Adobe PDF iFilter on SharePoint 2010

In order to install Adobe PDF iFilter on SharePoint 2010 you have to follow the instructions in this technet article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2293357. Over internet there are several posts talking about include more keys in the registry or change the path variable.

The only difference with the installation on SharePoint 2007 is the need to include in the registry the key ".pdf" manually on "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension" and with value {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}.

Planning and architecture for SharePoint Server 2010

Update: An extensive documentation has been published talking about SharePoint 2010 performance at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758647.aspx

Microsoft has published first performance tests for SharePoint 2010 Beta. Although they are very simple documents is a very good starting point to have an approximate idea about SharePoint 2010 performance. I understand that these documents will be followed by a more extensive document like the Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007. In addition you can find all architecture resources about SharePoint in this URL:
- SharePoint 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261834(office.14).aspx
- SharePoint 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261834.aspx

Installing SharePoint 2010 Beta 2

After a few months of blog inactivity I have come back! During these months two things have changed my life: My wedding and SharePoint 2010.

Since July I am fighting with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 in my lab environment. The NDA did not allow me to share the news but now (after SharePoint Confrence) all has changed. The first post about 2010 will be about its installation. Although the process has been improved from Beta 1 it is still a bit confusing. I recommend reading carefully the documentation before install because there are a lot of little tricks that need to be done before "click to install". I started without reading it and I have encountered several problems with the prerequisites like the SQL Server version, .net framework and PowerShell.

So, let read the document and enjoy with the new SharePoint version. SharePoint 2010 is here!

Related links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx

Assigned task mail not received!

When a task is assigned to an user he or she receives always a notification e-mail immediately. Well, always not. If the user has synchronized the tasks list with Outlook 2007 the e-mail will not be sent and he will receive the notification in his task pane.

SharePoint Designer workflows and enabled incoming mail lists

This week I created a workflow which starts automatically on event added. All works fine if I add the items manually but if I email the items to the list the workflow does not start. The reasons:

- Security restriction: From SP1 there is a security fix that avoid starting a workflow by the system account identity. Changing the identity of application pool to a non-system account will fix the problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947284/

- Incoming mail: In addition to the previous problem, you need to explicitly allow the farm to start a workflow when a new item is created by mail. To do it you need SP1 + Infrastructure Update (or SP2) and execute the following command:
stsadm -o - pn declarativeworkflowautostartonemailenabled - setproperty va true
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953289/

SharePoint + Surface

Hi,
Raona has developed a proof of concept involving SharePoint and Microsoft Surface. Last month we have acquired a Surface for one of our meeting rooms and we use it to "launch" our presentations and documents during the meetings.

You can view the video demostration in our page (spanish). Demo will begin at 1:00:
http://www.raona.com/es_es/Offering/InformationWorker/Paginas/RaonaSurfaceShooter.aspx

MOSS SP2 includes Infrastructure Update

Today I have installed my first SP2 farm. The first think that I checked was if it includes infrastructure update and the response is ... YES! In my version 12.0.0.6421 it appears .

70-564 passed!

Today I have passed the "70-564 Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5" exam. I recommend it to all SharePoint developers that has developed with Visual Studio 2008.
I have not studied anything neither I used any TK (TricK)

Related links:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-564.mspx

SharePoint Best Practices in London and SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas!

This year I hope to go to these two events and I am proud to announce that raona will be a platinum sponsor at SharePoint Best Practices in UK. I invite you to visit our booth and know us.

The SharePoint Conference 2009 was announced yesterday and it will be a great opportunity to know the new features of O14. By the way, was not this year the turn of Europe to organize this event (SPC2007 – Berlin, SPC2008 – Seattle)? Well, we have to wait until SPC2010 (I propose Barcelona… J).

What is the PID of my web application?

Update for Windows 2008: In IIS 7 this command is replaced by %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list wp

Just a quick tip for developers. When you need to debug an assembly loaded by a web application (like SharePoint) you can attach the process to the project and debug. The problem is how to determine the correct process in the processes list if you have more than one web application. To select the correct process you can execute the IIS script iisapp. It will show you all the running web applications and the respective PID (Process Identifier).

This is my current output for 'iisapp':

W3WP.exe PID: 5120 AppPoolId: SharePoint
W3WP.exe PID: 5892 AppPoolId: SharePoint Central Administration v3
W3WP.exe PID: 360 AppPoolId: SharePoint - intranetalpha80
W3WP.exe PID: 5852 AppPoolId: SharePoint - DemoWeb80
W3WP.exe PID: 4604 AppPoolId: SharePoint - demowebPRO80
W3WP.exe PID: 5040 AppPoolId: SharePoint – 21503
W3WP.exe PID: 5416 AppPoolId: SharePoint – 11806
W3WP.exe PID: 2328 AppPoolId: SharePoint – 12345

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?