The SharePoint Upgrade Trap

SharePoint 2007 migrations are simple enough, but beware of hidden dangers. Here's a look at some of the more common upgrade and migration problems.

When I think about the process of migrating from SharePoint 2003 to SharePoint 2007, the phrase "deceptively simple" comes to mind. Microsoft gives you the option of either performing an in-place upgrade or a migration. If you choose the in-place upgrade option, all you have to do is insert an installation disk, answer a basic question or two, click Next a few times, and you're good to go.

Simple, right? So why qualify the process as deceptively simple? Well, there's a lot that can go wrong. Let's look a bit more closely at some of the caveats to the upgrade or migration process and what you can do to avoid some common problems.

Upgrade Paths
The first thing that you need to know about the upgrade process is that not every version of SharePoint can be directly upgraded. SharePoint 2007 supports in-place upgrades from SharePoint 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

If you are running Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, then the easiest way to upgrade is to upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and then to SharePoint 2007. Microsoft offers a full upgrade toolkit that can help you to upgrade from Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to 3.0. You can download this toolkit here.

If you happen to be running Microsoft Content Management Server 2002, then you will not be able to do an in-place upgrade, but you can migrate the server's content.

What Could Go Wrong?
So if an upgrade or migration is so easy, what could possibly go wrong? Even though Microsoft has thoroughly tested the upgrade and migration features, they have no way of knowing about any custom code that you might be running. The migration or upgrade process works really well if you are using only stock Web parts, but things become a bit sketchy when you start introducing customizations.

One classic example of this is that if you use a tool such as Microsoft FrontPage to customize a SharePoint site, that site is said to be unghosted. What this means is that when the migration completes, the site will still retain some of the look and feel of the SharePoint 2003 site, because Setup doesn't know how to convert Web parts that do not comply with some default parameters. Fortunately, Microsoft does provide administrators with a way to return a site to a ghosted status once the migration is complete.

Path of Most Resistance
As you can see, the upgrade or migration process is not always as easy as you might at first be lead to believe. That being the case, I strongly recommend performing a trial upgrade or a trial migration. That way, you can find out about any potential issues ahead of time, without affecting your production servers.

The easiest way of performing a trial upgrade or a trial migration is to get a couple of high-end PCs that you can temporarily configure as servers. Once you have these PCs in place, you can place them on an isolated network and then restore your SharePoint backups to them.

Using an isolated network is important -- you don't want your trial migration to impact your production network in any way. The down side to using an isolated network segment is that you will need to set up at least one domain controller and at least one DNS server on it.

One of the easiest ways to bring an infrastructure server onto your isolated network segment is to install a trial version of Windows Server onto a PC and then use DCPROMO to promote it to a domain controller. Once you have done that, then you can physically remove the new domain controller from your production network, and then attach it to your isolated segment. You will then need to seize the operations master roles and configure the domain controller to act as a DNS server.

Keep in mind that because you have seized the operations master roles, you won't be able to plug the domain controller back into your production network. That being the case, you will need to use the Active Directory Users and Computers console to remove the references to your new domain controller from your Active Directory.

It's a lot of work to get the SharePoint server and the domain controller in place for a trial migration or upgrade. The nice thing about using this method though, is that it allows you to get an accurate feel for how the transitioning process will go when you eventually try it on your production network.

Keep in mind that even if it appears that your trial migration or upgrade was successful, you need to have some of your power users log into your isolated network and interact with your SharePoint site in the same way that they do on the production network. Having experienced users to thoroughly test the post-migration lab network is the only way that you will be able to tell for sure whether or not there were problems with the migration process.

A Simple Plan
Unfortunately, if you have created any custom Web parts, made customizations to existing Web parts, or purchased any third party SharePoint add-ons, then there is no way of knowing exactly what is going to happen during the upgrade or migration process. That's why it is so important to thoroughly test your migration plan before you attempt to upgrade or migrate your production servers.

Source:- rcpmag.com/

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.

Manage content and processes

Simplify compliance efforts and keep business information more secure through a comprehensive set of tools to manage and control electronic content. Streamline the everyday business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity by using electronic forms and out-of-the-box workflow processes that users can initiate, track, and participate in through familiar Microsoft Office applications, e-mail, or Web browsers.

