Days later you stop by and adjust the setting for one of your profiles and gosh, there it is, the profile you thought you deleted.  Being a smart person you figure its not been removed and you try it again.  This time you watch as the profile says ‘deleting’….

You even watch the StoragePoint Jobs conduct the bulk recall action.

But it doesn’t delete, as a matter of fact it switches back to the original where its Active.  How frustrating is that!  Quite I say.. But there is a way out of the darkness.  After doing much research on the meager Metalogix forms, and searching the web for any documentation I learned that during the proceessing of this job a lock I created an that its not cleared preventing a table from being updated. 

The FIX is simple a simple query on the StoragePoint Database that is in SQL. 

The query is

UPDATE dbo.Profiles SET State=0 WHERE [Name] = ‘profilename’ – in my case the profile name is ‘Hosting_Fish_staging’

Ahhh, happy SharePoint! err, StoragePoint

NEW SITE:

• Create ContentDB in SharePoint
• Run PowerShell command to create Host Based Site
• Create Storage EndPoint in Metalogix StoragePoint
• Create Storage Profile in Metalogix StoragePoint
• Analyze and Estimate
• Verify
• Then Externalize

EXISTING SITE – Migration from other SharePoint Farm

• Create Backup of existing site
• Move .bak file
• Create ContentDB in SharePoint
• Run PowerShell command to create Host Based Site
• Restore Backup of site
• Test site and verify that is operational
• Create Storage EndPoint in Metalogix StoragePoint
• Create Storage Profile in Metalogix StoragePoint
• Analyze and Estimate
• Verify
• Then Externalize

These are extreme HIGH level steps, there is a ton of detail in each bullet point.  These steps may NOT work for you or your environment.

Our company is creating their own backup restoration tool. The tool itself will be able to look into a backup file and pull out and restore a Document, Library or Site to a restoration location in the Central Administration Site Collection. How will that tool work? Don’t ask me, I’m no developer. However I’ve been assured it will be so cool and not leak memory, or bring down my SharePoint Farms! We’ll just see.

For this tool, I was asked to create a simple script to create a directory and push the Site Collection backups to a new directory based on date and time format. I figured I’d share it with you all, it’s pretty simple. Generally I’ve setup my backups to run a .bat file script which calls on a PowerShell script which does all the real work. The batch file is a simple one liner that says: ‘powershell –command <location><filename>.ps1’

The called PowerShell script is also pretty simple. You don’t need much head scratching for this trust me. We’ll step through it.

1 – Open the SharePoint Snapin

‘Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell’

2 – Get the Date and Time to a variable

‘$DTS = Get-Date -format “yyy_MM_dd_hh-mm” ‘ - Here is a guide for date time formats. Stay away from something with special characters etc. You never know how that stuff behaves.

3 – Set the location of your backups to be used in the commands that you’ll make later.

‘$Location = “f:\backup\” ‘

4 – Make the call to actually perform the Site Collection Backups

This comes in two parts, making the new directory:

‘New-Item $location\Whale\$DTS\ -type directory’ – This is per site in your collection. I’m certain you can create an additional step to call Get-SPSIte and then for each site… etc. But that was beyond the scope of my mission.

And secondly running the backup:

‘backup-spsite -identity http://whale.<domain>.com -path $location\whale\$DTS\whale_<domain>_com.bak –force’

So essentially it all looks like this:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

$DTS = Get-Date -format “yyy_MM_dd_hh-mm”

$Location = “f:\backup\”

New-Item $location\Whale\$DTS\ -type directory

backup-spsite -identity http://whale.<domain>.com -path $location\whale\$DTS\whale_<domain>_com.bak -force

What you’ll end up with in your directory structure is something like this.

Using windows task manager on the server you can create a simple task to call the batch file at whatever interval you need, hourly, daily, weekly whatever gets your goat.

As we know once you protect the document, which they’ve done it locks down many features, Spelling and Grammar being one of them.  Mind you, I’m a systems guy, I build infrastructure and servers, occasionally I do some work with SharePoint but I rarely do any custom work or anything that would be considered custom.  I’m an Out of the Box type fella.  I also remember templates at my last company.  I managed the web interface for them but not the actual templates.  I clearly remember the pain on the faces of my co-workers when a request came in to edit or change a template.  Not to mention the move from Office 2003 to Office 2010, that was really bad.  So I thought long and hard about my reply… I could put a button there… Oh I should have just said once protected….  

