Microsoft Farmer

How-to Recreate a Corrupted Post.aspx page in SharePoint 2010

2010-12-12T14:59:00.000-06:00

In the event that the Post.aspx page has become corrupted to where it is not showing any blogs, follow these instructions to easily recreate the page.

NOTE: You will need to have SharePoint Designer Enabled and Administrative Permissions to the site for this to work

1. Using SharePoint Designer, Open the Blog Site by clicking Open Site

2. From the Navigation quick menu, select All Files

3. In the results tab for All Files select Lists

4. In the results tab for Lists, select Posts

5. In the results tab for Posts, right-click Posts.aspx and select Delete

6. In the Confirm Delete popup dialog, select Yes

7. In the results tab for Posts, right-click AllPosts.aspx and select Copy

8. Right-Click in the white-space in the results tab for Posts an and select Paste

9. You should now have a file in the results tab for Posts named AllPosts_copy(1).aspx

10. Right-Click on AllPosts_copy(1).aspx and select Rename and type Post.aspx

11. Using Internet Explorer navigate to the site which was open in Step 1.

12. From the blog site, select any Blog post to take you to the new Post.aspx page created in Step 10.

13. From the Site Actions menu, select Edit Page

14. On the Posts web part, select Edit Web Part from the web part drop-down menu.

15. In the Web Part Properties menu on the right side of the screen, change Selected View to Summary View

16. On the Message from webpage popup dialog, select OK

17. In the Web Part Properties menu click Apply and then OK

18. In the Main web part zone, select Add a Web Part

19. From the Lists and Libraries categories library, select the list view Comments web part and select Add to add the web part to the Main zone

20. Move the Comments list view web part below the Post list view web part.

21. On the Comments web part, select Edit Web Part from the web part drop-down menu

22. In the Web Part Properties menu on the right side of the screen, change Selected View to Summary View

23. On the Message from webpage popup dialog, select OK

24. In the Web Part Properties menu click Apply and then OK

25. From the Edit Menu in the Ribbon, select Stop Editing from the Page Tab

26. Using SharePoint Designer, Open the Blog Site by clicking Open Site, if the site is still open in SharePoint Designer make sure you refresh your content using the refresh button in the top left.

27. From the Navigation quick menu, select All Files

28. In the results tab for All Files select Lists

29. In the results tab for Lists, select Posts

30. Right-Click on Post.aspx and select Edit File in Advanced Mode

31. From the View tab in the menu ribbon, select Code, in Page Views

32. At around line 49, there will be a <Query> tag under <XmlDefinition>. Replace everything from <Query> to </Query> with the following:

<Query>

</OrderBy>

<Where>

<Eq>

</Value>

</Eq>

</Where>

</Query>

33. At around line 125, you will see the close tag for the Comments List View web part </WebPartPages:XsltListViewWebPart>. On the next line, paste in the following code. You will also need to change the highlighted GUID above with the GUID for the Comments list in your site. To determine the GUID for the Comments List, do the following:

1) Using Internet Explorer navigate to the site which was open in Step 1.

2) From the blog site, select any Blog post to take you to the new Post.aspx page created in Step 10.

3) From the Site Actions menu, select View All Site Content

4) Under the Lists category, select Comments

5) From the List Tools menu in the ribbon, select List

6) In the Settings category, select List Settings

7) Copy the URL from the Internet Explorer browser and paste it into a Notepad

8) Delete everything before List= (including List=)

9) Delete %7B and %7D from the beginning and end

10) Replace %2D with –

11) You should now have a properly formatted 32 character GUID (not including dashes) for the Comment List to replace the highlighted IDs

<WebPartPages:ListFormWebPart runat="server" __MarkupType="xmlmarkup" WebPart="true" __WebPartId="{C43398A5-8CDC-4080-871F-0E562F41EAC4}" >

<Title>New Comment</Title>

<FrameState>Normal</FrameState>

<HelpMode>Modeless</HelpMode>

<Dir>Default</Dir>

<MissingAssembly>Cannot import this Web Part.</MissingAssembly>

<ListName xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">{5CC85BD4-19A5-438B-942C-ADECDF862EA3}</ListName>

<ListId xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">5cc85bd4-19a5-438b-942c-adecdf862ea3</ListId>

<PageType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">PAGE_NEWFORM</PageType>

<ViewFlags xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">Default</ViewFlags>

<ListTitle xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">Comments</ListTitle>

<TemplateName xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/ListForm">BlogCommentsForm</TemplateName>

</WebPart>

</WebPartPages:ListFormWebPart>

34. Click Save to apply the change.

35. On the Site Definition Page Warning popup dialog select YES

An unhandled exception occurred in the silverlight application sharepoint 2010

2010-12-12T14:36:00.000-06:00

In SharePoint 2010 you may recieve the error "an unhandled exception occurred in the silverlight application sharepoint 2010" on sites which have been upgraded. This will generally occur when trying to create new Lists, Libraries, Sites or Pages. This happens because silverlight is unable to connect to the Windows Communication Foundation endpoint for enabling the Client Object Model, if Security validation is Off. To resolve the problem navigate to Central Administration and enable the Web Page Security Validation for the Web Application. Do the following:

Open Central Administration
Select Application Management
Select Manage Web Applications
Select the Web Application where the error occurs
In the ribbon, select General Settings
In the Web Application General Settings dialog box, find Web Page Security Validation and select On

Check-In Multiple Files At Once!

2010-06-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

I've had this question come up a lot lately. The scenario is simple. You create a library in SharePoint. You have versioning and/or require check-in/check-out enabled for the library. You use bulk upload or drag and drop via Explorer View to move a large amount of files/folders into the new library. Once you are complete, everything is in a Checked-Out state! So, how do you check them all in at once? Simple! (if you are a site administrator…check your permissions)

Go into the Library where you need to check in multiple files.
Select Document Library Settings from Settings
Select Manage checked out files under Permissions and Management
Select the documents you want to check-in (or select the all checkbox to select them all)
Select Take Ownership of Selection
Select Site Actions and then Site Settings
Under Site Administration select Site Content and Structure
Next to View in the main screen, change Default View to Checked Out To Me
Select the documents you want to check-in (or select the all checkbox to select them all)
Select check-in from Actions

My Profile Availability Not Showing Up

2009-12-18T13:43:00.000-06:00

Going to you’re My Profile site should show your availability based on your Exchange Calendar. However, there are instances when this isn’t displayed. Of course, if you aren’t looking for it, you probably aren’t seeing this feature fail. What would happen is that you open you’re my Profile page, then a Section appears called Availability, and it says, Checking Free/Busy…but then disappears. If you check your ULS logs during this time, you will probably notice the following error (where DOMAIN is equal to your domain):

ExchangeAutodiscover-GetAvailabilityUrl threw an exception: System.Net.WebException: The remote name could not be resolved: 'autodiscover.DOMAIN.com'

The problem seems to be that SharePoint is literally looking for autodiscover.domain.com rather than the actual exchange outlook web access site. A quick fix that I am using is to create a redirect in the DNS which point autodiscovery.domain.com to the Outlook Web Access site, something like owa.domain.com. I’m not sure why this problem occurs, but the redirect works like a charm.

How-to Hide Columns In List/Libraries Views and Forms

2009-11-10T13:41:00.004-06:00

When creating lists and libraries in SharePoint, sometimes it necessary to hide certain information from users. You can easily create custom views and uncheck columns which you don’t want users to see, however, users will also be able to see/edit the unchecked items in the newform.aspx page (when you click new). So, here’s an additional step to make sure that you hide columns not only from views, but from the form:

Navigate to the list or library which you need to hide the columns
Under General Settings, select Advanced Settings
Next to Content Types, select Yes to Allow management of content types
Click OK
Back in the Settings page, you will now notice a heading for Content Types
Select the existing Content Type to edit it
In the Content Type settings page, select the columns which you wish to hide.
There are three options to choose from:
Required (Must contain information)
Optional (May contain information)
Hidden (Will not appear in forms)
Select Hidden to hide the column from the form
Click OK when you are complete.