* Control documents through detailed, extensible policy management. Define customized document management policies to control access rights at a per-item level, specify retention period and expiration actions, and track content through document-auditing settings. Policy integration with familiar client applications makes compliance transparent and easy for employees. Integration with Information Rights Management helps ensure that proprietary and confidential information is better protected even if it is not connected to a server.
* Centrally store, manage, and access documents across the enterprise. Organizations can store and organize all business documents and content in one central location, and users have a consistent mechanism to navigate and find relevant information. Default repository settings can be modified to add workflow, define retention policies, and add new templates and content types.
* Simplify Web content management. Provide easy-to-use functionality to create, approve, and publish Web content. Master Pages and Page Layouts provide reusable templates for a consistent look and feel. New functionality enables enterprises to publish content from one area to another (for example, from a collaborative site to a portal), or to cost-effectively manage multilingual delivery of content on multiple intranet, extranet, and Internet sites.
* Extend business processes across the organization. Forms Services–driven solutions make it possible to more securely and accurately collect information both inside and outside the organization without coding any custom applications. This information can then be integrated easily into line-of-business systems, stored in document libraries, used to start workflow processes, or submitted to Web services, thus avoiding duplicate effort and costly errors resulting from manual data entry.
* Streamline everyday business activities. Take advantage of workflows to automate and gain more visibility into common business activities such as document review and approval, issue tracking, and signature collection. Integration with familiar Microsoft Office client applications, e-mail, and Web browsers simplifies the user experience. Organizations can easily modify the out-of-the-box processes or define their own processes using familiar Microsoft tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (the next generation Microsoft Office FrontPage) or Microsoft Visual Studio development system.

source:- office.microsoft.com/

Microsoft SharePoint gets search, file sharing features

Data capture vendor Captaris and security software developer Epok have developed add-ons to Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 that let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.

Captaris, best known for its RightFax software for distributing faxes, recently introduced the TIFF iFilter for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The iFilter takes an image, scans it using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and then stores it in SharePoint along with all its meta data. The resulting file is then available for discovery by SharePoint’s search engine.

IFilter components are used by Microsoft Indexing Service and other Microsoft Search-based products, such as SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Exchange Full Text Search and SQL Server FTS.

Captaris, which is in the process of being acquired by OpenText, thinks paper-centric industries benefit the most from its TIFF iFilter such as insurance, governments, health care and financial services.

The iFilter supports Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and works on both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows OS, SharePoint Server, and SQL Server.

The Captaris TIFF iFilter comes in three editions: Standard (for two core systems), Pro (four core systems) and Enterprise (unlimited cores).

Standard is priced starting at $299. Pro starts at $499, and Enterprise pricing will be announced before the end of the year.

SharePoint is Microsoft’s fastest growing enterprise software in its history and the company counts 100 million licenses and more than a $1 billion in revenue, according to figures released this summer. The platform also is attracting third-party vendors driven to plug some of the gaps in the platform.

Earlier versions of SharePoint had support for TIFF images, but it was dropped in the 2007 version of SharePoint. Microsoft released a Filter Pack for SharePoint in Dec. 2007, and specifically made apologies for the absence of the TIFF filter in the release.

Experts have also said that SharePoint has gaps in its access control story.

Epok in particular is attacking that need with an update to its cross-organization access management software called Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4. The platform extends user authentication to a company’s partners.

The 2.4 version breaks the restriction that only a user within a SharePoint domain can use Microsoft Office to create, edit, and then save documents directly into SharePoint.

Epok extends that capability to any Office user in any domain as long as they have the needed access rights.

The upgrades also include a reporting system that can show such facts as who has access to a document and when the document expires. And a mouse over feature on user icons shows additional access details and expiration dates.

Epok can automatically enforce those expiration data on a user’s access to certain documents while maintaining the user’s overall access rights.

“SharePoint is creating a control problem and what we see is a huge demand wave for extranet access,” says Nigel Simmons, vice president of product management.

