SharePoint 2010 reaches RTM!

Today SharePoint 2010 RTM was released. This is an exciting milestone for Microsoft. Volume License customers will be able to download SharePoint on the 27th of April if they have an active SA. Customers who do not have the SA will be able to download it on 1st of May.

For more information, check the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog

New SharePoint and Office 2010 Image availabe

Overview

This download contains a two Virtual Machine set for evaluating and demonstrating Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. 

Virtual machine “a” contains the following pre-configured software: 

1. Windows Server 2008 SP2 Standard Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the “CONTOSO.COM” domain with DNS and WINS 

2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services 

3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2 

4. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate Edition 

5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Beta 2 

6. Microsoft Office Web Applications Beta 2 

7. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 

8. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Beta 2 

9. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2 

10. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 

Virtual machine “b” contains the following pre-configured software: 

1. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the “CONTOSO.COM” domain 2. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 “demo” users with metadata in an organizational structure. All of these user profiles have been imported and indexed for search within SharePoint Server 2010, with “contoso\administrator” granted administrator permissions. 

SharePoint Server 2010 has been configured in a “Complete” farm using Kerberos authentication and the default SQL Server 2008 instance for data, and has a site collection created using the Team Site template at http://intranet.contoso.com/ and a FAST Search Center at http://intranet.contoso.com/search/. 

Performance Considerations 

1. If possible, unpack and run the VM image on a separate, fast hard drive (7200 RPM or better) from the operating system of the host machine. If this is being done on a laptop, a second internal drive or external eSATA drive works best, though USB 2.0 (make sure it's 2.0, 1.1 is too slow) or Firewire is acceptable. For absolute best performance use a second internal SSD drive.

To download it, follow the below link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c51819b-3d40-435c-a103-a5481fe0a0d2&displaylang=en

User profile import will not work when Office WebApps are installed on the server

From working with the Profile Import Service Application, and testing out what SharePoint 2010 can do, we have found out that if you have Office Web Apps installed on your server, the Profile Import will not work.

This is a known bug and will be fixed in a future release.

Integrated Windows Authentication with Claims Based Authentication in SharePoint 2010 error (IE)

Hi

In case you have a problem "signing as a different user" in SharePoint 2010 Web Application that uses "Claims Based Authentication" you will need to turn off the "Integrated Windows Authentication" option in Internet Explorer (As shown below). Without doing this, you wont be able to sign is as a different user.

This does not apply to other browsers and it is an IE issue.

FileNotFoundException error when installing SharePoint 2010 Beta

On a Windows Server 2008 R2 installation which passed all the prerequisites, you might get the following error :

11/17/2009 16:39:32 9 ERR Exception: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.IdentityModel, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
File name: 'Microsoft.IdentityModel, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.CurrentUserIsAdministrator(Boolean allowContentApplicationAccess)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPConfigurationDatabase.Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.ISPPersistedStoreProvider.DoesCurrentUserHaveWritePermission(SPPersistedObject persistedObject)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.BaseUpdate()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPConfigurationDatabase.RegisterDefaultDatabaseServices(SqlConnectionStringBuilder connectionString)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPConfigurationDatabase.Provision(SqlConnectionStringBuilder connectionString)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword, SecureString masterPassphrase)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword, SecureString masterPassphrase)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.
To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].

To resolve the problem you will need to download the following Geneva Framework version that had the required DLL.

Installing SharePoint 2010 Beta

Since SharePoint 2010 has been made available for MSDN/TechNet subscriber now, here’re some steps you would like to follow to get a successful installation. But keep in mind: This beta is not supported and you CANNOT upgrade the installation to RTM when it’s released. This Beta should only be used for evaluation purpose.

Follow these steps to install SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Beta products. The process is split in two parts. The first part will install SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta, and the second part will install SharePoint Server 2010 Beta. You can either install SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Start by installing SharePoint Server 2010.

before you start the installation, you will need the following pre-requisites

• .Net Framework 3.5 with SP1 installed
• Geneva Framework (Windows Identity Foundation) (download here)\
• SQL Server 2005 SP3 and CU3 OR Server 2008 SP1 and CU2
• Install WCF FIX: A hotfix that provides a method to support the token authentication without transport security or message encryption in WCF is available for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 – link not activated yet) . Please note the 2008 fix also applies to Vista, while the 2008 R2 fix also applies to Windows 7.
  If you don't have this fix installed, you will get "Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport'" error in ULS log. And most of the service applications will not run properly
• Create a special AD account that will be used as the SharePoint Managed Account in your farm. Refer to step 3 of the following post for how to create this account.

After you have applied the fixes and updates

• Run the pre-requisite tool for SharePoint foundation 2010
• After installing the binaries, run the configuration wizard. Setup the farm using complete farm installation. Use standalone installation only on Windows 7/Vista for dev purposes.
• Go to Central Administration and run the "Configuration Wizards" to setup the service applications. Use a special user for the SharePoint Managed Account for services and web applications in the farm
• Enable Developer Dashboard and turn to OnDemand for troubleshooting page performance issues. It can be done by STSADM or SharePoint 2010 Management Shell (Windows PowerShell).
  STSADM: stsadm -o setproperty -pn developer-dashboard -pv OnDemand
  Windows PowerShell:
  $svc=[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService
  $ddsetting=$svc.DeveloperDashboardSettings
  $ddsetting.DisplayLevel=[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPDeveloperDashboardLevel]::OnDemand
  $ddsetting.Update()

After installing this, you will have SharePoint Foundation 2010/SharePoint Server 2010 installed.

