Wednesday 29 September, 2010

SharePoint 2010 Upgrade - SQL 2008 DB attach error

Yes, finally I was ready to move some of my MOSS 2007 SharePoint sites to the SharePOint 2010 test environment after days of playing on the new ground. I choose the Database attach method. As a first step I made sure that I have SP 2 and October 2009 CU on my MOSS 2007 and ran the

stsadm.exe -o preupgradecheck

This step is very important don't skip it. After making sure all components of my MOSS 2007 will get migrated to SP 2010 farm. I detached the database from MOSS 2007 Database server and moved it over to SP 2010 database server, the database server is SQL 2008. Everything was smooth till this point. The moment I tried to attach the MOSS 2007 content database, I received an error  as shown below. I checked my permissions on the database server and found nothing wrong.


Later I realized that this is a bug with SQL management studio and I need to use TSQL to attach the database


USE [master]
GO
CREATE DATABASE [WSS_Content_Databasename] ON
( FILENAME = N'E:\MSSQL\MSSQLSERVER.DB\Data01\WSS_Content_databasename.mdf' ),
( FILENAME = N'E:\MSSQL\MSSQLSERVER.DB\Data01\WSS_Content_databasename_log.LDF' )
 FOR ATTACH
GO
if exists (select name from master.sys.databases sd where name = N'WSS_Content_databasename' and SUSER_SNAME(sd.owner_sid) = SUSER_SNAME() ) EXEC [WSS_Content_databasename].dbo.sp_changedbowner @loginame=N'sa', @map=false
GO

Database attach went through fine after this and I had my first site migrated to SharePoint 2010 :-)

Friday 24 September, 2010

Office Web Apps. Now you can embed Powerpoint or Excel spreadsheet in you blogs/websites/sharepoint site

One of my friend Kiran sent me this  and I thought it is worth sharing.

Microsoft Office Web apps team has released some new features one of the most interesting one being able to embed PowerPoint and Excel spreadsheets into your Sharepoint site/blogs/website. You can read more from here. A very good feature of this is you can update the source location of Spreadsheet/PowerPoint page and Sharepoint/webpage/blog automatically displays the updated file.

Monday 20 September, 2010

Free SharePoint 2010 Training Videos for IT Pros's and Developers


A lot of people ask me for good SharePoint 2010 learning resources, like books videos etc., Here are couple of links I referred myself and are great for SharePoint Developers, IT Pros as well as Users of SharePoint 2010. Hope you find this useful, here we go.

SharePoint 2010 End  User Training Videos at Point8020.com






and did I tell you, you can download all these videos.
 

Tuesday 14 September, 2010

Some cool features you will like on SharePoint 2010

As I started using my new SharePoint 2010 site, there are some cool features I liked and hope every user of SP 2010 will really appreciate these.


The first thing I noticed was the “Getting Started” links on the homepage





You don’t have to go to “Site Settings” to carry out those changes that you wanted to do as soon as you got your new site. Things like changing the site icon, theme are right here. Even the customize quick launch bar comes handy at any time.










The other feature I liked was the Library tools Ribbon that appears on the top of the page the moment you select the small check box on the “Shared Documents” web part




Cool isn't it

Sunday 5 September, 2010

SharePoint 2010 Evaluation Virtual Machine Available for download

Altohugh this is coming a bit late on my blog, I thought it is still a good information to share, lot of my SharePoint frineds wanted to try out SharePoint 2010 right away without going through the hassels of setting up one, and here is the solution I pointed them all to 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM). I hope this will be useful to my many more SharePoint friends out there!!

Tuesday 3 August, 2010

Getting XML data from SharePoint list

Ever wondered how you can generate a XML file/data from a SharePoint list, Have you started to think on the possible code..wait!!, here is an easy solution.

