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Michael Blumenthal Profile |
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Midwest GiveCamp needs Volunteers
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass711ED739D0394BA491709139F9482527pbA Message from Clark Sell, one of the organizers of Midwest GiveCamp:/b/p pa href="/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/157/MidwestGivecamp_4_6A51299F.jpg"img style="border-bottom:0px;border-left:0px;display:inline;border-top:0px;border-right:0px" title="Midwest Givecamp" border=0 alt="Midwest Givecamp" src="/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/157/MidwestGivecamp_thumb_1_6A51299F.jpg" width=772 height=196/a /p pb/b pbC/bbhicago’s very fir [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 23rd '10 |
Midwest SharePoint 2010 Conference Sessions now available on CD!
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass1A1DF831AC674CBB8209EC77B85857F6pIf you missed the Midwest SharePoint 2010 Conference in Milwaukee, WI this spring (April 15th, 2010 to be exact), you can now get recordings of all the sessions on DVD. My presentation was about best practices for building a corporate intranet on SharePoint 2010. Here’s the link: /p pa title="http://www.imergeportal.com/midwest_SP2010_cd_sessions.htm?src=michaelbl" href="http://www.imergeportal.com/midwest_SP2010_cd_sessio [read].
Posted: Fri, May 28th '10 |
Checking the Ghosted / Customization State of a Master Page
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassED3FD7E38E084B56A2900D13B472E408pThe best practice is to deploy a site branding through a web solution package. We had a third party do a branding for us, then needed to update it before they delivered the source code for the WSP to us. So I found myself needing to update a master page for multiple site collections. The master page was deployed via the WSP. If I updated it by uploading a new version of the master page to the Master Page Gallery in each si [read].
Posted: Tue, May 18th '10 |
Creating Initial SharePoint Site Hierarchies with PowerShell – Part 1
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassB0FD3C5B112444B193B1D257A5AA125BpAt my current client, we are setting up a MOSS 2007 web application that provides collaboration sites for their communities of practice. We have an initial site hierarchy of 155 sites across 20 site collections. How do you set that all up? Although we set up the 20 site collections manually (most got their own content databases, but that’s not the reason we did them manually. With only 20 items, in the time it would have [read].
Posted: Sat, May 15th '10 |
More PowerShell Scripting for SharePoint
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassB8AEEF37193A4C8AB7294160CA76368DpI realize I’ve been woefully behind in my blogging about the SharePoint work I’ve done with PowerShell. Last year, I was working on a MOSS 2007 intranet website for a political action committee. At a high level, here are some of the things I did./p ol liUse the choices in a choice field as the basis for a loop. $fieldname is the name of a column that is a Choices column./li ol p$choicefield = $list.Fields[$fieldname]br$c [read].
Posted: Fri, May 14th '10 |
CSPUG Hosts, Magenic Sponsors SP2010 Community Launch Party, May 12, Downers Grove and Chicago
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassFAAD66A7689E4071BB226A886557DBB8pJoin other Chicago area SharePoint professionals in Chicago or Downers Grove as we watch Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, announce the launch of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010./p pRegister at a href="http://www.cspug.org"www.cspug.org/a!/p p--Michael/p/div/div
divbCategory:/b SharePoint 2010/div
divbPublished:/b 5/6/2010 6:01 AM/divdiv class="feedflare"
a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Blogging [read].
Posted: Thu, May 6th '10 |
Slides from my presentation to QCSPUG – Overview of SP2010
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass16589CCA02A843849F741355C99739B6pLast week, May 22nd, I had the great honor of speaking at the first meeting of the Quad Cities SharePoint User Group. I presented an overview of SharePoint 2010. My slides are here:/p pa title="SharePoint 2010 Overview for QCSPUG by Michael Blumenthal of Magenic" href="/Files/QCSPUG/SharePoint%202010%20Overview%20for%20QCSPUG%20by%20Michael%20Blumenthal%20of%20Magenic.pdf"SharePoint 2010 Overview for QCSPUG by Michael Blumen [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 30th '10 |
Slides from Midwest SP2010 Conference
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClassBA1B8A6B2ADF40A08FC76BA02A80A0C8pI just posted them here: a title="Ten Essentials for SharePoint Intranet Success - Magenic - Blumenthal - Midwest SP2010 Conf" href="/Files/MidwestSP2010Conf/Ten%20Essentials%20for%20SharePoint%20Intranet%20Success%20-%20Magenic%20-%20Blumenthal%20-%20Midwest%20SP2010%20Conf.pdf"Ten Essentials for SharePoint Intranet Success - Magenic - Blumenthal - Midwest SP2010 Conf/a/p pThe slide deck includes a few slides that I didn’t ha [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 18th '10 |
SharePoint 2010 RTM’d!
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass272E7A859393490FA4892869BB834B56pAgain, Twitter is a great way to stay up on the latest in the SharePoint world./p pRead about it here: a title="http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/04/16/sharepoint-2010-reaches-rtm.aspx" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/04/16/sharepoint-2010-reaches-rtm.aspx"http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/04/16/sharepoint-2010-reaches-rtm.aspx/a/p pFor those of you who attended my session on 10 Essent [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 16th '10 |
Upcoming Community Events; SPUG Resources; Blog Note
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass4C22F555CF9F46B2920949DE273162C3h3Upcoming Community Events/h3 pNext month there are two regional community events that I think you should know about:/p ol liThe Midwest SharePoint 2010 Conference. April 15, 2010. Milwaukee, WI. a title="http://www.imergeportal.com/midwest_SP2010_Conference.htm" href="http://www.imergeportal.com/midwest_SP2010_Conference.htm"http://www.imergeportal.com/midwest_SP2010_Conference.htm/a/li liThe Quad Cities SharePoint User Group [read].
Posted: Tue, Mar 23rd '10 |
RTM, Launch, and GA dates announced for SharePoint 2010!
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass2C606579A6D044BCAD35D1BE6479E654pSharePoint 2010 will RTM next month – April 2010! pThe launch event will be May 12supth/sup. a title="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx#fbid=387xf5ImGXJ" href="http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx#fbid=387xf5ImGXJ"http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/businessproductivity/proof/pages/2010-launch-events.aspx#fbid=387xf5ImGXJ/a [read].
