How to set the dates of the current monday, wednesday and friday of the current week fo date and time column for a list

Set the Sunday of current week for date and time column in a list.

Add date and time column for a list Name it as Date

Select "Calculated Value" radio button under Default value section

=1-WEEKDAY(TODAY)+TODAY

whenever u add item to this list in NewForm.aspx
by default Date=dd-mm-yyyy(21-12-2014) i.e sunday of current week


















Reference:

http://superuser.com/questions/376698/how-to-get-the-dates-of-the-current-monday-wednesday-and-friday-of-the-current

SharePoint 2010: Making a Column Read-Only in a list using Sharepoint Designer

Using SharePoint Designer, you can make one of the columns on your list/library Read-Only so that when a user goes to edit the list item, that one particular field will be unmodifyable, even for Full Control Permissions.
This can be done by changing the field type from an “editable” field to a simple “display” field.
To do this, open up SPD and navigate to your list.
You want to create a new “Edit” form for this list so click on the “New…” button:

Type in a name for your new form. Select the “Edit Item Form” radio button and go ahead and make this the default form for editing.

Click OK and then open up your new form to edit the code.

In this particular library, I have a column that I named “Read-Only” which I will be changing to read-only mode in the edit form. To do this, scroll down to the column inside the code and change the following:

<SharePoint:FormField runat="server" id="ff3{$Pos}" ControlMode="Edit" 
FieldName="Read_x002d_Only" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('u',
concat('ff3',$Pos),'Value','ValueChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims(
string(@ID)),'@Read_x002d_Only')}"/>
<SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff3description{$Pos}" 
FieldName="Read_x002d_Only" ControlMode="Edit"/>

to

<SharePoint:FormField runat="server" id="ff3{$Pos}" ControlMode="Display"  
FieldName="Read_x002d_Only" __designer:bind="{ddwrt:DataBind('u', 
concat('ff3',$Pos),'Value','ValueChanged','ID',ddwrt:EscapeDelims( 
string(@ID)),'@Read_x002d_Only')}"/> 
<SharePoint:FieldDescription runat="server" id="ff3description{$Pos}"  
FieldName="Read_x002d_Only" ControlMode="Display"/>

Now when you go to edit an item on your form via “Edit Properties”, the column will be read-only.




Reference:

http://sharepoint.indigoreality.com/2013/04/03/sharepoint-2010-making-a-column-read-only/

Q&A with the SharePoint MVP Experts Chat On Oct 29th @1pm EST or 10am PDT

A note from Melissa Travers
Sr. Community Program Mgr, Community and Online Support

We are launching our SharePoint MVP Expert Chats again!  Have questions about SharePoint 2010 or 2013?  Or SharePoint Online? Office 365?  Please join us October 29th at 1pm EST or 10am PDT where you can have your questions answered live!  We will be using the Reddit Ask Me Anything format.  This is new to us but many of Microsoft teams are using this medium now.  Please create a Reddit account beforehand so you can be ready to ask questions.  

More information on the chat and room location will be available on Oct 29th in the SharePoint forum.  

Hope you can join us!

https://www.reddit.com/r/sharepoint

Hope you can join us!

MVP Experts Participating:

1.      Andrew Connell

2.      Cathy Dew

3.      Doug Hemminger

4.      Doug Ware

5.      Eric Shupps

6.      Gavin Barron

7.      John Ross

8.      Kris Wagner

9.      Randy Drisgill

10.   Sahil Malik

11.   Sean McNeill

12.   Shane Young

13.   Spencer Harbar

14.   Todd Bleeker

15.   Trevor Seward

16.   Wictor Wilen

On Twitter: #SharePoint questions? Get answers live 10/29 @10am PDT from the MVPs https://www.reddit.com/r/sharepoint  #sharepointmvpchat #mvpbuzz

Drag Drop not working in SharePoint 2013 with IE8 Installed

Issue: User reported that drag and drop functionality is not working for the some of the user:

Error: There was no error however, user was not able to see Drag files here option when accessing the SharePoint sites. You can see the difference form the below snap-shots.

