On the 20th May, we released two hotfix packages focused on Content Deployment.  These packages delivered performance improvements and addressed a number of known customer pain points.  The hotfixes have been rolled in to the Infrastructure Update for Office Servers that was released today so if you've been experiencing issues with Content Deployment, download the pack, install it and you'll get federated search thrown in with the deal.

The updates can be downloaded from the links below:

Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) - x86
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) - x64
Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) - x86
Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) - x64
Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Project 2007 (KB951547) - x86

Installation Instructions are available from the links below:

Deploy Software Updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Deploy Software Updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 - This article also applies to Project Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express.
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007) (This article will go live later today)
Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Search Server 2008) (This article will go live later today)

 While you are installing the Infrastructure Update, I'd recommend you have a read of the following blog posts on Content Deployment:

  1. SharePoint ECM Team Blog on "End to End Content Deployment Walkthrough"
  2. Stefan Goßner's "Deep Dive into the SharePoint Content Deployment and Migration API"
  3. Spencer Harbar's "Ensure your platform hygiene..."

Here is a summary of the Content Deployment issues addressed in the Infrastructure Update:

Incremental bug fixes:

  • Incremental import can fail if a feature with a custom content type has been reactivated on the destination.
  • Unpublished pages do not get unpublished on the destination.
  • Reinheriting permissions on the source does not propagate incrementally.
  • Deleting a permission level on the source causes a "Permission level cannot be found." exception during incremental import.
  • Incremental behavior with the Recycle Bin improved. Incremental import fails with a "FatalError: You cannot perform this action on a checked out document." exception.
  • "Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint" error during export.
  • Document "Title" field does not get deployed by incremental deployment in some cases.
  • In some cases, making permissions changes on the source or destination will result in a "The specified name is already in use." error.
  • Deleting or renaming an item then creating one with the same name causes incremental deployment to fail.
  • Incremental deployment fails when pages have independent permission settings.
  • Deleting a file and folder can cause incremental deployment to fail in some cases.

Other bug fixes:

  • Removing a User from a group does not propagate to the destination during incremental deployment.
  • Some source web settings related to search are not propagated to the destination.
  • Content Deployment can time out incorrectly on large deployment jobs.
  • Miscellaneous SQL deadlocks.
  • Quick deployment jobs behave incorrectly when Variations is used.
  • Quick deployment fails when pages are Quick Deployed while the Quick Deploy job is running.
  • Running One-time jobs manually can fail.
  • In some cases, a content deployment job can get stuck in a "Preparing" state forever.
  • Deployment sometimes unghosts items that are ghosted on the source.
  • Custom master page settings on the source are not propagated to the destination during deployment.
  • Content deployment fails when compression is disabled.

If you want more details on the Content Deployment issues addressed in the Infrastructure Update, visit the Microsoft Help and Support site:

WSS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952698/
MOSS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952704/

Ryan Duguid
Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corp