Back to the issue.  I started digging around and found a great online reference to spellchecking a protected document.  You can read about it here:  http://word.mvps.org/ actual link: How to enable spellchecker in a protected document.  The site is a little dated but the information is spot on.  It was quite the cut and paste deal and really simple to pull off, the password challenge was unique but if I would have actually read the document it would have been fine.  You just have to make a minor code modification to allow for the password to unprotect and then protect the document.  The trick for me was, how does the general user run the macro?

Right, so after putting this macro in an Office 2010 document the end user has to click on the ‘view’ tab, then ‘macros’, then ‘view macros’, and then know which (If you have more than one) macro to run?  What if one of the macros was ‘clear form’ instead of spell check?  Ouch.. So I wanted a button, or a tab, or something to make the user experience to be much easier.

The above reference does have an option to show you how to replace the button, but its working with Office 2003 or older and outdated for my slick install of 2010.  I started hunting around and came to a few sites that mostly put it together.  I found this site: Greg Maxey (Look at the cute graphic, he must be a developer) you’ll need the Custom UI Editor Tool. And away we go..

First you have your document, TestDoc.doc.  We’ll need to change it to a macro enabled  document or template so now its testdoc.docm.  This document has a form that the user will fill out.  Its also protected to allow for form fill in.

Add your macro.. Now lets add a button.

Download and install the above mentioned Custom UI Editor for Microsoft office.  Open this and then open your document then right click and select ‘Office 2010 Custom UI Part’.

You’ll then see a child ‘customUI14.xml appear.  This is the magical part!  This is where you can edit the UI on the ribbon and other areas of your MS Office experience.  This is also where things get rather fuzzy for me as a non-developer.  Luckily someone thought of me when writing this and included some of the simple/common things that you may want to do.

I selected ‘Custom Tab’ and Cachow in pops some really fancy looking XML.  I made a few edits and saved it to the document.

Something to note:  If your editing for Office 2007 the xmlsns line is slightly different.  It should be : <customUI xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/01/customui>

<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2009/07/customui">
    <ribbon startFromScratch="false">
        <tabs>
            <tab id="customTab" label="Snazzy TAB">
                <group id="customGroup" label="Snazzy Group">
                    <button id="customButton" label="Snazzy Button" imageMso="HappyFace" size="large" onAction="SPC" />
                </group>
            </tab>
        </tabs>
    </ribbon>
</customUI>

I get this:

Pretty cool right?  But if you click the button you get nothing but an error. Even though its calling my Macro (onAction=”
SPC” its not quite hooked up!  I had some digging to do to find out where the error was.  I tried “SPC()”, a different name, a different macro, a different document, a different computer (no, not really) but I tried a lot of things.  I was looking over the macro and noticed that the code ‘Sub SPC()’ looked different than one of the examples and I found my issue.

You need to run the macro ‘Sub SPC(control As IRibbonControl)’  The control  Represents the active window containing the Ribbon user interface that triggers a callback procedure.  But it works, and that’s all that matters.

So the moral of this story is that we now have an HR document that allows the end user (in this case highly skilled Attorneys) to use spell check when they fill out their performance review forms!!

Now, if they only had SharePoint I would have InfoPath’ed a new form and built some workflows around this developed a complete process and they would have passed out!  But for a small company SharePoint seems expensive!

Frank was hit by a bus, you’re now responsible for XYZ critical application, and it’s not working.

At one point or another in this world someone has returned to the office after a nice long weekend to read this in their email, or have their boss standing at their cube with panic all over their face saying these words.  So what do you do?  Look around for your hero suit!! That’s what.  The alternative is to go to Monster.com or Craigslist jobs and start looking.  Today is your day.  If you remember a week or so ago I posted ‘DOCUMENT EVERYTHING’,   I hope you read it and started to implement your plan with your co-workers.  Frank getting hit by the bus is sad, and you’ll miss him but if you planned you’re in good shape, you’re going to be the hero!  Your boss can relax and you can get XYZ critical application back up and running.

 
However, you likely didn’t read that post and neither did Frank (Only 24 of you did thanks to Google Analytics) and you’re wondering where to start, and what to do.  You can try the steps below, I recently had to use these at my work (no bus casualties, just a quitter).

Was it an in-house application?

• Check where you document everything and hope someone did their job!
• Find any other administrator who may have supported this application in the past
• Find the developer/s to start asking some questions
• Find the power users and ask a few questions
• If nothing is turned up in the above, start digging into server and application logs to start the typical troubleshooting.

Was it a commercial application?