Posted: Fri, Mar 5th '10 |
Why the silence?
Michael Blumenthal
divbBody:/b div class=ExternalClass4228919AF3F0447D82948A5C9F3EAA9EpI haven’t blogged in a while, though I have tweeted a lot./p pHere’s why:/p pEnd of November, my wife and I were blessed with our second child./p pNow my web hosting company is migrating my site to a “new platform” (which I think means new hardware). It’s apparently a slow process, and I don’t want to add significant new content until it is done./p pSo between those two things, it may be a bit quiet here for a few [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 19th '10 |
Lots of 2010 Info now available
Michael Blumenthal
Body: With the opening of the 2009 SharePoint Conference yesterday, the NDA was removed from 2010 information and Microsoft and 3rd parties have been publishing content as fast as they can. Twitter has been a good way to find out about a number of these. My favorites so far are: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/results.aspx?displaylang=en&nr=50&sortCriteria=Date&sortOrder=Descending&stype=s_adv&freetext=sharepoint%202010 – A ton of downloads on Microsoft.com all abo [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 20th '09 |
November 2009 CSPUG Meeting: Speakers Chosen
Michael Blumenthal
Body: We’ve just finalized our speakers for the Nov 5 and Nov 19 meetings of the Chicago SharePoint User Group. We have Rick Seeman, a SharePoint Technical Specialist from Microsoft, MVP Asif Rehmani, and MVP Rob Bogue speaking. We can’t tell you the specific topics yet, because it’s all 2010 and under NDA. Save the dates! The Nov 5 meeting is an evening meeting in the Loop, and the Nov 19 meeting is an afternoon meeting in Downers Grove. Rick and Asif speak at both, Rob speaks at th [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 6th '09 |
Twitterstream Snapshot
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Here’s a snapshot of all my tweets to date. This is for the benefit of anyone who reads my blog but doesn’t follow me on Twitter, and also so that a search of my blog includes my tweets. #SharePoint: "An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host" when email enable a list? Ensure Cntrl Adm default AAM url ok.3:33 PM Sep 30th from TwInbox RT @TopSharepoint: How we did it: Speeding up #SharePoint for SharePoint.Microsoft.com: http://tinyurl.com/yfr7coa -10:28 PM Sep 29 [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 2nd '09 |
End User Training Product Vendors
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Here’s a short list of companies that provide end user training products or information. Rob Bogue’s Shepherd’s Guide – book and licensable content that you can build into your website. http://www.sharepointshepherd.com/default.aspx BrainStorm Inc’s Quick Reference Cards and Computer Based Training http://www.combined-knowledge.com/EUA/index.html (Also see episode 25 of the http://www.sharepointpodshow.com/) http://Office.Microsoft.com of course. http://www.endusersharepoint.co [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 11th '09 |
Reminder: September 2009 CSPUG meeting next week!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Building Public Facing SharePoint Sites George Durzi Consultant Clarity Consulting Interested in seeing what it takes to build a public facing site using SharePoint? George will cover areas such as publishing workflow, server and network topology of the solution, organizing your SharePoint solutions, publishing site definitions, branding, packaging the site’s publishing assets, configuring and running content deployment, and setting up anonymous access. We’ll also discuss some special [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 5th '09 |
SharePoint Solution Architecture – One Example
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Problem: Organization X needs a way to track a variety of information about events going on in a large number of geographic locations. There is one event per location, but many locations. Examples of the information that needs to be tracked per event are location name, event dates, details about the people competing, and the organization’s notes and tasks for the event. There are many ways to solve this problem. One that leverages the goodness of SharePoint and involves no work in [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 26th '09 |
SharePoint Training: Videos on Demand!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Penton Media, the company that brings you the SharePoint Connections Conferences in March and November, and at which I have had the honor and pleasure of presenting, will be launching Connections Online, their online video store of conference sessions, next week. The site is already online, so you can check it out: http://videos.devconnections.com. I have one of my sessions up there: PowerShell for SharePoint Developers and Administrators. It’s at http://videos.devconnections.com/p [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 26th '09 |
New website for SharePoint Governance; Thoughts on Governance Plans
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I just found out about this new website for SharePoint Governance: http://SharePointGovernance.org . I like the idea, and have already submitted 4 comments on how to improve what’s there. The biggest gap I see is that it needs text or a link on the home page that explains what SharePoint Governance is. Here’s my attempt: SharePoint Governance is the policies and procedures an organization puts in place in order to maintain an appropriate level of control over the organization's Sh [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 22nd '09 |
PowerShell to set Registry Entries needed to install Live Mesh on Win2008
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I am going to use Mesh to sync files between my host OS and the VM where I am using Office 2010 Tech Preview (which includes InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010). In order to install Mesh on Win2008, you need the registry entry described in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368304(VS.85).aspx. The PowerShell commands you need are: cd hklm:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\ md Installer cd Installer New-ItemProperty . -name "DisableMSI" -value "0" -PropertyType dwor [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 18th '09 |
PowerShell script to report SharePoint version number – Improved!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I was recently recording a webcast for Connections Online about using PowerShell with SharePoint, and I put together what I think it a pretty cool four lines of code: $farm = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm]::Local $bv = $farm.BuildVersion.ToString() $vertable = Import-Csv versions.csv $vertable | where-object {$_.Version -eq $bv} A sample versions.csv file is here: http://blumenthalit.net/Files/PowerShell%20Scripts/versions.csv What the last line of the script returns is a [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 17th '09 |
Video Posted: InfoPath form to create a WSS Installer Configuration File
