Giles Hamson

Don’t be fooled by InfoPath login prompt

October 18, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

A short sharing since I was amazed of the quality of feedback I received today from InfoPath and could have spent hours on this.

Steps:

Create an infopath form (here 2013, but may be the same in previous versions as it hasn’t moved that much at all since 2007)
Publish it to Sharepoint (2013) as a Content Type
Bang ! Infopath prompts for a login/password for the Webs.asmx web service
Entering any login still fails.

After a bit of thinking I went back a few step on that Publishing dialog box and noticed that I pasted some text that my client wanted to see displayed and it was just that: InfoPath didn’t like to transform the Description of the form or Sharepoint refused it because some characters were incorrectly formatted.

Avoid characters

So don’t be fooled by InfoPath / Sharepoint, the error doesn’t always lays where you think it is.

via François on Sharepoint http://sharepointfrancois.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/dont-be-fooled-by-infopath-login-prompt/

French native Sharepoint Consultant living in London. A crossway between a designer, developer and system architect. Prefers stretching the limit of out-of-the-box features rather than breaking them into code. When not working with Microsoft Sharepoint François is often found on Web2.0 News sites and related social networking tools.

This article has been cross posted from sharepointfrancois.wordpress.com/ (original article)

Categories: Work Tags: François Souyri, SharePoint

Take care when deleting the #Project Ideas list in #ProjectServer #PS2013 #SP2013 #SharePoint #ProjectOnline #PPM

October 14, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

I am a Project Server and SharePoint consultant but my main focus currently is around Project Server.
I have been working with Project Server for nearly five years since 2007 for a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in the UK, I have also been awared with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011.
I am also a certified Prince2 Practitioner.

This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

Just a quick blog post to ensure you take care when deleting the project ideas list and to let you know of potential issues with deleting projects that were created via the deleted project ideas list.

This post covers the issues you will see when trying to delete a project from Project Server that was created from a project ideas list after the list was deleted.

Example Project Ideas list:

Project created in Project Server from the Project Ideas list above:

Delete the Project Ideas list from the “List Settings” > “Delete this list” option.

Now try to delete the project that was initiated from the Project Ideas list, in this example delete the PM Test Project from the Delete Enterprise Objects menu in server settings. Navigate to the Project Server queue and you will notice that Project Delete job fails:

The key error is:

Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.BusinessLayer.QueueMsg.RemoveIdeaListLinkMessage‘ messageID=’8′ stage=” blocking=’Undefined’

You will see the the project still exists in the Project Center:

But trying to access the project details gives an error:

Checking the Delete Enterprise Objects page shows that the project is not visible when selecting “Delete draft and published projects”:

Change to “Delete only published projects” shows the project:

Attempting the delete again throws the same error.

My advice at this stage is to recover the deleted Project Ideas lists if possible. In this example I still had the Project Ideas list in the PWA site recycle bin. After restoring this deleted list, the subsequent delete job for the “PM Test Project” completed successfully.

With this in mind, I would recommend that you do not delete any PWA lists that have been used to create projects in Project Server.

Categories: Paul Mather, Work Tags: Project Server

Project Challenge 2013 #ProjectServer #PS2013 #SP2013 #projchallenge #pmot

October 14, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

Just a quick post to let you know that we (CPS) will have a stand at Project Challenge 2013. We will be on stand 72. CPS are also presenting, details below:

Wednesday 16 October 2013 – 14.00
Title: Portfolio management – how do I even get this on the executive agenda?
Speaker: David Dunning, Professional Services Director, CPS
http://www.projchallenge.com/case_studies_expertise.cfm

Tuesday 15 October 2013 – 11.30
Title: Microsoft Portfolio and Project Management made simple! Discover how effortless online and on-premise deployments are now a reality
Speaker: Ivan Lloyd, Product Lead, Corporate Project Solutions

