SharePoint Bar and Grill

Managing SharePoint Designer 2010

Jon Daugh — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 22:52:00 GMT

Most of the customizations made by using SharePoint Designer affect only the site being customized. However, there are some customizations that can affect and potentially break sites and other sites in the hierarchy. It is also possible to customize pages in a way that affect the maintenance and performance of the server running SharePoint 2010. All of this can result in more work for a SharePoint administrator. There are controls built-in to SharePoint Server 2010 that did not exist in SharePoint Server 2007, but can help to reduce or eliminate the risk of issues when customizing with SharePoint Designer 2010. The controls restrict SharePoint Designer 2010 at the site collection level or at the central administration level.

There are four selections that enable SharePoint Designer 2010 restrictions and there are two Web pages where this can be controlled. Both Web page locations have the same controls but they behave differently:

1. Central Administration: Restricts what the site collection administrator may do.

2. Site Collection Administration: Affects what the site owners and designers may do.

SharePoint Designer Controls are listed with risks and mitigation. List items 2-4 are the most common reasons for sites that are negatively impacted when customizing with SharePoint Designer:

1. Enable SharePoint Designer

Risk: When SharePoint designer is enabled, users with designer, site owner, or site administrator have the ability to make changes to SharePoint sites.

Impact: Changes made to SharePoint can be made at any time without approval and/or testing. While the time frame to produce solutions is fast, the probability that issues may arise can be high. Data may not be well structured or time frames to render data may be slow due to slow connection or poorly formed designs.

Mitigation: Reduce the number of people that are able to customize pages using SharePoint Designer. Provide sufficient training before providing access to SharePoint Designer. Test customizations before implementing and use solutions whenever possible. This control is enabled by default.

2. Enable detaching pages from their site definition

Risk: When a site is opened using SharePoint Designer, you may have the ability to perform advanced customization that can detach it from the site definition.

Impact: Once this is done, pages are no longer ghosted. This means that all site content is retrieved from SharePoint content databases instead of the ghosted page that is loaded in RAM. This over rides the existing content that is stored in the site definition. When an upgrade is performed that includes new content for the site definition, it will not be included with an un-ghosted site, which may cause undetermined issues. Un-ghosted site way also increase SQL Server resources.

Mitigation: Enabling this setting also allows SharePoint Designer users to edit pages in advanced mode as opposed to normal mode. This is done by right clicking a file and selecting “Edit in advanced mode” after opening a site with SharePoint Designer 2010. This is turned off by default. It may be turn on at the site collection level so that site administrators may edit in advanced mode or from central administration so that no users can edit in advanced mode. Consider only turning this on when planned changes are necessary and turning of when changes are complete.

3. Enable customizing master pages and page layouts

Risk: Users may have the ability to customize pages and page layouts.

Impact: Organizational branding or designs may not match the company look and feel or present data in the manner intended. Required content rendering that has been enforced by the agency or objects that allow the page to render properly can also be deleted.

Mitigation: This setting is turned off by default. It may be turned on for all users from the site collection level or turn on only for the site collection administrator at the central administration level. This control is only effective when the publishing feature is turned on.

4. Enable managing of the Web site URL structure

Risk: When the All Files option is clicked in SharePoint Designer, from the navigation pane authorized users will see all of the files in your site hierarchy or web site URL structure giving a complete view of everything.

Impact: A user may change or delete a file or delete a name space that is required by the site, which may create issue with the site rendering or loss of content.

Mitigation: This setting is turned off by default. It may be turned on for all users at the site collection level or turn on only for the site collection administrator at the central administration level.

Recommendations for managing SharePoint Designer

Leverage the governance model in determining whether SharePoint designer should be used. In general, top level sites or publishing sites have tight governance policies in place; whereas, collaboration sites have little governance.
Consider the qualifications of the user and offer training if necessary.
Consider leaving the customizations up to the development group.
Do not let users customize in advanced mode if they are not on the development team.
Provide a request form for customers so that they may easily place requirements for customization.
Tier the level of customization and assign roles (e.g. 1 = browser, 2 = SPD normal mode, 3= SPD advanced mode, etc).
When using SharePoint Designer, execute it against a Web Front End that is not part of the load balancing pool so that resource remains dedicated to users.
For finer grain restrictions, consider leveraging controls through Group Policy. If Group Policy controls are used in conjunction with SharePoint controls, be sure to test the results more closely before going live.

