I recently went to apply a custom SharePoint theme and was presented with the unhelpful error message above.

It turns out that the reason for this error is that SharePoint has encountered an unknown file that it cannot read from in the themes’ directory.

Navigation to your custom theme directory  – [Systemdrive]\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\THEMES\yourtheme and delete the rogue file.

In my case it was the windows generated ‘thumbs.db’ thumbnail database in the folder that was causing the problem. If you have used an editor to edit any of your theme files then you may possibly have some temp files in the directory which need deleting.

If like me it was the ‘thumbs.db’ file then be sure to disable thumbnail caching for the folder. To do this click Tools in windows explorer then select Folder Options > View, look for the checkbox entitled ‘Do not cache thumbnails’ and click it.

Hope this helps

Synopsis

In this Blog and in all the blogs i post, I try to re-use my work/efforts; for one, it ensures that the information is grounded, it certainly gives me practice, and more importantly, it demonstrates how SharePoint is modular, and how each part of the Wheel Compliments each other.  So.. </soapbox> over, lets begin… The idea here is to demonstrate how we can affect changes to SharePoint Lists and Libraries; for instance, we will use LINQ to SharePoint to talk to Lists in a Site, and use Sandbox Solutions to "work in that list in a protected area” based on the Rules of the Sandbox.  Now; the intrusive part is the how we gain access to the SharePoint List, in this example (Part 1) I am still doing a Sandbox Solution which means it is limited to the Site Collection, but I still have code that may be better protected in a “Full Trust Proxy” which will be (Part 2).

Get ready on how you can do:

1. Create a Sand Box Solution with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 on SharePoint 2010 Beta
2. Use LINQ to SharePoint via the SPMetal Utility to create and add a Class to our Solution to act as the Wrapper to our Content Database
3. Create a Web Part to display information from SharePoint Lists
4. Use some Code to do some actions on that List

Recognition of Effort to my friends in the SharePoint Community

So… I want to take time out to recognize some of my buddies in the SharePoint Community that helped with a really weird issue I was having trying to get even a “Hello World” textbox control working in my Sandbox Solution.  As it turned out and I do have the troubleshooting steps outlined below, my issue was related to having SharePoint 2010 on a Domain Controller, and the problem was solved [albeit after 12 hours of work and 4 – 6 hours troubleshooting] via a PowerShell Script found on Jie Li’s and Jeremy Thake’s site.  Using Twitter (yes I know, I tweet too much) I solicited the help of my co-worker Bart Tubalinal @bart_tubalinal and Jeremy Thake @jthake to see if they saw something glaring wrong in my code; they looked, they found nothing… then i hear the words I didn’t want to hear “… have you tried looking in the ULS log…, this may be your environment…” this would have not shocked me as much if I didn’t have to deliver at Virginia Beach SharePoint Saturday this coming Saturday (1/9/2009), and didnt want to risk doing an re-install my OS. In the end Paul Swider @pswider asked if i ran the script found on Jie Li’s site; as soon as i placed it in a file and ran it with PowerShell, BOOM! I was good to go!  Mark Miller @EUSP of End User SharePoint pointed out that he may emphasize the community involvement in a Keynote he is prepared to give, I encourage him to do so.

Let us Begin…

Part 1: This is Part 1

Part 2: Doing everything but using a Full-Trust Proxy for the most Intrusive Part of the job!

So the first thing we need to do is crack open our spiffy Visual Studio 2010 and Create a new SharePoint Empty Project

1. Fire up Visual Studio
2. Select SharePoint 2010
3. Select Empty SharePoint Project (as you can see I named mine TouchPeopleinSharePoint)

Next you will be prompted to choose if this is a Sandboxed Solution or a Farm Solution, I selected “the Default” which is SandBoxed Solution… so what is Microsoft trying to tell us here folks?

Once you have done that, click Finish to close out the dialog box.  Next just to be sure, you can never be too careful; since I am building against a x64 bit system, I wanted to make sure that my Project Properties Build Targets were appropriately set.

Once I have completed that process, next I am going to add a new Web Part. NB, you are not permitted to do Visual Web Parts in SandBoxed Solution because that would mean that you would need to deploy it on the WFE; which under SandBoxed Solutions, we don’t want to, so… we wanna select a regular web part.

See below…

So once the Web Part is added, we have the following cs file created, clearly you can see we have methods that are over-ridden which we will employ in our solution.

Before we get there however, I need to do some prep work..

• I need to Add my SPMetal Class
• I need to make a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq

This Class that I am adding is created by SPMetal Utility and it basically provides me Entity Classes and a Context Object to manipulate SharePoint Lists via LINQ to SharePoint. I use this because all that plumbing is already done for me and hey, work smarter not harder…

NB. The Red squigglies are there in this CharlieSiteLists.cs file because I dont at this time have a Reference Set for Microsoft.SharePoint.Linq which i will do below…

So now for the real work… finally!

1. So first I create a List Box object, I will add my result set to that collection (line 16)
2. I make a reference to the CharlieSiteList.cs (SPMetal Utility Created File) Data Context Object so I can use it as a Wrapper to the Content Database (line 25)
3. I iterate though a list and return the First Name and Last Name via the Add Method of the ListBox Object (line 26 – 33)

That is it! Easy huh… now we just Deploy our Solution…

Next I go to my site under “Site Pages” and create a Web Part Page…but before I do that, lets just make sure that our Sandboxed Solution is there in the Gallery. We find this by clicking on Site Settings and under Galleries, you will see “Solution”.. go ahead and click that bad bwoy..

All being well you should see your solution as I see mine…

Now, we edit that page we would have created to hold our Web Part or you can just put it in a page of your choosing. 

So, here is where the SharePoint community came alive for me last night.. and although SharePoint threw no Error in the Event Viewer, nor did the Actions yielded any “gotchas” that I did anything wrong, when I added the Web Part to a zone..

When I add the TouchPeopleNOLookupList Web Part to the Left Column Zone as indicated below it goes though the motion but ADDs Nothing but in the ShowMyProfile Web Part it works… that web part is a Farm Level Solution though… same code.. 