Epok also takes maintenance of permissions for access controls out of the hands of IT and put them in the hands of business users.

In addition, the system can be configured to require users to view and/or acknowledge certain contractual obligations related to data such as non-disclosure agreements.

The Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4 is priced at $25,000 per server.

Source:- networkworld.com/

Microsoft Details SharePoint-SQL 2008 Integration

Microsoft really wants SharePoint users to upgrade to SQL Server 2008, which was released to manufacturing on August 6. Yesterday, the company's SharePoint hosting and development blog pointed out that IT admins don't have to wait for the documentation to do so.

IT administrators typically look for Microsoft's "supportability statement" document before performing system upgrades. The document for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is currently available, and it includes information about upgrading to SQL Server 2008 that was published on July 31.

The document describes MOSS 2007 hardware and software dependencies, along with precautions on upgrading from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008. For instance, you need to have the latest SharePoint service packs in place before installing SQL Server 2008.

"Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports SQL Server 2008," the document says. "However, you must install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 or later and Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1 or later before you install SQL Server 2008."

IT admins have to download and run the setup program, as well as "the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard," to perform the MOSS 2007 SP1 install.

The SharePoint Hosting and Development blog provides some upgrade tips and suggests that the "upgrade from [SQL Server] 2005 to 2008 is a pretty simple process." IT admins will have to install ".NET 3.5 SP1 and hotfix KB942288-v4" first in order to move to SQL Server 2008.

Microsoft's blog provides a list of features describing why IT admins should upgrade, but most of the benefits seem to apply just to improvements in SQL Server 2008. One potential benefit is data compression, which can be automated by default. Compression can reduce your backup size, although SharePoint stores data in the binary large object (blob) form, which doesn't compress as well as other data types.

"That said, you can probably see up to 30% [size reduction] on your blob-laden content databases and perhaps 90-95% on your other databases," the blog estimates.

Other improvements include a Resource Governor for SQL Server maintenance and administration, although the blog cautions that it "should not be used to control SharePoint's usage of SQL."

Source:- rcpmag.com/

Tips for using Microsoft Excel Services with SharePoint Server

One of the most interesting developments in the Excel 2007 release was the Excel Services module that made it possible to load spreadsheets and run calculations on a central server. This feature theoretically makes it possible to impose much better controls on who accesses and alters important data.

But practical applications are still a little thin on the ground. To help users along, boffins at the Microsoft Office Developer Center have published a raft of technical guides about Excel Services and how it can work in tandem with Microsoft's SharePoint Server web portal system.

The company's Microsoft Excel blog recently highlighted a new guide, Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services that deal with common pitfalls experienced by Excel users. The advice covers:

• Making an Excel workbook compatible with Excel Services


• Configuring external data connections


• Configuring Excel Services to work with Kerberos


• Saving an Excel workbook to a SharePoint document library programmatically


• Avoiding exceptions in a UDF when accessing the caller's identity


• Handling dimension issues for UDFs that return arrays


• Calling 32-bit native DLLs from UDFs on 64-Bit operating systems


• Quick tips for common Excel Services issues.

The article explains that some features and functions within will not work within Excel Services - including VBA and shared workbooks. In some of these cases, a workbook will fail to load in Excel Services. There are also complications surrounding connections to external data sources, which can be avoided by using the Excel Data Connection Wizard to configure links when the workbook is opened on the server.


Source:- accountingweb.co.uk/

Independents Seize On Success Of Microsoft's SharePoint

SharePoint is finding a growing role in offices and departments as a collaboration tool for small business units.

Swiss software supplier Day Software announced Wednesday that it is opening SharePoint to the larger world of Java applications in the enterprise. It has produced CQ Connector for SharePoint, which is based on the Content Repository standard for Java. The connector can tie SharePoint into an enterprise portal, swap information from the portal to SharePoint, or vice versa.

With Day's connector, SharePoint becomes "much more enterprise ready than it tends to be on its own," said Santi Pierini, senior VP of marketing.

