Question and answers asked at webinar: A deep dive into SharePoint 2013

1.     What’s the upgrade method from 2010 to 2013?

The in-place upgrade method is gone, which is good, because it was never a viable option for a production SharePoint upgrade due to the lack of rollback capabilities.

When upgrading to 2013, the approach starts with a content database attachment. When the database is attached, the SharePoint 2013 servers will contain the code for both SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013.

Sites in the attached database will initially operate with the 2010 framework. Site collection administrators will have an option to run a trial upgrade, preview the results, and either revert back to the 2010 version or complete the upgrade to 2013. While they are previewing the results, the 2013 version of the site is actually a copy of the 2010 site.

2.     What is the difference between search and e-discovery?        

Search is a function performed by any users looking for content. E-discovery is a legal process involving the location of documents related to a specific legal action. When conducting the E-discovery, there are specific pieces of functionality available to legal professionals, such as the ability to place a hold on content to keep it from being destroyed.

3.     Is the workflow azure now an on-premise solution?

Both. The Windows Azure Workflow service can be hosted by Microsoft on the Azure platform. This option requires no local solution. However you can also install this service on your local servers. This may be installed on your SharePoint server or a dedicated server.

4.     If BCS can be developed and deployed within the application, how the data connection changes be taken care for migrating those application on production environment?

The BCS connection in the SharePoint App would be updated to match the environment it was being deployed to. The updated app can be published to the Office.com Marketplace or internal Catalog. The site collection owner will see a message that the App is ready to be updated and they can trigger the update process that contains the updated connection changes.

     5. So, the new Client API will have methods to get access to objects above the Site Collection? Currently the client API in 2010 can't.

The Client API can be used to make HTTP requests across and within site collections. This is vastly improved over SharePoint 2010. You can access operations at the Site, Web, Lists, Libraries, Workflows, BCS, Permissions, etc. What you can’t do is higher level operations, such as working with the web application objects or other farm level objects.

6.     How can we get access to server objects?

When developing Apps for SharePoint 2013, most operations that take place within a Site Collection (Lists, libraries, workflows, BCS, etc.) can be accessed using the Client APIs. You could also deploy your own service to your environment that can be used to interact with any Server Objects and then access this service through your App. A Self-Hosted or Azure-Hosted App for SharePoint can be written using server-side technologies such as ASP.NET,

Java, or PHP and can take full advantage of their server-side capabilities.

7.     Please mention what BCS is.

Business Connectivity Services. BCS provides the framework to interact with data that resides outside of SharePoint, for example as SQL Database containing your LOB data.

8.     Have there been any improvements in the area of using touch interfaces on mobile devices?

SharePoint 2013 now provides the ability to create completely different looks(master pages) for the same site but for different platforms. These device channels, as they are called, provide the ability to have one look for browsers, one for tablets, and one for smart phones.

9.     What changes will be made in Nintex for SharePoint 2013?

Nintex will be announcing their changes for SharePoint 2013 shortly. In the meantime, Nintex has provided a Platform Preview for SharePoint 2013 that utilizes the new SharePoint App Model.

Reference: www.abelsolutions.com

The server returned a non-specific error when trying to get the data view from the data source

Error when creating a SOAP Data Source in SharePoint Designer 

With Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, you can easily link data sources that contain interrelated data to one another. You can even link data sources of separate types — for example, you can link an XML file to an SQL database. By linking multiple data sources, you create a single data source that appears in the Data Sources list with all of your other data sources.

Consider the following scenario:

§  You create a web application which is configured to use claims-based authentication with NTLM 

§  You create a custom list or use an existing list with some data. 

§  You create a SOAP data source in SharePoint Designer & configure to authenticate as a claims user 

In this scenario, you receive an error similar to the following

The server returned a non-specific error when trying to get the data view from the data source

Cause: I am trying to find out the root cause behind this issue but most probably the answer would be- SharePoint impersonates the anonymous IIS user account and is denied access to the resource.

Resolution:

1.      Open IIS Manager. 

2.      Expand site and find the application to which you are connecting from SharePoint Designer. 

3.      Right click, select Explore. 

4.      Open the web.config file 

5.      Search for <appSettings> 

6.      Find the line with <add key="aspnet:AllowAnonymousImpersonation" value="true" /> 

7.      Change it to <add key="aspnet:AllowAnonymousImpersonation" value="false" /> 

8.      Save the file 

9.      Add the Data View from SharePoint designer.

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

SharePoint Designer cannot display the item

Problem Description:

When you use Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010, you may experience one or more of the following issues:

When you try to edit or publish a workflow, you receive one of the following error messages: 

1.      SharePoint Designer cannot display the item.

2.      The list of workflow actions on the server references an assembly that does not exist. Some actions will not be available. 

When you try to create a new list workflow, site workflow, or reusable workflow, you follow the steps to create the workflow. However, after you have completed the steps, the item is not present. 

When you connect to a SharePoint Online site, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft SharePoint Designer cannot be used to edit web sites on servers different from SharePoint Server 2010.

  

When you connect to a SharePoint site, you receive the following error message:

This web site has been configured to disallow editing with SharePoint Designer. 

Resolution:

To resolve these issues, install Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2013. SharePoint Designer 2013 is available at the following Microsoft website:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35491

Note:- You may install SharePoint Designer 2013 alongside SharePoint Designer 2010. However, we recommend that you uninstall SharePoint Designer 2010 before you install SharePoint Designer 2013.

Important Guidelines:

1.      You experience these issues if one or more of the following conditions are true:

2.      You have received the most recent update to the Office 365 SharePoint Online service. 

3.      You have upgraded your on-premises installation of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. 

4.      You have upgraded your installation of Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2013. 

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 issuesJJ