SharePoint Maze

It’s hard to imagine how SharePoint goes away

Is SharePoint going away? I do think this question must be title of this post (SharePoint is Going Away). Steve Gaitten, who is author of this post, should change his title like a question that needs to be considered currently. In the post, he gave his own statements regarding that SharePoint was going away after he had attended at Worldwide Partner Conference 2011.

As a SharePoint roamer on SharePoint maze, I would love to share my thought concerning SharePoint and Office 365 as well as Cloud computing that is coming up information & communication technology era.

Recapitulation on Steve’s post

Take a look at post (http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2011/07/26/sharepoint-is-going-away.aspx). He saw a few SharePoint exhibits at WPC 11 as well as knew the Microsoft SharePoint‘s earning revenue then he wrote that SharePoint was going away. Continuously, he mentioned in Office 365 that is cloud service of Microsoft and then introduced to Cloud Part for SharePoint, which supports Office online, finally.

If what he wrote is his thought

There are a few SharePoint exhibits at WPC does not mean SharePoint is going away.  Although I have never attended any Microsoft WPCs but I know that WPC is not for SharePoint only, it is for all of Microsoft partners there from Xbox, and Smartphone to big solutions, systems such as System Center, SQL Server, SharePoint.. Etc. You can also find the Microsoft‘s products here (http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/sitemap.aspx#Products) or Microsoft market place here (http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx). If I was SharePoint partner, I would not exhibit my own SharePoint applications at WPC and I need exhibition at SharePoint Conference rather than WPC because I need a focus of interest in SharePoint Conference where SharePoint partners, Business User, SharePoint geeks assemble and then experience and discuss what their own SharePoint applications can do. Exhibiting is actually advertisement so you need to aim at right market place in order to reduce time and budget. Let me give you a simple comparison.

We have the same budget to make exhibition but at the WPC, we just advertise to 5,000 exposures because there are a lot of diversified Microsoft partners there. Consequently, you just have 40-50 percent for your goal. Also, the capability of advertisement at WPC is low and it’s difficult to aim to audience. Would you aim to Xbox, Mouse devices audience? Take a look at the SPC column in the table, you will have 7,000 exposures because SPC is focused by big SharePoint community now, thus the focusing rate is 95 even 100 percent. It’s easy to advertise your SharePoint applications as well as aim to SharePoint community easily. I can conclude that he gave careless thought regarding going away just because of a few SharePoint exhibits at WPC.

How about Office 365? He said that Microsoft’s Business Division was being going forward Office 365. I agree with him about this but it does not mean Microsoft mainly focuses on Office 365. As you know, SharePoint 2010 is used by a lot of businesses around the world. The 100 million users or 20.000 new SharePoint users in everyday for the past five years are impression numbers on me. Let’s check this post out and then you will be impressed with those numbers. One question for you now: Is Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Right for SMBs? This answer is here (http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/hardware_software/228000484). “Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are downloading, trying, and adopting Microsoft’s SharePoint technology“. SharePoint 2010 is huge platform that is actually for Enterprise. So what collaboration solutions can I use for my own small business? It’s Office 365. Office 365 allows you to take your own collaboration environment on the cloud is to hide a truth that Microsoft want to be the king of collaboration solution in the world. You say Microsoft does not have competitor on the collaboration road now even that Oracle or IBM just has a lot of products with in the so-called “Collaboration Solution”.

Microsoft wants to conquer the collaboration solution from SMB to Enterprise areas and they are doing that. You know the importance of collaboration in Enterprise 2.0 nowadays, thus Microsoft just have a bit of worry if they let their competitors have playground for collaboration solution on small business boundary. Microsoft will spread out of collaboration solution, won’t it?

I can conclude releasing Office 365 does not mean SharePoint is going way. This is a part of strategy that Microsoft wants to spread, as well as be king of collaboration solution. I give you the following:

• What is Office 365?
• Why Office 365?
• Office 365 for small business
• All of Office 365 Stuffs

Check this blog if you want to learn Office 365 via visual images.

There are a lot of factors proving that SharePoint is not going away. Remember that I’m giving my own opponent thought from his thought assumption. I do not have time to prove SharePoint is not going away now, because of a lot of factors.

Have you wondered why I put the sentence “if what he wrote is his thought” before? In case what he wrote isn’t his thought, for what? Take a look at how SharePoint folks commented about the post “SharePoint is going away“.

“Thought provoking artice“

“Centainly thought provoking“

There are more comments around SharePoint community, Facebook, Twitter, Google+

Is it provoking article? Okay !!! Don’t mind it now. Remember that Steve is Director of Online Operations at Bamboo. He is excellent to perform the art of  marketing as my thought. He excellently drove readers to Cloud Part for SharePoint by writing. That’s domino effect he used. He just made a small effect on social and then this affect would be spreaded all over out of us. That’s why I want to say what he wrote isn’t his thought.

My views

There are thousands of SharePoint technical, vendors, outsource companies are working with SharePoint platform to make the best applications. It’s hard to imagine SharePoint is going away now even this will happen in the future. When I compared SharePoint 2010 and MOSS 2007, I recognized a lot of changes on those. Service application, which kicked Shared Service Provider out of SharePoint now is an example. Please read my funny post  in order to see what Shared Service Provider had made SharePoint administrator dizzy before Microsoft released SharePoint 2010. Have you ever thought MOSS 2007 would enable you to implement Enterprise Content Management? We suddenly got new awesome capabilities and functions in SharePoint 2010, even we were flabbergasted when we were hearing that SharePoint 2010 was only run on 64-bit hardware & software. I did think SharePoint 2010 was in the Microsoft Office System Plan when they were releasing MOSS 2007.  I mean Microsoft premeditated to restrict MOSS 2007. Consequently, SharePoint 2010 is so larger than MOSS 2007. It could make us upgrade from MOSS 2007 in order to experience a bunch of features on unified and cost-effective infrastructure that we heard many times from Microsoft. Maybe we are wondering the last of the SharePoint version. Will there be a SharePoint 18, SharePoint 2012, SharePoint 2014? Personally, I thought SharePoint 2010 is the last of SharePoint version. Maybe Microsoft  will focus on System Center that provide you automation IT process for  your SharePoint system in one place. Have you seen Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 that was just released? Or SharePoint administration perspective, you can’t use SharePoint backup even SQL Server to backup all component in your SharePoint infrastructure, but SCDPM 2010 can do that effectively.

