This will be the first post about “troubleshooting MOSS/WSS” on a series, defined by topics and Issues. Once I have created several posts of this kind, I’ll push up a main page with a repository of single links to each topic and its content.

ALERTS in SharePoint

I think one of the most reported and popular issues within SharePoint Server 2007 / WSS

(and have been also before on SPS 2003) is:  the “Alert problem”.

Well, when we’re talking about “alerts” it usually means the “Notification email” that is sent to a user.

i.e. this is mostly set on a document library where users configuring their “Alerts” for getting notified on certain actions like changes on documents, new added, deleted, modified etc. This can be set to an “immediate alert” which sends out immediately emails due to the configured actions that happened and/ or

The typical issue is this one:

You create an alert on a document library. You get the notification that the alert has been created.

But you don’t get any alerts sub sequentally 

So what I‘ll try to tell you today is a little “toolbox“ you can use on troubleshooting your environment while investigating problems with your alerts.

First of all, we should split of some wording when we’re talking about “Alerts”:
- the initial email, sent to you with notification that you have set and/or created an alert
- the following emails (subsequently) sent to you, when you have configured to be notified on any changes to a document, Item, List entry a.s.o.
- the search based alerts …
- the workflow initiated email alerts for i.e. assigning you a task.

As you see, we may handle several different kinds of “Alerts” and also why or if they sent or not.
Therefore it is often quiet diffiicult to troubleshoot the cause of those issues as they may vary each time.

From my daily business I often have very tricky cases and issues. But sometimes and despite the Internet,
some “simple resolutions” also may work based on native settings or better let’s say: 
”why can’t we see the forest about all those trees in front of it?”

– sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But I can hear also some “uuuhh yeahhh oooahhh” but what’s the joke?”

Let’s check some examples where the cause and resolution were quiet simple but not noticed on the first research:

Issue 1:  “Some email alerts are sent but some others are not…”

Problem:

We had users registered for alerts. The “initial email” was sent to the user, notifying him that he just created an alert.

Now another user changed the document/item you marked for an alert but you don’t  get it!

Resolution:

The resolution was as simple as seeing the “forest behind the tress” ;-) 
When you have typically a load balanced environment and also using an exchange server for all email traffic,
you should have a look also into the “mail relay settings of the SMTP Server”

Cause:

The IP addresses that were configured to allow relay did not include the IP address for one of the front end servers.

Adding that IP address resolved the problem.

Issue 2:  “All users are getting alerts but only one user not”

Problem:

- In this case, just to keep it short, it was Outlook causing it and moved all email alerts into the “junk mail folder” of the affected user
Simple, isn’t it?

Ok, but this is “fortunately” not the usual case and should be only to show up how troubleshooting sometimes can be so easy
when you’re able to “see the forest BEHIND the trees”.

Coming back to some more difficult and more interesting causes of almost similar problems:  Alerts are not working…

1. Migration Issue:

One common issue regarding suddenly not working email alerts can occur after migrations and/or detach/re-attach databases to a different web application.
For this you may find a little sample code chunk here, which should you help to fix such an issue:
E-mail notifications for alerts are not sent when content in a migrated list or in a migrated document library changes after you perform a database migration to upgrade to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB 936759)

Additionally you can also try to fix it by using the new "stsadm -o updatealert" command and the SharePoint Administration Toolkit v4  (x64 version) ; (x86 version).

The cause here is  that the issue occurs if the URL of the Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 server differs from the URL of the Windows SharePoint 3.0 server. For example, this issue occurs if the URL of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 server is http://ServerNameVersion3, and the URL of the Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 server is http://ServerNameVersion2.

2. setproperty- Issue:

Another cause also mostly occurring after migrations is the missing or not correct set property value for the alerts at all or in particular on your site-url.

To check those properties you just open a command box, navigating to the 12-hive BIN folder (by default:  C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\…) and run STSADM command line tool

Once on 12-hive, type in the following commands to check all related property settings:

stsadm –o getproperty –url http://YourURL –pn alerts-enabled         
-the expected result should be  <Property Exists=”Yes” />

stsadm –o getproperty –pn http://YourURL –pn job-immediate-alerts      
-the expected result should be  <Property Exists=”Yes” Value=”every 5 minutes between 0 and 59” />  
 where the Value type may vary.

When  the properties are not set correct or even set but due to migrations, database restore or detach/re-attaching it, the alerts may stop working for no obvious reason.