Simply format the following string to form the request URL.

http://contoso/sites/sales/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={GUID}&XMLDATA=TRUE&noredirect=true
  • {0} – The URL to your site.  This could be the root web or a child site.
  • {1} – The GUID for your list. 
 Please refer the following MSDN article for a more detailed instructions


Kirk Evans Blog 


Simple isn't it. Now make use of the XML data wherever you want

Thursday 22 July, 2010

Validate if date is between two dates

I had this unique request coming from a user, he was using a Sharepoint list which had two date fields. Let us asume these fields to be "Order Date" and "Processed Date". The user wanted to make sure people enter a valid "Processed Date" which lied between "Order Date" and "Todays Date". Now SharePoint by default does not any such field validation functionality.

I tried googling, but there was nothing readily available for SharePoint. The next thing came to my mind was using a Javascript snippet, but how do I add the snippet to the code was another challenge. Please read through the article below to understand how to go about this.

1. First task was to create a list for the customer which had "Order Date" and "Processed Date"
2. Once this is created I need to write a Javascript snippet which will make sure the Processed Date is in between "Order Date" and todays date(current date)

so here is it:



3. Now that the snippet is ready I need to find a way to include this to the "NewForm.aspx" and also to "EditForm.aspx", Initially I though of using SharePoint Designer to do this, but somehow though there could be an easier way. Finally after 3 days and sevral cups of tea I found that I can add a content editor webpart the "NewForm.aspx" and "Editform.aspx" page . Normally "Edit Page" option is grayed out for these pages. But there is a cheat to get in

Just append "ToolPaneView=2" to the end of the URL for example

http://servername/site/sitename/lists/OrdProc/NewForm.aspx?ToolPaneView=2








4.Next step is to add a contet editor webpart to the bottom of the page and copy the javascript snippet to the source editor. Click on Save and Apply ok on the webpart properties menu. Thats it its done!!.


5. Now it is time for testing, first I tried to key in a "Processed date" before the "Order Date" and as you can see I got a pop up "The Processed Date should be between Order Date and Todays Date" Bingo!!


6. The second thing I need to test what happens if I choose a date later that todays date.





and as you can see in the above pictures, it worked!! . You can also use the same two validate date between two differrent dates other than today, just tweak the javascript.

Thursday 1 July, 2010

What's new in Office 2010

Office 2010 is here! like me most of you may be thinking if one should go and upgrade to Office 2010 yet. Well here is a list of new features of Office 2010 as compared to Office 2007/2003. Go ahead take look and decide See What's new in Office 2010

Wednesday 31 March, 2010

SharePoint Admin Tool Kit 4.0 installation issue on 32 bit environment

Last week I was trying my hands on SharePoint Admin Tool Kit Ver 4.0 (freely available for download from the microsoft site), this tool has some useful features for Administrators as well as users. Particularly I liked the Permission Reporting tool. Installation on a 64 bit environment went through fine and I could also see the Batch Site Manager (helps with Move, Lock and Delete Site Collections ) in Central Admin Page and Permission reporting links coming up individual site collections, however when I tried to install the same on a 32 bit environment although there were no errors I could not see the Batch Site Manager link coming up in Central Admin Page nor the permission reporting tool links on the Site Collections. This was really strange, no errors!, but at the same time tool is not installed!!

After a lot of digging around, I found the installation is not complete after the exe is run for 32bit environment , thanks to nitman's comment there are couple of steps that need to be run manually, which ideally should have been taken care by the exe itself
To deploy and activate the Batch Site Manager feature


1. At the command prompt, run stsadm.exe -o addsolution -filename "C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft\SPAdministrationToolkit\BatchSiteManagerSolution\BatchSiteManager.wsp" to add the solution file to the farm solution store.

2. Run stsadm.exe -o deploysolution -name BatchSiteManager.wsp -immediate -allowgacdeployment to deploy the solution to the farm.

3. Go to Central Admin -> Operations -> Solution Management, confirm batchsitemanager.wsp status is deployed.

4. Run stsadm -o activatefeature -name BatchSiteManagerLinks to activate the feature.

To deploy and activate the Permission Reporting Tool feature

1. At the command prompt, run stsadm.exe -o addsolution -filename "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SPAdministrationToolkit\PermissionReportingSolution\PermissionReporting.wsp" to add the solution file to the farm solution store.

