Michael O'Donovan's SharePoint and Stuff : SharePoint

Materials from community event posted – media player web part, organogram control and sample master page

modonovan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:37:06 GMT

Hi Community Friends,

Sorry for the delay in posting the materials I used to present the UX on SharePoint session at the last IW community. I have uploaded the contents to the events tab on the information worker web site. It includes the following:

presentation
sample master page, style sheet and images used
sample media player web part code
sample silverlight organogram control (team browser control)

http://www.informationworker.co.za/Pages/Events.aspx

Enjoy,

Michael

Buy SharePoint Themes from SharePointShop.co.za

modonovan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:29:03 GMT

Proudly South African SharePoint theme store http://www.sharepointshop.co.za/ has just launched with some great looking themes for your SharePoint sites. Check them out here

These are delivered by local partner, bSolve.

Michael

Most common issue with SharePoint installations – service account misuse

modonovan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:32:29 GMT

It is frightening to see how many SharePoint installations have been installed with wrong service accounts. Either people are using the default domain administrator or local machine administrator for all service accounts, or they are creating a single service account for everything and in many cases giving it WAY too many rights. SharePoint 2007 has been out for a fair amount of time and people are still getting this massively wrong. We can dissect later why that is, but for now I wanted to give my quick overview on what I suggest for service accounts in SharePoint 2007.

Few golden rules:

Never use domain administrator or built-in machine administrator for any SharePoint service account, and never be logged onto a server with as either of these accounts when installing SharePoint.
Never use the same service account for all SharePoint services
Never manually grant SQL Server rights to any service account (except the one you use to install SharePoint – farm service account, will come back to this later). SharePoint will give all SQL Server rights to the appropriate service accounts
Read the installation documentation. This is not a simple installation and configuration, so don’t treat it as such. Do you home-work before installing and configuring a SharePoint farm. Seriously, this is not a file server!

Depending which resources you read, will see suggestions anywhere from 3 to 7 service accounts required for SharePoint Server 2007. In my suggestion below, I recommend 5 service accounts. There are many arguments to be had around details, but I don't believe you will be going wrong with this.

Account	Purpose	Scope	Used By	When do you input this account name?	Rights Required
Farm Account / Central Admin App Pool Account	Used to run setup on each MOSS server in the farm. You must be physically logged on as this user when installing MOSS. This user account must not be the domain or local default “administrator” account, create a new account which you might call “MOSSFarmSVCAccount” and use this across all servers to install MOSS. During installation it will ask for a Farm Account, give it this user account. Used by the SharePoint Central Administration Web App’s application pool to communicate with SQL Server This account is sometimes referred to as the “database access account”	Farm	Person installing MOSS SharePoint Central Admin Application Pool WSS Administration Service	To log onto server to install MOSS During setup its asked for as the “Farm Account”	Member of the local administrators group on each MOSS server. Even though not a domain admin, this account must be a local server admin on each MOSS server. Member of SQL Server Security Administrator and Database Creator rights on SQL Server where databases will be created during setup. Before installing MOSS, make sure this user has these rights in SQL Server. Once done, you will not need to grant access to SQL objects again, SharePoint will do this for you when it get’s configured.
SSP App Pool Identity Account	Used by the SSP Web Application’s application pool to communicate with SQL Server Excel Calculation Services use this account by default to connect to data sources	App	SSP Web Application’s Application Pool Excel Services Service	During SSP creation	No rights or permissions should be explicitly given to this account. In other words, make this a standard domain user account (you might want to set password policies to prevent password expiring etc) SharePoint will automatically grant this account the correct permissions on the databases in SQL. SSP content database = DBO Content DB’s associate to SSP = Read/Write Central Admin content DB = Read Config DB = Read
SSP Service Account	User account for the SSP Web services to use for inter-server communication and for running SSP-scoped timer jobs	Farm	SSP Timer Service SSP Web Services	During SSP creation	No rights or permissions should be explicitly given to this account. In other words, make this a standard domain user account (you might want to set password policies to prevent password expiring etc) SharePoint will automatically grant this account the correct permissions on the databases in SQL. These end up being the same rights and permissions as the SSP App Pool Identity Account
Search Content Access and Profile Import Account	Used by the MOSS search service to read content to index. It is also used by default to access AD to import user account information into the profile database. yes, you can have other accounts which you use to specifically connect to AD for profile import and and various accounts for all your content crawling, but for now I am assuming 1 account for all of these tasks.	SSP	Search Service	Supplied During SSP creation	No rights or permissions should be explicitly given to this account. In other words, make this a standard domain user account (you might want to set password policies to prevent password expiring etc) SharePoint will automatically grant this account the correct permissions on the databases in SQL. This account must NOT be a member of the local administrators group. Well none of the accounts should be (except farm service account), but I really just wanted to call this out here explicitly because it has be known to cause issues with Search. A rule will automatically be created which grants this account read access to all MOSS content
Generic WSS Web Application Pool Identity	I generally recommend having one generic application pool identity (service account) for all the web applications (application pools) you create. Make life easier otherwise you create many accounts for all web applications (application pools). There is also a discussion to be had on how many application pools you need for your web applications, but is a discussion for another day. Used by all WSS web. This account will perform all communication between the web application and the SQL Server databases for those web applications.	App	Web Application Pools	During web application / application pool creation	No rights or permissions should be explicitly given to this account. In other words, make this a standard domain user account (you might want to set password policies to prevent password expiring etc) SharePoint will automatically grant this account the correct permissions on the databases in SQL.