• Check where you document everything and hope someone did their job
• Is there a maintenance plan, if so get on the phone with the company
• Check the application web site for clear clues, I’d start looking for manuals, user guides, or readme documents. Do a site specific search from Google.  “application name” error code or information” site:company.com
• If it’s a particularly sticky issue you could open up a one-time support ticket, most software vendors will do this for a premium of course
• You could also look into renewing your maintenance plan on this application

The above screams flow chart or Visio drawing but I lack that kind of time.  Once your crisis is over you’re going to need to start looking into the application.  Does your company actually have a repository of disaster recovery information?  If not your about to be a hero again by building the database of information.

 
When our issue happened a co-worker got called up to a job in Washington D.C. with very little notice.  Our turnover on the applications he had supported was shorted by quite a bit.  I got all of 20 minutes to get detail on a major piece of equipment, process, and impact to the enterprise.  To compound our issue his support backup on this application left a few months earlier and… well, it just caught up with us, as not properly planning will.  I took the steps and got the plan on the right track, I have my document everything database of information and barring any general disaster with the system we should be fine for the general issues. 

How would you handle being handed a basket case?

Goodbye the first decade of 2000…

What did you bring us? 

What achievements has the first decade of the new millennium brought to us?  I’m sure there are way more than I can outline in this post.  But the one that really stands out for me is the amount we’ve learned to use a keyboard more than our own voices.  I’m guilty of it, my wife, my kids, most of my co-workers as well.  Facebook was founded in 2004, Twitter 2006, and text messaging (SMS) started in the 80’s but has been steadily growing for this entire decade and the one before.  In 2008 4.1 trillion SMS messages were sent!  With all of these things in place I honestly don’t have to say one word to my kids throughout a given day!  Wait, I’m pretty sure there have been days where I’ve even said goodnight via SMS!!  How pathetic!

But really, HOW cool!  I mean, my grandparents would be shocked at what is going on today.  I can have complete (…almost complete) relationships with people via, Twitter, Facebook and Instant Messenger, who needs to have the unpleasantness of a face to face.  Why would I want to look into someone’s eyes, observe their facial expressions, or heck, smell their bad breath while I speak to them.  I only need to read about it in 140 characters or less!  140 characters?  That’s it?  The long winded, the rambling, run-on, detailed conversations can stop?  Now… I’m sold!

I remember finding an envelope in a case my father had under his dresser.  Inside the envelope were stacks of letters, as I opened each letter I noticed something, the words written I hardly recognized.  The letters were from my grandfather stationed in England in 1916 during WWI.   The letters were full of eloquence, grace, and romance that made the pages come alive.  I couldn’t put the letters down I had to read every single one!  Not only did I learn how much my Grandfather loved his Maggy, but I learned that there is so much more to the written word than we experience today! 

I blame myself for not paying attention in Mr. Applegates 10^th grade English class.  I blame Mr. Applegate or Ms. Fox for not taking that extra time needed to get some kid to understand a conjunction.  I wonder if my own children will actually learn cursive.  Will that matter?  Should I care, really?

Technology continues to roll on, for some of us it passes by; some grasp it and ride the wave.  Either way, it’s going to continue.  Do I waste valuable time with my kids to have them learn a conjunction?  Or do I spend the energy having them tear apart a server and put it back together in 5 minutes or less?  (I might do that last part just for fun!) Do they need to learn a completely different language?  Something like a programming language that will take them to the next phase of life?  Leave the writing and eloquence to MS Word, and get to programming an application.

Looking back to 2000, and before all of web 2.0, I can say that the world was smaller, it felt safer and I had a completely different outlook on our collective future.  I think 140 characters are too short.  I feel that we should spend more time actually talking to our neighbors. Sometimes I wish I had half as many friends to do something with than my Facebook or twitter accounts show – Oh.. hold on while I Tweet this post! 

Happy New Year!

I was actually impressed with the level of detail in the book since it was released days after SharePoint 2010 went RTM.  I’m sure they have an inside scoop or something.  I love the ‘format’ and conventions in the book.  I actually like that in all the Wrox books I’ve become a big fan buying the SharePoint Branding book (THE best cover), Begining and Professional Developing, SharePoint Designer 2010 books and have read a good 80% of every one.  You’d think I’d be an expert by now..   But alas, a book can show you just so much.

By far my copy of the Admin book has seen better days, Its been to the RedSox/Mariners game, a Thanksgiving with my in-laws, the water park and most of the bathrooms I visit.  Go get your copy it really is my main resource for admin data.

