Let’s assume that I want to create a new dedicated content database for a new site collection. This site collection will have huge contents and it may require database of size 60-80 GB. Also we do not want any of the content databases to grow more than 100 GB (Microsoft recommended content database size). So we decided to create a new dedicated content database for this site collection. Any new site collection after this must be created in a content database with a least number of sites in it, provided it is not crossing the limit of maximum allowed sites in that content database. 

As usual, I have taken few screen captures for better understanding of this scenario.

We have total 8 content databases for our MOSS 2007 deployment. I have created a new content database with the name “New_Content_DB”.

I want to create a new site collection in this new content database – “New_Content_DB” and then lock it. So that any new site collection after this will be created in a content database (any one from SPS01 to SPS08) with least number of sites in it. Let’s create a new site collection,

New site collection – “sites/newsc” was created in “New_Content_DB” as expected. Now, I would like to lock it so this content database will be used only for this site collection – “sites/newsc”.

I ran following query to confirm that the site collection – “sites/newsc” was created in “New_Content_DB” database.

Now, let’s lock it. I have set “Site Level Warning” to 0 and “Maximum Number of Sites” to 1 for this. Here is the screen capture,

Any new site collection after this must be created in content database with least number of sites in it. In our case it is SPS07. So let’s create a second site collection and it must be created in SPS07 instead of New_Content_DB. Here is the screen capture,

As shown below, the second site collection – “sites/newsc2” was created in SPS07 database.

One more time, SQL query to confirm that second site collection – “sites/newsc2” was created in SPS07 database.

Any new site collection after this point will be created in SPS07 and then SPS08 and so on…Here is the screen capture after creating couple of other site collections – “sites/newsc3”, “sites/newsc4” etc.

As per Microsoft recommendation SharePoint content database should not grow more than 100 GB in size. So you may want to move site collections with maximum contents or fastest growth from one content database to another (the smallest content database in your SharePoint farm or a new content database). Here are the few support links which can help you achieving this.

For SharePoint 2007:

First Release of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/04/30/announcing-the-first-release-of-the-microsoft-sharepoint-administration-toolkit.aspx

Mergecontentdbs: Stsadm operation:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288557.aspx

One of the best posts for moving site collections to another content database:
http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=56f96349-3bb6-4087-94f4-7f95ff4ca81f&ID=53

For SharePoint 2003:

MS IT Database Split for WSS2.0 and SPS2003:
http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=governance&ReleaseId=5351

Audience Targeting:

MOSS 2007 has a feature that allows you to enable audience targeting (although this is not available in WSS 3.0). Turning on this feature means any items in a list or library can be set to appear only for a particular audience. An audience can be defined as a SharePoint group, distribution list, security group, or a global audience. The advantage of this feature lies in showing a group of users only relevant information, as opposed to overwhelming them with less relevant information. For example, a company may have a list of all new employees, perhaps including some trivia and background information. Audience targeting permits administrators to show a list of only those employees that joined a particular business unit, and only the primary identification information. The disadvantage of audience targeting is that users are not prevented from seeing the entire list, by selecting a different view or URL hacking, unless item-level security is applied.

Item-Level Security:

This feature enables users to set specific security on each item in a list or library. This means that, as items are added to the library, the user can indicate who can view the item. When setting the security for a single item, SharePoint allows the user to give access to an individual or group within AD and/or SharePoint. Item-level security is useful when uploading specific documents that only certain users should be able to see and completely prevent others from accessing them. For example, an internal portal for a company could display employee benefits only to that specific employee. Item-level security could allow only those users to see those documents without making the same documents available to the entire company.

The disadvantage of item-level security is the headache it poses for administrators in cases where it is unclear who the intended viewer is. For users of the older SharePoint Portal Server 2003, item-level security is not ideal given that users could see all items in a list, and only discover upon clicking whether they were authorized to view the item. SharePoint 2007 has now updated this feature with security trimming: Users see only the items listed that they are authorized to view, and all other items are filtered, or "trimmed" out.

Reference:
http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/3722456

Choosing between AD Groups and SharePoint Groups. What is the best approach for assigning permission levels in SharePoint?

Here are some guidelines:

A general rule of thumb is the less security principals you have, the more scalable your security design will be.  In other words, it is easier to assign permission levels to 1 group than 100 users.

Avoid assigning permission levels directly to user accounts—use either an Active Directory (AD) group or a SharePoint group to contain the users.  If there is a one-to-one mapping between an AD group and a SharePoint permission level, you could assign permissions to the AD Group rather than creating a SharePoint group, but if you always use a SharePoint group, you have a clean way to add more users/groups later if you need to.