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I’m in the Office 2010 Technical Preview program, so I have started playing with the Office 2010 client applications. I’m using Outlook 2010 Tech Preview as my email client, and I like the Quick Steps. I wish I could share a QuickStep with my colleagues though – would be nice if there was a way to export & import Quick Step Definitions. Meanwhile, I saw this blog post from the InfoPath 2010 team:(http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2009/07/13/install-the-office-2010-techni [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 17th '09 |
FAQ and Prep list from the SharePoint Prod Team Blog Post
Michael Blumenthal
Body: The same day that the Office 2010 sneak peak website became available, the product team posted this: Announcing SharePoint 2010 Technical Preview Here’s the blue (blueberry? :) ) pie: Key links: Getting Ready for 2010: both for Developers and Admins: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/Get_Ready.aspx A FAQ: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/Pages/FAQ.aspx --Michael
Published: 7/17/2009 6:57 AM [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 17th '09 |
Fresh Pie! Microsoft unveils Sneak Peak of SharePoint 2010
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Fresh Pie: the “SharePoint Pie” is now all blue and the segments have new titles. Check it out here: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/Sneak_Peek/ Also, here’s some object model documentation for the developers: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=94afe886-3b20-4bc9-9a0d-acd8cd232c24#tm Note the presence of an iterator class designed to make working with large lists perform better. --Michael
Published: 7/13/2009 7:00 PM [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 13th '09 |
PowerShell Script to Disable Loopback Checking
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I find I need to use host headers for SharePoint sites a lot. For example, in a recent deployment I had the following host header sites all pointing via DNS entries to the same farm/web front end (it was a small farm): ssp.foo.com mossca.foo.com intranet.foo.com I’m doing this on Windows Server 2008, IIS 7, with the latest service packs and updates (as of this writing). There is a know issue/feature where you will be unable to browse the sites defined by host headers from the web br [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 11th '09 |
Bits and Bytes – July 7, 2009
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I’ve been busy with a deployment of an intranet for a smaller firm, and have accumulated a number of items that I want to share. First off, yesterday and today, I ran into an issue where I had my SSP on port 82 (i.e. http://server:82) and want it to make it available on it’s own url, http://ssp.demo.local. I have all of this on one machine since it’s a dev environment – windows server 2008 and IIS7 in a HyperV VM, all 64bit to be exact.. When I extended the SSP’s web app to t [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 8th '09 |
June 2009 Cumulative Update (CU) for WSS and MOSS Available
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Per the timeline for updates laid out in this picture here in this post, there are MOSS and WSS Cumulative Update packs due every 2 months. It’s not been announced on the SharePoint Team Blog yet, but it’s been in KBAlertz (here for MOSS and here for WSS), Twitter, and on http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/07/01/moss-and-wss-june-cu.aspx that the CU for June is available. Looks like it made it out just in time – the last day of the month. As usual, these fix a fasci [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 7th '09 |
What we know or can infer about SharePoint 2010 - as of June 23, 2009
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Although no beta code has been released to the public, and I personally have had no access to it via other channels, we know or can make some intelligent guesses about a few things. First, what we know: 64 Bit! SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64 bit only. That means that the web front ends and application servers will run best on the x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 (due out this October). Note that it WILL NOT run on Windows Server 2003, x64. SQL Server has to be 64 bi [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 28th '09 |
My SPSaturday Slides & CSPUG Meeting Next Week!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Two quick items: My slides from my PowerShell for SharePoint Developers presentation is here: SharePoint Saturday Chicago 2009 - PowerShell for SharePoint Developers (4.81 MB PDF). The next meeting of the Chicago SharePoint User Group is next week, 6/25/2009, 1-4pm at Microsoft’s Downers Grove Office. Visit www.cspug.org to register. Have a great weekend! --Michael
Published: 6/19/2009 3:50 PM [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 19th '09 |
So you want to secure Central Admin on IIS 7 in Windows Server 2008
Michael Blumenthal
Body: You’ve already installed SharePoint. You want to use SSL to secure Central Admin because it is the Right Thing To Do and it makes those annoying warnings go away. Note that you could not do this during installation because psconfig does not provide a command line option for creating Central Admin with SSL. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263093.aspx#section2. You need a certificate, but you don’t need to buy an official one – after all, the only people using the [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 3rd '09 |
MOSS 2007 on Win 2008 Allergic to IPv6
Michael Blumenthal
Body: My friend Ralph today ran into the issue described here: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmacleod/archive/2008/06/25/iis7-sharepoint-2007-fails-with-503-service-unavailable-errors.aspx I have set up MOSS on Win 2008 a few times and never run into this because I always turn IPV6 off in all NICs prior to installing MOSS. -Michael
Published: 5/26/2009 1:30 PM [read].
Posted: Tue, May 26th '09 |
Building a Win2008S SE MOSS VM on Win2008S EE in HyperV
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I recently upgraded my laptop OS from WinXP x86 to Windows Server 2008 x64. My laptop is a Dell D620, and is a dual core 64bit machine, and since we’ve been told that SharePoint 2010 will be 64 bit only, I figured now was as good a time as any to make the jump to 64 bit and get familiar with HyperV rather than Virtual PC or Virtual Server.. So I am now in the process of building a 64 bit MOSS VM. I did an install of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition as the guest OS, installed the [read].
Posted: Sun, May 10th '09 |
I’ll be speaking at SharePoint Saturday Chicago and SharePoint Connections Vegas
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I’ve been invited to speak at SharePoint Saturday Chicago, June 13th, 2009 and SharePoint Connections, November 9-12 2009. You can go to each site to find out more about each event including what I will be talking about. --Michael
Category: SharePoint Events
Published: 5/9/2009 10:19 PM [read].
Posted: Sun, May 10th '09 |
Passed 70-631 WSS Config
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I passed 70-631 on Friday, 1 May 2009 and had passed 70-630 previously. The Install / Config side is done – now on to the app-dev side. Anyone recommend practice exams or other resources for 70-541, WSS Dev? I’m planning on reading the rest of Pattison & Larson’s Inside WSS 3.0 book. It’s frustrating that Transcender, MeasureUp, and SelfTest Software don’t have practice exams. Michael
Category: WSS 3.0
Published: 5/4/2009 2:01 PM [read].
