This one has been stuck in my drafts pile for longer than planned. It shouldn’t still be a problem because it was addressed in the December 2010 Cumulative Update. But if you do have problems opening PDFs from SharePoint 2010, the first step should be to apply Cumulative Updates. But here’s the hack that worked before the fix was issued:

Problem: Can’t open PDF files from SharePoint 2010

Reason: Looks like Microsoft got heavy with the default security settings.

Solution:

• In the DOCICON.XML file*, edit the mapping key for PDF files to include the OpenControl parameter
  e.g. <Mapping Key=”pdf” value=”pdficon.gif” OpenControl=”" />
• In Central Administration, go to Manage Web Applications. For each web application that may contain PDF files, under General Settings, change File Handling from Strict to Permissive <- by all means read the explanation about Strict vs Permissive in the dialogue first, it does have security implications.

Note this fix only applies to new libraries. See referneces for a Powershell hack to fix existing libraries.  Otherwise PDFs in existing libraries will still have the problem, whether accessed by navigating to the library or from within search results.

* If you’re wondering what the DOCICON.XML file is, you need to configure SharePoint to recognise PDF files. See related blog post: SharePoint 2010 and Adobe PDF

References:

• SharePoint 2010 won’t open PDFs – MS Technet discussion
• Powershell script to amend existing document libraries – KM Associates, Jan 2011
• December 2010 Cumulative Update details – Microsoft, Dec 2010

Microsoft have announced the upcoming planned release of SharePoint 2010′s first service pack. Due to arrive in late June 2011.

Full details in their blog. Short version here for my memory as much anything else

• Introducing the Site Recycle Bin – self-service recovery of site collections and sites!
• Shallow Copy – improved method for managing Remote BLOB Storage – can now move site collections to new content databases without moving the underlying files (used to be uploaded and then downloaded again, waste of resources). Now the references stay intact by simply updating the pointers instead.
• The return of StorMan.aspx – reporting on site quotas (top docs, library size etc.) for site owners to manage their stuff.
• Some work on browser support for IE9 (phew, should be more stable) and Google Chrome
• Plus all the usual bug fixes and will include all Cumulative Update packs through to April 2011.

Here are a few tips and tricks to use when working with user profiles in SharePoint 2010. Note: Most also apply to SharePoint 2007.

1. Displaying all profiles in the service application

When you go to edit user profiles in the User Profile service application, you will see a blank screen with a search box to find profiles. If you enter a letter, it will list all names beginning with that letter. If you simply want to list all profiles, enter the first letter or your domain.  All user profiles begin with the domain name…

2. Adding properties to user profiles

User profiles come with a whole bunch of properties to fill out. Some are automatically mapped to your domain if you are syncing profiles with Active Diretory. You can also add your own properties. They can be set to be filled in by users or be synchronised with another data source.  You can also remove the properties you don’t need.

If you want a property to be visible on the Profile page, simply check the appropriate boxes. You can choose to display it on the user profile page, display it on the Edit Details page (so that users can fill in the property themselves) and include updates to the field in newsfeeds (see item 6).

By the way, if you edit a profile from Central Admin, don’t worry about red asterisks that suggest certain properties are mandatory. They aren’t.

3. Synchronising user profiles with Active Directory

…is a lot trickier to achieve in SharePoint 2010 than it was in SharePoint 2007.  I’ve included a bunch of links that worked for me in the handbook on this site, see: Shared Services. Follow the instructions very carefully.

4. Know how search works

People search is built-in to SharePoint. When you search for information, user profiles will be included in the results. If you are specifically searching for people, the results can be less accurate. SharePoint includes phonetic search – if you don’t know how to spell a name, spell it how it sounds and the search engine should find a match. But what SharePoint does not include is partial search. A search for ‘Dan’ won’t find ‘Daniel’. And results aren’t displayed alphabetically by default – you have to change the sort order in the search results. If you want search to behave like an address book, you have to do some work. The following post provides a walkthrough: Setting up Staff Directory Search in SharePoint 2010.

5. Creating audiences

The Audience feature has been in SharePoint for a while but doesn’t always get used much. But if you are trying to create a more social intranet, audiences are a great tool. Audiences can be used to target navigation and web parts (so that items only appear for certain groups). Audiences are created using rules that match user profile content. For example, you could create a user profile property called Newsletters with a dropdown menu to pick from. You could then create an audience for each type of newsletter. When people select the newsletter in their profile, they will be added to the audience and can receive targeted content.

