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June 29 Urkel + Mexican Food on a Date = RunsHomecoming 1991. Big football game, fun dance, and dinner... Theron asked his date and I asked mine… a girl I met while on staff at 4-H camp. If you thought I lived in a rural area where there were no more than 6 homes on our mile. She lived out in sublet a distant suburb of raft river population less than 200. After a 50 mile ride to pick up my date, we had some awkward moments of silence, but otherwise had some great funny small talk conversations. I had setup some big plans, reservations at the local Mexican resteraunt with reserved booth with a view of the TV. I knew Urkel (Family Matters), TGIF baby! …was going to be on, and we wouldn’t miss it! After enchiladas and burritos with fried ice cream for desert we headed over to the dance. The football game was pretty much over and the kids were headed to the gym for the dance. As the music began with a bit of C&C music factory, I was ready to pull out my moves. “Wanna dance?” No, not really. My friends took the floor, and I stuck with my date. As we sat there through a few songs I asked my date what was going on. She said she wasn’t feeling good and wanted to go home. I notified my friends they’d need to get other rides and I headed out on the long drive to Sublet. At the end of the year, my friend would remind me of this classic date by a note in my year book. “I’ll never forget cruising in the MVP, seeing Urkel on a date, missing you at the Homecoming dance when your date got the runs!” Amsterdam is not the same as Oakley, Idaho.I love world cultures, travel, and hearing about how different places are and meeting people from diverse places. I met a girl from Holland at a church dance and asked her out. She asked if I wanted to take her to Oakley’s homecoming dance. Sure. Sounded like a good date. When I went to pick her up, I waited for an hour while she did her hair, then went with another couple to dinner. She picked at her food, but really didn’t eat anything. We then went to the dance. We danced a bit, and I really enjoyed myself on the dance floor. Toward the end of the dance, the other couple we were with were saying the kids were going to a bomb fire up on the hill, some kind of local tradition. Cool, I thought. We jumped in the back of some guys truck and went up some crazy dirt roads a few miles up a hill. Kids were talking and hanging out. After an hour, I was looking at my watch. I was for sure going to miss my curfew. Some kids were leaving and asked if we were going. I asked my date, who was hanging out with other guys at this point if she wanted to go. She said, “nah. I’m having fun. This is the first time I’m really seeing what it’s like to be an American.” I said I’d wait for her, the gentlemanly thing to do. Another couple of hours passed and a large group were leaving the hill including our original ride. At this point she was hanging out with a couple of other guys. It was 1 in the morning and it was going to take at least an hour to get home from the bottom of the hill. I was just 16 and this was likely my 3rd date. I asked her when she was planning on going home. I hung around; wanting to make sure she got home ok. We finally went with the last group home. She was in the cab, and I was freezing in the back of the truck going over huge pot holes and bumps. She was really quiet all the way back to the house. After I dropped her off, I’ve never gone as fast. The MVP was maxed out. When I arrived home around 2am, my dad opened the door, and wiped a tear from his eyes. “I can’t talk to you right now, let’s talk in the morning..." Wow. I felt horrible. I couldn’t explain the situation well enough. The next morning I was grounded from driving for 2 weeks. Cruising in Burley Idaho – One night we grew upThomas, one of the shyest kids I know had one of the coolest trucks. He loved to take his dad’s truck with it’s shiney paint job and spin cookies or donuts or choose your favorite circular pastry. The truck would actually shake back and forth when he’d press the gas.
One day we were cruising Overland avenue in Burley, Idaho and listening to Def Leopard "Hysteria" oh yeah, Armageddon it. “Pour some sugar on me” baby. As we listened and banged our heads, we drove along banging our heads and looking for “chicks and babes.” One particular night, we were cruising along and saw some babes. We pulled up beside them after pulling through the burgers etc, parking lot. The girls started pointing and laughing at one of the girls. As we starred she flashed us. I was driving at the time and had to stop and pull over to recoup. As we all chatted about what had just happened to us. I realized we had grown up that very moment. We were no longer innocent kids. We were now peaking puberty and becoming adults. “What just happened? Tell me again.” We’d say over and over. We couldn’t believe it. These weren’t the high school girls we hung out with or chased. This was a different element we’d never been exposed to.
Thomas got a Phd at the school of hard knocks. He dated a 13 year old when he was 18, lived on a trailer on his parents property for a while, and learned that smoking was bad for your teeth and more the hard way. Poor guy. He was easily influenced by his peers. His peers were sometimes a lot lot younger than him and sometimes they took down stop signs. I hope you don’t have to learn that lesson. It’s bad. People die.
