December 24, 2009

How to Customize a SharePoint Theme

Filed under: SharePoint Designer,Sharepoint — Tags: , , , , — Tim Lefler @ 10:27 am

Not much going on in the office today, so I figured I’d document a SharePoint theme customization technique. This example was taken from this excellent SharePoint blog post. I just wanted to make sure I had this captured so I wouldn’t loose it.

A SharePoint theme is a set of fonts, graphics, and colors that make up the appearance of the site. An approach to develop a new theme is to customize an existing theme. This allows you to start with a working theme and then make modifications, shortening the amount of time it takes to develop a new theme.

A SharePoint site to which a theme has been applied will have a _themes folder when viewed within SharePoint Designer. When the _themes folder is expanded the theme that has been applied will appear as a sub folder. When a theme is applied to the a SharePoint site a copy of all the files that make up the theme are copied into the content database in the _themes sub folder.

Note: This is an important point. Because a copy is made of the theme’s folder ohn the web server and placed in the content database, any changes you make to the CSS of theme files within SharePoint designer will not be used on anything except the site you are currently working with. You have to manually make the same changes in the theme’s folder on the web server if you want the theme modifications to be used when a new site is created.

In addition to all the files from the theme’s folder, the theme.css and the mossExtension.css files are merged to create a new file that is stored in the content database. The file is named XXXX1011-65001.css, where the XXXX represents the first four letters of the theme’s name.

The XXXX1011-65001.css style sheet is the only CSS file applied to the site by the theme. It is applied right after the CORE.css style sheet is applied by the default.master page. Any core styles redefined in the theme’s style sheet will override the styles defined in the CORE.css. This gives you the designer complete control over the CSS applied to the pages on your site.

So to customize a theme, the first step is to examine the themes that come with SharePoint and find one that closely matches the theme you want to create.   For this example, a new theme will be created called “My Theme” based on the Classic theme in SharePoint. In the new theme the Search area gradient will be changed to gray instead of yellow.


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Hide the Top Global Navigation Breadcrumb in MOSS

Filed under: SharePoint Designer — Tags: , , , , , , , — Tim Lefler @ 9:45 am

I hate the pesky top Global Navigation breadcrumb “home” Link.

There are a couple of techniques to get rid of this Global Navigation Breadcrumb.

Technique 1: Modify the Master Page

A technique to remove it is to make the changes to the Master Page using SharePoint Designer.

  1. Launch SharePoint Designer
  2. Click File->Open Site.  Enter your site.
  3. In the folder list pane, expand the _catalogs folder.  Then expand the masterpage folder.
  4. Open the “default.master” page.
  5. Locate the content placeholder for the breadcrumb…. look for the following lines in the HTML of the master page. 
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    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderGlobalNavigationSiteMap" runat="server">
          <asp:SiteMapPath SiteMapProvider="SPSiteMapProvider" id="GlobalNavigationSiteMap" RenderCurrentNodeAsLink="true" SkipLinkText="" NodeStyle-CssClass="ms-sitemapdirectional" runat="server"/>
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>
  6. Leave the Content placeholder in place but remove the navigation breadcrumb by replacing the lines above with the following: 
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    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderGlobalNavigationSiteMap" runat="server" />

Technique 2: Modify the Theme CSS

The second technique to remove it is to make the changes to the CSS for the Theme using SharePoint Designer. This removes it from the Site Navigation breadcrumb also so make sure this is what you want:

  1. Launch SharePoint Designer
  2. Click File->Open Site.  Enter your site.
  3. In the folder list pane, open the _themes folder.  Then expand the current theme folder.
  4. Open the .css file associated with the theme.  It will have the first four characters of the theme name followed by 1011-65001.css
  5. To hide the Top Navigation bread crumb add the following:
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.ms-sitemapdirectional,.ms-sitemapdirectional a{
display:none;
}

December 18, 2009

Volume Licensing and the Key Management Service (KMS)

Filed under: Information Technology — Tags: , , — Tim Lefler @ 1:15 pm

Overview

This is a synopsis of information provided on the Microsoft Volume Acitvation Site, but I’ve filtered it for what I think is usefull.

Microsoft Volume Activation (VA) 2.0 is designed to allow volume licensing customers to automate the activation process so that there is little  impact on end users. VA 2.0 provides volume customers with two models for activating Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. The KMS model is designed to activate systems by connecting to a locally managed network-based service. The MAK model has systems connect to Microsoft for activation either individually or by using a proxy.

Most people will use both activation models because latops are not around to activavate to a local KMS service.