Final tip on audiences: don’t forget to setup a schedule to update them, preferably inline with when user profiles are synced.

6. Enable the Activity Feed Timer Job for Newsfeeds to update

New to SharePoint 2010 is the Newsfeed feature within user profiles. The newsfeed contains all updates of interest to a user – based on changes made by their colleagues or updates that match items in the ‘Interests’ section of their profile. For example, if I register an interest in XBox 360, I’ll see updates in my newsfeed regardless of who made them (i.e. they don’t need to be in my social network).

But for newsfeeds to populate, the activity timer needs to be enabled (it’s disabled by default). The default name for the Timer Job Definition is ‘User Profile Service Application – Activity Feed Job’.

7. Extend the time out on Farm Search Settings

If you have ever seen your user profiles disappear from search, it can be caused by a timeout. The issue normally occurs on an incremental crawl. Increase the timeout from 60 to 120, then perform a full crawl. After that, everything should be working.  To increase the time out, go into the Search Application service page, and click on Farm Search Administration (it’s a few links above Content Sources).

That’s all for now. If you’re interested in more details on any of these topics, leave a comment.

This post is filed in the SharePoint 2010 handbook under: Shared Services and Social Computing.

[Update] Please note that this solution does not quite get to a full address book search. When Microsoft says ‘Sort by name’, they actually only sort by first name. Daft I know but go complain to them.  The best approach is to add a note for people – add at least the first letter of each name if possible, e.g. search for First name: Cla, Last name: P. That usually ensures all possible matches are listed on the first page.  I did have a workaround for SharePoint 2007 that also sorted by last name, but it only worked per page, i.e. per 50 results which also is not ideal.

—-

This post applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, Standard or Enterprise edition. (Requires User Profile Service). It does not apply to SharePoint Foundation Service or FAST.

SharePoint Server includes people in search results. This is great if you’re looking for expertise in a given subject. Results are based on the content of user profiles, which can be a mix of formal information – organisation hierarchy, name, contact details etc. and informal stuff – skills, hobbies, interests etc.

However, what SharePoint does not do straight out of the box is provide address book style staff directory searches. If you are searching specifically for a person, you have to spell their name precisely or phonetically. This post will walk through setting up staff search where you can enter all or part of a name (e.g. show me names beginning ‘Sm’) with results displayed alphabetically.

Preparation

To set-up staff directory search, you first need to have configured a search site using one of the built-in Search site templates available with SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise edition. I recommend the Enterprise Search Center site template, it’s available in SharePoint Server Standard and Enterprise edtions (yes, Microsoft has habit of mixing up what the word Enterprise applies to).

For help with setting up the search site, see the following blog post: SharePoint 2010 Search Set-up

Create the Staff Directory search tabs and results page

Instead of using the standard People results page that comes with the Enterprise Search site, we’re going to add an additional tab and results page called Staff Directory. Note: you could just modify the People page, I prefer to use a separate one and leave People for finding expertise.

First we need to create the page we are going to display staff directory search results:

1. Navigate to the search site
2. Go to Site Actions – View All Site Content
3. In All Site Content, under Document Libraries, click on Pages
4. In the Pages library, click on the Documents tab at the top of the page, click on New Document and select Welcome Page
   
5. To create the page:
   - Enter a title: Staff Directory
   - URL: staffresults
   - Select the page layout: (Welcome Page) People Search results, and click Create
   
6. The page will be checked out, check it in and publish as a major version (1.0). There’s still some work to do but we’ll be editing it later…

Second, we need to create tabs to make it easy to navigate to the page:

1. Go back to Site Actions – View All Site Content
2. In All Site Content, under Lists, click on Tabs in Search Pages
3. Click Add New Item and enter the Tab Name: Staff Directory and Page: staffresults.aspx
   You must use the same page name that you just created. You don’t need to enter the full URL, just the page name, the list points directly at the Pages library.
4. Repeate steps 1 – 3, but this time select the list Tabs in Search Results

The end result: Your search site now has a dedicated tab and search results page for your staff directory:

Create the Staff Directory Search Box

The following can be done on any page on any site but let’s assume you want it on the Intranet home page.

