SharePoint grayed out Multiple file uploader option

After upgrading to Internet Explorer 11 and Office 2013, while trying to do multiple file upload to a SharePoint document library, it was grayed out.

I've ensured the STSUPLD control in Addons menu, verified the 32 bit version of Internet explorer is loading the site. But still there is no luck and also i'm unable to access the Datasheet view of the document library or a list.

The trick is to un-check the "ActiveX Filtering" option from Tools menu. Additional browser security...

Deploy SharePoint solutions at web application level

SharePoint solution packages by default get installed to "Globally" scope when you don't have any resources which are web application scoped. It is not a logical decision to deploy in web application scope when I have Assemblies to GAC, Application pages to Layouts folder etc. If there are any resources which are targeted at web application scope like deploying assemblies at Application bin directory, safe control entry etc then the solution deployment will force us to deploy at web application level.

Some times you will have assemblies to GAC, not a web part project and don't have any resources which are scoped against web application. At this juncture, you may need to deploy the solution at web application scope for various reasons like

• Security  - To hide features part of the solution from showing off in other web applications.
• Shared Environment - Other applications running in the Farm and they don't to get impacted of your WSP
• Isolation - Having a global scoped WSP will recycle all app pools during deployment

This can be achieved by adding a safe control entry to the solution package and solution deployment script will be satisfied by this. If it is MOSS 2007 then its matter of Manifest.xml modification. But SharePoint 2010 is powered with Visual Studio 2010 tools for SharePoint, if we make any modification to Manifest.xml then the Package designer will ignore its support to the developer.

The solution would be, open your package designer, scroll down and find the Advanced Tab, click on "Add" button to add additional assemblies.

Select "Add assembly from project output", input the namespace and full assembly name for the safe controls.

Save these settings and hit on Ok button,one more setting to update. Click on the project in solution explorer and press F4 to open the properties window, exclude the assembly from being copied to solution package.Because we already added the assembly in "Additional Assembly" section.

Package and deploy the solution at web application level scope.

Notes from Tech Ed 2011 India - 1

"Design,Performance and capacity factors for successful intranet and internet SharePoint sites" session was presented by Sanjay Narang from MCS and following notes were taken from the session. All credit goes to Sanjay for enlightening the full house.

RPS- Request per second 
An indicator to express the number of request served by the web farm irrespective of size of the request

Points to note while tracking the load of the server

1. All Users - Total user base of the application
2. Active users - Total users who are currently using the application
3. Concurrent users - Total users who are currently using the same functionality concurrently(Given the nature of HTTP's disconnected architecture this'll be very few)

(Image from Microsoft Technet)

RPS Calculation

1. Take IIS logs from all the servers in web farm
2. Take from a peak hour traffic of a day
3. Use tools like Log parser to query the log files collected.(how to use Log parser ?)
4. Avoid requests for for image,CSS,JS while calculating RPS.
5. Avoid Http 401's also

Decision point

1. Average RPS on a day
2. Average RPS in  a peak hour
3. Max RPS in a peak hour
4. Average daily concurrent users
5. Peak concurrent users in peak time

Dataset

The size of data stored in a system is called as Dataset, typically in SharePoint world we call it as Content Database and its size

Points consider while planning for Dataset

1. Content Database size
2. Temp DB Size
3. Transaction Log size
4. Space required for full backup
5. Number of documents and versions in content db's
6. Number of metadata associated to the documents
7. Number of other list items (need to calculate the size of the list item too)

Performance and Reliability

1. Server availability - Overall uptime of the system
2. Server responsiveness - A Farm's time taken to serve the request
3. System resource utilization - CPU utilization and available memory

Boundaries and limits

When you plan for the capacity planning and management, it is essential to keep a tab on the product boundaries and limits

1. Content Database size - 200 GB
2. Site collection size  - Max 100 GB
3. Site Collection per Content database - 5000 Max/2000 recommended

General recommendation of Servers

• One WFE server per 10k users
• One SQL instance per 4 WFE servers
• 3-5 WFE Cores per Sql Core
• One DC per three WFE servers
• 2-4 GB memory per CPU core

High availability - points to consider

• Hardware/Software load balancers
• Cluster/Mirror of Sql server
• Service applications associated to the app
• Search target, dedicated/distributed

Sql Server memory recommendation

• Small - 8 GB
• Medium - 16 GB
• To handle up to  2TB of data - 32 GB
• To handle data from 2TB to 5TB - 64 GB
• To handle more than 5 TB - Go for new instance of Sql server

As there is no perfect tool (yes there is a tool called HP Sizer is available)to tell you what kind of Farm is required for your purpose, it requires a careful assessment of all these points and the requirement is necessary to arrive at a conclusion. It is always recommended to do oversizing rather than undersizing(Want to know your servers are over sized/undersized, use performance monitor counters to gather data and analyse).