Use SharePoint groups over AD security groups.   You can delegate control of SharePoint groups to site administrators.  If you use AD groups, there could be a bottleneck getting users added/removed from them since only a select few in the organization have permissions.  Another issue with AD groups is you cannot view the members in SharePoint, making it difficult to determine who has access to what.

Difference between SharePoint Groups and AD Groups:

Domain Groups

•       Normally created and maintained by the IT department
•       Can be used across different SharePoint sites and site collections
•       Organizations may already have good AD group structures that map well to your SharePoint implementation
•       Groups can be nested - e.g. you can add another AD Group as a member to an existing AD group
•       No features for users to submit a request to join a group

SharePoint Groups

•       The creation of groups can be done by business users
•       When a group is being created, you can define who "owns" the group
•       Can allow users to submit a request to join a group
•       Can determine who has permissions to see the users within groups
•       Groups are created within a particular Site Collection - cannot be used in other site collections
•       You cannot add a SharePoint Group as a member of another SharePoint group (no nesting)
•       SharePoint Groups cannot be used in other systems (e.g. network Shares)
•       The SharePoint Groups are separate from Active Directory - so you can go wild with the SharePoint Groups without upsetting your AD administrator

References:
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/johnwpowell/default.aspx
http://guru-web.blogspot.com/2007/10/difference-between-sharepoint-and-ad.html

Recently we had an issue for receiving emails with larger file attachments in SharePoint. Here is how we fixed this issue.

Note: We have maximum email size set to 10 MB in MS Exchange. So MS Exchange will not allow any emails bigger than 10 MB. Also default setting for maximum email size in SMTP Virtual server is 2 MB.

Steps to modify SMTP Virtual Server properties and increase incoming email size limit to accept bigger emails in SharePoint.

1. Open IIS on SharePoint Server where SMTP Virtual Server is hosted.

2. Right click on Default SMTP Virtual Server and select properties.

3. Click on "Messages" tab of Default SMTP Virtual Server Properties.

4. Change "Limit message size to(KB)": 10240

5. Change "Limit session size to(KB)": 51200

6. Click "Apply" and then "OK" button at the bottom.

- We can NOT increase this limit more than 10 MB (10240 KB) because this is the maximum email size allowed in MS Exchange.

- You will not be able to receive emails bigger than 10 MB even by setting this limit to 20 MB or more. (Provided you have maximum email size set to 10 MB in MS Exchange Server of your company).

=====================================================
Query to get total number of items in each list of SharePoint farm:
=====================================================

Use SP_DB01

select

case when webs.fullurl = ''

then 'Portal Site'

else webs.fullurl

end as [Site Relative Url], webs.Title As [Site Title],

case tp_servertemplate

when 104 then 'Announcement'

when 105 then 'Contacts'

When 108 then 'Discussion Boards'

when 101 then 'Docuemnt Library'

when 106 then 'Events'

when 100 then 'Generic List'

when 1100 then 'Issue List'

when 103 then 'Links List'

when 109 then 'Image Library'

when 115 then 'InfoPath Form Library'

when 102 then 'Survey'

when 107 then 'Task List'

else 'Other' end as Type, tp_title 'Title', tp_description As Description, tp_itemcount As [Total Item]

from lists inner join webs ON lists.tp_webid = webs.Id

Where tp_servertemplate IN (104,105,108,101, 106,100,1100,103,109,115,102,107,120)

order by tp_itemcount desc

Note: Repeat above query for each SharePoint content database.

==========================
Query to find all site collections:
==========================

Use SP_DB01

Select SiteId, FullUrl, Title, Author, TimeCreated
From Webs
Where ParentWebId IS NULL

Note: Repeat above query for each SharePoint content database.

=======================================================================================
Query to get Site Collection Statistics - Created, Owner, Contents size, Bandwidth usage, Last Modified etc.
=======================================================================================

Use SP_DB01

select distinct a.fullurl as [SiteUrl], a.TimeCreated as Created,

b.tp_login as [SiteAdmin],

sum(cast(c.size as decimal))/1024/1024 as [recyclebin],

cast(d.bwused as decimal)/1024/1024 as [BandwidthUsed],

cast(d.diskused as decimal)/1024/1024 as [SiteSize],

cast(d.diskquota as decimal)/1024/1024 as [SiteMaxQuota],

d.id as [SiteID],(select db_name(dbid) from master..sysprocesses where spid=@@SPID) as [Content_DB],

(select @@servername) as [ServerName],

d.lastcontentchange as [LastContentChange],

(select datediff(day,d.lastcontentchange,current_timestamp)) as [DaysSinceLastChange]

from webs as a inner join  

            sites as d on a.siteid=d.id inner join

       userinfo as b on a.siteid=b.tp_siteid left join

         recyclebin as c on a.siteid=c.siteid where b.tp_siteadmin = '1' and a.parentwebid is null   

group by a.fullurl, b.tp_login, d.diskused, d.id, d.bwused, d.diskquota, d.lastcontentchange, a.TimeCreated

Order by a.fullurl

Note: Repeat above query for each SharePoint content database.