Resolution:

Run the stsadm commands to “set” the properties correct or just to trigger SharePoint once more to processing it.

stsadm –o setproperty –url http://YourURL –pn alerts-enabled –pv True

stsadm –o setproperty –url http://YourURL –pn job-immediate-alerts –pv “Every 5 minutes between 0 and 59" 

You can specify for the property “job-immediate-alerts” one of the following values:
•"Every 5 minutes between 0 and 59"
•"Hourly between 0 and 59"
•"Daily at 15:00:00"
•"Weekly between Fri 22:00:00 and Sun 06:00:00"

Please see here for options and syntax of the commands:

Alerts-enabled: Stsadm property (Office SharePoint Server)
Job-immediate-alerts: Stsadm property (Office SharePoint Server)

3. Scheduled Alert Issue:

Another finally very simple cause is that SharePoint for some reasons sometimes needs to be “reminded” on what’s its job on alerts ;-)

latest I had the case with problems on not sent “scheduled alerts”. The initial alerts as well as the immediate alerts were sent properly but no scheduled alert (which is a summary of certain changes, notified daily, weekly etc.) received the user.

After extensive troubleshhoting and research we finally just ran again a stsadm command to re-register the alert template on the server and “oh wonder”,
suddenly the alerts worked again.

Resolution:

Run stsadm -o updatealerttemplates -url http://YourURL -f C:\Alerttemplates.xml –lcid 1033

First Troubleshooting steps:

- Check your Outgoing Email settings on SharePoint / SMTP Settings on WFE/IIS and/or Mail relay permissions and restirictions

- Check if email notficiatiosn and alerts are fired only partly (immediate but not scheduled), if the initial email at all is delivered and exclude any Outlook client problem  (junkfilter, blocklists, etc.)

- In SharePoint on Central Admin page, you’ll see under “Operations” the Timer job Definitions and status. First of all, check if the timer jobs finished successfully at all.

- Check the alert properties via stsadm, if they’re set properly

- Re-register the alerttemplate again

- Check if the issue only occurs on a particular site collection, web application
  (to test,this, just create a brand new Web app, Sitecollection and leave all on default. Create alerts as applicable and check for delivering)

• If the alerts are fired on a new web app/Sitecollection, then consider the effort to just export from faulty site and import to working site your content
  
• If the alerts are not fired at all, use Network Monitor, Process Monitor traces, to see if any email at all arrives your mail relay/Exchange server or not
  
• If the alerts are not working only on certain libraries or subsites or even just randomly, check for custom event handler or other parts that you may implemented or changed to performing email alerts

Additional Links and resources:

Alerts in Windows SharePoint Services

SharePoint Alert Manager

Technical details:

Once you have done all the previous investigations and tests but still no glue or idea what may causing your alerts issue, you can dig a bit deeper into the SharePoint Mysteries:

Alerts are processed by the OWSTimer job. In central admin you may see just the “Immediate alerts” job, but this one processes both, the immediate and the scheduled alerts at intervals of every 5 minutes by default.

To follow the trace of an alert process you can look into the content database tables on your SQL server.

The interesting tables here to review are as follows:

ImmedSubscriptions      (records the immediate alerts settings)

SchedSubscriptions      (records the scheduled alerts settings)

EventCache                    (records all events in SharePoint, so either the alert changes)

EventLog                         (This table contains events for which only non-immediate alerts exist)

EventSubsMatches        (records the timestamp when a scheduled alert has to be processed by the timerjob)

TimerLock                       (records the server that processes the timerjobs)

First of all go to Central Admin page and screw up your Diagnostic (ULS) logging to “verbose - All Errors”.

Start repro your issue by creating an alert (immediate and/or scheduled) and note the timestamp you started as well as the timestamp you configured the scheduled alert to be fired.

