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One common question we get from customers who are evaluating SharePoint Server 2010 or a specific SharePoint scenario is: “How did someone else do it?” Or, more specifically: “How did Microsoft IT do it?”

Fortunately, Microsoft IT documents and publishes a set of resources known as Microsoft IT Showcase, which describes how they designed and deployed various Microsoft technologies and products. These resources include Webcasts, TechNet Edge videos, and Quick Reference Guides.

Here is a list of Microsoft IT Showcase resources for SharePoint Server 2010:

• Architecting a Global Human Resources System Using SharePoint, Azure, & Duet
• Building the Next Generation Intranet Using SharePoint 2010
• Consolidating and Sharing Business Intelligence Reports for Finance TechNet Radio
• Consolidating and Sharing Business Intelligence Reports for Finance Video
• Consumerization of IT
• Creating BI Dashboards Using SharePoint 2010 Without Programming
• Creating Scorecards to Report Organizational Rhythm of Business
• Customizing the User Experience with FAST Search
• Enabling Managed Metadata for Information Discovery at Microsoft
• Enabling Self Service BI from EDW using SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2
• Facilitating Employee Rewards Management at Microsoft
• How Microsoft Built Its Internal Social Video Platform
• How Microsoft IT Enables Office Web Applications in SharePoint 2010
• How Microsoft IT is Moving to the Cloud to Meet and Exceed the Needs of the Business
• How Microsoft IT Manages Project and Portfolio Management
• Implementing Social Computing at Microsoft
• Initial Best Practices & Lessons Learned from Microsoft IT's SharePoint 2010 Upgrade
• Interactive Web Technologies Deliver Financial Message to Investors and Analysts
• An Inside Look at Finance at Microsoft: Leveraging Technology
• IT Showcase On: Business Intelligence (BI)
• IT Showcase On: Microsoft SharePoint
• Managing a Parallel Upgrade to SharePoint 2010
• Measuring and Driving Microsoft IT Using Microsoft BI Solutions
• Microsoft IT CIO Office Scorecards – Delivering Dashboards from KPI Catalog to the Masses (IT Pro Webcast)
• Microsoft IT CIO Office Scorecards – Delivering Dashboards from KPI Catalog to the Masses (Video)
• Migrating to SharePoint 2010
• New FAST Search Solution Speeds Retrieval of Relevant BI Data
• The Power of ECM2: Enterprise Content Management Using SharePoint 2010
• Server Virtualization
• SharePoint 2010 Governance and Life Cycle Management
• Using Excel Services to Improve Financial Data Retrieval Performance

This is the same list from the SharePoint Server MSIT Showcase page (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb687797). Check this page for the most current list and for links to IT Showcase resources about SharePoint Server 2007.

To get started with SharePoint Server 2010, see the following:

• SharePoint Server 2010 TechCenter (http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ee263917)
• SharePoint Server 2010 Technical Library on TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc303422)
• SharePoint Developer Center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/sharepoint/aa905688)
• Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/?CTT=97)

Enjoy!

 

Joe Davies
Principal Writer
SharePoint Server Platforms and Infrastructure Writing Team

Check out How to Troubleshoot Connecting to the SQL Server Database Engine in the TechNet Wiki. Author Rick Byman takes you step-by-step though the troubleshooting process when you get the “Connect to Server” error. I strongly encourage you to bookmark this article and use it for the next time you see this type of error. Additionally, because it is a TechNet Wiki article, all it takes is a Windows Live ID and you can add to it and improve it based on your experiences.

This article is a great example of what I like to call “troubleshooting methodology” content. When you get a general error, troubleshooting methodology content takes you step-by-step through the system, configuration, and process requirements, typically from the most general and basic to the more complex and specific problem sources. Here is an example of a troubleshooting methodology topic I authored for DirectAccess in Windows Server 2008 R2: General Methodology for Troubleshooting DirectAccess Connections.

Question to the SharePoint community: Would you like to see troubleshooting methodology content for SharePoint 2010 Products? If so, what specific troubleshooting situations would you like to see covered?

Please leave a comment on this blog post with your answer. Thanks!

See Troubleshooting resources for SharePoint Server 2010 for a recent blog post that describes our current troubleshooting content for SharePoint Server 2010.

To get started with SharePoint Server 2010, see the following:

• SharePoint Server 2010 TechCenter (http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ee263917)
• SharePoint Server 2010 Technical Library on TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc303422)

Enjoy!

 

Joe Davies
Principal Writer
SharePoint Platform and Infrastructure Writing Team

One of the best ways to know what databases your SharePoint deployment uses is to keep a record and add database names each time you create a new database.
This isn’t always easy as there usually isn’t enough extra time during the day to keep records. Plus, more often than not your SharePoint database maintenance tasks tend to occur either late at night or in the pre-dawn hours when no users are accessing the system, so remembering to add a new database name to an ongoing list is really tough.

Luckily, there are several tried and true methods you can use to find not only the active databases used in your SharePoint environment but also find the properties for each.

• If you only need a list of all content databases, use SharePoint Central Administration.

In the Application Management section just click Manage content databases to go to a page that lists content databases used in your farms. 

• To see the complete list of all databases on a SQL Server instance or in a farm, use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. 

This is a good way to find the databases but isn’t always feasible for one reason or another. Since SQL Server Management Studio lists all databases, it can be hard to out which ones are the SharePoint Server databases.

• See Database types and descriptions for a complete list of the names of all the databases supported by SharePoint Products.
• Download the Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products poster.
• View the Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products poster online.
• See other published SharePoint Server 2010 posters access Technical diagrams (SharePoint Server 2010).

