Freaking SharePoint !#@&$%!!

A little facelift…

2011-11-14T23:05:00.001-08:00

Figured it was time to streamline:

New URL: http://freakingsharepoint.com/
New look – testing out Blogger’s Dynamic Views – ~~not completley sold yet~~ - Nope. Hated it. Going back to a basic template!

Other interesting tidbits to mark this juncture:

First Post: 10/2/2007 – Site/Web Template Names – This blog is 4 years old!
Most Popular Post: – SharePoint 2010 forces users to save PDFs – Solution Found! – 10,135 views & 25 comments
Least Popular Post: Changing MOSS Service account password – 8 views & 0 comments
Top Search Terms:

“microsoft.sharepoint.applicationpages”
“one or more web parts on this page references”

Fun Search Terms:

“freaking sharepoint”
“sharepoint fun” <—Who are you people???!!!!
“why sharepoint be hating on pdfs” <—HA! Love it.

Thanks for reading and hope to discover more SharePoint goodness to share with you guys!

SP2010 Performance Optimization

2011-09-21T21:34:00.001-07:00

There are lots of things you can do to make SharePoint go faster.

This blog aggregates some useful information I’ve leveraged. Will continue adding as I learn more. Figured it would be good to have the info aggregated in one place.

Infrastructure

Move TempDB & Database log files to separate drives
Consider content db strategy for different types of SharePoint sites (intranet vs. collaboration vs. public)
Content db size limits are there to ensure backups can run quickly
Don’t use default db growth settings: http://www.benjaminathawes.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=5

Registry Setting

The windows server will routinely call to Microsoft to check licensing. If you are on a VM that has blocked network this will cause slowdown in performance. To fix it, copy the following into a .vbs file on your server and run it with a cscript command from the command prompt:

const HKEY_USERS = &H80000003
strComputer = "."
Set objReg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _
& strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")
strKeyPath = ""
objReg.EnumKey HKEY_USERS, strKeyPath, arrSubKeys
strKeyPath = "\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WinTrust\Trust Providers\Software Publishing"
For Each subkey In arrSubKeys
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_USERS, subkey & strKeyPath, "State", 146944
Next

IIS

Run a warmup script

http://spwakeup.codeplex.com/ or
http://nearbaseline.com.au/blog/2010/02/powershell-warmup-script-2/ (Powershell)

Run IIS 7.5 warm-up module - http://www.idocs.info/index.php/2010/09/warm-up-sharepoint-2010-on-w2k8r2-using-iis-7-5-app-warm-up-module/

Cache - http://www.zimmergren.net/archive/2011/01/09/sp-2010-developing-for-performance-part-3-caching-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
- BLOB cache (cache files on WFE)
- Output cache (cache rendered ASPX files in memory)
- Object cache (cache SP object metadata on WFE)
Search or User Profile sync scheduling – these are super intensive processes that will slow down your server. Verify that they are scheduled to run during non-peak hours.
- You should only run the full crawl once or when needing to reset your crawls.
- Otherwise, only run incremental crawls
Logging
- Turn logging down in non dev environments if not needed for troubleshooting
- Health Data Collection may also be logging more data than is necessary
Services
- Do not turn on all the service applications by default. Turn on only the ones required for the implementation.
Custom Dev
- Disable Loopback Check - http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/07/02/disableloopbackcheck-amp-sharepoint-what-every-admin-and-developer-should-know.aspx
- Use the developer dashboard to figure out which parts of your page running slowly - http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2009/10/28/using-the-developer-dashboard-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx
- Use SPDisposeCheck to check for memory leaks in custom code - http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/SPDisposeCheck

Other great links regarding performance:
- http://www.aptimize.com/Upload/docs/SharePoint-Performance-Optimization-10-Steps.pdf
- What SQL DBAs need to know about SharePoint - http://www.slideshare.net/jdwade/sharepoint-for

SharePoint 2010 Service Accounts

2011-06-22T09:43:00.001-07:00

Word to the wise, when working as a consultant/contractor, get as far ahead as possible on getting service accounts requested. Same goes for hardware.

I always look to this blog for a easy copy/paste/edit when I’m asked for a list of the required service accounts for SharePoint:

http://www.ericharlan.com/Moss_SharePoint_2007_Blog/sharepoint-2010-service-account-reference-guide-a184.html

I also like his answer for WHY you should have so many accounts. I always get asked this! http://www.ericharlan.com/Moss_SharePoint_2007_Blog/why-all-these-sharepoint-service-accounts-a181.html

SharePoint Server Time and Solutions stuck in Deploying

2011-02-28T12:01:00.001-08:00

I recently went through setting up a Trial environment at my client which included 4 web front end (WFE) servers. I used AutoSPInstaller which was really sweet for the multiple SP2010 installs. Make sure you get the latest version for a bit more flexibility and nicer config xml.