 IE’s Snap-shot: 

Chrome’s Snap-shot

Background: We have a recent upgrade of IE7 to IE8 and after this user started complaining that they can’t user the option to Drag files in SharePoint sites.

Troubleshooting:

Tried it on the server where we have IE 9 installed and its working fine.

Tried to clear IE cache and reset IE settings.

Tried to reset the zone of sites in IE.

Tried to run the SharePoint 2013 site in IE compatibility view.  

This is something broken or not available in IE 8 which has broken it.

Tried to look at internet and found MS KE which says this functionally is not available in Chrome or Mozilla https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2761267 and this was true for us as this is by design.

However, our problem was to not having it available at all IE 8.

Resolution:

By checking on the server where it was working fine, I noticed that there is a add-on installed with a very clear name: SharePoint DragUpload Control, which is actually allowing IE to work with this functionality.

Checked on Installed IE 8 add-on list and found that ad on STSUpld UloadCtl Class add-on was already enabled.

This adds on is supported by STSUPLD.DLL and is available at location C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12.

One article says this functionality doesn’t come with IE 8 or IE 9 by default; you need to have SharePoint DragUpload Control installed. Or installing Office 2013 or SharePoint 2013 does the same job for you.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/odabasi/archive/2013/04/16/sharepoint-2013-document-%20library-drag-amp-drop-feature-requirements.aspx

Since we don’t have any plan to upgrade Office as of now and SharePoint Designer 2013 is blocked

There was another Option which MS KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2901074 suggested upgrading to compatibles browser or Office package would resolve the issue, since we don’t have that option, so what next.

Well looking at many options it says that we have to have Office 2013 or SharePoint Designer 2013 installed to user this very popular functionality of SharePoint 2013.

Reference:

http://blogs.realdolmen.com/experts/2013/03/21/drag-and-drop-files-into-a-sharepoint-2013-document-library-depends-on-installed-browser-and-office-version/

http://www.sharepointdiary.com/2014/04/sharepoint-2013-drag-and-drop-upload-not-working.html

Plan you browse for SharePoint 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263526(v=office.15).aspx

Applies to: SharePoint server 2013, IE8, IE 9, IE 10, Office 2013, SharePoint Designer 2013.

October 2014 Cumulative updates: SharePoint Server

October Cumulative updates are release for both SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013.

SharePoint 2010:

• SharePoint Foundation 2010:
• SharePoint Server 2010: KB 2899490
• Download SharePoint Server 2010 October 2014 CU: 2899490

Note: This CU includes all SharePoint 2010 fixes released since SP1. The CU does not include SP2 and no fixes released in October CU

SharePoint 2013:

• KB 2889946 - SharePoint Foundation 2013 October 2014 CU
• KB 2899469, KB 2880962, KB 2880485 - SharePoint Server 2013 October 2014 CU
• KB 2752098 - Fix for SharePoint 2013 Indexing Connector for Documentum (if installed)
• KB 2889898 - Office Web Apps Server 2013 October 2014 CU
• Download SharePoint Foundation 2013 October 2014 CU: 2889946
• Download SharePoint Server 2013 October 2014 CU: 2899469, 2880962, 2880485
• Download SharePoint 2013 Indexing Connector for Documentum October 2014 CU: 2752098
• Download Office Web Apps Server 2013 October 2014 CU: 2889898

Note: After installing the fixes you need to run the SharePoint 2013 Products Configuration Wizard on each machine in the farm

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2013.

Error: "A web analytic report is not available for this site. Usage processing may be disabled on this server or the usage data for this site has not been processed yet : SharePoint 2013

Issue: When you click on Site Actions and then Site Web analytics Reports, you get error message. 

Error: A web analytics report is not available for this site. Usage processing may be disabled on this server or the usage data for this site has not been processed yet. 

Back ground: 
Any site in the SharePoint environment is having issue and every single site we are getting this issue. Usage and Health data collection Service is provisioned fine. 