Posted: Mon, May 4th '09 |
MOSS Search Fails during Infrastructure Updates Install (Problem and Resolution)
Michael Blumenthal
Body: “Failed to start service SearchServiceInstance on this server after completing upgrade. Please start it manually.” The service it is talking about is Office SharePoint Search. PSConfig stays on the “task 8” screen for a while, though it does later complete “successfully”. Here’s the other symptoms: When I am logged in as MOSSsa, my Farm Admin account which is a member of Administrators, and I try to start the service I get: Let’s help the search engines: The e [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 21st '09 |
Need More Permissions than Sec Admin and DB Creator to Attach Content Database in SQL 2008
Michael Blumenthal
Body: So I decided that the best way for me to get some content into this new MOSS farm that I created was to attach a content database. I logged into my farm server (it’s a demo environment so it’s all on one box). I logged in as my Farm Admin account. I went into SQL Server Management Studio, right clicked the Databases folder, and then clicked Attach. Got this: That’s not what I was expecting. After asking one of our SQL gurus to take a look and having him tell me that he’d neve [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 20th '09 |
Building a Demo VM in a Highly Scripted Way
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Currently, I am setting up a single server MOSS virtual machine which will host a demo site that will be used by part of Magenic’s sales force. The demo site will represent a repeatable service offering. Additionally, another project team in my office is working on a MOSS and Commerce Server solution that will have multiple concurrent MOSS developers. We are planning to give each developer their own single server farm. I believe the best way to do this is through a scripted insta [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 19th '09 |
SharePoint Links from 13 April 2009 MSDN Flash
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Virtual Lab: A SharePoint Developer Introduction - Page Branding After completing this lab, you will be better able to work with master pages, work with styles sheets, create themes, and use features and feature stapling. Code Sample: Information Management Policy Deployment Sample for SharePoint Server 2007 This sample code for SharePoint Server 2007 shows how to use feature activation to deploy information management policy to content types, including pre-existing content types [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 14th '09 |
My Webcasts from Microsoft Virtual Tech Days now available!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Webcasts of my sessions at Microsoft Virtual Tech Days on April 1, 2009 are now available on demand at: Site Provisioning Solutions: https://www506.livemeeting.com/cc/sbsgb3/view?id=RS9WRN&role=attend&pw=2MMg%7DhC (downloadable too) Information Architecture for a MOSS Intranet: https://www506.livemeeting.com/cc/sbsgb3/view?id=FQR5J5&role=attend&pw=jgt%21%247J (Streaming only) Let me know what you think of them! --Michael
Category: SharePoint – WSS and MOSS
Published: 4 [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 7th '09 |
When a WSP gets stuck in "Deploying"
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Recently, I was involved in deploying two solution packages I had created. The farm administrator had just used the the Solution Management page in Central Admin to deploy the packages globally, and the status was "Deploying" but more than the usual amount of time went by and it was still listed as Deploying. To resolve this, we first ran stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs on the server running Central Admin. No change. We then ran stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs on each member of the farm that ha [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 23rd '09 |
Build Scripts for a SharePoint Solution
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I thought it would be instructive to describe how I build and deploy a SharePoint solution that I have built in Visual Studio 2008. I put this process together before I was aware of WSPBuilder, and probably before WSPBuilder was as popular and mature as it is now. That means that I created my solution manifest and my diamond directive file manually. It also means that although I use the structure of the 12 hive in my solution, I don't do it in quite the same way that you would with W [read].
Posted: Fri, Mar 20th '09 |
I'll be speaking at MS Virtual Tech Days, April 1, 2009!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I'll be giving my "Information Architecture for a MOSS Intranet" and "Site Provisioning Solutions" presentations. More info here: https://www.msfttechdays.com/public/home.aspx --Michael
Published: 3/19/2009 8:54 PM [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 19th '09 |
My WSS 3.0 Blog site looks fine under IE8
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I just installed IE 8 tonight on my laptop, and BlumenthalIT.net (a WSS 3.0 site) looks fine. Michael
Category: WSS 3.0
Published: 3/19/2009 8:51 PM [read].
Posted: Thu, Mar 19th '09 |
PSBB mentioned on SharePoint PodShow episode 13
Michael Blumenthal
Body: If you haven't started listening to the SharePoint Pod Show, you should! It's at www.sharepointpodshow.com, and I've listened two a few episodes so far - in particular the interviews with Andrew Connell and Jeremy Thake (Episode 13). Thake even mentions my PowerShell Building Blocks (PSBB's) for SharePoint at 40 minutes, 53s to 42 minutes 45 seconds. PSBB is one of my CodePlex projects - you can find it at www.codeplex.com/PSBB . He mentions one that displays the SharePoint version n [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 2nd '09 |
March CSPUG Meeting - Registration Now Open!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Joel Oleson (www.SharePointJoel.com) will be our featured speaker at the Chicago SharePoint User Group meeting March 12, 2009. Register now, as he is a rockstar of the SharePoint world, and registration will fill up fast! He'll be talking about Governance. Go to www.cspug.org or directly to the registration page here. --Michael
Category: Chicago SharePoint User Group
Published: 3/2/2009 3:49 PM [read].
Posted: Mon, Mar 2nd '09 |
Digging deep to understand MOSS's behavior
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I blogged about this problem earlier in my post titled Corrupted Workflow Association?. At the time, I decided to work around it by renaming the workflow association and then NOT EVER TYRING TO DELETE IT AGAIN. That was fine in my development environment, however then this happened in our QA environment. The symptom was similar in the QA environment: I try to delete the workflow, and the page never returns, meanwhile the CPU on the SQL server gets very busy - in this case, sticking a [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 23rd '09 |
A Sign the Farm is Quiescent
Michael Blumenthal
Body: In Central Admin, in Operations, you have an option to quiesce the farm. This stops all new connections, and is a good idea before, for example, restoring a content database. it's the next to last operation under Global Configuration. When the farm is quiescent, you will get certain errors, such as the following. "The server is currently being taken down for maintenance" is InfoPath Forms Services' way of saying the farm is being quiesced, and we can't do any new connections - alth [read].
Posted: Sat, Feb 21st '09 |
Very Odd Calculated Value Column Behavior
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I have a task list, and I have added a calculated value column to it. The calculated value column returns a text string which is recognized as a URL and is a clickable link. The formula for the column is =concatenate("http://server/managedpath/sitecoll/site/_layouts/UpdateSomethingStatus.aspx?TID=",ID). When you click on the link, the target page checks a web service to see if one of the columns in the task list (the "Is A" column) needs to be updated, if so updates that column, a [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 18th '09 |
Corrupted Workflow Association?
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I prefer to blog about solutions rather than problems, but lately I've been running into more of the later... Here's one. I have a list with a workflow association, and when I try to remove the workflow association in my development environment, SQL Server goes nuts and eats up all the CPU. Interactive performance degrades and the only thing I can do is restart the SQL Server service. My workaround at this point is just to rename the workflow association to include the word "Bad" in [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 16th '09 |
BDC Business Data Column - Can you limit the rows updated?
