Features deprecated in SharePoint 2013

Visual upgrade : 

The visual upgrade feature in SharePoint Server 2010 is not available in SharePoint 2013. For the upgrade from Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010, you could choose to use the visual upgrade feature to give site collection owners and site owners the opportunity to preserve the previous user interface temporarily while still upgrading the infrastructure and databases, site collections, and features to the latest version. This allowed site collection owners and site owners to update customizations to work in the new user interface. Once the database and site collection upgrade was complete, the user had the option to upgrade the user interface on a more granular level of the website (SPWeb object).

Document Workspace site template

When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Document Workspace site template is not available.  The scenario of collaborating on a document is now provided by the Team Site site template. The Document Workspace site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.

Personalization Site site template

 When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Personalization Site site template is not available.  The Personalization Site site template was not a widely used site template. The Personalization Site site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.

Meeting Workspace site templates

When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, all five of the Meeting Workspace site templates are not available. This includes the Basic Meeting Workspace, Blank Meeting Workspace, Decision Meeting Workspace, Social Meeting Workspace, and Multipage Meeting Workspace. SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 provide other features that support meetings and collaboration. For example, you can use Lync to conduct live meetings, OneNote to take notes during meetings, and a SharePoint team site or My Site to store shared meeting notes.

Group Work site template and Group Work solution:

When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Group Work site template is not available. This Group Work site template provides a groupware solution that teams can use to create, organize, and share information. The Group Work site template includes the Group Calendar, Circulation, Phone-Call Memo, document library, and other basic lists. The Group Work site template and the Group Work solution are discontinued and not available in SharePoint 2013.The Group Work site template was not a widely used site template. The Group Work site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.

Visio Process Repository site template :

When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Visio Process Repository site template will continue to be available. However, the Visio Process Repository site template will be removed in the next major release of SharePoint.The Visio Process Repository site template is not a widely used site template. The Visio Process Repository site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.

Unghosting and customizing CSS files

The following methods are included in SharePoint 2013, but will be removed from the next major release of SharePoint:

• Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer.Webs.CustomizeCss
  
• Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer.Webs.RevertCss

The Webs.CustomizeCss method applies style sheet customization to a particular file.
The Webs.RevertCss method reverts style sheet customization of a file to the default style sheet.
These two methods are stored in Webs.asmx.cs and are defined in Webswsdl.asps.

The methods are outdated and are no longer needed

Imaging Web service

The Imaging Web service provides functionality for creating and managing picture libraries. The Imaging Web service will be removed from the next major release of SharePoint. The Imaging Web service is included and supported in SharePoint 2013.The Imaging Web service is not widely used. The only client application for the Imaging Web service, Office Picture Manager, is no longer included with SharePoint 2013. The Imaging Web service is being removed to reduce security vulnerabilities and to simplify the number of ways to connect to SharePoint 2013.

Excel Services — Can't edit workbooks in the browser that have external data connections

Workbooks with external data connections that use Windows authentication cannot be refreshed in the browser. Instead, you are prompted to open the workbook in the Excel client program. Workbooks that have database or Windows credentials stored either in the Secure Store Service or in the connection string can still be edited in the browser. This change applies only when Excel Web App in Office Web Apps Server is used to view workbooks, not when Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2013 is used.

This is a design limitation in SharePoint 2013

Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010

Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010 has been discontinued and is not available in SharePoint 2013. Analytics processing for SharePoint 2013 is now a component of the Search service.A new analytics system was required for SharePoint 2013 that included improvements in scalability and performance, and that had an infrastructure that encompasses SharePoint Online. The Analytics Processing Component in SharePoint 2013 runs analytics jobs to analyze content in the search index and user actions that are performed on SharePoint sites

Organization Profiles

The Organization Profiles feature is deprecated in SharePoint Server 2013. Organization Profiles contain detailed information about an organization such as teams, divisions, and other information that describes the organization’s hierarchy. SharePoint features related to identities continue to evolve around the core concepts of users and groups, and SharePoint will not be investing further in OrgID.

Some Search features deprecated from Foundation 2010

The search capabilities of SharePoint Foundation 2013 have changed, and are now based on the same search implementation as SharePoint Server. This provides many improvements, but also means that the search configuration is very different.

and in Server 2010. 

