharePoint 2010 public beta.  In order for the sync to work, the SharePoint WFE farm admin account or UPA admin account must have “Replicated Directory Changes” permissions in Active Directory.  To help the SharePoint admins that are not Active Directory admins, here is a step-by-step walk-thru to complete this task on Windows Server 2008 R2.  Finally, the User Profile Service administration content on TechNet has been updated based upon feedback from the public beta release.

1. Open Active Directory Users and Groups with local machine Administrator permissions.
   
   
2. Right click the domain and select Delegation Control.
   
   
3. Click Next on the Delegation Control Wizard welcome page.
   
   
4. On the Users or Groups page, add the domain\account of your SharePoint farm admin account and click Next.
    
   
5. On the Tasks to delegate page, select “Create a custom task to delegate” and click Next.
   
   
6. On the Active Directory Object Type page, keep the default options and click Next.
   
   
7. On the Permissions page, check the “Replicating Directory Changes” and click Next.
   
   
8. Click Finish to complete the Delegation of Control Wizard.
    
   

Walkthrough of creating a SharePoint 2010 external list using Visual Studio 2010 Beta

There are a bunch of SharePoint features in Visual Studio 2010 Beta. You may have already heard about them from reading the blog Short Overview of SharePoint Features in Visual Studio 2010 or by other means. Today I want to introduce one of them, Business Data Connectivity (BDC) designer, which is available in the project template Business Data Connectivity Model. If BDC is new to you, here is a short description. BDC is one of two most important architectural components of Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) which enables users to read and write data from external systems—through Web and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services, databases, and Microsoft .NET Framework assemblies—from within Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 applications. This MSDN webpage Business Data Connectivity (BDC) Service has a more descriptive version.

Visual Studio 2010 helps a SharePoint developer to develop, debug and deploy .NET assemblies as external data sources to SharePoint. In the following paragraphs, I will walkthrough with you how to create your first SharePoint external list using Visual Studio 2010. In order to make this walkthrough work on your machine, you need to install SharePoint 2010 Public Beta^* and Visual Studio 2010 Beta2^#.

*: Please read Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server before the installation. If you are using SharePoint Foundation 2010 you will need to create a Feature Event Receiver to enable the import of BDC models. How to create a Feature Event Receiver will be covered in a future blog post.

#: Please make sure Microsoft SharePoint Development Tools component is selected when installing. It is chosen by default if you choose Full installation.

Let’s start the journey.

1. Create a new BDC Model project. (Main menu: File -> New -> Project…). In the left column of the New Project dialog, you are able to find node 2010 under tree view Visual C# -> SharePoint. Similarly you can find same node under Visual Basic -> SharePoint. In the middle column of the dialog, you should be able to see Business Data Connectivity Model listed as one of the project templates. See the screenshot as follows. Here I am creating BDC Model project in Visual C#. You are able to do the same things in Visual Basic.

2. After clicking [OK] button in the New Project dialog, the SharePoint Customization Wizard dialog will be displayed. In this dialog you can customize the local site you want to target and trust level for the SharePoint solution. Since a BDC model is deployed to a farm, a collection of one or more SharePoint servers and one or more SQL servers, only “Deploy as a farm solution” option is enabled. Here is the screenshot of the dialog.

3. When you click [Finish] button in the SharePoint Customization Wizard dialog, the BDC Model project will be created. There are four main UI panes that help you manage the BDC model visually. They are the BDC Designer Surface, BDC Method Details Pane, BDC Explorer, and Properties Browser.

a. The BDC Designer Surface allows editing entities, identifiers, methods, and associations between entities. And you can do that either from toolbox or context menus.

b. The BDC Method Details pane, where its name is already self-explanatory, lets you edit everything related to a method, from the method itself, its parameters to its parameters’ type descriptors, from method instances to filter descriptors, etc.

c. BDC Explorer lists and organizes metadata objects in the BDC model in a tree view. It lets you to browse and search metadata objects in a graphical way and allows you to copy/cut/paste type descriptors between different parameters or type descriptors.

d. Properties Browser gives you a familiar way of editing components and attributes of BDC Models. We use it to supplement the functions offered by the other three panes and list all the attributes for a particular metadata object for editing. Here is a typical layout of a BDC Model project as described above.

4. If you notice, there is already a default entity generated for you when the project is created. This default entity also has an identifier and two methods ReadItem and ReadList created. One is a Finder method that is to return a collection of data. The other is a Specific Finder method that is to return a specific entry based on the input parameter(s).

