Jai’s Sharepoint blog

Beautiful article by Bob Fox:

http://www.sharepointbeagle.com/channels/administration/Pages/MOSS2007BackupandRestoreOperations.aspx

Strange are Microsoft ways. We have all this wonderful e-mail integration between MOSS and exchange server and we start getting mails. Cool!, is it? No.

If you have a situation (which at least is common now) where you have an Exchange Server 2003 and an Outlook 2007, you will not be able to open the Alert. It will give an error.

Resolutions?

1. Check this out:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/930807. They don’t give it out unless you request for it, which definitely is bad news.

2. Use OWA for alerts…phew! and now try telling that to your clients.

    Hope MS comes up with something soon.

3. Till then, the best way to do it is remove the ‘Cached Exchange Mode’ in the client Account settings.

1. After you configure your authentication provider for AspNetSqlMembershipProvider and modified your Central Admin web.config also, when you try to access the Central Admin, it will ask for the password and will not let you in. If you come across this problem, just make sure you modify the provider as follows:

   <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider"> <providers> <add name="MyAspNetSqlRoleProvider" connectionStringName="MOSSSqlServer" applicationName="abcd" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" /> </providers> </roleManager>

2. When you create the authentication provider database, make sure you give the ApplicationName other than ‘\’. This will help us to use the same database for multiple sites.

I am one of the unfortunate ones who happened to come across the ‘Absolute path information required’ three times. First it happened when I was playing around with MOSS first time. Secondly, it happened after I had gone live and third after I had deployed quite a handful of sites.

Problem: After you created a new web application (and gave a wrong path for the IIS virtual directory), anything you do on the Central Admin -> Application Management would throw a ‘Absolute path information required’. Strangely Microsoft has not released any tool kit / fixes for this yet.

Fix(?): This happens because of an invalid entry created in the Config database and this affects any operation on the Web Applications list. However, this doesn’t create any problems on the current sites, though you cannot touch them. After enough ‘googling’, the following solutions were seen:

1. Re-install the whole server farm!!!!! – phew! a nightmare and last thing you want after your deployment

2. Restore the last working Config database – reasonable, but then you don’t want to mess up with the configuration.

3. Use the SharePoint object model, do some digging and remove the invalid application from the database. After two experiences, this is what I did for the third time and it worked like magic!

I am putting up the same here. Anybody who is in this situation now can download this and try. My application is quite simple and hence doesn’t have any readme! I have also put the source in case you want to customize it.

Executable: SharePointTools.zip

Source: SharePointToolsSrc.zip

To Run:

You need to copy the executable to the server. This application currently cannot retrieve details using a path.

To modify the code:

Install the SharePoint Server 2007 SDK and open the source in VS 2005.

Thanks to Soumyan for this idea.

Note:

I don’t claim this to work for anybody and everybody . It worked for me, if it can help you, it would be great! Take a backup of your existing setup before you try this, please. This piece of software is given as, is without any warranties.

Where we are?

1. Created a forms (SQL) authenticated SharePoint site.
2. Provided multiple authentication providers so that you can connect from SharePoint designer/Infopath.
3. Successfully published the InfoPath form as a browser enabled one.

Now what?

1. Wow!…able to fill the form from the browser itself. Now you try to print…oops…suddenly you realize when you print, the header and footer from IE comes in the page. This is the last thing you want when you are printing documents like Invoices, Purchase orders etc..
2. What to do? Yeah…I can open the form in InfoPath itself (provided it is installed in your laptop), and do the proper printing.
3. You happily open the form in InfoPath…Yes -> then no need to read further . You know better!
4. It is giving an error -> Cannot open? Then I will tell you what to do. Open your site in IE. Make it a trusted site (from Tools->Internet Options -> Trusted Sites -> Sites -> Add). If you have logged into your site, logoff and login again. Here, make sure you have the option ‘Login automatically’ ticked.
5. This should work! (hopefully!!!)

The same thing applied to Shared Calendars and Outlook.

Looking for some sharepoint stuff? Well, most of this you would find elsewhere, however, there could be something extra! you never know :)