 SharePoint 2013 uses the web-based interface to show the current status of the topology. You change the topology by using Windows PowerShell. SharePoint Server 2010 also included a web-based option for changing the topology

The thesaurus replacement mode is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.

Search Query web service 

In SharePoint Server 2010, the Search Query web service exposes the SharePoint Enterprise Search capabilities to client applications. This enables you to access search results from client and web applications outside the context of a SharePoint site.

Search RSS and search from Windows  

The search RSS feature is deprecated in SharePoint 2013. The functionality for performing enterprise searches from Windows 7 depends on search RSS and this element has also been deprecated in SharePoint 2013. The RSS link no longer appears on the results page. This link is replaced by the Search Alerts link.

 Custom word breaker dictionaries

 

The format of the custom word breaker dictionaries has changed in SharePoint 2013. In SharePoint 2013, you can only create one language-independent dictionary. In SharePoint Server 2010, you can create language-specific custom dictionaries (one dictionary for each language) to edit the word breaker behavior of enterprise search. The word breaker behavior for East Asian (CJK) languages has not changed in SharePoint 2013.

Configuration of stemming in the registry

The configuration of stemming in the registry is no longer supported in SharePoint 2013. Modifying stemming entries in the registry has no effect during search. In SharePoint Server 2010, you can turn stemming on or off, or you can replace it with a third-party stemmer by changing the registry. In SharePoint 2013, you cannot use a third-party stemmer.

SharePoint Search SQL syntax

In SharePoint Server 2010, you could construct complex search queries by using SQL syntax.

Shallow search refiners

SharePoint Server Search in Office 2010 supported shallow search refiners. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint supports shallow refiners and deep refiners. InSharePoint 2013, only deep search refiners are supported.

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint deprecated features

 FAST Search database connector

The FAST Search database connector is not supported in SharePoint 2013.

FAST Search Lotus Notes connector

  The FAST Search Lotus Notes connector is not supported in SharePoint 2013.

FAST Search web crawler

The FAST Search web crawler is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
The SharePoint 2013 crawler provides similar functionality to the FAST Search web crawler.

FAST Query Language (FQL) deprecated features

 The FQL features are aligned with the features of the SharePoint Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax

URL Query syntax

In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, the URL-related managed properties (such as site, or path) are tokenized as a text string, and you can query any subpart of the URL. This includes STARTS-WITH, ENDS-WITH, PHRASE and proximity queries on URL properties. Special characters such as “/”, “_” and “-”are handled as word delimiters.
In SharePoint 2013, the entire URL is tokenized as one word. This includes special characters such as “/”, “_” and “-”. You can query these managed properties by:

• Searching for the full string for the site or path.
  
• Searching for the leading part of the site or path.
  
• Omitting the protocol part (http, https), and omitting the leading part of the domain address in the query expression, for the site managed property.
  

  Specific search scope filters

    In SharePoint 2013, search scopes are automatically converted to result sources.
  
  

  Anti-phrasing 

    The search anti-phrasing feature in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint is not supported in SharePoint 2013. 
  
  Offensive content filtering
  
  The filtering of offensive content in search is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.
  
  

  Substring search

  The substring search feature was removed in SharePoint 2013.
  
  

  Person names and location extractions

  In SharePoint 2013, you cannot extract person names and locations from documents by using predefined extractors.
  
  Number of custom entity extractors
  
  In SharePoint 2013, the number of custom entity extractors that you can define is limited to 12.
  
  

  Supported document formats

  SharePoint 2013 no longer supports rarely used and older document formats that are supported in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint by enabling the Advanced Filter Pack. Both the ULS logs and the crawl log indicate the items that were not crawled.
  In SharePoint 2013, the set of supported formats that are enabled by default is extended, and the quality of document parsing for these formats has improved.
  
  

  Content processing extensibility

  The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint content processing extensibility feature has changed in SharePoint 2013. Content processing prepares an item from a content source for indexing and searching. The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint content processing extensibility feature uses a sandbox where your custom code runs. 
  