Don’t forget to uncheck the hidden column from your Views as well on the List/Library Settings page

User Profiles Changes Are Not Updating Across the Farm

2009-11-10T13:40:00.005-06:00

This “feature” shows up when a user changes their last name, email address account name or any other information which is replicated from an external source. The best example is changing a last name in Active Directory, which then changes the email address and account name (i.e. Jane Doe changes to Jane Johnson and email changes to jdoe@email.com to jjohnson@email.com).

What should happen is that SharePoint picks up the changes and synchronizes the information with the user profile throughout the entire environment. But in a lot of cases the updated information is not reflected in the farm!

This happens because there are two user profiles in a Microsoft SharePoint Standard or Enterprise farm. This is because the base Windows SharePoint Services application has one profile and MOSS has one. This is because you can install Windows SharePoint Services without MOSS, but you cannot install MOSS without installing the base WSS. So, Windows SharePoint Services provides for a basic user profile, while the addition of MOSS adds a more advanced user profile.

So, what happens in the instance where the user information isn’t replicating, the problem is that the synchronization jobs are simply not happening. To force the synchronization to happen, you can use the following commands:

stsadm -o sync

-excludewebapps

-synctiming

· "M" denotes every n minutes (m:5 means every 5 minutes).

· "H" denotes every n hours (h:1 means every 1 hour)

· "D" denotes the number of times per day (D:3 means three times per day)

-sweeptiming

-listolddatabases

-deleteolddatabases

Changes the Profile Sync job (MOSS)

stsadm -o sync –synctiming m:2

Changes the Quick Profile Sync job (WSS)

stsadm -o sync –sweeptiming 1

There’s another scenario for synchronization not happening. The example is when you first visit a site a record is recorded in the UserInfo table of the sites Content Database. The field tp_IsActive is defaulted to false, which means you have visited but have not interacted with the site.

The Sync process uses this value to determine if the user info should be replicated in the sync process. So, if you were to make a change to the profile information in AD and refresh the site that you had only visited and see the information is still the same, it was not updated.

If you now interact with the site, either add a document or edit a link, in effect become an active user of the site, and then run the stsadm -o sync command, the profile changes to the user name will be replicated to the site.

There are instances where the two commands don’t necessarily solve the problem. This happens when content databases become stale or have not been synchronized. In this case, there are stale records which need to be cleaned up prior to synchronization.

The following command should cleanup stale records.

Lists Old Content Databases

stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases 2

Cleans up Old Records (Does Not delete databases, just the old records corresponding to the databases)

stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 2

Updating Existing Alerts After URL Change

2009-10-15T10:43:00.000-05:00

When you change your SharePoint URL it does not automatically update alert subscriptions to reflect the change. For example, changing the URL from http://inside.sharepoint.com to http://mysharepoint.com would result in Alerts holding the old URL rather than taking the new. This is because those Alert Subscriptions are holding absolute paths. When you change the SharePoint URL, you will also need to take these additional steps (NOTE: I'm suggesting doing this in the database, so use at your own risk):

Run the following against SQL:

update immedsubscriptions

set siteurl = replace(siteurl,'http://', 'https://')

update schedsubscriptions

set siteurl = replace(siteurl,'http://', 'https://')

Note that you need to update both the immediate subscriptions table and the scheduled subscriptions tables.

To run these you need to connect to your content database in SQL Server Management studio, open a new query window and run the above SQL.

Hiding Columns in Lists/Library Views and Forms

2009-10-14T14:24:00.001-05:00

1. Navigate to the list or library which you need to hide the columns

2. Under General Settings, select Advanced Settings

3. Next to Content Types, select Yes to Allow management of content types

4. Click OK

5. Back in the Settings page, you will now notice a heading for Content Types

6. Select the existing Content Type to edit it

7. In the Content Type settings page, select the columns which you wish to hide.

8. There are three options to choose from:

· Required (Must contain information)

· Optional (May contain information)

· Hidden (Will not appear in forms)

9. Select Hidden to hide the column from the form

10. Click OK when you are complete.

Don’t forget to uncheck the hidden column from your Views as well on the List/Library Settings page

Updating Profile Information in SharePoint 2007

2009-10-13T13:06:00.001-05:00

Once you have added users to a SharePoint environment, you may have the need to update their information. For example, if a user’s last name changes and they want to modify their email address or user name. Luckily, SharePoint uses ADUIDs to help synchronize information in the system. Since it’s very unlikely that the ADUID will ever change, this is a great model and means you can change information as you need without harming the system. However, let’s say you’ve updated Active Directory and the updates in SharePoint still don’t show up. Here’s how to update that information:

1. As a Farm Administrator, navigate to the Central Administration Page

2. Select the Shared Service Provider used to host the site where the user wants to change information

3. Under the User Profiles and My Sites heading, select User Profiles and Properties

Note: You can check the Import schedule for full and incremental. What causes the issue of Profile information not updating is when there is no full import scheduled. SharePoint will “see” the ADUIDs match and won’t update the information. Schedule a full import to allow this process to be automatic

4. From the User Profiles and Properties screen, select View User Profiles

5. Locate the user which you wish to update. Hover over the user to see the dropdown menu. Select Edit from the dropdown menu.

6. From the Edit User Profile screen you will be able to change all profile information for the user.

When done, click Save and Close

Start or Stop a Full Crawl in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

2009-10-12T13:59:00.002-05:00

Sometime the crawl in Windows SharePoint Services gets stuck, doesn’t run or simply misses sites because of other issues (security, configuration, etc.). In MOSS and Search Express, it’s easy to kickoff full crawls when these kinds of problems happen. You would need to initiate a full crawl, because nothing new would be crawled during the outage and when you have resolved your search problems, you would be missing that data in your results.

Thankfully, this one is quite easy. Utilizing the STSADM command out of the hive, you can start and stop full crawls. In some cases, I've even added this as a scheduled windows task to make sure that WSS runs a weekly full crawl.

To start a full crawl of the content, use the following syntax:

Stsadm -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart

To stop a full crawl of the content, use the following syntax:

Stsadm -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstop

Remove Metadata and Personal Information from a document

2009-10-12T13:53:00.002-05:00

So you have collected a lot of Metadata on your Office 2007 document and you are ready to publish the final document and share the document. However, before you share an important document you probably want to review the contents of the document to ensure that everything is correct and the document does not contain anything you do not want to share with other people, especially hidden data or personal information that might be stored in the document itself or in the document properties (metadata). Here’s how to do it:

Open the Office document that you want to inspect for hidden data or personal information.
Click the Microsoft Office Button, click Save As, and then type a name in the File name box to save a copy of your original document.

It is a good idea to use the Document Inspector on a copy of your original document because it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes.

In the copy of your original document, click the Microsoft Office Button, point to Prepare, and then click Inspect Document.
In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the check boxes to choose the types of hidden content that you want to be inspected.
Click Inspect.
Review the results of the inspection in the Document Inspector dialog box.
Click Remove All next to the inspection results for the types of hidden content that you want to remove from your document.

If you remove hidden content from your document, you might not be able to restore it by clicking Undo.

The inspectors for Comments and Annotations, Document Properties and Personal Information, and Headers and Footers cannot be used in an Excel workbook that has been saved as a shared workbook (Review tab, Shared Workbook command). This is because shared workbooks use personal information to enable different people to collaborate on the same workbook. To remove this information from a shared workbook, you can copy the workbook, and then unshare it. To unshare a workbook, on the Review tab, click Shared Workbook. On the Editing tab, clear the Allow changes by more than one user at the same time check box.