References:
http://blogs.technet.com/corybu
http://www.codeplex.com/MSITSRF
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/QueriesToAnalyzeSPUsage.aspx

• Click drop down menu on the right hand side of “Glass” icon and select “Find More Providers…” in IE 7.0

• Under “Create Your Own” enter URL and Name. Please make sure you search for TEST (k=TEST) in URL. For example,

URL:
http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/TestSC/SearchCenter/Results.aspx?k=TEST&s=All%20Sites

Note: Above URL is for searching in "All Sites" (in entire SharePoint Server Farm).

Also note that I have specified "SharePoint Search" as the name of the search provider.

• Click “View” link, if you want to look at the XML file, click “Install” button otherwise, which will add this custom search provider to IE 7.0

• Once the Search Provider will be added, you will see it listed in Search Engine List.

• Search for something, let’s say “sharepoint” and select “SharePoint Search” – the custom search provider, which we have added in previous steps. It will ask you for credentials to connect to the SharePoint site. Enter your credentials and it will return search results.

Let’s start with understanding the purpose of setting up Records Center site. Why do we need central repository for our contents? Well, you can store almost all kind of contents in SharePoint but if you will not manage it properly, SharePoint contents will grow tremendously and eventually it will go out of control. The only way to prevent SharePoint servers from deteriorating in the future with an overload of content is to start archiving unwanted information. This is done by linking live or active SharePoint sites to a Record Center.

I am going to create a new site collection for Records Center in my existing SharePoint server farm however it is possible to create a Records Center in a separate farm and link it to SharePoint sites in this farm. In fact, that would be a better approach as you will be moving unwanted SharePoint contents to the content databases of another farm which will help you in keeping your live or active SharePoint farm content databases as small as possible.

Here are the steps:

1. Create Records Center site.

2. Create library for storing archive contents from SharePoint live sites.

3. Create and apply Information Management Policy for the retention period.

4. Define Record Routing rule for the content type.

5. Configure Record Center from SharePoint Central Administration site.

6. Start archiving unwanted SharePoint contents.

· Create a new site collection for Records Center.

· I have named it “Records Center Site”.

· Here is the Records Center site out of the box. In this example, we will configure Record Center site to archive project documents from live or active SharePoint site - “Test Site Collection”. Create a new document library for unwanted project records (documents).

· I have named it “Project Documents Repository”. Please note that I have selected “None” in Document Template as my project document could be a word, excel or any other document.

· Define policy for the retention period. Click “Site collection policies” link under Site Collection Administration.

· Create a new policy. Click “Create” link on the top right corner.

· I have named it “Project Document Policy”. I have selected all auditing options to keep the track of any changes in these documents. I have selected 5 years retention period for these documents after they are last modified. They will be deleted after 5 years.

Note: Records (documents) older than 5 years will be deleted and sent to “Recycle Bin”. Records Center administrator will then decide to delete them permanently. If there is a need, administrator can restore documents from recycle bin.

· Site collection policy is successfully created.

· Apply policy “Project Documents Repository” document library. Click “Information management policy settings” link under Permissions and Management.

· Select “Use a site collection policy” option and apply “Project Document Policy” , which we created in previous steps.

· Set same Meta data for this document library - “Project Documents Repository”. This is because when you archive contents from live SharePoint site, it will be stored here and that’s why it is good to have same Meta data as document library of live SharePoint site. Click “Add from existing site columns” link under Columns.

· Add all those columns (properties), which you have for your live document library contents.

· I have also modified “All Documents” under Views to show these Meta data in default view.

· Here is how “Project Documents Repository” looks like after following above steps.

· Create “Record Routing” to archive project documents in “Project Documents Repository”. Click New => New Item under Record Routing.

· I have used “Project Content Type” for creating project documents in my live site – Test Site Collection. Record Routing title will be the content type which you want to archive from live SharePoint site. So in title I have “Project Content Type”. Location will be the name of the document library where you want to route these records. In our case it is “Project Documents Repository”.

