One step close to Microsoft… OR another dream comes true…

Recently, I have been nominated and accepted as a extended V-TSP program (now called as P-Seller)

What is a P-Seller (VTSP) is an employee of a Microsoft Partner who is acting as an extension of the Microsoft team in the capacity of pre-sales technical support. As a V-TSP, I have ability to position, demonstrate, design and implement Microsoft solutions.

• We’re given Microsoft network credentials, email address and VPN access.  We can use these to gain additional access to Microsoft internal resources (similar to what’s available to full time employees).
• Access to guidance on technical learning plans, solution training, advanced technical training material and Pilot/PoC/ADS training material.
• Tighter integration with product teams.
• Additional training outside of what is available to other partners or the public.

Boost your Organisation's Productivity with Microsoft Office and SharePoint 2013

Boost your organisation's productivity with microsoft office and share point 2013 from Mohamed Faizal

Boost your Organisation's Productivity with Microsoft Office and SharePoint 2013

The business productivity starts when employees collaborate with each other most efficiently. In the context of fast-changing innovation economy, information workers should be empowered with tools to communicate critical business information with rich documents, presentations and Excel spreadsheets in real-time with colleagues/business partners. In this session, the speaker will explain how your organisation can help to unlock the potential of your employees and maximise your business productivity using Microsoft Office with SharePoint 2013.

This session will cover the demonstrations in the following areas: 

• Connect Microsoft Office to SharePoint (effective ways to save files, check in/out and versioning)
• Real time collaboration with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Visio with office online (co-authoring)
• Share and sync your notes with colleagues (OneNote)
• Syncing Documents to Offline Devices (OneDrive Pro)
• Resources management: room booking, equipment’s booking with SharePoint calendar
• Quick way sync and Export a SharePoint list to Excel
• Quick way to create a list with validation.

SharePoint 2013 Search : The chart cannot be rendered

The chart cannot be rendered. This may be due to a misconfiguration of the Microsoft SharePoint Server State Service

Go to Central Administration>>Configuration Wizards>>Launch the Farm Configuration Wizard>>>Start The Wizard>>Check the State Service

Now you can view charts

Misconceptions about SharePoint farm admin account

Two days ago I received a call regards to SharePoint farm admin account access level.

“SharePoint farm admin account has access to all site collection and able to site content” the argument is

“Farm admin defined in Central Admin will always have full access to everything in the farm, because they are by nature, farm admin.”

My reply was NO SharePoint farm admin account by default don’t have access to SharePoint Site collection or site content, unless the user is member of “Domain User” AD group. (By default when you create user in AD which automatically add user to “Domain User group”

So decided to try myself :

Created new user called user1 on my AD

Created Site Collection with User 1 as primary administrator

Login using Farm admin account  “Sorry, this site hasn’t been shared with you.

Login using User 1 account

Farm Administrator: This account refer to the SharePoint Administrator like us, these accounts are usually user account and they just explore the Central admin. A user with Farm Admin rights is not automatically granted rights in Site Collections. To bypass having to add the user to every Site Collection, in Central Administration go to Manage Web Applications.

Farm administrators have no access to site content by default; they must take ownership of site collections to view any content. They can do this by adding themselves as site collection administrators—but ideally, they’ll leave the content management side to you, so they can focus on the software.

SharePoint farm administrators (refer to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/permissions-for-site-collection-administrators-HA101943260.aspx)

SharePoint farm administrators control settings in the SharePoint Central Administration Web site – that is, settings that apply to all the site collections in your organization’s SharePoint deployment. They also create site collections and set the first layer of permissions for site collections.

These settings affect the types of decisions that you can make, as a site collection administrator. Here are the permissions decisions that farm administrators can make:

• Enable or disable the anonymous access feature.
• Specify which permission levels are available for you to choose from.
• Specify which individual permissions are available within each permission level.
• Choose how much of SharePoint Designer is available in the site collection.
• Choose which users can manage service applications, such as the User Profile Service application, or Search. Each service application has its own customizable permission settings.
• Add another user as a farm administrator.

