Jason Medero SharePoint MVP: SharePoint Space for all things SharePoint, OCS, RMS, InfoPath, and Office

Yes as the title describes I will be attending SPC 2008.  It should really be a great conference with a bunch of great topics and SharePoint MVP speakers.  Last week I took a look at all of the topics and WOW I do not know how I am going to choose one topic over another.  Its going to be like a marathon running from one great session to another…as you can see I am pretty excited!  There will also be some extra curricular at night that everyone who is reading this and attending the conference should attend.  I mean what is a great conference without some great networking!  My fellow SharePoint MVP's Bob Fox and Andrew Connell are hosting SharePoint by day SharePoint by night gathering at an Irish pub which is going to be a great time. 

Check it out here for the information if you want to plan on attending!  I know with these SharePoint rock stars there will be plenty of SharePoint talk going around.  If you would like to put a face to this blog or just have a nagging SharePoint question come by the SharePoint booth at the convention center as that is where I will be hanging out during the day with my fellow MVP's and some other blue badges. 

There is also a great Ask The Experts lunch which will be an informal session with Tons of experts to ask all type of SharePoint related questions.  Here is the general logistics for this session:

The Ask the Experts lunch event is designed to give attendees the opportunity to interact directly with SharePoint experts in an informal setting. The event is designed to allow attendees the opportunity to have an informal setting for Q&A on various topic areas. The goal of the event is to allow for a free flow of questions and answers between attendees and speakers.

• The room will be have round tables set up, each table having a unique topic area.
• Experts will be available to discuss technical issues, solutions, development and architectural issues, among many other topics.
• Attendees will roam through the room visiting different topic areas. These are casual discussions, not presentations.
• Whiteboards will be available; however, no power will be run to tables for use with laptops as this is designed as an informal Q&A session.
• Food and drinks will be provided throughout the Hall.

Ask the Experts (ATE) Lunch EventDate:            Wednesday, March 5th

Time:            11:30AM to 1:00PM

Location:        Hall 4AB Washington State Convention & Trade Center

Attendees:       All SharePoint Conference attendees.

For those of you interested in joining or maybe even founding your own SharePoint user group, my friend and co-worker Bob Fox and Lawrence Liu from the MS SharePoint team will be holding a meeting with this topic in mind.  Check out the details below as it should definitely be an interesting topic.

Use the link below to sign up for the meeting:

SharePoint User Group meeting

 So as you can see there are a ton of awesome events going on!  So whether you are in the mood to get a drink and network or have a question that you have been dying to get answered SPC 2008 has it all.  Looking forward to see you all there.

Cheers!

Yes as the title describes I will be attending SPC 2008.  It should really be a great conference with a bunch of great topics and SharePoint MVP speakers.  Last week I took a look at all of the topics and WOW I do not know how I am going to choose one topic over another.  Its going to be like a marathon running from one great session to another…as you can see I am pretty excited!  There will also be some extra curricular at night that everyone who is reading this and attending the conference should attend.  I mean what is a great conference without some great networking!  My fellow SharePoint MVP's Bob Fox and Andrew Connell are hosting SharePoint by day SharePoint by night gathering at an Irish pub which is going to be a great time. 

Check it out here for the information if you want to plan on attending!  I know with these SharePoint rock stars there will be plenty of SharePoint talk going around.  If you would like to put a face to this blog or just have a nagging SharePoint question come by the SharePoint booth at the convention center as that is where I will be hanging out during the day with my fellow MVP's and some other blue badges. 

There is also a great Ask The Experts lunch which will be an informal session with Tons of experts to ask all type of SharePoint related questions.  Here is the general logistics for this session:

The Ask the Experts lunch event is designed to give attendees the opportunity to interact directly with SharePoint experts in an informal setting. The event is designed to allow attendees the opportunity to have an informal setting for Q&A on various topic areas. The goal of the event is to allow for a free flow of questions and answers between attendees and speakers.

• The room will be have round tables set up, each table having a unique topic area.
• Experts will be available to discuss technical issues, solutions, development and architectural issues, among many other topics.
• Attendees will roam through the room visiting different topic areas. These are casual discussions, not presentations.
• Whiteboards will be available; however, no power will be run to tables for use with laptops as this is designed as an informal Q&A session.
• Food and drinks will be provided throughout the Hall.

Ask the Experts (ATE) Lunch EventDate:            Wednesday, March 5th

Time:            11:30AM to 1:00PM

Location:        Hall 4AB Washington State Convention & Trade Center

Attendees:       All SharePoint Conference attendees.

For those of you interested in joining or maybe even founding your own SharePoint user group, my friend and co-worker Bob Fox and Lawrence Liu from the MS SharePoint team will be holding a meeting with this topic in mind.  Check out the details below as it should definitely be an interesting topic.

