SharePoint PreScan Utility Hiccups

I haven't had any chances to work on doing an upgrade from SharePoint 2003 to 2007 until now. So in order to get myself up to speed I decided to begin testing with my companies old 2003 implementation since we have already moved to 2007, we had just decided to do a complete rebuild from scratch instead of the upgrade.

The first thing I do is run the PreScan Utility, you can find it here http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8a00b1f-6f45-42cd-8e56-e62c20feb2f1&displaylang=en.

I got an error which stated "Skipping virtual server: . Server state = NeedUpgrade. Most likely this virtual server is not extended with WSS v2. "

To me this seems strange as I thought the Virtual Server was already set to be SharePoint. So I google the issue, here is the KB from Microsoft for the different prescan errors and solutions http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937291.

In my case I just needed to do the upgrade as whoever set up the portal server originally had not done this. To do this you would use the stsadm utility.

1. Open Command as an administrator
2. Change the Path - cd "\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin"
3. stsadm -o upgrade -url http://serverbeingupgraded

Run the Prescan utility using the config xml, this config file maps the site templates correctly, if you run the prescan with out this you will get back notifications that SharePoint is using a lot of custom templates, which may not be the case.

1. Open Command as one of the SharePoint admin accounts
2. Run the utility
prescan /c preupgradescanconfig.xml /v http://serverbeingupgraded

Getting the results below is good, if any of the items marked in blue come back with something other than 0 you will want to look into things a little deeper, and will most likely have to recreate your custom templates for use with 2007.

03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of sites skipped (already scanned): 0
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of sites scanned: 50
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of broken sites: 0
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of webs scanned: 125
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of broken webs: 0
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of webs using custom template: 0
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of pages scanned: 6145
03/25/2009 10:36:55 Number of unghosted pages: 315 (5.13% of total).

Unghosted pages are not necessarily a bad thing and there is a way of reghosting.

For more info on this visit Joel Olsens blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/04/13/don-t-be-afraid-of-prescan-part-1.aspx

Create New Site Collection using New Database

Background
This document explains how to create a new site collection with its own database within SharePoint. Site collections can only be part of one content database and a site collection can contain many subsites. For the most part site should be fine with the way the departments can be broken out into Site Collections, each department can now have subsites if they are needed and those subsites will be created in the same database as the site collection. However if a new company or new department needs to be created a new site collection will therefore need to be created.

Creating a New Database

1. Go to Central Administration
2. Go to Application Management
3. Select Content Databases
4. Make sure that all of the databases statuses are set to Stopped, there is typically one set to ready even though this is not required for SharePoint to work. (Stopped does not mean the database is not running, it just means that new Site Collections cannot be created for that database) To set a database to stopped:
5. Click on the database name
6. Change the database status from ready to Offline
7. Click Ok
8. Click on Add a content Database
9. Ensure the correct web application is selected
10. Ensure the correct database server and server instance is selected
11. Enter the database name, should be something recognizable such as WSS_Content_Department or Company Name/Abbreviation
12. Click Ok

Create a New Site Collection

1. Go to Central Administration
2. Go to Application Management
3. Select Create Site Collection
4. Select the correct Web Application
5. Enter the title
6. Enter the URL
7. Select the appropriate template (Blank if importing existing site)
8. Enter the site collection information
9. Click Ok, this will now create a new site collection in the new database

Change settings in the Site Collection

Now that a new site collection has been created modify it so that it resembles the look and feel of all the other sites and uses the correct search center and features. Audiences may need to be used to control who has access to see what links in the navigation.

