SharePoint Thoughts

SharePoint Saturday @ Ozarks

2009-07-18T15:58:54-05:00:00

SS Ozarks was alot of fun, I will be uploading the slides here shortly.

SharePoint install only allowing basic installation

2009-07-07T00:17:19-05:00:00

This evening I got to a point where I thought it would be wise to get my test environment ready for the SharePoint Saturday Ozarks. I got my SharePoint w/SP1 Installation disk on for my Win2k8 environment. When the installation started for some reason all the options apart from Stand-Alone server type(s) were disabled. It frustrated me because I’ve done this for so long and it couldn’t click why Complete Installation was disabled. After an hour and half of banging my head and thinking of Plan-B I decide to do a complete uninstall and re-install that’s when I found out that there was WSS 3.0 already installed in my to-be test environment.

Lesson learned, if you have WSS 3.0 already installed and you are try to install MOSS on top of if you’ll not be able to configure your environment as a farm environment. SharePoint assumes the environment will be a Stand-Alone environment hence disabling all the other Installation types including a WFE install.

To move forward you’ll be required to uninstall WSS 3.0, make sure you have a complete backup of the contents that you want to retain then uninstall WSS and re-install MOSS.

Speaking @ SharePoint Saturday - Ozarks

2009-06-15T14:40:09-05:00:00

I will be speaking at SharePoint Saturday - Ozarks in Harrison, AR on July 18th on SharePoint Architecture: SharePoint Capacity planning and performance (the labs). http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ozarks/default.aspx.

We will take a deep dive on how you can stress test your SharePoint environment with the already available Visual Studio Tools. We will also look SharePoint Capacity planning tools. See you there!

St Louis MOSS Camp

2009-04-07T11:28:56-05:00:00

I will be speaking at MOSS Camp in St. Louis on April 18th on SharePoint Capacity Planning and Governance. More information at http://www.stlsug.org/MOSSCamp/default.aspx hoping to see you there!

Free SharePoint Designer

2009-04-02T07:36:54-05:00:00

Microsoft announced on March 30th thats SharePoint Designer will be a free download as of April 1st 2009, more information about it can be found at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA103607621033.aspx

User Profile redirect on SharePoint

2009-04-01T17:23:53-05:00:00

One of my clients wanted to have the user profile on SharePoint to be redirected to a custom page that they have created showing the user's picture and other detailed information that would not basically appear on the out of the box user details page.

With this task in hand I have to explain the mechanism behind user profiles details page. When a user is clicked on SharePoint, userdisp.aspx page is called which determines the destination of the page. This page can ge found at 12hive\Templates\Layouts.

To allow the details page to be directed somewhere else, add the following code to your userdisp.aspx

<%@ Assembly Name="Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

Then just before the closer of your content tag </asp:content> add the following code

<%
// Changes to redirect User Display to Details pageas per the requirements
try
{
Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext cntx = Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext.GetContext(HttpContext.Current);
Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager profileManager = new Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileManager(cntx);
bool userExists = profileManager.UserExists(this.UserListForm.Item["Account"].ToString());

if (userExists)
{

// to redirect to a custom page
Response.Redirect("/<your custom page url>.aspx?=accountname:" + this.UserListForm.Item["Account"].ToString

// to redirect to my site page
Response.Redirect(profileManager.MySiteHostUrl + "/Person.aspx?accountname=" + this.UserListForm.Item["Account"].ToString());

());
}

}

catch

{
// do nothing, will use the original userdisp.aspx
}

Hopefully this helps someone!

Capacity Planning in SharePoint

2009-03-30T21:03:16-05:00:00

I thought it would nice to put something out there that can help someone who’s looking to either deploy, re-deploy and migrate contents from a database that has grown too large.

When planning SharePoint deployment it’s always good to have a clear picture of where your site is going so that you can make the necessary arrangement to put it under control. Microsoft has a good documentation on Architecture to help you answer the hard questions, but how, when and where do you start on capacity planning?

Some of the things to put in mind during the planning phase include:

1. Maximum size of a list and list containers, the recommendation is to not have more than 2,000 items at a given level. The maximum number of items supported in a list with recursive folders is up to 5 million items.

2. Maximum database size per site collection equates to about 200GB which is driven as per the SLA on your database recovery time.

3. A maximum of 20 SSP’s with 4 as best practice for your SharePoint farm to reduce the administration procedures.

4. MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 do not support the /3GB switch to address the application’s memory allocation.

5. 32-bit vs 64-bit hardware – If you are budgeting for hardware be sure to budget for X64-bit to get better performance for your application. Also future releases of SharePoint will be based on X64-bit hardware.

So how do you determine the required number of servers for n number of users? Microsoft released a free download of System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) originally an Exchange Server Deployment tool but now can be used for SharePoint Farm Architecture with addition of SharePoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 Models http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/capacity-planner.aspx .

To simulate the load, you can use Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite.

As best practice, test your farm architecture prior to deploying it to production environment.

Mix Videos

2009-03-24T09:49:10-05:00:00

For those of us who were unable to attend Mix here are some of the presentations though not all. http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09

Speaking at SharePoint Connections

2009-02-21T14:22:55-06:00:00

I am honored to be one of the speakers for this year SharePoint Connections in Orlando FL between March 22 -25 2009. This is one of the biggest events for SharePoint around the world and it always comes with a great learning experience.

I will be speaking on:-

· SharePoint and Business Intelligence

· Information Rights Management (IRM)

· SharePoint Single Sign-On.

I am excited to be one of the speakers and to share my knowledge on SharePoint Movement. More information for this event can be found at http://www.devconnections.com/shows/SP2009SP/default.asp?c=1&s=134

See you in Disney World

Welcome

2009-02-20T17:40:03-06:00:00

Welcoming all my clients and friends to my geekswithblogs... we will explore SharePoint and other Microsoft applications deeply.