Tag: SharePoint

Great book on SharePoint Foundation 2010

Mastering Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 by Callahan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you don’t know, there are two distinct version of SharePoint, Server and Foundation. SharePoint Foundation 2010 is available as a free download from Microsoft and is the base of the enterprise version known as SharePoint Server 2010. Thus, if you want to learn SharePoint, no matter what the version, you are going to need to learn about the features found in SharePoint Foundation 2010.

Too many SharePoint books I have read simply gloss over SharePoint Foundation 2010 and concentrate solely on SharePoint Server 2010. It is very refreshing to find a book totally dedicated to the base version of SharePoint that is available to anyone for free. Because SharePoint Foundation 2010 provides the building blocks for SharePoint Server 2010 I believe that everyone looking for information about the capabilities of SharePoint would greatly benefit from investing their time in reading this book.

The author has provided a very comprehensive guide for the SharePoint product, in many cases I believe the information provided in this book is far more comprehensive and relevant than other SharePoint books I have read. It takes through the whole process, from installing a single server, customizing, all the way through to configuring multi-server ‘farm’ environments. The book focuses more on the technical aspects of managing and maintaining SharePoint rather than designing solution or modifying the branding. However, there is very scant information about this available elsewhere and this book does a fantastic job of pulling it together in one place as a reference for the SharePoint administrator.

If you are looking to learn more about SharePoint or do indeed have the SharePoint Foundation 2010 product this book is probably the best for ‘cutting your teeth’ and getting up to speed with administrating the product. It provides a single source of information that is generally very hard to locate elsewhere. Best of all, it won’t confuse you when it comes to which version of SharePoint it is talking about as it squarely focused on SharePoint Foundation 2010, which remember is freely available but rarely mentioned (unfortunately).
View all my reviews

If you plan on purchasing this book, and you liked my review, appreciate it if you could do so through my Amazon store at:

http://astore.amazon.com/c00ef-20/detail/0470626380

helps me in a small way to buy more SharePoint books for review.

That’s why I use SharePoint

Just came across this site from Microsoft promoting the benefits of SharePoint:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/iusesharepoint/landing.aspx

and all I can say is well done Microsoft. You’ll find a number of short videos to chuckle at but they do get the message across about what the benefits of SharePoint to average users. All the videos are worth watching.

You’ll also find pointer to more helpful information such as tutorials and download about SharePoint.

Great site. Bravo Microsoft, bravo!

Installing SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 on SBS 2011

You’ve read the walkthrough, now see the video!

 

SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 installation walk through

Here’s a walk through of the installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010 Service Pack 1 on a stand alone server not connected to a domain with a default install of SharePoint Foundation 2010. I’ll look at doing something for SBS 2011 Standard soon.

 

The first thing you’ll need to do is download the Service Pack 1 file which can be found at:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26640

 

Right mouse click on the file and ‘Run as administrator’

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Next, accept the license terms at bottom.

 

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The Service Pack will now commence installation.

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You will receive a message indicating the process is complete. However, all that has happened that the binary files have been updated. You need to now apply the update to SharePoint Foundation 2010 manually. This is because now you must manually run PSCONFIG after installing SharePoint 2010 patches on ANY server that SharePoint Foundation 2010 is installed on.

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To check to see whether the Service Pack has been installed correctly, firstly run the SharePoint Central Administration. Select System Settings and then Manage servers in this farm.

 

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Note the Configuration database version. Unless it is 14.0.6029.1000 Service Pack 1 has not yet been applied to the SharePoint farm.

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To apply the downloaded update to the SharePoint farm run a command prompt as an administrator.

 

Change to directory c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\bin and execute the following command:

 

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

 

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You should see the process complete 6 stages in total like shown above.

 

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If you now check the version of the configuration database in Central Administration as shown previously it should be 14.0.6029.1000.

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One of the additional features that Service Pack 1 provides is the ability to view the storage usage on a site. To see this go into your site and select Site Settings. You should now notice a new option under Site Collection Administration called Storage Metrics.

 

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As you can see from the above screen shot, this now gives you a break down of exactly where space is being used in your site.

