One year on

I am proud to announce that my SharePoint Operations Guide is now one year old. How it has grown from that initial release. Firstly, I want to take the opportunity to thank all the subscribers, without whom the Guide would not be where it is today. I’d especially like to thank the small group of foundation subscribers who supported me back in May 2008. Without you especially standing up early to support me, the Guide would probably still be sitting unfinished in some folder on my computer.

Before I start waxing on lyrically about the Guide I’ll just let you know that in recognition of this milestone I’m making a special offering. During the month of May 2009 you can not only get Chapter 2 free but also you can purchase the Guide for only $249. That’s a throw back to the initial release price and a $50 discount over the current price. To do this simply send me an email (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll send you Chapter 2 and a special redemption code that can be used until the first of June 2009 to obtain a discount. This is a special offer that will not be repeated, so if you are interested in learning how to install, maintain and migrate SharePoint then take advantage of this offer before it expires.

So a full year, wow! When I look at the Guide now I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been able to achieve. It now stands at over 1,250 pages, the DVD includes 4.2 GB of information, there is a Linkedin group for subscribers and those interested in the Guide plus more. I’m happy to say that I’ve still got plenty of ideas for additional content so the Guide is only going to keep growing. I’ve even come up with a logo:

Looks familiar doesn’t it?

I’m always keen for people to let me know what would be a good addition to the Guide or to contact me (director@ciaops.com) if they have any questions about Windows SharePoint or the Guide.

Once again, I thank all the existing Guide subscribers and I look forward to working hard for another twelve months to make the Guide even better.

Separate SP2 downloads

The SharePoint SP2 might be available as a single download but if you are using the following you will also need these separate SP2 downloads:

SharePoint Designer – Download SP2

Microsoft Search Server Express – Download Office Servers SP2

As the last link says:

Install SP2 for Other Office Products
If you have other Office products installed, please be sure to update them as well.

Seems everything works better when they all have the same updates installed. Strange that! Happy updating.

All of these updates will be sent to Windows SharePoint Operations Guide subscribers as part of their May 2009 DVD update.

SharePoint SP2 is here

Microsoft has now made available Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint.

Description of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x86)

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (x64)

Since these have only just become available I am yet to fully test them. I do also note that you can also download the complete installation of SharePoint v3 including Service Pack 2:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 with Service Pack 2

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 2

Windows SharePoint Operations Guide subscribers will finds these updates automatically on the upcoming May 2009 DVD release that is part of their regular update.

You will find that Office 2007 SP2 is also available.

Microsoft Office 2007 SP2

Coming in May

May is a big month for my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide, simply because it is now 12 months old! I’m amazed at how its grown and how many people have subscribed. So, I’m planning a number of things:

For existing subscribers

– There will the normal May update which will include additional sections on prep’ing a Windows 2008 Server for SharePoint, embedding an updating Microsoft Excel chart into SharePoint as well some additional troubleshooting tips.

– There will be an updated DVD containing a whole swag of additional videos, documents and programs including 64 bit editions of the installation files and SharePoint Designer.

– I’ll also be throwing in a few thank you surprises for subscribers only, but I don’t want to give away the surprises just yet!

– and more

For non-subscribers

– I’m going to be offering a never to be repeated special on the Guide in celebration of how far it’s come. This offer will only be available for May 2009 and after that it’ll be gone for good. So if you were umming and arring about whether to subscribe can I say that next month is going to be your best opportunity.

– As part of the special offer I’ll be offering the second chapter of my Guide FREE to those who register and only those that have registered will be eligible for the May special offer.

I’ll announce more details for both subscribers and non subscribers in May so stay tuned.

Mobile SharePoint

One of the great new features of SharePoint is that it has support for mobile devices built right in. You don’t need to do any special configuration.

So here’s what you see when you visit this blog with a web browser using the URL http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog.

However, if you are using a mobile device to access the information you probably want something more stripped down to reduce the download time. If you do, then simply add /m to end of any SharePoint site. So, in the case of my blog go to http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog/m and you’ll see:

which is a listing of the recent entries and if you click on one you’ll see:

You’ll get the same information but you’ll get in a “leaner” form, which is perfect for mobile devices.