Question: How do I change my already bad deployment? Check this KB article out, which may help http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;934838

I hope this helps in some little way next time you are tasked with this.

Michael

MonteCasino.co.za and TsogoSun.co.za go live on MOSS 2007

modonovan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:35:07 GMT

Both of these web sites (developed by local partner Intervate) have gone live using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). When you have a chance, hope on over and take a look.

www.montecasino.co.za

www.tsogosun.co.za

Once, again these have been updated on www.informationworker.co.za/pages/showcase.aspx for a complete reference of local SA sites on MOSS.

New Social Computing for the Enterprise SharePoint Site Launched

modonovan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:19:39 GMT

Check out http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/social. It’s about organisations using social computing technologies inside the firewall for business benefit. Watch this space (site) as it delivers more information over time which I am sure will be of value to you.

Oh, and yes, it’s built in SharePoint and Silverlight.

Free SharePoint Hands on Lab Day in Johannesburg – Community Led

modonovan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:26:41 GMT

Hi All,

On the 23rd of May (yes, it is a Saturday), the IW Community will be hosting a SharePoint Lab Day (SLAB). This means you can come and choose from over 30 SharePoint Hands On Labs to brush up on your SharePoint skills. You choose the lab, you work at your own pace!

Yes, and this is all totally FREE!

You need to register ASAP because seats are limited and running out fast.

The labs cover IT Professional and Developer scenarios, if you are new to SharePoint or experienced there will be labs for you!

Examples of topics covered in the labs:

Web Parts
Data Lists
Event Handlers
Workflow
Silverlight
Page Navigation
Page Branding
Web Services
Content Types
User Management

lata,

Michael

SharePoint “How To” Videos on TechNet – Done by “Our” very own Hilton Giesenow

modonovan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:40:40 GMT

Proudly South African Hilton Giesenow has been putting together some really great “How To” SharePoint videos for TechNet. These are short videos (generally around 10mins each) which show you how to do some of the important configuration tasks required in a SharePoint environment. For example; how to configure outgoing email; installing and configuring MOSS 2007; email enabling a SharePoint list and loads more.

Check them out here

MOSS 2007, WSS 3.0 and Office 2007 SP2 – Release Date and Features Announced

modonovan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:15:48 GMT

Service Pack 2 for MOSS 2007, WSS 3.0 and Office 2007 will release on the 28th of April 2009. This announcements was made on the Office team blog, along with an introduction to some of the fixes / features added.