Troubleshooting: 
Checked errors on the SharePoint servers, nothing reported.
Checked on the Logs nothing reported.
Enabled Reporting feature on Site collection Admin feature list, nothing worked. 

Note: enabling “Reporting” Site Collection Feature the Site Settings > Site Web Analytics link will disappears and will replaced elsewhere with Popularity Trends (under Site Administration). 

Resolution: 

While looking at the wide audience, I get to know that Web Analytics is discontinued from the SharePoint 2013. 

Due to less than optimal performance running service at scale in large enterprises, web analytics has been discontinued and is not available in SharePoint 2013.  Having said that, you can still view some analytics capabilities for e.g. Most Popular Items, Popularity Trends.. report for a specific item/site/sitecollection level 

Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chandru/archive/2013/08/31/sharepoint-2013-web-analytics-report-where-is-it.aspx 

If you have any thoughts on this please drop in the comments. 

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2013.

Folder to exclude from the SharePoint Antivirus Scanning: SharePoint 2013

While working on some of the Antivirus Issue and revisiting the AV configuration in each of the SharePoint platform seen many system and log folder also being scanned by AV deployed on SharePoint servers.

MS had published a very useful KB article which gives you information and listing all those servers which can be excluded form the AV scanning on your SharePoint environment.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952167

Though of Sharing with all you guys…!

WMI: Windows Management Instrumentation

I was given a task to compare the latest software installed on mane server. Looking at the task though it sounds very simple that  we can compare the list form Control panel and add remove programs.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776518(v=ws.10).aspx

However, it involves many hours job when it comes to servers. I came across the term WMI which gives you extended functionality to extract such reports.

First of all its important o know about what is WMI: Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows-based operating systems. You can write WMI scripts or applications to automate administrative tasks on remote computers but WMI also supplies management data to other parts of the operating system and products, for example System Center Operations Manager, formerly Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), or Windows Remote Management (WinRM).

Courtesy: msdn.microsoft.com

You can use WMI from client applications and scripts. It provides an infrastructure that makes it easy to both discover and perform management tasks. In addition, you can add to the set of possible management tasks by creating your own WMI providers.

Courtesy: msdn.microsoft.com

Extracting the information of all updates and hotfixes from command promot:

wmic qfe list brief /format:htable > "%USERPROFILE%\hotfix.html"

This produces a nicely formatted list in an HTML file named hotfix.html that gets placed in the User folder.

Reference:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4197.how-to-list-all-of-the-windows-and-software-updates-applied-to-a-computer.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394582(v=vs.85).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa393964(v=vs.85).aspx

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, Windows Server 2008.

Forefront Identity Manager Stops after servers are rebooted: SharePoint 2010

Issue: FIM synchronization services in our one of the SharePoint environment stops or doesn’t start every time our servers are patched and rebooted.

Error: We have many loges reported in event viewer of the servers. Event ID 3, Event ID 6324, Event ID 3760

Log Name:      Application

Source:        Forefront Identity Manager

Date:          29/06/2014 03:16:04

Event ID:      3

Task Category: None

Level:         Error

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Computer:      Server Name.

Description:

The TryGetSetting function in SettingsProvider.dll returned an empty set of supported parameters for property, SQLConnectionString.

Event Xml:

http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event

">

 

   

    3

    2

    0

    0x80000000000000

   

    1469029

    Application

    Server Name

   

 

 

    The TryGetSetting function in SettingsProvider.dll returned an empty set of supported parameters for property, SQLConnectionString.

 

Log Name:      Application

Source:        FIMSynchronizationService

Date:          29/06/2014 03:18:05

Event ID:      6324

Task Category: Server

Level:         Error

Keywords:      Classic

User:          N/A

Computer:      Server Name.

Description:

The server encountered an unexpected error and stopped.

Log Name:      Application

Source:        Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation

Date:          29/06/2014 03:18:38

Event ID:      3760

Task Category: Database

Level:         Critical

Keywords:     

User:          Farm account.

Computer:      Server Name.

