Sharepoint

"The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key" VMWare Windows Server 2008 Install

Wayne Larimore — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:43:37 GMT

I was prepping a virtual environment within VMWare Workstation 6.5 (EZInstall approach) for Microsoft SharePoint 2010. I encountered the following challenge when booting from a Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 ISO:

"The unattend answer file contains an invalid product key..."

To get rid of this show-stopper I simply disabled the floppy drive connection it had created. It worked like a charm.

Oklahoma City SharePoint User Group Opportunities

Wayne Larimore — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:39:42 GMT

We have two events happening in March that you should be aware of if you are in the Oklahoma City metro area. It will be great time to share what you are doing with SharePoint and struggles you are having. Perhaps there will be someone in attendance that can provide an answer to your problem.

When: March 11th, 2010 11:30am - 1:00pm (please rsvp, see below)

Where:

Dell Oklahoma City office
3501 SW 15th
Bldg A, Hudson Hall on 1st Floor
Oklahoma City, OK 73108

Who:

Eric Shupps, The SharePoint Cowboy will be our guest speaker for this first meeting of the Oklahoma City SharePoint User Group.

Subject:

Overview of SharePoint 2010 and talk further about features in SharePoint 2010 of interest to the IT Pro and the developer.

Please RSVP to: balcock [at] ou.edu or call (405) 325-7307

When: March 29, 2010 6pm - 8pm

Where: http://okccoco.com/

Who:

Corey Roth is a consultant at Stonebridge specializing in SharePoint solutions in the Oil & Gas Industry. He has ten plus years of experience delivering solutions in the energy, travel, advertising and consumer electronics verticals. Corey has always focused on rapid adoption of new Microsoft technologies including Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, LINQ, and SilverLight. He also contributed greatly to the beta phases of Visual Studio 2005. For his contributions, he was awarded the Microsoft Award for Customer Excellence (ACE). Corey is a graduate of Oklahoma State University. Corey is a member of the .NET Mafia (www.dotnetmafia).

Subject:

Introduction to SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search

This intro level talk will teach you the basics of Enterprise Search in SharePoint. Here you will learn about the basic building blocks such as content sources, crawled properties, managed properties, and scopes. We will also cover what types of data can be indexed. We’ll use demo search using SharePoint 2010, but all of the topics apply to MOSS 2007 as well.

Hope to see you there :o)

SharePoint 2010 Office 2010 official launch dates announced

Wayne Larimore — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:01:37 GMT

The Microsoft SharePoint Team blog has officially posted the release dates for SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010.

RTM (Release to Manufacturing) will be this April 2010

May 12th, 2010, is the launch date for SharePoint 2010 & Office 2010

SharePoint 2010 Service Application Architecture Planning

Wayne Larimore — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:14:24 GMT

Matt Passannante has recently posted an excellent article on SharePoint's new Service Application Architecture. He reviews the history of where we've been and provides the look into the future of "Componentization" - the approach Microsoft has taken with the Service Application Architecture. Microsoft has numerous built-in services ready for use as well. I highly recommend reading this great article. It will clarify alot of questions you may have concerning this huge complex powerful new platform within SharePoint...

http://vspug.com/matt/2010/02/23/planning-for-the-new-service-application-architecture-in-sharepoint-2010/

Oklahoma City OKC SharePoint Users Group - Launch

Wayne Larimore — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:49:40 GMT

Wendy Schopf has initiated the startup of our very own SharePoint Users Group here in Oklahoma City. Here's her announcment of the first meeting:

We are thrilled to announce the formation of the Oklahoma City SharePoint Users Group (OKCSUG). OKCSUG is an open and independent forum that has set its sights on building community.

OKCSUG’s vision is to bring Oklahoma City and surrounding SharePoint communities together through knowledge sharing and networking. Now moving the group full speed ahead, OKCSUG founder Wendy Schopf will speak to new members at the first meeting at 6pm on Monday the 22nd of February at the OkcCoCo. There will be networking, discussions, and planning to blaze the OKCSUG trail for 2010! Snacks and drinks will be provided.

Accelebrate has jumped onboard to show their support through sponsorship and will offer give-aways throughout the year. We are currently seeking additional sponsors, speakers, and topics. Come to the OKCSUG meetings or contact OKCSUG to find out more about sponsorship or speaking opportunities or to participate in steering the group through 2010.

Register on OKCSUG Website to receive email updates of all our future meetings and events. If you know of other people that might be interested in this group please feel free to forward this email.

When: February 22nd, 2010 6:00pm-8:00pm
Where: OKCCoCo

SharePoint Designer Restore fails with "Could not find the file" Exportsettings.xml

Wayne Larimore — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:02:33 GMT

I recently attempted to move a subsite from one location to another on our SharePoint 2007 platform. I received an error upon restoring. The backup seemed to successfully complete, but the restore kept failing with Could not find the file C:\Windows\Temp\[someguid]\Exportsettings.xml.