1. Add a Content Editor web part to the page
2. Edit the web part to change it’s title to Staff Search
3. Click inside the web part, then in the menu ribbon, click on the HTML icon and choose Edit HTML Source
   Note: You must do this inside a web part and using the HTML Source box for it to work. Otherwise SharePoint will remove the JavaScript when you save the page
4. Insert the following code* inside the HTML Source box:  Replace the URLs to point to your search site and page name. You may want to include the full path, e.g. http://server/… Change the table settings if you want a different size or style of layout.

   <script language="javascript">

   //function for enter on keyboard and apostrophes in search strings

   function txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(e)

   {
   if (e.keyCode == 13 || e.keyCode==10)
   {
   e.returnValue=false;
   DoWildPeopleSearch();
   return false;
   }
   else
   return true;

   }

   function escapestr(str)

   {
   return str.replace("'","%22");
   }

   //staff search

   function DoWildPeopleSearch()

   {
   var firstname = escapestr(document.all["firstname"].value);
   var lastname = escapestr(document.all["lastname"].value);
   var url;

   //search on last name onnly (first name is empty)

   if(firstname == "")

   {
   url = "/search/Pages/staffresults.aspx?k=LastName%3A" + lastname;
   window.location=url;
   return;
   }

   //search on first name only (last name is empty)

   if(lastname == "")

   {
   url = "/search/Pages/staffresults.aspx?k=FirstName%3A" + firstname;
   window.location=url;
   return;
   }

   //search on first and last
   url = "/search/Pages/staffresults.aspx?k=lastname%3A" + lastname +
   "%20FirstName%3A" + firstname;
   window.location=url;
   return;
   }
   </script>
   
   <table width="100%" id="StaffSearchTable" border="0" cellspacing="0"
   cellpadding="4"><tbody>
   <tr><td width="80" nowrap="nowrap">First Name:</td>
   <td width="100%"><input name="firstname" id="firstname"
   onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)" type="text" size="25"
   maxlength="55"/></td></tr>
   <tr><td width="80" nowrap="nowrap">Last Name:</td>
   <td><input name="lastname" id="lastname"
   onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)"
   type="text" size="25" maxlength="55"/> </td></tr>
   <tr><td></td>
   <td><input onclick="DoWildPeopleSearch()" type="button" value="Search"/></td></tr>
   </tbody></table>
   <p>Enter all or part of a name<br/>e.g. A will find all names beginning with A</p>

5. Click OK. If you are confident you’ve got the code right, now woud be a good time to export this web part. SharePoint is very fussy about using JavaScript and if you try to edit it at a later date, it may break. Export and then import to the web part gallery to make it easy to just add it back in at a later date. If you’ve made an error, delete the web part and start again from scratch.
6. Once done, save the page and you should now have a web part that looks something like this:
   
7. Test the web part to make sure you entered the correct URLs for the search page. Assuming you did, stay on the Staff Directory results page, ready for the next step.

Note. The code creates a layout using a table. If this offends your design sensabilities, by all means insert DIVs and appropriate HTML code to create a properly formatted AAA-compliant box. (p.s. it still won’t be compliant if you’re using a web part zone because the zones use tables in the page layout…)

* I’d love to take full credit for this code but somebody else wrote the original. I’ve had it for years and can’t remember if I got one of the Devs to help or found it via Google. There’s quite possibly a better way of writing it.

Modifying the Staff Directory results page

The final step is to edit the Staff Directory results page. If you’re not already looking at the page, navigate to it now.

The image above shows the default People search results page. You can see the search parameters in the search box – I searched for everyone with a last name beginnning G. But look at the results. They are not in alpahebetical order. We’re going to replace the default search box with our staff directory search and change the way the results are displayed.