SharePoint Versions

2009-07-28T20:28:00.003-05:00

With all of the patches, hotfixes and service packs coming out, its hard to keep track of your farm and it's patch level. It's also difficult to verify what version you should be at after applying patches, hotfixes and service packs. This goes along with another post that I had to show database version and database schema version. Here's the lists of patches and versions up to June:

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 June 2009 Cumulative update: 12.0.0.6510

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 April 2009 Cumulative update: 12.0.0.6504

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Service Pack 2: 12.0.0.6421

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Feb 2009 Cumulative update: 12.0.0.6341

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Aug 2008 Cumulative update: 12.0.0.6327

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Infrastructure Update: 12.0.0.6318

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix: 12.0.0.6303

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix: 12.0.0.6301

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 post-SP1 hotfix: 12.0.0.6300

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 SP1: 12.0.0.6219

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 October public update: 12.0.0.6039

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 August 24, 2007 hotfix package: 12.0.0.6036

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 RTM: 12.0.0.4518

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Beta 2 TR: 12.0.0.4407

MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 Beta 2: 12.0.0.4017

Office 12 (PDC image - pre-beta): 12.0.0.3111

You can go to your Central Administration Operations page and select Servers In Farm to pull your Farm and Server Versions, or you can use Powershell (if it's loaded) and run thi command on each server to pull the version:

(get-item "hklm:software\microsoft\shared tools\web server extensions\12.0").getvalue("version")

project cannot be opened in read-write mode because a previous checkin for this project is not complete

2009-07-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

Problem
You try to open your project in the professional client, but you get a message box saying that the project is already checked out to you (or someone else).
This project cannot be opened in read-write mode because a previous checkin for this project is not complete.

Explanation
This sometimes occurs if:

You close the professional client window with the plan still open inside (by clicking on the x in the top right corner of the window).
The client closes before the check-in process is completed and the project stays checked out.
You shutdown the client via the task manager with a plan still open
You shutdown windows with a running MS Project session.

Resolution
This issue was first addressed with Service Pack 2, but because of the nature of how it is caused, the issue may still occur

Check in the Project Center of Project Web Access

Navigate to Project Web Access
From the Quick Launch Bar, select Project Center, under the Project heading
From the Project Center Screen, change the view to Summary
Scroll the project details to the right to verify Owner, Checked Out Status and Checked Out By information

If the check-out state is "yes", you can request for an administrator to perform a force check-in of your project

To do a force check-in:

Navigate to Project Web Access
From the Quick Launch Bar, select Project Center, under the Project heading
From the Project Center Menu, select Go To
From the drop down, select Check In My Projects
Select the check box next to the project to force check-in and click the Check In button
Give Project Server a couple of minutes to process the transaction before re-trying to open

If your project is not checked out or if you force check-in and continue to receive the error, you will need to clear your project cache:

Start Microsoft Office Project 2007 Professional
Logon to the Microsoft Office Project Server Account
From the Tools menu, select Local Project Cache
From the fly-out menu, select Cleanup Cache
From the default Project Filter (Project not checked out to you) select, your project and click Remove From Cache
If your project does not appear in the default filter, change the Project Filter to Projects checked out to you
Select your project from the list and click Remove From Cache
Click Close
Restart Microsoft Office Project 2007 Professional and try to open your project again

SharePoint Config Wizard fails after Infrastructure Updates

2009-06-01T12:42:00.003-05:00

After building out a new farm and applying the various SharePoint updates, you received the following error after installing the Infrastructure Updates and running the Config wizard:

“An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException was thrown. Additional exception information: Failed to upgrade SharePoint Products and Technologies.”

The reason this happens is because the farm doesn’t have any Web Apps provisioned so the Web.config file which is supposed to be in the 12\template\Layouts folder is missing.

To resolve this, simply copy the Web.config file in the 12\Config folder and paste it into your 12\templates\Layouts. Now run the Config wizard again and everything should work smoothly.

SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 2 Changing SharePoint to Trial Mode After Installation

2009-05-26T14:48:00.004-05:00

More fun from Redmond! Microsoft is warning customers of SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 of a bug that causes the program to stop functioning at 180 days. Microsoft is working on a fix.

"During the installation of SP2, a product expiration date is improperly activated. This means SharePoint will expire as though it was a trial installation 180 days after SP2 is deployed. The activation of the expiration date will not affect the normal function of SharePoint up until the expiration date passes. Furthermore, product expiration 180 days after SP2 installation will not affect customer’s data, configuration or application code but will render SharePoint inaccessible for end-users."

The bug is activated by applying Service Pack 2 to Office SharePoint Server 2007, Project Server 2007, Form Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is not affected.

Although Microsoft is still working on a hotfix, a workaround is available.

What can you do to fix it?

To work around this issue you will need to re-enter your Product ID numbers (PID) on the Convert License Type page in Central Administration. Your can see this KB article for detailed steps.
You can also wait for the hotfix (available for free from http://support.microsoft.com) to resolve this issue.
Note: For Search Server 2008 Express the only way to resolve this issue is to apply the hotfix.

For more information, your customers can go to the Sharepoint Team blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

Register A New Project Workspace Template

2009-05-14T10:40:00.003-05:00

Note, before you can register a New Project Workspace Template, you will need to create one. Be sure that you crate the new template based of the Project Workspace Site template. Make sure you do not modify any of the lists, libraries of column names or types. You can add additional lists and libraries as well as add custom column types and names to any existing lists, but Project Server will expect certain data to be passed from the site to the server. If you change the default values, you will experience failures during project server synchronization

When you are done creating the template, you will want to save the site as a template and then download the site template (*.STP) to a location on the WFE Server that is hosting your project server.

After you create a project workspace template, you must promote it to global status before Project Server allows it to be used for Project Workspace provisioning.

Log on to any one of the servers in the farm that hosts Project Web Access.
Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the hive.

cd %ProgramFiles%"\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN"

Run the command to add the template to the global list of templates, as shown in the following example. Replace Template Path with the location, MyWorkspaceTemplate.stp with the STP created and title with the new title name

stsadm -o addtemplate -filename "

Run the command IISReset. Your new template is now registered for global use within Web applications associated with the SSP that contains the instance of Project Web Access.
To see the list of registered templates, run the command stsadm -o enumtemplates. For the example template, the command outputs the following.

Test Workspace Title - Language: 1033 - Site Template: _GLOBAL_#0 - Template Id: 6215

Embedding Video On Your SharePoint Site

2009-05-13T11:00:00.002-05:00

Have you ever wanted to simply add some video to a landing page in SharePoint? There are a lot of hefty applications out there that do this quite well, utilizing Silverlight and Ajax, but, did you know that you can do this with out of the box SharePoint? It's actually quite simple. Here's how!

Upload a media file to a standard SharePoint Document Library
Navigate to the site where you want to embed the video
Edit the page and select Add a Web Part
Under Miscellaneous, insert a Content Editor Web Part
From the Web select Open the Tool Pane
From Tool Pane, select Source Editor
Copy in the following code (replace http://link to video here with the actual link to the video in the library):

autoplay="true"

loop="false"

width="200"

height="200"

</embed>

</div>

Click Apply. Its just a matter of formatting after that!

iFilter Not Working After Applying Microsoft Update

2009-04-29T20:19:00.002-05:00

After applying any Microsoft Update, in this case we were applying the February Cumulative patches for WSS and SharePoint, that your Foxit PDF IFilter has stopped working. I'll wait while you go perform a search and notice you are not getting the expected results. You can even build the index and notice that it's building in record time!

Well, the resolution for this is quite simple. First get your install documentation that you originally used to install Foxit PDF IFilter and make sure you note the way that your IFilter is currently configured. Now, all you need to do is uninstall the Foxit PDF IFilter and reinstall. If you attempt to just reinstall/repair you will get error messages.

Sharepoint 2007 version query

2009-04-27T11:35:00.004-05:00

Ok, so you might wonder how to tell what version your Sharepoint 2007 farm is? Sometimes the Central Admin screen can show one thing, while dll's show a different thing, and even running a patch to completion doesn't necessarily mean you were upgraded (I found that out the hard way). The best way for sure is to query the database, and it will tell you where you started, where you've been and where you are currently.

Run this query against your SharePoint Config Database:

SELECT version FROM .dbo.versions

You will see several lines in the results, hopefully more than 4, if you dont see 5 at least, you need some patches in a bad way. Here are some of the results you may see for cumulative updates and service packs.

