maandelikse Argiewe: Mei 2008

SharePoint Migrasie Tip: Gebruik “Untagged data” Uitsig vir verdere Migrasie

In one or my very first blog posts, Ek beskryf die algehele proses wat ons volg op 'n kliënt van SPS te migreer 2003 to MOSS. A reader left a comment asking for more detail and here it is.

Vir dat migrasie projek, Ons het 'n goeie manier om 'n klomp van SPS te beweeg om uit te vind 2003 documents over to MOSS. The initial load was easy enough. Create a new target document library in MOSS and use windows explorer to move the documents.

This is the new document library:

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Open up two windows explorers. Point the first at SPS 2003 and the second at the new document library in MOSS. The following screen shot shows this. Note that the top browser is actually pointing at my c:\temp drive, but you can imagine it pointing to an SPS 2003 document library:

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After that drag and drop operation, my target looks like this:

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Now it’s time to deal with the metadata. Assume we have just one column of metadata for these documents named "location." We can see from the above "all documents" view that the location is blank. It’s easy enough to use a data sheet view to enter the location, or even go into each document’s properties one by one to add a location. Let’s assume that there is no practical way to assign the location column a value automatically and that end users must do this by hand. Verder, let’s assume there are hundreds of documents (maybe thousands) and that it will take many many days to update the metadata. As we all know, no one is going to sit down and work for four of five days straight updating meta data for documents. In plaas daarvan, they will break that out over a period of weeks or possibly longer. To facilitate this process, we can create an "untagged data" view as shown:

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Nou, when someone sits down to spend their allocated daily hour or two to tag migrated documents, they can use the "untagged documents" view to focus their effort:

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As users tag documents, they drop off this list.

This notion of an untagged data view can also help with a class of data validation problem people inquire about on the forums. Uit die boks, there’s no way to prevent a user from uploading a document to MOSS and then not enter meta data. We can specify that a particular site column is mandatory and the user won’t be allowed to push the save button. Egter, if the user uploads and then closes the browser (or uses windows explorer to upload the document), we can’t force the user to enter meta data (weer, uit die boks).

This approach can be used to help with that situation. We can use a "poorly tagged data" view to easily identify these documents and correct them. Couple this with a KPI and you have good visibility to the data with drill-down to manage these exceptional circumstances.

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SharePoint Wildcard Soek: “Pro” Is nie 'n Stem van “Programmering”

Op die MSDN forum, Mense vra dikwels 'n vraag soos hierdie:

"I have a document named ‘Programming Guide’ but when I search for ‘Pro’ soek nie dit vind."

Dit mag dalk nie so voel, but that amounts to a wildcard search. The MOSS/WSS user interface does not support wildcard search out of the box.

As jy grawe in die search web dele, vind jy 'n boks, "Enable search term stemming". Stemming is a human-language term. It’s not a computer language substring() tipe funksie.

Hierdie is 'n paar stingels:

  • "fish" is a stem to "fishing"
  • "major" is a stem to "majoring"

Dit is nie spruit:

  • "maj" is not a stem to "major"
  • "pro" is not a stem to "programmer"

The WSS/MOSS search engine does support wild card search through the API. Here is one blog article that describes how to do that: http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2008/03/06/how-to-use-the-moss-enterprise-search-fulltextsqlquery-class.aspx

'N 3de party produk, Ontolica, provides wild card search. I have not used that product.

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Meld Workflow aktiwiteit in SharePoint Designer

Verlede week, Ek is besig om uit te vind hoe om te loop en te implementeer 'n toestand masjien die gebruik van SharePoint Designer en genoem, As 'n eenkant, dat ek sou waarskynlik skryf 'n blog post oor 'n beter workflow te meld.

Wel, Sanjeev Rajput beat me to it. Het jy 'n blik.

Spaar log data in 'n persoonlike lys lyk beter as die gebruik van die gereelde workflow geskiedenis:

  • Dit is net 'n persoonlike lys, sodat jy kan uitvoer om dit te presteer baie maklik.
  • Jy kan skep uitsig, dinamiese filtreer die data, ens..
  • Dit is nie onderhewig aan die motor-purge jy met gereelde workflow geskiedenis.

Daar is 'n paar risiko's / nadele:

  • Baie hardloop werkstromen met 'n baie te meld kan veroorsaak te veel data geskryf word aan die lys.
  • Maybe you *do* want automatic purging. You don’t get that feature with this approach (sonder kodering).
  • Security is tricky. In order to write to the list, the user must have permission to do so. That means that it’s probably not suitable for any kind of "official" audit since the user could discover the list and edit it. This could be overcome with some custom programming.

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Die probleem met die Tribbles … dwaal .. KPI

This past week I finished off a proof of concept project for a client in Manhattan. While implementing the solution, Ek het in 'n ander tekortkoming van MOSS KPI (kyk hier vir 'n vorige KPI kwessie en my tydelike oplossing).

Agtergrond: We used SharePoint Designer workflow to model a fairly complex multi-month long business process. As it chugged along, it would update some state information in a list. KPIs use this data to do their mojo.

We decided to create a new site each time a new one of these business processes kicks off. Aside from the workflow itself, Hierdie webwerwe gasheer verskeie dokument biblioteke, use audience targeting and so forth. Just a bunch of stuff to help with collaboration among the internal employees, reis werknemers en die kliënt se deelnemende vennote.

Ons wou ook 'n paar KPI wat monitor die algemene gesondheid van die spesifieke besigheid proses om te wys as wat deur die staat workflow data en beskou die gebruik van die KPI.

Ten slotte, ons gebruik KPI lys items wat nie 'n telling op 'n oog op 'n lys in die webwerf (in teenstelling met die trek van 'n ander bron data, soos blink of SQL).

Die Probleem: Soos jy kan dink, aanvaarding van ons was die basiese idee om na uit te voer in 'n produksie-wêreld, we would want a site template. Provision a new site based off a "business process" sjabloon.

The problem is that you can’t seem to get a functioning KPI that way. When I create a new site based on a template with a KPI List and KPI web part, the new site’s KPI data are broken. The new site’s KPI list points at whatever source you defined when you first saved it as a template.

By wyse van voorbeeld:

  • Create a new site and build it to perfection. This site includes the KPI data.
  • Behalwe dat as 'n sjabloon.
  • Skep 'n nuwe tuiste en basis as van die sjabloon.
  • Hierdie nuwe webwerf se KPI lys items’ bronne verwys na die webwerf sjabloon, nie die huidige terrein.

Die Instantiëring proses nie korrek is die URL.

I tried to solve this by specifying a relative URL when defining the KPI list item. Egter, Ek kon dit nie kry nie variasie van wat om te werk.

I always want to pair up these "problem" blog boodskappe met 'n soort oplossing, but in this case I don’t have a good one. The best I can figure is that you need to go in to the newly provisioned site and fix everything manually. The UI makes this even harder because changing the URL of the source list causes a refresh, sodat jy regtig het die hele ding van die grond af te herdefinieer.

As iemand weet 'n beter manier om dit te hanteer, post a comment.

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MOSS Small Farm installasie en config Oorlog Story

Hierdie week, I’ve struggled a bit with my team to get MOSS installed in a simple two-server farm. Having gone through it, Ek het 'n groter waardering vir die aard van die probleme wat mense verslag te doen oor die MSDN forums en elders.

Die finale plaas opset:

  • SQL / Index / Intranet WFE die binnekant van die firewall.
  • WFE in die DMZ.
  • 'N soort van firewall tussen die DMZ en die interne bediener.

Voordat ons begin met die projek, we let the client know which ports needed to be open. During the give and take, heen en weer oor daardie, ons nooit uitdruklik gesê twee belangrike dinge:

  1. SSL beteken dat jy nodig het om 'n sertifikaat.
  2. The DMZ server must be part of a domain.

Dag een, we showed up to install MOSS and learned that the domain accounts for database and MOSS hadn’t been created. To move things along, we went ahead and installed everything with a local account on the intranet server.

Op hierdie punt, ons ontdek die verwarring oor die SSL sertifikaat en, ongelukkig, decided to have our infrastructure guy come back later that week to continue installing the DMZ server. In die gemiddelde tyd, Ons oplossing argitekte vorentoe beweeg met die besigheid goed.

'N naweek gaan verby en die kliënt verkry die sertifikaat.

Ons infrastruktuur man opdaag en ontdek dat die DMZ bediener is nie gekoppel aan enige domein (óf 'n omtrek domein met 'n beperkte trust of die intranet domein). We wasted nearly a 1/2 dag wat. If we hadn’t let the missing SSL certificate bog us down, we would have discovered this earlier. Oh well….

Nog 'n dag verby en die verskeie sekuriteit komitees, belanghebbende partye en (nie so) onskuldige omstanders almal eens dat dit OK is die DMZ bediener met die intranet domein aan te sluit (dit is 'n POC, na al, nie 'n produksie-oplossing).

Infrastructure guy comes in to wrap things up. This time we successfully pass through the the modern-day gauntlet affectionately known as the "SharePoint Configuration Wizard." We have a peek in central administration and … Yee Haw! … DMZ server is listed in the farm. We look a little closer and realize we broke open the Champaign a mite bit early. WSS services is stuck in a "starting" status.

Lang storie kort, it turns out that we forgot to change the identity of the service account via central administration from the original local account to the new domain account. We did that, re-hardloop die opset towenaar en voila! We were in business.

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Mea culpa — SharePoint Designer * CAN * Skep State Machine Werkstromen

I’ve recently learned that it’s possible and even fairly easy to create a state machine workflow using SharePoint Designer. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that good stuff and I had a need this week that looked for an invention. Coincidentally, I came across this MSDN forum post sowel. My personal experience this week and that "independent confirmation" lends strength to my conviction. I plan to write about this at greater length with a full blown example, but here’s the gist of it:

  • The approach leverages the fact that a workflow can change a list item, thereby triggering a new workflow. I’ve normally considered this to be a nuisance and even blogged about using semaphores to handle it.
  • SharePoint allows multiple independent workflows to be active against a specific list item.

To configure it:

  • Design your state machine (i.e., the states and how states transition from one to the next).
  • Implement each state as separate workflow.
  • Configure each of these state workflows to execute in response to any change in the list item.

Each state workflow follows this rough pattern:

  • Upon initialization, determine whether it should really run by inspecting state information in the "current item". Abort if not.
  • Do the work.
  • Update the "current item" with new state information. This triggers an update to the current item and fires off all the state workflows.

Aside from the obvious benefit that one can create a declarative state machine workflow, all that state information is terrific for building KPIs and interesting views.

It does have a fairly substantial drawback — standaard werkvloei geskiedenis dop is selfs meer nutteloos as normaal 🙂 Dit is maklik reggestel, egter. Store all of your audit type information in a custom list. That’s probably a good idea even for vanilla sequential workflow, maar dit is vir 'n ander blogpos 🙂

I call this a "mea culpa" because I have, ongelukkig, said more than once on forums and elsewhere that one must use visual studio to create a state machine workflow. That simply isn’t true.

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Leer op die harde manier — DMZ WFE moet in 'n Domain

Hoewel dit nie letterlik waar, as 'n praktiese saak, 'n internet-gesig staar web voor die einde in 'n DMZ moet wees in 'n domein (d.w.z. nie 'n selfstandige bediener in sy eie klein werkgroep). It doesn’t need to be in the same domain as the internal WFE(s) en ander bedieners (en waarskynlik nie), maar dit moet 'n domein.

My colleagues and I spent an inordinate amount of time on a proposal which included SharePoint pre-requisites. This included a comprehensive list of firewall configurations that would enable the DMZ server to join the farm and so forth. Ongelukkig, Ons kon nie 'n sin iewers wat gesê het om by te voeg, tot die effek, "the whole bloody point of this configuration is to allow your DMZ WFE server, in 'n domein, die interne plaas aan te sluit."

'N perfekte storm van gebeure, waar ons basies gelyk het toe ons dalk reg gekyk, saamgesweer het om hierdie probleem te verberg ons tot redelik laat in die proses, wat sal verhoed dat my uit te roep my "vertel slegte nuus vroeë" regeer.

Sug.

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As jy nie probeer Twitter …

Twitter is a very odd duck. I’ve been using Twitter for a little over a month and in some indefinable way, it’s almost as important to me as email. I find myself vaguely unsettled if I wait too long before looking over what others are twittering about. I get annoyed at Twitter’s occasional performance problems because it means I’m missing out. I get a little puff of excitement when I see a new Woot announcement.

Dit is 'n werklike gemeenskap bouer in 'n manier wat werklik blogs en forums en selfs persoonlike gesig aanvulling tot aangesig vergaderings.

In die afgelope maand, Ek het gevolg een persoon se pogings om te skud 'n koue terwyl hy probeer om 'n Seder te bestuur.

I’ve learned personal detail about many folks I mainly "know" deur middel van blogs — waar hulle woon, die aard van die projekte wat hulle werk op, dat hulle 'n werk / familie kwessies net te bestuur soos ek.

Een persoon se ma oorlede … a sad event for sure. But sharing that fact changes and enhances the character of the whole experience.

Dit is net die persoonlike dinge.

There’s more to it than that. It’s also another medium for sharing ideas, of meer dikwels Ek dink, seeking help. Throw a question up on Twitter and you’re never left hanging and the responses typically arrive within minutes.

As jy nog nie probeer om dit, you should really give it a go.

Kyk my by http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

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