When I first met Thomas he showed me a program he’d built for his new Tandy 1000. It flashed all the colors of Basic. This RGB monitor flashed yellows, reds, blue’s over and over in sub seconds. We’d turn off the lights and rock out to the colorful strobe lights. It was like a Rave ahead of it’s time. June 20 Glory to the Lunch LadiesFrom Horse Stable to Lunch Room Our lunch room, the lunch room for 1st through 12th grade was not only the same building, but had an incredible history. In its hundred year history, this building was once a horse stable, a bus garage, and much later converted into how we knew it, the cafeteria. In first grade I learned why there was butter on the honeycomb looking ceiling. Each day with our rolls we would get a little square of butter. It fit perfectly on the end of a spoon, and the twenty high foot ceiling was high enough that even standing on the table, you couldn’t easily scrape the butter off. On those hot summers you would look up wondering if it was going to get warm enough to drip on your head. I guess the lunch ladies figured it was futile to attempt to scrape off the butter, so it simply piled up year over year.
Mentioning those rolls, oh how they were delicious home made rolls. Napoleon may have saved his tots for class, but at our school it was the hot rolls. Cold or hot those rolls were great. They were soft and gooey goodness on the inside. One day I fit at least 7 rolls into my mouth. You did have to be careful and really keep an eye on your food otherwise Curtis would pick up your cookie or roll and give it a lick and give it back. His trick worked. He got extra food after a few groans. He knew who would be grossed out and get a few laughs from buds.
In junior high part of growing up was the ability to “go downtown” during lunch. We were given choices, lunchroom (default), little classroom ($$), or the country store and Gillette’s both of which offered a combination of candy, pop, chips, frozen burritos, frozen pizza and a mini microwave at the back of the store. My buddy Kelly more than once mentioned it was the rolls that made him come back and visit us in the lunch room. Yep, he was one of the free ones. One of the cool kids whose Mom gave him cash and in 7th grade was the only kid I knew that walked around writing his own checks at lunch. It took some work, but Kelly did end up being convinced that the lunch room wasn’t a bad place even though we kids were “stuck” there. We all began to really look forward to our lunch room adventures…
Out of the darkness… Grendle’s Mom You might ask what it was that made Kelly convinced. Well, one day, after finishing off our meals we walked up to the washing station. A metal bowl in the corner of the washing area with soapy water was full of water. As I dropped my spoon a little splash of water hit the lunch lady we would later call Grendle’s Mom. We had been studying Beowulf in our English class and the description seemed fitting at the time. She growled, “Hey, you kids need to be more careful.”
The next day, we didn’t think anything of it as we walked up to return our trays.
Grendle’s Mom barked, “Are you kids going to be nice?!!”
“Sure,” we replied, and thinking we were going to be careful, we dropped our silver into the pale.
“Hey!” she snapped as she reared and pulled out her spraying wand threatening us with her curled brow.
The next day, we figured we were going to get wet. Knowing that was her plan, we walked up with a group of kids. We tossed our silver into the pale and splashed her good. Up came the sprayer and down we went hiding behind the kids. She got them good. Out we ran.
The next day, Kelly had a plan. “Let’s get her good this time!” We all were encouraged to take 3 or 4 spoons and forks. As we finished our food we couldn’t wait to really get her. She was furious this time and getting away with it, I’m sure made her even madder. The wrath of Grendle’s Mom would be upon us if we didn’t shape up.
“Are you kids going to be good?” We’d hear as we walked by with our trays… She had her evil eyes on us. We had to lay low for a while.
It was not only the rolls that made some of the other food tolerable. The no-bake cookies were to die for. In grade school, seconds weren’t an option. If you asked for more, they’d say they had to wait for junior high and high school. No option at all. In junior high, ten minutes later the high school would be around. In high school on the other hand, there wasn’t anyone following us. So, hanging out in the lunch room and asking for extra cookies became our practice, especially on no-bake cookie day.
Our stories with the lunch ladies didn’t end there… On our last week of school we didn’t find ourselves in the lunch room too often, but we got word that we should go. We stopped by one day and Grendle’s Mom asked us to come by one day after graduation. We all thought she’d either take out a super soaker and really get us, or bucket of salad dressing or the like. We were all wrong, no super soaker, no slime or anything you’d expect. Our arch nemesis over the years gave us each a pen set and wished us the best of luck in our lives. Who would have guessed?
I thought it was over. At the end of the summer I was turning 19. In my faith that means if you’re a good kid, and you’ve been preparing your whole life to serve the lord, you are called to serve. I was no exception. My faith was strong, I put in my papers and got my call to …The Virginia, Richmond Mission. I entered the MTC (Mission Training Center) and was eating the food at the MTC. Yuck. I missed my lunch ladies and the good times so much I decided to send them a post card. I told them all how much I missed the good times, and the food. My brother would later report that the lunch ladies hung up my post card on the glass in the food line. Nephi and the plates post card was proudly displayed with the kind thoughts. Grendle’s mom took it upon herself to write back. She sent a nice note and five dollar bill. She referred to my brother as picking up the “shenanigans” and keep things going. The buck had been successfully passed. The motivational note ended with Dunk ‘em while I soak your brother and friends (a subtle reference to baptisms.) On Valentines Day I was reminded of what was going on back at the Declo lunch room as I received a note with… A Twenty Dollar Bill! In it a simple, message… “Buy the biggest chocolate heart you can find!” Grendle’s mom really ended up being sweet. She made my day, and looking back on it, our fun really helped turn the monotony of washing dishes into a daily water fight.