Below Same Code… in the Create ChildControls in a NON SandBoxed Solution

U can see in the Properties Window that this one is same code but not SandBox Solution… and it yields results as above…

So as part of my debugging I downloaded this ULS viewer from CodePlex at http://ulsviewer.codeplex.com/ and I saw that, Indeed, I have a few errors going..

Paul Swider pointed me to Jie Li’s site where i saw below,

I placed that script in a file and ran it with PowerShell and I got my Web Part to work as indicated below. 

We are in business folks…

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will do this all with a Full Trust Proxy i.e. move the intrusive Class that actually touches the Content Database to the GAC and use a Proxy to call it.

Have fun! 

Here’s how you can create and delete views in a SharePoint list or library using PowerShell (Is there anything that can’t be done through a PowerShell script?)

The script below creates a view called “TestView”.  It expects three command-line arguments:  site collection URL, the name of the view to create, and the list GUID.  The view that’s created is an exact replica of the “All Items” view (you can certainly modify the code as needed).  Here’s how you would call this script from the command line:

powershell  CreateView.ps1 "your_site_collection_URL" "TestView" "List GUID 6865306f-60e0-4889-addd-4fb9862e72e0"

Script code (use the button in the top right corner to copy it to the clipboard):

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c") | out-null

# reading command line arguments

$siteURL = $args[0]

$strViewName = $args[1]

$ListGUID = $args[2]

# enter your CAML query for the view here...

$strQuery = "<Where><Gt><FieldRef Name='ID'/><Value Type='Counter'>0</Value></Gt></Where>"

 # create a new SPsite object and recursively go through all webs

# until a matching list GUID is found

$site=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($siteURL)

foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)
{
 

foreach ($list in $web.Lists)
{

$ListTempGUID = $list.ID.ToString()
  

if ($ListTempGUID.Contains($ListGUID))
{

write-host "**********************************************"
write-host "Match found. Preparing to create a view: ", $strViewName
write-host "List Title: ", $list.Title
write-host "List GUID: ", $list.ID

$fields = $list.Views["All Items"].ViewFields.ToStringCollection()

$result = $list.Views.Add($strViewName, $fields, $strQuery, 100, $True, $False , "HTML", $False)

write-host "View ", $strViewName , " was created successfully."

break

}
}

} 

write-host "Done."

$site.Dispose(); ##ENFORCED DISPOSAL!!!

So far, so good?  Well, now that you’ve created a view, how do you delete it?  Follow the same logic, only instead of using the Add method of SPViewCollection object, we’ll be using the Delete method.

Same command line arguments as before:  site collection URL, name of the view, and list GUID.

Calling script from the command line:

powershell  DeleteView.ps1 "your_site_collection_URL" "TestView" "List GUID 6865346f-60e0-4889-addd-4fb3862572e0"

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c") | out-null

# reading command line arguments...

$siteURL = $args[0]

$strViewName = $args[1]

$ListGUID = $args[2] 
# creating a new site object and recursively searching through its lists

# until a matching list GUID is found

$site=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($siteURL)

foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)
{
 

foreach ($list in $web.Lists)
{

$ListTempGUID = $list.ID.ToString()
  

if ($ListTempGUID.Contains($ListGUID))
{
foreach ($view in $list.Views)
{

If ( $view.Title.Contains($strViewName))
{

write-host "**********************************************"
write-host "Match found. Preparing to DELETE a view: ", $view.Title
write-host "List Title: ", $list.Title
write-host "List GUID: ", $list.ID

# you can insert a pause here if you like...

$list.Views.Delete($view.ID)

write-host "View ", $view.Title , " has been deleted successfully."

break

}
}

break

}

}

}
write-host "Done."

$site.Dispose(); ##ENFORCED DISPOSAL!!! 
 

Finally,  how do you find out the GUID of your list?  It’s fairly straightforward – you just need to access the SPList.ID property of your list.  Here’s a simple script that will output the GUIDs of all lists in your site collection:

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c") | out-null
# write column headings

write-host "List URL ; Web URL ; Web Title ; List Title; List GUID ;"

# create a site object and recursively list all of its list objects and their details
 $site=new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://your_site_collection_URL)  

  foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs)
 {
  foreach ($list in $web.Lists)
 {
 write-host $list.DefaultViewURL, ";", $web.URL , ";",  $web.Title , ";" , $list.Title , ";" , $list.ID

 }

 }

$site.Dispose(); ##ENFORCED DISPOSAL!!!

For various SharePoint admin tasks, there are times when you need to execute an STSADM command from within a PowerShell script. 

Before you can do that, you’ll need to tell PowerShell where to find STSADM executable. You can do that by adding the following line to your profile.ps1 file (usually located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0 ):

Set-Alias -Name stsadm -Value $env:CommonProgramFiles”\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN\STSADM.EXE”

Now you can use stsadm in your scripts and it should work beautifully…

Sometimes, when you run a Content Deployment job between a source farm and a destination farm, you may encounter the following issue:

“Content deployment job ‘Job Name’ failed. The remote upload Web request failed.”

When you look in the ULS logs, you may see the following:

File upload of ‘C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\SiteDirectory\ExportedFiles70.cab’ failed. Exception System.Web.HttpException: Maximum request length exceeded.  at System.Web.HttpRequest.GetEntireRawContent()     at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_InputStream()… 

OK, let’s do a web search to see how to fix this issue.  After some searching, you’ll come across posts that tell you to modify maxAllowedContentLength or MaxRequestLength attribute in the Central Administration web.config file (or maybe WFE’s too).  Examples: 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd795107.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/hosamkamel/archive/2007/09/18/resolving-maximum-request-length-exceeded-exception.aspx

I’ve found that if you only modify web.config files as specified in the articles above, it will NOT solve the problem.  

 To solve this problem, you need to increase maxRequestLength value in three places on the TARGET farm:  

1. Central Administration web.config file (typically located in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\DirectoryName)
2. Your web application main web.config file (typically located in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\DirectoryName).
3. Content deployment web.config file located in:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\ADMIN\Content Deployment

Note:  You can find out the correct paths for items 1 and 2 by opening IIS Manager.

