SharePoint 2007 - MySite Self Service Site Creation

After setting up a new SharePoint 2007 installation an end user got the following error message when trying to create a new MySite "Your personal site cannot be created because Self-Service Site Creation is not enabled. Contact your site administrator for more information".

You can enabled Self Service Site Creation by

• Open Central Administration
• Click on the Application Management tab
• Click on the Self-Service Site Management link
• Click on the checkbox for "Enable Self-Service Site Creation" against the site collection hosting the MySites.

Integrating Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SAP

I've been recently looking into MOSS integration with SAP. Found this whitepaper useful.

from saptech:

The SharePoint Team published a new whitepaper which describes the innovations in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that make interoperability with SAP easier than ever. The paper explains the general business and technical challenges facing customers who want to bring the power of their SAP assets into the tools and places where information workers do most of their work. It then shows how Office SharePoint Server 2007 addresses those challenges and, finally, describes various interoperability options, from simply displaying SAP information in a portal page to creating complex business process solutions that incorporate SAP data. You can download the paper at Integrating Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SAP. If you have any questions or feedback feel free to send me a mail!

Microsoft-SAP technical guidance portal http://www.microsoft.com/isv/sap/technology/interop/sharepoint.aspx

Telerik RadEditor available for MOSS

The Telerik RadEditor is now available for SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) in Lite and Full versions. If you've worked with MCMS you would of heard of Telerik. The Telerik RadEditor was a huge improvement over the native HTML placeholder control even in the Lite (Free) version.

After looking at the comparison chart http://www.telerik.com/documents/RadEditorMOSS_Feature_Comparison.pdf both the RadEditor Lite and MOSS out-of-the-box editor have the same features. The Full version of the RadEditor has the following aditional benefits.

Formatting text appearance

• Strikethrough
• Superscript
• Subscript

Formatting paragraphs and lists

• New paragraph
• Horizontal ruler
• Justify

Working with portions of text

• Inline AJAX spellchecker
• Print
• Paste from word
• Paste from word cleaning font and sizes
• Paste plain text
• Paste as HTML

Inserting elements

• Absolute positioning
• Flash manager
• Windows Media manager
• Document manager
• Insert special character
• Insert code snippet
• Insert custom link
• Insert time
• Insert date

View

• Preview mode
• Full screen
• Modules
• Docking / undocking
• Zoom (in and out)

Misc

• Repeat
• Find and replace

Modules

• Properties inspector
• Real time HTML inspector
• Statistics module
• Find and replace

For more info http://www.telerik.com/products/sharepoint/overview.aspx

Creating Content Types with the Content Types Viewer

This post shows how to create content types using the Content Types Viewer and features. In this post we are going to create a "car" content type with a "door", "engine" and "colour" site columns. This post assumes you are familiar with SharePoint 2007 administration.

The Content Types Viewer is available to download from http://www.codeplex.com/MOSS2K7CTypesViewer/

1. Once on your SharePoint 2007 site go to site settings and the site column gallery.

2. Create a new "doors" site column as a number attribute.

Tip: Always create new site columns or content types in a custom folder. This makes them easy to find and separates them from the out of the box ones.

3. Create a new "engine" site column as a string attribute.

4. Create a new "colour" site column as a choice attribute (add any colours for the choices).

5. Create a new "Car" content type inheriting from a list item.

6. Add the newly created site columns to the "Car" content type.

7. Run the Content Types View. Type in the URL of the site collection and click "GO".

8. Select the "Car" content type.

9. Click on the "Show Fields" button.

10. Create a new folder called "DemoSiteColumns" under C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Features\.

11. Create a new file called features.xml containing:

<Feature Id="F5E3FEE8-1D9B-4b95-848B-7614D638B90D" Title="Demo Site Columns" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" Description="Enables the Demo Site Columns" version="1.0.0.0" scope="Site" hidden="FALSE">

<ElementManifests>

<ElementManifest Location="elements.xml">

</ElementManifests>

</Feature>

12. Create a new file called elements.xml.

13. Open elements.xml in notepad. Click on the "Copy to Clipboard" button from the Content Types Viewer.

14. Select edit > paste from the notepad window and save changes to the elements.xml file.

15. Click on the "Show Field Refs" button.

16. Create a new folder called "DemoContentType" under C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Features\

17. Create a new file called features.xml containing:

<Feature Id="3B4752E6-8D62-4df0-A4D3-31C8E99D44FC" Title="Demo Content Type" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" Description="Enables the Demo Content Type" version="1.0.0.0" scope="Site" hidden="FALSE">

<ElementManifests>

<ElementManifest Location="elements.xml">

</ElementManifests>

</Feature>

18. Create a new file called elements.xml.

19. Open elements.xml in notepad. Click on the "Copy to Clipboard" button from the Content Types Viewer.

20. Select edit > paste from the notepad window and save changes to the elements.xml file.

21. Open a command prompt and type the following:

CD C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\bin

stsadm -o installfeature -file DemoSiteColumnsstsadm -o installfeature -file DemoContentType

22. Before activating the features either delete the existing site columns and content types or activate the features in a different site collection.

