External user sharing is confusing with new Office 365

If you are not aware, the next version of SharePoint Online from Office 365 allows much easier file sharing with external parties. As part of this sharing you can require the external user to require a login for the file. So is that handled? So let’s look at this purely from an external users point of view.

Initially the external user will receive an email like that shown above that invites them to open a shared file. They simply click on the filename link.

Since the option to require a login to access this file was selected during sharing they now see this screen that says they must sign in with a Hotmail or User ID. You will also notice that in the lower right there is an option to Sign up for a Hotmail account. We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Let’s say they do have a Hotmail account so they click the icon on the left. This is where they end up.

If I enter a Hotmail address in the User ID field Office 365 detects this and now prompts you to Sign in at Hotmail.com via a link at the bottom of the page. Hmm…I did already tell you I had a Hotmail account no?

If instead of the left hand link the user selects the icon on the right hand side of the screen corresponding to a User id they end up at the same Office 365 login screen. If they have an Office 365 login (from another tenant) they can login and access the file but in our case the external user doesn’t have this.

Now if the user clicks the link at the bottom of the original page to sign up for Hotmail, guess where they end up? Yup, same Office 365 login screen. Can you see anywhere on here that tells a user how to register for a Hotmail account? Neither can I.

The only real option, if the external user hasn’t given up yet, is to select the Sign in with a Windows Live Id at the bottom of the page. That then takes them to a screen shown above where there is finally a link to sign up for Hotmail as shown above.

So if they now try and sign up the only option they receive for a Microsoft account name is @hotmail.com or @live.com. I can’t see many external users wanting to sign up for an additional email account can you?

Honestly, this is all too confusing for external users who probably just want to see a file. I also reckon that even signing up for a Hotmail account to access a protected file is not easy either. Why can’t the sign up for Hotmail link at the first page actually take you to location where you can actually sign up? Hmmm…all too hard for my liking.

My solution? If you really want to require a password for access to a shared file with an external user get them to create Microsoft Live ID first at:

http://login.live.com

As you can see above, at least when you do that you can specify the email address of the account. This means the external user can make it same as the email account they already have! It also means they don’t get an additional Hotmail or Live email box.

Once a Windows Live ID has been created in this way, linked to the external users original email address, they can use this to login to access the restricted shared file. Problem here is that you need to do that BEFORE they can access the file. More pain.

So for a pure external user, with no existing Hotmail, Office 365 or Live ID, sharing restricted files from SharePoint Online 2013 is going to require a lot of customer support. I certainly hope Microsoft improves this process over time. I really, really do. Office 365 is still in Preview, so fingers crossed.

SharePoint Online includes print to PDF

If haven’t already seen you’ll find SharePoint Online in the version of Office 365 due out shortly includes the option to convert documents to PDFs.

When you preview a supported document you’ll see the Office Web Apps preview as shown above. In the lower right of this window are a number of menu buttons. If you select the first one from the left (which looks like a page) a menu will be displayed. In this menu you’ll find the option Print to PDF.

Selecting that will give you a nice PDF of the document. Easy as.

New Office 365 public facing web site

Here is a great short video that demonstrates how easy it is to create really slick public facing web site in the upcoming version of Office 365.

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http://www.youtube.com/v/dJlwCNXMCBo?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

Getting started with the Public website in Office 365

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJlwCNXMCBo

The final product is still live on the web and you can visit it at:

http://www.contosobistro.com/

I think that the improvements to this aspect of Office 365 are going to bring big dividends for Microsoft. I believe a significant amount of businesses are going to take advantage of all the options and features that are available in the public facing web site with the upcoming version of Office 365 when it becomes available soon. Also, if I was an IT reseller looking for an opportunity with Office 365, I’d suggest you look closely at what services you can offer around the new features Office 365 bring to the table with the public facing web site at the very least.

Determining SharePoint Foundation 2010 Version

There are times when you need to find out what version of SharePoint Foundation you are currently running. The easiest way to do this is to look in SharePoint Central Administration via the following procedure:

On the SharePoint Foundation Server select Start | Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products | SharePoint 2010 Central Administration.

When the SharePoint Central Administration appears select Manage Servers in Farm from under the System Settings in the top right.

In the middle of the page locate Configuration database version and compare the number you find here with:

http://todd-carter.com/sharepoint-versions/

You’ll then know whether you are running the latest version.

Checking and fixing SQL Database

In the previous post I showed how to recreate a Windows SharePoint Search Database that had become unusable. There is of course some troubleshooting you can do before recreating an SQL database. This is generally to check and repair the database using the SQL command DBCC CHECKDB like so.

For arguments sake, let’s say that the database WSS_SEARCH_SERVERF is corrupt. Firstly login to the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express and expand the Database folder so you can see each database.

The first step will be to put the database into single user mode so that only SQL can work on it exclusively while it is being repaired. Single user mode means that only a single program will be able to use the database. If another process is using the database now and we put the database into single user mode that process will typically grab the database and not allow us to work on it. Thus, you should stop anything else that is currently access the database so SQL Management can gain exclusive access.

Because this is a SharePoint Search database we know that the only thing that should be accessing this is the SharePoint Search Service.

