March 2008 Archives

Check out the Major_Change_Datasheet.pdf, now available for download and review.

Exerpt:

Uncontrolled changes are the single largest cause of unplanned outages and major IT issues. Change Management is the proven, industry standard method for reducing these risks to your business. MajorChange.com is a web-based application designed to allow your business to easily and efficiently coordinate and control the change
management process within your IT environment.

MajorChange.com will assist you in introducing and maintaining effective change controls for all changes affecting to your IT systems and services. These controls will help to ensure successful change implementation and minimize the occurrence and severity of unexpected service issues or outages.

• Minimize the risk from changes to your IT systems and services
• Suitable for all businesses, large and small
• Customizable to reflect your business and IT environment
• Fast, intuitive and easy to master user interface
• Secure and accessible from virtually anywhere
• Keep up to date with automated e-mail alerts

Learned a couple of things today about Mailbox Management policies (thanks Dougie).

1. You can only have one mailbox management policy per mailbox (anything lower priority is skipped)
2. Deleted items can't be moved to System Cleanup Folders (though the gui will give you the option - instead of being moved, these items are DELETED! Crazy, poorly documented...
3. Calendar items do not end up as appointment items in the calendar system cleanup folder but as regular messages - and if you try to delete the calendar items folder and recreate one with the same name but that will accept appointment items, you will be dissapointed (it will revert it back to a regular folder) :-(

Reference Article from Microsoft...

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Got Major Change?

Consider this nightmare...

It's 11pm, the mail server just crashed and now it won't come back up after a reboot.

You ask yourself...

• Who last worked on the server?
• What did they do?
• What did they install?
• Why did they do it and Why wasn't it planned?
• And most importantly ... Why Me? And Why Now?

Sound familiar? How many times has THAT happened (or similar)? Have you had that long, agonizing night because of a change or patch that should have been carefully planned, tested or maybe even never installed in the first place - because it was convenient?

Major Change can bring the Change Control
process to your Business TODAY.

Change Management is the process by which a desired change to a server, service or application is:

• Requested (Submitted)
• Reviewed (Approved or Rejected)
• Documented (Stored and Retrievable/Searchable)
• Closed (Marked Complete)

Major Change provides a simple, user friendly console that addresses all of the change management process steps above, in addition to providing timely notifications direct to your inbox by email.

Best of all, Major Change is a web based service which means you can implement Change Control in your business NOW, with absolutely no hardware or software investment.

Major Change is a web-based application designed to allow you to easily and efficiently coordinate the change management process within your IT environment. Major Change assists you in introducing effective controls on all changes pertaining to your IT systems and services. These controls help to ensure successful change implementations while minimizing the occurrence and severity of unexpected service issues and outages.

Major Change and the change management process allow for comprehensive documentation and tracking of existing and historical changes, often a requirement under corporate policies and certain government legislation.

Major Change follows the proven, industry-standard change management process through a simple and intuitive interface. The submittal, approval and completion of changes is managed and tracked entirely by Major Change. It also accommodates the external review and implementation processes, performed by your Change Advisory Board (or equivalent authority) and technical teams.

Major Change is customizable to suit your business needs:

• Create multiple users, approvers and administrators - All users are kept up to date with email alerts when a request's status is changed
• Create multiple clients or subsidiary business units - Define logical partitions to match your business, each client/unit can be independently or globally managed and reviewed
• Create projects and project sponsors - Ensure changes are assigned to the right resources, run reports against specific projects
• Create a comprehensive list of nodes - Know exactly which devices, or groups of devices a change will be performed on
• Create a detailed list of services and applications - Know what services or applications a change will affect and whether it will impact your users

Got Major Change?

Always choose complimentary colours, like the one's outlined using this cool tool...

kuler.adobe.com

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

I'm going to start building a list of such tools, so I can find them. For tonight, there is just this one, from Microsoft:

• Microsoft Exchange Server SMTPDiag Tool

More later...

Don't mind me. Just bookmarking.

Favicon Gallery

This is a brilliant capability in MOSS 2007 (with Collaboration Portal at the root of the site) and a brilliant find/article by the author. Had to book mark it.

How to move/migrate SharePoint list items/documents and preserve metadata properties at the same time

The short list, in case he retires his blog entry :-)

1. Create a destination list (don't worry about the columns, just create the placeholder
2. Move the list items (not the list itself) using the 'Manage Content and Structure' option in SharePoint

Ever wondered how much uptime you are actually getting from your hosting provider? This matrix spells it out for you...