23. Go back to the command prompt and type the following:

stsadm -o activatefeature -file DemoSiteColumns -url http://localhost/

stsadm -o activatefeature -file DemoContentType -url http://localhost/

You have now created two features which create the site columns and the "Car" content type.

Prescan now available to download

You can download PreScan.exe here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8a00b1f-6f45-42cd-8e56-e62c20feb2f1&DisplayLang=en.

You will need to run PreScan.exe against your WSS V2 or SharePoint Portal 2003 sites before they are migrated. PreScan scans the V2 SharePoint site for customised site templates, sites based on custom site definitions, unghosted pages, custom webparts, orphaned objects and sites that are based on languages or have customisations that are not installed. PreScan reports issues found. These will need to be resolved for the migration to be successful.

Some great posts about PreScan

• Bill Baer's Prescan Wisdom and Handling Prescan Errors
• Don't be afraid of Prescan - Part 1
• Your Friend Prescan and What it Does - Part 2
• Joel Oleson's Upgrade Related Posts
• Shane Young's Detailed Gradual Upgrade Steps

Articles for Microsoft 2007 Products

Great source of useful articles
http://www.asaris.de/sites/walsh/Lists/Articles%20for%202007%20Products/Grouped%20By%20Category.aspx

Team Collaboration Feature SharePoint 2007

Someone in the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 product team has a sense of humour or a good example of creative coding or maybe a good way to distinguish between features ... I'll let you decide. The GUID of the collaboration feature is

<Feature ID="00BFEA71-4EA5-48D4-A4AD-7EA5C011ABE5">

Is it me or does this look like collaboration?

Using the Content Types Viewer

The content types viewer is a windows form which displays information about content types that exist in SharePoint 2007. I came to write the tool because creating custom content types using features was quite time consuming. Creating content types with a web browser is more intuitive but there is no easy way to deploy them. The content types viewer looks like:




Download it here http://www.codeplex.com/MOSS2K7CTypesViewer/

How to use the content types viewer

1. Type in the url of the site collection where the content types are. Then click on "GO".
2. Select a content type from the list of content types displayed.
3. You have 3 choices. You can view the schema of the content type by clicking "Show Schema". You can also view the fields (the xml displayed is used for features that create site columns) by clicking "Show Fields" and field refs (the xml displayed is used for features that create content types) by clicking "Show Field Refs".

Show Schema example:

Show Fields example:



Show Field Refs example:



Comming soon ... creating content types with the Content Types Viewer.

Updated: Creating content types with the Content Types Viewer

Tip: Creating content types in SharePoint 2007

When creating content types try and think generically. One great feature of content types is that they support inheritance. If you have an object for example a car, create a base car content type that contains all the common attributes that a car supports (doors, engine, colour etc) and then create a content type based on the car content type.

For example: Content types that inherit from the car would be convertible and 4x4.



By using this approach you can add common items to the car content type and they will get added to content types that inherit from the car content type. You could then add unique attributes to each of the child content types (convertible and 4x4).

Dilbert on consulting

SharePoint 2007 Support Knowledge Base

It's worthwhile to keep an eye on this page http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?catalog=LCID%3d2057&spid=11373&query=&adv=&mode=s&cat=False&range=1-180 it lists workarounds and support information for SharePoint 2007.

SharePoint 2007 Books

Studying for 70-551 Upgrade MCAD to MCPD Web Developer

I'm currently studying for exam 70-551 UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework. The exam is very substantial (4 hours long and 90 questions).

More information about the exam http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-551.mspx

This package of Microsoft Self-paced training kit books are worthwhile MCPD Books from Amazon



I've bought these books, all I need now is some time to read them.

Kingston Bagpuize a hive of activity

Kingston Bagpuize is a small village outside of Oxford just off the A420 (the road which joins Oxford with Swindon and Bristol). However small Kingston Bagpuize is, 3 gold partners are based there, CIBER UK, ndl-metascybe and Business and Decision.

• CIBER UK http://www.ciber.co.uk/
• ndl-metascybe http://www.ndl.co.uk/
• Business and Decision http://www.businessdecision.co.uk/ (formerly Domino Systems).