One day we were in the salad bar line early at lunch. At the teachers table sat one of my favorite substitutes. Holyoke, we called him holey oak. He was as old as a tree and wore thick glasses. He was great. As we stood in line I noticed a resemblance between his hair and the sunflower seeds. This resemblance gave me an evil idea. I picked up some sunflower seeds and placed them onto his sparse mug. One of my buddies already sitting down saw what I was doing and almost freaked out. As the old man ate, he pulled his head forward and a couple of seeds fell into his salad. Without thinking he gobbled up the salad with the freshly added oily seeds.
One of my favorite items in the salad line was the worms. NOT. (As was said in the 90’s or n-ya as they say in Declo)
The way people talked in Declo “N-ya” on a side note was a term for saying “Yeah,” really sarcastically, enough that is was super obvious that you were not in agreement. This all started with games I use to play with my brothers. Where we’d be in sarcastic agreement cause we had to go along with my older brother. Declo really did have it’s own language. It really reached its limits when you’d get called really little orange potentate.
Back to the worms… these worms, dried and curly fried, known as figs to fogies, weren’t eaten by any of the kids.
One day I had the bright idea to see if I could get some kids to try the worms. The big tub of ranch dressing, usually watered down was super thick this particular day. The soupy substance looked like it could hide a treat. So taking a scoup of the infamous worms I dropped them into the tub and gave it a good stir. Even my buddy behind me didn’t notice the first scoop so I had to catch his attention and grab a second scoop. We had a good laugh as we took our seats. I didn’t hear anything for a few minutes. Then as I looked around I’d hear an occasional groan or Earnest sounding “eeiew”. This wasn’t enough. The next week we hid worms, grass (items you’d prefer grow on your sheep shaped chia pet), and other odd things that would show up in the salad bar that we’d seen earlier in the week in the hot lunch line. May 30 Did it. MSDN Blog is now upMy SharePoint Blog is now up... http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/
I'll start posting my thoughts on that side.
Another Reminder. I'm putting up some posts tonight on the Lunch Ladies and the Lunch Room to see if people like my geekish memories.
Joel May 24 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Beta 2 RTW!I don't remember how many times I got bugged to know when you could get the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint v3 beta 2 bits.... Here you go!
On a side note. This stuff has been wildly popular. Who would have guessed? The MS.com guys ended up having to add more servers. Thats ok... LOVE the demand.
*** Killer ITPro Elearning online training... just went live.
Course 3370: Getting Started with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Beta)
In this clinic, you'll explore the 2007 Microsoft Office System to understand how it provides many benefits to an organization, including enhanced collaboration, personal productivity, and an effective enterprise content management solution. You will also explore the design goals and features of Office SharePoint Server 2007 and learn how to manage documents and Web content using Office SharePoint Server 2007. Course 3369: Getting Started with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Beta) This clinic covers the benefits and business value of deploying Windows SharePoint Services, provides an understanding of how Windows SharePoint Services contributes to the collaboration solutions from Microsoft, and outlines the skills and knowledge required for an organizational deployment. May 23 Are you a SharePoint Geek?Delivered at the SharePoint Migration Workshop
You know you’re a “SharePoint Geek” when…
May 19 SharePoint Conference 2006It's friday mid day and I'm sitting in the partner migration workshop. The regular sessions from the SharePoint Conference are over. It's been a crazy, crazy week for me. In my new role I've actually been extremely busy with the conference. One of my first projects in my new group has been managing the demos for Billg's keynote and KurtD's (Kurt Delbene) keynote. I've been managing the magic behind the scenes working with 3sharp on the messages themes that we (MS) want to get across and showing the key features of the product. In Billg's he was keen on showing Wiki's and blogs. We as well wanted to show the key integration with Outlook like integrated tasks and 2 way calendar integration. Tom Rizzo, my boss's boss gave the demo. He did an excellent job... as usual. Behind the scenes we started this project 4 weeks ago flushing out the scenarios going over this with a number of executives including Bill's speech writer. It's been fun and tiring to work through this process to get this content to a level where it flows and has the right message. I worked with Jon Kauffman and Mike Fitzmaurice on 2 of the 3 demos during Kurt's keynote. Fitz did an awesome job and it really flowed. Jon's machine behind the scenes was soooo slow. I felt really bad for him. He did do a great job of getting out the right message, but the dry runs were tons more snappy. To be honest, the hardware and network was suppose to be faster than it was in the dry runs where it was sub second page load times. Hopefully not many people noticed... but the gameboy in the back running the demo didn't come off so well ;)
On Monday I also went to the Exchange Integration session. I liked the URL always works stuff in Exchange 2007. Good stuff. The offline folders in OWA was good screenshots, but the demo (which I've seen) would have been more killer. Ray, the speaker didn't know SharePoint very well and possibly misled some of the ShaerPoint attendees that were drilling on email features. One example... The speaker said he couldn't think of any reason why SharePoint would need to call exchange. Obviously he hadn't seen the Inbox and Calendar web parts of the coolest new Exchange 2007 mail web parts that do an easier job of making it easier to get a view of your "stuff" on your mysite.
