Sharepoint 2010 Automated Deployment

I tested http://autospinstaller.codeplex.com/ for the needs of my projects and it is very useful tool. Well developed PowerShell application with configuration options. You only need to attach the SPS 2010 media (iso) and start the script.

Sharepoint - InfoPath Error - “Some rules were not applied”

Yesterday evening I had a very strange problem with InfoPath form. When I tried deploy it to Sharepoint production farm I received the error that “some rules were not applied”. The same form worked perfect when I tested in InfoPath client against the same Sharepoint deployment. It is very important to say, that I’m using a call to UserProfileService and GetUserProfileByName operation. The production farm consist of three WFE and we found the following exception in the log:

w3wp.exe (0x15D8)                       0x17A8 Forms Server                     Forms Services Data Objects       13zh                Exception            System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.     at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()     at Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.SolutionLifetime.WebServiceHelper.GetResponseHelper(WebRequest request, DataAdapterTimer dataAdapterTimer, DataAdapterCredentials credentials, Stopwatch timer, ExecWebRequestExceptionState state, String adapterName, Boolean isQuery)     at Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Server.SolutionLifetime.WebServiceHelper.ExecWebRequestSync(XPathNavigator inputSubDOM, Boolean[] inputUseDataset, XPathNavigator resultsSubDOM, Boolean resultUseDataset, XPathNavigator errorsSubDOM, Uri serviceUrl, Uri soapAction, Int64 timeOutMillisec, Solution solution, Document document, String name, Boolean isQuery, DataAdapterTimer dataAdapterTimer, DataAd...

Server platform: Windows Server 2003 x64, SP2

The solution:

Check http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642 (Method 2: Disable the authentication loopback check) and add DisableLoopbackCheck key on each WFE.

After reboot it works!

MOSS 2007: Broken Approval Workflow

The server is currently being taken down for maintenance. Check with your system administrator to see when this server is scheduled to come back online.

The problem:

The server farm has been Quiesced

The solution:

Go to Central Administrator->Operations->Global Configuration-> Quiesce Farm and Click ‘Reset farm’

MOSS 2007 Event ID 6102

I had received the following message in the Event Log of my server on every 30-50 seconds:

Here are the details:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Office SharePoint Server
Date:          6/11/2009 11:50:27 AM
Event ID:      6102
Task Category: Launcher Service
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      VM-MOSS-01
Description:
LoadBalancer.RegisterLauncher failed:  Unable to connect to the remote server

The solution:

Open Central Administration-> Operations –> Service Accounts

For service “Document Conversions Load Balancer Service” change the account to “Network Service”

SUGBG (Meeting 4): MOSS Backup and Enterprice Search

When: 20 May 2009, 18:30

Where: Microsoft Bulgaria office (Sofia, Blvd.”Nikola Vaptzarov”, 55)

Sessions:

Backup scenarios for MOSS 2007

Alexander Miloev – Consultant, Microsoft Services

Enterprise Search (Part 1) - Search & User Experience

Tihomir Ignatov (me) – Senior Consultant, Microsoft Services

For more information, visit www.sugbg.org

Sharepoint Versions, Service Packs and Cumulative Updates

 

Service Pack / Hot Fix	MOSS 2007 Version
June CU ( KB971538 & KB971537 )	12.0.0.6510
April CU ( KB968850 & KB968851 )	12.0.0.6504
SP2 ( KB953338 & KB953334 )	12.0.0.6421
February CU (KB963654 & KB961755)	12.0.0.6341
Cumulative update (KB956056 & KB956057)	12.0.0.6327
Infrastructure Update (KB951695 & KB951297)	12.0.0.6318
Post-SP1 hotfix (KB948945)	12.0.0.6303
Post-SP1 hotfix (KB941274)	12.0.0.6301
Post-SP1 hotfix (KB941422)	12.0.0.6300
SP1	12.0.0.6219
October public update	12.0.0.6039
August 2007 hotfix package	12.0.0.6036
RTM	12.0.0.4518

April Cumulative Update for MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0

WSS 3.0 April CU package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850

MOSS 2007 April CU package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851

 

Details Description:

WSS 3.0

MOSS 2007

Start from April Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed. 

