Rating System in SharePoint 2010

Before I start writing on this article, I would like to highlight the name of the person who is the coordinator of this solution. He has created this solution way back in SharePoint 2007 version and now it’s upgraded to SharePoint 2010 also.

Now obviously you are thinking as what exactly I am talking about? - The name of the person is StephaneEyskens. You can take the complete reference from the following link: http://sptoolbasket2010.codeplex.com/

Let’s come back to the main point now: SharePoint 2010 has comes up with many new features as well as functionalities and Document Rating is one of them.

Displaying content based on ratings can help content readers find quality content easily. If you are a content manager or author, ratings can help you easily see which topics are considered to be more popular by the readers.

How to Enable Rating System for your Document Library?

·         Open the document library

·         Settings

·         Document Library settings

·         General settings section

·         Rating system

·         Check this option ‘Allow this item to be rated in this list’ to Yes

·         Click OK

As soon as you click ok then you can see the addition of one more column in your document library named as ‘Ratings (0-5)’

What are the other changes happened in your document library?

·         Open the document library

·         Settings

·         Document Library settings

·         Check the Columns section

·         You will see the addition of one more new column:

§  Number of Ratings

Important things to notice about this Rating functionality:

·         If you rate the document twice, thrice… then it will always overwrite the previous rating and shows the current one only.

·         The ratings control is then available on pages based on the layout. Using a page layout ensures that similar pages share some consistent elements and design.

·         If the ratings feature is enabled for your organization, a Rating Settings option will appear in the site settings for a list or library

Which Job plays an important role behind this Rating system functionality?

·         Open the central administration

·         Monitoring

·         Review Job Definitions

·         Check for this Job: User profile service application-Social Rating synchronization job

Note: The above mentioned job runs on hourly basis so if you are in hurry and wants the average of those rating system as soon as possible then click on the above job and select ‘Run Now’-that’s it.. Mission Accomplished J

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J J

Thank you.

Cannot complete this action SharePoint 2010

One of colleague who is working in a different organization called me yesterday for SharePoint help. He told me that he was working on semantic restores and accidently restored the library pages i.e. displayform.aspx, editform.aspx, newform.aspx etc… Due to this action, he was not able to open the document library and was getting the following error message:

Cannot complete this action

Please try again.

Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.

Correlation ID: e0998560-69eb-4e08-96fe-3411577ebd63

Date: 5/24/2012

There are so many ways by which we can troubleshoot this issue:

1.   Are we able to open the document library by means of SP site?

-open the SharePoint site

-view all site content

-Under document libraries section

-you will see that affected document library

-click on it and check the results

As per my knowledge, it has to reflect the same error message.

2.   Try to map your SharePoint site by means of shared drive concept

-How to create this shared drive?

·         Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Map network drive...

·         In the Map Network Drive dialog box, click Connect to a Web site that you can use to store your documents and pictures.

·         In the Add Network Location wizard, click next.

·         Click Choose a Custom Network Location, and then click next.

·         In the Internet or Network Address box, paste in the site address you had copied to the Clipboard, and then click next.

·         Enter a name for the network location.

-Once the shared drive created then you can copy all the documents which are present in you library that is not working. So it means that there will be no DATA LOSS J that’s the main thing, correct?

3.   Custom lists and libraries section on your SharePoint site

-Open the SharePoint 2010 site collection on which you are working

-site actions

-site settings

-Under site administration

-custom list and libraries

-select the library in which we are facing the problem

-once you click on it then it will redirected to library settings page

-by which of this page, we can create a new view

-try to create a new view and your problem will be fixed.

The number of options which are explained above will definitely helps you to prevent data loss as well as do a effective troubleshooting that will fix the issue J

After all of this also, if the issue remains then I am always there to help youJ

Please let me know in case of any queries/questions. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J

Thank you.

The SOAP message cannot be parsed

Guys

I am back again to share some valuable information with all of you. This time the issue was with InfoPath forms.

Problem Description: I was getting the following error message while trying to publish the InfoPath form to a SharePoint site.

Error Message: The SOAP message cannot be parsed.

Started research on this and found important article that resolved my issueJ. That article is published by Microsoft and we (my complete team) wants to thanks Microsoft for sharing this vital information.