Key Management Service (KMS)

KMS requires a minimum number of physical computers in a network environment. You must have at least five (5) physical computers to activate Windows Server 2008 and at least twenty-five (25) physical computers to activate Windows 7 clients. These minimums, called activation thresholds, are set so that they are easily met by enterprise customers. For more information about activation thresholds, see the Volume Activation 2.0 Planning Guide.

Note:  These thresholds at least pose a problem to people who are first implementing KMS.  None of your windows 7 clients are activated until the 25 limit is reached.  Thankfully in our environment there are a lot of windows 2008 servers so that helps with our threshold, but this is still something that needs to be planned for….

By default, volume editions of  Window 7 and Windows Server 2008 connect to a system that hosts the KMS service to request activation. No action is required of the end user

MAK is used for a one-time activation with Microsoft’s hosted activation services. There are two ways to activate computers using MAK. The first method is MAK Independent activation, which requires that each computer independently connect and activate with Microsoft, either over the Internet or by telephone. The second method is MAK Proxy activation. With this method, a computer acting as a MAK proxy gathers activation information from multiple computers on the network and then sends a centralized activation request on their behalf. MAK Proxy Activation is configured using the Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT).

Note: For us MAK was not an option because we are under a corporate agreement with Microsoft.

What If Systems Are Not Activated?

If activation does not occur immediately after the operating system is installed, Windows 7  and Windows Server 2008 still provide the full functionality of the operating system for a limited amount of time, or grace period. The length of a grace period varies from thirty days, for Windows 7  to sixty days, for Windows Server 2008. After the grace period expires, the initial release of Windows Vista transitions to reduced functionality mode (RFM), but Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008, after the initial grace period expires, do not go into RFM. If not activated, these products continue to remind the user to activate through notifications.

Grace Period

During the initial grace period, there are periodic notifications that the system needs activation. Systems in this grace period have a set period of time to activate the operating system. Once a day, during the logon process, a notification bubble reminds the user to activate the operating system. For both 60-day and 30-day grace periods, this behavior continues until there are three days left in the grace period. For the first two of the final three days of the grace period, the notification bubble appears every four hours. During the final day of the grace period the notification bubble appears every hour, on the hour.

After the initial grace period expires or activation fails, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 continue to notify the user that the operating system needs activation. (Very annoying but everything still works)

So to setup the (KMS) service on a windows 2003 machine…..

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Notes on Installing Team Foundation Server 2008 in Dual-Server Deployment

Filed under: TFS — Tags: , , , , — Tim Lefler @ 8:46 am

Read my Team Foundation Server Overview for general TFS information. Today, I’m documenting the nitty gritty steps to get it installed and working.

My deployment is a little different than the scenarios described in the TFS Installation guide.  We have a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 that we want to make use of for the portal site, a back-end SQL 2008 machine, and want a separate TFS Server.  So the TFS Tiers we want to end up with look something like this.

Team Foundation Server Tiers

Team Foundation Server Tiers

The DOMAIN accounts I will be using for my two logical tiers are:

Account Description
DOMAIN\tfsservice TFS Service Account
Member of MOSS Farm Administrator’s Group
DOMAIN\tfssetup TFS Setup Account
Local Administrator on our 3 servers
SQL “sysadmin” role during the installation
DOMAIN\reportingServices Reporting Services Service Account
Local Admin on our TFSSERVER
DOMAIN\sqlsvc SQL Database Service Account
DOMAIN\sqlanlsvc SQL Analysis Services Service Account

And my three physical machines are as follows:

Machine Name
 Description
TFSSERVER Duh… the TFS Server
MOSSSERVER MOSS Server running SharePoint 2007
SQLSERVER Back-end Database Serrver

Prerequisite Installation:

Make the DOMAIN\tfssetup user an Administrator on all three machines.

I start by getting the SharePoint Extensions for TFS installed on our MOSSSERVER web front end.  Right off the bat, things were starting to get complicated because we use 64 bit machines and the SharePoint Extensions that come with the TFS installation media only has the 32 bit versions.  You need to download the TFS 2008 Power Tool from Microsoft here.
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December 15, 2009

Team Foundation Server Overview

Filed under: Information Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Tim Lefler @ 7:54 am

Team Foundation Server Overview

Team Foundation Server is part of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite (VSTS 2008).   VSTS 2008 provides multi-disciplined team members with an integrated set of tools for architecture, design, development, database development and testing of applications.

This is my watered down overview of TFS highlighting the pieces of the Microsoft Documentation that I thought were important.

VSTS 2008 Team Foundation Server is an integrated collaboration server.  It consists of a set of tools and technologies that enable a team to collaborate and coordinate their efforts on building a product or completing a project. Team Foundation enhances team communication, tracks work status, supports team roles, enacts the team process, and integrates team tools.

