Dave Wollerman's SharePoint Blog

Since there is hardly any life here at vspug.com from an administrative point of view and the fact the site goes down and apparently moves without notice, I have decided to go off and manage it myself. All my old posts are over on my new blog location, however I have lost pretty much all my pictures and comments which were associated with my posts (which I have been trying to contact the administration here to see if they can assist, but there has been no response). Anyway I wish vspug.com the best of luck in the future, but please bookmark my new blog at the link below if you are interested in continuing to follow me.

http://wollerman.wordpress.com/

This blog will be deleted in a few months.

On July 23, 2009, our local Sogeti office here in Detroit will be demonstrating Windows 7 along with New Horizons at the Micosoft offices in Southfield, MI. This event is totally free, so please join us to learn about Windows most recent operating system.

Register Now!

When:
July 23, 2009
9am – 11am

Event Highlights:
- Learn about Windows 7 benefits for businesses
- Make users productive everywhere
- Enhance security and control
- Streamline PC management

Agenda:
- Compatibility and Deployment
- DirectAccess
- BranchCache
- BitLocker
- AppLocker
- Virtualization
- Search

Event Location:
Microsoft Corporation
1000 Town Center Dr.
Southfield Town Center, Suite 1930
Southfield, MI 48075
USA

Click to Register:
http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=139173

Are you interested in hosting a Windows 7 event on your premises? Please feel free to reach out to us and we can schedule this for you.

SOGETI USA LLC
31555 W.Fourteen Mile Road, Suite 301
Farmington Hills, MI 48334
248-702-1900

© 2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Outlook, SharePoint, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The information contained in this document relates to pre-release software product, which may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software product when first commercially released. This document is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to this document or the information contained in it

Must read if you have run or are use to running the STSADM preparetomove command when detaching/attaching content databases within or between farms and if the infrastructure update has been applied.

http://blogs.msdn.com/toddca/archive/2009/01/30/preparetomove-away-from-running-this-command.aspx

I have recently been working on an issue where I was receivieing a 401 unauthorized access when calling the search.asmx web service. The reason why I was getting this error is because anonymous access was enabled for the IIS Web site. The anonymous access of course filters down to the _vti_bin application and eventually to the search.asmx file itself. Anonymous access never crossed my mind for some reason as I was able to access the service description just fine, it only happened when executing the methods, QueryEx method specifically.

I was able to execute a work around for this limitation, which once implemented works as I expected it to work with full anonymous turned on. What I did was configure the search.asmx file itself under the _vti_bin application in the IIS Web site to not allow anonymous access. This still allowed users to anonymously browse my SharePoint site. After testing, I realized the DataFormWebPart I created to execute the call to the QueryEx method worked with an anonymous user even though the search.asmx file was set to not allow anonymous. The results I received in my test were sites enabled for anonymous access, when I clicked the sign in link in the upper right, i received all the sites I had access to.

I also came across this nifty tool called SharePoint Search Service Tool which helps test and build querypackets against the SharePoint 2007 (and WSS v3) search web services:
http://www.codeplex.com/SharePointSearchServ 

I will be attending the Fall 2008 Day of .Net event in Ann Arbor, MI. Registration is now open and past events have filled up quickly so register as soon as you can if you are interested!!!

Register Now!! and view speakers and sessions for this years Fall 2008 Day of .Net event!

The Day of .NET in Ann Arbor is a collaborative effort between the following INETA member groups:

Great Lakes Area .NET User Group
http://www.migang.org/

Ann Arbor .NET Developer Group
http://www.aadnd.org/

Northwest Ohio .NET User Group
http://www.nwnug.com/

Greater Lansing User Group .net
http://portal.artemis-solutions.com/glugnet/

West Michigan .NET Users Group
http://www.grdotnet.org/

Below is the an excerpt from the inviation. you can see the full invitation and register at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=129450. Also, please visit the Southeast Michigan SharePoint User Group web site at http://semsug.tech.officelive.com/default.aspx for more information on upcoming events and past meetings.

Robert will discuss SharePoint Governance with the group.  Whether your SharePoint implementation is out of control or whether you fear it soon will be, it's worth looking at some key ways to maintain control of your implementation without stifling the adoption that is necessary for true success.  Learn what things you should plan for in your SharePoint implementation.

