Emmanuel Bergerat's blog on SharePoint

Starting to play with SharePoint PowerShell cmdlets

2009-11-26T20:26:00Z

Hello,

As you may know, SharePoint 2010 ships with Windows PowerShell. Being an automation geek, passionate by process, services and tools, I began to have a look at the INCREDIBLE possibilities brought by this architectural choice.

To start, I just retrieved the available cmdlets from SharePoint cmdlets:

Launch SharePoint 2010 Management Shell
Type Get-Command –PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
you just read them

Now, funnier: have an idea of types and totals of them, just to evaluate the upcoming task of knowing, using and documenting them :

Type the same command, but pipe the output to a TXT file
Get-Command -pssnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell | Format-Table Name > SP2010cmdlets.txt

Now Open the TXT file with Excel (2010 of course :-) ), and rework it as follows:

Remove the useless spaces characters with =TRIM() function
Create an “Action Type” column with =LEFT(A2”,SEARCH("-",A2)-1) – my cmdlets starts in the A2 cell

Insert a Pivot Table to count per “Action type” and there you are:

Cmdlet Type	Count
Get	143
Set	110
New	93
Remove	80
Update	11
Install	10
Add	10
Uninstall	8
Import	8
Start	8
Export	8
Disable	7
Enable	6
Clear	6
Stop	5
Move	4
Initialize	3
Upgrade	3
Backup	3
Restore	3
Resume	2
Test	2
Suspend	2
Mount	2
Revoke	2
Grant	2
Dismount	2
Unpublish	1
Copy	1
Restart	1
Receive	1
Merge	1
Disconnect	1
Rename	1
Publish	1
Connect	1
Ping	1
Grand Total	553

553 cmdlets to know, use, document ….

Btw, you can save the Excel file.

< Emmanuel />

Stop and Go with SharePoint 2010 on your workstation

2009-11-16T21:15:00Z

Hi,

As many of you learned, you can now setup SharePoint 2010 on a development workstation. It’s not supported for production, but for development, learning and demo that definitely rocks! As you may imagine, I tried this up and really have fun with it since (especially with Office Web Applications).

SharePoint 2010 on your workstation!

There’s few things to have in mind before setting this up:

You need a x64 OS (with everything that comes with it) – mine is Windows 7 Ultimate (heard that Vista SP2 x64 should be OK also)
You need 4 GB of RAM (under this you’re dead – your machine will be ... to be precise)
You’ll get the limitations of a “more or less” standalone setup. Especially if your machine is an AD DS Domain member. So bye, bye many users, services accounts, etc. But that definitely worth it, so no big deal here
many others things that Matthew Burnett described in his SharePoint Conference SPC 3998 session named “SharePoint isn’t just for Servers anymore”. You'll also find those information in the SDK once published (which is a question of hours or days now)

For those attending this session, you heard Matt talking about few other guys helping him on Windows PowerShell scripts. I’m part of them (it also includes Paul Andrew).

To live happy with SharePoint on my day-to-day workstation, I created 3 Windows PowerShell scripts to:

Set the SharePoint 2010 related default services “Startup type” as I wanted (i.e. “Manual”) - used once.
Start those Services when SharePoint 2010 is needed
Stop those same Services when SharePoint 2010 is not needed anymore

So, here they are:

Modify the Startup type for SharePoint related services

In my case, I setup independently the SQL server (which must be x64), so my instance name is “MSSQLSERVER”, and here is the script:

# SharePoint 2010 Workstation START up type modification script
#
# Scripts written by Emmanuel Bergerat (emberger@microsoft.com) on Oct. 20th 2009
# Provided as is, and can be freely modified and distributed
# Enjoy!
#
 
"Setting all SharePoint 2010 related services to Manual Startup:"
# SQL Services set to Manual Startup
"MSSQLSERVER","SQLWriter","SQLSERVERAGENT" | ForEach-Object {
    Set-Service $_ -startuptype manual}
    "  - SQL Services set to Manual StartUp"
 
