Migration Issue - Content Database is in compatibility range and upgrade is recommended?

Applies: SharePoint 2010, Project Server 2010

So you have migrated Project Server and Content DB from one environment to another. You attached the content DB (containing the PWA Site Collection) and then attach the four restored PS databases to the PWA instance. You might think that this would be sufficient and that all the restored databases would be successfully upgraded ok by the DB attach operations.

You might then subsequently run the SharePoint configuration wizard, to resolve any issues. Looking at the ‘Upgrade Status Check’ in Central Admin shows all is ok.

Not the case for one of the sites!! When the user started to use the system, strange things started to happen. Project Workspaces where not being created when publishing a project. Same issue occurred if you manually created a site using one of your site templates.

On close examination it turn out that the Project Server (PS) databases upgraded just fine but the content DBs did not. This was evident from ‘Database Review Status’ page within Central Admin.

To resolve this issue we needed to upgrade the affected content databases using the Power Shell command (Run as Administrator).

Upgrade-SPContentDatabase -Identity YourDatabaseName

Depending on your data/content/customisation, you may encounter some errors which you will need to review and resolve. The issues may relate to missing features that need to be enabled etc.

Finally, the ‘Database Review Status’ page within CA will indicate that all the databases are ok and do not require any update.

Hope this helps.

EPM/SP2010 Content Roll-up – Where is Content Query Webpart?

I had an enquiry from a user about rolling up content. The user could not locate the content Query webpart.

Resolution: In-order to access this webpart, you first need to enable the SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure feature at site collection level. See figures below.

Hope this helps.

EPM/SP2010 – Adding PDF iFilter

Here the steps from Microsoft KB for adding iFilter for SP2010, summarised for clarity.

1. Install PDF iFilter 9.0 (64 bit) from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025 (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025)

2. Download PDF icon picture from Adobe web site http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html (http://www.adobe.com/misc/linking.html) and copied at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\

3. Add the following entry in docIcon.xml file, which can be found at: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML
<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdf16.gif" />

4. Add pdf file type on the File Type page under Search Service Application

5. Open regedit

6. Navigate to the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension

7. Right-click > Click New > Key to create a new key for .pdf

8. Add the following GUID in the default value
{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

• Restart the SharePoint Server Search 14
• Reboot the SharePoint servers in Farm
• Create a Test site (with any out-of-box site template) and create a document library upload any sample PDF document(s).
• Perform FULL Crawl to get search result.

SharePoint Usage Survey Results from OpenText.com

Over 2100 people participated in their survey: how are Businesses Using SharePoint?

Some of the more interesting results include:

• #1 Challenge is End User Adoption
• 44% of companies lack a training program
• 35% considering or using SharePoint in the Cloud

These results aren’t unexpected! I will share my take and field experience of this in a following post.

Microsoft EPM/SP 2010 – SP1, How it Impacts you & the Mystery behind Patching (FREE MPUG Webinar)

Intended Audience/Role: PMs, PMO and EPM/SharePoint 2010 Administrators

Description

Eager to upgrade to Microsoft EPM/SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1, but afraid of breaking something in the process?

Join veteran Microsoft EPM consultant, PJ Mistry, for this FREE 1.5 hour webinar discussing the ins and outs of Service Pack1. PJ will discuss how this will impact you if you are an existing user and thinking about upgrading and also the mystery behind the patching process. In this webinar, you will learn;

1. The key fixes and enhancements include in SP1.

2. Practical things you should consider and have in place before taking the leap towards patching.

3. Approach and best practices for patching your EPM/SharePoint environment. Applies to Service Packs and Cumulative Updates.

There are many myths and some uncertainty about how best to implement software updates for EPM/SharePoint. Attending this webinar will bring you a step closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Register for Webinars

• Date: Tue, November 29, 2011 @ 17:00 (BST)
• Register: http://www.mpug.com/Lists/Event%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=543&Source=http://www.mpug.com/Lists/Event%2520Calendar/Calendar.aspx 

About the Presenter

PJ Mistry is the Director of Projects at Project Solution Ltd, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is an avid evangelist of Microsoft SharePoint and Enterprise Project Management (EPM) with over 12 years hands-on field experience. His achievements include 10,000 user rollout of EPM and integration with SAP. His technical expertise has been a key ingredient in the development of some of the add-ons that fill the key gaps in the out-of-box offering/ capability of Microsoft SharePoint & EPM. To learn more visit: www.EPMAPPStore.com. Contact him at: PJ@ProjectSolution.com. Follow him on Twitter @EPMSolution or blog www.EPMGuy.com.

