File Element OverwriteIfAlreadyExists=”TRUE”

27th of May, 2013 / / 4 Comments

I have been implementing workarounds since SharePoint 2007 to overwrite an unghosted (or customized) file that already exists at a specified URL for a File element within a Module element of a Feature element manifest (or site definition which I stopped using extensively in SharePoint 2010 preferring web templates).

Updating existing files when upgrading our SharePoint custom Features can be accomplished by provisioning ghosted files using the Type attribute set to Ghostable or GhostableInLibrary. For unghosted (or customized) files a common trap is setting IgnoreIfAlreadyExists=”TRUE” expecting existing files to be overwritten.… [Keep reading] “File Element OverwriteIfAlreadyExists=”TRUE””

SharePoint Code Quality

27th of May, 2013 / / No Comments

During a recent technical interview I asked the candidate which tools they used to review code quality for their SharePoint custom solutions.
This blog post describes the process and tools we use to check SharePoint code quality for a SharePoint Online 100K user deployment I have been working on.

Our project team uses Team Foundation Service (TFS) Cloud for source code management and continuous integration.  We perform code quality checks as part of TFS Team Build and Release Management processes.… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Code Quality”

Office Web Apps Server – just say no to Windows Update Automatic Updates

21st of May, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Office Web Apps Server 2013 is a standalone Microsoft product that is leveraged by Lync 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013 for web based document viewing and editing using the WOPI (Web app Open Platform Interface) protocol. Office Web Apps Server used be called Web Application Companion (WAC) and that is what all of the Lync 2013 pre-release software and documentation called it. In my opinion, Office Web Apps Server is a very confusing name as Exchange Outlook Web App (or Access) has owned the OWA acronym since 1997 with Exchange 5.0 SP 1.… [Keep reading] “Office Web Apps Server – just say no to Windows Update Automatic Updates”

BHOLD SP1 Core Portal Role Management for Dummies

20th of May, 2013 / / 8 Comments

I’ve had the rare luxury of time in learning BHOLD SP1 for a customer recently and I thought I’d share the basics of what I’ve learned about the product. There’s very little in the way of information in the public realm about BHOLD SP1, particularly as Microsoft have made significant changes to the database schema for Service Pack 1 of BHOLD, so I thought I’d share some learnings.

Beware, this is a ‘BHOLD for Dummies’ scenario where all you might like to do is develop a quick scenario to show off BHOLD’s capabilities in role management.… [Keep reading] “BHOLD SP1 Core Portal Role Management for Dummies”

Ideal Workloads for Cloud

17th of May, 2013 / / No Comments

Working in the fast changing world of IT, sometimes is good to stop, take a breather and reflect on where we are and how we got here. Cloud computing is certainly no exception and has had an enormous amount of hype over the past 5 years, but has it lived up to the promise?

Looking Back

I and many others at PDC 2008 listened to the announcement of Azure and the follow up communications as Microsoft went “all in” on the cloud.… [Keep reading] “Ideal Workloads for Cloud”

Fixing issues with BHOLD SP1 FIM Integration MSI installation

17th of May, 2013 / / No Comments

For those struggling to get their BHOLD SP1 demo working in a Windows 2008 R2 64-bit environment, I’ve recently run into two critical errors I thought I would blog about as they took me and my colleague Stefan Buchman some hair pulling time to work through. As this is a bleeding edge release, there isn’t much in the way of public information about others running into these errors so I thought I’d blog their fixes in case others were struggling.… [Keep reading] “Fixing issues with BHOLD SP1 FIM Integration MSI installation”

Outlook Anywhere NTLM SSO with UAG 2010 KCD

17th of May, 2013 / / 8 Comments

Outlook Anywhere can be configured with two authentication methods – Basic and NTLM. Outlook Anywhere NTLM authentication has always been a bit of a tricky beast when using a pre-authenticating reverse proxy like TMG or UAG. The benefit it can bring is that a user signed on to a domain joined computer with a domain account can get seamless SSO (Single Sign On) without entering a password. This can happen if the user is on the corporate network or if they are remote using Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) and cached credentials.… [Keep reading] “Outlook Anywhere NTLM SSO with UAG 2010 KCD”

AWS Cloud Architecture Essentials – The Commodity

16th of May, 2013 / / No Comments

AWS Architectures start at the heart of many businesses, customers.

The foundation and principles of AWS have been built on Amazon, a company that was envisaged to be the most customer centric company in the world. “There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.” – Jeff Bezos

These types of requirements are inputs into an ethos that pervades, that underpins the Architecture of AWS.… [Keep reading] “AWS Cloud Architecture Essentials – The Commodity”

UAG 2010 – Problems with Custom Trunk Ports and Failing Redirects

10th of May, 2013 / / 1 Comment

UAG 2010 prior to Service Pack 1 Update 1 did not support publishing trunks on custom ports – only 80 and 443 were supported. That meant each UAG trunk required a separate IP address per trunk. With SP 1 Update we could publish UAG trunks on custom ports on a single IP address, although it doesn’t seem many people actually did this. For a customer recently where UAG 2010 was required with 5 trunks, there was an existing network architecture restriction that required the UAG servers to use public IP addresses.… [Keep reading] “UAG 2010 – Problems with Custom Trunk Ports and Failing Redirects”

Publish Lync 2013 Including Mobility and Office Web Apps with UAG 2010

6th of May, 2013 / / 11 Comments

Microsoft Forefront TMG (Threat Management Gateway) has been the primary way Lync Web Services have been published in the past. With the untimely demise of TMG, the only Microsoft product (other than IIS) with reverse proxy functionality is Microsoft Forefront UAG (Unified Access Gateway). TMG will continue to be supported until 2015 for mainstream support and 2020 for extended support. If TMG is not already installed however, technically it cannot be used for a new installation.… [Keep reading] “Publish Lync 2013 Including Mobility and Office Web Apps with UAG 2010”