Rez's Blog Spot: Posts

Exporting the Term Store in SharePoint 2010 not possible through GUI?

Noorez Khamis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:32:14 GMT

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I have been playing around with the Term Store in the SharePoint 2010 Beta and I really like what I see. Now, we don’t have to keep creating these root level lookup lists or use another database or site collection to house meta-data columns and values that are similar across all web applications and site collections. However, I’m still running into a problem.

I restored my content database on another server and I’m assuming the term store sits on another database somewhere so I went to try and export the term store however, it doesn’t seem like it’s possible? Perhaps it’s just a beta bug as there is a way to import it:

Maybe there is a Powershell command to export the term store as well but I haven’t found it.

I surely hope Microsoft fixes this in the release version as I don’t want to have to be manually creating the term store in each environment.

Update: Now that SharePoint has RTM’d, there is a new tool on codeplex that will export the term store (thanks to a blog reader who commented!):

http://termsetimporter.codeplex.com/

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,SharePoint,Term Store,Metadata

Category: SharePoint

Published: 11/30/2009 10:00 PM

Tags: PowerShell, SharePoint, Term Store, Metadata

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Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 14– Document Sets

Noorez Khamis — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 03:36:44 GMT

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Overview

Document sets are a group of related documents that can be packaged together and then managed as a single entity. [1]
Think zip or compressed folder but they are not actually compressed and not considered a folder.
Used to manage multi-document work products. For example, an RFP or RFP Response might be composed of many documents, like spreadsheets, appendices, etc… You might want to group these together as one entity rather than in a folder.
SharePoint allows you to:

Automatically create a set of default documents when a specific document set is created. For example, if your organization has default templates for an RFP composition, you can have these automatically within your document set.
Define the content types allowed within your document set (i.e. invoices, expense forms, etc…)
Synchronization of meta-data for all documents within your document set
Allow workflows for the document set itself rather than all the individual documents within the document set (i.e. approve all of these documents)
Have and customize a welcome page for your document set (i.e. so you can describe the templates in your document set or even describe the document set purpose
Have versioning on the entire Document Set! This is huge, you can roll back and view previous version of document sets

Activated via a Site Collection Feature under Site Actions –> Site Settings –> Site Collection Features:

Or activated by PowerShell via: Enable-SPFeature –id “DocumentSet” -url “”

Upon activation, you create a new content type based upon the Parent Document Set content type and add that content type to your library.

Some things to be aware of:

You cannot group by content types on views in document sets
Folders and metadata navigation are not supported

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

1. Introduction
2. Document IDs
3. Managed Metadata Service (Term Store)
4. In-Place Records Declarations
5. Site Collection Auditing
6. Content Organizer
7. Compliance Details
8. Hold and eDiscovery
9. Content Type Publishing Hubs
10. Multi-Level Retention
11. Virtual folders and metadata based navigation
12. Scaling
13. Send To...
14. Document Sets

[1] http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/introduction-to-document-sets-HA101782466.aspx

Technorati Tags: Document Sets,SharePoint 2010,Records Management

Published: 4/12/2012 8:36 PM

Tags: Document Sets, SharePoint 2010, Records Management

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Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 3 – Managed Metadata Service - Term Store

Noorez Khamis — Sun, 02 May 2010 16:26:16 GMT

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Overview

The Managed Metadata service is new in SharePoint 2010 and consists of a feature called the Term Store Management Tool
This service can be accessed via Central Administration –> Manage Service Applications –> Managed Metadata Services or via a the site settings in the SharePoint site (Site Actions –> Site Settings –> Term store management)
The Term Store (or Taxonomy Term Store) is a hierarchical collection of managed terms that you centrally managed and define, and then use as attributes for list items in SharePoint
A term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with a list item
A term set is a collection of related terms
You can specify that a SharePoint list column must contain a term from a specific term set
Managed metadata refers to the fact that terms and term sets are managed independently from site columns within SharePoint sites themselves
- i.e. Create a new column on a list called “Department” and associate it with a “Corporate Departments” Term Set –> Column Settings
  - Corporate Departments –> Term Set name
    - IT –> Term name
    - Marketing –> Term name
    - Etc… –> Term name

Terms can be divided into two types:
- Managed terms are usually pre-defined and can only be created by users with appropriate permissions. They are often organized into a hierarchy.
- Enterprise keywords are words or phrases that have been added to SharePoint list items as part of a custom keyword column. All enterprise keywords are part of a single, non-hierarchical term set called the keyword set.

Both managed terms and enterprise keywords are stored in a database referred to as a term store
- The default database name in SharePoint looks like “Managed Metadata Service_GUID”
Each list has a setting call Enterprise Metadata and Keywords Settings where these settings can be turned on or off

So what are some benefits of using the Term Store?

