Get Ready for Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Certification Path for IT professionals

• 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Will cover configuration of SharePoint 2010 including deployment, upgrade, management and operation on a server farm.

• 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Will cover advanced SharePoint 2010 topics including capacity planning, topology designing and performance tuning.

Certification Path for Developers

• 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Five-day instructor-led course designed for developers with six months or more of.NET development experience. Course covers what you need to know to be an effective member of a SharePoint development team using Visual Studio 2010.

• 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications
  Microsoft Official Curriculum: Five-day instructor-led training course designed for development team leads who have already passed the Developing on SharePoint 2010 technical specialist exam. The course covers choosing technologies for and scoping a SharePoint project, best practices for SharePoint development, configuring a SharePoint development environment, advanced use of SharePoint developer features and debugging of code in a SharePoint project.

https://partner.microsoft.com/40121316?msp_id=sharepoint2010ready

SharePoint 2010: Getting Started with Development on SharePoint 2010 Hands-on Labs in C# and Visual Basic

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C010FC68-B47F-4DB6-B8A8-AD4BA33A35C5&displaylang=en#filelist

SharePoint 2010 for Project Management Success

SharePoint 2010 for Project Management Success from Dux Raymond Sy on Vimeo.

Determine hardware and software requirements (SharePoint Server 2010)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx

Install SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2

From: Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog

Starting from Service Pack 2, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 support Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2. When you try to install SharePoint bits on Windows Server 2008 R2 directly, you may see the following dialogue:

This is because Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 bits without SP2 slipstreamed are not supported on Windows Server 2008 R2. The KB article 962935 is not live on the web site yet.

To install on Windows Server 2008 R2, for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 you can download the slipstream builds here:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2 (x86)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EF93E453-75F1-45DF-8C6F-4565E8549C2A&displaylang=en

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP2 (x64)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9FB41E51-CB03-4B47-B89A-396786492CBA&displaylang=en

For SharePoint Server 2007, you can follow Create an installation source that includes software updates (Office SharePoint Server 2007) to create one. Or you can also read on, we will go through the complete steps to create a new slipstream build for SharePoint Server 2007.

Installation Steps

1. Copy the content of SharePoint Server 2007 setup files from the installation media to a folder on your hard drive.

2. Delete everything inside Updates folder.

3. Download Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 to a folder.

Make sure your Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP2 is downloaded after July 29^th.

4. Open a command prompt,  change directory to the folder you put the downloaded patches, and run the following two commands:

wssv3sp2-kb953338-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:[Path to installation bits]\Updates /quiet

officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract: [Path to installation bits]\Updates /quiet

Change [Path to installation bits] to where you put the bits. These will extract all the content from the two packages to Updates folder. SharePoint installation program will automatically read this folder to apply the patches.

5. Delete wsssetup.dll. This is a very important step so please don’t miss it.

6. If you also need the Cumulative Updates to be applied when install SharePoint, download the latest Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 Cumulative Update packages and extract them into Updates folder like step 4.

7. Your slipstream build of SharePoint Server 2007 is done!

8. Go and install it on your Windows Server 2008 R2 box, after the installation, the site version will show 12.0.0.6421 or possibly a higher version if you added additional cumulative update files.

Web Application, Site Collection and Sub-Site

SharePoint Terminologies and Hierarchy

Following diagram illustrates the SharePoint hierarchy:

Web Application, Site Collection and Sub-Site

The following points are to be considered when deciding on an extranet site structure and usage of SharePoint Components.

· Administration Overhead

· Scalability

· Upgrade Scope

· Backup/Restore

· Security

· Search Settings

· Audit/IRM Settings

· Feature Scope

· Recycle Bin

· Usage Reporting

· Branding

· Navigation

· Content Rollup and Aggregation

· Content Type / Site Column Scope

Backup and Restore

· Full fidelity backups are only possible at the site collection level

· If a sub-site needs to be restored then the entire site collection must be restored

· 3rd party solutions offer full fidelity recovery at more granular levels

Security

· Site Collections allow security groups and permissions to be isolated from other site collections

· Management is more complex with site collections

· Difficult to see what access a user has across site collections

· No OOTB way to synchronize settings across site collections

· Usage of Site collections can reduce the need to break security inheritance

· Site Collections can be used to overcome SharePoint group limitations (Cannot go over 2000 users or AD groups in a single ACL)

Feature Scope

· Features can be scoped to a Site Collection or Web (or Farm or Web Application)