1. Edit the staffresults.aspx page
2. Delete the web part called People Search Box
3. If you exported/imported your Staff Search web part earlier, now add it to the Top Zone of the page
4. Edit the web part settings and under Appearance, change the Chrome to None (to hide the title and borders)
5. Click inside the web part content and click the HTML icon to Edit HTML Source. The code is identical to the before but we are going to use a different table layout. Replace your TABLE section with the following:

   <table id="StaffSearch" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
   <tbody><tr><td width="80" nowrap="nowrap">First Name:</td>
   <td width="180"><input name="firstname" id="firstname"
   onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)" type="text" size="20"
   maxlength="100"/> </td>
   <td width="80" nowrap="nowrap">Last Name:</td>
   <td width="180"><input name="lastname" id="lastname"
   onkeydown="txtWildPeopleFinder_KeyDown(event)" type="text" size="20"
   maxlength="100"/> </td>
   <td><input onclick="DoWildPeopleSearch()" type="button" value="Search"/>
   </td></tr></tbody></table>

6. Click OK and save the page. Then click Edit to edit it again.
7. Find the People Search Core Results web part and edit the web part settings
   - Expand the Display Properties section
   - Under Default Results Sorting, change it from ‘Default’ to ‘Name
   - You can also modify other settings, such as number of results per page, size of summary and URL
   - Click Apply/OK to save the changes to the web part settings. Save and publish the page

And there you have it, staff directory search in an address book format with results listed alphabetically by surname.

There are some other tweaks that I often do, such as adding department to the search box as a dropdown list (requires very accurate data in your AD – i.e. consistent department names) and adding additional properties to the search results such as mobile phone, alternate contact (again, is dependent on the data being available in the profile). But this should get you started.

Final note: It is possible to use the code here and create a staff directory search in SharePoint Server 2007. The complication comes from not having a built-in capability to display results by name. You can set-it up but with a huge limitation – it sorts alphabetically by results page and you can’t have more than 50 items per page. Also, the people results in SharePoint 2007 look terrible. You can make them look more like a business-card style results layout but it takes quite a bit of tweaking using XML. If there’s demand in the comments for it, I’ll dig out my old notes…

This post is part of the SharePoint 2010 Handbook: Enterprise Search

[Update] Following comments to this post, please note that this refers to using the Enterprise Wiki template when creating a site collection. The Enterprise Wiki template is the only one that will create a root site with all features available. All other templates limit the features for the site collection and the Publishing Portal template is the worst of all.  Within a site collection, you can use any site templates you want for sub-sites.

[Update 2] You must be a Site Collection Administrator to perform these steps. Being added to the Site Owners group (Full Control permission) is not enough.  The search settings are under Site Collection Administration. If you can’t see them, you’re not a Site Collection Administrator.

—- Original Post —-

In SharePoint 2007, if you created a new site collection using the ‘Collaboration Portal’ template, it would come with a number of sites, including the Search Center. In SharePoint 2010, this is no longer the case. There isn’t a Collaboration Portal template for starters, the nearest you’ll find is the Enterprise Wiki template which is my recommended starting point for Intranets, KM and Collaborative Sites. (Side note: Another example of poor usability on Microsoft’s part. The Enterprise Wiki template is available in both the Standard and Enterprise editions of SharePoint 2010. When you read about features with ‘Enterprise’ in the title, don’t assume they are limited to the Enterprise Edition, in most cases they are also available in Standard.)

In SharePoint 2010, the clue is in the search box:

When you create a new site collection, the default search settings limit search to within the current site only and uses built-in search pages. If you want to search across multiple sites (a fairly normal requirement for most internal SharePoint deployments), use search scopes and configure different types of results pages, you will be wanting a dedicated search site. Here’s what to do:

Create a Search site

1. At the root of the site collection where you want the Search site to live, click Site Actions and select ‘New Site’
2. Select the search site template you want to use
3. Enter a title and URL (Search works for me…) and create the site

There are up to three search site templates to choose from (and you should use a search template if you don’t want to create a lot of extra work for yourself setting up search query and results pages):

• Basic Search – available with all versions of SharePoint
• Enterprise Search – requires SharePoint 2010 Server: Standard or Enterprise edition (yes, another of those ‘Enterprise’ features also available in Standard)
• FAST Search – requires SharePoint 2010 Server Enterprise Edition (or FAST add-on/dedicated)

The search query box is automatically integrated every SharePoint site within the global navigation bar (as shown in the first image above). Unless you particularly want to also have the Search site listed in navigation, go into the Navigation settings and hide it.

Configure Search Settings

Once you’ve got your search site, you can now configure the search settings to use it. This step needs to be repeated for each site collection that you want to point to the Search site.

