SharePoint User Group UK: East Anglia (19 November 2013)

Details of the next SharePoint User Group UK: East Anglia on 19 November 2013 can be found here: http://www.suguk.org/Event.aspx?id=8699926715.

SQL Saturday #228 Cambridge

Thanks to those who were able to attend my presentation at SQL Saturday #228 Cambridge (2013-09-28). Here are my slides.

What Happens if you Don‘t Configure, Manage and Maintain SharePoint Databases?

If you have any questions please contact me.

SQL Saturday – #228 Cambridge

SQLSaturday #228 Cambridge is a training event for SQL Server professionals, Business Intelligence and SQL Server Developers and those just wanting to learn more about SQL Server.

This event will consist of a pre-conference day on the 27th September and a free community day on the 28th September 2013 both to be held at the historic Queens College Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB3 9ET, United Kingdom.

I will be presenating a short talk on: What happens if you don’t Configure, Manage and Maintain SharePoint Databases?

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Call for SUGUK Speakers

If you would like to speak at any of the SUGUK events then get in contact with us. Details are on the web site http://www.suguk.org/About.aspx

You do not have to be a professional speaker.

So contact us today!

SharePoint User Group UK: East Anglia (06 June 2013)

The first Vendor night for SharePoint User Group UK: East Anglia went very well. Presenting were:

• Concept Searching
• Nintex
• Harmon.ie
• iOra

SharePoint Evolution Conference 2013

I am pleased to annouce that I will speaking at SharePoint Evolution Conference 2013. An overview can be found here: http://www.sharepointevolutionconference.com/abstracts.html#com714

Resetting site Water

Some time ago I was doing some testing on a development SharePoint 2010 environment and I got the following message:

Resetting site Water

Has anyone come across this before?

Enabling BLOB Cache on with SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager (CodePlex)

I was recently asked to investigate Blob Cache for SharePoint 2010. It was suggested to use SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager (by Bram Nuyts http://bramnuyts.be/author/bramnuyts/) which can be found on CodePlex. The reason for this was to minimise manual changes to the Web.Config file, which is a good idea. However not everyone is happy to use CodePlex or other similar resources so be warned!

I downloaded the latest version 1.1 and installed the solution by running:

stsadm -o addsolution -filename "<path>BlobCacheManager.wsp"

And then deployed it, see the “Deploying a solution package” section here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262995.aspx. I then followed the instructions on the web site to configure it but found that BLOB Cache did not work. After a bit of digging I figured out wht had to be configured.

1. The object cache user accounts had to be configured. The details on how to do this are here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758656.aspx
   I hope to release a PowerShell script for this soon.
2. The object cache folder needed to be created, so I created “C:BlobCache14” note this was a development environment. Microsoft warns: “We strongly recommend 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.”
   Ensure the foler is created on each WFE server.
3. The SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager had set the web.config blob cache attribute to True. This looks ok but it is case sensitiveand should be all lower case it – true. It should look similar to:

   <BlobCache location="C:BlobCache14" 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="true" />

4. The folder that was created, “C:BlobCache14”,  has to allow the Application Pool account for the Web Application you are using BlobCache on, to write to it. My account was called demosp_webapp (following suggestions from Todd Klindt http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=237)

Once these were all configured BLOB caching started to work and I saw folders and files appearing in the “C: BlobCache14” folder.

Thanks to Paul Hunt for help with the object cache user accounts PowerShell script and Paul Grimley for suggesting the solution.

Creating a Content Type Hub in SharePoint 2010

This blog post is a guide on how to create a Content Type Hub Site Collection located in the root of a Web Application within its own database.

Create a Content Type Hub Database

I like to have my Content Type Hub Site Collection in its own database. Here is the code/example to create a database for the content type hub.

Example

$CTHDBName = “ContentTypeHub_DB”

$WebApplicationURL = “http://SharePointRandy/”

New-SPContentDatabase -Name ContentTypeHub_DB -WebApplication $WebApplicationURL

Further reading http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607572.aspx

Create a Managed Path

As I want my Content Type Hub to be at the root of my Web Application (http://<webapplication>/contenttypehub) I need to create a managed path. The PowerShell to do this is here:

Example

$RelativeURL = “/ContentTypeHub”

$WebApplicationURL = “http://SharePointRandy/&#8221;

New-SPManagedPath -RelativeURL $RelativeURL -WebApplication $WebApplicationURL
-Explicit

Further reading http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607693.aspx

Create Content Type Hub Site Collection

It is easy to create a Content Database through the GUI but to ensure it is located in the database just created it is easier to do in PowerShell with the –ContentDatabase Parameter.

Example

$CTHurl = “http://SharePointRandy/ContentTypeHub&#8221;

$CTHOwnerAlias = “<domain><user>”

$CTHTemplate = “STS#1”

$CTHDBName = “ContentTypeHub_DB”

New-SPSite -Url $CTHurl -OwnerAlias $CTHOwnerAlias -Template $CTHTemplate -ContentDatabase $CTHDBName

Further reading http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607937.aspx

As I don’t want to use the Content Type Hub Site Collection for anything else I like to prevent further Site Collections being created in the Content Type Hub database. To do this, run the following PowerShell:

Example

$CTHDBName = ContentTypeHub_DB

Set-SPContentDatabase -Identity $CTHDBName -Status Offline

Further reading http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607912.aspx

Activate Content Type Syndication Hub

You need to activate the Content Type Syndication Hub feature to allow the Managed Metadata Service Application to connect to the Content Type Hub Site Collection.

$CTHurl = “http://SharePointRandy/ContentTypeHub&#8221;

Enable-SPFeature -Identity 9a447926-5937-44cb-857a-d3829301c73b -Url $CTHurl

Connect the Managed Metadata Service Application to the Content Type Hub

To connect the Managed Metadata Service Application to the Content Type Hub you need to use the command Set-SPMetadataServiceApplication. I’ll explain this in another blog post but for now see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607738.aspx

SUGUK:EA 2012-03-20

Click here to register for the next SUGUK:EA  event. We hope to have some books to give away, details to follow.