Rickey Whitworth's Blog » MOSS 2007

Using SSO with Moss 2007 Business Data Catalog to Authenticate with SQL Authentication Credentials

admin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:00:28 +0000

There are a lot of articles out there about using SSO with MOSS 2007 to allow a business
data catalog to connect to a sql server on the back end. The problem is that most
of them assume you want to use either the currently authenticated user or the application
pool account. If you want to connect using SQL Authentication, then you need to alter
your business data definition file and modify the connection portion to look like
this:



SqlServer
RdbCredentials
dbServer
dbName
false
SsoID
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SingleSignon.SpsSsoProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.SingleSignon,
Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c

Deploy Project Server 2007 to an existing deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007

admin — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:31:10 +0000

This scenario is typically used in an environment in which an Office SharePoint Server
2007 farm is deployed, its services are in use, and your organization wants to integrate
Office Project Server 2007 functionality. For more information about features and
functionality available through Office Project Server 2007 and the Project 2007 family
of products, see What’s
new in Office Project 2007 .

When deploying Office Project Server 2007 to an existing Office SharePoint Server
2007 farm, you must do the following general steps:

1. Install Office Project Server 2007 to all front-end Web and application servers
in the farm.

2. Enable the Project Application service on any application servers on which you
intend to run Office Project Server 2007.

3. Provision the Office Project Server 2007 site on the farm.

Additional configuration is required to enable the Office Project Server 2007 Proposal
feature. This information will be provided in a forthcoming update to this article.

Deploy
Project Server 2007 to an existing deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint Designer Workflow Limitations

admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 18:07:59 +0000

SharePoint Designer workflows are have some great benefits: they are relatively
easy to create, don’t require any code, and can be created and maintained by power
users, not just developers. However, there are several limitations to SharePoint
Designer workflows and you can hit these edges relatively quickly. Before deciding
to go down the SharePoint Designer workflow path, you might want to understand these
edges as you may have to do more work to create the solution. Nearly all of
these limitations listed further below can be solved through one or more of the following
techniques:

SharePoint
Designer Workflow Limitations – Implementing SharePoint Blog

Customizing MOSS 2007 My Sites within the enterprise

admin — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:36:00 +0000

Link to an article discussing how to customize My Site for the organization
as a whole.

Customizing MOSS 2007 My Sites within the enterprise

Hi, this is Steve Peschka from the SharePoint Rangers team again, and in this blog
entry Iâ€™ll discuss customizing My Sites across an organization. Thereâ€™s a good deal
of confusion out there about how best to achieve this, which is partly caused by functional
differences between SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and SharePoint Server 2007.

Microsoft
SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog : Customizing MOSS 2007 My Sites within
the enterprise

Virtual Directories Pointing to Another Server in MOSS 2007

admin — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:05:45 +0000

In our Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 environment, we had a virtual directory
that pointed to a file server for the purpose of listing files on that server. For
this to work, we needed Kerberos because this was going to be a double hop.

Here are the high level steps we followed to make a directory listing from another
server available in a sharepoint 2003 site

Sharepoint 2003

Using IIS Admin on the Sharepoint Server, browse to the Web Site you want the virtual
directory to appear under.
Create a new virtual directory that points to the remote file server path, choose
the checkbox to Always use the authenticated user’s credentials when validating
access to the network directory. Give Read and Browse access
to the directory.
Make sure the web site is set up to use Windows Integrated security only.
Make sure the web site is using an app pool that is tied to a domain account. Make
sure the domain account is enabled for kerberos delegation.
Go to Windows Sharepoint Services Central Administration, then click on configure
virtual server settings
Click on the virtual server you want the site to appear under.
Under the Virtual Server Management Heading, click Define
Managed Paths.
Go to the bottom section, Add a New Path, and type the virtual directory name in the
path, and change the type to Excluded path.

When we went to MOSS 2007, we tried to do the same thing, but the Managed Paths interface
is different. It doesn’t appear that you have to do a path exclusion here. So the
steps are a little different. In particular, pay attention to the IISRESET at the
end.