Troubleshooting done:

·         Checked the compatibility by means of form options

·         Checked the trust level by means of form options

·         Checked the VB scripting and deprecated code

·         Checked the submit options and browser compatibility

Resolution: 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923521

References:

·         http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922204

·         http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/ar/sharepointinfopath/thread/b16926ed-8c8d-4b91-8ebe-60c8da79fb95

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J

Cannot delete a Corrupted lookup Column from the list

Issue : Just Today i came accross a issue in Which the User had a List with many columns and One of the column Which was a look up column was corrupted

used to give a error "Unknown Error"

We were not able to Delete or edit the column

After a lot of research we found a work around to delete the Column

Checked the Url and found the below

/_layouts/FldEditex.aspx?List=%7B37920121%2D19B2%2D4C77%2D92FF%2D8B3E07853114%7D&Field=Product%5Fx0020%5FDescription

Which is a wrong url it should be

/_layouts/FldEdit.aspx?List=%7B37920121%2D19B2%2D4C77%2D92FF%2D8B3E07853114%7D&Field=Product%5Fx0020%5FDescription

Just remove ex from FldEditex.aspx => FldEdit.aspx

And you will be able to get to the inside of the column where you can edit or Delete the column .

Cause - Unknown

Site Collection Quotas

When you set a quota limit for storage, you can set two values: a warning value and a maximum value. When a site collection passes the warning limit, an e-mail message is sent to the site administrator and owner notifying them that their site collection is near to their storage quota. E-mail messages are sent daily until the storage level drops below the warning level. When a site collection meets the maximum limit, another e-mail message is sent to the owner and administrator, and no new content can be added to the site collection.

There are 2 important questions based on site quotas, such as:

How to manage quota template?

How to Change an existing quota template?

Let’s see and understand the complete process:

How to create a quota template

1.   Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.

2.   On the Central Administration page, under Component Configuration, click Manage quotas and locks.

3.   On the Manage Quotas and Locks page, click Manage Quota Templates.

4.   On the Manage Quota Templates page, in the Template name area, select create a new quota template.

5.   In the Template to start from box, select a template to base your new template on.

6.   In the New template name box, type the name to use for your new quota template.

7.   In the Storage Limit Values section, select the Limit site storage to a maximum of: MB check box, and then type the amount of storage to allow at a maximum.

8.   Select the Send warning e-mail when site storage reaches MB check box, and then type the amount of storage to allow before sending a warning e-mail message.

9.   When you click OK, the new template is added to the list of available templates, and the page is refreshed.

How to Change an existing quota template?

1.   Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.

2.   On the Central Administration page, under Component Configuration, click Manage quotas and locks.

3.   On the Manage Quotas and Locks page, click Manage Quota Templates.

4.   On the Manage Quota Templates page, in the Template name area, select edit an existing template.

5.   In the Template to modify box, select the quota template you want to change.

6.   Update the options you want to change, and then click OK.

7.   When you click OK, the template is updated, and the page is refreshed.

Please let me know in case of any further queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you J J

SharePoint 2010 Redirect Web Part

This is a sandbox web part for SharePoint 2010.

The web part will redirect a user to a given page if that user is effectively part of a SharePoint group. So If a user is in Active Directory group and the AD group is in the given SharePoint group, the user will be redirected.

Please use the following Link

http://sharepointredirect.codeplex.com/

what is a SharePoint redirect what part?The SharePoint redirect Web parts is a SharePoint 2010 sandbox solution. It gives you a Web parts that you can place on any SharePoint page. The web parts will automatically redirects the user to any specified page based on the user's membership to a SharePoint group whether this membership is a direct membership or an indirect membership.

A direct membership means that the user is directly added to the SharePoint group. An indirect membership means that the user for example belongs to an active directory group and that active directory group is part of the SharePoint group.

installation

This solution is simple. The only file you need is the WSP file. And the only access you need is to be a SharePoint site collection administrator.

Simply navigate to the site collection site settings page link like on solutions. Add a solution by selecting the WSP file. Then activate the solution. Once you do that browse to any page where you want and the Web part and try to insert a web part to the page. Under the custom Web part category you will see the Web part.

configuration

Configuring the web part is easy. Simply edit the web parts and you'll see three main fields to to use. The first one is the SharePoint group name. This is the group that the current user will be tested against and the user will be redirected based on whether they belong to that group or not. The second field is then redirect to page. This is the page to be redirected to event the user belongs to that SharePoint group. The last field is a status field which simply either makes the web part active or inactive.

