Sandboxed Solutions in SharePoint 2010
This topic describes how site collection administrators can install, uninstall, and upgrade sandboxed solutions.
Installing a Sandboxed Solution
Just as with a farm solution, there are two steps to installing a sandboxed solution. In the context of sandboxed solutions, these two steps are called uploading and activating.
- Upload stage: The upload stage consists of uploading a sandboxed solution to the solution gallery of a site collection. This parallels adding a farm solution.
- Activation stage: The activation stage occurs after the solution is uploaded to a solution gallery. When a solution is uploaded, it is still functionally inert. Activating the solution makes it operate within the site by deploying files, registering event receivers, and running solution validation. This parallels deploying a farm solution. If a sandboxed solution includes a Feature that is scoped to the site collection level, the Feature is automatically activated when the solution is activated.
A sandboxed solution is installed by a site collection administrator to the site collection's solution gallery. This gallery also shows the current resource usage, average resource usage over the past two weeks, and the status of each sandboxed solution. For more information about the resource usage and monitoring system for sandboxed solutions, see Resource Usage Limits on Sandboxed Solutions in SharePoint 2010.
The following are the steps a site collection administrator takes to install a sandboxed solution.
To install a sandboxed solution
- From a page in the site collection, click Site Actions, and then select Site Settings.
- On the Site Settings page, click Solutions under the Galleries heading.
- On the Solutions tab of the Server ribbon, click Upload Solution.
- In the Upload Solution dialog box, click Browse, and browse to the sandboxed solution package (.wsp file). Click Open.
- The solution package is now in the site collection's solution gallery, but it is not yet deployed.
- In the Activate Solution dialog box, click Activate to activate the solution.
Uninstalling a Sandboxed Solution
There are also two steps to uninstalling a sandboxed solution.
- Deactivation stage: A site collection administrator can deactivate a sandboxed solution from the site collection's solution gallery. Deactivation reverses most of the deployment actions of activation and, thus, turns off various capabilities of the solution. (If a solution that contains a Web Part is deactivated after the Web Part is added to a page, the Web Part displays an error instead of the usual information contained in the Web Part. The Web Part does not entirely disappear because deactivation does not undeploy the Web Part's .webpart file.)
- Deletion stage: The deletion stage occurs when an administrator chooses to delete a sandboxed solution from the solution gallery. When the administrator chooses to delete a solution, additional validations and checks occur to warn the administrator of the negative consequences of an unintended deletion. A sandboxed solution cannot be deleted if it is still activated. When a sandboxed solution is deleted, it is moved into the Recycle Bin and can be restored or deleted permanently from the Recycle Bin.
Upgrading a Sandboxed Solution
A site collection administrator upgrades a sandboxed solution by installing a new sandboxed solution package (.wsp file) that has the same solution ID as the existing sandboxed solution but a different hash code.
If the sandboxed solution contains any Features, feature upgrade actions are also processed: During upgrade, the Feature definitions for the existing solution are compared with the Feature definitions for the new solution. Existing Feature definitions are upgraded on the site. All new Feature definitions are activated on the site. (Incoming requests for the sandboxed solution fail during the upgrade process.)
How to Change the Icon on the Sign-In Page in SharePoint 2010?
Problem:
You’ve turned on claims-based authentication for a web application in SharePoint 2010, and you’ve also enabled the “Forms-based authentication” option in the authentication settings for one or more zones. The sign-in page SharePoint displays when you browse to the site has an error icon (red circle with a white X) on it, and you’d like to replace that with a different icon.
Solution:
First, for clarification, there are two default sign-in pages SharePoint might show you. Which one you see depends how you’ve configured claims-based authentication.
