Michael Van Cleave

FREE WEBINAR – SharePoint 2010 Public Facing Sites

2011-04-04T15:31:21-06:00:00

Although it is late notice, I thought I would put up a plug for a free webinar. SharePoint MVP Paul Stork and I are presenting on Best Practices for SharePoint 2010 Public Facing Sites.

I would love to go in to all of the topics on this post, but it would be easier if you just joined the webinar. Heck, it is free!

Check it out here.

Hope to see you there.

4/11/2011 Update: At the request of some followers ShareSquared has provided a link to the recorded version of the webinar. Now if you missed something you can replay it. ShareSquared also has posted the webinar Q&A on the company site if you asked a question and we were not able to answer it during the webcast.

Check out the recorded webinar here.

Michael

2010 SharePoint Composer Giveaway

2010-11-24T11:48:59-07:00:00

What does SharePoint Composer, an IPad, and a Halo Reach Xbox 360 bundle have in common?

The 2010 SharePoint Composer Giveaway!

ShareSquared is hosting a giveaway that has some terrific prizes. We have used this same giveaway at the last few technical conferences and it is about to close. Generally, we are giving you the ability to get in on the action even if you were not able to attend one of the conferences.

If you would like more detail about the giveaway, timeline, and its rules then follow the link below.

SharePoint Composer Giveaway

You need to hurry though. Time is running out and the prize pool is too significant to miss this opportunity.

Michael

SharePoint 2010 – Social Networking Feature, Integration, and Governance

2010-11-22T10:29:30-07:00:00

Right when you thought it was safe to head in to the holiday season without more SharePoint things to populate your calendar.

That is right; ShareSquared is putting on another spectacular SharePoint 2010 webinar. This time Chris Riley (of Enterprise Content Management and Capture fame) and Chris Givens (of Architecting Connected Systems fame) will be taking you through the social networking feature set. They will explain the basics of social networking, integration points with social networking, and governance techniques you can utilize for social networking.

This should be a terrific webinar if your organization is looking at implementing the social networking features of SharePoint 2010. You won't want to miss it.

Here are the details about the event:

Who should attend:
    Business & Technology Directors/Decision Makers
    SharePoint Administrators & IT Pros
    SharePoint Architects

Date: Tuesday, November 30^th from 11:00 – 12:00 (Pacific Standard Time)

Hope you can make it.

Michael

Relevant Links:
    ShareSquared, Inc
    Chris Riley Blog
    Chris Givens
    SharePoint Composer/Maestro

SharePoint Composer/Maestro Released – SharePoint 2010

2010-11-16T09:38:05-07:00:00

After much anticipation, ShareSquared, Inc has finally released SharePoint Composer and Maestro. We have finally have made it available for purchase to the public. Internally ShareSquared consultants have been using it with our clients for a while now.

These products are going to make any SharePoint implementation go smoother.

If you are not familiar with SharePoint Composer and Maestro then you are in for a treat. The product is meant to help organizations logically layout their SharePoint implementation utilizing a mind map. If you are not familiar with mind maps, they are a bubble type of map that helps people organize thoughts and concepts. You might have used one while in school for creative writing or some other type of organized homework.

You are able to use this map to communicate with your stakeholders about all the pieces and parts of the SharePoint implementation. It provides a visual appeal a team is usually lacking during most requirements gathering parts of a SharePoint planning. Once you create the map you are able to validate it against best practices and verify that you have all service dependencies accounted for. Afterward you can export your map as a script.

"What am I going to do with a script?" you might be asking. That is the genius part of this. You can take your Composer generated script and run it through Maestro to configure your SharePoint farm. That is right, all of the detailed information you captured throughout your requirements process Maestro configures for you. All you have to do is install the SharePoint bits on the server and then run your script through Maestro.

Not only does this give you consistency in across your SharePoint systems, but it also gives you a disaster recovery artifact in case something goes terribly wrong down the road and you have to rebuild your farm.

If you would like to know more about SharePoint Composer and Maestro, try it out, or just checkout some demo's and how-tos then follow the links below. It should help you get on the path with Composer and Maestro.