Uses
This web part is very useful in any SharePoint environment. Espeically in hosted SharePoint environments where uploading server side code is not allowed.

Data Refresh Failed

When we use external data connections then the data connection file talks with the excel services by means of authentication. These authentications are of three types:

1.       Windows

2.       None

3.       SSO

In Windows authentication mode, Excel Services attempts to use the Windows identity of the user who is logged on when authenticating with the external data source.

 

In SSO option, The SSO service uses a centralized database to store authentication credentials. Excel Services uses the SSO application ID that is specified for the data connection to request the credentials when authenticating with the data source.

Now the options remains is NONE-Selecting None for the authentication mode in the Excel Services Authentication Settings dialog box causes Excel Services to assume that the connection string contains the user name and password needed to authenticate with the data source. If the connection string requires the use of integrated security, the Excel Services Unattended Account is used for authentication.

To use the None option, we need to have:

Configured the Unattended Account. Excel Services impersonates the Unattended Account when it tries to authenticate with a data source by using either no authentication setting (None), or single sign-on (SSO) when the SSO application is not storing Windows account credentials.

Where is this unattended account we need to specify?

Central Administration

Shared Service provider (SSP

Excel service settings

Unattended account.

Here is the screenshot regarding this: 

If you have any queries / questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know.
I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues, Thank you

Delete a permission level

We can choose which permissions are associated with these permission levels (except for the Limited Access and Full Control permission levels) or add new permission levels to combine different sets of permissions. We can associate permissions with permission levels and also associate permission levels with users and SharePoint groups. Users and SharePoint groups are associated with securable objects such as sites, lists, list items, libraries, folders within lists and libraries, and documents.

-: How to Delete a permission level:-

§  On the Site Settings page

§  In the Users and Permissions section

§  Click advanced permissions.

§  If the Settings menu is not available, select Manage Permissions of Parent from the Actions menu.

§  On the Permissions page

§  On the Settings menu

§  Click Permission Levels.

§  On the Permission Levels page

§  Select the check boxes for the permission levels you want to delete, and then click Delete Selected Permission Levels.

§  Click OK to confirm.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J J

Copy a permission level

We can choose which permissions are associated with these permission levels (except for the Limited Access and Full Control permission levels) or add new permission levels to combine different sets of permissions. We can associate permissions with permission levels and also associate permission levels with users and SharePoint groups. Users and SharePoint groups are associated with securable objects such as sites, lists, list items, libraries, folders within lists and libraries, and documents.

-: How to Copy an existing permission level:-

§  On the Site Settings page,

§  Under Users and Permissions,

§  Click Site permissions.

§  In the Manage section of the ribbon,

§  Click Permission Levels.

§  In the list of permission levels,

§  Click the name of the permission level you want to copy.

§  At the bottom of the page,

§  Click Copy Permission Level.

§  On the Copy Permission Level page, in the Name field, type a name for the new permission level.

§  In the Description field, type a description for the new permission level.

§  In the list of permissions, select or clear the check boxes to add permissions to or remove permissions from the permission level.

§  Click Create.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J J

Key Improvement in SharePoint

Microsoft Share point technologies have matured to great extent since its beginning back in 2000’s. Throughout these years Microsoft provided a step further in every release of the SharePoint version and the technologies relating to the SharePoint services are converging and integrating to the current time.

In 2001 Microsoft provided the Version 1 of SharePoint services knows as “SharePoint Team Services v.1” along with “SharePoint Portal Server 2001”. The team services and portal server were managed as different entities.

In 2003 Microsoft released another server solution known as “Content Management Server 2002” along with upgraded release of SharePoint technologies  such as “Share Point Portal server 2003” and a renamed version of services known as “Windows SharePoint Services v2”. The Windows SharePoint Services v2 and SharePoint Portal Server 2002 were closely integrated while Content Management Server 2001 was a stand alone.

In 2006 Microsoft released another increment to the its Windows SharePoint Services with Version 3, with lot of new advancements and on the top of these SharePoint services are built the new SharePoint Servers. Microsoft released the first (beta) version of the new office system code named as “Office 12”.  Office “12” suit includes a range of SharePoint Servers of which Content Management Server and Portal Server are an integral part of the suit. The SharePoint Servers of office 2007 suit are called MOSS 2007.An Overview of MOSS 2007

MOSS 2007 provides the so many features to an organization’s enterprise level computing requirements. The feature set is divided into the following categories:

1.    Platform Service.    
 Platform Services is the core for the MOSS 2007 architecture. All the features of MOSS 2007 are based on the advancements in the platform services. Platform services component of the MOSS 2007 architecture provides these listed features.
-- Workspaces Management
-- Security
-- Storage
-- Server Topology Management.
-- Site Model

Microsoft Share point technologies have matured to great extent since its beginning back in 2000’s. Throughout these years Microsoft provided a step further in every release of the SharePoint version and the technologies relating to the SharePoint services are converging and integrating to the current time.

