Microsoft Teams Private Channels with Project and Roadmap App Tabs

 I am just noting this here for personal reference.  Similar to Planner and Stream App Tabs, Project and Roadmap App Tabs are not available in Private Teams Channels.

From Microsoft Teams support site here:  

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-the-project-or-roadmap-app-in-teams-2dc584e6-2f6c-4e2d-9008-0b3f6845eb52?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

From the note in entry 2:

Note: If you don't see the apps when you search, you might be searching from Chat or from a private Teams channel. The Project and Roadmap apps aren't available from those locations.

SharePoint 2013 CQWP won't group by more than 1 column.

When using the basic CQWP, it allows many options for customization.  One of the more popular features is grouping the results in multiple columns.  When I first started heavily using SP2013 I noticed that there was an issue with this feature.  No matter how many columns you select (2/3/4/5) it only shows the one column.

Doing some online searching I found all sorts of options for getting custom columns to show, but none for this particular issue.

I eventually found a related MSFT SharePoint Online/Office 365 post and tried this fix and it worked.

The fix is to edit the Controls15.css file:

1.  Edit /Style%20Library/en-us/Themable/Core%20Styles/controls15.css with notepad or SharePoint designer.

2. Locate the .dfwp-columns style

3. Set margin-left to 0.0em from 0.5em

4. Locate the .dfwp-list style

5. Remove "clear:both;"

6. Save the CSS file and publish a Major version.

Here is the original post.

http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/194368.aspx

SharePoint 2013 SP1 issue.

In the great tradition of SharePoint SP's causing issues (2007 SP2 expiration bug), it looks like SP 2013 was feeling left out.  Based on this link, the recently released 2013 SP1 may cause your farm to prevent future CU or product specific updates from being deployed.

So if you have already deployed this solution, I am sure MSFT is working on a fix that will be available shortly, but that does not create any warm fuzzies about the nature of what we as admins are doing to the farm every time we deploy a hotfix/CU/SP.  For the time being the SP download page is offline, I will try to monitor it and post an update when its back.

Thanks to my former co-worker, Stephanie Pollack for passing this along.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817429

SharePoint Administrator

A reader, Larry, posted this comment below on one of my blog entries regarding a SharePoint Admin Checklist and made me think about the various roles of the SharePoint product.  So instead of burying my response in the comments I decided to make a new entry about it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Larry said...

This looks like an interesting topic - anyone aware of a book or site that goes into detail explaining specifics on how to do these things? New admins won't know how to determine whether iis is running well, or what to do if the top level is not reachable, etc.

January 15, 2014 at 1:10 PM

Larry, you have brought up a great point with your comment.  The SharePoint platform, while easy to set up for any IT or tech savvy individual, is fairly complex behind the scenes.  For myself I started off as a Systems/Server Admin and just fell into supporting the product, and have stayed more on the SharePoint Administrator side of things where my IIS, SQL, and Server OS knowledge helps out in keeping SharePoint up and running smoothly.

There really isn't a standard definition for what a SharePoint Administrator is, or a SharePoint Developer, Architect etc etc.  Most companies try to fit these roles with anyone who has "SharePoint" on their resume, without understanding the various needs.  Can one person fill all roles?  Absolutely.  But good luck finding that person in your area for your budgeted salary.

Microsoft does try to help, using the following guide for the myriad of roles within SharePoint:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wael/archive/2010/12/16/sharepoint-governance-individual-roles-and-responsibilities.aspx

But anyways, back to your point about "new admins".  I say the best way to learn these things is by doing, whether by playing around on a Sandbox/Test environment or by taking a Windows Server Admin course, or application specific IIS or SQL courses as part of the learning process.  The Microsoft site again has information around the architecture of the product, this should give some help in understanding the various components of SharePoint.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892189(v=office.12).aspx

Hope this helps, and as always, everyone feel free to comment below.

Cheers.

Bryan

Sending Attachments via SharePoint 2010 Workflow

Sending Attachments via SharePoint 2010 Workflow

We had a use case of certain users not having a laptop or home devices to access certain documentation that occasionally is sent out later in the evening or over the weekend.  It was decided that we would send attachments as part of the SharePoint workflow process, and of course SharePoint designer does not have that functionality. 
A quick search turned up the following codeplex project, by user Aozen.
http://sharepointstuff.codeplex.com/releases/view/66258

This is an amazingly simple download and install, and the product works without any issues at all.  I initially used it on a Document Library to send an individual attachment, but it also works with lists and multiple attachments (not sure if there is a limit to this, I have sent up to 5 smaller attachments, but of course your email system/SMTP on SharePoint may need to be tweaked if you want to move large files).


