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.