Create a content type search refinement panel in SharePoint 2010

Out of the box there is a refinement panel for ‘Result Type’ however this is different to the content type, e.g. Word as opposed to Proposal. So the challenge was to create a new refinement panel to replace the Result Type refinement panel. Note, it was to replace in my case but there’s no reason why it can’t be in addition to:

Great article on getting this done:

http://www.glynblogs.com/2011/01/create-a-content-type-search-refinement-panel-in-sharepoint-2010.html


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Enjoy!

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administration Toolkit v2.0

The Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help administer and manage Microsoft® SharePoint® Foundation 2010 and Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010.

SharePoint Diagnostics Studio is awesome!

Download the toolkit from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=718447d8-0814-427a-81c3-c9c3d84c456e&displaylang=en

P.S. Try it on your dev/test farm before moving to production...

Enjoy!

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SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 - Arriving in June 2011

Service Pack 1 in late June 2011 ..  Site Recycle Bin, StorMan is back :-)

Enjoy SP 2010 SP1

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SharePoint 2010 Reporting Services Integration Authentication Fix

Server 1 (WFE), Server 2 (APP & Central Admin), Server 3 (DB w/ Report Server) - NTLM install
 
In SharePoint Central Administration -- General Application Setting - Reporting Services Integration

Selected the RS URL and "Trusted Account", domain user name & password (Server 3, local admin domain account for RS access)

Everything will work fine including activation of the features on existing site collections BUT when you click on Set Server Defaults, you will end up getting The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized

Fix

KB article has the answer: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/871179/en-us

On Server 2 (App & Central Admin)

To work around this behavior if you have multiple application pools that run under different domain user accounts, you must force IIS to use NTLM as your authentication mechanism if you want to use Integrated Windows authentication only. To do this, follow these steps on the server that is running IIS:

1. Start a command prompt.
2. Locate and then change to the directory that contains the Adsutil.vbs file. By default, this directory is C:\Inetpub\Adminscripts.
3. Type the following command, and then press ENTER:
   cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/NTAuthenticationProviders "NTLM"
4. To verify that the NtAuthenticationProviders metabase property is set to NTLM, type the following command, and then press ENTER:
   cscript adsutil.vbs get w3svc/NTAuthenticationProviders
   The following text should be returned:

   NTAuthenticationProviders       : (STRING) "NTLM"

Happy Monday!

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SharePoint Taxonomy Governance Policies - Information Architecture

How to create a taxonomy governance policy:

1. Identify all of the data collected within your organization’s portal. (You should already have the list from previous exercises).
2. Next, you will “structure” the data, organizing it by the following categories:
   1. Structured Data – Data that is organized, either hierarchically or in an existing taxonomy of some sort. This is data such as databases, Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, or even SharePoint lists that are organized and searchable by data types within the content (i.e. Name, Address, Phone, etc).
   2. Unstructured Data – This is ad-hoc data contributed freely by end users. Examples of unstructured data include emails, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, audio/video files, images, etc. In other words, things that are not searchable (unless you added metadata or they get “crawled”, such as by an Index Server).
   3. Semi-structured data – This is unstructured data that has been organized and/or has metadata attached. Examples of semi-structured data include SharePoint lists, Document libraries, Project and Team Sites, etc.
3. Once organized, determine who views the content vs. who contributes the content. ­ For example(s):
   1. MySites – Everyone can view them and everyone can contribute to their own.
   2. News and Announcements – Everyone can view them, but only Admins or Division heads can contribute.
   3. Division Portals – Some people can view them, and some people can contribute to them.
   4. Team or Project Sites – Select people can view them and contribute equally.
4. Lastly, you will create a Policy, stating WHO owns and manages this content. The intent here is to hold people accountable (at various levels) for keeping the data properly organized throughout the Portal’s lifecycle.

Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010

Here is a really PDF from MS on SP 2010 topologies and service application assignments.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=FD686CBB-8401-4F25-B65E-3CE7AA7DBEAB&displayLang=en

Happy Thursday!

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SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2011 - Reporting Services

Project Crescent is designed to be highly interactive and is targeted at all reporting users from CEOs to power users. Crescent provides drag and drop ad-hoc reporting functionality and was built entirely on Silverlight.

One of the interesting features is called Storyboarding. This features allows users to embed charts and graphs in Microsoft PowerPoint. The cool thing is the live link between PowerPoint and the underlying data. It does appear that Crescent will require SharePoint 2010 to run, which might be too complex for small IT organizations. Crescent will leverage Microsoft PowerPivot, which was released with SQL Server 2008.

