SharePoint, .Net, SQL, MS BI, Collaboration and Gadgets

Here are some resources regarding Moss which I get from my colleague, LJ. There are good resources for every sharepoint developer. Here you go:

MOSS Form Based Authentications
Part 1 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb975136.aspx
Part 2 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb975135.aspx
Part 3 - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977430.aspx

MOSS Alternate Access Mappings
Part 1 - http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/06/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-1.aspx
Part 2 - http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/03/19/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-2-of-3.aspx
Part 3 - http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/04/18/what-every-sharepoint-administrator-needs-to-know-about-alternate-access-mappings-part-3-of-3.aspx

**Thanks ot LJ who willing to share out the resources!

Simple error when trying to setup single sign on in Sharepoint 2007. Error: 

Please make sure you login as MS Single sign-on service account to configure it. Do check out here for more. http://cs.grossmann.com/blogs/fg/archive/2007/09/02/setting-up-single-sign-on-in-sharepoint-2007-errors.aspx

One of my colleague found out one funny bug in moss 2007. Here are the steps to reproduce it:

1. Add the content query web part, set to query items from page libraries from the whole site collection. (this should be default).
2. Add filter on “Scheduling End Date” and set to a specific date
3. Apply the setting and close the web part properties pane
4. Open back the properties pane, settings for the date are gone, and went back to [Today]. 

This seems like a bug in MOSS 2007.  The bug still exist after install SP1. Do let me know if anybody out there having the same problem and solutions.

p/s: My colleague already contacted a MS guy in my region. I will update this blog once got any feedback from them.

This is a common mistake when try to start a MOSS search services:

An unhandled exception occurred in the user interface.Exception Information: OSearch (Administrator)

This error occur when you do not specific the machinename in your username. you must put in fulll name. e.g. mossadministrator.

If you ever get this error during moss or wss 3.0 installation, you can follow the step below to fix it.

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
This product requires ASP.NET v2.0 to be set to ‘Allow’ in the list of Internet Information Services (IIS) Web Server Extensions. If it is not available in the list, reinstall ASP.Net v2.0.
Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.

Steps

1.  Run aspnet_regiis -i at .NET 2.0 folder.

2. If the error still exist, you need to manual “Allow” the asp.net 2.0 in IIS Web Server Extensions. 

We are getting error “Value does not fall within the expected range” when try to change the “Page Setting” in MOSS 2007. Yes, again same error message as in here (In fact, this error occurs is various scenarios). This error only happens when you copy an aspx page using SharePoint designer from one server to another severs (development server to production server).  Once you try to edit the Page Setting, the error will occurs. We did some googling around but no luck. Some sites mention that the page is link to the old Page Layout’s URL and we are not able to change it since we cannot access the page setting. But, there are a workaround where you can solve it! Here are the steps:

1. You cannot copy and paste the aspx page using SharePoint designer. First, export the aspx page using SharePoint designer to a physical file.
2. Open the aspx page with notepad and search on the “mso:PublishingPageLayout”. You will notice your development portal URL is there.
   <mso:PublishingPageLayout msdt:dt=”string”>http://xxxdevelopmenturl/_catalogs/masterpage/BlankWebPartPage.aspx, Blank Web Part Page</mso:PublishingPageLayout>
3. Replace your development URL (xxxdevelopmenturl) to the production URL and save it.
4. Open your production site with SharePoint Designer and import the modified aspx page.

That’s all. You should able to change the page setting without any error. Do note that if you are using reporting services in the aspx page, you can replace all the report’s URLs too. In that case, you do not need to reconfigure all the web parts again. This saves us a lot of effort since our aspx page contains more than 25 web parts. It will take us hours to reconfigure the report URL and parameters. 

** Special thanks to Mr. Goh TH who point out the Page Layout URL issue!

Are you getting frustrated with “An unexpected error has occurred” in sharepoint 2007? I found some useful tips. You can get more error messages from MOSS especially when they are not written to the application log. Do follow the steps below to get more:

1. Go into the web.config and set custom errors to off:

<customErrors mode=”Off” />

2. Turn on tracing and the callstack by setting both to true:

<SafeMode MaxControls=”200″ CallStack=”true” DirectFileDependencies=”10″ TotalFileDependencies=”50″ AllowPageLevelTrace=”true”>

3. There can be valuable info in the Event Log, so check there for more information on any exceptions that may have been thrown.

I am working on a SharePoint dashboard project recently. We have a lot of pie chart and graph integrated using Reporting Services Add-In web part. We have set Target Audience in each web part to offer multiple views to different users. It works fine in the past until this Monday. All the web part with target audience tie to AD group disappear. After spending half day on it, we found that the password for search service and content access crawler account expired. This effect the user profile and cause the target audience failed. Do check out these accounts if you have similar problem.

I received a certificate stated “Charter Member” for a beta exam I passed early this year. It looks cool. But I have no idea what is that means? Anyway, more (certificates) better than less

I got error “Could not access the Search service configuration database” to start the search service after filling in the account and database info while seting up SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in a server farm. After googling, apparently SPSearch(or WSS) doesn’t like its server name to be a FQDN, instead, it prefers NetBIOS. To solve this, you have to change the FQDN name to a NetBIOS name in the SharePoint_Config database.  IMPORTANT!! Please do a database backup before proceed!!

Here is the solution I found:

Open your SQL Query Analyzer and execute this command. This command will replace the “NETBIOS” and “FQDN” string to your server settings.
use SharePoint_Config
UPDATE Objects Set Name=’NETBIOS’ WHERE Id=(SELECT Id FROM Objects WHERE Name=’FQDN’)