Reference Links:

ShareSquared, Inc (Consulting)

SharePoint Composer Site (General Info)

SharePoint Outpost (download/purchase)

SharePoint Composer on YouTube (Demo/How-To)

MindJet Mind Manager 9 (Mind Map used with Composer)

Check it out and enjoy configuring SharePoint.

Michael

SharePoint 2010 - FSSPUsernameFilter.dll failed to load

2010-11-11T11:04:32-07:00:00

The other evening I had the unfortunate pleasure of having to rebuild a client's SharePoint farm.

Generally, SharePoint is not unstable. Unfortunately, the original consultant built the farm with one service account, which made things dicey. Murphy, of some strange law fame, stepped in and presented a situation in which that service account password had to be changed. As you would expect, the administrator changed the password. Since the administrator was newer to SharePoint he didn't realize the implications of the password change and its effect on the farm.

Anyhow, this presented an opportunity to rebuild the farm with best practices in mind. Using the least privileges model, I setup the farm again. When I completed building the farm out and tried to review my accomplishment. I was blindsided by the ever so dreadful "Server 500 Error" when trying to access the site collection.

On a side note, the 500 error is just as useful as lipstick on a pig on a lonely, desolate island. I digress. When I inspected the server's Windows event log, I found:

"The HTTP Filter DLL c:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Protection for SharePoint\FSSPUsernameFilter.dll failed to load. The data is the error."

While searching "The Cloud" (sorry shameless, sarcastic plug) I found plenty of support articles about the issue. However to resolve the error most if not all of the articles resolutions had something to do with modifying the IIS Metabase. If you are like me, you envision your clients trying to modify their IIS Metabase and almost go in to a convulsive shock.

Before donning your special metabase modification coat and hat, try this. Reinstall ForeFront Server for SharePoint. It will take care of any entries in IIS and you will not even come close to the amount of potential damage done if you incorrectly change something in the metabase.

Granted it might take a bit of time and it is not as cool to talk about over the coffee pot with your co-workers, but in the end, it will yield the same result with very little risk.

Happy SharePointing!

Michael

SharePoint 2010 Design & Deployment Best Practices

2010-05-17T09:55:54-06:00:00

Well now that SharePoint 2010 has successfully launched and everyone is scratching for every piece of best practices information they can get their hands on, I would like to invite anyone and everyone to come and take part in ShareSquared's next webinar.

The webinar will cover some key information such as:

Pros and cons of the different approaches to installing and configuring SharePoint 2010
Configuration Best Practices for SharePoint 2010 farms
Services architecture; dependencies, licensing, and topologies
Information Architecture guidance for sizing, multilingual support, multi-tenancy, and more.
Using tools such as SharePoint Composer and SharePoint Maestro to configure and deploy SharePoint 2010
And most of all, avoiding common pitfalls for installation and deployment.

What is better than all of that? Well, the even more exciting thing is that the presenters will be our very own SharePoint MVP's Gary Lapointe and Paul Stork. If you don't know who these guys are then you should definitely check out their blogs and their contributions to the SharePoint community.

To get more information and register click here:

Other great links to information in this post:

Check it out and get up to speed from some of the best in the industry.

Michael

SharePoint 2010, Cloud, and the Constitution

2010-04-14T14:32:09-06:00:00

The other evening an article on the Red Tap Chronicles caught my eye. The article written by Bob Sullivan titled "The Constitutional Issues of Cloud Computing" was very interesting in regards to the direction most of the technical world is going. We all have been inundated about utilizing cloud computing for reasons of price, availability, or even scalability; but what Bob brings up is a whole separate view of why a business might not want to move toward the cloud for services or applications.

The overall point to the article was pretty simple. It all boiled down to the summation that hosting "Things" in the cloud (Email, Documents, etc…) are interpreted differently under the law regarding constitutional search and seizure than say a document or item that is kept in physical form at a business or home. Where if you physically have it stored someone would have to get a warrant to search for it or seize it, but if it is stored off in the cloud and the ISV or provider is subpoenaed for the item then they will usually give access to the information. Obviously this is a big difference in interpretation of the law and the constitution due to technology.

So you might ask "Where does this fit in with SharePoint?

