SharePoint Licensing

In the new web page for SharePoint for MOSS there is couple of pages that explains it in detail. I recommend you to review the FAQ page that resolves the common doubts in MOSS licensing:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/how-to-buy/Pages/licensing-overview.aspx

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/how-to-buy/Pages/faq.aspx

These tables represent the license model as I understand it. I recommend that you take it as guidance and check it with your license provider or Microsoft representative.

Products

Product	Public price	Features	CAL Requirements
WSS	Free. Included in W2K3 license.	Basic collaboration	Review the W2K3 CAL requirements. Needs the External Connector for non-employees.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Server License	$4,424	Full equip for users with enterprise CAL. Standard CAL does not include: BDC, Excel Services, Forms Services, Business Intelligence, Forms Server.	Only for employees. Each employee needs a Std. or Ent. CAL
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites	$40,943	Full equip	Non-employees don't need any CAL. Each employee needs a Std. or Ent. CAL
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search (Enterprise Edition), Server License	$57,670	Full equip	Only for employees. No need any CAL. * Seems that this product is no longer available.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search (Standard Edition), Server License	$8,213	Not included: BDC, Excel Services, Forms Services, Business Intelligence, Forms Server. Index limited to 500.000 documents.	Only for employees. No need any CAL. Recommended for +40 standard CALs.
Microsoft Forms Server 2007, Server License	$4,424	Only forms	Only for employees. Each employee needs a Forms CAL
Microsoft Forms Server 2007 for Internet sites	$22,118	Only forms	Non-employees don't need any CAL. Each employee needs a Std. or Ent. CAL
Search Server Express	Free	All Enterprise Search features except BDC Search and limited to only one server. Not scalable.	No need any CAL.
Search Server	Not public?	All Enterprise Search features except BDC Search.	No need any CAL.

Update 05/06/2009: Seems that "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search (Enterprise Edition), Server License" is no longer available and then you need to purchase a CAL for each user inside the organization.

Client Access License (CAL)

Each SharePoint CAL needs a SQL Server CAL if SQL Server is not licensed per server. The same is applicable to Windows 2003 Server.

Product	Public price	Features
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard CAL	$94	Not included: BDC, Excel Services, Forms Services, Business Intelligence.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL	$75	Full Equip and needs an Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard CAL ($94)
Office Forms Server 2007 CAL	$54	Only forms
Office SharePoint Designer 2007	Free (since April 2009)	The tool to customize SharePoint 2007.

All information has extracted from Office official page:

• Product comparison: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101978031033.aspx
  
• Products and CALs: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101865111033.aspx
  
• Prices: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/FX102176831033.aspx
  

IV CEUS

Tomorrow I will be at Madrid during the fourth SharePoint Users Spanish Conference (CEUS). I will talk about SharePoint functionalities and my colleagues Marc Bàguena and Pablo Peris will talk about web 2.0 with SharePoint and Workflows with SharePoint Designer.

During the morning there will be seven sessions presenting five case studies and two sessions about SUGES (Spanish SharePoint User Group) and FAST.

Here you can find more info about the event: http://www.microsoft.com/spain/office/ceus2008/agenda.htm

Enable usage statistics in SharePoint

Following the procedure described here you can enable the usage statistics in a MOSS site collection. Basically you need to enable logging in the farm, in the SSP and in the site collection. After the usage data is being collected you can view it from:

• Browser: Only the last month through Site Actions à Usage Summary.
  
• SharePoint Designer: Open your site with SPD and go to Site à Reports à Site Summary. More info: Use reports to measure site performance and usage
  
• Using the object model: Through the API you can collect the information and make your own statistics.
  

Remember that you can use any other system based on javascript to collect information about the site usage like Google Analytics or WebTrends

SharePoint Day at San Luis

The last week I was in San Luis talking about SharePoint. You can view all sessions in the next links:

SharePoint Overview (Spanish)

SharePoint integration (Spanish)

Excel Services & Search Server Express demo (Spanish)

 

Microsoft SharePoint Day at Madrid

The next September, 24th Raona and Microsoft organize the Microsoft SharePoint Day at Madrid. I will be in Argentina and I will not be in the sessions, but is a perfect opportunity to know us and our work.

