Aidan Nolan's [MSFT] SharePoint Blog

Migrating SharePoint 2007 SQL Databases

2008-03-21T18:07:00Z

Have you deployed SharePoint 2007 with SQL Server Express? Has it become such a success that you are now out growing SQL Server Express and it's time for the big guns...... Whatever your reason the steps below should help you successfully migrate from one SQL Server to another (doesn't necessarily have to be SQL Express either!):

NOTE: I implemented this is a lab envirnoment. I would recommend this approach before attempting any of the steps below on a production system (to allow for any adjustmensts or tailoring of steps for your setup).

1. Run “SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard”

2. Click “Next” followed by “Yes” (stop services)

3. Select “Disconnect from this server farm” and click “Next” followed by “Yes”

4. Click “Finish”

5. Detach all MOSS databases (configuration and content) from SQL Express

6. BACKUP DATABASES

7. Stop SQL Server Express Service

8. Attach all MOSS databases (configuration and content) to new SQL Server 2005

9. Run “SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard” again

10. Click “Next” followed by “Yes” (stop services)

11. Select “Yes, I want to connect to an existing server farm”

12. In Database Server text box enter name of server where SQL Server 2005 is installed

13. Click “Retrieve Database Names” – This should return the configuration database now on SQL Server 2005

14. Under Specify Database Access Account enter DOMAIN\User_Name (domain account with access to DB) and password

15. Click “Next”

16. Specify port number for Central Admin - should default to old port number, if not enter old port number

17. Click “Next”

18. Confirm configuration settings and click “Next”

19. Click “Finish”

20. Once complete Central Administration will automatically open up

Within Central Administration you will need to restart any services which are not started and create a new search database.

Hopefully this will have done the trick and you are now up and running again but using a different database :)

Also, the following "Migrate Content Databases" TechNet article is worth reading if you are interested in the topic: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/03c94172-a203-4d47-bf9f-239bb6647aa61033.mspx?mfr=true

Installing WSS 3.0 and MOSS SP1

2008-03-07T14:28:21Z

Recently I deployed MOSS 2007 on a mid sized farm for a customer. This was a relatively painless experience bar a few group policies issues that I was already wised up to and expected! As part of the deployment I also needed to installed WSS 3.0 SP1 and MOSS SP1.

Note:It is essential that you read Planning and deploying SP1 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server before attempting this task.

I ran into a small issue when attempting the install WSS 3.0 SP1 on a WFE server, failing after step 2.

I investigated the issue (check log file) and set out to re-install WSS 3.0 SP1. Running the installation for SP1 again greets you with "The update is already installed on this system":

Now I knew that wasn't true sure I witness SP1 kicking me out after step 2 :) After some further investigation I found out to re-install a failed SP1 installation you need to use STSADM.exe in the command line:

§ stsadm -o upgrade -forceupgrade –inplace

This fixed all my problems and a smooth MOSS SP1 deployment followed. I hope this helps you if you are left banging your after a failed SP1 install.

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

2008-03-04T11:54:25Z

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint is now released, check out the details here!

HiSoftware Releases Latest Accessibility Solutions for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

2008-03-03T23:45:00Z

This week at the Microsoft Office SharePoint User Group Conference in Seattle, Washington, Microsoft and HiSoftware will be releasing AKS V1.1 in providing a more accessible solution to the collaborative environment of blogs and WIKIS. Additionally, HiSoftware will announce the release of Compliance Sheriff for SharePoint for end-to-end accessibility compliance for content validation, workflow and on-going auditing of SharePoint sites.

Check out the press release here for more details.

Changing service account usernames and passwords in MOSS and WSS 3.0

2008-02-07T21:58:00Z

How to change a SharePoint service username account and service password is documented here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838. However, the wording in the steps would lead you to believe you are only changing/updating the password:

"Update the password for the account that is used by the Central Administration application pool. To do this, follow these steps:

a.	On all servers in the server farm, open a command prompt, type the following line, and then press ENTER: cd %commonprogramfiles%\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\Bin
b.	On the server that hosts the Central Administration Web site, type the following line at the command prompt, and then press ENTER: stsadm –o updatefarmcredentials –userlogin `DomainName`\`UserName` -password `NewPassword`
c.	On all other servers in the server farm, type the following line at the command prompt, and then press ENTER: stsadm –o updatefarmcredentials –userlogin `DomainName`\`UserName` -password `NewPassword` -local
d.	Restart Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0. To do this, type the following line at the command prompt, and then press ENTER: iisreset /noforce"

To prove you can change the username as well I kicked off my VPC.... Here are a few screen shots to show you it working :)

SharePoint Central Admin App Pool – Before updating username and password:

STSADM.exe command run: Note: IIS did moan a little when I tried to iisrest /noforce - once I did a full iisreset everything restarted with out error.

