CIAOPS SharePoint Bootcamp reviews



I am pleased to say that the feedback from the recent SharePoint bootcamps in Melbourne and Sydney has been extremely positive. here are some examples:

“Great venue + facilities. Outstanding content, with good labs and great takeaway materials. Incredible value for money – well worth travelling”


“It was a day jam packed with value… real knowledge and no fluff.. well worth our time and the investment of the course..”


“I learned enough to make this worthwhile, after about 30 mins. All the rest ramped up, and gave me so many ideas on how to both do things better, and leverage SharePoint so much more. Looking forward to doing the advanced SharePoint as soon as is available.”


“Robert thanks very much for an information packed day. All bases were covered with comprehensive notes, labs, a hard drive with VMs and content and ongoing access to your website and reference material. We covered a great deal of content in a short space of time and it was genuine 300 level technical material.”


“Just wanted to send my warm feedback and deep thanks for a very intriguing and interesting day at the SharePoint bootcamp! I learned a whole lot about SharePoint and the other products you’ve discussed, but mostly learned how much I didn’t know 😉 You were able to pack a huge amount of info in this day to leave a strong desire to use the study material and learn more about SharePoint.”


“I definitely did gain some knowledge on SharePoint 2010 from the one-day Bootcamp course in Sydney and its installation. In addition to that I also learnt something on Virtualisation from the VirtualBox software, especially when I encountered problems with its installation on the Memory setting and BIOS setup on the HP Laptop PC. It was worth the money spent, effectively with the 1-year free Subscription of CIAOPS Operations Guide valued at $300 & the free giveaway Iomega 500GB Portable USB drive ($100), the course is effectively free of charge.”

Of course there are some things that I need to work on including ensuring that everyone can get access to the hosted SharePoint training site before the session and ensuring that everyone is able to set up the labs on their machines. However, I’m really please with the positive feedback given this is my first attempt at something like this.


So where to from here? I am currently working on a advanced SharePoint course as well as something around Office365. I hope to be able to announce something soon for August, so stay tuned here.


If you have any suggestions about what you believe would be worthwhile to cover in my bootcamps don’t hesitate to contact me (director@ciaops.com).

Indexing Adobe PDFs in SharePoint Foundation 2010

Brought to you by this month’s release of the CIAOPS SharePoint Guide.

 

SharePoint Foundation 2010 does not come with the native ability to index Acrobat PDF documents, however it can easily be configured to do this. By default, if you upload a PDF document to SharePoint Foundation 2010 you should see something like this:

 

image_2_361DDEF0

 

When you attempt to run a search for a term in the document (in this case ciaops) you will find that the search returns no result like shown here:

 

image_4_361DDEF0

 

 

The reason is that SharePoint Foundation 2010 relies on something called an iFilter to provide the ability to index documents. You require an iFilter for each different document you wish indexed in SharePoint Foundation 2010. By default, the iFilters for most Microsoft Office documents now get installed as part of the SharePoint Foundation 2010 pre-install. Ones for other common file types, like Acrobat PDF documents don’t, however they can be manually configured.

 

The following process will work on both a SharePoint Foundation 2010 standalone member server and a Small Business Server 2011 Standard server.

 

The first step in the process is to download and install the PDF iFilter program from Adobe. To do this visit:

 

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

 

It is important to remember that SharePoint Foundation runs on a 64 bit operating system so you are going to need a 64 bit version of the PDF iFilter.

 

image_6_361DDEF0

 

Login to your SharePoint Foundation 2010 server as an administrator and download the file to your SharePoint Foundation Server 2010 and expand the file. You should find a single installation file like shown below.

 

image_8_640B31A8

 

Double click the installer file to run. Accept any User Access Control (UAC) that is presented.

 

image_12_640B31A8

 

The iFilter installation process should now commence.

 

Press the Next button to continue.

 

image_14_640B31A8

 

Accept the License Agreement and press Next to continue.

 

image_16_640B31A8

 

Select a location to install the iFilter files, by default this will be your C: Drive.

Press Next to continue.

 

image_18_11F88461

 

Press Next to continue.

 

image_20_11F88461

 

Press Close to complete the installation.

 

To add the PDF Icon to SharePoint download the PDF icon from:

 

http://www.adobe.com/images/pdficon_small.gif

 

and save it to:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\

image_22_11F88461

 

You will generally need administrator privileges to do this.

 

image_24_11F88461

 

This may mean you have to save it another location and then copy and paste to the destination.

Locate the file c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\14\template\xml\docicon.xml. Right mouse click on the file to edit.