• If you want a report of all of your SharePoint databases that includes the GUIDs and related property values, use the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

There are several Windows PowerShell cmdlets you can use to find all of the SharePoint databases and then print this report to a text file. The quickest and perhaps easiest cmdlet is “Get-SPDatabase”. Run this cmdlet in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell to list all of the SharePoint Server databases with properties for each one. From this potentially large list you can then obtain specific information such as the database ID by using additional syntax in your cmdlet. Similarly, also in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, run “Get-SPDatabase | Sort-Object disksizerequired -desc | Format-Table Name” and you will get a simple list of the names for each database. You can then print this list to a text file by adding, “| out-file c:\db.txt” to the end of the command.  For detailed information, see Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010, Database cmdlets,  Get-SPDatabase, and Get-SPContentDatabase.

• A unique way to find all databases used by a SharePoint 2010 farm is often overlooked mainly because it provides a backup of your farm.

In Central Administration, in the Backup and Restore section, access Perform a backup. This page lists all of the items that you can backup in your farm.  In this list are all of the databases used by SharePoint Server. Just expand all of the components and then look through the Type column to find the SharePoint database names. Of course, if you do not want to perform a backup, just click Cancel after you’ve listed all of the databases in your SharePoint farm.

 

Credit for some of these tips goes to where I discovered them, in the SharePoint 2010 – General Questions and Answers forum.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Hord, Technical Writer, SharePoint Content Publishing

This is the first in a new series of posts that puts the spotlight on Windows PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2010 Products that are stored in the TechNet Gallery. In each post, we will describe a script’s functionality and use and look under the hood at specific Windows PowerShell programming techniques that you can learn for your own scripts.

Download SharePoint 2010 Prerequisites
The Download SharePoint 2010 Prerequisites Windows PowerShell script (http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/bcf3332d-f726-4ac7-b01a-eeda4b7ece8e) downloads and stores all of the files for the prerequisites of SharePoint Server 2010 in a specified location. This is useful when installing SharePoint Server 2010 in an offline environment or as part of an automated setup and is a Windows PowerShell alternative to using the PrerequisiteInstaller.exe tool, as described in Install prerequisites from a network share.

You can test this script by copying the code into a text editor (click Copy Code on the script page, then paste it), saving it as a .PS1 file, then executing the script by specifying its path and .ps1 file name for the Windows PowerShell prompt (example: PS C:\users\default> c:\users\joedavies\sp2010prereq.ps1).

For those of you honing your Windows PowerShell programming skills, notice how this script loads the $UrlList object with the set of download URLs and then uses a Foreach{} structure to download each file into the specified folder with the Start-BitsTransfer Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) cmdlet.

See the TechNet Gallery for a list of Windows PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2010 Products.

For more information about Windows PowerShell support in SharePoint Server 2010, see the following:

• Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010 Resource Center (http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ff603532) 
• Windows PowerShell for SharePoint Server 2010 (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/ee662539)

To get started with SharePoint Server 2010, see the following:

• SharePoint Server 2010 TechCenter (http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ee263917)
• SharePoint Server 2010 Technical Library on TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc303422)

 

Enjoy!

 
Joe Davies
Principal Writer
SharePoint Platform and Infrastructure Writing Team

In the recent blog post, December 2011 CU for SharePoint 2010 has been released, Senior Escalation Engineer for SharePoint Stefan Goßner provides an overview of Cumulative Update 2011-12 (CU 2011-12) for SharePoint Server 2010 (thanks, Stefan!).

For SharePoint business intelligence users, CU 2011-12 for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is particularly exciting because it opens the door for people to get business intelligence content on Apple iPad devices. People can now view PerformancePoint reports and scorecards, Excel Services reports, and Reporting Services reports on iPad devices running the iOS 5 Safari browser.

We just published an article on TechNet that provides more details about which kinds of reports and scorecards will and won’t work on your iPad, how to configure business intelligence content to display with best results, and how to navigate content on your iPad. For more information, see Viewing reports and scorecards on Apple iPad devices.

We’re very interested in your feedback, so please add a comment and tell us what you think.

Happy Dashboarding!

Denise Stendera

Writer, Business Intelligence in SharePoint

P.S. If you’re interested in viewing more business intelligence solutions and scenarios, see our Business Intelligence Resource Center.

Since Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is an application that relies on Microsoft SQL Server database software, we strive to provide IT pros comprehensive documentation about storage.

The TechNet SharePoint Server 2010 Library contains the following articles:

• Storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration gives guidelines to help organizations plan and configure their storage needs on SQL Server databases in a SharePoint Server 2010 environment.
• Backup and recovery links to content about planning, best practices, and configuring permissions for backup and recovery tasks.
• Database management links to content covering all facets of SharePoint databases. Included is adding, attaching, and moving the databases: how to maintain, monitor, and rename databases, and how to scale out SharePoint sites.

 

The following white paper written by the SharePoint product team is a great resource:

• SQL Server 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 Products: Better Together shows what SQL Server 2008 R2 edition has what advantages and tells you how to choose the edition that is right for your SharePoint Server 2010 implementation.

 

Or click one of the following resources.

• SQL Server and SharePoint Server 2010 Databases contains lots of good information about SharePoint Server storage requirements.
• Capacity Management for SharePoint Server 2010 provides many resources to help you plan capacity managements for your SharePoint Server 2010 environments.

 

We try to provide complete documentation, but let us know if we missed something. Write us at itspdocs@microsoft.comitspdocs@microsoft.com to ask questions, to tell us about your SharePoint Server 2010 storage requirements, or to give us recommendations.

