Deploy and Add an Application Page in SharePoint 2010

How to deploy and add an Application Page in SharePoint 2010.

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Throttling Limits in SharePoint 2010

Throttling is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 lists. It allows SharePoint administrators to impose limits on the number of items returned by list queries from a list.

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SharePoint 2010: Business Connectivity Services

This article explains step-by-step how to make an external content type using Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS).

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Duplicate managed accounts - Item has already been added error

You can add multiple managed accounts in SharePoint but you cannot delete them. If you add same account twice, and you are logged in with that account, you get following error when you try to do anything in the central admin:

Item has already been added, key in dictionary: domain\user

The solution is to remove one managed account. Use PowerShell.

$managedaccount = get-spmanagedaccount -identity "domain\user"

remove-spmanagedaccount $managedaccount[0]

This will remove the extra managed account. You may have to log out and log in again. Also recycle the application pool associated with that managed account.

SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 migration

SharePoint 2013 has been out for several months now, and naturally the question of migration comes up. What is the process like to migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013? What should people consider when they are migrating? What are the important elements to a migration plan?

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JQuery functionality does not work in your SharePoint pages!!

Scenario: You develop something using JQuery in a SharePoint page. The page loads fine on your machine but when you deploy it, users are not able to use the functionality. Page loads fine and users see it so you think it's not permissions related. Here are some tips you should try to resolve the issue:

1. Most common mistake that people make is that they forget to publish the jquery library file. Of course, this happens only if you store jquery library file in your SharePoint site. Some people store the file in the _layouts folder. Some access it directly from a CDN. In case, you are storing in SharePoint site, make sure all users have read access to that site or library. Then make sure, you have published the jquery file as a major version. Right click jquery file and click "publish a major version". Now all users should be able to use the jquery functionality

More detail: If you the jquery file has not been published as a major version, users can still use it but you will have to give them contribute permissions. Read permissions will not work. If you want users to be able to use jquery with the read permissions, then publish the jquery library file as a major version.

2. If you are storing jquery library file in "Styles Library", make sure all users have at least read access to this library.

3. Recheck the jquery path in your code. It may be pointing to your test or development environment. Make sure the path is correct.

Turn off launcher service

All of a sudden your SharePoint stops working. You cannot even access the central admin site. Did you change the service account recently? Did you change the password of service account recently? Did you change the password in the application pools? Here are some suggestions how you can fix the problem?

1.       Recycle your app pools

2.       Reset IIS

3.       Check Logs: If SharePoint is not running then there will be nothing in the logs. You need to check Windows event log. Check the error message and take action accordingly.

 

Only event log can tell you the error that has caused SharePoint to stop working. For example, you will see a message like this:

The Office HTML Viewer Service could not be registered with Office HTML Load Balancing Service.

 

Error:  Unable to connect to the remote server

Now there can be different reasons for this service to fail. For example, if the incoming port (Firewall settings) has been shut down, you will get this error.  Open the port to resolve the issue. Then if service account password has been changed and not updated in the settings this error may occur. If for any reason you are unable to resolve the issue and you are sure (or not sure) that you are using load balancing service, you can turn off the services in the Windows “Services”.

 

Fig 1: Turn off document conversion launcher and load balancer services

After fixing this and other similar issues, your SharePoint should start working again.

Customizing Google News Search Connector For SharePoint

Have you ever used Google News Search Connector for SharePoint? It allows you to search Google News from within SharePoint. If you haven’t done it before and would like to learn how to do it, read following article on my site:

Working With SharePoint 2010 Search  - Part 2

http://walisystemsinc.com/sharepoint/art/spsearch2/Working_With_SharePoint_2010_Search___Part_2.htm

By default, Google News are shown on the right side of your page as shown below:

Suppose we want to show Google News in the center, can we do that? Yes, we can. All you need to do is modify the XSLT and you are done. Let me show you how.

1.       Go to Central Administration site

2.       Click General Application Settings

3.       Click Farm Search Administration

4.       Click Search Service Application Name

5.       Click Federated Locations on the left

6.       Click Google News to open it.

7.       Expand Display Information Node.

8.       In Federated Search Results Display Metadata section, click ellipsis to edit the XSL. For you convenience, you can copy the XSL to a better editor like Notepad or Visual Studio (if you want to see XSL in colors and with better formatting).

9.       Search for “ms-searchsummarymain” class name and remove it. You will find it immediately below the “Google News Results” headline.

