Monday, March 28, 2016

Synchronize the SharePoint document library

Now synchronizing the SharePoint document library in SharePoint 2013 is simplified as just like that.
Even there is an add-on (OneDrive for Business) for Chrome browser to do so.

Follow these steps to Synchronize the document library with your local folder.

Click the "Sync" button in the bar as shown in this image.







70-488 exam study guide

Here is my little part to help someone who wish to find the exam guide on 70-488.

70-488 Exam Guide - Developing SharePoint Server Core Solution

Apart from this ,
I have been forwarded the excel file , the classified and organised exam study guide  on 70-488 - Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server Core Solution.

SharePoint 2013 - Exam Guide on 70-488 - Developing SharePoint Server Core Solutions


And another one from renowned author and my all time favorite when its comes to exam preparation one and only "Becky Betram on Exam Gudie - 70-488.



Friday, March 25, 2016

Updating the Managed Account in SharePoint

Apart from updating the SharePoint 's Managed account through Administration site , here is an alternate way of updating the managed account through SharePoint Power Shell commands.

All we know the importance and best practices of using the SharePoint Managed account to provisioning the SharePoint Service Application in the Farm.

But in my local machine that elevated to Domain controller, Always I used to provision the System Account (Administrator) . So this account can be undergoes the password expiration policy on the Domain Controller Policy.

When you change or updates the account that has been used for provisioning the SharePoint Service Application on the farm , then updated password cannot be propagated to all services in the Farm.

Because the Service Application name,id, Application Pool Id, Managed Account and its credentials will be stored on the Config database and as well as in the IIS settings.

When I was trying to configure the SharePoint App development on my local machine , I have gone through many errors those not allow me to deploy it through Visual Studio.

Even though App Management Service , Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service Application Proxy , and DNS settings for App development all are configured still the errors prop up and does't allow me to go ahead.

Upon digging more on the error log , I found there are no "App Fabric ,distributed cache services" are not provisioned and the password for App Management service application also not updated in the Service level.

And also I am using the another farm account that not been used to provisioning or installing the SharePoint.

So the outline is to update all service applications and their's account( Managed) credentials.
use the

Set-SPManagedAccount -ExistingPassword "

and pass the existing account identity and is password as shown in the image.



Thursday, March 24, 2016

Collab365 Summit - May 10th-12th 2016 - Live from Microsoft HQ


Collab365 Summit - May 10th-12th 2016 - Live from Microsoft HQ

Register yourself @ Collab365 Summit 2016

In the Collab365 team on the 10th, 11th and 12th of May 2016 for an incredible amount of SharePoint, Azure and Office365 content. Delivered direct to your device, when you want it and for no cost at all. Catch premium keynotes across all 3 days. Sessions designed and delivered for IT Pro, IT Dev and Business delegates.


Introducing brand new Summit Experience for 2016
Watch Live

Watch the LIVE SHOW streamed direct from Redmond or catch the recorded sessions from top speakers around the world. If you are a seasoned pro or just starting out on your career with SharePoint and Office 365 we have plenty to help you begin your skills journey 


Learn Lost

100 sessions of amazing content brought to you by Microsoft - Direct from MS HQ and beyond, community experts and evangelists from right around the globe. Watch Dev sessions, IT Pro and Business sessions. It's all free to attend and is guaranteed to educate.

Have Fun

As well as live sessions, live chat and real time twitter feeds, we have been adding more spice to the mix in the form of 2 real-time, tech based, fun as heck quizzes. Compete against your peers, win prizes and unlock new learning opportunities!

Microsoft Product team speakers

Bill Baer and Raman Sharma
SharePoint
Jeremy Thake
Office 365 – Product Manager
Sonya Koptyev
Office 365 – Product Manager
Mark Kashman
Office 365 – Product Manager
Chris McNulty
Office 365 – Product Manager
Reuben Krippner
Office 365 - Director
Christophe Fiessinger
Enterprise Social Group


Monday, March 21, 2016

Feature Dependency SharePoint 2013

Feature Dependencies in SharePoint 2013 - Base Site Features

The feature that depend another feature to work correctly on the site called feature dependent.
In SharePoint 2013, all most all site template has its own dependency on other features.

Example,

In team site navigation hierarchies with managed meta data, requires publishing feature dependency.
Team site with default list and list template requires few feature dependencies.

Or, if you want to provision the list with event receiver, you may prefer to split the even receiver logic, site column and content type in to different feature. Finally, your list will group all the features to work as expected. In that case, no features will be activated with dependent features are activated first.

First site column features must be activated, the content type that relies on the column must be activate and finally the list definition and event receiver.

Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\FEATURES
Open the “BaseSite” folder and “Feature example, it will be shown like this image,


So the base site feature id: B21B090C-C796-4b0f-AC0F-7EF1659C20AE has its dependencies on rounded blue bordered box.

Feature Name
Feature GUID
Local Directory Site Control

14AAFD3A-FCB9-4bb7-9AD7-D8E36B663BBD
Portal Layouts

5F3B0127-2F1D-4cfd-8DD2-85AD1FB00BFC
WebPart Adder groups.

2ED1C45E-A73B-4779-AE81-1524E4DE467A
Document routing resources

0C8A9A47-22A9-4798-82F1-00E62A96006E
Record Resources

5BCCB9A4-B903-4fd1-8620-B795FA33C9BA
Social Site

4326E7FC-F35A-4b0f-927C-36264B0A4CF0
Search WebParts

EAF6A128-0482-4F71-9A2F-B1C650680E77
Search templates and resources

8B2C6BCB-C47F-4F17-8127-F8EAE47A44DD
Item Form recommendations

39D18BBF-6E0F-4321-8F16-4E3B51212393



Types of Features:

  1. cross site scoped : The feature can have it dependency of the another feature that is scoped its  high level hierarchies. Example , Publishing feature in the web (sub site) scope requires the site collection scoped Publishing Infrastructure should have been activated prior to be activated on the site level.
  2. Same site scoped : Feature can have its dependency of the other feature that is scoped on the same site scope level.

    Example, A feature that provisioning the site columns should be activated before the feature that creates the content type that relies on the already available site columns in the site and its associated form template on the site.

Rules of the Feature:

  1. Feature can be set to visible or hidden through its feature definition file (Feature.xml)
  2. Hidden feature cannot have any feature dependency.
  3. Hidden feature can activated ,deactivated,installed and uninstalled through only Power shell command,So farm admin have full control on it.
  4. Feature dependencies cannot be chained.



Monday, March 14, 2016

SharePoint Database recovery model

Here are the list of databases and its default recovery model available on SharePoint related content databases.

As SharePoint tend to be available on all time and span to host able on different server and beyond the network and geographies, we should understand its recovery model.

This precise information is very critical and wanted when the database damaged or corrupted especially a SharePoint Config and SharePoint_AdminContent databases to restore the FARM as soon as possible in time.

Recovery models Simple,Full and Bulk logged has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Learn more about these recovery model @ MSDN

You may update its from default recovery model to another recovery model as per your SQL Capacity plan.


Thursday, March 10, 2016

Missing server side dependencies



Missing server side dependencies in SharePoint  is one the main problem that stops being upgraded or migrate to next version of the SharePoint.

SharePoint administrator has to take prompt action on this problem on his farm.


 

The "SharePoint Health Analyzer" report this problem under "Configuration" category and you have to take the manual job to delete these missing server side dependencies.

Example,If you are installing the WSP package that contains the features and webparts, that will create the related SharePoint artifact folders on the server  such as folder name with feature under \Template\Features and user controls under CONTROL TEMPLATE so on.

When you retracting the WSP package from the farm, it should wipe out all the folders that created on deploying the solution.

You have to create the batch file to disable/uninstall the feature while retracting them.


Same analogue, will be applied the missing server dependencies , even though  you retracted package from the server , feature / webpart name references will not be deleted from the "SharePoint_Admin_Content Database." Even though you deleted the web config entry that related to missing features, could be "" list.

This will be called "Orphaned features" in the SharePoint.Before going to look into resolve this problem, we should learn What is the reason ? why the missing server side dependencies are clogged in the SharePoint server ?

The reason is very straight forward, you might forcefully uninstall the solution without deactivating the features that are scoped to site / web / web application and Farm.

How to prevent the "Missing Dependencies" issues on the SharePoint.

Always use the "Feature event receiver class" to delete the feature folder from the server when its deactivating.

Create the "Health Analyzer definition rule to "Repair automatically" to yes.




Somehow, we missed and found so many "Missing Server Side dependencies", now  we will see on how to resolve this configuration problem,

Resolution : #1

$feature = Get-SPFeature | ? { $_.DisplayName -eq "Orphaned feature reported in HealthAnalyzer" }
$feature.Delete()
Sometime, the webpart also can be missing and reported by Health Analyzer.

I just open the content database and select the table dbo.AllWebParts and fired the delete command.(For safer side, have your Content DB backup).

Resolution : #2

DELETE  from [WSS_Content].[dbo].[AllWebParts] where tp_WebPartTypeId='c6f6e5a5-1038-13a7-87c1-0db44446d99a'

Resolution: #3,

Download the SharePoint Utility called "SharePoint Feature Administration and Cleanup" from codeplex that will help you to identify the faulty features on the farm.


Missing dependencies in SharePoint

Monday, March 07, 2016

jQuery ajax method and SharePoint list

Using jQuery ajax method we can initiate the RESTful request to retrieve the SharePoint List Items that has been designated as resources through end point.

Once the end point has been identified, the query will be used to make CRUD operation using OData protocol.

Here is the simple code snippet and bit explanation behind the jQuery ajax call and the call back method.

All you need to is to pass the SharePoint's REST endpoint URI as url parameter to ajax method.
And request what data format has to be returned by the request by specifying the header format.


 $(document).ready(function () {
            $.ajax(
                {

                   url: "http://win-0nvq2rjqgo2/_api/web/lists/getbytitle('trac')/items",
                    mehtod: "Get",
                    headers: { "Accept": "application/json; odata=verbose" },
                   dataType:"json",
                  success: function (data) {
                        SuccessMessage(data)
                    },

                     error: function (data) {
                     //var parsedJson = $.parseJSON(data.responseText);
                       console.log(data.responseText);
                        //Logging the error details
                  }
                });
        });


        function SuccessMessage(w) {
         $.each(w.data.results, function (index, item) {
         //logic to show the output in html page
                $('#itemsInDiv').append(item.Title + "---->" + item.FName);
            });

When the request has been processed and the data will be passed to success handler by SharePoint.


To get the clear exception, log the error details using data.responseText. Here I just renamed the list track to trac and logged the exception details.



Wednesday, March 02, 2016

SharePoint Farm credential expired - Solution

Disclaimer

strictly this solution is not intended for staging servers.

Sometime, your SharePoint development environment configuration account's password might have expired. especially as a developer, you need to switch the different account on the same time to test user context based application or SharePoint Add-Ins development. You cannot use the System account to develop the SharePoint App on the server.

In that case, you might try to use the STSADM command to update the farm credential, but the STSADM command window flicks and disappear.

Or trying to change password or reset the same in SQL Server, still you are not able to use it as you have only the system account or Administrator account on SQL with Windows authentication.

Here is the simple solution, But its not recommended approach on the staging server.



Open your IIS Manager, and check all the application pool that uses the password expired account,usually "Administrator" on development machine.

Select the application pool , on the right hand side, click on the "Advance Settings", change the application pool identity with another account and set back the same account which password expired earlier.
Now ensure all services (SQL Server,SQL Server Agent,SQL Browser and SharePoint Administrator) are all up and running by going through "Services.msc" from RUN command window and started all sites in the IIS.

After reset the same account, you can reset the IIS and check the site or central administrator site, it will open.









Tuesday, March 01, 2016

Composed Looks in SharePoint 2013

Apart from "Designer Manager" in the SharePoint 2013, another remarkable  new feature in SharePoint 2013 branding side is "Composed" look that enables the site owners to change their site's look and feel as they wanted in just click of selecting the predefined template.(Theme).

The word composed means putting all the design elements such Master Page,Layout page,font,colour and background image and make the design template.
Later you can apply this template for your site.

Example,
If a Site collection administrator wanted to differentiate the each site under the site collection ,he /she could prefer to use the different composed looks.

To start this click on gear button on the site and click-->Change the look.



How this made up ?

Navigate to Site Settings-->Under web designer galleries->Click on Themes
There you will see the folder 15 (default theme applied on your site currently).Under this folder you will see the font scheme (.scheme),color palette (.spcolor) .

The combination of these file makes the  dynamic views on the SharePoint layouts (Title,WebPart Title,Dialog border,TopBar Text and Navigation related elements).

Here is the snapshot of the .spcolor file



Font scheme file snapshot