Monday, April 29, 2013

April CU for SharePoint 2013 Released


The product group released the April 2013 Cumulative Update for the SharePoint 2013 product family.

The Full Server Packages for April 2013 CU are available through the following links:
After installing the fixes you need to run the SharePoint 2013 Products Configuration Wizard on each machine in the farm.

Update for SharePoint 2013 require March 2013 PU for SharePoint 2013 to be installed first *

** The SharePoint Server 2013 CU contains the SharePoint Foundation CU. And the SharePoint Server 2013 with Project Server CU contains Project Server CU, SharePoint Server CU and SharePoint Foundation CU.
That means only one package has to be installed for the SharePoint 2013 product family **

Friday, April 19, 2013

Refresh of SharePoint Server 2013 IT Pro training now available

Microsoft has re-released SP2013 training modules with updated content. This training package is for administrators, architects, and business analysts for learning all the new capabilities and functionalities in SharePoint Server 2013. Content doesn't only concentrate on SharePoint configuration, but also covers the different new functionalities from user experience perspective.

This training package is publicly available from the SharePoint TechCenter and contains multiple videos and downloadable presentations that are used with the videos.


The released package contains many technical details across the SharePoint Server 2013. This is the refreshed version of the previously released training package, and all materials have been updated to match the RTM version of SharePoint Server 2013.

All videos include slide shows, and most videos contain at least one demo that shows the covered concepts in detail.

51 presentations and videos
Over 17 hours of video
790 PowerPoint slides about SharePoint Server 2013
The material has been separated into to 14 modules. Each one contains one or more videos lasting anywhere from 5 minutes to more than an hour.


  • Introduction
  • System Requirements
  • Architectural Changes
  • Farms and site architecture planning
  • Office Web Apps 2013 architecture and deployment
  • Service application architecture
  • Enterprise Search
  • Social Features
  • Enterprise and Web Content Management
  • Customization options and management
  • Authentication and authorization
  • Business Continuity Management
  • Upgrading to SharePoint Server 2013
  • Project 2013 for IT Professionals

Thursday, April 11, 2013

New Troubleshoot SharePoint portal page in the TechNet Wiki


In an effort to consolidate all of the best information about troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013, Joe Davies recently published the Troubleshoot SharePoint portal page in the TechNet Wiki.

Give it a whirl...






Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Two New Best Practices for SharePoint 2013

While debating application pool layout for a customer's solution, I ran across some info, which I had briefly read over in the past, but now is causing me to rethink my design approach drastically from that of 2010 farm architectures.

The following best practices were spelled out by Steve Walker, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, during the SPC119 session at the SharePoint Conference  2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

SharePoint 2013 best practices for Web Applications is to create only 1 web application and using host-named site collections as opposed to path-based site collections with multiple web apps. This dove-tails into another SharePoint 2013 best practice for application pools. SharePoint 2013 best practices for application pools is to create one for all services.

Legacy Topology – Multiple Web Apps

  • Each Application Pool requires additional resources on each Web Role Machine
  • Caching of common assemblies alone is significant overhead
  • Leads to multiple farm architectures very quickly with high numbers of web applications !!



Recommended Logical Topology

  • One Web application, one zone
    • Have a good business reason why you deviate from this
  • One IIS Website; "SharePoint" (Application Pool)
  • Use Host-named Site Collections (HNSC's)
    • Scales Better
    • Reduced Resource Consumption (Memory for App Pools, Cache, etc)
    • Mitigates x-site scripting risks the same as multiple web apps
    • SSA (Secure Site Access) - You can still have multiple host names !


NOTE: SharePoint 2013 supports both path-based and host-named site collections. The primary difference between path-based and host-named site collections is that all path-based site collections in a web application share the same host name (DNS name), and each host-named site collection in a web application is assigned a unique DNS name. You must use Windows PowerShell to create a host-named site collection. For more information about host-named site collections, see Plan for host-named site collections in SharePoint 2013.