Collaboration feature area of MOSS 2007 provides rich support for various kinds of communication and collaboration needs across the enterprise, within departments and among teams. The feature set under collaboration includes the following.
-- Documents/tasks/calendars
-- Blogs
-- Wikis
-- E-mail integration
-- Outlook integration
-- Offline documents/lists

2.    Portal.
 Portal Area of the MOSS 2007 architecture provides support for integrating different types of web sites and site collection into one Portal. There can be as many portals as required by the enterprise. The Portal features provide a lot more advancement and easiness for creating these site collections and portals. The features provided in this area are:
-- Enterprise Portal template
-- Site Directory
-- My Sites
-- Social networking
-- Privacy control

3.  Search.
 The search area of the MOSS 2007 architecture provided improvements by the following features:
-- Enterprise scalability
-- Contextual relevance
-- Rich people and business data search          
-- Content Management.

As discussed earlier that content management was provided in earlier version of SharePoint technologies as a different standalone server, but in MOSS 2007 this functionality has been provided as an out of the box feature. The Content Management provides the following improvements to the SharePoint Experience.
-- Integrated document management
-- Records management
-- Web content management with policies and workflow

5. Business Forms.

With the advent of Windows Workflow Foundation, it was needed that the business process forms used in the workflows produced by the WWF be saved and routed with an engine kind of mechanism. Therefore the MOSS 2007 included a Forms Server which is solely responsible for managing the business forms across enterprise in a workflow. The business forms area provides the following features:
-- Rich and Web forms based front-ends
-- Pluggable Single Sign-On (SSO)

6. Business Intelligence.

Since the SharePoint servers have been very successful in the enterprise wide aggregation of communication and information there needed such services which can display the business related data to the related departments and teams. So that everyone having appropriate rights to view the business related data can access and analyze the various kinds of information on the portal. The Business Intelligence feature area provides exactly the required things. This includes:
-- Server-based Excel spreadsheets
-- Server-based Excel data visualization
-- Report Centers
-- Business Intelligence Web Parts
-- Key Performance Indicators (KPI) / Dashboards
-- Key Improvements in MOSS 2007 / Limitations in SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Let’s talk in details about the major improvement in MOSS 2007 (the limitations and pain points in SharePoint Portal Server 2003). The following list is a brief overview of which features the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 does not provided, but are now provided as Part of MOSS 2007.
-- Multi-Lingual
-- Authentication
-- Extranet portal addresses/aliases/maps
-- Fine-Grained Access Control per list item permissions
-- Workflows
-- Backup / Restore
-- Aggregation of information and lists
-- Navigation usability
-- Report Center and Dash boards
-- Tasks & Calendar Sync with outlook
-- Site Customization
-- Offline documents and lists.
-- Search improvements.
-- Metadata Management
-- Usage Reporting
-- Listings Usability

These limitations/paint points have been addressed with the help of improved and integrated MOSS 2007 architecture. These limitations have been addressed by different feature areas (as discussed earlier) of MOSS 2007. The following sections elaborate on the few of the major improvements which are made to counter these limitations. These are discussed per Feature Area.
Platform Services

Platform Services is the core advancement in the MOSS 2007 and many of the improved features are provided in this category. From the above mentioned list. The improvements provided by Platform Services are.

Multi-Lingual
Supports installation of multiple language packs to the same server so that each web can have its own language, thus providing support for multilingual web sites as well

Authentication
With the help of ASP.Net 2.0 the Platform Services provides features such as ASP.Net pluggable Authentication and web form authentication.

Extranet
Deployment of extranets with the help of Reverse proxy support and alternate access URLs is made possible.

Fine-Grained Access Control
In SharePoint Portal Server 2003 only Document Library (List) level access was supported where as now there is a per item level security defined.
Workflow
Platform Services provides support for Windows Workflow Foundation. 

