Secrets of SharePoint

May 2011 - SharePoint Tips

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  • Search Results at Your Fingertips

    Kenneth Lo -Expert in Residence As everyone in your organization starts adopting document collaboration using SharePoint 2010, instead of email attachments, the ability to quickly and accurately search for the right information has become even more critical. The search box in the upper right corner of SharePoint 2010 requires little explanation. Let’s, however, further streamline our lives by enabling document search straight from your desktop...

  • Get local farm information using PowerShell

    Mattias Karlsson -Expert in Residence Using the Get-SPFarm cmdlet, you can retrieve information, including the name of the Config database, version number, and servers in the farm that can be useful when creating scripts for your SharePoint farm. You can open up the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell on your SharePoint server to view the settings of your farm and type: PS > Get-SPFarm You will only see the name of the configuration database. You...

  • Validate the form data when items are created

    Mattias Karlsson -Expert in Residence In SharePoint 2010, you are able to create simple rules to validate the data inserted by the end users before saving a new item. These Validation Rules are created on a per-list basis and are using the same type of formulas to validate the data as when you created calculated columns. A simple example would look like this: =[Discount]<[Cost] which would send an alert to the end user if the column Cost is less...

  • Enable query logging to analyze and improve search

    Mattias Karlsson -Expert in Residence With Query Logging, you are able to log your end users’ search queries. This is useful to better understand your end users’ search patterns and to tweak and improve the search result. With the Query Logging enabled, you are able to create reports based on the logged information. Query logging is enabled on the Search Service Application Administration page. ReTweet this Tip!
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  • Content Not Displaying in Publishing Site?

    John Ferringer -Expert in Residence Often, SharePoint sites with their publishing functionality turned on will display images, documents, or links just fine for authors, editors, and other elevated users. However, they don't display properly for users with read-only access rights to the site. You should take a look at the SharePoint lists containing those items and then check to see if they are checked out or in a status of draft, rather than...
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  • The boundaries of SharePoint full farm restore

    Sean McDonough -Expert in Residence SharePoint’s built-in full farm backup and restore capabilities are solid when it comes to capturing and restoring SharePoint content and configuration for small to mid-size farms. It is important to note, though, that these capabilities cover only the SharePoint farm – not the underlying operating system and related components. SharePoint full farm restore is not a “bare metal” restore solution...

  • Mapping Drives to Document Libraries

    Kenneth Lo -Expert in Residence Certain applications, including Microsoft Visual Studio, require the files to be saved to a disk drive. How delighted would you be if I revealed how to use SharePoint document libraries as mapped drives? Let’s find out! 1. Open Windows Explorer 2. Right-click on My Computer 3. Click on Map network drive 4. Pick a drive letter 5. In the Folder field, fill in the URL of your document library 6. You are done and...

  • Configure noise words to improve search results

    Mattias Karlsson -Expert in Residence Noise words or stop words are ones that are ignored by the search service when end users perform a search. Common stop words are “a”, “the,” and “is,” which mean that if someone makes a search , for example for . “the smallest state” the query would remove the word “the” and query “smallest state” only. The noise word files are located on...
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  • Backup and restore watch-outs: SSPs and service applications

    Sean McDonough -Expert in Residence SharePoint’s full farm backup capability is an excellent way to capture the content and configuration of small to mid-size SharePoint farms, but it doesn’t capture everything you need. For example, an SSP backup for MOSS 2007 doesn’t include the Single Sign-On (SSO) Service encryption key the service requires for operation. By the same token, a backup of SharePoint Server 2010’s Secure Store...

  • Managing Project Tasks from Outlook

    Kenneth Lo -Expert in Residence It is time to bust out my PMP (Project Management Professional) hat. Many people have a love-hate relationship with MS Project. This great product indeed packs many neat features. However, this long list of options may also intimidate some end-users who merely need to make simple updates. We all know SharePoint is awesome, and it of course has a solution for us! You can easily create a Project Task List, which is essentially...

  • Cannot Restore SharePoint 2007 Backups to SharePoint 2010 Farms

    John Ferringer -Expert in Residence It is not possible to restore a backup made in WSS v3 or MOSS 2007 into a SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 farm. Microsoft specifically blocked this option to prevent it from being used as a migration path from the 2007 release to the 2010 release. ReTweet this Tip!

  • Enable alerts on search results

    Mattias Karlsson -Expert in Residence Search Alerts allow end users to get an alert when a specific search result is changed or updated. This makes it possible for them to “monitor” changes on specific topics. The alerts can be sent either as an e-mail or as an SMS text message. Although Search Alerts are disabled by default, they can be enabled from the Administration page of your Search Service Application. In the System settings section...
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  • Enable folder creation on a list

    Niklas Goude -Expert in Residence You can enable folder creation on a list in SharePoint 2010 using PowerShell. Simply store an instance of an SPList Object, set the EnableFolderCreation property to $true, and update the SPList object. PS > $spWeb = Get-SPWeb http : // sp01 / site PS > $spList = $spWeb . GetList ( "http://sp01/site/Lists/MyList" ) PS > $spList . EnableFolderCreation = $true PS > $spList . Update () ReTweet this...

  • Reuse customized Web Parts

    Mattias Karlsson -Expert in Residence You will sometimes want to reuse a customized Web Part at different sites. An example of this could be the Content Query Web Part that you could customize to show aggregate content from different sites. If this customized Web Part could be useful in different sites, or at different locations, it can be exported and then stored in the Web Part Gallery. This is how to do this. (Note, not all Web Parts can be exported...

  • Backup and restore watch-outs: SQL Server encryption

    Sean McDonough -Expert in Residence Starting with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise and Developer editions, databases can be encrypted on disk using transparent data encryption, or TDE. SharePoint has no qualms with TDE, and SharePoint’s databases can be encrypted without issue using TDE. When backing up and restoring databases that are encrypted, though, be careful. Encryption is handled by SQL Server, and such encryption “flies below the radar”...
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