The version of content databases should be 12.0.0.6504 after successfully applying these updates.

Service Pack 2 for Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 has been released

 

Installation Steps

To keep all the files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following packages need to be applied on all servers in the farm. Service Pack 2 contains all fixes released through February of this year, so customers can install it directly on RTM build of the products.

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
2. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack (if applicable)
3. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007
4. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 Language Pack (if applicable)

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or "psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.  The version of content databases should be 12.0.0.6425 after successfully applying these updates.

 

 

Overview of Service Pack 2 (SP2) improvements (Office servers 2007)

Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• Improves the performance and stability of the content deployment feature and of the Variations feature.
• Adds a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool. This tool provides the following functionality:
  • Lets a SharePoint administrator use the Variations feature to scan a site for errors, report the errors, and fix certain problems.
  • Finds and repairs missing peer relationships and corrupted entries in the internal variations relationships list.
  • Handles the propagation of large volumes of variations content in a more manageable way.

Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access services

• Fixes Open Snapshot so that snapshots open more reliably, even if there is no SharePoint root site.
• Fixes display issues that cause calculations to appear incorrect in some cases.
• Improves connections to cubes by using .odc files in non-English cases.
• Improves the performance of programmatic scenarios.
• Fixes conditional formatting in Mozilla Firefox browsers.
• Improves support for generating Excel Web Access Web parts on new sites.

Microsoft Office Groove Server (64-bit version only)

• Office Groove Server 2007 Data Bridge now limits the number of file-sharing workspaces to 64 to make sure that all workspaces can be synchronized. This limit applies only to newly added file-sharing workspaces. If you already have more than 64 file-sharing workspaces, you can continue to use them.
• Improves synchronization reliability.
• Groove Server 2007 Manager can be installed and run with SQL Server 2008.
• Improves the Groove Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) connectivity and auto-activation functionality.
• Improves error reporting in the Groove Relay Server.
• Improves the robustness of Groove Relay Server.

Microsoft Office Forms Server

• Improves performance of large browser forms on InfoPath Form Services, both for memory usage and for page load time.
• Improves reliability of Forms Server and of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server by addressing the previous behavior in which an upgrade of an administrator-approved form template triggers an IIS reset.
• Improves the Digital Signature functionality for InfoPath Forms Services.

Microsoft Office Project Server

• Modifies the queue service to prevent it from using large volumes of memory over long periods.
• Improves the performance of certain database table indexes.
• Improves cost resource functionality. For example, the server now correctly handles tasks that have material or work resources assigned to the same task.
• Improves certain areas such as resource plans, build team, and the server scheduling engine.

Microsoft Office Search Server

• Improves the reliability and stability of WSS crawl, of SharePoint crawl, of crawling through a very large corpus, and of backup restore.
• Introduces a new command to the Stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint administrator tune the Query processor multiplier parameter. For example, the Query processor multiplier can be used to tune the query performance for SSP indexing content sources that have highly restrictive permissions and many duplicates.
• Improves the accuracy of searches that involve numbers. For example, there is additional support for large numbers in which a comma is used to separate every three digits (for example, 1,000,000), for numbers that are between 9 and 40 characters, and for numbers that are separated by spaces.

Platform support

• Provides full support for Windows Internet Explorer 8.
• Provides level 2 browser support for Mozilla Firefox (versions 2 and 3).
  • For more information about browser support levels, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101945391033.aspx (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101945391033.aspx)

• Provides support for Windows Server 2008.