Wednesday 16 October 2013 – 12.30
Title: Microsoft Portfolio and Project Management made simple! Discover how effortless online and on-premise deployments are now a reality
Speaker: Ivan Lloyd, Product Lead, Corporate Project Solutions
http://www.projchallenge.com/presentations.cfm

I will also be around at the exhibition on Wednesday – come and say hello Smile

Categories: Paul Mather, Work Tags: Project Server

Improvise #ProjectServer 2013 #CU installation time #SP2013 #PS2013 #CU

October 13, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

With the release of Project Server 2013 and then release of periodic Cumulative Updates, one evident factor i have experienced is the size of cumulative updates of project server, and the time they requires to be installed.

Just before this blog, a normal time i have experienced to install any CU on Project Server 2013 servers, were some where between 4-5 hrs and some time more than that as well 😦 and this duration is for 1 CU only, imagine if you have to install more than 1 CU which is common as March CU is a pre-requiste for any new CUs to be installed.

Which means, that either you plan to start the installation at day end, so that next day when you will resume work you only have to wait for configuration wizard to be finished

you can sit idle and stare at that progress bar on your screen, moving as slowly as any slowest turtle exist on planet earth, and curse yourself that why have you started the installation at this time.

I have been look for ways to improvise the duration of installation of CU, and the good news is that there is a way to install the same CU with the duration time of between 30-45 mins … yea you are reading it rite, its mins NOT hrs 🙂

Credit for this goes to Russ Maxwell, who brought this solution forward. And i am re-posting this good to spread to Project server community, because its equally painful for us as well 🙂

From the start the suspect in this whole case, i.e. why CU takes so long, are the SharePoint services running on the server such as App fabric/search etc. As they consume most part of CPU, and push windows installer to a lower priority to consume CPU time.

So here is a Power-Shell script to automate and speed up the installation process by disabling SharePoint server services gracefully. The scirpts performs the following steps:

Disable the IISAdmin and SPTimerV4 service

Shut down IIS Admin and Timer Services if they are running

Give you the option to Pause the Search Service Application (see search notes below)

Stop Search Services (see search notes below)

Install the patch in passive mode (No user interaction required but will witness the patch install in the UI). Note: Power Shell should remain open in the background while patch is running.

Upon completion of the patch, the Power Shell script, services in step 1 are set to Automatic

Starts up IIS Admin and Timer Services

Starts up Search Services

Resume the Search Service Application if it was paused

Finally, the script will display the Start Time and End Time for patch install

The script can be downloaded from the script gallery below:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Server-2013-automate-and-833aeb0b

A walkthrough using the script is below:

Copy the script and CU in the same folder, note that only one CU should be placed in the folder and file extension should be .exe.

Open the power shell and run the script, i recommend to pause search service application here by choosing 1. The screen shots below are of Project Server 2013 JUN CU installation on my server:

Notice the installation time of JUN CU, 35 mins, voila 🙂

Happy patching.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/2013/10/improvise-projectserver-2013-cu.html

The author of the blog has an extensive experience of working as an EPM Consultant. Currently he is located in Dubai, UAE and working for Microsoft partner organization as Project Server specialist. He has a thorough experience of providing Project Management technical/functional consultancy to all sort of organizations. He is a certified PMP, a Project Server MCITP, and also received a MS community contributor award 2011.

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

Categories: Khurram Jamshed Tags: Project, Project Management, Project Server

#ProjectServer and #SharePoint 2010 / 2013 October 2013 Cumulative Update #PS2010 #SP2010 #PS2013 #SP2013 #MSProject

October 12, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

This article has been cross posted from pwmather.wordpress.com (original article)

The Office 2013 October 2013 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2887714

Project Server 2013 Server Roll up package October 2013 CU (Recommended):
***Delayed***
Project Server 2013 October 2013 CU (Included in the Server Roll up package):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825659 & http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2760465
Project 2013 October 2013 CU:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825651

Also worth noting, if you haven’t done so already, install the March 2013 Public update: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2768001 if installing the October 2013 CU.

