Thursday, September 25, 2008

Visio Stencils for Sharepoint Server

Found this pretty cool site that has a very useful tool for visio.

http://blogs.msdn.com/roberdan/archive/2006/03/05/543967.aspx

Kudos

John

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Alternate Access Mapping

Okay, to do this, Central Administration, Alternate Access Mappings, right side....

Scenario----You want to make your sharepoint site open to the public from the internet, how do you do it?

Click edit public urls button
Alternate Access Mapping Collection drop down, drop down to your main portal site

In your default field type the internet url, such as http://sharepoint.mydomain.com

Add internal urls that match your host headers if you have any.

Add mysites.mydomain.com to a custom internal url.

That should do it.

Searching for people does not come back with results

In search center you attempt to search for people and the results are blank.

In your ssp admin page, search settings, content sources. Edit the local sharepoint servers. Make sure sps3://mysites/ is there in the list and if you are using host headers make sure you have sps3://mysites.blankblank.com. Select full crawl and now the people should show up in your search.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Adding images to filetypes in SharePoint

First, you need to obtain the images of the icons you want and make sure they are 16 x 16. Then, upload them to the sharepoint server, in this directory, C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES

next, add them to the docicon.xml file located here, C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML .

do a iisreset and you are done.

these need to be scaled down.








Creating custom search scope for your search center

have loads of sharepoint sites, dont want to do a generic search all sites from the search center? Then, create individual scopes to scale down the search, just like the search on the individual sites.

First thing to do, go into your ssp admin, search settings, create new scope (call it what your site is). Then click on the rule link to create the rule. I used the web option, then added the link to the site itself.

Once you have created all your scopes, and they r ready to be used, go into your actual site, under site settings, all settings. Under site collection administration, click search scopes. Create new display group.

Last step is to modify the web part so that the new display group is dispalyed. Site actions, edit page, modify web part. In the Search Box tool pane, click the plus sign (+) next to Miscellaneous. In the Scope Display Group text box, type the name of the display group that you want to use, and then click Apply. Click OK to close the tool pane.

On the Search Center page, click either Publish or Check In to Share Draft, depending on your site permissions and workflow.

Done

Windows XP issues a 'Delayed Write Failed' message when you perform file management tasks

Turn off Enable write caching on the disk:

1. Use My Computer or Windows Explorer to right-click your disk and press Properties.

2. Select the Hardware tab.

3. Select the disk and press the Properties button.

4. Select the Policies tab.

5. Clear the Enable write caching on the disk check box.

6. Press OK and OK.

7. Repeat steps 3 through 6 for each disk.


Another possible cause of this is your sql server is out of disk space because the db files on stored on the c drive.

Last possible reason you need to bump the maximum file size in your web.config on your Sharepoint server under inetpub directory. maxRequestLength property

I have seen this issue before on windows xp.

Increase maximum file size for uploading in SharePoint

Got to SharePoint Central Administration page
Under Application Management on Web Application General Settings in section "Maximum Upload Size" you can specify the file upload size you wish. By default it is 50mb.

Exclude sites for indexing, 'private sites'

I was asked to create sites for the CEO and CIO but they were to be kept under wraps because of obvious reasons. The way to exclude sites from search/index is as follows.

Navigate your way to your ssp admin page, click on search settings under search. Click Crawl Rules. Select New Crawl Rule.

Put the path to the SharePoint site you wish to 'Exclude', then check off exclude all items in the path option. That's it. You can test it by using the test feature right above the 'new crawl rule' screen.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

need to extract all documents from sharepoint libraries (updated)

I have found a better way, and much easier way to accomplish this.

http://blog.krichie.com

the app is called spiefolder, and it can be batched to rip your whole sharepoint site down in minutes. Great tool and a must have.

Syntax

SYNTAX: SPIEFolder.exe []

where:

The Web URL where the list exists
Name of the list (Document Library)
File System directory
[] Import or export (defaults to export)

spiefolder http://krichiemoss "Shared Documents" c:\spiefolder\SeedFiles
spiefolder http://krichiemoss "Shared Documents" c:\spiefolder\SeedFiles import

How to combine document libraries and discussions

SharePoint offers both document libraries and threaded discussions however they are located in different SharePoint lists. Some clients would like to have both located together to facilitate the process of discussing documents. Document Discussion allows you to have a threaded discussion around a specific document by combining the standard SharePoint document library with the standard SharePoint discussion on a single screen.