If you’ve enabled both Windows and forms-based authentication for a zone, you’ll see the sign-in page depicted in Figure 1. It contains a drop-down list that lets you choose how you’d like to log in. This version of the page is located at {SharePointRoot}\TEMPLATE\IDENTITYMODEL\LOGIN\default.aspx:
Figure 1
On the other hand, if you’ve only enabled forms-based authentication (and not Windows), you’ll see the sign-in page depicted in Figure 2. It contains the standard user name and password fields you’d expect to see on a sign-in page. This version of the page is located at {SharePointRoot}\TEMPLATE\IDENTITYMODEL\FORMS\default.aspx:
Figure 2
Both pages have the red error icon. Fortunately, the master page used by the sign-in pages places the icon inside an ASP.NET content placeholder, making it easy to change. Here are the steps:
Note: I describe how to do this manually so you can see what’s going on, but as always, I recommend you create a Solution Package (WSP file) for final deployment.
1. Go to the location of your current sign-in page (one of the two locations I described above).
2. Copy the “default.aspx” page to a new folder you’ve created (perhaps named after your company) under {SharePointRoot}\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS. That way you’re not changing out-of-the-box files.
3. Open the copied file in a text editor and add the following ASP.NET content tag:
<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderId="PlaceHolderIcon" runat="server"> <img src="/path/to/new/icon.gif" runat="server" /> </asp:Content>
4. Save the file.
5. Open Central Administration, and go to the Web Application Management page.
6. Select your web application, and click Authentication Providers in the ribbon.
7. In the dialog that pops up, click the link for the zone where you want your new sign-in page.
8. For the Sign-In Page URL setting, choose “Custom Sign-In Page,” and set the URL to ~/_layouts/YourFolder/default.aspx (or wherever you put your new page).
That’s it! Now your sign-in page should have your new icon (see Figure 3 below), and I hope it’s much more user-friendly than the big red X.
What’s new in SharePoint 2010 SP1
What's new in SharePoint 2010 SP1
With all the latest buzz on the release of SharePoint 2010 Service Pack1, here is what SharePoint 2010 SP1 adds:
Site Recycle Bin: With this new feature, administrators can restore site collections and/or sites that have been accidentally deleted by their owners. How often does this happen? Hopefully not too often. But when it does, having recoverable copies without getting out backups is a plus. We've had the Recycle Bin feature in SharePoint for lists, libraries, and documents for while now; this is a nice additional safety net.
Broader browser support: SharePoint 2010 SP1 adds support for IE9 in Internet Explorer 8 Standards Mode, as well as for Google Chrome.
Shallow Copy: This new feature allows you to move site collections to new content databases without having to move all the Remote Blob storage content. Thus, only the ownership information is moved, without having to copy the unstructured data in the file store. The Move-SPSite PowerShell cmdlet has been enhanced to allow this feature
StorMan.aspx (Storage Space Allocation page: StorMan.aspx has been reintroduced in SharePoint 2010 SP1. It was removed from the original version of SharePoint 2010. Now that it is back, it adds the ability to display better information to users regarding their quota information. That makes it easier for users to clean up their sites by deleting content they may not need.
Support for SQL Server "Denali" (aka SQL Server 2011) ): Given that SharePoint is heavily integrated with SQL, it stands to reason that new features in the forthcoming Denali version of SQL Server will only make SharePoint 2010 better.
Cascading filters in PerformancePoint Services: Filters values can now be passed from one filter to the next.
Improvements in SharePoint 2010 Service Pack1
As some of you already started testing the release of SharePoint 2010 Service pack1 and there is already enough fuss about this Service pack 1. Personally I feel that the SP1 release and the June CU for SharePoint 2010 releases added more fuel to the problem.
I have stressed this enough to install the Service pack 1 and then install the June CU.
Please see the link below for more detailed info on the improvements and various blogs posts by SharePoint MVP's.
How to Pass Querystring data into an InfoPath Form
Recently I came across this blog when trying to test some new functionality in Infopath and SharePoint 2010.
How to easily send a value from the browser’s query string into an InfoPath form. Hopefully this will help somoeone. Please see the link below.