Perform some actions like changes, deletions, uploads etc. and note the timestamp of changes and wait about 5-10 minutes

Check if you received the alert notifications (Initial email, immediate alert email)

Check on SQL Server if you can find your alert by using these queries:

select * from [Content_DB].[dbo].[ImmedScubscriptions] where [UserEmail] = ‘User.email@domain.com’

select * from [Content_DB].[dbo].[SchedScubscriptions] where [UserEmail] = ‘User.email@domain.com’

select * from [Content_DB].[dbo].[EventCache] order by [TimeLastModified]

select * from [Content_DB].[dbo].[EventSubsMatches]

• Can you find your alerts in “ImmedScubscriptions / SchedScubscriptions” table?
• Do you have a related record in EventCache due to the Timestamp (TimeLastModified) you noted from your repro?
• Do you see the record for scheduled alert in the EventSubsMatches table

Check now your ULS logs (by default located at (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\logs)  for entries like that:

[…] …Begin invoke timer job Immediate Alerts, id … […]

[…] …AlertsJob loaded 9 of 9 event data records…  […]

[…] …AlertsJob loaded 5 of 5 subscription records…  […]

[…] …Alertsjob results for immediate delivery: 9 prematches, 9 passed filtering, 5 of 9 passed security trimming, 0…  […]

[…] …Alertsjob results for scheduled delivery: 0 prematches, …  […]

[…] …AlertsJob processed 0 daily notifications …  […]

[…] …AlertsJob processed 0 weekly notifications …  […]

[…] … …  […]

• Can you see any records indicating that your alerts are processed at all?

Check your Event log for suspicious errors related to the timeframe and probably containing phrases like “exception,  HResult errors, etc.”.

Check if you are on an almost actual patch level as probably the cause of your issue already has been fixed in one of the last updates?

So if all those steps are don’t get you closer to the cause you are at least much more better prepared for the next step on calling Microsoft Support for assistance.
With all these troubleshooting steps done before you can provide all these actions to the support engineer and this may speed up the resolution as the Support Guys then can go directly and already narrowed down to a particular area with very deep troubleshooting steps for you!

So hopefully this post could help you somehow. I’ll be on updating this post whenever some new or deeper insights can be published to get this topic a bit more structured in depth and usage.

Stay tuned ;-)

Steve from daily business and the SharePoint Mysteries…

Beta announcement:

I’ll proudly present the official news of the day:

Today, Microsoft is releasing the public beta of

• Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010 and Office Web Apps for business customers.
  Millions of people can download the beta at the following links:

SharePoint Foundation 2010 (Windows SharePoint Services 2010 Beta)

Microsoft SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010 Beta

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products (Beta) Management Pack

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 (Beta) Management Pack

Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Beta

Microsoft SharePoint Server for Internet Sites Enterprise 2010 Beta

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (64-bit)

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta (32-bit)

Note!  The public beta will be shown as Build  14.0.4536.1000

• Office Mobile 2010 has also reached the public beta milestone and is now available on
  the Windows Mobile Marketplace  for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.
  
• As part of the beta Microsoft is unveiling several new capabilities, including:
  
  • The Outlook Social Connector, a new feature which brings communications history, business and social networking feeds into the Outlook experience.
    
    • At beta The Outlook Social Connector will support SharePoint social networking and support Windows Live at launch.
    • Microsoft is also announcing that Linked-in and Facebook will be the among the first third-party social networking sites that  have providers for the Outlook Social Connector.
    • Microsoft also released the Outlook Social Connector SDK for developers to build connectors to third-party social networks.
  • Technology and design advancements, including deeper integration between Office 2010 and Office Web applications, improved navigation, visual design and icon updates, a new Office logo and increased performance and stability.
• As a result of the continued partnership with SAP, Microsoft also announced intend to deliver Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP, which will expand the long standing solutions that blend the worlds of process and collaboration. The solution is planned to be released in the H2 2010

Find more Links and resources on my previous post about “2010 and the new features”

Installation notice for the SharePoint Server Public Beta on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Windows 7

If you will be installing the SharePoint Server 2010 Public Beta on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft Windows 7, then you will need to download and install an update from http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806  to resolve an issue that occurs in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 when provisioning Service Applications or when accessing pages that make service calls. 

Without the hotfix, these operations will result in an error

"System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Unrecognized attribute 'allowInsecureTransport'.

Note that attribute names are case-sensitive.
(C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebClients\<Service Area>\client.config line <Line Number>)". 

If you have already installed Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 on a server running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 does not need to be reinstalled when the update becomes available; however, Service Applications that have been successfully provisioned without the update installed may need to be removed and re-provisioned once the update has been successfully applied.

have fun with the new “Wave 14” ;-)

As many times used in our daily business, we’re used to ask for “Build number” rather than “Service Pack or Patch level”. Because of some confusion of the customers and for transparency I’ll provide here a list of the most relevant Build numbers and its related KB Numbers.