5. Now let’s deploy to the SharePoint server. You can either click the deploy menu item in main menu (Build -> Deploy Solution), or in the context menu of the project or the solution. In the output you will see several activities happening including packaging, solution retraction/addition, deployment, etc.

6. Let’s open the target site and see if our model has been successfully deployed. Open the target site with any browser supported by SharePoint, like Internet Explorer 8. Create an external list based on the model we just deployed. Here are the steps to create an external list in case you are new to it.

a. In main menu: Click Site Actions -> More Options…

b. On the Create dialog, select External List, click [Create] button in the right column

c. On the next external list create form, type a name for the list. Check ‘Yes’ to display the list on the Quick Launch for easy access. Then click to select the model we just deployed in the External Content Type Picker form. Click [Create] on the external list create form. Now the Hello World list is displayed.

In the main menu under List Tools -> Items, you may find only “View Item” option is enabled. Guess why? Yes, it is because the default entity only has a Finder method to view the entire list and a Specific Finder method to view a specific item. In our next blog in this series, we will show you how to add more functions like Add, Update and Delete to the list as well as pull data from external data sources.

Beta Language Packs for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta and SharePoint Server 2010 Beta are now available for download

Several beta language packs for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta and SharePoint Server 2010 Beta are now available through the Download Center.  Installing one or more language pack will allow you to evaluate the new Multi User Interface (MUI) features of SharePoint 2010.

The following language packs are available:

• German
• English
• Spanish
• French
• Japanese
• Russian
• Chinese (simplified)

SharePoint Foundation 2010 Language Packs

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0956787e-210d-4d78-9e4e-a9cdef0e8495&displayLang=en

SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=a0c7c05d-8fca-4391-bc70-b62c9af91123&displaylang=en

Please follow the instructions on the download page to install language packs. For further reading, please refer to TechNet articles: Deploy language packs (SharePoint Foundation 2010) and Deploy language packs (SharePoint Server 2010).

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint

SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series: Part 1 – Introduction to the new List View

Hello.  This is Greg Chan, a Program Manager on the SharePoint team.  I am excited to kick-off a new blog series that will cover a wide spectrum of topics related to the new List View in SharePoint 2010. 

What is a List View again?

Put simply, a List View is a view for displaying SharePoint list data.  The concept of List View has been around since SharePoint v2.  While there are other technologies being used for visualizing list data in different scenarios (e.g. Content Query Web Part), List View remains the default component for displaying list data in SharePoint 2010.

List Views can be spotted everywhere in SharePoint.  They are used to display information such as your announcements, tasks and calendar schedules.

Examples of List Views

What’s the big change with List Views in 2010?

In 2010, we are introducing a component called the XSLT List View Web Part (XLV) that serves as the new default technology for displaying list data.  This honor used to belong to the List View Web Part (LVWP), which was the default from SharePoint v2 to 2007.  (Note: LVWPs are still supported in SharePoint 2010, but just not as widely used as the new XLV.) 

The new XLV brings a ton of improvements to the SharePoint platform.  This blog series aim to cover most of these areas. 

What are the key benefits to the new List Views (XLV)?

Replacing the default technology for List Views required fundamental changes to the SharePoint platform.  So why did we do it?  Let me call out the high level benefits of the XLV compared against LVWP from 2007:

• More Designer Friendly
  • Rich customization support through SharePoint Designer (SPD) while preserving browser UI experience
    • In SharePoint 2007, two of the main web parts for displaying list data were LVWP and the DataFormWebPart (DFWP).  Both had their own advantages and disadvantages.  The LVWPs were fully integrated into the browser with in-browser editing support, but lacked rich customization experience as they were not fully customizable inside SharePoint Designer 2007.  The DFWPs had a much richer customization story as they were fully editable inside SharePoint Designer, but lacked the in-browser editing capabilities that LVWPs had.  With the new XLV, SharePoint combined the best aspects of these two technologies and now allow you to richly customize your XLVs in SPD and also provide the in-browser editing experience.  It is important to note that XLV will preserve both SPD customizations and in-browser modifications, and not blow any of that away.
  • Extensible and shareable custom styles
    • A custom view style that you designed in SPD can now be easily shared with other designers across your site collection. 
  • Popular designer features such as Conditional Formatting.
    • Similar to the Conditional Formatting feature in Excel, designer can now set conditions on when to format items in a list view (e.g. KPIs.)
• More Developer Friendly
  • Uses standards-based XSLT instead of CAML
    • Much better documentation of XSLT than CAML.  (http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt)
  • Easily extensible
    • Developers no longer have to include large blobs of CAML to define views in their List definitions.  Take advantage of shared XSLT used to define out-of-box views and only define custom XSL for the sections you want.
• More End-User Friendly
  • Enhanced user experience including Ribbon UI and new multi-selection model.
    • Bulk editing and deletion are now supported.
  • Inline editing support
    • Edit fields in your list view without being directed to another page or dialog.
• More Robust Ways to Access Data
  • Display enterprise data through Business Connectivity Services (BCS)
    • End users can now interact with business data similar to how they interact with regular SharePoint list data. 
  • Cross-web list views displaying data from another web
  • Display list data joined from different lists

What’s coming up in the blog series?

