Setup SSL in SharePoint 2013 using commercial certificates



 

 Setup SSL in SharePoint 2013

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In this article you will learn how to setup SSL in SharePoint 2013. In my next article I will show you how to setup an Extranet in SharePoint 2013. Corporations usually setup SSL for Extranet sites. There are three ways to setup SSL.

1.       One way is to use a commercial SSL certificate. There are many sites that sell SSL certificates. For learning purposes you can sign up for a trial version (30 days). This is what this article will focus on today.

2.       Second way is to use a self-signed certificate that  you create in IIS.

3.       Third way is to set up your server to issue a certificate. This is what you need if you have custom DNS entries. Of course, you can also use first option (using commercial certificate) if you have DNS entries. If you use self-signed certificate and you have DNS entries, you get an error. More on this in another article!

So, let’s start. In this article, I will show you how to use Verisign certificate. Verisign is one the most popular companies that issue SSL certificates. We will sign up for a trial version.

1.       Before you sign up on Verisign site, we first need to create a certificate request. This will be needed when  you sign up at Verisign.

2.       Open IIS 7.0 (Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager).

3.       Click on the server name.

4.       In IIS section, double-click Server Certificates.

5.       On the right side, under Actions, click Create Certificate Request… link.

6.       Request Certificate form will open. Fill out the fields. Enter your site name or URL in the  Common Name field. Enter your company name or abbreviation in Organization and Organizational Unit fields. Enter City and State. Enter full state name, abbreviation is not accepted. Select Country/region and click Next.

 

7.       Keep the default values selected. Cryptographic service provider should have Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider selected. If it’s a test or development environment, you can keep Bit length set to 1024. If it’s a production environment and you are using a purchased SSL key, then select Bit length according to your needs. What kind of security is needed depends on what kind of site you have created and what kind of content it has. For confidential content or for government sites, you may want to select at least 2048 in Bit length. Remember, the greater the bit length, the stronger the security. However, a greater bit length may decrease performance.

8.       Browse to a folder that will store the request and give a name to the file, for example, sslrequest. Click Finish.

9.       Go to Verisign site and sign up for a trial version. Here is the direct link for the signup page:

 

https://trustcenter.websecurity.symantec.com/process/retail/trial_product_selector;jsessionid=5FD77503659274771617C69ABB11A28D?uid=f0e5b79664a05e9b52b4844f12670f91&locale=VRSN_US

 

Enter technical contact details and click Continue. On the next screen, you will be asked to enter CSR. Open the request file that you had created, copy it and paste it into the box on the site. Once you have signed up, you will get an email with the key.

10.   There will be three links in the email. Click the first link to download  and install the Test Root CA Certificate. On the download page, there are different browsers listed. Select the browser that you will use for your site testing. Remember if you know you audience will use different browsers then you need to perform this step for every browser that your audience will be using. Steps for Internet Explorer are listed next.

11.   Click the link Download Secure Site Trial Root Certificate link. From the box, copy the certificate and save it in a text file with a .cer extension.

12.   Open Internet Explorer.

13.   Go to Tools > Internet Options > Content > Certificates.

14.   Click Import…. A wizard will open. Click Next.

15.   Browse to the location of the recently stored .cer file (step 11 above).

16.   Select the certificate and click Open.

17.   Click Next.

18.   Select Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of the certificate. Click Ok.

19.   Click Next then Finish.

20.   When prompted and asked if you wish to add the following certificate to the root store, click Yes.

21.   Second step listed in the email confuses many people. Basically this step is not required for latest IIS server. Users using IIS 5.0 or Higher servers do not need to download the intermediate CA as it is included with the SSL certificate upon issuance if they selected in the purchase as server vendor: Microsoft IIS 5.0 or higher. If you are not sure about the selection you made when requesting SSL certificate, go ahead and install it. It will not harm anything. To install it, perform same steps as listed above (Steps 11 – 19). Be sure to click second link in your email instead of first when performing step 11.

22.   Just like the second step, third step in the email is equally confusing. Don’t follow those steps, follow the ones listed below to install the certificate without hassles.

