Sharepoint 2010 Hide “All Site Content”

Not blogged for a while..., however back to SharePoint and I wanted to hide the All Site Content shortcuts for read only users.  This keeps things tidy rather than securing areas.

This link is a very concise note on how to hide the "All Site Content" shortcut

Also to hide the Search bar - update the Master Page v4.Master and add the style below in red.

….class="s4-search s4-rp " style="display:none"

Working with Large Lists in SharePoint 2010 - List Throttling

Sharepoint 2010 gives a warning when your list items get near 5000, however the limit for items is 30million.

Here is a good article explaining what its all about and how you can assist sharepoint with List Thresholds....

A usefull link to the Sharepoint Site Template Numbers

http://www.bfcnetworks.com/sharepoint-2010-site-template-id-numbers/

Problems deleting a Sharepoint 2010 list

You can use the Powershell command below to delete a list, however if you get an error  in the form of "This list cannot be deleted." then go to Step B and try Step A again.

Step A - try to delete a list

$w = Get-SPWeb "http://myweb"

$w.Lists.Delete([System.Guid]$w.Lists["My List Name"].ID)

 

Step B - toggle list cannot be deleted error

$w = Get-SPWeb "http://myweb"

$list = $w.Lists["My List Name"]
$list.AllowDeletion = $True
$list.Update()

The delete command will now be visible on your list settings again and you'll run the line below:

$list.Delete()
Blog Ref:
http://jessepatricio.blogspot.com/2011/12/could-not-save-list-changes-to-server.html

Where is the "Local Drafts Folder"

Checking out Sharepoint documents to work on offline prompts you to use the Local Drafts folder - but where is it?

Try "My Documents\SharePoint Drafts"

Opening a Sharepoint 2010 site using claims authentication and the object model

ClientContext ctx = new ClientContext(someSiteUrl);

ctx.AuthenticationMode = ClientAuthenticationMode.FormsAuthentication;
ctx.FormsAuthenticationLoginInfo = new
FormsAuthenticationLoginInfo(myUserName, myUserPwd);

//get the web
Web w = ctx.Web;

//execute the query
ctx.ExecuteQuery();

http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2010/06/03/using-the-client-object-model-with-a-forms-based-auth-site-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx

Sharepoint FBA user administration (Forms Based Authentication)

We had a strange error where a user couldnt log on using FBA.   It turned out that the account was locked out, however it started a voyage of discovery into the murkey world of FBA in Sharepoint.

To add an FBA user we use the + _layouts/vCreateUser.aspx which works out fine, however with FBA it was not obvious how to either Reset a users password by the administrator or Delete a user.

Using II7 lots of documents say you can edit the list of users using the IIS7 admin console and open the .Net Users Feature.  However you either get an error saying the "default provider is not a trusted provider", or a time out error saying it cannot connect to the SQL database because of a network or instance-specific error!

It turns out you need to ensure that you need to Set the Default Provider in the .Net Users to the Sharepoint SQLRoleProvider after its given you an error saying it cant connect.  If you manage to get that and your IIS Connection Strings all tidied up then you have a small chance of all the users apearing when you open the .Net Users Feature.

When you get there you can either Delete the user or change its email address but not a lot more - EXCEPT that is to UNLOCK the account.

It turns out that in the web.config file there are a number of settings which handle the account lock out policies for the entry of incorrect passwords.  A good MSDN link for mor info on this is here - however even setting these and iisreset and reboot doesnt seem to want to change the settings for me, so I'll keep digging.

Another useful link on how to setup IIS7 for Sharepoint FBA is here

Sharepoint's link to FBA seems such a cludge and without proper user management tools is not something that can be sensibly rolled out.  Once again such a good idea not quite finished but still rolled out by Microsoft.

SharePoint 2010 : State Service issues & problems

I built two SharePoint Enterprise servers in separate farms from scratch using different farms and SQL servers. The first is a development machine to try things out on and the second is the production box.

As with all the best MVP advice you should not use the configuration wizard but manually create each service and for the most part Ive done this successfully, however when we started trying to use Infopath or Reports in Access Web Services we started getting some odd errors such as:

The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service.

And

This report failed to load because session state is not turned on.

This was happening on both the production and development servers which was most odd.

Looking in SharePoint service applications there was no reference to the "State Service" on one of the servers and one line item for "State Service" on the other. Also most odd as both servers had been setup in the same way.

 There is no way to create the State service from the new service application menu as it should have been setup from the SharePoint install, so you either have to use the Configuration wizard or PowerShell.

