Alexander’s Blog

According to a study by Microsoft and IDC, cloud computing technologies is likely to create 14 million jobs worldwide by 2015. The study also says that the revenue generated by cloud industry will total $1.1 trillion beginning in 2015.

According to an article posted on InformationWeek last month:

“Most new cloud jobs will be created in media and communications, manufacturing, and banking. In the case of the latter industry, many enterprises are expected to deploy private clouds as security concerns limit their interest in the public cloud, according to the study’s authors.

Geographically, emerging markets are expected to see the most growth in cloud-related jobs. Brazil is in line to see growth of 186%, India will see 99% growth, and China is expected to experience 84% growth. Cloud jobs in the U.S. are expected to grow by 66% by 2015.”

You can read the entire story here.

In case you didn’t know, according to Microsoft, SharePoint Designer has nothing to do with designing SharePoint? Then why is it called SharePoint Designer? Good question. The simple answer is: for the same reason that you have to click Start to shutdown Microsoft Windows. Just kidding! I really don’t have a clue why Microsoft would name a product then tell us that the name is meaningless and we should ignore it. You would think a name like SharePoint Editor would have made more sense.

One thing is for sure, SharePoint Designer will no longer be called SharePoint Designer in future because the name makes no sense at all. That’s just my prediction. According to Microsoft:

“SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for users to work on — not to design and publish — SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 web sites.”

Some people may consider SharePoint Designer 2010 to be a crippled version of FrontPage, even though when it comes to coding SharePoint Designer is a much better product. Others may consider SharePoint Designer 2010 a crippled version of SharePoint Designer 2007, which is perhaps a better way to describe it. Microsoft has removed a lot of features in SharePoint Designer 2010. Here is a partial list of what’s missing or changed.

• You cannot import a Web site from another server or file location in SharePoint Designer 2010.
• You cannot create, edit, or publish a disk-based Web site, or work with remote Web sites in SharePoint Designer 2010. Elements in the SharePoint Designer user interface that supported working with disk-based Web sites, such as the Use Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server preview option, have been removed.
• You cannot perform server administration tasks such as backup and restore, content migration, or other management tasks that affect and entire Web site in SharePoint Designer 2010. These operations should be performed in Central Administration.
• SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for working with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. It cannot be used with earlier versions of SharePoint.
• In Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and previous versions of Microsoft FrontPage, you could use the Microsoft Script Editor (MSE) to add text, edit HTML tags, and edit any Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) code in a data access page. MSE also provided IntelliSense features for script creation and editing. You could also use the Script Editor to view your page as it would appear in a Web browser. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 does not include Microsoft Script Editor.
• The Contributor Settings feature has been removed from Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
• The Single Sign-On (SSO) method of authentication has been removed from SharePoint 2010 and replaced by the Secure Store Service.
• Powerful cascading style sheets (CSS) layout features have replaced layout tables feature in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010. The tools related to creating and modifying layout tables have been removed from the SharePoint 2010 Designer user interface.
• If you open a Web page that contains an existing layout table in SharePoint Designer 2010, the layout table functions correctly. However, you cannot use SharePoint Designer 2010 to insert a new layout table.
• Themes created in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are not compatible with SharePoint Foundation 2010. If you are upgrading from Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to SharePoint Foundation 2010, you can use Visual Upgrade to continue to use sites in the old user interface.
• The Hyperlinks view is removed from SharePoint Designer 2010. You can use the error-checking features in SharePoint Designer 2010 to check for broken links, unused pages, cascading style sheets usage, and master page usage. The Recalculate Hyperlinks command has also been removed.
• Because of the changes to data management, the following database features from Microsoft FrontPage and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 are not supported in SharePoint Designer 2010:
  - Database Interface Wizard
  - Database tab of the Site Settings dialog box
  - Database Results Wizard
• Because SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for working with SharePoint sites, and these servers already have the necessary underlying code installed, an FTP client is not required and is removed.
• Customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) now requires higher permissions than in the previous release: By default, only Site Collection Administrators can customize pages, master pages, and page layouts, or use the All Files view.
• The functionality in Dynamic Web templates has been replaced in SharePoint Designer 2010 with master pages.

I often create a new site collection based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Collaboration Portal template for my clients’ intranet site. Just so you know, the Collaboration Portal template is hidden in SharePoint Server 2010. I use a PowerShell script to create the top-level site collection using the site template ID (SPSPORTAL#0) for the Collaboration Portal, as documented in my post Installing Collaboration Portal in SharePoint 2010.

Sometimes you may want to create a site based on your own custom site template that you have previously saved. Of course, if the site is a subsite then you can use the GUI to create the site, unless it’s a hidden template. However, if you want to use a script, and there are several situations where you may want to do that, the following script will come handy to create a new site based on a custom site template. Thanks to SharePoint MVP Alex Pierce for this script.