SharePoint on Azure

Given below my slides from Microsoft Azure Boot camp Singapore Chapter 

Windows Azure: Provision a SharePoint Server 2013 development environment with Visual Studio 2013

If you are going to conduct training OR evaluating software solutions OR learn SharePoint 2013 with VS 2013. The MSDN benefits enable you to get free access to Azure resources.

Text extract from Azure Portal

“The Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 developer desktop is an offering exclusive to MSDN subscribers. The image includes Visual Studio Ultimate 2013, SharePoint 2013 Trial, SQL Server 2012 Express edition and configuration scripts to quickly create a development environment for Web, SQL and SharePoint 2013 development. To learn how to configure any development environment you can follow the links on the desktop. We recommend a Large VM size for SQL and Web development and Extra-Large VM size for SharePoint development. Privacy note: This image has been preconfigured for Windows Azure, including enabling the Visual Studio Experience Improvement Program for Visual Studio, which can be disabled.”

Visit Windows Azure Portal (http://manage.windowsazure.com). And login to Management Portal

Go to Azure Virtual Machine and click “New” menus to “Compute”, “Virtual Machine” Creating Windows Azure Virtual Image Gallery.

Virtual Machine image Selection page, ALL on the left menu and scroll to find the Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 from the list. Click the arrow to continue. (don’t Select SharePoint Server 2013 Trail)

You can also select VS Professional 2013 / Premium 2013 depending on your requirements. All 3 VS images contain SharePoint Server 2013 with SQL Express edition.

By default Azure offer you to select Large Instance VM, based on my experience if you select Medium Instance, the server performance is reasonable. If need good response time and performance select Large instance.

Finally, you need to provide user name and password so that you log into the machine with Remote Desktop given user name and password.

Next step to Create a new cloud service for virtual machine. (if you want to logically group the server for load balancing and assign DNS name our VM you need to have cloud services, when you create another SharePoint Server 2013 you select same cloud service and load balance)

Select Affinity Group or Data center region (my case is Singapore I created Affinity group)

Select Storage account if you have one, else select create automatic.

Availability set is NONE

In order to access SharePoint Server 2013 from outside you need to configure the public endpoints to allow connections to Windows Azure data center.

Go to Endpoints and Enter Name for the endpoint “Public Port” and Select TCP protocol and private port is 80.

Virtual machine provisioning will take a few minutes, (status change from provisioning, starting and running) once the process is completed. Please click “Connect” on bottom the screen to initiate a remote desktop session for new virtual machine.

Following Software’s Pre-Installed by defaults

· Visual Studio Ultimate 2013

· SharePoint Server 2013 trail version

· SQL Express 2012 (Software binary inside)

· SharePoint configuration links

· Configuration PowerShell script to do jump start

When you click visual studio link, it will take few minutes to configure….

Once configuration is done, you can see VS 2013 lunch successfully J

Next steps is to configure SQL Express server, Click “Configure Developer Desktop Folder, Scripts and Select ConfigureSQLExpress.ps file

Please note that SQL Express 2012 installation do not come with SQL Setup 2012 Express Management Studio. You need to download and install this software, in order to do that you will to change the security settings in Internet Explorer.

To validate the SQL Express 2012 installation, launch your Visual Studio, Server Explore and Add Connection, enter (local)\SQLEXPRESS on server name text box and click Test Connection.

Now we successfully Installed and verify the SQL Express connection.

Next step to configure SharePoint Server 2013, Click “Configure Developer Desktop Folder, Scripts and Select ConfigureSharePointFarm.ps1 file “ConfigureSharePointFarmInDomain.ps1”

Local Account Name : Your Account Name

Password: <your password>

Which take several minute to complete the configuration, Once configuration completed system automatically launch SharePoint Portal J

The default port for SharePoint Central Administration is 11111, the above screenshots show CA and Default SharePoint Web Application.

Now lets create and deploy Simple application to SharePoint 2013, Create “App for SharePoint 2013” Project name VS2013SPAPPS

Select “SharePoint-hosted” apps options and click Finish.

Add new item and select “List”

MyList and select Default (Custom List) Option

f

Create following additional columns and select Required column

· Home Address Street

· Home Address City

· Home Address State or Province

· Mobile Number

· Home Phone

Select Debug and Start Debugging to test your new app. Wait for installation to complete. Important Note: do not use F5 as it may cause problems.

