This post is related to some of the new features found in SharePoint 2010. Since the switch to the new architecture of Service Applications and the passing of the Shared Service Provider things have moved around and there are a whole new set of issues you can get yourself into.

When you are creating My Sites you will notice some things like Ask Me About, Skills, Interests and some other fields are showing an error when trying to edit your profile.

With the introduction of the Service Applications you now need to be sure that you have your Web Applications and Service Applications correctly associated with each other. To get to the association location from Central Admin click on the Application Management link from the quick nav bar. Once that screen opens find the “Configure service application associations” link under the Service Applications section.

You can now configure which Service Applications are associated with the different Web Applications and Service Applications. There is a whole other topic on creating different Application Proxy Groups, but I’m not going to go into that now since it involves using PowerShell.

To solve the error we have found while trying to edit our profile we need to make sure that the Web Application and Service Applications have the User Profile Service Application and Managed Metadata Service in the same Application Proxy Group.

There are 2 different views so you need to make sure both are set. To change the View use the dropdown. Click on the link in the Web Application / Service Application column and on the window that opens make sure both options are checked.

That should fix your problem and make the error message go away.

More fun stuff in 2010!

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Here is a tip about how to prevent your site owner or other users who have access to add web pages from getting an access denied message when they try to edit a page.

Background
You have a site collection with a top level site that you don’t want anyone to access so you remove the permissions from it. Then on your sub-sites you break inheritance so you can get the security set up the way you want.

The Issue
When users go to edit a page to do something like add a web part they are given an access denied error. You can see this even if you have “Full Control” access on the sub-site.

The Resolution
Go to the top level site and create a new Group (ex: WebPartViewers), but don’t give it any access. Next, add the users or groups that you want to be able to add and remove web parts from a page. You could add “Authenticated Users”, but that is probably not a good idea since you will be opening up the web part library with this change.

Now go to the Web Part Gallery by way of Site Actions –> Site Settings –> Modify All Site Settings or navigate to /_catalogs/wp/Forms/AllItems.aspx at the site collection level. Click on Settings –> Gallery Settings. Click on the “Permissions for this gallery” under the “Permissions and Management” column. If you haven’t already, break the permissions so that you can add a new user to the library. Add the group that you created and give it Read access.

Now your users that have the correct permissions will be able to add web parts without getting the access denied error message!

Get to work!

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This is just a little FYI to save you some time. When you do a backup of your SharePoint site it is a good practice to use the stsadm command “setsitelock” so users aren’t making changes that can corrupt the backup. While this is good you need to remember this when you are trying to restore your site. If you find yourself unable to access the site or add users, which are common actions when moving to a dev environment, then be sure to “unlock” your site. Here’s some quick commands you can put in a batch file for backing up and restoring your sites. Have fun!

Backup.bat
@echo off
IF “%1″ == “” goto err
IF “%2″ == “” goto err2
setlocal
set SITE=%1
set FILENAME=%2

ECHO Backing up %SITE%
stsadm.exe -o setsitelock -url %SITE% -lock readonly
stsadm -o backup -url %SITE% -filename E:\BackupFiles\%FILENAME%
stsadm.exe -o setsitelock -url %SITE% -lock none

if not errorlevel 0 goto err

goto success

REM error message if no argument or site does not exist
:err
echo.
echo Site URL is required.
echo Here an example:
echo.
echo BackupSite.bat http://my.sharepoint.site site.bak
echo.
echo.

REM error message if no argument or site does not exist
:err2
echo.
echo Output file name is required.
echo Here an example:
echo.
echo BackupSite.bat http://my.sharepoint.site site.bak
echo.
echo.

:success
echo %SITE% backed up successfully

Restore.bat
@echo off
IF “%1″ == “” goto err
IF “%2″ == “” goto err2
setlocal
set SITE=%1
set FILENAME=%2

ECHO Restoring %SITE%
stsadm -o restore -url %SITE% -filename E:\RestoreFiles\%FILENAME% -overwrite
ECHO Unlocking %SITE%
stsadm.exe -o setsitelock -url %SITE% -lock none

if not errorlevel 0 goto err

goto success

REM error message if no argument or site does not exist
:err
echo.
echo Site URL is required.
echo Here an example:
echo.
echo RestoreSite.bat http://my.sharepoint.site site.bak
echo.
echo.

REM error message if no argument or site does not exist
:err2
echo.
echo Output file name is required.
echo Here an example:
echo.
echo RestoreSite.bat http://my.sharepoint.site site.bak
echo.
echo.

:success
echo %SITE% restored successfully

Update:
With the release of SP2 the site is automatically set to read-only so you don’t need to include this in your batch file. However, if you don’t want it to be set as read-only then you need to run the backup command with the -nositelock option.

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One thing you lose when you create a data view of a slide library is the ability to just show a thumbnail without some custom work. It’s not difficult, just a pain. Here’s the code so you don’t have to waste time thinking about something that should be built in. Note: This works for ppt and pptx files. You’ll have to think to make the rest work!

<td class=”ms-vb”>
<xsl:variable name=”fileExt” select=”concat(‘_pp’,substring-after(@FileLeafRef, ‘.pp’))” />
<xsl:variable name=”fileName” select=”substring-before(@FileLeafRef, ‘.pp’)” />
<img border=”0″ src=”/{@FileDirRef}/_t/{$fileName}{$fileExt}.jpg” />
</td>

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Need to open access to your SharePoint site for anonymous access, but don’t want them browsing your lists and libraries? Just activate the lockdown feature!

Set your web site up for anonymous access in Central Admin under Authentication providers. The next step is to log on to your server and open up a command prompt so you can run a stsadm command.

If you haven’t added it already then you need to make sure the path is set to include C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN.

Next run the command:
stsadm -o activatefeature -url -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml

Now you can go the permissions for your site and edit the permissions to allow access to the entire site. Your users will not be able to get to your lists and libraries to view what is in them, but you can still expose the items for users to get to through web parts on your pages.

One last thing to note is that if you already have anonymous access turned on to your site it will appear like this command does not work after your run it. You need to go to your site and turn off anonymous access and then turn it back on for it to work.

Good luck with your public sites!

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I had the pleasure of working with a client recently on an issue that was described to me only as “there was a problem with the Internet and then SharePoint stopped working.” With such an in depth explanation to the problem I knew exactly where to start, the logs!

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Thanks to everyone that came out to SharePoint Saturday. Thanks to Eric Shupps for getting everything organized and getting some great speakers out to talk about SharePoint!

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This was a fun adventure that ended with me solving the problem and Microsoft support not responding.

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Tonight I’m performing my first SP2 install attempt on a production server. All service packs are downloaded and the installation process begins.

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Check it out! SharePoint Saturday is hitting Dallas on July 25th. Come out and listen to different speakers talk about what’s going on in SharePoint these days.

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