SharePoint 3.0: Error: Access Denied When Activating Publishing Infrastructure, Site Collection Feature

Description:

When attempting to activate the "Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" Site Collection Feature, an "Access Denied" error is presented.

Solution:

* Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > IIS Manager
* Expand the Application Pools node, locate the application pool associated with the site collection that is experiencing an issue
* Right-Click the Application Pool and select "Properties"
* Select the "Identity" tab
* Note the user account

* Start > Programs > Microsoft Office Server > SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration
* Site Actions > Site Settings > Advanced Permissions
* Click "Groups"
* Click "Farm Administrators"
* New > Add Users
* Add Users: Type the name of the Application Pool Identity account
* Give Permission: Add users to a SharePoint group: Farm Administrators
* Add the Application Pool account to the Farm Administrators group
* Send E-Mail: Uncheck (you most likely do not want to send an email)
* Click OK

* Try again to activate the "Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" Site Collection Feature


Reference:

SharePoint - Access Denied When Enabling The Publishing Infrastructure Site Collection Feature http://www.sharepointblogs.com/george/archive/2009/03/24/sharepoint-access-denied-when-enabling-the-publishing-infrastructure-site-collection-feature.aspx

Office Word 2007: Change Orientation on Page within Document

Description:

Instructions for changing page orientation (portrait vs. landscape) on a single page of a document (as opposed to the entire document), in Word 2007.


Solution:


Assuming for purposes of explanation that the entire Word document should be portrait, except one page within it should be landscape orientation:

1. Place cursor on the page prior to the one which will be formatted as landscape.
2. Along the ribbon, select "Page Layout," then "Breaks," then "Next Page."
3. Select "Page Layout," then "Orientation," then "Landscape." This will set all following pages to Landscape.
4. From here, set the following page back to portrait.


Reference:

Changing Page Orientation Within a Document
http://wordprocessing.about.com/od/wordprocessingsoftware/ss/pageorient.htm

SharePoint 3.0: Error: Your search cannot be completed...

Description:

Upon submitting a search query using an advanced search box, selecting more than one search scope checkbox from the advanced search web part, the corresponding search results page returns no results and instead returns the following errror:

"Your search cannot be completed because of a service error. Try your search again or contact your administrator for more information."

Further testing and attempts to isolate the issue resulted in finding out that one scope in particular seemed to be problematic. When this particular search scope was used in the search query, the results page would return an error. However, if this scope was not selected during the query, then the search results would display normally.


Solution:

The problem scope, called "All Content," initially had the following scope rules:

* All Content, Include
* ContentSource = People, Exclude

The steps to resolve the issue are as follows:

1. Remove all existing scope rules
2. Create new scope rules to explicitly define each content source such as:
* ContentSource = Content Source 1, Include
* ContentSource = Content Source 2, Include
* ContentSource = Content Source 3, Include
* ContentSource = People, Exclude
3. Update scopes

SharePoint 3.0: Overcoming Upload Limits and Timeouts

The following instructions are recommended for overcoming out of box limitations related to uploading documents. These configurations are done once per web application and are not global changes.


1. Central Administration > Application Management > SharePoint Web Application Management > Web Application General Settings > Maximum Upload Size: Change to 2047 MB (Maximum)


2. Internet Information Services Manager > Web Site > Right-Click > Properties > Connections: Change Setting (e.g. 600 seconds)


3. Windows Explorer > Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Layouts\ > Web.Config

Replace This:

httpRuntime maxRequestLength="2097151"

With This:

httpRuntime executionTimeout="999999" maxRequestLength="2097151"


4. Web.Config Continued...

Replace This:

httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200"

With This:

httpRuntime executionTimeout="999999" maxRequestLength="51200"


5. Windows Explorer > INET PUB\WWWRoot\VirtualDirectories\WebApplication\ > Web.Config

Add the snipet from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944981 between the "configSections" closing tag and the "SharePoint" opening tag (like Shane suggests in his post).


References:

You cannot upload files that are larger than 28 MB on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944981

Error message when you try to upload a large file to a document library on a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site: "Request timed out"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925083

Windows Server 2008 WFE will not allow large file uploads
http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2008/12/17/windows-server-2008-wfe-will-not-allow-large-file-uploads.aspx

Got to love it...

SQL Server 2008: A Must Do Configuration for Resource Governor

Over the past few months, I have been upgrading numerous SharePoint environments to SQL Server 2008 and I have wrestled with system performance. Unless adjustments are made, SQL Server will attempt to consume more than its share of processor. I've seen this cause SharePoint web applications to freeze and become unusable.

A resource management measure for SQL Server 2008 which I consider to be crucial for SharePoint environments, is outlined below. These steps will limit SQL Server Management Studio and Query Analyzer to 25% processor utilization, and possibly preserve the usability of the SharePoint farm. I strongly recommend these steps for SharePoint environments using SQL Server 2008.


SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor

Steps take from TechNet article:
Integration of SQL Server 2008 and Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc990273.aspx


1. Create a resource pool to limit CPU usage to 25 percent

CREATE RESOURCE POOL poolAdhoc
WITH (MAX_CPU_PERCENT = 25);


2. Create a workload group for ad hoc queries and register it with the new resource pool

CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP groupAdhoc
USING poolAdhoc;


3. Create a function that classifies Management Studio and Query Analyzer as members of the ad hoc group

CREATE FUNCTION adhocQueryClassifier() RETURNS SYSNAME
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
BEGIN DECLARE @grp_name AS SYSNAME
IF (APP_NAME() LIKE '%MANAGEMENT STUDIO%')
OR (APP_NAME() LIKE '%QUERY ANALYZER%')
SET @grp_name = 'groupAdhoc'
RETURN @grp_name
END
GO


4. Register the new function with Resource Governor

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR
WITH (CLASSIFIER_FUNCTION= dbo.adhocQueryClassifier);


5. Restart Resource Governor

ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE;

FAST ESP Videos on YouTube

Want to view a demonstration of current and future capabilities of FAST ESP? Here are a couple YouTube videos that provide a great overview.