· Everything is set in our Records Center and here is how it looks like after following above steps.

Note: If you have not specified Records Routing properly, it will route all the documents to “Unclassified Records” document library using default “Unclassified Records” routing when you archive them from SharePoint live sites.

· Now, configure Record Center from SharePoint Central Administration site. Go to Application Management and click “Records center” link under External Service Connections.

· Provide the URL of the Records Center site appended with /_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx as shown in example. I have used display name as “Records Center”. So when somebody will right click on document to be archived, he/she will see “Send To => Records Center” in the menu.

URL: http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/RC/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx

Display Name: Records Center

· That’s it. You have successfully configured Records Center. Now, let’s test it. As shown below, I am going to archive one of the documents from “Project Document Library” of my live site – “Test Site Collection”. Right click on the document to be archived, select “Send To => Records Center”.

· If you have followed all above steps properly, you will see “Operation Completed Successfully” message.

· Document will still remain in the document library of your live site. You may delete it as it has been stored in Records Center already and it is not needed any more.

· Let’s go back to Records Center site to check, if the document is successfully archived and yes, it is. It will create folder with the time stamp to store those archive documents.

· In side the folder, you can see the document and the Meta data (properties) of that document. Properties are stored in the form of an XML file.

There is lot more you can do with Records Center other than just moving archive contents however idea behind this post is just to give an overall idea of how Records Center site works.

· Following screen captures explain how to copy accidentally archived document (if you have deleted it from everywhere – document library, recycle bin etc. in your live site) back to its original location. This has nothing to do with Records Center but I have added this just to give you an idea of copying document from one location to the other. Right click on document to be copied and click “Send To => Other Location”

· Provide the destination URL.

Destination document library or folder:

http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/TestSC/ProDL

Also you can change the document name if you wish.

· Click “OK” button at the bottom.

· Document successfully copied to “Project Document Library” for Test Site Collection.

1. Create a new document library. I am going to create document library for project documents.

2. As shown below, I have named this document library as “ProDL” and entered “Project Document Library” as description.

Note: It is a good idea to abbreviate your list or library name when you create them. This will help in keeping SharePoint URLs as short as possible. You can change the name of the document library to whatever you want later on by going to document library settings. Please keep going to learn how?

3. Go to the document library settings of document library – “ProDL”, which you created in previous step. Click on “Title, description and navigation” link under General Settings

4. You can change name here to whatever you want. I have changed it to full name – “Project Document Library” and that is what it will display as name for this document library in SharePoint but the URL for this document library will still use the abbreviated name – “ProDL”, which we entered at the time of creating it.

5. As shown below, name appears as “Project Document Library” in SharePoint site.

6. Click “Advanced settings” link under General Settings

7. Select “Yes” for “Allow management of content types?” as shown below.

8. After you finish step 7, you will be able to see “Add from existing site content types” link under Content Types. Click this link - “Add from existing site content types”

9. Select “Link to a Document” content type and add it.

10. After step 9, you should be able to see “Link to a Document” in “New” menu of your document library.

11. Click “Link to a Document” under “New” menu.

12. Enter “Document Name” and “Document URL” for the existing document at other location (in another document library).

13. Here is how “Project Document Library” looks like after adding one document and one “Link to a Document” content.

Note: Always use “Link to a Document” content type instead of adding the same document to another document library or the document library of another site.

How to add link to the document to Announcements list?

1. Go to Announcement Settings => List Settings as shown below.

2. Click “Add from existing site columns” link under Columns.

3. Select “Web Page” column and add it. Please make sure you have selected “Add to all content types” and “Add to default view” as shown below.

4. That’s it. You are done. Now you can add link to a document when you add announcement items to Announcement list.

5. Here is how Announcement list looks like after adding announcement items with link to a document.

Finally let’s talk about Meta data for folder content type. Never use folders, always use views. It is NOT recommended to use folders in document library or any other list but there are certain situations where you may want to add folders and then Meta data for those folders.

How can you add Meta data to folders?

1. Go to Site Actions => Site Settings => Modify All Site Settings

2. Click “Site content types” link under Galleries.

3. Click “Create” link on top left corner.

4. We are going to create folder content type for defining Meta data for folder contents. Please select the settings as shown below. You can add this new content type to “Custom Content Types” by choosing it under “Existing group” or you can create a new group.

5. Go to the document library where you want to define Meta data for folder contents. Click Settings => Document Library Settings.