External Links

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx
• http://sharepointdevwiki.com/display/spadmin2010/SharePoint+2010+Beta+2+Install+screen+walk+thru
• http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx

Taxonomy Services, Managed Metadata, and Managed keywords

SharePoint 2010 comes with a new services that provides the functionality to tag content types with metadata and keywords. I will be posting more information about how to manage taxonomies within SharePoint 2010 in upcoming posts, for now, i will explain some keywords that we will see a lot in SharePoint 2010.

Taxonomy is a hierarchal tree of Values

Term Store is a DB containing different taxonomies

Term Set is a section in the term store that contains individual terms.

Term is a node in the taxonomy tree with an ID and many text labels

Tagging is the act of linking an item to a node or multiple nodes in the taxonomy tree.

Groups are security boundaries within the term store and above the term set.

Keywords are the actual links (reference) to a node in the taxonomy tree.

Managed Metadata Column is a new column type that can be added to content types

Managed Keyword Column is a new column type that can be added to any content type

At this point, i'm not sure what is the difference between the Managed keywords, and Managed Metadata.

These can be managed in SharePoint 2010 using the Term Management Tool. You will find this in Central Administration --> Manage Service Applications. The tool will allow administrators to publish, Terms, Term Sets, and importing them.

It is possible to tag documents within a desktop Rich Client such as MS Office Word.

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More Links

http://manish-sharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/10/taxonomy-services-and-managed-metadata.html

http://sharepointsolutions.com/sharepoint-help/blog/index.php/2009/10/using-enterprise-content-types-and-managed-taxonomies-in-sharepoint-2010/

SharePoint 2010 UI Improvements

SharePoint 2010 has a lot of improvements in the UI which impacts the usability of the WCM in SharePoint in a positive way.

Some of the enhancements are:

• Cleaner Markup: The Microsoft SharePoint Foundation (MSF) controls are no longer table based, and all the CSS classes were re-factored and cleaned up.
• SharePoint 2010 is XHTML compliant, and also supports WCAG 2.0.
• Reduced Postbacks / Page refreshes.
• Server Ribbon, which copies the functionality of the ribbon in Office applications.

Reference: http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2009/10/19/part-1-improvements-to-the-core-sharepoint-platform.aspx

Metadata in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 comes with a huge taxonomy API, put into the Microsoft.Taxonomy.dll assembly.

With SP 2010, it is possible to tag items and pages with keywords from a term store, which then can be leveraged through the search solutions, or navigation solutions.

This will provide SharePoint with another method to visualize the data, together with the folder structure (i.e. SPSites, SPWeb, SPList approach).

SharePoint 2010 Developers Center

The SharePoint 2010 Developer Center is now live on MSDN. The site contains useful learning modules about SharePoint 2010. The site includes modules for getting started developing in SharePoint 2010.

Welcome to SharePoint 2010

Beta version of SharePoint 2010 will be released in November as announced by Steve Ballmer and Jeff Teper today at the SharePoint 2009 Conference.

The new version of SharePoint Office Server has a lot of new enhancements in regards to content management and collaboration. Some of the interesting new features are:

• Social Feedback and Organization
• Enterprise Metadata
• Web Publishing including Digital Asset Management
• Governance and Records Management
• Development on Windows 7

and many more

For more details about SharePoint 2010, visit the SharePoint Team blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/10/19/sharepoint-2010.aspx

SharePoint site usage report or reports

SharePoint offers a way for web sites owners to view some statisticts about who is visiting thier site, which pages were accessed, and who is refering to thier site. These are called "Site Usage Reports" or "Site Usage Report" if you havn't enabled the MOSS Standard site features.

All the documentations that describe the process of enabling the "Site Usage Reports" fail to mention that you need to enable the "Office SharePoint Server Standard Site features" on the site to get the advanced statistics.

You will need to enable this feature so you can display some more advanced statistics about the site, as shown in the picture.

It took me a while to figure out why some of my sites were displaying these advanced reports and some weren't.

The advanced reports page has the following url:

~/_layouts/SpUsageSite.aspx

while the normal usage reports has

~/_layouts/UsageDetails.aspx

At the moment, I'm having a problem with displaying the data in the advanced usage reports, however, the normal reports succeeds in displaying them.

References:

• http://woodywindy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!773832677F575173!357.entry?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=120088718
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262541.aspx

How to include your DLL files into the final WSP file

Often developers reference external DLLs into their VS projects when developing application in Visual Studio. When a developers use the WSPBuilder or the VSeWSS to build their SharePoint projects, they can include the referenced DLLS in the WSP file.

To include/exclude the DLLs, view the properties of the referenced DLL in your VS project, and from the properties window, change the "Copy to local" property to "True" if you would like to include the DLL, or "False" to skip it. If the DLL file gets copied into the "bin" folder when building the project, that file will be included in your final WSP file.

Note that you will run into problems when installing/uninstalling the WSP files that share the same DLL file on SharePoint. The DLL file will be removed from the GAC if one of the solutions were uninstalled. SharePoint does not keep a count of the number of dependant solutions. It would have been good if SharePoint could keep track of the number of solutions that depend on the DLL files in GAC.