 

image_26_11F88461

 

Locate the element where you will see entries for each icon starting with <Mapping key=. Enter the following on a new line:

 

Note, that the extension names do not have to be in alphabetical order so it is best to place the entry at the end of the existing list. Also ensure that the correct filename for the icon is used in the entry line.

 

When complete, save the file and exit notepad.

 

To see the icon immediately in WSF start a command prompt on the server via Start and Right mouse clicking on Command prompt and selecting Run as Administrator from menu that appears.

 

image_28_7D0701ED

 

At the prompt enter iisreset to restart Internet Information server. Don’t forget that resetting IIS will also affect other applications on the server. When the process is complete, exit the DOS prompt and examine any SharePoint Foundation 2010 libraries that contain PDF documents.

 

image_30_7D0701ED

 

Next, copy the following script to a file called Addextension.vbs on your system

 

Sub Usage
    WScript.Echo “Usage:    AddExtension.vbs extension”
    WScript.Echo
end Sub
Sub Main
    if WScript.Arguments.Count < 1 then
                Usage
                wscript.Quit(1)
   end if
    dim extension
    extension = wscript.arguments(0)
    Set gadmin = WScript.CreateObject(“SPSearch4.GatherMgr.1”, “”)
    For Each application in gadmin.GatherApplications
        For Each project in application.GatherProjects
                    project.Gather.Extensions.Add(extension)
                Next
    Next
End Sub
call Main

 

image_32_7D0701ED

 

Now run a Command Prompt as an administrator by right mouse clicking on the Command Prompt icon like and selecting Run as administrator.

 

image_34_2AF454A6

 

Accept any UAC that appears.

 

Change to the directory where you saved the VBS script and type:

Wscript addextension.vbs pdf

 

image_36_2AF454A6

 

You should see no result if the script executes correctly.

 

image_38_2AF454A6

 

If you receive an error like shown above, check that your Search Service is enabled in SharePoint.

 

image_40_2AF454A6

 

Run Regedit and accept any UAC.

 

image_42_2AF454A6

 

Locate the registry (above image is incorrect for SBS. Office Server key doesn’t exist) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\

image_44_1602D233

Right mouse click on Extensions and select New and Key.

 

image_46_1602D233

 

Add the key .pdf

image_48_1602D233

Right mouse click on (Default) in the right hand window and select Modify from the menu that appears.

 

Enter the following into the Value Data field:

 

{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

 

 

 

Close regedit.

 

 

 image_52_1602D233

Click Start | Administrative Tools | Services and right mouse click on Services and select Run as Administrator from menu that appears.

 

Scroll down the list of services and locate the service SharePoint Foundation Search V4.

image_54_43F024EB

Right mouse click on the service and select Restart from the menu that appears.

 

image_56_43F024EB

 

You should see the service restart.

 

Close the Services window.

 

image_58_43F024EB

 

Run a Command Prompt as an administrator again by right mouse clicking on the icon and selecting Run as Administrator from the menu that appears.

 

Any PDF documents you now add to SharePoint will be indexed, however those already there will not be indexed until a full crawl is run.

 

image_62_71DD77A3

 

To launch a full manual crawl change to the directory:

C:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extension\14\bin

 

And run the following command:

Stsadm –o spsearch –action fullcrawlstart

 

This will commence a full reindex of all SharePoint information. This reindex may take a while to complete and may impact the performance of your SharePoint Server.

 

image_64_71DD77A3

 

 

If a search is now run using the same term (here ciaops) you can see that now returns a hit from the PDF and from text inside that document (rather than just the title). This indicates that the PDF search is operating correctly.

 

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

Office and SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 are about to receive their first Service Pack (so those that always wait until Service Pack 1 becomes available can finally start using SharePoint 2010!). Details about what is included can be found here:

 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/05/16/announcing-service-pack-1-for-office-2010-and-sharepoint-2010.aspx

 

My understanding is that it will also include a feature to determine where space is being utilized in SharePoint sites. This was a very handy feature of the previous version of SharePoint that mysteriously removed from SharePoint 2010. We will have to wait and see what it actually is when the service pack is released but if it is included then it will certainly be a major benefit to SharePoint 2010 admins of all shapes and sizes.

Erky Perky

Just saw this post:

 

You Must Manually Run PSCONFIG after Installing SharePoint 2010 Patches

 

SharePoint Foundation 2010 changes the method in which patches are installed. PSconfig no longer runs automatically after an update is installed. The SharePoint binary files are updated with the patch but the databases are not automatically upgraded.

