Pre-upgrade scan tool

The pre-upgrade scan tool is used to scan the sites in SPS 2003, before they are upgraded to MOSS 2007. The tools helps to find any errors/issues that might occur during the upgrade process. Two main reasons for which this tool is run is to:

1. parse and save list definitions with associated lists
2. report common issues that will result in failed upgrade

User running this tool must be member of Admin group on local server.

This tool should be run during planning & upgrade process. If a user attempts to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration wizard without successfully running this tool, the wizard exits and prompts the user to run the tool.

The pre-upgrade scan tool can be run from the command line by using the following command:

prescan.exe /c preupgradescanconfig.xml /all

The above command scans all servers in the server farm. After the scan has completed, the location of reports (_log.txt & _summary.txt) is displayed in the command-line window.

Issues reported by the pre-upgrade scan tool:
The reported issues include the existence of the following objects:

1. Customized site templates:
   An administrator need to know which site templates have been customized for a particular site, so that he can verify the customizations again after the upgrade.
2. Orphaned objects:
   There may be some objects that exist but are not associated with a particular site. These types of objects are orphaned objects. Orphaned objects may be list items, lists, documents, Web sites, and site collections. Because orphaned objects do not work in the previous version, they would not work after the upgrade. If an in-place upgrade is performed, the orphaned items will still exist but will not work. If a gradual upgrade is performed, orphaned items will not be copied to the new site. It is recommended that any orphaned objects should be cleaned up before upgrading.
3. Custom Web Parts:
   The existence of custom Web Parts is reported to the appropriate site administrator or developer before upgrading.
4. Missing components (language packs, user controls):
   If a Web site is based on a language template pack that is not currently installed on the front-end Web servers, or a Web site uses controls that are not currently installed on the front-end Web servers, the missing language packs or controls should be installed before upgrading.

How to add a Web Part Zone on a page?

Open the Page in SharePoint Designer.

1. Open Web Parts task pane: click Task Panes --> Web Parts.
2. Click at the location on the page where you want to insert new web part zone.
3. Click “New Web Part Zone” at the bottom of Web Part task pane.
4. Right click on new web part --> Web Part Properties
5. Edit properties if required --> Ok

(Refresh page in IE to see the changes)

User getting login prompt for the site even when logged into domain

This is a common issue that seems weird because it happens to just a few people in your domain.
So a few will keep getting annoyed with the login-prompt every time they access the SharePoint site even when they are already logged-into the domain.

Perform following steps on every individual's machine who is facing the problem:
Open IE --> Internet Options --> Security --> Custom level --> Select ‘Automatic logon with current user name and password’ for User Authentication/Logon.

Newly added scopes at SSP level don’t show up in Search Scope dropdown

Ok, when you add a scope on SSP level it doesn't show up in the Search scope drop-down for the sites.
This is because SharePoint gives us great flexibility and control over the search features. So any new scope that we add at SSP level will be available to all the site collections (as unused scope) but it needs to be enabled.

Steps to do this:

1. Open the root site in the Site collection and open the Site Administration page (Site Actions --> Site Settings)
2. Click the 'Search scopes' under 'Site Collection Administration'
3. The newly added scop is listed under the 'Unused Scopes' group
   To make it available in the search scope dropdown for the site collection we need to make this scope available
   

4. Click/Edit 'Display Group: Search dropdown' scope group
5. Check the 'Display' checkbox for the scope you added at SSP and click OK
   

6. Repeat these steps for 'Display Group: Advanced Search dropdown' scope group if required

Now the newly added scope will be visible in the search scope dropdown on the site collection.

You can also remove certain scopes from the search dropdown by unchecking the 'display' box. If you do not want to make a scope available to the site collection, make sure to remove it from all the display scope groups viz. Search dropdown and Advanced Search dropdown.

"All Sites" scope not available in the site collection

Today I was experimenting with the Enterprise Search feature in MOSS. Doing the practical was long due.

So the first thing I noticed on my test site was that the 'All Sites' scope was not available in the Search scopes in my site collection. 'All Sites' and 'People' are the two default scopes added by SharePoint when we enable the Search service.

So I was wondering why it didn't show up in the search scope dropdown

The reason and solution is explained very nicely by Brijesh here
Steps 8 and 9 (enable publishing features) were not required though when I tried it.