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

Installation Instructions (from Aozen's Codeplex link above)This solution must be deployed as a farm solution. It will not work as a sandboxed solution.

1. Download the .wsp file from the download section
2. Use the normal methods for adding the solution to the solution store (Stsadm or powershell)
3. Log into central admin and deploy the solution. This adds a feature that you can activate at the web application level
4. Go to Web application management in Central Administration. Select the web application that will use this activity. Click manage features in the ribbon. Activate the Send Email with attachment feature.
5. Activating the feature adds a safe assembly line to the web config file.

How to use

1. Open SharePoint Designer
2. Navigate to the list / library you want to add a workflow to
3. In the Actions drop down you should see a new section called SharePointStuff Custom Actions
4. Select the Send Email With Attachment activity

Note
To send the emails the activity uses the SMTP server setup for the current web application in SharePoint. If outgoing email is not enabled on your farm you will need to enable it or you will get an exception.

"User Not Found Error" when attempting to manually start SharePoint 2010 Workflow

So one morning I come in and try to manually start a workflow, and receive a generic "User Not Found" error when first clicking on the Workflow icon within an item.  I followed up and attempted to force a Workflow, and of course that did not work either.  Looking in the ULS logs I saw several of the following errors: 
"Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: User cannot be found." 
So after wracking my brain as to what I did to cause this, I remembered I had done some cleanup on the _layouts/people.aspx?MembershipGroupId=0 (the individual listings of SP users in 2010) so I was worried I deleted a system account or worse, but everything current was there.

Off to the web I went and a majority of the posts were from Office 365 support forums which had a bunch of "please open a support case", but a few pages down I found this entry:
http://www.erinbglenn.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=28 from Erin Glenn, and this solved my issue.
Using SharePoint Designer to Check out then Check in all the workflow files within  "All Files, _Catalogs, wfpub" at the root site as she mentions did the trick.

Basically one of the accounts I deleted was an old SP Admin here, and sure enough his account was attached to one of the root workflow files she mentions in the blog post. 
So many thanks to Erin on this one.

One Note synch password prompt for SharePoint 2010: A password is required to synchronize this notebook. (Error code: 0x80070005)

When synching OneNote Files with SharePoint 2010 our users continually were getting Password prompts on starting OneNote. 

"A password is required to synchronize this notebook. (Error code: 0x80070005)"

After searching high and low I came across this thread on the MSDN forums:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/mr-IN/sharepointgeneralprevious/thread/0c2bf498-f669-4551-bf51-9113c64af26c?prof=required

Within that thread a MSFT support person suggests this KB article as a possible fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280  The key point of this was the fact that in my environment we do not use a proxy server, so I am not sure how this will work with a Proxy, but it solved my issue.  The fix is already included in Win7, but you need to create the AuthServer list as follows:

1.       Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.

2.       Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters

3.       On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.

4.       Type AuthForwardServerList, and then press ENTER.

5.       On the Edit menu, click Modify.

6.       In the Value data box, type the URL of the server that hosts the Web share, and then click OK.

Note You can also type a list of URLs in the Value data box. For more information, see the "Sample URL list" section in this article.

7.       Exit Registry Editor.

8.    Restart the WebClient Service in Admin Tools|Services|WebClient

"Cannot start service SPAdminV4 on computer '.'." error on SharePoint configuration wizard

This entry is for those environments with the June 2012 CU for SharePoint 2010 (And as Mike notes in the comments 2012 December CU) .  This patch causes CRL checks to be enforced, which in turn affects some native functionality of SharePoint AdminV4 service.
When running the SharePoint Product Configuration Wizard, the configuration will fail with the following error:


Failed to create the configuration database.
An exception of type System.InvalidOperationException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Cannot start service SPAdminV4 on computer '.'.

In order to bypass the CRL Check for SPAdminV4 service startup, the following steps need to be completed on each SharePoint server.
 

1.) Add a new computer policy which alters the options for retrieving certificate validation on a network.

2.) Add host file entries into the local computer host file.

• Alter the computer policy
• Click on Start-Run
• Type in "GPEdit.msc" and click "OK"
• Expand Computer Configuration-Windows Settings-Security Settings-Public Key Policies
• Double-click "Certificate Path Validation Settings"
• Click on the "Network Retrieval" tab
• Check the box "Define these policy settings"
• Uncheck "Automatically update certificates in the Microsoft Root Certificate Program (recommended)" and "Allow issuer certificate (AIA) retrieval during path validation (recommended"
• Click on "OK"
• Close out of GPEdit.msc

