Archive for April, 2009|Monthly archive page
Sample project plan SharePoint deployment
Already published in 2007 but still very useful, a sample project plan in MS Project for deploying SharePoint:
Planning and deploying an enterprise Web site solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a large-scale team project that encompasses multiple planning, deployment, and customization tasks. You can use Microsoft Office Project to help you plan your large scale projects, control the project work, schedules and finances, and keep project teams aligned. To help you envision the steps required to plan, deploy, and customize Office SharePoint Server 2007, you can download a sample Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment project plan that was created by using Office Project 2007.
There also a MS Project 2003 version available. Download the Sample project plan: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment on TechNet. Also thanks to Joel.
Whitepaper on working with large lists in SharePoint 2007
Via Mark Kruger I came across an interesting recently published TechNet whitepaper on working with large lists in SharePoint 2007:
The test results in this white paper are intended to demonstrate the difference in the performance characteristics of SharePoint lists containing large numbers of items when different data access types are used to present list contents.
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There is documented guidance for Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 regarding the maximum size of lists and list containers. For typical customer scenarios in which the standard Office SharePoint Server 2007 browser-based user interface is used, the recommendation is that a single list should not have more than 2,000 items per list container. A container in this case means the root of the list, as well as any folders in the list — a folder is a container because other list items are stored within it. A folder can contain items from the list as well as other folders, and each subfolder can contain more of each, and so on. For example, that means that you could have a list with 1,990 items in the root of the site, 10 folders that each contain 2,000 items, and so on. The maximum number of items supported in a list with recursive folders is 5 million items.
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There are some scenarios in which you want to take advantage of the features of Office SharePoint Server 2007, but need to exceed the limit of 2,000 items per container. If you write your own interface for managing and retrieving the data, it’s quite possible that you can go past this limit without an adverse impact on farm performance. You may be able to manage larger lists to some extent by using views within Office SharePoint Server 2007 that are filtered such that there are never more than 2,000 items returned. Filtered views provide better performance than just trying to view one large flat list, but are not as efficient as breaking down the list into different containers if you are using the predefined browser-based Office SharePoint Server 2007 interface. If you develop your own interface, there are several different ways to retrieve list data, each with different performance characteristics. Some data access methods perform very well, but are only useful in a limited number of scenarios. Finally, there are also performance tradeoffs that need to be made with other data maintenance tasks in addition to data retrieval.
Download the whitepaper Working with large lists in Office SharePoint® Server 2007.
SharePoint Backup Demystified
On April 3rd I attended the SharePoint Day with the Experts in Amstelveen, hosted by Quest Software and Microsoft. There were some great sessions by Joel Oleson, Daniel McPherson, Robin Meure and Mike Watson.
Mike Watson did a very interesting session on SharePoint backup strategies, Backup Demystified:
Does SharePoint backup and restore mystify you? Does your current backup solution seem inadequate? Want to learn how to put it all together and build the perfect solution but don’t know where to begin? In this session, Mike Watson, former architect for Microsoft Online, will help you put backup/restore in perspective. Mike will give you the information you need to understand your options and formulate the perfect backup and recovery strategy.
Download Mike’s presentation on his blog The SharePoint Mad Scientist.
‘Read-Only’ when opening documents in Office 2003 from SharePoint 2007
Via Andy Burns I came across a solution for a very annoying issue in SharePoint 2007 when using an Office 2003 client: When a user wants to edit an Office document directly from the document library in SharePoint 2007 and Office 2003 is installed on the client, they need to open the context menu and select “Edit in …”. If they just click on the name in view instead, the document is opened as Read-Only.If the user then wants to save his edits and presses save, the “Save as” dialog is presented. And if “Require checkout” is enabled the uses has to save the document with a new name because overwriting the old version isn’t allowed.
Ton Stegeman came up with a solution for this last year by creating a custom document library schema that has two extra view fields:
These fields, when clicked make the Office applications behave just like when users click the link “Edit in Microsoft Word” for a Word document. After you installed the template and you open a Word document in Word 2003, Words asks if you want to check-out the document (if this is enabled, otherwise it just opens the document in edit mode).
