Preparing for Sharepoint 2010 Upgrade Today

I was looking for new references available for sharepoint twenty ten on internet, I happen to look at this cool presentation by Joel Oleson that talks about high level task involved with the sharepoint twenty ten upgrade. Click here to look at the presentation.

Thanks Joel for sharing this great piece of information, I hope everyone will find this information interesting and valuable.

SharepointAge Rocks !!!!!

What is SharePoint 2010

What is SharePoint 2010? SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise & the Web that enables you to connect & empower people through an integrated set of rich features. Whether deployed on-premises or as hosted services, SharePoint 2010 helps you cut costs with a unified infrastructure while allowing you to rapidly respond to your business needs.



Watch out for a sneak preview here I am very excited to expose more about the sharepoint twenty ten so keeping watching .......

BDC Meta Man Web Edition Released

Lightning Tools has recently released a web edition for BDC Meta Man to generate the Business Data Catalog Application Definition file. The web edition is designed to address the user paint point about SharePoint can communicate with their Line-of-Business Systems, but why they need to use a desktop application(BDC Meta Man Desktop Version) to create the Application Definition File.

Other goals for the web versions are as follows.

• Allow users to create Application Definition File from within the browser (Figure 1 - BDC Meta Man Web Edition)
• Give the ability to create Application Definition File to Site Collection Administrators
• Give users functionality of BDC Meta Man from within the browser
• Streamline the process of creating an Application Definition File.
• Imitate BDC Meta Man desktop application (Figure 2 - BDC Meta Man)

Some screencasts and demos are available at their website Lightning Tools

Enjoy the great enterprise suites with sharepoint with the ease of these awesome tools.

Happy Sharepointing !!!!

How to disable edit forms fields with sharepoint

While working on one of the projects, an sharepoint edit form needed to have some fields to be disabled or readonly. I did not wanted to write custom code to achieve this, also was looking for a solution that would be quick, handy and would utilize the web developement experience, I thought of giving it a shot with Javascript ..... while researching more on this I saw Andrey Shchurov Blog where Andrey has discussed the similar solution using Javascript.

Thanks Andrey for pointing this out, you have saved lot of my developement time.

Service Pack 2 Update - Expiration Issue Fix

The public update for the Service Pack 2 expiration date issue is now available for download.

The update can be applied before or after Service Pack 2 installation. If the update is applied prior to installing Service Pack 2 it will prevent the expiration date from being improperly activated during installation of Service Pack 2, if it is applied after Service Pack 2 it will remove the expiration date incorrectly set during installation of Service Pack 2.

For more details on downloading the fix, refer the blog below.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/06/25/service-pack-2-update.aspx

Signups for Office 2010 Beta is OPEN !!!!

Office 2010 Beta signups are now available. The survey doesn’t guarantee your entry into the program, but it does put you into a pool of other applicants Microsoft will invite to participate in the beta. Sign up, if you would like to participate for Office 2010 Beta.

http://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=3343&SiteID=160&InvitationID=Beta-PRJM-HVCM

Happy Sharepointing !!!

Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by Using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane

Recently while going through some MSDN articles, I happen to know a way of exposing enterprise search in sharepoint with Internet Explorer 7.0 and the Microsoft Office 2007. Following MSDN articles talk about it in more detail.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb625970.aspx

Enjoy this cool enterprise feature !!!

Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products - Sharepoint 2010

Since the announcing of SharePoint 2010 in may'09, the community has been buzzing with what we know about ‘10, we are still speculating lot about ‘10. There isn’t a whole lot of concrete information out there yet, but I’ve compiled a list below of what I’ve read and known from various communities so far.