How to create Host Named Site Collections:

http://smallcitydesign.com/how-to-create-a-host-named-site-collection-in-sharepoint/
  • Remember to add the site collection's hostheader to DNS (or hosts file)
  • Remember to check/update IIS Bindings with site collection hostheader

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

SharePoint 2013 Site Templates


SharePoint 2013 Templates ( Get-SPWebTemplate)


Name Title LocaleId
GLOBAL#0 Global template 1033
STS#0 Team Site 1033
STS#1 Blank Site 1033
STS#2 Document Workspace 1033
MPS#0 Basic Meeting Workspace 1033
MPS#1 Blank Meeting Workspace 1033
MPS#2 Decision Meeting Workspace 1033
MPS#3 Social Meeting Workspace 1033
MPS#4 Multipage Meeting Workspace 1033
CENTRALADMIN#0 Central Admin Site 1033
WIKI#0 Wiki Site 1033
BLOG#0 Blog 1033
SGS#0 Group Work Site 1033
TENANTADMIN#0 Tenant Admin Site 1033
APP#0 App Template 1033
APPCATALOG#0 App Catalog Site 1033
ACCSRV#0 Access Services Site 1033
ACCSVC#0 Access Services Site Internal 1033
ACCSVC#1 Access Services Site 1033
BDR#0 Document Center 1033
DEV#0 Developer Site 1033
DOCMARKETPLACESITE#0 Academic Library 1033
EDISC#0 Discovery Center 1033
EDISC#1 Discovery Case 1033
OFFILE#0 (obsolete) Records Center 1033
OFFILE#1 Records Center 1033
OSRV#0 Shared Services Administration Site 1033
PPSMASite#0 PerformancePoint 1033
BICenterSite#0 Business Intelligence Center 1033
SPS#0 SharePoint Portal Server Site 1033
SPSPERS#0 SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space 1033
SPSPERS#2 Storage And Social SharePoint Portal ... 1033
SPSPERS#3 Storage Only SharePoint Portal Server… 1033
SPSPERS#4 Social Only SharePoint Portal Server … 1033
SPSPERS#5 Empty SharePoint Portal Server Person… 1033
SPSMSITE#0 Personalization Site 1033
SPSTOC#0 Contents area Template 1033
SPSTOPIC#0 Topic area template 1033
SPSNEWS#0 News Site 1033
CMSPUBLISHING#0 Publishing Site 1033
BLANKINTERNET#0 Publishing Site 1033
BLANKINTERNET#1 Press Releases Site 1033
BLANKINTERNET#2 Publishing Site with Workflow 1033
SPSNHOME#0 News Site 1033
SPSSITES#0 Site Directory 1033
SPSCOMMU#0 Community area template 1033
SPSREPORTCENTER#0 Report Center 1033
SPSPORTAL#0 Collaboration Portal 1033
SRCHCEN#0 Enterprise Search Center 1033
PROFILES#0 Profiles 1033
BLANKINTERNETCONT... Publishing Portal 1033
SPSMSITEHOST#0 My Site Host 1033
ENTERWIKI#0 Enterprise Wiki 1033
PROJECTSITE#0 Project Site 1033
PRODUCTCATALOG#0 Product Catalog 1033
COMMUNITY#0 Community Site 1033
COMMUNITYPORTAL#0 Community Portal 1033
SRCHCENTERLITE#0 Basic Search Center 1033
SRCHCENTERLITE#1 Basic Search Center 1033
visprus#0 Visio Process Repository 1033

Monday, April 1, 2013

Site Mailboxes in the new Office


Site mailboxes allow users to work together naturally – while compliance is applied behind the scenes.

A site mailbox brings Exchange emails and SharePoint documents together. For users, a site mailbox serves as a central filing cabinet, providing a place to file project emails and documents that can be only accessed and edited by site members.
When one project member files mail or documents using the site mailbox, any project member can then access the content. Site mailboxes are surfaced in Outlook 2013 and give users easy access to the email and documents for the projects they care about. Additionally, the same set of content can be accessed directly from the SharePoint site. (Site mailboxes don’t appear alongside users’ personal mailboxes in Outlook Web App.)
Under the covers of a site mailbox, the content is kept where it belongs. Exchange stores the email, providing users with the same message view for email conversations that they use every day for their own mailboxes. Meanwhile, SharePoint stores the documents, bringing document coauthoring and versioning to the table. Exchange synchronizes just enough metadata from SharePoint to create the document view in Outlook (e.g. document title, last modified date, last modified author, size).
Compliance policies are applied at the site mailbox level and are transparent to the users – thus adding value behind the scenes while preserving users’ productivity.