Powershell Command Builder

SharePoint Mike — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:41:00 GMT

Still struggling trying to figure out powershell? I know not everyone has been on 2010 that long and for those of you just starting to get your feet wet in Administering with Powershell here is a neat little GUI for basic commands:

Powershell Command Builder

Missing Workflows after Migration

Dave Reilly - SharePoint — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:11:29 GMT

If you find the default OOTB workflows missing after migration from SharePoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010, the following steps may help restore them:

1) Open the root of the site collection in SharePoint Designer 2010

2) In the Navigation section, click on All Files, then click _catlogs

3) Check for a folder named "wfpub" and if it exists right click on it and delete it

4) Run the following PowerShell for the site collection having the issue:

$site = Get-SPSite http://root-site-collection-url

Disable-SPFeature -url $site.URL -Identity Workflows -Confirm:$false

Disable-SPFeature -url $site.URL -Identity OffWFCommon -Confirm:$false

Enable-SPFeature -url $site.URL -Identity OffWFCommon

Enable-SPFeature -url $site.URL -Identity Workflows

Hide Quick Launch

Dave Reilly - SharePoint — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:46:00 GMT

Every 6 months or so when a customer requests this I always end up forgetting the name of the property and to wrap <style> tags around it so I'm posting this one to the blog.To hide the quick launch navigation on the left side of a page in SharePoint 2010 you can edit the HTML of the page and add the following:

#s4-leftpanel {
DISPLAY: none
}
.s4-ca {
MARGIN-LEFT: 0px
}

</style>

NOTE: I do not recommend doing this if it can be avoided as this does not remove the quick launch column, it only hides it, so alignment of content on the page is still based on the column being there which can make things look strange for centered content. The preferred solution is creating a page based on the blank page layout that does not have quick launch navigation. However, in the real world customers do not always have the time or interest in moving existing content to a new page just to remove this column... hence this workaround.

Finding all links in a Content Database

Dave Reilly - SharePoint — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:59:00 GMT

NOTE: This is for development and testing purposes only, SQL queries ARE NOT supported on production SharePoint Databases

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932744/

This query will scan for all the links in a content databse. Change the “Top Level” text to the actual base URL of the customer’s farm before you run it to make the output look better. Target each content DB you want to scan in SQL management studio and the results should paste nicely into Excel for review.

select 'LOCATION: Top Level/' + DirName + LeafName + ' LINK: ' + TargetDirName from AllLinks WITH (NOLOCK)
where TargetDirName LIKE 'http://%'

Log File Cleanup

Dave Reilly - SharePoint — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:31:00 GMT

Here is a basic PowerShell script for cleaning up old files, it can be customized for number of days, file extension, and folder paths. I use this to help clean up my constantly growing SharePoint 2007 usage logs on my web front ends. After SharePoint processes them into SQL the log files are no longer needed and over time these old usage logs can take up lots of storage space.

#########################################
# Log_Cleanup.ps1                                                       #
#                                                                                    #
# Deletes files in target folder                                      #
# that are older than specified number                        #
# of days                                                                       #
#                                                                                   #
########################################
Function LogCleanup
{
############################# Parameters ##########
## Delete all files older than this number of days
$Days = "30"

## File types to delete
$FileType = "*.log"

## Root folders to run cleanup separated by commas
$TargetFolder = "C:\USAGE_LOG_FOLDER", "C:\SOME_OTHER_FOLDER"
## NOTE: Script WILL recurse each subfolder inside these folders
########################## End Parameters ##########
if (Test-Path $TargetFolder)
{
$Now = Get-Date
$LastWrite = $Now.AddDays(-$days)
$Files = get-childitem $TargetFolder -include $FileType -recurse |Where {$_.LastWriteTime -le "$LastWrite"}
foreach ($File in $Files)
{write-host "Deleting file $File" -foregroundcolor "Yellow"; Remove-Item $File | out-null}
}
Else
{Write-Host "Folder $TargetFolder Does not exist! Check folder path"}
}
LogCleanup

SharePoint 2010 - Configuring Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

SharePoint Mike — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:49:00 GMT

I have seen some documentation out there on setting up the Adobe iFilter with SP 2010, but now Microsoft has officially published KB2293357

Install Windows Server 2008 following the SharePoint prerequisites (Pre-upgrade utility).
Install SharePoint 2010 with the complete option and run the PSconfig wizard.
Configure required Server Farm Topology. In this example we use a Single Server Farm.
Create a new Search Service application.

Configure Adobe iFilter based on steps mentioned below:

Install PDF iFilter 9.0 (64 bit) from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025 (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025)
Download PDF icon picture from Adobe web site http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html (http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html) and copy to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\
Add the following entry in docIcon.xml file, which can be found at: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML
<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdf16.gif" />
Add pdf file type on the File Type page under Search Service Application
Open regedit
Navigate to the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension
Right-click > Click New > Key to create a new key for .pdf
Add the following GUID in the default value
{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

Restart the SharePoint Server Search 14
Reboot the SharePoint servers in Farm
Create a Test site (with any out-of-box site template) and create a document library upload any sample PDF document(s).
Perform FULL Crawl to get search result.

Once the crawl is completed we will get search results.