MOSS 2007

Using IIS Admin on the Sharepoint Server, browse to the Web Site you want the virtual
directory to appear under.
Create a new virtual directory that points to the remote file server path, choose
the checkbox to Always use the authenticated user’s credentials when validating
access to the network directory. Give Read and Browse access
to the directory.
Make sure the web site is set up to use Windows Integrated security only.
Make sure the web site is using an app pool that is tied to a domain account. Make
sure the domain account is enabled for kerberos delegation.
From a command prompt, type iisreset.

Apparently, Sharepoint will not recognize the site until you do an iisreset. Kerberos
configuration for Sharepoint is outside the scope of this post, so do a search or
contact me for more info.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2 Reporting Services integration with WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:27:22 +0000

There are numerous benefits and advantages to integrating Reporting Services with
Office SharePoint Server 2007. Prior to SP2, Reporting Services reports were published
to a report server and were executed solely in that environment. The integration point
between Reporting Services and SharePoint was two separate Web Parts: Report Explorer
and Report Viewer.

Using
Reporting Services 2005 in SharePoint Integration Mode enables some significant benefits
to the end-user and the organization as a whole, as follows:

Uses
SharePoint document libraries to store reports, data sources, and report models.
Enables
publishing, viewing, management, and delivery of Reporting Services reports from the
same user interface used for managing Office documents.
Enables
organizations to construct BI dashboards with rich reports.
Leverages
workflow and collaboration capabilities that are already available in Office SharePoint
Server 2007.

When
using SharePoint Integration Mode, some features that are available in Native Mode
are replaced with comparable functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007 or are
no longer available. The Reporting Services features that are not available in Integration
Mode are:

Report
Manager
Management
Studio
My
Reports
Linked
Reports
Job
Management

Link
Here

Customizing the Content Query Web Part XSL in MOSS 2007

admin — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:13:34 +0000

An example of how the content query webpart can be used to create a customized
news rollup group.

Excerpt:

The Content Query Web Part can be used to display a dynamic view of content from
your site on a web page. This article discusses how you can extend this Web Part to
show additional information about your SharePoint items (news articles, announcements,
events, documents, etc.)

Article
Here

BI in Office 2007 Resources

admin — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 03:27:02 +0000

Okay, not really an excerpt, but an entire copy. Sorry Patrick,
I needed it here for a reminder so I could follow up more later. Read the original
post here

Excerpt

Yesterday, I delivered my third webcast in the Ascend program. This one was dedicated
to working with Excel Services, the integration of SQL Server Reporting Services,
the Report Center and the infrastructure provided with MOSS 2007 for doing BI in the
portal. Compared to the WCM webcast this one went very smooth. I had a lot of network
problems during the WCM cast – but I have done a decent recording on Wednesday that
will be available.

There was a question on the future of Office Web Components (OWC) in
the new SharePoint. The story is that you will be able to use the OWCs without a problem
in the next version but there is likely not going to be a follow-up version. Microsoft
wants you to invest in Excel Services (the Web access for spreadsheets or snapshots,
and the Web Service).

In addition to the material covered, here are some useful links to resources if
you want to learn more on Excel Services:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cumgranosalis/archive/category/12700.aspx
Walkthroughs of working with the Web Service, the User-Defined Functions (UDF) extensibility,
…
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/ had
a series on Excel Services

Sharepoint 2007 Forms Authentication

admin — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:05:57 +0000

This article was very helpful in getting my Wss V3 site up and running using forms
authentication and asp.net’s membership provider. It does have a few gaps (or
makes a few assumptions) so it is not a complete step by step guide, but its the best
I have seen.

Excerpt:

It’s easy when you know how! I’ve been playing around with Beta 2
of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for a couple of weeks now trying to get
Forms Authentication to work. Together with Dan Winter from Microsoft and Adam Tybor
I’ve got an internet presence site working with Forms Authentication and anonymous
access. Perfect for an public facing internet site run on SharePoint 2007. So here’s
the step by step guide on how to do it (with pictures!)

A quick word of warning – this works for Moss 2007 Beta 2. If the process
for any subsequent releases change I’ll post the changes on the blog as well.

Sharepoint 2007
Forms Authentication