When I went to deploy the code, which had already been successfully deployed in 1 WFE Dev environment, I noticed my solutions were getting stuck in “Deploying” status.

I verified that I did see dlls deployed by the solutions in the GAC for all my 4 servers, but the solution in Central Admin did not seem to know that the solutions had completed.

My coworker, Blake, pointed out that the server time on my WFEs was in the wrong time zone and that he’d had issues with SharePoint before when servers were out of sync on time. I checked and all my WFE’s were on the same incorrect time, but my SQL servers were on the right time. A ha!

I went and changed the server time zone to the correct time and restarted the SharePoint Timer Service on all 4 servers. Then I retracted all my code, manually deleted .dlls from the GAC of all servers (had to use gacutil, or I get an Access Denied error), and then re-added & redeployed the solutions. My timer job time was still wrong, but the solutions completed deploying to all 4 servers this time!

Anyone know how to reset the SharePoint time?

Followup: We had a MS tech guy in for a risk assessment and we mentioned this issue he said to go ahead and rebuild the farm. GAHHH!

So, lesson learned: Make sure your servers are ALL on the same time zone before you install SharePoint!! It is now on the infrastructure teams check off list.

Document Sets & Multiline Text field with appending does not work

2010-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Noticed something today as I was working.
I have a mulitline text field with "Append changes to existing text" turned on.
I added that column to a Document Set content type and saw that the changes to the column are not appended. The column only keeps the last entry made.

Why is this? Is this by design?

Freaking SharePoint!!!!

SharePoint 2010 – Embedding Youtube Videos in Wikis – Media Failed to Load

2010-10-25T08:23:00.001-07:00

You’d think this would be easier, but…no.

This issue popped up when a client was trying to embed a youtube video in his shiny new wiki by editing the HTML & adding the <object> embed code. Sadly, the code was stripped once the page was saved and he turned to me for help.

I then tried to do Insert > Audio & Video > Change Media > From Address and enter the youtube video address which seemed like a logical way to do things. Unfortunately, I was only greeted by the error message “Media failed to load.”

What???!!! Of course this isn’t going to be easy. Eventually, after digging around, I did find a solution.

Essentially you have 2 options for embedding video:

Upload a video onto the SharePoint site & embed using the Media Web Part
Embed a Youtube (or other source) video using the Content Editor Web Part

Option 1 works very easily:

Edit Page & Check Out
Click “Insert” > “Audio & Video”
A Media Web Part appears on the page. Click the center of the web part & a new Medio Options ribbon shows up
Click “Change Media” > “From Computer”
Browse to the video file on your computer (It gets uploaded to the “Site Assets Library” by default, but you can change this)
Save & Check In
Click the video to play it.

Option 2 is a little trickier, but does work:

Edit Page & Check Out
Click “Insert” > “Web Part”
Click the “Content & Media” section & pick the “Content Editor Web Part”
Click the down arrow at the top right of the web part > “Edit Web Part”
Click the web part and enter some text about the video (if you don’t when you edit HTML in the next step there will be a bunch of junk and it will be hard to figure out where to insert your embed text)
On the Ribbon > Editing Tools > Format Text, you will see an HTML menu. Select “Edit HTML on this menu”
Paste your <object…> embed code here
Save & Check In
Click the video to play it.

SharePoint 2010 Create New Web Application links/buttons disabled??

2010-10-12T07:21:00.001-07:00

Saw this happening off and on in my 2010 environment. Issue would clear when machine was rebooted. NOT a good maintenance plan!

Luckily, ran into this post that worked! http://socialsp.com/2009/12/03/links-not-enabled-on-sharepoint-2010-central-administration-site/#comment-16

Woo hoo!

SharePoint Server not redirecting to default.aspx

2010-10-11T14:03:00.001-07:00

Our SharePoint 2010 Enterprise server all of a sudden stopped redirecting to the actual .asx pages of the site when we were navigating to just the server name or foldernames.
When i go to http://spsite/pages/default.aspx the page appears. If i go to http://spsite/ the page does not redirect, and instead shows a 404 error.
Some googling led me to this answer, which worked(!), but I realized there really wasn’t good documentation on how to make the changes for IIS7.x, so here they are:
1. Open IIS Manager (Start > Run > inetmgr)
2. Click on the server node
3. Click “ISAPI and CGI Restrictions”
4. Verify that you have the following web service extensions allowed:

5. If they are not all allowed, right click + add the missing dlls.
Not sure why these weren’t set up before, but this solved the issue for me. Hope it can help someone else!