Please see also the new Update Center for Microsoft Office, Office Servers, and Related Products

WSS v3

MOSS 2007

Release Version KB Global RTM End of Support 2009-01-13 12.0.4518.1016 N/A   Public DST 12.0.6039.5000 KB934525 Y SP1 12.0.6219.1000 KB936988   Post SP1 (Jan) 12.0.6300.5000 KB941422 Y Post SP1 (Jan) 12.0.6300.5000 KB941653   Post SP1 (Feb) 12.0.6303.5000 KB948945   Post SP1 (Feb) 12.0.6303.5000 KB948957 Y Post SP1 (Feb) 12.0.6304.5000 KB949399 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6305.5000 KB949749 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6306.5000 KB949956 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6307.5000 KB950279 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6308.5000 KB950484 Y Post SP1 (May) 12.0.6314.5000 KB952288 Y Post SP1 (May) 12.0.6314.5000 KB952292   Post SP1 (May) 12.0.6315.5000 KB952698 Y Post SP1 (May) 12.0.6316.5000 KB953137 Y Post SP1 (June) 12.0.6317.5000 KB953473 Y Post SP1 (June) 12.0.6317.5000 KB953484   Infra Update 12.0.6318.5000# KB951695 Y Post SP1 (July) 12.0.6324.5000 KB955594 Y Post SP1 (AAM) 12.0.6324.5001 KB956248 Y Aug CU 12.0.6327.5000 KB956057 Y Aug CU 12.0.6327.5000 KB957109   Oct CU 12.0.6332.5000 KB957691 Y Dec COD 12.0.6335.5000 KB959644 Y Dec Uber CU 12.0.6335.5000 KB960010 Y Dec COD 12.0.6336.5001 KB961175 Y Jan 09 COD 12.0.6336.5002 KB963023 Y Feb 09 CU 12.0.6341.5000 KB961750 Y Feb 09 CU 12.0.6341.5000 KB967703   Feb 09 Uber CU 12.0.6341.5000 KB961755 Y SP2 12.0.6421.1000 KB953338 Y Apr 09 Uber CU 12.0.6504.5000 KB968850 Y Jun 09 Uber CU 12.0.6510.5001 KB971538 Y Aug 09 CU 12.0.6514.5004 KB973400 Y Oct 09 CU 12.0.6520.5000 KB974989 Y

Release Version KB Global RTM End of Support 2009-01-13 12.0.4518.1016 N/A   Public DST 12.0.6034.5000 KB937832 Y SP1 12.0.6219.1000 KB936984   Post SP1 (Jan) 12.0.6300.5000 KB942819 Y Post SP1 (Jan) 12.0.6301.5000 KB945089 Y Post SP1 (Jan) 12.0.6301.5000 KB941274 Y Post SP1 (Feb) 12.0.6303.5000 KB948947 Y Post SP1 (Feb) 12.0.6304.5000 KB949402 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6306.5000 KB949955 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6307.5000 KB950280 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6307.5000 KB950292 Y Post SP1 (Mar) 12.0.6308.5000 KB950487 Y Post SP1 (May)* 12.0.6314.5000 KB952294 Y Post SP1 (May) 12.0.6315.5000 KB952704 Y Post SP1 (May) 12.0.6316.5000 KB953138 Y Post SP1 (June) 12.0.6317.5000 KB953471 Y Infra Update 12.0.6318.5000# KB951297 Y Post SP1 (July) 12.0.6324.5000 KB955593 Y Post SP1 (July) 12.0.6324.5000 KB955586   Excel Security fix 12.0.6317.5000 KB953397 Y Aug CU 12.0.6327.5000 KB956056 Y Oct CU 12.0.6331.5000 KB957693 Y Oct CU 12.0.6331.5000 KB958569 Y Dec COD 12.0.6335.5000 KB959637 Y Dec Uber CU 12.0.6335.5000 KB960011 Y Dec COD 12.0.6336.5001 KB961176 Y Dec COD 12.0.6336.5002 KB963022 Y Feb 09 CU 12.0.6341.5000 KB961749 Y Feb 09 CU 12.0.6341.5000 KB961754   Feb 09 COD 12.0.6341.5001 KB968269 Y Feb 09 Uber CU 12.0.6341.5000 KB961756 Y SP2 12.0.6421.1000 KB953334 Y Apr 09 Uber CU 12.0.6504.5002 KB968851 Y Jun 09 Uber CU 12.0.6510.5003 KB971537 Y Aug 09 CU 12.0.6514.5002 KB973399 Y Oct 09 CU 12.0.6520.5000 KB974988 Y

Maintained and current as of  2009-11-20

Background Information of Cumulative Update (CU)

Each Cumulative Update will also consist of a package that contains the latest of every hotfix patch that we have shipped.You can apply the latest service pack, the latest WSS Cumulative Update package and the latest MOSS Cumulative Update package and be completely up-to-date.