 In the case of there not being any reference to a State Service I ran a powershell command to create a state service database and then ran the Configuration Wizard with everything possible unchecked apart from the State Service. The powershell command to create the database is "

New-SPStateServiceDatabase" See TechNet for more details

After an IISReset the errors seemed to clear and all was well with one of the servers.

For the other server the same process wasn't an option as the Configuration Wizard already had the State Service Checked. So using Powershell I manually created a State Service Application and State Service Proxy and enabled it all using the commands


New-SPStateServiceApplication
New-SPStateServiceDatabase
New-SPStateServiceApplicationProxy
and
Enable-SPSessionStateService

(See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee890113.aspx)

 However after doing all of this successfully and being able to see the State Application and Proxy in the SharePoint Central administration list of service applications the error s still persisted. So using the SharePoint service application screen I deleted the first State Service and the new State Service Proxy and State Service which I had created. This allowed me to run the configuration wizard with only the State Service tick box checked and after another iisreset voila !

Others have also seen this issue - see

Misconfiguration of the MOSS State Service
Pasted from <http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepointworkflow/thread/521db715-0d76-49ce-be36-7c37cfb8026f>








 

Access 2010 Web database conversion

Native SharePoint 2010 is dissapointing in terms of not being able to have relational data lists or lookups with filtering and for reporting I used Access reporting based on SharePoint lists.
With Access Services in SP2010 I thought I'd just convert these reports and data sources over, but as ever its not that simple. You need to create a new Access Web database and then import tables into Web Compliant tables. It would appear that linked tables to sharepoint are not compatible. As ever with Microsoft so near and year so far from a complete solution....

Here is a very good article about converting your access databse "Converting Access Databases to Access Web Databases (25th May 2010)"

Configuring Business Data Connectivity Services

Setup BDC with its own user, database and App pool
Start the service
You should have a pages host to contain the external content type definitions so you need to Configure /add an External Content Type Profile Page Host.
Create a new site collection (I use the same web application as the metadata hub created earlier)
Use the Publishing Pages Portal Template
Once published goto Central Admin ->Manage service applications –> Choose the BDC /BCS Service -> Click manage from the toolbar->Configure->Type in the URL of the site collection you created above. ie http://metadata.company.com/sites/ExternalContentTypesFinally assign administrators of the BDC Metadata Store by clicking on the Set MetaData Store Permissions.

To create external connections see this article

Multiple Authentication Methods in SharePoint 2010

There are new and exiting authentication methods such as Claims-based authentication in SharePoint 2010 which leads Microsofts product line in being the first Server to offer it.  This article introduces them
while (alive) { writeCode(); } : Multiple Authentication Methods in SharePoint 2010:

Setup Managed Meta Data Hub for the Sharepoint 2010 farm

My personal notes to: Setup a Managed Meta Data Hub for the SP2010 farm
Create a new web applicationCreate a new user for this (and make sure its in the Managed accounts list with the correct permissions)

Create a new web application & make sure the "Document Sets metadata synchronization" web app. feature is activated (you can find this by managing the web application and choosing "manage features" from the tool bar.always use NTLM to start with to test work and can switch after
Create a new site collection with a template of "Publishing ->publishing Portal"

Create the service application
Create a new "Service Application" from Central Admin->Application Managment->Service Applications->Manage Service applications

Click on the new button on the toolbar and choose "Managed Metadata Service"

Enter the name, SQL server and DB name.

You can either use the IIS Web application pool you created when you setup the web application and site above or create a new one with yet another new user account which has been added to the managed users

For the Content Type Hub use the URL of the site collection you setup above and then click ok.Note: this will not start the Managed Metadata service, and you may see errors in the event log saying that this service is not running on any of the servers in your farm. You need to start the serice seperatly.
You start the service by Central Admin->System Settings->Servers->Manage services on server

Click start next to Managed Metadata Web Service

-------------

To check it is working and to manage the content goto Central Admin->Application Management-> Service Applications->manage Service Applications

You will see two entries for the Service, the first is the actual service and the second indented line is a proxy stub.

Click on the first line and choose Manage from the toolbar. This will bring you up the Term Store Mangement Tool where you can manually input Terms or import them using a CSV

Note: you may find errors if you do this straight away as certain timer services need to run to fully impliment this service. Gernerally I would always do an IISReset as well (well it cant hurt!)