NOTE: If this is a SharePoint Foundation 2010 environment additional steps will be required instead of step 4 above

Adding Searchable File Types to SharePoint Foundation 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2518465 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2518465)

Wow how time flies

SharePoint Mike — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:11:08 GMT

I know I have been lax on posting any updates to my blog in several months. The past 6 months have been a whirlwind of activity and this blog has fallen to the wayside. That will hopefully change in the near future. As a matter of fact my New Year's resolution is to "Attempt" to post at least one update a month. Only time will tell if I can stick to the resolution or if it will fall to the wayside as so many resolutions do.

Slipstream Project 2007 on Windows Server 2008

SharePoint Mike — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:57:27 GMT

To successfully install Project Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008, You will need to follow these steps:

Copy Project Server 2007 installation files from the CD to a local directory on your hard drive, such as C:\Project2007.
Download Office Server 2007 SP2 files from this location: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b7816d90-5fc6-4347-89b0-a80deb27a082&displaylang=en.
Choose the appropriate download for your architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).
From the command prompt, extract the update files to a local folder using /extract switch.
Example: c:\officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\Project2007SP2\
Copy the extracted Office Server SP2 files to /Updates directory in the Project Server 2007 installation folder on your hard drive.
Download the WSS 3.0 SP2 files from this location: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20614
From the command prompt, extract the update files to a local folder using /extract switch as you did in step 4
Copy the extracted Office Server SP2 files to /Updates directory in the Project Server 2007 installation folder on your hard drive.
You can now install Project Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 by running the Setup.exe contained in the Install folder you created in Step 1

Using Powershell to export all solutions from current 2010 farm and programatically import and deploy them

SharePoint Mike — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:46:00 GMT

Sitting on client site with Shane Young and Jeff Jacobs today we came across a challenging scenario. While trying to migrate their current production to another farm, as well as stand up a new Integration farm, we came to the realization they may not have the binaries for all their custom designed solutions. What we needed was a way to ensure the same solutions were deployed to each farm. Well we found a neat little way to do this using Powershell.

Extract all solutions from your farm

(Get-SPFarm).Solutions | ForEach-Object{$var = (Get-Location).Path + "\" + $_.Name; $_.SolutionFile.SaveAs($var)}

** I must note here that utilizing the (Get-Location).Path will drop all the solutions where you currently located in the file system, so ensure to navigate to the appropriate folder before running this command, or modify the command to hard code in the path you need. We do not like hard coded path's therefore we just call our current location.

Import all solutions to another farm

Get-ChildItem | ForEach-Object{Add-SPSolution -LiteralPath $_.Fullname}

** Once again this calls your current location in the filesystem so ensure you navigate to the folder containing your newly exported solutions prior to executing this script.

Deploy all solutions on the new farm

Get-SPSolution | ForEach-Object {If ($_.ContainsWebApplicationResource -eq $False) {Install-SPSolution -Identity $_ -GACDeployment} else {Install-SPSolution -Identity $_ -AllWebApplications -GACDeployment}}

Once this is executed it will take 10 minutes or more for the solutions to deploy, depending on the number of solutions of course. So now you have a programmatic/repeatable method to ensure your farms have identical solutions.

Shane Young also wrote up a blog on this located here. For sake of saving myself some typing, I am just putting the bare bones code here. If you need a detailed explanation of what each command does please visit Shane's blog as he does a great job explaining in detail.

Getting More Information from the Unexpected Error

SharePoint Mike — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:46:37 GMT

I know this has been covered time and time again but I still run into the occasional SysAdmin who does not know what to do with the Unexpected errors. So here are the steps to get the error callstack and shed some light on your unexpected error.

1) Go to the MOSS site for which you would like to enable it.

The default location is at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories and a sub directory with your web application’s port number.

2) Locate and open the web.config file for editing.

3) Find out the following entry

And change it to

4) Also find

Change it to

5) Save and close web.config.

Happy Birthday SharePoint!!

SharePoint Mike — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:29:00 GMT

I have been working on the System Administration side of SharePoint for a long time. I can say I definitely owe SharePoint a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Even if it is a week Belated.

Catch this article and many others over at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/default.aspx ; The official SharePoint team blog.

SharePoint Conference 2011

SharePoint Mike — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:23:00 GMT

Registration for SharePoint Conference 2011 is open. The conference will be in Anaheim, CA October 3-6.

It will be the only conference to hear experts from Microsoft and around the world share their experience and knowledge about a variety topics such as cloud services, best practices & real world project insights.

Session content will cover products including SharePoint and SharePoint Online as part of the soon to be released Microsoft Office 365.

In addition to exclusive session content you will have access to Hands on Labs, as well as opportunities to network with technical and industry experts including Microsoft engineers, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), Microsoft Certified Masters (MCMs), SharePoint customers and many of our top Certified Partners.