Day is a little-known implementer of Java standards and offers the Communique suite of enterprise portal and Web content management applications. It has a large library of connectors to enterprise software, including one toSAP (NYSE: SAP)'s NetWeaver API for connecting to SAP applications. Its CTO is Roy Fielding, a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation and one of the originators of the Apache Web Server. Day has headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, and Newport Beach, Calif., where Fielding works.

Its CQ Connector for SharePoint, built following the Java community's JSR 170 repository standard, can exchange information between Communique's repository used to store Web site content and a departmental SharePoint repository.

The connector can search the content of a SharePoint repository, using either SQL query language or Xpath, which allows relevant data to be extracted without necessarily retrieving the whole document. It can observe changes in SharePoint content, restrict access to a SharePoint repository by imposing certain views, and impose an Access Control List to enforce enterprise security restrictions.

"We're seeing high demand to make SharePoint more effective for global, enterprise-scale companies," Pierini said.

Day also makes connectors to Vignette, OpenText LiveLink, Interwoven, EMC (NYSE: EMC) Documentum, FileNet P8, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) Lotus Notes Domino.

A second product, from Alfresco Software, implements Microsoft's SharePoint protocol to produce a compatible collaboration server, but one that it also says functions on more of an enterprise scale.

Alfresco already offers an open source content management system and it's making Alfresco Labs 3, its SharePoint-compatible collaboration server, available as open source code as well. Labs 3 was announced July 31. The Labs 3 repository can extract information from SharePoint and Office applications and manage content on a more enterprise level, said John Newton, chairman and CTO, in an interview.

"Microsoft was forced to release the protocols under European Union agreement," he said, referring to the March 2004 European Commission ruling. Newton said Alfresco is the first independent vendor to implement both the SharePoint and Office application protocols, as allowed under the ruling.

In the Alfresco Labs 3 implementation, however, customers can use the SharePoint protocol with non-Microsoft databases, operating systems, and portal products, he noted.

source:- informationweek.com/

MultiFactor SecureAuth(R) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Delivers Efficient, Inexpensive Solution for Secure Portals

MultiFactor Corporation, an innovator in 2-factor authentication, Microsoft web application security and VPN Authentication solutions, today announced the availability of SecureAuth 4.5 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a secure access solution for enterprise portals.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft's industry-leading platform for document management, enterprise content search and data aggregation. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is increasingly utilized as the offering of choice for scalable portals to both internal users, extranet partners and customers. The ability of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to expose content, previously only available to intranet users, is unparalleled in portal products.

MultiFactor's SecureAuth, a Microsoft Certified solution is specifically designed for integration into the ASP.NET application framework. SecureAuth offers a deployable, non-phishable, authentication solution that requires no extra servers or infrastructure.

"Office SharePoint Server is a robust platform designed to meet the business needs and resource constraints faced by the enterprise today," said Deb Bannon, SharePoint Senior Product Manager. "The integration of Office SharePoint Server with products like MultiFactor SecureAuth enables the enterprise to further secure content shared across the intranet and with extranet partners."

"SecureAuth utilizes native ASP.NET authentication and data integration features to seamlessly integrate into an Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment. SecureAuth takes advantage of the new forms based authentication features in SharePoint Server 2007 to redirect the user to the SecureAuth solution and then conduct a secure, non-phishable validation," said Garret Grajek, COO of MultiFactor Corporation. "Upon authentication the user is redirected back to SharePoint Server 2007 to obtain the roles and permissions set up by the SharePoint Server 2007 administrative console."

In conjunction with the Office SharePoint Server platform, SecureAuth is able to deliver a secure credential, mapped directly to the individual user. SecureAuth utilizes the existing data store shared by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform, thus eliminating the need to create or replicate an additional data store.

About MultiFactor Corporation

MultiFactor Corporation delivers proven two factor authentication, web application security, and VPN security methodologies. SecureAuth is a tokenless authentication solution generates and validates client and server side certificates without PKI. MultiFactor Corporation's real-world security solutions draws from a diversified team of cryptographers, network and Web application specialists and certified security engineers to provide inexpensive and easily deployed security solutions.

source:- marketwatch.com/

Thoughts on SharePoint and FAST Search

SharePoint Report 2008 we discuss SharePoint's shortcomings and strengths in the search space. While SharePoint 2007's search capabilities have been improved over the 2003 product, it's still not "enterprise class" for a variety of different reasons.