# IIS Service to Manual Startup
    Set-Service "W3SVC" -startuptype manual
    "  - IIS Service set to Manual StartUp"
 
# SharePoint services set to Manual Startup
"SPTimerV4","DCLoadBalancer14","DCLauncher14","SPWriterV4","SPUserCodeV4","SPTraceV4","SPAdminV4","WebAnalyticsService" | ForEach-Object {
    Set-Service $_ -startuptype manual}
    "  - SharePoint Services set to Manual StartUp"
 
# SharePoint Search set to Manual Startup
"OSearch14", "SPSearch4"| ForEach-Object {
    Set-Service $_ -startuptype manual}
    "  - SharePoint Search set to Manual StartUp"
" "
"All SharePoint 2010 related services are now set to Manual Startup"

Start SharePoint 2010

# SharePoint 2010 Local Dev Workstation Services START script

# Scripts written by Emmanuel Bergerat (emberger@microsoft.com) on  Nov. 24th 2009

# Provided as is, and can be freely modified and distributed

# Enjoy!

# Start local SQL Services

"Starting Local SQL Services"

"MSSQLSERVER","SQLWriter","SQLSERVERAGENT" | ForEach-Object {

    $servicePrior = get-service $_

    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status + " and will be Started"

    Start-Service $_

    $serviceAfter = get-service $_

    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }

"=> Local SQL Services Started"

" "

# Start IIS

"Starting IIS"

"W3SVC" | ForEach-Object {

    $servicePrior = get-service $_

    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status + " and will be Started"

    Start-Service $_

    $serviceAfter = get-service $_

    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }

"=> IIS is Started"

" "

# Start SharePoint 2010 Services

"Starting SharePoint Server 2010"

"SPTimerV4","DCLoadBalancer14","DCLauncher14","SPWriterV4","SPUserCodeV4","SPTraceV4","SPAdminV4","WebAnalyticsService" | ForEach-Object {

    $servicePrior = get-service $_

    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status + " and will be Started"

    Start-Service $_

    $serviceAfter = get-service $_

    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }

"=> SharePoint Server 2010 is Started"

" "

# Start SharePoint Search

"Starting SharePoint Search 2010"

"OSearch14","SPSearch4" | ForEach-Object {

    $servicePrior = get-service $_

    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status + " and will be Started"

    Start-Service $_

    $serviceAfter = get-service $_

    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }

"=> SharePoint Search 2010 is Started"

" "

"Warming up local SharePoint WebApplications"

$snapin = Get-PSSnapin | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"}

if ([bool]$snapin) {} else {Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell}

function Warmup-Site([string]$url)

    $wc = New-Object net.WebClient

    $wc.credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultCredentials;

    return $wc.DownloadString($url)

Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration | Get-SPSite | ForEach-Object { Write-Host "Warming up site:" $_.Url ; $html = Warmup-Site -url $_.Url}

"=> Local SharePoint sites warmed up"

" "

"=> SharePoint 2010 is started on this workstation... Do you still have free RAM? :-) <="

Stop SharePoint 2010

# SharePoint 2010 Local Dev Workstation Services STOP script
#
# Scripts written by Emmanuel Bergerat (emberger@microsoft.com) on Nov. 24th 2009
# Provided as is, and can be freely modified and distributed
# Enjoy!
#
 
# Stop SharePoint Search
"Stopping SharePoint Search 2010"
"OSearch14","SPSearch4" | ForEach-Object {
    $servicePrior = get-service $_
    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status  + " and will be stopped"
    Stop-Service $_ -Force
    $serviceAfter = get-service $_
    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }
"=> SharePoint Search 2010 is STOPPED"
" "
# Stop SharePoint 2010 Services
"Stopping SharePoint Server 2010"
"SPTimerV4","DCLoadBalancer14","DCLauncher14","SPWriterV4","SPUserCodeV4","SPTraceV4","SPAdminV4","WebAnalyticsService" | ForEach-Object {
    $servicePrior = get-service $_
    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status  + " and will be stopped"
    Stop-Service $_ -Force
    $serviceAfter = get-service $_
    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }
"=> SharePoint Server 2010 is STOPPED"
" "
# Stop IIS
"Stopping IIS"
"W3SVC" | ForEach-Object {
    $servicePrior = get-service $_
    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status  + " and will be stopped"
    Stop-Service $_ -Force
    $serviceAfter = get-service $_
    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }
iisreset
"=> IIS is STOPPED"
" "
# Stop local SQL Services
"Stopping Local SQL Services"
"MSSQLSERVER","SQLWriter","SQLSERVERAGENT" | ForEach-Object {
    $servicePrior = get-service $_
    "$_ is " + $servicePrior.status  + " and will be stopped"
    Stop-Service $_ -Force
    $serviceAfter = get-service $_
    "$_ is now " + $serviceAfter.status }
"=> Local SQL Services STOPPED"
" "
"=> SharePoint 2010 is STOPPED on this workstation... you can use it now... with more RAM ;-) <="