My top 6 improvements are:

Support ODF 1.1 in Office 2007 (read and Save As)
Built in Save as PDF in Office 2007 (no need to download add-in anymore)
Performance in start-up, shutdown, view rendering, and folder switch has been improved in Outlook 2007 – I have been testing this, and WOW it is a major improvement!
Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication in WSS – I like :-)
The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved in MOSS
SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers

Check out the full blog article here

Reminder: IW Community Meeting on Wednesday, it will be the best yet!

modonovan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:52:46 GMT

Hi Folks,

Tomorrow (Wednesday the 15th April) will see the best South Africa Information Worker community meeting EVER! We have a large number of people registered for the ToolFest and expect it to be an absolute hoot.

It is not too late to register, so hop on over to www.informationworker.co.za and click the registration banner of the home page.

We have about 8 15 minute sessions, giving an overview of each of these tools / extensions for SharePoint:

Gary Lapointe’s STSADM extenstions for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007
STSADM.EXE tool tricks
Visual Studio 2010 & SharePoint
Colligo for SharePoint & Outlook
Nintex Reporting
SharePoint Manager 2007 from Codeplex
Smart Tools for SharePoint
Sushi

See you there,

Michael

Another GREAT MOSS Bootcamp completed

modonovan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:33:23 GMT

Yesterday we completed another 2 day MOSS 2007 bootcamp (held in Fourways, Johannesburg), and the general feedback was that it was a fantastic event. Not only did the delegates love the content and labs, but they found the networking opportunities to be very valuable to.

I did promise that the slides which were used would be published today, and so please us this link to download the PPTs off of my SkyDrive

If you are in the South African region, please don’t forget to join the Information Worker Community and use it as a way to keep in touch with other SharePoint focused South Africans (both technical and business).

Over and Out,

Michael

Insight into Visual Studio 2010’s Support for SharePoint Development

modonovan — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:11:07 GMT

Somasegar has posted a short (30 second read) of what to expect in Visual Studio 2010 in terms of SharePoint development tools support. Sounds very excited and should make our lives a heck of a lot easier.

Read the full article here.

Channel 9 has a good little video too on this subject.

ComponentOne Release 3 Web Parts for SharePoint

modonovan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:10:41 GMT

“ComponentOne Web Parts leverage the power of Microsoft's Silverlight technology for superior performance, styling, animation, and interactivity. Version 1 of ComponentOne SharePoint Web Parts includes three feature-packed web parts:

ComponentOne DataGrid™ for SharePoint
ComponentOne Chart™ for SharePoint
ComponentOne Maps™ for SharePoint

These web parts access both SharePoint lists and SQL Server data. They are easily configurable by administrators and, if permissible, by end users alike” – http://labs.componentone.com/WebParts/

FAST Search for SharePoint Announced

modonovan — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:43:05 GMT

Microsoft have unveiled the roadmap for FAST integration with SharePoint with the announcement of FAST Search for SharePoint. This together with FAST Search for Internet Business was announced at the FASTForward conference in Las Vegas.

The details of these announcements can be found on the Microsoft PressPass site here, and also on the SharePoint Team Blog.

Michael

PerformancePoint Scorecarding and Dashboarding capabilities now part of SharePoint Enterprise CAL

modonovan — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:39:48 GMT

"PerformancePoint scorecarding and dashboarding capabilities will now become part of SharePoint Enterprise CAL and available to customers who are on SharePoint SA. Microsoft is removing the barriers for customers who want to deploy a complete Business Intelligence solution, leveraging their existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel. Customers with SharePoint ECAL SA will have rights to deploy PerformancePoint Server today" – check out the announcement on the SharePoint team blog

WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint Released

modonovan — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:49:28 GMT

I have been asked this question numerous times. “Does SharePoint produce WSRP compliant content, so that other portal technologies can render SharePoint content such as lists and web parts?” My answer would always be “No”, SharePoint is a WSRP consumer not a producer…well now there is some GREAT NEWS…..that has changed.

Microsoft has released the WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint to CodePlex. This toolkit consists of sample code for producing WSRP conformant content for SharePoint lists and libraries.

You can find the SharePoint Product Team announcement here http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/12/05/announcing-the-wsrp-toolkit-for-sharepoint.aspx, and

2 Video Samples here:

For many other great resources on interoperating with SharePoint, be sure not to miss the Resources for Interoperability with SharePoint Site which has many interop resources.