May 02 2013

SharePoint 2010 How to enable Email Notification on Issue Tracking List

Category: Microsoft,SharePoint,SharePoint 2010,Technology — Kamlesh @ 7:33 pm

SharePoint comes with a out-of-the-box Issue Tracking list template.  A sample Issue Tracker list is shown below:

Sample Issue List in SharePoint 2010

Sample Issue List in SharePoint 2010

Here is a simple task to be accomplished in SharePoint.  As soon as a new request is assigned to a User, an email should be sent to the user intimating about the task.

You try to look for email setting under List Settings -> Advanced Settings:

"Issue

List Settings -> Advanced Settings -> List Setting does not show Email options

But the Email setting for notification is missing in this screen.  This behavior is by design. The Email Notification is relied to Outgoing E-Mail settings in Central Administration.

To fix this, you need to launch Central Administration, go to System Settings and select Configure outgoing e-mail under the Email and Text Messages (SMS) section. This will show the below screen:

Outgoing Email Settings in Central Administration

Outgoing Email Settings in Central Administration

Based on your environment setting, enter the 3 values in the above screen. Click OK to save your settings.

Once done, go back to your Issue Tracking list and navigate to its List Settings -> Advance Settings option.  You will now find the Email Notification setting here.

Email Notification section is enabled after making changes in Central Administration

Email Notification section is enabled after making changes in Central Administration

Enable the email notification option and save the details. Next time, when you create a new Issue, it will send the email to the respective Assigned To user.

Notification bar will indicate that Email Messages will be sent to Assigned To person

Notification bar will indicate that Email Messages will be sent to Assigned To person

As shown above, while creating a new Issue, SharePoint will provide you notification that this List is email enabled.

 

Apr 05 2013

SharePoint Color Palette Tool

Category: Microsoft,SharePoint,SharePoint 2013,Technology,User Experience — Kamlesh @ 11:18 am

Good News for SharePoint Designers!  Microsoft recently released SharePoint Color Palette Tool,which can be freely downloaded from this Microsoft Official Download Page.  This tool will come handy to pick up right color codes and see the preview, before you start applying the CSS to your actual SharePoint site.  The default colors shown as part of this tool are more related to SharePoint 2013 User Interface.

SharePoint 2013 Color Palette Tool

Screenshot of SharePoint Color Palette Tool (Click to enlarge)

To install/work with this tool, you need not require SharePoint server installation.  However, the system should have .NET Framework 4.5 and Internet Explorer 8 or higher browser.

Download: SharePointColorPaletteTool_Setup.msi (1.14 MB)

Apr 02 2013

The workbook cannot be opened – SharePoint 2010 (error fix)

Category: Excel,Microsoft,SharePoint,SharePoint 2010,Technology,Troubleshooting — Kamlesh @ 9:53 pm

While publishing a Excel Sheet from Microsoft Excel 2010 to my local development SharePoint Server 2010, I got this error on the browser – “The workbook cannot be opened“.

Quick steps to publish Excel data into SharePoint: File -> Save & Send -> Save to SharePoint -> (Select your location) – (Use Publish Options to select the scope of excel data)

Workbook cannot be opened error in SharePoint 2010

By the way, I used the instructions in Chapter 1 of Real World SharePoint 2010 book to build my SharePoint 2010 virtual machine for development.  I guess I created multiple AD users (sp_farm, sp_serviceapp, sp_apppool,  SQL_service) and messed up with some settings. Let us forget the past and move ahead to troubleshoot the above error.

  1. Quickly searched Internet and got multiple ways to resolve this problem.  I was not sure which one will suit my need.
  2. Thought why don’t I first get the exact issue in the log file.  Went through the Log file in SP_ROOT\Logs folder, but it didn’t help.
  3. Got an idea of trying verbose logging for Excel Services.  SharePoint 2010 Central Administration -> Monitoring section -> (Reporting Section) Configure diagnostic logging . Selected Excel Services Application and changed the two drop-down values to verbose.
  4. Performed the action of save/publish from Excel again to repeat the error with additional logs.
  5. This time I managed to get the below error message in the Log File: Error initializing Safe control – Assembly:Microsoft.Office.SharePoint.ClientExtensions
  6. This error is well documented on this Microsoft KB983007. You will get a hint here that this is due to security issue with your Managed Accounts setup. Meanwhile, do not forget to revert back the verbose logging settings that you performed in earlier Step 3.
  7. My next task was to find out the Managed Account which is responsible for Excel Services.  To to this, I went back to Central Administration -> Security section -> Configure managed accounts option.
  8. Clicked on Edit option against each account and reviewed the farm components using this account. I found that WROX\sp_serviceapp account was using Excel Services Application.
    Identify managed account which is using SharePoint Services
  9. My next task was to review the security settings of sp_serviceapp user in SQL Server.
  10. I launched SQL Server Management Studio and connected to the default instance which is used by SharePoint.
    Review SQL Server Logins
  11. Reviewed its permission as shown below:
    SQL Server Login Properties
  12. Noticed that this account didn’t had permission to WSS_Content_3000 and WSS_Content_Team databases, which were the actual Content Databases used by the Web Applications on which I was trying the Excel save/publish operation.
  13. Went ahead and assigned db_owner and public roles for both these databases for the user sp_serviceapp.
    SQL Server login - gave permission to SharePoint managed account
  14. Save the above changes by click OK button. (No reboot / iisreset is required)
  15. Tried the Excel save/publish operation once again and it worked now!  Below is the expected result:
    Published Excel Sheet

