Coming soon...

I am going to be creating a new blog soon called SharePointRandy.com so watch this space.

Create Page – Access denied

If users are getting an access denied page when they go to create a page it is because they do not have Restricted Read rights to the Master Page Gallery.

• From the root site collection click: Site Actions > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings
• Under Galleries select Master pages and page layouts . This takes you to the master page gallery which stores master pages. The master pages in this gallery are available to this site and any sites underneath it.
• Click in Settings > Document Library Settings
• Under Permissions and Management select Permissions for this document library
• You need allow Read access to users and/or groups of users who need to be able to Create Pages.
• In my situation we added a custom SharePoint Group. However note the screen grab below, it shows the default setup.
• In may be easy to inherit from the Parent (Actions > Inherit Permissions) and then remove the ones you don’t need.

TechNet UK Virtual Event

Ok this has very little to do with SharePoint but worth trying to catch if you can: www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/govirtual

MOSS SP2 trial expiration!

There is a small bug in MOSS SP2 that will turn your MOSS license from a fully paid version to a trial one :-). Don't worry it doesn't cause any other problems. Details of how to fix the the issue can be found under KB Article ID: 971620

. But here is a short summary:

1. Browse to Central Administration
   1. Click on the Windows Start Menu
   2. Click Administrative Tools
   3. Click SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration
2. Click on the Operations tab
3. Click on Convert License Type
4. In the Enter the Product Key textbox, type in your product identification number and click okay.
5. The License Synchronizer Job will execute on all machines in the farm after a few moments. Once all machines have updated their license from the timer job, the Convert License Type page will reflect the correct license.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,SP2,MOSS

SUGUK - Vendor Night - London - June 17th

The SharePoint User Group UK is holding a Vendor night on Wednesday 17th June. Go to http://suguk.org/forums/thread/18923.aspx for more details.

SharePoint 2010 Search

You most probably know by now that SharePoint Server 2010 will use a lot of the FAST search technology. I don't know much about FAST so I was surpised to hear of a couple of the new features that may appear.

1. Visual Search
   I guess you select or upload an image and it will go and find similar pictures.
2. Conversation Search.
   Audio file is uploaded, speech to text translation takes place allowing search to find words in the file.

How is Conversation Search going to work? If I search for a keyword that is in the audio multiple times will it indicate each time the word is used and allow me to go to that part of the audio?

SharePoint AdventureWorks WCM demo

Cool, SharePoint AdventureWorks WCM demo has landed at http://www.microsoft.com/click/SharePointDeveloper/ Thank you cScape, Microsoft and everyone else involved in putting it together.

STSADM -sitetemplate

I noticed something odd today while trying to create a web using stsadm. I ran the following:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://litwaredemo/sites/EasternConference/AtlanticDivision -sitetemplate SPSSITE#0 -title "Atlantic Division"

However I got back an error saying :

File or arguments not valid for site template SPSSITE#0

I realised the problem was I forgot the last “S” just before the # for the site template. But rather then completely failing SharePoint partially created the web. So after fixing the syntax error I first had to delete the web before running the command again.

stsadm -help

When using stsadm you can see the syntax for each operation by opening a command line and typing:

stsadm –help

E.g.

stsadm.exe -o addpath

Would display:

stsadm.exe -o addpath
-url
-type

SharePoint Foundation Server

I predict the new version of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 will be called one of the following:

• SharePoint Foundation Server
• SharePoint Foundation Server 2010
• SharePoint Foundation Services
• SharePoint Foundation Services 2010
  

Get up to speed with FAST, fast

Natalya Voskresenskaya (SharePoint MVP) will be blogging about FAST soon, see her post here.

I’ve spoken to a few people in the SharePoint community about FAST and I am not surpirsed that most know nothing or very little about it. My reasoning is that it is expensive and hard to get hold of, last time I looked you couldn’t download it. Anyway I look forward to the blogs by Natalya Voskresenskaya.

SharePoint 2010 predictions

I predict SharePoint 2010:

• Will include a LMS within its first service pack
• A new content type will be Multimedia (Video and Audio)
• Records Management will be very different - better
• W3C standards support will be much better - it couldn't get worse could it?

Oh and the learning curve will be as steep as MOSS!

SharePoint 2010 beta released soon?

So Chris Capossela says that:

Office 2010 — including Office Web applications, SharePoint Server 2010... will enter a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

I take this to mean that some Gold Partners will have SharePoint 2010 before the technical preview.

SP2 now here in Q2 not Q1 as I had hoped.

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System due to ship April 28th. Lots has changed so checkout: http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/16/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-due-to-ship-april-28th.aspx

Sorry Microsoft I didn't mean it!

