Configuring Facebook Authentication in SharePoint 2010

Hi Guys ,

One of the most used login is Facebook . Nowadays almost everyone has a facebook account . so was checking if it possible to use the same as Authentication for the Sharepoint site .

I have not yet tried this at my end Due to some Limitations However found this Step by Step Instructions very interesting and Helpful .

http://ovaismehboob.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/configuring-facebook-authentication-in-sharepoint-2010/

 Thanks Ovais Mehboob .

Office Web apps Overview

Some important feature included in Sharepoint 2010.

Microsoft Office Web Apps is the online companion to Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications that enables users regardless of their location to access documents and edit documents. Users can view, share, and work on documents with others online across personal computers, mobile phones, and the Web. Office Web Apps is available to users through Windows Live and to business customers with Microsoft Office 2010 volume licensing and document management solutions based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.

Office Web Apps is tightly integrated with SharePoint 2010 Products. When you install Office Web Apps, the Office Web Apps Services are added to the list of SharePoint Services and the Office Web Apps Feature is added to the available SharePoint Features.

Office Web Apps services include the Word Viewing Service, PowerPoint Service, and Excel Calculation Services that are created and run within the context of SharePoint Services.

The Office Web Apps Feature and services integrate with SharePoint's robust enterprise content management capabilities to provide users the ability to access and work on your organization's documents from anywhere using a Web browser.

For More Detailed Information check the Below link .

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff431685(v=office.14).aspx

Resource Throttling in SharePoint 2010

A new feature in SharePoint Server 2010, resource throttling provides options for monitoring and throttling server resources and large lists for Web applications. This enables you to control resource utilization during peak usage and prevent user activity from negatively affecting server performance.

To enable resource throttling:

1. On the General Settings Ribbon, select Resource Throttling.
2. Enter values for the List View Threshold option. This limits queries within a list to guard against performance degradation with too many list items. In SharePoint Server 2010, a list can support up to 50 million items. Two thousand items in a view is the accepted performance limit in SharePoint Server 2010.If a list contains a large number of items, queries with too many results will be very slow. If a user attempts an action that would reach a throttle limit, a message appears listing alternative methods that will not affect performance.
3. Allow or disallow object model override. This allows users with the appropriate permissions to programmatically override the List View Threshold setting for specific queries.
4. Set the List View Threshold for auditors and administrators.
5. Define the List View Lookup Threshold. The default of 8 generally works in new implementations. List view lookups can often go beyond six fields. In this event, you need to increase the limit.
6. Define the List Unique Permission Threshold. This option is rarely changed.
7. Turn Backward-Compatible Event Handlers on or off. By default, this is off. If you have a large amount of development work in SharePoint Server 2007 that leveraged event handlers for lists or libraries, you will want to turn this on. You should check with your developers if you are upgrading from SharePoint Server 2007.
8. Configure HTTP Request Monitoring And Throttling. This changes the setting in IIS for all Web servers in the farm for this Web application.
9. Define the Change Log constraints. Be careful not to reduce this too much because it will negatively affect servers that rely on history information for sites contained in the Web application.
10. Click OK.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg491393.aspx

Enable Anonymous Access in SharePoint 2010

Its not difficult to configure anonymous access in MS SharePoint 2010. Not much different then SharePoint 2007 set up, the only difference is the GUI or the Ribbon.


1. Open the Central Administration, under Application Management, click on the Manage web applications .

 2. Select the site you want to enable anonymous access on and click on the Authentication Providers icon.

3. On the Authentication Providers pop-up window click on the Default zone.

4. Under Edit Authentication, check Enable anonymous access and click Save.

5. Going back to Web Application Management click on the Anonymous Policy icon.

6. Under Anonymous Access Restrictions select your Zone and set the Permissions to None – No policy and click Save

7. Now, web application will allow anonymous access to be set.

 After Which , navigate to your top level site collection for the web application.

Click the Site Actions > Site Settings. Under Users and Permissions click Site permissions

8. Under Permission Tools, Click Anonymous Access icon and set the permissions to Entire Web site and click OK


That’s all, If you followed these steps properly you should have now Anonymous Access enabled.

