Tag Archives: SharePoint 2007

Microsoft SharePoint Certifications

Microsoft makes the following SharePoint certifications available:

Fixing HRESULT 0x80040D23

I’ve been playing around with a fresh install of SharePoint 2007 Standard on my home server via Remote Desktop at work today and fixing small problems as they came up. One of the bigger problems I ran into was when trying to access the “Search Settings” pages via the “Shared Services Administration” pages. When I tried to do this, I got the following rather cryptic error message:

Exception from HRESULT : 0x80040D23

My curiosity piqued, I started checking various things.

  1. Was the search service running according to SharePoint? Going to Central Administration => Farm Topology and clicking on the server name showed that the search service was indeed started.
  2. Was the search service running according to Windows Server 2003? Going to Start > Administrative Tools > Services and looking at the “Office SharePoint Server Search” service showed the service as stopped, but it intermittently tried to start itself. Manually starting it gave the following error:

    Error 183: Cannot create a file when that file already exists.

  3. Checking the Application event viewer via Start > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer showed a whole bunch of application error messages originating from SharePoint. I emptied out the event log and tried starting the service again, which gave me the following informational entry: 
    Event Type:	Information
Event Source:	MSSQL$OFFICESERVERS
Event Category:	(2)
Event ID:	17137
Date:		8/30/2007
Time:		12:43:31 PM
User:		NT AUTHORITYNETWORK SERVICE
Computer:	CAERYN
Description: Starting up database 'SharedServices1_Search_DB_dfea8'.
  4. This made me wonder about what the permissions on the database were. Opening SQL Server Management Studio Express, I pulled up the properties on the indicated database, which shows that that particular user actually did have at least connect access to the database. I suspected that this wasn’t enough, though, so I went into the Properties tab for Office SharePoint Server Search, went to the “Log On” tab, and changed the account used to the same account that owned the search database.

Voila, the service started properly and I could access the Search Settings pages!

Update: Subsite Searches in SharePoint Not Working

We’re not the only ones having problems with subsite searches – apparently, the University of Washington’s SharePoint install suffers from the same issue. They’re working with Microsoft and have a ticket open, but I’m shocked that with the number of people who have this issue, no solution has yet been found.

We’ll see whether anything in particular happens as a result of our open ticket with Microsoft.

File Servers: Dead? Not Really.

Joel Oleson (a member of the MS SharePoint Products and Technologies Team) wrote earlier this year on whether the file server is dead or not. A lot of the points he makes about what should and shouldn’t be stored on SharePoint servers are fairly obvious – don’t do application or hotfix rollouts using SharePoint, for example – but some of them were a bit surprising or at least worth mentioning.

  • Storing SQL databases as a SharePoint object doesn’t really make sense; linking these in via the Business Data Catalog functionality does.
  • Just because Access 2007 files can be stored in SharePoint doesn’t mean they should be stored in SharePoint. This depends largely on the complexity of the database and how it’s used.
  • Direct quote: “Access 2003 databases should not be stored in SharePoint document libraries where multiple users need to edit the access database simultaneously.”
  • SharePoint is not developer source control, though the terminology and functionality is roughly the same.
  • If Excel spreadsheets have data that cross different spreadsheets, this may cause issues due to how file paths are encoded when those dependencies are created.
  • File storage: cheap. SharePoint storage: expensive relative to the cost of file storage (since almost everything’s stored in a database).
  • Basically, if it’s a collaborative file share, SharePoint can replace it. However, if it’s simply file storage, this may not be cost-effective.

Joel has a follow-up post here – some further bullets:

  • Having users completely copy over all their private documents into My Sites or Team Sites isn’t what you want to have happen.

There are plenty of others talking about the same subject (see the links Joel provides). This additional commentary isn’t bad.

Subsite Searches in SharePoint Not Working

We’ve been having a search configuration problem within SharePoint 2007 at work in which the “This Site” and “This List” search scopes available within any site haven’t been returning results, despite the fact that the global site search will very clearly return results with the exact same query. This seems to be an issue that several people have on TechNet’s Sharepoint – Search forums. A bit of digging discovers a recent post by Robin Meuré, which suggests that using https:// (SSL) might be the issue. I’m a bit dubious, but I’m running it by our system administrator to see if it even makes any sense.

Useful SharePoint References

Of course, with all the work I’m doing, it’s at least a little inevitable that I would have to do some research on certain issues and tasks. Here’s a list of some of the more useful resources I’ve found (grouped by subject):

Customizing and Theming SharePoint 2007

General Reference

Navigation

Search

User and Content Management

SharePoint 2007 Oddities

SharePoint’s a weird little bugger. It doesn’t really help much that the iSchool’s SharePoint 2007 install is hacked together in the first place (and who knows whether that explains some of the oddities that I’ve run into). One example is how the server handles what are technically known as 404, or “file not found”, errors. All three of the following messages mean that a file can’t be found:

  • HTTP/1.1 404
    Connection: close
    Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:59:05 GMT
    Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
    MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices: 12.0.0.4518
    X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
  • XML Parsing Error: no element found
    Location:
    https://portal...
    Line Number 1, Column 1:
    ^    (under Firefox only – IE gives me a blank page)
  • 404 FILE NOT FOUND

As far as I can tell (and the iSchool’s system administrator agrees), these are all SharePoint-generated errors and not the fault of the Internet Information Services server we’re running SharePoint off of.

Even with the quirks, though, SharePoint 2007 is actually fun to screw around with. I’ve been enjoying the work quite a bit.

Job Description

The position as listed below has changed slightly – there are two hires for this position, including myself, so it’s now a 20 hour/week position during the summer and a 10 hour/week position during the academic year.

Position Title
SharePoint Administrator
Meets Internship requirement for second year MSIM students
Start Date: as soon as possible
End Date: June 15, 2008

Location
The Information School of the University of Washington

Position Description
Under the general supervision of the Director of IT and in collaboration with the Information School IT team, the SharePoint Administrator will complete a needs analysis of iSchool stakeholders, help faculty and staff members establish collaborative sites around work teams, assist faculty and staff in the creation of personalized “MySites,” design document work-flow, provide support and training to end-users, document process and procedures, develop work-flow applications, and market the intranet site to internal users to ensure its overall success.

This position participates in the continued enhancement of the Information School’s web presence and intranet architecture. Development functions will be performed in partnership with internal IT Services staff, including other developers, project managers, and IT operational staff. The Information Specialist will build, enhance and maintain the Information School’s intranet web architecture and platform, which is based upon Microsoft’s SharePoint software. This framework will be utilized to deliver critical web-based solutions to the Information School.

This is an hourly position working up to 19.5 hours during the academic year and up to 40 hours per week during summer quarter and other school breaks.

Requirements

  • Experience with Microsoft SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007
  • Sharp analytical and project management skills
  • Ability to work well independently and as a member of a team
  • Strong information organization/information architecture skills
  • Experience writing documentation
  • Ability to train end-users
  • Excellent communication skills

Desired Qualifications

  • Bachelors’ degree in computer science, business or related field or equivalent experience
  • Experience with Windows and SharePoint Portal Server administration
  • Process management improvement/business analysis
  • Two years of information technology experience such as analyzing, designing, installing, maintaining or programming computer software applications

This position is open to all Information School students. Undergraduate and graduate level students will be compensated at a competitive hourly rate of $17 – $19 per hour DOE. This position is not benefits eligible.

Note: This job classification is governed by a negotiated labor contract and is subject to union shop provisions. For more information about union shop provisions, visit: www.washington.edu/admin/hr/jobs/apl/union-info.html