1. Inline editing for list items : no need to hit the datasheet view

2. BDC will be a two way road : sp2010 may support inserting data from BDC

3. No IE 6.0 Support : SharePoint 2010 will be “targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems.

4. With same architechture as of MOSS 2007, the stress will be on intergarting the advanced UI features, watchout for office like ribbon control, ajaxed controls etc

5. Content Management Interoperability Services : This will allow SharePoint to communicate with other CMS.

6. PerformancePoint Monitoring & Analytics functions will be bundled into the Server license.

7. Users will be able to open/edit/save/collaborate on Office documents through a web browser.

8. Native support for ODF and PDF seems to be a safe confirmation as Office System SP2 will now support editing of both formats.

9. All Forms Server functions bundled with 2010 – There are clients who signed on for Forms Server standalone for WSS installs, so it would be nice if they bundled it with the next equivalent of WSS. I have an unofficial confirm from an MS employee that features will be available in 2010 but no solid details so far.

10. Standardized UI across all Office products, browsers, mobile devices.

11. Open API support

12. FAST Search for Server Enterprise owners

Does Operating System edition matters with powershell ?

Yes, it does matters when accessing Sharepoint Object Model through powershell.

Make sure that you use PowerShell 64 bit when you trying to manipulate the SharePoint object model from a script on a 64 bit OS machine.

If you try run a script that accesses the SharePoint object model in a 32 bit PowerShell window from a 64 bit OS, you will run into errors that are rather hard and confusing to diagnose: The error you will receieve will be as below which is totally misleading.

Error: “The Web application at http://servername could not be found. Verify that you have typed the URL correctly. If the URL should be serving existing content, the system administrator may need to add a new request URL mapping to the intended application.”At line:1 char:38+ $spsite=[Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite]( <<<< “http://servername”)

I hope this post saves some time for someone in sharepoint world !

SharePoint Service Pack 2 released on April 28, 2009

I'm sure many of us stay on top of this, but thought I'd post in the event someone had missed it. Instructions on installing are included in this post.

Service Pack 2 is a cumulative update, and includes all major updates since the release of WSS3 & SharePoint 2007, and includes the hotfixes and improvements by Microsoft.

Updates Included in SP2: February 2009

Cumulative Update December 2008

Cumulative Update October 2008

Cumulative Update Infrastructure Update Service Pack 1

Instructions for applying Service Pack 2:

Please read the entire contents before proceeding to apply any service packs :

1. Install WSS3 SP2

http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emicrosoft%2Ecom%2Fdownloads%2Fdetails%2Easpx%3FFamilyID%3D79bada82-c13f-44c1-bdc1-d0447337051b&urlhash=XSi8&_t=disc_detail_link

This will run the automated SharePoint Products & Technologies Configuration Wizard (PSConfig).

For organizations running SharePoint Server 2007 (Standard & Enterprise), continue:

2. Install SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 .

http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emicrosoft%2Ecom%2Fdownloads%2Fdetails%2Easpx%3FFamilyID%3Db7816d90-5fc6-4347-89b0-a80deb27a082&urlhash=dPCu&_t=disc_detail_link

This will run the automated SharePoint Products & Technologies Configuration Wizard (PSConfig) a second time, and will run a bit longer than the first.

If Language Packs are used within your organization, install the respective Language Packs Start with the correct version of the WSS3 Language Pack SP2. If you have a MOSS Environment, install the WSS3 Language Pack SP2 first, followed by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Language Pack SP2 WSS3 Language Pack SP2:

32 Bit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=085e5ac8-58f6-4cf9-8012-33b95ee36c0f

64 Bit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2c2b6caf-b46d-45eb-ac4d-deaaa48c3a2c

Office SharePoint Server Language Pack SP2:

32 bit -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=01c6a3e8-e110-4956-903a-ad16284bf223

64 bit -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=66c5026f-9f47-4642-8378-2526918009fa

The Service Packs must be installed on all SharePoint servers in the farm, and remember to plan accordingly, as the update process will create approximately 1 hour of downtime per server. The patch created an issue in one of my farms. The Search Service Provider Database was missing stored procedures, and I was unable to open Search Admin). A new SSP was created successfully, and after changing default SSP and changing the associations I was in. Unfortunately this method meant losing settings such as crawl schedules & sources, and any other customizations to the SSP site.