Word cannot open this file because it is larger than 512 Megabytes

When you try to open a Word file, you receive an error:

Word cannot open this file because it is larger than 512 Megabytes

Probable cause:

This is the maximum file size Word can open.

Note: The maximum file size is limited to 32 MB for the total document text only and does not include graphics, regardless of how the graphics image is inserted (Link to file, Save with document, or Wrapping style) into the document. Therefore, if the file contains graphics, the maximum file size can be larger than 32 MB.

Resolution:

There is a workaround to resolve this issue.

Workaround Steps:

·         Rename the Word file to a Zip (.docx to .zip).

·         Open Windows Explorer, locate, and then open the saved compressed file that has a .zip file name extension. 

Note: To be able to change the 'docx' extension to 'zip', you have to have Windows Explorer's options set to show the extensions.

·         Select the word  folder, and then open the  media  folder to display the graphics.

·         Delete (or move to a new folder) some graphics to reduce the file size.

·         Rename the file back to docx and open with Word. If Word displays some errors, because it cannot find some files, click Yes  to recover the contents.

·         There will be placeholders for the deleted (or moved images).

·         Right-click the image placeholder, select Change Picture and browse to the folders where the pictures are saved to select the pictures.

·         Click the arrow next to the Insert button and select Link to File.

·         Save the document.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J J

Some usefull Powershell command lets used in SharePoint

Get-SPSite -Limit all | Select-Object Url, Owner, SecondaryContact | Format-Table -AutoSize

This one-liner returns a handy list of all the site collections in the farm, along with each site collection’s owner and secondary owner.

Get-SPSite | Get-Member

Running this command will show Owners and SecondaryContact to retrieve the names of the primary and secondary owners.

Get-SPWeb http://portal.contoso.com/mysteryweb | Select-Object Url, WebTemplate, WebTemplateId | Format-Table –AutoSize

This command will list the template and template ID used by the site.

Get-Command -Module Microsoft.Sharepoint.Powershell

This command lists all the SharePoint-related cmdlets: There are more than 500, which is too many cmdlets to digest at once. So, you can start refining any cmdlet searches with other parameters.

For example, the following one-liner gives you all the cmdlets that deal with site collections or SPSites as PowerShell refers to them:

Get-Command -Noun SPSite

You can substitute any cmdlet verb or noun in that command. You can also use wildcards like this:

Get-Command *SPSite*

If you have any queries and concerns do let me know.

SharePoint Performance Troubleshooting

A very good article written by Mr. Jason Himmelstein on the key things to note before starting the SharePoint performance troubleshooting.

Click Here, for the detailed article.

10 Steps to Optimize SharePoint Performance

Read this white paper written by Eric Shupps, a renowned SharePoint MVP that specializes in SharePoint performance to learn how SharePoint deployments are a combination of applications, services and databases where delivering a scalable, dynamic and efficient portal implementation can be a challenging task for even the most experienced IT professionals. You'll also learn how you can make improvements that can be made within or outside of the SharePoint infrastructure.

Another Article by Mr. Jason Himmelstein SharePoint Troubleshooting: A Little Data Goes a Long Way.

If you have any difficulties in reading and understanding the concept form the above articles. Do let me know, I would be more happy to help you.

Query to Identify Database Settings for SharePoint in SQL Server.

The above query will help you to find the Database Size in your SharePoint Environment.

New Features in SharePoint 2013 Preview

If you've not had time yet to work with SharePoint 2013 Preview, here's a look at what's new so far. Your assessment of the value of said new features will vary, depending on your mileage and usage.

Authentication

Microsoft says that SharePoint 2013 Preview has been improved to make claims-based authentication easier to use. It extends support for application authentication via Open Authorization 2.0 (OAuth) as well as for server-to-server authentication.

                             SharePoint 2013 Sample Authentication Architecture Fragment

Users can grant apps in the SharePoint store and catalog access to certain resources and data. Server-to-server security tokens that contain user identity claims enable cross-server authenticated access between, say, SharePoint 2013 Preview and Exchange 2013 Preview. (See also Microsoft's architecture posters website for the one labeled  "Extranet with Dedicated Zones for Authentication" and to see full views of the image excerpts below.)