In my last post I shortened Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as MSS. But for the record Microsoft say:

Don’t try to acronym Microsoft SharePoint Server to MSS since MSS is already taken by Microsoft Search Server. Just remember, SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint.

So remember SharePoint is SharePoint.

MOSS is dead long live MSS!

It looks like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is dead and being reborn as Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, note the lack of the word Office. Why? I think it is because Microsoft want us to stop using acronyms.

Thank You

A BIG thank you to the guys who participated and organised the European SharePoint Best Practice Conference.

Job Wanted

If you are reading this and need some help with SharePoint then I am available for contract work, feel free to call me on +44 (0) 70 1737 5467.

SharePoint and Chocolate

At work I love working with SharePoint and at home I love eating chocolate. But now these two have come together as Cadbury are running their web site http://www.cadbury.co.uk/ and http://www.cadbury.com/ on SharePoint. How cool is that?

.NET Mobile API

Please excuse the non SharePoint blog item but I wanted to let you know about www.51degrees.co.uk. I’m not going to explain what it is but if you are using .NET to develop web sites for mobile devices you should check it out.

Twitter

I'm finally Twittering, tweeting and microblogging more, whatever it is called i am at @RandyPerkins.

Microsoft Commerce Server 2009

I recently twittered (@RandyPerkins) about the release of Microsoft Commerce Server 2009. I can't compare it to any ecommerce packages around at the moment as I haven't used any, however when I last looked at MCS or whatever it was called it compared well. I can only imagine that it now is even more competitive.

Time to build a dev server and test it out.

Office Communication Server 2010

In my previous post I mentioned that the next version of SP will be in 2010. I think we will see a Beta this year still.

As for Office Communication Server I see this being rebranded Office Unified Communciations and being released in 2010 also.

Fact the next version of SharePoint...

will be called SharePoint 2010, well it isn't going to be called SharePoint 2009 as Balmer has said

"From a strategy perspective, the next big innovation milestone is Office 14, our next Office release, which will not be this year, there's a version of Sharepoint, there's a version of Exchange, there's a new version of Office Live,"

SharePoint Designer Free - Part 2

The following seems to prove it:

• http://www.sadev.co.za/node/339
• http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2009/03/13/sharepoint-designer-free-as-in-beer.aspx

But we will have to wait tw0 weeks to be 100% sure.

SharePoint Designer vNext

SharePoint Designer was heavily criticised for its WorkFlow limitations. Specifically those around redeployment. The answer was to use Visual Studio 2005/2008 or go for a third party product such as K2 or Skelta.

I predict that the SharePoint Designer vNext will be split into two versions. They are:

• SharePoint Designer
• SharePoint Designer for Workflow

SharePoint Designer vNext will be better (I know it's not hard) than the current version and will borrow from the Expression suite.

SharePoint Designer for Workflow will as the name suggests be a dedicated GUI package for creating workflows.

I predict some of the vendors who have made money from "low end" workflow products will exit the market. However the bigger guys will use it as an opportunity to focus on other areas of BPM.

SharePoint Designer 2007

Word on the (SharePoint Street) is that SharePoint Designer 2007 will be free from 1 April 2009. I'll post more details when I get more info. I hope that Microsoft fix some of the bugs in the product first.

I would rather use a beta of Windows 7 every day than SharePoint Designer for 10 mins.

SharePoint and FAST

In the next 12 months you could see the search market significantly change. You may say it is already changing and you’ll be right. I see Yahoo usage reducing further. They may even stop developing search. Microsoft will get more than a foot in the door with regards of Enterprise Search. With their acquisition of FAST I thought it would take 2 years before we saw anything useful from them. However they have just announced (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/02/10/microsoft-unveils-new-enterprise-search-road-map.aspx) that SharePoint vNext will have “high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP”. WOW

What I want now is Microsoft to acknowledge those of us who have a real interest in metadata, search, taxonomies, etc and release an exam. They hinted here https://www.quickstartmicrosoftsearch.com/login/signin.aspx there would be one but so far no sign of it.

Oh and I shouldn’t talk about search without mentioning Google. Yes they are the leaders of search but they don’t have the whole package.

Channel Islands SharePoint User Group

If you work on SharePoint in the Channel Islands why not join the Channel Islands SharePoint User Group http://www.sharepointgroups.org/cispug/

European SharePoint Best Practices Conference

The first SharePoint Best Practices Conference in Washington, DC in September, 2008 was an overwhelming success. The First European conference promises to be just as popular. Go to http://www.sharepointbestpractices.co.uk/ for more details