• Add host file entries
• Click on Start-Run
• Type in "C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc" and click "OK"
• Double-click the file "Hosts"
• Select "Notepad" as the program to open the file
• Insert the following lines into the hosts file
• 0.0.0.0 crl.microsoft.com
• 0.0.0.0 crl.verisign.com
• 0.0.0.0 ocsp.verisign.com
• 0.0.0.0 SVRSecure-G2-crl.verisign.com
• 0.0.0.0 SVRSecure-G3-crl.verisign.com
• 0.0.0.0 www.download.windowsupdate.com
• 0.0.0.0 SVRSecure-G2-aia.verisign.com
• Save the file and exit notepad

SharePoint 2013 Pre-Upgrade Cleanup

SharePoint 2013 Pre-Upgrade Cleanup

I saw this link thanks to my former co-worker, Richard Harbridge, and he mentions the blurb contained in the above link about "Wide Lists".  This was news to me and my team as well. Everyone is aware of the item limitations within SharePoint, but had never heard about the "wide list" caveat.  With items you can throttle those settings but no settings for columns.  Irregardless, the need to perform a clean up of your environments prior to upgrading is a point that can never be made enough.

One Note: An error occurred while attempting to sync this section or notebook

So this is one that comes up often, when attempting to sync up a One Note Notebook with a SharePoint 2010 site, you will get a red icon on the notebook and some variation of: "An error occurred while attempting to sync this section or notebook."

Basically this is due to the fact that "Require Documents to be checked out" is enabled on the library.  From everything I've seen online, this is a known bug with Microsoft, but no fix available that I could find.  Now the workaround of course is to uncheck that setting in the Library Settings/ Versioning Settings, BUT forcing Check out is a huge part of certain governance standards, so make sure you check with the site users so that they can determine which need is more pressing.

Office App Store for SharePoint 2013 is now live

One of the new features of SharePoint 2013 is the creation of an "App Store" for custom widgets and templates for all to share either as free downloads or as a pay for model.  The link to the SharePoint specific portion of the office app store is below:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps-for-sharepoint-FX102804987.aspx

As the Apple vs. Android app stores have shown, the key is consistency of the apps, and making sure that they are vetted properly.  This feature will be a huge component of 2013, but as an admin I potentially see some governance opportunities as to how to handle these.  That would be along the lines of coming up with an approved list or process of allowing these into various environments, and creating an internal app store that our developers can use to share features across farms and platforms.

SharePoint 2013 Presentations

With Microsoft Office "Wave 15" and SharePoint 2013 right around the corner, Microsoft has started to post several videos and slides around the upcoming product.  Below is a link to the IT Pro track on Technet, from a high level overview to Architecture and Upgrade modules.

For It Professionals:
TechNet

Also there is a MSDN link for Developers with the same type of information:
MSDN

"Value does not fall within the expected range." When activating Microsoft Publishing after 2010 upgrade

We recently did an upgrade from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010, and one of the site collections wouldnt allow Publishing to be activated. It either threw a Columns error or the "Value does not fall within the expected range." error when attempting to access. Via STSADM or PowerShell, it would error out as well, including removing completely and attempting to re-install. (note
this problem Site Collection is a legacy WSS 2.0 site collection that had been upgraded to WSS 3.0, MOSS and now to SP2010 which is bad, but we never had the ability to force new sites to be created)

In doing a side by side comparison between the problem Site Collection and one that worked using the Get-SPFeature -url http://SharePointsite, it showed that the Publishing service is actually composed of 3 seperate features.
1)PublishingSite
2)PublishingLayouts
3)PublishingResources

I enabled them in the above order by running:
Enable-SPFeature -Identity PublishingSite -url Http:://SharePointsite
Enable-SPFeature -Identity PublishingLayouts -url Http:://SharePointsite
Enable-SPFeature -Identity PublishingResources -url Http:://SharePointsite

And that did the trick.

SharePoint 2010 Licensing Calculator

As part of my engagements, invariably the discussion turns towards what version of SharePoint 2010 server the customer should purchase, STD vs Enterprise, Intranet vs Internet, etc etc. And more importantly, how much it costs.
Most of the time the answer is "It Depends", its widely accepted that Microsoft is notoriously vague as to the real cost of SharePoint. Say you have a 1000 users and you want to go to Enterprise on a 3 server farm (WFE/Index/SQL Servers). So by going through the guidlelines for generic SharePoint 2010 Costs....How does 4896 per SharePoint Server (WFE and Index) for a total of $9792 grab you? But wait there's more, you also have to pay $94 dollars per CAL for your 1000 users for Standard, $94,000 there, and $83 dollars per CAL for Enterprise for another $83000 on top of that...
But all hope is not lost, Microsoft has a fairly robust online licensing calculator that can give you your true cost, taking into account your licensing agreement with Mother Microsoft, which will Dramatically affect those numbers above. The link is here , just select the software needs and enter in the pertinent data, and you can move back from the ledge or be able to make a better case for a different level of licensing, as the end report shows how much each form of agreement costs. Good luck.