• WSS continues to remain separate and is not included in the MOSS package
• All of the latest Global and Local patches for WSS are in the WSS package
• All of the latest Global and Local patches for MOSS (Excel Server, Document LifeCycle, etc are part of MOSS), InfoPath Forms Server, Project Server are in the Office Server package
• The list of what is in the package is an accumulation over time of what we have shipped since RTM
• The package includes the Infrastructure Update, there is no reason to install it separately.

Some more useful links:

Configure a server farm for minimal downtime during software updates

Language Pack Service Pack 2 for WSSv3

Language Pack Service Pack 2 for MOSS

Not so long ago, a customer requested a clear statement from Microsoft Support regarding

“Office integration with FBA (forms based authentication) and MOSS (SharePoint Server 2007)”

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
====================
On a Document Library in SharePoint 2007, "versioning and check-out required" has been configured. After modifying documents in word (Office 2003) the expected Pop-Up should appear for which you need to type in for example a comment, some fields etc.
Unfortunately the Pop-Up dialog does not appear by using FBA (forms base Authentication).

Well the answer was quickly found and this is the final status:

Supportability statement:
No version of the Office clients up to 2003 support Forms Based Authentication.
The features that are removed/hidden when “Client integration is disabled” should not be expected to work (supported)
when forms based authentication is enabled.
See this TechNet page (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288081.aspx) for a description of
“Expected behaviors when client integration is disabled”

With SharePoint portal server 2003 and Office 2003, FBA wasn’t supported at all.

However, since Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 it is now possible to use more Office integration features with FBA.

"Some organizations might want to use forms authentication, but also require the same level of integration they get when using Windows authentication. There are a couple of possible workarounds in this scenario, but it is helpful to examine why this limitation exists.

When a user accesses a page on a site protected by forms authentication, the server looks for a valid authentication cookie. If no cookie is found, or if the cookie is not valid, the server redirects the browser to the logon page by using an HTTP 302 status code. At this page, the user is allowed to authenticate by using his or her credentials. After the credentials are validated, the server creates a valid authentication cookie and sends it back to the browser, with the originally requested page. The browser keeps the cookie in memory and sends it back to the server with every subsequent request to that Web server. With each request, the server checks the validity of the cookie to ensure that it is good (that it has not expired or been tampered with), and then processes the request. Because the authentication cookie is in memory with the browser process, it introduces some limitations:

The cookie is retained only as long as the browser is open; when the browser is closed the cookie is destroyed with everything else in memory that the browser was using.

The cookie belongs to the browser's application process (such as the .exe file for the browser), and cannot be shared with other processes. Office system applications run in their own processes, for example, msword.exe for Microsoft Office
Word. As such, a cookie that a user generated when logging into the site in the browser cannot be shared with Word.

The issues described in this article clarify why the Enable Client Integration option was developed: to help make the end-user experience more uniform and predictable in that environment; however, the user experience is somewhat different for users that are accustomed to SharePoint sites secured with Windows authentication. Even with those restrictions, there are still a few options that can be used to allow for using forms authentication and yet still provide many or all of the deep integration points with Office applications that are available when using Windows authentication.”

To implement support for Forms Authentication Integration on the client, request the Office 2007 Cumulative Update for April 2009 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968765) from Microsoft support.

Important:

This update can be used with Office 2007 on a computer that is running the Windows XP or Windows Vista operating system. If you are using Windows Vista, you also need to install Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista (see Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista).

NOTE: If you are using Internet Explorer, these new features require at least version 7.0 or higher.

The Forms Authentication Integration Update for Office 2007

“When Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007 were first released, the Office client applications such as Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel could not directly open a document from a site that was secured with forms authentication. This is because, as explained earlier, a 302 HTTP response code is sent back to the client when it tries to open an item in a site using forms authentication. The Office clients were not able to respond to a 302 response code, and as a result would display the actual forms logon page in the application, instead of the requested document.