Use the link below to sign up for the meeting:

SharePoint User Group meeting

 So as you can see there are a ton of awesome events going on!  So whether you are in the mood to get a drink and network or have a question that you have been dying to get answered SPC 2008 has it all.  Looking forward to see you all there.

Cheers!

I have recently been building out a few MOSS 2007 environments for a client with a big Ultima online fan Erik.  We have decided in the build process of each environment to include SP1 because of all of the bug fixes that have been resolved in this service pack.  We are building your classic environments POC, Test, UAT, Prod and while building our POC and Test environment we noticed an error in the event log immediately after applying MOSS 2007 SP1.  The error that was showing up in the event viewer was:

Application Event log error:

Event Type:        Error

Event Source:    Office SharePoint Server

Event Category:                Office Server Shared Services

Event ID:              6482

Date:                     1/22/2008

Time:                     12:40:03 PM

User:                     N/A

Computer:          MOSS01

Description:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (a287d59e-47fa-4182-8eba-9b0f52f27f5b).

Reason: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

Techinal Support Details:

System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(RuntimeType objectType)

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(Type objectType)

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.CreateInstance(Type serverType)

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.IsCurrentContextOK(Type serverType, Object[] props, Boolean bNewObj)

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.get_AdminObject()

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.ProvisionGlobalProperties()

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()                                                    

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

System Event log error:

Event Type:        Error

Event Source:    DCOM

Event Category:                None

Event ID:              10016

Date:                     1/23/2008

Time:                     1:23:53 PM

User:                     <UserName>

Computer:          <Computer Name>

Description:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID

{3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}

 to the user NORTHAMERICAsrvspdev1 SID (S-1-5-21-6776287-1952083785-2110791508-434436).  This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

So our first job was to identify the CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} which was the culprit causing the issue.  I took a look in the registry by going to START>>RUN>>REGEDIT then navigated under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID and began searching for the app id above.  Well I found it and did some digging in there and found a reg key called "App Id" this CLSID matched up to a CLSID that was located when I opened up the component services management console.  Ah HA we found pay dirt!  The Osearch COM object was to blame and for some reason the necessary accounts did not have the rights to access this object.  My friend Erik had the great idea to compare the launch and activation rights on a server with SP1 applied to a non-SP1 server what a concept!

Registry Editor where I found the CLSID app ID.

Open up component services and locate the Osearch component.  Right click on it and go to properties and check to match up the app Id with the Id shown in the Reg key.

Below is another screen shot with the security tab being displayed.  Click the Edit button next to launch and activation permissions and that will display which accounts have what permissions to the specific component you have selected.

So the final test was to apply MOSS 2007 SP1 to the environment and see if applying the service pack would strip away those rights that were there previous to SP1.  So we first applied the WSS SP1 to the server and the permissions were not changed.  Finally we went and applied MOSS 2007 SP1 and immediately after the permissions on this COM object were gone!!!  The figures below show the permissions on the Osearch Com object before and after SP1 was applied.

This is what the launch permissions looked like on our server pre-Sp1.

This is what the permissions looked like immediately following the binary install of MOSS SP1…Yikes!!

In order to solve this issue we simply copied the same rights that were on the MOSS 2007 server that didn't have SP1 and reapplied them to each of the servers in the server farm where the issue was occurring.  After a quick reboot this solved all of the errors that were occurring in the event viewer.  I have not completely validated that this is a known issue but we were definitely able to repro this issue in multiple medium farm environments where we have dedicated accounts for SSPadmin, Content Access Acount, Content Crawler account, App Pool Identity account, and a dedicated farm admin account.

One item to note is that this problem (DCOM errors in event viewer) did not seem to occur when we tried to reproduce in a small farm environment (1 server running everything but SQL) using one single account for all services.  The account running all services was a local administrator on the box so this might be the reason why we did not see these errors on the single server box.  As opposed to in our medium and large farm build out where the dedicated service accounts used were not granted local admin on the box.

So MOSS SP1 has been out for quite sometime now and I did not see barely anything that directly related to the issues that came about in my situation.  So I hope this helps or saves some people some time in the future when applying MOSS SP1. 

Cheers

I have recently been building out a few MOSS 2007 environments for a client with a big Ultima online fan Erik.  We have decided in the build process of each environment to include SP1 because of all of the bug fixes that have been resolved in this service pack.  We are building your classic environments POC, Test, UAT, Prod and while building our POC and Test environment we noticed an error in the event log immediately after applying MOSS 2007 SP1.  The error that was showing up in the event viewer was:

Application Event log error:

Event Type:        Error

Event Source:    Office SharePoint Server

Event Category:                Office Server Shared Services

Event ID:              6482

Date:                     1/22/2008

Time:                     12:40:03 PM

User:                     N/A

Computer:          MOSS01

Description:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance (a287d59e-47fa-4182-8eba-9b0f52f27f5b).