SharePoint 2010 forces users to save PDFs – Solution Found!

2010-08-12T21:01:00.001-07:00

We’ve recently deployed SP2010 at a new client .Things are dandy, except the users are complaining that they are prompted to save PDFs when they click on them, instead of the PDF opening up in Adobe Acrobat. What?? That seems insane, but it turns out it is “by design” as I found out on Sean’s blog: http://blog.brainlitter.com/archive/2010/05/19/sharepoint-2010-treats-pdf-and-other-file-types-as-insecure.aspx

This worked on the top level site collection ,but not on doc libs on other site collections in the web application, so I saw within this forum post: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepoint2010setup/thread/80365b88-937a-4188-85ef-45cbdc2cd10d that someone suggested the following:

“The http header X-Download-Options: noopen is added by the Browser File Handling and the two setting that are in it. But the Read-only and Edit prompt are driven by SharePoint and a setting in the DOCICON.XML file. If you have added PDF as a Document extension inside the DOCICON.XML you will need to also add an additional attribute in the line and that is opencontrol=”” this seems to stop SharePoint from applying it's header to open the document. <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="icpdf.gif" OpenControl=""/> “

I did this as well but we were still getting prompted. Oddly enough, if you checked out the document, then you could open the PDF directly. Also, NEW doc libraries on these sites would open PDFs correctly. This is all very strange.

I then tried changing the document library setting to force documents to open in the the client application. (Settings > Advanced Settings > Opening Files in the Browser). Still no luck.

At this point, my instinct was that some setting on the document library, that I could not see from the UI, was not getting properly set when I changed the web application level setting.

Well, thanks to Todd Klindt’s blog, http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=214, plus some Powershell wrangling, I was able to find a way to go to the properties of the doc lib and verify that it’s BrowserFileHandling property was still set to “Strict”!

PS C:\ > Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell
PS C:\> $site = Get-SPSite(“http://mysubsitecollectionurl”)
PS C:\> $web = $site.OpenWeb()
PS C:\> $list = $web.GetList(“http://mysubsitecollectionurl/List”);
PS C:\> $list.browserfilehandling
Strict

No wonder we were still having issues! Using powershell, I was able to set this property to “Permissive”, and my PDFs immediately began opening in Adobe. Whoo hoo!

PS C:\> $list.browserfilehandling = “Permissive” ; $list.update();
PS C:\> $list.browserfilehandling
Permissive

Now I want to be able to go through all my existing doc libs and switch that property. Unfortunately there wasn’t any way to filter out which libraries needed to be switched (manually created ones) and ones that did not (default SharePoint doc libs), so I ended up going through the sites on a case by case basis, mostly driven off the doc lib names b/c we had used site templates to deploy the same doc libs to the different sites.

PS C:> foreach ($list in $rsrWeb.Lists) { if($list.title -match "Documents") { if($list.browserfilehandling -eq "Strict") { $list.browserfilehandling = "Permissive"; $list.update(); $site.url, $list.title, $list.browserfilehandling} } }

Use the line above to copy into your Powershell window, but let me break it out down below:
foreach ($list in $web.Lists)
{
     if($list.title -match "Documents")     //return any lists with a title containing “Documents”
    {
          if($list.browserfilehandling -eq "Strict") //if the profile is set to strict
         {
               $list.browserfilehandling = "Permissive";
              $list.update();
              $site.url, $list.title, $list.browserfilehandling //print the list url/name for verification
          }
     }
}

Woo hoo!! Hope this helps you out when dealing with WHY THE HECK is SharePoint hating on PDFs??!!

Entity Framework and reserved word "EntityKey"

2010-07-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

Just a note, do not name your columns in your database "EntityKey" if you are going use the Entity Framework to generate a model. EntityKey is a reserved word and your service will suddenly start showing an "Internal Server Error 500" with no more info.

I only discovered what was wrong when I had a hunch it might be a reserved word and changed my column name to something else.

Hope this saves you some time!!

Freaking SharePoint!