More consistent use of terminology across the enterprise
Allows the building of an enterprise taxonomy for all your SharePoint Sites
Better and more consistent search results (less synonyms)
Metadata is dynamic (better than list choice field) as choices are only managed in one location rather than each list
Do not want to use choice columns to supply those values because when an update needs to be made, they will have to manually go to different locations and update the choice values
Lookup columns are not an option as the terms need to be shared across site collections
Entering terms is easier as new suggestion managed metadata selection control is used with Ajax-like type ahead and drop down functionality

Entering enterprise keywords allows users to select from existing or create their own keywords, and has option of showing tagged items on user’s My Site
Allow users build an organization’s taxonomy on the fly or have it predefined in advance

API Reference (Microsoft.SharePoint.Taxonomy Namespace)

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://devsp2010:1001"))

   //Instantiates a new TaxonomySession for the current site.

   TaxonomySession session = new TaxonomySession(site);

   //Instantiates the connection "Managed Metadata Service Connection" for session

   TermStore termStore = session.TermStores["Managed Metadata Service Connection"];

   // Creates and commits a Group object, a TermSet object and several Term objects

   Group group1 = termStore.CreateGroup("Rez Term Sets");

   TermSet termSet1 = group1.CreateTermSet("Corporate Departments");

   Term term1 = termSet1.CreateTerm("IT", 1033);

   Term term2 = termSet1.CreateTerm("Marketing", 1033);

   termStore.CommitAll();

   // Sets a description and some alternate labels term1 and commits

   term1.SetDescription("Name of information tech dept", 1033);

   term1.CreateLabel("Information Technology", 1033, false);

   term1.CreateLabel("ITech", 1033, false);

   termStore.CommitAll();

   // Deletes an unnecessary term

   term2.Delete();

   termStore.CommitAll();

Other features of the Term Store

Supports multilingualism!
Terms sets can be managed by individuals or by owners of the part of the taxonomy
Create your own taxonomies
Taxonomy structure tree view
Taxonomy store (centralized service)
Modifications that can be done by end users to the taxonomy, depending or rights.
Copy term sets (taxonomy branch)
Move branch or term
Deprecate term, merge terms, reuse term sets
Specify owners and security for term sets that will control governance for taxonomy
Specify terms that are available for tagging or make them just grouping categories for term sets

So… why is this important for Records Management??

Consistent meta-data across the organization drives records management!
Rules based on consistent meta-data allow better categorization, search and storage within a Records Center
Allow certain ‘approved’ terms from a central list to be used as metadata in libraries across a few site collections

Note: If you get the following error when trying to use the managed term set when creating a new column:

“The required feature is not enabled for this column type.”:

Just use this PowerShell command to activate the feature:

Enable-SPFeature -id "73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b
0604c" –Url

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee424402%28office.14%29.aspx
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/document-management/overview-sharepoint-2010-metadata-and-taxonomy-management-006015.php
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee832800%28office.14%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556337%28v=office.14%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee559337%28v=office.14%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.taxonomy(office.14).aspx

Technorati Tags: Records Management,SharePoint 2010,Enterprise Keywords,Managed Metadata Services,Term Store,Taxonomy

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/2/2010 8:23 AM

Tags: Records Management, SharePoint 2010, Enterprise Keywords, Managed Metadata Services, Term Store, Taxonomy

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 10 – Multi Level Retention

Noorez Khamis — Tue, 18 May 2010 03:15:18 GMT

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Overview

Multiple stage retention policies allow specification of the entire lifecycle of a document as one policy (e.g. review Contracts every year, and delete after 7 years)
Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 requiring records to be kept for a certain amount of time
and you can set review periods for records in between the time they are declared and when they are destroyed
SharePoint 2010 has the ability to create hierarchal folder structures and manage retention at each folder within the hierarchy (while providing the ability to inherit retention settings from parent folders)
Retention policies can be set up by content type, library or folder
By default, retention is enabled within a SharePoint site collection but there is a feature that can allow override of retention schedules on folders or libraries which is activated as a Site Collection Feature:
- Enable-SPFeature -id LocationBasedPolicy -url “”

Retention policies are created in Site Settings --> Site Collection policies or Content Type Settings/List Settings --> Information management policy settings
The OOTB Actions when a stage occurs include:
- Moving the item to the Recycle Bin
- Permanently Delete the item
- Transfer to another location
- Invoke a workflow
- Skip to the next stage in the policy
- Declare the item as a record
- Delete all previous drafts of the items
- Delete all previous versions
The settings also allow a user to schedule recurrence on retention stages

API Reference – (Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement. InformationPolicy Namespace)

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://devsp2010:1000"))

    using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())

        SPList list = web.Lists["Shared Documents"];

        SPContentType ctype = list.ContentTypes["RezDocument"];

        if (Policy.CanHavePolicy(ctype))

            PolicyCatalog pc = new PolicyCatalog(site);

            var policy = (from p in pc.PolicyList.OfType()

                          where p.Name == "expireme" select p).First();

            Policy.CreatePolicy(ctype, policy);

            Policy.ProcessChanges(site);

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263464(office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.recordsmanagement.informationpolicy(office.14).aspx
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepointdevelopment/thread/36e1b9cb-ed80-428a-8bba-9c8c939d176d