Reason: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

Techinal Support Details:

System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} failed due to the following error: 80070005.

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(RuntimeType objectType)

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(Type objectType)

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.CreateInstance(Type serverType)

   at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.IsCurrentContextOK(Type serverType, Object[] props, Boolean bNewObj)

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.get_AdminObject()

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.Gatherer.ProvisionGlobalProperties()

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance.Synchronize()                                                    

   at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerJob.ProvisionLocalSharedServiceInstances(Boolean isAdministrationServiceJob)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

System Event log error:

Event Type:        Error

Event Source:    DCOM

Event Category:                None

Event ID:              10016

Date:                     1/23/2008

Time:                     1:23:53 PM

User:                     <UserName>

Computer:          <Computer Name>

Description:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID

{3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230}

 to the user NORTHAMERICAsrvspdev1 SID (S-1-5-21-6776287-1952083785-2110791508-434436).  This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

So our first job was to identify the CLSID {3D42CCB1-4665-4620-92A3-478F47389230} which was the culprit causing the issue.  I took a look in the registry by going to START>>RUN>>REGEDIT then navigated under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID and began searching for the app id above.  Well I found it and did some digging in there and found a reg key called "App Id" this CLSID matched up to a CLSID that was located when I opened up the component services management console.  Ah HA we found pay dirt!  The Osearch COM object was to blame and for some reason the necessary accounts did not have the rights to access this object.  My friend Erik had the great idea to compare the launch and activation rights on a server with SP1 applied to a non-SP1 server what a concept!

Registry Editor where I found the CLSID app ID.

Open up component services and locate the Osearch component.  Right click on it and go to properties and check to match up the app Id with the Id shown in the Reg key.

Below is another screen shot with the security tab being displayed.  Click the Edit button next to launch and activation permissions and that will display which accounts have what permissions to the specific component you have selected.

So the final test was to apply MOSS 2007 SP1 to the environment and see if applying the service pack would strip away those rights that were there previous to SP1.  So we first applied the WSS SP1 to the server and the permissions were not changed.  Finally we went and applied MOSS 2007 SP1 and immediately after the permissions on this COM object were gone!!!  The figures below show the permissions on the Osearch Com object before and after SP1 was applied.

This is what the launch permissions looked like on our server pre-Sp1.

This is what the permissions looked like immediately following the binary install of MOSS SP1…Yikes!!

In order to solve this issue we simply copied the same rights that were on the MOSS 2007 server that didn't have SP1 and reapplied them to each of the servers in the server farm where the issue was occurring.  After a quick reboot this solved all of the errors that were occurring in the event viewer.  I have not completely validated that this is a known issue but we were definitely able to repro this issue in multiple medium farm environments where we have dedicated accounts for SSPadmin, Content Access Acount, Content Crawler account, App Pool Identity account, and a dedicated farm admin account.

One item to note is that this problem (DCOM errors in event viewer) did not seem to occur when we tried to reproduce in a small farm environment (1 server running everything but SQL) using one single account for all services.  The account running all services was a local administrator on the box so this might be the reason why we did not see these errors on the single server box.  As opposed to in our medium and large farm build out where the dedicated service accounts used were not granted local admin on the box.

So MOSS SP1 has been out for quite sometime now and I did not see barely anything that directly related to the issues that came about in my situation.  So I hope this helps or saves some people some time in the future when applying MOSS SP1. 

Cheers

For more information in regards to the ongoings with the NJSPUG check out the website (work in progress) for content downloads, meeting agendas etc…

NJ SHAREPOINT USER GROUP: Wednesday, January 23

Registration:  http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=123585

 Reporting in SharePoint 2007- Excel Services, SQL Reports, Dashboards 

Guest Speaker: Cary Gottesman 

Principal Technology SpecialistMicrosoft 

ú Using SharePoint's Report Library for shared access to reports

ú Demonstrating Excel 2007's advanced Pivot Tables and Charts with Analysis Services Cubes

ú Showing Advanced Dashboard and Analytic Capabilities with SharePoint 2007 and Performance Point Server AGENDA:

5:30 PM EAT + GREET
Networking, Free Food/Drink

6:00 PM Guest Speaker
“Reporting in SharePoint 2007“

6:45 PM  WRAP UP
discussion, prize giveaways

Cheers,

For more information in regards to the ongoings with the NJSPUG check out the website (work in progress) for content downloads, meeting agendas etc…