Thanks,

Steve Hord, Technical Writer, SharePoint Content Publishing

Hi – SharePoint Server 2010 has been out for over a year, and many of you have upgraded to take advantage of the new user interface, ease of administration, and new features. But many organizations are still evaluating whether and when to upgrade. We’d like to get a little information from those of you who haven’t yet upgraded to find out how we can help. We’re conducting an informal e-mail survey to collect data and figure out how we can help make upgrade a little easier for you.

Just send an e-mail to upgradesp@microsoft.com with your answers to the following questions:

• Are you planning to upgrade?
  • If so, what’s your timeline for upgrading?
  • If not, what are the top issues blocking you from upgrading?
• What would make it easier for you to move forward with an upgrade?
• What support do you need from Microsoft to make it easier?
• What version of the Office client applications are you running, and does that affect your decision or timeline for upgrading?
• What browser software and what version of that browser are you running, and does that affect your decision or timeline for upgrading?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

By the way, if you’re not sure what you get with the 2010 version, you can see some lists of what’s new for each audience segment here:

• For IT Pros: http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ee518662
• For Developers: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ee539826 and  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ee557323
• For end users: http://officebeta.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/whats-new-in-microsoft-sharepoint-server-2010-HA010370058.aspx

And if you’re looking for resources to get started with an upgrade, see:

• Upgrade and Migration Resource Center on TechNet
• Upgrade Resource Center on MSDN

 

- Samantha Robertson

Feature Pack 1 for Duet Enterprise is available for download. Feature Pack 1 adds the following solutions to Duet Enterprise for Microsoft
SharePoint and SAP.

• Aggregated Business Calendar
• User profile-based List Forms

Note that you can choose to install either of these solutions or both of them.

To get Feature Pack 1, do the following:

1. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/default.aspx. Make sure you’re signed in to your MSDN subscriber account.
2. In the menu, click Subscriber Downloads.
3. In the search box, type “Duet Enterprise” and then click the “Duet Enterprise” link that appears.
4. In the Feature Pack 1 for Duet Enterprise 1.0, SharePoint components (x64) - DVD (Multiple Languages) row, click Download.
   Note that if you’re not already signed in using your MSDN subscriber account, the link will be named “Sign in” instead of “Download”. If this happens, sign in to your account and then click the “Download” link.

If you’re not familiar with Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP, the Duet Enerprise product information page and www.duet.com are both good places to start. Documentation and other useful resources about Duet Enterprise can be found on the Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Tech Center.

The Aggregated Business Calendar solution enables you to work with multiple calendars at the same time. Site Owners can aggregate up to four of any of the following types of calendars into the Aggregated Business Calendar web part: SAP calendars, SharePoint calendars, Exchange calendars, and custom calendars. For example, a site owner can add two SharePoint calendars, one Exchange calendar, and one SAP Business calendar, or four SAP Business calendars. Any combination of these calendar types is supported. To have these calendars aggregated into one place helps you avoid switching between different calendars, and you can easily compare schedules and avoid schedule conflicts.

The User profile-based List Forms solution is a sample solution that demonstrates how you can expose different fields in a list form to different users based on their SharePoint user profile. This enables a solution developer to design a solution that only displays the fields in a form that a particular user needs to work with, thus increasing the productivity of the end user. Note that this solution is intended to be customized by a developer before you deploy it into a production environment.

Feature Pack 1 is available as an MSDN subscription. Note that you must already have Duet Enterprise for Microsoft and SAP deployed before you can deploy Feature Pack 1.

The TechNet library has documentation about how to deploy and use Feature Pack 1.

Dan Evers
Senior Technical Writer
SharePoint Content Publishing

Back in June, Andrea Bichsel blogged about the TechNet Wiki and how you can join with only a Windows Live ID and contribute written content about SharePoint 2010 Products. 

Another venue for publishing your content is the TechNet Gallery, which can hold all kinds of content (scripts, videos, code files) in addition to written content in the form of uploaded white papers. Here are some examples of community members who have published their content as white papers in the TechNet Gallery:

• Configuring the Content Type Hub
• Document ID Service

When publishing written content, the choice between the TechNet Wiki and the TechNet Gallery is not necessarily an either/or choice. Both venues have their advantages:

• Content in the TechNet Wiki is easy for the community to correct, modify, or extend over time
• Content in the TechNet Gallery can be more easily printed, customized for personal use, or shared offline (such as an attachment in an email message or a file in a folder)

In some cases, it is appropriate to post content in both places: in the TechNet Gallery for a self-contained, portable, and printable version and in the TechNet Wiki for a version that can be more easily discovered and augmented by the community. The original author of both cross-links to each version so that readers of the white paper know how to modify the community version in the TechNet Wiki and readers of the TechNet Wiki topic know how to obtain the self-contained version for printing, customization, or offline sharing. Here is an example: SSAS: Explaining the GetClusterCharacteristics Stored Procedure for Sequence Clustering Models

For more information, see Ed Price’s blog post titled "Should I use the Gallery or TechNet Wiki?" to determine the right publication venue(s). Regardless of the venue, your community content helps us on the writing team determine customer issues and possible content gaps that we can address in the SharePoint Server 2010 Technical Library on TechNet.

Here's hoping I see some of your great content in the Wiki, the Gallery, or both!

To get started with SharePoint Server 2010 or to verify that the content that you intend to publish is not already in the TechNet Library, see the following resources:

• SharePoint Server 2010 TechCenter (http://technet.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ee263917)
• SharePoint Server 2010 Technical Library on TechNet (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc303422)

 

Joe Davies
Principal Writer
SharePoint Platform and Infrastructure Writing Team 

SharePoint Products automatically generate GUID-based database names when databases are created, such as WSS_Content_ 2a24a7ecde1744d4823e31d77b266653. When you're ready to upgrade, if you don’t have a handy farm inventory, it can take a little time and research to identify each database and map them to your Web applications and site collections. It sure would make farm management a bit easier if the database names actually meant something that you could more easily identify. Why not take a little time to make the database names more meaningful while you’re doing a database attach upgrade?