SharePoint Illegal Characters
Today we started to bring in the documents for our new department and found lot of errors trying to move the folders and the documents to SharePoint. This is due to the Illegal characters in the naming conventions.
Characters that can't or shouldn't be used in File, folder and site names.
~ # % & * { } \ : < > ? / + | " . _
Notes:
- Period can't be used consecutively in the middle of a name or at the end
- Underscore shouldn't be used at the start of any name
- Spaces are encoded as %20 (3 characters) and count to the 240 character Web-DAV file length limit
SharePoint 2010: Missing Links in Central Administration
Today 03/14, I came across this scenario, and wanted to post something up as it will make you second guess your SharePoint configuration [and sanity]. I have SharePoint 2010 hosted on my Windows 7 laptop. In my Favorites Bar in IE, I created a SP2010 folder, and in that folder, I add a favorite for Central Admin, and my SharePoint sites. Gives me an easy way to hit the sites I’m after while working on my laptop.
When I open IE and click my Favorite for Central Admin, I find that some links are missing. Clicking on some of the links that actually show up throw Access Denied messages, though others will work. The main link that is missing that I associate with this scenario is “Manage Services on Server” under System Settings. The “Configure incoming e-mail Settings” link will also be missing on that page.
You get: Servers> Manage Servers in this Farm
Expect this: Servers > Manage Servers in this farm | Manage Services on Server
Also, most of the Farm Backup and Restore links will be missing. Check out this screenshot. The following links are missing:
- Perform a Backup
- Restore from a backup
- Configure backup settings
You get: Farm Backup and Restore View Backup and Restore History | Check backup and restore job status
Expect this: Farm Backup and Restore Perform a backup | Restore from a backup | Configure Backup Settings | View Backup and Restore History | Check backup and restore job status
To make matters worse, you likely set this up a few weeks ago, and can’t quite remember if those links were there to begin with 
If you’re like me, you think, “I must have messed something up. Let me run the configuration wizard, and see if that gets things going.” If you do that, IE will launch after the wizard, and Central Admin will appear with all the links. You go on your merry way, and do whatever you were planning on doing. You come back a couple days later and the links are missing again. This is where questioning your sanity comes into play
I asked around, and found that the cause is a combination of the following:
- Browsing from the server hosting Central Administration
- UAC Enabled on the machine
- Opening the browser without elevation
- If you are browsing from a Windows Server hosting Central Admin, you also have IE Enhanced Security Configuration (ESC) to deal with as well.
The fix is to either:
- Launch Internet Explorer as Administrator (Right-click Internet Explorer, select “Run as Administrator”)
- Browse Central Admin, by clicking the SharePoint 2010 Central Administration link in the Start menu. This runs “psconfigui.exe –cmd showcentraladmin” which will force elevation.
I would think the majority of people that are going to hit this are developers working with SharePoint locally as most administrators will not be browsing directly from the server hosting Central Admin. From looking around, it appears the same behavior is seen with SharePoint 2007:
Accessing the term store as a manager or contributor
Accessing the term store as a manager or contributor
Today 03/03, we ran into a situation where one of the users who manage the SharePoint 2010 Site was unable to access the term store management links.
I've touched on the term store a few times in posts this year. But as ever the best way to learn a new tool is to get a bit of practical experience. So I came across this little nugget this week when onsite with a client. Firstly a bit of background on the term store.
The building blocks of the term store are:
- Metadata application: Top level container of our term store. Contains groups
- Groups: Term sets are collected together in groups
- Term set: A hierarchical group of related terms
- Term: The basic building block of the term store. A metadata word
The term store can be managed by the following three groups of people:
- Term store administrator: Full control over the term store, and able to assign other people roles.
- Group managers: This role allows a user to manage a particular group of term sets
- Contributers: This role allows users to manage terms sets in a particular group, but they are not able to create additional contributers.
Term sets also have 'owner' and 'stakeholders' properties but these aren't actually used for anything.
Anyway the reason for this was post was to talk about how the roles described above access the term store. If the user has sufficient permissions to see 'site settings in 'site actions' then there isn't really an issue. They can navigate to site settings, and into the term store. However if the user cannot see the 'site actions' button their is no easy way to navigate to the term store at all. In fact it seems the only way is to link directly to it (and make sure you link to the term stored access via 'site setting's not central administration) and either distribute the link or post it somewhere. Whilst we have always had different permissions models outside of the standard user access model, this feels a bit different and all a bit unfinished. Have a look and see what you think. Comments below please.
Catch 22 for Approval Workflow in SharePoint Designer
Today 02/09 I began blogging on this, and found someone else's blogpost from Dec 2010 who also blogged on this exact topic. Though I never saw his blog post prior to writing this, credit to Lars Nielson.
I ran into an interesting dilemma while working on my most recent project. The project involved a number of document libraries that required content approval as well as versioning.
The scope of work greatly limited the amount of customizations that could be made to SharePoint (i.e. building workflows in Visual Studio).
This introduced an interesting problem based on our initial game plan. The workflow is basically a document goes through a change process and committee approvals before it is published. End Users cannot see changes until an approved document is published.
The change process was the complicated piece to this because the organization had a number of variables within the process, so the only solution was to require each step in the workflow to be manually kicked off.
When I made it to the approval stage, we initially had content approval on in the libraries. And here is where the catch 22 comes in, trying to set content approval status to Approved in a document library that requires a document to be checked out and content approval is on.
To set the content approval status from Designer, ok easy enough, there is an action for that....uh oh, the document must first be checked out. ok, check out document, set approval status....uh oh, I get an error that says content approval status cannot be set while a document is checked out.
Catch 22. Basically to set content approval status in designer, the document must be checked out, but content approval status cannot be changed while a document is checked out.
Possible work-around - We did not go this route, we basically turned off content approval, and used a workflow to notify approvals, and once approval was granted, a user would publish a major version of the document. This was acceptable for this engagement.
I was going to explain the workaround here, but I ran across a blog post while getting my info together of someone who already documented it. So in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Lars gets credit for this solution. Lars Nielson blogged on this exact topic in late 2010. http://discoverlars.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/update-the-approval-status-in-a-sharepoint-designer-workflow/
The bottom line in this is that for highly complex workflows, you really need Visual Studio.
SharePoint 2010 boundaries, Thresholds and Supported limits
SharePoint 2010 boundaries, Thresholds and Supported limits
Many would be considering SharePoint 2010 for their environment and questions will be asked to SharePoint Admins and Architects on the product.
Here is some handy information from Microsoft on the limitations (boundaries) of SharePoint 2010.
Before we dive into it, letz define what are the limit types:
- Boundaries: Static limits that cannot be exceeded by design
- Thresholds: Configurable limits that can be exceeded to accommodate specific requirements
- Supported limits: Configurable limits that have been set by default to a tested value.
Event ID 107:Report Server Windows Service cannot connect to the Report Server Database
Today 11/01/2010, when I was doing the routine event log checks for errors as a scheduled task on the first of every month. One of My SQL server had a whole bunch of Report Server Windows errors with event ID 107.
Please see the error below:
Report Server
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Report Server Windows Service (MSSQLSERVER)
Event Category: Management
Event ID: 107
Date: 11/1/2010
Time: 9:12:49 AM
User: N/A
Computer: MOSSSQLSERVER
Description:
Report Server Windows Service (MSSQLSERVER) cannot connect to the report server database.
Resolution: Go to Services. msc and Make sure all the services for SQL Server Database engine and Reporting Services were in the running state. Then Open the Report Services Configuration Wizard, Connect to the specified SQL Server Database Server and then I found that the connection to the Report Server Database was set to some other database. Modified the settings doe the Database setup and connected the Report Server Database and save the settings.
What Drives Social Media in SharePoint?
Ask a crowd of people whether they believe social computing is important within the enterprise, and you usually see -- at best -- an even split of yes and no answers. More often than not, the majority of people answer no. As I present on the topic at various conferences and SharePoint Saturday events, most people attend my session not because they believe social computing is critical to their business, but because they want to understand why they should care.
With so many people ambivalent to social computing, why is it that one of the top technology trends is the expansion of social computing features across enterprise applications? One problem with perception is that people tend to focus on the consumer social media applications without considering the underlying application of the technologies that power them, and how those features and capabilities might improve the enterprise.
So why should you care about social media in SharePoint? Well, let’s take a look at some of the problems you may be experiencing within your environment:
- You’ve spent months migrating content into your shiny, new SharePoint environment. You’ve moved your information silos from your old, proprietary portal or file shares to SharePoint. NOW WHAT???
- You were sold on the idea of search, but you can’t find anything.
- You can’t tell who owns what.
- You can’t tell what’s new, what’s old, or what has changed.
- You realize that all of your data is now disconnected.
How do you solve these problems? The answer is managed metadata, thoughtful taxonomy, and a solid governance model. The answer is to roll out social computing tools within SharePoint to improve search and provide additional methods for surfacing data within your environment. Think of it as a software stack:
Metadata powers both structured (taxonomy) and unstructured (ad hoc) collaboration, which is then filtered by the various social media tools, which is an extension of search, which makes your team site, portal, and content relevant to end users. Across all of these pieces is your governance model, ensuring all of the moving parts are working together.
Metadata is the key to making social media work inside the enterprise. It makes social media work within SharePoint, it makes your content visible to end users, and it powers search. Metadata makes your environment useable, linkable, relevant. Metadata is the building block of social media within SharePoint.
When thinking through your own social media strategy, its important that you recognize this connection between social computing, metadata, and search. It will help you to sell your team and management chain on the powerful impact of social media in the enterprise, and, more importantly, help you realize the full potential of your SharePoint investments.
SharePoint Security Update
Microsoft announced a security advisory that affects many SharePoint deployments.
Recently Microsoft announced Security Advisory 2416728 (Vulnerability in ASP.NET) and SharePoint. The vulnerability affects the following SharePoint versions
- SharePoint 2010
- SharePoint Foundation 2010
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
- Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
- Windows SharePoint Services 2.0
Microsoft has posted an out-of-band security update that should be applied ASAP on the SharePoint web front-end servers for affected deployments. The SharePoint team blog is the best source for more information:
SharePoint Team Blog
Unable to start Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service
Windows SharePoint Services Timer Service- Unable to start the Timer Service- Showed error -Pathto the executable not found.
Well while the summer is coming to end and getting ready for the much awaited winter, today I suddenly noticed that the Notifications and alerts in SharePoint were not working.
As usual, first thing I checked was whether the SMTP service is running-(Started and running) and then I checked the outgoing and incoming email settings.Looks OK as per the defined values. Then I created an alert to check the receipt of an email about the alert created. No luck. This is clearly a problem and something is wrong with the environment. Also I ran the SP Config Wizard to check if there is any other problem in the environment.
SharePoint 2010:Taxonomy Picker.ascx Failed Error
SharePoint 2010:Taxonomy Picker.ascx Failed Error
Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation
Date: 9/27/2010 12:08:41 PM
Event ID: 7043
Task Category: Web Controls
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: MOSS\SPFARM
Computer: MOSSSERVER
Description:
Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed: Could not load type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.TaxonomyPicker' from assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.
Cause of the Problem:
The file drive:\Program Files\Common Files\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\TaxonomyPicker.ascx is badly formed and doesn't compile.
Solution:
You can change the bad syntax of the file. To Fix:
Find the character string , and replace with a comma ‘,’ (without quotes).
Or, you can rename it TaxonomyPicker.ascx_broken. It is badly formed, but the file is never actually used. Thank you to this post for the answer:
http://todd-carter.com/post/2010/05/03/Help-Wanted-Taxonomy-Picker.aspx