Backup / Restore
Improved backup / restore including wastebasket and VSS support

Aggregation
Aggregation support by the help of Cross-web list parts is provided.

Navigation
Improved Look & Feel and navigation by using master pages and Security-trimmed UI is provided.

Site Customization
Customization enhancements with the help of templates, feature extensibility and ASP.Net Master Pages are supported.

Collaboration
 The feature set provided under the category of collaboration have some very important improvements in MOSS 2007 as compared to the SharePoint Portal Server 2003.  The core improvement areas are Document Libraries and Outlook Integration and synchronization.

 Document Library Improvements
In the Document Library Improvements, it now supports the
Checking out of documents from document library to local folders
Major and minor version tracking
Version management
Multiple content types within same document library, and
A tree view of Document Library

Outlook integration improvements
In the Outlook integration improvements, it supports
reading and writing to SharePoint objects such as calendar, tasks, contacts, discussions, and documents from within outlook client.
Moreover it supports for synchronization with offline documents which have been checked out for edit in Microsoft outlook from SharePoint Document library.
Also it supports for calendars and Task’s two way synchronization.


Portal

The feature area of portal also has a bit of good improvement which includes the following.
Portal Site
-- Integration with Windows SharePoint Services
-- Intranet Portal Template – Topics, Site Directory

 People and Expertise Search
-- People specific search “tab”
-- Social network support

My Site
-- Improved Public Page, Personal homepage
-- Targeting and personalization
-- Easier targeting – Distribution lists and Security Groups

Profile store improvements
-- Scalability, flexible schema, LDAP synchronization

Business Intelligence (BI)

Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server technology didn’t provide any support for the enterprise or business related information to be shared and viewed on the SharePoint portal sites. In MOSS 2007, Microsoft have envisioned and achieved the goal of improving organizations by providing business insights to all employees leading to better, faster, more relevant decisions with the help of new improvements and new features of SharePoint Portal Server.

MOSS 2007 provides these supports with the help of the following features:
-- Excel client/Excel Services
-- Dashboards & Key Performance Indicators

Excel Client is used for creating the spreadsheets and then is published to the MOSS 2007 document libraries. The Excel Services provides features of displaying the Excel files as reports in the web browser.

Dashboard Enables guided and optimized analysis of data by the user/employee. This data is stored in the Dashboards in the form of Aggregate workbooks, reports, scorecards, etc. the Dashboards make the information relevant within in the reports etc. also it annotate data with additional information

Event id: 7034

An event is any significant occurrence in the system or in a program that requires users to be notified, or an entry added to a log. The Event Log Service records application, security, and system events in Event Viewer. With the event logs in Event Viewer, you can obtain information about your hardware, software, and system components, and monitor security events on a local or remote computer. Event logs can help you identify and diagnose the source of current system problems, or help you predict potential system problems.

Today I am trying to collect the information based on Event id: 7034 so that it would be useful for the people to get the information at one place.

1.       Alert Name: User Code Host service fails to start

Source: Service Control Manager

Event ID: 7034

Level: Error

Article: Microsoft KB:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2509267

http://xblogs.kompas-xnet.si/post/SharePoint-User-Code-Service-not-starting.aspx

Resolution Mentioned:

Set the data value of ProcessNameFormat in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PerfProc\Performance to 1

2.      Alert Name: Service instance provisioning failed

Summary: An attempt to start or stop a service instance failed on a server in your farm because the service instance provisioning failed.

Resolution: Start the service (Please refer the following for detailed documentation)

Article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff519517.aspx

3.      Alert Name: Service Stop Operations

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

Description: Service Control Manager (SCM) stops services and driver services. It also reports when services terminate unexpectedly or fail to restart after it takes corrective action.

Message: The %1 service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this %2 time(s).

Article: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/windows-server-2008-event-id-7034-service-stop-operations.aspx

Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc756361(WS.10).aspx  

4.      Alert Name: The Windows Firewall has detected an application listening for incoming traffic.

Event Type: Failure Audit

Event Source: Security

Event Category: Detailed Tracking

Article: http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=861&eventno=4615&source=Security&phase=1

5.      Log name: Application

Source: SharePoint Foundation

Task Category: Web controls

user: domain name\usernaccount name

Description: Load control template file file/_controltemplate/taxonomypicket.ascx failed

Article: http://todd-carter.com/post/2010/05/03/Help-Wanted-Taxonomy-Picker.aspx