The Office 2010 October 2013 Cumulative Updates are now available, please see the links below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2887713

Project Server 2010 Server Roll up package October 2013 CU (Recommended):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825793
Project Server 2010 October 2013 CU (Included in the Server Roll up package):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825816 & http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825803
Project 2010 October 2013 CU:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2825812
Remember SP1 or SP2 is a pre-requisite for the Office 2010 October 2013 CUs.

As always, test these updates on a replica test environment before deploying to production.

Categories: Paul Mather, Work Tags: Project Server

Office Web Apps Server 2013 – Unable to preview/create/edit through web #SP2013 #PS2013 #OWA2013

October 3, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

A quick post to share the joy of installing/configuring Office Web App server 2013 and adding to farm to work with Project Server 2013 project sites, and additionally to share the issue which led me bang my head to wall several times a day while troubleshooting 🙂

This can be very beneficial in terms that Project Server users can enjoy a complete web based Project Management experience with Office Web Apps server in place. As most of the Project scheduling capabilities are already available through PWA in 2013, additionally users can also manage their project artifacts on project site without the need of office suite installed to be used to create/edit documents.

Follow these very detailed and helpful TechNet article in order to prepare Office Web App server , and then bind it with your SharePoint server later to make it work.

There is troubleshooting section in last TechNet article, Configure SharePoint 2013 to use OWA server, which can help you to troubleshoot most of your common issues.

However there are few more i would like to highlight, which may can drive you crazy:

First, if you are planning to configure your SharePoint to use Office Web Apps in test environment over HTTP, include the host name list to your OWA server list by using following power-shell command:

New-OfficeWebAppsHost -domain <server-name>

Note, since the above parameter is slightly confusing, you need to include Domain and your SharePoint server name as well. That is if you domain name is contoso.com, and your SharePoint webapp name is http://sharepoint:port, then include contoso.com and sharepoint both to host list by executing above command twice for each parameter value.

You may find following error in your OWA server log file due to above issue:

WOPI : CreateWOPIHttpRequest failing due to invalid host

Also in your Office Web Apps Server, ULS logs location is: c:\programdata\microsoft\officewebapps\data\logs\uls

More issues, if you see the below issue and technet article solution wont help, try check your SharePoint server firewall settings:

Sorry there was a problem and we cant open this document. Please try to use Microsfot word to open this file.

One of the solution for the above issue is host name not available in host list of OWA as described above. however, if you still see this error, as for me i have had been banging my head with this error for last few hours 🙂 , go through your ULS logs thoroughly and see if there is an indication to connectivity between two servers. Something like below in ULS: (i have highlighted the meaningful line in below, however left the other part intentionaly so that search engines can catch)

__________________________________________________________________

OPI CheckFile: Catch-All Failure [exception:Microsoft.Office.Web.Common.EnvironmentAdapters.UnexpectedErrorException: HttpRequest failed —> Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.HttpRequestAsyncException: No Response in WebException —> System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server —> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 33.0.0.4:85 at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.EndConnect(IAsyncResult asyncResult) at System.Net.ServicePoint.ConnectSocketInternal(Boolean connectFailure, Socket s4, Socket s6, Socket& socket, IPAddress& address, ConnectSocketState state, IAsyncResult asyncResult, Excepti… 03e73292-863f-49a5-bf05-6d9f982aa7e9

10/01/2013 15:17:29.72* w3wp.exe (0x1084) 0x222C Office Web Apps WAC Hosting Interaction adhsk Unexpected …on& exception) — End of inner exception stack trace — at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult) at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.HttpRequestAsync.GetResponseCallback(IAsyncResult asyncResult) — End of inner exception stack trace — — End of inner exception stack trace — at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.WopiDocument.LogAndThrowWireException(HttpRequestAsyncResult result, HttpRequestAsyncException delayedException) at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.HttpRequestAsync.End() at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.WopiDocument.GetWopiRequestResultWithRetry(Int32 maxSize, MemoryStream ms, WopiRequest wopiRequest) at Microsoft.Office.Web.Apps.Common.WopiDocument.CheckWopiFile()] 03e73292-863f-49a5-bf05-6d9f982aa7e9