Well the overall push for this next version of SharePoint is one that gives a business ultimate flexibility to utilize the Cloud. In one example this upcoming version gracefully lends itself to Multi Tenancy so that online or "Cloud" hosting would be possible by Service Providers. Another aspect to the upcoming version is that it has updated its ability to store content outside of the database and in a cheaper commoditized storage facility. This is called Remote Blob Storage (or RBS) which is the next evolution of External Blob Storage (or EBS). With this new functionality that business might look forward to it is extremely important for them to understand that they might be opening themselves up to laws that do not need a warrant to search or seize their information that is stored in the cloud.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the next few months. Usually the laws change slowly in comparison to technology so it might be a while until we see if it is actually constitutional to treat someone's content on the cloud differently as it would be in their possession, however until there is some type of parity that happens or more concrete laws regarding the differences be very careful about what you put in the cloud.

Michael

Are you ready for SharePoint 2010?

2010-03-19T09:46:38-06:00:00

With SharePoint's next release on the horizon (May 12^th) many of my clients and colleagues are starting to ramp up for the upcoming tidal wave of functionality. Microsoft has been doing a terrific job of getting as much information out in the public lime light as possible over the last few months and I think that will definitely pay off with regards to acceptance of the new version of SharePoint.

However, there are still some aspects of the new platform that are a little murky. Aspects such as:

"Should we upgrade?"
"Will my current installation upgrade without issues?"
"What benefits will I see by upgrading?"
"What are the best practices for upgrading or best practice in general relating to 2010?"
"How should we plan to deploy SharePoint 2010 in our organization?"

There is a ton of information out there, but how do you go about getting some of these questions answered? Well, I am glad you asked. (J)

ShareSquared will be delivering a FREE SharePoint 2010 Readiness Webinar that will cover Preparation, Strategies, and Best Practices for the upcoming version of SharePoint. The webinar will be presented by 2 of ShareSquared's outstanding SharePoint MVP's; Gary Lapointe and Paul Stork.

As all those T.V. commercials say… "Space is limited, so sign up now!" Just kidding, well kind of but not really. I am sure that the signup will be huge and space is really limited so the sooner you sign up the better. I would hate for any of you to miss out.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to shoot me a e-mail through my blog or contact ShareSquared directly.

See you at the webinar!

Michael

Climbing higher mountains…

2010-01-30T10:15:29-07:00:00

A while back I decided to leave ProKarma, Inc. There were many reasons for my departure most of which I won't detail in this blog post.

However I am proud to announce that I am now part of the ShareSquared, Inc team. I am sure that most of you might not have ever heard of ShareSquared so that is the reason for the post. Not only to update everyone of where I have been, but also give you more information about ShareSquared.

ShareSquared is a Microsoft Gold Partner that has consultants spread across the United States. The consultants themselves are extremely deep in Microsoft technologies and in many cases are second to none. To describe this if you were to look at some of the consultants you would find a number of current and previous Microsoft MVP's, a SharePoint Certified Master, previous Microsoft product team employees, and more. Yep, if you haven't thought of the proper word for it I will help you out. We are "Stacked" with talent.

So what does this mean for me? I get to work with this top level talent and help provide even more bang for my client's buck. J

It might seem that with the company name and the talent pool that we only work on SharePoint and on a project basis, however nothing is farther from the truth. We span a wide range of Microsoft Technologies and will help with anything from Staff Augmentation to Mentoring and Training.

If you are kicking off an initiative and need some expert input or you have a problem child that needs some direction, give us a ring. We are always happy to set the path or get things back on path.

Check out ShareSquared, we would love to help.

Michael

SPC 2009 Advanced Service and Topologies

2009-11-02T11:27:04-07:00:00

Presenters:

Simon Skaria and Umesh Unnikrishnan

This was my second session during the week. It was one in which my hopes were that they would talk about the deployment differences that SharePoint 2010 would have over 2007. I was not disappointed.

So to sum it up a bit:

2010 has a much more flexible model compared to 2007.
Improved security model
- Claims Based Authorization/SAML
Better administration with Central Administration and also PowerShell
Service Isolation
- Now the Services that you deployed and configured with 2007's Shared Service Provider are deployed and configured individually. The benefit is that they can be attached to any web application making it possible to split up different services for different web applications. I will try to explain this a bit further later in this post.
Services can utilize their own databases instead of all of them using the SSP database like in 2007
2010 has a great story around multi-tenancy.
- With the isolated services you can assign specific services for the web application to have (as stated above)
- Also you can create "Feature Packs" (only through powershell (I think))
  - Feature Packs are the ability for you to specify which features the site collection will have available to it. So you can enable and disable features depending on what a client pays for and then assign it to their site collection. This way they don't even see features that are not available to them.