Now you can see that the My List is default SharePoint functionality for presenting the list and adding/updating items is fully functional

Now in few mints we can use this for development/evaluation purposes in a nice isolated and hosted environment. Enjoy your development :-)

Customizing SharePoint 2013 Search Experiences

This was presented CTU 10th Iteration 

Customizing SharePoint 2013 Search Experiences from Mohamed Faizal

Deep Dive into SharePoint Topologies and Server Architecture for SharePoint 2013

This was presented in Singapore as well as Malaysia

Deep Dive into SharePoint Topologies and Server Architecture for SharePoint 2013 from Mohamed Faizal

Newsfeed : we’re still collecting the latest news !!!

After you overcome My Site issue you may encounter another issue

We’re still collecting the latest news, you may see more if you try again a litter later

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After waiting few hours and restarted server and tried many ways but no help its shows me… above message…

and try this option : http://blogs.technet.com/b/mpriem/archive/2012/08/20/sharepoint-2013-preview-newsfeeds-showing-nothing.aspx no help… :-(

So i decided to investigate ULS Log, which shows displays that “No cache hosts are present or running in the farm”

Under Service notice that AppFabric Caching Service was disable, I started the service and Re-set Application Pool and Re-Set IIS server NO HELP !!!

Finally discover that “Distributed cache” is stopped on SharePoint Service on Server

Go to Central Administration, click Application Management.

In Service Applications, click Manage Services on Server.

On the Services on Server page, locate the Distributed Cache service.

If the Distributed Cache service is stopped and you want to start the service, under Action, click Start.

Click “Newsfeed” now you can view “Status update text box, newsfeeds…” enjoy…

SharePoint 2013 : My Site Something went wrong ?

After Install & configure SharePoint Server 2013. First think everyone wants to explore the new feature called “Newsfeed” on My Site.

Unfortunately, sometimes you may expected following error.

“We’re sorry, Something went wrong with your My Site setup.

Please try again later or contact your help desk.” 

This error due to root site, after Installing SharePoint 2013, you need to configure default the Root (/) site collection, sometimes you may created under /Sites/ instead of Root (/).

Now you create new Site collection  (/) Root. this will enable you to create My Site without any issue. :-)

After Root Site collection created you may able to see Newsfeed, Blog, Apps, and Tasks

Office 2013, SharePoint 2013, Office 365 and Exchange 2013 RTM

Today, Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president in the Microsoft Office Division, announced that Office solutions and other "2013"-branded products have reached the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) stage.

Some key points

• IT professionals and developers will be able to download the final version via their TechNet or MSDN subscriptions by mid-November.
• General availability is planned for the first quarter of 2013. Starting October 19, customers purchasing Office 2010 from local retailers or resellers will receive the new Office for free upon availability.
• Customers will also see a preview version of the new Office on Windows RT devices, beginning with the Windows 8 launch on October 26.
• Rolling out new capabilities to Office 365 Enterprise customers in our next service update, starting in November through general availability.
• Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the Office 2013 applications as well as other Office products including SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 through the Volume Licensing Service Center by mid-November. These products will be available on the Volume Licensing price list on December 1.

Apps for SharePoint 2013

(From My SharePoint 2013 Ignite Notebook) Part 1

Think SharePoint 2013 as a Portal Platform, which help you understand the new paradigm shift, which helps lots of developer to do program using C#, Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, NodeJS. The SharePoint 2013 App model is based on web standards: HTML 5, CSS, JS, OAuth 2.0 and OData. Today SharePoint enable most of the SharePoint API functions remote accessible the remote interface is much easier to maintain and more secure. This also concept also open door for SharePoint Developer create Facebook kind of applications for SharePoint and Office.

Today Application Challenges

Till SharePoint 2010 solution deployment done either Sandbox or Farm Solutions,

• Sandbox Solution
• Limited
• Only allow to access sub set of server side APIs
• Cannot call external hosted web services
• Use client side object call hosted web services
• Supported for Online and on premise environment
•  Farm Solution
• Need big server touch
• Not possible to deploy on SharePoint Online
• IT Pro. Say Performance issue due to developer code
• Deploy file to \BIN directory or GAC folder
• Outages when deploy code
• When error occur, affect the app pool which make cause service outage
• Supported only for on premise environment
• SharePoint Apps
• Easy to deploy apps.
• Reduce the number of 99.99
• One set of server is for lots of customer
• Application no longer live in SharePoint
• Code executed in client, cloud or on-prem
• Permission via OAuth.
• Service bus EndPoint via REST / CSOM
• No Sever-Side SharePoint API for Apps
• Supports HTML5, CSS, JS and railed development

What type application we can develop?

