Dom Cosgrove Blog

Today, I was building a SharePoint 2007 demo environment using a set of scripts that I’ve used numerous times before to configure and provision the SharePoint Web applications. I made some slight adjustments to the settings to match my clients naming convention e.g. User Names, Web Application Names, Database etc. Something I’d done many times before.

I then went to navigate the SSP Administration site and got access denied no matter what account I used, SPFarm, SPAdmin, SSP Service Account, Local Administrator. I couldn’t understand it! I even deleted the SSP and recreated it doing it manually. Again I got access denied. I checked the database permissions and the AppPools, they seemed to be configured correctly.

I did some Google searches and came across Faraz Khan blog post that seemed to be getting the same issue as me. Faraz suggested creating a new Application pool, but I did not understand why I would have to, again I’d used the scripts a number of times before.

Reading through the comments I noticed that Scott had valid reason why I was experiencing this behaviour:

“DO NOT call you SSP the same name as the AppPool you use for the SSP Admin Site.

The SSP actually uses its name to create an AppPool for use under the Office Search site.

If your SSP Admin AppPool is the same name then MOSS sets it to use the timer svc account.”

I had configured the script to create a SSP called “SharedServices” and the Application Pool called “SharedServices” as per the customer request. Low and behold after deleting the MySites and SharedServices Applications, changing the application pool to be “Shared Services AppPool” everything worked as expected.

Now I know, this is nothing new and I’m sure that many people have had similar experiences, especially if they don’t use the default SSP name “SharedServices1″, but I thought that I would blog about it as I spent 2 hours trying to troubleshoot something that could have been easily avoided.

Thanks again to Faraz and Scott.

This is for my own quick reference, as it is in the Microsoft Installation Documentation. I also find that SQL Server is often installed by a separate team and the default collations are selected. The correct SQL Collation should be:

Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS

• Latin1_General Character Set ;
• Case Insensitive – A and a are treated as the same character;
• Accent Sensitive – a and á are NOT treated as the same character;
• Kana Sensitive – Japanese Hirakana and Katakana characters which look the same are NOT treated as the same character;
• Width Sensitive – Single-Byte and Double-Byte versions of the same character are NOT treated as the same character;

So you’ve set up the Managed Metadata Service Application and set up your Content Type Hub to publish your corporate Content Types. You create your content types and ensure that they are published. You want to use your content type in another site collection and expect to see your corporate content types available, when you click add from existing content types…. But they are not there! So what’s the story?

The issue is more than likely you created your content type hub with the Blank Site Template. The issue is the TaxonomyFeatureStapler is not included in the Blank Site Template. So you may think that the easiest solution is to delete the Content Type Hub, but what about all that hard work you’ve already invested in creating the content types! Well fear not, not all is lost; you can activate the required feature to get everything working as expected:

STSADM -o activatefeature -id 73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C -url http://<your site collection> -force

Once activated, you’ll see the Content Type publishing feature appear in the Site Collection Administration, as well as the Term store management option in the Site Administration on the top level site. Now try the content type publishing feature!

If you try to add the managed metadata column type on a blank site template without the TaxonomyFeatureStapler feature enabled you’ll also get the following error:

The required feature is not enabled for this column type

Again this can be resolved by activating the required feature.

Definitely worth remembering when setting up your farm!

This is more for self-reference than anything else, but may come in handy for others out there.

When debugging an application in Visual studio I was setting a break point at a specific line of code. When running the application in debug mode, the breakpoint becomes a hollow red circle with a warning that says, “The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document.”

One of the first things I checked was that the application was being built in debug verses release mode. It was. I also deleted the obj & bin folders.

Other things tried included:

• Deleting the ASP.Net temporary files;
• Rebuilding the project;
• Devenv.exe /ResetSettings
• Ensure that dll referenced in the GAC that are part of your custom solution are deleted;
• Copy the pdb file to the GAC where you assembly lives (C:\windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\ <assembly_version_number>__<assembly_public_token_key>\Namespace.Project.dll)

The solution that worked for me in this instance was:

1. While debugging the application, click on Debug > Windows > Modules
2. The Modules window will show all the modules that have been loaded for the project;
3. By the module where the breakpoint is not found it will likely say that the Symbol file cannot be found or opened.
4. You can right click the module and browse to your PDB file.

MS Connect has a Theme Builder for MS Office 2007 and 2010, currently in Beta. This could be used to quickly create custom themes which could then be used in SharePoint 2010.

Could be useful for a basic branding exercise.