2010-07-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

My most commonly used expression when working with SharePoint:

Buy one here!

http://www.zazzle.com/freaking_sharepoint_mousepad-144394182187073191

Error on installing SilverLight 3.0 for K2 web designer

2010-05-12T13:59:00.001-07:00

You may run into an issue after upgrading to K2 4.5 and trying to use the web based Silverlight Designer. When hitting the designer, you are prompted to download and install SilverLight 3.0 and that is all well and good until the installer starts and fails with no explanation.

Thanks to the guidance from a K2 tech sales contact, what is actually happening is that there is a failure when the 3.0 installer goes to uninstall SilverLight 2.0. In order to fix this

Go download the Microsoft Installer Clean-up tool
Open the tool from Start > Program Files
Remove Silverlight 2.0
Rerun your SilverLight 3.0 installer

And now, you should be ready to rock with the cool K2 Web Designer!

SP2010 Ramp up: Setting up the Content Type Hub

2010-04-13T11:26:00.001-07:00

The following steps will set up your Content Type Hub for your SP2010 Farm:

Create new web app & site collection
1. Title: Content Type Hub
Central Admin > Manage Service Applications
1. Click once on Managed Metadata Service
  1. In Ribbon > Properties
  2. Set Content Type Hub to the url of the site collection you just created
  3. Check "Report syndication …"
  4. OK
2. Click once on Managed Metadata Service Connection
  1. Ribbon > Properties
  2. Check all boxes
  3. OK
Go to Content Type Hub site
1. Activate Site Collection Feature: Content Type Syndication Hub
2. Settings > Galleries > Site Content Types
3. Create content type
Go to other site collection/web app
1. Site Settings > Site Collection Admin > Content Type Publishing (If you do not see this menu option, go here! http://pacsharepoint.com/2010/06/content-type-publishing-option-missing.html)
  1. Check "Refresh all published content type…
Go to Central Admin > Monitoring > Check Job Status
1. Find the "Content Type Subscriber" job for your other site collection
2. Click on Content Type Subscriber
3. Click "Run Now
Once that job completes, go back to other site collection
1. Site Settings > Site Collection Admin > Content Type Publishing
2. You should now see the new content types from the hub appear
3. They will also show up in Galleries > Site Content Types

Running a x64 VM on your machine

2010-04-07T11:35:00.001-07:00

SP 2010 is x64 only, so you will sooner or later have to run a x64 virtual machine on your laptop.

You may run into the following issue when starting up the machine:

“VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration has been enabled, but is not operational. Your 64-bit guest will fail to detect a 64-bit CPU and will not be able to boot.

Please ensure that you have enabled VT-x/AMD-V properly on the BIOS of your host computer”

So how do you do that?

- Reboot your machine and hop into the BIOS (hold down f12 on the lenovos)

- Config > CPU

- Enable Virtualization Technology

- Save the config changes

At this point, your machine will reboot. I’ve read that you will have to completely power down your machine for the changes to take.

In my case, my machine said it couldn’t start up and went through some auto repair, which also did not work, but once the machine started up, I was good to go with running the 64 bit machines.

For reference, I am on an Intel dual core machine with windows 7 x64 OS.

SharePoint Conference

2009-10-29T14:35:00.001-07:00

Just got back from SharePoint Conference in Vegas. SOoooo much information to soak up and lots of exciting news about SP2010 and also Visual Studio 2010. F5 SharePoint Deploy baby!

Also, I met the revered Gary LaPointe of gl-stsadm fame!

Blake, GL, me

I was sooo excited bc his extensions have saved my butt so many times!!! You know what i'm talking about, right, fellow SP devs?!

Now, back to the world of .ddfs and manually creating features....le sigh....

Create a Deployable Custom SharePoint Web Service

2009-04-24T22:58:00.001-07:00

So, you want to expose some SharePoint functionality to a web service, and you want to make sure it’s deployable. This is how we do it!

You have 3 major steps:

1. Build your web service
2. Set up the SharePoint Solution
3. Add the Solution to SharePoint and Deploy

Requirements before your start:
- Visual Studio
- MakeCab.exe
- Access to the SharePoint server where you want to deploy this service

Follow along below…

Build your web service

This is a great walkthrough for creating a custom sharepoint webservice: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms464040.aspx

A few supplemental notes:

- if you plan on exposing SharePoint functionality, you will have to add a reference/using statement to Microsoft.SharePoint

- when changing your .asmx file, make sure you get the fully qualified name of your class and dll. For example:
<%@ WebService Language="C#" Class="CustomWebService.Service, CustomWebService, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4eef54b119a62de3" %>

- Disco.exe is available in the Visual Studio 2008 > Visual Studio Tools > Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt

- make sure you go to the _layouts directory where you’ve copied the .asmx when you run disco.exe

At the end of this process you should have:

- Access to http://myserver/_vti_bin/yourservice.asmx
- a solution like this:

- these files in C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/web server extensions/12/ISAPI

- and, your CustomWebService.dll in the GAC

Set up the SharePoint solution

First, get all your necessary files into your Class Library project

1. Create folders to hold your files – in the Class Library project you created, right click > Add New > Folder, and create:

DeploymentFiles – to hold all the SharePoint solution generation files
ISAPI – to mimic the final location of all your web service files
Assembly – this is a personal preference of where I like to have my dlls deployed. If you use this, make sure you change the project properties to write the dlls here.