SharePoint Central Admin App Pool – After updating username and password:

Remember never ever under any circumstances attempt to change app pool accounts directly within IIS!!! This is what STSADM is for :)

Over all changing usernames and passwords of SharePoint service accounts is a fairly important feature of STSADM; especially as company security department policies dictate not just changing passwords periodically but usernames as well.

SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool

2008-02-05T13:11:00Z

The Microsoft Solution Accelerator Communications and Collaborations group is pleased to announce the availability of the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool for download on TechNet.
Are you planning a SharePoint installation for a customer? Chances are, you have a lot of questions.

- What is the necessary hardware investment?
- What kind of topology is needed to meet organizational requirements for availability and performance?
- How will additional users from a recent merger affect deployment?

When planning a new SharePoint deployment, you will need a way to quickly characterize the general topology and minimum hardware requirements to support expected usage loads with adequate performance. You will need a way to explore plausible scenarios and get pointed in the right direction. The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool gives you a quick way to draft topology and equipment sizing for your particular scenario and usage profile.
This solution reduces "SharePoint sizing" estimation efforts from a matter of days to a matter of hours.

Description of the Tool

Imagine a tool that you could use to input a few key facts about users, user needs, business requirements, and organizational resources in order to:
- Build a topology model based on this input
- Run simulations that show the impact of this topology
- Generate a summary report that will help you evaluate alternatives
The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool consists of System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) models for:
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS)
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS)

The tool can be used for planning and feasibility studies of a deployment project to give you a rough estimate of hardware requirements. The tool can generate estimated performance metrics based on a simulation and provide useful Visio schematics of the proposed deployment to be included in documents and proposals.

You can obtain the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool on Microsoft Download. For a short introduction to the tool and its usage, please go to this TechNet overview page: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=93030
Note: This Solution Accelerator needs SCCP 2007 to be installed first.

Downloads
SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool on Microsoft Download Center
System Center Capacity Planner

Try Microsoft's newest products in a FREE, online virtual environment

2008-02-04T13:09:52Z

Microsoft Virtual Labs: http://www.microsoft.com/events/vlabs/default.mspx

Geographical SharePoint Deployments

2008-02-04T13:04:00Z

Geo guidance material went live on Technet over the weekend."Plan to deploy SharePoint 2007 Globally" covers the following:

• Supported global solutions and recommendations for Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployments
• Extending Office SharePoint Server global solutions with Office Outlook 2007 and Office Groove software
• Design global information architecture and governance
• Plan for global enterprise search
• Plan for bandwidth requirements
• Optimizing Office SharePoint Server for WAN environments
• Optimizing custom Web parts for the WAN

Happy reading :)

MOSS and InfoPath 2007 Accessibility

2008-02-02T00:57:00Z

This is becoming somewhat of recurring question for me lately with a number of customers asking about SharePoint 2007 accessibility.

Here are some resources and links that you should find helpful:

Improvements in accessibility
Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) - AA compliance toolkit
Telerik Rich Content Editor

"The Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) provides templates, master pages, controls, and web parts along with technical documentation that enable designers and developers to advance the accessibility of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 based web sites and applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired.

Microsoft has hired HiSoftware to develop the AKS. The decision was made primarily based on HiSoftware’s in-depth expertise and broad industry experience in providing tools and services for improving software accessibility to the point of compliance with key industry and goverment standards and beyond. The contractual Statement of Work calls for HiSoftware to deliver a kit that can significantly reduce the time, knowledge, and effort required to implement a SharePoint-based web site that conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints, which are collectively known as WCAG 1.0 AA. The AKS can also be used to address the exceptions that have been identified in the U.S. government’s Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or VPAT documents for MOSS 2007. While most of our customers find the improvements in accessibility (more info at Office Online) over previous versions of SharePoint to be adequate for their needs, a growing number has asked us to provide even more. The AKS is our near term response. Longer term, we plan to make significantly further improvements in accessibility in the next version of SharePoint, but we don't have any details to disclose at this time." .... codeplex.com