 

This means that you are going to have to go in after installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 patches and run:

 

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

 

from the command line. Fun eh? according to the article you’ll see a error in the event logs indicating that the PSCONFIG command needs to be run. Gotta say this isn’t going to make supporting SharePoint 2010 Foundation (especially on SBS 2011) any easier!

Melbourne bootcamp complete


I am happy to say that the inaugural CIAOPS SharePoint bootcamp in Melbourne this week was well received by those that attended. Some feedback already in includes:

“I can thoroughly recommend Robert’s SharePoint Bootcamp sessions as highly informative and delivered with great candour. Robert has put together a package that provides an excellent introduction to the possibilities of SharePoint in the small-to-medium business sector.” – Jason Thomas

and

“Thanks for a great day today. It was very well run and organized. The SharePoint training is a great intro into getting SharePoint up and running, it reinforced my prior knowledge and filled in some gaps. The discussion on SharePoint’s business applications will provide a solid framework for presenting SharePoint solutions to clients. The learning materials provided are fantastic and will be a valued resource.” – Alex Moodie

This week the show rolls into Sydney on 2 days. There are still a few places if you are want to attend. To sign up visit http://www.ciaops.com/bootcamp.

After Sydney, I’ll be running my bootcamp in San Francisco on Tuesday the 14th of June as I return from SMB Nation Spring 2011 in Toronto. If you are interested in attending on this date visit http://www.ciaops.com/bootcampsf to register.

I’ve also had some interest shown in bootcamps in other locations and I’ll keep you posted on these locations as they become available.

Beyond these SharePoint bootcamps I’m now starting to consider what to offer next. I’ve had interest shown in training around advanced SharePoint, Office365 and social media. If you are interested in any of these or have some suggestions of your own that you’d like to see please feel free to let me know (director@ciaops.com).

I must also thank all those who attended the sessions in Melbourne and I really hope you got value from not only the money that you spent but also the times invested. I certainly hope you can see the potential SharePoint offers not only as a business solution but also a potential grow area for your business.

Locked SharePoint site

image_2_0ACCB827

 

Suppose that you go to your SharePoint site and you no longer see the link to Upload documents to a document library. What the hell? You think. Next you open the ribbon bar, as shown above, and you see that a lot of the buttons are greyed out. All this prevents users from entering information into your site. How can you fix this?

 

Chances are the site has become ‘locked’. To unlock it, open SharePoint Central Administration and select Application Management from the menu on the left hand side.

 

image_4_0ACCB827

 

Next select Configure quotas and locks from the Site Collection section.

 

image_6_0ACCB827

 

As you will probably see in the Site Lock Information section, the site is set to Read-Only. Change this to Not locked and you site should once again be free for editing and uploading.

 

image_8_0ACCB827

 

Why does it happen? It typically happens after a SharePoint backup failure. Processes like stsadm –o backup lock the site prior to a backup. If that backup fails to complete for some reason the site remains locked and thus read only for users.

CIAOPS Bootcamp USA bound

With some help from Tim Carney I am bringing my SharePoint bootcamp to the San Francisco Bay area on Tuesday the 14th of June. For AUD$399 you’ll receive a full days hands on SharePoint training and a 12 month subscription to my SharePoint Operations Guide. You can find all the details and how to register at:

http://www.ciaops.com/bootcampsf

I also have a discount code available for those that want to email me directly (director@ciaops.com) to obtain it.

If you can’t attend, don’t fret I hope that this will be the start of many SharePoint bootcamps run across the US. Keep your eye peel for more information on these soon.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 RTM available for download

SharePoint Foundation 2010 has left beta and is now available for download via the Microsoft web site at:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595

 

I have downloaded in and installed it onto a Windows 2008 R2 server without issues. The new release automatically downloads and installed the additional components it requires which is a change from the beta release. So far that is about the biggest change I can see but more information after some more testing.

 

Now, the interesting question – will SharePoint Foundation 2010 RTM run on SBS 2008? Out of the box no, because it requires a number of additional components such as:

 

– Windows Identity Foundation

– Microsoft Sync Framework RunTime v1.0

– Powershell V2

– etc

 

None of these appear to get installed automatically so I’m trying to install them manually one by one and then installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 RTM. At this stage, I’m not 100% sure it can be installed and am in the process of checking but I get the feeling that it probably won’t work or that some of the prerequisites may break other components of SBS 2008.

 

I’d suggest that you at least hang off trying to install SharePoint Foundation 2010 RTM on SBS 2008 until I can run a few tests.

 

More updates soon.