  Custom XML item processing

  FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint includes a custom XML item processing feature as part of the content processing pipeline. Custom XML item processing is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
  
  Adding a test item to the index 
  
  DocPush is a test and diagnostic command-line tool that submits test documents to the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint index. A similar command-line tool is not available in SharePoint 2013 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/ff607742.aspx#section2

Recently published content for SharePoint 2013

Published the week of March 11, 2013

New articles

Understanding result sources for search in SharePoint Server 2013   Use a result source in SharePoint Server 2013 to specify a provider to get search results from, and optionally to narrow a search to a subset of those results.

Enable apps in AAM or host-header environments for SharePoint 2013   Learn how to enable app domains for alternate access mappings or host-header web application environments after installing the March 2013 Public Update.

User profiles for SharePoint Sever 2013 learning roadmap   Use this learning roadmap to gain expertise about user profiles and associated technologies in SharePoint Server 2013.

Configure and use the Documentum connector in SharePoint Server 2013   Describes how to install and configure the Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Indexing Connector for Documentum.

Overview of SQL Server in a SharePoint environment (SharePoint 2013)   Learn about the SharePoint Server 2013 relationship with SQL Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and SQL Server 2012 and how you can interact with the databases.

Updated articles

Use Windows PowerShell to update alerts in SharePoint 2013   Learn to use Invoke-AlertFixup to update the e-mail alerts associated with a URL.

Published the week of March 4, 2013

New articles

Create a high availability architecture and strategy for SharePoint 2013   Describes how to combine farm architecture and technology to create a highly available environment in a single SharePoint 2013 farm.

Blog: Stage 3: How to enable a list as a catalog   New post in a series that describes how you can use SharePoint 2013 to set up a website that is based on product catalog data.

Updated articles

Software boundaries and limits for SharePoint 2013   Revised limits for maximum file size and security scopes.

Installing and configuring workflow for SharePoint Server 2013   Added information about least-privilege configuration.

What is Blob Cache? How to configure it ?

SharePoint Server 2010 provides three types of caches that help improve the speed at which Web pages load in the browser: the BLOB cache, the page output cache, and the object cache.

SharePoint Server 2010 provides a disk-based cache that stores files that are used by Web pages to help them load quickly in the browser, and reduces the load on the database server when it uses those files. These files are known as binary large objects (BLOBs), and the cache is known as the BLOB cache.

Configuring cache settings for a Web application.

You enable and configure the BLOB cache, and make configuration changes to the page output cache profiles and the object cache in the Web.config file in the Web application to which you want to apply those changes. The changes you make to the Web.config file will be applied to all site collections within the Web application

Note : Please take a backup of the web.config before you make any changes to the file

To configure BLOB cache settings

1.      Verify that you have the following administrative credentials: You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to configure the BLOB cache settings.

2.      Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

3.      In Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, in the Connections pane, click the plus sign (+) next to the server name that contains the Web application, and then click the plus sign next to Sites to view the Web application or applications that have been created.

4.      Right-click the name of the Web application for which you want to configure the disk-based cache, and then click Explore. Windows Explorer opens, with the directories for the selected Web application listed.

5.      Right-click web.config, and then click Open.

6.      If the Windows dialog box appears, select Select a program from a list of installed programs, and then click OK.

7.      In the Open With dialog box, click Notepad, and then click OK.

8.      In the web.config Notepad file, find the following line: <BlobCache location="" path="\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|jpe|jfif|bmp|dib|tif|tiff|ico|png|wdp|hdp|css|js|asf|avi|flv|m4v|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|rm|rmvb|wma|wmv)$" maxSize="10" enabled="false" />

9.      In this line, change the location attribute to specify a directory that has enough space to accommodate the cache size.

Microsoft strongly recommends that you specify a directory that is not on the same drive as where either the server operating system swap files or server log files are stored.

10.  To add or remove file types from the list of file types to be cached, for the path attribute, modify the regular expression to include or remove the appropriate file extension. If you add file extensions, make sure to separate each file type with a pipe (|)

11.    To change the size of the cache, type a new number for maxSize. The size is expressed in gigabytes (GB), and 10 GB is the default. 

It is recommended that you not set the cache size smaller than 10 GB. When you set the cache size, make sure to specify a number large enough to provide a buffer at least 20 percent bigger than the estimated size of the content that will be stored in the cache.