How to obtain and install the service packs

This service pack update is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download the service pack, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082)

 

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7816D90-5FC6-4347-89B0-A80DEB27A082)

 

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01C6A3E8-E110-4956-903A-AD16284BF223 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01C6A3E8-E110-4956-903A-AD16284BF223)

 

• 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66C5026F-9F47-4642-8378-2526918009FA (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=66C5026F-9F47-4642-8378-2526918009FA)

 

Overview of Service Pack 2 improvements (Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0)

 

Some big areas of the improvements that the Windows SharePoint Services team wanted to highlight:

• Faster, more reliable content migration and data backup and restore
• Reduced memory consumption
• Smoother upgrade experience
• Significant database performance adjustments
• Updated integration for forms authentication
• Advanced permission management
• Helpful administrative tools
• Expanded browser compatibility

How to obtain and install the service packs

This service pack update is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download the service pack, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B)

 

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BADA82-C13F-44C1-BDC1-D0447337051B)

 

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x86)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=085E5AC8-58F6-4CF9-8012-33B95EE36C0F (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=085E5AC8-58F6-4CF9-8012-33B95EE36C0F)

 

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 (x64)

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2C2B6CAF-B46D-45EB-AC4D-DEAAA48C3A2C (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2C2B6CAF-B46D-45EB-AC4D-DEAAA48C3A2C)

Sharepoint Designer and Workflow Resources

 

A six-part series on getting the most out of SharePoint Designer 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA102199841033.aspx

Creating Custom Workflows with the SharePoint Designer 2007

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/In+the+Office/Creating-Custom-Workflows-with-the-SharePoint-Designer-2007/

Create new sharepoint workflow

http://www.sharepointhosting.com/tutorials/create-new-sharepoint-workflow/create-new-sharepoint-workflow.html

Using SharePoint Server Workflows with InfoPath 2007

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb267332.aspx

Use an approval workflow in SharePoint Server 2007

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102506161033.aspx

Workflows roadmap

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263262.aspx

Creating Office SharePoint Server 2007 Workflows in Visual Studio 2005

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms564355.aspx

Combining Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows SharePoint Services, and Office SharePoint Server

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262259.aspx

Introduction to workflows

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101544241033.aspx

Design custom workflows by using SharePoint Designer

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102422951033.aspx

Understanding Workflow in Windows SharePoint Services and the 2007 Microsoft Office System

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/d/d/9dd464d6-41a3-40ed-abab-a4f175f80cc0/Understanding%20Workflow%20in%20Windows%20SharePoint%20Services%20and%20the%202007%20Office%20System.doc

MOSS 2007 training (in Bulgarian)

http://moss.teacher.bg/TrainingContent.htm

Workflow Scalability and Performance in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd441390.aspx

Sharepoint Admin Consideration Guide

Guide to the most important things to consider before deploying Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services, including server administration, governance, branding, and development.

Available in .docx, .pdf and .xps formats

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4ce750af-5564-4b92-b74b-703d4c150ba6&DisplayLang=en

Sharepoint Administration Toolkit v3.0

Microsoft just released  the third version of SP Administration Toolkit. The new added feature is Sharepoint Diagnostics (SPDiag) tool, which can:

• Collect IIS and ULS log files, performance counter data, event logs, and WMI instrumentation data from a SharePoint farm.
• Filter data to show granular information related to specific servers, Web applications, HTTP requests, event IDs, URI queries, and almost any other data points captured through supported channels.
• Create custom reports that can help reveal performance trends over time.
• Create snapshots of your SharePoint farm that include detailed information about your farm’s hardware, installed software and logical topology.
• Export collected data and reports that can be sent to Microsoft support personnel.

The user guide for SPDiag is available for download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1c222804-51c7-4bb5-ae3d-89c68ad27a78&displaylang=en

Another enhancement in the toolkit is updated setup program, which now works with User Access Control and is no longer need to run it as administrator.

Downloads:

Microsoft Sharepoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x86

Microsoft Sharepoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x64

Sharepoint Communication

There is a series of two great posts about Sharepoint communication – ports, protocols and proxies, developed by UK MCS Sharepoint team.

Martin Kearn wrote in 3 points why is necessary to understand the farm communication:

1. Secured or ‘locked down' farms may have servers on different network segments and you may have to configure firewalls to only let the minimum traffic through. Without know what traffic needs to go where, this is a very difficult process.
2. Understanding network activities is very useful when trying to troubleshoot strange problems since SharePoint does not do a great job of reporting when there are network issues preventing something from working.
3. Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008 are both ‘locked down' by default. Meaning that a fresh install of Windows Server 2008 will have everything disabled in Windows Firewall. Clearly you could simply enable all inbound / outbound communications (and I've done that once or twice myself in the past! J) but that kind of defeats the point. It is much better to understand what traffic is coming in and out of the server and open ports as necessary.