 

If nothing else this is a great reason to install SharePoint Foundation service Pack 1.

Much to do about Mango

I’ve published in this blog previously annoyances I’ve had with Windows Phone 7. However, I continue to see Windows Phone 7 as a good (although currently weak) alternative in the mobile space. As such I continue to keep an eye on upcoming developments, of which I have been recently reading about the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7 known as Mango.

 

The following article:

 

http://www.winrumors.com/windows-phone-mango-overview-outlook-phone-calendar-video/

 

Is a worthwhile read about what new features are coming. The article contains two videos which cover these additions quite nicely and are well worth a minutes to view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5g7tHxwmQ

 

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFl4la6LdU

 

However by far the video that interests me the most is this one:

http://www.youtube.com/user/winrumors#p/a/u/1/4liR0XntUFA

 

Why? Because it cover the Outlook and phone features which is what I need more as a business user. I also like the new calendar features which makes a big difference to using the phone. If you are a business user of Windows Phone 7 I’d suggest you watch this last video.

 

Overall it seems to me that Microsoft has taken on board the feedback it has received so far and will deliver a very worthwhile update to the platform. This certainly give me a lot more faith in platform going forward with two important caveats, that being that this update will be available soon and work on my existing device. My understanding is that the Mango update will be out in September and will work on existing devices. I’ll be keeping my finger crossed but am very happy to see the Windows Phone 7 platform advancing

Standalone installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010

Here’s my walk through of installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on a stand alone Windows Server.

Standalone installation of SharePoint Foundation 2010

 

Some points to note with this method:

 

1. There are not many prompts. All the defaults are taken.

 

2. New SharePoint site ends up on the default web site for the server on port 80.

 

3. You get a SharePoint Team template by default.

 

4. You get SQL Server 2008 Express installed which has a 4GB database limit.

 

5. You generally can’t expand this installation to allow multi server (i.e. a SharePoint farm)

 

This is really the most basic of SharePoint Foundation installs. Watch out for further installation examples, coming soon.

SMBNation Spring 2011

My first time at SMBNation Spring has been a real blast. Not quite the same as the event in Vegas but still well worth the trip.

 

The facilities at the International Centre where excellent and the Wi-Fi was the best I have seen at any SMBNation event. Dana Epp’s presentation on the benefits of Tele-working was excellent (as Dana’s stuff always is). Ollie Sommer’s presentation on clustering a Hyper-V environment was another highlight. On the second day, Tim Carney’s presentation on migration strategies had some very interesting and different alternatives on SBS Migrations. Some really great sessions for attendees of all levels.

 

I was a little disappointed that my session on SharePoint wasn’t attended by a greater number, but I accept this in light of the fact that SharePoint still has a long way to go to becoming mainstream (especially with resellers) in the SMB Market, However, those that did attend I believe got something of of value and enjoyed the content.

 

You can find my presentation slides for viewing here:

 

http://docs.com/CNXK

 

Even though I’m really not focused on the managed service provider model like most that attend I was impressed by the vendor hall and the quality of people attending. Both attendees and vendor representative where extremely friendly and helpful so kudos.

 

So what did I get out it? Simple, networking. I was fortunate to be able to catch up with many familiar faces as well as meeting loads of new people. It was great to also put names to faces of people who have corresponded with me over time. These events are so much more about the hallway networking. The presentations are simply the icing on the cake.

 

To Harry and his team at SMBNation a hearty thanks and well done, another excellent event and I thank you for the opportunity of being able to present. I hope to see you all again real soon.

Indexing PDF Documents in SharePoint Server 2010

After a recent post on indexing Acrobat PDF documents in Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010 (especially on SBS 2011 Standard), I was asked whether the process is the same for SharePoint Server 2010.

 

It is much easier for SharePoint Server 2010 as it was designed with the ability to index external file types from the start. You still need to install the PDF IFilter and make some registry changes. After that you simple need to tell the search service in SharePoint Server 2010 to index PDFs.

 

Here some references to help:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2293357

 

and

 

http://www.sharepointsharon.com/2010/03/sharepoint-2010-and-adobe-pdf/