The Search Drill down session was good. David Mowatt did a good job. My favorite new search things in 2007....
* No recrawl of documents if ACLs change... only recrawl the ACLs
* Change Log keeps track of what changes making Indexing optimized and fine tuned
* Better algorithm 500% better relevancy
* Hit Highlighting
* Did you mean recommendation
* Easy modification of results page
* BDC (Business Data Catalog) integration for Indexing ERP and other backend systems
Tuesday.. Administering Part 1/2
Steve Tullis rocks. Great content. I'd seen this at TechReady2, but got some updated content and great overviews of the consistent Administration UI.
Met with a couple of customers on Extranet, Topologies, and Scale. Great conversations. Key takeaways for me was working with the UA (User Assistance) team on prescriptive guidance on the topologies. Things are soooo flexible that customers have more questions. Those that know what they're doing have the freedom, but ultimately the small, medium, and large farms look pretty similar. But... what I like is say making the Index server a web server so it doesn't have to hammer the web front ends. As well I like the flexibility of putting the index on one of 2 front ends in a medium environment (5-15K Users) where hardware costs are a concerned. You truly can scale out linearly rather than going from 1 to 3 to 5 servers you can go 1,2,3,4, etc... Offload what you need to. Virtual server support makes this very interesting. April 29 Upgrade/Migration to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007I've been working with Michael Herman from Parallelspace on an upgrade/migration workshop for upgrades of SPS 2003/WSSv2 to SharePoint 2007 among other scenarios such as PF, File Shares, etc... John Nisi, Mitch Prince, as well have acted as experts on the Portal and CMS side as well. We had a beta workshop last week in NYC. It was a great opportunity to gather feedback on the effort. It's incredible how this project is really coming together. As challenging as any major web based product is at upgrade. I'm impressed that from an IT perspective, they (now we), have put together some good flexible options around upgrade.
1. In place upgrade - of course for hardware reasons you're going to want to have an option like this, so for small environments you're not needing additional hardware or additional expenses. Be sure to get a good backup if you take this route. You'll pretty much be down while the upgrade takes place, the options are few, but this is the quickest route to getting the job done.
2. Side by side upgrade - running V2 and v3 or 2003 and 2007 side by side on 2 different IIS web applications (IIS virtual servers) in the same farm may sound strange, but this gives best of both worlds options... the ability to preserve on hardware costs... minimize user impact, and the ability to quickly roll forward or rollback and with customizations or no customizations, you'll find this ability very useful.
3. Database attach/content database migration - having 2 different farms on different hardware, given it's the right time of the year to invest in hardware... this option is great for really seeing your farm have a clean v3/2007 experience. I really like the idea of taking a content db and simply taking a good backup, making a copy of the db, and attaching it to the v3 FE's. Automatically Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 will know to upgrade the content in the database. There is planning of course on disk space on the SQL side and IIS/DNS namespace for something like this, but as well this gives you options for a quicker upgrade than the side by side, but methodical and easy to roll back.
I'm not including all the pro's and con's here in this post, and I'm not including an option that I think will really help ITPros be successful in their upgrades...
Imagine there are 3 buckets of customization in a farm.
1. Those sites that are not unghosted (uncustomized)
2. Sites that have been customized to add functionality included in the next version (breadcrumbs, custom nav, remove site settings (security trimmed UI), etc..) or slight modifications (dataview web parts, images outside of zones)
3. More than light customization.... More dominant look and feel change, possibly via custom site definitions or site templates (doesn't look like the out of the box SharePoint site)
If all your sites fall into bucket 1, such as blocking FrontPage modification, or a bit of #2, then upgrade will be straightfoward and possibly an enjoyable? experience.