6. Click “Advanced settings” under General Settings

7. Select “Yes” for “Allow management of content types?” as shown below.

8. After step 7, you will be able to see Content Types in document library settings. Click “Add from existing site content types” link under Content Types.

9. Select “Folder Content” content type, which we have created in previous steps and add it.

10. As shown below, “Folder Content” is now added to your document library. Click “Folder Content” link under Content Types.

11. Add appropriate columns for your folder contents. I will add couple of columns by clicking “Add from existing site or list columns” link under Columns.

12. I have added “Category” and “Release Date” columns as shown below.

13. Now, it will allow me add Meta data whenever I create a new folder in this document library. Following screen shots show how to add Meta data to existing folders in your document library.

14. Right click on folder and select “Edit Properties”.

15. Select “Folder Content” (which is what we have created in previous steps), if you have more than one content type listed in drop down menu.

16. Enter Meta data as shown below.

17. Here is how document library looks like after adding Meta data for folders.

1. Create a custom content type for your test site. I am going to use “SCTest” top level site (site collection) for the demo. Go to Site Actions => Site Settings and click on “Site Content Types” link under Galleries category.

2. Click “Create” link on the top left corner of Site Content Type Gallery.

3. Create a new site content type as shown below. I have chosen Document content type for simplicity. You can add this content type to “Custom Content Types” by selecting it for Group category but I have created a new group called “Test Group” to add this new content type. Please note that I have named new custom content type as “Project Release Documents”

4. You will see following screen on adding a new custom content type. Click “Add from existing site columns” link under “Columns” category.

5. Add appropriate columns for this new content type. I have chosen few as shown below.

6. This is how a new custom content type looks like after adding few existing site columns.

7. I am creating a new document library for “Test Site Collection” (SCTest) to use this custom content type.

8. As usual, I have used shortest possible name for my document library to keep URL for this document library as short as possible. You can always change the “Name” field later on by going to Title, description and navigation under General Settings of document library settings.

9. Go to Settings => Document Library Settings.

10. This is an additional step. I have modified the document library name from TCTL (to keep URL short) to Test Content Type Library as by going to Title, description and navigation under General Settings

11. Click “Advanced Settings” link under General Settings category.

12. Select “Yes” for “Allow management of content types?” and click “OK”.

13. Select “Add from existing site content types” link under Content Types.

14. Select a new custom content type – “Project Release Documents” which you have created in previous steps as shown below.

15. This is an additional step – I am changing order for content types and making “Project Release Documents” as default content type. Select “Change new button order and default content type” link under Content Types.

16. Change the order and select number “1” for “Project Release Document” content type to make it default content type for this document library.

17. So finally content types and columns for your document library will look something like this. Please adjust your column order by clicking on default view – “All Documents”.

18. Now, something very interesting…how content types work with MS Office 2003. Well, keep reading…

As you can see from the screen capture, “Project Release Documents” is the default content type for your document library. Click New menu and select “Project Release Documents” to add a new document (content) to your document library.

19. You will see following message on your screen, if you have MS Office 2003 installed on your machine. Click “OK”

20. It will allow you to use MS Office 2003 (Word 2003) to create a new document. As you have already noticed MS Office 2003 will not allow you add/edit metadata in Word application itself. Add some text to this document and click “Save” icon.

21. Now, you can add those metadata properties for your document however I have noticed that couple of document properties is still missing…I don’t know why. I need to check it out later but anyways it will allow you to add metadata properties for your document using MS Office 2003 and that is what is more important.

22. To add those missing metadata properties, I am going to right click on document in my document library and select “Edit Properties” link.

23. Adding those missing metadata properties, which I could not see in MS Office 2003 for some reasons.

24. Finally here is the document in document library which was created using custom content type and MS Office 2003.

Now, here is the scenario for those unlucky people who can not work with content types using MS Office 2003.

Note: This site belongs to different SharePoint test environment than the previous one.

1. I have created ProjDocs document library and it has “Test Content Type” as default content type.

2. Attempt to create a new document in ProjDocs document library. Same message will pop up, which is shown is previous screen capture before opening MS Office 2003 (Word 2003) for creating a new document.

3. Unfortunately when you try to save this document, it will give you following error message. When you (keep) clicking on either “Yes” or “No” button, it will finally add this new document to ProjDocs but all metadata properties will be missing and you can not add metadata properties even by editing properties in SharePoint.

4. Document “Test2” was added.

5. Trying to edit metadata properties by right clicking “Test2” document in ProjDocs document library and selecting “Edit Properties” link.