1. At the root of the site collection, go to Site Actions – Site Settings.
2. Under Site Collection Administration, click on Search Settings
3. Within Search Settings:
   • For the Site Collection Search Center, enter the URL to your search site in the format /search/Pages (replace the word ‘search’ with the site URL for your search site, if different))
   • In Site Collection Search Scopes dropdown mode, select ‘Show search scopes’
     The image below shows the settings for my demo machine:
     
     
4. Click OK and you’re done.

Once the search settings are configured, the search box will show scopes with the default set to search across all sites instead of just the current site:

Don’t forget, you’ll need to configure search settings for each site collection that you want to point to the Search site. Whilst the URL will be relative for the site collection where the search site is located, for all other site collections you will need to enter the full path (for example, on my demo the URL is http://sp2010/search/ for all other site collections)

Enter a search query in the new search box and you will be routed to the Search site to display results:

In the image above, I’ve configured the default results page in the Search site to also include federated search results. When I enter the query ‘SharePoint’ I can see documents and items on the Intranet (along with refiners on the left to filter results), people who have SharePoint in their profile and federated results YouTube.

I’ve also modified my Search site to include 2 additional tabs – Staff Directory and Internet. The Staff Directory is discussed in a follow-up post (see links at the end of this page). The Internet tab shows more federated search results from sites such as Twitter, MSDN, TechNet and Google News. I’ve even got a page for querying Facebook but haven’t managed to federate that one yet. Federated results are great for finding relevant information inside and outside your organisation using a single query.

This post is filed in the SharePoint 2010 Handbook under Install & Configuration and Enterprise Search.

Related blog posts

• Configure Adobe PDF indexing
• SharePoint 2010 vs FAST for Search
• Staff Directory Search in SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010, PerformancePoint runs as a service application. Having been configuring it recently for a demo, I stumbled across a couple of steps that needed to be completed to get the demo up and running. The environment is a single server virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, Office 2010 (plus Visio and Project).

Configure the unattended account

PerformancePoint now delegates security to SharePoint and connections are made using an unattended account. To configure that account:

1. Go to the Secure Store Service Application (Central Admin – Manage Service Applications)
2. Click ‘Generate New Key’ in the ribbon, then click ‘Refresh Key’ in the  same ribbon
3. Go to the PerformancePoint Service Application and then click on PerformancePoint Service Application Settings
4. The Secure Store Service Application field should be populated with the name of your Secure Store Service
5. Enter the user name that is run as the unattended service account (I created a ‘ppsadmin’ account for this purpose)

All connections between Dashboard Designer and SharePoint now use the unattended account, which means you no longer have to configure manual permissions when creating dashboards and their elements.

The account will be given the appropriate SQL Server permissions. However, if you are planning to use Excel Services for data sources, don’t forget to give this account permission to access the SharePoint sites where Excel workbooks will be published to. If you try to set up a new data source and point to the SharePoint site and document library but can’t see any workbooks, chances are the unattended account doesn’t have permissions to access the document library.

Using Excel as a data source

Whilst most proper dashboards will use cubes as their data sources (accessed via SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services), you can also create dashboards based on data stored in Excel workbooks. There are two options for Excel workbooks:

• Connect to the data source using Excel Services
• Import that data from an Excel workbook

The latter approach will literally copy the data from Excel into Dashboard Designer. I had a hiccup on my demo machine because I’ve installed 32-bit Office on a 64-bit OS. Dashboard Designer requires Excel to match the OS, 64-bit OS means 64-bit Office. (One possible workaround is to dump the data into a SharePoint list, which can also be used as a data source. I prefer to use Excel Services.)

Excel Services requires an additional step compared to previous versions of SharePoint and PerformancePoint. When you publish the Excel workbook to SharePoint, you have to specifically publish the named range (item) you plan to use as a data source:

1. The spreadsheet must be saved using the new file format – .xslx
2. Name the range that contains the data to be used in your dashboard (select the cells and ‘Define Name’ in the Formulas area of the ribbon
3. Save and send to SharePoint:
   - Click Publish Options and instead of ‘Entire Workbook’ (the default) select ‘Items in the workbook’

You’ll now be able to use the workbook as an Excel Services data source in the Dashboard Designer. Without publishing the items individually, if you try to set up a new Excel Services data source, you’ll be able to point to the SharePoint site, document library and Excel workbook but won’t see any items to select.

References

• Set up and configure PerformancePoint Service – TechNet

Related blog posts

• PerformancePoint – A brief history