Service Pack 1

Version: 12.0.0.6219

3.0.7.0 (initial Database Schema)

3.0.10.0 (Current databas schema)

Service Pack 2

Version: 12.0.0.6421

3.0.8.0 (initial Database Schema)

3.1.3.0 (Current Database schema)

April Cumulative

12.0.0.6504

3.0.8.0 (initial Database Schema)

3.0.10.0 (Current Database schema)

Cascading Dropdown Lists in InfoPath 2007

2009-04-02T12:48:00.002-05:00

This one has come up a couple of times for me. Basically, it’s the need to create a series of filtered drop-down lists in an InfoPath form that ultimately populates a read-only text box control. A logical example would be choosing a car manufacturer, then selecting the car type and then color and finally putting the price in the test box. Here’s a simple method of doing this exact thing using some simple XML and InfoPath 2007. Keep in mind through this exercise, I’m going to present it the long way to make it easier to understand.

Open InfoPath 2007
Under the Design a form heading, select Design a Form Template
Select Blank and then click OK. Make sure you UNCHECK the box next to, Enable Browser-compatible features only before clicking OK
From the Design Tasks Pane, select Controls
Insert two (2) Drop-Down List Box controls and one (1) Text Box control. Note: you can either drag and drop the controls onto the form page, or you can simply click on the control to have it automatically insert. You can change the formatting later. At this point, if you click on Controls, in the Design Task pane, you can select Data Sources. You will notice a Main data source with a group folder called myFields. Under the group folder you will notice the fields which were entered above, automatically created, automatically named and the data types defaultedto text. These data fields are uniquely bound to each control inserted.
Double-click on the first Drop-Down List Box control, which should be named field1 as default, to open the Drop-Down List Box Properties
With List box entries set to Enter list box entries manually, click Add…
Add, Ford and then GM and then Lexus, then click OK
Now, open a Microsoft Notepad (click Start->All Programs->Accessories->Notepad), this seems to be the easiest method to put the XML datasource together. What we want to be able to do is filter on the manufacturer Drop-Down List that you defined above as Ford, GM or Lexus. What we want to return is the model and then the price for that model. For this exercise, we’ll use four (4) XML tags, as follows. NOTE: XML Tags are useually in pairs, an opening and closing tag, referred to as a tag pair. All data that belongs to a specific element will be appearing within this tag pair. In our case, we will be embedding tag pairs within tag pairs to define data all the way to the price:

<AUTOINDUSTRY></AUTOINDUSTRY>
<AUTOMODELS></AUTOMODELS>
<MODEL></MODEL>
<PRICE></PRICE>
We’ll also use a tag called AUTOMAKER that will be defined later.

Now we can setup the XML in the Notepad to be able to filter data and return a value, in this case the price. First we’ll add the filters for Manufacturer, but we need to format the XML tags. First put in the AUTOINDUSTRY tag pair. This will represent the start and finish of the XML:

Now Insert the AUTOMODELS tag pair inside the AUTOINDUSTRY tag pair. Between these tags is where the logic we are going to use will be embedded:

Now we need to setup the filters from the dropdown selection from the list we created earlier, this is also where we define the AUTOMAKER tag listed above:

Next we’ll add the models tag pair for the selected manufacturer inside the AUTOINDUSTRY tag pair

<MODEL>Mustang</MODEL>
</AUTOMODELS>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="GM">

<MODEL>Corvette</MODEL>
</AUTOMODELS>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="Lexus">

Finally, we’ll add the price for the selected model

<AUTOINDUSTRY>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="Ford">
<MODEL>Mustang</MODEL>
<PRICE>20,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="GM">
<MODEL>Corvette</MODEL>
<PRICE>30,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="Lexus">
<MODEL>IS</MODEL>
<PRICE>30,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>
</AUTOINDUSTRY>

To add multiple Models, we’ll have to copy an entire AUTOMODELS tag, we’ll add one for this example:

<AUTOINDUSTRY>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="Ford">
<MODEL>Mustang</MODEL>
<PRICE>20,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>

<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="Ford">
<MODEL>Focus</MODEL>
<PRICE>10,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="GM">
<MODEL>Corvette</MODEL>
<PRICE>30,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>
<AUTOMODELS AUTOMAKER="Lexus">
<MODEL>IS</MODEL>
<PRICE>30,000</PRICE>
</AUTOMODELS>
</AUTOINDUSTRY>

Now, save the file that you’ve been working on to your local machine and name it auto.xml
Back in the InfoPath form, double-click the second drop down control, which should be field2 and to open the Drop-Down List Box Properties box
Under List Box Entries, select Look up values from an external data source and then click Add
Select Create a new connection to: and select Receive data and click Next
Select XML Document and click Next
Click Browse and then select the auto.xml file we created earlier and click Next
Select Include the data as a resource file in the form template or template part and click next
Enter the name auto in the field provided for Enter a name for this data connection and check the box next to Automatically retrieve data when form is opened and click Finish
Next to Entries, back on the Drop-Down List Box Properties, click the Select XPath button (this looks like a little + with a document next to it, just to the right of the box)
On the Select a Field or Group popup, select AUTOMODELS and then click Filter Data…
Add a new filter, by clicking Add…
Change the first dropdown box to AUTOMAKER. This is the tag we created earlier in the XML file. This will compare what has been selected to what is in the XML file for filtering purposes.
The second drop down should be is equal to
On the third drop down select, Select a field or group
Change data source to Main and select field1 and click OK
The third drop down should now display field1, click OK to accept the filter rule
Click OK to accept the new filter
Click OK to accept the Xpath
Click the XPath button next to Value and change it to PRICE and click OK
Click the XPath button next to Display Name and change it to MODEL and click OK
Click OK to accept the new property changes.
Finally, on the Text Box, double click on it to open the Text Box properties, this should be field3
Next to Value, select the Xpression button to open the formula box (this should look like an F with a small x to the right of the box)
Click Insert Field or Group and select field2 from the Main data source
Click OK, to accept the selection
Click OK to accept the formula
Click Apply to accept the changes
You can now click the Preview button to test the form or you can also click File->Preview->Form, which will do the same thing

What you have essentially done is, setup one dropdown list loaded with values. Based on the selection that you make on that initial drop down list, you are comparing it to values in the XML, in this case AUTOMODELS. Every instance of AUTOMODELS which matches the selection from the initial drop down list is then pushed into the second drop down. Then, based on your selection of that filtered list, an additional value is pulled, in this case, the price that we set on the models. We then display the model to the user and store the price as the value. Finally, we pass the set value into the text box to display the price.

Additionally, you can set some conditional formatting on the second drop down to disable the control if the first drop down is blank. You could also change the display properties on the Text Box to make it read-only. In this manner, the user would have to select a manufacturer before they could select a model and there’s no way for them to change the price. You can also do some formatting to clean up the value in the second dropdown to render information that's relevant to the first choice. Good Luck!

PerformancePoint to be included with SharePoint 2007 Enterprise!

2009-03-24T09:34:00.000-05:00

Microsoft’s vision for Business Intelligence has always been about pervasive access to information. Having more people access the right information enables smarter, timelier decisions, stronger collaboration on projects, facilitates accountability throughout the organization, and propels the company forward.

As part of this vision, PerformancePoint scorecarding and dashboarding capabilities will now become part of SharePoint Enterprise CAL and available to customers who are on SharePoint SA. This means that customers who want to deploy PerformancePoint can do so today at no additional cost.

In mid 2009, Microsoft will release PerformancePoint Server 2007 “service pack 3” which will include updates to the current product’s planning module. This change will enable customers to deploy a complete BI solution with existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel.

Whereas SharePoint is tremendously successful, Microsoft PerformancePoint never reached the BI for the masses stage. Not all organizations who license MOSS throw their non Microsoft BI solution overboard tomorrow, but many will consider replacing existing solutions overtime with PerformancePoint. At the same time there will be a huge boost in favor of Microsoft for new, to be developed solutions.

The downside of the move is that some essential parts of the BI Microsoft stack are eliminated. Ask every user who used the ProClarity Desktop Professional and he or she will tell you it is one of the best clients for the BI professional business user. Although Microsoft always had in mind to "kill" ProClarity's "fat" client, Excel is not the answer for many Enterprise BI solutions.

The desktop solution has been one an essential piece of the puzzle winning deals. If that functionality does not come back into Microsoft’s new BI roadmap, it opens the door for the competition to deliver BI in the Enterprise space.