Over and above I think the thing that I am most impressed with is the Service Isolation part. You have the ability to setup services individually (not like the SSP where you had services blocked together) and you can then assign them to web applications. For example, you can set up a services farm that has 2 Metadata Management Services, Search, and etc. Web App 1 could use one metadata management service, while web app 2 utilizes the other one.

I know that it might sound confusing, but think of it like the ability to set up search, metadata services, BCS (business connectivity services), and other services without regard or dependency on other services.

That is enough for now.

Until the next session.

Michael

Reference Link:

Service Architecture Explained

SPC 2009 Post Conference Review

2009-10-22T21:32:56-06:00:00

Okay, I know that I haven't posted much on the sessions as of yet, however I thought I would do that after this post.

Overall the conference was outstanding. I was told that there were over 8000 people in attendance. It was really well run and the attendees were constantly doing something constructive and worthwhile. The evening events were spectacular and a lot of fun. The Microsoft folks sure know how to throw a party.

I was talking to some folks that have been networking with and they asked me what my thoughts were on what is being released. My response was "It is the equivalent to the difference between SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007". For lack of a better adjective it is unbelievable. The changes and thought that Microsoft has put in to this next release will cause the same nearly insurmountable tidal wave of implementations and upgrades by companies globally. SharePoint 2010 is amazing.

If you are a SharePoint developer/administrator/architect then the best thing you can do is get a hold of the beta when it is released in November. If you thought 2007 was huge just wait until you get a look at this monster. J

I will now get on to blogging about some of the sessions I attended.

Michael

SharePoint 2010 Overview and What’s New Session

2009-10-19T23:24:32-06:00:00

After the keynote sessions and lunch the first set of breakout sessions kicked off. Needless to say with the session line up it was difficult to choose only one to attend. However I thought it would be wise to at least see what is new and get an overview of the platform.

I got to the session a bit late, but I don't think that I missed much. Arpan Shah was the speaker and it was a packed house. One of the largest rooms I have seen so far. Easily over 300 people in attendance. Here is what I caught.

Tagging and Rating

You now have rating functionality built in to SharePoint. You have to turn it on in the settings, but now if you have content that your organization rates highly it will be able to be displayed as such. Also tagging is a new kind of keyword metadata capture. You have the ability to tag content in a multiple keyword fashion that will allow the content to be searched and even routed by the tags. This is some very cool functionality.

Multi-Select List Items

Now you have the ability to affect more than one item with an operation. What I mean by that is say you want to check out a few documents and take them with you on the road to edit them in transit. You now have the ability to select multiple items in all lists and use the Ribbon to perform actions such as checkout. Remember the ribbon is contextual so depending on the content you select it will modify the selections you have for the group.

AJAX EVERYWHERE!

Okay to be perfectly honest I think I am going to have to get out there and really learn AJAX. I have been avoiding it forever, but now you will find that SharePoint utilizes AJAX just about everywhere. The dialog messages, page refreshes, content updates, everything is smooth and flicker free.

MySites

Your MySite will have more relevant tabs. Not just the standard ones that were previously provisioned, but ones that really seem to fit the "Profile" model.

Tag Cloud. There is a new webpart that is a Tag Cloud that you have that will give you the same functionality as the ones you see on everyone's blogs. It is kind of neat.

You have the ability to see important content to you. Like documents that you authored, your current content, etc. (not much of a change from the old site, but some differences).

My Network gives you the ability to see your hierarchy in the organization, but now you also have the ability to more manually add people to your network. My guess (since I didn't see much of the feature) is that it would be similar to the "Facebook-ish" setup.

Better blogs!

RESTful Web API

This is probably one of the best features that are coming in the next version. I am a big fan of RESTful web services because of the simplicity of the interface that can be used. Now SharePoint allows access to its data via the RESTful web services. The demonstration that was done was where an excel spreadsheet was published with Excel services that contained a graph. The presenter created a blog and was adding some content to the blog post, then quickly added a image tag and referenced the chart through the RESTful API.