About Robert Bogue:  Robert holds the following certifications — MCSE (NT4/W2K), MCSA: Security, A+, Network+, Server+, I-Net+, IT Project+, E-Biz+, CDIA+ — and is the president of Thor Projects LLC, which provides SharePoint consulting services to clients around the country.  Robert has contributed to more than 100 book projects and numerous other publishing projects.  His latest book is The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users.  (You can find out more about the book at http://www.sharepointshepherd.com/.)  Robert has been pleased to be a part of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program for the past five years.  He was most recently awarded MVP for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server; he has also received MVP for Microsoft Commerce Server and for Microsoft Windows Servers – Networking.  Robert runs the SharePoint Users Group of Indiana (SPIN, http://www.spindiana.com/) and is also a member of the steering committees for the Indiana Windows Users Group and the Indianapolis .NET Developer Association.  Robert speaks at local and regional events as well as national conferences.  He blogs at www.thorprojects.com/blog.  You can reach Robert at Rob.Bogue@thorprojects.com.

Please join us and share your ideas and best practices while networking with your peers.  Food and beverages will be served.

About SouthEastern Michigan SharePoint User Group

The Southeast Michigan SharePoint Users  Group is a forum for the community of SharePoint professionals and partners to collaborate, share best practices and network.  The group's vision is to provide members with a forum to hear top industry experts present, learn and teach others who are interested in the same technologies and are facing the same challenges as you.

My Sites have features that can be controlled by personalization permissions. These permissions are managed under the Shared Services Provider in the SSP Administration console. These permissions can be set for specific users or active directory security groups. The table below outlines the features available with each my site access level. The personalization permissions used with each level are noted below the table.

*: Requires users to have no personalization permissions under the Shared Services Provider
**: Requires users to have “Use personal features” personalization permissions under the Shared Services Provider
***: Requires users to have “Create personal site” and “Use personal features” personalization permissions under the Shared Services Provider

As many of you know I have received much attention related to my Workflow blog posts. Everything from "incendiary, headline-grabbing attempt to create a problem where none exists" comments to notifications about dissrailing SharePoint training classes with this "non issue". I don't mind the "friendly" discussions I have had around this topic, I am glad this problem (or non problem, depending which side of the fence you are on) was brought to light. I still believe there are people out there not aware of this feature and won't realize the impact that it has on their environment until its too late.

With that said, I wanted to include some finds related to a common workaround related to the workflow auto clean-up feature. I found this information on a MSDN forum posting I have recently ran across. There are a few workarounds for this feature. You can configure a property when developing a custom workflow to adjust the auto clean-up days. You can turn off the timer job related to the workflow auto clean-up days. And you could write a script that updates the associations already existing in the database. Example scripts are located in the forum mentioned earlier (http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepointworkflow/thread/b15b27e2-3033-418b-9731-968273d7423e). There is code for a script which will update the auto clean-up days for a workflow association from 60 days (default) to any number of days you wish to configure. This code was written and posted by Shola Salako. Fred Morrison also has posted a powershell script which will update the auto clean-up days for workflow associations as well.

I recently had an interesting issue crop up for me. I created a SharePoint Designer (SPD) workflow that acts somewhat as a state machine workflow using the "collect data from user" option. This option creates a task, assigns a user, and returns back the ID to the list item created. I was using SharePoint groups as the value for the assigned to field. For some reason the second step was not assigning the user but the other 3 steps were. I checked the length of the name, the users in the groups, the permissions of the group, the owner of the group, pretty much every thing and it did not fix my issue. I more than triple checked my workflow to make sure it was properly named.

Then I realized that there was something different with that group as compared to the other groups. The name had a dash in it. Yep! a dash ( – ). I removed the dash in the name and the SPD workflow was able to then assign the user to the task with no issues. The funny part is it is not a SharePoint thing because I was able to manually assign the user, so the only thing I can think of is that it must be the way SPD assigns the user.

So bottom line is… if you plan on assigning users to tasks from a SPD workflow, make sure you do not have dashes in the name…