VISIT HEDGEHOG WEBPARTS GALLERY

Keeping track of the changes made to the intranet can be difficult

From the guys over at Hedgehog www.hhogdev.com,

Keeping track of the changes made to the intranet can be difficult. In order to accomplish this, you need to subscribe to a list to know if the item(s) has changed. Subscribing to the many lists available or having knowledge of the lists can be difficult and time consuming. SiteTracker will display all the items that have change in the areas that you are interested in and allow you to mark them as read so that SiteTracker can start to watch for new changes.

SITE-TRACKER LINK

Email sharepoint documents as attachments

This link works like a charm. To make it work, I added the sharepoint site to the local intranet zone, and adjusted the setting as outlined in the link. Perfect.

https://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/ayyapusetty_raja/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=11

Kudos

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Import and Export lists or libraries

Using stsadm tools from, http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2007/09/importexportcopy-lists.html

I created a batch file to help you do mass imports and exports...

echo on
set cmmand="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe"

%cmmand% -o gl-exportlist -url "http://yoursharepointserver/shared documents/forms/allitems.aspx" -filename "c:\export\shared" -includeusersecurity -versions 4 -nofilecompression


%cmmand% -o gl-importlist -url "http://yoursharepointserver/" -filename "c:\export\shared" -includeusersecurity -updateversions 2 -nofilecompression

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Foldering in Document Libraries

Why do people insist on using folders in SharePoint like they are using 'My Documents' on there computer? I have seen this more often than not, then the users complain on the folder hierachy, it's too much. Well, this is partly Microsoft's fault :( The best approach I have learned when it comes to document libraries is to refrain from using folders as much as possible. Instead, create 2 custom columns or three if you want. Name the first column 'Document Type', make it a choice, then populate the choice fields with possible categories you would use. Let's say we are creating a Helpdesk Support Doc Library. Make some choices, desktop, server, internet, applications etc...Each document that is upload to this list should have a doc type assocaited to it. You could then create another column, say department if you are in a big company. This way maybe different departments have different solutions to the same problem. When you are done, create views to filter the doc types or departments or any variation. Then, group them by doc type, this will create a folder like look. Hope this makes sense.

John

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Guidelines for using folder structures in document libraries

When using document libraries in SharePoint try to avoid creating nested folders. There are several reasons you do not want to create folders more than one level deep if you need to create them at all.
  1. Security can't be applied to a folder in SharePoint
  2. Currently, you can't add a folder by itself to a web page in a web part
  3. Why would you continue nesting folders, you are then recreating your file server structure all over again.

Instead of creating folders in Document Libraries create a seperate document library, this allows users to consume the content most important to them and you have more control over security and other features such as custom views.

Index JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, PS, EPS, PSD, AI and SVG files

XMP IFilter lets you index and search JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, PS, EPS, PSD, AI and SVG files. It extends Microsoft Index Server to extract metadata from Adobe XMP compatible files. XMP IFilter supports Dublin Core, Adobe Photoshop, XMP Basic and other XMP schemas. XMP IFilter is easily extensible and can support other XMP core schemas such as XMP Exif schema. If your metadata needs are not covered by the core schemas, you may add custom schemas as extensions. For better integration with Microsoft applications XMP IFilter also outputs common office document properties such as 'DocTitle', 'DocKeywords', 'DocCreatedTm' and others.

http://www.ifiltershop.com/xmpfilter.html

$300 for the server edition :)

View data easily from any sql server in sharepoint!

Great product and CHEAP!

http://www.lightningtools.com/pages/lt%20data%20viewer%20web%20part.aspx

STSADM tools that are essential to SharePoint Administration

http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2007/09/importexportcopy-lists.html

Increase the size limitation while you save site as template include content in MOSS 2007

In MOSS 2007 you can change that limit using stsadm execute the following command :
stsadm -o setproperty -pn max-template-document-size -pv 40000000

40mb

MAXIMUM SETTING IS 500MB

Edit in Datasheet View in Office 2003 does not work

Article Content
The papers that Microsoft at present (June 2004) have comparing what you get with Office 2000; Office XP and Office 2003 say that "Edit in Datasheet View" is a function of Office 2003.
It is but only if you are running Office 2003 Professional.
It is not included in either Office 2003 Standard or Office 2003 Small Business Edition.
Finally, a source that prefers to remain anonymous told me that it is possible to get Edit in Datasheet to work with Office 2003 Business Edition (*note that Monty extends this to Standard Edition*) by making a registry change. Here's his (or her!) text.