23.   Copy the certificate from your email. It will be at the bottom of the email. Be careful when copying. Copy whole text including -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE----- and paste it into Notepad. There should be no white spaces or extra line breaks.  Save the file with .p7b extension. You can name the file as sslcert.p7b or whatever you prefer.

24.   Click Start > Run and type mmc and click OK. MMC console will open.

25.   From File, select Add/Remove Snap-in.

 

 

26.   Select Certificates from available snap-ins and click Add >.

27.   Select first option My user account and click Finish.

28.   Click OK.

29.   Expand Certificates – Current User node.

30.   Expand the Trusted Root Certification Authorities folder on the left and select the Certificates subfolder.

31.   Locate the following certificate:

a.       Issued To: VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5

32.   Right-click the certificate and select Properties.

33.   In the Certificate purposes section, select Disable all purposes for this certificate. This is a pre-installed certificate and must be disabled before using new certificate from SSL.

 

34.   Click Apply then OK.

 

Install Certificate

 

35.   Finally, install the certificate. There are two ways to do it. One is through the IIS and the other is the MMC certificates console. I prefer the second way because you have to come to the MMC certificates console anyway to fix a problem if you opt to install the certificate through IIS. If you install the certificate through IIS, at the time of binding the certificate to your site, certificate will not show up in IIS and then you will have to come to the MMC certificates console to perform an additional step. So it’s better to go with the MMC route from the beginning.  There is another problem with the IIS method. You get the following error when you install the certificate through IIS.

 

 

Error Text: Cannot find the certificate request that is associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where the request was created.

 

36.   Open MMC console (Start > Run > Type MMC > Click OK).

37.   Certificates console will still be available because you added it in step 24 but if for some reason  you had to restart your machine or log out of it then you will have to add the console again. Follow steps 24 – 28 to add Certificates console. Expand Certificates – Current User node on the left.

38.   Expand Trusted Root Certification Authorities and click Certificates folder.

39.   Right-click Certificates folder and select All Tasks then select Import.

40.   Browse to the certificate (.p7b) file. Click Next.

41.   Select Place all certificates in the following store and leave default store selected. Click Next.

42.   Click Finish.

43.   You will get The import was successful message. Click Ok. You may also get following security warning.

 

Error Description: You are about to install a certificate from a certification authority (CA) claiming to represent: Verisign Trial Secure Server Root CA – G2.

If you get this security warning, click Yes to install the certificate.

44.   With MMC Certificates console still open, expand Personal folder on the left and right-click Certificates subfolder. Select All Tasks then select Import.

45.   Browse to certificate file (.p7b) and Click Next.

46.   Keep second option Place all certificates in the following store selected and keep Personal certificate selected as the default option. Click Next.

47.   Click Finish. You will get The import was successful message. Click Ok.

Bind Certificate to your site

 

48.   Finally, bind certificate to your site. Open IIS.

49.   Click server name. Expand Sites node.

50.   Click site name that you will bind to the SSL certificate.

51.   On the right, under Actions, click Bindings.

52.   Click Add.

53.   In Type, select https.

54.   Keep 443 in the Port. This is default port used for SSL.

55.   In SSL Certificate, select the certificate you just installed. Please note that if you don’t see new certificate in this drop down, then you probably missed steps 44 – 47 above. Click OK. That’s it.

Alternate Access Mappings

 

56.   Assuming you have a web application setup to work with SSL, configure Alternate Access Mappings to use site with SSL. Open Central Admin Site and click Application Management.

57.    Under Web Applications, click Configure alternate access mappings.

58.    You will notice you already have default site listed in the Default zone. To add new URL in the Intranet zone, click Add Internet URLs.

59.    From the Alternate Access Mapping Collection drop down, select correct application that you want to use for the AAM setting and then add URL in the text box labeled URL protocol, host and port, for example, https://www.walisystems.com. From the Zone dropdown, select Intranet.

60.    Click Save.

Now open site with https to test that everything works fine.

 

In the address bar, click the lock sign to check validity of the certificate. If you want to see the certificate, click View Certificates link at the bottom of the notification.