“Oh I don’t have time…”

“This was easy, I’ll never forget that Farm Account Password…”

“Man, if I only wrote it all down!”

Sure it may be a burden, a hassle, a royal pain in the @$$, but let me tell you it’s completely worth it.  There are lots of Systems Administrators but the only Great Admins are the ones who document everything, to the point that it’s actually a little irritating.

In the first of my career I was unfortunate enough to work under a Systems Admin who was notoriously sloppy, and in many ways reckless.  Looking back on this experience I gained some very valuable insight as to how you don’t want to be as an administrator.  I’d ask this ‘Mentor’ of mine for information he’d say some of the craziest things to me like ‘Oh just make it up…’ or ‘I have no idea I don’t pay attention to these things…’

At this point I knew that I’d have to do it much differently, this style was not going to work for me.  Especially as the systems I work on got more and more complex.  Here is how I do it, and the tools I use.

The first thing is to find the right tools.  Three tools that I’ve found invaluable are Microsoft SharePoint, SnagIt, and Microsoft OneNote.  You may not have access to these tools where you work but the concept of each tool is what is important. 

I use SharePoint as a central repository of information.  I use it to manage a project, or system over its lifecycle.  SharePoint has terrific collaborative features and ‘good enough’ document management to safeguard information.  I also use it to host my OneNote and images surrounding the install, setup, changes and close out of a project or system. 

OneNote is a terrific storage repository for topic focused data, and an absolute necessity!  I’ve never found a piece of software as featured as this for managing information.  You can quickly send information from Outlook, Internet Explorer or many sources to your OneNote database.  Its organizational features make it easy to quickly store, catalog and update information that can quickly resolve troubles when they come up.  Especially those repeated issues that come along.  You’ll never again stand there saying “I know I’ve seen this error before!”

Lastly, there is SnagIt.  It’s a terrific screen capture tool that allows you to edit the captures with fancy arrows and text.  With every install of a system I use SnagIt to capture each step along the way.  I then store these images in OneNote and upload them to the SharePoint project that they pertain to for easy retrieval.

But why?  Well, if you’re asking yourself this question after reading all this, I may not be able to help you.  There are precious few of us who don’t need some assistance with maintaining valuable data, I’ve known a few of them and they are no fun to work with… :) Just all brain and no personality.  But for the rest of us mortals we learn by experience, and this experience is recommending you DOCUMENT EVERYTHING… Plus, if you get hit by a bus, you will not leave your friends in the lurch!

Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction

There are so many times where I am interacting with support staff, manufacturers, vendors, and technical support people that I wonder if Support, or customer service is still something that is being trained in most organizations.  Oftentimes the conversations are hurried and clearly the person on the other end of the line is not focused.  So it left me scratching my head and I thought about the keys to customer service for me:

1. Active Listening – Understanding the issue
2. Empathy – Letting them know that the issue is important to you
3. Feedback throughout the process – status, and updates as the incident is worked
4. Verification of resolution – Resolve, test, and verify
5. FOLLOW UP!  - check-in, if naturally you cannot remember to do that, set an appointment to.

If we all just followed some of these simple procedures SLA’s wouldn’t be such a hassle!

This blog is more about what and how I do the things I love to do more than it is about getting work. I have a great job with a great company with great people. One of the key tools that I use every day is an RDP client software, RDP -Remote Desktop Protocol… Its the lazy way of getting into that computer over there in that cold server room, across the building, across the country, or across the world. The tool I use to organize the 80 servers, and multiple desktops I work on everyday is something called ‘Remote Desktop Manager’ from Devolutions.

Remote Desktop Manager is a small application used to manage all your remote connections and virtual machines. Add, edit, delete, shared, organize and find your remote connection quickly.

What I like the most about this product is its ease of use, and they have a free version for testing.  I used the default Microsoft RDP client for the longest time in my Systems Admin youth, doing all I could to remember what server is what, and more.  I had a huge Excel list on my desktop with shortcuts that got completely unmanageable.  Then an old salty Systems Admin that I work with turned me on to this product and its made my life completely easy.  With the more systems I work with from production to test I can keep them all straight in a nice ordered list.

Some of my favorite features:

• Storing credentials – This is great for connecting to test environments
• Nice Tree view order to your servers/workstations
• Simple one click connections
• Customized connection settings per session
•  Share your connections with others

This is just some of the really cool features I use.  There are a ton more, and its support for other products like VNC, Wake on lan, and Citrix to name a few. Give it a try, if you manage multiple servers/workstations you’ll be glad you did.