401.1 Errors with Reporting Services and CNAMES in Windows 2003 SP1

2009-03-18T13:55:00.000-05:00

The first part of this is a republish from an earlier 401.1 post, but this also relates to Reporting Services with CNAMEs. So, rather than a lot of jumping around, I’ve decided to just post the duplicate to make this resolution easier. Keep in mind that I’ve added the step to reboot the server after each step. If you are doing all three, wait until the end to reboot and mitigate your downtime.

The first error is the 401.1 when you browse a Web site that uses Integrated Authentication and is hosted on IIS 5.1 or IIS 6. This pertains to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) which included a loopback check security feature designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.

Resolution: Disable the loopback check
Follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
4. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
6. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
8. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer

The next problem is when a client computer connects to a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer by using an alias name, the client may receive additional 401.1 errors or something like:

System error 52 has occurred.
A duplicate name exists on the network.

This problem can occur when you try to connect to the server by using a CNAME alias that is created in the DNS zone. The server is not "listening" on the alias, and therefore is not accepting connections to that name.

Resolution: Disable Strict name Checking
Follow these steps:
1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and click the following key in the registry:
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
4. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
5. Value name: DisableStrictNameChecking
6. Data type: REG_DWORD
7. Radix: Decimal
8. Value: 1
9. Quit Registry Editor.
10. Restart your computer.

For Reporting Services using cname, you need to do these last steps:

Edit the RSWebApplication.config file to update the report server URL, that Report Manager uses to connect to the report server:

Delete the default entry in ReportServerVirtualDirectory
Type the new URL using host headers in ReportServerURL
The configuration should look like this:

http://myhostheader/reportserver

Edit the reportserver.config file to update the report server URL, that Report Server uses to connect:
Replace the URLRoot tag with the CNAME
The configuration should look like this:

http://myhostheader/reportserver

Resources Checked Out And Won't Sync

2009-03-13T10:42:00.002-05:00

This is an oldie, but a goodie! Suppose you have an automated or manually initiated Active Directory Synchronization, either on your Groups or Resource Pool. During synchronization you get a failure on a resource. The next time you try to synchronize, you get more failures, similar to this one:

Standard Information:PSI Entry Point:
Project User: DOMAINNAME\username
Correlation Id: c79f3275-d271-4d4d-b052-b5e641003f5d
PWA Site URL: http://servername/projectserver
SSP Name: SharedServices1
PSError: Success (0)
Changes were detected for a resource during Project Server Active Directory Synchronization. However, the changes could not be applied because the resource could not be checked out. The checkout failed because the resource is checked out to another user. Resource GUID: 413baade-8372-493b-b271-c417c2852d53

What’s happened is that during the process, the system will (1) check-out, (2) modify and (3) check-in the resource. However, on the first failure, the resource never got checked in. You can go to the Force Enterprise Check In and notice that the resource in question isn’t in the list as you’d expect. Don’t Panic! Here’s what to do:

Note: You will need access to the SQL Server Management Studio and an account that can write to the database to do the following:

Start a new Query
Select ProjectServer_Published (or whatever you named the Published DB)
In the query type in the following to check back in the resources:

UPDATE MSP_RESOURCES
SET RES_CHECKOUTBY = NULL
WHERE RES_UID in (
SELECT
RES_UID
FROM MSP_Resources
WHERE RES_CHECKOUTBY = ‘00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000′)

How To Reset A Zune

2009-03-13T09:16:00.002-05:00

Zune?? Yes, they are still out there and in my opinion, they still rock! Seriously though, one of the problems that seems to keep coming up is that the player locks up and there's no escape. So when you get locked up, what do you do? There's the reset which is bacically holding the Back button (<-) at the same time as you press and hold the top of the Zune Pad. This would be the same as turning your Zune off and On (reboot). However, sometimes you need to just start over and resync all your data. There are two methods to do this listed below. Remember...if you use the methods below, it WILL erase your Zune...

Soft reset: (Erases all content)
Press and hold the Back button (<-) at the same time as you press and hold the top of the Zune Pad. When the Zune device begins to power up, release the buttons.

Now as soon as you release these buttons you must enter a second combination of buttons so immediately press and hold the Back button at the same time as you press both the right side of the Zune Pad and the Play/Pause button. Continue to hold these buttons until your Zune device restarts and "Please wait" appears on the screen.

Hard reset: (Erases all content & firmware)
Press and hold the Back button (<-) at the same time as you press and hold the top of the Zune Pad. When the Zune device begins to power up, release the buttons.

Now as soon as you release these buttons you must enter a second combination of buttons so immediately press and hold the Back button at the same time as you press both the left side of the Zune Pad and the Play/Pause button. Continue to hold these buttons until your Zune device restarts and "Please wait" appears on the screen.

How-to Rezise Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)

2009-03-09T17:15:00.004-05:00

One of the problems that I face is dealing with Virtual Machines that were created with no expansion in mind. I’m talking, of course, about virtual hard drives that are incorrectly sized. Before we get started, let me just say, the best rule of thumb…make your hard drives much larger than you think you’ll need, but make them expand dynamically. Yeah, you will have a hit on disk performance as it expands, but it’s negligible and much easier than having to try to resize.

Having said that, let’s get started. You will need a couple of things to get this done. First you will need the VHD Resizer tool, located here: http://vmtoolkit.com/files/default.aspx. You will need to register, but totally worth it for the tool. Second, make sure you have your Virtual Environment along with 1-1/2 times more space than your current VHDD. This is because you will need to have a temporary second drive to get through this process (it’ll make sense in a bit).

Creating unallocated space

Once you download the VHD Resizer tool, unzip it and run the installer (.msi)
You should find a folder called vmToolKit in your start menu, select the vhdResizer application to get it started
You should be prompted to select the VHD to resize, navigate to and select your VHD
You should now be at the main application page of the VHD Resizer
On the Destination Vhd, select Save As
You should be able to create a folder on the popup screen, create one and call it New VHD
Navigate to the New VHD folder and type in a name for your new VHD and select, Save
Now, make sure you select Dynamic next to Type. This will create a new VHD the same size as the one you have now, except, it will also provision the additional space you will request in the next step
Type in the New Size for your new drive. Because you have selected Dynamic above, your new HDD will be the same size but have additional unallocated space available. We’ll reallocate that space later. Be sure to put in a large enough number, like 120GB or something
Click Resize to start (this will take some time…go get caffeine)

Getting your new space

Start your Virtual PC Console
Select your old VPC and open the configuration Settings
Select Hard Disk 2 and then browse to the New VHD folder where you made the new VHD
Select the new VHD and then select Open and then OK to close the Settings. NOTE: Now you should have the old VHD still attached as the primary drive and the new VHD (created above) attached as the secondary. This means that your Virtual Machine will boot as the old VHD being the primary and the new VHD being the secondary. It’s important that your new VHD is your secondary and not the bootable drive
Start your Virtual Machine and login
Start the Disk Management tool (right-click on My Computer and select Manage)
Select Disk Management. At this point, if you get an error “Unable to Logical Disk Manager Service”, you will need to go to your services and locate the Local Disk Manager Service. Make sure it’s startup type is Automatic and that the service is Started. You will have to restart your Disk Management tool in order for this to take effect

You should see two disks on this screen, Disk 0 (the old VHD) and Disk 1 (the new VHD). Disk 1 will also display the new amount of unallocated space

Right click the active space on the new VHD and select Change Drive Letter and Paths…

Click Add and then Assign the following drive letter. In my case, I’m selecting E:

Open a command prompt (click Start->Run->Type CMD->Click OK)

In the command prompt, type diskpart. You should see the prompt display DISKPART>

Type in List Volume and hit Enter.

From the list locate your new VHD by the Ltr which you assigned it. In my case, E

Select your VHD to modify by typing in the command: Select Note: Volume will be the volume number to the left of the Ltr for your new VHD. In my case, E is next to Volume 1, so my syntax will be Select Volume 1. You should see the response; Volume 1 is the selected volume.