Note   This tip does not apply to an in-place upgrade.

When you’re not in the middle of an upgrade, renaming databases requires detaching them from the SharePoint Web applications in SharePoint Central Administration, then using SQL Server Management Studio to rename them (or back up and restore them with a new name). Either action requires some down time to accomplish, and renaming databases might not be your top priority for your down time opportunities.

However, when you do a database attach upgrade, you are either detaching the databases while you move them to the new farm, or backing them up and restoring them to the new farm, so you have an opportunity to rename them. Why not straighten them out then? It's as easy as typing a new name in the "To database" box if you're restoring a database or using “Rename” when you attach the database to a new SQL Server instance.

Restore:

Rename:

Before you rename the database to just anything, take a moment to decide on a naming scheme. For example, you could include any of the following in your database names:

• The port number for the Web application associated with the database, such as WSS_Content_2133.
• The type of sites that are stored in the databases, such as WSS_Content_Collab or WSS_Content_MySites.
• The name of the site collection in the database, if there’s only one per database), such as WSS_Content_ContosoHome.

Of course, even if you're not doing an upgrade, you can take time during a service outage to rename databases to lose the GUIDs and make them make more sense. Here are some blog posts to help you rename databases at any time:

• Renaming crazy SharePoint Database Names (includes screenshots of the process)
• Renaming Content Databases (also discusses using Stsadm backup/restore in the comments)
• Getting rid of GUIDs in SharePoint 2010 database names (links to procedures for renaming all kinds of databases in SharePoint Server 2010)

Also, see more info on:

• Database attach upgrade: Perform a database attach upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010, Upgrade and Migration for SharePoint Server 2010
• Managing databases in SharePoint Server 2010: Database management (SharePoint Server 2010), SQL Server and SharePoint Server 2010 Databases

- Samantha Robertson

Did you know that there were 22 sessions at the SharePoint Conference devoted to governance? Me either, until I started building my schedule and found that there were way more talks than I could possibly attend. I did manage to catch three of the governance sessions, one each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and found a couple of common themes to mull over about user adoption and governance that I thought I’d share with all of you.

Here are the specifics about the talks I attended:

• SPC290 - The City of SharePoint: What SharePoint Planners Can Learn From City Planning
  Speaker: Craig Roth - http://blogs.gartner.com/craig-roth/
• SPC297 - True Business and IT Partnership: Best Buy Governance and SharePoint 2010
  Speakers: Matthew Ruderman, Sarah Haase, Fred Baer. More from Sarah Haase: http://www.networkworld.com/podcasts/com/2009/081009com-sarahhaase.html
• SPC261 - Practical Approach to SharePoint Governance: The Key to Successful SharePoint 2010 Solutions
  Speaker: Susan Hanley. More from Susan Hanley: you can get her chapter on governance from the book "Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning" at: http://www.susanhanley.com/books.htm and she contributed to the following white paper available from the Microsoft Download Center: SharePoint Server 2010 Adoption Best Practices

Theme 1: User adoption: It’s not "build it and they will come" but rather "build where they are"

In "The City of SharePoint", Craig Roth spoke about how in city planning, to be successful the process needs to follow the pattern “first life, then spaces, then buildings – the other way around never works” (quote from Jan Gehl, Gehl Architects). In other words, you can’t build the buildings and hope people come populate them. You need to structure the city around the people. The same goes for SharePoint:

1. First, find out what the users need – business activities and priorities
2. Then, plan the spaces (design the services and applications)
3. And finally, plan the buildings (the architecture and topology needed to support it)

This was echoed in the “Best Buy Governance” talk when Sarah Haase talked about how their completely decentralized system was getting deeper use in certain departments due to specific enthusiastic site administrators who figured out how to improve their business processes by switching them from spreadsheets and e-mail to SharePoint lists. These administrators later banded together and became a steering committee that started to work together and start a user group and training, and started calculating the return on investment for their SharePoint applications. Although it didn’t follow the same pattern, the successful sites concentrated on specific business needs and processes, then worked out how to support those processes in SharePoint and how to understand the impact the change to those business processes was having on the bottom line.

Susan Hanley’s talk “Practical Approach to SharePoint Governance” also emphasized the need to establish the clear business goals and business outcomes you want to achieve by using SharePoint. She has this as part of the mission of the governance committee, but I think really that this work is part of the planning for the sites and infrastructure – you have to know what you want to build and why before you can build it.

Theme 2: Training is key to success

In the “Best Buy Governance” talk, one of the things that really opened up the use of SharePoint in the organization was providing training and “open labs” to get info about how to use SharePoint in the organization. They’re also establishing common metadata in the organization and providing training about how to use that.

Following up on this in the “Practical Approach to SharePoint Governance” talk, Susan Hanley emphasized that training about governance concepts really needs to come in context. Bite size chunks of training on roles and responsibilities, policies and guidelines for authoring and design, and so on, need to happen in context of the how to training for those areas, targeted to the people who are going to do the work. No one’s going to read a 100-page governance plan from front to back and absorb it, but if you incorporate the policies of which tools to use or best practices for authoring in the training for content authors, then it’s all in one tidy package and they absorb both.