12.  To enable the BLOB cache, change the enabled attribute, from "false" to "true".

13.  Save the Notepad file, and then close it.

When you save a change to the web.config file, the Web application in Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 automatically recycles. This recycling can cause a brief interruption in service to sites contained in that Web application, and users can lose session state

When you enable the BLOB cache on your front-end Web server, you reduce the load on the SharePoint Server 2010 database server created by read requests from Web browsers.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/cc261797%28v=office.14%29.aspx#section3

SharePoint 2013 Build Numbers

This will come very handy while installing and troubleshooting 2013

Build Number	Build Name	Component	Information Link	Download Link	Notes
15.0.4128.1014	Beta	SharePoint Foundation 2013		Download	Bugs, Notes, & Regressions
15.0.4128.1014	Beta	SharePoint Server 2013		Download
15.0.4128.1014	Beta	Project Server 2013		Download
​	​	​	​	​	​
​15.0.4420.1017	​RTM	​​SharePoint Foundation 2013	​	​Download	​ Bugs, Notes, & Regressions
​​15.0.4420.1017	​RTM	​SharePoint Server 2013	​	​Download	​
​​15.0.4420.1017	​RTM	​Project Server 2013	​	​Download	​
​	​	​	​	​	​
​15.0.4433.1506	​December 2012 Hotfix	​SharePoint Server 2013	​KB2752058	​Download	​ Bugs, Notes, & Regressions
​15.0.4433.1506	​December 2012 Hotfix	​SharePoint Server 2013 (coreserver)	​KB2752001	​Download	​

Courtesy - http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=346

Forgot your Sharepoint Farm passphrase ?

This can happen to you . But no worries You can’t retrieve it, but you can reset it using PowerShell.

Make sure the account you are logged in as is

• A farm admin and
• local admin on server

$passphrase = ConvertTo-SecureString -asPlainText –Force
Set-SPPassPhrase -PassPhrase $passphrase –Confirm

For more info : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607568.aspx

Missing Webparts- One of the crtitical error from HEALTH ANALYZER

Missing server side dependencies- The Umbrella which covers 4 critical issues

Missing features has already been covered under this section:

http://sharepointknowledgebase.blogspot.in/2013/03/missing-server-side-dependencies.html

Remaining ones are missing webparts, missing setup files and missing assemblies.

Let’s concentrate on Missing Webparts section:

[galaxy.SPWP.FSODataParser,	Culture=neutral,	PublicKeyToken=fc9c10bf499fbb4b])	[WSS_Content_SP2010],
in	database	[WSS_Content_SP2010],	farm.
[EasyTabParts,	Culture=neutral,	PublicKeyToken=b15a43dfe3a17723])	[WSS_Content_SP2010],
[MC_Menu,	Culture=neutral,	PublicKeyToken=d088e98baa178219])	[WSS_Content_SP2010],

[Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,	Culture=neutral,	[SharePoint_AdminContent],
[Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal,	Culture=neutral,	[SharePoint_AdminContent],

Some webparts are belongs to SharePoint_AdminContent database. While debugging further on this, we tried to find out the leaf names as well as dir names are a part of which links/URL’s exactly but we didn’t find anything. That’s strange to troubleshoot further.

The GUIDS which are belongs SharePoint_AdminContent Database are as follows:

[baf5274e-a800-8dc3-96d0-0003d9405663]

[9eba9c17-3b89-a2e7-a3cf-0ee3d7c2adb1]

[07f48b68-2e69-c86a-ebe4-16359e03ebc2]

[23091f6c-295d-4493-504c-1714a20d65a2]

[7d319bdd-d90e-7861-b7f0-2f9f4cec3004]

[c744e2b2-158c-c2f8-2f80-54bf046ff644]

[36f2680f-4855-f100-da5b-5dd1d07ae62b]

[b36f9dfe-325a-1b44-e6bb-645dcf79c770]

[0a60f514-1dea-8537-b588-64ee5e224da3]

[9f56656f-6aa3-0d55-a812-711bf65864ea]

Further research on this, we came to a conclusion that this is a known issue regarding this GUIDS belongs to AdminContent DB and we can certainly ignore that. This will gets fixed in the next CU.

Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/allenwang/archive/2011/10/09/sharepoint-2010-missing-server-side-dependencies.aspx

Example:

Error Message:

[MissingWebPart] WebPart class [a03a7e7e-aab8-9045-8bf2-54d79ff53595] (class [PowershellWebpart.PowershellWebPart.PowershellWebPart] from assembly [PowershellWebpart, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0bf26c041eeaa3b0]) is referenced [1] times in the database [WSS_Content_Sharepoint.SP2010], but is not installed on the current farm. Please install any feature/solution which contains this web part. One or more web parts are referenced in the database [WSS_Content_Sharepoint.SP2010], but are not installed on the current farm. Please install any feature or solution which contains these web parts.

As we can see, the error gives you a “WebPart class” GUID, the name of the content database, and how many times it is referenced in the database but no site collection link.

Following SQL query will be used to find out the site ID, LEAF name and Directory name.

"SELECT * from AllDocs inner join AllWebParts on AllDocs.Id = AllWebParts.tp_PageUrlID where AllWebParts.tp_WebPartTypeID = '4575ceaf-0d5e-4174-a3a1-1a623faa919a'" | select Id, SiteId, DirName, LeafName, WebId, ListId, tp_ZoneID, tp_DisplayName | Format-List

SITE ID: we can easily find out the site collection link based on the fetched site ID details

LEAF name: this will be a page on which that faulty webparts exist

DIR name: this will be a document library in which those pages exist.

Output will be like this:

Id       : 657a472f-e51d-428c-ab98-502358d87612

Name     :

SiteId   : 337c5721-5050-46ce-b112-083ac52f7f26

To find the site collection URL using the information output from the query, type the following command:

$site = Get-SPSite -Limit all | where {$_.Id -eq "337c5721-5050-46ce-b112-083ac52f7f26"}

$site.Url

Once we have the site collection URL, we can use the relative path specified by the DirName property to find the location of the file.

To remove the web part from the page, type the page URL in the browser and add?contents=1 to the end of it.

That’s it. You will see the web part maintenance page on which faulty/corrupted webparts are listed.

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

Approval Workflow Error : "An error has occured in Approval"

I have came accross 2 -3 tickets in this week in which the user gets an error in the approval workflow. I knew the solution to it but the user wanted something documented . So tried to check on my blog if i have posted it and found that it was not . so adding to the list .

Issue : Error on Approval Workflow : "An error has occured in Approval"

User has a SharepPoint OOB Approval workflow which can be created through the site and easily be attached to a document library and it starts manually or automatically when a new document gets created and get the required approvers to review and approve the document for publishing.

How to configure a Approval workflow :

For a document library or list

Go to Settings->Workflow Settings->Add Workflow
Choose the Approval workflow from the list, make it start on item creation go to the next page.

Select the approvers and check "Update the approval status"

Click Finish and the workflow is created .

Although this is a easy way to configure the workflow It might end-up with a error:

 Error  System Account :  An error has occured in Approval

A small setting can change the whole error .

This is an approval workflow which should after getting the approvals update the approval status of the document .

The workflow will start and run flawlessly until the end and when it will try to update the approval status.If this setting under Versioning settings is not set  to require content approval it will fail to update the status and thorws the error.

An error has occured in Approval

So, if you come accross an Approval Workflow

Go into the document library settings and go to Versioning Settings Page

Set "Require content approval for submitted items to?"

To Yes and everything should be fine.

This would not make any changes to the Existing status of the workflow . Terminate the workflow and run it again .

New Learning Roadmaps for SharePoint 2013

A learning roadmap is a way of organizing content (articles, white papers, videos, blog posts, etc.) to provide a customized and optimized learning path for a technology, feature, product, or solution. Starting with prerequisites and then moving on to introductory, intermediate, and advanced learning goals, learning roadmaps enables a novice to ramp up quickly and an experienced technology person to build more expertise in a particular area.

My colleagues on the SharePoint IT pro writing team have been very busy publishing the following additional learning roadmaps:

·    Upgrade for SharePoint 2013

·    Virtualize SharePoint 2013

·    Windows PowerShell for SharePoint 2013

If you need to technically ramp up in any of these areas, take a look at these articles to understand the prerequisite knowledge and then dive in.

See Learning roadmaps for SharePoint 2013 for the complete list for SharePoint 2013.

See Learning Roadmaps Portal for the complete list across Microsoft products. To create your own learning roadmap, see the Learning Roadmap Template.

Reference: http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/archive/2013/02/25/new-learning-roadmaps-for-sharepoint-2013.aspx