Description:

SQL Database ‘DB Name; on SQL Server instance ‘SQL Server Instances Name,14331' not found. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.

Cannot open database "DB Name" requested by the login. The login failed.

Login failed for user ‘Farm account name’.

  

Troubleshooting:

There are different approaches towards troubleshooting this issue as reason for its occurrence is unknown.

Resolution:

Different people had suggested different things:

First:

Such as adding service account into three groups on local machine:
FIMSyncOperator, FIMSyncJoiners and FIMSyncBrowse and errors should go.

Second:

FIM Sync service should start before FIM service. However it may not be happening. Currently the service is set to Automatic and can be changing it Automatic (Delayed Start).

We could deploy a script which will check for the service every 60 seconds, and if it is not running, sends an email to the administrator

• while ((Get-Service "FIM").status -eq "Running")
• {Start-Sleep -Seconds 60}
• Send-MailMessage -From FIM@ps.local -To admin@ps.local -Body "FIM Stopped" -SmtpServer server1

•  Alternatively, you can put a .cmd file in your Recovery Tab of the service,  and use the following command: Powershell Send-MailMessage

Third:

In our case we had also found there were several SQL related error and in further investigation we found that server hosting FIM service were rebooted before the SQL server and once the SQL servers were re-booted FIM services always failed to find it reference to connect to SQL.

Rebooting SQL servers after server hosting FIM services had let FIM sync Services in Start state and resolved our issue.

Applies to: SharePoint server 2010, Windows Server 2008, Fore front Identity manager.

The file exists. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070050): Adding users to SharePoint

Issue: When adding a user to the site we are getting error The file exists.

Error: The file exists. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070050)

Background: We had some users migrated from one domain to another and this is an issue with one of those users.

Site admin confirmed that user is migrated correctly and getting above error once adding user to the site.

Troubleshooting:

We tried to add the user from our side and we were also getting the issue.

Tried to add the user on another side and was having the issue.

Checked in Active directory if user had valid account created.

Checked in User profile if user account entry exists.

Able to find the user in People picker and working fine.

The moment we click Ok, we get the error message.

Tried to delete the user site using PowerShell and re-added him, did not help.

Resolution:

It seems to be an orphan entry of the user old account exist on the site

Started looking at content DB with SQL queries.

select s.Id, w.FullUrl from Sites s inner join Webs w on

s.RootWebId = w.Id

select * from UserInfo where tp_Login='domain\username' and

tp_SiteID=''

Deleted user entry form UserInfo table in SP content db.

delete from UserInfo where tp_Login= 'domain\login'

Create account again using standard SP actions or just login to portal using this account. It did helped to resolve the issue.  

Alternative approach can also be acquired to clear the user SID history.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/ashleymcglone/archive/2011/11/23/how-to-remove-sid-history-with-powershell.aspx

Applies to: SharePoint server 2010, Windows Server 2008.

IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error 2148073478 (0x80090006): SharePoint Server 2010.

Issue: When we tried to open a SharePoint web app, we get error message Page cannot be displayed. 

Error: In event ID we have seen error message:

IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error 2148073478 (0x80090006)

Background: We had seen event ID 6482 in one of SharePoint servers which is saying that SSL certificate on one of web application has expired. Though we had not used SSL in any of our SharePoint webapp, but still we were getting SSL error message.

MS had suggested to work based on the KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962928 and renew self SSL on the web application; however this didn’t resolve the issue.

MS had suggested to follow the steps in another KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908572 to give Local Administrator rights to admin account at location \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA as Renew Self SSL were failing.

This did fix the issue of Event ID 6482 to fire in the event viewer but did lead to another issue which is point of discussion in this article.

We have seen after testing this fix what MS had suggested, it did break our testing and preproduction environment where were not able to start IIS service and getting the above error message.

Resolution:

To fix this issue and have IIS admin service running again was also challenging.

Based on one of steps to fix this issue MS has suggested to rename the MachineKeys folder at location \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys based on the KB https://support.microsoft.com/kb/908572.