2. Run stsadm.exe -o deploysolution -name PermissionReporting.wsp -immediate -allowgacdeployment to deploy the solution to the farm.

3. Go to Central Admin -> Operations -> Solution Management, confirm permissionreporting.wsp status is deployed.

4. Run stsadm -o activatefeature -name PermissionReporting to activate the feature.

Tuesday 30 March, 2010

SharePoint Server 2010 Beta Product Key

If you are not able to locate the SharePoint Server 2010 Beta, Product key on the download site,
SharePoint Server 2010 Beta(Enterprise Client Access License features) product key: PKXTJ-DCM9D-6MM3V-G86P8-MJ8CY

Monday 22 March, 2010

Resolution for SP 2010 installation issue

Last week I had mentioned that I am facing some issues with SP 2010 foundation installation and I keep getting prompted for server reboots. I was able to get through it and I alomost for got to share the resolution...

I would like to thank Bill Baer for neatly listing all the SP 2010 installation issues and how to overcome them, if you have faced any other issue other than the one I faced please refer Bill Baer's blog

I have an extract from the blog that helped me

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):


A system restart from a previous installation or update is pending. Restart your computer and run setup to continue.

For the list of pre-requisites needed to install the product please refer to:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106209

Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.


Check the value of the following Registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\UpdateExeVolatile - if the value of the UpdateExeVolatile Registry key is anything other than 0 you will see this message.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations - if the PendingFileRenameOperations Registry key has any value you will see this message.

To remove an orphaned UpdateExeVolatile registry key value

Open a registry editor, such as Regedit.exe or Regedt32.exe.

Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\

In the right navigation pane, double-click the UpdateExeVolatile key.

Configure the key with a value of 0

Close Registry Editor.

To delete the orphaned PendingFileRenameOperations registry key

Open a registry editor, such as Regedit.exe or Regedt32.exe.

Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\

In the right navigation pane, right-click the PendingFileRenameOperations key and select Delete.

Close Registry Editor.

Ready to Evaluate SP 2010

Now that I have setup a virtual environment with SP2010, I was literally stuck..thinking ...now what!!!

I guess Microsoft heard me and I found this real good evaluation guide on their technet site http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262881(office.14).aspx . The guide starts from what's new and runs through installation, deployment and upgrade options. I found this guide really helpful.

SharePoint 2010 + Virtualization

With SharePoint 2010(64bit) we definately lost one advantage!! i.e setting up a VM for development or for that matter just to play around with the new features on a laptop(32bit)......or did we??

The moment this came to my mind I started to explore the possibility of setting up a 64 bit VM on my laptop and I could find more than one option and here they are. I am sure there are people like me who wish to setup 2010 on their laptop I hope this will help them out.

1.Vitrual Box from Sun
2.Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2  is another good option
3. VMware Workstation is really good if you do not mind spending some money on your VM

of course there are more than 3 options available like the native boot to VHD option available on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Out of the list I particularly liked the Hyper-V as it lets me reserve most of the memory that I have on my laptopn to the VM

Wednesday 17 March, 2010

SharePoint Saturday India

What is SharePoint Saturday ?

SharePoint Saturday India is a free, educational, informative, & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs who are willing to share their great experience with Indians.

For more information and to register for the event visit SharePoint Saturday India site!

Monday 8 March, 2010

First looks SharePoint 2010

I was able to get through the SP2010 installation, the issue that I encounterd was due to the Windows 2008 licensing. Once I got the MSDN license for Windows 2008 and the SharePoint installation was smooth then after.

Thursday 25 February, 2010

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition Installation

I started last week with the Beta installation of SharePoint 2010. The pre-requisites got installed without any issues. However after that when I try to install SharePoint foundation I get repeatedly prompted for reboots. Not heading anywhere. I see other people are facing this issue and I am not the only one... so I have some company.. I am still on it and will share the solution once I hot upon it.. keep checking back for updates

Monday 11 January, 2010

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site

Want to know more about SharePoint 2010 from Microsoft !!

What's new in SharePoint 2010

Excited about 2010, I mean SharePoint 2010 and want to know what are the new features here is the link New Features in SharePoint 2010