Once selected, type in the command: Extend. This should take a minute with the response, DiskPart successfully extended the volume

Go back to the Disk Management and you will now notice that your new VHD has all of its disk space allocated

Shutdown your Virtual Computer

Go back to your Virtual PC Console and back to the Settings

Select Hard Disk 2 and select None to dismount it

Now select Hard Disk 1 and browse to the new VHD, the one in the New VHD folder and select it, then click Open and then OK to select it as your new drive

Start your virtual machine with the new VHD, this will have to go to a reboot as the system has to account for the new space

At this point, you are done. You have a new resized VHD that will dynamically grow as you use it and you can (if you want) delete the old VHD

InfoPath 2007 Can't Publish to SharePoint Site

2009-03-03T14:31:00.004-06:00

This is an interesting error that was a little difficult to resolve. Here are some troubleshooting tips:

Make sure you are publishing to the root. For example, don't publish to http://servername/sites/, but to http://servername/.
Make sure you are not trying to publish to a Form Base Authentication Site. If you are using Form Based Authentication, then you probably have client integration disabled.
Make sure that you have a site at the root. When you create a publish site, this should happen, but if it doesn’t, you can do the following:

Go to your Central Administration
Then navigate to your Application Management
Select Create Site Collection
Select your Web Application

Next to the Specify Web Site Address, take out the managed path (i.e. change “/sites/” to “/”). If you don’t see the “/” root option, then your site is created and this isn’t your problem.

Select a team site and click create.

The error that we finally found was because this particular farm was slated to be a public facing web host. Therefore, it had a URL scan (urlscan.ini) enabled on the web-front ends. In this case under the [AllowVerbs] section of the URLSCAN, the OPTIONS and PUT were missing. By simply adding those two variables and rebooting the server, this resolved the problem.

The OPTIONS verb is a very simple verb that just asks the server to enumerate the other verbs its capable of, like GET, PUT, POST, etc. InfoPath uses this request to find out if the URL has SharePoint installed or not. That's why blocking this verb causes an error in InfoPath. Allowing OPTIONS through URLScan should have no security implications at all, since it is a general information request only.

SharePoint Administration Toolkit 3.0 Released

2009-03-02T14:09:00.001-06:00

The new SharePoint Administration Toolkit is now available. The is quite a bit of really useful tools to help manage, monitor and diagnose your SharePoint Farm!

The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help manage Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. This toolkit contains the ability to diagnose performance issues, perform bulk operations on site collections, an Stsadm operation to update alert e-mails after the URL for a Web application has been changed, and a User Profile Replication Engine tool.

Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x86
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=412a9ef1-3358-4420-b820-0ca3f4641651&displaylang=en

Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x64
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BE58D769-2516-43CB-9890-3F79304528FF&displaylang=en

Timesheet Classifications and Timesheet Import

2009-02-18T11:54:00.001-06:00

A new feature in Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 from 2003 is the Timesheet feature. Although, this a really cool feature, the design falls short in terms of actually getting the time from a timesheet into a task and then getting those tasks approved by Project or Assignment Managers. I won’t get into the whole, import Timesheet or how to programmatically automate the import and submit method, but if that’s something you want to do, there’s a great starter solution available on CodePlex by Christophe Fiessinger: http://www.codeplex.com/AutoStatusService

Timesheet Classifications are something that a Project Server Administrator can customize/add to their hearts content. Then, when a user goes to their PWA Timesheet and Adds a Task, they have the option to select a different classification other than Standard. So, why would you want to do this? Well suppose you want to duplicate timesheet lines for business purposes or accounting reasons. You would setup the specific classifications, then add tasks with the same name to your timesheet, but select a different classification each time. These duplicate tasks names with different classification names will become the unique identifier for a timesheet line.

The intention for multiple classifications can be used for business analysis of time related to the task that was not productive as far as working the task. So you may have spent 2 hours traveling to perform a task - and you may bill the customer, but this wasn't something directly related to performing the task - and in this scenario was not included in the planned time to perform the task. There are probably better ways to handle this scenario, but this is just an example.

Sounds great huh? Wrong! Here’s the caveat. When you use the Import Timesheets through the My Task section in PWA, only Standard timesheet classifications will appear, and only those tasks will be allowed to be imported. This is by design and is not a functional bug.
.
So, if you’ve gone down the rabbit hole or customization against the timesheet utilizing the web services via PSI, or if you’ve decided to create a custom timesheet interface that overlays Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Timesheet functionality and you are utilizing classifications for various things, like unverified timesheet line items or to allow duplicate tasks for different departments, you have probably seen this error.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Project Server Timesheet
Event ID: 7851
Date: 2/16/2009
Time: 1:10:43 PM
User: N/A
Computer: EPMSERVER
Description:
Standard Information:PSI Entry Point: Statusing.ImportTimesheet
Correlation Id: ead69630-b9b5-43f2-b7d7-81eade40b8ff
SSP Name: SharedServices1
PSError: TimesheetIncorrectPeriod (3208)
Timesheet period used '(null)' is invalid.

This is caused because programmatically, the ImportTimesheet method for the Statusing web services doesn’t know how to filter for only Standard classifications. So, what’s happening is that the system is trying to do something that it can’t do and therefore throws the error causing the time for that task to fail and come up missing. Change those lines back to Standard and try concatenating the tasks programmatically to create unique tasks and importing should work.

401.1 when you browse a Web site that uses Integrated Authentication and is hosted on IIS 5.1 or IIS 6

2009-02-18T09:45:00.005-06:00

This is a problem that also happens when you programatically try to manupulate data utilizing web services, such as PSI. The error isn't always apparent right away or even with minimal useage on the system. But, if your farm gets hammered, it'll show up pretty quick. This will also cause things like Profile Synchronization, Indexing and Crawling to fail.

You may see an error that like these:

HTTP 401.1 - Unauthorized: Logon Failed
Event id 2436: 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)
Access is denied. Verify that either the Default Content Access Account has access to this repository, or add a crawl rule to crawl this repository. If the repository being crawled is a SharePoint repository, verify that the account you are using has "Full Read" permissions on the SharePoint Web Application being crawled. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)
Error while trying to run project: Unable to start debugging on the web server. You do not have permissions to debug the server. Verify that you are a member of the 'Debugger Users' group on the server.

This issue occurs if you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 include a loopback check security feature that is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, authentication fails if the FQDN or the custom host header that you use does not match the local computer name.

The workaround for this issue is to disable the the loopback check or specifiy the host names. The following describes how these are accomplished, keeping in mind that Method 1 seems to be the best method with the best results:

Method 1: Disable the loopback check Follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value
Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER
Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer

Method 2: Specify host names

To specify the host names that are mapped to the loopback address and can connect to Web sites on your computer, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value

Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER
Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify
In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer, and then click OK
Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IISAdmin service

More information can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896861

Configuring the Office Project Server 2007 Cube Building Service

2009-02-18T09:02:00.005-06:00

Can't get your cube to build in your shiney new environment? Well, don't dispair, this is actually a common problem! It's a pretty easy fix, but you will need a SQL 2000 disk, to finish this proceedure, so hopefully, you have one laying around. Yes, I said SQL 2000 (x86 or x64), that wasn't a misprint or fat finger! I listed these steps in the order they need to be done. So, sit back, relax...and here we go!

Security Requirements
The Application Server (PSI Server) Queue service will be running using the SSP credentials, entered when setting up the SSP instance. The Analysis Services service, used to build the cubes, should be running under the same account or an account running that would need to have read access to the Reporting database.
If multiple PWA instances are created and their cubes are built on the same Analysis Services machine, the recommendation is for administrators to create a single windows account that will run the Analysis Services service, as follow:

Go to the machine where Analysis Services is installed
Go to the Computer Management window
Right click on ‘My Computer’ and select Manage
Select Services under ‘Services and Applications’
Select the Analysis Services (OLAP) service
Right-click on it and select Properties
Select the Log On tab and enter the credentials that will have read access to the Reporting database of all of the PWA instances

The same account used to run the Analysis Services service will need to have read access to all of the PWA instances that plan to build their cubes on that Analysis Service.