Open web.config file located at each location and locate the maxRequestLength attribute.  Increase it to allow upload of the largest CAB file that you have.  The default setting limits the upload file size to 51200 KB for CA and web application and to 102400 KB for content deployment.

<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”102400″ />
  </system.web>
</configuration>

You can find out how large the largest CAB file is by running the following command on the source farm Central Administration server:

stsadm -o editcontentdeploymentpath -pathname (pathname here) -keeptemporaryfiles Failure

 This setting will allow you to see the CAB files generated during the content deployment job (in the temp directory specified in the Content Deployment settings screen in Central Administration).

As you probably have noticed, it has been quite some time since I have posted. For that, I apologize. For some reason, all of our customers are very busy during the holiday season this year!

Rant #1 – SharePoint 2010 Beta

At the SharePoint Conference in October, they indicated SharePoint Server would run on client operating systems – which is nice for developers or business analysts that would like to use it in a test environment, but don’t want to set up a server to do so.

While this may be true for the final, released product, it is NOT true for the beta. So, for those of you wanting to try out SharePoint 2010 before it’s release, prepare to install Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2.

Additional information on the requirements for the beta of SharePoint Server 2010 are located on the technet web site.

Rant #2: Documentation for Data Connections (SQL Server Reporting Services Integration)

Suppose you wanted to use SQL Server authentication for a data source in SSRS. Suppose you wanted to embed those credentials in a connection string. Typically, we just create the connection in InfoPath, and then use the “Convert” option from the Tools | Data Connections dialog box. This was not the case for my most recent session of “Fun with SharePoint Server 2007 and SSRS 2008″. Simply embedding the information in the connection string did force the report to use the provided credentials. I had to add an additional element specifying Credential Type to make it work. Here is an example:

<udc:SSO AppId=” CredentialType=” />

As you can see, I just had to set it to an empty string. Not exactly rocket science, but still frustrating

(Non) Rant # 3: Federated Search

One of the nicer improvements of the SharePoint Server 2007 service packs is the introduction of Federated Search. It is now easy to provide Internet search results (by default, coming from Bing) right alongside your normal web results. The “fly in the ointment” as they say is that – if you are using SSL - you generally get an Internet prompt regarding security and *mixed content*. However, there is a very simple workaround. For whatever browser zone your site is in (presumably Intranet or Trusted Sites), change the security setting for that zone to a custom level. After doing so, make sure “Mixed Content” (under miscellaneous) is set to “Enable”, instead of “Prompt”. Easy!

Well, that’s all I have time to share today…will continue on my path of evangelizing SharePoint joy and happiness. Another big project starts in January…no rest for the weary

This is another gotcha that I’ve run into today – when I went to publish an InfoPath form to my SharePoint site I spotted an error in the design checker ‘Invalid Form Template’. I ignored the error and carried on but when I tried to create a new form based on the template in the document library, I received the following error –

I did some research and came accross this blog post from Joel Oleson (@joeloleson) which helped me fix the problem –

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2008/01/02/evaluation-version-expired-but-not-really.aspx

The steps I took to fix the error were slightly different from Joel’s (see below) but his blog post helped to point out the registry keys on which the access was failing.

The application pool account for my SharePoint web application was running as ‘Network Service’, I did try and add this account to the ‘Distributed Com Users’ group but this did not fix the problem.

Initially I changed the application pool account for the web application to a domain account and this fixed the problem, then I changed it back to Network Service and gave that built in account read permission on the registry key –

‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\Office Server\12.0’

and that also worked! So there are two options in case anyone runs into the same problem.

Hope this helps

I was dealing with another one of those “helpful” SharePoint error messages today:

“An unexpected error has occurred.”

Nishant Rana’s blog post had the exact steps needed to get SharePoint to spit out the details:

http://nishantrana.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/%E2%80%9Can-unexpected-error-has-occurred%E2%80%9D-error-message-in-sharepoint/

I’m bookmarking this one!

We all now know that SharePoint 2010 is resource intensive, especially intensive with its ram usage.

I originally installed full blown SharePoint 2010 on my laptop (which has 4gb of ram) only to see most of that ram being used up and none left for visual studio to run.

I would recommend anyone who wants to install it on their workstation that only has 4gb of ram to install SharePoint Foundation instead which needs much less ram and will be fine for simple SharePoint 2010 dev or just playing around.

After I had installed it on my workstation I went on a search of some powershell scripts that I could use to stop SharePoint’s services when its not in use and start them up when needed.

It turns out Emmanuel Bergerat had created some and posted them on his blog, see here –

http://blogs.msdn.com/emberger/archive/2009/11/16/stop-and-go-with-sharepoint-2010-on-your-workstation.aspx

Thanks Emmanuel!

I have modified these scripts to work with SharePoint Foundation instead of full SharePoint Server 2010.

You can find the scripts on my SkyDrive – link at the bottom of the post.

To get them to work you will need to open them and edit the line –

‘MSSQL$SHAREPOINT’,"SQLWriter",’SQLAgent$SHAREPOINT’ | ForEach-Object

You need to change the name of the SQL Service (in my case MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) to the name matching yours. This name will depend on what your SQL instance is called, if you install SharePoint ‘standalone’ then it will most likely be the same as mine.

Run the scripts in the following order –

1. ‘Manual.ps1’ – Sets services to manual startup (Only need to run this once)

2. ‘Start.ps1’ – Starts SQL & SharePoint Foundation services

3. ‘Stop.ps1’ – Stops SQL & SharePoint Foundation services

Hope this helps!