SharePoint 2010 is a connective tool that Microsoft is employing to sell other products. At one time, I worked as a SharePoint infrastructure administrator at a export company in Vietnam and recognized that non-Microsoft mail system does not work SharePoint together effectively. In the company, we used MDaemon for SharePoint and then it was not stable. Or when it comes to security tool, what I encountered at that time is that Sysmantec conflicted with w3wp.exe. That’s why I thought SharePoint 2010 is a connective tool. I mean we will implement SharePoint effectively with Microsoft family. If you decide to use SharePoint 2010, you should consider other Microsoft products, such as Exchange Server, System Center, Forefront, Lync, Visual Studio or so on.

I’m not going to talk about what SharePoint 2010 is. I’m thinking of the SharePoing going away and how it goes. If SharePoint goes away, related Microsoft products will go away too.

Summing up

I do not have biased opinion for SharePoint though I’m SharePoint MVP. Even I will be willing to face SharePoint going away now. The one thing we must acknowledge that we are following Microsoft, thus we must face any disasters from Microsoft if any.

How does SharePoint go away? Could you answer this question? It’s so hard to imagine how SharePoint goes away. Don’t waste time to think about that because it’s not worth thinking. Let’s focus on your passion now.

Source: http://thuansoldier.net/?p=1659

21:45 GMT +7 July 29, 2011

Why did I encounter HTTP 500 Internal Server Error on SharePoint 2010?

I’m building SharePoint 2010 farm for customer from fresh installation. I encountered the error "HTTP 500 Internal Server error", which made me mad. However, above all, let me summarize a few stuffs on my working. SharePoint 2010 farm was deployed on Vmware with single-server deployment. After completely installing SharePoint 2010, as well as SharePoint 2010 Products and Configuration Wizard, I then suddenly encountered HTTP 500 Internal Server error. I rummaged through Internet in order to find any ways that I believe in. I probably knew that I was having ambiguous error because I have not had it yet.

This story today that I would like to tell you is like a experience, as well as my mistake so you can avoid.

I used separate SQL Server account to run SQL Sever service and create new setup user account to use for SharePoint 2010 installation. I installed SharePoint 2010 and ran SharePoint 2010 Products and Configuration Wizard without any problems. After finished installing, I ran SharePoint 2010 Central Administration at the first time in order to configure the first Web application but I got the error. I checked some resources out but could not figure out exactly problem. I enable Callstack (true), customerror (On) and debug (True) to view error but they made more complication. Or I used IISReset to attempt at resetting IIS Service but there was any changes. I started re-installing SharePoint 2010 but I configure to track SharePoint 2010 installation before.

What was the matter with me? I checked on the Event View tool but this made me disappointed. I wondered why I got it until I suddenly thought of permission of my accounts, which was used to install SharePoint 2010. I check the setup user account the following permission:

1. Domain user account
2. Member of the local Administrator group on SharePoint server
3. SQL Server login on the database server
4. securityadmin and decreator role on SQL Server

I realized my setup user account did not belong to local Administrators group. To add your account into local Administrators group, please to the following steps:

1. Click Server Manager > Configuration > Local Users and Groups.
2. Click Groups and then r-click Administrators > Properties.
3. In the Administrators Properties dialog, click Add and then add your setup account.

I used IISReset to reset IIS Web Server and then the error was resolved. Microsoft does not give the caution for lack of permission in setup user account. Consequently, I got ambiguous error that I did not find logs concerning it in Event View, IIS Web Server even SharePoint Logs (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS). I’m not sure my recognition is cause but I did it and it worked well. This is the first mistake regarding SharePoint 2010 installation I have. I hope everyone would not have like mine.

Some references you can check-out:

• http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E500.html
• http://blog-sharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/12/sharepoint-webconfig-how-to-show-full.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#5xx_Server_Error
• http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/500servererror.htm

Hope they helps everyone.

I wrote it here.

10:15 GMT+7 July 26, 2011

Backup/Restore SharePoint 2010 IIS Web Server Configuration through PowerShell

SharePoint 2010 is running on IIS 7. Web Server with several configuration information and settings of Application pools, Web applications that are indispensable to life of whether SharePoint environment or SharePoint administrator. Therefore, backing up SharePoint 2010 IIS Web Server configuration is such important administrative task that every SharePoint administrator have to do. Additionally, that’s a part of disaster recovery plan that you need to document carefully.

In this post, I will use PowerShell, which is the useful tool for Windows Server administrator, to backup IIS Web server configuration. You will employ Get-Help cmdlet, which was introduced in the previous post, as a guideline.

Above all, the one thing you have to do is to add IIS PowerShell snap-in into SharePoint Server through this post. However, you can import module WebAdministration that is supported for IIS PowerShell Administrative task. In case you do not know modules, you can use the following cmd:

Get-module -listAvailable

Now, suppose you do not know how to import module, you can use Get-Help, which is the powerful cmdlet in Windows PowerShell. Now, type the following cmd:

Get-Help *-module

In the list, you can know how to import module by using Import-Module cmdlet. If you do not fully know how to use Import-Module cmdlet, you can use the following cmd:

Get-Help Import-Module -example

After learning by above cmd, you will use the following cmd in order to import module.