Therefore go into the Windows Services console and locate the appropriate SharePoint Search Service. In this case it is Windows SharePoint Search Service since the source system is WSS v3. Right mouse click on the service and select Stop from the menu that appears. You may also want to actually Disable the service to prevent it from re-running itself. If you are checking a SharePoint Search Database then this would be recommended as SharePoint Search will reactive on a regular basis and grab the database.

After a few moments the SharePoint Search Service will show nothing in the Status column indicating it is not running.

Return to the SQL Management console, right mouse click on the database in question and select Properties from the menu that appears.

In the dialog that appears select Options on the left and then scroll down on the right until you locate the State section at the bottom. There you will see a line Restrict Access. Change this to SINGLE_USER and press the Ok button to continue.

You will be prompted about closing connections to this database. Press OK to proceed.

When you are returned to the main SQL Management console you should see a small person icon over the database and the name of the database should have (Single User) displayed after it.

If you now select the New Query button (just under the File menu in the top left of the screen), it will open a blank area on the right. Into here type:

dbcc checkdb (‘’);

in this case:

dbcc checkdb (‘wss_search_serverf’);

then press the Execute button just above. This will simply examine the database for issues and report back the results.

The window below will show the output from this check process. Examine the log to determine the issues that may be evident.

Prior to actually completing a repair of the suspect database it is recommended that you have some form of backup.

To proceed with the rebuild and repair change the query to:

dbcc checkdb (‘’, repair_rebuild);

in this case:

dbcc checkdb (‘wss_search_serverf’, repair_rebuild’);

You may need to run this command a few time to complete all the repairs. Check the output of the repair for the results.

Hopefully, the database has successfully been repaired and now you can put it back to MULTI_USER mode by reversing the process detailed earlier via Properties | Options | Restrict Access.

With the database now back in multi-user mode you should be able to start the dependent services and everything should now work as expected. Don’t forget to change the mode of any dependent services from disabled in the Windows Services management console if you disabled them earlier.

Recreate WSS Search database

In the rare even that the search database for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 becomes corrupt or unusable here is how to create a new one. The SharePoint search Database simply contains index information about the SharePoint site and can be recreated at any time.

If you go into the SQL Server Management Studio Express you should be able to identify the search database that you are having an issue with. In this case we can see that it is WSS_SEARCH_SERVERF.

Open the SharePoint Central Administration. Select the Operations tab and then select Services on Server from under the Topology and Services heading.

Locate the line Windows SharePoint Services Search and press the Stop hyperlink to the right.

You will then receive a message like shown above telling you that the index files will be deleted. Press OK to continue.

After a few moments you should see that the Status changes to Stopped. Now select the hyperlink Windows SharePoint Services Search on the left or the Start button on the right.

Complete the details for the Service Account. This is account that the SharePoint Search Service runs as. Best practice is to have a dedicated account with a password that doesn’t expire and NOT use the Local service. This account will automatically be given full read only rights to all SharePoint data. Scroll down.

Now select a Content Access Account. This account will be used to crawl (read) all the SharePoint data and index it. again, best practice is that it should be a dedicated account with a password that doesn’t expire and NOT the Local Service.

In the Search Database fields you will see the Database Server name and the Search database (here WSS_SEARCH_SERVERF).

Enter a new name for the SharePoint Search database (here WSS_NEW_SEARCH_DB) and leave the other settings as is.

Press the OK button to create the Search database and start the SharePoint Search Service.

You will have to wait a few minutes while the Search Service is configured and started.

You should see that the Windows SharePoint Services Search is now started.

If you refresh the databases view you should now see the new Search database you created that is now operating with SharePoint. You can detach and remove the old database to avoid confusion.

Depending on how much database you have on your site it might take a while to completely reindex the search results. You can of course always do a full crawl manually if you want. Beware that the first crawl (whether automatic or forced) will be a major crawl (since it is new empty search database) and will thus be a very intensive process that may impact the performance of the server.

The last thing you should do is run a search from the SharePoint site to ensure everything is now working as expected.

New features for SharePoint Online 2013

Been working through some information from the recent SharePoint Conference about what’s coming done the pipe for SharePoint with the new version of Office 365 due soon. While doing so I found the above slide and some interesting information to note:

1. All versions of SharePoint Online will include the App Catalog and Marketplace.

2. The Small Business (P) plan will now include Form Based Applications. That seems to indicate it will now include some sort of form services (i.e. InfoPath services).

3. E-Discovery and compliance are only going to be available with SharePoint Online Plan 2 (and the E3 and E4 plans).

4. Enterprise search is only going to be available with SharePoint Online Plan 2 (and the E3 and E4 plans).

5. Access Services will be available for P and all E plans. That is a change (even though it is not noted in this slide) as it only used to be available for P, SharePoint Online Plan 2, E3 and E4 plans.

6. All SharePoint plans except Kiosk plans get something called Work Management (which I am not about as yet, but it is new).

The other general thing I will note here is to compare the feature set between SharePoint Foundation 2013 (the traditional Small Business SKU) and the SharePoint Online plans, even the Small Business P plan. The difference is VERY significant and this only further reinforces my opinion that you really shouldn’t be considering SharePoint Foundation 2013 at all.

This is very exciting if all of this is come to fruition Combined with all the other new features I can see more and more businesses moving to SharePoint Online with Office 365 in 2013.