2 shortcuts on your desktop, and you’re all set

I packed them up in a ZIP file attached to this post.

Adapt, enjoy, improve … any feedbacks are welcome,

< Emmanuel />

Note: I released a newer version on Nov 24th that includes: Warm-up scripts in the START script, and IISRESET in the STOP script (as I was informed it releases more RAM).

SharePoint 2010

2009-11-13T21:03:00Z

Hi,

As you may know, SharePoint 2010 is here. It was presented during SharePoint Conference 2009 that took place in Vegas few days ago.

You can imagine I test and evaluate it internally for months now, but can only talk about it since few days.

Contributing to the build of a new product/release is really exciting.

I won’t start to describe all the features, as many others will do better than me, and 300 hours of sessions from SPC2009 are here for that.

I will do other things:

Share & blog regularly on my knowledge, tools and experiences I have everyday with the product
Just say how I summarize it when customers or colleagues ask me to describe it:

For those who don’t know the product, the best sentence I know to describe the product is:

The business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Web

For the one knowing MOSS 2007, I say:

It’s looks like a similar product but with EVERYTHING in it which is either improved or changed

I am very happy being pat of this story, and hope I will transmit to you this thrill.

< Emmanuel />

The checkbox that saves you hours

2009-07-30T17:33:46Z

Hi,

Being a geek is expensive, even if you work at Microsoft. You always want to test, assess, and use the latest concepts and technologies. So hardware budget, and personal time consumption is very high.

Being a real one (even if my budget is always too short), I recently changed my Home PC for a blasting rig.

When you launch yourself in the assembly, setup, etc. … of a new machine, you arrive to a backup/restore/transfer data step.

As most of us have now hundreds GB of data, this can take a while before it’s done.

On my new PC, I use few Western Digital Velociraptors, few 1.5 TB Seagate Disks, 1 Adaptec high-end RAID card (to outperform the Intel ICH10R and Marvell SAS controller of my motherboard) and various arrays with stripe (Raid 0) and stripe+mirroring (Raid 10)

You can expect some good transfer rates from this, can’t you?

While transferring back data between a stripe array to another, I was very surprised on my rate transfer performances (using Windows Vista x64 Utlimate en-us with 6 GB of RAM):

9,8 MB/s what a crappy transfer rate !….. (btw I use TeraCopy here to speed up data transfer)

I then remembered my few trainings, certifications, and tweaking on Vista/Windows Server 2008. I decided to check an obvious setting for the Hard Disks Drives.

Here’s how to check and eventually set it right:

Right Click on “Computer” icon and choose “Manage” (There’s various ways to arrive to the next screen, that’s one of them)

Select “Disk Management” tree

In the Central Window, Select your disks set and right click on the Volume based on Hard Disks Drives and select “Properties”

On the displayed Windows Form, select the “Policies” tab, and check the checkboxes I highlighted in red (in my case, they were not checked)

Then enjoy the real speed of your disks or arrays :

101 MB/s transfer rate now !

At this rate, the transfer time for 500 GB (which are all my family DVs rushes I didn’t edit yet) drop from 10 hours to less than 1 hour…..:-) … 9 hours of useless machine time saved.

That’s what I call saving hours …. not talking of the overall performances your machine deliver with this little checkbox.

