• October Cumulative Updates for SharePoint 2013

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Praveen Hebbar}

    October 2013 Cumulative Update Packages for SharePoint Foundation 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 have been released

    October 2013 CU for SharePoint Foundation 2013 - KB 2825674
    October 2013 CU for SharePoint Server 2013 - KB 2825647

    Note: This is build 15.0.4551.1001 of the cumulative update package.

    Important: March 2013 PU for SharePoint Server 2013 is mandatory to install this update.

    Updates Center for SharePoint 2013       
    Common Question: What is the difference between a PU, a CU and a COD

  • Upgrading from WSS 2.0 to SharePoint 2013

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Praveen Hebbar}

    There is no direct approach/method to upgrade from WSS 2.0 to SharePoint 2013. The changes between versions are too great, and the hardware requirements differ so much between versions that a direct, in-place upgrade is not possible or supported. You can, however, perform a series of database attach upgrades to first upgrade your content to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010 and then to SharePoint Server 2013.

    Supported Upgrade Sequence

    To upgrade your content across these versions, follow these steps.

    The supported and tested upgrade path is Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010 and then SharePoint Server 2013.

    1. First upgrade: Upgrade the content to WSS 3.0

      This upgrade method will ensure the required upgraders are run as intended. One of the most common applications of this upgrade method is an in-place upgrade of Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 followed by the installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 over the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 installation.

      • Download the prescan.exe tool and run it on the SharePoint site
      • Check that there are 0 errors and check that the bit flag value on the database for the web site in the table sites is updated.
      • Check for the SQL server having WSS 2.0 sites, stop the services and move the database files over to the new SQL server
      • Run the Products and technologies wizard on the WSS 3.0 environment
      • Create a new web app on port 80 (or a random port)
      • Once the web app is up, detach the content database from Central Admin, Application Management, Manage Content Databases page
      • Attach the restored WSS 2.0 db to the web app in WSS 3.0 and then run the following command to upgrade the database from WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0

      Stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://webappUrl -databasename <restoredfromWSSv2> –databaseserver <WSSv3_SQLSvr>

      • Wait for the operation to complete.
      • Once completed, browse to the web app and verify that the sites are browse able.
    2. Second upgrade: Upgrade the content to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

      You can install MOSS 2007 over the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 installation.
    3. Third upgrade: Upgrade the content to SharePoint Server 2010 Products

      • Use SQL Server to make a backup of the content databases on the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007 farm, restore the backups to the SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 farm, and then take the old farm offline.
      • Attach the copies of the content databases to the SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 farm and upgrade them (optionally, you can upgrade them in parallel).
      • Verify that the content was upgraded and that the SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 farm is working correctly.
    4. Fourth upgrade: Upgrade the content to SharePoint Server 2013 Products

      • Use SQL Server to make a backup of the content databases on the SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 farm, and then restore them to the SharePoint Foundation 2013 or SharePoint Server 2013 farm.
      • Attach the copies of the content databases to the SharePoint Foundation 2013 or SharePoint Server 2013 farm and upgrade them (optionally, you can upgrade them in parallel).
      • Verify that the content was upgraded and that the SharePoint Foundation 2013 or SharePoint Server 2013 farm is working correctly.
      • Upgrade the site collections.

    More Information

    What does Prescan do and what does it touch in the database?

    PRESCAN.EXE will report on common issues that will result in a failed upgrade; therefore, running PRESCAN.EXE, addressing reported issues, and resolving those issues, and re-running PRESCAN.EXE to verify those fixes is a best practice when planning a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007/Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 upgrade.

    It parses and saves List definitions with the associated Lists. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 already incorporates this feature whenever a list is modified; however, this process should be completed for all Lists, so prescan calls the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Service Pack 2 method to persist that data.

    1. Tp_fields column in the lists table to persist the list schema. This is to facilitate v2->v3 list upgrade
    2. Bitflags column in the sites table to indicate a site collection has been scanned.

    Flips the bitflags field in the sites table in the content database to 262144 if it is ready to be upgraded.