10/01/2013 15:17:29.72 w3wp.exe (0x1084) 0x222C Office Web Apps WAC Hosting Interaction ajjve Medium WOPI CheckFile: Catch-All Failure [url:http://epm2013:85/_vti_bin/wopi.ashx/files/9cc20f3dd1c444f0b6eb71528ec907c2%5D 03e73292-863f-49a5-bf05-6d9f982aa7e9

___________________

To ensure the connectivity, don’t only rely on using ping command to ensure the connectivity between two servers, i.e SP and OWA. Try browse you webapp from OWA server and see if its accessible. If you are getting above error, then most likely you wont be able to access the webapp as well from outside SP server. Check your firewall settings of SP server, and see if you have allowed the ports to be accessed.

Control Panel -> Windows firewall -> advance security -> Inbound Rules > Port > Protocol:TCP, Specific Port: > Allow the connection > Apply to all zones > Enter a rule name > Finish.

And hopefully if everything works for you, you will be able to preview/create/edit office documents through web to have a complete web based experience of SharePoint 2013.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/2013/10/office-web-apps-server-2013-unable-to.html

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

Categories: Khurram Jamshed Tags: Project, Project Management, Project Server

Better logging in SharePoint

October 1, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

Just a very quick post so i can remember this post which describes 5 different approaches to custom logging within SharePoint.

http://spdevlab.com/2013/06/21/5-suggestions-to-implement-a-better-logging-in-sharepoint/

via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/better-logging-in-sharepoint/

Paul is a an expert SharePoint and Project Server developer and is responsible for designing and implementing custom solutions on client systems using the latest SharePoint and .NET technologies.
Paul has extensive experience with SharePoint systems across all sizes of implementation, ranging from small to large farms and has an excellent understanding of all the elements of SharePoint.

This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article)

Categories: Paul Busby, Work Tags: Development, Project Server, SharePoint

Virtual Machine – Duplicate SID issue #VM #Clonning #SID #SP2013 #PS2013

September 29, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

While preparing virtual environment, including Domain controller and other VMs joining DC VM. I chose a quicker way by using same base VM to be used to create other VMs.

Everything went OK with domain controller VM, until i received first shock during SQL installation process. When i entered dedicated SQL domain account i have created to configure SQL services, following is the error i received:

No mapping between account name and security SIDs was done

and then i tried few more times entering credentials again, until i started googling about the error, but it didn’t work.

As per Technet and other reliable sources, i figured out that problem is with security identifies SID between VMs. And for those wondering about what the hell is SID, because i was doing the same when i first came across this issue :), following is what i found about SID:

“Every Domain has a unique Domain SID that’s the machine SID of the system that became the Domain’s first DC, and all machine SIDs for the Domain’s DCs match the Domain SID. So in some sense, that’s a case where machine SIDs do get referenced by other computers. That means that Domain member computers cannot have the same machine SID as that of the DCs and therefore Domain.”

Now the challenge was to verify this information, i.e. to check if both VMs have got same SID, and how to rectify this issue.

In order to check the SID of your VM, download this handy tool PsGetSID available on technet. From command prompt, run this tool and you will get the SID of your VM. Run the tool on both machines, and verify if both machines have got the same SID.

