Jane Leung's Blog

The SharePoint Team blog annouces the news of some SharePoint 2010 sneak peek:

SharePoint 2010 sneak peek

I just checked out the overview sneak peek video, pretty cool stuff shown

Tallan and Microsoft are pleased to present a breakfast seminar on the topic of “Breakthroughs in Web 2.0."

The Internet is the business platform of the 21st century-you must know how you can put this platform to work for your business!

The advent of Web 2.0 characterizes the shift in the World Wide Web from a collection of static sites and experiences to a global space where broadband connections and multimedia applications deliver deeper content and richer interaction between individuals.

Are you interested in leveraging Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and community features to attract new customers?

How about extending your website with Web 2.0 features to increase user satisfaction? Or create a “stickier” visitor experience?

Or facilitate 3rd parties adding value to your site at $0 cost?

Attend this seminar and you will discover:

• What exactly is meant by Web 2.0?
• What can adoption of Web 2.0 concepts and technologies do for your business?

• The latest technical innovations in the Microsoft Web Development Platform.

Date

June 16, 2009 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM EST

Location

Microsoft Corporation
1290 Avenue of the Americas
6th Floor
New York, NY 10104

To register: https://www.clicktoattend.com/register.aspx?eventid=138425

 More details: http://www.tallan.com/events/pages/EventDetails.aspx?eventID=72

The Preview Pane function was brought to my attention by my co-worker, so I just want to share it here with your all .

It is an useful and yet less noticable way of viewing your SharePoint list data.

Go check it here, a blog sponsored by Tallan Inc.

As a .NET developer, I was introduced to the world of SharePoint by a product named "Business Scorecard Manager". This product worked on both the WSS and SPS platform and since then I have been heavily involved in the whole SharePoint platform on my work. 

Later in 2007, "PerformancePoint Server 2007" came out and replaces BSM. Although I never had a chance to really look into this product but this week, I am happy to hear that Microsoft annouces an update to its BI strategy by incorporating PerformancePoint Server features into MOSS enterprise CAL.

Read the full press here!

Ever want to create your WSS web application at a location other than the default C:Inetpubwwwroot location? Make another drive such as D:Inetpubwwwroot as the default instead?

Go and visit this new blog which I also contribute to now: Blog SharePoint

Tallan Inc, a Microsoft Gold Partner, also the company that I am working at now  has finally launched its own blog site which dedicated to SharePoint technologies. It is still in its start up stage but I am sure me and the other "talented" Tallan people will start contribute to it on a on-going basis from now on!

For a side note, Tallan is pronounce as "Ta – larn". I want to point this out because when people first heard of the name, they usually pronounce it as "Talen" (same as Talent)

Go and check it now – Blog SharePoint!

About two years ago, a client asked for best practices on SharePoint Server 2007 when MOSS and WSS 3.0 had just made its RTM version. Back then, there were information scattered around the Internet and a lot of them are made to the preliminary version of MOSS 2007. Now, a site that said it all: Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007, hosted on Microsoft TechNet. The site categorizes best practices for the following areas: 

• Operational Excellence (tips on setting up and deployment for best performances)
• Team Collaboration Sites
• Publishing Portals
• Search
• My Sites
• Developing Custom Applications
• Additional Resources

I have only started exploring the site but I feel like this is already a must-have favorite on my Internet browser!

Well, I know I have run this command numerous times already:

stsadm -o addwppack -filename <abc.cab> -globalinstall -force

But today, when I tried to run this command again, I got the message:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Webpart deployment failed.

The first thing I thought of is permission issue, I am running this command with an logged in account which is a member of the administrators group on both the WFE and SQL Servers but this account is not the same as the database access account I used when going thru configuration wizard. So I just go to Central Administration and added myself to have full control to the web application that I am interested at and also added myself to be part of the farm administrator group. (That should really do the trick – I thought to myself)

No luck. Same error message.

Added myself to be part of the security groups related to MOSS on WFE?

Still…… No luck.

Next, I went into SQL Server. I noticed that the logged in account I used don't have any access at all to the admin_content database, so I added the account as db_owner to admin_content.

YES! This works!

Really, new things learned in every brand new day

Yesterday, when I was doing a fresh MOSS installation on one of the VMs, I got the error when running SharePoint Configuration Wizard and it failed at the step of creating configuration database.

… and it immediately rings a bell in my head: I am not running the wizard as my usual logged in account. In fact, I am just running the wizard as someone who is part of the administrator group on the WFE server and the backend SQL Server.

Knowing that I can logged in to the SQL Server box but not able to see all the settings in SQL Server, I know exactly what is missing from my new logged in account:

• Security Admin Server Role
• Database Creator Server Role

Working on SharePoint technologies on a daily basis, yet small things sometimes slip thru my mind

I am working on automating the process of deploying a SharePoint farm. The client wants a standardize way to setup all the development and test environments. So looking into automate SharePoint deployment thru scripting seems the right way to go.

Being a scripting newbie/dummy, luckily there are already a number of good resources to provide me the information I need:

Ben Curry has a very detailed blog on how to script SharePoint farm using PSCONFIG.exe and STSADM.exe

Technet has all the references I need when I am unsure of a command line tool

The 3 command line tools I need to use are SETUP.exe, PSCONFIG.exe and STSADM.exe

SETUP.exe – Install the binary bits. Uses a Config.xml as input parameters (e.g. install location, product key, server type)

PSCONFIG.exe – equivalent to running the SharePoint Product and Technologies Configuration Wizard, create/connect to a config database, create Central Administration web applicaation, install services and features to the environment

With PSCONFIG, one can also have the option to specify the farm's configuration database name instead of some GUID attached to it. Also, note that there is sequence of running the PSCONFIG commands.

1. configdb

2. helpcollections

3. secureresources

4. services

5. installfeatures

6. adminvs

7. evalprovision (only for stand-alone installations)

8. applicationcontent

9. upgrade

STSADM.exe – start search services and create Shared Services Provider

And just for scripting newbiedummy, if you need to use the syntax "%" (percentage sign) inside the scripts as a text, use double %% syntax for the display of character "%". –> this happens to be the longest time I spent on troubleshooting my script.