6. Unfortunately it does NOT allow adding those missing metadata properties.

7. Here is the work around. If you want to create a new document, simply upload a new document and it will allow you to add those metadata properties but if you want to edit metadata properties of existing document unfortunately you have to download that document to your local computer first and then upload it back to edit/update its metadata properties. Here is the screen capture for uploading a new document to ProjDocs document library.

8. Enter metadata properties for this document and you are done!

9. Here is how ProjDocs document library looks like after uploading those two documents.

Note: Error: 'length' is null or not an object is environment specific. It happened in our environment after we installed one of the hot fixes (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935958) for resolving the other issue.

Here is the hot fix for those who are unable to work with content types using MS Office 2003.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292

This hot fix also resolves issues to work with multiple content types using MS Office 2003.

Note: I have taken screen captures from two separate SharePoint environments.

Step 1-24 are from the enviornment, that does NOT have http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935958 hot fix applied and we can work with content types using MS Office 2003 without any issues.

Step 1-9 are from the environment, that has http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935958 hot fix applied and for some reasons we are unable to work with content types using MS Office 2003 after applying that hot fix. We have to apply http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292 hot fix to resolve errors explained in these steps but we will have MS Office 2007 available very soon so we have NOT applied it yet.

Note: MS Exchange or your mail distribution system (Majordomo in our case) must be configured to route all emails that suffix with @sharepoint.hq.MyDomainName.com to C:\Inetpub\mailroot\Drop folder of SMTP Virtual Server installed on MOSSServer1.

10. Safe E-Mail Servers: Accept mail from all e-mail servers is selected.

That's it, incoming e-mail feature for MOSS 2007 is configured...Congratulations!

Now, Let's talk about testing this feature...(Please keep in mind that we have Unix based Majordomo mail distribution system in our organization) Most of the time it worked fine for receiving e-mails in SharePoint however we stopped receiving e-mails after 2-3 days of testing. We were unable to telnet into server on port 25. SharePoint server(with Virutal SMTP Server installed) was not listening on port 25. We checked “Connection” property under “Access” tab of SMTP Virtual Server properties and noticed that SMTP server is accepting connection only from 196.X.X.123 server however we configured to receive e-mails from any e-mail server. So We removed that IP Address (196.X.X.123) from the “Computers” tab and set connection settings to “All except the list below” by keeping “Computers” tab empty. After this change, we started receiving e-mails in SharePoint as normal but question was how this change was occurred and who made changes to “Connection” settings? and here is the answer :-)

While testing incoming e-mail feature in SharePoint, we set “Accept mails from these safe e-mail servers” with the above IP Address (196.X.X.123) and that changed “Connection” settings of SMTP Virtual Server in IIS. This was the root cause of this issue. So be very careful when you make any configuration changes to your incoming e-mail settings.

As I mentioned before I am pretty excited about announcing this feature in our SharePoint production enviornment however here are the few things what I am concerned about,

How can we manage undelivered emails?

1. What happens to emails, which are sent to wrong email addresses? SharePoint logs refer that as Unknown Alias. How does SMTP server handles it? Is there anyway we(or SharePoint Admin email account) can get notified for undelivered email messages? We tried to set email account in SMTP server properties for Undelivered emails but that didn't help. We would like sender to receive bounce back email when email is sent to wrong email address or at least SharePoint administrator account get notified when email is not delivered to SharePoint.

2. We have Distribution List set for different groups. Let's say for example, dl-spadmins has all email accounts of SharePoint administrators. If we add email address for SharePoint document library in this DL and then send email to dl-spadmins, all members of that DL receive email but SharePoint document library does NOT receive this email. Is there anyway to troubleshoot this issue?

Why we want to add email address for SharePoint document library to Distribution List (DL)? Because we can not find those contacts in SharePoint even though we have configured Directory Management Service for incoming email feature in SharePoint and that is because we have Majordomo mail distribution system instead of MS Exchange (I believe this is the reason, we can not find those contacts in MS Outlook but I am not sure) So if we add contacts for important SharePoint document libraries to DL of relevant department (Site Collection), anybody can send email to DL, which will send email/document to all the members of DL as well as SharePoint document library and nobody needs to remember email address of SharePoint document library. All they need to do is, just send an email to DL and it will reach both the members of DL and SharePoint document library, which these members are going to access later.

When you add email address of email enabled Document Library to Distribution List(DL), permissions for email must be set to "Accept e-mail messages from any sender" in order to receive email in SharePoint and yes, It shows "System Account" for those messages or the documents received in Document Library. This is already been discussed in this Blog and unfortunately we are still struggling for an appropriate solution. If you set "Save all attachments in folders grouped by e-mail sender" , it creates a new folder for each new sender and then add attachments to that folder however it still shows "System Account" under "Modified By" field but at least it gives you an idea (by looking at the folder name) who sent that email/documents to your Document Library.

