Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System - April 28th is the day!

You can stop holding your breath, as the release date for Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 was announced: April 28th is the big day!  Mark that day down in your calendars and get those browsers warmed up. 

There are, of course, numerous fixes, enhancements, etc for all the products, but since this blog covers SharePoint, I wanted to point out just a small part of what's coming up:

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2:

An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.

SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.

Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM):

The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved. A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services:

SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.Some display issues have been addressed.Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Forms Server:

Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.Browser rendering of various controls, such as the 'cannot be blank' asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

Project Server:

Better memory management in the queue service.Performance to certain database table indexes is improved.Resource plans, build team, cost resources, and the server scheduling engine have improved.

Search Server:

Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.Backup-restore has been improved.A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

A few more tidbits about what’s coming down the pipeline for the client side can be found on the Office Sustained Engineering blog.  Of course, I am working with a beta engineer to get a few sneak peeks at new features, and will be posting a lot about that in the near future.

View the original article here

December Cumulative Update Packages

Just released, the WSS and Office Server Core CU packages are now out:

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 hotfix package (Sts.msp): December 16, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;959644

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 hotfix package (Coreserver.msp): December 16, 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;959637

One important fix included in the WSS package is the fix for the approval workflow issue, which I covered in a previous post:

You use the Approval workflow in a document library, and you select SharePoint groups as approvers. Some of your domain trusts are offline. In this scenario, when the workflow is initiated, it fails, and you may receive the following error message in the Unified Logging Service (ULS) log:

System.SystemException
The trust relationship between the primary domain and the trusted domain failed.

View the original article here

MOSS Thai Language Pack installation fails on x64 systems

We had reports of customers who are unable to install the x64 Thai Language pack. It will error out with the following error:

An error occurred during the installation of the Microsoft Office Server Language Package 2007 - Thai.
Error installing the set(assembly?): ‘microsoft.office.excel.server.resources, fileVersion=’12.0.4518.1014",version ="12.0.0.0000000",culture="pl",pub
The signature or register(list?) cannot be verified or are faulty(incorrect). HRESULT: 0x80131045

A new build of this package is now posted, and can be found on the language pack page (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=th&FamilyID=318d8562-58bd-4329-b1f6-f1941a38bc7f).

Thank you for your patience while we fixed the glitch.

View the original article here

The page cannot be found HTTP 404 - file not found on the Search Administration site after installing Infrastructure Update

After installing the Infrastructure Update (KBs 951695 and 951297) and successfully complete the upgrade, you note that, within the SSP Administration page, you do not see the “Search Administration” link.  Instead, you click on the “Search Settings” link.  Within that page, that has the correct link to Search Administration.  However, you get a HTTP 404 error.

This appears to be a result of the proper S2 (Search Server 2008) features not being installed properly during the upgrade.  As you may be aware, the IU adds numerous search enhancements, including features from S2.  So, we have to force the features to deploy.

Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN.

Issue the following commands:

1. stsadm -o activatefeature -filename S2BaseSiteStapling\Feature.xml –url http://server/ssp/admin –force

2. stsadm -o activatefeature -filename S2SearchAdmin\Feature.xml -url
http://server/ssp/admin –force

3. stsadm -o activatefeature -filename S2SiteAdmin\Feature.xml -url
http://server/ssp/admin -force

View the original article here

Guide to enable SSL site collections using host headers to be browse able using ISA Server

After setting up a SSL enabled site collection using SSL, with ISA running with a single rule, you are not able to browse to the SSL enabled site collection.  The cause for this is simple: each SSL enabled site collection must have it’s own rule set within ISA.  Here is a step by step guide on how to do so:

1. In ISA 2006, right click Firewall Policy, New, and finally SharePoint publishing rule; type a new name for the publishing rule.  Click Next.

2. Select Publish a single Web site or load balancer since we are dealing with a single site collection.  Click Next.

3. Select Use SSL. Click Next.

4. Type the name of the published web site, which is the external URL as it would appear on the certificate.  Click the box next to Use a computer name or IP address to connect to the published server, and fill in the correct IP address for the server.  Click Next.