This week I will be in Argentina talking about SharePoint

Raona will participate in the Innovation Summit at Buenos Aires, in the San Luis Digital and in the Microsoft SharePoint Day at Córdoba during the next week. We will see a complete SharePoint overview (by me) and 2 demos about PerformancePoint (by Laureano Remedi) and Search Server (by me againJ).

If someone comes to any of these events, feel free to contact me.

Agenda:

• 23/09/2008: Innovation Summit (Buenos Aires)
  
• 26/09/08: San Luis Digital (San Luis)
  
• 29/08/08: Microsoft SharePoint Day (Córdoba)
  

Related links:

Microsoft Innovation Summit

SharePoint Day (San Luis)

SharePoint Day (Córdoba)

Have you ever altered a SharePoint Database?

Well, if your answer is affirmative I recommend you this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841057/en-us

Audit data in SharePoint and its impact in DB size

If you are using the SharePoint audit features you need to know which impact have in the size of your DB. A bad audit configuration may cause that the content and SSP database grow permanently.

In the case of a site collection with the audit enabled (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA100997261033.aspx) you will see the space used by auditing in the table AuditData in the content database. On the other hand, if you are using a BDC application definition and you have defined an entity make sure that in your entity definition sets the audit property properly (http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepointbdc/thread/ea208a3b-fd3b-4508-882e-466371c1a53c/).

But if you have enabled auditing for several months is possible that you need to free up space in your disk. In this case the only supported way is through API (very slow solution). For that reason I recommend that review the requirements of your SharePoint solutions and only enable the Sharepoint audit options that are required.

Update: In the Infrastructure Update there is a new stsadm command that allows to trim the logs: stsadm -o trimauditlog –enddate 20080704 –databasename WSSContent123456 (Thanks kezoe)

UpdateListItems fails with “%20” urls

The web service Lists.asmx has the web method UpdateListItems that allows you to add, edit or delete an item in a list or document library. In the batch xml you need to put the FileRef parameter as the url of the item or folder when you are working with a document library. If your url has blanks the browser will replace it with "%20" and it is not valid for the UpdateListItems. So, you need to put the url with blanks qnd all works.

SPUtility.SendEmail

I want to make one comment about this method. It cannot be used out of a SharePoint context because inside it uses SPControl.GetContextWeb(HttpContext.CurrentIL. I wanted to use it to send an email from a timer job.

Have you any idea to send an email using the web applications settings for the outgoing mail from a timer job?

Error “Server is not operational” using MOSS LDAP Membership Provider

If you are using MOSS and want to authenticate to AD through forms, MOSS offers you a custom membership provider to AD (and any other directory service that implements LDAP protocol). There is many articles and posts that talk about it here and here (broken link L).

Recently I have configured it with the following fragment in the web.config:

<membership
defaultProvider="SharePointLdapMembershipProvider">
<providers>
<add
name="SharePointLdapMembershipProvider" type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LdapMembershipProvider, Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bCe111e9429c" server="litwareinc"
port="389"
useSSL="false"
userDNAttribute="distinguishedName" userNameAttribute="sAMAccountName" userContainer="CN=Users,DC=litwareinc,DC=com" userObjectClass="person" userFilter="((ObjectCategory=group)(ObjectClass=person))"
scope="Subtree"
otherRequiredUserAttributes="sn,givenname,cn" />
</providers>
</membership>
<roleManager
defaultProvider="SharePointLdapRoleProvider" enabled="true"
cacheRolesInCookie="true" cookieName=".PeopleDCRole">
<providers>
<add
name="SharePointLdapRoleProvider" type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LdapRoleProvider, Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bCe111e9429c" server="litwareinc"
port="389"
useSSL="false"
groupContainer="DC=litwareinc,DC=com" groupNameAttribute="cn" groupMemberAttribute="member" userNameAttribute="sAMAccountName" nAttribute="distinguishedName"
groupFilter="(ObjectClass=group)"
scope="Subtree" />
</providers>
</roleManager>

And get always this stack error:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Office Server General
Event ID: 7888
Date: 29/06/2008
Time: 3:45:39
User: N/A
Computer: MOSS
Description:
A runtime exception was detected. Details follow.
Message: The server is not operational.

