Mojave aka Commerce Server ready...

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Another addition to the growing arsenal of SharePoint based products... MS have relaunched Commerce Server, a 2009 version...

What is it? - An ecommerce solution for B2C and B2B scenarios.

Some highlights from the datasheet..

"New default site and easy page skinning features get you up and running quickly. Native integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server (with the availability of 30 new Web parts and controls) and integration with Microsoft‟s Live Services (such as Microsoft Live Virtual Earth™ and Windows ™ Live ID) allows you to pick and choose a range of pre-built functionality without impacting the entire site. "

"Collectively known as SharePoint Commerce Services, Commerce Server 2009 ships with more than 30 different Web parts and controls that offer a building-block approach within SharePoint to deliver contemporary e-commerce Web site functionality"

Some Links:

Commerce Server 2009 @ Microsoft

Readme and Installation Guide - some links to other downloads.

Its available for MSDN subscribers, and available from Microsoft from tommorow... 1st April 09...

KPI’s & RAG Reporting...

Thursday 12 March 2009

MOSS Enterprise comes with some great KPI List functionality, but what happens if you want to apply some RAG (Red Amber Green) reporting to other types of lists, calendars? What about if you only have SharePoint Standard Edition or WSS?

I found a great post by Christophe@PathToSharePoint.com that provides an excellent solution.

The post provides a number of articles on how to apply colour coding, formatting and graphics to list columns using a combination of calculated columns and some clever JavaScript in a Content Editor Web Part to render the content in calculated columns as HTML.

Using the standard Issues list template, I created a project status list which depending on a specific status displays a red, amber or green graphic, and formats the project information to a specific colour.

You could get really creative and have the project status change using workflow or data from another sharepoint list or data source.

The full articles are here:
http://pathtosharepoint.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/apply-color-coding-to-your-sharepoint-lists/ which then links off to a number of other related posts.

Thanks to the author, great stuff!

(Note: In SharePoint 2007, you can edit the list pages and add Web Parts above or below the list content. For this to work ensure you put the content editor web part below the list!)

Cheers

Aj...

February Update released!

February Cumulative Update (CU) released a couple of days ago... tagged the 'Uber' package...

info here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/03/09/uber-packages-of-february-cumulative-update-are-ready.aspx

It installs on top of SP1 and includes the Infrastructure Update, and all hotfixes from SP1 onwards...

Great Installation Guide can be found here:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2009/03/12/install-guide-february-cumulative-updates-for-sharepoint.aspx

SharePoint Slow-Freezes after search results

Wednesday 4 March 2009

On Site this morning, created a nice shiny new MOSS installation, patched it up with SP1, Infrastructure updates and the December Cumulative Hot fixes, fully configured the SSP, Search et al... and good to go...

Had a strange issue when using the standard All Sites search - The results were instantaneous, but then nothing happened for at least 30 seconds. I couldn’t click on any of the links, breadcrumbs, navigation including the Internet Explorer browser back buttons! Tried it with FireFox, worked a treat, so the issue seemed IE specific. I tested with IE 6, 7 and 8, same Issue.
Advanced search worked fine, after going through a serious of troubleshooting, I tried the Feb updates as there was some reference to resolving search issues – still no change!

In the end, we fixed it, thanks to: http://blogs.msdn.com/dhirajm/archive/2009/02/03/slow-search-result-after-infrastructure-update.aspx
Option 2 fixed it!

Error Accessing Search Settings

Tuesday 3 March 2009

I got the following error this morning, when I tried to access Search Settings in the SSP admin: "Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream."

After snooping around a bit, I found that the .Net 3.5SP1 may be the culprit. I had installed this prior to installing MOSS. I re-ran the setup, repaired and the error went away, great! But that wasn’t the end of it.

Issues began when I tried to split the Query and Indexing roles, The Propagation status (Search Admin) showed “Error” and the Event viewer started showing 6482 errors.

Thanks to Mr V’s blog post: http://mrvsharepoint.blogspot.com/2009/02/when-you-to-search-settings-you-get.html, I managed to get it working...

As I was working in a NON SSL environment, I didn’t realise that the Office Server Web Services had its own self signed certificate, so had ignored the IIS resource kit stuff - that'll teach me to read things properly.

I followed the instructions; the only other thing I had to do is reapply the password for the Default Content Access Account in the SSP Search Settings.

Event Log – Clear!