5. From the drop down for Accept requests for, select This domain name.  In the Public name box, type in the domain name you wish to use.  Click Next.

6. We now must create a new listener.  Give the new listener a name.  Click Next.

7. Select Require SSL secured connections with clients.  Click Next.

8. Select External Network and then the IP Address.  This IP address will be dedicated to accept requests from SharePoint traffic externally.  Click on OK, and then click Next.

9. Click on Select certificate and select the correct certificate with the name you are using in the public name.  Click on Select.

10. Select the authentication type, and configure as needed.  Click Next.

11. If SSO is being used, click on Enable SSO for Web sites published with this Web listener, and configure the SSO domain being used for authentication.  Click Next.

12. Click Finish.

 

13. Select the new Listener, and click on Next.

 

14. Select the NTLM authentication, and click on Next.

15. Select the first option if AAMs are already configured; if not select the second option. Click Next.

 

16. Select All Authenticated Users.  Click Next.

 

17. Click on Finish.

View the original article here

February Cumulative Update Packages

Late update:

The “uber” packages are now out.  Sorry for the late update, I was out sick all last week.

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 cumulative update package: February 24, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961755

Description of the SharePoint Server 2007 cumulative update package (MOSS server-package): February 24, 2009
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961756/

Knowledge base articles:

WSS
961750 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961750

967703 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967703

MOSS
961749 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961749

961754 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961754

Download locations:

WSS
961750 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961750&kbln=en-us

967703 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=967703&kbln=en-us

MOSS
961749 Global
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961749&kbln=en-us

961754 Language specific
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=961754&kbln=en-us

View the original article here

Items in Site Navigation and Navigation Editor are not displaying after 40 to 50 pages are created

I've had a couple of customer come across this issue, which is actually a limitation that is put in place out of box. By default, the web.config file is set to allow only 50 items to be displayed on the navigation menu chrome on the top of any portal. The 50 items is also taking into account any default navigational tab that the template being used for the portal has. For example, the Collaboration portal template has 6 tabs, by default. To allow more items to be displayed in the navigational chrome, there are 4 lines in the web.config file for the virtual server in IIS that needs to be modified.

Note: Before making any changes to your web.config file, please make a backup of it!

Find the following lines in the web.config file:

add name="GlobalNavSiteMapProvider"
add name="CombinedNavSiteMapProvider"
add name="CurrentNavSiteMapProvider"
add name="CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode"

At the end of each line, add the following value:

DynamicChildLimit="x"

x = the number of elements you want to allow to be displayed on the navigational chrome. This number also takes into account the number of default navigational tabs that are included with the portal template being used.

If we wanted to allow a total of 85 elements, it would be configured as such:

add name="GlobalNavSiteMapProvider" description="CMS provider for Global navigation" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation.PortalSiteMapProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" NavigationType="Global" EncodeOutput="true" IncludePages="PerWeb" IncludeHeadings="true" IncludeAuthoredLinks="true" DynamicChildLimit="85"

add name="CombinedNavSiteMapProvider" description="CMS provider for Combined navigation" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation.PortalSiteMapProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" NavigationType="Combined" EncodeOutput="true" IncludePages="PerWeb" IncludeHeadings="true" IncludeAuthoredLinks="true" DynamicChildLimit="85"

add name="CurrentNavSiteMapProvider" description="CMS provider for Current navigation" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation.PortalSiteMapProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" NavigationType="Current" EncodeOutput="true" IncludePages="PerWeb" IncludeHeadings="true" IncludeAuthoredLinks="true" DynamicChildLimit="85"

add name="CurrentNavSiteMapProviderNoEncode" description="CMS provider for Current navigation, no encoding of output" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation.PortalSiteMapProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" NavigationType="Current" EncodeOutput="false" IncludePages="PerWeb" IncludeHeadings="true" IncludeAuthoredLinks="true" DynamicChildLimit="85"

View the original article here