12 October, 2013

Cannot logon with credentials obtained from Secure Store Provider

Problem Description:
I'm using SPD 2010 to connect to an external SQL database hosted on a different server. External data source type selection is SQL Server. I then filled up the connection properties, choose "Connect with Impersonated Windows Identity" and Secure Store Application Id. But SPD 2010 returns this error: Cannot logon with credentials obtained from Secure Store Provider

Error message:
Cannot logon with credentials obtained from Secure Store Provider

We need to set up your Secure Store service application on the server, and add a Target Application. This is an arbitrary name you assign to the set of credential mappings that you will set up in the Secure Store but getting the same error.

Troubleshooting done:
1)   I made sure that the credentials that i set in the secure store have at least db_reader access to the database.

2)   Also ensured the user making the request is a part of members group for the target application.

3)   Chekced the ULS logs and did not find anything relevant.

4)   Suspecting that there is some sort of firewall or VPN issue but, I am not sure how to proceed?

5)   Tried with different account rather than system account to ensure it reflects the same set of results.

6)   Referred the following articles again n again to make sure everything set up correctly but did not yield any results!


Thanks to Fabian Williams and Marc Anderson for the valuable articles:

http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/how-to-create-configure-consume-sharepoint-2010-secure-store-in-business-connectivity-services

What Resolution we have applied:-
We have created a SQL Account with SQL authentication +
Connect with impersonated custom identity and the issue has been resolved. See this useful post SharePoint 2010 using BCS with SQL Server database by Arjan Fraaij.

Reference:

Product applies to:
SharePoint Server 2010

11 October, 2013

Not able to open office documents from SharePoint

Let me describe the problem in details-
-I can open the documents from my desktop

-I can save the documents to desktop by means of SharePoint site

-But if i tried opening documents from the SharePoint site directly then I can’t open it and getting filename error message box.

-Tried opening the document in Mozilla Firefox and it works fine.

-Tried opening the document in Google chrome and it works fine.

-Now it’s clear that the problem is with the IE only. Let me tell you that I am not using 64-bit IE but using 32-bit version only!

-Tried clearing the cache and cookies in IE but same problem.

-Tried adding the site in trusted zone but same problem.

-Checked with other office documents like MS Excel, PowerPoint but same    problem.

Finally I have applied the following resolution:
1)   Run one of the Office 2010 application
2)   Click on File menu, and select Options.
3)   In the “Options” dialog, select Trust Center in the left pane.
4)   Click on Trust Center Settings in the right pane.
5)   Select Protected View in the left pane of “Trust Center” dialog.
6)   Disable any of all of the protected view options as below by uncheck the check boxes:
·         Enable Protected View for files that fail validation
·         Enable Protected View for files originating from the Internet
·         Enable Protected View for files located in potentially unsafe locations
·         Enable Protected View for Outlook attachments

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know, Thank you.

New/Upload/Actions/Settings are not visible in library

Common FAQ’s:

1)   How To See The "New", "Upload", "Actions," And "Settings" Menu Buttons In A Folder
2)   New / Upload / Actions / Settings / View menus on a document library are hidden
3)   New/Upload/Actions/Settings are not visible in library
4)   Drop-downs no longer showing up in a document library for New, Upload,
5)   Customize the menu bar of a document
6)   How to remove [new, upload, actions, settings] from document repository Actions or Settings


Simple and easy resolution for all the above mentioned FAQ’s:
1)   Click on edit page option, select that library web part, and click on Modify shared web part.
2)   You will get a box to edit different options in right side.
3)   Under toolbar type right now it must showing Summary Toolbar or No Toolbar, so just change it and makes it Full Toolbar.
4)   Click Apply and Ok.
5)   Exit edit mode and you will get all your options back.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned info then please let me know. Thank you. 

Filename is Invalid or Cannot Contain Any of the Following Characters

Filename is Invalid or Cannot Contain Any of the Following Characters
When you attempt to create, save, or rename a file, folder, or shortcut, you may receive one of the following error messages:

A filename cannot contain any of the following characters:
\ / : * ? " < > |

or

path\filename
This filename is not valid.

or

path\filename
The above file name is invalid.

If you are facing any of the error messages which are mentioned above then request you to have a look on the following article:

Resolution: To create, save, or rename a file, folder, or shortcut, use a valid character that is not listed in the above mentioned error messages.

Thank you.

FAQ’s:-

Can we upload the document into document library which filename as special characters?NO

Rename files name that contain special character while uploading on document library? Possible- NO

Is there any way to upload the file name that contains \ / : * ? " < > | # { } in document library- NO

Word Web App cannot open this document for viewing because of an unexpected error + PowerPoint Web app cannot open this presentation for viewing because of an unexpected error

When viewing or editing in browser Word or PowerPoint files with the Word Web or PowerPoint Web app the following errors occur:

Word Web App Errors:
Word Web App cannot open this document for viewing because of an unexpected error. To view this document, open it in Microsoft Word.
Word Web App Cannot open this document because the server is still processing the document.  Please try again later

PowerPoint Web App Errors:
PowerPoint Web app cannot open this presentation for viewing because of an unexpected error. To view this presentation, open it in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Network connectivity has been lost.  Check your network connection or try again later.

If you are facing these errors then request you to refer the following Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2521084

Thank you.