OK, strictly nothing to do with SharePoint or IW, but thought I’d share it anyway. I’ve been using the Diggo Social Bookmarking site for some time and find it extremely useful.

It offers the following over and above the standard IE bookmarking:

• Tagging of content
• Adding Comments
• Highlighting content in the page
• Read Later
• Publish to Blog
• RSS Feeds
• Search
• Categorisation
• JavaScript Shortcut Tool Bar
• IE plugin (this is a little buggy, but been a while since I’ve used it)
• Power Note for the Android, think there is an iPhone equivalent for those who have a second class device

Hope you find this useful!

This is great quick reference that I came across the other day. I had some issues with different formatting in Outlook 2003 & 2007 when using CSS. You think browser compatibility is bad! There is a strong argument for plain text emails. Unfortunately this was not an option in my case. Anyway, I found this article to be very helpful.

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

This is a neat solution to a limitation of SharePoint document libraries. OOTB SharePoint document libraries do not support linking to files in network file shares. It does however support linking to documents stored in other document libraries, via the “Link to Document” content type. The solution builds on this mechanism.

The problem with the OOTB “Link to Document” content type is that it validates that the link points to a document stored in SharePoint on creation. The way the content type works is that it redirects the user to an application page called “NewLink.aspx”, which is stored in the _Layouts directory. The application page builds an .aspx page dynamically, which is stored in the SharePoint Document Library. The newly created page contains the code to redirect the user to the document referenced in the URL field of the content type.

As modifying the NewLink.aspx page is NOT supported by MS, as any updates to SharePoint may overwrite the changes. The solution to this is to create a copy of the NewLink.aspx page in a custom directory in the _Layouts directory. The validation code is modified in the new file as follows:

function HasValidUrlPrefix_Override(url)

{

    var urlLower=url.toLowerCase();

    if (-1==urlLower.search(“^http://”) &&

        -1==urlLower.search(“^https://”) && -1==urlLower.search(“^file://”))

        return false;

        return true;

}

A copy of the “Link to Document” Content type is created and the definition is modified as follows:

<ContentType ID=”
0x01010A00B891CB0B16E1174F9DFEF504DDF2B3FE”

Name=”Link to Network Share Document”

Group=”CUSTOM GROUP”

Description=”Links to document stored on Network share using a UNC address”

Version=”0″>

<FieldRefs>

<RemoveFieldRef ID=”{fa564e0f-0c70-4ab9-b863-0177e6ddd247}” Name=”Title” />

<FieldRef ID=”{c29e077d-f466-4d8e-8bbe-72b66c5f205c}” Name=”URL” Required=”TRUE”/> <!– URL –>

</FieldRefs>

<DocumentTemplate TargetName=”/_layouts/CUSTOM_DIR/NewLink.aspx” />

</ContentType>

The new application and content type can then be packages into a feature and deployed as a solution. The feature can then be activated on the sites where it is required.

Notes

• The newly created content type should be based off the OOTB “link to Document” Content Type. i.e. the new content type ID should start with 0x01010A;
• This solution does not check for permissions on the Network file share. The ACL of the file will dictate the permissions. If the user does not have permissions an error message will be displayed;
• Standard SharePoint Document library security will be honoured. If the user does not have permissions to the list item they will not see the link to the network file share;
• UNC address should have the flowing format: file://[filepath]/[fileName].[extension]. There is no validation of the UNC address format;
• This method does not provide any browse to functionality for the end user. They will need to be trained on how to locate the correct UNC address.

If you get the following message after creating the “Managed Metadata Service” in SharePoint 2010, you’ve most probably forgotten to start the “Managed Metadata Web Service”.

The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started. Please Contact your Administrator.

To start the service got to Central Administration, in the “System Settings” section of the home page select “Manage Services on Server”. Locate the “Managed Metadata Web Service” and click the Start link. Be patient as it can take a few a short while to start.

My college Adnan Ahmed recently attended the SharePoint Connections Conference in Amsterdam. He highly recommended the conference and said that the content was invaluable. He kindly passed on the links to the slides from the presentations and the videos, so I thought I would share them.

I have to say that the quality of the videos and the content is excellent. I’m personally off to the SharePoint 2010 Evolution Conference in London next month and I hope that they will be providing similar post conference material. It is impossible to attend all the sessions and these videos provide a great way to view the content at leisure after the conference. Last year I was slightly disappointed that there was no video material for the SharePoint Best Practice Conference in London.

Videos:

http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/SharePoint-Connections-2010-Amsterdam/

Slides:

http://www.devconnections.com/Updates/Amsterdam_Jan2010/