Techinal Details:
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8007203A): The server is not operational.
at System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry.Bind(Boolean throwIfFail)
at System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry.Bind()
at System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry.get_AdsObject()
at System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher.FindAll(Boolean findMoreThanOne)
at System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher.FindOne()
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LDAP.FindOneObject(DirectoryEntry searchRoot, String filter, SearchScope scope, String[] propertiesToLoad, ResultPropertyCollection& entryProperties)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LdapMembershipProvider.GetUserAttributeBySearchProperty(String searchValue, String searchProperty, String returnAttribute)

I was able to make a LDAP query using LDAP://LITWARE as a connection string. But the provider was not able to connect to the server because it cannot resolve the IP of the LDAP server. If I replace the server="litwareinc" for server="127.0.0.1" (DC IP) or server="litwareinc.com" all works. Finally my web.config looks like this:

<membership
defaultProvider="SharePointLdapMembershipProvider">
<providers>
<add
name="SharePointLdapMembershipProvider" type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LdapMembershipProvider, Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bCe111e9429c" server="litwareinc.com"
port="389"
useSSL="false"
userDNAttribute="distinguishedName" userNameAttribute="sAMAccountName" userContainer="CN=Users,DC=litwareinc,DC=com" userObjectClass="person" userFilter="((ObjectCategory=group)(ObjectClass=person))"
scope="Subtree"
otherRequiredUserAttributes="sn,givenname,cn" />
</providers>
</membership>
<roleManager
defaultProvider="SharePointLdapRoleProvider" enabled="true"
cacheRolesInCookie="true" cookieName=".PeopleDCRole">
<providers>
<add
name="SharePointLdapRoleProvider" type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Security.LdapRoleProvider, Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bCe111e9429c" server="litwareinc.com"
port="389"
useSSL="false"
groupContainer="DC=litwareinc,DC=com" groupNameAttribute="cn" groupMemberAttribute="member" userNameAttribute="sAMAccountName" nAttribute="distinguishedName"
groupFilter="(ObjectClass=group)"
scope="Subtree" />
</providers>
</roleManager>

Then, you always need to ensure that the IP of your LDAP server can be resolved.

Note: For the user picker you need to add this line to the PeoplePickerWildcards section to allow the search function:

<PeoplePickerWildcards>
<clear />
<add key="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" value="%" />
<add key="SharePointLdapMembershipProvider" value="*" />
</PeoplePickerWildcards>

Enjoy it!

SharePoint Day at Barcelona (Spanish)

En Raona estamos preparando el SharePoint Day donde haremos un repaso a la plataforma en general y profundizaremos en algunos aspectos como la búsqueda y la gestión de procesos.

Fechas: 17/06 Barcelona – 24/09 Madrid

Información y registro:

http://www.raona.com/Formacio/Seminaris/Seminarios2008/MicrosoftSharepointDay/tabid/304/Default.aspx

¿Nos vemos?

Searching pending approval documents

If you have enabled the content approval in your document libraries and only the approvers of the items can access to the unpublished versions, you will have a problem with the search. When a user launches a search query, he will see listed in the search results the pending approval documents although he does not have permissions to access to an unpublished version of it. It will be able to read all the indexed data, but when he tries to access to the item it gets an unauthorized error.

This behavior is correct, because the security trimmer omits the permissions on the draft versions. The solution is to create your own security trimmer and register it for the corresponding crawl rule. If you follow the example in the msdn documentation you only need to add this line to determine if the current user has access to the item listed in the search for each crawlURL:

bool hasPermission = item.DoesUserHavePermissions(web.AllUsers[strUser], SPBasePermissions.ViewListItems);

From the crawl url you can get the GUIDs and ID item required to get an SPListItem (item in the code above).

Enjoy it!