Many people from different teams in the SharePoint family contributed to the new List View in SharePoint 2010.  In this blog series, you’ll get a chance to hear from some of those area experts covering key List View topics.

Here are the topics that will be covered:

• Introduction to the new List View  (you are reading it! J)
• List View – New User Experience
• List View Architecture
• List View Customization
• External Lists
• Conditional Formatting
• How to Share Your Custom List View Styles
• How to Create Custom Fields for the new List View
• Related Item View
• How to Create Views Displaying Cross-Web and Joined List Data

The order in which these topics will be published may change.  We may also add or modify topics on this list.  If there is any areas regarding List Views that you’d like to learn about and isn’t on this list, feel free to suggest them here. 

Thanks for reading.  I hope everyone is excited about the new List Views.  Stayed tuned for more!

Installation notice for the SharePoint Server Public Beta on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows 7

If you will be installing the SharePoint Server 2010 Public Beta on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft Windows 7, then you will need to download and install an update from http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806  to resolve an issue that occurs in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 when provisioning Service Applications or when accessing pages that make service calls.  Without the hotfix, these operations will result in an error "System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive. (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\<Service Area>\client.config line <Line Number>)".  

If you have already installed Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 on a server running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 does not need to be reinstalled when the update becomes available; however, Service Applications that have been successfully provisioned without the update installed may need to be removed and re-provisioned once the update has been successfully applied.

Update Center is now live

The Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers, and Related Products went live today, which will enable customers to find an up-to-date list of all of our Service Pack, Public Update, and Cumulative Update releases in one location. While the SharePoint team blog has posted Cumulative Update package information in the past, this will be available on the Update Center moving forward.

A few Update Center highlights:

• Latest Updates Table
• See the latest updates for your version of Office
• List of all releases in a year
• Find information about past releases
• RSS Feed
• Subscribe to our feed and get updated as new releases become available

Path to User Profile Synchronization success in SharePoint 2010 Beta

The TechNet content about this topic has been updated to incorporate the information in this blog.  Please refer to it if you need guidance on setting up user profile synching in SharePoint Server 2010 Beta.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721049(office.14).aspx

Thanks!

Dave Pae
SharePoint TPM

[Note: Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7 WCF hotfix is now available and this post has been updated.] 

Before we get into the deep details, I want to share a high-level checklist to setup User Profile syncing on Windows Server 2008.  Once the WCF hotfix for Windows Server 2008 R2 is available, this guidance will work on R2.  This checklist is for beta only - we plan to improve how this works by RTM. 

- Check that your system meets minimum requirements: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx
- Start with a clean OS install
- Check that the WCF hotfix is installed
           Windows Server 2008 WCF hotfix http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkID=160770
           Windows Server 2008 R2/Windows 7 WCF hotfix http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806
- Check that you have done a "Complete" install of SharePoint Server 2010
- Check that the setup/farm admin account has "Replicating directory changes" in your test domain
- Use the farm configuration wizard to setup all the service applications and successfully create a site collection
- Check that statistics (i.e. Number of User Profiles, etc.) appear on the User Profile Service Application page
- Start the User Profile Synchronization Service and status changes to "Started" - this can take some time and this will configure and start the Forefront Identity services for you (do not try to manually set the logon credentials and start the service)
- Setup an Active Directory Connection
- Start a full Profile import 

Now onto the full details to setup the User Profile synching...

When using SharePoint 2010 Beta, if you need to synchronize bulk users and groups with AD or LDAP, you’d likely be using the user profile synchronization functionality in SharePoint. This functionality is the backbone to turning the profile store into a ‘person’ store with interesting information from AD/LDAP or BDC sources, including hierarchy and group information that can be used to drive functionality such as audiences or hierarchy driven business processes.

We’ve done an overhaul of this feature in 2010, which is also leading to some growing pains for us through the Beta. We’ve a set of steps that you can follow to successfully bring users and groups into the profile store, and despite the fun and temptation of playing, we highly recommend you follow these steps.