Project Crescent is expected in SQL Server 2011 (Denali) CTP2, which could be out in April. In the meantime, check out the YouTube video Introducing Project Crescent, which shows us a few of the visualizations.

Have a great weekend!

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SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight 4 Book

Great book! If you are an RIA freak, get this book -- Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Silverlight-SharePoint-2010-Integration/dp/184968006X

Happy Friday!!!!

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SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solutions - Resource Quotas

Points are calculated based on various metrics, and these metrics are designed to monitor the resource usage of the server to accurately reflect the true health of the server. SharePoint contains 14 metrics that contribute to the quota points.

1. AbnormalProcessTerminationCount
2. CPUExecutionTime
3. CriticalExceptionCount
4. InvocationCount
5. PercentProcessorTime
6. ProcessCPUCycles
7. ProcessHandleCount
8. ProcessIOBytes
9. ProcessThreadCount
10. ProcessVirtualBytes
11. SharePointDatabaseQueryCount
12. SharePointDatabaseQueryTime
13. UnhandledExceptionCount
14. UnresponsiveprocessCount

Each metric, called a ResourceMeasure, contains a ResourcesPerPoint property.

The ResourcesPerPoint value is divided by the resources consumed to calculate the points used for that category.

For example, AbnormalProcessTerminationCount has a ResourcesPerPoint value of 1. Every time a sandboxed solution terminates abnormally, 1 point is added. If you want to increase the penalty for a sandboxed solution that terminates, you can set ResourcesPerPoint to another value, such as 2. You can use 0 if you are not concerned about this metric. Other ResourceMeasures might not have a one-to-one correspondence with an event. The CPUExecutionTime metric prevents a sandboxed solution from consuming too many CPU cycles. The default ResourcesPerPoint value is 3,600 for CPUExecutionTime.
Another value is AbsoluteLimit, which is incremented each time a solution gets a point.

If a solution exceeds the AbsoluteLimit value, it is terminated even if the daily usage limit has not been reached. Exceeding the value of AbsoluteLimit affects only the single solution, unlike the daily usage limit. These two levels of quotas, daily limit and absolute limit, work together to protect the health of the farm. I strongly recommend that you not modify ResourceMeasures, but as a developer or an administrator, you should understand exactly how these mechanisms work.

Although SharePoint does not provide an administration page for adjusting the quota metrics, you can see and change the values using the SharePoint object model or Windows PowerShell

SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solutions - MS Article

Here is a really good one -- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335711.aspx 

SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solutions

SharePoint 2010 introduces a new way of adding custom dev to SharePoint: Sandbox solutions, also called User Solutions. Solution deployment we are all used to in SharePoint 2007 still exists in SP2010 but those solutions will be called Farm solutions. Sandbox solutions are scoped to site collection and each site collection has its own gallery of these solutions which can be found in the site settings page.

Visual Studio 2010 gives visual tools to build the deployment package so long gone are the days of editing DDF and manifest files. After building the WSP you can upload it to the solution gallery just like you would upload a master page to its gallery. Select the solution you uploaded and the context sensitive ribbon gives you the option to activate the solution.

Sandbox solutions have their own advantages but also some limitations. Best part is you don’t have to deploy the solution from the server which means no server reset. You can do as many deployments as you want – every developer’s dream :) And, you can test your customizations in a test site collection on the production servers before applying it to the real sites.

Coming to the limitations, not every type of custom functionality can be packaged into a sandbox solution. From what I’ve seen so far any component that needs files in 14 hive cannot be part of sandbox solution, for e.g.: Visual Web Part

Happy Friday!

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SharePoint 2010 Logging Database

One of the features of SharePoint 2010 that is getting me really excited is the logging database. The purpose of this database (which is named WSS_Logging [One per Farm] by default) is to aggregate logging information from the farm into one central location.

The logging database by default contains the following information from all servers within the farm and it is fully supported to query this database directly.

· ULS Logs

· Event Logs

· Selected Performance Monitor Counters:

o % Processor Time

o Memory Available Megabytes

o Avg. Disk Queue Length

o Process Private Bytes (OWSTIMER and all instances of w3wp)

· Blocking SQL Queries

· SQL DMV Queries

· Feature Usage

· A host of information on search crawling and querying

· Inventory of all site collections

· Timer job usage

The logging database by default contains the following information from all servers within the farm and it is fully supported to query this database directly.

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