Business Connectivity Services

Microsoft added a bunch of new features to BCS in SharePoint.

                                                  SharePoint 2013 BCS Architecture

You might like these: Support for OData Business Data Connectivity (BDC) connections, in addition to connections for WCF, SQL Server, and .NET assemblies. Automatic generation via Visual Studio 2010 of BDC models for OData data sources. An event listener with an event subscriber on the SharePoint 2013 Preview side, to enable SharePoint users to receive notifications of changes to the external system. Self-contained apps for SharePoint.

But wait--there's more: Enhancements to external lists that bring them to functional parity with other SharePoint lists. The exposure of the REST APIs for web and mobile app developers to use. Six new Windows PowerShell cmdlets specifically for OData. And the ability, via Business Connectivity Services Client Runtime, to have side-by-side installations of Office 2010 and Office 2013 Preview on the same client computer.

eDiscovery

Showing SharePoint's increasing presence in the world of litigation, eDiscovery improvements have been added that, unfortunately, are probably sorely needed. They include a new site template, the eDiscovery Center, which creates a portal for managing cases—you can access cases to search, hold content, and export content.

Microsoft has added improvements to in-place holds, including site-level preservation; the ability for users to work with content that's preserved; and the ability to define the scope of preservation via a query filter.

You can also now take the results of your eDiscovery search—including documents, wiki pages, Exchange email messages and tasks-- and export them into a review tool.

Mobile devices

Optimized viewing for mobile device users was a no-brainer addition to SharePoint Server 2013 Preview—it had to be done.

Other new features include the following: The ability to render a single SharePoint published site in multiple formats for different devices. The ability to enable a push notification service on a SharePoint site to send device updates to a Windows Phone device.

We're not done yet: A new geolocation field type for use in mobile app development. The ability for some devices to display PerformancePoint Web Parts, Excel Services reports, and SQL Server Reporting Services reports. And finally, enhanced viewing of Office Web apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) via mobile browsers.

Records management and compliance

Reflecting perhaps not a dearth of added features, but the distance SharePoint 2010's records management features had improved from SharePoint 2007's, you'll find that SharePoint 2013 Preview has enhanced compliance simply by extending retention policies to SharePoint sites.

This also applies to any Exchange Server 2013 Preview team mailboxes associated with those sites.

Business intelligence

SharePoint 2013 Preview adds tons of new features, including the following: New features in Excel for business intelligence (BI): In-Memory BI Engine (IMBI) for near-instant analysis of millions of rows of data; Power View Add-in for Excel, which offers visualizations, animations, and smart querying to enable users to visualize modeled data; decoupled PivotChart and PivotTable reports allowing for the creation of PivotChart reports without having to add a PivotTable report on the same page; and the ability to do trend analysis from cells in PivotTable reports that use OLAP data.

It also adds Excel service enhancements such as an updated Business Intelligence Center site template, and improved timeline controls.

Visio Services improvements include the ability for users to add comments to a Visio drawing on the web via Visio Services.

And PerformancePoint improvements include the ability for users to copy dashboards and dependencies to other users or site collections; an enhanced UI; support for Analysis Services Effective User feature, which eliminates the need for Kerberos delegation for per-user authentication; and support for PerformancePoint on the Apple iPad.

Social computing

It's no surprise that Microsoft wanted to beef up the social computing features in SharePoint, and with SharePoint 2013 Preview, it's on track for doing so. Basically, it's enhanced the administration and user experience, and added ways for enterprise users to collaborate more fully and naturally using social media features.

One way is by enhancing the ability create discussions—via two new templates called Community Site and Community Portal. Microsoft also redesigned the UI for MySites, and added Microblog and Newsfeeds features, and improved features users need around saving, synchronization, sharing, and moving content.

Because of the new MySites features, you'll also find Microsoft made several changes to the User Profile service application settings in Central Administration around configuring permissions, privacy, micro-blogging and newsfeeds, and more.