• Contact form
• Travel request form
• Shared documents
• Contact list
• Room booking
• Visitor information
• Claims
• Leave applications
• HR related forms download
• More input look at 40 SharePoint template to develop applications

Choice of Application type

Provider Hosted Apps Windows Azure Auto-Provisioned Apps SharePoint Hosted Apps

Marketplace

SharePoint and Office apps Microsoft going to introduce a commercial public marketplace, Today Office has 75 M users, Office and SharePoint Apps concept sounds very promising. Beside the public marketplace there is also option for private corporate app catalog for enterprise

Downslide of SharePoint Apps

• The performance is depends on Network latency issues
• InfoPath form not supported as SharePoint Apps
• Timer jobs are not possible within an app
• Deep changes to the user site are not possible with an app
• Cannot have any server-side SharePoint code

3 Steps to Setup your SharePoint 2013 Preview

 

After long back once again, I try to create small note or share my knowledge with SharePoint community in Singapore, This article covers 3 basic steps to Install & Configure, Learn and understand the change on SharePoint 2013 Preview. I try my level best to cover visually step-by-step configuration from simply enabling Hyper-V on Windows 8, installing Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012 to complexly installing SharePoint 2013. Hope this help you, Please note that this only for test purposes not on production.

1. System Requirements, Download tools & Setup and Install.
2. IT Pro & Developer Training
3. What is New in SharePoint 2013 

System Requirements, Download tools & Setup and Install.

Minimum Hardware & Software Requirements

The requirements for a development environment for an installation of apps for SharePoint 2013

Processor: 64-bit, 4 cores

RAM:  8 GB for production use 6 GB for developer or evaluation use

Hard disk:  80 GB free for system drive

Installation of SharePoint 2013 Preview is supported only on Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 x64 or Windows Server 2008 R2. (Windows 7 not supported yet)

To install & configure how to: Set up an on-premises development environment for apps for SharePoint

Download Tools

1. Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2008 R2

2. SharePoint Server 2013 Beta

3. Visual Studio 2012

4. SQL Server 2012 or SQL Server 2008 R2

5. Windows 8 Hyper-V (64 bit)

Windows 8, Go Windows Features and Enable Hyper-V feature.

 

Hyper-v Manager running on Windows 8

I configure using Hyper-V (Windows Server 2012 RC on Windows 8), Domain Controller with SQL Server 2012.

Install SQL Server 2012…

Install & Configure SharePoint Server 2013

Run SharePoint 2013 Preview Products Preparation Tool which will install all the prerequisites…

Once prerequisites software installed, please restart your Windows 2012 OS and install SharePoint 2013 Preview.

You can enter preview product key : 6RNT8-XV26M-GWH36-VMGQH-94MMH

Setup completed… now run configuration wizard to configure SharePoint 2013 preview…  

SharePoint 2013 configuration Wizard helps to Install and configure features and services,Configure security and create sample data. 

Select Create a new server farm option

Enter SQL Server 2012 / 2008 R2 Instance name, User Name and Password.

 

If you wish to change default port no, please change as well (I change to port no 2013)

While installing SharePoint 2013 for a Stand-Alone setup on Hyper-V encounter some issues.

Step 3. "Failed to create a Configuration Database"

Step 3. “Failed to connect to the configuration database”

Step 3. “Failed to create sample database”

To resolve above issue follow the steps

Step 1: SQL Server 2012 Management Studio Access the below (.\ZAREEF) > Security > Logins > {logged in user account} > Server Roles >

Step 2: Provide following server Roles for Administrator account

• dbcreate
• public
• serveradmin
• setupadmin
• sysadmin

Step 3: Services required to run the Configuration Wizard

• AppFabric Caching Service
• SQL Server Agent (SHAREPOINT)
• Workstation - need to be started.