More info from Microsoft on Governance and Training

Of course, this is only scratching the surface of what was covered in these three talks, and what was covered overall at the SharePoint Conference 2011 on Governance, but it got me thinking, and I thought it might get you thinking too. If you’re interested in more information on Governance, check out the Governance Resource Center and Governance content on  TechNet. If you want information about what training is available from Microsoft on SharePoint Server 2010, see the Learn SharePoint Server 2010 page on TechNet and the Training Courses and Videos available on Office.com. And let us know your thoughts on governance and training in the comments on this blog or on those pages, or by e-mailing us at itspdocs@microsoft.com.

- Samantha Robertson

The launch of Lync 2010 on Wednesday completes and really super-charges our wave of 2010 productivity products released in the past year, including Office, SharePoint and Exchange. I enjoyed hearing Bill Gates share his thoughts on the significance of Lync and the future of the unified communications space.

 

As an end user myself I love the experience Lync brings to SharePoint and Office with the real-time collaboration I rely on every day to find and interact with people and teams across our business and others outside Microsoft. These products were built to work together and the experience speaks for itself.  Here are my personal favorites:

 

• See the people I interact with through the visual experience of Lync and the social capabilities of SharePoint, including photos from SharePoint My Site and high definition video that delivers the best image based on bandwidth.
• Find the people I need to work with using Lync skills search which accesses SharePoint’s people search and skills, expertise and organization information in SharePoint My Site. I can quickly find who I’m looking for and start interacting with them immediately. No more sending e-mails to large aliases asking “does anyone know…?”
• Connect instantly with people’s names lit up with presence icons throughout SharePoint and Office that allow me to initiate IM, phone or online meetings on the fly. This allows me to interact with someone as we co-author a document or ask a question to the person who submitted approval for a budget in Excel from inside SharePoint or Excel. Very cool and very fast.
• Post recorded meetings to SharePoint sites using the Lync recording manager. All of my team’s documents, meeting notes and interactions and decisions can be easily saved and shared in SharePoint.
• Know more about the people I’m working with through Lync contact cards that show up every place I see someone’s name. No more assigning a task or workflow approval to the wrong person!

 

There are a ton of other compelling new Lync features that will delight your users. I encourage every SharePoint customer to explore the incredible productivity and business impact that many of our Lync customers are realizing today. Many customers can experience hosted versions of these products working together through the recently announced Office 365 service.

 

For our SharePoint IT professionals and developers, SharePoint 2010 and Lync 2010 offer an extensible platform to build rich applications that deliver unified communications and collaboration. The possibilities are endless. Workflow solutions with the ability to click to communicate instantly with others in the approval chain to make a decision, sales portals that launch team sites with new opportunities and invite the account team to an online meeting, line of business applications with document management and the ability to work in real-time with others and the list goes on and on. Experience these products together the way we designed them. The Lync experience makes SharePoint better and more importantly makes all our work more productive and impactful.

-Eric Swift

General Manager

SharePoint Product Management Group

 

Below are further details and a workaround for the SharePoint 2010 October Cumulative Update issue discovered yesterday.

Packages Impacted

The Cumulative Update packages affected are the Server Packages for SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Server and Project Server 2010, specifically; 

1. SharePoint Server Package 2394320
2. Project Server Package 2394322

The downloads for both of these packages have been removed from our servers.  If you have already downloaded them you SHOULD NOT install them.  They will be republished.

Issue Details

The October Cumulative Update for the packages listed above makes some changes and updates to the user profile database.  Unfortunately there are certain situations where this update does not complete as expected and leaves the update in an inconsistent state.  This causes issues with several SharePoint features that use the User Profile Application such as MySites, People and Expertise Search & Ratings.

Workaround

If you have already applied the October Cumulative Updates mentioned above, you should perform the following steps; 

 

If you encounter any issues following these steps or have questions specific to your environment/deployment please call Microsoft Product Support for assistance.

 

Check the following locations for the Microsoft.Office.Server.dll to determine the version. If the version is 14.0.5128.5000 or greater, the October CU is applied.

1. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\Microsoft.Office.Server.dll
2. C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Office.Server\14.0.0.0__71e9bce111e9429c\Microsoft.Office.Server.dll

 

Using Central Administration perform the following steps

1. Click on Manage Service Applications
2. Select User Profile Service Application by clicking on it
3. At the top of the screen on the Service Applications tab, click on Manage
4. On the Manage Profile Service: User Profile Service Application page, click Manage User Permissions
5. On the Permissions for User Profile Service Application dialog, you will need to
   1. Specify the desired user accounts and click the Add button to add them to the list
   2. By default SharePoint 2010 RTM has these accounts
      1. NT Authority\authenticated users
      2. All Authenticated Users
   3. Once the user accounts are in the list, you will need to set the permissions appropriately for your environment and click OK.

Packages NOT Impacted

The following Cumulate Update packages are NOT affected by this issue and are safe to install;

1. SharePoint Foundation Server “Uber” Package 2394323
2. SharePoint Foundation Server Package 2405789
3. SharePoint Foundation Server Package 2427410
4. SharePoint Foundation Server Package 2436034

This issue does not impact the 2007 versions of these products.

 

Microsoft has discovered a critical issue in the recently released October Cumulative Updates for SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Server 2010, and we have removed the files from download availability.  If you have already downloaded the CU, do not install it.  If you have installed the CU, please contact Microsoft Support for assistance.  We will be posting additional information about the issue here as soon as we have it, and will make the Cumulative Update available for download again as soon as the issue has been fully resolved.

This week our President Kurt DelBene let the world know of our plans to release Office 365 and I wanted to share my thoughts on the announcement and positive impact it will have on the market, SharePoint customers, and our partners. Today Office, Exchange, Lync and SharePoint provide the productivity backbone for many organizations. With these products, companies are already seeing great results and high ROI. With Office 365 we’re proud to announce the next step in the future of productivity, bringing together these capabilities in an always-up-to-date cloud service.  It provides businesses of all sizes with professional grade productivity solutions at a predictable monthly cost.