The following diagram outlines a sample logical implementation of Team Foundation Server as it relates to the roles most common to the software engineering and development lifecycle.
TFS_Components

Team Foundation Server delivers source control, work item tracking, Team Foundation Build, team project portal Web site, reporting, and project management capabilities.  Team Foundation Server also includes a data warehouse where data from work item tracking, source control, builds, and testing tools are stored.

Team Foundation Server

All team projects are stored and managed with Team Foundation Server.  A logical Team Foundation Server is made up of two components:

  • An application-tier server, made up primarily of Web services
  • A data-tier server, made up primarily of several SQL Server databases.

The application-tier server and data-tier server can be deployed on one server or two servers.

Team Foundation Build

Team Foundation Build provides a build lab as part of Team Foundation.  The builds can be defined to be on-demand, rolling, or continuous integration where each check-in causes a build to be queued according to its priority.  Enterprise build managers can synchronize the sources, compile the application, run associated unit tests, perform code analysis, release builds on a file server, and publish build reports.  Team Foundation Build works with other Visual Studio Team System tools during the build process, including version control, work item tracking, and test tools.

Team Foundation Server Proxy

Team Foundation Server Proxy is an optional server designed to boost network performance by caching copies of source control files in a remote location, local to the developer needing the files. By storing copies in the remote location, typically connected to the source location through a slower link than the local area network, the proxy helps each user avoid a costly download of the files to their workspace across the slower connection. (more…)

December 7, 2009

How to force VMWare VCB BackupExec Module to Use Monolithic Backups of VMDK Files

Filed under: vmware — Tim Lefler @ 4:19 pm

See my previous post on how to setup VMWare Consolidated Backup (VCB) with the BackupExec module.

If you are performing a Full virtual machines backup of the *.vmdk files by making use of the “-FullVM” suffix in you pre-backup script, you will notice that VCB calls vcbMounter.exe and the default action is to span each vmdk with a 2GB file size limit.  So if you are backing up a 30 GB vmdk you will actually end up with 30/2 = 15 separate 2GB vmdk files.  Since NTFS has a 3 TB file size limit this seems to complicate things.

Note:  If you plan on restoring these backups using VMWare Converter I think this is a requirement.

If you want to force it to use one large (monolithic) vmdk file you can force it to by editing the “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\generic\glue.js” file and find the function  “AttachVMData”.  After the Transport section you add a section that apends the “-M 1″ option to the vcbMounter command.  This forces it to use Monolithic mode.  See below:

// set the transport mode (san/nbd)
cmd += "-m " + TRANSPORT_MODE + " ";
 
// set vcbMounter to use Monoloithic files
cmd += "-M 1 ";

December 2, 2009

How to setup SharePoint 2007 with SQL 2008 Reporting Services in Integrated Mode – Distributed 3 Server Deployment

Filed under: Sharepoint — Tags: , , , , , , , — Tim Lefler @ 8:15 pm

In this post I’m going to go through the steps I used to setup SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services in Integrated Mode with SharePoint 2007.  Most of the examples on the web walk through installation of Reporting Services in a standalone server deployment of SharePoint.  A single computer with Reporting Services, SharePoint, and SQL installed.

Standalone Server Deployment

Standalone Server Deployment

With all of the components installed on one machine, the typical example glosses over many of the challenges faced when integrating Reporting Services in a production environment.  See this article for more information on Deployment Topologies for Reporting Services in SharePoint Integrated Mode.  In our production environment we try to follow the best practices and want to make use of a three computer deployment.  A SharePoint web front end (WFE), a dedicated Reporting Services Machine, and a dedicated database server.

Three-Computer Deployment

Three-Computer Deployment

We also try to follow the principle of least privilege and have separate service accounts for the different components.  Another caveat for our environment is that we have Kerberos enabled, so I need to make sure Reporting Services supports Kerberos and is configured appropriately.  So my three computers are as follows:

Machine 1 Name: MOSSSQLSBX
Operating System: Windows 2003 Server x64
Server Role Dedicated Database Server
Deployed products: SQL Server 2008 (Database Engine, Full Text, Basic Management Tools, Management Tools Complete)
Topology: one instance (no named)

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Machine 2 Name: MOSSRPTSBX (for SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 SharePoint Integrated Mode)
Operating System: Windows 2003 Server x64
Server Role: Reporting Services Server
Deployed products: SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services, MOSS 2007
Topology: SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

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Machine 3 Name: MOSSWEB01SBX
Operating System: Windows 2003 Server
Server Role: SharePoint WFE, Application Server
Deployed products: MOSS 2007
Topology: simple Farm

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