Why My Site

Here is the blog from SharePoint blog, but for some reason, Microsoft doesn’t allow me to access the page anonymous. http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=981

so I copied most of articles here in case I will need it to convince company to use my site.

There’s a lot of buzz today about social networking within an organization, and with good reason! According to Gartner, “It is no longer a question of if an enterprise should invest in social software, but when, from which provider and for what business purposes.” and by 2015, 40% of large enterprises will have a corporate "Facebook," for circulating both business and personal data. (Gartner, Predicts 2011: When Social and Business Processes Collide, November 19, 2010) When done right, enterprise social networking can be a very valuable tool in helping employees find colleagues with the expertise they need to solve a problem or better serve customers. SharePoint has included My Sites since the 2003 version, and today in 2010 they are better than ever at helping people locate one another and the critical business information they share, enabling everyone to do their jobs more efficiently and feel more connected across the enterprise.

Now onto the good stuff! SharePoint My Sites is only as valuable as the information people contribute, which you can do easily by leveraging tools such as tagging, document and photo libraries and colleague connections. So in an already busy work environment, how do you ensure your employees understand the value of My Sites? Below are some tips for driving adoption in your organization.

• Identify a select group of early adopters who can spread the word about My Sites among their colleagues. Showcase them through email, a newsletter or an Intranet feature story, citing personal examples of how My Sites has improved their everyday work life. Also, reach out to the avid consumer social network users in your organization to become early adopters and promoters of safe, secure social networking inside the organization.
• Use My Sites as a marketing tool inside organizations. For example, smaller teams within a larger organization can boost their profile by making sure their My Sites are completely utilized. Each team member can list expertise, share documents, tag material and update newsfeeds, making them easier to find in an organization. In fact, simply saving your documents to your My Site will make it much easier for people to find out what you know and benefit from your work. It is much easier to find files by looking up people in SharePoint.
• Make My Sites your own. Custom skins that live on top of SharePoint allow organizations to brand My Sites, helping drive interest and loyalty. The theme might be for your department, role, or a corporate HR-sponsored initiative—whatever is most relevant for your business.
• Incorporate filling out My Sites as part of an employee orientation. This helps quickly drive adoption and ensures employees know how to properly utilize the tool. Many of your new employees will already be familiar with these tools as consumers and successful job seekers.
• Encourage high-profile executive involvement. When your executives share, they set the tone for everyone. Using the built-in blog on a My Site is a great way for executives to share trip reports, reflections on the business, and career development tips. This knowledge is shared more visibly and persistently than in email and encourages other employees to share their experiences as well.

We use My Sites widely across Microsoft, and from personal experience, it has helped me engage colleagues more quickly, locate expertise and find the information I need to not only do my job better, but be more efficient. When I can find the right contact for a customer by doing a people search, take advantage of colleagues’ presentation by finding it on their My Sites, or stay in touch with a colleague through their personal updates, SharePoint is enabling me to benefit from the power of social computing in the enterprise. That makes me more productive, effective and connected in today’s fast-paced world of business.

Christian Finn

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 Products is Now Available for Download‏

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=984

Import-SPWeb : Cannot import site.

Error:
FatalError: Cannot import site. The exported site is based on the template STS#0 but the destination site is based on the template SPS#0. You can import sites only into sites that are based on same template as the exported site.

Import-SPWeb : Cannot import site. The exported site is based on the template STS#0 but the destination site is based on the template STS#1. You can import sites only into sites that are based on same template as the exported site.

Issue:-
In SharePoint 2010 when we use Powershell Commands to Export / Import site collections we get Site Template mismatch errors as now SP 2010 needs to have the same template for the site while importing which was used on the site exported.
In such scenarios when you have migrated from SPS 2003 -> MOSS 2007 -> SP 2010 there will be many old Site templates which are now Obsolete in SP 2010 and not available, due to which it will be very difficult to Import the site.

Resolution / Workaround:-
1. Central Admin -> Application Management -> Create Site Collection
2. During Template selection go to ‘Custom’ Tab -> Select Template Later…..
3. Run the Import-SpWeb command now and it should import the site collection without any issues.
As we are not selecting any template while creating a Site Collection, it automatically pics up the template which is using while importing the Site Collection.

No FAST Search site collection features

You will need to manually active the feature by PowerShell.

GUID for the FAST Site Admin Feature (5EAC763D-FBF5-4d6f-A76B-EDED7DD7B0A5).

add-pssnapin microsoft.sharepoint.powershell

$siteWithNoFastFeatures = get-SPSite http://searchsite
$siteWithNoFastFeatures.Features.Add("5EAC763D-FBF5-4d6f-A76B-EDED7DD7B0A5")

$siteWithNoFastFeatures.Dispose()

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SQL Server Profiler in 2008

I am not using this very often but it is great to trace some TSQL statement when you can’t see from your code.

You need select “Show All Events” and tick all selection under “TSQL” section

Then to filter the noise out, you need to specify the database name by select Column Filters

Change the Icon for SharePoint site

To use a different site icon.

1. Start up SharePoint Designer 2010
2. Open your site
3. Navitate to the Master Pages library
4. Click on the the Master Page that your site uses (this is v4.master for a default team site)
5. Click on the Edit file link under Customization
6. Locate the tag "<SharePoint:SPShortcutIcon " in the code
7. Replace the url to favicon.ico with your own ico file.

To convert a .gif file to .ico format, I use this site http://www.prodraw.net/favicon/index.php

Contains an Identifier which is not read only. The Update operation requires a corresponding PreUpdaterField for this Field

If the identifier of the entity type represents a field in a database table that is not automatically generated, set the Pre-Updater Field property to True. I got this error when I try to insert new record, the ID field cannot be edited. or when I try to modify the existing record.

The workaround (maybe a bug in SharePoint) I found is to unselected  the “Read-Only” and “Required” choices for the ID field in “Read Item” operation, remove the list and create the list again.

Then come back to the “Read Item” operation, tick the “Read-Only”choices again, remove the list and recreated.

The local farm is not accessible. Cmdlets with FeatureDependencyId are not registered

Problem

When you run powershell on your server you get the following error:

The local farm is not accessible. Cmdlets with FeatureDependencyId are not registered.

Solution

Make sure the logged in user has rights to the SharePoint_Configuration database

• SharePoint_Shell_Access
• DB_owner (try reducing the privileges after you get it working in order to support “least privileges”

Hide Default Controls in SharePoint 2010

If you want to hide Top Bar, Ribbon, Quick Launch are come up with Application Pages by default.

One way to hide these controls is by passing a Parameter with the URL. [ ?IsDlg=1 ] SharePoint will hide these elements when It gets IsDlg Parameter on URL.

Or you can create a css file and add it in by Content Editor Web Part

<style type="text/css">

    #s4-ribbonrow, .ms-cui-topBar2, .s4-notdlg, .s4-pr s4-ribbonrowhidetitle, 

.s4-notdlg noindex, #ms-cui-ribbonTopBars, #s4-titlerow, #s4-pr s4-notdlg 

s4-titlerowhidetitle, #s4-leftpanel-content {display:none !important;}

    .s4-ca{margin-left:0px !important; margin-right:0px !important;}

</style>

#This will hide the elements and only the content will be shown.

Note : If you use this code in SharePoint Site Pages with Content Editor Webpart then you can’t check in the page since the toolbar goes hidden.

[ ?Contents=1 ] will opens the page in WebPart maintenance mode to help you remove web part easily.