The point to this is that now you have the ability to get to your data not only by a link, but now you actually have the ability to reference the data through the API with ease.

Content Organizer

The Content Organizer is another very neat feature. Now to tell you the truth I haven't run in to any of my customers that needed this functionality, but that doesn't mean that it isn't useful. The CO is a routing table very similar to the record routing table you find in the Records Management site. However there is a difference. You have to turn the feature on for the site specifically. Then once it is on, it creates a "Drop off Library" that will follow rules that you create to route documents that are uploaded. The rules are easy to create. They are basically just list items (go figure) that you specify how to identify documents that need to be routed. Some of the attributes you have the ability to route on are Content Type, Managed Keywords, Document Type, etc.

Better Cross Browser Support

This is another really key feature for SharePoint. It now is starting to adhere to more common standards. Some of the standards that were thrown around today that it supports are WCAG, XHTML, JSON, and CMIS. Not that they all have to do with cross browser support, but to get better cross browser functionality they had to start supporting the current standards. So you should see a very good browser experience for most PC based browsers. They didn't make any promises for Mac based browsers.

Webparts in the Page Content Area

One thing that was interesting is that when Arpan was creating his above mentioned blog post he was able to put a streaming video webpart in the page content section of the blog publishing page. Now this I feel is significant. Mainly because I always get the question "Can we mix page layout content areas and web part zones", while the answer is yes in 2007 it isn't what the client is asking. They are asking if they can put web part zones in the content areas to give them the ability to place webparts in the content. I think content creators will like this. However it does kind of break the idea of having constant layouts.

Streaming Videos in SharePoint

Yep, you read that right. SharePoint will have the ability to support streaming video. You will also have some really decent control over the look ahead and bit throttling features that it can require, but from what I saw today it was as simple as a webpart that referenced the video and it was rocking.

Another interesting part to this is that when Arpan was selecting his video SharePoint support for previewing the video before he selected it was great. He was able to start, watch, and confirm that it was the video he wanted before he had to confirm it for addition the page.

Better support for Digital Asset Management

SharePoint 2007 really doesn't do this very well. Not that you can't force it to be an Asset Management tool. It is just that the customers that I have worked with it never really seemed to fit as a good Digital Asset solution. This has been greatly improved.

This wasn't very granular in any of the newer features, but it should give you a good list of things to start looking for in the beta when it comes out. Now of course this really didn't mention any type of development-centric content, but that is still to come. There are a lot of sessions dedicated to the new development tools and synergies between SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio (never thought I would ever say that).

Hope this helps and I will be posting more as I have time.

Michael

SharePoint Conference 2009 – Keynote and First Impressions

2009-10-19T11:54:53-06:00:00

So first impressions….. Hmmmmm…. This is BIG!

First off, the conference is sold out. There has been an increase of attendance of close to 100% since the last conference. There are people here from over 70 different countries.

The keynote was not what I had expected. Ballmer did a great job explaining the new vision for SharePoint and how they are starting to embrace more of what customers, developers, and IT pro's want. Some of the key areas that came up that were of importance were:

Distributed deployments
Integrated development tools and ease of use
Differences in Licensing model
Friendlier with other Browsers/Standards
A newer level of maturity in the product.

Tom Rizzo also did a great job of showing a new level of ease of integration using the newly remodeled SharePoint Designer. The community generally will appreciate the changes that Microsoft has made to turn this tool in to a good translation between Business Analyst and Developer. The tools no longer seem to compete with each other but genuinely work together to for 2 tools to fit 2 different roles to deliver a single solution.

A lot of what Rizzo showed off was the new "No Code" facilities for LOB integration and also some very cool enhancements for WCM. Much of the new interface has the Ribbon that was first instilled in Word and Excel, but now it is making its SharePoint debut.

Overall, I would say that this is going to be a rocking conference and there is going to be so much information to absorb. I will try to do my best to blog about the things that I am seeing or doing but with over 240 sessions and open labs. I will not be able to hit them all.