Article for next steps setting up content types

SharePoint 2010 Connection Filter Logic

For SharePoint 2007 our MOSS profile sync uses the an LDAP query that filters which OU Users we dont't require -

ie User filter: (&(objectClass=user)(!Status:=System)(!UserAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))

This assumes we want everyone except those with and AD attribute of Status=System (the UserAccountConrol setting excludes accounts disabled)

For SharePoint 2010 once you have setup your Sychronization Connection to include one or more OUs from AD, you can then add exclusion rules by clicking to the right of the Syncronization Connection and choosing Edit Connection Filters from the menu.

I didn't read the screen properly and just applied the same filter logic as SharePoint 2007 but after 4 hours of pain not getting the results I wanted, so I read what it said on the screen.
It says "Exclusion Filter for Users" - as such YOU MUST REVERSE YOUR LOGIC from SP2007!!

Thus to achieve the same result above you need:
ie User filter: (Status:=System)(UserAccountControl:Bit On:=2))

I'll read the screen next time - duh!

The importance of SharePoint 2010 Managed Service Application install order

SharePoint 2010 is very unforgiving when it comes to the configuration of its Managed Service Applications. Not only do all the security settings need to be just so, but the order of install needs to be just right.
Because of this sensitivity, after installing the binaries and getting the administration site running I concentrated on getting the most tricky Service Apps running first, ie the User Profile and User Sync Service Application. However after a good install with few errors, on editing a user's profile some of the fields had really odd errors saying that "There was a problem retrieving data for this field"

There was nothing obvious; however it turns out that if you don't install the Managed Meta Data Service then you will have this problem. It doesn't matter if you install the MMD before are after the UPA but it just needs to be there.

The order I attempted to install Services after the binary and install of the administration site is as follows:

• Register some pre-configured AD accounts into SharePoints' Managed Accounts (having setup the right AD permissions first). These will be used for the IIS Application Pools so you know what is running what. SharePoint very unhelpfully gives these GUIDS as names.
• Create a New Web Application for the MySite Profiles with its own application pool and use one of the Managed Users we setup above
• 
  
  Create New Site collection in that Web Application – using a template of Enterprise –> My Site Host
  (Don't try to load site at this time)
  
• 
  
  Create a new User Profile Service Application with its own app pool
  • Start the UPA service – (very easy to miss this)
• After service has started do an IIS Reset – or even reboot to make sure
• Start the User Profile Sync service – prompts for details – wait 10 minutes until started
• Reboot again – very important.
• Add a Synchronization Connection to AD (You can add LDAP Filters to the connection after it is setup)
• Start profile Synchronisation (full)
• Once complete (and it will take a while…..) Manage User Profiles and you will see on some of the fields the errors I mentioned above.
• Now install the Managed MetaData Service
• IISReset or reboot again – and these field errors disappear!!

Glad it's so intuitive……..!
References :
Spencer Harbar's Rational Guide to implementing SharePoint Server 2010 User Profile Synchronization
SharePoint 2010 – Provisioning User Profile Synchronization

MSDN: Edit Profile Synchronization connection filters

http://blogs.msdn.com/brporter/archive/2010/02/20/excluding-disabled-user-accounts-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/SharePoint-2010-user-profile-properties-temporarily-disabled.aspx

Sharepoint 2010 BCS connection getting started and authentication issues

There is a very good "get you started" article here, walking you through creating a SharePoint List to an external SQL table. Whilst all the steps were clear it did not deal with security and authentication to the SQL server.

Several methods are available to connect through to back end data providers, however "Connect with User's Identity" (or Pass Through) will only work with Kerberos enabled, and if it is not you will get a Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON' error.

With SP2010 it is much better to use either the Impersonate Windows (or Custom) Identity - which makes use of the SharePoint 2010 Secure Store Service.

If however you dont want to use these or havnt set them up then you can use RevertToSelf which uses the BCS's application pool credentials.

Microsoft warn against this method as a potential security risk and if you try to select it as a connection property it will give you an error saying that revert has to be enabled for the application pool. (See this link)

This is done by setting RevertToSelfAllowed for the BCS model's authentication mode wont work without using powershell to set the Sharepoint Server setting for this to True.

$apps = Get-SPServiceApplication
$bcs = Get-SPServiceApplication where {$_ -match ""}

## If you’re doing this by hand, just type $apps and look #for the Business Data one, then index into it like $apps[i].#If you’re doing it for automation, filter by #$_.GetType.FullName (not $_.TypeName, which is localized).

$bcs.RevertToSelfAllowed = $true

Remember that if you do use this method then the BCS's application pool credentials must have the appropriate rights to the SQL Server Table.

References:
Authenticating to Your External System - BCS Team blog
BCS and External List Learning – Part1
BCS and External List Learning – Part2
Getting started with Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2010