Back from SharePoint Conference 2009

I have returned home from ten days in Las Vegas NV where I attended the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 at Mandalay Bay. I cannot say that I am happy to be home, especially since I have to clean up after myself again. I love throwing wet towels on the floor and then going out for the day so that I can return to the hotel room at the end of the day and the towels are magically clean and put away.

There were many highlights of the conference. The cocktail reception, the keynote, the sessions, the Huey Lewis & the News concert, catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.

The bottom line is SharePoint 2010 delivers!! It is going to be an awesome, next three years working with this generation of products and technologies. Things are moving full steam ahead.

I especially enjoyed the governance planning session by my friends, Susan Hanley and Scott Jamison.

Friday's full day workshop on SharePoint Server 2010 Installation and Upgrade Training by Shane Young and Todd Klindt from SharePoint911 was fantastic and informative. It was more fun than hanging out at House of Blues Foundation Room until 3:00am...almost.

Most of all I love the fact that I won all of my gambling money back at the craps table after I checked out on Saturday morning, as I was killing some time before the cab ride to the airport. I hit three point numbers and several hard ways. Folks were happy to be winning and I received an applause for the good shooting.

Links: CommonCraft: SharePoint in Plain English

I've seen this video posted on various blogs. I like it a lot. Its titled, "SharePoint in Plain English." It is by CommonCraft, http://www.commoncraft.com. Brilliant!

View Here:
http://www.commoncraft.com/custom-video-sharepoint-plain-english

Download Here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/5/6/A56BB856-74F5-4A6B-887B-876BAE88116F/SharePoint%20in%20Plain%20English.zip

Migrating Internet Explorer Favorites and RSS Feeds

With Windows 7 releasing soon, it will be time to think about migrating user profile settings to a new operating system build.

Aside from file folders, and desktop files, you may have a bit of time invested in the Internet Explorer favorites and feeds. Even if it only saves a couple minutes of searching in the end, I thought it would be worthwhile to post locations of these items on a source Vista build.

Favorites:
C: (Operating System) \Documents and Settings\UserProfileName\Favorites

RSS Feeds:
C: (Operating System) \Documents and Settings\UserProfileName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds

SharePoint 3.0: Clarifying Check Out Status on Multiple Document Upload

I found a post on TechArchive.net, "Re: disabling check out on document library upload," in which the author was observing that multiple document uploads were resulting in status of "checked out" after uploading. The author cited a post of mine, "SharePoint V3: Achieving Checked-In Status When Uploading Mulitple Documents," and explained that the post didn't solve the issue.

So, I am posting the two possible reasons why, after uploading multiple documents to a document library, the uploaded documents have the status of "checked out."


1. Require check out is configured on the library

I did a test, configuring six document libraries, and then performed a multiple document upload. Here are the results:

a.
Document library configurations resulting in "checked out" status when multiple documents are uploaded:
Require Check out + No Versioning
Require Check out + Major Versioning
Require Check out + Major and Minor Versioning

b.
Document library configurations resulting in "checked in" status when multiple documents are uploaded:
No Require Checkout + No Versioning
No Require Check out + Major Versioning
No Require Check out + Major and Minor Versioning


2. The document library is configured with a required field. When the document upload completes, the field is not populated and the status for each of the uploaded documents is set to "checked out."

SharePoint 3.0: Custom Permission Levels

When planning site collection security models for SharePoint deployments, there is certainly a case for simplicity and sticking to the out of box permission levels. Doing this requires the least amount of thought, administrative effort, documentation, and training.

As an added benefit of sticking with the out of box, you can leverage many of the Web based training tutorials and end user, computer based training modules, that are available on the Web with since most of these instructional resources are based on out of box configurations.

Having said that, circumstances and business requirements can require something different than the out of box permission levels. For example, you might want to lock out SharePoint Designer from some users by configuring a permission level that excludes the "Use Remote Interfaces" permission. Or, you might want to prevent content contributors from being able to delete by excluding the "Delete Items" permission. In most cases, having thirty three distinct permissions allows enough flexibility to accommodate.

When I need to utilize custom permission levels, I put a good amount of effort into planning for these and ensure to be consistent with their names, descriptions, and definitions. Below is a sample matrix that I used for planning four custom permission levels, instead of using those which are out of box.

Publishing SharePoint Web Applications in ISA Server

Background:

This article assumes SharePoint Web applications are configured with NTLM Authentication, that multiple Web applications are being published outside a company's firewall, and ISA Server is being used as a firewall. The scenario described also assumes that a one set of Windows credentials has access to multiple SharePoint Web applications.


Description:

It is common for a SharePoint environment to include multiple Web Applications. Since each Web Application requires its own IIS Web site and may have its own IP address and host header, having mutliple Web applications does create some complexity and therefore requires some consideration.

It gets a bit more complicated when multiple Web applications need to be made accessible outside of a company's local network, such as an extranet or public internet scenario. In this case, firewall rules and NAT must be configured for each Web application to protect the organization and the application being published.

Then comes the user experience. Inside the network, client computers often times belong to the same domain as the SharePoint servers, or at least a trusted domain. Furthermore, the domain URLs are considered either "Local Intranet" or "Trusted" by the users' internet browser. In this environment, a user can navigate from Web application to Web application without receiving an authentication prompt. Life is good on the local network.

This all changes when Web applications are published outside the company's firewall. First, client computers accessing the sites no longer belong to the same domain as the SharePoint servers. Second, the users' browsers aren't configured to automatically log users into the Web applications. The challenge this creates for the user is if a contiguous user experience requires accessing multiple Web applications, the user is going to receive an authentication prompt for each application.


Solution:

ISA Server allows Rules to share Listeners. What this means is that you can create one Listener and add multiple Web applications to that Listener. Then, you can create a Rule for each unique Web application, associating these Rules with the Listener.

The result of this is that users can access multiple, externally facing SharePoint Web applications, without requiring to authenticate to each one.

MSDN: Enterprise Search URL Syntax Reference

One of the most simple, yet powerful features of Microsoft SharePoint Search is the URL syntax. Using URL syntax you can submit a query to a search results page without requiring the use of a SharePoint search box. This means that search results can be rendered on a search results page any way that the proper URL string can be built.

For example, search queries may be submitted implicitly throughout the user experience as a user is navigating a SharePoint Web site. Hyperlinks (dynamic or static) containing search query parameters do all of the work.

The MSDN article, "Enterprise Search URL Syntax Reference, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa637082.aspx," explains the proper format for submitting keywords, scope, view, and start page information through the query string.