I've been asked this enough times, it makes sense to blog my response.

SharePoint vs Joomla

A small subset of SharePoint is about publishing, however SharePoint is much more than just a CMS (though it does incorporate Microsoft's first foray into CMS, the now-defunct Content Management Server).

SharePoint is an application framework, Joomla is a website CMS (website with a database backend that is skinned = easy/consistent and non-technical website management). Although there is some slight overlap in what can be done, they are completely different animals.

In general (mostly due to expense and overhead), I'd prefer having Joomla as my CMS. There are thousands of components allowing me to create a fully fledged website without having to code much of anything. Out of the box, SharePoint (web publishing feature) is quite limited, and the licence costs to expose it to the Internet are astronomical, whilst with Joomla most stuff is free, or otherwise, very good value.

I work with both (SharePoint fulltime, Joomla part-time - www.itgroove.net), both have their strengths and weaknesses, however they are for completely different markets. I'd say SharePoint's strength is good for Intranets, Internal Portals, knowledge sharing, document management and ideal for business seeking a remote access, collaborative, file server replacing platform - Joomla's strength is purely a good CMS.

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Presence Information / Online Status won't show unless ...

You have MSN Messenger (or Office Communicator) installed on the machine where you are accessing SharePoint.

Other settings which might need your attention:

1. You have setup Person Name Smart Tag and Presence Settings in Web Application General Settings in Central Administration


2. Site being accessed is in Trusted Site list


3. You need office installed on the machine you are visiting the SharePoint website from

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Ran into this tonight and solved it in the only way I could sort out how.

Issue:
I imported/created a new master page that worked fine on all sites that inherited permissions from the top site collection (publishing collaboration portal).

However, subsites with unique permissions would not display the master page properly (however, it would display the existing master pages included in SharePoint). It was screwy, warped, messed up, whatever - it looked damn ugly.

Resolution:
Anyways, after some frustration and realizing the time (going to go have some beers with friends, much more important), I finally stumbled across this article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936908). While it didn't actually help, it did make me think about the problem differently. I had different permissions for this subsite (using it as a pseudo extranet setup) and thus figured it was going to look different anyways. So, I just imported the master pages again (yes, chain broken but problem solved) into this site collection (thus they end up in _catalogs\masterpage) and then set the one I wanted at that point, to be the default master page.

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

I couldn't find this information in one place, so decided to do it myself.

Workflows built into MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007/$$$) and WSS (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0/free):

WSS 3.0 Only

• Three-state: The Three-state workflow is designed to track the status of a list item through three states (phases). It can be used to manage business processes that require organizations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer support issues, sales leads, or project tasks.

  The Three-state workflow supports business processes that require organizations to track the status of an issue or item through three different states and two transitions between the states. With each transition between states, the workflow assigns a task to a person and sends that person an e-mail alert about the task. When this task is completed, the workflow updates the status of the item and progresses to the next state. The Three-state workflow is designed to work with the Issue Tracking list template, but it can be used with any list that is set up to contain a Choice column with three or more values. The values in this Choice column serve as the states that the workflow tracks. More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101544311033.aspx?pid=CH101760531033

MOSS 2007

• Three-state (see WSS)


• Approval: The Approval workflow routes a document or item that is saved to a list or library to a group of people for approval. By default, the Approval workflow is associated with the Document content type and it is thus automatically available in document libraries.

  The Approval workflow supports business processes that involve sending a document or item to colleagues or managers for approval. The Approval workflow makes an approval business process more efficient by managing and tracking all of the human tasks involved with the process and by providing a record of the process after it is completed. More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101544251033.aspx



• Collect Feedback: The Collect Feedback workflow routes a document or item that is saved to a list or library to a group of people to collect their review feedback. By default, the Collect Feedback workflow is associated with the Document content type and it is thus automatically available in document libraries.

  The Collect Feedback workflow supports business processes that involve sending a document or item to a group of people to collect review feedback. The Collect Feedback workflow makes a review business process more efficient by managing and tracking all of the human tasks involved with the process. After it is completed, the Collect Feedback workflow consolidates all of the feedback from reviewers for the workflow owner and it provides record of the review process. More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101544261033.aspx?pid=CH101782961033



• Collect Signatures: The Collect Signatures workflow routes a Microsoft Office document that is saved to a list or library to a group of people to collect their digital signatures. The Collect Signatures workflow works only with Microsoft Office Word 2007 or Microsoft Office Excel 2007 documents that contain one or more Microsoft Office Signature Lines. By default, the Collect Signatures workflow is associated with the Document content type and it is thus automatically available in document libraries for documents or workbooks that contain Microsoft Office Signature Lines.