Emirates cup

Maybe I shouldn't admit to this being a Liverpool fan, but I've just bought two tickets for day two of the Emirates cup.






Day 1 - Saturday 28th July 2007
Inter Milan v Valencia (2pm)
Arsenal v Paris Saint-Germain (4.15pm)


Day 2 - Sunday 29th July 2007
Paris Saint-Germain v Valencia (2pm)
Arsenal v Inter Milan (4.15pm)


Two games for the price of one. Hopefully the football will live up to the expectation.

Configuring and Integrating Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 Whitepaper

The white paper is available here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2AEB1A5E-43B8-483B-8CB2-86C0E82BF0AB&displaylang=en

Years ago Microsoft had a solution called MSIB which intergrated Commerce server and MCMS together to provide a plarform for building rich content authoring enabled eCommerce sites.

Overview of the download .. (from MS site)

This download provides setup and configuration information for solutions that are based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Commerce Server 2007. This download includes step-by-step configuration tasks and sample code.This document in this download does not provide prescriptive guidance or a recommended enterprise architecture for building solutions that are based on these technologies. It is assumed that the reader has basic knowledge about Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Will miss the MlsContext and Rich Products, well maybe not :)

SPS 2003 upgrade to MOSS 2007

I’ve successfully completed several migrations from SharePoint 2003 to MOSS 2007 with sites that have had various degrees of customisations. Mainly these have used the database migration approach. This was due to minimising the amount of downtime and to new hardware requirements.

Microsoft have whitepapers and information on technet for upgrading to SharePoint 2007, for more information go here http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/601874ea-86c9-4611-bdaf-abe17bbb68161033.mspx?mfr=true

Planning is definitely the most important stage of the upgrade process. You need to choose the correct approach. The approach maybe obvious but you need to weigh up the pros and cons of each approach before deciding.

Choosing the upgrade approach http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/53b8a28b-43c4-43aa-8854-d72d9b7b59c41033.mspx?mfr=true

Using the database migration I was able to stagger the upgrade for each of the site collections, so that user acceptance testing can be carried out and the migrated site approved by the stake holders. This also meant I was in full control of what content was to be migrated and at which point in time, reducing the impact on the end users.

One of the issues with the database migration is that you are actually adding the old SharePoint 2003 content database within the new SharePoint 2007 web application. This means you will now have two content databases for each site collection you migrate. You can specify site limits on the content databases in central administration so that the new sites will use the new database, but you will still have two databases to backup and manage etc.

The diagram below illustrates the normal process.




A way around this is to migrate the SharePoint 2003 site collection to a temporary web application. Once this has been completed and the target audience are happy the content has come across you can then setup content deployment to push the content from the temporary web application to the new site.

The diagram below illustrates this process.



Hope you find this useful.

STSADM Import / Export

Tip: When exporting a site in SharePoint 2007 using STSADM, you may get a .CMP file 17KB in size. This will be because the user who is running STSADM doesn't have access to the site. If you give the user permissions to the site, you will export the site successfully.

Always run STSADM as a user with a site collection owner rights on the target site.

MOSS Variations … Alternative approach

Variations in SharePoint 2007 work well if you have direct translations from one main language into one or many languages, but if you want a more flexible solution to cater for having pages in other languages but not the source language then you can’t do that with the out-of-the-box approach.

For example, under the standard approach:

A global company has a multi-lingual website with content predominately in English. I setup my source variation as EN (English). I also create FR (French) and DE (German) variation labels. I create a page under EN and submit to FR and / or DE.

* User creates a page in the English site.




* User submits the variations of the page into the French and German sites.





* User can create pages in both the French and German sites, but this is regionalised content and cannot be translated using variations







The company has a page targeted at French and German visitors only. The normal process is to create a page in the source variation (in the above example this is "EN") and submit to a number of variations, but in this case I don’t want it to appear in English.

A solution would be to:

1. Create the source variation label as a neutral label ie called “CMS”.
2. Click on create hierarchies and build the site structure as you did before.
3. Create a variation label for each of the desired languages.
4. Click on create hierarchies.
   

You can now create a page in the “CMS” section and submit to French and German. The out-of-the-box multi-lingual switching control and landing page functionality will need to change in order to hide the “CMS” variation from the menu and landing logic. This approach is similar to the multi-lingual concept of master and slave sites in MCMS 2002.

Holiday

Time for a break ... and I'm off to Paphos for a week. Weather looks good to:



Will post some info on SharePoint 2003 migration to MOSS once I return.