Technorati Tags: Records Management,SharePoint 2010,Retention

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/17/2010 8:15 PM

Tags: Records Management, SharePoint 2010, Retention

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Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 9 – Content Type Publishing Hubs

Noorez Khamis — Thu, 13 May 2010 04:57:02 GMT

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Content Type Publishing Hub is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 whereby it allows a SharePoint administrator to have a central location where they can manage and publish content types from across all their SharePoint web applications
Other web applications can subscribe to the content type publishing hub and pull down published content types from the hub and receive updates on the published content types
Activated as a Site Collection Feature:
- Enable-SPFeature -id ContentTypeHub -url “”

Notice how it is called the Content Type Syndication Hub in the feature?
- Just like RSS, Microsoft wants to give a feel of subscribing, pulling and pushing of content types
Content type hub is available to SharePoint web applications via the Metadata Service Application
As long as the web applications use same Metadata Service Application, the content types will be pushed to those web applications that are subscribed to it

Configuring the Content Type Hub
Configuring the content hub is a little tricky and not very intuitive. Here are some steps on how to do it.

Create the web application and the root site which you want it to be the Hub
Enable content type syndication feature
In the Managed Metadata Service Application (Central Admin --> Application Settings --> Service Applications) properties (IN THE RIBBON), you can set the Content Type Hub URL
In the Managed Metadata Service Connection (Central Admin --> Application Settings --> Service Applications) properties (IN THE RIBBON), we explicitly tell to consume content types from the hub

To Publish the Content Type to the Subscribers

Once the content type hub web application has been configured, you should see the “Manage publishing for this content type” option under each of the Site Content Type settings and have the ability to publish it.

SharePoint admins have the option to publish, unpublish or republish the content type they have selected.

**Note: By default, the hub is controlled by 2 timer jobs. In order to receive published content types immediately, run the following two timer jobs:

1) Content Type Hub
2) Content Type Subscriber (of web application which is going to receive the content types updates)

After running these two timer jobs, the content types should be published and available to the subscribing sites

Published content types can be checked by going to Site Settings --> Site Collection Administration --> Content Type Publishing, here you have the option to refresh all content types, view any errors with content publishing and view the subscribed content types.

So what are some reasons for content type publishing hubs for Records Management?

Globally used content types that are controlled in one location.
This removes duplicate tagged documents and ensures consistent meta-data
Company has two web applications that have a set of content types that are the same (could be employee profile, real estate listing etc)
Company would like to have a central location where the content types can be created and pushed out to the above two site collections seamlessly and without having to make any modifications to separate site collection content types

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://www.chakkaradeep.com/post/SharePoint-2010-Content-Type-Hubs-e28093-Publish-and-Subscribe-to-Content-Types.aspx
http://www.whatsthepointofsharing.com/2009/11/28/how-to-publish-and-subscribe-to-content-types-in-sharepoint-2010/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spcontenttype(office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spcontenttypecollection(office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spcontenttypeusage(office.14).aspx

Technorati Tags: Records Management,Content Type Publishing Hubs,SharePoint 2010,Managed Metadata Services

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/12/2010 9:57 PM

Tags: Records Management, Content Type Publishing Hubs, SharePoint 2010, Managed Metadata Services

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 8 – Hold and eDiscovery

Noorez Khamis — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:00:06 GMT

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New feature in SharePoint 2010 whereby the use of electronic discovery allows records managers to find and lock down content related to tracking external actions like litigation, investigation or audit

For example, if a company is sued about how they use the word “eDiscovery”, the Records Manager needs to find and process all content that contains the words “eDiscovery” or “electronic discovery”
Allows discovery of documents by all metadata associated with the document and automatically places them “on hold” and/or copies the results to a specific location
In the US, "Federal Rules of Civil Procedure" governs the request of information in litigation, so it is now easy to be able to produce electronic data when requested in a court
It is activated as a Site Feature:
- Enable-SPFeature -id hold -url “”

Processing holds is done by a timer job called “Hold Processing and Reporting” on the web application
- Manually run this job to accelerate (it is run on a daily basis by default)
Holds can be set manually as well via the Compliance Details dialog invoked from the ECB menu

Pad lock added to list item when on hold

Holds are found using the search index and you have the ability to preview results as well as choose the site you would like to search for the relevant documents

Records Management applications

Used in scenarios involving law suits and litigation
- In the US, corporations have Civil Rule requirements for providing records.
- Failure to produce documents in legal cases results in stiff penalties.
- There is still a lot of confusion on how these rules are applied and it depends on what policies are in place and how much risk your exposed to.
- What it means is that you need to be able to find the records in a set period of time, place a hold on them and not allow them to be deleted.
- Audit makes sure you can check if they are edited or deleted.
In the process of electronic discovery, data of all types can serve as evidence.
- This can include text, images, calendar files, databases, spreadsheets, audio files, animation, Web sites and computer programs.
Holds and eDiscovery features of SharePoint can be used to prevent spoliation of data and compliance with various laws (for example, holding financial records for 7 years or putting a hold on a document because of a litigation).
Important because you can now search & place holds across farms, whereas before you could have only 1 records center in a farm. Not very useful.