/><xsl:variable name="ChannelTitle">

               Google News Results

           </xsl:variable><xsl:if test="($RowCount &gt; 0)"><div class=”ms-searchsummarymain” xmlns="">

Just leave the class name empty (class=””).

10.   Immediately after this line, you will find following line:

<div class=”ms-searchChannelTitle”>

Remove the class name. Your DIV tag should look like this:

<div class=””>

11.Locate following line:

 

<span class=”ms-searchChannelTitle”>

 

Remove class name. Final tag should look like the following:

<span class=””>

12.Search for “ms-searchsummary” and remove it.

Before the change, tag will look like this:

<xsl:with-param name="StyleClassPrefix" select="string(‘ms-searchsummary’)" />

After the change, tag will look like this:

<xsl:with-param name="StyleClassPrefix" select="string(‘’)" />

“ms-searchsummary” appears twice in the XSL. You have to remove it from the second location as well. Search again and modify the tag by removing it.

Before: <xsl:with-param name="StyleClassPrefix" select="string(‘ms-searchsummary’)" />

After: <xsl:with-param name="StyleClassPrefix" select="string(‘’)" />

13.Search for following tag:

<xsl:value-of select="$ShortLink" /></a></div>

After </div> add breaks. Final tag will look like this:

<xsl:value-of select="$ShortLink" /></a></div><BR/><BR/>

14.Save the changes. Go to SharePoint site and run search again, now you will see Google Search results in the center.

 

Download completed XSLT (TXT format) from here.

http://walisystemsinc.com/sharepoint/art/googlesearch/googlexsl-11092012.txt

 

 

Delete (SharePoint) site that has subsites

Delete site that has subsites

If you get this error:

Obviously one solution is to go and delete the subsites and then delete the parent site. The other way is to go to “Manage Content and Structure” under “Site Actions” and delete the site from there. It will delete the site no matter how many subsites were contained in there.

Delete managed account in SharePoint 2010

Sometimes when you are trying to delete a managed account from the SharePoint, you get an error message that account is still being used therefore it cannot be deleted. If this account is being used and is not visible to the naked eye then chances are it is being used in an application pool. Good thing is that error message shows you the pools that are still using this account. You go to IIS and search for the pools, you don’t find them. Use PowerShell to resolve the issue. Here is the error message:

1.       Open SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and run following command to remove the culprit pool.

Remove-spserviceapplicationpool –identity <pool name>

2.       Now add the pool back with new managed account so that you can delete the old managed account.

New-spserviceapplicationpool –name <pool name> -account  <domain\user>

To confirm if the pool has been created or not, use the following command:

Get-spserviceapplicationpool –identity <pool name>

HTML5 and SharePoint: Run HTML5 video in SharePoint 2010

Easy step by step tutorial on  how to run HTML5 video in SharePoint 2010

http://walisystemsinc.com/sharepoint/art/html5/HTML5_and_SharePoint_2010.htm

How to install AD on Windows Server 2008

The following blog has details and step by step instructions:

http://petri.co.il/installing-active-directory-windows-server-2008.htm

SharePoint 2007 site definitions and site templates don't work in SharePoint 2010

If you were using Site definitions in SharePoint 2007 that might not work in SharePoint 2010. The reason being that you were using site templates (.STP files) in your code. STP templates are not supported in SharePoint 2010, therefore, your code will surely throw an error. First thing is to update your STP to WSP and then update your site definition code. Also if your site definition code points to 12 hive,  update the reference to 14 hive. To convert your STP files to WSP, read following excellent article:

http://tom-dw.blogspot.com/2010/06/importing-sharepoint-2007-list.html

After you have converted your STPs to WSPs, update your code.

Site templates in 2010

Site templates are deprecated. If you need to redeploy a site template to either SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010, follow these steps:

1.       Create a site from the site template.

2.       Install SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 on your existing server farm or on a new server farm. If you install the upgrades on a new server farm, attach the content database that contains the site that you created to the new farm.

3.       On the new installation, on the Site Settings page, select Save Site as Template. This creates a solution package with a .wsp file name extension.

Start Stopped Services

When you create a new application in SharePoint 2010, there are several services that may not start automatically. You have to start them otherwise you get errors in the sites. For example, if “State Service” is not started and you try to access an InfoPath form, you get following error:

The form cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service. For more information, contact your server administrator.