· You can prevent access to certain functionality by using site collections

o Some Features must be scoped to a site collection

o You might have to activate a Feature thereby (potentially) making functionality available to all users/contributors/designers of a site

Search

· Search Scopes are defined at the site collection level (You can create shared scopes via the SSP but they must be “activated” at each site collection)

· Best bets and keywords are site collection scoped (Use a single search centre)

· Settings must be manually (or programmatically) synchronized across site collections

Scalability

The single most critical reason for using multiple site collections is scalability

· Limit content databases to 100GB (50GB recommended, 100GB maximum)

· If you must go over 100GB then use only 1 site collection in the content database

· You will encounter performance issues and possibly deadlock conditions (if over 100GB)

· Split content approaching 100GB in a site collection into a new site collection in a separate content database (STSADM)

· Site collections cannot live across content databases

· Web applications can have multiple content databases attached to them

Reporting

· Usage reports are scoped at the site collection

· There is no out of the box mechanism to get cross site collection usage reports

o SSP administrators can get search query reports which span site collections

· Many 3rd party products produce much more useful/sophisticated reports for cross site collection reporting

Branding

· Master pages and CSS can be used to enforce a consistent branding experience

· Use Themes for as much as possible so that the application/system pages will be branded

· Use Feature Stapling to automatically apply the branding. This provides a seamless experience for the end-user

Content Types / Site Columns

• Features could be used to deploy to consistent Content Type and Site Columns across multiple Site Collections
• It is important that the Content Type ID remains the same – creation via the browser does not allow setting the ID across site collections

Cross Site Configuration

• Solution Accelerator from MSFT (http://www.codeplex.com/SPConfigurator)
• The tool automates the process of deploying site settings in all or selected sites in a server farm:
  • Applying Master Pages across a SharePoint server farm
  • Setting up Web Titles for all or selected site collections across the farm
  • Applying audit control settings to all or selected sites
  • Adding advanced settings such as “Allow content type management” to all types of lists
  • Adding a new Expiration Policy at the site collection level
  • Adding a new Expiration Policy to content types, lists, and documents

Useful TechNet links for Planning, Designing; Securing an Extranet (SharePoint Server 2007)

 

Plan authentication methods (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262350.aspx

Design extranet farm topology (Office SharePoint Server)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263513.aspx

Downloadable book: Planning an Extranet Environment for Office SharePoint Server

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262400.aspx

Planning, Designing; Securing an Extranet and Internet Facing WSSv3 and SharePoint Server 2007 Environments

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/08/08/planning-designing-amp-securing-an-extranet-and-internet-facing-wssv3-and-sharepoint-server-2007-environments.aspx

External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc268155.aspx

Useful Sharepoint Links

A fantastic blog from pareshj

Useful Links

· MOSS Video Demos (Total 14 Modules)
· Before You Begin with SharePoint Server 2007
· MOSS Tools for performance and capacity planning
· Downloadable book: Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007
· MOSS 2007 - Planning and Architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007
· MOSS 2007 - Administrator Guide
· Complete reference of all STSADM operations
· Using the 2007 Microsoft Office system for disaster planning and response
· Planning and Designing SharePoint Products and Technology Solutions for Geographically Dispersed Sites
· Complete reference of all STSADM operations
· Complete reference of all PSCONFIG operations

Best Practices

· Before You Begin with SharePoint Server 2007
· Best Practices Analyzer for WSS 3.0 and MOSS2007
· Writing SQL Syntax Queries for Relevant Results in MOSS2007
· Backing Up and Restoring Web Sites with Stsadm
· Downloadable book: Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007
· MOSS Hardware and Software Requirements
· SharePoint 2007 products comparison download
· Which SharePoint technology is right for you?
· White Paper: Working with large lists in Office SharePoint Server 2007
· MOSS Tools for performance and capacity planning

How to Deploy updates for SharePoint 2007

· Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
· Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007
· How to troubleshoot common errors that occur when you run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard

How to configure Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) successfully
· http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=8

What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings

· http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/06/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-1.aspx
· http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/19/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-2-of-3.aspx
· http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/04/18/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-3-of-3.aspx

STSADM COMMANDS

· Jose Barreto's Blog Complete reference of all STSADM operations (with parameters) in MOSS 2007 SP1
· Jose Barreto's Blog Complete reference of all STSADM operations (with parameters) in MOSS 2007

SharePoint Administration Toolkit
· SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Office SharePoint Server)

TCP Chimney should be disabled

· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942861
· The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Scalable Networking Pack release

SharePoint Accessibility Resources

It has been a while since I have posted anything; this is mainly because I have been extremely busy and lack of personal time...
I found the following resource on SharePoint Accessibility extremely useful. This is taken from Sanjay Narang's blog....