Fast ESP for SharePoint - 1 of 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTbcCNby8xE

Fast ESP for SharePoint - 2 of 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjW6ZjX8Pyk

SharePoint 3.0: How to Crawl Case Sensitive URLs

By default, MOSS will not crawl URLs which are case sensitive. However, Microsoft Help and Support Article ID 932619 provides instructions for making a registry modification to the Index server which allows case sensitive URLs to be crawled.

Microsoft Help and Support Article ID 932619:
You cannot crawl case-sensitive Web content in SharePoint Server 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932619

It is important to note that a content index reset is required. For this reason, this modification may require a maintenance window for production environments, especially large environments with lots of items in the content index that will need to be crawled again.

Like most system changes, it is a good idea to test this first in Development or QA environments, record the change, and then schedule a time to deploy it to production. The instructions are straightforward, however, the first time that I made the modification, the search service didn't start properly so I had to stop it and start it a second time. Then it was fine. Running through the steps in Development or QA first will allow you to work the kinks out.

Windows Server 2008: IPV4 Weak Host Configuration

It is very common to have a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) farm that includes mutliple web applications, each having its own host name and ip address.

In fact, when SSL certificates are installed on the web server directly (i.e. not offloaded to the hardware load balancer), then there is a requirement to assign unique ip addresses for each web application in order to ensure that the web site bindings (ip address + host name + port) remain unique on the web server.

When a web server is multihomed like this, it is very important to consider and configure the approprate strong or weak host model, in order to ensure that the web server will behave properly. If this configuration is neglected or set incorrectly, then it will cause Windows services to fail, IP packets to be disgarded, and the web server to "break."

Here is an excellent article describing the strong and week host models:

TechNet: The Cable Guy: Strong and Weak Host Models by Joseph Davies
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2007.09.cableguy.aspx

Returning to the subject of the multihomed MOSS web server; here are steps that may be followed to configure the IPV4 interface as "weak":

1. netsh interface ipv4 show interface
2. See the IDX number
3. netsh interface ipv4 set interface [IDX number] weakhostsend=enabled
4. netsh interface ipv4 set interface [IDX number] weakhostreceive=enabled

SharePoint 3.0: Error: The Backup/Restore Job Failed

Description:


In this scenario, a full farm backup failed because the backup of the "SharedSearchIndex" failed.

Error: The backup/restore job failed. In order to rerun the backup/restore the timer job must be deleted from the Timer Job Definitions page. Failure Message: The backup job failed. For more information, see the error log that is located in the backup directory.

Central Administration > Operations (Tab) > Backup and Restore (Heading) > Backup and restore job status

Error: Object Shared Search Index failed in event OnBackupComplete. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory. WebException: The current operation timed-out after 3600 seconds.

Central Administration > Operations (Tab) > Backup and Restore (Heading) > Backup and restore job status



Error: The Backup/Restore job has the status of "Failed"

Central Administration > Operations (Tab) > Global Configuration (Heading) > Timer job status



Solution:


This issue may be caused by a timeout. To resolve this issue, there are a few steps. First, any time a SharePoint Backup/Restore job fails, you must delete the failed timer job definition, otherwise subsequent backup attempts will also fail.

Second, take an inventory of scheduled jobs that are running on the farm, including incremental crawl schedules, SharePoint backup scheduled tasks, and Enterprise Backup jobs (e.g. Symantec BackupExec, Networker, etc..). Measure how much time incremental crawls are taking to run. Also, measure how much time the backup is taking to run. Determine what time the backup job needs to start. Keep in mind that if an enterprise backup solution is backing up the SharePoint backup files, then the SharePoint backup should COMPLETE before the tape backup job begins.

If necessary, adjust the scheduled jobs so that the crawls are not interferring with the backup job.


Steps:

1. Delete the Backup/Restore timer job definition.

Central Administration > Operations (Tab) > Global Configuration (Heading) > Timer job definition

2. Adjust the start time of the incremental crawl. Make sure the schedule is set up in a way that the incremental crawls complete at a time that is earlier than the start time of the scheduled task that runs the backup job.

For example, if the incremental crawl takes less than an hour to run, and the the backup job is scheduled to run at 8:00 PM, then schedule the last incremental crawl to occur at 7:00PM.

SSP Administration > Search (Heading) > Search Settings > Content sources and crawl schedulesContent Source > Edit > Crawl schedules


3. If necessary, adjust the start time of the scheduled task that runs the backup

Start > Settings > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks

CBT Clips

One of the most challenging aspects of a SharePoint rollout is user adoption and user education. Organizing training sessions and brown bag lunch demonstrations are good ways to inform and educate users about SharePoint and how it is used in the organization.

However, ramping up several users on SharePoint at once requires that each person has some context for what they are learning. You can't always force this on people; force them to imagine working a certain way, role play to a point where the instruction actually makes sense.

For this reason, a successful user education strategy should include reference material that is easy to locate, easy to use and relevant. It should be easily accessible at the point in time when a user has a specific question while performing a task. The reference material should address the specific question at hand, and only that. Otherwise, the user will not be able to find the answer to their question and they will lose interest.

I have found CBT Clips to be a great solution for fulfilling this need. CBT Clips offers collections of very brief, to-the-point, computer based instruction videos. These are perfect for new users who just want to know how to upload a document, how check in/check out works, or how to use Outlook with SharePoint.

The price for a company wide license is very reasonable and I think that depending on the size of the organization, an investment may easily pay for itself.