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I've just posted a question on the MSDN forums as follows: I have a Task list that has two content types that inherit from Workflow Task. Let's call them CT1 and CT2. CT2 has a Business Data Column while the others do not. This Task list can contain several thousand records, though the number of active tasks at any given time is small (e.g. 20). The Business Data Column gets its data from a web service. I have a view that displays only the active tasks, and includes the business [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 16th '09 |
Twitter ROI == Minutes! AKA Better CAML Intellisense
Michael Blumenthal
Body: So I've just today gotten on Twitter. First thing I did was to start following a bunch of SharePointy tweeters, and some Magenicons (Magenic Consultants). Andrew Connell's most recent tweet is a link to one from John Holliday. He has a package to make your CAML intellisense RADICALLY better. Check it out here:http://johnholliday.net/post/2009/01/18/Feed-your-CAML-some-IntelliSense-so-it-doesnt-bite-you-in-the-you-know-what!.aspx --Michael
Category: SharePoint Development
Published: 2/1 [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 16th '09 |
Debug XOML Bogus - why?
Michael Blumenthal
Body: On Friday, I was debugging a SharePoint workflow that I built in Visual Studio 2008. When I ran it, then stepped through the running workflow in the debugger, the designer view of the running XOML did NOT match the designer view of the workflow. In fact, the "live" XOML that was generated by the debugger was a visualization of an old build of my codebase. WTF? In particular, I had a parallel activity in my workflow, with 5 branches. In my current build, I had commented out branch [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 16th '09 |
Upcoming Event: SharePoint Intranet Success Strategies Webinar
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Martin Muldoon from BA-Insight, my colleague Anthony Handley (MVP, Expression: Design), and I are presenting the following webinar on February 17th. Register Now!
Category: SharePoint Events
Published: 2/5/2009 9:05 PM
Attachments: http://blumenthalit.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/102/clip_image001_2.jpg http://blumenthalit.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/102/clip_image001_thumb.jpg [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 6th '09 |
Upcoming Event: Chicago SharePoint User Group February Meeting
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Automate Business Processes Using InfoPath Forms with Integrated SharePoint Designer Workflows… WITHOUT CODING! Asif Rehmani SharePoint Server MVP Trainer/Solution Architect SharePoint Solutions Forms and Workflows are essential to business processes. Organizations usually rely on programmers to create the forms and workflows using code. Well, code no longer! If you have access to Microsoft Office InfoPath and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, you can create powerful data driven fo [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 6th '09 |
Even thinly sliced dead trees care about their User Experience!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: There are intranet design lessons to be learned from my local newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. Over the last three months, they've redesigned their newspaper (yes, the print edition), and they wrote about it recently. You can read about it here in this PDF: http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/acrobat/2009-01/44426645.pdf . The link to the PDF is on their feedback page (chicagotribune.com/feedback), which also has a link to an audio interview on the topic (though I haven't listened to it [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 10th '09 |
SharePoint Most Popular Intranet Choice!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Every year, the Nielsen Norman Group picks the 10 best intranets of the year, and their latest report (2009) is discussed here http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intranet_design.html (look at the section titled "Technology Platform: Unification Begins". The full report and related info is here: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/design/. One of the things that caught my eye in Nielsen's January 5, 2009 Alertbox article was that half of the winners they identified used SharePoint. Th [read].
Posted: Mon, Jan 5th '09 |
Service accounts should never expire...
Michael Blumenthal
Body: So I am working in a Windows 2003 server virtual machine that is hosted by my client and is a member of their domain. This VM is my development VM, and it has MOSS installed and uses many of the same service accounts that our production environment uses so that it's a realistic development environment. This morning, I went to do a compile of a workflow solution I am working on. I have build scripts set up, and they do several things including manaully deploying a shared utility DLL t [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 2nd '09 |
That's not valid XML!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: The rich text edit control for a multi-line text box field generates DIV tags that include syntax like this: NOTE that there are no Quotes (") around the value side of the class declaration. When I try to use an XMLDocument object to work with the content I get back from the SharePoint field, it throws an exception because it says that the DIV tag is not valid due to the lack of quotes in the class attribute value. This looks like a bug, yes? Michael
Published: 12/31/2008 7:44 AM [read].
Posted: Wed, Dec 31st '08 |
Which views can be used when Creating an Alert ?
Michael Blumenthal
Body: When you create an alert on a list, you have the option of specifying a view which limits which items would trigger the alert. Note however that the list of views you can choose from is a subset of the views available on the list. In fact, if you don't have any views that are ok to use for alerts, you won't even see the option to select a view. What are the rules that determine which views are available for use? Experimentally, my guesses are: 1) It must have a where clause. All Item [read].
Posted: Sun, Dec 28th '08 |
Search Solution Success
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I've built a small search solution which I think is pretty neat. The problem: Customer has a team site with many, many children team sites. Each child team site is for a project team, and the company does about 300 projects per year. Currently, navigation to a specific project team site from the parent team site is via a drop down menu on the global navigation. This is an awful user experience because the menu has so many items that it is practically unusable. Other requireme [read].
Posted: Sat, Dec 27th '08 |
Best Practices for SPList access and Web Part development
Michael Blumenthal
Body: So I've been looking through the new (as of 5 Nov 2008) SharePoint Guidance on Microsoft.com at www.microsoft.com/spg . It's not immediately obvious, but if you click on the last (right-most, at least in left-to-right languages) breadcrumb, you get a drop down list of other very useful sections that are also SharePoint P&P Guidance. Under Development Activities for example,there are 7 How To's - go here to see them all: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd206918.aspx The one th [read].
Posted: Tue, Dec 2nd '08 |
Another thing to collect when capturing a Site Request
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Assuming you require your users to fill out a form to request a new site or site collection, one more thing that you may want to ask them for is one or more distinctive keywords that describe the site content. You could then take these and turn them into Best Bets for Search.
I'm thinking of this because I am putting together a search page for a customer that has a lot of team sites beneath one site, and menu navigation is not very usable because you get one menu with all subsites, a [read].