Import-Module WebAdministration

Suppose again you do not know any cmds of WebAdministration module, you can employ Get-Command cmdlet, which is introduced in the previous post to list all cmds of WebAdministration.

Get-Command -PSSnapin WebAdministration

I’m sorry to say that I must use the word “cmd” (abbreviation) because firewall of hosting provider filters some keywords.

You continue to employ the Get-Help cmdlet by using the following cmd:

Get-Help Backup-WebConfiguration -example

You now know how to backup IIS Web Configuration through PowerShell by the following cmd:

Backup-WebConfiguration -Name SharePoint_IIS_Backup

You need to check the result by navigating the following path:

\Windows\System32\inetsrv\backup

 In order to restore your backup file, you can use the following cmd:

Restore-WebConfiguration -Name SharePoint_IIS_Backup

 Summing up

• Backing up/restoring IIS Web configuration and setting are important tasks that SharePoint administrator need to do. Also, they allow you to prevent disaster as well as make SharePoint alive.
• Get-Help is the powerful cmdlet that SharePoint PowerShell absolute beginner need to use fluently.

Where do you look for SharePoint Real world stuffs?

Where do you look for SharePoint Real world stuffs? Of course, you have been looking for the SharePoint Real world stuffs at SharePoint books, SharePoint workshops, SharePoint conferences, SharePoint talking event, SharePoint User Group or so on. However, not everyone can come to there because of many factors, thus you, who have not had a chance to take part in there, are wondering how to find SharePoint Real World topics.

In this post, I gonna try to recommend you some ways to find SharePoint Real World topics that I thought it would be useful for you.

Above all, according to Wikipedia, the real world is another term for reality that you have been doing everyday for your working on any fields.  For example, you intended to cook a delicious pizza, which is one of the favourite foods of your girl-friend. You looked for the best recipe books in order to learn step-by-step from there and then give your girl-friend the good pizza as you expected. But your girl-friend disliked after she had eaten. You were disappointed as well as you didn’t know why she disliked your pizza, which was made by you from the best recipe book. You were losing score on your girl-friend. Simple reason is that your recipe was suitable for your girl-friend. So how do you think the recipe book, which is used by you, is Real world? Personally, I thought it’s not Real World recipe because you were facing a truth that your girl-friend disliked your pizza although in this book, you saw the delicious pizza. It’s not reality thus I would like to say again that it’s not real world.

Real world is a truth that you are facing on. For SharePoint perspective, I would think so that. Where do you look for your issues that you hope anything will be done? Looking at the following:

1. SharePoint Social TechNet
2. SharePoint StackExchange
3. NBSP Dev – NBSP End-User – NBSP ITPro
4. …..etc…

I come to them everyday in order to learn from real world questions and then try to solve if I can. They are actually real world question as  my thought.

I do think that above areas are the real world stuffs for you. And you?

Get-Help cmdlet - The teacher of SharePoint PowerShell beginner

Windows PowerShell alows administrator to reduce as well as do administrative tasks, which may not be executed through GUI. How can I get started beginning PowerShell for SharePoint administration? Please come to this post in order to learn the levels of power SharePoint PowerShell. In this post, Joel drove us to the SharePoint PowerShell map, that we will go gradual steps.

However, the PowerShell world is huge that you may be got lost one the way. In this post, I will introduce one cmdlet, which helps you return information guide, description or concepts. It's Get-Help cmdlet that you, who is absolute SharePoint PowerShell beginner, need to know how to use.

I will try to do step-by-step for the beginner. Firstly, you need to find SharePoint 2010 snap-in in order to add into PowerShell.

Get-PSSnapin -Registered

Before doing PowerShell in SharePoint, you need to add SharePoint 2010 snap-in by the following command:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

(Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell is the name of SharePoint 2010 Snap-in).

One more command before digging Get-Help cmdlet is to list all supported commands in SharePoint 2010 snap-in

There are 543 cmdlets in the SharePoint 2010 snap-in. If you want to see this, please type the following command:

@(Get-Command -PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell).count

Now, I want to introduce Get-Help cmdlet, which is the best map that will drive you to SharePoint PowerShell world. Looking at the following command:

Get-Help Get- SpWebapplication

I take one cmdlet from the list of cmdlets out and then I combine it with Get-Help cmdlet. Now, looking at result

Get-Help cmdlet provides Name, Synopsis, Syntax, Description...etc for you. However, sometimes, you have been wondering how to learn from example. Don't worry !!! You just need to add -example after your command.

Get-Help Get-SpWebapplication -example

Let me say that the Get-Help cmdlet is really cool for SharePoint PowerShell absolute beginner. You see not only examples but also description of examples.

The last one that I want to introduce is wildcard in your command. Looking at the following command

Get-Help *-SpWebapplication

Is Get-Help cmdlet a teacher for SharePoint PowerShell absolute beginner? Yes, I think so.

Planning and Designing Service Application Architecture – Part 3

Hello everyone who is tracking my topic for level 100 ITPro, which is mentioned how to plan and design Service application architecture in order to meet business requirement.

In previous posts, you reached out to new capabilities of Service applications including flexibility, extensibility and scalability platform, which is like a tranquillizer to cure you of dizzy. The challenges from Shared Service Provider were resolved by improvements of  Service application in SharePoint 2010.

At this post, there are 4 basics that you need to consider and then implement in order to meet Service application security policy.

• Delegate administration for specific Service application
• Permission of Service application
• Restrict access to a Service application
• Approach Secure Store Service

Delegate administration for specific Service application

A good new capability of Service application in SharePoint 2010 is that you can delegate administration for specific Service application. If you pay attention to part 1, you will see that I delegated administration account for Managed Metadata Service so that this user account only had administration permission in Managed Metadata Service interface management. Before implementing Service application functions, you should document administration role, which is responsible for managing your Service application. Generally, you are responsible for this role but sometimes, you need to delegate for secondary administrator of Service application. Remember this administrative task is just for specific Service application.