As I said in the beginning the mobile accessibility is automatically configured with SharePoint right out of the box, nothing more to do. Also, don’t forget that all this functionality comes with a product that is free for you to download and is already included with SBS 2008. How could you ask for any more?

New video

I have created another quick video based on the blog post I did about configuring Usage Analysis processing on Windows SharePoint.

<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-b9ZUEeJyreY/UQO3NTex6EI/AAAAAAAAH-A/3fm3-oBy1hQ/video146f9a96915c%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('3f535a71-3b5c-42c1-ba6f-d6ee3aa0ab35'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "

http://www.youtube.com/v/l52vEpldE_s?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l52vEpldE_s

The only difference in the video is that I spend a little time towards the end showing what the results are from the Usage processing and what the reports actually look like.

As always send me any feedback or suggestions (director@ciaops.com).

SharePoint Usage Analysis

Hands up if you knew that Windows SharePoint includes a basic Usage Report similar in some ways to Google Analytics? Now the tough question – who also knows how to enable it (since it isn’t by default). If you answered No to either question, then this post is for you.

The first step is to check whether Usage Analysis is enabled on your Windows SharePoint site. It isn’t on SBS2008 Companyweb so I’ll use that as my example. Log into the SharePoint as an administrator and select Site Actions in the top right of the screen. You’ll only see Site Actions if you have the appropriate rights.

From the menu that appears select Site Settings.

In Site Settings select Site usage report in the Site Administration section.

If you see a screen like show here chances are the usage analysis has not been enabled. Next step is now to enable it.

Run the SharePoint Central Administration from the server console via Start | Administrative Tools | SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

Select the Operations tab, then click Usage analysis processing under the Logging and Reporting section (at the bottom left).

Click to Enable logging and usage analysis processing. You will also need to choose time when usage processing will run. Usage processing can be intensive so select a time of low load on your server. Click OK when complete.

You will not be able to view any logs until the scheduled processing runs. After that you should see something like that shown above when you return to Site Usage Report. Here you can select to view a number reports of you site’s access. This can be extremely handy when you need to get a feel for the usage of your site.

For further information about configuring Windows SharePoint to take advantage of all the product has to offer please visit www.wssops.com for information about the Windows SharePoint Operations Guide.

PDF icon in SharePoint

Now that you finally have Windows SharePoint up and running on SBS 2003 or SBS 2008 via (companyweb) you start uploading documents. When you upload Microsoft Office Documents like Word and Excel you see a nice icon next to the document, however when you upload an Acrobat document (PDF) you don’t.

As you can see from the above screen shot there are 3 files in document library. The bottom two being Excel and Word files automatically have a little icon to the left denoting the type of file, however the first file is actually a PDF and as you can see there is no distinguishing icon.

Unfortunately by default SharePoint doesn’t include a PDF icon, however with a little bit of configuration you can add it. Here’s how:

Firstly, you’ll need to download a suitable PDF icon to use. A good one can be found at:

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

and looks like:

Download the file and save it into the directory c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\images on the SharePoint server.

Next locate the file c:\program files\common files\Microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\template\xml\docicon.xml on the SharePoint server. Right mouse click on the file and select edit.

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

The name of the file must match the name of the PDF icon you downloaded. Note that the extension names in the docicon.xml file do not have to be in alphabetical order so it is best to place the entry at the end of the existing list.

When complete, save the file and exit the editor.

Go to the DOS prompt on the SharePoint server via Start | Run | Cmd and type iisreset to restart IIS.

If you now refresh the page you should find the PDF icon displayed like so:

Just because you have now have a PDF icon doesn’t mean that your PDF documents will be indexed by SharePoint (which is possible). That also needs to be configured, but that’ll be the subject of a future post.

This information can also be found in my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide along with exactly how to configure PDF search. Not only that the Guide has a vast array of information about not only installing and configuring SharePoint but also how to get some of the best add-ons for SharePoint up and running to provide your installation with additional value and functionality.