Also, it came up in the keynote that the first public beta for SharePoint will launch in November. This is going to be a hayday for Microsoft I am sure. In the Q/A with Ballmer and Rizzo it someone asked if the new VS2010 would be able to share the new development enhancements (integrated development/client development) with developing against SharePoint 2007. To be short about it, the answer is NO. They seemed to play off the reasoning due to different API's and Runtime changes, but this "no matter what the reason" is unfortunate. I am sure I will blog on this more later, but right now I have to get back in to the mix.

Michael

Here we go again…

2009-10-11T23:21:53-06:00:00

Over three years ago I ran in to a Microsoft server product that I fell in love with. It is enormous, complex, and useful in so many ways. Enormous because it solves many common business problems out of the box there isn't many competitors that can top that. Complex because there isn't just one way to solve most of the business problems with this product. Any solution that you create with the product can be as unique as the client you are implementing it for. Useful because even with all of the out of box features it is extensible in so many ways that you can create elegant and solid solutions when you use it as a platform.

Yep, that's right. I am talking about SharePoint. When I started to get involved with WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 it was in the early beta stages. I was lucky enough to get paired up with a very good SharePoint architect early in my SharePoint career and learned a lot from him (Thank you Philip). So for the last three years I have been working heavily with SharePoint and have found that it always seems to amaze me. I am able to continue to learn new things and always be amazed what the SharePoint community comes up with to solve business problems that a constantly evolving.

Anyhow, the reason I am writing this is not to rehash old memories, but to kind of put in writing the evolution that SharePoint made just three short years ago. Now Microsoft is about to do it again. Coming up next week is the SharePoint 2009 Conference. Usually going to one of these types of conferences is pretty exciting, but what will make this conference different is that we are about to see the evolution of SharePoint again.

SharePoint 2010 is going to be unveiled at this conference. Now to be very clear, I haven't seen much of the new functionality outside of what has been published on the SharePoint 2010 site. However, I have talked to a few people that are part of the TAP program and from the reviews that they are giving the new platform it will be amazing. Even from what Microsoft is showing as teaser material is nothing short of extremely cool. Check it out.

With this said, I am lucky enough to be able to make the trip to this exciting event. I am looking forward to soaking in every last bit of information that will be presented. Also, while I am there I am also looking to blog about my findings and new functionality that is presented. Needless to say this won't be easy with over 250 sessions of content being presented, but I am up for the challenge. I am excited to see what new things Microsoft has to impress us with and how it is going to make solving our clients' problems easier.

So until all of this goes down be sure to check out the teaser stuff that is on the SharePoint 2010 site.

Michael

Sites Referenced:

Extranet FBA Issues

2009-02-11T16:37:42-07:00:00

Hello all,

Yes, it has been a very long time since I have posted but I have a good reason I swear. Since my last post, I have changed companies and joined ProKarma as their Microsoft Practice Director. My duties are different from being just a consultant so it is possible I will be expanding my blog posts to other things other than just SharePoint. J

However until I get more time and material I figured I would post a couple of issues that I recently ran in to with a client of mine while we were trying to open their SharePoint server up as an extranet.

Issue #1:

The first issue that I ran in to was that the web application that they wanted to open as an extranet with FBA would not resolve any names in the People Picker. As you know when you change the authentication of a Web Application you also need to assign a user as a Site Collection Administrator. The issue I encountered was that no matter what I tried my administrator user that I had created in the database would not resolve.

Solution:

So after some thought and research (since I hadn't actually implemented this instance of SharePoint) I found that the database was rejecting the Network Service user from accessing the database. Come to find out the person who installed SharePoint and created the initial web application that I extended was using the Network Service user as the Application Pool identity. He neglected to create the service users as would be done in best practices and this ultimately caused time to spent diagnosing an issue that should not have popped up normally. Either way the issue was resolved, but it just goes to point that best practices will save you unnecessary cycles in the end.

Issue #2:

After opening up the web application opened as an extranet up popped another issue. While I was VPN'd in to the clients network I was able to log in using FBA. However, when I was not on their network the same user could not log in. Nothing had changed with the user and access just that I was not logged on to the client's network.

Solution:

This time it was my issue. I had forgotten the old rule that when you setup FBA you need to reboot the server. For some reason the system caches and it will not update properly. Therefore, in this instance after the reboot, the issue was resolved and I was able to log in without issue.

Hopefully you will not run in to these issues and if you do this post will help.

Michael