SharePoint Ramblings
10 October 2009 - Configure disaster recovery across SharePoint farms by using SQL Server log shipping
Full article - Configure disaster recovery across SharePoint farms by using SQL Server log shipping on Microsoft TechNet.
This is a great article on Microsft TechNet that goes into great detail on how to user SQL Server 2005 or 2008 log shipping to create a disaster recovery farm with a geographically dispersed data center for SharePoint 2007 SP2. With this recovery plan you will still have access to current search results.
This article covers the following:
- Introduction to log shipping
- Overview of Office SharePoint Server and log shipping
- Requirements for the secondary data center and farm
- Configuring the log shipping environment
- Failing over
- Considerations when testing failover
- Reconfigure log shipping or fail back
- Summary
Weather you have setup a disaster recovery plan yet or not this article is worth a read.
23 February 2009 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 to Boost SharePoint Development
Full article - Microsoft Visual Studio to boost SharePoint on InfoWorld.com.
InfoWorld has a good posting on things that we SharePoint developers can look forward to in the next release of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 will include better tools and integration with SharePoint though broad set of project templates, designers, and deployment infrastructure and will exposing an extensibility API that will continue to foster the ecosystem of third-party developers. These two enhancements will help any .Net developer more productive on the SharePoint platform. I am very much looking forward to this and getting my hands on Visual Studio 2010, hopefully later this year; hopefully it will enable better integration for debugging and deploying solutions.
17 December 2008 - Changing Subsite Text links and URL's in the Top Link Bar
If you have setup a subsite and after the fact realised to used the wrong name or simply want to change its name, you can do this through the "Title, description, and icon" link under site settings, but this does not update the navigation link/tab in the top link bar for you. In order to change the link text on the tabs in the top link bar all you have to do is:
- Click on Site Actions in the upper right hand corner of the parent site
- Click on Top link bar under Look and Feel
- Click on the edit icon of the link that you want to change
- Change the text under Type the description and click OK
That is all there is to it.
To change the default page of a subsite, the easiest way that I have found so far is to simple create a new link in the top link bar (follow the steps about with the exception of clicking on New Link instead of the edit icon), give it the URL that I want to use and then remove the original.
7 November 2008 - Error Opening Microsoft Office Documents from SharePoint Document Library and Internet Explorer Crashing
I am finding that a lot of my SharePoint users as well as myself are running into errors with editing Microsoft Office documents straight from a SharePoint Document Library. Most of the issues result in Internet Explorer crashing (both IE6 and IE7) and the error message preceding the crash is:
I have yet to find a good explanation of what is causing this to only effect Microsoft Office Documents, but the remedy is as follows:
- Do a search for "owssupp.dll". There should be more than one instance of it on the C:
- Delete all instances of this file from the hard drive (You will need administrator rights)
- Go to Control Panel> Internet Options > Advanced (tab) > Reset Internet Explorer settings (click Restore Defaults)
- Run the Office Diagnostic Tool (Start> Programs> Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office Diagnostic)
When the diagnostic tool completed, the first time that I followed the link to "Continue" took me to Microsoft to correct a problem, their fix was to enable the download of a file, I enabled the down load of the file and things worked fine for a while. I have just encountered the same problem again this afternoon and it was also reported by one of my users (and decided to post the fix). After running the Office Diagnostics tool, we were able to open and edit our Office Documents again. When I find out the cause of this issue I will post my findings.
7 November 2008 - Ballmer: Microsoft 'Interested' in Open-Source Browser - But I got more out of what he had to say about SharePoint
Full article - Ballmer: Microsoft 'Interested' in Open-Source Browser on CIO.com.
This article on Steve Ballmer's speach in Sydney, Australia, at the Power to Developers event cought my eye. I always find it interesting to heard what Miscrosfit has to say about the Open Source community; I did not find it all that enlightening but I did like what he had to say about the direction of SharePoint:
I am for anthing that makes developing with SharePoint easier.
23 July 2008 - Warning: SharePoint can create chaos if not used properly
Full article - Warning: SharePoint can create chaos if not used properly on Info World.
Info World has a posting about how SharePoint can create chaos if not used or implemented properly. Nothing groundbreaking there, but it is good to see that we are not alone trying to figure out how to best manage SharePoint usage in our organisation. We are always trying to figure out what is the best way to implement the next project, should we go custom app all the way or try and make the most of SharePoint and extend it where we find gaps. More often than not we take the second approach in the article, and use it as both our application and an intranet platform.
23 June 2008 - SharePoint Skills Shortfall
Full article - SharePoint Skills Shortfall on Redmond Developer News
Redmond Developer News has a good article on SharePoint and how though it is right now to find good talent or any talent with good SharePoint development under their belts. I have also heard this from several recruiters, who have positions to fill but not the candidates. Also internally, I know we are looking for people but they are just not out there... yet! Hopefully this will all change over the next year or so as more and more companies embrace SharePoint and train their existing developers in it. Since SharePoint leverages the .NET Framework, any .NET developer has the potential of becoming a great SharePoint developer, the hardest thing to over come is how SharePoint is implemented and how to get started developing for it as there is no direct build-in support in Visual Studio, again yet. Hopefully this will change and Microsoft will make it much easier for us to develop for SharePoint with all the tools we are so familiar with.
20 June, 2008 - SharePoint Ramblings
I have bee working with SharePoint for the last 6 months, and will be for the foreseeable future so I figure that I might as well post my findings and thoughts here to help those new to SharePoint and to get some collaboration on the more tricky areas of SharePoint. I’ll use this space to post useful links to articles and sites that I have found invaluable and write about my own experiences.
I originally start using SharePoint back in 2000/2001, created a few small sites and custom Web Parts. The next 6 or so years, I did very little SharePoint development, but had come in contact it with from an end user perspective several time, and was always pleasantly surprised how well it was evolving. When the opportunity arose to get back into the nitty gritty of SharePoint in November 2007, I jumped on it. I’ve primarily been using SharePoint for the typical Document Libraries, Task list and delivery of custom apps for task tracking and reporting purposes. Over the coming weeks, I will share my experiences over these past 6 months and going forward.