Posted: Fri, Nov 21st '08 |
Best Practices for SharePoint Development from Microsoft
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group recently released a whole bunch of guidance on SharePoint development. www.microsoft.com/spg www.codeplex.com/spg In addition to requiring Windows Server 2003/8, .NET Framework 3.5, WSS 3.0 or MOSS, VS2008, and VSeWSS 1.2, it also requires Typemock Isolator v5. There's a heck of a lot of stuff there to digest. Additionally, there is a tool to make sure you are calling Dispose on your SharePoint objects - http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/ [read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 18th '08 |
SharePoint Connections Day 1
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Added breadcrumbs to one of my presentations on the flight over. These help me keep the flow of the presentation. Keynotes this evening: Got into the first keynote late, sat in the back, and the audio was completely unintelligible. On the screen, which was not that easy to read, someone was doing something in Visual Studio. The second Keynote however, was by Steve Riley, and was very interesting. I would write more, but my priority now however is to practice my presentations.
[read].
Posted: Tue, Nov 18th '08 |
SharePoint Connections: Slides from Site Provisioning Solutions
Michael Blumenthal
Body: My slides are here (6.51MB PDF). The image on slide 29 got its resolution drastically reduced during conversion to PDF, but it is just a Visio diagram of a workflow. Links referenced in my presentation are: This site, http://Blumenthalit.net Magenic, www.Magenic.com Find the office near you at http://www.magenic.com/Default.aspx?tabid=411 We are in the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services program. To find out more about this Software Assurance benefit, look here:http://www.micro [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 16th '08 |
SharePoint Connections: Slides from Introduction to MOSS Administration
Michael Blumenthal
Body: My slides are here (8.21MB PDF). Links referenced in my presentation are: This site, http://Blumenthalit.net Magenic, www.Magenic.com Find the office near you at http://www.magenic.com/Default.aspx?tabid=411 We are in the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services program. To find out more about this Software Assurance benefit, look here:http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/benefits/sdps.mspx CodePlex: PowerShell Building Blocks for SharePoint and My Stock Quote Web Part Books on Share [read].
Posted: Sun, Nov 16th '08 |
SharePoint Connections: Slides from Information Architecture for a MOSS Intranet
Michael Blumenthal
Body: My slides are here (7.51MB PDF). The image on slide 16 and 34 didn't convert right, but it's nearly the same image as on slide 17. Links referenced in my presentation are: This site, http://Blumenthalit.net Magenic, www.Magenic.com Find the office near you at http://www.magenic.com/Default.aspx?tabid=411 We are in the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services program. To find out more about this Software Assurance benefit, look here:http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sa/benefits/sdps [read].
Posted: Sat, Nov 15th '08 |
Upcoming Magenic Webinar:Real World SharePoint - Customer Facing Apps
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Go here to get more info and register: http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Invitation.aspx?e=e2a4148e-7795-4548-a809-dd1b1ab8c3ab --Michael
Published: 10/30/2008 3:28 PM [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 31st '08 |
Bad English is Good Syntax
Michael Blumenthal
Body: In our development and integration environment, I am working on a workflow that sleeps inside a while loop. We read the sleep interval from the web.config, and for testing have it sleep for only a minute. However, the shortest real interval that it will sleep is the frequency of the timer (sptimerv3.exe) job that executes the workflow on wake up. By default, it's 5 minutes. You can verify that by the stsadm -o getproperty -propertyname job-workflow -url . To set it down to one minute [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 23rd '08 |
Chicago SharePoint User Group Meeting this Thursday!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Go to https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=132723 to register!
Published: 10/20/2008 1:49 PM
Attachments: http://blumenthalit.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/83/image_4.png http://blumenthalit.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/83/image_thumb_1.png [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 21st '08 |
Search Keyword to search for just sites: ContentClass:STS_Web
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I know I'm overdue to respond to some blog comments you all have been kind enough to leave, but in the mean time I want to share this item I came across. I had a requirement (one of several) from a business user that had a site hierarchy with a site (Projects) that had many subsites (Project 1, Project 2, Project 3...) and wanted a searchable list of these sites. In the process of figuring out the best way to meet this requirements, I discovered this: You know how you can specify propert [read].
Posted: Fri, Oct 17th '08 |
How do I view tasks due in the next 10 days?
Michael Blumenthal
Body: A client of mine is a project manager and wanted to create a view of his SharePoint task list that showed items due in the next 10 days. The problem: The filter options in a view let you compare Due Date to [Today] but not to "[Today] + 10". You can't have a formula in the "right-hand side" (bottom box) of you filter expression. We wanted to say "Due Date is less than ([Today]+10)" but it wouldn't accept the phrase [Today]+10. However, you can create a calculated value column that uses a [read].
Posted: Sun, Oct 5th '08 |
Symptoms of your DB Server going down
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Tonight I was supposed to be involved in the deployment of a workflow Solution I had built, but when the deployment window opened, I went to my client's SharePoint intranet site and got three terrifying error messages: http://server.dom.tld/ returned a 404. http://server.dom.tld/managedPath/siteCollectionRootSite returned a 404. http://server.dom.tld/managedPath/siteCollectionRootSite/default.aspx returned a "An unexpected error has occurred. " I don't have access to Central Admin on this [read].
Posted: Sat, Sep 27th '08 |
When a Solution Won't Deploy
Michael Blumenthal
Body: We loaded a WSP into the solution store with STSADM, and then used STSADM to deploy the solution and execute admin service jobs. STSADM reported a success, but when we looked in Central Admin, we saw that the solution deployment was scheduled but never starting. When we canceled the deployment job, the status page for the solution package said that it had deployed to WFE (Web Front End) Server 2 (which hosts Central Admin too), but not server 1 which is just a WFE for the user-facing w [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 25th '08 |
More MOSS events
Michael Blumenthal
Body: September 28-30, 2008 Hyatt Regency Downtown Minneapolis, MN 2 DAYS, 30 SESSIONS, 4 TRACKS Magenic has been a proud sponsor of HDC in the past and is excited to see HDC come to Minneapolis! If you have never been to an HDC event, it's like PDC or TechEd in your back yard. HDC is a professional event, thrown for professional developers. Organized by some of the region's most active user group leaders and supported by the regional Microsoft development community, HDC is the nation's lar [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 18th '08 |
Unexpected Fun at Codeapalooza
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Codeapalooza, a full Saturday of free technical education hosted by CNUG and a number of other sponsors including Microsoft and Magenic, was unexpectedly fun. There was a full day of SharePoint sessions. I walked in, planning to be just an attendee. Keith, who is both my boss and the guy who organized the event, told me that the first SharePoint speaker was a no-show, and asked me to help Brian Gorbett with the first SharePoint session. Which is exactly what I did. Brian and I di [read].