 

To date, SharePoint 2010 is a huge hit with our customers. When I joined the business earlier this year, I was impressed with the passion shown by customers and partners using the product to transform the way their organizations collaborate and share information. We have more than 17,000 customers and 100 million people that rely on SharePoint every day. Now, with SharePoint Online as part of Office 365, millions more will be able to benefit from the power of SharePoint.

With great applications, SharePoint Online helps organizations and professionals create sites to securely share information, insights, and important documents with colleagues, customers, and partners.  

 

It’s simple to create Office documents and save them directly to SharePoint Online, easy to access your content off-line or on your phone, and quickly share information and insights using familiar tools.

 

And, with Office 365, organizations get the full benefit of Office, Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint because it is designed to work together.

For SharePoint developers and independent software vendors (ISV’s), the opportunities to configure and extend SharePoint Online today include the ability to:

• configure master pages, templates, page layouts, and site columns
• customize the site UI with custom Silverlight controls, navigation or functional controls
• build customized document workflows, using data and documents contained within SharePoint Online
• customize lists and content types
• use Sandbox Solutions to build custom web parts
• design browser based forms using InfoPath forms

Please visit the MSDN SharePoint Online Developer Resource Center to learn more about the opportunities to extend and customize SharePoint Online. 

I know many ISV’s will be wondering how to support some of the rich solutions created for SharePoint 2010, such as those that rely on full-trust code or connect to back-end systems using Business Connectivity services (BCS). Over time we intend to enable many of these features online, such as BCS.  Others like full-trust code require a new approach to run effectively in a highly scalable shared service. As we move towards public availability we will be providing further guidance on how we will be moving the capabilities or providing alternative approaches to support these advanced scenarios online.  

For IT professionals and site administrators, SharePoint Online offers easy ways to plan, set up and manage your SharePoint Online service using the SharePoint Online Administration Center including the ability to:

• set up a new service
• create or delete a site collection
• build extranet sites and invite customers and partners securely
• manage administrators for a site collection
• change storage quota and warning level
• access end user support and training content

Please visit the TechNet SharePoint Online Administration and Planning site for guidance on setting up and managing your SharePoint Online service and stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.

The announcement of Office 365 is an important milestone for the SharePoint business and I am looking forward to the opportunity it will bring to many more organizations and professionals who can now benefit from the power of SharePoint. Starting today, we begin testing Office 365 with a few thousand organizations around the world.  Over time, we’ll expand the beta to more organizations as we prepare to launch the service worldwide next year. I encourage you to learn more about SharePoint Online and sign up for the Office 365 beta at office365.com.

 

-Eric Swift

General Manager
SharePoint Product Management Group

 

Governance is a key component to ensuring the success of your SharePoint 2010 deployment, and one we frequently get asked about it as we travel to conferences and events. Represented by a set of established processes, procedures, and stakeholders, a well designed and implemented governance plan promotes adoption, ensures participation, and maximizes ROI.  By using the governance techniques, best practices, and recommendations available below, you can align your policies for using SharePoint 2010 with your culture and goals while still enabling teams and individuals to effectively collaborate and share information.

Resources

Resource Center (Governance in SharePoint Server 2010)

The Governance Resource Center provides documentation, references, and solutions to help IT Professionals plan and prepare to govern SharePoint 2010 environments.  The Governance Resource Center aligns to three (3) specific areas:

1.       IT Governance

2.       Information Management

3.       Application Management

Resource Center (ALM Resource Center | SharePoint 2010)

The ALM Resource Center provides documentation, resources, references, and solutions to help Developers with the coordination of all aspects of software engineering.

Whitepaper (SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning)

The SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning whitepaper targets the business value of governance and provides guidance for the necessary governance planning and implementation of SharePoint Server 2010.

Whitepaper (Implementing Governance in SharePoint 2010)

This document focuses on the product and technology aspects of SharePoint governance – the technical implementation. It provides high-level guidance on the many configuration options SharePoint provides to enable you to manage the environment for the benefit of all.

Whitepaper (SharePoint Server 2010 Operations Framework and Checklists)

This document details the operational processes, tasks, and tools that are required to operate and maintain a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment. It explains how the management of SharePoint Server 2010 fits in with the overall Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) model.

Publication (Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)

Essential SharePoint 2010 provides information derived from a business value perspective that documents and illustrates how to plan and implement SharePoint 2010-based solutions to maximize business results.

Virtual Lab (Configuring Tenant Administration on SharePoint Server 2010)

After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a new Tenant Administration site collection, manage site collections through Tenant Administration, and create a partitioned service application.

Virtual Lab (Monitoring SharePoint 2010)

The objective of this lab is to provide a basic introduction to using Service Level Monitoring to monitor services provided by SharePoint Server 2010. By the end of this lab you will be better able to create a Service Level Object, generate a Report of SharePoint Services Availability, and configure a Service Level Dashboard.

Solutions

Active Directory Domain Services Markers

Active Directory Domain Services Markers can be used to prevent and report on SharePoint installations in your organization.

Quotas

Quotas are used to specify limits to the amount of storage that can be used by a site collection and establish resource limits on sandboxed solutions.

Locks

Locks are used to prevent users from from adding content to or accessing site collections.

Self-Service Site Creation

Self-Service Site Creation is used to allow or prevent  users from creating site collections on demand.

For a comprehensive list of governance features see also http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262287.aspx.

               

 

 

x-post from the Microsoft Security Response Center blog -- The download links for the security updates are in the Security Bulletin.

As we announced yesterday, today we released Security Bulletin MS10-070 out-of-band to address a vulnerability in ASP.NET.  The bulletin and the blog by Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform are available for more information.