For brevity, I am going to list the steps for AD only. In place of reading these steps as you go along, please give this a full read and then follow the steps. Note that quite a few of these steps are because of known issues in the Beta and we are working towards fixing them for RTM.

Prepping for Provisioning the User Profile Synchronization Service

1. After provisioning the User Profile Service Application, ensure that the service is running by going to the Manage Services on Server page in central admin, and if the User Profile service does not show as started, click start on User Profile Service. Do not try to start the User Profile “Synchronization” Service at this time (it’s listed right underneath the User Profile Service).

2. Permissions (for the account you are logged in as, when provisioning or configuring the user profile synchronization service)

a. In order to run the User Profile Synchronization service, you must be a farm admin. Running the user profile synchronization service requires a farm topology decision (where to run it and when), which is a farm admin operation across the SharePoint services platform.

b. Ensure that the farm admin running the farm timer job (typically the account you specified during install unless explicitly changed after install) is a local admin on the box where you are going to run the sync service.

c. This account should also be added to the user profile administrators with full control privileges.

d. While rare, please ensure that this account is not excluded by policy from being able to logon-locally on the machine where sync will be provisioned and run.

Provisioning the User Profile Synchronization Service

3. Now, start the User Profile Synchronization Service, by going to the Manage Services on Server page in central admin and clicking start on the User Profile “Synchronization” service. When you hit start, service will ask you to associate a User Profile Service Application with it, select the User Profile Service Application you created earlier and hit OK.

4. Wait a few minutes to allow for provisioning, verify that the User Profile Synchronization Service shows Started on the Manage Services on Server page, and then check the following items on the  machine where the sync service is running

a. Run services.msc and check if the windows services “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” and “Forefront Identity Manager Service” are running. Do not start them here manually.

b. Check the folder %Programfiles%\Microsoft Office Servers \14.0\Synchronization Service\MaData to see if there are two subfolders \ILMMA and \MOSS-XYZ (where XYZ is the name of your user profile service application). These folders will be empty at this time.

5. Issue an IISReset on the machine where user profile sync service was provisioned.

Prepping for Connection Creation

6. Before you proceed with creating connections to bring data in, it’s good to pause and spec out what containers you’d be selecting for your connection, where the users are, where the groups are etc. It’s important to get the connections right, before kicking-off sync. We highly recommend that you spec one connection per forest and do not create multiple connections to the same forest.

7. In order to be able to sync with AD, you need to have an account that can be used to call AD and identify what has changed since a given time (in other words, an account that is capable of reading the AD change log). This right is called “Replicate Directory Changes” in AD lingo. This right does not allow for writing or modification of AD objects. You’d need this account name and password when you create a connection. This account can be the same or different than the farm or UPA admin account. Please do not proceed without having an account with these rights, even if you don’t plan to do incremental synchronization. This AD right is required for both full and incremental sync.

Creating a Connection

8. To create a connection with your AD source, you must logon locally on the central admin box. User the Configure Synchronization Connections link in the user profile service central admin page for connection creation.

9. Majority of the items on the connection creation page are intuitive. Specify the fully qualified domain name for the forest, and specify the DC. Ensure that both the forest and the DC are directly reachable from the machine where you provisioned the user profile sync service.

10. You’d likely leave the Authentication provider type to “Windows Auth”.

11. Right below the authentication provider fields, you’d see the account name and password fields for the AD account you procured in step 7.

12. Select Populate Containers and carefully chose the right containers for your connection. For example, find out which containers have the users, if you don’t want to bring in anything else. We have some trouble with this control in IE8, so press F12, and select IE7 in the dev tools window that pops up.

13. If you had additional connections to create, create them all now.

Configure Users or Users and Groups

14. Based on the numbers of users and groups in your system, it can take much longer to sync users and groups, then syncing users only. So to get you started, we’ve provided for a Users-only option under Configure Synchronization Settings link. Select Users-only for the first full run.

Additional Settings

15. We don’t cover the details in this blog, but you can setup additional property mappings and filters at this time, if absolutely needed. If you can live without filtering out data or mapping specific custom properties, it might be best to proceed without them.

Running Sync

16. At this point, you can go to Start Profile Synchronization, select Start Full Synchronization and click ok. Depending upon the number of objects, the first full sync can take many hours to complete. We expect the performance to improve with RTM but after the first full sync, the incremental syncs should be much faster.