Posted: Tue, Sep 9th '08 |
Upcoming MOSS Search Webinar from Magenic
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 All About MOSS Search: Better Collaboration, Deeper Context and Improved Access to Information CIOs and IT Managers: Learn how companies use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to make it easy to find and share information and collaborate. view details...
Published: 8/28/2008 5:35 AM [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 28th '08 |
MakeCab limitation
Michael Blumenthal
Body: So I'm building a deployment package for the world's most advanced collaboration platform (i.e. MOSS), and what do I get? An error because I am specifying a path+filename that is longer than 100 characters. Didn't we learn when we left 8.3 filenames behind that arbitrary limits like that cause nothing but pain? I suspected that it was a make cab issue when it said that it couldn't find files in my ddf file, but it was files in the middle of my file list. I came across http://makemsi- [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 20th '08 |
Codeapalooza Sept 6, IIT in Wheaton, IL
Michael Blumenthal
Body: For all of you Chicago area SharePointers, there's a day of SharePoint sessions at Codeapalooza on September 6th, at IIT in Wheaton, IL. Take a look at http://www.codeapalooza.com/agenda.htm. --Michael
Category: SharePoint – WSS and MOSS
Published: 8/20/2008 8:16 AM [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 20th '08 |
Version Management Based on Risk Mitigation
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Our current version management approach is based on fear and risk mitigation. The versioning I’ve been dealing with is for Features for workflow solutions. For example, we produce V1 of a workflow. It has GUIDs all over – for the solution, the feature, custom site columns, content types, and more. We now produce V2. We need to replace every GUID because we want this to be a totally separate version. If we don’t change all the GUIDs, we may get warnings or errors about whichever item [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 14th '08 |
Interesting experience with Infrastructure Update
Michael Blumenthal
Body: This is reported by my friend Ralph. He and I are working at the same client right now, and he is responsible for MOSS Farm Administration there. Monday and Tuesday of last week we installed the Infrastructure Updates in a 32-bit virtual machine. Not that they took very long, but we did the WSS update on Monday afternoon and the MOSS update on Tuesday morning. The new Search admin pages are nice! The upgrade was uneventful. More recently however, Ralph installed the same update [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 11th '08 |
SPBookReport: English Curry SharePoint Best Practices, Chapter 10
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I just got a copy of "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices" by "Ben Curry and Bill English, with the Microsoft SharePoint Teams". Last night (7/30/2008) I perused the table of contents and read all of Chapter 10, "Business Processes and Workflows". The book is, of course, available from Amazon here: MOSS 2007 Best Practices The table of contents is quite appealing as the book covers a number of topics that I am interested in other than workflow - including branding an [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 5th '08 |
First Look: Installing the Infrastructure Updates for WSS
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Here's a visual overview of installing the 32-bit version of the Infrastructure Updates for WSS. These are a prerequisite for the MOSS Infrastructure Updates of course. Instructions are here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/07/15/announcing-availability-of-infrastructure-updates.aspx I first backed up my content databases, just in case. Then I ran the installer that I downloaded from Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695). Note that this was do [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 4th '08 |
That was weird... (Workflow development)
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I was getting some strange behaviors when testing my workflow solution. This is the third version (but I am calling it v2) of a workflow solution that I had written. The previous version was just a bugfix release (v1.2) to the original (v1.0). The particular workflow task that was acting strangely had a few of its own fields. In each version of the workflow, I gave each field a unique name. For example, in my task item there is Field X (not it's real name, but bear with me) that [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 18th '08 |
PowerShell Building Blocks for SharePoint
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I've just created a new CodePlex project, PowerShell Building Blocks for SharePoint ("PSBB" for short). http://www.codeplex.com/PSBB . This project serves to make widely available a set of PowerShell functions that let you work with SharePoint objects. This initial release includes 14 PowerShell functions: Enjoy. These do depend on Zach R's Get-SPWeb function that you can get at Post.aspx-List=90bbfd11-c9a5-45cf-a77e-19559aae81ae&ID=7. --Michael
Published: 7/15/2008 7:05 AM
A [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 15th '08 |
RedDevNews.com Article on SharePoint
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I was reading the July 1st, 2008 issue of Redmond Developer News, and it had a front page article on SharePoint. http://reddevnews.com/features/article.aspx?editorialsid=2524. Key points you may already be familiar with: The quantity of MOSS deployments are skyrocketing. The Visual Studio development experience leaves something to be desired. In particular with developing Application Pages since you have to develop these as class library projects... Not that many people have deep experi [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 9th '08 |
Yet More PowerShell Scripts for MOSS
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I've just started the next version of a workflow solution I am building for a client, and took the time to automate my build and deployment process a bit more. To this end, I wrote the following PowerShell functions that you can use (as-is, no warranties, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.) Clear-Alerts-From-SPWeb -URL Removes all alerts from a site. Useful for example if you restore a backup of a production site collection to your dev environment, and you don't want real end users getting [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 8th '08 |
Should Develop MOSS Workflow solutions in a 32 bit environment
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I'd been working in a 32 bit VM until a recent hard drive crash. Now I'm working in a 64 bit VM, and have found some interesting things about the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit development for MOSS Workflow. If you try creating a new Sequential Workflow in VS2008 in a 64 bit VM, you get two errors. The first exception message is: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". The second message is: "SharePoint site location entered is not valid. The SharePoint site at [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 30th '08 |
Removing a custom Content Type
Michael Blumenthal
Body: One of the things I have discovered recently is that when you add a custom content type to a list, any column definitions that are referenced are copied into the list. To say that another way, if I add MyCustomContentType to a Tasks list, and the definition of MyCustomContentType includes three custom field references (references to site columns), then those columns are added to the Tasks list. However, when I go to remove the content type, the fields do not disappear when you remove t [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 30th '08 |