It did fixed the issue however, when testing servers were rebooted (as a part of patching) the IIS Metabase was corrupt resulting in IIS Admin service did not start and all web application were inaccessible.  

Anticipating this could result in serious issues to Production environment, we decided to take production servers out of patching schedule and re-opened the case with MS informing them the issue we are facing after the fix was implemented to resolve first problem.

We restored the old MachineKeys folder by renaming it to original name and deleted the newly created MachineKeys folder first in testing platforms.

During the testing in root to live we spotted that there were two services (Cryptographic Services and syslog-ng Agent Service) which were automatically creating the MachineKeys folder and was not letting us rename it.

Stopping these services allowed us to rename the MachineKeys folder and we were able to start IIS Admin and World Wide Web Publishing services in sys-test and Pre-production platforms.   

Implemented the same steps in production servers, rebooted each server one at a time to check if any issues occurred post fix.  

There was no disruption to the service and IIS web applications are working fine.   

Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saurabh_singh/archive/2007/08/02/iisadmin-startup-issues.aspx

Applies to: SharePoint server 2010 and Windows Server 2008, IIS 7.

Unable to run audit Reports- .XML file opens as blank page : SharePoint 2010.

Issue: Whenever a user clicks on a Audit report on his SharePoint site, it brings back a blank page.

Error: There is no error as such, however, audit log reports opens as blank page in any browser.

Background: We had started facing this issue when user has reported that the issue is happening on one site. We started investigating from that side only. However, when we had explored this is wider issue and affecting multiple sites.

This was not the end point this issue was affecting other platforms also.

This issue was reported on multiple sites where when running audit logs reports opens as a blank page.

This issue was initially reported for one of the site and then we checked on other sites it has the same behavior.

Troubleshooting:

As an initial investigation checked by disabling AV scan on our testing servers and Production severs but it came as clear.  

As this issue was wide, to isolate it concentrated on one test environment where one server was working and other was not!

Compared,

• IE settings on servers, clearing cache and resetting IE settings did not work.
• IIS settings on both server and they were intact.
• Settings on compat.browser file, which controls the behaviour of the IIS web applications when requested over http in IE at location D:\IISWebSites\wss\VirtualDirectories\\App_Browsers\compat.browser.
• /_layouts/RunReport.aspx file content and no difference found.
• Web.config files and \12 hive folder settings, no difference found.

Have tried to trace the behaviour of the request via Fiddler and nothing found.

Compared to open the pages in different browser, IE, Chrome and Firefox.

It looked liked to be an issue with the way .xml file is parsed from IE.

Resolution:

Opened a case with MS and they had asked to confirm if http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2894844 orhttp://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2905247 KB is installed on any of the servers.

There were no entries of this KB on any of the servers.

Started comparing the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 updated on both of the servers. Assuming the issue has started in June, 14 month, started looking at the updates installed after May, 14.

On one test server (working one), last update ran on 31st Jan, 14, however on server non-working, last update ran on 16 May, 14 and the KB number installed was KB2894843 and we had KB2972214 installed on 12 Sept, 14.

Thinking and agreeing with MS eng. that KB2972214 installed on 12 Sept, 14  must had not caused the issue because the issue was there before 12 Sept, 14.

Targeted the KB2894843 installed on 16 May, 14 and uninstalled it from the server non-working sever.

Tried to browse the Audit log and it did work fine.

Note: This KB is near in the number, where MS has asked to check if any of the

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2894844 or http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2905247, we had installed on the servers and answer was no.

Installed KB2894843 on the working server and it did break the audit logs and started coming as blank page.

Uninstalling the KB2894843 again from working server, had fixed the issue again.

With these entire tests we confirmed that http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2894843 had created the issue.

MS has confirmed that this is recent issue they were reported with by other clients as well and root cause of the issue is still un-known.

They had requested if we can uninstall the KB from all the affected servers as they have no plans to introduce any Hot-fix for this KB in near future.  

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, Windows 2003 Server, .Net Frame Work 2.0.