2. Move all the web service files into the ISAPI folder

3. Create the SharePoint Solution generation files in the DeploymentFiles folder:

- BuildSharePointPackage.ddf – this file tells makecab.exe which files in the solution will be included in the .WSP file and in what structure

; *** .ddf file for generating SharePoint solution.
;
.OPTION EXPLICIT ; Generate errors
.set DiskDirectoryTemplate=CDROM ; All cabinets go in a single directory
.Set CompressionType=MSZIP;** All files are compressed in cabinet files
.Set UniqueFiles="ON"
.Set Cabinet=on

DeploymentFiles\manifest.xml
Assembly\CustomWebService.dll

.Set DestinationDir=ISAPI
ISAPI\CustomWebService.asmx
ISAPI\CustomWebServicedisco.aspx
ISAPI\CustomWebServicewsdl.aspx

;***End

When you open up the CAB version of the WSP file, it will look like this:

- BuildSharePointPackage.Targets – tells Visual Studio how to call MakeCab.exe to create the WSP file

<Project DefaultTargets="BuildSharePointPackage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<MakeCabPath>"C:\Windows\System32\MAKECAB.EXE"</MakeCabPath>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="BuildSharePointPackage">
<Exec Command="C:\Windows\System32\MAKECAB.EXE /F DeploymentFiles\BuildSharePointPackage.ddf /D CabinetNameTemplate=$(MSBuildProjectName).wsp /D DiskDirectory1=WSPs\$(Configuration) "/>
<Exec Condition=" '$(Configuration)$(Platform)' == 'DebugAnyCPU'"
Command="$(MakeCabPath) /F DeploymentFiles\BuildSharePointPackage.ddf /D CabinetNameTemplate=$(MSBuildProjectName).cab /D DiskDirectory1=WSPs\$(Configuration)"/>
</Target>
</Project>

Please not that the <MakeCabPath> should point to wherever you have MakeCab.exe installed.

- manifest.xml – this files tells the WSP what to do with the files when the solution is deployed

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Solution xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
SolutionId="70DA8F86-312E-11DE-9B70-CEFF55D89593"
DeploymentServerType="WebFrontEnd"
ResetWebServer="TRUE">

Lets break this part down, as it is important.

- SolutionId – get a new GUID to identify your solution
- <RootFiles> – this tag tells the solution to put files at the root lever, the 12 Hive
- <RootFile> – one tag for each file,the location property tells where in the WSP we are getting the file to place at the Root. B/c we put the the file into the WSP at the ISAPI path, the manifest will also deploy the file to the ISAPI path from the root location.
- <Assembly> – this tag will place the dlls in the appropriate location. The DeploymentTarget set to “GlobalAssemblyCache” will put the dll in the GAC.

So, now your solution should look like this:

4. Update the .csproj file to user MakeCab to generate the WSP

- Unload the project and edit the .csproj file

Find the line:
<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />

Below there, enter the following lines:

<Import Project="DeploymentFiles\BuildSharePointPackage.targets" />
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<CallTarget Targets="BuildSharepointPackage" Condition=" '$(Configuration)$(Platform)' == 'DebugAnyCPU' " />
</Target>

Save and Reload the project.

Build the project and you should have WSP files in a WSPs folder in the project. Make sure you include this folder in your project.

Add the WSP to SharePoint & Deploy!

use stsadm to add the solution to the central admin solution store

from the 12 hive/bin, open a command window and run the following command:

stsadm –o addsolution –filename [Location of your .wsp file]

Then go to Central Administration > Operations > Solution Management

You should see your wsp in there. Click the name and deploy it immediately.

Verify that :

- your dll is in the GAC
- your .asmx, xxxwsdl.aspx, and xxxdisco.aspx are in the 12 hive/ISAPI folder
- and that you can navigate now to http://yourserver/_vti_bin/yourservice.aspx

And you are finished! congrats!