On the other hand if you have modified the out of the box site definition (against PG's recommendation) or have made some heavy look and feel changes that fall into #3. There are options for you. There are abilities to map 2003 site defitions to 2007 site definitions and site features. Partners are doing work in this area as well. The product group knows that these customizations which have created a conscious branching of the out of the box templates are "ok." They will give you the ability to upgrade all the #1 sites, and keep the others with the 2003 look and feel and features, giving site administrators the ability to "reghost" their sites. A scan tool which will ship with the product will give you the ability to "see" what pages have been customized and fall outside of bucket #1. Note this is not an option with the upgrade in place with the current plan of record.
The reason I put this out there, is to encourage people to follow some best practices with current environments...
1. When adding custom web parts or dataview web parts, add them to a dummy site, export then import onto your real site... (giving credit to Dustin Miller for this best practice)
2. Storage and Database sizes -managing your databases to a decent size such as 25-50GB will make upgrade easier to manage in all 3 upgrade/migration scenarios. If you're planning hardware now, you may want to consider the option you'll use and think about some additional disk space for side by side databases during and post upgrade, maybe an extra space for the database backup pre-upgrade
3. Bin vs. GAC - I haven't talked about custom web parts, but you'll find that when the assembly is in the GAC it will work post upgrade. That's not to say that's best practice. My saying is... Make sure you know that what you add, you can remove. That's as well to say, that what you add, you can re-add. Re-deploying or re-registering the assemblies or webparts should be a familiar task for admins. Deployment does become soooooo much better in farms with multiple FEs.
4. Namespace & Consolidation - I totally recommend keeping a tight ship. Keep the number of IIS Web Applications/IIS Virtual Servers and namespaces to a minimum. Avoid IIS Vservers with multiple names as well. That becomes very difficult to deal with during upgrades/redirects, etc... Having a few databases is ok, it's not that much of an incremental, you'll find that having lots of IIS virtual servers is a pain.
5. RAM - yes RAM and FE's play well together, if you're thinking about the side by side, extra RAM will ensure a smoother upgrade 4 GB is recommended to start.
6. There are special considerations for shared services. Search/Profiles are the ones you should consider most. Think about these services in all 3 scenarios. Consider the time it will take to index post upgrade as well.
If you're doing a lot with SPS Alerts, let me know I'd like to understand the scenarios. If you're not, don't invest a lot in the indexing based alerts. Note the alerts on content in the mysite are actually WSS alerts underneath (utilizing the timer service vs. indexing).
Note... these thoughts are my own based on my own understanding, there's no guarantees in what I've said here. Ha ha, I'm already thinking like a product manager.
April 19 From ITPro to Product Manager?Yes, it's true. I've accepted a job in the Office Server Product Marketing team aka SharePoint Marketing TPM team in the IWPMG (Information Worker Product Marketing Group.) I started last week. My new title is Sr. Technical Product Manager. I'll actually more than ever be involved in the Tradeshows, events, evangelism, whitepapers, and guides with an emphasis on those focused on the ITPro/NT Admin.
I hope that coming from the ITPro world and representing this crowd with the product group will ensure that more, better, focused content is written and applicable to this audience.
I'm debating moving future posts to the blog to MSDN and would be interested if readers of this blog have a preference.
Joel April 14 See you at TechEd in BostonI'll be speaking with John Nisi, one of the Portal COE Rangers. Great guy, very funny. These sessions are going to be similar to the ones at TechReady2 an internal conference by Steve Tullis and Keith Bankston.
Infrastructure Topics in SharePoint Products and Technologies: Administrative Architecture and Planning for Deployment
Speaker(s): John Nisi, Joel Oleson
Session Level(s): 300
This session describes the new Deployment and Administration Architecture for Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Learn about Logical and Physical design architectures, planning and deployment considerations, as well as Inter-Farm and Intra-Farm Shared Services Capabilities. Also, understand the Administration Components and Administration Security considerations throughout the platform. Infrastructure Topics in SharePoint Products and Technologies: Deployment and Advanced Administration Topics
Speaker(s): John Nisi, Joel Oleson
Session Level(s): 400
This session is the second of a two-part series on Deployment and Administration in Windows SharePoint Services (version 3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Learn about advanced configurations and deployment architectures including Extranet Deployments and Inter-Farm Shared Services. Gain an understanding of Steady State and Advanced Administration techniques and capabilities for the SharePoint Farm including Password Management, Disaster Recovery, SQL Management, Patching and Service Pack Management and the Microsoft Common Engineering Criteria enhancements. Mini Spec for STS to WSS redirectorThis Mini spec was written to write a simple redirect app for moving content from a V1 STS server to WSS V2. We found that the hundred or so IIS Virtual Servers (web applications) did not scale when creating a one to one mapping on redirection and was a pain if we ever needed to fail back to the pre-migration site. This probably makes sense to someone migrating STS sites to WSS in a medium to large enterprise environment.
