i:0#.w|Ali.Mazaheri

Troubleshooting e-Discovery with SharePoint and Exchange 2013

2013-05-17T20:09:00Z

Working on implementing a POC to demonstrate the new e-Discovery capabilities in SharePoint and Exchange 2013 I hit an interesting issue which I could not find any resources online to troubleshoot. To setup the e-Discovery I successfully:

Installed the EWS components on SP2013 servers
Established S2S auth between Exchange and SharePoint 2013 by following the TechNet article
Configured permissions on the Exchange side
Added and validated a Search Result Source for Exchange

After provisioning an e-Discovery site ,I managed to successfully add a mailbox but then notice the following error on the page:

"This source may be invalid, you do not have permission to access this location, or the location is not indexed by Search."

Looking at the ULS log I noticed the following exception:

"ExecuteDiscoveryQuery: Query to Mailbox with Id [/o=ALIMAZ/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=12f2304707574b4c88a645db9e7c09e2-Administrator], IsArchive [True] failed with error code [0] and error message [Search AdminRpc call failed on Mailbox database instance 1b061d06-19a9-4fcd-b61b-9dcac1a1c97b with return code 2802.]"

After searching online and not finding anything related to the above error I suspected that our friend Exchange should be the cause of this error :), wearing my Exchange admin hat (Kinda scary) I saw the same error in the event log on Exchange server and running Test-ExchangeSearch cmdlet noticed that Content Index State for the mailbox database is in "FailedandSuspended" mode.

Following TechNet article Reseed the search catalog and manually resetting the index on Exchange resolved the issue and I managed to conduct queries against Exchange from e-Discovery site and wrap up the POC:

Building a SharePoint 2013 App to embed Yammer feed on an Office 365 SharePoint site using Yammer Connect

2013-02-23T23:11:45Z

Here is quick step by step post on how to build a sample App to embed a Yammer feed on an O365 SharePoint site by leveraging Yammer Connect API.

In Visual Studio 2012 create a new project using SharePoint 2013 App template:
Open the App.js file an add the following JavaScript snippet:

Network, FeedType and FeedID are three parameters we need to connect to our Yammer specific feed via Yammer Connect API.
Open the ClientWebPart.aspx and add the following JavaScript snippet:
Next, we need to define the properties for the App Part and add the required querystring parameters to ClientWebPart element:

You can get the value for the Network and FeedID by going to your Yammer group page and clicking on Embed This Feed link:
After compiling and publishing the project from Visual Studio 2012 you should be able to add the App to your O365 Corporate Catalog and add it to a site collection of your choice and set the properties of App Part to render feed from a specific Yammer Group in your network:

Site Mailboxes in the new Office

2012-08-26T18:56:49Z

Cross posting from Exchange Team Blog:

Site mailboxes allow users to work together naturally – while compliance is applied behind the scenes.

A site mailbox brings Exchange emails and SharePoint documents together. For users, a site mailbox serves as a central filing cabinet, providing a place to file project emails and documents that can be only accessed and edited by site members.

More.

Service Application Federation between SharePoint 2013 (Public Preview) and SharePoint 2010

2012-08-07T19:58:00Z

One of the common challenges upgrading a multi-farm MOSS 2007 (Parent/Child) deployment to SharePoint 2010 was the introduction of new service application architecture and planning for downtime upgrading MOSS 2007 parent farm to a new SharePoint 2010 provider. With the release of SharePoint 2013 the good news is that SharePoint 2010 consuming farms are now able to leverage SharePoint 2013 service apps through federation (Note. This only works one way and a SharePoint 2013 farm can not consume services from a SharePoint 2010 provider).

In this post I provide a step by step guide on how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 MMS to SharePoint 2013 and then federating the service to an existing SharePoint 2010 farm.

To upgrade the MMS service application simply backup and restore the database to your SharePoint 2013 SQL instance.
Provision a new instance of MMS in SharePoint 2013 using the 2010 MMS database (Consider providing other attributes such as HUBUri, etc.)
Provision a Proxy for the new MMS service application.
Ensure that the new MMS service application is accessible via SharePoint 2013 Central Admin site and included as part of service application association setting.
Next we need to establish a trust between SharePoint 2010 consumer farm and SharePoint 2013 as new provider farm, steps are similar to SharePoint 2010 and as outlined on my previous blog post .
After successfully running the cmdlets on both farms you should have a trust established and the SharePoint 2010 farm should have access to SharePoint 2013 Topology service.
Now we need to publish the MMS in SharePoint 2013 provider farm via CA site or PowerShell.
In SharePoint 2010 consumer farm connect to the remote SharePoint 2013 MMS service application using CA site or PowerShell.
In SharePoint 2010 consumer farm ensure that you have access to SharePoint 2013 MMS service application.

In next blog post I will cover upgrading SharePoint 2010 User Profile service application to SharePoint 2013.

Content Deployment Source feature in SharePoint 2013 (Preview)

2012-07-30T18:20:28Z

SharePoint 2013 brings a lot of new capabilities and enhanced functionalities such as new XSP (Cross Site Publishing), Image and Video rendition, Friendly URLs, Content Search Web part and tight integration with Search and Managed Metadata service applications outline in this TechNet article.

