March 2007 - Posts
With planning it should be possible to keep your users running when the Office System Beta 2 Technical Refresh expires this weekend. Fortunately, you have until May 15 to upgrade your SharePoint servers.
What are your options? Get the appropriate licences and upgrade Office, or delay the decision another 60 days by upgrading to one of the Office System trial versions.
To learn how to upgrade your servers read the section called "Beta 2 TR Upgrade Resources" in Joel O's post on upgrading to RTM.
I went to update my list of Essential WM5 Applications and the hit counter is through the roof! It's even gaining on my old SharePoint Resources article. Happily, it's up to date again with what I'm still using after nearly three years of WM5. There are a few new applications, some that turned out not-so-essential, and ratings for everything. Enjoy!
Yes, the feature was included during the betas. No, it's not there in the final release. But like Grandpa used to say, "you can't keep an open standard down forever."
Download Save as PDF or XPS for Office 2007
You read that right. TextPad has a new major version, and it looks really good. Thank-you to the TextPad deities for continuing to support my license key. Total Commander is one of few others that does too and I've referred a thousand people to both of your sites.
What's next, SpeedScript 2007? Where are you Charles Brannon?
What's this? A Commodore 64 emulator for Windows Mobile 5.0? I knew that box of five-and-a-quarters was going to come in handy some day. Ah, the sweet, musty smell of vindication, wahoo!
Site Template Galleries and List Template Galleries are not upgraded during a migration.
This is true of WSS 2.0 to 3.0, and therefore SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007.
The reason is that they're not sites or lists, they're simply files stored in special Document Libraries named Site Template Gallery and List Template Gallery, one per Site collection.
So how do you upgrade these templates to WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007?
1. Create a blank site called SiteTemplates in the old environment and create sites based on all your templates beneath it.
2. Create a site beneath it called ListTemplates and there create instances of, well, I’ll bet you can guess.
3. Upgrade the server, SiteTemplates will be migrated too.
4. If they come out fine, use Save As Template in the new environment to save each back to the Gallery.
5. After you’re done, either keep or remove the SiteTemplates site depending on how useful you find it.
It’s the same strategy I use to develop site templates with people. I create a /Sandbox or /Dev site collection, rough out a site below it, and then give the future site owner rights to contribute according to their skill level. After the design is approved I can build a Site Definition based on it or Save as Template and upload it into the Gallery of their actual site. When they need to make changes, for example to change the format of the Project Charter doc stored in a Project Site, they can make the changes themselves and let me know that a new Template needs to be deployed. If they understand that after initial stabilization deployment happens once per month, it works itself into a nice routine.
And if you grab VSeWSS, there's a fighting chance that some of these upgraded Site Templates can be turned into bona fide Site Definitions with the SharePoint Solution Generator. Only Site Definitions are now called Site Templates too, so while you're ahead semantically, you're running in place syntactically. C'est la SharePoint vie.
This was just brought to my attention this week and if that's the case, I'll bet this arbitrary change in DST rules causes more ripples than Y2K ever did.
If you're running WSS 2.0 or SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (which in dependent upon WSS 2.0), then you should install the patch. If you're running the new stuff - WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007 - then you're free to return to your daily reading.
Desktops receiving automatic updates may already have the Windows and Outlook patches. Administrators of Exchange and Outlook Web Access should read the guidance for MSFT Products affected by the change.
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: No update needed.
Windows SharePoint Services 2.0: A single global time zone update including changes for the United States and Canada DST change is available now via the Microsoft Download Center and on Jan 29 through Microsoft Update. (Windows SharePoint Services update does not include new Mexico time zones.) For more information, see KB articles 924881 and 888253.
Microsoft products affected by the DST legislation Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Office Outlook Microsoft Office Live Meeting Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft SQL Server Notification Services Microsoft Entourage
Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Office Outlook Microsoft Office Live Meeting Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft SQL Server Notification Services Microsoft Entourage
Source : http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_topissues
The short answer is that URLs don't support spaces, and UNC paths do. You're probably copying the URL into Windows Explorer, so just replace each %20 in your path with a space and you should be off to the races.
This:
http://moss.mysite.com/Shared%20Documents/
Becomes:
\\moss.mysite.com\Shared Documents\
If your SharePoint site is on a port other than 80, drop the port number from the UNC path.
This:
http://moss.mysite.com:2112/Shared%20Documents/
Becomes:
\\moss.mysite.com\Shared Documents\
If that fails, drop to a command prompt and try pinging the server:
ping moss.mysite.com
No response? Something is probably screwed up with DNS. Though you may be able to hit the site in your browser, there may be a redirect going on and it isn't fully configured in DNS. This redirection may be because the "true" web application has a different name or port.
What's the best practice? Give each of your web applications its own IP address with it's own port 80. The only time you use a different port should be when you enable SSL and traffic flows on 443. One application, one IP. You're already maintaining a list of host headers or ports, so get rid of those, get yourself a block of private addresses (I hear they're free), and save yourself more than a few headaches in configuring DNS, routing, and security.
Security? For sure. Who wants user traffic running on anything but standard ports? I don't. If I'm limiting database traffic, I don't want to be doing inclusions and exclusions for 50 applications by port number, I want each to have a big fat IP address to allow or disallow.
DNS is what you use to name applications, not host headers. Why not host headers? "You cannot use Host Headers as the primary means of identifying a web site when using SSL. I don't care what else you've heard, this is the case. . . . Therefore, regarding your configuration, do what you like as long as you don't use host headers on the same site that you require SSL."
Received via e-mail and also distributed on TechNet. You need a Live ID to register. Note that the first two plus the webcast on March 8 are for Vista rather than MOSS. Enjoy!
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