An update is available for Office 2007 client applications that allow the applications to process a 302 HTTP response code. The applications that are affected by this update are Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer2007. Because of this update, an Office application can display the forms logon page that is being used for the site in a pop-up dialog box. To do this, the application issues a request to the SharePoint site. The server sends a response that indicates its authentication method is forms authentication, including the location of the logon page that the client should use to authenticate. The Office application then renders the HTML from that logon page and enables the user to enter credentials. The credentials are sent via an HTTP POST back to the server. If the server returns a redirect response for the document that was originally requested, the Office application assumes that the identity is successfully established. It then uses the authorization cookie that the HTTP POST gave it to retrieve the document and any associated metadata, and open the item.”

For further information, please see also this posts: Update on SharePoint forms based authentication(FBA) and Office client
On MSDN:  Integrating with the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Final Status:

So this finally means that with office 2003 neither FBA with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 nor with SharePoint Server 2007 is supported.
Full supported is only Office 2007 SP2 and FBA with SharePoint 2007 SP2 and the April cumulative update.

The workaround for "persistent cookies" may be applicable for your scenario but initially supported with "commercially reasonable effort".

Regarding supportability please see also here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc939965.aspx and here "Professional Support for IT Professionals": http://support.microsoft.com/directory/factsheets/proitpro.doc

*** Update 2009-11-11 *** 
On certain emails and questions, I’ll provide here the summarized answers:

Hi Tony, Tyler and Daryl,

Regarding your questions:

Q1:      If I didn’t understand you wrong then full functionality should be achievable with Office 2007+April Office Cumulative Update and MOSS with FBA?
A1:       Using FBA with SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007 means only that it is supported in terms of our support policy when  experiencing issues there.
            The full office integration might work in certain cases but still not the same as using windows auth.   See the comments below for more.

Q2:      One Clarification: I have a customer who appears to be using Office 2003 with FBA, and the client side integration features appear
            to be working for them (sort of). 
           “So this finally means that with office 2003 neither FBA with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 nor with SharePoint Server 2007 is supported”
           Can I take that as meaning FBA does not work, or is not SUPPORTED with O2003 clients?
A2:      With Office 2003 it might work in some cases but it is not supported for break/hotfix requests. Only "best effort support" may offered.
           A possible workaround is described in the below article, section The Forms Authentication Integration Update for Office 2007

Q3:      Does this mean that with the service packs and April CU that FBA gives the same level of functionality as Windows auth??
A3:       See A1 and below excerpts

Excerpt from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977430.aspx#MOSSFBAPart3_IntegratingWithOffice2007

[…]When you configure a zone to use forms authentication, the Enable Client Integration box is cleared by default. If a zone is configured in this way, the following changes occur in functionality:
Support for remote interfaces is turned off. That includes WebDAV, SOAP, and Microsoft Office FrontPage remote procedure calls (RPC). Some functionality is not available, such as Web folders or the Web services for accessing content in that site.[…]
~
[…]When operating in this mode, users can still work with documents in SharePoint libraries, but they must right-click items and choose to save a copy to disk. They can then edit and update the document, and then upload it and check it back in when they are finished editing. Some organizations might want to use forms authentication, but also require the same level of integration they get when using Windows authentication. There are a couple of possible workarounds in this scenario, but it is helpful to examine why this limitation exists.

When a user accesses a page on a site protected by forms authentication, the server looks for a valid authentication cookie. If no cookie is found, or if the cookie is not valid, the server redirects the browser to the logon page by using an HTTP 302 status code. At this page, the user is allowed to authenticate by using his or her credentials. After the credentials are validated, the server creates a valid authentication cookie and sends it back to the browser, with the originally requested page.

The browser keeps the cookie in memory and sends it back to the server with every subsequent request to that Web server. With each request, the server checks the validity of the cookie to ensure that it is good (that it has not expired or been tampered with), and then processes the request.
Because the authentication cookie is in memory with the browser process, it introduces some limitations:
The cookie is retained only as long as the browser is open; when the browser is closed the cookie is destroyed with everything else in memory that the browser was using.

The cookie belongs to the browser's application process (such as the .exe file for the browser), and cannot be shared with other processes. Office system applications run in their own processes, for example, msword.exe for Microsoft Office Word. As such, a cookie that a user generated when logging into the site in the browser cannot be shared with Word.