This security update addresses a vulnerability affecting all versions of the .NET Framework when used on Windows Server operating system. While desktop systems are listed as affected, consumers are not vulnerable unless they are running a web server from their computer. 

The update will be made available initially only through the Microsoft Download Center and then released through Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services within the next few days. This allows customers the option to deploy it manually now without delaying for broader distribution.

For customers who use Automatic Updates, the update will be automatically applied once it is released broadly.  Once the Security Update is applied, customers are protected against known attacks related to Security Advisory 2416728.

If you can, please join me and Dustin Childs today for a live webcast where we will cover the details of this bulletin and take customer questions live. Here is the registration information:

Date: Tuesday September 28, 2010
Time: 1:00 p.m. PDT
Click Here to Register

Thanks,
Dave Forstrom
Director, Trustworthy Computing

x-post from the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

Today we provided advance notification to customers that we will release an out-of-band security update to address the vulnerability discussed in Security Advisory 2416728. The update is scheduled for release tomorrow, Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at approximately 10:00 AM PDT. The bulletin has a severity rating of Important and addresses a publicly disclosed vulnerability in ASP.NET that affects all versions of the .NET Framework when used on Windows Server operating systems. Windows desktop systems are listed as affected, but consumers are not vulnerable unless they are running a Web server from their computer.

Based on our comprehensive monitoring of the threat landscape, we have determined an out-of-band release is needed to protect customers as we have seen limited attacks and continued attempts to bypass current defenses and workarounds.

The security update is fully tested and ready for release, but will be made available initially only on the Microsoft Download Center. This enables us to get the update out as quickly as possible, allowing administrators with enterprise installations, or end users who want to install this security update manually, the ability to test and update their systems immediately.  We strongly encourage these customers to visit the Download Center, download the update, test it in their environment and deploy it as soon as possible.

The update will also be released through Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services within the next few days as we test to make sure distribution will be successful through these channels. This approach allows us to release sooner to customers who may choose to deploy it manually without delaying for broader distribution. 

For customers using Automatic Update, this Security Update will automatically be applied once it is released broadly. Once the Security Update is applied, customers are protected against known attacks related to Security Advisory 2416728.

We will also hold a special edition webcast for the bulletin release on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 1:00 PM PDT, where we will present information on the bulletin and take customer questions. If you are interested in attending the webcast, click here to sign up.

More information:

ASP.NET Security Update Shipping Tuesday, Sept 28th – Scott Guthrie’s blog. Out of Band Release to Address Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728 – Microsoft Security Response Center Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for September 2010 – TechNet Security Bulletin

Who are the SharePoint MVPs? The SharePoint MVPs are a passionate group of 225 individuals across 50 countries, who freely share their deep knowledge, real-world experience, and objective feedback to help people enhance the way they use SharePoint. They are independent experts who are acknowledged as community experts on SharePoint, and are awarded for their community involvement. You can see some MVP highlights on the community page of our SharePoint product site.

How can I connect with a SharePoint MVP?

·         Attend one of the many conferences where they’re attending or speaking

o   Many SharePoint MVPs will be speaking at the SharePoint Connections conference in November

·         Interact with them via live chat

o   The next chat is on Wednesday 9/29 at 9am PDT

o   Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx

o   Twitter Hashtag:  spmvpchat

·         Join our Facebook group or follow us on twitter to hear about upcoming chats and events

·         Review the MVP profiles and connect through their websites

·         Find them answering questions in the forums

How do I nominate an MVP?

If you know of someone extremely active in the SharePoint community, who is passionate about the product, goes above and beyond to share their knowledge and help others, and creates original content, then nominate them to become a SharePoint MVP

** Updated 9/27/2010 7:20PM ** – Updated with Out of Band Security Update announcement details.
** Updated 9/24/2010 4:30PM ** – Updated with additional defensive workaround published by the ASP.NET team valid for ALL affected versions of SharePoint listed below.
** Updated 9/22/2010 10:40AM ** – Updated verification step for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and added an exception in the workaround for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 running under ASP.NET 1.1.
** Updated 9/21/2010 11:05PM ** – Updated with workaround for SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and updated SharePoint 2010 workaround.
** Updated 9/21/2010 3:06PM ** – Included details for previous releases and workaround for WSS 2.0.

Update: Out of Band Release to address Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728 announcement.  See this post for details.

Update: Please note the additional workaround published 9/24/2010 4:40PM.  The original security advisory has been updated this afternoon to include additional defensive measures (Installing and enabling UrlScan or configuring IIS request filtering).  Please read the workarounds section of the security advisory and the update posted here for full details.  This extra step is applicable for ALL versions of SharePoint affected by this issue.

Update: Please note the important change from the 9/21/2010 3:06PM update to this blog post.  We originally stated that SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 did not require the workaround to be applied, however, we have recently discovered through testing that a variant of the issue does affect SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and also requires extra steps in the workaround for SharePoint Server 2010 (Steps 5-9).  Customers with these versions should refer to the relevant workaround below.  We will continue to keep this post updated with the latest guidance.

We recently released a Microsoft Security Advisory for a vulnerability affecting ASP.NET.  This post documents recommended workarounds for the following SharePoint products:

• SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Windows SharePoint Services 2.0

A workaround is not necessary for SharePoint Portal Server 2003. 

The workarounds for the affected versions of SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services listed above are temporary measures that do not fix the underlying issue but help to block known attack vectors until an ASP.NET security update is released.  We will provide instructions on how to revert the workarounds when the security update is released.

We recommend that all affected SharePoint customers apply the workaround as soon as possible.  You should apply the workaround to every web front-end in your SharePoint farm.