I hope that some of the above steps that I shared above will help you to resolve similar errors in your environment.

 

Apr 01 2013

How to install Loopback adapter in Windows 8

Category: SharePoint,Technology,Virtualization,Windows,Windows 8 — Kamlesh @ 6:47 pm

I recently installed Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 8 for networking between by Hyper-V host and client Virtual Machines.  Below is the step-by-step guide to setup Loopback Adapter in Windows 8.

My environment consists of:

  • Hardware – ASUS Laptop, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD
  • Software – Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (Hyper-V role enabled)
  • Networking – Wired LAN and Wireless LAN (I want to network between Host and Client without connecting the wired/wireless networks)

Before I begin with the steps, let me inform you that Microsoft Loopback Adapter is now renamed as Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter in Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012.   I am not sure why did Microsoft changed the name of this adapter now.  This KB article gives the official details about the name change.

Step by Step Instructions:

  1.  Launch the Add Hardware Wizard from control panel.  Being a keyboard user, I prefer Win+R (for run command window) and type hdwwiz command.
    Command to run Add Hardware Wizard in Windows 8
  2. This will bring up the Add Hardware wizard.
    The starting screen of Add Hardware Wizard in Windows 8
  3. Click Next, to Continue.
    Add Hardware automatically or Manually
  4. Select “Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)” as shown above and click Next.
    Select the type of Hardware you are Installing
  5. In the above screen, select “Network adapters” option (as shown above) and click Next.
    Select Network Adapter screen
  6. In the “Select Network Adapter” screen, select Microsoft as the Manufacturer and then choose “Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter” and click Next.
    Confirmation before starting the install of Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter
  7. The above confirmation screen will appear.  Click the Next button to continue.
    Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter installation in progress
  8. The installation step proceeds by showing the file copy progress bar indicator (as shown above)
    Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter installed successfully
  9. The above is the last screen of Add Hardware wizard, which indicates that the Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter is installed successfully.

Once these steps are completed, you can go ahead and assign a local IP address to this adapter.  I am using this Lo0pback Adapter to use Remote Desktop Client to a SharePoint Virtual Machine which is running in Hyper-V.  I will be sharing more details about this in my future blog post.

 

Mar 14 2013

Database Size Ranges Revisited – Small Medium Large

Category: Microsoft,SharePoint,SharePoint 2010,SharePoint 2013 — Kamlesh @ 12:21 am

Are you planning to migrate/upgrade your database and the DBA asks this question “What is the size of your Database? Is it small, medium or large?“.

When SharePoint 2010 got released, I had written a blog post about this one here.  Microsoft has updated this with a very minor revision as part of SharePoint 2013 documentation:

Size Range in Databases

Size
Size Range
Remarks
Very Small Up to 100 megabyte (MB)Introduced newly in SharePoint 2013 documentation
Small1 gigabyte (GB) or lessSharePoint 2013 / 2010
MediumUp to 100 GBSharePoint 2013 / 2010
LargeUp to 1 terabyte (TB)SharePoint 2013 / 2010
Extra LargeMore than 1 terabyte (TB)SharePoint 2013 / 2010

This not only applies to SQL Server database, but is valid for any other databases like Oracle, IBM DB2, MySQL.

This article is related to Relational Databases (RDBMS).  Big Data is not kept in mind while writing this post :-)

 Reference: Technet article on SharePoint 2013 database

Mar 11 2013

STEP-IN Office 2013 event at Bangalore

Category: Events,Office,Office 2013,SharePoint 2013 — Kamlesh @ 6:55 pm

BDOTNET Community event - STEP-IN Office 2013

BDOTNET community did something different this time by coming up with a Full Day session on the latest Office 2013 product/technology family. This event was titled as “STEP-IN Office 2013” and was held on 09-Mar-2013 at Microsoft Bangalore campus.  Most of the speakers belonged to Microsoft Partner Services Team, who had real-world experience with Office/SharePoint products.

