To the SharePoint

Preparing to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 Products

The public beta releases of SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 are coming soon. Aside from the anticipation of wanting to see all of the new features and functionality, some of you with existing Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environments may be feeling another kind of anticipation – upgrade anxiety. Well, the best way to handle anxiety is to get prepared. And the Upgrade and Migration Resource Centers are up and running with content to help you pick the right upgrade path and figure out how to test out the process to help cut down on surprises.

• Upgrade and Migration Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2010
• Upgrade and Migration Resource Center for SharePoint Foundation 2010

On these Resource Centers, you’ll find information to help you with questions like the following:

• How do I plan for upgrade?
• What’s new in upgrade?
• How do I get to 64-bit bit hardware?
• What upgrade approaches are available and what upgrade paths are supported?
• What does the upgrade process look like? What steps are involved for in-place v. database attach upgrades?
• How do I create test farms to test the upgrade process?
• How do I find all of my customizations?
• What happens with services during upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010 only)?

You can also view and download the upgrade models:

• Upgrade planning
• Upgrade approaches
• Test your upgrade process
• Services upgrade

And check out the upgrade planning articles so you can tame that upgrade anxiety!

These are just the planning articles -- how-to articles from TechNet and MSDN are also available on the Upgrade and Migration Resource Centers. Keep checking back, as even more articles are coming soon.

As always, let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Samantha Robertson, Senior Writer, SharePoint Products (I’m all about the upgrade)

New SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta) Content

Support your DBA!

We’ve just finished creating a new downloadable book for SQL Server database administrators who support SharePoint environments. If you work with one of those lucky folks, you may want to point them to:

SharePoint guidance for SQL Server 2008 database administrators (Downloadable book)

We’ve also updated a number of our other articles to refer to features in SQL Server 2008 that you can take advantage of in a SharePoint environment.

• Planning and Monitoring SQL Server Storage for Office SharePoint Server: Performance Recommendations and Best Practices (white paper)
• Physical topology recommendations
• Physical storage recommendations
• Deploy using DBA-created databases
• Database types and descriptions
• Choose what to protect
• Choose backup and recovery tools
• Monitor and troubleshoot storage performance
• Database maintenance for Office SharePoint Server 2007 (white paper)

As always, let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Margo Crandall, Prinicipal technical writer (Database, Backup/Recovery, Disaster recovery, and Availability)

The new Business Intelligence Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2010

The new Business Intelligence Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2010 is a TechNet site for information about business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010. The following is some of what is is included in the TechNet resource center.

IT professionals

• Excel Services overview
• What's new for Excel Services
• What's new for PerformancePoint Services
• Visio Services overview

Developers

• What's new: Excel Services (MSDN)
• Creating custom solutions with Excel Services (MSDN)
• What's new: PerformancePoint Services (MSDN)
• Creating custom BI solutions with PerformancePoint Services (MSDN)

The site also links to the diagram, Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010, described here.

Thee are also links to Blogs, the Microsoft Business Intelligence center on TechNet, and more !

My impressions of the SharePoint Conference

I’m Norm Warren, IT Pro writer for SharePoint Server 2010 business intelligence. I also write for B.I. the way…and used to write for Norm's PerformancePoint Server Blog.

The following are some of my impressions of my first SharePoint Server 2010 conference.

I remember the first SharePoint Server 2007 book I picked up. Surprisingly, it had a chapter on change management –the first chapter. As I spent time with customers at the 2009 SharePoint conference last week, my mind kept going back to that chapter. We met customers from all over who were delighted about the new features in SharePoint Server 2010 and yet I could detect a hint of reality. The reality that these conference attendees would need to go back to their work place and try to convince co-workers, managers, and others of the wonders of SharePoint 2010. So what do you do to influence? I’m sure it depends on your situation and what you want to accomplish. But here are some ideas that I remember from that book.

• Start out small and make sure that what you decide to implement (SharePoint Server 2007 or 2010) has great impact. I would ask around, maybe take a survey, to find out what features will affect the most people.
• Once you’ve prioritized the features you will implement, locate the champions in your organization and empower them to sell it. Maybe a proof of concept with a presentation.
• Lastly, never give up. Tenacity.  Continue to promote the ideas or technology you know will help improve your organization.

One more tip, not from the book: Locate the SharePoint 2010 poster or posters that matches your interest. Go to get a print out and hang it up near your office. Or take screen captures of the areas of interest (cheaper) and post a company Blog on those items of interest or send an e-mail.

Here are some tips for using the posters (after navigating to the site, scroll toward the bottom for tips).

How do you use our posters?

We'd like to know how you use the posters we have up on TechNet:

• SharePoint Server 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199(office.14).aspx 
• SharePoint Server 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx,
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287835.aspx

Do you print them on a plotter, or in a smaller format?

Would you like them to be available to order in glossy format?

Is there any other way that you'd like us to present them?

Post a comment here, or send us an email.

Thanks!