Resource Management In SharePoint Using EPM Live’s WorkEngine (FREE Webinars)

Microsoft SharePoint is a widely used collaborative platform that is commonly deployed for content management and general collaboration. EPM Live’s WorkEngine adds additional value to your existing investment in SharePoint by providing enterprise resource management tools and capabilities right in a SharePoint environment (Foundation or Server).

The ability to effectively plan and allocate limited resources against all of your project and work demands requires tools for visibility, analysis and execution. Today, you can have such tools without implementing yet another expensive, standalone solution. WorkEngine provides capabilities that enable your SharePoint users to perform:

• Resource capacity planning
• Resource scheduling
• Analysis of resource capacity vs. demand
• Resource scenario modelling
• Online time reporting and progress updates
• Comprehensive resource reporting and dashboards

Join us to learn how resource management can be successfully performed by leveraging and extending existing Microsoft SharePoint technology. These capabilities are offered to be deployed in your own Microsoft SharePoint environment, or as an online/SaaS service.​

Register for Webinars

• Date:     Thursday, November 17, 2011
• Time:     4:00 PM - 5:00 PM GMT (11:00a – 12:00p EST)
• Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/980681222

If you are unable to attend the webcast this Thursday we invite you to register for the encore presentation of this webinar on November 30, 2011.

• Title:      Resource Management In SharePoint Using EPM Live’s WorkEngine
• Date:     Wednesday, November 30, 2011
• Time:     4:00 PM - 5:00 PM GMT (11:00a – 12:00p EST)
• Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/276430014

Delivering Business-Critical Solutions with SharePoint 2010 – Microsoft Download

Siloed information and processes can limit business performance and consume IT resources. This white paper discusses how SharePoint 2010 can connect users to business data that currently resides in disparate systems, allowing solutions that streamline processes and result in better, faster decisions by your organization.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28133

SharePoint Library – How can I change/reset the URL?

Best practice when creating a SharePoint Library is to create the Library with a title which has no spaces i.e. gaps between words. For example you wish to create a document library for your admin team. And, you want the UI to reflect the full name ‘Administration Team’.

Recommended steps you should take (using the above scenario) are;

1. create the library with the title ‘Admin’ which is nice and short.
2. then, change the title, as you want it to appear in the UI, within the library settings.

What is the benefit of this you may ask? Well, firstly the URL part is short i.e easy to remember and secondly, as the title does not have any gaps you can easily map your available network drive, within windows explorer, directly to this library. You can even setup an AD policy to roll this out to users very much like any other network drive share.

Now, here comes the tricky part. You have already created some libraries which have gaps in the titles. How do we overcome this issue without re-recreating the libraries and moving the content?

The solution is to use SharePoint Designer! Within SPD, open your site and select All Files > Lists and find the library you want to rename.

Right click and rename the URL Part. Note: you will need admin/owner rights to connect SPD to the site to do this.

There you have it!! Let me know if this helps.

del.icio.us Tags: SharePoint,Library

SP2010–Getting to grips with PowerShell commands

Here are some nice Tips from Niklas Goude for PowerShell commands for SharePoint.

In SharePoint 2010 you can manage sites through Windows PowerShell. You can create new sites in a site collection using the New-SPWeb cmdlet

New-SPWeb http://SP/TeamSite -Template “STS#0” –Name “Team Site” `
-Description “Description of Site” –AddToTopNav –UseParentTopNav

You can retrieve an existing site using the Get-SPWeb cmdlet:

Get-SPWeb http://SP/TeamSite

You can configure a site through the Set-SPWeb cmdlet:

Get-SPWeb http://SP/TeamSite | Set-SPWeb -Description “New Description”

And finally, you can remove a site using the Remove-SPWeb cmdlet:

Remove-SPWeb http://SP/TeamSite -Confirm:$false

Setting the –Confirm switch parameter to $false omits the confirmation returned from PowerShell.

SharePoint - Social Tagging; what is it?

I often get asked this question?

This is a new feature of Sharepoint 2010, which takes Sharepoint to a whole new level. social tagging is also referred to as folksonomy.