Enjoy

< Emmanuel />

Sharepoint at home: few learned tips to share

2009-07-23T18:31:00Z

Hi,

Like few geeks at Microsoft, I host my own server infrastructure at home. Even if wife and sons do everything they can to bring it down (like complaining on the noise, or tearing the cables), I maintain this up and running, playing and learning a lot.

In my infrastructure, I host my a MOSS 2007 server, among a wide variety of services. With these few years of experience, I can share some basics that could be helpful to anyone dealing with SharePoint.

#1 tip: Balance the heavy loads operations

I realized that the server sometimes become noisy for hours. It hosts File Server, SQL server and MOSS server “roles”. Being noisy means getting an heavy load (as the CPU fan raises to 100% speed).

By order if importance, it becomes heavy loaded because of:

SharePoint crawling & indexing (Full)
SharePoint crawling & indexing (Differential)
Antivirus scan
Data Backup (on backup disks) and replication (to a NAS)
Defragmentation
Other SharePoint timer jobs (like User profile import, Usage statistics processing, etc.)

So, here’s my little tip: plan and monitor these operations carefully. Schedule them during the night, among different nights& time.

I decided to use a week time slot to perform all of them + a weekly reboot (.....argh !).

Sure, this feedback looks obvious, but scheduling all these, without cutting the service to the users, and not overlapping long processes needs planning.

I only host few TB of data, and do not use a SAN, but the optimization of these operations took me some efforts (estimating/monitoring the respective durations and finding the optimal start hours) and saved me performance issues and family headaches: now the machine is noisy when everyone sleeps – normally.

#2 tip: Maintain your SharePoint Databases

Managing my server empty space, and monitoring my folders sizes, I realized that the SQL Log folder was becoming quite huge after few weeks of SharePoint use, as this explorer view confirms:

The SharePoint site collections were hosting few MB of data, and the SQL Log folder was huge: many GB! What happened here?

My surprise was to discover that more than 90% of this space (25 GB here!) was used by the Central Administration related DBs log files. As you can imagine, I don’t create Gigs of data in the Central Admin!

So, another tip here: manage your DBs. Backup DBs and shrink Log files.

That’s not natural for SharePoint admins’, as they often are not DBAs.

Use the “Maintenance Plan Wizard” of SQL server 2005/2008 to set this up:

More information:

Planning and Monitoring SQL Server Storage for Office SharePoint Server: Performance Recommendations and Best Practices (white paper)
Bill Baer excellent White Paper Database maintenance for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (white paper) (thanks Bill ;-) and see you next week)

Hope these feedback may help.

< Emmanuel />

P.S.: Just to share how “not” obvious some of those things are, one of my customer spent hours to understand why the usage statistics were not available in its SharePoint. After a close study of the settings and the Event viewer messages, I realized he was rebooting the farm servers when the timer job was starting to process the statistics. I saved him a call to MS support !

SharePoint and IT Pros: few possible improvements to ease their lifes

2009-07-17T16:40:00Z

Hi,

Few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to express to the SharePoint Product Management team various ideas I have around SharePoint and IT Pros audiences.

Based on my different experiences and engagements with customers, the discussion was very interesting. I often thought back on topics we could cover, as Microsoft, to ease the life of IT Pros with SharePoint. They can be improved by different ways like code, tools, guidances or documentation...

I'd like to share some of these ideas:

MOF/ITIL processes with SharePoint:

One of my difficultly learned lessons in my past lifes in Quality, Process Imporvement and ERP projects management, is that processes are necessary in IT operations. MOF (standing for Microsoft Operations Framework), inspired by ITIL, really lacked me when I was managing ERP projects, where any little new feature or bug fix can creaete huge disasters in 120 ERP systems widely deployed and used for evryday business in a company .... (to block the invoicing of many companies for days is not something you want to live, believe me ...)
I also learned that most IT Pros and IT organization, apply or inspire themselves with these principles to operate their IT.
The use of development, integration, validation, pre-production then production environment, is a must in MOF/ITIL processes
The challenge of Release, Configuration and Change Management, is key for IT Pros ...
To apply MOF concepts to SharePoint is difficult because :

the platform is based on different servers technologies (Windows Server, AD DS, SQL Server, IIS, .net + SharePoint)
the line between binaries, settings and data is difficult to draw (are SharePoint Designer modifications data or settings ? depends on the point of view you have)
the transfer of data and settings from a platform (for example integration) to a production environment is complicated, and harldy reproducible
automation is partial and a study between automation effort and the earned value is often necessary
etc.