- Margo

New business intelligence services in SharePoint Server 2010

The poster, Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010, is a review of all the business intelligence (BI) services in SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta) and can be downloaded in Visio, PDF, and XPS file formats. You will notice that PerformancePoint Server 2007 is integrated into SharePoint Server 2010 (Beta), to add business intelligence features such as dashboards, scorecards, KPIs, and more. The poster includes the following information.  

• An overview of each business intelligence service and when you might use each service to surface reports, scorecards, KPIs, Excel files, and other features of BI.
• Architecture to show how the business intelligence services work together.
• A list of possible data sources for each business intelligence service.

Note that the term "Insights" in the poster refers to business intelligence.

From the poster:

The BI tools you use depend on the specific problems you are trying to solve. Your daily business activities have associated information and insights that emerge in three main areas of business intelligence: personal (and self-service), team or community, and organizational.

There will be overlap across these areas as seen in the diagram below. For example, in SharePoint Server 2010, a company’s employees may use Excel Services and Visio Services  to make relevant business decisions at the corporate level.

By design, all Microsoft BI products inter-operate so that teams and individuals within an organization can move across the continuum of personal, team, and organizational BI and have all products work together. For example, SQL Server Reporting Services reports, Excel Services reports, or Visio diagrams can be published in a PerformancePoint Dashboard.

The following is a sample of the poster. It is small and can be better viewed in the download (Visio, PDF, and XPS).

Content posters for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 !

The product team published an excellent Blog post, SharePoint 2010, which gives a comprehensive description of enhancements and features for the release of SharePoint Server 2010. Other "what's new" posts are covered on www.microsoft.com\sharepoint.

Our documentation team has  published posters for many of the focus areas that are shown on the "SharePoint 2010 wheel".The posters provide a one-stop view of different aspects of SharePoint Server 2010 deployment, and decision points, and they include useful diagrams and content. Each of the posters can be downloaded in Visio, PDF, or XPS format. The following is a consolidated list of posters with descriptions and download links.

SharePoint 2010 Poster downloads

Meet us at the SharePoint Conference!

We wanted to let you know that lots of folks from the SharePoint IT Pro content publishing team will be at SPC in Las Vegas next week. We’d love to meet you, and get your feedback on the documentation (SharePoint 2007/WSS 3.0 as well as SharePoint 2010).

We’ll all be at Ask the Experts, Wednesday from 5:45-7:00 (look for the IT Pro Content for TechNet table).

We’ll also be running short (10 minute) usability interviews on Monday from 5-7 pm in Banyon E in the South Conference Center, and at Ask the Experts. If you swing by, you’ll have a chance to:

• Review the design of our upcoming Solution Center sites—portals that will provide end-to-end support for common solutions, such as Content Publishing Portals and Internet Presence sites.
• Give us feedback on our new Getting Started page for 2010.
• Talk to us about partnering on SharePoint 2010 content, or tell us about your 2007 content that you're interested in having us help you publish or promoted.

You can also look for us in the following places:

Margo Crandall (me): Tweet me at @msmargoc or Margo.Crandall@microsoft.com. I’ll be at the Business Continuity session, SQL Server session, and general IT Pro sessions.

Rob Silver: Robert.Silver@microsoft.com Rob will be at as many Business Connectivity Services sessions as he can make.

Samantha Robertson: Samantha.Robertson@microsoft.com Samantha will be at most of the upgrade sessions.

Dan Evers: Danevers@microsoft.com Dan will be trying to get to Office Web Application and Workflow sessions.

Norm Warren: NormW@microsoft.com Norm will be at the business intelligence sessions.

David Longmuir: David.Longmuir@microsoft.com David will be at as many Enterprise Search sessions as he can make.

Nina Ruchirat: Tweet Nina at @msninar or NinaR@Microsoft.com. Nina will be attending IT Pro and social computing sessions. Contact Nina to discuss community engagement projects with content publishing.

 We'll also be blogging throughout the week, so check back. If you have suggestions or just want to get in touch, you can always contact us at itspdocs@microsoft.com.

Patching a mirrored farm with minimal downtime

(Cross-posted from the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog)

For administrators of large SharePoint server farms, a newly-published article describes how to update server farms that use database mirroring, while incurring minimal perceived downtime for users. This solution is for enterprise customers who have high-availability needs and infrastructure. This article describes a step-by-step process for Office SharePoint Server farms that incorporate SQL Server mirroring. You can achieve similar results on Office SharePoint Server farms that are set up in a clustered server environment.

In brief, the solution requires that you:

• Disable mirroring and set the mirror databases to read-only.
• Route network and database traffic to the read-only databases
• Apply software updates to the offline servers.
• Route network and database traffic to the updated servers.
• Apply software updates to the secondary farm.
• Re-enable mirroring and set the mirrored databases to read/write.

To read the full solution, see Configure a server farm for minimal downtime during software updates.

Full Control permissions assigned by a Web application policy

We know that there is some confusion about permissions assigned by a Web application policy. Here are answers to several questions we have recently received.

QUESTION: Do primary or secondary site collection administrators have more permissions on a site collection than a user who has been given Full Control at the Web application policy level of the Web application containing that site collection?