I guess most of the points were taken from this Technet Article. Nevertheless for those who need full set of information please go through that link. I don't find the deck presented from Tech Ed site, will provide a link when it's available.

Adobe integrates Acrobat Reader X with SharePoint

Adobe's X series PDF editor and reader Acrobat X and Reader X now tightly integrates with SharePoint. We need to provide the OpenControl key in the DocIcon.xml and clients should use Acrobat X or Reader X to leverage.

Now it provides additional options like Edit Document, Check-in,Check out,Discard check out for PDF documents.

If I say Edit Document, PDF automatically opens the document in Reader X and also asks whether I want to check out

It also provides a UI cue for the checked out document too

Once the documents are checked out in MS Office suit, the document library page automatically refreshes to show the checked out icon but here that refresh is not happening.

How to configure SharePoint for this ?

• You need to add the following lines in DocIcon.xml 
  
  • You can find DocIcon.xml in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML

AdobePDF.png

• Right click and save the above Acrobat PDF icon to your machine in the name of AdobePDF.png and copy it to folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES
• Now do an IISRESET and let IIS load these new resources.
• Repeat all the steps in all of your web front end servers

All these steps remain same for MOSS 2007, just change the \14\Template\XML to 12\Template\XML while doing modifications to DocIcon.xml and copying the AdobePDF.png file

SharePoint 2010 Approval workflow, a marvel

Way back our team built a multi stage approval workflow with serial and parallel flow options for MOSS 2007. Recently stumbled upon the SharePoint 2010 approval workflow which eventually showcases all these functionalities right out of the box. This is one of the huge improvement in SharePoint 2010

Lets see what are the configurable parameters it allows us to configure

Approvers
Accepts multiple users who are in the capacity of approving the content ,seperated by semicolons

Order:
Determines in which order the execution goes whether serial or parallel, technically in which order the tasks created to the Approvers

Flow of a Serial workflow

Flow of a Parallel workflow

Expand Groups

If checked and groups entered in approvers section will be expanded and tasks will be created for individual users else only a single task will be created for the whole group. Any user from the group can approve or reject

Request

A comment text which will be sent to the approver via email and approval screen also

Due Date for all Tasks

Final date on which all approvals should be completed

Duration per task

Amount of time for each task is due, works along with Duration Units

Duration Units

You can choose days,months or years in this drop down, works along with Duration per task

CC

Want to keep an additional person in approval loop, this is the place to go

End on First Rejection

Any approver rejects the document, workflow gets stopped and document rejected

End on Document Change

Some author changes the original document while the approval in progress, now the whole workflow gets terminated if the original is modified.

Enable Content Approval

Changes the content approval status of the library based on workflow approval

SQL server at xxx has an unsupported version 10.0.2531.0, SharePoint PSConfig error

While I was preparing a bonsai SharePoint 2010 web farm with Sql Server 2008 Enterprise database in my Dell Studio 1555. As I did numerous standalone SharePoint 2010 deployment for development activity on Windows Server 2008/R2/Win 7 with Sql Server 2008 express + SP1, I used to have the pre-requisites handy in my hard disk to build multiple virtual hard disks.

After building and networked the domain controller and the enterprise database server, executed the SharePoint 2010 installer and ran the PSConfig wizard on designated app server image. While connecting to the database server, wizard throws an error

---------------------------

SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard

---------------------------

SQL server at windb\dbsvr2010 has an unsupported version 10.0.2531.0. Please refer to "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=165761" for information on the minimum required SQL Server versions and how to download them.

---------------------------

OK   

---------------------------

I never expected this behavior ,went back to my standalone SharePoint installation and verified the database server. It says 10.0.2531.0 and running happily.

Went back to MSDN Hardware and Software requirement, there's a different standard for Sql Server 2008 Express(standalone) and Sql Server 2008 Enterprise(Farm installation). 