Link: SharePoint Foundation Powershell Scripts

Part 1… Consuming the External Content Type through SharePoint Designer in Microsoft Outlook 2010

Part 2… Consuming the External Data List Columns inside Microsoft Word 2010 through Form Fields

Teaser…Extending @ToddBaginski blog where he creates a .NET assembly connector and an External Content Type

http://www.toddbaginski.com/blog/archive/2009/11/05/how-to-create-a-searchable-sharepoint-2010-bdc-.net-assembly-connector-which-reads-from-a-flat-file.aspx

Synopsis

In this blog we will demonstrate the following:

• Create a Database Table from a SQL AdventureWorks Database
• Use SharePoint Designer 2010 to create and configure an External Content Type on the newly created Table
• Create an External List in SharePoint Browser User Interface (UX)
• Test – Read, Update External List Item from UX
• Connect to Outlook from the Browser UX
• Test – Read, Update from Outlook UX
• Teaser – Create a Document Library and include Library Columns from the External List LOB Data
• Pre Teaser – Build out Todd Baginski’s Blog by associating a Flat File External Content Type and SQL LOB System

Process

We begin the process by identifying a Test Site in our SharePoint environment to host our External List and creating a Table within the AdventureWorks Database to surface data from in our LOB System.

Above we are looking at our SharePoint Designer and our test site. Various information may be ascertained from this view above, please review.

In preparation, we will create a table called “FabianAWContacts” from a few tables in the AdventurWorks database as our Target LOB System Data

To verify our data, we do a select statement against our newly created database…

Above we have the initial steps of creating an External Content Type; in this phase we begin by providing a name, the Office Item Type (we will get to this later and is the crux of our work in this blog), and define the Connection to the External System. Below you will see how we make a connection and identify the LOB System Objects we will be surfacing data from.  It is here also where we will be making our CRUD Methods and assigning permissions.

The screen shot above displays the database and the table we created earlier. By right-clicking on the data table we will be selecting the option “Create All Operations” which in essence defines what and how we will interact with the data in the LOB System.  You can see from here also there remains the possibility to do other actions including associating to other LOB systems and establishing relationships with other disparate databases.

Once we choose the operation (Method) we will be taking on our External Content Type (CRUD) if we are undertaking Microsoft Office Outlook Off-lining then we need to make mappings between the LOB system and the Office Client, see below.  You will also notice that the different data types are associated with different mappings.

Once we have completed the mappings, click “Finish” and the new methods will be created as seen below.

As seen above or below, once the process of provisioning is complete you see and Identifier is associated (Primary Key and value that is used to trigger custom actions in the Browser UX. The green arrow below indicates that the association we make by selecting “Contact” in the ‘Office Item Type’ has the requisite mappings to enable it in MS Outlook.

After saving off our External Content Type we will next go to the SharePoint Browser UX and create an External List and point it to the External Content Type recently created. See below

The steps taken in the above three screen shots demonstrates how to create a new External List and associate it to an External Content Type. I have decided to create an External List called Company Contacts [actually AW Company Contacts, I changed the name after my screen shot], and I have associated it to my Company Contact LOB List.  Once the configuration and nomenclature is complete I click Create and the List is displayed below.

So lets begin the verification process.  We will target Contact ID 1003 – Michael Sullivan

Let us first check in SQL what the dataset should look like since it is the Source of Record… see below

So in the External List we will edit the ID 1003 for Michael Sullivan. Now because in our Methods Operation we elected to do Method Updates, when we click on the custom actions we will see an Edit menu, by selecting it we will see the window below.

Let us go ahead and do the following to M Sullivan

• Knight him
• and make him the third in his generation

Below you see the complete changes we will attempt to commit to the LOB System.

After clicking “Save”, we can already see in the Browser UX that the changes have been adopted

Next we check the same SQL Statement and we can also see our changes persisted to the database.  Also from this window we will make the connection now to Microsoft Outlook 2010 since we have already identified this External List as a Microsoft Office Contact Type.  By clicking the “Connect to Outlook” in the ribbon above it begins the process as we will see in two screen shots below.

After we click “Connect to Outlook” we will see that the process “Preparing External List for Synchronization with Outlook” begins

Once the above process concludes we can look below and see that the AW Company Contact External List (middle of the screen Left Hand Side) and also demonstrated by the Business Cards that the LOB External List is now available in MS Outlook 2010.

Hope you enjoyed this blog, Have fun with your SharePoint 2010 and BCS! I love it, hope you do too….

Teaser below

So my good buddy Todd Baginski who I met for the first time at SharePoint Conference 2009 LOL he created a great blog entry on HOW TO: Create a Searchable SharePoint 2010 BDC .NET Assembly Connector Which Reads From A Flat File which is very inspiring.  I took his solution and used it as the foundation for what I will be doing in my Part 3/ Teaser to this Blog.  In Todd’s example he took you up to the point of reading the External Content Type in an External List in SharePoint.  this all being done in Visual Studio from scratch so YES finally WE WILL CODE!

I will take it a few steps further…

1. Make the list CRUD enabled i.e. create methods for Create, Update and Delete, we already have Read
2. Making an association to a Table in a SQL LOB system and the Flat File so we can demonstrate two disparate systems coming together in SharePoint where they were previously not related

I am well on my way, I have the solution already created in Visual Studio and i will go in detail into the code of  the CRUD Methods, for the lead up please see Todd’s Blog, he does a much better job of explaining

Screen clipping taken: 11/25/2009 1:12 AM

Since getting my hands on the Beta 2 version of SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint foundation I’ve read countless guides and blog posts about how to install it on Windows 7.

The problem is finding one that gives you the correct install procedure and this often means trawling through the comments to see if it is a reliable source. Because of this I’ve decided to post my own tutorial of the steps I used to create a reliable and fully functional SharePoint 2010 environment on a single machine (client OS).

Keep in mind that this blog post only walks through installing SharePoint 2010 in ‘Standalone’ mode (aka default configuration). This does not give you as much flexibility nor does it replicate a server farm environment. But this does work well for small dev work or to simply play around with SharePoint 2010.

*RAM Requirements: Be aware that if you are planning to install SharePoint Server 2010 you will need a lot of RAM. The recommended minimum from Microsoft is 6GB. SharePoint 2010 will install on a machine with 4GB of RAM but this will not be enough for a development environment.*

1. Install the Pre-Requisites for your operating system listed in the following MSDN guide -

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx

2. Install the ‘WCF Hotfix’ (KB976462) for Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 which is available here –

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=23806

3. Extract the SharePoint installation (.exe) that you downloaded, you can do this by typing at the command line the following –

c:\SharePoint\SharePoint2010.exe /extract:c:\Temp

4. Next we need to edit an xml file and add an attribute that will allow you to install SharePoint on a workstation OS. If you try and run the setup without performing this step then it will display an error message that the OS is not supported.