Step 4:

• Open a SharePoint PowerShell command prompt
• . cd to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\BIN
• Substituting your own values where needed, run the command:
• .\PSCONFIG.EXE -cmd Configdb create SkipRegisterAsDistributedCacheHost user ZAREEF\Administrator password <yourpassowrd> passphrase <yourpassphrase>
• Re-run the SharePoint 2013 Product Configuration Wizard.  It should run right through the first 3 steps and start processing from step 4.

Note, you may have to clean up databases created from previously failed attempts by the wizard. (else system will have more than one configuration and administration database).

configuration wizard will start from task 4 to 10 and complete….

Welcome to SharePoint 2013 preview… and follow the steps to configure Service Application and Site Collection to explore new features

Incase if need to Install & Configure using Virtual Box visit :

How to Creating Image 

Setup & Configure domain controller

Install & Configure SQL Server 2012

Install & Configure SharePoint 2013

Also SharePoint 2013 on Windows Server 2008 R2 with SQL Server 2008 R2

If you need to know How to Upgrade from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 Step by Step by Ali.Mazaheri

 

SharePoint 2013 training for IT pros

Find IT pro-focused how-to training and walkthrough videos with this interactive course about SharePoint 2013 including changes and new features for search, social, plus deployment and performance/scalability.

Downloadable links for the presentations (.pptx) for each module are available later on this page. You can also download all presentations.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepoint/fp123606

 

SharePoint 2013 training for developers

Developer-focused how to training and walkthrough videos about Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 including changes and new features for search, social, ECM, WCM, and REST. Learn about apps for Office and SharePoint.

Important: These videos are based on an earlier preview version of Office 2013, SharePoint 2013, and Visual Studio so you might notice a few discrepancies

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/sharepoint/fp123633

What is New in SharePoint 2013

• Developer Tool : Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer, in addition to providing the release of newly developed web-based tool "Napa" Office 365 Development Tools for developing apps
• Web Standard: Common web standards like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Furthermore, implementation relies on established protocols like the Open Data protocol (OData), and OAuth.
• Mobility: SharePoint-powered mobile applications for Windows Phone using the new SharePoint phone application wizard template in Visual Studio
• Social: Adds new features that improve and facilitate the enterprise social activities within the organization:
• Follow people as well as content (documents, sites, tags)
• Share personal documents easily and keep track of access
• Keep up-to-date with activities of interest
• Company Feeds

To learn about SharePoint 2013 Preview ESN Capabilities : http://www.learningsharepoint.com/2012/07/29/sharepoint-2013-social-networking-capabilities-complete-tutorial/

• Community Site: Features such as reputation, categories, featured discussions, a question-post type, and best replies let community members easily find popular discussions, relevant information, and people with similar interests. Members build reputation as they participate in communities

• Search: several enhancements, custom content processing with the Content Enrichment web service, and a new framework for presenting search result types. Additionally, there have been significant enhancements made to the keyword query language (KQL)

• Workflow: SharePoint Designer 2013 Preview to author powerful workflows, and a new set of Visual Studio 2012 workflow project templates let developers access more sophisticated features like custom actions. Perhaps most importantly, Windows Azure Workflow is fully integrated with the model for apps for SharePoint
• ECM: Newly expanded set of .NET server managed APIs, to customize Enterprise Content Management (ECM) experiences and behavior. Design Manager, Managed Navigation, Cross-Site Publishing and EDiscovery.
• BCS : has been improved and enhanced in many ways, including OData connectivity, external data systems such as SAP, ERP, and CRM,external events, external data in apps, filtering and sorting, support for REST, and others
• Application Service: Word Automation Services and PowerPoint Automation Services (a new feature for SharePoint). SharePoint also provides data analysis tools, like PerformancePoint Services and Visio Services, that enable business intelligence, and powerful new features in Excel Services

Changes SharePoint Server 2013 Preview.

• The visual upgrade feature in SharePoint Server 2010 is not available in SharePoint 2013 Preview.
• The Document Workspace site template is not available
• The Personalization Site site template is not available
• The Group Work site template is not available
• Can't edit workbooks in the browser that have external data connections, due to design limitation
• Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010 has been discontinued and Analytics processing for SharePoint 2013 Preview is now a component of the Search service.