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557329%28office.14%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554902(office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557262(office.14).aspx

Technorati Tags: Records Management,SharePoint 2010,Holds,eDiscovery,Compliance Details,Litigation

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/9/2010 8:00 PM

Tags: Records Management, SharePoint 2010, Holds, eDiscovery, Compliance Details, Litigation

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 7 – Compliance Details

Noorez Khamis — Sat, 08 May 2010 13:36:24 GMT

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A new feature in SharePoint 2010 is that all SharePoint list items and library items now have Compliance Details settings which indicate all the important business information about the document
They are located in the ECB drop down menu (Edit Control Block)

These settings allow SharePoint administrators to ensure all information about the record in one place including:
- Viewing name, content type and folder path of document
- Viewing any retention policies on the document (and their recurrence)
- Exempting documents from policies
- Holding documents
- Declaring documents as records
- Generating audit log reports

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

Reference

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/document-management/the-scoop-sharepoint-2010-records-management-005948.php

Technorati Tags: Compliance Details,SharePoint 2010,Records Management,ECB

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/8/2010 6:33 AM

Tags: Compliance Details, SharePoint 2010, Records Management, ECB

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Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 6 – Content Organizer

Noorez Khamis — Sat, 08 May 2010 01:54:37 GMT

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Overview

In SharePoint 2007, content organization was largely a matter of upload decisions based on the individual
Administrators could help guide, but ultimately, was up to contributors to decide where the content ended up
New Content Organizer in SharePoint 2010 allows routing decisions to be centrally organized
This feature takes the decisions out of the hands of users and ensures that items are well organized
Users are guided to enter the appropriate metadata rather than being allowed to dump documents wherever they like
Routing rules from SharePoint 2007 are now replaced by content organizer,
New SharePoint feature available in all document libraries.
Used to route documents to the right folder based on content types and any other metadata that you require.
Activated as a Site Feature:
- Enable-SPFeature -id DocumentRouting -url “”

Automatic routing of documents to the right place in SharePoint enables administrators to automatically enforce rules on content submitted
End users don’t have to be aware of which document library document should go into
Content Organizer creates a drop off library where all documents to be routed should be placed
SharePoint moves documents that were submitted by users to appropriate place, based on:
- Rules for content rerouting
- Metadata
- Content Types
- Property based conditions
Content organizer allows application of multiple rules
Use the priority option to give one rule more importance over another
Has the ability to automatically create subfolders based upon metadata (i.e. folder for each year)

When content organizer rules are pointing to document libraries and a user tries to upload a document to them, SharePoint 2010 will redirect them to the drop off library for routing
Content organizer settings allow rules to send documents to sites outside of the current site collection
Settings also allow versioning via unique characters rather than SharePoint versioning and preserve all properties and auditing on the original document that was routed

E-mail Integration with Content Organizer

Feature that allows a site to use content organizer to route email messages as well
Activated as a Site Feature:
- Enable-SPFeature -id EMailRouting -url “”

On activation a new hidden list called “Submitted E-mail Records” is created that is configured through Content Organizer Settings

Content type for the content organizer email rule is “E-mail Submission”
You can see below how you can have property based rules based on commonly used email fields like to, from, cc, subject, etc…

**Note: You need to have incoming email configured in Central Admin --> System Settings --> Configure incoming e-mail settings and you need to have E-mail configured at the library level

***Note: What's wierd is that this email submission list is of an announcements type list and the items go in there as an announcement content type. Thanks to some colleagues that pointed out to me that there seems to be a bug in RTM where even if you have all the configurations set up, e-mails don't get routed to the content organizer correctly or the rules just don't seem to fire, they just seem to stay in that list. I'm not sure yet that it is a bug and if the latest Cumulative Updates from Microsoft fix it. Someone please let me know.

So, why are content type publishing hubs important for Records Management?

It’s now an Enterprise level feature that allows you to manage content across site collections
Finalized document can be copied to a specific mandated folder in the ‘Approved’ Document library based on metadata properties without any user intervention.

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee558288%28office.14%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556829(office.14).aspx
http://dotnetmafia.sys-con.com/node/1324338
http://aiim.typepad.com/aiim_blog/2010/02/sharepoint.html

Technorati Tags: Content Organizer,SharePoint 2010,Records Management,Email organizer

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/6/2010 8:08 PM

Tags: Content Organizer, SharePoint 2010, Records Management, Email organizer

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 5 – Site Collection Auditing

Noorez Khamis — Fri, 07 May 2010 02:54:19 GMT

Body:

Overview

Configured under Site Settings --> Site collection audit settings
Ability to generate a customized audit report about an individual record, item, column, content type, search or permissions
Ability to specify events to audit such as open, edit, check out/in, move, copy, delete & restore

Predefined reports in excel format under Site Settings --> Audit log reports

Records Management Scenario(s):

