SharePoint 2013 Service Applications – Whats NEW

The following are “New Services” applications have been introduced in SharePoint 2013. I’m going to explain very high level about those new additions in this article.

• App Management Service,
• Machine Translation Service and
• Work Management Service Application.

 App Management Service

App Management Service has been introduced in SharePoint 2013 and it allows SharePoint Farm administrators to manage SharePoint Apps (It’s a self-contained pieces of functionality that extend the capabilities of a SharePoint website but it can also surface a remote web application and remote data in SharePoint. Apps have no custom code that runs on the SharePoint servers)

Farm Administrators group will provision App Catalog site (It’s a special site collection on a web application) which can be used to store apps for SharePoint.

 App Management Service application verifies that permissions and licensing information is up-to-date before allowing users to access the app. There is NO GUI which can be used to manage the settings of App Management Service and it will have to be done through Powershell.

You can use the following link for App Management service application cmdlets to add specific functionality to a SharePoint site.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219772(v=office.15)

Machine Translation Service

Machine Translation Service provides built-in machine translation capabilities on the SharePoint platform. This application is based on WAS architecture and it supports synchronous and asynchronous streaming. It will be able to translate documents, pages and sites contents.

 

Machine Translation Service application can be extended using the following technology tools.

• Full trust solutions and SP Apps supported
• REST API and
• Client Side Object Model

It provides the Server side object model for batch and immediate translations.

You can use the following link for Machine Translation service application cmdlets to add specific functionality to a SharePoint site

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219794(v=office.15)

 

Work Management Service

 

The Work Management Service Application is another new service application that allows users to aggregate and synchronize tasks between multiple environments, such as Project Server, Exchange and SharePoint. So, it give users the ability to edit and change their tasks on one single place within the SharePoint farm.

There is NO GUI which can be used to manage the settings of Work Management Serviceand it will have to be done through Powershell. You can use the following link for Work Management Serviceapplication cmdlets to add specific functionality to a SharePoint site.

 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161255(v=office.15)

SharePoint 2013 – Drag and Drop functionalities doesn’t work on IE 8

“Drag and Drop” feature will not work with the following version of IE (Internet Explorer version 8.0.6001.18702IC). When you view the Document library on IE version, you get the following screen (Please note “drag files here” is missing).

But, if you do the same operation with Firebox 13.0.1 version, you can see “drag files here”. Not sure whether Microsoft will support when they release final version.

 

 

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 – Download

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh973397

Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview

Finally … Wait is over 🙂

Deployment guide for SharePoint 2013 Preview

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30384

Sharepoint Designer 2013

Sharepoint Designer 2013 is here 🙂

 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30346

 

SharePoint Designer 2013 is the tool of choice for the rapid development of SharePoint applications. Using SharePoint Designer, advanced users and developers alike can rapidly create SharePoint solutions in response to business needs. Advanced users can compose no-code solutions that encompass a variety of common scenarios, from collaborative sites and web publishing to Line-Of-Business data integration, business intelligence solutions, and human workflows, leveraging the building blocks available in SharePoint in an easy to use environment. In addition, developers can use SharePoint Designer 2013 to get a quick start on SharePoint development projects.

 

 

 

Tips – Backup and restore SharePoint List

Have you come across the following issue when you were doing export and import of SharePoint List?

Script:

Export-SPWeb -Identity "<<Site URL>>" -Path "D:\Backup\xyz.bak" -ItemUrl "<<List Name>>"  -IncludeVersions All

Error:

Export-SPWeb : The URL provided is invalid. Only valid URLs that are site collections or sites are allowed to be exported using stsadm.exe.
At C:\Users\o701227\Desktop\Powershell_BackupList.ps1:7 char:13
+ Export-SPWeb <<<<  -Identity "<<Site URL>>" -Path "D:\Backup\xyz.bak" -ItemUrl "/Lists/name"  -Inc
ludeVersions All -Force  + CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...CmdletExportWeb:SPCmdletExportWeb) [Export-SPWeb], SPException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletExportWeb

 

Above error is kind of misleading as it did not mention which part is wrongly mentioned (Site URL OR List name).

To isolate the issue, you can run the following command and confirm that Site URL is given in correct format and working as expected.

$Site =Get-SPWeb -Identity "<<Site URL>>"
write-host $Site.URL

If the above script is working fine, then the issue is caused by mentioning “List Name” in wrong format.

Let us consider the following scenario.

You have a List named “L1” underneath subsite called “S1” which is a subsite of “S” (“S” has been created in “Sites” managed path). Your are running the below script which is causing the above mentioned error.

Export-SPWeb -Identity "http://yourdomain.com/sites/S/S1" -Path "D:\Backup\xyz.bak" -ItemUrl "/S1/Lists/L1"  -IncludeVersions All

You will have to mention the List name in the following format to make it work.

/Sites/S/S1/L1

Finally, your script will looks like this and you should be able to take a backup of your list.

Export-SPWeb -Identity "http://yourdomain.com/sites/S/S1" -Path "D:\Backup\xyz.bak" -ItemUrl "/Sites/S/S1/Lists/L1"  -IncludeVersions All

 

Hope it helps…

Adding Users into SharePoint group through Powershell – Issues

Most of you already knew on how to add “Active Directory” users into SharePoint group through Powershell.

Any way, I’ve provided the script here.

if ((Get-PSSnapin -Name Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null)
{
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell
}
$SiteURL = "<<Site URL>>"
$GroupName = "<<GroupName>>"
$UserNames = "<<User1, User2 >>"
    foreach ($User in $UserNames)
    {
        Set-SPUser -Identity $User -Web $SiteURL -Group $GroupName
   }

The above script works for most of the times but if the user domain starts with / is “IN” , it doesn’t work. It throws the following error in that scenario.