Open the ‘config.xml file located at ‘c:\Temp\files\Setup\config.xml’ (where Temp is the folder that contains your extracted files from above).

Add the following line inside the <configuration> tag:

<Setting Id="AllowWindowsClientInstall" Value="True"/>

Save and close the file.

5. Run the SharePoint 2010 setup (setup.exe).

6. When asked what type of installation you wish to perform select ‘Standalone’. This will install an instance of SQL Express and the default configuration. This will allow you to use local windows accounts.

7. Once the wizard has completed it will prompt you to run the ‘SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard’ (aka Psconfig). Do Not run the wizard and exit.

8. Install SQL Server 2008 cumulative update package 2 –

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970315

9. When the above update has finished installing, execute the ‘SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard’. Ignore the warning telling you that installing SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7 or Vista is unsupported. You also need to click ‘OK’ to the message explaining that IIS will be reset as part of the installation.

The wizard will now configure SharePoint 2010 so you can sit back and relax! (Hopefully this step goes smoothly and you don’t see any errors).

10. When the wizard is complete, click ‘Finish’. An IE window should now popup and display a SharePoint page asking you to select the template you would like for your first SharePoint 2010 site collection.

11. Success – the installation is now complete and you have a full working copy of SharePoint 2010 Beta!

**Updated 23/11/2009

Jeremy Thake (@jthake) advised me that this service is required for the ‘User Profiles Synchronization Service’ in SP2010 and that if you disable it then this won’t work. Decide whether you are going to need this feature before you disable this. I am not sure why it slows down the OS so much when booting up.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I recently installed the betas of SharePoint Foundation 2010  on top of Windows 7 and full SharePoint Server 2010 on to Server 2008 R2. One problem I found is that after you have rebooted the machine a couple of times it becomes very slow to startup.

At first I thought it was just because I was running SP2010 on a machine with only 4gb of ram and that was just the nature of the beast. When I opened Task Manager though it told a different story – the service ‘FIMSyncronizationService (Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service)’ was still trying to start and slowing the whole machine down. Once this service was stopped the machine continued booting into windows.

The service never seemed to start properly and I am assuming this is only needed if you want to use the full Forefront product with SharePoint.

I have now disabled this service using ‘Services.msc’ and SharePoint 2010 is still working fine. I would recommend anyone with the same issue who is not using Forefront to stop and disable this service from loading.

Hope this helps

SharePoint Saturday San Antonio

www.SharePointSaturday.org/sa

Session: Taxonomy and Information Architecture 1:30 pm to 2:20 pm

Track: Management / Social

Presenter: Fabian G Williams

Blog: http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com

Twitter: @FabianWilliams

Level 100:

In our session we covered the following Agenda Topics

• · The Challenge of Unstructured Content
• · Concepts and Terminologies
• · Taxonomy and ECM Adoption Techniques
• · Why should Taxonomy matter to me

The audience was a mix of MOSS Admins and End User Content Owners; I asked if they frequently hear people say

• · “I just cannot find the stuff I am looking for”
• · Our Portal has too much clutter, pages are unstructured
• · The Intranet is not Important to me
• · When I search for something, I get too many irrelevant data

There were quite a few head-nods, and I concluded that if anyone answered “Yes” to any of those questions, then they are in need for an Organizational Structure around their content. We touched on the fact that we see Taxonomy in our everyday life, why do we think we do not need it in our workplace especially when it comes to ECM. We discussed the fact the one of the first Taxonomy that opened eveyone’s eyes came from the Dewey Decimal System where 10 classifications determined the placement of books in a library; try to find a book in a library without it today, #FAIL. Since last week we celebrated Veterans Day I also illustrated that Military Insignia is also a Taxonomy… E1 – E9 is a classification and Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps and Seaman 3^rd Class are the same.

After discussing the non technical references of Taxonomy, we shifted gears and talked about how easy it was for us to begin using sites like Bing, Yahoo, and Google. Did we have to go to a special class, get a book to read up on it? No, the taxonomy was evident and there are categories for what we are looking for. The difference between a taxonomy centered on ECM however…

• · Tends to be less rigid
• · Is content driven
• · Has redundancy built in and is flexible

So how does SharePoint help us with that… well, we have objects in MOSS to help us with our data classification

1. 1. First we have different classification that are broken up in Templates
   1. a. Sites specifically for Documents
   2. b. Sites specifically for Images
   3. c. Wiki/Surveys/Discussion Group templates
   4. d. People Data
   5. e. Business Data
   6. f. Etc
2. 2. All on a holistic server Farm
3. 3. All is searchable

Formula for Taxonomy is: Architecture + Application + Usability

So how do and Where do I Begin

• · Have a governance and Taxonomy discussion with an establish team.
• · Focus on the Business and or Process and not on the Technology
• · Realize that you may have a mixture of Taxonomy going

o Strive to separate out Navigation, Process, Role Based, and Document Management as it distinguishes different approaches to the same content

• · Just to get a 10’000 feet view of your environment; plan to make a Top Level Taxonomy representative of the company which will eventually be broken down into maybe
  • o Flat Taxonomy Model
  • o Hierarchal Model
  • o Network Model

We discussed the logistical boundaries to the product; at a Site Collection Level you distinguish

• · Navigation
• · Branding
• · Security
• · Etc

These are Taxonomy concerns especially as you build out the aforementioned Taxonomy model. We then moved into the heart of how we classify information…dah da dah…..

• · Site Columns
• · Content Types

We went into detail on how Site Columns are the foundation for entering Meta Data into SharePoint which will assist you in

• · Data Classification
• · Corporate Vocabulary (IP)
• · Data Mapping
• · Search Indexing
• · Elements to create End User
  • o Views
  • o Groupings
  • o Aggregation
  • o Filtering

We demonstrated how to create that new Site Column, and we discussed that in SharePoint 2010 you will be able to have Metadata on External List which are searchable and consumable in Office Suite of Applications.

