SharePoint Thinks, Links and Clinks

People Picker Picked a Peck of Points

tadd — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:51:39 GMT

In another non-alliterated words, what it the flow of requests that occur with a user (EUC, not eunich) search with the People Picker Browse Display UI. I was about to try to build this from scratch to make sure that I was troubleshooting the correct boundaries on a recent problem, but, then, BING to the rescue (AGAIN!). The flow diagram of the requests was already out there! YAY to MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd357076(PROT.13).aspx ) There is such a wealth of information out there. Especially, on [MS-WSSO]: Windows SharePoint Services Overview. No need to second guess when the protocol is outlined, diagramed, and described in such detail. Enjoy.

People-Picker Lunch-Time reading

tadd — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:54:19 GMT

I am spending my lunch time, sans-pickle, but with lots of good People-Picker goodness. I had to share the soon to be classics in the blogosphere links over at Full Metal Architect. I was digging into a lot of this prior to Binging a few additional things related to trusts, forests, domains, people-picker, browse, check name goodness that is in SharePoint. Bing saved the day again(insert them music here). But the blog entries below have made my day and saved me from recreating the wheel.

Additional People-Picker resources

Peoplepicker- Stsadm properties (TechNet)
http://www.bing.com/search?q=stsadm+peoplepicker+custom+ldap+query&form=OSDSRC BING BABY!!

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing the Fourth Release of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit

tadd — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:29:30 GMT

I have been away from the blog for a while. However, the release of the Fourth Release of the Microsoft Administration Toolkit is a good enough reason to come out of hiatus. I have been spending quite a bit of time lately digging into permission issues at a customer I support. I was reading about the Permissions Reporting Tool and a tear came to my eye. Now to go give it a try!

Permissions Reporting Tool

In the past, customers have had a difficult time trying to detect what sites in a site collection have broken inheritance from the parent and thus why they cannot access some sites. The Permissions Reporting tool for SharePoint makes it very easy to detect where inheritance has been broken in a site collection. You can compare an object like a list or a site against its parent to see where inheritance was broken and run reports to get more information on such sites. You can also check effective permissions for a user or a group in a particular site, web, or list in a site collection; this feature lists the permissions that a user or group has.

Once the Permissions Reporting tool is installed in the farm, a site collection administrator can go to the top-level site or any subsite in a site collection and use the links on the Site Settings page to reap the benefits of the tool. The following image shows the new links that appear after you have installed the Permissions Reporting tool in the farm.

Note: To be able to see the links for Broken Inheritance Reports Jobs and Compare Permissions Sets, you must be a site collection administrator. However, anyone with the Enumerate Permissions permission — by default, people in the site Owners group — will be able to see the Check Effective Permissions link.

Click Broken Inheritance Report Jobs to run reports of broken sites in a site collection. Reports contain any information relevant to a broken inheritance. The report output is in XML, but you can save the files and then open them in Excel to see the information at a glance. For more information, see Run broken inheritance reports on Office.com.

Click Check Effective Permissions to check a user or group’s permissions on a site, list, or item. You can view what permissions are allowed and denied and any blocking permissions. For more information, see Check permissions for a user or group on Office.com.

Click Compare Permission Sets to compare an object such as a site or a list against its parent to quickly detect which object breaks inheritance in your site collection. For more information, see Compare permission sets on Office.com.

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing the Fourth Release of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit

ProcDump : SysInternals tool for generating crash dumps during spikage

tadd — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:27:40 GMT

Another tool for your tool belt from SysInternals Mark Russinovich. Why would you need this in SharePoint land? Ever had a process spike and you would have liked to capture a memory dump for analysis and you just happened to miss the occurrence of the event? I have, and I know that a few other have as well. There are a few work arounds that can be done with some other tools out there.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx

“ProcDump is a command-line utility whose primary purpose is monitoring an application for CPU spikes and generating crash dumps during a spike that an administrator or developer can use to determine the cause of the spike. ProcDump also includes hung window monitoring (using the same definition of a window hang that Windows and Task Manager use) and unhandled exception monitoring. It also can serve as a general process dump utility that you can embed in other scripts.”

