Send Notification On Workflow Errors

Many of my clients have OOTB workflows enabled on their SharePoint farm(s). This will allow users to create and manage their own, simple workflows. However, one problem I have encountered is the support for those workflows tend to end with the creation of the workflow. 

One issue with user-implemented/supported workflows is notification when workflows fail. One of my client's requested a notification of failing workflows. My initial thought was to create another workflow to monitor and send notifications when user workflows entered into an error state. Then, I remembered SharePoint offers OOTB alerting..so, I decided to check with the SharePoint community to see if there were any good, ootb solutions for notifying upon failure. I eventually came across Dave Sampson's post regarding his solution and voila! Simple, yet very effective solution! Check out his solution located on his blog http://dave-sampson.blogspot.com/2012/06/simple-sharepoint-2010-workflow-error.html

Print Calendar and/or Lists

Have you ever had the need to print a day's activity from a SharePoint calendar, or any other list/library, in an easy to read format?

There are a few options to accomplish this task (I will cover just a few).

• Create a new list view - good for a single calendar (does not scale well - requires creating a new view for each calendar)
• Add a new feature providing a print ability for every list/library from the 'Actions' > 'Print' menu. http://www.spelements.com/spelements.com/spprint
• If it is a single list/library/calendar AND you are using Outlook, you can import the list/library/calendar into Outlook and print the same format as Outlook calendars:

• Open SharePoint Calendar in Outlook

1. Open the calendar that you want to print on the SharePoint website.
2. Click "Connect to Outlook" in the "Actions" group on the "Calendar" tab.
3. Click "Allow" to confirm that you want to allow the SharePoint website to open Outlook on your computer. Outlook automatically opens.
4. Click "Yes" to confirm that you want the SharePoint calendar to connect to Outlook. The SharePoint calendar automatically appears in Outlook under "Other Calendars."

• Print the SharePoint Calendar

1. Click "Other Calendars" in the navigation pane in the left side of the window. Click the SharePoint calendar to open it.
2. Click the "File" tab in Microsoft Outlook, then click "Print."
3. Select "Calendar Details" style under "Print What" to print the complete details of the SharePoint calendar.
4. Click "Print Options" to select print options such as the date range or printing a specific page. Click "Print" after selecting your options to print the SharePoint calendar.

Resolving Event ID 7043: ‘Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed

Event ID 7043: ‘Load control template file /_controltemplates/TaxonomyPicker.ascx failed: Could not load type 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.TaxonomyPicker' from assembly Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.

This error is a result of the control “TaxonomyPicker.ascx” not actually required – it was left in accidentally from release. When SharePoint websites start they automatically compile and cache controls in the “/_controltemplates” folder (default location is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES), which includes the TaxonomyPicker.ascx control. The controls are checked against the SharePoint DLLs (Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal in particular), and thus the error that is raised is actually because the control entry does not exist in the SharePoint DLLs. Hence the event log is actually saying “I have an .ascx file that does not have a matching entry in the SharePoint DLLs”.

The Microsoft supported fix is to modify the ascx file and replace a few characters with a ‘,’. Additional research revealed, from numerous posts, the solution from Microsoft did not work for most. Instead, most, if not all, of the postsmentioned simply renaming this file (specifically the extension) to resolve. Something along the lines of TaxonomyPicker.ascx -> TaxonomyPicker.ascx.old or some derivative there-of.

Invalid Application Path Error in IIS 7.5 Pass-Through Authentication

IIS > SharePoint Web Services > (applicaiton) > Basic Settings > Test Settings

Results in an Invalid Application Path error message.

When The server is configured to use pass-through authentication with a built-in account to access the specified physical path. However, IIS Manager cannot verify whether the built-in account has access.

You see this error message (actually it is a warning message) because you have choose to use pass-through authentication. In this situation, the application pool is run under a low-privileged built-in account, usually Network Service, or ApplicationPoolIdentity. IIS cannot verify that the built-in account has proper settings, this can only be done at run-time.

In addition to this, the "Test Settings" process does not know which user you have authenticated as. So basically, you need to verify that the application pool identity has read access to the files and configuration files. You also need to make sure that the application identity has proper security settings.

So in most situations, you can safely ignore the warning message, because on a default setup, all the permission settings are correct.

System Center Monitoring Pack for SharePoint 2013

Key Updates in System Center Monitoring Pack for SharePoint 2013

System Center Monitoring Packs (previously known as Management Packs), for both SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Foundation 2013, were released on November 8, 2012. You can download them at the download center:

• System Center Monitoring Pack for SharePoint Server 2013  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35590
• System Center Monitoring Pack for SharePoint Foundation 2013 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35591 

1. 102 new monitors/rules are added for better monitoring of new services and existing ones in SharePoint 2013:
• Added monitoring for brand new services in SharePoint 2013, such as Education and Translation. Also added monitoring to newly added services of Access and Search in SharePoint 2013.
• Enhanced monitoring for existing services, such as Project, Usage database and Visio.
2. Redesigned SharePoint Monitoring Pack architecture for easier development and upgrade.
• Componentized into Library (SharePoint version common), Discovery and Monitoring (SharePoint version specific).
• Easier management pack development and upgrade in the future
• Users can reuse the common Class in Library to add their new monitors and rules without impact on the existing ones.
• Users’ own monitors and rules can be upgraded to the future SharePoint version without change (the Library is common for SharePoint versions).

New Microsoft SharePoint Certification for SP 2013

Check out the latest SharePoint certification (and it's not a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert

SP 2013 - Introducing the Content Search Web Part

Have you ever wanted to display content on a page from another site collection and been unsuccessful in finding an out of the box solution? Those days are now gone!

Microsoft has included a new web part called Content Search. With the tight integration of SharePoint Search and FAST for SharePoint Search in SharePoint 2013, Microsoft added the Content Search Web Part to address the issue of not being able to cross site collections for the content aggregation. In fact, the Content Search Web Part will display all content available in the search index, regardless if it is SharePoint content or not! (As long as viewers have read rights to the content)

The Content Search Web Part can be found in the Content Roll-up category of the Web Part Gallery. (Content Search is not available on Office 365 right now, but we are working on enabling it in the future.)

Reference - Content Search Web Part