14 April, 2013

SharePoint Pro | Update



By Michael T. Smith

As I discussed in "Inventorying SharePoint Using PowerShell," Windows PowerShell is a valuable tool that you can use to inventory top-level SharePoint objects. That article shows you how to get lists of farm features, web applications, site collections, and sites using PowerShell cmdlets. In this article, I will explain how you can use PowerShell to obtain information from SharePoint about lists, libraries, files, and pages. Here are some of the tasks we will explore:

  • Find lists and libraries based on just about any feature (e.g., versioning, content approval, date created).
  • Find all libraries that use a selected content type.
  • Find all items based on a selected column (including finding all documents created by a user).
  • Find all documents of a certain type (e.g., .docx).
  • Find all files larger than a certain size.
  • List all libraries, their file counts, and total file size.

A reminder before we get started: Just because you can use PowerShell does not mean that you can ignore SharePoint security. See "Inventorying SharePoint Using PowerShell" for the basic security requirements. You will need to have at least read permissions to the content you want to explore. You can add the account you're using with PowerShell as a site collection administrator to every site collection or use SharePoint Central Administration user policies to give your account full read permissions in each application (select Central Administration, Application Management, then select an application, then click User Policy).

 
To read the rest of the article, click here.


By Caroline Marwitz

See if any of the new or improved features listed below for SharePoint 2013 catch your eye. Then head over to Microsoft's SharePoint site for a deeper dive.

1. Authentication
  • OAuth support. This web authorization protocol means that a user or web app can request authorization to get temporary access to specific network resources.
  • Default claims-based authentication for new web apps. A new Windows PowerShell cmdlet, Convert-SPWebApplication, helps you migrate from Windows classic-mode authentication to claims-based authentication.
  • Distributed Cache Service for login tokens. A dedicated cache helps avoid the need for additional configuration and makes for less memory utilization in the web front-ends.
  • Enhanced logging.

To read the rest of the article, click here.
SharePoint Pro Magazine Tips and How-To's

SharePoint Pro | Updates



By Dan Holme

Over the last two weeks, I’ve laid out an analysis of Office 365 and what it means to enterprises large and small.  But there’s one piece that I left out—quite intentionally—that today deserves to be brought to light: apps.  Not just any apps.  Killer apps.  Solutions to problems that transcend SharePoint… problems that have plagued businesses for years.  Now that Office 365 is released, I’d like to lay out my prediction for an exciting near-term future for SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 apps. 

From time to time I will highlight apps that I think are particularly noteworthy.  Today, I’d like to talk about a few—in particular a pair of apps that address very common business meeting and organizational challenges: MEETINGS and MY VIEW, which revolutionize your ability to leverage the Microsoft stack to manage effective meetings, and to roll up tasks and calendar entries across your SharePoint and Exchange worlds into a single view that can surface on any computer, tablet, or phone.

Before we jump to that discussion, I’d like to thank everyone at Penton—the organization behind SharePointProMag.com—for all their work on our BRAND NEW SITE, launched today with a great new engine that my colleagues—for example Paul Thurrott at SuperSite for Windows—have been raving about.  I think you’ll love the new look, and how easy it is (finally!) to register to make comments, and to find content you’re looking for!  So whether you have time now to read about a couple of apps that could change your work life, do jump to the new site to check it out!

To read the rest of the article, click here.


By Asif Rehmani

Have you noticed any SharePoint pages in your environment that load slower than the others? Want to know why? The SharePoint Developer Dashboard can provide the answer. Its name makes it sound like it’s only for developers. However, it's an extremely useful tool for IT professionals as well as SharePoint site owners.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Additional Resources

Why Data Quality Matters—A DBA and IT Perspective | April 3
To applications, data is everything. Allan Hirt explains how keep it clean inside and outside the application.


March 21 | Upgrading to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V the Right Way
Join us as we talk about how to upgrade your existing hypervisor environment to contain the great new functionality available in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.


SharePoint Pro Magazine Tips and How-To's

SharePoint Security 101: What you need to know to secure SharePoint, by Randy Williams

SharePoint Pro | Updates



By Jason Himmelstein

When I initially sat down to start this article, I quickly realized that you can't begin to troubleshoot performance issues until you have a sound baseline to start with. Otherwise, the likelihood of you figuring out what is going wrong in the environment is extremely low. With this in mind, I decided to tackle this topic from a bit of a different perspective, examining what forms the base of a solid and well-performing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm and working backward from there.

Performance is a tremendously broad topic when you're talking about SharePoint 2010. End users frequently have concerns such as "Saving that form took too long," or "It felt like it took forever for me to upload a file," or -- my favorite -- "SharePoint feels slow." As IT pros, we rarely get specifics when people complain about performance; they expect us to fix problems instantly without any details of what's really going on.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Additional Resources

Mobilize SharePoint Securely: Top 5 Requirements
Give users mobile access to SharePoint while retaining control of the data

Free SharePoint Admin Toolset
Get 7 essential tools for monitoring, securing, and administering SharePoint

SharePoint Pro Magazine Tips and How-To's

SharePoint Pro | Updates


By Dan Holme

Yesterday, Microsoft released Office 2013, Office 365 Home Premium, and Office 365 University—a significant chunk of the “Wave 15” Microsoft Office portfolio. But business and enterprise plans of Office 365 are on hold for another month.

The general availability milestone for consumers means that Office 2013 is more officially in the wild, now. This is just one of many milestones, and there are many thousands of individuals—myself included—who have been using Office 2013 for months, whether through MSDN, TechNet, or Microsoft volume licenses, or through the suite’s inclusion on the Surface. Many thousands—myself included again—have also been working with the new version of Office 365 through preview accounts obtained during the Consumer Preview period, or through Enterprise plans.

This week, I’ll share some of the details and resources related to this release, which in my opinion is a “no brainer” for certain scenarios—especially for those of us who are the tech support for our FFANs (Friends & Family Area Networks). I’ll also address some of the rumors about the impact today’s release has on your business and your users (read: licensing!). Next week, I’ll cover and clarify the dizzying array of Office 365 offerings for business.

For those playing the “Where in the world is Dan?” game, I’m in London this week, speaking at the SharePoint User Group UK on Thursday. I fly to lovely Copenhagen on Friday for the European SharePoint Conference where I will deliver my new SharePoint 2013 Collaboration MasterClass, a keynote with Christian Buckley, and three governance sessions.

Due to this week’s Office release news, I’m going to put off sharing the next chapter in my Facebook Catfish saga which, by the way, Facebook has yet to address adequately! (MAJOR #FAIL in protecting their users!)

So, on a brighter note, the release of the stunning Office 365 and Office 2013 applications!

To read the rest of the article, click here.

By Caroline Marwitz

Because my brain has been totally corrupted by using Twitter, what else but a tweet came to mind while I was reading the just-released Metalogix SharePoint survey:
"SharePoint content explodes, admins unhurt.

Actually, by rights it would more accurately have said "Users going ape-crazy with putting content into SharePoint, admins hopeful #SharePoint 2013 can help, if their organizations will cough up the money for it and allow for decent planning time, and by the way, ANY downtime while migrating = fail."
To read the rest of the article, click here.

Additional Resources
Protecting Unstructured Data on File Servers, NetApp, EMC and SharePoint
Organizations today increasingly depend on unstructured data – including emails, spreadsheets and other documents. That makes protecting them a priority and having the right tools is critical to success. Read this white paper to learn about your options.

Real-time SharePoint Monitoring
Try this easy-to-use tool that watches SharePoint’s disk space operation speed


SharePoint Pro Magazine Tips and How-To's
Creating Mashup Applications in SharePoint, by Todd Baginski

The Cost of Changing to SharePoint, by Robert Bogue

SharePoint Pro | Updates.


By Michael T. Smith

Microsoft SharePoint quickly spreads through the enterprise because it’s very easy to use. Unfortunately, that often means that it’s easy to abuse, too.

To manage the ever-growing spread of SharePoint, we often write governance plans that mandate the auditing and policing of users, content, and policies. Which tools can you use to perform these audits or even just to find out what's happening in your SharePoint installation? Third-party tools can handle some of the necessary inventories and auditing, but you already have a great instrument in your toolkit: Windows PowerShell.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Additional Resources

The Essential Guide to Achieving High Availability for SharePoint Data
Michael Noel explores approaches for reliable, efficient distribution of SharePoint content.

Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V: The Essential Guide to New Virtualization Capabilities
Learn how Hyper V’s new advancements make it an ideal platform for all application tiers and scenarios

SharePoint Pro Magazine Tips and How-To's