InfoPath 2007 however, does not meet WCAG 1.0 level of accessibility. This is primarily because WCAG 1.0 restricts the use of scripting (checkpoint 6.3) which is something that InfoPath relies on extensively. In my opinion Microsoft is definitely acting on the need for accessible Web sites (hence AKS). Now I just hope there will be some sort of accessibility kit released for InfoPath or that the next Office wave addresses this need. Until then there is always custom .NET :)

BTW: I have seen a couple of cool sites were MOSS and accessiblity (WCAG 1.0 AA compliant) have been deployed really really well ... check out:

I am sure there are plently more but these two jump to mind :)

Error formatting external hard drive

2008-01-29T13:15:00Z

I haven't seen this issue before and it's not MOSS related :)

I bought a new 160GB 2.5'' external hard drive.... sure why not! Anyhow, when I tried to format the drive I received the following error message "All NTFS boot sectors are unwriteable. Cannot Continue." Screen shots below:

Screen shot of my reaction:

Not really :) but that's how I felt when I searched the web and couldn't find anything to help resolve the issue. In the end I simply deleted the partition and formatted the drive without any problems or errors. For some reason the initial partition must have been corrupted somehow and caused the format to fail. Hopefully, this doesn't happen to you but if it does you know what to do!

Is it possible to modify SharePoint email notifications?

2008-01-07T14:25:00Z

Last month a customer asked me if they could modify SharePoint alert notifications? Of course you can was my confident answer! My understanding being they wished to customise the emails sent by SharePoint via e-mail subscription notification service in wss 3.0. This covers changes made to list items (item level alert), documents, lists (list level alert) or document libraries, basically any SharePoint list type. However, this was not the case! The customer was already pretty well clued in and aware of AlertTemplates.xml and it's inner workings. If you are not, there are two great articles worth reading on Microsoft SharePoint Developer Documentation Team blog:

Customizing Alert Notifications and Alert Templates in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

How To: Customizing alert emails using IAlertNotifyHandler

There is also a whitepaper from All MindsharpBlogs that is worth reading:

Modify Alert Notifications using AlertTemplates.xml in SharePoint 2007

So what other notifications would you need to customise I wondered? Well how about emails sent from SharePoint to notify a user when permissions are granted or modified on a list item, document, list or document library (see figure 1 below):

Figure 1: Email notification from SharePoint

Where can we customise the text and links circled in red? I did a deep dive on this and my conclusion unfortunately is not a good one. You can't!

I opened up AcIinv.aspx (Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS). Aclinv.aspx is a page used in SharePoint to grant permissions to a user and generates the email as depicted in figure 1.

Figure 2: Aclinv.aspx (Add Users)

Within Aclinv.aspx I found the following:

<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"%> <%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.AclInv" ......%>

This helped me to snoop into the assembly and identify the method SendEmailInvitation(PeopleEditor picker, string subject, string message) which is used to send the email. It also confirmed that it was not possible to modify the text or links circled in Figure 1 but only the email body text.

I hope this helps you in some way. BTW: If you wish to pre-populate the Personal Message in Aclinv.aspx this can be achieved by simply modifying the JavaScript function UpdateEmailSubject() .... it's nice to end a blog on a positive note :)

Error when creating My Site

2008-01-04T01:18:00Z

I came across this issue yesterday when reviewing a customer's SharePoint 2007 configuration.

Sympthons: When a user clicks "My Site" SharePoint 2007 returns an error message to the user along the lines of: "Your personal site cannot be created because the managed path "http://server_name/mysite.aspx" has not been created for this site. Contact your site administrator for more information."

Resolution:

Review managed paths (Central Administration, "Application Management" tab, "Define Managed Paths"). Check out Chris Johnsons blog as this may help resolve your issue completely http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/09/15/754902.aspx
After modifying the managed paths the error was present. As I didn't install MOSS initally and it wasn't a production envirnoment it was relatively safe for me to delete the My Site site collection and recreate (sure it wasn't working anyway and this would eliminate any possible errors in previous configuration).
I now received a different error message "File Not Found" when I tried to create a new My Site. I noted the path SharePoint was looking for when creating the new My Site and deleted the site collection again, recreating once more with the expected URL (basically matching the top-right "My Site" URL with the My Site site collection URL).
Then clicking on "My Site" once more the orginial error message returned. However, it now contained some breadcrumbs (My Site> Create My Site) as in figure 1 below:

Figure 1: My Site link

Clicking "Set as My Site Host" (figure 2 below) finally resolved our issue and successfully created a new My Site!

Figure 2: Set As My Site Host