Permission of Service application

SharePoint 2010 allows you to limit permission for specific Service application. This is a good feature for security policy. You can look at the following example.

Restrict access to a Service application

For restricting access to a Service application perspective, you can allow access to a Service application by adding service account to the Service application. If you need to dig into the best practice for using Service account, please check out this post from Todd, who is international SharePoint expert as well as SharePoint MVP.

In order to learn more about how to restrict access to a Service application, please come to TechNet

Approach Secure Store Service

This content might not be included in your plan but I would like to introduce it to you. Check out about what Secure Store Service is here. Now, before finishing this post, I would like to share the following table.

The last one I want to mention is isolated requirement that was introduced in part 2. Implementing isolated requirement is a part of security policy that you should consider.

To be continued…

Planning and Designing Service Application Architecture – Part 2

In previous post, I introduced to the new capabilities and functions of Service Applications in SharePoint 2010. Planning Service application architecture is one of processes that SharePoint admins need to know in order to optimize Service Application architecture effectively.

Before planning Service application architecture, you should take the understanding of new capabilities of Service Applications as well as how to use Default and Custom group. Why didn’t I mention how to configure each Service application? Because each Service application has its individual settings that serve your business solution so you should reach out them by learning how to configure particular Service applications from other resources after reading my topic.

In MOSS 2007, you only have SSP, which was called monolithic stuff, for serving functions for your business solution so you, as a SharePoint administrator, will not think of the concept of dependencies. Because of diversification of Service application box, some Service applications will be dependent on the other. For example, you need to deploy Social networking solution including People Search in your organization. You need to import user information in order to create the best use of People Search. Also as Enterprise Search, you should utilize it for your Social networking solution. One resource about Service application dependencies you should know is this post.

Business functions planning worksheet

After learning Service application dependencies, you start identifying your business requirement as well as Service applications, which are responsible for business functions. The big challenge you need to know is that you must translate business functions into Service application. Simple reason is that business user or customer couldn’t know capabilities of Service applications, thus they just show requirement. For example, when you gain to business requirements from customers, they won’t say any technique words because they don’t know them, thus they will think of common functions in corporate and then say you by business language. To translate from business languages into Service applications, you must learn fully capabilities and functionalities of Service Applications. Writing down business requirement in the following worksheet is to define Service applications effectively.

This worksheet is an example that you need to refer. As you see, business user expects a document management system as well as Search system in order to meet their goal. Service functionality in worksheet is capabilities of particular service application that you should write down in order to configure later. Or business users specify that they want to use more social computing functions, such as My Sites sites, you should think of User Profile Service application.

Define number of instance depending on isolated requirement

After making business functions planning worksheet, you start considering required isolation depending on department policy in your organization. For example, the Finance department needs to use separate Excel service for their required performance as well as they expect the financial analysis to be secured. In this case, you should create new service instance in order to meet finance department’s requirement.

For high-availability perspective, you should document critical services that must be performed. It means you should use multiple instances to ensure increased availability, which is a part of business continuity plan for your organization. Remember I’m talking about Service application, not entirely the huge Business Continuity Management picture. If you want to learn it, please refer to this post.

As a business functions planning worksheet, I strongly recommend writing down required isolation.

In my example, I wrote down following factors:

• Service application: after identifying service applications, you can put them into this worksheet.
• Critical: you need to define critical level including High, Normal and Low.  High level service is what you need to consider performance and security policy that your organization actually needs,
• Number of instance: this column allows you to know the number of instances for each Web application.
• Isolation: considering required isolation is to meet performance or security policy in your organization.

Also, you need to list proxy group that needs to associated with Web application by configuring Custom group.

Service application security policy

As I mentioned earlier that what I’m taking at this topic is level 100 ITPro, thus you should improve deeply knowledge at other great resources from SharePoint expert. Because I’m not SharePoint expert so I just share basics of SharePoint for everyone who is approaching SharePoint 2010, which is huge product for developer, administrator as well as business user.

When it comes to business requirement, the security policy is indispensable as I think personally. Next post, I will continue to share my thinking on security policy for Service application.

Planning and Designing Service Application Architecture – Part 1

In the 2^nd SharePoint Saturday Vietnam, I was honored to speak about how to plan and design Service Application Architecture in order to meet business requirement. This topic focused on the new capabilities of Service Application, which kicked Share Service Provider out of SharePoint 2010 and then “attacked” the design of logical Service Application architecture. I had intended to write  the basic of this process after finished speaking there, I haven’t had time to do what my expectation is calling me until now.

I’m humbled to say that the topic is level 100 ITPro and also I recommend that you should learn from great resource that I will put at the last topic.

I want to split my topic into 4 parts:

• What Share Services Provider made SharePoint administrator dizzy.
• Adventuring Service Applications in SharePoint 2010.
• Planning Service Application for business requirement
• Designing logical Service Application Architecture.

Share Services Provider made SharePoint administrator dizzy

I would like to invite you to go back in time  to 4 years ago when we were welcoming the new capabilities and improvement in MOSS 2007 as well as hearing “good-bye SharePoint Portal Server 2003” from IT enthusiasts. I spent around 30 minutes in order to rummage information of Shared Service in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 through Internet which is indispensable to IT geeks. I know that you were happy after you heard about the release of MOSS 2007, which had a number of great improvements in comparison to  those of SharePoint Server Portal 2003. Did you want to forget Shared Service at that time? It looks as if we were Italia football fanatics, who loved Juventus FC as well as Del Piero, Pavel Nedved, Buffon until one event, which was Calciopoli, created a stir among football folks. Then you would want to forget the players and then switch to Premium League? “Farewell, farewell, fare well Shared Service….” Just kidding…Am I reminding you of Shared Service Provider in MOSS 2007? Of course, I want you to think of it again. Take your time in order to revise Shared Service Provider again.

