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.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, August 1, 2008

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.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Friday, August 1, 2008

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: 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.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Workflow and SQL Error: Update

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. It turns out that the stuff I said about systemupdate was wrong… up to a point. There is a bug with systemupdate and triggering events, but it’s not the one we thought it was!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, July 14, 2008

Problems with Site Policies and FBA in SharePoint 2007

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’ve been meaning to post this for a while because I’m sure it may help somebody. As usual, it’s been pushed back and back until now I finally have some time. I also have another, workflow-related post on another problem which will follow shortly.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, July 3, 2008