  The Collect Signatures workflow supports a business process that involves sending a document to a group of people to collect signatures. The Collect Signatures workflow makes the digital signature process more efficient by managing and tracking all of the human tasks involved with the signature process and by providing a record of the signature process after it is complete. More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101544281033.aspx?pid=CH101782961033



• Disposition Approval: The Disposition Approval workflow is designed to support records management needs within an organization. This workflow manages the document expiration and retention process by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents or items.

  The Disposition Approval workflow supports both records management and document management processes by providing organizations with a way to manage and track the process by which expired or out-of-date content is evaluated and deleted. Users can manually start the Disposition Approval workflow on individual documents or items. For greater consistency in managing expired content, organizations can configure the Disposition Approval workflow to work in conjunction with the Expiration policy feature of an information management policy, so that the workflow starts automatically when documents or items on a site expire. Although the Disposition Approval workflow can be used for any list, library, or content type on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, it can be used specifically on a Records Center site to support records management needs and an organization's document retention policies. More: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101544291033.aspx?pid=CH101782961033

Ok, so by now, you've come to the realization that you can't just 'save' to your SharePoint portal from Outlook, like you can from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

But wait, Colligo has an (expensive) app that will allow this to happen. It's expensive (to me) because this should BE IN Outlook, but thanks to Colligo, at least it's an option. Sure, you can email SharePoint libraries but this offers more than that and is worthy of a bookmark in my blog.

Colligo Contributor Add-In for Outlook

Here is a listing of best practices I put together for a client some time ago, enjoy or throw away. Whatever. :)

The following best practices are based on the amount of risk and expense a corporation can afford. For example, a small company running Small Business Server will typically only have one server so the Domain Controller (DC) role cannot be moved to a dedicated machine. Alternatively, a corporation such as a bank does have the monetary resources (and increased risk) and should separate Domain Controller roles from any Line of Business Applications or Internet Exposed equipment.

1. Domain Controllers (the centralized user account/password database) should not house applications that require specialized permissions or rights as these can result in compromise and weakness in a Windows Domain Design

2. Domain Controllers should never be Internet exposed (i.e. an Exchange Server, installed on a Domain Controller will likely be Internet accessible as it provides SMTP and WWW access, at a minimum)

3. Based on #1 and #2, if Domain Controllers are dedicated to their purpose and/or simply provide simplified capabilities (print serving, file serving, i.e. Non-applications), there should never be a need for a service account to ever require "Domain Admin" privileges

• A "Domain Administrator" has Administrative capabilities across ALL Domain Controllers, All Member Servers (by default) and All Workstations (by default)
• An Application, installed on a non-DC Member Server will only ever need "local administrator" access to the server (and perhaps rights such as "Log On As A Service" or "Run As A Batch Job") on which it runs OR possibly matching local administrator privileges across several Member Servers (Which you would manage by creating a dedicated application group)

4. Service Accounts are common (and perhaps important) as they provide a few things:

• A separate password that shouldn't be shared with others (set and forgotten)


• Typically, this account is set to 'never expire' its password. While this isn't a great idea (Service Accounts should be 'Managed'), it is common place for service accounts to have this attribute


• A user account or the default 'administrator' account should never be used for services as their passwords may expire, may be changed due to someone being terminated, etc. and thus applications could break immediately or even weeks later after a server is restarted

5. Service accounts should follow a naming convention, such as 'Service-SQL'. This is so that they can be easily identified as to their purpose. If SQL Server was no longer used, this account should be able to be safely disabled without any detrimental impact

6. Often, a single Service Account will be created, such as 'service-master'. While this will limit how many service accounts get created (just one), it typically results in several people knowing its password. Thus in the case of a termination, this account password will need to be reset and subsequently, services and applications will need immediate (and often production impacting) attention

7. Does the application even require a service account anymore? Perhaps due to legacy information or upgrades, a service account was assumed. Note that Windows 2003 was the first Windows operating system to introduce the "local service account" and the "network service account". Perhaps this is all that is required

8. The default 'Administrator' account password should not be known (nor should it be 'administrator', it should be renamed but that is for a different document). In addition, the Service-Account Passwords should be protected as well. It may be inconvenient to have the 'CTO' type in a service account password but it does ensure delegation of responsibility and access control

9. Procedures should be put in place to manage 'changing' of service account passwords. Typically this would involve:

• Notifying users of an upcoming change (change control, usually no impact)


• Changing the password for the service account in the domain


• Changing the password entered in the Windows Service dialog for the service(s) and possibly, within the application itself (many applications will manage the changing of the service password within the application interface)

Note: If your domain is Windows 2003 based and/or your Servers are Windows 2003 based, the following document should prove a worthwhile reference as well: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/serversecurity/serviceaccount/default.mspx

How Did We Get Here?