• MOSS Architecture and Shared Services
• What is a Shared Service Provider?
• All of SSP in Microsoft Technet

How does SSP make SharePoint administrator dizzy? Ok, nothing is perfect. I mean that there are pros and cons in SSP. Maybe, I should say that pros are what you like as well as cons are what you dislike. As you know, MOSS 2007 provided the SSP to deploy a number of productivity services, such as Business Data Catalog, which allows you to connect to external system, or Excel Service, Office SharePoint Server Search etc.  Do you think that SSP is monolithic? I mean that all your productivity services must be available to all Web application. In other words, you can’t have a separate service for one Web application. For example, if your Finance department wants access your financial analysis, revenues by using Excel Service and Marketing department needs to access to BDC in order to connect Dynamic CRM, you must provide each department employee with access to both in the farm. This wastes resources and limits the security functionality in your organization.

You are beginning to be uncomfortable after listening what I mentioned. But let me keep showing what SharePoint administrator should know and acknowledge the truth of SSP. You only have one SSP for each farm, which means you manage a single of failure. If your SSP fail, all users will lose all functionalities of SSP. It’s a truth that you should acknowledge.

“What’s elseeeeee?”  Please calm down!!! The last one is that you can’t deploy granular services to individual business group, thus you will give services to users who do not need.

In previous section, you knew what SSP made SharePoint administrator dizziness. In this section, I will give you tranquillizer, which will cure you of dizzy. Would you like it?

Above all, SharePoint 2010 provides more Service Applications than SSP and a set of great functions for your organization regarding business solutions. The following information will help you to define functionality in order to put it into planning worksheet, which I will share later. However,  I recommend that you should learn it cautiously because  I only give you a brief summary as follows

• Access Services: it allows you to view, edit and interact with Microsoft Access 2010 database in a browser.
• Business Connectivity Service: you can use it in order to connect your SharePoint system to external system, such as Dynamic CRM, Dynamic AX, Oracle.
• Excel Service: Viewing and Interacting with Microsoft Excel files in a browser is one of benefits, which needs to be used when you go out of office.
• Manage Metadata Service: this new service application allows you to manage Term, Keywords. Also, Manage Metadata Service is used to publish Content Type across site collection. In short, Manage Metadata Service is actually service application for your Enterprise Content Management solution.
• PerformancePoint: Presenting interactive and visual dashboard are what your boss would expect. Also, PerformancePoint allows you to implement KPI (Key Performance Indicator), Scorecard and report, which are necessary to operate your organization effectively.
• Search: Implementing Search in order to find your content is a part of Enterprise Content Management solution. Also, Search allows you to find people inside organization.
• Secure Store Service: it provides single sign-on authentication to access multiple applications or services.
• Usage and Heath Data Collection: collects farm wide usage and health data and provides the view various usage and health reports. As a SharePoint administrator, it is  actually service application that you must consider.
• User Profile: It allows you to implement Social Network by using My Site, Profile page, Social Tagging and other social features.
• Visio Graphics Service: you can view Microsoft Visio diagram in Web browser by using this service application.
• Web Analytics: it provides Web Service interfaces.
• State Service: provides temporary storage of user session data for SharePoint Server components.
• Word Automation Services: performs automated bulk document conversions.
• Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service: this service application tracks subscription IDs and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode. This is a new functionccalled Multi-Tenant, which allows you to configure to share data across Tenants or to partition data for each tenant. It is only implemented through Windows PowerShell.

SharePoint Foundation 2010, which is free version, only has 2 available Service Applications: Usage and Health Data Collection and Business Connectivity Service.

Before deploying Service Applications, you need to understand components of Service application. There are 3 components that you should document once planning your Service Application architecture.

• Service Application Connection (aka Proxy): When you create a service application, you create a service application connection, which is known as a proxy. I mean that a proxy is automatically created for a service application while the service application is created via Central Administration. One thing you should know is that a proxy is a virtual link used to connect Web application to Service application.
• Service Application Proxy Group: The benefit for SharePoint administrator is that Service application is grouped together through proxy group. There are two types of proxy group including Default and Custom. By default, all service applications you create are in Default group. I mean that all users in Site collections  of Web application that consume services from this group. Otherwise, you can create Custom group in order to select your service that you want for a specific Web application.
• Database: In MOSS 2007, each SSP has 2 databases including SSP database and search database. Because of its inflexibility, SSP database seems to reduce administrative tasks for DBAs, however you can’t use separate database in case you need to implement security policy for your organization.  One of the big challenges for DBAs, who are familiar with MOSS 2007, is the larger number of database that are created and associated with each Service Application.  However not every Service Application stores its data.

Right now, it’s time for me to give you the tranquillizer. Is Service Application better than SSP? I would like to compare Service Application with SSP but let me do it later. You will be amazed at my comparison. Firstly, you can deploy granular services, delivering only the services that are requested for each Web application. For example, you have 2 department Web applications that are using the same Default group. However, the Finance department needs to secure their information, such as revenue, exchange rate, financial analysis and so on, you definitively can do it by creating new instance Service Application and then associate it with Finance department.

Administrators will be happy if their infrastructure or something is centralized in order to manage effectively. SharePoint 2010 provides effective local management by delegating administration of Service Applications via Central Administration. I mean you can delegate a specific user as Service Application administrator in security scenario as  the following demonstration image. I’m just permitted to access Application Management namely Managed Metadata Service.