Post-Event Roundup from the Chicago SharePoint User Group June 2008 Meeting [Part 2 of 2]
Michael Blumenthal
Body: There are a few bits and bytes that I wanted to share: 1) I had a conversation with a gentleman at the user group meeting who had recently been comparing the backup/restore solutions from CommVault and AvePoint. His organization uses CommVault for most other applications and is happy with those agents, and I had heard that CommVault's offering was pretty good for SPS2003, but he told me that he was severely disappointed in their backup agent for SharePoint 2007- it acts as if it is using [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 20th '08 |
Post-Event Roundup from the Chicago SharePoint User Group June 2008 Meeting [Part 1 of 2]
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Wow. The team at Hubbard One did some really impressive work creating a uniform multi-web-application solution for a customer than had 9 public websites that they wanted to unify into one brand and one technology platform. It's still 9 sites, but now it's all run off of a medium MOSS farm that Hubbard One is hosting. The team at Hubbard One had already invested 3 weeks in component development (server controls), and 10 years in an information architecture and content management syste [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 20th '08 |
Building a 2008 MOSS 2007 VM - Part 3
Michael Blumenthal
Body: In this 22 minute video, you can see me: Begin adding roles. Install Active Directory Domain Services (0:00 to 1:40, edited obviously). You can't install IIS in the same pass as when you install ADDS. 1:50, Run DCPromo to make this a domain controller. At 2:10-2:40, I decide to do an advanced mode install of DCPromo (checking the checkbox on the dialog box). 3:02, I use dev.local for my forest root DNS domain name, DEV for my netbios name. 3:28, Windows 2008 forest functional level [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 3rd '08 |
Custom Site Column Names must be Unique
Michael Blumenthal
Body: And it won't tell you if they are not. The feature activation process will silently ignore your site column. I think that it (STSADM or the ULS log) should report an error, and have filed a bug report with Microsoft. Here's how to reproduce the problem: 1) Create a Feature that defines a site column that uses a name that is already taken. (you can get this elements file at http://blumenthalit.net/files/Elementbug/SiteColumns.xml) 2) Wrap it in a feature, and deploy the feature. Ac [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 3rd '08 |
New KB Article on Installing SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) in a SharePoint Farm
Michael Blumenthal
Body: http://kbalertz.com/953127/integrate-SharePoint-Server-Windows-SharePoint-Services-Server-Reporting-Services-using-Reporting-Services.aspx When you install SSRS properly with the SSRS Reporting Services Add-in, it becomes part of your farm. You can view reports just by clicking on them in a site. As you can see, I like using KB Alertz because it emails me every time a new MOSS or WSS KB comes out. --Michael
Category: SharePoint – WSS and MOSS
Published: 6/2/2008 4:11 PM [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 2nd '08 |
Partial Answer to "How do we do Team Development for SharePoint?"
Michael Blumenthal
Body: This is potentially a much bigger question, but I'll just address the narrow section of code migration from a hardware/software level, what I would recommend is that each developer have their own Virtual Machine which is a Windows Server with SQL Server and MOSS. Each developer does their development on their personal VM (either running at their desktop or on a VM server), and each developer produces WSPs containing Features. These WSPs get deployed to a single common farm for integrat [read].
Posted: Fri, May 30th '08 |
Great Deployment and Planning Pocket Guide
Michael Blumenthal
Body: I've been meaning to blog about this for several weeks now. There's this great little pocket guide called the "SharePoint Deployment Guide and Checklists", and it was written by some people from Microsoft and some MVPs and the like, including Joel Oleson and Rob Bogue, among others. I highly recommend it. If you have a Microsoft Account Executive or other Microsoft contact, you can ask them for one. It's Microsoft part number 098-108909, and looks like this: If that doesn't work, [read].
Posted: Fri, May 30th '08 |
I've built a Feature. What should I give to my SharePoint Farm Admin?
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Let's assume you are in an enterprise with a good process around code promotion. That is, if you write some code, it has to go from development to staging to production rather than straight to production and it gets validated and tested in each environment before it goes to the next environment. There may be approvals at each stage, and documentation required, because the developer is handing the code off to another party for deployment and testing. In the context of SharePoint, custom [read].
Posted: Thu, May 29th '08 |
Environmental Indicators for Server Health
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Once I remember reading about a data center that altered the air conditioning level of the room occupied by the system admins, and made the room's "weather" more turbulent when a server started reporting an error. The result was that the system administrators could feel the server health without even having to look at anything. Similarly, Martin Woodward has hooked up a Nabaztag Rabbit (no, not a Nazgul Rabbit) to his TFS build process. It made me think about what you could hook it up [read].
Posted: Thu, May 29th '08 |
Tip for Troubleshooting Windows Authentication Problems in SharePoint
Michael Blumenthal
Body: One day you find you can't log onto a particular SharePoint site with account X. This happened to me today where the account was a service account that an application was supposed to use to talk to the Lists ASMX web service so that the application could create a list item in a list on that site. One thing that can help you when you troubleshoot authentication is to ask yourself if SharePoint is giving you the access denied message or if IIS is. You can tell by looking at the access de [read].
Posted: Wed, May 28th '08 |
Upgrading an Evaluation Edition OS on a VM
Michael Blumenthal
Body: So I got a MOSS VM from a class a while ago, and I've been using it for a while - for a variety of projects, any time it wasn't practical to take the time to build a development environment from scratch. It was built using an evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 R2, and it finally expired. I finished development on one of my MOSS workflows last Friday afternoon, and it expired Friday night, so when I went to use it Monday morning, it happily told me that it would shut down in an [read].
Posted: Wed, May 28th '08 |
Joel Oleson Knows My Blog Exists!
Michael Blumenthal
Body: Joel Oleson recently posted a "SharePoint Alphabetical Blog Directory" as a blog post, and I am very pleased to point out that my blog - this blog - is in the list. It's right after all the blog.technet.com blogs. After reading his other blog post on the Top 100 SharePoint blogs by Technorati rating, I realized I need to start using Technorati. To that end, here is my Technorati Profile link.
Published: 5/23/2008 2:37 PM [read].
Posted: Fri, May 23rd '08 |
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