If you set "Accept e-mail messages based on document library permissions" then the email will not be received in SharePoint.

One more thing...

If you set "Accept e-mail messages based on document library permissions" option for your Document Library and if somebody, who doesn't have permissions on your Document Library sends an email to your Document Library, it never arrives in your Document Library. Also Sender will not receive any bounce back. So Sender assumes that he has successfully sent an email to your Document Library and you never receive it. Now, this issue might be specific to Majordomo(Unix based) email distribution system and may work well with MS Exchange configuration. I have tested this in my Lab with MS Exchange and I believe it sends the bounce back message if you don't have permissions on the Document Library but I am not 100% sure. :-(

Finally here is the matrix for reusing same contact name for same library or different library in SharePoint,



References:
http://www.combined-knowledge.com/Downloads%202007.htm
http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=31

Back in September 2007, we upgraded SharePoint Portal Server 2003(SPS 2003) to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). For some unknown reasons, after finalizing upgrade to MOSS 2007, We have MOSS 2007 environment depending on configuration database of SPS 2003. We are unable to create a new site collection/site if we detach old SPS 2003 configuration database.

One of the best possible way to fix this issue is to reconfigure existing SharePoint 2007 environment and get rid of both old SPS 2003 configuration database and old MOSS 2007 configuration database, which was created as a part of migration to MOSS 2007. We can also think of creating a new web application (Portal Site) and move content databases from original web application to a new web application however we did not want to take any risk of inviting new issues without thoroughly testing it in our MOSS 2007 stage environment, which is almost identical to our MOSS 2007 production environment. I will talk about these two approaches for fixing old (SPS 2003) configuration database dependency issue some other day but my intension of mentioning this issue is to talk about how to make Office 2003 web parts and components to work if in case you upgrade or reconfigure your MOSS 2007 environment.

As I mentioned before, the best possible way to resolve SPS 2003 configuration database depedency issue in MOSS 2007 is to reconfigure MOSS 2007 and that is what we tried first in our MOSS 2007 stage environment. SharePoint stage environment was upgraded to MOSS 2007 the same way as production environment and stage environment also has SPS 2003 configuration database dependency issue. So we reconfigured SharePoint stage environment successfully (I will talk about it in detail some other day) and we noticed that we were unable to install Office 2003 web parts and components after this. We are still using MS Office 2003 company wide. So the only option, we were left with was to reinstall Office 2003 web parts without installing WSS 2.0/SPS 2003. We tried to install Office 2003 web parts and we received following error:

"You must install Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 before you install Office 2003 Web Parts and Components."

We found following KB Articles, which explain more about this error message and its work around.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929320
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927602
Here is the link for downloading Office 2003 Add-in for MOSS 2007,

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=38be67a5-2056-46a1-84b1-337ffb549c5c&displaylang=en

So if you upgrade SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007 or if you reconfigure existing MOSS 2007 environment and if you want to reinstall Office 2003 web parts (to use it with MS Office 2003, I know nobody would personally prefer it over MS Office 2007 but if your company is still using MS Office 2003 with MOSS 2007), you can download and install Office 2003 Add-in from above link, which will allow you to use Office 2003 web parts in MOSS 2007.

Thanks to Microsoft for releasing this Add-in on time otherwise we would require to start from the scratch, meaning refresh OS on the servers, install SPS 2003 and then upgrade it back to MOSS 2007 just to have Office 2003 web parts working in MOSS 2007.

First of all, let me make this clear that I am not a good SharePoint Developer but I have tried my best to achieve this programmatically.

Few days back, we decided to outsource SharePoint support. The new support professionals will be responsible for troubleshooting basic SharePoint issues and if require, they should be able to provide the end user with the contact information of particular site collection administrator.

Basic SharePoint issues such as - Request for creating a new sub site under particular site collection(Top Level Site or Departmental Site), Unable to access SharePoint, Unable to edit SharePoint contents, Unable to access lists, libraries etc.

We have site collection created for each department and each site collection has one or more site collection administrators, who are responsible for managing the site collection, they belong to. If site collection administrators are unable to address the end user's issue, the request will be forwarded to SharePoint Farm Administrators - I am the part of that team.