There are features and techniques in SharePoint to support this Enterprise way of operating IT, but they are not documented "that way"
SharePoint misses an Operations mindset oriented documentation, like "Change Management in SharePoint" or "Release Management in SharePoint".
I think White Papers could help here...

SharePoint and virtualized servers:

Most of the IT teams I worked with are in the process of evaluating, migrating or operating part of their platforms on virtualized servers
Since our last summer announcements, SharePoint community lacks studies, guidances, and documentation on virtualization with SharePoint
There is a lot of questions out there, with no answers (yet), and almost no real examples posted :

what to virtualize (SQL, WFE, Application servers, VLANs, ...)?
for which performances?
how (at least for the Hyper-V customers)?
for which benefits (costs, administration time, ...)?

I hope we'll be able to give more data around this topic in the next months

SharePoint Logs & Errors understanding and use improvements:

SharePoint logs a lot of things but doesn't help you to understand
Just make this experience : setup MOSS 2007 with the "Autonomous" option, then let the server run few hours, and, guess what, you'll have a lot of logs!
Did you already experienced the "SharePoint error page" ? You definitely had this page. The one that says "there has been an error ....." and don't help you at all to understand or even start an investigation (if you're lucky, you have the user and the error time .... to try to find what happened)
There's definitely a need here for guidance and practical how-tos:

Which settings to choose in the Central Admin parameters, when and why
Where to look (SharePoint logs files, Windows event viewer, SQL profiler)
How to interpret ......
How to find solutions ....

Create SharePoint posters:

That sounds stupid, but organizing the data, and seeing it really helps
I think we need to publish posters on SharePoint farms, services, main menus, architecture, etc.
That should be possible as Exchange and SQL Server teams did it
.... and Mindhsarp partner also did !

The others topics were more internal and cannot be discussed here, but what would be yours? Please share.

Being positive and improvement oriented, I can say that Microsoft SharePoint 2010 will bring great improvements on some of these topics, and ease the IT Pros life. Very exciting things to come. Don't forget to join the SharePoint Conference 2009 to see them closely.

< Emmanuel />

Sorry for being silent during the past weeks

2009-07-17T16:18:00Z

Hi there,

For those of you following my little posts, you noticed I've been silent for the past 2 months. This happened due to personal issues with my new born son Tom.

Tom is born on May 19th and he's really cute. Unfortunately, he arrived with a rare and complicated disease, that popped up 2 days after his birth, while eating for the first time.

His survival have been a real question for many weeks since then. Even if he's still at the Reanimation Unit of Hopital Necker-Enfants Malades (at Paris, France), he should be Ok now. We deeply trust and respect the team in this unit that already saved his life few times, and do an amazing job to save babies.

Those past and long weeks were very hard for my family.

In the same time, this life experience pushed us more on the "Giving back to others" track. Funny timing: Bill Gates senior publishes a book on that topic during his life (Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime).

So now, tune on, as I had time to think about few posts for you all :-) , and will have time to write them.

< Emmanuel />

MOSS 2007 SP1 with Infrastructure update slipstream optimization

2009-04-17T17:38:00Z

Hi,

Few months ago, I posted a little step-by-step tutorial to generate an ISO file to have a “ready to use” up to date source for MOSS 2007 setup (this post is still here).

The setup of this binary source is VERY long, and I looked for ways to improve this.

To remember, the Full Slipstream setup duration is 23 minutes and 19 seconds:

But, this ISO includes all the “CoreServerMUI” language MSP files:

I thought keeping only the one I need : “en-us” and “fr-fr”, I could earn something:

Setup duration is very similar: the “Light” Slipstream setup duration is 23 minutes and 21seconds:

Bad news: duration is the same …. more than 23 minutes in either case…

Good news: 237,340 KB space is earned…

... so I keep the light one (waiting for the SP2 slipstream release)

< Emmanuel />

Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: Synthesis

2009-04-17T17:01:00Z

Hi,

This long post series raised interest from many of you. Thanks for that.