To improve performance, you can deploy multiple instances of a service application for the same Web Application. For example, your manager want to improve Excel render in Web browser, you can create new instance of Excel Service in the same Web application that is connected with existing Excel Service connection.

SharePoint 2010 allows you to share Service Applications across farm. Using this new functionality is to reduce your resource and centralize solution in one place. For example, suppose your organization belongs to Enterprise group, thus you have 4 farms for different goals, such as publishing content solution, Collaboration or Department. If you create new instance of Service Application for each farm, you will find it difficult to manage Service applications effectively. As I mentioned, you can centralize cross-farm capable Service application.

Not all Service Application can be shared across farm. When do you share Service applications across farm? Please consider the following reasons:

• You want to minimize management.
• You want to centralize Service application to manage easily.
• Some Service applications need to be shared because of organization-wide policy, such as you want to centralize term, information by using Managed Metadata Service, which should be shared across farm regarding various farms.

The last one thing you should know is extensibility that you can utilize in order to deploy third-party Service Applications on SharePoint environment, such as Microsoft Project Server 2010.

It still remains new functionality that is Multi Tenancy. You can refer to great resources:

• Rational Guide to Multi Tenancy with SharePoint 2010
• In a Nutshell: SharePoint 2010 Service Applications

Summing up

Service Applications is like a buffet that you can select what you want to eat in dining-table. SSP is monolithic while Service Application is clay. It’s hard to model monolithic things but you can shape a clay depending on you requirement.

Personally, I think that releasing Service Application is one of Microsoft’s strategy because you, who are SharePoint 2007 Administrator, will be interested in functionality of Service Application that not only resolve your issues but also leverage businesses for your organization. Now, I know that you will consider it carefully and then upgrade to SharePoint 2010.

Next part, we will discuss together how to plan Service Application architecture as well as design in order to meet business requirement.

Please bookmark my blog in order to track this topic (http://thuansoldier.net/).

How can students learn SharePoint 2010

I got a lot of email messages from students who want to learn SharePoint 2010. In Vietnam, investing hardware to learn SharePoint 2010 is difficult because hardware requirement from Microsoft is high. It doesn’t mean they can’t learn SharePoint 2010.

In this post, I want to share a way so that you are student who want to learn SharePoint 2010. At one time, I learned SharePoint 2010 by reading SharePoint 2010 book and then imagined what I had read.

Because you want to learn SharePoint Server 2010 in production environment thus you must prepare 64-bit Windows Server 2008, 64-bit SQL Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

Looking at hardware and software requirement to install and run SharePoint Server 2010 at here.

If you have condition to invest hardware, don’t hesitate to do this. But if you have no condition, you can use Microsoft Virtual Labs.

SharePoint Server 2010

• TechNet Virtual Lab: Developing KPIs and Scorecards with SharePoint 2010 PerformancePoint Services
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management Visual Upgrade
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Advanced Search Security
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Configuring Search UIs
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Connectors & Using the Business Data Connectivity (BDC) Service
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Federated Search
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Linguistics
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Monitoring & Systems Management
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: PowerShell for Search
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Query API and Query Languages
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Relevancy and Ranking
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Search Reporting and Analytics
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Server 2010: Upgrading SharePoint 2010 to FAST Search for SharePoint
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Backup and Restore in SharePoint Server 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Business Connectivity Services
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Business Continuity Management in SharePoint Server 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring Remote Blob Storage FILESTREAM Provider for SharePoint Server 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring Tenant Administration on SharePoint Server 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Configuring User Profile Synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Enterprise Search
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Introduction to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Monitoring SharePoint 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: New IT Pro Features in SharePoint Server 2010
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Performance Management
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint Designer for IT Pros
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM – IT PRO – Business Continuity Management
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM – IT PRO – Installing and Configuring
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM – IT PRO – Service Applications
• TechNet Virtual Lab: SharePoint RTM – IT PRO – Upgrade
• TechNet Virtual Lab: Windows PowerShell and SharePoint 2010

Microsoft stores all Microsoft products and technologies at Microsoft Virtual Lab for everyone who want to configure via Microsoft’s infrastructure. Your computer must connect to Internet.

Also, you can read SharePoint 2010 book and then try to remember what you read. Although it’s difficult to remember because you must practice to fully remember.

One great resource : SharePoint 2010 for Students from Rand

As a result, if you decided to follow SharePoint product and technology, you should invest for your future.

Good luck.

13:15 GMT +7 June 2, 2011

Fully configure host header for Web application (Step-by-Step)

Host header (aka domain names or host names) let you assign more than one site to a single IP address on a IIS Web server. In SharePoint context, may you need individual host-named such as http://thuansoldier.net instead of http://thuansoldier/.

When you create new Web application and then create new site collection, you will make difficulties  for end user. They don’t want complicated URL with port number. In this post, I will configure host header via DNS and IIS 7.5. in order to facilitate URL of Web application.  All of them are visual but you can use Windows PowerShell to do this rapidly.

Create new Web application

Open Central Administration > Application Management > Manage web applications (under Web Applications). Click New in Ribbon.

I will select Classic Mode Authentication because I haven’t configured Kerberos yet for fully configuring Claim-based Authentication. Under Name, you can type name of Web application. You should name it simply to remember and manage.  Please notice under Port and Host Header. Because I want to facilitate URL for end-user thus I select port 80. I continue to type URL: portal.ict24h.net.

At Security Configuration settings, I will keep by default all. Under URL at Public URL, I delete port 80 and keep so as below image.

I use exist application pool. Under Database Name at the Database Name and Authentication, I reduce name of Content database because GUID is so complicated. This make you manage content database effectively.

Now, you can select service application connection and then click OK to create new Web application.

Register the host header in DNS Server

In my DNS server, I create new host A.

Type host name under Name and IP of Web server. Click Add Host.