Application Server
This applies to all of the WFEs that are running Microsoft Office Project Server 2007. But, it would be a good idea to do this on all WFEs, so if one of your Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 servers go down, you can easly spin up another one.

The Application Server must have the Analysis Services DSO (Decision Support Object) component installed.
To install the Decision Support Objects for Analysis Services

Run the SQL Server Installation Wizard.
On the End User License Agreement page, read the license agreement and then select the check box to accept the licensing terms and conditions. Click Next.
On the SQL Server Component Update page, setup installs software required for SQL Server 2005. To begin the component update process, click Install. To continue after the update completes, click Finish.
On the Welcome page, click Next.
If you will build the cubes in Analysis Services 2005, this component can be obtained by running the installation setup for Analysis Service, and selecting the Client Component to be installed.

If the cubes will be built on Analysis Services 2005, you need to install the following components:

Microsoft SQL Server Native Client (sqlncli.msi)
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Management Objects Collection (sqlserver2005_xmo.msi)
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components (SQLServer2005_BC.msi)
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft ADOMD.NET (SQLServer2005_ADOMD.msi)

These components can be downloaded from the Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – February 2007 release, available here: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=50B97994-8453-4998-8226-FA42EC403D17&displaylang=en

Analysis Services
If running Analysis Services 2005, the following setup steps are required:

Add the user account running the Queue service at the Application Server to the OLAP Admin Group
Give administrative access to the OLAP Admin Group to the “\bin” folder

If running Analysis Services 2005 (Service Pack 1 is required), you need to setup a repository for DSO to write to. If you have migrated the Analysis Services 2000 repository to the Analysis Services 2005 server, no additional steps are required.
The instructions below detail how to migrate the repository or create a new one:

On the server with Analysis Services 2005 installed, go to \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\OLAP
Create a directory called ‘DSO9’
Share it as MSOLAPREPOSITORY$
Give the SQLServer2005MSOLAPUser$MSSQLSERVER administrative access to the share
Copy the file msmdrep.mdb into the DSO9 directory previously created. This file can be found in the Analysis Services 2000, and by copying it to this directory you will be migrating it to Analysis Services 2005. If you don’t have an Analysis Services 2000 server, you should create a new (empty) .mdb file and add it to the DSO9 directory (you should use the name above or edit the section below).
Navigate to the \Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.x\Config directory
Edit msmdsrv.ini file and replace DSO section with the following (make sure to change the text in red to your specific environment variables):

<DSO>
<RemoteRepositoryConnectionString>Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
Data Source=\\<MACHINENAME>\MSOLAPRepository$\msmdrep.mdb;
Persist Security Info=False
</RemoteRepositoryConnectionString>
<RepositoryConnectionString>
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
Data Source=x:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.x\OLAP\DSO9\msmdrep.mdb;
Persist Security Info=False
</RepositoryConnectionString>
<RemoteLocksDirectory>
\\<MACHINENAME>\MSOLAPRepository$
</RemoteLocksDirectory>
<LocksDirectory>
x:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.x\OLAP\DSO9
</LocksDirectory>
</DSO>

Internet Explorerer Settings
Make sure that the URL to your almost complete Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 PWA site is in the Trusted Zone of your Internet Security. You will then need to follow the final steps to be able to setup and build the cube.

Open Internet Explorer, click Tools, and then click Internet Options.
Click the Security tab, click the zone that you use to connect to the Office Project Server 2007, and then click Custom Level.
Under Access data sources across domains, select Enable.

Note: If you set the security setting to Prompt, you cannot use the Office Web Components when you create a data analysis view.

Rebuild the Project Server Reporting Database

2008-12-29T11:42:00.002-06:00

In a previous post, I discussed patching the Project Server 2007 farm to resolve several issues in the server and client side applications. The patching process is quite lengthy, but resolves a lot of common issues, even if you haven’t noticed them. One of the issues which is resolved is Project Server Reporting not matching what is in Project Server Published. You might notice this in a timesheet comparison report or if you are comparing timesheet actual time to actual time in the project plan.

Once you have patched the server, you can simply rebuild the Project Server Reporting database. Keep in mind that although this is a simple process, it can take a long time and is very resource intensive…so after hours or weekends.

So, here’s how to do it:
Create a backup
1. Logon to the Project Web Access Site as a PWA Administrator
2. From the Quick Launch menu, select Server Settings
3. Under the Database Administration heading, select Administrative Backup. Note, we are going to initiate a restore to trigger the rebuild, so we are backing up to make sure we have the latest information and not overwrite the environment with older information.
4. Select Enterprise Custom Fields and select Backup

You can check the Queue to make sure the job completed successfully.
1. From the Server Settings screen, under the Queue heading, select Manage Queue
2. Click the ‘+’ next to Job Completion States to expand the section
3. From the Available Job States, select Success and then Add>
4. From the Job Grid select Refresh Status
5. You should see a Job Type named Archive Custom Fields with a Job State of Success and % of 100%

Perform a Restore
1. Once your backup job has completed, from the Server Settings screen, under the Database Administration heading, select Administrative Restore
2. From the Item, select Enterprise Custom Fields and click Restore

You can check the Queue to make sure the job completed successfully.
1. From the Server Settings screen, under the Queue heading, select Manage Queue
2. Click the ‘+’ next to Job Completion States to expand the section
3. From the Available Job States, select Success and then Add>
4. From the Job Grid select Refresh Status
5. You should see the following Job Types named:

Restore Custom Fields
Reporting Database Refresh
Reporting (Fiscal Periods Sync)
Reporting (Resources Capacity Range Sync

When all of the job types have completed 100% Successful, then your Project Server Reporting Database has been rebuilt. At this point, all of your data between Project Server Published and Reporting should match.

Patching Project Server 2007 in a MOSS 2007 Farm

2008-12-29T11:31:00.002-06:00

Ever wanted to fix the little problems that occur in a Project Server 2007 Farm running on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? Of course, when I say little problems, I'm talking about missing time, bad actuals in a project plan, MS Project Pro crashing, the Reporting database not matching the Published...those kinds of things. ...grumble... Well, here's the patching list in the order that the patches should be installed. Note that you may have to request a great deal of these, but thankfully Microsoft has made that process a bit easier. You'll also note that I start with SP1 and nothing earlier. This is because SP1 is a nice cumulative rollup, you can now get MOSS and Project Server with SP1 and some of the patches prior to SP1 don’t play well with it. You will need to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard after each installation.

One more thing, make sure that you have full internet access before attempting this patching sequence. There are some checks that the patch process performs that require internet access. If you don’t have it, you could have some failed installations and Project Server Services not starting.

Finally, I’ve also included the patching process for Project Professional 2007. If you simply patch the servers and fail to patch the client, then you will continue to have problems. Also note that this patching process will help keep a myriad of issues from happening, but won’t necessarily go back and fix problems that have already happened. Those fixes need to be handled on a per-issue scenario.

Office Server System
KB936988: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1
wssv3sp1-kb936988-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB936988

KB936984: 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 1
officeserver2007sp1-kb936984-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB936984

KB941426: Project Server 2007 post-Service Pack 1 hotfix
office-kb941426-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB941426

KB950816: Project Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb950816-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB950816

KB951169: Project Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb951169-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB951169

KB952000: Project Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb952000-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB952000

KB951695: Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
infrastructureupdateforwindowssharepointservices3.0-kb951695-fullfile-x86.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB951695

KB951297: Microsoft Office Servers Infrastructure Update
infrastructureupdateformicrosoftofficeservers-kb951297-fullfile-x86.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951297

KB956057: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix
wss-kb956057-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB956057

KB956056: SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb956056-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB956056

KB956061: Project Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb956061-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB956061

KB957691: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
wss-kb957691-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB957691

KB957693: SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb957693-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB957693

KB957696: Project Server 2007 hotfix
office-kb957696-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB957696

KB960010: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package
wss-kb960010-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB960010

KB960011: SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package
office-kb960011-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB960011

KB960313: Project Server 2007 hotfix
Office-kb960313-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960313

Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007
KB937154: Project 2007 Service Pack 1
project2007sp1-kb937154-fullfile-en-us.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB937154

KB950480: Project 2007 post-Service Pack 1 hotfix
office-kb950480-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB950480

KB951166: Project 2007 hotfix
office-kb951166-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB951166

KB952067: Project 2007 hotfix
office-kb952067-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB952067

KB951547: Project 2007 Infrastructure Update
infrastructureupdateformicrosoftofficeproject2007-kb951547-fullfile-x86.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB951547

KB956060: Project 2007 hotfix
office-kb956060-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB956060

KB958138: Project 2007 hotfix
office-kb958138-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB958138

KB959643: Project 2007 hotfix
office-kb959643-fullfile-x86-glb.exe
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB959643

Automatically logon to your machine!