Read the posts here:

SharePoint Ports, Proxies and Protocols .... An overview of farm communications by Martin Kearn

and

SharePoint Ports, Proxies and Protocols .... Search Communication by Peter Reid

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

Organizations need tools to simplify the process of collaborating with people outside their firewall. Currently, many such organizations collaborate using methods that are not efficient or secure, such as unencrypted e-mail and instant messaging. The External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint includes software and guidance to quickly and easily deploy a collaboration environment based on SharePoint Products and Technologies that you can use to collaborate with partners across the Internet.

Solution features include a setup wizard to automate the setup process, Web Parts to automate the process of provisioning new site collections and new users, form-based logon for external users, and automated password reset functionality.

This solution accelerator is a collection of software and guidance that you can use to easily deploy a SharePoint-based environment for collaboration with people outside your firewall. The accelerator allows users to create collaboration environments that use the familiar SharePoint interface.

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

Downloads for offline viewing

MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

 

You can download offline content with a lot of technical articles about Office Sharepoint Server 2007 and Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0.

Try it, cool content!

Administrator’s Guide of Topics to Consider before Deployment

Shane Young, MVP; Randy Drisgill; Larry Riemann; Jennifer Mason; and Chris Caravajal of SharePoint 911 provided this excellent guidance for administration, configuration, branding and development of Sharepoint products and technologies. It is very suitable for who are new in this field and contains key articles to consider before deploying Sharepoint to their environments.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=139163

How to install Sharepoint (WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007) without Active Directory

Hi guys,
Today I had unbelievable problems with installation of WSS 3.0 to single machine (VPC). I wanted to deploy WSS as farm, with SQL Server on the same server and outside of the domain. And... big troubles.... I got the followng exception in the event log when I run the Sharepint Configuration wizard:

Failed to create the configuration database.An exception of type System.Security.Principal.IdentityNotMappedException was thrown.

Additional exception information: Some or all identity references could not be translated.

System.Security.Principal.IdentityNotMappedException: Some or all identity references could not be translated.
at System.Security.Principal.NTAccount.Translate
(IdentityReferenceCollection sourceAccounts, Type targetType, Boolean forceSuccess)
at System.Security.Principal.NTAccount.Translate(Type targetType)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.GetMachineRelativeSecurityIdentifier(SPServer server, Boolean& isMachineAccount)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.GrantIdentityDatabaseAccess()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWindowsService.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.CreateBasicServices(SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb() at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()
For more information, see Help and Support Center
at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

actually the exception thrown after step 2 of 9 of Configuration wizard.
I found this post and it really help me to complete the installation successfully:

http://blogs.msdn.com/fooshen/archive/2007/02/01/installing-moss-without-ad.aspx

The real output in my cmd window after the executing of steps in this article was :

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>PSConfig -cmd -configdb -create -server vm-sharepoint-srv\sql2005 -database SharePoint_Config -user sharepoint -password sysadm -dbuser sqlmoss -dbpassword sysadm -admincontentdatabase SharePoint_AdminContent

SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard version 12.0.4518.1016
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2005. All rights reserved.
Performing configuration task 1 of 3
Initializing SharePoint Products and Technologies configuration...
Successfully initialized the SharePoint Products and Technologies configuration.
Performing configuration task 2 of 3Creating the configuration database...
Successfully created the configuration database.
Performing configuration task 3 of 3Finalizing the SharePoint Products and Technologies configuration...

Successfully completed the SharePoint Products and Technologies configuration.
Total number of configuration settings run: 3
Total number of successful configuration settings: 3
Total number of unsuccessful configuration settings: 0
Successfully stopped the configuration of SharePoint Products and Technologies.Configuration of the SharePoint Products and Technologies has succeeded.

Good luck!