Step 1

Get the site template ID using the following method.

1. Enter the following text in Notepad.
   $url = “http://www.contoso.com/”
   $site= new-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($url )
   $loc= [System.Int32]::Parse(1033)
   $templates= $site.GetWebTemplates($loc)
   foreach ($child in $templates){ write-host $child.Name “  ” $child.Title}

   Replace “http://www.contoso.com/” with your site URL.

2. Save the file with .ps1 extension, e.g. GetSiteID.ps1.
3. Run the file in PowerShell.
4. You will see all the sites and their IDs displayed.
5. Make a note of your custom site’s ID.

Step 2

Use the method documented in my post Installing Collaboration Portal in SharePoint 2010 to create a new site based on your custom site ID.

Microsoft has documented some useful information on how to determine your current Microsoft SQL Server version number and the corresponding product or service pack level in the KB article 321185. The article also describes how to determine the specific edition of SQL Server that you are using.

There is another article that has information on how to find the latest builds for SQL Server. That information is available in the KB article 957826.

For example, to determine the version number of the SQL Server Client tools in SQL Server 2008 R2 you can start the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and go to Help, About.

It’s easy to verify that you have the latest build by using these KB articles. For example, Build 10.50.2806.0 (Cumulative update package) was the latest build as of today for SQL Server 2008 R2 since the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.

I recently installed a new SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise for a client. I also installed a SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard. Both were installed on separate Windows Server 2008 R2 servers running in a virtual VMware environment.

PROBLEM

After I successfully created the User Profile Synchronization (UPS) application and started the service, everything looked good. Then I went to Manage service applications in Central Administration under Application Management and clicked on the hyperlink for the newly created UPS application so I can configure Active Directory synchronization connection. Unfortunately, I received the following dreaded error.

An unexpected error has occurred.

SOLUTION

Here are some of the actions I took. I am listing all the solutions I tried because some of them are most likely to fix your error.

1. Reset IIS after UPS had been provisioned. This is the most common fix for the above error.
2. Verify that in addition to all the other necessary services, the two Forefront Identity Manager services have started successfully.
3. SharePoint Web Services Root application pool in IIS has started.
4. Health Analyzer has no errors.
5. Both UPS services in Services on Server have started.
6. Recycle SharePoint Central Administration v4 application pool in IIS.
7. Look for anything unusual on the SQL Server 2008 R2 server. Make sure the three UPS databases exist (Profile, Sync, and Social).
8. Make sure the account you are logged in as, e.g. SP_Admin, is a member of both the Farm Administrators and the local administrators group on the SharePoint server per this KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981229.
9. Reboot the SharePoint server.
10. Clear the file system cache per this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939308. You will find the instructions on Chaitu Madala’s blog much easier to follow.

Stop the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service (Found in Windows Services)

Navigate to the cache folder In Windows Server 2008, the configuration cache is in the following location: Drive:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config In Windows Server 2003, the configuration cache is in the following location: Drive:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config Locate the folder that has the file “Cache.ini” (Note: The Application Data folder may be hidden. To view the hidden folder, change the folder options as required)

Back up the Cache.ini file.

Delete all the XML configuration files in the GUID folder. Do this so that you can verify that the GUID folder is replaced by new XML configuration files when the cache is rebuilt.

Note When you empty the configuration cache in the GUID folder, make sure that you do not delete the GUID folder and the Cache.ini file that is located in the GUID folder.

Double-click the Cache.ini file.

On the Edit menu, click Select All. On the Edit menu, click Delete. Type 1, and then click Save on the File menu. On the File menu, click Exit.

Start the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service

Note The file system cache is re-created after you perform this procedure. Make sure that you perform this procedure on all servers in the server farm.

Make sure that the Cache.ini file in the GUID folder now contains its previous value. For example, make sure that the value of the Cache.ini file is not 1.

1. You may have inconsistent assembly versions on the SharePoint server after the installation of the package KB2560890. You need to make sure that you have applied all the SharePoint Server 2010 updates listed in this TechNet blog post issue #2. In may case, all the updates were already installed, except for the update 2560890. For some reason Windows Update never offered me 2560890 update. Here’s a list of the updates mentioned in the TechNet blog.
   NOTE: The updates are referenced as officeserver2010 but they actually pertain to SharePoint Server 2010. There is no such thing as “Office Server 2010.” There was a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 but Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is not “Office Server 201o.”

   
   
   After I installed the update KB2560890 I was prompted to restart the server. After the restart the error went away and I was able to successfully manage the profile service.

2. Because I only needed one of the updates, I didn’t need to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard to complete the upgrade process. However, in your scenario you may consider running the wizard if necessary.

Hopefully one of the above solutions will solve your problem. In my case solution #11 did the job.