10 reasons to consider FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

1)  Content Processing Pipeline
For people familiar with the FAST Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), the good news is that the most valued capabilities of ESP have been brought into FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 and made easier to access and deploy through tight integration with the SharePoint management and development tools.  The open framework in FAST ESP for creating custom content processing pipelines is a good example. Since it was first introduced in version 3 way back in 2002, FAST customers and partners have leveraged advanced content processing and advanced linguistic features to create a wide variety of novel search applications. This highly valued aspect of the FAST ESP will be available in FAST Search for SharePoint and has been architected and enhanced to take advantage of the SharePoint management interfaces and development tools like PowerShell.

 2) Meta-data Extraction
Meta-data is used in search for faceted refinement, relevancy tuning, targeted queries (e.g. search only the authors field), and other general techniques designed to improve findability. The problem is that unstructured documents are often devoid of useful meta-data. The ability to automatically extract meta-data to create useful structure on otherwise unstructured documents is a feature of FAST ESP that will also available in FAST Search for SharePoint 2010. Importantly, FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 takes advantage of simple administrative tools and the concept of “managed properties” in SharePoint to support adding custom meta-data extractors very quickly.

 3) Structured Data Search
Structured data search is possible with both search options in SharePoint 2010, but FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 adds an extra level of sophistication for searching data that contains numbers, dates, and other encoded and structured information. To start, the full FAST Query Language (FQL) is available to application developers who want the richness and expressiveness that FQL provides. This includes support for numeric and date data types, formula-based query operations, term weighting with the XRANK operator, and much more. Also, integration with the new Microsoft Business Data Connectivity services in 2010 means that ingesting structured data from external Line of Business applications is much easier in FAST Search for SharePoint.

 4) “Deep” Refinement (Faceted Search)
Previously only available in SharePoint search through 3rd party add-ons, faceted search, called “refiners” in the default search interface (SharePoint Search Center), is now native in the out-of-box SharePoint 2010 search. FAST Search for SharePoint adds to this the ability to deliver faceted search across results sets of any size while retaining precise counts on the refinement facets. This is critical for research and analysis applications where precise counts on facets are important decision making criteria. (You can see examples of deep refiners on FAST ESP powered sites like scirus.com and dell.com.)

5) Visual Search (Document Thumbnails and Previews)
Visual document thumbnails and previewer Web Parts will be out-of-the-box with FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 to help users more quickly judge what is relevant in a search result list. This includes a graphical previewer for PowerPoint presentations based on Microsoft Silverlight that allows users to quickly find the “one slide” of interest without having to open up the entire presentation.

 6)  Advanced linguistics
The quality of search against text data is highly dependent on the ability to apply the right language-specific processing techniques. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 builds on the FAST ESP heritage and Microsoft tools to include advanced language processing (linguistics) for dozens of languages, including optimized processing for Chinese/Japanese/Korean.

7) Visual best bets
SharePoint already supports the concept of search Best Bets – managed results delivered with the search for specific queries. FAST Search for SharePoint adds to this the ability to render visual best bests in the form of images and even videos. Management of search best bets, both standard and visual, is through the standard SharePoint administrative console.

8) Best-in-class development platform
FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 builds on the comprehensive development framework of SharePoint 2010. The customization options range from configuring out-of-the-box search behavior (best bets) and user interface controls (Web Parts), to extending existing functionality using public Web Part code and SharePoint Designer, to creating brand new components and functionality with the available APIs. For FAST ESP aficionados, no compromises have been made in the area of extensibility with FAST Search for SharePoint, but many of the customizations in ESP are now much easier to do.

9) Custom search experiences (per user/profile)
FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 includes the same level of relevancy tuning available to FAST ESP. It will be possible, as it is in ESP, to create custom relevancy models tuned to differences in content sources, application needs, and user contexts. User context simply means that different users can have different search “contexts” that enable experiences optimized for their specific business needs. User context can be used to set the search sources, relevance rank profile, linguistic processing features, and other search features by user or user group. In an enterprise search setting, this means that a Sales Director does not have to see the exact same results as a Product Designer for a given query, even if they are searching the same sources.

 10)  Extreme Scale and Performance
Scale and performance of the out-of-the-box SharePoint 2010 Search has been dramatically improved – with proven scalability to 100 million documents and more. For FAST Search for SharePoint 2010, the exact same scale-out model that exists in FAST ESP has been preserved to enable extremes of content (e.g. number of documents to search), queries (e.g. the number of queries or query rate), or both. This means search solutions that can support billions of documents and thousands of queries per second.

Upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products from MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0

When we plan for an upgrade from MOSS 2007 or WSS 3.0 to SharePoint 2010 Products, we have different upgrade approaches as building blocks that can be used for optimal upgrade approach.

In-place upgrade: Use this approach to install the new version of SharePoint 2010 products on the same hardware that is used for the previous version. Upgrade the content and settings in the server farm as part of a single process.

Database attach upgrade: Use this approach to upgrade the content for the environment on a separate farm. It doesn't upgrade any of the services or farm settings. Content databases can be upgraded in any order and can upgrade several databases at the same time. Using this approach, it’s possible to attach a Shared Service Provider database during DB attach upgrade, this will upgrade the profile information in the database. Using this approach, it’s not possible to upgrade the search database.

Hybrid approaches: A hybrid approach lets us to take advantage of in-place upgrade's ability to upgrade content and settings, while we take advantage of the speed of a database attach upgrade. The advantages of this method is

1)   Farm wide settings can be preserved and upgraded
2)   Customization are available in the environment after upgrade, although manual steps may be required to upgrade or rework

We can upgrade multiple content databases at the same time, which results in faster upgrade times overall than an in-place upgrade. For more information on Upgrade Process please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262483(office.14).aspx