I was asked few times to provide a little synthesis and the scripts used, so here they are:

Steps :

Scripts:

I attach to this post all the scripts used during these posts. They are packed in a ZIP file.

Of course, I modified them :

License keys are all replaced by XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

Passwords are all set to “password”

The server is named SERVER (yes it is !)

Sources and binaries are available from a “Z:” drive

Steps 15 & 16 are not scripted

The MSP files (steps 12 & 13) were removed.They are too big to be attached to this post

Enjoy,

< Emmanuel />

White Paper on unattended / scripted MOSS 2007 setup is available !

2009-03-27T21:49:00Z

Hi all,

From various customer engagements, few months ago, I realized Microsoft had to bring in one place a way to industrialize MOSS 2007 environments setup.

Once available in a coherent and unified resource, it could benefit equally SP developers, knowing their work will deploy more easily, and the administrators, being able to dramatically improve consistency in their release management and platform setup.

That’s why I created and presented the TechReady 7 session OFC302 on MOSS scripted install, as I described here (Speaker at TechReady7 – Creating and Presenting OFC302 MOSS 2007 scripting).

Thanks to the TechNet team, and especially with the Microsoft Office SharePoint Content Publishing Team, we wrote and published this White Paper : Using scripts to automate SharePoint Server 2007 installations (white paper).

You should use it to define your setup strategy for your MOSS farms.

The associated tool is under creation (v1 is coming …. slowly). You can follow progress and read the vision here : http://www.codeplex.com/SPAutoSetup

This subject will become bigger and bigger, as a lot of enterprises adopt SharePoint technologies, and not a lot of enterprises allow “on-click” setup and configuration.

It’s just the opening of a new door to insert MOSS 2007 in Enterprise and wide scale systems.

< Emmanuel />

Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: part XVI – SPDevmod from Scot Hillier

2009-03-25T20:26:00Z

Hi,

Last post of this long series.

You definitely need to adapt your environment, with all these tools, to SharePoint development. Many references and advices exists in this area, from very strong people on SharePoint. The one I selected for me comes from Scot Hillier, one of the most respected MVP on SharePoint in the US (http://www.shillier.com/).

He posted his “development” method, and environment modification here: SharePoint Development Environment Modifications and explanations here: What's Your Process for Developing SharePoint Features and Solutions?

So, here’s a little step by step :

1. Download the modifications from CodePlex:

2. Unzip the package:

3. Select the right version for you (here VS2008):

4. Launch “install.bat” with administrator rights (to prevent from a registry access error, launch it from a local hard drive for the VM):

5. Enjoy and use:

This post is the last of this long series I started few month ago. I clearly wanted it to be in a chronological order. You may have seen I switched from Windows Server 2003 to 2008 during the posts. I needed that for some customers engagements. I will post on the unattended setup and adaptation of Windows Server 2008 for the development environment, but later. I have a lot of others subjects waiting for a long time now that I want to share with you.

Enjoy and use these 16 posts, as you need. It’s clearly one option to create the SharePoint development environment .... among others (like copying VHD files …. ;-) )

< Emmanuel />

Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: part XV – Useful external tools

2009-03-20T19:31:57Z

Hi,

We now have most of what can offer Microsoft on our development platform.

Approximately all the developers I met use additional tools and settings to ease their work (and especially with SharePoint).

I selected few tools you may find useful, as their “features” are needed to develop on a Web platform:

a very good text editor: you need this kind of tool to live happy. Visual Studio does it well, notepad … forget it. So I selected a free one :
- Notepad ++: You can find it easily on the net.
- PSpad is another option you may consider.
- UltraEdit is the reference, but you need to pay for it.
- Sure I missed a lot of others in this small list.

a HTTP debugger / Web debugger: you need this kind of tool to see directly what HTML is exchanged between the browser and the server:
- Fiddler2 is the most used one, as far as I know. You can find it here : http://fiddler2.com/fiddler2/ . I encourage you to watch the video explaining how to use it.