Configure host header for a Web application

Above all, you check Web applications in Central Administration or IIS Website. Because I will do configuration in IIS thus I will check exist Web application in IIS.

In IIS Manager, right click in Web application that needs to be configured host header and then click Edit Binding. In Site Bindings dialog box, click Edit. At IP address option, select IP address of DNS Server. Under Host name, type your host name. My domain name is ict24h.net thus I want to use my SharePoint site with this domain name. Click OK.

Open Central Administration > Application Management, under Web Applications , click Configure alternate ccess mappings. Verify that the URL for the default zone is set correctly.

However, when you open portal.ict24h.net whether in Internet Explore 8 or Mozilla Firefox 3.5, you will encounter 404 Page Not Found error. What’s up? Yes, you haven’t created Site collection in your Web application yet. Thus you will encounter this error.

At Central Administration, click Application Management > Create site collections (under Site Collections). Please notice your Web application that you just created namely portal.ict24h.net.

Then configure some information. Open your site collection with URL portal.ict24h.net.

I want to share basics in this post because I saw some questions about it in SharePoint 2010 – Setup, Upgrade, Administration and Operation.

I hope this post helps everyone.

2:10 GMT +7 June 22, 2011

Is it necessary to have many customizations in your SharePoint 2010?

I suddenly think about customization in SharePoint 2010. To be honest, I haven’t been SharePoint developer yet thus I can’t talk about programming or something which mentioned in programming technique area.

Is it necessary to have many customizations in your SharePoint 2010? My brother mentioned in an ERP Oracle he implemented in the morning. We discussed what would happen when there were many customizations in a software product? I know that in order to meet business requirement, we need to customize SharePoint 2010, but what do you think of corollary of many customizations? SharePoint is such a huge product that you can use it for your core business such as BI, sales dashboard, record management..etc. Let’s think about my question as a result.

Corollary makes you “dizzy”

SharePoint 2010 needs to be considered as a long-term strategy. Simple reason is that it’s difficult for you to realize what SharePoint 2010 will bring to your organization within short time. If you think that it’s deployed for your short-term strategy, don’t implement it immediately. Is out-of-the-box SharePoint 2010 sufficient for your business requirement? Depending on your SharePoint 2010 skills, you can utilize maximum features that SharePoint 2010 provides. I saw that many companies want to customize SharePoint 2010 without using out-of-the-box features. Even, with my current project that I’m responsible as a consultant, they haven’t utilized available features, and so they have been encountered a little complication. They hired SharePoint freelancers and requested for many customizations.  I just give you one true example from this project. When they wanted to have a list of all countries in the world, they asked SharePoint developer, but I queried “Why didn’t you use Choice list in SharePoint 2010?”. They misused SharePoint developer and make customized features that they could do it by clicking mouse. Let’s revise the introduction to SharePoint 2010 from Microsoft. They said that SharePoint 2010 was no-code solution. I agree with this.

When you have many customizations in your SharePoint 2010, have you ever wondered if SharePoint developers or administrators would retire from your organization after working for a long time. Yes, it’s corollary. You will hire sharepointer to continue to work for your SharePoint environment. But when they come to, they will be “dizzy” with many custom code in solution. Do you think that they can resolve or continue to manage for your SharePoint environment well? I’m not sure about this. Return my true example, when the previous developer had retired, the project manager would continue to hire new developer in order to continue to develop until feature but the new developer was “dizzy” because of customizations. Although I don’t have much programming knowledge, I know that not every developer has similar programming style. I mean they have different code styles depending on their skills. One can develop with 5-10 line of codes, but another one can do it with 10 – 20 line of codes, thus it’s difficult to fix or manage codes from previous SharePoint developer if you don’t have broad and deep understanding of SharePoint programming.

Now, I want to share my viewpoint by mentioning the patches of Microsoft. Yes, do you think that your customizations will be fit patchs from Microsoft? Are you sure about the compatibility? If there are any issues, who will resolve your customizations? Will you remove them and then build new customizations or find a SharePoint expert? Or will you be subordinate to outsourcing company? I mean that you will consider support from outside company.

Try to reduce your worries

To reduce your worries, I think you should consider what I mentioned earlier. You can think of following factors:

• Retirement
• Different programming style
• Patch from Microsoft
• Impact of core business

You can learn or find a good SharePoint consultant who can know out-of-the-box SharePoint 2010 as far as possible. They will utilize them without code in order to meet business requirement effectively. Don’t misuse SharePoint developer for your customizations.

You can refer to additional resources:

• Is it necessary to customize your SharePoint implementation in order to mature it?
• Where to draw the line between SharePoint Customisation and SharePoint Development – from Jeremy Thake
• When to Customize SharePoint 2010 and Some Reasons for Doing It – from O’Reilly Answers
• SharePoint, fighting the business, getting it right, doing it right – from TechNet Forums
• You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em – from Lori Gowin
• To Customize or Not to Customize—That is the Question (not SharePoint-specific) – from Jack Boyer

13:45 GMT +7 June 27, 2011

What is happening out there now in the SharePoint stadium?

As you know that Microsoft SharePoint Team told about SharePoint Service pack 1 2 weeks ago. This made everyone, who have been working with SharePoint 2010 eager for experience. Like the king of all kinds of sport, SharePoint attracts a tremendous number of its fans around the world to the huge stadium where Microsoft would be likely to bring its excited followers many promising spectacular scores ever made in history. But what we are encountering are confusion, complication and absurdity. I’m talking about SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1,  not any unfair soccer game or any biased referee on the playfield

Perhaps, everybody doesn’t want to see ambiguous stuffs like those at Calciopoli 2006, which created a stir among football folks. In the SharePoint 2010 world, have you seen vague stuffs from Service Pack 1 package yet? I don’t intend to compare Calciopoli with the SharePoint 2010, but I just want to make it funny in order to start taking everyone come to what is hot in SharePoint 2010 community.