If you are gonna install Sql Server Express 2008 as your data store you are good enough to go with only Sql Server SP 1 (10.0.2531.0) but if you are preparing a web farm and proceeding for Non-Express database then you should also install the Cumulative update 2(10.0.2714) or CU5 (Installing CU3 or CU4 is not recommended)

Now the PSConfig wizard is happy and configures my web farm successfully.

Expose SharePoint 2010 Central Administration out of the job server

We tried to access the central administration of a Test server(Windows 2008 R2, IIS 7.5) from a client machine by adding proper host entries and providing the right port number and we were able to access the central administration. But soon we realized that the hyperlinks end up in a ASP.NET authorization error.

After tweaking the following authorization settings IIS 7.5 admin console, we were able to expose the links

Open inetmgr and select ASP.NET Authorization

Expand the central administration node and Select the _admin node and you can see a "Deny" rule, remove the deny rule and add a "Allow" rule

Repeat the same for _vti_adm node

Do an IISReset and good to go, 

Even after this some buttons from the Ribbon were disable for e.g;,Create application, Extend application 

Switching off the User account control solves the issue, start -> search for UAC and do the following change

Instructions provided above relaxes the security on SharePoint Server and shouldn't be applied on test,stage or production servers.

 

Porting Sharepoint 2007 document library STP to SharePoint 2010

Recently read a post from Tom Belgium which speaks about porting SharePoint 2007 list templates to SharePoint 2010 and it worked just by replacing the product version and and repackage with makecab utility.

I faced a scenario to port a document library STP template including some documents.SharePoint packages the documents of the document library and manifest.xml as a single package.

Following are the steps to modify the STP file.
Rename the STP File to a CAB file and have a look at the contents

Create a new folder in c: drive say c:\Templates\, drag and drop all the contents from the cab file

Edit the Product version tag in Manifest.xml and save the file

Open a command prompt, navigate to the folder where we copied contents from CAB file and take the list of files in a txt/ddf file. Store this file within C:\Templates folder

Prepare the DDF file with the list of obtained file names, don't forget to give the cabinet file name in DDF file

Download the sample DDF file here


Execute Makecab utility to generate the CAB archive, you will see a C:\templates\Package folder and within that folder the STP will be available

This is the new STP file which will work in SharePoint 2010 edition.

Rename a SharePoint 2010 standalone server

To rename a SharePoint 2010 server MSFT recommends using the power shell cmdlet with a brief article. Unfortunately in my case the power shell throws an "object reference" exception which pushed me to explore my good old friend STSADM in 14 hive.

Rename the SharePoint 2010 server using STSADM

stsadm.exe -o renameserver  -oldservername -newservername

Rename the Windows Server 2008 R2

Computer->Properties->Change Settings->Change-> Provide the new Server name and restart the machine

Update Farm credentials using STSADM
stsadm.exe -o updatefarmcredentials  -identitytype configurableid  -userlogin          -password

 Update AAM settings for Central Administration

• Open central administration, select Application Management in the left pane
• Select configure Alternate access mappings under Web applications setting
• Filter the view by "Central Administration" and modify the internal Url to reflect the new Server Name.

If you have created any other web applications then modify the alternate access mapping settings for those URL's

Do an IISRESET and good to go.

SharePoint on Cloud from Microsoft Online Services

SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service for businesses. In SharePoint setting up a web farm and get it up running form small enterprise was always a challenge in terms of hardware cost, getting the expertise to set up the web farm, capacity planning etc.

Now Microsoft wants to bring SharePoint to the masses by exposing it in the cloud thus it takes care of the infrastructure, scalability of the web farm, maintenance & patching the systems with less or no downtime and calculation of volume licensing(ever did or try to find the licensing math) with as low as 10$.

Reach out to SharePoint Online for small business which provides information related to the small enterprises. Developers can reach out to Developer resource center for understanding developer features available. I believe there should not be major change Developer resource centers with the API for development.

Finally SharePoint also joins the Cloud band. hmm.. result of significant innovation and development in virtualization arena.

Configuring Location based Metadata in SharePoint 2010

Location based metadata which manages to inherit default metadata values from its immediate parent. This is a nice feature in SharePoint 2010 and its available out of the box with few configuration steps.