NEVER EVER type: stsadm –o uninstall !!! (yes, we need at least 3 !s for this)

2009-04-16T14:52:00.001-07:00

Just a little warning for you guys:

stsadm –o uninstall will uninstall SHAREPOINT from your server with NO WARNING.

That is bad. very very very bad.

funny enough, when you type stsadm –help, it doesn’t even list this command.

WOW.

IF you should happen to accidently type this when, say, trying to uninstall a feature and accidently hitting enter too soon --(Hypothetically speaking of course…) you are pretty much in for a world of hurt.

You will have to re-install sharepoint,reconfigure Central Admin and SSP(s) and then re-attach your content db.

The difficulty here is that your content db will no longer be getting the profile synch b/c it is still associated with the old SSP in the database, even though through the UI, you can see that your web app is correctly associated with the new SSP after reinstall. I haven’t quite figured out how to fix this. Any insight into how to fix the association of a content db to an SSP would be much appreciated.

One amazing thing I did find, however, is that once site was up and running again, workflows seem to continue without a hiccup. I’m guessing this has something to do with the dehydration/rehydration of the workflow when it is waiting for the next step to happen.

Hope none of you will ever run into this!

Using SPQuery to find an item in a doc library with folders

2009-04-16T13:18:00.001-07:00

if you know the actual folder where your item is:

SPQuery query = new SPQuery();

query.Folder = [insert folder path];

But what do you do if you have no idea what folder it is in?

Luckily the answer is just as easy:

http://sharepointlive.blogspot.com/2008/12/issue-spquery-doesnt-return-items-from.html

query.ViewAttributes = "Scope='RecursiveAll'";

will search through all items in the doc library.

Sweet.

TEST

2008-07-30T09:01:00.001-07:00

microsoft.sharepoint.applicationpages.dll

2008-07-11T09:34:00.001-07:00

oh my god, why was it so hard to find this?

it is in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\Virtual Directories\<your site>\_app_bin

you can use this dll to extend application pages like the login page! woohoo!

SharePoint Alerts & Task Notifications not working -- things I tried

2008-05-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

In case you guys are searching for the things you tried in trying to fix this, below is what i tried before I found the answer, documented HERE.

good luck!

Here is the setup:
The client has nonupgraded MOSS 2007 on a small server farm setup with on web application containing several site collections. Each site collection has a separate content DB. Recently, alerts and task assignments stopped working for some reason on their prod and dev servers -- this is why the client brought in my company to see if we can fix things. Alerts and task notifications are vital to the way they do business.

First thing we did was install the rest of SP1. They only had WSS SP1 installed previously. That did not fix the problem. I then ran stsadm -o updatealerttemplates & iisreset on dev. this seemed to clear up the alert problems in dev, but the same actions in production did not change anything.

In order to trouble shoot, I created a new web application on the same server, added a site collection, and added an alert to a task list and added some tasks. Bam! we get an alert notification that something changed on the list and also a notification that a task was assigned to me. So now I have 2 web apps with the same security setup on the same server, one with working alerts and one without.

Here is a list of the other things I've tested/tried:
- verified that Immediate Alerts timer job and SharePoint Timer Job are running successfully.
- verified my test user has full access to the task list and the containing site and the top level site of the web app.
- on new web app, same site , added 2nd task list -- alerts work (had read that each web app can only have 1 task list with "notify on assignment" checked)
- on old web app, same site, added new task list -- alerts do not work -- followed alert through database and saw that it was written to EventCache table with non-null EventData column that gets cleared out when Immediate Alerts timer job runs
- on old web app, different site collection, added new task to existing list -- alerts do not work
- on old web app, create new site collection with task list -- alert works, task notification does not. alert notification didnt' come in til about 1 hr after i created the task
- checked that site properties were set up correctly using stsadm -o getproperty -pn alerts-enabled and -pn job-immediate-alerts. set to "yes" and "Every 5 minutes between 0 and 59"
- reset these properties (turned off and then back on)
- verified that timer job account has dbo access to content dbs for sites on old web app and on new web app
- noticed that enterprise feature was not activated on old web app but was activated on new web app. deactivated enterprise features on new web app and got alerts still, but no task assignment notification. tried activating enterprise features on old web app, but no change in alert behavior.
- took a site collection from old web app, detached it's content db from old web app. reattached this content db on new web app. recreated alert. added new task --> get alert notification, but no task assignment notification. At this point, on the new web app, i have 1 site collection with working alerts/tasks and 1 site collection with only alerts working.