Heavy audits are required on items that have been declared a record, for legal reasons (i.e. decisions, invoices, bids, etc…)
A document has been deleted or changed and the administrator would like to figure out who deleted or changed document in question.
Site collection auditing features that allow document auditing can be used to figure out who opened, edited, checked out, moved, deleted or even searched for list items or documents

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spaudit(office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spauditentry(office.14).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spauditentrycollection_members(office.14).aspx

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,Records Management,Auditing,Site Collection

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/6/2010 7:54 PM

Tags: SharePoint 2010, Records Management, Auditing, Site Collection

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Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 4 – In-Place Records Management

Noorez Khamis — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:23:00 GMT

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Overview

A new capability in SharePoint 2010 is In-Place Records management
Instead of moving a document to a specific SharePoint Records Center in order to declare it a record, a document can be declared and handled as a record within site it was created in
After having declared the document as a record, the document can now have policies and restrictions different from when it was just a document in the site
Policies can be added either to the Content Types or directly on the document libraries
Documents can be declared as records either manually or automatically
Manual record declaration can be configured at the Site Collection level and overridden in each document library within the site
Activated as a Site Collection Feature:
- Enable-SPFeature -id InPlaceRecords -url “”

Site Collection settings for Records Declaration allow blocking delete & edit of documents
Also allow security settings to allow declarations of records by role

When Record Declaration Availability is set to “Available in all locations by default”, a new icon appears on the Ribbon which allows the user to select a document and declare/un-declare a record:

A document will get a padlock added to its icon when declared as a record:

You can also override the record declaration availability on the document library level
Automatic declarations of records within document libraries is possible by checking the “Automatic Declaration” option in the document library settings

API Reference – (Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.RecordsRepository Namespace –> IRecordDeclarationHandler Interface) – Note: I haven’t tested this yet….

class DeclarationFilter : IRecordDeclarationHandler, IRecordUndeclarationHandler

    RecordOperationResult IRecordDeclarationHandler.OnDeclare(SPListItem item)

        // checks if item is marked as "_do_not_declare_record"

        if (CheckRecordFilterProperty(item, PROPERTY_DO_NOT_DECLARE))

            // item mared as "_do_not_declare_record", cancel processing

            return RecordOperationResult.CancelRecordProcessing;

        else

            // continue with default processing

            return RecordOperationResult.ContinueRecordProcessing;

    RecordOperationResult IRecordUndeclarationHandler.OnUndeclare(SPListItem item)

        // checks if item is marked as "_do_not_undeclare_record"

        if (CheckRecordFilterProperty(item, PROPERTY_DO_NOT_UNDECLARE))

            // item mared as "_do_not_undeclare_record", cancel processing

            return RecordOperationResult.CancelRecordProcessing;

        else

            // continue with default processing

            return RecordOperationResult.ContinueRecordProcessing;

So why use In-Place Records Management?

Don’t need to route everything to Records Center’s anymore, can have declared records across the organization in different SharePoint repositories
Company wants certain documents and wiki's to be declared as records but without moving them to a Records Center
Current Records center is getting close to the recommended content database size limit and, scalability is becoming an issue as the company does not have resources to invest in a second Records Center at this point of time

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://blogs.msdn.com/mcsnoiwb/archive/2009/11/05/sharepoint-2010-records-management.aspx
http://aiim.typepad.com/aiim_blog/2010/02/sharepoint.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.recordsmanagement.recordsrepository.irecorddeclarationhandler(office.14).aspx

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,Records Management,In-Place,Declarations,Records Center

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/3/2010 5:21 PM

Tags: SharePoint 2010, Records Management, In-Place, Declarations, Records Center

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 11 - Virtual folders, Folder inheritance and metadata based navigation

Noorez Khamis — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 13:23:58 GMT

Body:

Overview

Metadata Inheritance
- In previous versions of SharePoint, folders had no function other than to act as containers.
  - You couldn’t pass values to their contents or add any help to browsing and searching other than their names
- In SharePoint 2010, Documents and subfolders inherit metadata from their parent folder making it easier to find documents when metadata is automatically added, instead of forcing users to add the same value over and over to the documents or list items they just uploaded
Virtual Folders
- Instead of navigating by traditional folders, a user can filter the library to the virtual folder that contains just the metadata for which certain person is searching for
- There is no need to navigate from folder into folder to find records, you can navigate by metadata instead
- Virtual folder based navigation can be used instead of using views (as in SP 2007), however, views are still available in SharePoint 2010
- When activated and configured, SharePoint 2010 adds a menu to the left hand navigation and user does not have to click multiple times to get to the relevant data and the user can easily find the information they are looking for using this Tree view navigation that is presented to them and browsing by using the virtual folder navigation.
- This can be configured using the following steps:
  - Activated by default as a Site Feature via PowerShell or the GUI:
    - Enable-SPFeature -id MetaDataNav -url “”

To configure go to the library or list settings and click on Metadata navigation settings
- You can configure virtual folder settings using available options on the screen
- Once you enable metadata navigation (i.e. 'Person Responsible' Column in the screenshot below), a new entry is added to the left navigation of the site which allows you to navigate based on the values in that column.

