SharePoint

We encountered a problem recently with a two server farm. One server was configured as index and query server. Both servers were delivering pages to users. If a user executed a search on the server which did not run the search services, the Search page returned an error, and we saw the following in the application log and SharePoint logs:

UPDATE: Spence posted a great comment pointing out some issues with this post. Richard then restored our Community Server DB to a point in time before the post, so it’s been wiped. Post again, Spence, please, as I didn’t get chance to copy the text of the comment, I’m afraid.

I finally bit the bullet and decided to upgrade our SharePoint farm yesterday. I’d been holding off for a while because of time constraints and because of a known issue with Project Server, also part of our farm.

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while, simply because it’s not quite as straightforward as with Server 2005. To configure incoming email on SharePoint when running on Server 2008 you’ll need to run through the following steps:

NOTE: We use a wildcard SSL certificate which makes our life much easier when dealing with multiple hostnames. I have not tested this approach with multiple SSL certificates for specific sites.

Having just spent a long time examining the state of a new farm we’ve been working on for demonstrations, I would like to issue a warning… The Problem: None of the ‘New…’ menu items in our document libraries would work – we were seeing the error message:

As you may remember from my earlier post and subsequent follow-up, we have been seeing an issue related to workflows and the Workflow History list in SharePoint 2007. As I’ve already mentioned, the case is with Microsoft and I also said that I would post updates as new information arrived. Today, more detail has emerged and, as promised, I am sharing.

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.

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.

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.

I posted last week about a couple of issues we were experiencing with SharePoint. I made some traction on the Workflow History issue at the end of last week and the revelation was pretty far-reaching, so I’m posting again.

When trying to view an item in a list which has workflows run against it, you get an error: Some part of your SQL statement is nested too deeply. Rewrite the query or break it up into smaller queries

If you are using Forms Based Authentication and try to access Site Policies you may well find that you get an Access Denied response. If you do, this post will help you!

I don’t know about you, but I always mean to gather various bits of knowledge into one place, but just like tidying my filing at home, I never quite get around to it. Fortunately for me, Chris O’Brien is a bit more organised and in my ever expanding blogroll today I saw a great article about really useful SharePoint controls to use in custom pages for that handy bit of functionality.

Well, it’s the end of day zero, the partner-only day here at the Madrid Project Conference. It’s been an interesting day. I’m not sure what I am allowed to say, but service pack 1 for Office 2007, which covers the desktop products, sharepoint, project server et al is very close to being available now. That was an interesting announcement, as we are looking at installing Project Server in Black Marble. I’d like to wait for SP1 - it makes sense - but because SharePoint will be patched at the same time I need to do some testing of our customisations first.

Finally, after all the excitement that Richard and Robert had in Seattle and Barcelona, I find myself in the Auditorium Hotel, Madrid for the EMEA Project Conference. According to the multilingual sales blurb in my room, the hotel is the largest in Europe, and I must say it’s very nice. We flew in yesterday and today is an MS Partner-only day before the conference itself kicks off tomorrow.

I spent a while knocking my head against a problem with a SharePoint server farm that’s worth posting about. It’s also worth a big hats-off to our Technical Support Coordinator at Microsoft Partner Support who dredged up the article that finally pointed us in the right direction.

We’re slowly migrating services onto our new servers here at Black Marble. This morning we had one of those moments where significant amounts of wall kicking and teeth gnashing ensue.