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SharePoint 2013 and InfoPath 2013 - Creating Web Enabled Forms

Creating Web Enabled InfoPath Forms

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In this article, you will learn how to create web enabled InfoPath forms. InfoPath is an information gathering tool and is used to create XML forms. People have always been trying to come up with a standard for creating electronic forms. Before InfoPath, companies created electronic forms in different formats. InfoPath has helped companies to adhere to a standard. Coding XML manually may not be an interesting job but creating XML forms with InfoPath has really made this job quite easier.

All clients must have InfoPath installed on their machines in order to open the forms. It could be a problem for smaller companies to provide InfoPath client to all the users. What can be the solution then? Solution is to create web enabled forms that can be opened in web browser without having to install InfoPath client on user machines.

Following is a step-by-step guide that will show you how to create and deploy a web enabled form:

1.      Open InfoPath (Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office 2013 > InfoPath Designer 2013).

2.      Under “Popular Form Templates”, double-click “SharePoint Form Library”.

   

            Fig 1: New Form

Figure 1 shows how the new form looks.

3.      Change the form label. Click on the words “Click to add title” and write “User Registration”.

4.      Change section heading. Click on the words “Click to add heading” in the first section and write “User Information”.

5.      Highlight second section and delete it.

6.      Now it’s time to add labels and controls in the form.  Add following labels and controls in the form. To add a label, click on “Add label” text and enter the label name. To add a control, click “Add control” words and then click control name to add it there. Controls are located under the HOME tab (in “Controls” section). Enter first label called “First Name”. Click “Add label” in the first cell and write “First Name” there. In the second column adjacent to the first cell, click “Add control” and then click “Text Box” in the menu. This will add “Text Box” control in the cell.

Figure 2: InfoPath controls

Right-click the text box and select select “Text Box Properties…”. In the “Field Name”, enter “FirstName” and click OK. You can also rename control by selecting the respective node on the right side and changing the field name in the properties.

Here is the list of all labels and controls.

Label	Control Name	Control Properties
First Name	FirstName	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “FirstName”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.
Last Name	LastName	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “LastName”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.
Address	Address	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “Address”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”. Check “Multi-line” option.
City	City	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “City”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.
State	State	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “State”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.
Zip	Zip	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “Zip”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.
Phone	Phone	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “Phone”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.
Email	Email	-          Under “Data” tab, change the control name to “Email”. -          Under “Display” tab, uncheck “Enable spelling checker” and “Enable AutoComplete”.

 

7.      After adding the above controls, there are two more controls to be added yet. Add two buttons at the bottom of the form. We will change button settings later.

 

Figure 3: Complete Form

One of the buttons will submit the form to a SharePoint library and the other button will close the form. To submit form to a library, you need to create a library in SharePoint first.

8.      Go to your SharePoint site. You will create a library at the root site. Open SharePoint site. On the home page, click third image button to add a new library.

Figure 4: Add new library

9.      Under “Apps you can add”, click on “Form Library” icon.

Figure 5: Click Form Library Icon

10.  Enter “User Registration” in the “Name” box and click “Create” button.

11.  Now you have created the library, go back to the form. Click on “Manage Data Connections…” link on the right side (at the bottom).

Figure 6: Manage Data Connections

12.  Click “Add…” button.

13.  Select “Submit data” option and click “Next”.

14.  Select “To a document library on a SharePoint site” and click “Next”.

15.  Enter the document library path in the “Document Library” box. For example, “http://yourservername/UserRegistration”.

16.  Click function (fx) button to create file name.

17.  Click on “Insert Function” button. From the “Functions”, select “concat” and hit OK.

18.  The file name will comprise of user’s first name and last name. You will concatenate both fields to create the file name. Double-click first field to insert first name and select “FirstName” from the fields. Click OK.  Double-click second field and select “LastName”. Click OK. Remove third field from the concat function, that is not needed. Click OK.

19.  Check “Allow overwrite if file exists” and click “Next”.

Figure 7: Data Connection Wizard

20.  Click “Finish”. Click “Close”.

21.  Right-click first button on the form and select “Button Properties…”. From the “Action” drop down, select “Submit”.

22.  Click “Submit Options…”.

23.  Check “Allow users to submit this form”.

24.  From the first drop down, select “SharePoint document library”.

25.  From the second drop down, select the connection that you created for data submission. The default name of the connection was “SharePoint Library Submit”. Select this in the drop down. Click OK.