Do you want to kick the June CU ball after kicking Service Pack 1 ball?

We are amazed at the Microsoft SharePoint Team’s recommendation. They said that we need to install June 2011 CU immediately after the installation of Service Pack 1.

It is strongly recommended to install the June 2011 Cumulative Update immediately after the installation of Service Pack 1. The June Cumulative Update includes several important security and bug fixes that are not included Service Pack 1.

The size of Service pack 1 is 387 MB while June 2010 CU is around 985MB. Looking through on Facebook, Twitter, I saw many comments and complaints about that they were complaining at Service Pack 1 and June CU. They wonder why the June CU is much lager in size than that of SP1.

Another one said that he took an awfully long time to install June CU1 and then he failed with June 2010 CU. It looks as if he felt disappointed due to the boring football match, which he spent money  just to get failures.

We have been wondering why they made this recommendation. Let’s look at Microsoft’s explanation:

• SharePoint 2010 SP1 contains all SharePoint updates published through the April 2011 Cumulative Update in addition to other fixes that were applied specifically to SP1 during its development. SP1 is a baseline, and that baseline is tied to our Service Pack Life Cycle Policy. We recommend applying SP1 to your SharePoint environment because it resets the baseline for your entire SharePoint environment, and prepares your environment for future releases such as the June CU.
• The June Cumulative Update is the first Post-SP1 build released to customers. It contains new fixes to issues raised through various escalation channels and through our support organization. The June CU is based on Service Pack 1, but it adds new updates to some of (not all) the packages that SP1 installs.

Are you dizzy with their explanations? We have around 550 MB of the SharePoint Server 2010 installation source, and 385 MB of Service Pack 1 as well as over 950 MB of June CU 2011. Incredible !!! I must download over 1,2 GB for my SharePoint 2010  environment at this time. Maybe I need tranquillizer. Look at Harbar‘s complaint and warning.

In short, are we watching a boring football match?

What the fans as well as organization board talked about this football match.

The SharePoint 2010 football match is different from the fan’s expectation and let’s view their comments as well as viewpoints of the committee.

• Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download – Microsoft SharePoint Team
• SharePoint 2010 SP1 and the June Cumulative Update for SharePoint 2010 – The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team
• Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 is here – Wictor Wilen (SharePoint MVP, MCM SharePoint 2010)
• Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 What Do You Install the answer – Dave Coleman (SharePoint MVP)
• SharePoint 2010 SP1 Released–Office 365 Launch – Dave Milner
• SPDeletedSite – quick overview of SP1’s improved recycle bin
• SharePoint 2010 Build Numbers
• Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products documentation
• Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 whitepaper
• SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 Now Available–What’s New? – Andrew Connel (SharePoint MVP)
• SharePoint 2010 SP1 – Site Recycle Bin – Chakkaradeep Chandran
• List of issues fixed in SharePoint 2010 SP1 – Chakkaradeep Chandran
• SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 PowerShell Changes – Gary Lapointe (SharePoint MVP)
• SharePoint 2010: Service Pack 1 Feature Recovering Site From Recycle Bin – Alpesh Nakar
• The Mystery Behind SharePoint 2010 Patching – Jie (MSFT)
• So What the Fuss? – Service Pack 1 and June 2011 CU for SharePoint 2010 – HarBar (SharePoint MVP, MCM SharePoint 2010)
• 10 Best Practices and Recommendations for SharePoint 2010 SP1 and June 2011 CU – Joel Oleson (SharePoint Hero)

Have interesting things in SharePoint 2010 SP1 in the great summer.

Understanding of SharePoint 2010 Stand-alone installation

Some folks misunderstood about Stand-alone installation in SharePoint 2010. I try to write this post in order to explain this concept to everyone who has just started installing SharePoint 2010. This post is for SharePoint 2010 beginner who actually want to understand SharePoint 2010 infrastructure carefully.

As you know, there are 3 types of  farm deployment: Stand-alone, single-server farm, multi-server farm and virtual environment but I just mention in stand-alone at this post.

The concept of stand-alone is that you will install AIO (all-in-one) installation SharePoint 2010 and infrastructure components in a single server. In a single server, you will install following server roles:

• Active Directory Server role
• DNS Server role
• WFE/Application Server role
• Database Server role

In other words, all component will be installed in a single server.

This installation is used for trainer or developer. Also, you should use installation for test and development environment.

At one time, when Microsoft released SharePoint 2010 RTM and I couldn’t install SharePoint 2010 with SQL Server 2008 Express in a single computer. You can refer to this post.

I hope this post make someone understand stand-alone installation.

11:00 GMT +7 June 13, 2011

Apply master page for all subsites in SharePoint 2010

I’m working with SharePoint 2010 for pilot testing for one customer and responsible for designing Intranet sites, making solutions by using out-of the-box SharePoint 2010, such as Collaboration, Document Management, Record Management..etc

When I open the top-level site, it’s really cool. However, the subsites aren’t inherited from the top-level site. Now, I want to share the tip in order to resolve this issue. Firstly, you must active SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature to control master pages and page layouts in order to serve your branding. To do this, at the top-level site, click Site Action > Site Settings > Site colection features (under Site Collection Administration).

Back to Site Settings page, click Manage site features (under Site Action).

Note: If you haven’t actived SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature yet before activating SharePoint Server Publishing feature, you will encounter error. Please distinguish between them carefully.

Right now, open you Site Settings page of the top-level site and check under Look and Feel. There are some changes at here. Click Master page under Look and Feel.’

You can use not only default master page but also custom master page. Select Reset all subsites to inherit this site master page setting.

Done!!!

21:50 GMT +7 June 25, 2011