The Sharepoint definition

What is SharePoint? That is the first question that a customer, friend, wife … make when you talk them about SharePoint. My response always was different and here you can see some of the answers that I gave joined in a simple response:

"SharePoint is a Microsoft's product to develop portals …. And it can be used also to search information in many places (Notes, SAP, …) … and gives you a complete collaboration environment… And includes some advanced functionality like workflows, web forms, excels on web… "

This definition is not simple, and the most important, it does not define SharePoint entirely. The reason: SharePoint is too large and cannot be defined it completely on a single sentence.

For that reason, now I have a new definition for SharePoint:

"SharePoint is a Microsoft's product which connects the information with the people in each level of the business"

This sentence is too simple. But from this definition you can explain the functionalities around the fact that SharePoint approaches the information to the people.

Please, feel free to post your own definition or any comment.

SharePoint Designer and Office Live

I am trying to connect to my Microsoft Office Live Small Business Site from SharePoint Designer and it does not work. If I open my office live site using http:// it prompts the credentials form and then shows me the error "Server Error: The Version of Windows SharePoint Services running on the server is more recent than the version of SharePoint Designer you are using. You need a more recent version of SharePoint Designer". If I put the url of my site using https:// it does not ask for my credentials but shows me the same error again.

I have tried the solution that this post offered, but it does not work: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1918526&SiteID=1

It can be possible, because in this video we can see SPD in action with Office Live: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=262657

Did you try? Works for you?

I have SPD with SP1 and my Office Live Site is not beta: http://alexpelaez.web.officelive.com/default.aspx.

Thanks in advance!

Office Live and SharePoint

At this moment everybody can have their SharePoint or some of its functionality and apply to his life or job. Microsoft, in my opinion, is approaching SharePoint to the maximum end users through the different products that have launched recently. So, this is the list of these products that are created for different targets of users.

Individual SharePoint

For those who want to have their documents always online and share it with their friends there is Microsoft Office Live Workspace. It allows you to upload documents, share to other users and includes collaboration functionality integrated with passport authentication. A good idea to suppress the mail with attached documents and the suffix version in the subject. We could reduce this version to a personal document library for everyone.

SharePoint Lite

Oriented to small business there is Microsoft Office Live Small Business. It gives to the small companies the opportunity to get on the web for "free". It allows the managing of the web content and the publishing of different files. On the other hand it offers the option to extend and personalize your site with the integration of SharePoint Designer and installing solution for Office Live. I am waiting to have enough time to investigate it, but it sounds very good. We can see this option like a little SharePoint site oriented to small companies.

Medium SharePoint

Announced at SharePoint Conference 2008 by Bill Gates, the Microsoft SharePoint Online
is the solution to get a fully functional SharePoint in your organization and avoid the infrastructure issues associated to a SharePoint system. It leverages all of the functionality of the product with the minimum costs. It target is those companies with no previous experience with SharePoint and is a perfect start point. The customizations are limited, but it offers, from an end user experience, a WSS installation with all the functionality provided out of the box.

Full SharePoint

The SharePoint which everybody knows installed on your own servers. WSS 3.0 is included on the license of Windows 2003 and MOSS has many licensing options that offer different functionalities (BDC, Search, Forms Services,). This is the perfect tool for medium and large companies with a need: "Connect their employees with their information". It can be extended in different manners using the browser, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio.

Please, feel free to post your comments and opinions.

Quick tip: Lookup fields to a document library

In order to be able to lookup a document in a document library from a customized list is necessary that the document has the Title (or the property that you have selected to show) informed. When you save the document from Office 2003 the Title is not informed and it causes that the document cannot be putted as a reference in our custom list.

Optimizing your web content management portal

One of the most common problems with this kind of MOSS sites is the time to load the home page (or any other page). The first thought is "We need to add more WFE to the farm", but if you have not any complex component (flash, custom web part, …) the most probable problem will have the weight of the page. In order to reduce it you can follow this article which explains the principal techniques. I wish to remark two of these techniques: enable the HTTP compression on the server and avoid charging the core.js and core.css to the end users (core.js is not necessary for them and core.css will be override by your custom CSS).

In order to check it in this page you can check quickly what is the weight of your page and with this plug-in for FireFox you can calculate (objectively) the load time of any page.

Enjoy it!

Related links:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727371.aspx#MOSS2007OptPerfWCM_PagePayloadSmallisGood
https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/3371

And the 70-542 too. I already have the SharePoint poker!