Mini Spec:
Requirements: Root requests will automatically be redirected to the new location (New Version of SharePoint). Any link to a subsite (i.e. http://team-foo/subsite/ or http://team-foo/subsite) or document library (http://team-foo/subsite/doclib or http://team-foo/subsite/doclib/) at a lower level is taken to a page where the user is informed the site has been moved and the user clicks on a link which redirects them to the same level or location on the hosted environment. Document or file requests are redirected directly by the user receiving a page informing them the page has moved and following the link to the doc or file (i.e. http://team-foo/doclib/doc1.doc -> 404 Moved (user click) -> default.asp (redirect logic) -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/doclib/doc1.doc
Since in STS V1 .htm files become .aspx for views, default and Allitems any requests to .htm files should be redirected to the root of the folder…. Examples:
http://team-foo/default.htm -> 404 Moved (User clicks) -> default.asp (logic strips filename and extension) -> https://spsites.customer.com/sites/foo/
http://team-foo/doclib/page.htm -> 404 Moved (User clicks) -> default.asp (logic strips filename and extension) -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/doclib
http://team-foo/doclib/forms/AllItems.htm -> 404 Moved (User clicks) -> default.asp (logic strips filename and extension) -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/doclib/forms
http://team-foo/doclib/anyfolder/blah.htm -> 404 Moved (User clicks) -> default.asp (logic strips filename and extension) -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/doclib/anyfolder/
404 page 1. Consists of “This Site has moved” (And Kimberley’s content as necessary) 2. Should relay that .htm requests will redirected to the site or document library of the requested page. 3. Should contain a link to root default.asp page as in “/” example: <a href = “/”>Here</a> 4. Requires this page be registered as the default 404 page for the redirect virtual server
Default.asp (redirect page w/ logic)
Use case logic to determine header and matching server redirect location
1. Sniffs the referrer if no referrer go to header as logic dictates such as http://team-foo -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo 2. Sniffs the referrer if exists with no .htm then retain the suffix starting below the header… example: http://team-foo/doclib/doc1.doc -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/doclib/doc1.doc 3. Sniffs the referrer if exists ending with .htm then check for existence of “forms/” to left of filename and if forms exists… removes the “forms/” from the path including filename to right of last “/” examples: http://team-foo/default.htm -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/
http://team-foo/subsite1/default.htm -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/subsite1 http://team-foo/subsite1/lists/mylist/calendarview1.htm -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/subsite1/lists/mylist/
http://team-foo/subsite1/doclib/forms/someview1.htm -> https://sites.customer.com/sites/foo/subsite1/doclib/
4. If header is in no case statements then send them to https://sites.customer.com/
Server Setup: 1. Setup a single IIS Website (IIS virtual server) for blank host header, unassigned IP addresses, and port 80. 2. Assign new 404 page via IIS MMC 3. Put default.asp page in root of web site Migration Steps: 1. Unassign IP address of source STS V1 IIS Web Application/WebSite 2. Assign Host Header value of current “name” + -old in source STS V1 Web app 3. Update the default.asp page with old path and new path 4. Verify Redirect…. 5. Stop IIS Web Application
Test Cases…. 1. / 2. Default.htm of old path 3. Allitems.htm on doc library 4. Custom view on old doc library 5. Request file in doc library 6. Request file in folder of old doc library (might fail) 7. Explorer view 8. Calendar view 9. Custom htm page on old site 10. Survey request 11. Custom list default and custom view 12. Events list default and custom view 13. Site Settings favorite
April 06 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 ROIHere's a non standard list of what I think CIOs should get excited about when considering upgrade or deployment of WSS V3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
Flexibility of Topology - Ability to optimize where you put what components
Self service recycle bin and 2nd stage Admin recycle bin - Reduce IT costs around restore of documents and lists Workflow on lists - ability to consolidate business process based applications Host Header & Corporate Mode Consolidation - Host both types from the same server Portal Site type moved to common template - greater support for WSS/SPS consolidation more scale for hosting "portals" Publishing integration - includes master pages, consolidation of CMS/SharePoint Cross Forest People Picker - supporting fewer deployments and better end user experience Support for virtualization of production environments - Ability to combine customized business unit environments onto common hardware Support for virtualization of non production environments - ability to virtualize dev/test/staging, etc... Pluggable Auth provider - Providing flexible open LDAP directories or SQL databases Web based Forms - consolidation of consensus type applications, and dependencies on Infopath on all clients using those forms and consolidation of FrontPage published sites (ASP apps) with access dbs MultiLingual MySites and Areas (sites) - providing consolidation of regions or the globe End user migration of lists and docs - (Prime) Flexible Webpart Deployment - Add once and it gets replicated to the other servers via Timer job
Reports center KPI, BI, Excel - Consolidation and consistent UI of reporting structures for
Business Data Catalog - Out of the box integration with ERP systems for search, very HOT