Configuring default metadata

1. Add the required folder structure to your document library, in this example it is

Root->Hardware->Router
Root->Software->Microsoft

2. Add the required column to the document library, in this example it is "Classification" and click on "Column default value settings"

click on the required  folder in left pane, choose the column name in the right pane. You will be seeing a popup as below

Change the radio button to "Use this value" and enter the default value in the text box. This value will be inherited in all the documents which will reside in this folder.

Provide a different value for the subfolder "Router" inside the Hardware folder.

Upload a file to Hardware folder and note the "Classification" metadata is pre-populated

Similarly if we upload a file in "Router" folder the classification will be pre-populated as we've provided earlier.

SharePoint 2010 registers a Item Added event reciever(Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.LocationBasedDefaultsReceiver ItemAdded) to the document library upon first access of this feature.

Refer the following MSDN articles for more info
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.documentmanagement.metadatadefaults.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557925.aspx

SharePoint 2010 SPSite : System.IO.FileNotFoundException

Can any one spot an error in the following snippet. Following snippet tries to open a SPSite, SPWeb and tries to open a List to get it item count. All objects exist in the server and this code was built with VS 2010 for SharePoint 2010 in x86 Debug mode.

I ended up with the following exception

System.IO.FileNotFoundException was unhandled
Message=The Web application at http://Foo could not be found. Verify that you have typed the URL correctly. If the URL should be serving existing content, the system administrator may need to add a new request URL mapping to the intended application.
Source=Microsoft.SharePoint
StackTrace:
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite..ctor(SPFarm farm, Uri requestUri, Boolean contextSite, SPUserToken userToken)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite..ctor(String requestUrl)
at ConsoleApplication1.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\Users\Administrator\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\ConsoleApplication1\ConsoleApplication1\Program.cs:line 17
at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(Assembly assembly, String[] args)
at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args)
at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly()
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()
InnerException:

After a couple of minutes I got things straight. There was a mistake in the build, as a basic rule while developing for SharePoint 2010 all your build should be in x64 mode not in x86 mode.

Basic mistake, but it hurts and the error message is not really helping...

Where is my iisapp.vbs in Win 2008 Server ?

In sharepoint development iisapp is one of the script which I use heavily to find the application pools running and to recycle a single application pool. This is the usual case in doing development against Win 2003 & IIS 6. While starting the development in Win 2008 server soon it showed me that I'm dealing with a different web server.

Hit the command line console and gave iisapp, it replied that it is not an internal command or invalid command. IIS 7.0 gotta new administration console command called appcmd.

Giving the command "%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list wp" provides me the information about the running application pools in IIS 7

Yet another tool to learn in a SharePoint developer's life ....

WCF Activation HTTP-Non HTTP Activation fails with Fatal error 0x80070643

Last night while preparing a Windows Server 2008 for the evaluation of SharePoint Server 2010 beta, I've installed all the prerequisites of SharePoint 2010, installed the roles, beta preview binaries and some hotfixes etc. I just wanted evaluate .NET 4.0 beta 1 along with SharePoint 2010.

While adding the features for my server such as .NET Framework 3.0, WCF activation, Window process activation service and desktop experience. Except WCF activation everything wen t smooth. My Server restarted dozen times saying "Configuring updates were failed reverting changes".

After sometime go-ogling the web resulted in the following Microsoft Connect article saying that the .NET Framework 4.0 is the culprit and uninstalling this will resolve the issue. But no luck even after uninstalling .NET Framework 4.0 and .NET 3.5 SP1.

At last I've uninstalled all the prerequisites of SharePoint 2010 related hotfixes, CTP's and beta previews. Now the WCF Activation feature installed like a breeze and finally succeeded in setting up my evaluation copy.

But a beta binary set installation which blocks a Server feature installation is not so good and as usual Microsoft doesn't provide any useful reasonable error message. Moral of the story is build is your box in a clean slate, Add roles and features required to the server and the add up your hot fixes,CTP's and betas.

Hope it helps some one

Are you planning to practise SharePoint 2010 with zero set up and configuration

Download the pre-configured Hyper-V SharePoint 2010 Evaluation and Demo Virtual Machine (~1.8GB) along with the SharePoint 2010 Walkthrough Guide for a chance to get hands on with SharePoint 2010 with zero set up and configuration.

but take a look at the system requirements, it might soar a bit

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008 R2

Additionally you will need:

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V role enabled.
2. Drive Formatting: NTFS
3. Processor: Intel VT or AMD-V capable
4. RAM: 8 GB or more recommended
5. Hard disk space required for install: 50 GB