Debug View: this tool now available from Microsoft (formerly provided by SysInternals) is great to see how your code is run by the CLR runtime. You just add instructions like System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(“what I want to display in debug view”), and you see it in DebugView window. A must, especially to test your deployment packages and methods.
- DebugView for Windows can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx

a reflection tool to understand code: you may need this kind of tool, even if I cannot spend that much time on this on MSDN …

to this minimal list, add whatever you need or have the habits to work with.

< Emmanuel />

Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: part XIV – Install IE7 Developer Toolbar, WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 SDKs

2009-03-20T18:48:00Z

Hi,

Thanks for the support I received on this (long) series of posts.

We are close to the end of it. So we now focus on more “developer centric” little tools: Internet Explorer 7 Developer Toolbar and Software Development Kits for WSS v3 and MOSS 2007.

Internet Explorer 7 Developer Toolbar unattended setup

This toolbar is almost mandatory to develop Web items with/for Internet Explorer. It can be downloaded from here:

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar: http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=E59C3964-672D-4511-BB3E-2D5E1DB91038&displaylang=en

To know how to set it up, you now know what to look at : the “/?” argument:

You just launch it:

IEDevToolBarSetup.msi /quiet /norestart

And here you are:

Notes:

Installing from the network, you may have a security warning message
Internet Explorer 8 (released today on the web) already includes some tools for web development, available pressing “F12”:

WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 SDKs unattended setup

Any developer on SharePoint platform should know these. They help finding the way to achieve the expected customization.

They can be downloaded from here:

To set them up unattended, use the same principle: “/?” argument to know which switches are enabled:

Then launch the setup:

"WSSv3 SDK v1.4.exe" /quiet /norestart /passive
"MOSS 2007 SDK v1.4.exe"  /quiet /norestart /passive

and here you are:

Still few steps, and you’ll be close to a good development environment :-)

< Emmanuel />

Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: part XIII – Install SharePoint Designer 2007

2009-03-03T19:30:00Z

Hi,

Now that you know how to setup Office 2007 (Enterprise in previous post), you’re able to setup SharePoint Designer 2007, Project Pro 2007 and Visio 2007.

It’s just a question of reapplying the process and creating the right files.

I stay on MSP approach for SharePoint Designer. Here’s the steps and results:

launch “setup /admin”
Select the product

Set the options

Generate and Save the MSP file

launch setup with the MSP file “setup /adminfile %mspfilelocationandname%”

Here you are:

UPDATE (3/9/2009): One of my friend at Microsoft Support pointed me you need a "volume" licensed release of Office for OCT to be available. It may not be the case through MSDN or TechNet downloads.

Automating WSS v3/MOSS 2007 development environment setup: part XII – Install Office Enterprise 2007

2009-03-03T16:55:00Z

Hi,

We then need the “clients” software to work. The most useful one for developers will probably be InfoPath, to create forms for the SP based solutions.

To install the product, I‘ll use my company release of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007. You’ll perhaps need adaptations from what is described here.

There’s 2 options to setup unattend Office 2007:

Use a config.xml file with the few parameters you need
Create a MSP file using “Office Customization Tool”

I’ll describe the OCT tool (the option 2):

Create a “O2007EnterpriseSetup.msp” file for the setup (needed once, but needed!):

run “setup.exe /admin” from the software package root. This launches the “Office Customization Tool'”:

Select the edition you have and press “OK”
Fill in the fields and options. In my case, I change:

The Company name (for the fun)
The setup screens options (incl. license and no display)
The features installed (set it to “Run all from my computer”)

Then click on “File / Save as” and choose a name/location for the MSP file
Save it

Run the setup with this file as a parameter: “setup /adminfile %mspfilelocation%”
- You’ll see the splash screen for few seconds
- Then, everything is unattended
- …
- And here you are:

UPDATE (3/9/2009): One of my friend at Microsoft Support pointed me you need a "volume" licensed release of Office for OCT to be available. It may not be the case through MSDN or TechNet downloads.

References:

Setup reference for the 2007 Office system : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179099.aspx
Config.xml file in the 2007 Office system : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179195.aspx
Office Customization Tool in the 2007 Office system : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179097.aspx