Adding a choice list for User Profile Information within MySites

This issue has come up a couple times recently as a few clients have started to use their MySites more frequently. In one case, they wanted to give users a list of Projects that they were assigned to that users could add themselves. Rather than have the users manually type in the information, leading to typo's and misspellings, I created a custom lookup list within a new Profile Property.

From within the "user profiles and properties" under the Shared Services and Administration home page, click "Add Profile Property".

From the new property screen, enter in the info for name, display name, property type, and then click the check box for "Allow Choice List".

Then further down the page under "Choice List Settings" , select "Defined choice list" and at the bottom you can browse to and upload a file (has to be a CSV file), then you will have your choices listed.

 and now the users will be able to pick from them when editing this property on their "MySites" page:

This new property is indexable and searchable, thus providing greater information about your users.

Microsoft entering Health Care arena with SharePoint

I came across this link via twitter, thanks to @pswider. Microsoft will announce a "HealthVault" software product based on SharePoint (Assuming MOSS here) as a hosted solution. Over the past year I have been involved with several projects in the HealthCare industry using SharePoint and this could be a huge step for Microsoft. Now there will be all sorts of security/privacy concerns about having personal medical data out in the "cloud", and they are valid, but the potential benefits should outweigh those concerns.
Most Hospitals/Medical entities use SharePoint extensively, and if there can be a standardization of the process as well as an easier implementation of the solution (in terms of the documentation and referral process) this will be quickly adopted and become standard all across the industry, after some initial growing pains.

3rd Party Backup Tools for SharePoint

Many clients ask about the capabilities of the native SharePoint backup and that usually leads to the disclosure that while it is an effective tool, it does have some limitations. Most notible is the lack of a true "Item level" restore option without doing a whole restore to another environment and manually moving the data over.

I came across the following site in my travels and needed it again this week for a client to get more info on several available applications. While I have had experience with some specific applications (AvePoint, CommVault, NetApp), there are many others that could be a better fit for your company. This link will take you to the excellent SharePoint Reviews site and specifically to their backup and recovery product reviews.

Again having knowledge of these utilities will ensure you make the correct decision for your particular situation.

SharePoint Mulitple Field (Connected) Lookups

Another project, another roadblock thrown up by SharePoint.
We needed the ability to look up multiple values off of one field-basically we needed a Phone, Fax, email based off of a name. This is where Codeplex comes into play, and the Connected Lookups Solution that Leonid Lyublinski of Microsoft created, fits in with this need.

This solution creates a new Column Type for your list, Connected Lookup Field, that uses the basic lookup functionality and upgrades it considerably. It creates a "Parent Column" that is the reference point for the subsequent "Value Columns". This is what it looks like:


There are some limitations in regards to list size (1000 items seems to be the most it can handle) as well as some nesting issues that Leonid references here.

The Code itself is available for Download from Codeplex here. It is an automated install, very simple to perform, and once it is installed, very easy to use.

"Name Active X Control" component prompt in IE for external facing web sites

Here is something new I had not come across before, so I'm posting it for my reference as well as hopefully helping others who may run into this........

Recently I was involved with creating a new web site for my company in SharePoint. After running through dev and UAT environments we moved it to production and turned it on to the outside world. As soon as we did, an alert regarding a "Name Active X Control" started appearing on many of our browsers. (Of course only the IE flavors 7 and 8- Firefox, Chrome and Opera were fine.) After browsing around a bit looking for the issue I found this Microsoft KB entry.

The KB article suggests 2 steps to solve, one add the site to the trusted site list, this is the reason we missed this in testing, our UAT and Dev environments were internal intranet sites, automatically trusted by the browsers. (As you can imagine we have changed our QA process) The second step is involving editing the init.js Java Script and renaming the file and calling that new file something other than init.js.

The root cause is SharePoints' presence awareness, but as other blogs (Thanks to Mossman - I'd do a link but for some reason the blog post seems to have vanished) have stated you'd think they'd come up with a more specific name rather than the spooky sounding name.dll.

SharePoint and Regulatory Compliance Part 3 (The EU gets involved)

It seems that I have stumbled on to an easy to blog about theme recently with the use of SharePoint and regulatory compliance. Another SharePoint article came to my attention recently regarding the European Union's new MiFID regulations that are going into effect on November 1st.

The above article is from the Windows Financial services magazine and has a MS outlook (outlook as in forecast, not the email client) on how the new EU MiFID regulations will affect companies and how SharePoint can fit in to filling some of these regulatory requirements. Again using existing Microsoft infrastructure, SharePoint can be a great resource in regards to complying with these regulations.