ProcDump

SharePoint Development Tools - SharePoint Development Wiki - SharePoint Dev Wiki

tadd — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:49:11 GMT

Great list of tools to make your SharePoint Development, Deployment, Debugging, Debunking very Delightful.

SharePoint Development Tools - SharePoint Development Wiki - SharePoint Dev Wiki

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint 2010 Technical Preview

tadd — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:26:02 GMT

Sneak a peek over at the site below for videos and more!

2010 Sneak Peek Home: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/default.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek Overview Video: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Overview-Video.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek IT Pro Video: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/IT-Pro-video.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek Developer Video: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Developer-video.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek Get Ready: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Get_Ready.aspx
2010 Sneak Peek FAQ: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/FAQ.aspx

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Announcing SharePoint 2010 Technical Preview

DelegConfig v2 beta (Delegation / Kerberos Configuration Tool) : Download : The Official Microsoft IIS Site

tadd — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:25:33 GMT

I just love the main screen of this tool! Kerberos can be scary and misunderstood (kinda like referees!)

“

Introduction

DON'T RUSH!!! You are not so smart that you should skip over reading the following. I like to skip over documentation just as much as the next person. But for your own benefit please read this information (usage tips and features). If you are not aware of everything this tool can do, you will add unnecessary confusion and work to your already frustrating experience of getting Kerberos and Delegation to function properly.

Usage Tips
READ what the report tells you - If I had a penny for every time somebody asked me what the report ALREADY SAYS I would be rich. Okay, maybe not rich, but I'd have a lot of pennies.
Start by using the report locally from the web server - You should still use the same URL that you plan on using remotely. However, certain types of authentication problems will occur only if your connection is using Kerberos and there is something misconfigured. Using this tool from a browser instance local to the server will avoid those types of problems since in most cases local requests use NTLM.
Next, use the report from a remote client - One important check that is performed is whether or not your browser has actually connected to the web service using Kerberos. If you always make your requests from the web server itself, you will likely always see a "Negotiate with NTLM" connection with a red "x" next to it (and red icons usually bother people). A second important piece of information revolves around name resolution of the client. If your requests are always from the server, how can we see what the client thinks?
Lastly, click any "Fix This" buttons locally from the server - There will be "Fix This" buttons that appear that will allow you to make the exact changes that you need to get things working. But just like any other web application, this application is at the mercy of the whole double-hop concept. The most relevant types of changes this tool can make are Trust settings and ServicePrincipalName settings which are both stored in Active Directory. If you try to make changes to these settings (i.e. you click the fixThis buttons) from a remote browser instance it will likely fail because of the failed double-hop from browser-to-WebServer then webServer-to-ActiveDirectory.
Pages
/Set/SPNs.aspx - Allows adding and removing of ServicePrincipalNames
/Set/Delegation.aspx - Allows changing Trust for Delegation settings.
/Set/Providers.aspx - Allows correcting of inadequate NTAuthenticationProviders settings.
/Report.aspx - Gives a picture of what is right and what is wrong.
/Wizard.aspx - A set of wizard steps that supports adding more tiers to /Report.aspx.
/Test.aspx - Allows double-hop tests for webServer-to-Sql or webServer-to-File server or webServer-to-webServer

“

DelegConfig v2 beta (Delegation / Kerberos Configuration Tool) : Download : The Official Microsoft IIS Site

What GUID is that Feature in the Window?

tadd — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:05:13 GMT

Check out Robert’s post at http://www.thorprojects.com/blog/archive/2007/05/16/list-of-features-with-guids.aspx for a quick list of which GUID links to which feature within your MOSS Farm.

In addition, StefanG has a tool on msdn (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WssAnalyzeFeatures) which will list out the guid and feature that you have installed on your site collection. Very helpful!

Better Together : Adding a custom column to Site Settings

tadd — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:37:45 GMT

Over on “Better Together”, a new blog by a fellow Microsoftie Will Feaser, he shares a quick and easy to implement method of adding customized links to the Central Administration, Site Settings. All with brackets and short little ~ and others in your elements.xml file. Be forewarned, make sure you backup your environment and have proper change control as future service packs, hot-fixes, upgrades and other admins playing may change your settings.