I found out this happens when the content size exceeds 25MB and it fails to include the mentioned file - Exportsettings.xml. I found a workaround solution at this particular blog.

Here's the jest of what needs to happen:

Recover leftover files from the original backup site location (via Recycle Bin)
Select all recovered files (locate at the root of the site now) within SharePoint Designer and Publish them to a local location via File System.
Change the extension name of all files from *.cmp to *.cab
Unzip the *.cab files into a temporary subfolder
Use the Microsoft Cabinet Software Development Kit's cabarc executable to create one file with all files into a seperate subfolder.
- e.g. cabarc n test-restore.cab C:\testdir\*.*
Rename the new files extension from .cab to .cmp
Use this file to restore the site

[addendum] - I was getting the message “Web site restore did not complete successfully”. My file was around 380MB in size. To get around this issue, I increased the maximum file upload size in the Central Administration. It's located in the following location: Central Administration --> Application Management --> Web Application General Settings --> Maximum Upload Size. It was set to 50MB and I increased it to 400MB temporarily to accomplish this backup / restore request.

Convert VMWare and Hyper V files Free

Wayne Larimore — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:11:21 GMT

I found a free tool that will convert Hyper-V (VHD) files to VMWare (VMDK) and vice-versa.

Here's the link: V2V Converter - Free

It's Official - Upgraded Blog & New Diggs

Wayne Larimore — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:02:03 GMT

This past weekend I upgraded this blog. I run my blog on subText, a fork of the old .TEXT blogging platform. I went from version 1.9.3 to 2.1.2 and it wasn't a smooth migration path, let me tell you.

At the same time, I moved all of my websites (including this blog) from webhost4life to the fairly new WinHost.com. These guys are doing it all right. It fits exactly what I was needing and has cut my hosting cost in half. They bill on a monthly basis and have top quality support. The control panel is very simple but yet powerful. I went with the basic plan. However, they do provide an advanced plan as well. Some of the issues I ran across with my subText upgrade dealt with going from an IIS 6 platform to an IIS 7 platform. If anyone else is looking to do the same leave a comment and I'll fill you in on what I had to do to make it happen.

Anyways, I'm a happy camper now. Glad to have the migration behind me.

SharePoint 2010 Post Conference Takeaways

Wayne Larimore — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:16:28 GMT

I have had some time to ponder the ton-of-stuff at the 2009 SharePoint Conference. Overall, I really like what Microsoft has done with this version. They seem to have addressed the majority of pain points. Here are some of the highlights of what comes to mind...

Service Applications - Previously, we were forced to use the SSP service for all services (Search, BDC, Profile, Excel). Now, the Service Application approach is providing a Service Model. AC gave a level 400 session on this and built a cleverly simple load-balanced calculator that was indeed an independent service.

The Ribbon - consistency is always a good thing. The Ribbon provides a consistent place where the end-user knows where his / her actions can be acted upon.

Sandboxing / Visual Studio 2010 templates - Developing for SharePoint has always been a confusing effort. Once the developer became familiar with creating the solution structure and with the repetition of doing it lots of times, it was second nature. Deployment? eck! Now, with VS 2010, the necessary structure and files are generated via SharePoint project templates and even builds the wsp file for deployment. Sandboxing provides a way to deploy your solution with a subset object model and deployed to a special gallery, a more secure environment and allows admins to upload instead of IT/Ops. Visual Web Part templates now have a built-in Designer also.

Lists - Lists and libraries are pretty much the bread and butter to SharePoint. I use Custom Lists a lot in my day-to-day activities. New in SP 2010, they have introduced a way to prevent Duplicate Values, provided Column Validation (via Excel formulas) and More Robust Metadata defining.

LINQ Support - The need to write / build CAML seems to be nearly eliminated with the introduction of Microsoft.SharePoint.LINQ ; at least that is what we were told. It will now translate LINQ into CAML for us!

SharePoint Designer / InfoPath / No Code approach - I sat in on a session demonstrating a no code approach to an end-to-end business case. I was pretty impressed by it, but still leary of it in real life business situations. However, I am real eager to start working with SPD and InfoPath to see if no code solutions are really possible in SharePoint 2010. They have addressed some short falls that were in InfoPath 2007. Here are some of the new features I remember: Web Part creation, SP list/library form creation, ability now to do filtering in browser forms, and the rules manager. Lastly, workflow management has been improved significantly in both SharePoint Designer and InfoPath 2010.

Developing SharePoint Applications: Patterns & Practices Update

Wayne Larimore — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:17:33 GMT

[via AC]

An update has been published on Patterns & Practices as related to SharePoint Application Development. This is a great resource to follow as you are developing your custom SharePoint solutions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203468.aspx