Workaround for SharePoint 2010 & SharePoint Foundation 2010

1. Navigate to the SharePoint installation directory at %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\template\layouts.
2. Create a new file called error2.aspx in this directory with the following content:
   <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Security.Cryptography" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Threading" %> <script runat="server"> void Page_Load() { byte[] delay = new byte[1]; RandomNumberGenerator prng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider(); prng.GetBytes(delay); Thread.Sleep((int)delay[0]); IDisposable disposable = prng as IDisposable; if (disposable != null) { disposable.Dispose(); } } </script> <html> <head runat="server"> <title>Error</title> </head> <body> <div> An error occurred while processing your request. </div> </body> </html>
3. Navigate to %SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\virtualdirectories.
4. For each subfolder in this directory, do the following:
   1. Edit web.config
   2. Find the customErrors node and change it to; <customErrors mode="On" redirectMode="ResponseRewrite" defaultRedirect="/_layouts/error2.aspx" />
   3. Save your changes
5. Navigate to %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\isapi.
6. Make a copy of the web.config file at this location and rename it to web_backup.config
   1. Important: if you skip this step, the workaround may affect your ability to apply patches to your SharePoint installation at a later date
7. Edit web.config and add the following lines immediately following the <configuration> node, before <system.web>:
   <system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="AssemblyResourceLoader-Integrated-4.0" /> <remove name="AssemblyResourceLoader-Integrated" /> </handlers> </system.webServer>
8. Save your changes
9. Run iisreset /noforce

Verifying the workaround:  After applying the workaround, you may not see a change in SharePoint’s error handling behavior.  For example, you will still receive a 404 error if you try to access a page that does not exist – this is unique to the SharePoint workaround and is different from the expected behavior described here. This is by design — the workaround described here specifically protects against the ASP.NET vulnerability in error cases that are not handled by SharePoint.

Workaround for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

1. Navigate to the SharePoint installation directory at %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\isapi.
2. Make a copy of the web.config file at this location and rename it to web_backup.config
   1. Important: if you skip this step, the workaround may affect your ability to apply patches to your SharePoint installation at a later date.
3. Edit web.config and add an httpHandlers section as shown:
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <configuration> <system.web> <webServices> <protocols> <remove name="HttpGet" /> <remove name="HttpPost" /> <remove name="HttpPostLocalhost" /> <add name="Documentation" /> </protocols> </webServices> <customErrors mode="On" /> <httpHandlers> <remove path="WebResource.axd" verb="GET"/> </httpHandlers> </system.web> <location path="authentication.asmx"> <system.web> <authorization> <allow users="*"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> <location path="wsdisco.aspx"> <system.web> <authorization> <allow users="*"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> <location path="wswsdl.aspx"> <system.web> <authorization> <allow users="*"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> </configuration>
4. Save your changes
5. Run iisreset /noforce

Verifying the workaround: Browse to http://servername/_vti_bin/webresource.axd.  In both cases (with and without the workaround), SharePoint will handle the error and redirect you to /_layouts/error.aspx.  This page takes a query parameter (ErrorText) with a more detailed description of the error that occurred.

After applying the workaround, ErrorText will always say “Path /_vti_bin/webresource.axd was not found”.

Workaround for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0

Only apply this workaround for sites that run under ASP.NET 2.0.  Sites running under ASP.NET 1.1 are not affected and do not need a workaround.

1. Navigate to the SharePoint installation directory at %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\template\layouts.
2. Create a new file called error.aspx in this directory with the following content: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Security.Cryptography" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Threading" %> <script runat="server"> void Page_Load() { byte[] delay = new byte[1]; RandomNumberGenerator prng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider(); prng.GetBytes(delay); Thread.Sleep((int)delay[0]); IDisposable disposable = prng as IDisposable; if (disposable != null) { disposable.Dispose(); } } </script> <html> <head runat="server"> <title>Error</title> </head> <body> <div> An error occurred while processing your request. </div> </body> </html>
3. Navigate to %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\isapi.
4. Make a copy of the web.config file at this location and rename it to web_backup.config
   1. Important: if you skip this step, the workaround may affect your ability to apply patches to your SharePoint installation at a later date
5. Edit web.config and add an httpHandlers section as shown: <configuration> <system.web> <webServices> <protocols> <remove name="HttpGet" /> <remove name="HttpPost" /> <remove name="HttpPostLocalhost" /> <add name="Documentation" /> </protocols> </webServices> <httpHandlers> <remove path="WebResource.axd" verb="GET"/> </httpHandlers> <customErrors mode="On"/> <trust level="Full" originUrl="" /> </system.web> </configuration>
6. Save your changes
7. Run iisreset /noforce

Verifying the workaround: For Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 installations, you can verify the workaround in two parts:

1. Browse to http://servername/_layouts/foo.aspx.  You should receive an error message stating “An error occurred while processing your request.”
2. Browse to http://servername/_vti_bin/webresource.axd.  You should receive an error message stating “Path ‘/_vti_bin/webresource.axd’ was not found.”

For more information:

Microsoft Security Advisory (2416728) – (Updated 9/24/2010) Vulnerability in ASP.NET Could Allow Information Disclosure Security Advisory 2416728 Released – Microsoft Security Response Center Blog Understanding the ASP.NET Vulnerability – Microsoft Security Research & Defense Blog Important: ASP.NET Security Vulnerability – Scott Guthrie’s Blog Frequently Asked Questions about the ASP.NET Security Vulnerability – Scott Guthrie’s Blog

Update on ASP.NET Vulnerability  - Scott Guthrie’s Blog

Security Advisory 2416728 - Workaround Update - Microsoft Security Response Center Blog