Point To Remember: When creating a top-level site in any site collection, use a site template under Publishing templates group. This has two benefits:

1. The default search scopes will be available by default.
2. The dropdown for top-link bar will be easier to setup and control (How to enable drop down menus for top-link bar?)
3. I'll update this list as I find more advantages

Copy .vmdk (virtual machine) file to passport drive gives 'Not enough disk space' error

This got me scratching my head for some time.

I have VMware Server 2 and have created few VM machines which I wanted to copy to a passport drive. Though the drive had almost 350 GB of disk space I could not copy the .vmdk file onto it which is just 8 GB. However, all other files for the VM got copied without any problem - but they are of no use without the vmdk file which is the disk file for the VM.

The reason turned out to be the file format of the passport drive - FAT32.
I formatted it and used NTFS file format and voila! The .vmdk file got copied without any issue.

Sometimes you just need to go back to basics :)

Site logo/title links point to default.htm instead of default.aspx

Another basic one that I faced in my initial SharePoint days.

This is really straight forward. Simply open the Website Properties in IIS and click on Documents. Then remove entries for Default.asp and default.htm from the list.

If this doesn't work for you then follow these steps:

1. Open the site in Share Point designer.
2. Find the default.htm page in the site root folder along with default.aspx page.
3. Delete the default.htm page from the site.

This will fix the problem. All the pages will now open default.aspx page.

Enable Publishing feature for site collection gives access denied error

This is one of the cases where you really hate SP administration using the UI.
The friendly(?) errors generated by sharepoint lead you nowhere.

I tried to follow the steps given by Vincent Rothwell here but it didn't work for me.
But scrolling through the comments on the same blog gave me few leads and finally I resolved the issue.

1. Activate the feature via stsadm on the server:
stsadm -o activatefeature -name PublishingResources -url http://website/

2. Check the site administration - site features page in site setting (refresh if needed) - Publishing feature should be activated

3. If it is not, manually enable it after you run the command.

Lesson to learn: You should pay attention to comments as well, not just the blog :)

How to enable drop down menus for top-link bar?

This is one of the basic questions I faced when I started using/implementing SharePoint. But I will still post it for record :)

I refered the solution explained by Eric Shups here. Below is the summary of what I did:

Find the below section in default.master page of the site
< asp:SiteMapDataSource
ShowStartingNode="False"
SiteMapProvider="SPNavigationProvider"
id="topSiteMap"
runat="server"
StartingNodeUrl="sid:1002" / >

Change it to following
<asp:SiteMapDataSource
ShowStartingNode="True"
SiteMapProvider="SPSiteMapProvider"
id="topSiteMap"
runat="server" />

Also change the following in default.master to appropriate levels
StaticDisplayLevels="2"
MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="1"

(Refresh page in IE to see the changes)

If you have enabled Publishing features on MOSS make sure you have checked the 'Show Subsites' checkbox in Navigation settings. Heather Solomon has explained this in detail in her post.

Add a Sign Out link on the top-right nav links of the site

Even though we have the SignOut link on the available on the 'Welcome Username' dropdown menu but our client wanted to have it be clearly visible - without requiring to select the 'Welcome Username' dropdown.

A quick search led me to this msdn post. Here is how I implemented this.

1. Open default.master for the site collection home site. Add the following lines at the desired location on the master page
   
   <td valign="middle" class="ms-globallinks" style="padding-left:3px; padding-right:6px;">
   <a href="/_layouts/signout.aspx">Sign Out</a></td>
   <td style="padding-left:1px;padding-right:3px;" class="ms-globallinks"></td>
   
   
2. Check-in and approve the master page.
3. To have this link available on all sites in the site collection we need to inherit this master page for all the subsites. To do this on the site collection home site: go to Site Actions --> Site Settings --> Master Page.
4. Now select the default.master in the dropdown and check the checkbox “Reset all subsites to inherit this Site Master Page setting” in both Site Master and System Master sections.

Going SharePoint way...

After a long wait I have now decided to blog about SharePoint. I started with SharePoint in Nov 2007 and feel that its a good time to share the little knowledge I have gathered so far.

I will be mainly logging the issues I faced and their solutions and any new gyan that I gather along my way in this exciting technology.

This will basically help me to search through them as the files are really getting difficult to manage [:P]
And also because I think its a good Point-to-Share