"It seems that if you set:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\ProductVersion]"ProInfo"=dword:00000001

on a machine with Office SBE or Standard you don't even need to exit IE. The next time you click on "Edit in Datasheet", off you go."

Alex Angas points out that the KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909506

Create color in your bland SharePoint Calendar

Explained in this blog, you can add color to your SharePoint calendar so it mimics Outlook.

http://www.codeplex.com/planetwilson

http://planetwilson.blogspot.com/

DO NOT USE NETWORK SERVICE FOR ANY ACCOUNTS!

This seems to be debated at length on the web but from my experience, when configuring services in your SharePoint farm, every time I would try and use the service account I ran into bizarre issues. You should use an actual account and preface the account name with the domain, such as
corp\johndoe. Doing this seems to resolve a lot of issues.

Useful SharePoint Designer Custom Workflow Activities

This link will take you to codeplex where there are a handful of really useful already configured workflows for your SharePoint sites.

http://www.codeplex.com/SPDActivities



Project Description
This project takes aim at making it easier to create advanced workflows using Sharepoint Designer by providing a set of custom workflow activities.

Want to get involved in the project? Contact me

Check out my blog at http://unclepaul84.blogspot.com or my LinkedIn profile

Configure usage reporting







Usage reporting is a service that enables site administrators, site collection administrators, and Shared Services Provider (SSP) administrators to monitor statistics about the use of their sites. Usage reporting also includes usage reporting for search queries that can be viewed by SSP administrators for search and site collection administrators.

After usage reporting is enabled, site administrators and site collection administrators can view site usage summary pages that have the following information for their sites and site collections:

Requests and queries in the last day and the last 30 days.

Average number of requests per day over the last 30 days.

A chart of requests per day over the last 30 days.

A list of the top page requests over the last 30 days.

A list of top users over the last 30 days.

A chart of top referring hosts over the last 30 days.

A chart of top referring pages over the last 30 days.

A list of top destination pages over the last 30 days.

Top queries for the last 30 days (if search usage reporting is enabled).

Search results top destination pages (if search usage reporting is enabled).

SSP administrators for the search service can view a search usage reports page that tracks the following information.

Number of queries per day over the previous 30 days.

Number of queries per month over the previous 12 months.

Top queries over the previous 30 days.

Top site collections originating queries over the previous 30 days.

Queries per search scope over the previous 30 days.

Site collection administrators for the SSP site can view a usage summary page that tracks the following information:

Total amount of storage used by the site collection.

Percent of storage space used by Web Discussions.

Maximum storage space allowed.

Number of users for all sites in the hierarchy.

Total hits and recent bandwidth usage across all sites.

Site collection administrators can also view a site usage report that includes monthly and daily page hit totals filtered by the following criteria:

Page

User

Operating system

Browser

Referrer URL

Enable usage logging for the farm

1.On the Central Administration home page, click Operations.
2.On the Operations page, in the Logging and Reporting section, click Usage analysis processing.
3.On the Usage Analysis Processing page, in the Logging Settings section, select Enable logging.
4.Type a log file location and number of log files to create.
5.In the Processing Settings section, select Enable usage analysis processing, and then select a time to run usage processing.
6.Click OK.

Enable usage reporting

1.On the SSP home page, in the Office SharePoint Usage Reporting section, click Usage reporting.
2.On the Configure Advanced Usage Analysis Processing page, in the Processing Settings section, click Enable advanced usage analysis processing.
3.In the Search Query Logging section, select Enable search query logging.
4.Click OK.






Save site as a template disappeared

So, you have created some sites in SharePoint right. Then, you decided to go into site features and activate everything under the sun. You then go back to a site you want to use as a template, but that option is no longer there. Well, if you selected server side publishing as a feature and activated it, this removes the save site as a template option in site settings. FYI. There is a way to make it work, you could append your http link with _layouts/savetmpl.aspx that would give you the screen to save as a site template.


