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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