Now as we decided to outsource SharePoint support, we had following requirements:

1. Create a new AD account, which will be used by all the support professionals to access any site with "Administrator" privileges in the SharePoint server farm. Lets say this account is "domain\spsupport"
2. If any support professional is unable to resolve the issue and he/she wants to direct end user's request to the site collection administrator, he/she should be able to access any site collection with "Administrator" privileges to provide name and contact information of site collection administrator to the end user. Support professional should use "domain\spsupport" account for this purpose. They can also use this account to find out the content owner information and forward permissions requests/issues to the content owner - e.g. If somebody needs access to a specific document library of a site or when somebody request specific permissions to lists/libraries of a site.
3. Finally make "domain\spsupport" account as site collection administrator for all the site collections in the SharePoint server farm.

We have almost 300 site collections and adding "domain\spsupport" account as site collection administrator to each site collection using Central Administration site or Site Settings does not seem to be an appropriate solution. So I decided to write a simple C# application which will output stsadm commands for adding "domain\spsupport" account as site collection administrator to each site collection in the farm.



Here is the code,

Note:

1. This code assumes that you have all the site collections created under "sites/"
2. This is a console application so you have to use it the way you use stsadm command.
3. This code will output stsadm commands. You may run it as follows to generate batch file for all the stsadm commands,

AddSCAdmin.exe -url http://sharepoint.domain.com -user domain\spsupport > addSCAdmin.bat

4. Finally you can run addSCAdmin.bat file, which will execute all the stsadm commands for adding domain\spsupport account as site collection administrator.

5. addSCAdmin.bat file should look like this,

stsadm -o siteowner -url http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/SC1 -secondarylogin domain\spsupport
stsadm -o siteowner -url http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/SC2 -secondarylogin domain\spsupport
stsadm -o siteowner -url http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/SC3 -secondarylogin domain\spsupport
stsadm -o siteowner -url http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/ITSiteCollection -secondarylogin domain\spsupport
stsadm -o siteowner -url http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/MktSC -secondarylogin domain\spsupport
...............................
...................
........


Disclaimer: Please do not use this code unless you have tested it in test environment first. I will not be responsible for the outcome of this code.

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.StsAdmin;

namespace AddSCAdmin
{
    class AddSCAdminClass
    {              
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            AddSCAdminClass sc = new AddSCAdminClass();
            sc.addSiteCollectionAdmin(args);
        }

        private void addSiteCollectionAdmin(string[] args)
        {
            try
            {
                string mode = "";
                string virtualserver = "";
                string user = "";

                // get command line arguments
                if ((args.Length == 0) || (args.Length == 1 && (args[0] == "-?" || args[0] == "-help")))
                {
                    displayOutput("", mode);
                    displayOutput("AddSCAdmin.exe -url VirtualServerURL -user domainuser [-quiet]", mode);
                    displayOutput("", mode);
                    displayOutput("  -url VirtualServerURL: Full URL of virtual server starting with http://", mode);
                    return;
                }

                // loop through command line arguments
                for (int i = 0; i < args.Length; i++)
                {
                    if (args[i] == "-url")
                    {
                        virtualserver = args[i+1];
                        i++;
                        // make sure url parameter starts with http:
                        if (!virtualserver.StartsWith("http:"))
                        {
                            throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("url parameter should start with http://");
                        }
                    }
                    else if (args[i] == "-user")
                    {
                        user = args[i + 1];
                        i++;
                    }
                      
                    else if (args[i] == "-quiet")
                    {
                        mode = "quiet";
                        continue;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        displayOutput(String.Format("Unrecognized switch {0}", args[i]),mode);
                        return;
                    }
                }

                // connect to web application on virtualserver
                SPWebApplication webApp = SPWebApplication.Lookup(new Uri(virtualserver));
                // create site collections object for web application
                SPSiteCollection siteCollections = webApp.Sites;

                string SCUrl = "";
                int SCCount = 0;
                // loop through site collections
                foreach (SPSite siteCollection in siteCollections)
                {
                    //site = new SPSite(siteCollection.Url);
                    SCUrl = siteCollection.Url;
                    if (SCUrl.Contains("sites"))
                    {
                        SCCount++;
                        Console.WriteLine("stsadm -o siteowner -url " + siteCollection.Url +" -secondarylogin "+user);
                    }
                }
                //Console.WriteLine("Total Site Collection: " + SCCount);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
            }
        }

        private void displayOutput(string text, string mode)
        {
            if (mode != "quiet")
            {
                Console.WriteLine(text);
            }
        }
    }
}


I have created C# project for this solution. Please send me an email if you want the zip file for the whole project.

I hope this will help few people for such specific need.