The issues described in this article clarify why the Enable Client Integration option was developed: to help make the end-user experience more uniform and predictable in that environment; however, the user experience is somewhat different for users that are accustomed to SharePoint sites secured with Windows authentication. Even with those restrictions, there are still a few options that can be used to allow for using forms authentication and yet still provide many or all of the deep integration points with Office applications that are available when using Windows authentication. […]

Another good post is here:  Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) Walk-through - Part 1 - 3

Hope that this will clarify your questions and the interpretation of the given link resources

Greets, Steve

The October cumulative Update packages (former known as “Uber package”, now called “Full Server” package) are now available.

Download and installation instruction:

• Install SP2 for WSS and MOSS and also the Service Packs for the Language Packs as applicable or not done so far.
• Install the full server package for KB 974989 - WSS v3 (Oct. CU 2009) 
• Install the full server package for KB 974988 - MOSS (Oct. CU 2009)

Important notes about the cumulative update package

• The hotfixes are now multilingual. Therefore, there is only one cumulative hotfix package for all languages.
• One cumulative hotfix package includes all the server component packages. The cumulative update package updates only those components that are installed on the system.
• The cumulative packages are based on the last Service pack prior published.
  It is not recommended to install the packages on an earlier Service pack as the latest provided.

Note!

It is always recommended to test first the updates in a test environment before applying it to productive systems! Otherwise ensure that you have a full, valid backup of your farm/servers!
(Please check also the Official SharePoint Team blog for more info’s)

Additional Information on support lifecycle:

Support for SharePoint Server 2007 RTM (Service Pack 0) ended on January 13^th of this year. Support to customers submitting issues that have not upgraded to Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 are not provided anymore. Support services to help these customers upgrade to the latest service pack and then reevaluate their issue at this point is still provided.  More information regarding service packs you’ll find on Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle policy. Information on the end of support for SharePoint Server 2007 RTM/SP0 can be found here.  Please let me know if you have any further questions.

*** Update 2009-11-18 *****

The public beta is now published. Please see my post on “SharePoint Server 2010 announcement”

*** Update 2009-11-10 *****

published since 10/19/2009: SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs for download!

Brief Description:
The SharePoint 2010 developer evaluation guide describes the SharePoint 2010 developer platform, including walkthroughs of some of the new capabilities for developers.

….

Hi folks,

as we’re now allowed to disclose the latest information, I’ll start right away on my blog ;-)

Published Info about SharePoint 2010:

The first blog published on Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog shows up a very detailed description of the official disclosure about the new SharePoint 2010 features.

Here you may find a lot of information regarding SharePoint 2010 (formerly known as “Office 14”) and what we’ll get in this release.

*** Update 2009-10-28 *****

Now after the SharePoint Conference 2009 has been finished, the first decks, slides and other information are coming through.
One of them has been posted on my colleague’s Blog as SharePoint 2010 – First technical Stuff available.
Here you’ll find first intro’s on  “Upgrading from MOSS2007 to Sharepoint2010”

Learn More about SharePoint 2010

Information for IT Pros at TechNet           http://MSSharePointITPro.com
Information for Developers at MSDN        http://MSSharePointDeveloper.com
Information for Everyone                         http://SharePoint.Microsoft.com

Testing SharePoint 2010:

Also a very interesting blog already has been published for those people gladly like to play around with the beta stuff! So mostly when you try out or play around with a new release, you usually don’t want to install a complete domain scenario. So you want choose a “single server complete install of SharePoint 2010” which may become a little bit tricky ;-)

See this Blog Post for how to deal with it.

A public beta is currently announced for November 2009, so please check frequently the official Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog for getting latest info.
You can here “Pre-register for SharePoint 2010 Beta” for the Beta bits and got notified when they available.

SharePoint 2010 Developer

The SharePoint 2010 Developer Center is now live on MSDN. This new sub-site includes Getting Started modules, as well as a Beta version of the SharePoint 2010 SDK.

To read more, take a look at the SharePoint developer documentation team blog, or head straight to the SharePoint 2010 Developer Center to see detailed, public technical information and instruction around both SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server 2010.