To start the stopped services, follow these steps:

1.       Run Central Administration

2.       Click on Configuration Wizard right hand side navigation links and then Launch the Farm Configuration Wizard.

3.       Start the Wizard

4.       Make sure checkbox along with State Service is checked.

5.       Click Next.

Also, some sites may complain about missing features. This is because you have to enable enterprise features in all sites. You can do this by going to central admin site.

1.       Go to central admin site and click “Upgrade and Migration” link.

Figure 1: Upgrade and Migration

2.       Click “Enable Features on Existing Sites” (see figure above)

3.       Now check “Enable all sites in this installation to use the following set of features:”. Enterprise features option will be listed there. Click OK.

Figure 2: Enable features on existing site

To start services individually, do the following:

1.       Go to central admin site and select “System Settings”.

2.       Select “Manage services on server” under “Servers”. You will see services that are stopped. There will be a “Start” link against each of them. Start the services that you want to start here.

Figure 3: Manage services on server

SharePoint Performance Monitoring (Via Montis)

Extractedfrom the original post

“There is no need to remind you that performance monitoring is an important aspect of managing a network environment. As a network administrator you covered all the bases and are on top of monitoring your network not only for outages but for performance bottlenecks as well… right?

Adding SharePoint to your network environment adds new requirements to your performance monitoring needs. One method of monitoring SharePoint servers is by examining the performance counter logs which contains several critical counters that are used when evaluating performance issues. There are a number of primary counters that we’ll look at and they include metrics for CPU, memory, and disk performance.

”

For complete post click here

SharePoint Solution Deployment (Via LiamCleary )

Extracted from the original post

“One thing that I have always had long discussions with is the deployment and packaging process for SharePoint. On one side of the fence I think that the WSP deployment process is fantastic and a great way to ensure consistency of code and asset deployment. One of the issues I face really comes down to the balance of ease of deployment with a single solution package or breaking out the components into separate solution package files. During Wayne's session at #SPC11 this morning the suggestion was made to perhaps break away from the single WSP approach and break items out into multiple to facilitate and easier upgrade process. So what do you think? Well I decided to raise a few questions and sent a survey via twitter asking anyone to complete it so I could see what people thought about this. The questions I sent out were as follows:”

For complete post click here.

SPC11–Keynote overview and a few thoughts thrown in.(Via Paul.)

Extracted from the original post “I first attended a Microsoft Conference in Las Vegas 2 years ago. It was the launch of Office 14 and Steve Ballmer bounded out onto the stage to lots of whoops and hollers. That particular keynote was all about the whizz and bang that Office 14 was brining to the party.

This years keynote didn’t start with quite as much pomp and circumstance, After all, Office 14 is now a mature product with over 18 months release time under it’s belt and i think that Jared Spataro was going to have a hard time getting anywhere near the reaction from the crowd that Steve Ballmer did 2 years ago.

He did come out with some great information, especially some nice looking info graphics around the chosen theme of Productivity Delivered.

One interesting point for me is that SharePoint has now shipped over 125,000,00 licenses to over 65000 companies around the world. if SharePoint was a standalone software company, that would place it in the top 50 software companies in the world.

The social side of the conference got a good mention, especially the phenomenon known as SharePint. An interesting X Factor style audition video featuring some well known actors such a Luke Perry and Carmen Electra added a light note of humour to the event.

Jared was followed by Jeff Teper, the Corporate vice president for the SharePoint product group to talk more about where the product team was focussing it’s attention at the present and the future. A short touch on vNext said we can expect it to grow on the good work done in 2010, but that no more details would be released this week!”

For complete post, click here.

Page Layout: This Control is Currently Disabled.(Via Erik Swenson)

Extracted

“Update: Quick fix at the bottom of this post.

Here is a SharePoint 2010 Bug that needs to be fixed. If you have a custom design and you moved the site actions out and below the Ribbon Control, you will notice that when you go to change a publishing page layout via the ribbon the option is disabled.

Here is what the SharePoint 2010 publishing site Ribbon Page Layout Chooser looks like when active:”

Click here, if you want to read the complete article.

SharePoint Resources – September 2011(Via Asif Rehmani)

Extracted

“Guidance and Best Practices

Data Storage Changes for SharePoint 2010
With the release of SharePoint 2010 SP1 and some new guidance Microsoft is changing the supported data size limits for SharePoint content databases. Prior to SP1 the content database limit was 200 GB for collaboration and 1 TB for document archive. The content database size includes both metadata and BLOBs regardless of where the BLOBs are located and use of RBS does not bypass or increase these limits. ”

For complete post, click here.