What to Expect Next

17. We have bunch of kinks to work out in the status that you see on the right side of the user profile service admin page. For example, if you see the number in the status going down, that means the sync run has just moved from one stage of synchronization to another and are now showing the number for that stage. We are also working on a tool to let you stop a bad run, but in the meantime, it’s not recommended that you stop a sync run brute force. This can get you in a tough state that requires special database-level steps to recover from.

18. If you are running sync for the first time, and you already have the User profile service live, for example users can use their MySites and Profiles, they might see changing organization charts as users come in and managers get attached. This should all clear up once the sync run is complete.

19. Along with the user number shown in the status, you can also search for a known profile or accounts that start with a known domain name in Manage User Profiles page. Note that you are going to not see any users listed here, but they are there, you just have to search for them.

Running Incremental Sync

20. Once the full sync step is complete, you can flip the “Users only” setting to “Users and Groups” and run an incremental sync (or schedule an incremental job).

SharePoint 2010 Public Beta is now available for download

Today we are announcing the general availability of the public beta of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010 and Office Web Apps for our customers and partners. Millions of people can download the beta at http://www.microsoft.com/2010. 

Office Mobile 2010 has also reached the public beta milestone and is now available on the Windows Mobile Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

As part of the beta, we are unveiling several new capabilities, including:

• The Outlook Social Connector, a new feature which brings communications history, business and social networking feeds into the Outlook experience.
  • At beta, the Outlook Social Connector will support SharePoint social networking and support Windows Live at launch.
  • We are also announcing that LinkedIn will be the first social networking site to provide a connector for the Outlook Social Connector.
  • We are also releasing the Outlook Social Connector SDK for developers to build connectors to third party social networks.
• Technology and design advancements including deeper integration between Office 2010 and Office Web Apps, improved navigation, visual design and icon updates, a new Office logo and increased performance and stability.

We’re also announcing our plan to deliver Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP which will expand the long standing Duet partnership. The joint solution from SAP and Microsoft will enable interoperability between SAP applications and SharePoint 2010 and provide complete flexibility and extensibility to compose solutions that blend the worlds of process and collaboration. Duet Enterprise is built on top of the new Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010. The solution is planned to be released in the second half of calendar year 2010.

SharePoint Public Beta Resources

• General information about SharePoint 2010: http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/Pages/default.aspx
• Resources for Developers on MSDN: http://www.mssharepointdeveloper.com
• Resources for IT Pros on TechNet: http://www.mssharepointitpro.com
• Have a SharePoint 2010 question? Ask it in the SharePoint 2010 forums

Where can I download SharePoint 2010 public beta?
You can download SharePoint and Office 2010 public beta from http://www.microsoft.com/2010

Is the SharePoint public beta supported?
The SharePoint public beta is not supported. However, we recommend looking at our resources listed above and asking questions in the SharePoint 2010 forums.

When is the final release of SharePoint and Office 2010?
We are planning to release SharePoint and Office 2010 in the first half of calendar year 2010.

Will there be a migration path from SharePoint public beta to final release?
We do not plan to support a SharePoint 2010 public beta to release bits migration path. The SharePoint 2010 public beta should be used for evaluation and feedback purposes only.

If I’m on SharePoint 2007, how do I get ready for SharePoint 2010?
Take a look here for getting ready guidance.

Is there a downloadable SharePoint 2010 VHD?
We plan to make a VHD available for download sometime in the future. We will announce its availability on our team blog.

How do I get trained on SharePoint 2010?
Please review the Getting Started page, the  IT Professional learning guide , the Developer learning guide , and the End User resources to ramp up on SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series

The Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog kicked off a blog series today that will cover a wide spectrum of topics related to the new List View in SharePoint 2010. Today’s topic, as Part 1 of the series, covered Introduction to the new List View.

The other topics that will be covered in the series are:

• List View – New User Experience
• List View Architecture
• List View Customization
• External Lists
• Conditional Formatting
• How to Share Your Custom List View Styles
• How to Create Custom Fields for the new List View
• Related Item View
• How to Create Views Displaying Cross-Web and Joined List Data

October 2009 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The server-packages of October 2009 Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. October 2009 Cumulative Updates introduce more rules on Pre-Upgrade Checker, which can help customers to prepare the upgrade of their SharePoint farm to SharePoint 2010.

Download Information

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974989

Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974988

Detail Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974989 (link may not be live yet)

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974988 (link may not be live yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and language packs
2. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and language packs
3. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
4. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Please note: Start from April 2009 Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.

The version of content databases should be 12.0.6520.5000 after successfully applying these updates.

You can also refer to April Cumulative Update post for deployment guides, slipstream how-to links and FAQs.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint