Feature enhancements in SharePoint 2013 than SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2013 general model remain same as SharePoint 2010 but has few platform level improvements and new capabilities like
• Shredded Storage
• SQL Improvements
• Cache Service
• Request Management
• Themes
• Sharing

In terms of Service Applications:
• New service applications available and improvements on existing ones
• Office Web Apps is no longer a service application
• Web Analytics is no longer service application, it’s part of search

Enterprise content Management
• Policies:
• Site-level retention policies compliance levels has been extended to sites
• Policies include Retention policy for sites and Team Mailbox associated with site
• Project closure and expiration policy
• Designed for managing discovery cases and holds
• Establishes a portal through which you can access discovery cases to conduct searches, place content on hold, and export content
• eDiscovery capabilities
• Support for searching and exporting content from file shares
• Export discovered content from Exchange and SharePoint
• Team folders
• Seamless integration of Exchange and SharePoint to provide best of both world and end user flexibility

Web Content Management
• Support the tools and workflows designers usage
• Variations & Content Translation
• Search Engine Optimization
• Cross Site Publishing
• Video & Embedding
• Image renditions
• Clean Urls
• Metadata navigation

Social
• Microblogging
• "Share content, links, and media"
• Follow people, sites, content, and conversations"
• Activity Feeds
• Provides a view into recent activity related to content, links, media, and people"
• Communities
• Community sites with self-service administration and moderation
• Modern community features such as achievements and reputation
• Discussions
• Modern discussion boards
• Blogs
• Client application integration
• "Categories, comments, and moderation "

Search
• New Search architecture with one unified search
• Personalized search results based on search history
• Rich contextual previews

Outlook 2007/2010: What is the character limit for a link to open?

As I just shared the Character limitation of URL in Sharepoint .

Outlook Hyperlink also has its own limitation

One of my user was copying a shortcut as a hyperlink in Outlook and it opened the site with a empty Document Library .

I Compared the shortcut url with the one sent as hyperlink in the outlook and found that the one sent to the users is not a complete url/link . so thought their might be some limitation to that too .   

Based on my research, this is what i found

Outlook 2013 – Seems no limitation.

Outlook 2010 – 1033 characters

Outlook 2007 – 1033 characters

Outlook 2003 – 256 characters

Readers - if you find any descripancies in the numbers (limitations ) please comment so that we can keep this post updated . 

URL path length restrictions (SharePoint Server 2010)

I have come across so many users who are not able to create or upload files after certain stage and it says

"The specified file or folder name is too long"

This is Limitation is in Sharepoint 2007 and continues in 2010.

The total length of a SharePoint URL equals the length of the folder or file path, including the protocol and server name and the folder or file name, plus any parameters that are included as part of the URL. The formula is as follows:

• URL = protocol + server name + folder or file path + folder or file name+ parameters

For example, the following is a typical URL path to a file stored in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010:
http://www.contoso.com/sites/marketing/documents/Shared%20Documents/Promotion/Some%20File.xlsx

When you go to the site and open the file with Microsoft Office

http://www.contoso.com/sites/marketing/documents/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?id=/sites/marketing/documents/Shared%20Documents/Promotion/Some%20File.xlsx&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Econtoso%2Ecom%2Fsites%2Fmarketing%2Fdocuments%2FShared%2520Documents%2FForms%2FAllItems%2Easpx%3FRootFolder%3D%252Fsites%252Fmarketing%252Fdocuments%252FShared%2520Documents%252FPromotion%26FolderCTID%3D0x012000F2A09653197F4F4F919923797C42ADEC&DefaultItemOpen=1

The limitations In this section apply to the total length of the URL path to a folder or a file in SharePoint Server 2010 but not to the length of any parameters. Also, these limitations apply only to un-encoded URLs, not to encoded URLs. There is no limit to encoded URLs in SharePoint Server 2010. The limitations are the following:

• 260 Unicode (UTF-16) code units – the characters in a full file path, not including a domain/server name.
  
• 256 Unicode (UTF-16) code units – the characters in a full folder path, not including the file name and the domain/server name.
  
• 128 Unicode (UTF-16) code units - characters in a path component, that is, a file or folder name.
  
• 260 Unicode (UTF-16) code units – the characters in a full path, including a domain/server name for use with Office clients.
  
• 256 Unicode (UTF-16) code units – the characters in a full path including the domain/server name, for use with Active X controls.

Reference :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff919564(v=office.14).aspx#about

You receive a "The specified file or folder name is too long" error message

Recently published content for SharePoint 2013

Published the week of February 25, 2013

New articles

Refreshing Excel workbooks with embedded PowerPivot models from SharePoint Online (white paper)   Download this white paper to learn how to perform scheduled data refresh of workbooks that contain PowerPivot models published to SharePoint Online.

Configure server-to-server authentication between publishing and consuming farms   Learn how to configure server-to-server authentication when you share service applications across SharePoint 2013 publishing and consuming farms.

Blog posts: An introduction to cross-site publishing, Stage 1: Create site collections for cross-site publishing, Stage 2: Import list content into the Product Catalog Site Collection   Posts in a series that describes how you can use SharePoint 2013 to set up a website that is based on product catalog data.

Updated articles

Configure an environment for apps for SharePoint (SharePoint 2013)   Updated information about the account used to set up the Subscription Settings and the App Management service applications from the farm account to a managed account. The farm account is not recommended.

Getting started with SharePoint Server 2013 workflow   Added a video overview of workflow in SharePoint Server 2013.

Published the week of February 18, 2013

New articles

Virtualize SharePoint 2013 learning roadmap   Use this learning roadmap to build expertise about how to install and configure SharePoint 2013 in a Microsoft virtual environment.

Backup and restore best practices in SharePoint 2013   Learn how to implement best practices before you back up and restore a SharePoint 2013 farm.

View an Excel Services dashboard by using a Windows 8 tablet   Watch this video to learn how to explore data in an Excel Services dashboard using a Windows 8 tablet.

Overview of Excel Services reports displayed in PerformancePoint Web Parts   Learn about how to display Excel Services reports in Dashboard Designer.

Overview of PerformancePoint analytic charts and grids   Learn about analytic charts and grids in Dashboard Designer.

Overview of PerformancePoint KPI Details reports   Learn about PerformancePoint KPI Details reports.

Overview of PerformancePoint reports and scorecards   Learn about reports and scorecards within PerformancePoint Services Dashboard Designer.

Overview of PerformancePoint scorecards   Learn about PerformancePoint scorecards.

Overview of Reporting Services reports displayed in PerformancePoint Web Parts   Learn about how to include Reporting Services reports in a PerformancePoint web part.

Overview of the PerformancePoint Decomposition Tree   Learn about PerformancePoint decomposition trees.

Overview of Web Page reports in Dashboard Designer   Learn about web page reports in Dashboard Designer.

How to build a social media-sharing site in SharePoint 2013 (white paper)   Learn how to build a social media-sharing site in SharePoint 2013.

Fundamental site planning in SharePoint 2013   View links to resources about site planning concepts such as how to structure sites and how to plan site navigation in SharePoint 2013.

Overview of site collections and sites in SharePoint 2013   Learn about site collections, sites, and site templates in SharePoint 2013.

Blog post: How to set up a product-centric website in SharePoint 2013   First in a series of posts that describes how you can use SharePoint 2013 to set up a website that is based on product catalog data.

Blog post: Get the new Office Visio stencil with the cool icons   

Updated articles

Manage Feed Cache and Last Modified Time Cache repopulation in SharePoint Server 2013   Added new section: "Feed Cache settings on the User Profile Service application."

Manage the Distributed Cache service in SharePoint Server 2013   Added an optional step to reconfigure the memory allocation of the Distributed Cache service, added a note about Inbound ICMP (ICMPv4) traffic, and added a new section: "Repair a cache host."

Plan for feeds and the Distributed Cache service in SharePoint Server 2013   Added two new sections: "Capacity planning for the Distributed Cache service" and "Firewall configuration considerations."

Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262043.aspx

Cannot Publish Access Database to Sharepoint 2010 Server

Happy Friday to all of you :)

Worked for almost 10 hours to resolve this issue that I am going to explained in detail manner.

Okay, here we go…

Problem Description: We have published an Access 2010 database to SharePoint 2010 site. The publish was successful but received an error

Error Messages:

Message#1:

Exception message: Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131904

Message#2:

The server was unable to process the request due to an internal error. For more information about the error, either turns on IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults (either from ServiceBehaviorAttribute or from the <serviceDebug> configuration behavior) on the server in order to send the exception information back to the client, or turn on tracing as per the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SDK documentation and inspect the server trace logs.

Message#3:

I get this error in the event viewer:

Log Name:      Application

Source:        Microsoft-SharePoint Products-Access Services

Date:          22/2/2013 10:03:43 AM

Event ID:      3

Task Category: Data Layer

Message#4:

An error has occurred. Please try again.

If I review the series of error message then it’s not completely clear where its dragging out and in which direction.

Troubleshooting done on this issue:

1.    Manage Services on Server – Access Database Service is started

2.    Manage Services Applications – Review the access Settings

3.    Manage Web Applications – Make sure application is associated with the Access Service

4.    Make sure all the features are activated

o   Central Admin --- System Settings --- Manage Farm Features --- Access Services Farm Feature

o   Central Admin --- Manage Web Applications --- Select Web Application hosting the Access Services Site --- Manage Web Application Features --- SharePoint Server Enterprise Web application features

o   Site Collection --- Site Settings -> SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection features

o   Site Collection --- manage Site Settings --- SharePoint Server Enterprise Site features

Microsoft Theory:

If Access Services is activated on an Application Server, then you will also need to turn on the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web application Service, thus turning that machine into a WFE/APP server. Problem with this approach is that it could affect your licensing agreement because licensing depends on the number of WFE’s your farm has. Hence, the workaround for this issue is to enable the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application service on the server running Access Database Services.

As per this, we have made the changes and started the access service on the same server where Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web application Service is running.

5.    Make the changes in web.config file so that the error should be more clear and accurate one.  Changes includes: callstack=True and customerror=off

6.    Re-provision the access, session state, security token service applications

Resolution:

We have provided access to the account associated with Access Services the dbo permission for the content database in SQL Server for the particular site collection for which I was trying to add a Web Database.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know.

Thank you.

Upgrade Best Practices SharePoint Server 2010

I was in a process of giving the details about migration to a organisation from 2007 to 2010 and found this useful article on Technet .

http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc261992(office.14).aspx

To ensure a smooth upgrade from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, follow these best practices

• Update your servers to Service Pack 2 (SP2) of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or later.

Your environment must be updated to Service Pack 2 of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to run the upgrade process, either for an in-place or database attach upgrade. We recommend that you install the October 2009 Cumulative Update because it includes improvements to the pre-upgrade checker tool. Ensure that the environment is fully functioning before you perform an upgrade.

•  An upgrade does not solve any problems that might already exist in your environment. Therefore, ensure that the environment is fully functioning before you perform an upgrade. For example, if you have Web applications that are no longer being used, unextend them before you upgrade. If you want to delete a Web application in Internet Information Services (IIS), unextend the Web application before you delete it; otherwise, SharePoint Server 2010 will try to upgrade the Web application even though it does not exist, and the upgrade will fail. If you find and solve problems beforehand, you are more likely to meet the upgrade schedule that you have estimated.

• Before you try an in-place upgrade, migrate to 64-bit servers. Upgrade your operating system to a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 (SP2). If you are using SQL Server, upgrade or migrate to a 64-bit version of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Cumulative Update 2, or SQL Server 2005 with SP3 and Cumulative Update 3.

• Do not try to combine these operations with your upgrade process. You cannot perform an in-place upgrade unless your system already runs on a supported operating system and platform.

For more information, see What's new in upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010).

• Run the pre-upgrade checker to look for potential issues.

The pre-upgrade checker reports missing customizations and issues with orphaned sites, and more, so that you can address these issues before you perform your upgrade.

 For more information, see Run the pre-upgrade checker (SharePoint Server 2010).

• Perform a trial upgrade on a test farm first.

Back up the live farm, restore to test servers, and then perform the upgrade. Examine the results to set expectations for what the live upgraded sites will look like, to determine how much post-upgrade customization will have to be done, and to estimate how long the upgrade will take. Try a full search indexing crawl. For more information, see Use a trial upgrade to find potential issues (SharePoint Server 2010).

• Plan for capacity.

Ensure that you have disk, processor, and memory capacity sufficient to handle upgrade requirements. For more information about system requirements, see Review system requirements for upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010). For more information about how to plan the disk space that is required for upgrade, see Estimate how long the upgrade process will take and the space that you need (SharePoint Server 2010). For more information about how to plan for capacity, see Performance and capacity management (SharePoint Server 2010).

• Back up your environment.

Perform a full backup of your environment before upgrading. That way, you can recover your environment if you must roll back from an upgrade. For more information, see Back up environment before an in-place upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010).

• Optimize your environment before upgrade.

A few key limits have changed in SharePoint Server 2010, such as query throttling on large lists and lower limits on the number of site collections allowed per content database (from 5,000 warning and 15,000 limit to 2,000 warning and 5,000 limit). Be sure to optimize your Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment to meet these limits or restrictions before upgrade to mitigate errors during the upgrade process or broken lists or sites after upgrade. For more information about the site collection limit, see SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits. For more information about large lists and addressing the lower limit on site collections, see Clean up an environment before upgrade (SharePoint Server 2010).

• (Optional) If you are using the database attach upgrade method, set the original databases to read-only.

If you expect a long outage window while you perform a database attach upgrade, you can set the databases in the original environment to be read-only so that users can continue to access their data without changing it. For more information, see Attach databases and upgrade to SharePoint Server 2010.

• Do not add any servers to your server farm after you begin the upgrade process.

Running the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard upgrades the configuration database. The configuration database contains the list of servers in the farm. Servers added to the farm after the configuration wizard has been run are not included in the database. Therefore, servers added after the wizard runs do not appear in the upgraded version topology. If you need to add servers to your farm, do so either before you start the upgrade or after you have completed the upgrade process.

• After upgrade, review the Upgrade Status page and upgrade logs to determine whether there are issues that must be addressed. Then review the upgraded sites.

The Upgrade Status page reports on the upgrade progress, and the upgrade logs list any errors or warnings that occurred during the upgrade process. You should verify all of the sites and test them before you consider the upgrade complete. For more information, see Verify upgrade and review upgraded sites (SharePoint Server 2010).

Workflows are not available after we upgrade from 2007 to 2010 using database attach method

This is a very critical issue that most of the users have faced after the migration from Sharepoint 2007 to 2010

After upgrading the SharePoint 2007 Database via database attach method to SharePoint 2010, You might find that the 2007 Approval workflows are no longer available for users to create new workflows.

In SharePoint 2010 the 2007 workflows are there to allow any running workflows to complete, but by default creating new instances of the workflows is disabled as the expectations are that you will want to move forward to the SharePoint 2010 workflows.

Resolution 

1 .  The following steps must be taken to enable 2007 workflows after upgrading to SharePoint 2010:

 =>  Go to Site Actions ->Site Settings->Site Collection Administration->Site collection features

  Activate SharePoint 2007 Workflows  

=>  Remove ‘none’ from <AssociationCategories>none</AssociationCategories>

 =>  14\template\features\ReviewWorkflows\Reviewapproval.xml

 => 14\template\features\ReviewWorkflows\ReviewFeedback.xml

 =>  14\template\features\SignatureWorkflow\Signatures.xml

 =>  Associate Workflow

  Go to Shared Documents, Library Settings, Add a Workflow

 =>  Select legacy Workflow.

  

Note : Please take a back up of Reviewapproval.xml,ReviewFeedback.xml,Signatures.xml before doing the modification, the above solution is not verfied after we install any new update. chances are there that these files might get replaced in future update. please have a backup of working files as well.

Reference -

http://blogs.technet.com/b/vinitt/archive/2011/02/23/moss-2007-workflows-no-longer-available-visible-when-we-upgrade-from-2007-to-2010-database-attach-method.aspx

The super reader account utilized by the cache does not have sufficient permissions to SharePoint databases,

Let me brief some details as what exactly happened in reference to following error message:

Object Cache: The super reader account utilized by the cache does not have sufficient permissions to SharePoint databases.

We have moved one web application from Development to staging environment. Movement was successful and we started facing the above mentioned error while browsing the web application.

After viewing the error message, thought process started to resolve around permissions.

Okay, but which permissions, account, sections where we need to specify and so many things…

Opened central administration—manage web applications—click on the specific web application to check the permissions –three accounts were listed there: nt authority, two more accounts and all are in Read Only mode.

Checked the IIS settings for that web application and cross checked the same account listed or not (which we have seen in the CA-user policy for that application)

Checked the account permissions in reference to SQL Databases and its perfectly fine (already listed in the users and roles in SQL)

As per Microsoft recommendations, there should be a Portal Super User account that must be an account with Full Control access to the Web application and The Portal Super Reader account that must be an account with Full Read access to the Web application.

Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff758656.aspx

While doing some research, I came across with an excellent article, written by Andras Gaal

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrasg/archive/2010/09/30/setting-the-super-user-account-on-sharepoint-2010-and-getting-access-denied-errors-afterwards.aspx

The above article resolves my issue and works perfectly fine for us.

I would like to put some stress on one point from the same article:

If you are in claims mode, you will need to use the claims user name (i:0#.w|domain\user).

Make sure you make a note it as it will creates new exceptions…

Thank you.

Code blocks are not allowed in this file SharePoint 2010

Hello Everybody,

Today I worked on one critical issue which belongs to our development environment. We have migrated one web application from production environment to development for testing purpose. Migration has been successful but we were facing an exception while browsing the web application.

Error Message:

An error occurred during the processing.

Code blocks are not allowed

Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.

Server Configuration:

·         2 SharePoint Servers

·         SQL server 2008 R 2

·         Windows Server 2008 R2

·         SharePoint Version: SP2010

Troubleshooting done:

1.    Tried accessing the system pages i.e. settings.aspx, viewlsts.aspx etc. every system was opening fine without any issues. So the issue is with the home page only…

2.    Tried accessing the web part maintenance page, it opened without any issues. We closed the webparts which are present on the home page-just to make sure that there is no problem with the existing webparts. Checked the home page again but same issue.

3.    Tried changing the master page as were able to open the system pages (by appending _layouts/changesitemasterpage.aspx). We changed to different one as we are using custom master page. Checked the results again but same problem.

4.    Opened the site in SharePoint Designer 2010 and checked the status of master page as well as the home page. It was fine and without customization too.

Note: if you see any of these pages in customizable state then I would suggest you to take the backup and try ‘reset to site definition” option.

Obviously, next question will arise- what exactly it will do? Yes, it will reset your page to default state. It means you will lose your customizations. But issue will be resolved and you can customize the page again as per your requirements.

5.    Checked the windows application as well as SP logs (Location: \14\Logs). I would suggest you to analyze these logs before continuing your troubleshooting.

What is my observation\Understanding?

·         Code blocks are only processed for custom pages deployed in the root virtual directory of a site if the code it considered safe.

·         This code is considered safe only if the page is served directly from the file system. As soon as it becomes unghosted for any reason, the code is no longer considered safe and the error shown in the symptom occurs.

Resolution:

As our production web application was working without any issues so I compared the web.config of both the applications. Analyze the code line by line with the production web.config and that’s it. I found the one which was missing in the web.config that belongs to my development web application.

Note: I would suggest you to take a proper backup before making any changes in the web.config file.

What I did? What kind of entries I added in the web.config file?

Here we go:-

In you web.config, you need to search the tag name as “<PageParserPaths>”

Once you find that then make the following  entry:

<PageParserPaths>

    <PageParserPath VirtualPath="/apps/*" CompilationMode="Always"

              AllowServerSideScript="true" IncludeSubFolders="true" />

</PageParserPaths>

After adding this entry then IISRESET is mandatory.

Tried accessing the site and the issue has been resolved.

Happy SharePoint once again…

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know, Thank you.