1. Go to the new site collection
2. Go to Site Actions > Site Settings
   
   Enable Features - Server Features may need to be activated
3. Under Site Collection Administration select Site Collection Features
   Activate the following:
   Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection (If applicable)
   SharePoint’s Server Publishing Infrastructure (If applicable)
   SharePoint Server Standard Site Collection (If applicable)
4. Repeat this step under Site Administration > Site Features
   
   Search Settings
5. Under Site Collection administration select Search Settings
6. Select use custom Scopes and enter /searchcenter/pages
7. Click Ok
   
   Look and Feel (Navigation)
8. Under Look and Feel select Navigation
9. Add the other sites as New Links under Global Navigation
10. Enter Title
11. Enter URL – this can be relative, if it is the root site just put a /, if another site collection enter /sites/sitecollectionname
12. If adding an audience, select the audience
13. Click Ok
14. Click Ok
    
    Audiences
    Audiences in this situation can be used to control “security by obscurity”, while users may not have access to some sites when using site collections they will see the links because the links are not looking at the security of the actual site collection they link to. This means that users may click on the link and then get an error stating they do not have access.
15. Add Audience
16. Go to the Shared Service Provider
17. Select Audiences
18. Create Audience
19. Enter the Name
    Enter the Owner
20. Select the include rules (this can be changed later)
21. Click Ok
22. Select the Operand, generally user
    Under Operator select Member Of for doing groups
23. Select the AD group for the people that will be in this audience
    Click Ok
24. Select compile audience
    The audience is now created and can be added wherever needed.

Moving a site into a new site collection
If a site is located in the wrong site collection or needs to be moved to its own site collection.

Export:
Export the site to ensure all permissions and versions are copied over using the stsadm utility, using command prompt

Cd “Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\Bin”

Stsadm –o export –url http://currenturl -filename c:\directory\exportfile.cab –includeusersecurity –versions 4

Create New Site Collection or new site for the new location using the blank site template

Import
Import the site to the new location

Cd “Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\Bin”

Stsadm –o import –url http://newurl -filename c:\directory\exportfile.cab –includeusersecurity

Re-run Profile Import

1. Go to Central Administration
2. Go to the Shared Services Provider
3. Go to User Profiles and Properties
4. Select Start Full Import

MediaRich Visualizer for SharePoint!!!

Here is something I have been waiting for, a product that will take many different file formats and create thumbnails, and allow me to do bulk export, import, zooms, pans, etc. FOR FREE!!!

Recently one of my clients asked about storing images in different file formats and for seeing those formats displayed as thumbnails. We all know about Photo Libraries but they only do a couple of items out of the box. In my wanderings across the net I found MediaRich DAM for SharePoint from Equilibrium. Great product and it met the needs of my client however there is a one time license fee and then an annual maintenance fee.

They just announced yesterday (3/3/2009), MediaRich Visualizer for SharePoint for free. While it doesn't do everything MediaRich DAM does, it does offer a lot of nice features for those that don't need full scale Digital Asset Management.

I am gearing up to install it on my development box to play around with it, but from reading and checking out the comparison chart, things are looking good to me. I did realize as I started my installation that OpenOffice may be required depending upon what formats you want to view as thumbnails.

Ill keep updating as I explore this product.

Auction Site in SharePoint??? You sure can*

Background: Client wants to do an internal auction site for all employees for their Bucks Program, basically they are given fake money for accomplishments. The client is in the middle of a SharePoint rollout and was wondering about creating the auction using SharePoint inorder to get an even better ROI. So of course this got me thinking, it should be possible (albeit some limitations) to complete with some workflow and a picture library. Auction would be using preset bid increments of $10,000, company of about 300 employees.

Solution: Created a Picture Library with some custom fields and two workflows one for new items and one for on item change. Created a Master Edit Page in another secured folder so that end users couldn't alter bids. Created a Data View Web part on the main auction page with a Bid button, and last but not least a Thank You redirect page.

*Caveats: Make sure you have the hardware and pipe to handle this feature or you will peg your environment, this happened to the client because they forgot to increase their Virtual Environment power for this VM during the auction. You may also run into a few items that will error out, my thought is that this is caused by end users clicking on the workflow at the same time. You are also limited to the type of auction (at least with this example).

I will post my steps for creating this later today or tomorrow