For me, SID was same in both VMs, and in this case the good news is that there is solution to fix it other than creating VM form scratch – feeling better 🙂 You need to run the SysPrep tool to get things fix, following are the steps;

1. go to c:\windows32\system32\sysprep folder, and run the tool sysprep

2. Once the dialog box will pop up, select the following configuration and click OK.

3. It will take a while to process and create a new SID, and it will restart your system.

Once finished, you can then run the same previous tool PsGetSid to verify if your VM has got a new SID now, and try using domain account again and hopefully this time it will work for you without any issue.

via All about Enterprise Project Management (EPM) http://khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/2013/09/virtual-machine-duplicate-sid-issue-vm.html

This article has been cross posted from khurramjamshed.blogspot.com/ (original article)

Categories: Khurram Jamshed Tags: Project, Project Management, Project Server

Recursive rules in InfoPath–How to prevent

September 24, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

A while ago I had a scenario in an InfoPath form where the user could either enter an amount or a percentage value. This value would then get added to a total already in the form. The requirement is that the user enters either value and the form then calculates the other one.

So if I enter a number then the percentage gets calculated. If I entered the percentage then the number value gets calculated.

So I quickly setup some rules so that when the value changed the percentage or the whole numbers gets calculated and updates the relevant field. This creates a loop of continually updated fields.

I had hoped that some clever InfoPath “stuff” would just make this work and I wouldn’t have to worry about the issue. This didn’t work and caused the form to fail or the fields would not update correctly.

The solution to this problem is that you need a third field to control the updates. Mine is called “Calculating” and is a simple Boolean field.

Now in the rules for Field1 (number) and Field2 (percentage) the first thing to do is to check that calculating = 0 then set calculating = 1 and then set your field. At the end set Calculating back to 0.

This is just a very simple implementation of a lock but it stops the InfoPath rules going crazy.

Pictures explain everything

via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/recursive-rules-in-infopathhow-to-prevent/

This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article)

Categories: Paul Busby, Work Tags: Development, Project Server, SharePoint

Programmatically Disable Event Firing on List Item Update in SharePoint 2010

September 19, 2013 Giles Hamson Leave a comment

All credit to the original post here

The short version for my future reference is

Create a simple class

public classEventFiring : SPItemEventReceiver
    {
       public void DisableHandleEventFiring()
        {
           this.EventFiringEnabled =false;
        }

       public void EnableHandleEventFiring()
        {
           this.EventFiringEnabled =true;
        }
    }

Then use this to disable events

 using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
                {
                    SPList list = web.Lists.TryGetList("Custom");
                    SPListItem item = list.GetItemById(34);
                    item["Title"] ="Updated Successfully";
                    EventFiring eventFiring = newEventFiring();
                    eventFiring.DisableHandleEventFiring();
                    item.Update();
                    eventFiring.EnableHandleEventFiring();
                    Console.WriteLine("Updated Successfully");
                    Console.ReadLine();
                }
            }

via Buzz Blog http://paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/programmatically-disable-event-firing-on-list-item-update-in-sharepoint-2010/

This article has been cross posted from paulbuzzblog.wordpress.com (original article)

Categories: Paul Busby, Work Tags: Development, Project Server, SharePoint

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SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

Archive

Don’t be fooled by InfoPath login prompt

Take care when deleting the #Project Ideas list in #ProjectServer #PS2013 #SP2013 #SharePoint #ProjectOnline #PPM

Project Challenge 2013 #ProjectServer #PS2013 #SP2013 #projchallenge #pmot

Improvise #ProjectServer 2013 #CU installation time #SP2013 #PS2013 #CU

#ProjectServer and #SharePoint 2010 / 2013 October 2013 Cumulative Update #PS2010 #SP2010 #PS2013 #SP2013 #MSProject

Office Web Apps Server 2013 – Unable to preview/create/edit through web #SP2013 #PS2013 #OWA2013

Better logging in SharePoint

Virtual Machine – Duplicate SID issue #VM #Clonning #SID #SP2013 #PS2013

Recursive rules in InfoPath–How to prevent

Programmatically Disable Event Firing on List Item Update in SharePoint 2010

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