2008-12-23T08:45:00.001-06:00

If you are like me then you use a lot of virtual machines (a lot). To make it easier to load up these virtual machines and get started right away, I’ve found it very convenient to have them automatically logon during boot. So, here’s an easy way to set that up. This will work with any machine, not just virtual environment, so, if you have a home office that you want to turn on in the morning while you get coffee, this will work too.

Note: The account that you are going to use to logon must have a password for this to work

From the machine that you which to automate logon
1. Click Start and then Run

2. Type in regedit, to start the Registry Editor. Note: This can also be accomplished by opening the executable: C:\WINDOWS\system32\regedt32.exe

3. Navigate to the this location: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

4. Change the DefaultDomainName vaule to match the domain you want to authenticate against. If don't have a domain and want to logon to the local machine, type in the computer name.

5. Change the DefaultUserName to the user you want to automatically logon as

6. Change the DefaultPassword to match the password for the user you are logging on as. If you do not see the DefaultPassword key, you will need to add it.
a. From the dropdown menu, select Edit and then New
b. From the flyout menu, select String Value
c. Name the new key DefaultPassword
d. Double click on the new key, DefaultPassword
e. Type in the password to match the username used above

7. Change the AutoAdminLogon vaule to 1. If you do not see the AutoAdminLogon key, you will need to add it.
a. From the dropdown menu, select Edit and then New
b. From the flyout menu, select String Value
c. Name the new key AutoAdminLogon
d. Double click on the new key, AutoAdminLogon
e. Type in 1

How to convert PowerPoint to DVD

2008-12-23T07:37:00.004-06:00

Did you even want to convert a PowerPoint presentation to DVD (using all free third-party software)? Unfortunately, there is no single free application that will accomplish this; however there are other options that you could take to achieve PowerPoint to DVD conversion using all free apps.

First, you'll need to convert your PowerPoint to a video format, in this case, AVI.
EM PowerPoint to Video Converter Free

The free version of this program will convert your PowerPoint presentation into a video file, and can output to a good variety of video formats (e.g. WMV, AVI, MPG; it can even output to BMP images).

The program works by “virtually” opening your presentation using PowerPoint, and recording the output to video. This program will let you specify (a) the size of the desired output video from a good number of options; (b) whether you want an auto transition between slides or the option to manually go through the presentation and record; and (c) if auto transition, how many seconds to display each slide. It will also let you specify an audio file to use with your video or if recording your presentation manually will also allow you to alternately record an audio/commentary track using a microphone (note: this function is actually available inside PowerPoint).

Experiment first to see if everything works out as you want it to. This program installs a media player and DVD burner in the program directory, and these cannot be uninstalled seperately. The DVD burner component, moreover, requires VOB or MPG files as inputs to author a DVD, so we won't be using this application.

Second, we'll burn the AVI to DVD
DVD Flick

DVD Flick is a free DVD authoring program that can use videos from a wide variety of formats as input and burn DVDs that will run on any DVD player.

This program is extremely easy to use; all you have to do is add your converted videos (accepts many formats), title your project, and change any settings that you want (including picking a display template for the main menu, see below). Note that the program will use the names of the files you use as titles for the eventual videos on your DVD, so you might want to rename these appropriately before adding them to DVD Flick.

Windows XP given 4 months to live

2008-12-23T07:27:00.000-06:00

The final shipment date of Microsoft's aged, yet distinctively non-Vista (and working) operating system has been extended. System builders can now obtain Windows XP until May 30, 2009.
Windows XP was originally scheduled for end-of-life on January 31, 2009. That deadline was delayed to mid-2010, provided the Windows XP licenses were for netbooks and low-cost PCs that can't handle Windows Vista.

Microsoft has a problem, though, given the popular opinion of Windows Vista ranks just below Typhoid Mary in terms of "must-have" status. PC makers selling larger systems have been working around the January 2009 Windows XP expiration date by offering Windows-Vista-loaded machines with an option to downgrade to Windows XP.

Under the new, four-month extension, PC makers must still purchase licenses before January 31, but can choose to have the licenses delivered through May 30, 2009. This is apparently a move to keep system builders from stockpiling licenses at least until Microsoft can shove early versions of Windows 7 (...grumble...) out the door in late 2009.

Backup Internet Explorer Settings

2008-12-23T07:18:00.003-06:00

Have you ever wanted to backup Internet Explorer's settings? Now, there's a third-party tool that will do just that: Backrex Internet Explorer

The small, step-by-step backup program grabs everything from Internet Explorer 6 or 7, including cookies, add-ons, auto-complete entries, connection settings, and, of course, your favorites .You back it all up to a zip file that's compressed and, if you'd like, password-protected, and can restore settings in the same click-by-click fashion.

The app doesn't support the Internet Explorer 8 betas (yet).

Internet Explorer Backup

Project Server Task Approvals Fail to Render in Page

2008-12-19T10:48:00.000-06:00

Nice little bug found using Project Server 2007 when accepting, rejecting or reviewing tasks. When you go the Task Updates page and select all, where there are more than 45 or 50 tasks, and then select accept, reject or review the resulting page returns an error. The error returned is the wonderful "Unexpected error has occurred" and references the web part maintenance page.

In reality, what's happening is that the application is taking all of the UIDs from all the selected tasks and concatenating them with the root URL and then trying to render them in the page. This is a problem because the maximum allowed URL length in Internet Explorer is 2,080 characters. The length of a UID is 36 characters. So, if you do the math on a typical site, you get a number of characters greater than 2,080. What Internet Explorer will do is truncate the new URL to 2,080 and the result is the page mentioned earlier.

Although this is now a know bug and targeted for a SP2 fix, there's no Hotfix that's available to resolve this problem. The only fix that I've been able to come up with is creating a rule that accepts all tasks. The downside is that...it actually works and accepts all tasks. Project Managers will still have to go one task at a time to reject them, but will then have the option to accept all tasks. You can even have custom rules that automatically run from users, project or even tasks

Miniature Calendars in Outlook

2008-12-19T10:39:00.001-06:00

How to make a mini-calendar for your own Out of Office message! Here is an example mini calendar for the dates when I’ll be home for the holidays:

Mini calendars are helpful and provide a visual reminder of how long you will be gone. I like to use them to emphasize when I’ll be back to answer e-mail. Instead of trying to deal with messy spacing and fonts to make your own mini calendar you can use Outlook’s built-in Send via E-mail feature for calendars. This way you can just copy and paste a preformatted mini calendar right into your Out of Office message. To get you started here is how I made the mini calendar for my upcoming vacation.

Creating a Mini Calendar
1. Right-click the name of the calendar in the Navigation Pane. This should be the calendar you want a miniature version of.

2. Click Send via E-mail…

3. Use the “Send a Calendar via E-mail” dialog to specify the date range and the level of detail that is shown for your appointments.
For this example I selected the dates when I’ll be on vacation and “Availability only”.

4. After clicking OK you get a nicely formatted e-mail with your calendar information. We want to put this into an Out of Office reply though, so we’re not done just yet.

5. The easiest way to select the calendar so you can copy it into your Out of Office message is to hover your mouse over the calendar until you see a '+' icon appear.

6. Click the icon so the calendar is highlighted like the calendar.

7. Select Copy in the Ribbon (or hit Ctrl+C on your keyboard) to copy the calendar.

8. Create a new Out of Office message and select Paste (Ctrl+V) where you want the calendar to appear.

And you’re done! Don’t worry, the gray lines won’t appear when someone receives your Out of Office reply.