SharePoint log viewer

Finally, I had some time to develop a tool that I always wanted. A tool that will let me go trough the SharePoint log (where unfortunately I spend lot of time) with ease to find the information I want. Actually it is very simple : It is a small windows application that read the text log file, convert it to a xml file and then, bind it to DataGridView where it can be filtered By :

- Time stamp
- Process
- Area
- Category
- Level of severity


You can find it on CodePlex at : http://mosslogviewer.codeplex.com. It is still a beta version but many ideas are coming.

Your feedback is welcome.

Enjoy!

Document icons missing in the search results

This week I had mounted a new server. When I configured Search I found that the documents icons (all types of documents) do not show in the search results page. When it comes to documents icons we always have to check the ...\12\TEMPLATE\XML\DocIcon.xml. The problem was that the file had two instances of the pdf mapping key and the gif file name which is in the mapping value had a blank space in it. I deleted one instance, corrected the gif file name and performed an IISRESET. After that, the icons displayed fine.

To summarize here is what I did :

- Verify that there are no double mapping keys
- Check the icons file names
- IIS reset or recycle the pools

Hope this helps someone.

SharePoint 2010 Public Beta available for download

Microsoft SharePoint team has announced the availability of SharePoint 2010 Public Beta for download. More information and links are available on the SharePoint team blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/11/18/sharepoint-2010-public-beta-is-now-available-for-download.aspx.

Also, Bill Baer has posted a nice article on how to install SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 (aka WSS 4). You can read his article here : http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2009/11/18/installation-notes-for-microsoft-sharepoint-server-and-microsoft-sharepoint-foundation-2010-beta.aspx

It is not recommended to use SharePoint 2010 Beta in a production environment because it is not supported. Use it only for evaluation purposes. The release version of SharePoint 2010 is expected in first half of the year 2010.

Happy SharePointing...

SharePoint Search : Some files are not crawled (indexed)!

Recently, I was asked to find out why some documents are not indexed in a particular library and therefore, not showed in the search results. I began by inspecting the crawler log to see if there are any errors or warnings. No errors nor warnings I found. Better, I found that some of the documents are crawled correctly.
Comparing the crawled documents with the non-crawled ones, it appeared that the non-crawled ones are in minor versions (draft). By default, the crawler account is granted 'Full Read' permission. Which mean that it just cannot see draft documents which are visible only to authors who have 'Edit' permission.

So what is the solution? You have to :

- Either grant the crawler account the 'Edit' permission to let him see unpublished files and crawl them. In this case, all draft documents will show in search results to everyone, even to visitors who are not supposed to see them. The search results are not security trimmed (1). However, if you do not have access to a document, you still be denied the access even if it shows in the search result.
- Or keep the crawler account with 'Full Read' and publish the draft documents into major versions.
- Otherwise, accept to not index draft documents

I cannot recommend a solution or another. Every company must have a documents management policy, and its according to this policy that we can decide if we have to raise the right of the crawler account or keep draft documents out of the search scope.

Here are some interesting links to better understand SharePoint search behaviour :

What Does the Crawler Crawl and When?
SharePoint indexing/search behavior on major and minor versions
MOSS Enterprise Search - 16 things you might not know

Hope this helps.


(1) The search results are not trimmed only for draft items. That's what I noticed. For the other items, the results shown are trimmed at query time according to the permissions the user has. 

WSS 3.0 August 2009 CU...Another issue!

In my last post I said that the WSS 3.0 August CU fix the issue of Alternate Access mapping. It's true. But, be careful. It seems that these CU have their issue : Because of the changes made to the database schema, you cannot attach a content DB which schema is prior to these CU. Imagine if you want to make a SQL restore of DB which backup was taken before you had installed Aug. CU. Houston, we have a problem.

For more details please read the post of Stefan Gossner here .

SharePoint SP2 Alternate Access Mapping issue... Fixed

The fix for the Alternate Access mapping issue has been published in August 2009 CU : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973410.

The Kb states the following, amongst the issues fixed :

'You have a Web application that has more than five incoming URLs. You cannot change Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) settings after you install the 2007 Microsoft Office system cumulative update that was released in April 2008.'

<Update >
Please be aware of the new issue found in these updates. Read here.
</Update >

SharePoint Alternate Access Mappings explained....my way!

I see many people confused about AAMs, their role and their usage. Therefore, I decided to write a post about them and explain in clear English what are they, when to use them and where to define them.

What AAms are?

AAMs are different urls mapped to the same application in order to give access to the same content using different zones. We cannot talk about AAMs without talking about web application zones. Each SharePoint web application can have five zones : Default, Internet, Intranet, Extranet and Custom. Each zone can have its own authentication provider. For example, Integrated windows authentication for the Default zone, Anonymous access for the Internet zone and Form based authentication for the Extranet zone. All the five zones share the same Database. i.e. the same content, but each one has its proper IIS web Site. Each zone has a public url. When we create a web application, the default zone is created. Let's say "http://default.mycompany:80". Then, we can extend this web application to the four remaining zones if we need to. For our example, we will extend our web application to the Internet zone "http://www.mycompany.com" and the Extranet zone "http://extranet.mycompany.com".

When to use AAMs?

Suppose that for convenience, I want my internal users to access the default zone using a more simplified url. What to do? Create a new AAM (http://mycompany) and map it the default zone. Now, the default zone can be accessed using whether http://mycompany or http://default.mycompany:80.

Suppose again that my company has been sold to a rich man. The urls I created for my web application are no longer valid. What to do to rename my web application urls from mycompany to hiscompany? Backup the content, create a new web application with new urls then restore the content? Yes, it could be. However, there is a better and simpler solution : AAMs. Create new AAMs, i.e. "http://default.hiscompany:80", "http://mycompany", "http://www.hiscompany.com" and "http://extranet.hiscompany.com" and map each url to the appropriate zone.

Where do I define these AAMs?

I'm glad you asked! Go to Central Admin > Operations > Alternate Access Mappings, under the Global Configuration section.

It goes without saying that the urls we are talking about must be first defined in the DNS and IIS.

I hope I have shed more light on AAMs by now. Nevertheless, if you have any question, feel free to ask.

Hope this post is helpful.