SharePoint 2010 Ressources

As Steve Ballmer announced this morning at the SharePoint Conference, and Jeff Teper notes below in his post, the public beta of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 will be available in November.   Take a look at:

- SharePoint 2010 Website - to view SharePoint 2010 in action

- SharePoint 2010 forum- for SharePoint 2010 questions

- SharePoint 2010 PressPass- for the SPC 2009 keynote video, a Q&A with Jeff Teper, and more

- SharePoint 2010 Developer Center - for developer info

- http://www.mssharepointitpro.com - for IT Pro info

- http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint - for more SharePoint information

- Business Intelligence Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta)

Further outsight:

I’ll post soon some more information on the complete “Application roles” which you can install and configure in SharePoint 2010,

So stay tuned ;-)

greets, Steve

Hi folks,

ok, I know it has been posted already many times but still I'm receiving questions from customers
"what is now the current status about the update story?"

Well, I'll try to light it up a little bit and may collect all information about it by now ;-) 
Let's start with the Service pack 2 ...

Published in April 2009 the Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 was announced.

After publishing SP2 - the "issue that reverts SharePoint products to Trial Version" occurred,
which has been fixed now by this Hotfix for the Trial Issue after SP2 Install

*** Update 07/31/09: The Service Pack 2 download has been updated to include this fix ***

Published August 2009  the  KB 973400 - The full server package for WSS is available   but the MOSS package still was missing.
In this package there was found another issue with  “ReAttaching content database by stsadm –addcontentdb …..”

*** Update 07/22/09: The MOSS package has been published ***

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** Current Status 10/14/09 – SP 2 and August CU final and ready for download ****

So I collected now for you to download all relevant updates together with the latest bits ;-)

Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Service Pack 2 contains all fixes released through February 2009, so you can install it directly on RTM build of the products.

KB 973400 - The full August cumulative update server package for WSS

KB 973399 - The full August cumulative update server package for MOSS

As usual, please bear in mind that you have to update your language packs as well!
You may find more Info about here:  SP2 and Language Packs 

I’ll hope, this makes it a bit clearer and more comfortable for you ;-)
Greets, Steve
…told from daily business…

Update 2009-09-14 

From an earlier Blog post of my colleague, Joerg Sinemus he posted about the known issue regarding the WSS August cumulative update:
"issue with ReAttaching content database by stsadm –addcontentdb …..
Result: Recommended way is use WSS August CU on WSS-Only Environments and test it before doing this in Production."

Now another colleague, Patrick Heyde  posted more details on this issue: Side Effect AugustCU 2009 - Problem with Attach Contentdb

Usually, since SP2 for WSS and MOSS you might not need to detach/reatach databases but some customer are still using precreated scripts for deploying updates where database detach/reatach is commonly used. Please check the Link for more information about that Issue and how to deal with it.

greets, Steve Chen
---------------------------------------

As usual the WSS package was published in august 2009 but the MOSS package were not ready but highly awaited.
Now we have the full august cumulative packages ready.
The WSS description is already online but the description for MOSS is currently not active but may come soon!

Descriptions:
KB 973400 - The full server package for WSS v3
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;973400

KB  973399 The full server package for MOSS
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;973399
curently not active! but coming soon ;-)

Download:
Full server package for WSS http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=973400&kbln=en-us
Full server package for MOSS http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=973399&kbln=en-us

This packages are containing many fixes since June and it is recommended to have the following considered:

- You should have Service Pack 2 for WSSv3 and MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) already installed
- You still need the additional "Trial issue fix" to install
- You also should first update all SharePoint Language Packs on top
   --> For more information to language packs a.s.o. please see this blog:
   http://blogs.msdn.com/joerg_sinemus/archive/2009/04/29/sp2-and-language-packs.aspx
- Install/deploy the full WSS package
- Install/deploy the full MOSS package

After installing the packages on all servers in your farm, please don't forget to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line.

This is my first post as newbie here.

Since I'm working for Microsoft SharePoint Team, I stumbled several times over interesting issues and I was thinking it would be worth to blog about ;-)

So within this blog, I would like to share my experiences from work especially to "document the undocumented" things which could make SharePoint sometimes to a mysterious thing ;-)

I like it to dig a bit deeper into complex issues and always beeing captured on it when I not fully understand "why or what exactly" is happening under the hood. Therefore I would like to share my findings here for others in assistance or just "for a  better understandning".

Whenever possible, I'll reply and assist on further questions or will offer assistance when desired.

Have fun and hopefully find interesting and useful hints on here ;-)