Q. Why are there often so many Domain Admins in a Windows Domain?
A. Typically, Laziness and/or Inexperience

• Service accounts often end up as Domain Admins because an application install will 'work the first time'. The service account has all the capabilities it needs (and then some) and thus the installation goes smoothly instead of smartly. No effort is taken after the fact to ensure the application is actually secure or aligns with the corporate security policy


• Sometimes IT Administrators (or 3rd party vendors onsite) just don't know any better. They always

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Great resource/reference but assumes single server farm. When you have multiple servers, just make sure you do the Central Admin server first, stop when it tells you to, go to the other servers and run setup and stop at the same place, then go back to the first one and finish, then all the others.

Patching MOSS and WSS to SP1

So far, I haven't seen it laid out nicer, so don't mind me but I'm bookmarking this one...

WSS 3.0 (free) vs MOSS 2007 ($$) comparison

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

So far, I haven't seen it laid out nicer, so don't mind me but I'm bookmarking this one...

WSS 3.0 (free) vs MOSS 2007 ($$) comparison

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

You know what? I can code forms in CGI, ASP, ASP.NET and could fudge a PHP one pretty quick. But for clients wanting a form on their website, WuFoo rocks for creating a slick form, good and quick. Very impressive, so I'm bookmarking it so I don't lose it (I have my AdHoc account already too).

WuFoo!

Good job guys. Brilliant Web app.

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Not too well documented, but if you have the following scenario, you probably need to specify a UNC path to your backup destination instead of a local drive (i.e. use \\server\share, instead of d:\some_backup_folder).

• You have MOSS 2007 (or WSS 3.0)
• You are doing a backup via the GUI or using STSADM
• SQL Server is on a different server (i.e. you have a farm and not the standalone install)
• You are getting lots of errors about backing up content databases

You'll need to sort out which accounts are trying to backup to the path, but you'll need to a UNC. So there, now you know. I look forward to someone blogging this better than me ;) or providing a Microsoft KB that outlines this better.

How to Install and Run Best Practice Analyzer (BPA)

1. Download the BPA from: Microsoft SharePoint BPA
2. Run the executable and extract to (your folder choice may vary): D:\Top\BPA
3. Then Perform the following:
4. cd top\bpa
5. sharepointbpa.exe -cmd analyze -substitutions SERVER_NAME name_of_your_server

Note: the 'SERVER_NAME' is not *your* server name, that is the syntax telling it you about to specify a server - note that text needs to be in upper case too.

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Download - Preformatted document libraries for SharePoint

SharePoint Templates: Preformatted document libraries for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007

Add preformatted document libraries to your Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. Each library is configured with a Microsoft Office Word 2007 template that generates a new document and binds data in the library with data in the body of each document.

Get them here...

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

Nice and simple... but stored here so I don't forget it.

@ECHO OFF
TITLE Metabase Backup :: %COMPUTERNAME%
REM Created by: Sean Wallbridge
REM Created: 10:51 AM 3/6/2008
ECHO Performing Metabase Backup...
REM These backups can be found in IIS Backup/Restore Configuration, to restore when necessary, in the IIS Console.
C:
cd %Systemroot%\System32
Cscript.exe iisback.vbs /s %COMPUTERNAME% /backup /b MOSS_Metabase_Backup

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

This was a really good note and I decided to copy it rather than reference it (sorry Bryant but link to you is still there). I didn't want to risk that site being shutdown and not having this.

Yes, you can run a second Central Administration (CA) website on a second server. I don't care what other people are saying, I have done it, and am doing it now. Here are the steps I followed:

Use the psconfig.exe command to install the first server (so you can name the database yourself. I hate the default name the wizard uses (Sharepoint Admin Content guid guid guid guid guid guid guid guid guid guid, etc). It's too long. If you need the syntax, do a search on psconfig.exe -cmd -create and you should get the help you need. The basic syntax is:

PSCONFIG.EXE -cmd configdb
[-create]
[-disconnect]
[-connect]
[-server ]
[-database ]
[-dbuser ]
[-dbpassword ]
[-user ]
[-password ]
[-addomain ]
[-adorgunit ]
[-admincontentdatabase ]