The following topics were covered during this event:

  1. New Features in Office 2013
  2. Building Apps for Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013
  3. A Deep dive into SharePoint 2013 Workflow
  4. Integrating ASP.NET with Excel & Word
  5. SharePoint 2013 Social Enterprise and Office Integration
  6. SharePoint 2013 – Hybrid and Search in the Cloud

In short, these were the take-aways from me:

  1. Many cool refreshing features (e.g. Anywhere access, Flash Fill, Social Networking integration)
  2. One of the popular employee recognition application called Kudos (refer MSDN)
  3. On-premise and Cloud-based deployment models of SharePoint 2013
  4. Excel Interactive Views
  5. Windows Azure Workflows for SharePoint 2013
  6. As usual, some networking with folks around!  Got opportunity to meet Biplab Paul for the first time, who is the present MVP Lead of South Asia

Participants:

Thanks to Biplab Paul (MVP Lead) to help organizing for all the logistics for this event and bringing the Microsoft speakers on-board.

BDOTNET Team – Lohith, Kamlesh, Manas, Sudeepta, Senthil, Sandip…

… and all attendees who spent their personal time on weekend with Community learning!

Links:

Event Official Website
Event Photos Facebook Group

To know more about the BDOTNET Community Group, please join their Facebook Group here.

Nov 02 2012

SharePoint 2013 RTM Download Links

Category: Microsoft,Microsoft Office,SharePoint,SharePoint 2013 — Kamlesh @ 12:03 am

SharePoint 2013The final(RTM )release of SharePoint 2013 is now available on Microsoft Website for download.  I am maintaining links of all the software programs at one place for my easy reference:

Free Software:

  1. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2013 (~ 816 MB) – Download Link
  2. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2013 – 32bit (~ 282 MB) – Download Link
  3. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2013 – 64bit (~ 324 MB) – Download Link
  4. Microsoft Office Web Apps Server 2013 (~ 386 MB) – Download Link
  5. Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 (Non-RTM / Preview 2) | Installer Link | Announcement News on 12-Nov-2012

Trial/Evaluation Software:

  1. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 (180 days Evaluation) – via TechNet |Product Key: NQTMW-K63MQ-39G6H-B2CH9-FRDWJ
  2. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 (by using Office 365 Developer trial, you need not setup environment) - via MSDN

Licensed Software:

  1. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 – (available to MSDN Subscribers)

Pre-RTM Versions:

  1. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Preview (Evaluation Version link / Product Key: 6RNT8-XV26M-GWH36-VMGQH-94MMH)
  2. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2013 Preview (~ 947 MB) – Download Link

 

Oct 26 2011

Microsoft Certified Architect announced for SharePoint

Category: Certification,SharePoint 2010,Training — Kamlesh @ 9:15 pm

Microsoft recently announced the Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) certification for SharePoint Server 2010. Earlier to this, MCA was only available for Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server.  This announcement was made during the SharePoint Conference 2011.   Candidates who are interested in MCA, should complete the per-requisite of Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) in SharePoint.

Individuals who earn an MCA have achieved the capstone certification from Microsoft, proving their ability to architect large-scale complex solutions with Microsoft technologies.

Please refer to Spencer Harbar’s blog post for more details and here is the official MCM SharePoint site.

Tags:

Sep 26 2011

SharePoint 2010 VHD with Service Pack 1

Category: Microsoft,SharePoint 2010,Technology,Virtualization — Kamlesh @ 8:01 am

Since 2009, Microsoft has released multiple versions of SharePoint 2010 VHD (a.k.a 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine).  Microsoft also upgrades its Evaluation Virtual Machines from time to time.  You may find many websites sharing the SharePoint 2010 VHD Download links, which may be outdated by now.

Below is the latest VHD containing Service Pack 1 builds of all products.  This was published on 13-Sep-2011:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27417

The above link contains three Virtual Machines with setup of Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010 SP1, SharePoint 2010 SP1, Project Server 2010 SP1 and Lync Server 2010 SP1.

Update (16-Jan-2013):

Today, while navigating my own blog, I noticed that Microsoft has refreshed this VHD on 26-Mar-2012. In addition, I can now see companion content and documents related to SharePoint 2010 Value Pillars.

Jul 30 2011

SharePoint 2007 Log Folder Location

Category: SharePoint,Technology — Kamlesh @ 11:03 pm

Location of SharePoint 2007 LogsLogs are the best place for Developers/Administrators to troubleshoot problems.  By default, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007)stores its Logs at this location:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS

To avoid unnecessary burden on the Operating System (C:) drive, SharePoint Administrators often use the best practice of moving logs to a  different Drive/Location.  The following are the steps to change the default SharePoint Log location:

  1. Login to Central Administration website.
  2. Navigate to Operations menu. Under the Logging and Reporting section, click on Diagnostic Logging option.
  3. Under the Trace Log section, provide the new Path of Log file.
  4. Click OK to save the settings.

The SharePoint 2007 log files are also referred as Unified Logging Service (ULS) logs. On CodePlex, you can download ULS Log Viewer, which is a free Windows application to filter/easily view the log data.

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