Download Ton’s solution from CodePlex.
SharePoint and Office Client integration
A question that I get asked a lot is which version of the Microsoft Office client offers the best integration with SharePoint 2007. Already in April 2007 Microsoft published a whitepaper that describes how different versions of Office programs work together with the 2003 and 2007 versions of SharePoint technologies: Microsoft Office Programs and SharePoint Products and Technologies Integration – Fair, Good, Better, Best.
Although an overview of the integration features of Microsoft Office 2000 versus Microsoft Office XP with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is provided, the paper’s focus is on the integration features of the Office 2003 Editions versions the 2007 Office Suites with the 2007 SharePoint Products and Technologies.
The increasing levels of functional capabilities have been deemed “fair” for Office 2000, “good” for Office XP, “better” for the Office 2003 Editions, and “best” for the 2007 Office Suites in terms of how they work together with SharePoint.
A detailed comparison of how the Office 2003 Editions versus the 2007 Office Suites, namely, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 and Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, work with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be provided.
The paper concludes that in order to realize the best user experience with Office and SharePoint integration features, the client programs must be upgraded to a 2007 Microsoft Office Suite, namely, Office Professional Plus 2007 or Office Enterprise 2007 and the server technologies must be upgraded to either Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007.
SharePoint content migration solutions
For a project I’m working on, I’m looking for a solution to migrate content from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2007. The complexity of the migration is caused by a corrupted content database and instable SharePoint installation in the source farm. Furthermore audit trails, security, metadata etc. need to be preserved.
Installing stuff on the source farm is out of the question, as are all sort of standard scenario’s supported out of the box (such as working with content migration packages). We’ll probably have to turn a 3rd party solution, I’ve listed some of the solutions I found below:
- The Migration Manager for SharePoint by Quest Software doesn’t seem to be the right solution for the project since it requires installing Migration Manager for SharePoint locally on the front-end servers in each SharePoint 2007 server farm involved;
- The SharePoint Site Migration Manager by Metalogix doesn’t require an installation on the source farm unless you have some specific requirements for your migration. Only if your situation requires the following features you need to install a service on the source farm: Browsing site collections, creating site collections, copying site collections, copying MySites, migrating all user information from MOSS 2007 to MOSS 2007, copying alerts and preserving metadata on folders (e.g., Modified By). Furthermore there’s an interesting whitepaper on the Metalogix website describing several migration scenario’s.
- AvePoint’s DocAve Content Manager for SharePoint has the same disadvantage as the Quest solution: It requires installation on all web front-ends in both the target and the source farm.
- Unfortunately I wasn’t able yet do determine whether the Tzunami Deployer for SharePoint 2007 Migration requires an installation on the source and/or target farm, although the FAQ-section on their website seems to say it does: “Tzunami Deployer requires a Windows Service component to be installed on the SharePoint server.” It’s unclear which one “the” server is…
Case: SharePoint Enterprise Search at Twynstra Gudde
A great case showing the potential of SharePoint as an enterprise search solution is Abel at Twynstra Gudde, a Dutch business consulting firm. With their search engine called Abel all TG’s professionals can search through relevant company sources: Colleagues (in Peoplesoft), projects & contracts (in CODA), opportunities, CRM, document management (in Open Text DocsOpen) and collaboration or team sites.
Because the it’s a really successful implementation of SharePoint, Tam Tam – my former employer – won the Microsoft Search Partner of 2008 award for this project.
There are some more screenshots at Paul van Brenk’s blog.
Case: Business School Netherlands
Filed under: Case studies, SharePoint, Web Content Management |
Leave a Comment Another nice website using SharePoint for web content management is Business School Netherlands:
Great resource: SharePointReviews.com
SharePointReviews.com is a great resource for all sorts of SharePoint products:
SharePointReviews.com is an independent product directory that provides SharePoint power users, developers and administrators with objective reviews and opinions on SharePoint Web parts, applications and development platforms. With searchable product listings and ratings, it will help you find the most suitable product within the shortest time. You can browse by categories, vendors, platforms and other parameters.