ANSWER: No. A user who has been granted Full Control through a Web application policy has the same access as a primary or secondary site collection administrator, because the Full Control permission level includes the site collection administrator permission.

Q: If a user has been granted Full Control by a Web application policy, can primary or secondary site collection administrators limit the user's permissions at an individual site collection level?

A: No. One site collection administrator cannot limit another site collection administrator’s permissions. Furthermore, because the user was granted permissions through a Web application policy, other site collection administrators cannot remove that site collection administrator's access.

Q: Which permissions are part of the Full Control permission level under a Web application policy?

A: The permissions are the same as the Full Control permission level on a site, plus site collection administrator and site collection Auditor permissions.

Many thanks to Kevin Davis (SharePoint PM) and Matt Swann (SharePoint Test) for their help.

Sample governance plans: Internet and intranet presence deployments

We recently published the following sample governance plans:

Sample governance plan (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163922) for an intranet portal deployment based on Office SharePoint 2007. The plan, written by Joel Oleson with contributors John Ross, Jennifer Mason, and Paul Culmsee, can help you identify key considerations for planning this scenario.

The following list shows several elements that should be part of your governance plan:

·         Lines of ownership for business and technical teams.

·         Service delivery requirements for business and IT. 

·         Information architecture.

·         Levels of support.

·         Education and training plan.

The sample plans provide more detailed descriptions of these and other elements you should consider. 

To find more governance articles and tools, visit our Governance Resource Center.

If you have ideas for governance topics, or want to comment on our existing content, please let me know.

Thank you,

Judy Cowan

Writer, SharePoint Enterprise Solutions UA

SharePoint Administration Toolkit version 4.0

We're sure you've installed SharePoint Administration Toolkit version 4.0 by now, but just in case you haven't ...

With this release, we added functionality to address various difficult administrative tasks. These include the following:

• SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (SPDiag) improvements

SPDiag version 2 contains several important updates and new features that increase its effectiveness as a troubleshooting tool, such as a new Diagnostics tab which allows SharePoint administrators to execute predefined rules designed to discover and report against some of the most common SharePoint issues, and command-line functionality for collecting farm data with no tool installation.

• Permissions Reporting tool

The Permissions Reporting tool makes it easy to detect where permission inheritance has been broken in a site collection. You can compare an object, such as a list or a site, against its parent to see where inheritance was broken, and run reports to collect more information about such objects. You can also check effective permissions for a user or a group in a particular site, Web, or list in a site collection.

The associated Stsadm unlockfgpreport operation assists an administrator in tracking and controlling permissions for report generation on lists with a certain number of items within an entire farm. An administrator can unlock or lock permissions for a site collection, list, or a Web application. If a Web application is specified, then all libraries or lists are unlocked.

• The updatequota Stsadm operation

This operation allows an administrator to change a quota template in bulk. Before this operation was available, the only way to change a quota template across multiple site collections was to manually update the quota template for every site collection or write custom code.

• Security Configuration Wizard manifests

SCW manifests for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are included the SharePoint Administration Toolkit version 4. These manifests add the SCW roles for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to Windows Server 2003, providing a simple method of reducing the attack surface for farm servers.

For more detailed information about the SharePoint Administration Toolkit v4, see the following TechNet articles:

• SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Office SharePoint Server)   (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc508851.aspx)
• SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Windows SharePoint Services)   (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508986.aspx)

The download links for the SharePoint Administration Toolkit version 4:

• x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=665e98ea-5318-486d-aba2-2bfe46254357   (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=142035)
• x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cd2d09a7-1159-4d40-be1c-8efab1345381   (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=141504)

By the way, this is our last planned offering of new features and functionality for this toolkit, which provides additional administration tools and solutions for both Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0.

Stsadm Silverlight interactive application

Article updates for the April Cumulative Update

If you subscribe to our newly-published RSS feeds for Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server, you may have noticed a wave of topics that we updated for the April Cumulative Update.

We updated topics because the Windows SharePoint Services portion of the Cumulative Update fixes a pain point (possible data corruption and definite size limitation) in deleting, merging, and splitting content databases. From the Cumulative Update description, here's the problem, and how you can avoid it:

"If a site collection is very large, an attempt to delete the site collection from a Web application fails. This causes the stsadm -o mergecontentdbs command to fail when you try to move site collections from one content database to another. This issue is resolved by adding an optional -gradualdelete parameter to the stsadm -o deletesite command. If this parameter is present, SharePoint marks the site collection as deleted to prevent further access while a SharePoint Timer job gradually deletes the data in the site collection. After you install the hotfix package that this article describes, the stsadm -o mergecontentdbs command uses this gradual delete functionality by default."

Now that product team added the Site Collection: Delete timer job to run in the background and gradually delete anything marked as deleted, you can delete and move large site collections the way that you always wanted to!

Note: Although the Stsadm mergecontentdbs operation uses the gradual delete functionality by default after you install the hotfix, it's not the default for the Stsadm deletesite operation, so you'll need to remember specify the -gradualdelete parameter.

Here's the list of the topics that we changed as a result of the update: