Installing SharePoint 2013: Video

SharePoint 2013 is finally here! It packs a real punch with all the new features that Microsoft is delivering with it. For example, have you played with the new document upload functionality or how about the new SharePoint Apps marketplace? 

You must have at least jumped into the awesome Community site social features right? No? Well, I guess you need an environment first to get started on SharePoint 2013.…This is what we're going to talk about here.
To get a prototype environment going, you need to install SharePoint 2013 either directly on your computer or install it within a virtual machine (either Hyper-V or VMware). There are plenty of steps to installing the software; however, the first things you need to make sure of are the following:

1. You’ll need a 64-bit environment. Starting with SharePoint 2010, the software no longer supports anything but a 64-bit environment whether native or virtual in nature.
2. Windows Server 2008 R2 is needed as the base OS to install SharePoint 2013.
3. SQL Server 2008 R2 (or SQL Server 2012) is needed to host your SharePoint 2013 databases. SQL Server Express can also do the trick; however, it has limitations

To watch complete video: http://www.sharepointpromag.com/article/sharepoint-2013/installing-sharepoint-2013-144618

Understanding My Sharepoint Sites- SharePoint 2007

I researched on the net and did not find a perfect Answer explaining about “My SharePoint sites” . So Thought of sharing this

I got to know that this is a Automated process But how does it work ?  Why does it not work for some users And they keep Opening Tickets J

Being a Farm admin why don't we see all the sites in the My SharePoint sites

This was very confusing so I wanted to do some more research on this . After Researching what I got to know is the Membership information comes from the profile import/crawl and the "My SharePoint Sites" gets updated on the client PC on a daily basis.

It happens that's some users don't see all the sites listed under My SharePoint sites even if they are a part of the site.

Add to My links is not connected to My SharePoint sites it will add a link in the Drop down below My SharePoint Sites . This is the First thing all the users often try .

So after Going through some documentation this is what I got to know

For the users that are not experiencing the membership features of MOSS 2007 (for e.g. My SharePoint Sites, etc), they were listed in the Owners group on the SharePoint site.

The membership functionality strictly works for the users listed explicitly in the Members group of the SharePoint site.

Now It Does make sense and is much Transparent. The only thing we have to do now is insure the owner of the site is also a member of each site collection in order for them to take advantage of the membership features .

As long as your site collections all reside under the same SSP your My Site belongs to, the membership functionality will work across the board.

Note : Your memberships will be updated on the next index crawl cycle

***** How to Show sub-sites Under My SharePoint Sites ?******

Answer = You will have to explicitly add the user to the members group of all the subsites as well.

When we Create a sub-site it automatically creates 3 new groups for that subsite. By default it puts the site creator in the Owners and the Members group.

 So it Doesn't Mean That if you are a owner you need not be a member of that site .If you remove yourself from the members group will not allow the site to be captured in the membership system

Documents in this folder are not available. This folder may have been moved or deleted, or network problems may be preventing a connection to the server.: Explorer View.

Issue:

While trying to open the document library in explorer view or using “Open with Windows Explorer” option and was getting following error

Documents in this folder are not available. This folder may have been moved or deleted, or network problems may be preventing a connection to the server.

Troubleshooting:

1.       Confirmed that it’s a machine specific issue by login user to other workstation.

2.       On user workstation, checked and found that the webClient service was not running.

3.       From services.msc, changed service startup type to Automatic and Started the service.

4.       Performed IE Reset.

5.       Run Office diagnostics.

6.       Rebooted the workstation after every steps to verify.

Resolution:

1.       Backed up the registry folder "Software".

2.       Deleted a folder “Software” under “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT -> Software -> Microsoft -> MasterAggregatorForIPP -> OleDbHandlers”

3.       Run Office Repair

4.       Restarted workstation.

Configure People Picker in SharePoint 2013

You configure the People Picker web control at the zone level for a farm by using the Stsadm setproperty operation. By configuring the settings for the control, you can filter and restrict the results that are displayed when a user searches for a user, group, or claim. Those settings will apply to every site within the site collection.

The information in this article applies only to web applications that use Windows authentication in either claims mode (the default for SharePoint 2013) or classic mode.

You use the People Picker control to find and select users, groups, and claims when a site, list, or library owner assigns permissions in SharePoint 2013. People Picker is configured at the zone level for a farm by using the Stsadm setproperty operation. By configuring the settings for the control, you can filter and restrict the results that are displayed when a user searches for a user, group or claim. Those settings will apply to every site within the site collection. For more information about the People Picker properties, see Peoplepicker: Stsadm properties

This article contains information about People Picker Stsadm properties and how to configure People Picker for specific scenarios. For more information about the People Picker control and how it works, its relationship to authentication and claims providers, and how to plan for People Picker, see People Picker and claims providers overview (SharePoint 2013).
Before you perform the procedures in this article, you must do the following:

• Verify that the account that you use to run Stsadm is a member of the Administrators group on the server on which SharePoint 2013 is installed.
• Open the Command Prompt window as an administrator to perform the procedures in this article.
• In the command prompt on the drive where SharePoint 2013 is installed, change to the following directory: %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\Bin. %COMMONPROGRAMFILES% is typically set to :\Program Files\Common Files.

Detailed Article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg602075%28v=office.15%29.aspx

Knowledge Management with Metadata and SharePoint Search

Over time, we quickly realize that knowledge can be difficult to find within an organization. Having a dedicated knowledge repository can be very helpful, but the true knowledge in your company usually goes beyond a dedicated place to store articles and documents. SharePoint is great for capturing knowledge through documents, blogs, wikis, discussion boards, social newsfeeds and other content, but this knowledge often gets lost over time, especially as new content is added throughout your environment. How do we harness this knowledge so that it becomes more relevant and useful for the users of your system?

One of the key foundations to a good knowledge management system in SharePoint is the definition of content types and managed metadata. This provides a global structure that can be used across your SharePoint environment and provides consistency when searching for information in SharePoint, no matter where your content lives.

Using Enterprise Keywords is an easy way for users to tag content with Metadata that doesn’t fit in the structured taxonomy. Using the Managed Metadata Service, these Enterprise Keywords can easily be moved into the formal taxonomy if and when it makes sense.

To pull all of this content together, SharePoint Search can be used to return content from across your organization into a single location. The search results page allows users to further refine their results using both your structured and non-structured metadata. A simple example of this may be in finding all training documents related to a particular topic, no matter which department they originated from.

Tapping into the knowledge of the people within your organization can provide amazing benefits. Users can complete their SharePoint profile in order to manually add skills and experience that is relevant to their job. SharePoint Search can use this information to return the relevant people for your query.

Search in SharePoint 2013 can also determine the relationship between people and the documents they have authored, making it even easier to find the right person with the skills or experience you are looking for without the need for users to keep their profile constantly up to date.

SharePoint Search out-of-the-box will provide some ranking of the results based on relevance. With some additional configuration, search can provide very specific ranking for your organization. This may be based on the age of the content, the feedback (ratings) of content received by peers, the source of the content, or even the popularity of the content.

With some initial planning and configuration, users can see the true potential in using SharePoint for finding knowledge throughout the organization.

www.abelsolutions.com