Please join me in welcoming Will to the blogosphere. Even though he links to me as “A Tadd to much.”

Better Together : Adding a custom column to Site Settings

Stefan Goßner : Hotfix for SP2 issue that reverts SharePoint products to Trial Version has been released

tadd — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:44:34 GMT

If you follow SharePoint technologies on the blogosphere, you will most likely have come across Stefan’s blog. If not, here is a link to a recent blogpost regarding a fix for the “Let us go back to the Trial version” that was an added feature for SP2.

Good Luck

Stefan Goßner : Hotfix for SP2 issue that reverts SharePoint products to Trial Version has been released

Twitter and SharePoint and a Purple Polka Dotted Twikini

tadd — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:09:16 GMT

I have been using twitter a little over the past few years. I remember getting an account because I thought it was going to be the next big thing. It took off and I forgot that I had an account. I then remembered, went out a started to tweet again. Using my Windows Mobile phone and sending SMS messages was an OK to proceed, but I thought that there had to be a better way. I did some searching with BING (http://www.bing.com/search?q=Twitter+Windows+Mobile+Client&form=OSDSRC) and came across a few clients. I decided to give Twikini a try.

Written in C++, which is a plus to me over some of the other languages.

I like the icon

It looked to be just what I was looking for in a client for twitter. After some practice tweets, I was impressed.

GPS location posting (optional)

TwitPic integration

Retweeting (new word?)

Favoriting (another new word)

I won’t be following some of the tweeters in their screen shots, but Twikini has made following the 12 or so that I do follow easier.

What does this have to do with SharePoint? I follow a few SharePoint gurus and other Software Geekazoids and I think that having a Client on my phone will make it easier to follow them.

Feel free to follow me http://www.twitter.com/drtadd

Find other SharePointers of the world http://twitter.com/search/users?q=sharepoint&category=people&source=find_on_twitter

Next test will be me learning my # and @ for searching, replying, and other twitness. My GPS is not talking to it yet, but I like a challenge. I will make sure to have a true repro of the screen below in July and August!

SharePoint - webparts

tadd — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:07:01 GMT

Check out the list and description of the great out of the box web parts that Ian Morrish has over at http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/webparts.aspx

This is more of a “favorites” blog entry for me to remember.

SharePoint - webparts

Trying to be sneaky and defrag a Virtual PC VHD using Win 7 mount VHD

tadd — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:46:13 GMT

Note to self: Sometimes, just because you can technically do it, does not mean that you should.

Lesson Learned!

I decided to save some time and defrag a Virtual PC VHD by mounting it in Windows 7. The mounting was easy, the defrag was easy as well. Started Virtual PC back up and it said “Hey, your drive is read only!” I said “crap, what did I do?” Oh, yeah, I forgot to UNMOUNT the VHD from Windows 7. So, I UNMOUNTED the Virtual PC VHD from Windows 7 and I was thinking, wow, if this works, think of the time savings! Restarted Virtual PC and it said, “Umm, you know, you modified this disk, WHICH, BY THE WAY, had a differencing disk.” I decided to tread on and made some changes and exited, feeling pretty good. Came back a little later and tried to restart the Virtual PC with its fresh defrag drive. OOPS, registry is crapped out and it makes sense. Oh well, back to the back up and Lesson learned.

NOTE: Defrag the VHD from its own OS running, not from some fancy smanzy trick of mounting the VHD in the way cool Windows 7 RC. Yeah, Windows 7 is cool and it allows you to do other things with VHDs that do work.

Go BING it!

Stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint Server 2007 (Now with SilverLight interactivity!)

tadd — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:00:41 GMT

Check out the new STSADM reference on TECHNET. It now has SilverLight functionality added for your convenience.

Stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint Server 2007

Sharepoint Ports and Protocols - Bing

tadd — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:53:53 GMT

I was looking for a reference(s) for all the various ports and protocols in play with a SharePoint Implementation. I said to myself, “Hey, go BING it!". So, I did!

http://www.bing.com/search?q=Sharepoint+Ports+and+Protocols+&form=QBLH

BING is my new friend. I hope he will be yours too!

Sharepoint Ports and Protocols - Bing