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References

http://www.iotap.com/sp2010/Blogs/tabid/470/EntryId/163/Metadata-based-Navigation-in-Sharepoint-2010.aspx

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,Records Management,Virtual Folders,Metadata

Category: SharePoint

Published: 6/6/2010 6:20 AM

Tags: SharePoint 2010, Records Management, Virtual Folders, Metadata

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Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 2 – Document IDs

Noorez Khamis — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:09:50 GMT

Body:

Overview

A Document ID is a unique identifier for a document within a SharePoint 2010 site collection
SharePoint 2010 now provides a static URL or permalink that opens the document associated with the ID, regardless of the location
SharePoint 2010 includes new Site Collection scoped Feature called the Document ID Service. To enable feature you can go to Site Settings --> Site Collection Features or you can launch the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell and run the following:

Document ID Capabilities:

Upon activation of this feature, a new link appears under: Site Settings --> Site Collection Administration called Document ID Settings

Settings allow the custom assignment of Document IDs with certain character prefixes
Settings allow the resetting of all Document IDs within the Site Collection (via daily timer jobs)
- Document ID enable/disable job
  - creates the Document ID column in the Document content type & Document ID list column available in every document library within site collections where the feature has been activated
- Document ID assignment job
  - Assigns Document IDs to any existing documents within site collection.

To force run these jobs go into Central Administration –> Monitoring –> Review job definitions –> click the two jobs for the appropriate web application
Settings also allow user to select a scope to be able to input a specific Document ID in and have it pull up the document directly from this search scope index (i.e. a frequently updated index)

Find by Document ID Web Part enables user to enter a Document ID, then constructs a "static URL" and looks up the item, this web part is located under (Site Actions –> Edit Page –> Insert (from Ribbon) –> Web Part –> Search Category –> Find by Document ID)

Properties of each document within a document library now has a field called Document ID:

**Note: After activating Doc ID feature for existing documents within site collection, an action needs to be taken on document to cause the Document ID to appear (i.e. like check-in/check-out.)

The Document ID URL now looks like this:
- http:///_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=34RZ5NUVTCP7-1-4
This is a new SharePoint 2010 application ASPX page that sits in the layouts directory and is called DocIdRedir.aspx that takes a Document ID as query string parameter.
This gives the ability to consistently reference documents as on document movement the document ID URL link does'n’t change or break, even if the document moves between sites!
Developers now have the ability to create their own Document ID provider if they want to generate doc id’s in a specific way, they would derive from the:
- Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.DocumentIdProvider

public class MyDocumentIdProvider : Microsoft.Office.DocumentManagement.DocumentIdProvider

    // Generate doc id we want here

    public override string GenerateDocumentId(SPListItem listItem)

        return MyClass.GenerateDocId();

    // Use default search or call GetDocumentUrlsById before search

    public override bool DoCustomSearchBeforeDefaultSearch

        get { return false; }

    // implement logic to find documents if default search doesn't suffice

    public override string[] GetDocumentUrlsById(SPSite site, string documentId)

        return new string[] { };

    // return default doc id initially displayed in doc id search web part

    public override string GetSampleDocumentIdText(SPSite site)

        return "RezCorp-888--CUSTOMID";

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

References:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee559302(office.14).aspx
http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0911041
http://www.whatsthepointofsharing.com/2010/01/15/sharepoint-2010-document-id-feature/
http://www.zimmergren.net/archive/2010/04/13/sp-2010-sharepoint-server-2010-creating-your-custom-document-id-provider.aspx

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,Records Management,Document IDs

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/1/2010 10:09 AM

Tags: SharePoint 2010, Records Management, Document IDs

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 1 - Introduction

Noorez Khamis — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:20:37 GMT

Body:

As I’m doing a MSPUG session on Records Management this upcoming Tuesday, I thought I’d start a series of blogs on a preview of some of the new Records Management features in SharePoint 2010 that I’m going to be presenting.

To start with, I was able to pull up some statistics from the Association for Information and Image Management (http://www.aiim.org) on Records Management trends and industries [1].

Trends in Records Management

Paper records are still increasing in majority of organizations, but starting to show signs of decreasing
Electronic records are rapidly increasing
Electronic records seem to be less managed than paper records
More procedures are now being put in place to apply legal holds on relevant records in the event of a litigation and in response to new laws
It still takes a long time to find paper or electronic documents for the purposes of legal discovery and heavy reliance on IT to find the electronic documents
Many systems in use at these organizations have many content repositories that still do not have direct ability to declare records, retention and classifications

Primary Industries that are using Records Management (in order of %’age use)[1]

Government & Public Services
Finance, Banking & Insurance
Utilities, Telecommunications, Oil & Gas
IT & High Tech
Manufacturing
Healthcare
Consulting Firms
Charity & Not-for-Profits
Education
Pharmaceutical
Professional Services & Legal
Retail & Transportation

Primary Driving factors of Records Management

So what are some compelling reasons to pay attention to Records Management?