Now:

1. Run the Sharepoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard on THE FIRST SERVER to finish the installation.
2. Use the psconfig.exe command to connect to the Configuration Database you just created (you don't specify the AdminContentDatabase, you do that later).
3. Again, run the Sharepoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard on THE FIRST SERVER to finish the installation, but on the last step, you will notice an "Advanced" option. Click the "Advanced" Button, and then choose the option for the server to host the Central Administration Website. Let the wizard finish.
4. Once you have finished the installation on both servers, you will notice two things:
Note: When you launch CA from either server, it will only connect to the first server. IIS on both servers shows the Sharepoint Central Administration v3 Site.
5. Now, here is the easy part. Go to Central Administration, Operations Tab, and click on Alternate Access mappings. Click on "Edit Public URLs", then choose the drop-down list for "Alternate Access Mapping Collection:". In the list, select "Change Alternate Access Mapping Collection", and in the resulting window, select Central Administration. Now, the Default should already be set to the first server: port combination. Just add in the "Custom" box the address for your SECOND server: port (by the way, the port will always be the same).
6. Now return to the second server, and open regedit.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\ Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS. When you highlight the WSS Key, you will see "CentralAdministraionURL" REG_DWORD with the First Server's URL. Change this value to your second server's URL.
7. I also went back to the First Server to check the regedit location to be sure it was the first server.

Bryant
reference

And then, this was a followup note by someone else, just to keep in mind (although Bryant's experience was different):

I have been running two Central Administration Sites in my farm for over a year now. One per web front end server. That worked out well, up to the point where I wanted to install SP1! Now: If you have more than one Central Admin Site in a farm the update to SP1 will fail! We had to find this out the hard way. We're now back to one CA site.

There are several steps to integrating PDF into SharePoint:

1. Install Adobe iFilter v6.0


2. Configure SharePoint to include PDF files in search


3. Associate the PDF icon with PDF documents

Install Adobe iFilter v6.0

1. Download the iFilter from Adobe (URL: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611)


2. URL: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611


3. Run the installer on each Web Application Server


4. Perform an IISReset

Configure SharePoint to include PDF files in search

Add the PDF file type to your search index (in each SSP)

1. Go to your SSP configuration and choose Search Settings


2. Select File Types


3. Click Add File Type


4. Enter pdf in the text box (labeled File extension) and click OK

Associate the PDF icon with PDF documents

1. Download the PDF icon (select 'small 17 x 17') from http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html


2. Give the icon a name (I use pdficon.gif)


3. Save the icon in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES


4. Edit the Docicon.xml file to include the PDF icon


5. Navigate to c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML


6. Open the DOCICON.XML file in Notepad (or an XML editor). You should see that the file has two main tags - ByProgID and ByExtension


7. Within the ByExtension tag, add an entry for the PDF icon Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdficon_small.gif " / (don't forget the brackets!)


8. Save and close the file


9. Perform a full crawl of your content sources

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register

If you are using SQL Server 2005, you must also change the surface area settingsConfigure surface area settings in SQL Server 2005

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, point to Configuration Tools, and then click SQL Server Surface Area Configuration.

2. In the SQL Server 2005 Surface Area Configuration dialog box, click Surface Area Configuration for Services and Connections.

3. In the tree view, expand the node for your instance of SQL Server, expand the Database Engine node, and then click Remote Connections.

4. Select Local and Remote Connections, select Using both TCP/IP and named pipes, and then click OK.

I'm starting to compile a list of SQL perforrmance tools:

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

The reports tool can be downloaded at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1d3a4a0d-7e0c-4730-8204-e419218c1efc&displaylang=en

The only prerequisite is to have SQL2005 SP2 installed, no reboot required.

Once installed, from the Management Studio you need to execute setup.sql for each instance on the server. Setup.sql is located in: %Program Files%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\PerformanceDashboard.

After the script execution you need to open performance_dashboard_main.rdl (available in the same directory) from Custom Reports (Right-click SERVERNAME > Reports > Custom Reports...).

SQLIO Disk Subsystem Benchmark Tool

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9A8B005B-84E4-4F24-8D65-CB53442D9E19&displaylang=en

SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=EEDD10D6-75F7-4763-86DE-D2347B8B5F89&displaylang=en

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (January 2008)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=DA0531E4-E94C-4991-82FA-F0E3FBD05E63&displaylang=en

Powered by www.itgroove.net

Sponsored by Major Change (.com) - The Online Change Register