Web content management

Microsoft improved the video upload process for content authors, and improved image display and performance of a site with its image renditions feature, which reduces the size of an image file that is downloaded to the client.

It added an integrated translation service that gives content authors or managers the ability to choose which content will be exported for human translation and which for translation by machine.

And cross-site publishing does just as it says, giving you the ability to display content in one or more publishing site collections. You can also designate any library or list as a catalog, enabling content to be reused on publishing site collections.

It added managed navigation, which lets you use term sets to define and maintain navigation on a site. And it added the ability to create more user-friendly URLs.

In the area of branding, Microsoft made it less mysterious, and now designers use such tools as Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web, or another HTML editor, rather than having to use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio 2013 to brand a SharePoint site.

And it added the ability for designers to design sites for display on different devices, such as tablets, smartphones, and desktops. Additional features enhance search, authoring, and publishing.

Workflow

Microsoft made architectural changes in SharePoint Workflow. If you want to have the nearly identical experience of building workflows in SharePoint 2013 Preview as you do in SharePoint 2010, you simply install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview.

But if you want the SharePoint 2013 workflow platform, you need to install and configure Windows Azure Workflow to communicate with your Preview farm. SharePoint Designer 2013 Preview includes new functionality designed specifically for Windows Azure Workflow, and called the SharePoint 2013 Workflow platform.

These new features include a visual workflow that uses a Visio 2013 Preview add-in, the ability to enable no-code web service calls from inside a workflow, new actions for the task process, the ability to start a workflow built on SharePoint 2010 from a workflow built on SharePoint 2013, and new workflow building blocks called Stage, Loop, and App Step.

Note that to manage and monitor the Windows Azure Workflow in SharePoint 2013, you must use Windows PowerShell. (To get a head start on working with PowerShell, consult our latest SharePoint and PowerShell article "Exploring and Inventorying SharePoint Using Windows PowerShell.

Reference: www.sharepointpromag.com by Caroline Marwitz

We cannot locate a server to load the workbook Data Model.

Problem Description:

Assume that you use an Analysis Services source to create a PivotTable in Microsoft Excel 2013. You upload the Excel Workbook to a Microsoft SharePoint site.

When you try to either refresh the PivotTable or filter the data in the PivotTable, you receive the following error message:

We cannot locate a server to load the workbook Data Model.

Probable cause:

This issue occurs because the Analysis Services instance has not been configured in the Central Administration site.

Workaround/Resolution:

1.    To work around this issue, configure the Excel Services service application on the SharePoint server. To do this, follow these steps:

2.    In the Application Management section of the Central Administration home page, click Manage service applications.

3.    On the Manage Service Applications page, click the Excel Services service application that you want to configure.

4.    On the Manage Excel Services page, click Data Model.

5.    Click Add Server.

6.    In the Server Name box, type the name of the Analysis Services instance that you want to add.

7.    Click Ok.

If you have any queries/questions regarding the above mentioned information then please let me know. I would be more than happy to help you as well as resolves your issues J

SharePoint 2013 free ebooks

Thanks allot to Mr. Jeremy Taylor as he states

There are a lot of resources (blog posts / worksheets / scripts / screenshots on random SharePoint things) on the internet on SharePoint 2013 which could be classified as an ‘ebook’ if you print it to pdf. However, I am interested in capturing “ebooks” that are in pdf, doc or xps format, with a table of contents and some thought to its presentation. The reason for this post is something you can download, print or save and read when you are offline. I will check for its source too and ensure its from an authoritative & well known source.

Here is a list of SharePoint 2013 free ebooks available on the internet:
Microsoft: Explore SharePoint 2013
Microsoft: Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013
Microsoft: IT Professional Reviewer’s Guide for SharePoint Server 2013
Microsoft: Plan and use the Distributed Cache service in SharePoint Server 2013

Happy New Year 2013.

It’s my pleasure to wish my all reader and viewers a very happy new year 2013….!

May GOD fulfill this year with all the happiness, warmth, and prosperity and keep you family and near being in a wealth state.  

I hope, I can bring you more of SharePoint learning from my experience and experience of experts across the world.

Happy Reading……!

Amardeep Singh.