When Software Attacks!

SharePoint Website Schematic

I find myself drawing the same diagram over and over again in meetings to explain how SharePoint sites relate to IIS web sites, how managed paths and alternate access mappings fit and why you need to extend the SharePoint web application if you want more than one authentication provider.

After some of my colleagues pestered me to draw it again, I decided to create an electronic version, and since everybody seems to find it so useful I thought I’d post it here as well.


Unable to access My Tasks in Project Web Access

Sometime ago we noticed an issue with My Tasks in Project Server. Certain users were unable to access My Tasks at all - they simply got a SharePoint error page.

A little jiggery-pokery with callstack and custom errors later, we saw that the error referenced a GUID for a task. I then searched the Project Server Publishing DB for the task GUID and subsequently located the project to which it belonged. If I edited the project in MS Project and updated the server, removing the task assignment from the user, they could access my tasks.


Site Policies and FBA in SharePoint: Update

My apologies to Craig, who posted a comment to my earlier post about our FBA problems and I didn’t notice until today.

To update you all on the situation, the fault is still with Microsoft and I have not yet received a hotfix.

However, for anybody considering FBA in their deployment, I would not let this issue stop you. There are two reasons I say that:

  1. Normally with FBA you would extend the web application in question, having both FBA and Windows authentication available on the same content via different URLs. This makes your life easier with things like indexing and management.
  2. The workaround I detailed is a good temporary solution to the problem with only minimal impact on the user experience (in that certain options are offered which may not work too well in Office when using FBA).

Hopefully this answer’s Craig’s question and assuages any doubts about the wisdom of deploying FBA in your SharePoint solution.


Life with a Diamond: nearly two weeks on

I said I’d post again once I’d had the Diamond a little while. It’s now been two weeks and I can honestly say I’m completely happy with it. Battery life for me is fine - I charge it about every three days and it chugs along with exchange push pretty much constantly. I am quite comfortable with the soft keyboard and I can honestly say I haven’t noticed any issues with the speed of the device either.


Touch Diamond Battery Life

In my last post about the Diamond I said I would let you know what the battery life is. I therefore carefully refrained from giving it any charge over the weekend, even when connected to my PC.

That means that it received no power from 5.30pm on Friday until it died (which it did, eventually).

After that time, exchange push carried on notifying me of email immediately on arrival until 8pm, after which it downshifted to checking every hour and continued like that for the rest of the weekend.