"I've been working on implementing accessibility requirements for a public facing site on MOSS. Though keywords such as "SharePoint accessibility" provide a number of results on Live Search or any other engine, I had difficult time in searching the appropriate resources. Thought it would be worthwhile sharing the resources that I found and providing a context around them. Here are these resources:

Microsoft's Statements/Papers on SharePoint Accessibility
We have couple of white papers and articles on this topic, however, search engines are yet to rank them better to come towards the top. Here are these:

Article: Accessibility features (as provided by Office Online)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/CH100948721033.aspx



Blog: Improvements in accessibility – Blog entry on SharePoint Team blog by Lawrence Liu. Though it's pretty old entry (April 2006) and was written for pre RTM version, but you can find a good summary of new and improved accessibility features. Most of this holds for RTM also. The blog groups the improvement areas in categories such as Headings, Navigation, Keyboard, Graphics, High Contrast – Low Vision, HTML Controls and also relates them to specific checkpoints from WCAG 1.0
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/04/24/improvements-in-accessibility.aspx



Whitepaper: Deliver accessible solutions by using Office SharePoint Server - This downloadable white paper provides information and guidelines about the issues that organizations face when delivering Web solutions, including those built by using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that are accessible to people with disabilities. It's a pretty good paper to read when you are starting your journey on accessibility. It describes the available out-of-the-box (OOB) accessibility features in MOSS 2007 and also provides a very good summary on Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS). If you want to know all about AKS in 4 pages, this is the article to read. However, if you are looking for best practices or implementation approaches – you need to look for a different paper. Have a look at the next one
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668367.aspx



Whitepaper: Best practices for developing accessible Web sites - This downloadable white paper provides information about designing and developing accessible Web sites in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. If you are looking for implementation best practices that you couldn't find in the white paper listed above, this is a very useful resource. In this paper, Waldek Mastykarz, provides tips and techniques that are categorized in different areas such as General (HTML, javascript), .Net, MOSS, and IIS. You'll find tips such as appropriate MIME type, things to ensure while writing custom controls e.g. use Render method RenderControl
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc716527.aspx

Other Resources
Blog: SharePoint Accessibility - Is MOSS 2007 accessible? – Provides a quick comparison of SPS 2003 and MOSS 2007 with Priority 1 requirements
http://www.21apps.com/sharepoint/sharepoint-accessibility-is-moss-2007-accessible/



Article: Building ASP.NET 2.0 Web Sites Using Web Standards - Though, this article provides the best practices for ASP.net in general, it is very useful from SharePoint perspective for developing custom web parts, field controls, web controls and user controls. The article provides the basic knowledge of mechanisms available within the ASP.NET 2.0 platform which support developing accessible web sites. This contains a lot of examples that would be useful for people who are new to accessibility. The techniques provided here would be mostly used while writing the "Render" or "CreateChildControls" methods. For example, you'll find this tip from this paper: "Provide an AssociatedControlId property when declaring an ASP.NET Label controls, so that the control renders a tag."
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479043.aspx



Blog: CSS Friendly Control Adapters in SharePoint 2007 (A Walk-Through) – Provides step-by-step walkthrough of how to use CSS Friendly Adapters, which are very helpful in creating CSS only, standards compliant controls (like the menu and treeView) for easy styling. These would be useful in areas where you'd like to use OOB navigation control in a publishing site.
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mossman/archive/2007/03/08/css-friendly-control-adapters-in-sharepoint-2007-a-walk-through.aspx



Blog: Web part zone adapter – if you are using web part zone, it is difficult to be compliant as web part zones use HTML tables for layout purposes. This adapter does a nice job on converting those table tags to div tags.
http://blogs.msdn.com/eigilm/archive/2008/10/07/web-part-zone-adapter.aspx



Blog: Another day, another accessible MOSS website - Provides a step-by-step walkthrough on how to go about developing an accessible site
http://blog.thekid.me.uk/archive/2007/05/01/another-day-another-accessible-moss-website.aspx



Toolkits
Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) – this kit is used by HiSoftware in collaboration with Microsoft and free for use. One thing you'd like to know that, the kit provides maximum use when you use SharePoint OOB UI and controls. If you are building a publishing site, where most of the controls and UI are custom developed, AKS can be used for references purpose mostly.
http://aks.hisoftware.com