Don't forget you can also follow the SharePoint Conference on Facebook, Twitter, RSS

Delete closed web parts

SharePoint Mike — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:02:00 GMT

Let me start off by saying I take no credit for writing this code. It was posted by CorbettMerrill in this technet post. That being said I made only 2 modifications so this script will now iterate down through all sites and sub-webs to look at the default.aspx and SitePages\Home.aspx and delete any web parts that are marked as closed. I am sure this can be customized further to encompass all sites but I have not had the time to sit and figure it out yet. A text file is attached with the code below:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c") | out-null
[void][System.reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint")

$pageURL="default.aspx"

function SubWebs([Microsoft.SharePoint.SPWeb] $web)
{
$subwebs = $web.GetSubwebsForCurrentUser()

foreach($subweb in $subwebs)
{
    SubWebs($subweb)
    $subweb.Dispose()
}
$web | select Url
$file = $web.GetFile($pageURL)
$webpartmanager=$file.GetLimitedWebPartManager([System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.PersonalizationScope]::Shared)
$count = $webpartmanager.WebParts.Count
if ($count -eq 0) {
   $file = $web.GetFile("SitePages\Home.aspx")
   $webpartmanager=$file.GetLimitedWebPartManager([System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.PersonalizationScope]::Shared)
   $count = $webpartmanager.WebParts.Count
}
for ($i=$count;$i -ge 0;$i--)
{
    $webpart = $webpartmanager.WebParts[$i]
    #If the webpart is closed, remove it
    if ($webpart.IsClosed -eq $TRUE)
    {
      if ($file.RequiresCheckout -eq $TRUE) { $webpartmanager.Web.GetFile($file.UniqueID).CheckOut()}
      $webpartmanager.DeleteWebPart($webpart)
      if ($file.RequiresCheckout -eq $TRUE) { $webpartmanager.Web.GetFile($file.UniqueID).CheckIn("Deleted web part: " + $webpart.Title)}
      write-host $webpart.Title "deleted from" $web.URL
     }
}
}

function Pause ($Message="Press any key to continue...")
{
Write-Host -NoNewLine $Message
$null = $Host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey("NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown")
Write-Host ""
}

write-host "This script will delete all web parts on this server that are"
write-host "currently in a closed (not displayed) status."
pause

$oContentService = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService;
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplicationCollection]$waColl = $oContentService.WebApplications;

$waColl1 = $waColl | where-object {$_.IsAdministrationWebApplication -eq $FALSE}

foreach ($wa in $waColl1)
{
$waName = $wa.Name
$sites = $wa.Sites

foreach ($obj in $sites)
{
$spSite = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($obj.Url)
$web=$spSite.Openweb()

    If ($web -ne $null)
    {
      SubWebs $web
      $web.Dispose()
    }
}
}

Delete Orphaned Event Handler through Powershell

SharePoint Mike — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 22:50:00 GMT

This past week my client ran into an issue where a feature removed with FeatureAdmin (http://featureadmin.codeplex.com) left an orphaned Event Handler on almost every site. Although we were not seeing any performance impacts, the numerous event ID 6644 errors made the Event Viewer hard to look at. So I did some digging and found several references to utilizing PowerShell to remove Event Handlers, but they seemed complex and difficult to modify. So Jeff Jacobs and I began scripting up our own method in the following short but sweet Powershell script:

First off here is the error with the pertinent Assembly information highlighted in red:

Event Type: Error
Event Source:
Event Category: General
Event ID: 6644
Date: 11/12/2010
Time: 11:16:54 AM
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
Event manager error: Could not load file or assembly 'ReplicatorEventHandler, Version 1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicTokenKey=ccd0742fa6b8e563' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp

If the Assembly is known, in our case it was fully listed in the 6644 errors in the Event Viewer, the deletion can be handled in the following method:

$var = Get-SPSite -limit All | Get-SPWeb -limit all | % {$_.EventReceivers} | where {$_.Assembly -eq "ReplicatorEventHandler, Version 1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicTokenKey=ccd0742fa6b8e563"}
$var | % {$_.Delete()}

**Replace the red assembly information with your assembly information

** I recommend using the following 2 methods only to identify the event receiver that needs to be deleted and adding it back into the above PS to ensure you are deleting the Event Receiver that is causing issues and not inadvertantly deleting others

If you only know a part of the Assembly name the "-like" statement can be used instead of the "-eq" like this:

$var = Get-SPSite -limit All | Get-SPWeb -limit all | % {$_.EventReceivers} | where {$_.Assembly -like "*Replicator*"} | Select Assembly

If you do not know any information about the Event Receiver then you can call back all Receivers:

$var = Get-SPSite -limit All | Get-SPWeb -limit all | % {$_.EventReceivers} | where {$_.Assembly -like "*"} | Select Assembly