What NOT to do on SharePointWe've been working with a customer on "what file types & scenarios don't work well on SharePoint." A lot of these if not all would pretty much apply to any web app. Here's what we pulled together from a brainstorm. The text was put together by our service manager, and parts of it like quota and upload sizes are our best practices and you may have different experiences.Contents
PurposeThe purpose of this document is to provide prescriptive guidance around the appropriate usage of Microsoft Office SharePoint 2003 as a data storage repository. In general terms, SharePoint is an excellent data repository upon which users can store their data, whether for personal or shared use. There are, however, specific scenarios in which SharePoint is not the optimal storage location. SharePoint StorageThe term storage indicates the use of SharePoint Team Sites or My Sites as a data repository. The term usage indicates the use of SharePoint Team Sites or My Sites in a collaborative context using SharePoint features or integrated processes and applications. File DependenciesSharePoint is designed to be a collaboration platform and is not designed to be a replacement for local file servers as a pure storage platform. To that end, you can store any type of files on SharePoint as long as the files are each smaller than 100 MB. File types scenarios that do not work well in SharePoint listed below. Linked Files and DocumentsLinked documents and files cannot be run from a SharePoint site, as the dependency on an external sources isn’t captured in SharePoint. For example, the URL references created in a linked Excel file when it is uploaded to a SharePoint site are not translated by Excel, and the links will not work. The creator of an AutoCad file would be responsible for ensuring the file was either not linked to other files or are consistently created in the appropriate file format (*.dwf). In all situations, SharePoint is unable to resolve embedded links in documents/files. Common examples include: linked Excel worksheets, inclusions or links within AutoCad drawings Database, Configuration, and Log FilesIn order to properly use database files, configuration files and log files, they need to be open and in a locked (writable) state. For example, in a normal file server scenario, shared MS Access databases need have several instances of the database open and locked to allow for users to update it. Similarly, log files and configuration files must be locked and in a writable state. Outlook *.pst files are designed to be used locally, as they have a one to one relationship with the *.pst file owner. SharePoint is not designed to manage locked files (.llck)and therefore it would not be a best use of the platform to run these types of files from a SharePoint site. They can, however, be stored in SharePoint, but would need to be downloaded to the local machine to work effectively. For more examples of the file types that are not designed for use on SharePoint, see the Incompatible File Types section below. Common examples include: Access database files, Windows configuration files, application log files, Outlook personal stores and archive stores (.pst) and offline stores (.ost). Application Developer Resources (i.e. Visual Studio)Visual Studio and similar application development suites are designed so that developers can build applications and deploy them to others. This application work is often broken up into project files during development, with the goal of compiling the project files into a final executable file. Visual Studio requires that all the project files associated with a development project be local to the machine in order to work. While the project files can be uploaded to SharePoint to be shared with other developers, the best practice is to use a file compression utility (i.e. WinZip) to collect and upload the *.zip file to SharePoint. Source ControlWhile SharePoint is an excellent document control/document versioning tool, it is not designed to be replacement for a Source Code Control solution like to Visual Source Safe. Application DistributionSharePoint is not designed to be a host for Product or Application distribution similar to the functionality provided in Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS), or as a replacement for a network server that is used to distribute application packages.. The recommended application here would be to create a SharePoint site and provide hyperlinks to the server location where the application packages are stored. Server Side ScriptsIt is not recommended that any server-side scripts be uploaded to SharePoint doc libraries as they will be rendered as text on the screen, and will not run from within a SharePoint site. Examples: ASP, ASA, etc... Poor PracticesLarge FilesIn general terms, SharePoint can successfully upload files and documents as large as 100 MB. However, for the best user experience, files no larger than 60MB should be uploaded to SharePoint. Archive/BackupSharePoint is not designed to act as an archive or backup (i.e. *.bak, *.iso, etc) resource. We allocate 2 GB (to a potential maximum of 5 GB), and the maximum size for each hosted SharePoint My Site is 2GB. Invalid Characters and Long File NamesSharePoint sites may not include the following characters: \ / : * ? " < > | # { } % & <TAB>”. Additionally, the following characters cannot be used in the naming of files to be uploaded to SharePoint: " # % & * : < > ? \ { | } ~ . SharePoint file names cannot exceed 128 characters in length. Good PracticesSharePoint Explorer ViewUse SharePoint Explorer view to perform file share like actions. SharePoint Explorer’s interface contains many of the same characteristics and functionality as Windows Explorer. April 05 FrontPage and MySitesHad some interesting support call recently. A user was trying to modify their mysite with Frontpage. In general editing on WSS/SPS 2003 MySites is a bad idea as it's confusing to end users as well as the IT Pro managing the environment.