I also checked in the SP logs and noticed that when alerts/tasks worked, I would get messages like this:
AlertsJob loaded 1 of 1 event data records AlertsJob loaded 2 of 2 subscription records Alertsjob results for immediate delivery: 2 prematches, 2 passed filtering, 2 of 2 passed security trimming, 2 final after rollup Alertsjob results for scheduled delivery: 0 prematches, 0 passed filtering, 0 of 0 passed security trimming, 0 final after rollup AlertsJob processed 2 immediate notifications in 2 digests, sent 2 emails, failed to send 0 emails

when they did NOT work, I'd get messages like this:
AlertsJob loaded 0 of 0 event data recordsAlertsJob loaded 0 of 0 subscription records Alertsjob results for immediate delivery: 0 prematches, 0 passed filtering, 0 of 0 passed security trimming, 0 final after rollup Alertsjob results for scheduled delivery: 0 prematches, 0 passed filtering, 0 of 0 passed security trimming, 0 final after rollup AlertsJob processed 0 daily notifications in 0 digests, sent 0 emails, failed to send 0 emails

SharePoint Alerts and task assignment notifications stop working

2008-05-23T07:02:00.001-07:00

Have you run into the issue where alerts suddenly stop working and task assignments no longer send email? After much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, I finally got assistance from Eric Shupps, a Microsoft MVP, after talking to him at the Dallas SP user group meeting. He suggested Hotfix KB941422 which fixes an issue with timer jobs being delayed an hour b/c of daylight savings time.

it worked!

here are the steps:]
1. Install Hotfix KB941422 on your server -- make sure this is done during a maintenance window.
2. unset & reset alerts-enabled & job-immediate-alerts properties:
stsadm -o setproperty -pn alerts-enabled -pv false -url [your SP site url]
stsadm -o setproperty -pn alerts-enabled -pv true-url [your SP site url]
stsadm -o setproperty -pn job-immediate-alerts -pv "Every 5 minutes" -url [your SP site url]
3. On each task list, go to Settings>List Settings>Advanced Settings. Select No for "
Send e-mail when ownership is assigned? " and save. Go back and set the same option to Yes.

You should now be getting your alerts and task assignment notifications! WOO HOO!

** UPDATE **

so it turns out my celebration was too early. The tasks/alerts were working at my top level site collections, but not at any subsites or subsequent site collections on the same web app. WTF??

I looked at what was different on my dev environment where all this had worked and remember that when i restored production to the dev box, i had some errors b/c i hadn't yet updated dev with the same SPs as prod, so i had to install the SPs and then attach each content db to get the site up and running as a copy of prod.

today I went to central admin > application management > content databases and selected my faulty site collection's content db. I checked "remove this content db" and saved.
then I selected "add content db" at the top of the screen and typed in the same name of the content db i just detached. this will re-attach the content db to the site.

i had a minor heart attack when i went to my task list> list settings and got an unknown error. i did NOT get this error when i logged in as a non-service account user. i went and enabled showing detailed error messages: see here. and then the unknown error went away. if anyone has a clue about this, let me know.

anyway, once this heart attack was averted, i tested my tasks and they worked! woo hooo!!!!

hope this will help you guys out there struggling with this crazy mess of a problem.

stsadm backup restore probles

2007-12-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

If you are getting errors about not having the same version of sharepoint, note that:

a. you MUST have the same versions of SharePoint Services installed on the source and target servers!

b. thanks to this great blog, i found that a certain patch to Sharepoint Services 2.0 does NOT update the version number. Get the Patch http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fdownloads%2Fdetails.aspx%3FFamilyID%3DD002054E-1ECC-4DA5-8E5E-73A5C4FF2998%26displaylang%3Dbg&ei=kK5pR4ijGqSqhAT4qKirCQ&usg=AFQjCNHnekbgHx5hsDM6JGcMHM0tEXz4UQ&sig2=vv3hd5PbI0zf6eTHZEzlgw
and your restore should work.

smigrate is another option you can use to migrate sites from one server to another using .fwp files. haven't seen a big difference here other than that smigrate is much more verbose about what it's doing during the migration vs. stsadm -o restore which just tells you it completed successfully

Changing MOSS Service account password

2007-12-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

Has your service accoutn password expired and you've changed it? and now you are noticing all sorts of errors in the app event log and things are just not working?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838

follow these instructions to reset your service accoutn password in the bazillion places it needs to be done. what a pain!