During the first day of the SharePoint Conference 2008 I have achieved my fourth SharePoint certification. Basically it includes the typical topics of MOSS:

• BDC and the application definition file
  
• Forms Server
  
• Managing the user profiles
  
• Search
  
• Audiences
  
• BI
  
• Enterprise content management
  

For those who are in Seattle this week I recommend you to try it. During this week you can obtain the 70-630 and the 70-542 exams for free.

Good luck!

The missing restored variations timer jobs issue fixed!

While I was Reading about the post SP1 hotfix for WSS and MOSS I have found that the issue about the restore of a publishing portal with variations has been fixed (see my previous post). The documentation says:

"This hotfix package also fixes the following issues that were not previously documented in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Timer jobs may be missing after you restore a backup
After you restore a backup to another server, many Windows SharePoint Services timer jobs may be missing on the restored server. "

Somebody has tested it?

70-630 passed too

With this exam I have achieved three of the four certifications about SharePoint 2007 (70-541, 70-630 and 70-631). This last exam is very similar to 70-631, and I recommend it to every "SharePoint worker" who deals with it regularly.

See you in Seattle!

Accessible variation label menu

This is my little contribution to the improvement of the accessibility in MOSS. I use this user control to show my variations in an accessible manner without tables.

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>
<%@Assembly Name="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"%>
<%@Register TagPrefix="CMS" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls"%> <cms:VariationDataSource id="LabelMenuDataSource" LabelMenuConfiguration="1" Filter="" runat="server"/>
<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server" DataSourceID="LabelMenuDataSource" EnableViewState="False">
<ItemTemplate> <a href="<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "NavigateUrl") %>">
<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "DisplayText") %></a>&nbsp;
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

To use it you can replace the content of the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES\VariationsLabelMenu.ascx with the code above. In those cases where there are different publishing portals on the same MOSS installation you can create a new file in the same directory (for example MyCustomVariationsLabelMenu.ascx) and use it in your master page simply changing the register tag.

Original tag:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="PublishingVariations" TagName="VariationsLabelMenu" src="~/_controltemplates/VariationsLabelMenu.ascx" %>

New tag:

<%@ Register TagPrefix="PublishingVariations" TagName="VariationsLabelMenu" src="~/_controltemplates/MyCustomVariationsLabelMenu.ascx" %>

Web.config for all web applications in the same port? How is that possible?

I have three web applications on the port 80 and each one is accessible through different host headers. I have to configure the proxy settings to one of them, but the changes to its web.config have not any effect. But if I make some change in the web.config of the web application that has the default host header access, this change is applied to all web applications. Is it possible? What is the reason?

70-631 Passed!

Today I have passed the "Configuring Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0" exam. In my opinion the most difficult section was "Configure Network Infrastructure" (about NLB configuration basically).

Next exam: 70-630 "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Configuring"

“Failure Audit” in a SQL Server 2005

Today I have found this error in my event viewer:

Event Type:    Failure Audit
Event Source:    MSSQLSERVER
Event Category:    (4)
Event ID:    18456
Date:        03/01/2008
Time:        03:20:01
User:        DEMOSS2007\Admin
Computer:    DEMOSS2007
Description:
Login failed for user 'DEMOSS2007\Admin'. [CLIENT: <local machine>]

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 18 48 00 00 0e 00 00 00 .H......
0008: 0b 00 00 00 44 00 45 00 ....D.E.
0010: 4d 00 4f 00 53 00 53 00 M.O.S.S.
0018: 32 00 30 00 30 00 37 00 2.0.0.7.
0020: 00 00 07 00 00 00 6d 00 ......m.
0028: 61 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 a.s.t.e.
0030: 72 00 00 00 r...

I encountered this same issue after a MOSS uninstall. Thanks to this post I have discovered that the SQL Job associated to a deleted SSP is not deleted in the SQL Agent and it cause the event viewer error. Disabling or deleting this job will fix the issue. I have not checked if this issue is fixed in the SP1.

Related Links:
http://www.virtual-generations.com/2007/01/28/sharepoint-and-sql-server-error-18456/ (Read the Update 3)