    If you have extensively customized your Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 sites (by using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003), you need to determine how you want to handle your customized sites when you upgrade. Your approach will vary based on the extent of the customizations, the complexity of your site, and your goals for upgrading.

  • Default Site Templates in SharePoint Server 2010

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Praveen Hebbar}

    Posted @ http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/20100.default-site-templates-in-sharepoint-server-2010.aspx

  • MOSS 2007 - Find the default view url for all lists in a web app using PowerShell

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Praveen Hebbar} 
    param
    (
        $url = $(Read-Host -Prompt "WebApp Url")
    )
    # Default View for lists in All Sites
    # Lookup Web Application as specified in the command line parameter
    $wa = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication]::Lookup($url) 
    # Create an array 
    $sites =@()
    Write-Output("`nProcessing sites...`n") 
    # Loop through all site collections in the web application
    foreach($site in $wa.Sites)
    {
        foreach ($s in $site)
        {
            $spWeb = $s.openweb()
                foreach($list in $spweb.lists)
                {
                    Write-Host "list:", $list.defaultview.url
                }
        }
    }

  • Work Management Service Application

    Posted over 1 year ago
    by Praveen Hebbar}

    The Work Management Service Application provides functionality to aggregate tasks to a central location on SharePoint Server:

    • Users get the possibility to view and track their to-dos and tasks.
    • Tasks can be cached to a users personal site.
    • Tasks can sync to Outlook where users can edit them wherever they have access to Outlook.
    • Tasks can be aggregated from Exchange, Project Server and SharePoint.
    • Based on 'Provider model' so that other systems can be integrated in the future.

    Work Management Service is usually exposed as part of each users My Site / Newsfeed experience. If you have Project Server, site-level tasks or Outlook/Exchange to-do's, this feature alone can help "sell" social to new users.

    Points to Note:

    1. Make sure you have provisioned your Search Service and that the proper content source is in continuous crawling. Or make sure your incremental crawls happen very often.
    2. The web application pool account you used for My Sites must also have SPDataAccess SQL permissions in your other Content databases of your web applications. If you do not do this, then marking tasks as completed will NOT work.

      # Add the managed account to the SPDataAccess database role in SharePoint content database
      $w = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity $url
      $W.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("domain\ServiceAccount")

      This should do three things -

      • Add the work management account to the user policy of the web application;
      • Add the work management account to the config database with the permissions of WSS_Content_Application_Pools;
      • Add the work management account to the My Site content database with the permissions of SPDataAccess.

    3. Confirm that these are set.

      You may need to restart the Work Management service and perform an IISReset. A restart of server is recommended if possible.

    4. WMA is one of the new features that is driven by Search. If a crawl hasn't been completed it will not be able to find any tasks to display. The list is based on the tasks that have been indexed as assigned to you and not the ones that have just been added.

    IMPORTANT:

    The tasks are stored in a hidden list called "WmaAggregatorList_User" at the personal site of individual users.
    WMA aggregates tasks from SharePoint lists created in SharePoint Server (internally called TasksWithTimelineAndHierarchy-171) plus upgraded SharePoint lists from earlier versions of SharePoint (internally called Task-107 or GanttTasks-150).

    One of the most commonly reported issues is Work Management Service Application is not aggregating tasks and the “We are having trouble refreshing your tasks” error on the “My Tasks” page with the yellow warning triangle.

    The reasons why the Work Management Service Application may fail to aggregate tasks are as follows:

    • The Work Management Service Application should use the same account as the web application.
    • The service account used for the Work Management Service Application needs Full Control permissions on the User Profile Service
      • Under Application Management section in Central Administration, click Manage service applications.
      • In the list of service applications, click User Profile Service Application.
      • On the Service Applications tab, in the Operations section, click Administrators.
      • On the Administrators for User Profile Service Application page, type the service account of the WMA and then click Add.
      • In the Permissions for Administrator box, check the Full Control permission level, and then click OK.

    • The Task content type should be marked as the Default Content Type for your custom list in order for the tasks to be aggregated by the service.
    • The web application is not associated with the application proxy group which hosts the WMA service application

    References