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
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.
Accounts used by application pools or service identities are in the local administrator group
Least Privilege Service Accounts for SharePoint 2010
In the last few years, enterprises have come to care about least privilege—the security concept that relates to an account being given only the permissions it requires to perform its tasks, nothing more. Least privilege is important for security, auditing, and compliance, and it applies not only to the accounts used by human beings, but also by service accounts.
And, like least privilege, enterprises have come to care about service accounts as well. I remember the days when it was perfectly acceptable to create a service account and set “password never expires.” Now, most enterprises have security policies that explicitly forbid such configuration because of the open door it leaves into a system.
During the next few weeks, I’ll be posting steps to help you deploy SharePoint with least privilege and to manage SharePoint service accounts. Let’s start by clearing up some confusion and all-too-prevalent mistakes that I see made with SQL Server, SharePoint administration, and farm accounts—and don’t be surprised that at least some of the confusion is due to the weirdness of the SharePoint setup wizard itself.
3 Accounts
Microsoft describes the administrative and service accounts required for initial deployment but skims over some important details and emphases, so let’s take a look at the three accounts this week, then we’ll return to some refiners next week.
True Errors in SharePoint (and other .NET web applications)
Uncovering True Errors in SharePoint (and other .NET web applications)
Recently this week on 08/12/2010, I came across these errors in SharePoint and was successfully able to resolve the problem.
Have you ever come across an error like this?
Or perhaps one similar to this?
Unfortunately, these types of “unexpected error” messages do not provide any level of detail as to the actual problem, but instead, only inform you, the admin, there was some type of error that prevented the expected page from coming up properly.
When this happens, there are two changes I make in the application’s web.config file, which have always helped uncover the true problem.
To show the call stack:
Change
<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="false"
DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50"
AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
to
<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true"
DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50"
AllowPageLevelTrace="false">
To turn custom errors off, so the error and the call stack can be shown:
Change
<customErrors mode="On" />
to
<customErrors mode="Off" />
I’ve seen others mentioning the need to change AllowPageLevelTrace="false" toAllowPageLevelTrace="true", however, I have not had to do this with SharePoint thus far.
One you’ve saved your web.config, the appdomain will be torn down and reloaded on the next incoming request (this happens automatically upon any change to the web.config, by design) and you should be ready to find out your true error
SharePoint Search Errors-Event ID-3083
Today when I tried to install the .NET Framework 3.5 security updates, I got the following errors in the event log:
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Office Server Search
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 2436
Date: 8/2/2010
Time: 1:59:12 AM
User: N/A
Computer: MOSSSERVER
Description:
The start address http://MOSSSERVER cannot be crawled.
Context: Application 'SharedServices1', Catalog 'Portal_Content'
Details:
Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content. (0x80041205)
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
When you start to analyse these errors you will find a Knowledge base article on the Microsoft homepageKB887993. Within this article they describe authentication issues to access web pages.
Use the second method to apply following registry key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]
“DisableLoopbackCheck”=dword:00000001
When you applied above registry value you get a second error within your event log:
Event ID-10036-Gatherer-Office Server Search
I have been noticing the below error in my application log. We have installed the Foxit pdf ifilter. May be the issue is related to the pdf filetype added to SharePoint Server.
Event ID-10036 -Gatherer
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office Server Search
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 10036
Date: 7/19/2010
Time: 10:05:13 PM
User: N/A,
Computer: MOSSSERVER
Description: A database error occurred.
Source: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server
Code: 8134 occurred 1 time(s)
Description: Divide by zero error encountered.
PowerShell Tips for SharePoint 2010
Here is a quick guide for PowerShell tips in SharePoint 2010:
http://www.powergui.org/servlet/KbServlet/download/2812-102-4534/SharePoint2010PowerShell.pdf
And this Technet article gives a complete mapping of STSADM commands with PowerShell Commands:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff621081.aspx
Thanks to SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint SQL 2008 Tips
With the SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM (Release to Manufacturer) and Launch, I want to give you my top reasons to upgrade with some additional tips to SQL 2008 from a SharePoint Admin/IT Pro perspective. Now that it's RTM SharePoint (both WSS and MOSS) supports SQL 2008!
1. Transparent Encryption - SharePoint doesn't even realize the database has transparent encryption turned on. I wouldn't recommend doing this on the Config database and especially would avoid the SSP and Search Databases. If you do decide to use this, it would be on content databases only, and even then I'd recommend using it only on the ones you need it on. Why? For Performance reasons encryption is overhead even if it is transparent to the application.
2. Backup Compression - Now this is a big no brainer. You can actually turn this on for the database so when backups happen even with the SharePoint Backup either Web UI or STSADM backup will backup the databases faster and more compressed.
3. Resource Governor - As all content is not created equal this gives you a chance to treat the most important data at a greater level of service. I love the fact that I can limit the exposure as far as performance is concerned with apps that might share the same SQL storage. Whether you're sharing with other SharePoint farms or sharing with other applications the resource governor allows you to be much more granular in deciding who gets what resources.
4. Mirroring enhancements - compressed logs means more reliability and quicker sync. Also other enhancements make it more transparent to setup and configure mirroring. Mirroring has taken some stride with SQL 2008. A transparent failover was demo'ed at the SharePoint Conference with SQL 2008. It wasn't clear in the demo how they dealt with the SSP, but I hope we get more prescriptive guidance from he product team on how to use the new features of mirroring to make DR for SharePoint even better.
5. Data compression - Careful here as well. Data compression can give you more disk space, but don't expect your SharePoint databases to really shrink down. The blobs aren't compressible. The lists are though. You might see 30% compression, but please avoid doing this on the Search database because of overhead unless the indexing performance isn't super key. You might get a lot of compression on that database though... just watch for overhead impact.
Sharepoint Administrative Tasks
I have been asked many a times what is the role of Sharepoint Administrator. In my opinion the Sharepoint Administrator primary job would be to monitor and check the Sharepoint Servers and Sharepoint Access, Build up the Physical Architecture, Logical Architecture and creation of SIte Collections and Sites and Management of Content Databases as per the best practices suggested by Microsoft.
- Some of the Routine SharePoint administrative tasks would be:
- Daily checks to test and monitor the SharePoint Status, health, and the Performance (SharePoint sites Response time, status of host server, SharePoint Server and the IIS Server)
- Daily check of Front-end and Back-end backups for business continuity.(Check the last date of your backups)
- Daily Check of the profile import.
- Daily check of the Search and Indexing features.
- Daily check and installation of Security Updates.
- Daily check the SharePoint Site Access
- Daily Monitoring and Reporting of SharePoint Sites.
- Daily Monitor and analyze SharePoint usage and activity.
- Daily Monitor and analyze SharePoint content and storage.
- Daily Monitor SharePoint Trends and Governance Violations.
- Daily monitor event logs for any errors or warnings. Make sure the number of warnings and errors were minimum and health check of the Sharepoint environment.
2007 Word Format changes after Users modified the document using the previous versions.
One of the strange things I recently noticed was,the users who had previous versions of office on their desktops, make changes to the server document by editing it from Sharepoint. When they were done with the changes and try to upoad and save the document using the previous version, the default template changes and all the formatting will be lost.
This is more common if the document were saved in the latest format and modified by other users using the previous versions. The whole formatting was lost in the Process.It took some time to figure out why this strange thing is happening.
Finally the issue was resolved successfully.
I am Planning a SharePoint project – is it any different from typical software development projects?
I am Planning a SharePoint project - is it any different from typical software development projects?
A friend of mine asked me this the other day.. and I was glad that I was asked this question. (Let's just say my friend was relatively new to SharePoint but have had years of managing typical software development projects).
From a pure Project manager's view it can be seen that SharePoint projects are not different to any old IT project. BUT let me tell you that to successfully complete a SharePoint project you'll need to think and plan a lot more outside of a standard software development Project. If you are a Project Manager who is "New" to SharePoint and want to apply your traditional PM methodology to deliver a SharePoint project then please take a timeout and head over to Paul Culmsee's blog and read the series of posts on "Why SharePoint projects fail". Paul points out all the reasons why sometimes the best efforts of Project Managers and strict text book process does not help with projects that are driven by technology enthusiasts who know little about actual drivers for using SharePoint and required change for SharePoint project.
Office HTML viewer to support Users without Office
The Office HTML Viewer server provides support for users who want to view the content of files in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services document libraries, but do not have Word, Excel, or PowerPoint from Office 97, or a newer release of Office, installed on their local computer.
This is a free download from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c62e0232-9bf6-48fc-829e-5c34d5c8b15f&displaylang=en
Hava a dedicate a server for the Html Viewer Server. Once you have it installed, go to Central Administration > Application Management > External Service Connections > Html Viewer and configure MOSS to use the server.