We discussed how we could create a Content Type which in turns builds on that Site Column and now “empowers” end users to have dynamic live access to LOB System Data which is now indexable and searchable in SharePoint in their document asset.

We ended our discussion looking logically at how Content Types placed at the Site Collection level is consumable to subsequent sites below it. How standardization of data, enforcement of policies, and ease of use is enhanced by the thought that goes into a taxonomy discussion.

• • Reusable Columns that can be assigned to multiple Lists and sites
• • Useful for maintaining consistent metadata
• • Available to all sites within the Site Collection
• • Site Collection Administrators and Site Owners are also empowered to create their own Document Library Columns in addition to consuming Site Columns in an effort to make their environment extensible and keyed into their Line of Business.
• • We discussed that Content Types are best approached in this manner
• • By Audience or Originating Site (example: Human Resources Documents, Sales Documents)
• • By Function (example Status Report, Expense Report, Sales Tracking)

And finally we ended the session by asking ourselves the Presidential Question first coined by Ronald Regan…

“Are you better off with Taxonomy, than you were without it”

• · Are you able to find what you are looking for easier
• · Are you working smarter not harder
• · Can you rattle off your Top Level Site Structure in your head (thereby knowing it is small enough and relevant enough)
• · Can disparate users find the same content from the safety of their world

If you answered “Yes” then you are good to go.. Hoooraaahhhh!

Recently I have been focusing on creating some Silverlight charts using the ‘Silverlight Toolkit’ from Codeplex (see the link in the instructions below).

Once I had created my first chart I wondered how to get it to display in SharePoint. It seems there are a number of options for displaying a Silverlight application (xap) in a SharePoint web part.

I found lots of blog posts that described separate bits of configuring I needed to do to get Silverlight working happily in SharePoint. I’ve decided to create a getting started list of what you need to do to get Silverlight installed and how to display your xap file with the built in ‘Content Editor Web Part’. I have linked to other blog posts where necessary.

Configuration

1. Download and install the Silverlight 3 runtime from silverlight.net -

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/

2. Download and install the Silverlight 3 SDK and tools for Visual Studio from the silverlight site - 

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/

3. <Optional> Download and install the Silverlight Toolkit (If you want to use some of these cool and free Silverlight controls) -

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=30514

4. If you are running Windows Server 2008 you can skip this step as the MIME types should have been automatically added to IIS7 for you. For server 2003 users you will need to add the Silverlight MIME types to IIS6, follow the instructions here -

http://blogs.technet.com/jorke/archive/2007/09/11/silverlight-mime-types-in-iis6.aspx

5. This step involves configuring the web.config files for the SharePoint sites that you wish to run your Silverlight applications in. Follow the instructions on this blog post -

http://blogs.msdn.com/steve_fox/archive/2009/03/11/amending-the-web-config-file-to-support-silverlight-development-on-sharepoint.aspx

6. Ensure that the assembly System.Web.Silverlight is in the global assembly cache. If not then you can find it at the following location -

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\Libraries\Server

7. Configuration complete! – now read on to the deployment section

Deployment

To get your silverlight xap displaying on a SharePoint page follow the steps below. In terms of where to store your .xap file there are a number of places for you to choose. Some people recommend storing it in a folder called ‘ClientBin’ in the IIS virtual directory of the SharePoint web application but I was not able to get this working. I opted for the simplest method which was to store the file in a document library.

1. Upload your Silverlight xap file to a document library

2. Switch to edit mode for your SharePoint page and add a Content Editor Web Part

3. Insert the following HTML code - 

<!–<div width=”600px” height=”100px” id=”silverlightControlHost”>
<object data=”data:application/x-silverlight”, type=”application/x-silverlight-2″ width=”450″ height=”450″>
<param name=”source” value=”http://yoursite/sites/charting/XAPs/SimpleSilverlightChart.xap”/>
<param name=”onerror” value=”onSilverlightError” />
<param name=”background” value=”white” />
<a href=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=108182″ style=”text-decoration: none;”>
<img src=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=108101″ alt=”Get Microsoft Silverlight” style=”border-style: none”/>
</a>
</object>
<iframe style=’visibility:hidden;height:0;width:0;border:0px’></iframe>
</div> –>

Remember to remove the comments from the above code and replace the param value=”” with the url to your document library and xap file.

4. Click apply and save the changes to your content editor web part

5. If all went well you should be seeing your Silverlight application displaying correctly!

Note: You may need to play around with the width and height of both the <div> and <object> tags to size them correctly for your Silverlight application.

Good Luck!

If you’re looking to learn about the Content Deployment functionality in SharePoint, Stefan Gobner, who is the Sr. Escalation Engineer for SharePoint @ Microsoft has some great articles on his blog:

Content Deployment Best Practices

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/pages/content-deployment-best-practices.aspx

Content Deployment Guide (6-part blog series)

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/10/30/content-deployment-the-complete-guide-part-1-the-basics.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/11/02/content-deployment-the-complete-guide-part-2-the-basics-continued.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/11/02/content-deployment-the-complete-guide-part-3-configuration.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/11/03/content-deployment-the-complete-guide-part-4-communication.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/11/04/content-deployment-the-complete-guide-part-5-quick-deployment.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_gossner/archive/2009/11/06/content-deployment-the-complete-guide-part-6-logging.aspx

Sometimes when you try to connect to a server using Remote Desktop (RDP), you might receive this error:

(“The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections.”)

This message means that there are at least 2 other active RDP sessions on the server (unless it’s a Terminal Services server, and that’s another story.).  Since you can’t log on, you can’t easily find out who else might be logged on.  One or both of these sessions may be inactive (someone logged in and forgot to log off), and if you’re working on a large team, it may be a hassle to find out who is connected.  Luckily, there’s a built-in tool in Windows Server which will tell you who is connected to your server:  qwinsta.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Log on to another server using an account that has administrative access to the server which is generating the error message.

2. Open command prompt and type in the following:

qwinsta /server:%SERVERNAME%  

where %SERVERNAME% is the name of your server.

More details about the syntax:    qwinsta /?

MS TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731503(WS.10).aspx

Note:

Another method is to use query session command instead of qwinsta.  The syntax is exactly the same. 

You can also use Terminal Services Manager to connect to another server and see RDP sessions.

So far we have installed SharePoint 2010 and we have configured a basic install and configured Enterprise Applications in Installation Procedure for Base SharePoint 2010 Install – Part 1 of 2 and also in this post Installation Procedure for Base SharePoint 2010 Install – Part 2 of 2.  Now we will look at how to create a Collaboration Site and basic configuration techniques as well as pulling back the cover on our Deprecated Shared Service Provider now called Service Applications.

So we will do two things in this post and step into high gear in the second post.

1. Create a new Collaboration Site
2. Overview of the new Service Applications (previously called Shared Services Provider [SSP])

In Part II we will

1. Configure the SSP
1. Look at User Profiles
2. Search
3. Business Connectivity Services (I will be turning this mutha out)

So even though you are in SharePoint 2010 the process to create a new Site Collection is relatively the same with minor exceptions to the types of templates now available to you and the process to get to creating new Web Apps and Site Collections. So first “Click” Application Management in the quick launch section as seen below…

After clicking on Site Collection we will be creating a new site under the Managed Path of /sites…

Notice the new Templates above… yeah.. lots of cool stuff in 2010.  Anywho….the screen shot below demonstrates the creation of the new site along with the services that are running on this server which may be consumed by this Web Application.

Previewing the New Site will yield.

Certainly on item of interest here that I would like to point out is the nuggets now in the Collaboration Site in terms of Document Libraries and Lists now available. One innocuous feature which warrants a blurb here is the fact you can from the web interface ‘easily’ add/modify images local to your computer against a MOSS 2010 site.  The Site Assets Library is where these images will be stored once you upload it to the SharePoint 2010 site. See a complete list of the new Lists and Libraries that are a part of this new Web below.

Looking at you Site Settings is still accomplished by clicking “Site Actions”, “Site Settings” and you will see the new interface and notice the new configuration options under Site Collection Administration, Galleries, etc. below…

For a full gist of what you can do under Application Management see the below two screen shots below. What is impressive is that you can manage what was previously separate in one area by managing both Web Applications, Site Collections, Service Applications  and managing your Content Databases. See Below…

I will do a Web Cast where my actions will be more fluid for the management of sites. Screen Shots here probably wont help as much with the depth of where you can take this animal. So I will leave off with one of the best additions I have seen for the health of your SharePoint Site. Monitoring and Reporting… see below

So looking at the screen shot above and below you can clearly see that there are alot of tools in the bag. I will touch on one aspect in this post because the ability to auto-correct is really impressive.  So to make sure I had stuff to demo, I purposely used fewer Service/Managed accounts for my services and one thing I cant help but it still shows up is also denoted [My database is on the same box as my SharePoint Farm] so take a look below and we will see how to handle some of these issues in my webcast.

Ill end here, but my Part 2 will go in depth into Service Applications (what is new, what is better, what is different) and how to manage your new Web and Service Applications

Hope you enjoyed!

In this Blog we will look at some of the basics to Configuring SharePoint 2010 in the newly designed Central Administration

Below you will see a screen shot where we left off in Part 1 of 2.  You have the option of configuring your farm using a wizard or managing the process yourself.  I opted to use the wizard but before do and you can certainly get back to this window by clicking the link “Configuration Wizards” in the quick link menu Left Hand Pane, but before doing so, we need to create and associate our Service Accounts as we did in MOSS 2007. In SharePoint 2010 you click on Security and then “Register Managed Account”

Create Managed Accounts in order to associate your Service Accounts. Below is an important step in that process. In SharePoint 2007 Best Practice we were instructed to create up to seven (7) accounts such as denoted below. I have included the same accounts however in the configuration of SharePoint 2010, I have decided to employ the same strategy however with the new services that are in MOSS 2010, and the fact you can have your services specialized and targeted, one can employ a nomenclature and provisioning process reflective of that.

So… because this is a single server install and I will be doing it with new bits in 2 weeks, i have decided to use only two (2) service accounts. What is noteworthy is that you can ALWAYS come back and modify the services and service accounts that are tied to your farm. In fact, you can click “Monitoring” and have a health check ran against your model which will pop up in a “Security” category. This will tell you if you are in line with Microsoft vision or adrift. It will also allow you to auto-correct some of your configs.

Security

http://fabianwin2k3r2:33397/security.aspx

To create a new Managed Account which in turn will be a Service Account on your Farm you

1. Click on Security in the Quick Launch Menu
2. Then Click “Register Managed Account” from the top of the second frame. You will see a window as shown below. Fill it out and click OK. This should be a domain account.

Register Managed Account

http://fabianwin2k3r2:33397/_admin/registeraccount.aspx?Source=http%3A%2F%2Ffabianwin2k3r2%3A33397%2F%5Fadmin%2FManagedAccounts%2Easpx

Once you have created all the Managed Accounts you will need for the associated services you will activate in your farm. You may elect to run the “Configuration Wizards” from the quick launch menu or manage individually.  I have included below the services that are available; you may check or uncheck the services as you need them in your farm and moreover you may select the accounts you previously configured above as you cherry pick which service want to start under that service account. See below…

After clicking next, you wait till all the new Databases are created. Which is a good point to show the databases were created BEFORE you configured you services (below)

and the databases that are now created after the services are started below…

So up to this point we have configured the Service Accounts, Instantiated Farm Services and in review of the new Databases created as a result. Next blog we will get into managing the New Web Applications that are now present as well as create our first MOSS 2010 Collaboration Site.

The Screen Shots below represents the installation steps to install the Base SharePoint 2010 up to the Central Admin. Part 2 of 2 will delve into configuring the Central Administration.

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New below…

NOTE WELL: New step in the SharePoint Technology Wizard above!

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NOTE WELL:  Now 13 steps rather than 9 steps in the SharePoint Products and Technology Wizard

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Initial Farm Configuration Wizard

http://fabianwin2k3r2:13397/_admin/adminconfigintro.aspx?scenarioid=adminconfig&welcomestringid=farmconfigurationwizard_welcome

Screen clipping taken: 8/15/2009 6:04 AM

Or am I more likely to be abducted by aliens? Well, if you installed MOSS Service Pack 2 from a download before the 29th July 2009 your production MOSS Farm could stop working in the future. This is explained in Microsoft KB 971620 and in this Microsoft blog post.

In summary, initial releases of SP2 was configured as a trial version, and unless re-installed, MOSS features will stop working 180 days after you installed SP2. The value “180″ is reported in the KB, but this value seems to be different in practice.

To determine if your MOSS Farm is at risk you can:

• Run Central Administration.
• Select Operations.
• Select Convert license type in the “Upgrade and Migration” section.

The description of “Current License” will show if you installed SP2 with the trial version problem:

You can also determine when the trial version will expire:

• Run Central Administration
• Select Application Management.
• Select Check services enabled in this farm in the “Office SharePoint Server Shared Services” section.

A warning will be displayed if you’re running the trial version:

KB 971620 contains a link to a hotfix to correct this issue. This hotfix may require you to reboot the server. Before testing if the fix was applied correctly, issue an IISRESET before running Central Administration.

Thanks to Tim at Cork County Council for pointing out this issue.

In this post I explained how to determine if your SharePoint installation is service packed, and to what level. However, the situation is a little more complex since your MOSS 2007 farm will be running Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0 and MOSS on top.

When using Central Administration / Operations / Servers In Farm to report the version number you’re seeing the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 version number. This will be updated when you run the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) service pack update.

So how do you find which service pack for MOSS you’re running with? One way is to find the version number of the Microsoft.Office.Server assembly from the Windows GAC (Global Assembly Cache). To do this:

• Run the Windows Explorer.
• Navigate to \Windows\Assembly.
• Right-click the file Microsoft.Office.Server and select Properties.
• Click the Version tab.
• Take a note of the “File Version”:

Here are the version numbers for the main MOSS services packs using this technique:

Version numbers from the Microsoft.Office.Server assembly do not follow exactly those for the WSS reported version number, but there is a close correlation.

Howdy y’all, just doing some documentation here. If you ever need to use the User Profile Replication Engine from the SharePoint Administrator’s Toolkit, you may run into the following errors when trying to retrieve data from the properties list:

Cannot retrieve properties

Cannot access Web Service

After tinkering for over a day, I think I got it figured out. My farm configuration is as follows:

Port 80 : Collaboration Portal
Port 81: My Sites
Port 100: Central Administration
Port 103: SSP

Troubleshooting Steps

When I tried to connect to Port 81 as the Source URL I would get one of the above errors. Same thing when trying to connect to the SSP or Collaboration Portal as the source URL. I then proceeded to tear down my SSP and My Site Host a few times (on a dev box) and eventually rebuilt my My Site Host to be on Port 80. After I did that it finally worked. The bad news is that I didn’t have the luxury of tearing down the SSP and My Site Host in the production environment where I had to do this stuff. So I moved my My Site host back to Port 81, tried the User Replication Tool again and noticed that it was still working when using Port 80 as the source URL.

What was it?

The User Replication Tool seems to be looking for the “userprofileservice.asmx” web service on port 80 no matter which web application is hosting the My Sites. For some reason or another my port 80 didn’t have the proper web services in it. After resolving that issue, I also noticed that it still won’t work with port numbers in the URL. For example http://localhost works but http://localhost:81 doesn’t work even though the My Sites are hosted on port 81. I validated this by renaming the web service on Port 80 and used Port 81 as the source URL which still generated the error.

Another Error…

After getting the Configuration Tab all set up, I went over to the Full Replication tab to do an actual replication. I was once again presented with the “Cannot access Web Service” error. This time around I didn’t feel like figuring out what the root cause was and instead tried running the application as the app pool account and then it worked!

The server-packages of October 2009 Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. October 2009 Cumulative Updates introduce more rules on Pre-Upgrade Checker, which can help customers to prepare the upgrade of their SharePoint farm to SharePoint 2010.

Download Information

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974989

Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=974988

Detail Description

Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974989 (link may not be live yet)

Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 October 2009 cumulative update package
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974988 (link may not be live yet)

Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server

To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended.

1. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and language packs

2. Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and language packs

3. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

4. October 2009 Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007

Please note: Start from April 2009 Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates.

After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.

The version of content databases should be 12.0.6520.5000 after successfully applying these updates.

You can also refer to April Cumulative Update post for deployment guides, slipstream how-to links and FAQs.

I ran into this error today when attempting to show a web part on a SharePoint site that utilises the .NET 3.5 Chart Controls from MS (See link at the bottom of the post).

When the page opened it bombed out with the above error, some research found the following question on stackoverflow –

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/302820/net-3-5-chart-controls-exception-error-executing-child-request-for-chartimg-axd

To fix this error you need to add the following entry into the <HttpHandlers> section of the web.config file:

<add path="ChartImg.axd" verb="GET,HEAD,POST" type="System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.ChartHttpHandler, System.Web.DataVisualization, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" validate="false" />

When I refreshed the page, I received another error – this time it was:

Invalid temp directory in chart handler configuration

If you too get this error then you need to make sure you have the following line in the <appSettings> section of the web.config:

<add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=c:\TempImageFiles\;" />

Also make sure that the above directory ‘TempImageFiles’ exists on the C: drive or you can change this to any other directory that you like.

Hope this helps!

Download link for MS Chart Controls:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=130F7986-BF49-4FE5-9CA8-910AE6EA442C&displaylang=en

In case you haven’t seen this link floating around the web or on twitter yet then here it is:

http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/try-it/Pages/Trial.aspx

Simply head over the site and register, you will then be notified as soon as the public beta of SharePoint 2010 becomes available in November