Sharepoint Timed Job Errors

2007-11-28T17:30:00.000-08:00

if your timed jobs are no longer running or even starting, or you notice that Application Server Administration Service Timer Job has failed, or maybe none of your timed jobs are running...

Restart Windows Sharepoint Timer Service in Admin Tools>Services

PHEW!

Finding Sharepoint List ID GUID

2007-11-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

http://cisa.ca/blogs/medhat/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=7

CAML query to return approved documents

2007-11-15T09:22:00.001-08:00

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/krayscosp/archive/2004/08/10/using-caml-to-retrieve-sharepoint-event-lists-based-on-dates.aspx#comments

One or more web parts on this page references a zone that doesn't exist. It has been moved to the

2007-11-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

Have you ever gotten this error when dealing with custom page layouts?

"One or more web parts on this page references a zone that doesn't exist. It has been moved to the Closed Web Part Gallery."

and then the web parts disappear from the page?

try checking in/publishing your Page Layout first!

damn!

Using List NewForm.aspx for user submissions w/o showing the List behind it

2007-11-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

My task was to create a Comments/Suggestions submission method on a SharePoint site. A great way to implement this is to use a list and capture the "New Item" form you get built in with the list. Just post a link to the form using Source in the url to redirect after submitting the form to whereever you want.

for example:
you have a -
-site: http://mysite
-list: MyList

place a link on the http://mysite homepage http://mysite/Lists/MyList/NewForm.aspx?Source=http://mysite

this link will show the user the form to submit a new item and then redirect them to the page they came from once they hit "OK".

using a list is a great option b/c you can create approval workflows attached to it to notify the correct parties.

stsadm import error

2007-10-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

got this error while importing a doc library with versioning off.
anyone seen this before?

FatalError: Specified method is not supported.
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPList.set_MajorVersionLimit(Int32 value)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.UpdateListData(SPList list,
Dictionary`2 listMetaData, SPImportSettings settings)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.DocumentLibrarySerializer.UpdateListData(S
PList list, Dictionary`2 listMetaData, SPImportSettings settings)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ListSerializer.SetObjectData(Object obj, S
erializationInfo info, StreamingContext context, ISurrogateSelector selector)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.ParseObject(Type objectType,
Boolean isChildObject)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.DeserializeObject(Type object
Type, Boolean isChildObject, DeploymentObject envelope)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.XmlFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializat
ionStream)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ObjectSerializer.Deserialize(Stream serial
izationStream)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportObjectManager.ProcessObject(XmlReade
r xmlReader)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.DeserializeObjects()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run()
Progress: Import Completed.
Finish Time: 10/22/2007 12:13:13 PM.

Custom Columns don't show up in Crawled Properties

2007-10-11T12:49:00.001-07:00

Are you having this problem?

here's why: http://randomdust.com/blogs/ryan/archive/2007/07/25/site-column-to-crawled-property-to-managed-property.aspx

basically, you need to have data using that custom column before it shows up!

Thanks ryan!

Site/web template names

2007-10-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

go here:
http:/[website]/_layouts/templatepick.aspx.

view source and search for list of template names to get their code names.
these code names can be used in the manifest.xml for the property "WebTemplate=" or in creating a site with stsadm.exe -sitetemplate

may as well put them here for ya!

"STS#0" - Team Site
"STS#1" - Blank Site
"STS#2" - Document Workspace
"MPS#0" - Basic Meeting Workspace

"MPS#1" - Blank Meeting Workspace
"MPS#2" - Decision Meeting Workspace
"MPS#3" - Social Meeting Workspace
"MPS#4" - Multipage Meeting Workspace
"WIKI#0" - Wiki Site
"BLOG#0" - Blog

"BDR#0" - Document Center
"NDEXIntranetSiteDefinition_6e96d78d-5267-42b9-acd2-2c43a0fec193#0" - NDEXIntranetSiteDefinition
"OFFILE#1" - Records Center
"ProposalManager_3f2812cf-9ab7-4c71-bf90-38507c574783#0" - ProposalManager
"SPSSITES#0" - Site Directory
"SPSREPORTCENTER#0" - Report Center

"SPSPORTAL#0" - Collaboration Portal
"SRCHCEN#0" - Search Center with Tabs
"BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0" - Publishing Portal
"SPSMSITEHOST#0" - My Site Host
"SRCHCENTERLITE#0" - Search Center

supposedly you can change the site template of a site after creation by following this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jackiebo/archive/2007/02/23/sharepoint-content-migration-object-model-and-content-migration-packages.aspx

but i haven't gotten it working yet to change my blank template site collection --> a publishing site collection