NJ SHAREPOINT USER GROUP: Wednesday, January 23

Registration:  http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=123585

 Reporting in SharePoint 2007- Excel Services, SQL Reports, Dashboards 

Guest Speaker: Cary Gottesman 

Principal Technology SpecialistMicrosoft 

ú Using SharePoint's Report Library for shared access to reports

ú Demonstrating Excel 2007's advanced Pivot Tables and Charts with Analysis Services Cubes

ú Showing Advanced Dashboard and Analytic Capabilities with SharePoint 2007 and Performance Point Server AGENDA:

5:30 PM EAT + GREET
Networking, Free Food/Drink

6:00 PM Guest Speaker
“Reporting in SharePoint 2007“

6:45 PM  WRAP UP
discussion, prize giveaways

Cheers,

Hey everyone,

Recently was in the midst of building a fresh medium farm environment.  Being that this was a fresh install of this environment I figured I would immediately apply MOSS 2007 SP1 to the environment so that everything is up to date.  I figured that I would first need to create an actual farm via running PSCONFIG (SharePoint Config Wizard) and creating a config DB then joining all of my servers to the farm prior to installing SP1.  So after I finished creating my medium farm via running PSCONFIG i thought now should be a fine time to run the SP1 update and then begin the build out of my farm (SSP creation, Services started, search config etc…).  I ran the installer and installed the binaries then ran PSCONFIG first on my app server running CA which was upgraded successfully.

 I then ran PSCONFIG on one of the WFE's in my farm.  It ran until step 9 then failed with a very general error Portal upgrade sequence failed.  I went and checked the Upgrade.log and found a coupel different errors:

"[SPWebServerSequence] [ERROR] [1/7/2008 4:36:40 PM]: Action 3.0.4.0 of Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPWebServerSequence failed.
[SPWebServerSequence] [ERROR] [1/7/2008 4:36:40 PM]: DoResetAcl C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12 emplatelayoutsweb.config failed.
[SPWebServerSequence] [ERROR] [1/7/2008 4:36:40 PM]:    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.EnsureWebServerWebConfigSettings.Upgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPActionSequence.Upgrade()"

These error were not very helpful as you can imagine.  I did some quick digging and troubleshooting and on a lucky hunch I thought is it possible that you need to configure your farms SSP prior to the upgrade?  I quickly ran through the configuration of the Shared Service Provider (SSP) and re-ran the upgrade.  Yessss the upgrade was now successful on my first WFE and also the second WFE as well.  So it turns out that in order to apply SP1 to new environments you first must have provisioned your SSP.  In my defense I did suspect this prior to actually installing SP1 and this hunch saved me mucho time!  I figured I would post this because I did not see much documentation that applies to my situation but if anyone knows differently please leave a comment below.

Cheers,

Jason Medero

"

 .  After some much

Hey everyone,

Recently was in the midst of building a fresh medium farm environment.  Being that this was a fresh install of this environment I figured I would immediately apply MOSS 2007 SP1 to the environment so that everything is up to date.  I figured that I would first need to create an actual farm via running PSCONFIG (SharePoint Config Wizard) and creating a config DB then joining all of my servers to the farm prior to installing SP1.  So after I finished creating my medium farm via running PSCONFIG i thought now should be a fine time to run the SP1 update and then begin the build out of my farm (SSP creation, Services started, search config etc…).  I ran the installer and installed the binaries then ran PSCONFIG first on my app server running CA which was upgraded successfully.

 I then ran PSCONFIG on one of the WFE's in my farm.  It ran until step 9 then failed with a very general error Portal upgrade sequence failed.  I went and checked the Upgrade.log and found a coupel different errors:

"[SPWebServerSequence] [ERROR] [1/7/2008 4:36:40 PM]: Action 3.0.4.0 of Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPWebServerSequence failed.
[SPWebServerSequence] [ERROR] [1/7/2008 4:36:40 PM]: DoResetAcl C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12 emplatelayoutsweb.config failed.
[SPWebServerSequence] [ERROR] [1/7/2008 4:36:40 PM]:    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.EnsureWebServerWebConfigSettings.Upgrade()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Upgrade.SPActionSequence.Upgrade()"

These error were not very helpful as you can imagine.  I did some quick digging and troubleshooting and on a lucky hunch I thought is it possible that you need to configure your farms SSP prior to the upgrade?  I quickly ran through the configuration of the Shared Service Provider (SSP) and re-ran the upgrade.  Yessss the upgrade was now successful on my first WFE and also the second WFE as well.  So it turns out that in order to apply SP1 to new environments you first must have provisioned your SSP.  In my defense I did suspect this prior to actually installing SP1 and this hunch saved me mucho time!  I figured I would post this because I did not see much documentation that applies to my situation but if anyone knows differently please leave a comment below.

Cheers,

Jason Medero

"

 .  After some much