Compliance with financial & legal standards
Transparency
Security for sensitive information
Increase in operational efficiency

Microsoft’s Strategy for Records Management

In an interview by SPRM of Adam Harmetz, the Lead Program Manager for the SharePoint Document and Records Management engineering team at Microsoft [2], some items I have been able to derive on Microsoft’s strategy in terms of Records Management in SharePoint 2010 include:

Traditional regulatory frameworks provide comprehensive frameworks for Records Management programs but there’s been recent interest to implement ‘in place’ Records Management
The current trend that Document Management, Web Content Management, and Records Management systems are being seamlessly integrated together and increasing the need for an overall Information Management strategy
Microsoft has brought this fact to light and has listened to its customers as the new release of SharePoint 2010 provides customers with viable options that can enhance adoption and meet Records Management program objectives
With the launch of SharePoint 2010, many new out-of-the-box features have been included which can help enterprise organizations manage their information and compliance with a focus on usability and familiar features within the SharePoint platform

In the upcoming blog series, I will be talking about the following Records and Information Management features in SharePoint 2010.

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

[1] http://aiimknowledgecenter.typepad.com/weblog/2009/11/electronic-records-management-trends.html

[2] http://sharepointrecordsmanagement.com/2009/12/16/sprm-speaks-with-adam-harmetz-of-microsoft

Technorati Tags: Records Management,SharePoint 2010,Compliance,Legal,Information Management

Category: SharePoint

Published: 5/1/2010 9:20 AM

Tags: Records Management, SharePoint 2010, Compliance, Legal, Information Management

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 13– Send to connections

Noorez Khamis — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 03:35:42 GMT

Body:

Overview

“Send to" ECB (edit control block or dropdown) menu option can be customized to send documents to multiple records management centers, not just one like SharePoint 2007.

It can now do more than just copy a document (like in SharePoint 2007), it can now:

Move the document
Copy the document
Move the document and leave a link to it so it is still accessible from original library

It’s configured in Central Admin –> General Application settings –> Configure Send to Connections:

When the “Send to” connection is configured to “move and leave a link”, the document appears with a short-cut symbol to it and points to a page with a special short-cut URL directly to where the document ended up. Every document in the Records Center will have a Document ID with it and this document ID URL has the ability to follow the document to it’s final destination. It has a Document ID associated with it and it points to a URL like: “/_layouts/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=XQ626KCMTU4R” where the Document ID is XQ626KCMTU4R.

The document itself, gets replaced with a web page of aspx format that is the same as the document name, except that it is with the aspx extension. When you click on the link, you get a page that indicates the document has been moved along with the explanation you fill in during the Send To Connection setup along with the new document id url:

To be able to use the Send To connection, you need to point to a site that has the Content Organizer feature activated. Again, this is different from SharePoint 2007, where it was only available in your one Records Center. You can activate the Content Organizer on any type of site.

Once the content organizer is activated, it creates the ability to connect to the OfficialFile Web Service. This web service needs to be pointed to during the initial Send To connection configuration. To get the URL for the OfficialFile Web Service go to your Records Center (or the site where you have the content organizer activated):

1. In Site Actions –> Site Settings.

2. Click Content Organizer Settings link in Site Administration section

3. At the bottom of page, in Submission Points section, find the URL for the official file web service

4. In the Central Admin Send to connections, us the URL specified. (i.e. http://yoururl/sites/records/_vti_bin/officialfile.asmx)

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

Technorati Tags: Send to,Records Management,SharePoint 2010

Category: SharePoint

Published: 11/30/2011 9:31 AM

Tags: Send to, Records Management, SharePoint 2010

Records Management features in SharePoint 2010: Part 12– Scalability and Performance

Noorez Khamis — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 03:31:35 GMT

Body:

Overview

Think scalability and performance first!

Invest time performing an in-depth current content inventory of Records (are we looking at terabytes?)
What are your growth estimates for the size of your electronic record inventories?

Large collections of Records require careful planning on numbers and locations of content databases, site collections, sites and document libraries in relation to the file plan
Bottom Line: Invest time in planning the SharePoint Logical Architecture for your Records Center
Some more thoughts:

Try and limit the size of your content databases to 50 GB to 100 GB
For very large archives of records, organize your Records Center repositories as independent site collections rather sub-sites and document libraries (consider making a site collection per category in your file plan)
Consider RBS
Clearly think of your backup, restore and disaster recovery strategy

How SharePoint 2010 can help with scaling [1]

SharePoint 2010 has many features to make it easier to scale to massive archives such as:

Database query performance optimizations [2]
SQL 2008’s Remote Blob Storage (RBS) decreased size of content DB [3]

Basically takes binary data out of your content databases resulting in the binary data on the file systems themselves and the metadata in the databases reducing the database size and improving scalability and performance

Internal timer job processing improvements
Highly scalable search along with new database indexing strategies [4]

Compound indexing, index management, and content-by-query optimizations
SharePoint now supports multiple index servers
Content index can now be divided into multiple index partitions
Each index server can be configured to run multiple crawlers
Multiple crawlers can crawl content in parallel
Index servers are now stateless. The crawlers build the content index and propagate directly to the query servers.
multiple query servers benefits of redundancy and parallel performance can be made available
crawl management and property store data tables have been split into separate databases and multiple tables of this kind can be configured.