Tagging of a content is basically assigning description words or categorising the content. There are two types of tagging social and expertise tagging. social tagging refers to content and adds metadata to content, i.e describes what th content is and what it is about. Expertise tagging is related to a person and describes the person. For example skills, projects they have worked on etc.

Social tagging helps users to grow the portals information architecture over time where as expertise tagging helps build relationships and connections to others in the organisation.

Hope this helps.

Microsoft EPM Project & SharePoint Workspace Automated Archive & Recovery Solution (ARS)– April Bonanza!!

Author: David Smith (Project Solution Ltd - Business Development Manager )

- Are you struggling with the numerous manual steps for archiving completed projects and associated SharePoint Workspaces?
- If you are using categories to hide/deny projects? what about access to important project artefacts?
- Wasting too much time and effort when you could be focusing on other key areas of your business?
- Are you experiencing system performance issues as result of amount of data/structure of data? Is this affecting adoption of EPM/SharePoint?

Want EPM Project Archive & Recovery processes to be completely automated? Want a simple solution that aligns with your Work/Project Management business processes? Payback within approximately 1year?

Microsoft EPM ARS 2007/2010 is one of the Business productivity add-on solutions/tools for Microsoft EPM/SharePoint which completely automates the entire process for Archiving and Recovery. simple and ease to use.
- Make the most of your existing investments in Microsoft EPM/SharePoint.
- Helps improve adoption of the overall Microsoft EPM/SharePoint Solution.
- Manage complete project life cycle including archiving completed projects.
- End-user self-service capability for archiving & recovery without losing access to associated project workspaces/artefacts.
- Improve system performance by keeping live data streamlined.

Check out the demonstration video below and find out more!!

Microsoft EPM Project & SharePoint Workspace Automated Archive & Recovery Solution (ARS)

April 2011 is going to an exciting month for all of us here in UK. We have the Easter break and the Royal Wedding on 29th April to look forward to. The whole nation will be celebrating. We at Project Solution will be participating by offering a massive 25% discount and FREE lifetime technical support and maintenance (including upgrades for 2010) for all our Business productivity add-on solutions/tools, on all orders during the month of April 2011, including ARS.  Offer valid until mid night 30th April. Contact us today on +44 (0) 1223 597 940 or [email protected]  quoting eCode ‘April2011’.

SharePoint Foundation 2010 - the trial period for this product has expired!!

Have you installed SharePoint Foundation with Search Express? Don't panic if you see this warning message in Central Admin. Below is an explanation from Microsoft along with the Workaround.

This is a false alarm. It is not time bombed and your farm will continue to work. If you click on the health analyzer warning you will see
"Explanation : The licensing information not available". The MSSx sku does not have licencing module since its a free product. By default the rule "Trial period for this product is about to expire." is enabled in the health analyzer. The bug here is that we didn't disable this rule. The rule kicks in and its unable to find the licensing module and throws an exception (you can find it in the LOGS folder).

Workaround: In central admin go to "Central Admin" => Monitoring => "Review Rule Definitions" => click on "Trial period for this product is about to expire" rule under configuration and edit it. Uncheck the "Enabled" checkbox.

EPM/SharePoint Central Administration; Where are the Regional Settings?

Applies: EPM2007; EPM2010; SP2007; SP2010

If you have been working with SharePoint Central Administration you will have come across an issue with the date format when troubleshooting e.g. reviewing search logs. It appears in US date format. And, no means of setting it to any other regional settings via Central Admin within Site Actions > Site settings.

However, you can access this page by the following URL format: http://servername:8888/_layouts/regionalsetng.aspx

That means if you add the “_layouts/regionalsetng.aspx” after your CA URL, you can reach the Regional Settings page.  Then, simply change desired regional settings. See example in screen shots below.

Fig (1) – SharePoint 2010 Central Administration > Site Settings

Fig (2) – Regional Settings

Hope this helps!

SharePoint 2010 – how to view/list all imported User Profiles?

Applies to: SharePoint 2010

If you encounter an issue during the user profile import process, how can you view/list all imported user profiles to start troubleshooting? Or, you may simply want to view the complete list of profiles imported from AD.

Below is a note from Microsoft Tech Support which I found useful;

It seems that there is no built-in method to list out all the users’ profile and associated properties. However, all the users profiles are stored in the SQL database “User Profile Service Application_ProfileDB_XXX” > table “dbo.UserProfile_Full”. You can run a SQL query command “Select * from dbo.UserProfile_Full” to list all the users.