PS C:\Users\XXXXXX> C:\Users\ XXXXXX \Desktop\AddUsers.ps1
Set-SPUser : You must specify a valid user object or user identity.
At C:\Users\ XXXXXX \Desktop\AddUsers.ps1:12 char:19
+ Set-SPUser <<<< -Identity $User -Web $SiteURL -Group $GroupName
    + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Set-SPUser], PSArgumentException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletSetUser

But, if you try to add the same user through STSADM / People picker, it does resolves and add the user into the SharePoint security group.

stsadm -o adduser -url "<<Site URL>>" -userlogin "<<Domain\account>>" -useremail "<<Email address>>" -group "<<SP Group>>" -username "<<Display Name of the User>>"

 Has anyone experienced similar issue?

Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell

Please make use of this tool if you have not come across already ….

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29101

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/8051.deploying-microsoft-script-explorer-for-windows-powershell/rss.aspx

I love it… Hope you will also love it 🙂

Happy Powershelling….

 

 

Restoring Deleted Site Collection through Powershell script

As you are aware that SharePoint 2010 SP1 has come up with pretty cool feature. Yup.. you got it…
Restoring a deleted site collections

You are no longer required to bother your DBA to restore the content database into staging to recover the deleted sites.

There are two scenarios that your site collection will be deleted.

1. Through Central Admin
2. When site admin deletes the top level site of the site collection, it will delete the entire site collection (even though it has sub sites underneath it… very bad, isn’t it 😦 )

If you come across the above scenarios, use the following Powershell script to restore the site collection.

Restore-SPDeletedSite -Identity <<Site ID / Site URL>> -Confirm:$falses

SharePoint 2010 – Failure trying to synch site issue…

Have you ever faced the below error on your SharePoint 2010 farm?

 failure trying to synch site xxxxx for ContentDB yyyyyy WebApp zzzzz.  Exception message was Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'dbo.UserMemberships' with unique index 'CX_UserMemberships_RecordId_MemberGroupId_SID'. The duplicate key value is (#############). The statement has been terminated..

 

I’m pretty sure that you would have got the following information through search engines.

****************************************
Cause:
Old references to non existing content databases in the synchronization job list.
Fix:
List databases which are not synced for more than two days

stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases 2
Delete old database references from the config db
stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 2

 ****************************************
Interestingly, the above issue is NOT always caused by old references to non existing content database issue in the synchronization job list. 

 WHY?

 
Because, I did face that issue and tried the above fix but that did not help. After spending hours by looking at ULS log files, Event receiver, I figured out that “Config cache” is having some issue (Two of the Web front end servers config cache files were not updated).

So, I’ve decided to delete the Object cache on all the servers to get the fresh copy from Configuration database. You know that it would be very difficult to clear the cache on large server farm  by doing it manually(In my case, its 7 server farm).

Good that we have our life saver. Yes, I’m talking about “Powershell”.

 

I started writing a Powershell script which would run from my app server and it will take care of resetting object cache in all of my servers in the farm. Yup… Just a single click and you are DONE 🙂 … Pretty cool, huh…

Here you go… for the Powershell script.

 
if ( (Get-PSSnapin -Name Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -eq $null )
{
    Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.Powershell
}
# Variables Declerations
$GUID = [Guid](Get-ItemProperty 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\14.0\Secure\ConfigDB' -Name Id).Id 
$ConfigDir = "c$\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\$GUID"
# Function which is used to STOP the Timer Service
Function StopTimer()
{
    Write-Host "The SPTimerV4 service will be stopped on " $Server.Name
    $Service = Get-WmiObject -computer $Server.Name Win32_Service -Filter "Name='SPTimerV4'"
    $Service.InvokeMethod('StopService',$Null)
    start-sleep -s 5
    Write-Host "The SPTimerV4 service has been stopped on " $Server.Name
}
# Function which is used to CLEAR the cache and resetting the value to 1
Function ClearCache()
{
  Write-Host "Cached config items will be cleared on " $Server.Name
  $ServerName = $Server.Name
  $ConfigDirPath = "\\$ServerName\$ConfigDir"
  $CacheIni = Get-Item "$ConfigDirPath\Cache.ini"
  Get-ChildItem "$ConfigDirPath\*" -Filter *.xml | Remove-Item
  Set-Content -Path $CacheIni -Value "1"
  Write-Host "Cached config items have been cleared on " $Server.Name
}
# Function which is used to START the Timer Service
Function StartTimer()
{
    Write-Host "The SPTimerV4 service will be started on " $Server.Name
    $Service = Get-WmiObject -computer $Server.Name Win32_Service -Filter "Name='SPTimerV4'"
    $Service.InvokeMethod('StartService',$Null)
    start-sleep -s 5
    Write-Host "The SPTimerV4 service has been started on " $Server.Name
}
# Get SPFarm object
$Farm = Get-SPFarm
# Loop through all the servers in the Farm and carry out all the functions (START and STOP the Timer and clear the Cache
foreach ($Server in $Farm.Servers)
  {
    # This will make sure that other types of servers (DB, SMTP etc.,) will not be affected
    if ($Server.Role -eq "Application")
       {
          try 
            {  
               StopTimer
               ClearCache
            }
          catch
            {
                Write-Host "Error Occured " ; $error[0]
            }
          finally
            {
                StartTimer
            }   
       }
  }

Hope it helps!!!