Clearly Microsoft saw this same shortcoming (both in SharePoint and it's overall search offerings) and announced that they were going to acquire enterprise search vendor FAST Search and Transfer (more information on FAST can be found in our Enterprise Search Report 2008).

For SharePoint users, this brings up a few opportunities and issues. In a previous blog post about the SharePoint conference, I highlighted the presentation that FAST employees gave. This presentation showed nifty new Silverlight-enabled search Web Parts. These Web Parts demonstrated several capabilities that FAST brings to the SharePoint world, like: content spotlighting, multimedia search, and taxonomy management.

The last capability is one that I believe would be particularly interesting for SharePoint users, since taxonomy management represents a challenging area for most SharePoint implementations -- SharePoint taxonomies are very rigidly based on physical structure of the SharePoint sites and leave little flexibility for a more logical taxonomic structure (Redmond folks would argue that the content query Web Part might help, but it's not a solution). That said, what Microsoft hasn't really provided is good guidance on what users can expect to see and any migration path between SharePoint search and FAST. Unfortunately, that really hasn't changed: Microsoft hasn't released any roadmap for FAST's integration, though you could argue it's still early.

That aside, what could the FAST acquisition mean to SharePoint customers? Here are a few of my thoughts:

• The FAST acquisition was officially completed today. This is a good thing, since Microsoft can now get down to the business of integrating the company's technology with the rest of Microsoft's products. However, it's not clear what, if any, impact this acquisition will have in the very short term. Judging by the Groove acquisition, which preceded the SharePoint 2007 release by some months, an acquisition after the release will not yield any updates in the core product until SharePoint vNext (probably around 2010 or so) and beyond. However, I'd be willing to bet that some elements of the demo given at the SharePoint conference make their way to sites like Codeplex or as free downloads on Microsoft's site.
• The former CEO of FAST will assume the role of VP of Enterprise Search. His responsibility will include all search products: SharePoint search, Search Server Express and FAST ESP. So I guess the "Enterprise Search" moniker might need to be removed or rewritten on the SharePoint search page; FAST is, by far, the new "enterprise" search product at Microsoft. What's interesting here is that Microsoft has historically brought Office-related technologies under one roof; just look at what happened to SharePoint specifically -- that product was once its own product group. As they integrate FAST, it would appear that this announcement suggests Microsoft might break out search into its own dedicated team and make SharePoint a "customer." This opens up the possibility of decoupling SharePoint from any particular search technology -- perhaps a pipe dream, but we can always hope.
• In a blog entry on the Enterprise Search blog, Microsoft stated that the FAST offering will continue its Linux and Unix support. The blog entry was quick to reinforce the message that Microsoft does not want to support or wish to invest in Linux or Unix solutions. While they would like to "delight a core part of FAST's customer base," they are openly hoping those customers will convert to Windows and .NET. This does call into question whether this Linux/Unix support will be long for the world. In the short term, however, Microsoft can boast a better product from which to launch a play to be a real contender in the enterprise search space; see our related blog entries and article on FAST here. In the long term, Microsoft will have to come to grips with the fact that enterprises will continue to leverage non-Windows technology and if Microsoft wants to benefit from that revenue, they should consider continuing FAST's support for those technologies (their recent earnings announcement, and the subdued guidance for the year, may reinforce that message).
• Microsoft won't support SharePoint on Linux . This is probably not a surprise to anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Microsoft. However, the fact that FAST (currently) is supported on Linux may introduce greater content aggregation and, certainly, search capabilities within SharePoint. Let's hope that Microsoft sees it that way.

In general, the FAST acquisition, for SharePoint, will likely have little impact short term. Over the longer term, it's clear that the Office 14 version of SharePoint will be substantially improved in the search area (depending on the SharePoint product team's willingness to implement the new technology). I would personally like to see some add-ons in the near term, since that would improve search within organizations that may have both tools.

Stay tuned for more on this topic as the integration progresses.

Source:

http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1219-Thoughts-on-SharePoint-and-Fast-Search