John

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Add column numbering in SharePoint Data List View

When you insert a Data View Web Part, you can add a column to the table and have it display a running count of records in your XSLT Data View. To add a column to your XSLT Data View, Follow these steps:
1. Put the insertion point inside any table cell that contains XML data.
2. On the Table menu, point to Insert, and then click Rows or Columns.
3. Click Columns, and then click OK.
4. Put the insertion point inside one of the new table cells that you created in the same row as the data that you want to work with.

Do not use the header row of the table for this purpose.
5. Click the down arrow next to the button on the Quick Tag Selector tool bar.
6. Click Insert HTML.
7. Replace "<>" with .
8. Click the green checkmark to approve the change.
You will now have a value in each row that indicates the number of records in the Data View.

Embed Visio Diagrams inside SharePoint web part page

http://www.gigabytz.net/embedvisio.pdf

Index PDFs in SharePoint - Not by Default!

This link describes exactly how to do it. Piece of cake.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832809

Maximum File Size for Crawling - DID YOU KNOW?

Maximum File Size for Crawling

By default, Search Services can crawl and filter a file with a size of up to 16 megabytes (MB). It will always crawl the first 16MB of a file. After this limit is reached, SharePoint Portal Server enters a warning in the gatherer log “The file reached the maximum download limit. Check that the full text of the document can be meaningfully crawled.”

To increase the limit of 16 MB, you must add in the registry new entry MaxDownloadSize. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).

2. Locate the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0 or whatever it is on your server\Search\Global\Gathering Manager

3. Open Edit - New - DWORD Value. Name it MaxDownloadSize.

4. Double-click, change the value to Decimal, and type the maximum size (in MB) for files that the gatherer downloads.

5. Restart the server.

6. Start Full Crawl.

NOTE: Increasing the file size may cause a timeout exception because the crawler can timeout if the file takes too long to crawl/index (because of its size). To increase timeout value, follow these steps:

1. In Central Administration, on the Application Management tab, in the Search section, click Manage search service.

2. On the Manage Search Service page, in the Farm-Level Search Settings section, click Farm-level search settings.

3. In the Timeout Settings section change Connection and Request acknowledgement time.

Installing SharePoint 2007 - the quick of it :)

I have read a lot of posts on the web about this subject, most of them for some reason skip steps that would of really helped me out greatly when i started working with SharePoint.

Here is a quick list of things I have learned along the way.

When you have finished the actual installation and are ready to begin configuring, try this:

  1. Create three web applications
      1. Call the first one Intranet and use port 80, for the content db name, append it so that it looks like Wss_Content_Intranet or something of the likes. Makes it much easier to find in SQL and you know exactly what DB does what.
      2. Second one, call MySites and again use port 80, also append the db
      3. Third one, call SSPAdmin, you can use port 80 or whatever port you like, and append the db again.
  2. Create Site Collection next
    1. When you do this, select the appropriate web application for sspadmin and mysites since you created them already.
  3. Create SSP

These three steps will at least get you up and running pretty quick.

Next thing you can do, go inside the SSP admin site and configure the crawl rules and import rules. While you are there, go to personalization links and add a link to your intranet page, this way when folks are in mysites, they can get back to the main portal. Configure usage reports because you are going to want to see who is actually using this beast of a product. I will post about these steps individually as I go on.

SharePoint goodies like 'Print List'




This is a collection pack on codeplex. Use my batch file and your off and working in no time.

The Print list is cool, you can print any list you have in sharepoint
The log viewer, also a cool feature.

http://www.codeplex.com/features/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2502

SharePoint Sushi

Another Great Tool from CodePlex!

http://www.codeplex.com/sushi

SUSHI was built and is maintained by Joseph Fluckiger, Senior SharePoint Consultant at Catapult Systems. Read Joseph's blog.

SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard

OMG, this tool rocks. If you have had the request to say take all content from one sharepoint site and populate another totally different sharepoint site, then this tool is for you. I have used it at length and so far, this thing is such a time saver, KUDO's to Chris O'Brien.

http://www.sharepointnutsandbolts.com/2007/12/introducing-sharepoint-content.html

you can get the tool here http://www.codeplex.com/SPDeploymentWizard

Creating views in SharePoint

http://www.gigabytz.net/creatingviewsinsharepoint.swf

SharePoint Free Application Templates and batch file

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb407286.aspx
This is the link to Microsoft's 'Fab40'

I created a batch file to make this process much easier. create a bat file name it whatever, and follow along with the guidelines below.



echo on

set cmmand="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe"

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename BudgetingTrackingMultipleProjects.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name BudgetingTrackingMultipleProjects.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename BudgetingTrackingMultipleProjects.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name BudgetingTrackingMultipleProjects.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename BugDatabase.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name BugDatabase.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename CallCenter.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name CallCenter.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ChangeRequest.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ChangeRequest.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ComplianceProcessSupport.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ComplianceProcessSupport.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ContactsManagement.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ContactsManagement.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename DocumentLibraryReview.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name DocumentLibraryReview.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename EventPlanning.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name EventPlanning.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ExpenseReimbursementApproval.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ExpenseReimbursementApproval.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename HelpDesk.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name HelpDesk.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename InventoryTracking.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name InventoryTracking.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ITTeamWorkspace.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ITTeamWorkspace.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename JobRequisition.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name JobRequisition.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename KnowledgeBase.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name KnowledgeBase.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename LendingLibrary.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name LendingLibrary.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename PhysicalAssetTracking.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name PhysicalAssetTracking.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename ProjectTrackingWorkspace.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name ProjectTrackingWorkspace.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename RoomEquipmentReservations.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name RoomEquipmentReservations.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

%cmmand% -o addsolution -filename SalesLeadPipeline.wsp
%cmmand% -o deploysolution -name SalesLeadPipeline.wsp -allowgacdeployment -force -local
%cmmand% -o copyappbincontent

Add a Print Button to your SharePoint page!

This is cool for those SharePoint Calendars!

How to do it,

In your SharePoint site, click on a calendar to display the calendar in calendar view. Edit page using modify wep part. You are going to add a web part above the calendar, pick content editor webpart. It will ask you to open tool pane, click that. On the right side, click source, then paste in the following source. Now the only tricky part to this is to find out what webpart you want to print. To do this, just view your site in regular view, right click, view source, and look for this 'WebPartWPQ3' you need to know the number of the webpart you want to print. once you have this, then add that number to the below code. You can change the title by changing the blue font below. http://www.imakenews.com/mernstmann/e_article000435389.cfm

John

Setting the SharePoint 2007 Navigation Flyout Level

Setting the SharePoint 2007 Navigation Flyout Level One of the biggest improvements with SharePoint 2007 has been navigation. The breadcrumbs help and the tabs make a lot of sense. One of the nice features of the tabs is that you can have an automatic flyout menu for subsites. Let's say you have a top level 'Clients' tab with a subsite per client. The navigation will allow you to hover over the 'Clients' tab and see a flyout menu with links to each client site (automatically). Very nice!

Let's say you have Project sites per client. When you hover over your Clients tab, you don't get an automatic second level for project sites. Why? The default setting is set to only show one level for the flyout. How do you change it? Look for the 'MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels' property in the default.master file. It is set to '1'. Change it to '2' and you have two levels of flyout navigation from your top site. Done. http://blogs.officezealot.com/mauro/archive/2007/05/30/20395.aspx

Now there is one important piece for amateurs like me, how to do this? Well, open SharePoint Designer, open you main site, then navigate to _catalogs and look for master, then default.master. Just right click the default.master file and open as TEXT! , hit the control F, and find the 'MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels', change it and viola............but NOT. One very important thing you need to do to finish ip is check the default.master file back in, otherwise, only you will be able to see the flyout menus.

John
www.gigabytz.net

I wanted to post all i have found out and know about Sharepoint

First things first, I have been in Technology for quite some time. After being introduced to SharePoint, I was hooked pretty quick.

Now, let me start to dump my knowledge in hopes of helping other guys along the way.

Most of the information I have found on the web in various places, I just wanted to have a central site for myself where i can go to see all the mods that i typically do for sharepoint installs.

John www.gigabytz.net