Presentation: Accessibility Kit for SharePoint - Building Accessible Websites on MOSS 2007 – slide deck from session at SPC2008; provides some screenshots on how AKS kit works, which is sometimes difficult to understand through the documentation that comes with the installer
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/03/19/slidedeck-for-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-building-accessible-websites-on-moss-2007-session-at-spc2008-now-available.aspx



ARF – Definition as provided at its web site - ARF is a FREE (open source) development framework for SharePoint, both MOSS and WSS. It provides a consistent solution to common problems found in SharePoint publishing development.
http://www.spworks.co.uk/arf/what.aspx



SharePoint Compliancy Toolkit - has been designed to help you achieve the accessibility level as described in Webrichtlijnen (Dutch government accessibility guidelines comparable to WCAG 1.0 Priority 2+)
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/tmt/archive/2007/10/20/Accessible-Web-Content-Management-Solutions-based-on-Microsoft-Office-SharePoint-Server-2007.aspx



Accessibility in General
E-Book: Understanding Accessibility - A Guide to Achieving Compliance on Web Sites and Intranets will assist you in achieving compliance with U.S. federal standards and W3C Guidelines for Web content. From the book home page – "This book is for Web Authors, Project Managers and basically any individual or team that is faced with the challenge of creating an accessible Web site or retrofitting a Web site to make it accessible. If you are new to accessibility we suggest you start at the beginning and read the entire book. If you are tasked with repairing sites that are not accessible, this book will serve as a reference and guide. If you review sites for accessibility this book will help you to select tools and understand accessibility requirements."
http://www.hisoftware.com/uaccess/Index.html

W3C Resources:
Official W3C Recommendation for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) – Provides all resources from W3C such as Introductions, Techniques and Guidelines on Managing and Evaluating Accessibility
http://www.w3.org/WAI/



Filed under: SharePoint, Accessibility, Resources, MOSS, WSS
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Downgrading from MOSS Enterprise to Standard

Prepare and Backup

1. Backup all SQL databases

2. Make a List of Web applications and related IIS site, Application Pool and Content Database.

3. Disable enterprise feature at Farm Level, for each web application and for all sites

4. Note which server is hosting SharePoint Central Administration and confirm that there are no pending or failed backup/restore or upgrade timer jobs.

5. Make a list of every server that host SharePoint Central Administration.Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS\ServerRole and record the value. Repeat these steps for each server with MOSS installed

6. Backup the 12.0 hive from the registry (Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0 Right Click on 12.0 and click Export)

7. Now edit the registry key by renaming the dsn key. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Secure\ConfigDB\dsn] Right click on dsn and click rename

8. Purge the old configuration wizard logs. From command prompt type "cd "%programfiles%\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\logs" Then type del psc*.log

9. Check to see if you have installed any language packs and uninstall them.

Uninstall Enterprise Edition

10. Now uninstall MOSS Enterprise from Add/Remove Programs. This will uninstall MOSS completely from your machine but will not delete any of your data.

11. Reboot your server

Install Standard Edition

If you have more than one MOSS server repeat these steps for all servers in the farm.
Now that all servers have had MOSS uninstalled from them and have been rebooted you need to install MOSS 2007 Std. You will perform the following steps on one server at a time. Start with the web front end server that previously hosted Central Admin and then you may do all additional servers in any order. Perform only on one server at a time. If any server fails resolve the issue before continuing to the next server.

1. De-Select the box for running the Configuration Wizard and click Close.

2. Now install any necessary language packs on the server. Instructions found here.

3. Once all servers have been installed return to your original web front end server which will host SharePoint Central Administration.

4. Click Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office Server > SharePoint Configuration and Technologies Configuration Wizard.

5. Click Next at the Welcome screen.

6. At the warning message click Yes.

7. At the Completing SharePoint screen you should see your database and database server listed. Click Next.

8. You will see a warning message reminding you to install MOSS on all servers in your farm before proceeding. Ignore this warning message and click Ok

Post Configuration

Now find out what your servers search topology is.

1. Go to SharePoint Central Administration and click the Operations tab

2. From Topologies and Services click Services on Server

3. If the Office SharePoint Server Search is started from the command line on this server you need to run the command stsadm -o osearch -action start

4. Recreate Web application Using the Existing IIS site and Application Pool and attach the content databases to them