The pages most people associate with "My Site" (Users should be blocked from editing)
These pages are in common for all users on the portal, with shared services these pages are in common across the shared services environment.
http://portal/mysite/default.aspx (personalizations ok) (Be really careful about any editing as it will affect *ALL* users)
http://portal/mysite/public.aspx This page is common and is usually followed by a GUID or Domain/Username in a querystring.
http://portal/personal/username/default.aspx (actually a redirect to /mysite/default.aspx) (I don't recommend editing)
http://portal/personal/username/shared%20documents/%webpartpage%.aspx (This is really the only place users should think about Editing anything on their mysite.
March 15 Cross Forest in Office Server and WSSIt's great to see Venky talking about one of my most passionate topics. Cross Forest deployments. We've worked really closely on this stuff and I've personally tested the stsadm methods he refers to. I'm excited about the new WSS picker. Obviously if you've been following my blog, we had to create our own picker to get over the cross forest issues we had before.
What I think is interesting is the work around profiles that Venky is doing. What do you do when your manager is in another forest and what do you do when there are 2 users with 2 accounts in 2 different forests? If you have any question about the "resource forest" model, I'd recommend looking at Venky's post which by far has the best and most detail on this topic...
March 01 Finding People on SharePoint and the InternetOne of my favorite things with SharePoint is the people finding. I think it's great when I'm searching for a term, find a person, then read their bio and see that I've found an expert. This does happen at MS quite a bit. On top of the AD imports we do I think we're upwards of 30% of people that actually populate additional info, a picture, and something added recently to MSWeb FAQ and URLs like links to blogs, such as in the case of my public profile. I created my Office 12 profile last week on http://office an internal only site which has been upgraded to Beta 1 (good stuff) I really like the auto colleage feature which found my team, manager, and IM contacts.... very cool.
I was doing some searches on the internet recently cause I got one of those reunion.com spam mail things. I saw that a bunch of updated items were posted and decided there was no harm in looking. Of course the "subscription" wall comes up and it wants data to see more info on Declo students like Thomas Gittens or JJ Jonathan Hoopes or Minico 94 graduates like Cindy Christenson Fisher or Keri or any of the other people that I'd really like to see what they're up to. I had a buddy in Virginia when on my church mission called Marcus Winston that I haven't heard from since. He was living in Arizona when he went home, but for some reason, in this world we live in, it's still tough to find people even if their names are obscure. You do the people searches on the internet and sometimes get half of an address with no phone number and you can pay 9.95 to do a background check and get someone's credit history, but what if you're just looking for an email address. When are we going to have a good directory? If you just have a cell phone and no home phone (why do we need em?) you're as good as hidden.
Well on the internet if you do ever google yourself (that does sound bad) then maybe if someone is looking for you they'll read your blog and you'll be able to find them. You do need to make sure your blog is being indexed by your favorite search engine and the one your friends use. Then they'll contact you... joleson@yahoo.com or joelo@microsoft.com
I do expect we'll have some state wide/nation wide picture phone and email directories in the future, but will the public have access to it and will it be served by Ads or 9.95 searches? Internet directories are pretty hot, but so far the highschoolalumni and reunion web sites haven't figured out how to make it verbose enough to make money on ads alone. Would be nice to have THE directory.... February 27 SharePoint Consolidation & WAN ConsiderationsI've been talking to a large customer that I believe is larger than the MS deployment (by number of users and size of content) and deployed in 7 locations looking to consolidate centrally. I recently provided some feedback on a white paper that covered this topic.
Here's a snippet:
"Many organizations support employees working in multiple sites either within a region or around the world. Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies currently supports three different deployment configurations to accommodate geographically dispersed sites with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. The purpose of this paper is to:
Personally, I'd go with a centralized model if you can, then I'd move to a regional WSS model with a centralized portal for enterprise search and site directory. I'd avoid the full services in all locations if at all possible.
There are some interesting things happening in the WAN accelleration space for file servers and HTTP. I expect to see some major shifts toward further consolidation and I expect Microsoft to respond as well. One partner solution Certeon, has a great solution for addressing slow WAN links by using compression, differencing with cache history, and protocol optimization. We've been working on a small pilot and have seen good results thus far. I'm curious to see how the optimized file types in 0ffice 12 client benefit customers with slow WAN links in consolidation, and how this impacts solutions which seek to compress all traffic. February 25 Moving Subweb to Site Collection or visa versaKeith Richies utilities are rich. I knew someone must have addressed the smigrate subsite to subsite or subsite to site collection, etc.... Sure enough, when looking I came across a posting on bluedogunlimited.com SharePoint Thoughts blog. Here's a snippet
SharePoint User Utility 2.1 is now complete!
Posted on 4/18/2005 3:57 AM by Keith Richie Web relocation within site collections
Pretty sure he's posted this on microsoft.com, many of you are likely already using it. Now you've got another reason if you weren't aware of this one. |
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