26.  Right-click second button and select “Button Properties…”.  By default, “Action” drop down will have “Rules and Custom Code” selected. Keep that option selected. Change “Label” to “Close”. Change “ID” to “btnClose”. Click OK.

27.  “Rules” pane will automatically open on the right side. If that does not happen, click “Close” button and then click “Manage Rules” button in the ribbon. That will open rules pane. Click “Add” button in the pane to add new action and select “Close the form”.

Figure 8: Add Rule

28.  “Rule Details” dialog box will open. Make sure “Action” drop down has “Close the form” option selected. Click OK.

29.  Save the form at this stage. Now the pending work is to change submit options. From the “File” menu, click “Info” and then click “Form Options” button.

30.  Select “Web Browser” category.  Uncheck “Show InfoPath commands in Ribbon or toolbar”.

31.  Select “Property Promotion” category. Click “Add” and select “FirstName”. Similarly, add all other fields one by one. These promoted fields will be available to be added to the library view.

32.  Select “Security and Trust” category. Uncheck “Automatically determine security level (recommended). Select “Full Trust” option.

33.  Select “Compatibility” category. Make sure “Form type” has “Web Browser Form”. In “Server validation” section, enter “http://yourservername/_vti_bin/FormsServices.asmx”. Replace “yourservername” in the URL with your actual server name.

34.  Click OK.

35.  It’s time to publish the form now. From “File” menu, select “Publish” and then click “SharePoint Library”.

36.  Enter your server URL and click “Next”.

37.  Make sure “Enable this form to be filled out by using a browser” is selected. Click “Next”.

38.  Browser to the folder where you want to save the published form. Enter “UserRegistration” in the file name box. Click “Save”.

39.  Click “Next”

40.  Click “Next”.

41.  Click “Publish”.

42.  Click “Close”

Uploading The Published Form

 

43.  There are two ways to upload the published web form to SharePoint: Using the interface provided by SharePoint and using PowerShell. You will use the first option in this exercise. Open "SharePoint Central Administration" site by selecting Start > All Programs > Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Products > SharePoint 2013 Central Administration.

44.  Select “General Application Settings” and click “Upload form template”.

Figure 9: Upload form template

45.  Click “Browse”  button to browse to the folder where form was published and select the published form. Click “Upload” button. You will see a message telling you that form has been uploaded. Click OK.

46.  Still on the same page (Manage Form Templates), right-click the newly uploaded form and select “Activate to a site collection”. Make sure correct site collection is selected in the “Activation Location” section and click OK. In case you get an error, try activating it from the site collection features in the SharePoint site. Here is how you do it. Go to SharePoint site. Click “Site Contents” link on the left side. Click “Settings” link. It will be under the search box. In “Site Collection Administration” section, click “Site collection features” link. Locate “UserRegistration” text and click “Activate” button in the same row.

Figure 10: Activated Feature

Preparing Forms Library
 

47.  Go to the “UserRegistration” library. Click “LIBRARY” tab at the top.

48.  Click “Library Settings” button in the ribbon.

49.  Click “Advanced Settings” link.

50.  Set “Allow management of content types?” to “Yes”.

51.  Set “Make ‘New Folder’ command available?” to “No”.

52.  Keep all other default values and click OK.

53.  On the library settings page, in “Content Types” section, click “Add from existing site content types” link.

54.  From the list of available site content types, select “UserRegistration” and click “Add” button. This will add the content type to the library. Click OK.

55.  Click “Change new button order and default content type” link. Uncheck “Form” option and click OK.

56.  Go back to the main library page and click the new document link. The form will open in browser. Fill it out and click Submit. Also try to the Close button. This is how the final form looks like:

Figure 11: Completed form ready for submission

After the form is submitted, open it again by clicking the form name and then close it by hitting the “Close” button.

This was a simple form used to demonstrate the creation and publishing process. You have seen the publishing method. Now you can design simple forms as well as complicated ones. The publishing method does not change. Only form layout and design will change. For complicated forms, programming can be done in Visual Studio.

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