List optimizations

Tens of millions of docs in a single list

Service Applications Architecture
New Send to connections allow moving of records instead of just copying
Multiple Records Center Site Collections
Internal database improvements (e.g. lock ordering, throttling, IOPS efficiency)
Background per-item processing throughput maximization
Content Organizer is able to organize your Records Repositories
Content Type Syndication allows central location to inherit and publish from

This allows:

Millions of records in a single Records Center
Multiple Records Centers! (new in SharePoint 2010, in 2007 you were only allowed 1)
A distributed archive allowing many Record Centers to bind together to act as one logical repository
Fast searching through your archives of records
An easy mechanism to move records to the archive of your choice and leave a reference to where it now exists

But this does not excuse you from planning your architecture for scalability and performance!!

Visit Microsoft’s Technet article called “SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits” [5] to see more of SharePoint 2010’s new boundaries, recommendations and thresholds that can help with scaling, capacity and performance for your Records Management Solution. I have listed some here:

Limit	Threshhold or Maximum
Zone	5 per Web application
Managed path	20 per Web application
Solution cache size	300 MB per Web application
Site collection	250,000 per Web application
Application pools	10 per Web server
Content database size (general usage scenarios)	200 GB per content database
Content database size (all usage scenarios)	4 TB per content database
Content database size (document archive scenario)	No explicit content database limit
Content database items	60 million items including documents and list items
Site collections per content database	2,000 recommended, 5,000 maximum
Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) storage subsystem on Network Attached Storage (NAS)	Time to first byte of any response from the NAS cannot exceed 20 milliseconds
Web site	250,000 per site collection
Site collection size	Maximum size of the content database
List row size	8,000 bytes per row
File size	2 GB
Documents	30,000,000 per library
Major versions	400000 maximum
Items	30,000,000 per list
Rows size limit	6 table rows internal to the database used for a list or library item
Bulk operations	100 items per bulk operation
List view lookup threshold	8 join operations per query
List view threshold	5000 maximum
List view threshold for auditors and administrators	20000 maximum
Subsite	2,000 per site view
Coauthoring in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint for .docx, .pptx and .ppsx files	10 concurrent editors per document
Security scope	1,000 per list
Web parts	25 per wiki or Web part page
Number of SharePoint groups a user can belong to	5000
Users in a site collection	2 million per site collection
Active Directory Principles/Users in a SharePoint group	5,000 per SharePoint group
SharePoint groups	10,000 per site collection
Security principal: size of the Security Scope	5,000 per Access Control List (ACL)

The complete list of this series can be seen by the following links:

Technorati Tags: Performance,Scalability,Records Management,SharePoint 2010

[1]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ecm/archive/2010/02/13/introducing-records-management-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx

[2]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/enterprisesearch/archive/2010/06/09/sharepoint-2010-search-dogfood-part-3-query-performance-optimization.aspx

[3]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748607.aspx

[4]

http://www.houberg.com/2009/10/sp2010_scalability_2_of_4_sharepoint_search/

[5]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262787.aspx

Category: SharePoint

Published: 11/15/2011 7:20 PM

Tags: Performance, Scalability, Records Management, SharePoint 2010

SQL Server 2008 – Administrator account denied access or locked out

Noorez Khamis — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:38:19 GMT

Body:

I don’t know how many times my clients have given me administrator access to the SQL Server machine thinking I will automatically have access to administer the SQL Server. However, in SQL Server 2008 and above (i.e. SQL Server 2008 R2), there is a new security feature where the installer doesn’t automatically add the local server administrators group as SysAdmin on the server. The person doing the install has to remember to do this during setup. Most of the time, they don’t do it or forget to do it.

Take the following steps to add yourself as SysAdmin on the SQL Server to have full access:

1. Stop the SQL Server instance and the SQL Server Agent service in your services (by going to administrative tools –> services or typing in services.msc from your run box)

2. Open a command prompt as an Administrator

3. Locate your sqlservr.exe file (usually located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Binn directory) and CD to that directory:

CD C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Binn

4. Run the following command and ignore any errors that may occur during run – this starts the SQL Server Service in single user mode [1] :

sqlservr.exe -m -s MSSQLSERVER

Note: MSSQLSERVER above is the name of your instance – usually the same as the last item after the “.” in the directory path i.e. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER )

5. Once that is run, check to see if the service in step 1 is activated (don’t forget to refresh the screen) and then open up SQL Server Management Studio

6. Once SQL Management Studio opens, go to the security tab, add your account and make them a SysAdmin

7. In your services, stop and restart the SQL Server and SQL Server Agent services

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188236.aspx

Technorati Tags: SQL Server,Single User,Security

Category: SQL Server

Published: 3/28/2012 8:19 PM

Tags: SQL Server, Single User, Security