Anyone involved with Content Deployment planning and deployment in MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010 should also find this new CD enhancement very handy :)

Content Deployment Source is a new feature in SharePoint 2013 which enables content deployment specific checks on source site collection and enables setting up content deployment from the site collection to a target site collection.

To enable this capability all you need to do is to:

Activate the feature:
After activating the feature a new “Content Deployment Source Status” link should be available under Site Collection Administration section:
After selecting the link you should be able to see a list of potential errors along with workaround to ensure a successful deployment:

Translating Office documents using Office Web Apps Preview and Microsoft Translator Service

2012-07-26T17:17:27Z

As you’ve already heard lots of new and enhanced capabilities are coming through the latest version of Office Web Apps (Preview), my colleague Steve Peschka did a great job on his post going over steps required to deploy a new OWA farm for your SharePoint 2013 deployment. In this post I will go over steps to configure OWA to allow users translate Office documents by using Microsoft Translator Service:

On your WAC server enable Translation by running Set-OfficeWebAppsFarm cmdlet and set the TranslationServiceAddress parameter to Microsoft Translator endpoint.
Restart WAC servers in your farm.
From SharePoint 2013 site open a Word document via browser.
Go to backstage by selecting File link and select Translate.
Select the language from the drop down (e.g. Dutch).
You should have access to translated document momentarily.

Upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 Step by Step

2012-07-18T00:32:00Z

This post provides a high-level step by step guide on upgrading a SharePoint 2010 site to a SharePoint 2013 (Customer Preview) and as with any Beta release is subject to change. For further information on planning and upgrading content and services to SharePoint 2013 you can visit the recently published TechNet site here.

Also make sure to check out Bill Baer's great post on Upgrade, and special thanks to Bill for sharing his custom solution used for this post J.

Add and deploy any required O14 custom solutions in your SharePoint 2013 farm, notice that all O14 solutions being deployed under 14 hive but eventually it's recommended to migrate the custom code to O15.
Backup and restore the SharePoint 2010 content database to your SQL Server hosting SharePoint 2013 farm.
Run Test-SPContentDatabase cmdlet to identify missing components along with potential errors and related warnings. Check the upgrade log and deploy any missing components and re run the cmdlet to verify.
Attach the content database to the desired web application using Mount-SPContentDatabase cmdlet.
After successfully mounting the content database to web application, the site should be accessible in 14 mode.
To upgrade the site simply click on "Start now" link on the toolbar, you can also go to SiteUpgrade page from Site Setting page as well.
Click on "TRY A DEMO UPGRADE" link to verify the site collection upgrade (This step can be performed by Site Collection Administrators, farm admins can run
Request-SPUpgradeEvaluationSiteCollection cmdlet as well).
Provision a temporary site collection to validate the site post-upgrade.
An email should be sent out to Site Collection admin when the temporary site is provisioned.
After validating the temporary site we upgrade the site by going to SiteUpgrade.aspx page and clicking on "Upgrade the Site Collection" button (Farm admins can run Upgrade-SPSite cmdlet as well).
During the upgrade The SiteUpgrade.aspx page shows the progress and provides a link to an upgrade log for troubleshooting purposes.
Your site collection should now be accessible in 15 mode along with all new capabilities enabled in the farm and for the hosting web application such as Social and Office Web Apps.

SharePoint 2013 (Customer Preview) is finally here!

2012-07-17T19:30:57Z

As you all know we publicly announced the availability of public beta (Customer Preview) release of next version of Office yesterday including SharePoint 2013, like previous release of SharePoint I've had the pleasure to work with Product Team and elite team of experts led by Vesa to work on labs and environment for our SharePoint Ignite IT Pro program and super happy to be able share the experience and lessons learned working on early builds moving forward.

As for now I recommend checking out the great post from Vesa on resources available for both IT Pro and Developer tracks, also reading the following great blog posts from Jeff Teper to begin!

SharePoint Server 2010 April 2012 cumulative update package is available now!

2012-06-14T18:26:00Z

FYI, from Microsoft support site:

A recent, isolated issue was discovered in the SharePoint 2010 Products April 2012 Cumulative Update that could result in an HTTP 500 error when users delete objects to include documents, lists, and Webs and a new object is created using the same path where the original object remains in the Recycle Bin. This issue has been resolved in the revised packages. The revised packages include support for resolving issues related to the originally published updates.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2598151

Document Preview and Thumbnail issue post SharePoint 2010 December CU 2011installation

2012-02-21T17:58:00Z

After updating one of my SharePoint 2010 labs with SharePoint 2010 December 2011 CU, I noticed that I could not see the document preview and thumbnails as part of my search results. After some digging with Fiddler I noticed that the call to wacproxy.ashx was returning a weired error as follows:

('ERROR:600:required parameters either missing or invalid')

This issue should be resolved in next CU, but for now if you are using Fast and Office Web Apps and you need to have the document preview and thumbnail in your search results, DO NOT INSTALL December 2011 CU.