SharePoint – Microsoft Certified Masters, and why I should care

A couple of weeks ago, the first batch of MCM: SharePoint were announced.

Curiously, I went to see what it takes to be a SharePoint master.

Initially, I had assumed that it was just going to be a higher level of certification after you’ve completed the 4x MSTS: SharePoint certificates.

First reaction was: woah US$18,000?  Hmm… sounds a bit crazy.

Realizing that it is a 3 weeks training course made the money side more acceptable.

Seriously, if a company will send their top SharePoint architect on a 3 week full time training, US$18,000 – this must be some serious crack.

But then starting to read about what they say after completing the training

http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/05/07/reality-check-microsoft-certified-master-for-sharepoint-2007.aspx

It begins to dawn on me that this is not your average level yet-another-certification.

It is a massive amount of work, time, effort.  In fact I would argue that the money aspect quickly went out the window with the shear amount of work that’s required to actually make it, and pass it at the end.  If you can take that much time off from client work to get through the course, by all means go for it!

Here are more materials.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/master/Sharepoint/default.mspx

So finally, what does this all mean for me?

For now, as a personal goal - I’ve decided to chew through the pre-reading list.

http://www.dynamicevents.com/MCM/MCMSharePointPre-Reads.pdf

They even provided a nice checkbox column for me to tick them off as I go…  nice!

I think if I can get through these 81 documents before SharePoint 2010 comes out it’d be awesome!

SharePoint - On the verge of launching a new release of a SharePoint site

On the verge of launching a new release of a public SharePoint website and I came across this list (from shanselman’s twitter actually).

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Here’s how we fared:

1. Favicon – checked and done!
2. Titles and Meta data – checked!  Actually SharePoint comes with quite a bit of baggage, but we started with a clean masterpage so this is not too bad.
3. Cross-Browser Checks – checked!  IE6, 7, 8, FireFox, Chrome, Safari + iPhone.  RichHTML editing is limited to IE for now – but there’s a release soon afterwards to upgrade to Telerik’s RadEditor Lite.
4. Proofread – not enough :-(
5. Links – checked - using both SharePoint’s internal reports and SSW Link Auditor – hopefully the content editors don’t put in bad links from now til launch…
6. Functionality Check – checked!  My biggest fears are that in the sprint until launch, if we accidentally break an existing feature that was working previously, so far my fears have been unfounded.
7. Graceful Degradation – not checked…  I think I’m going to feel guilty for saying this one, but I just don’t think it’s relevant to check for JavaScript now.  Especially on a SharePoint site.
8. Validation – no - it’s SharePoint.  This is going to be a tough one to tick off.
9. RSS Link – checked – may be.  One of the features of this release, unless we have to cut it.
10. Analytics – checked – both the SharePoint reports, as well as Google Analytics that was used for the old site
11. Sitemap – checked – SharePoint does this naturally
12. Defensive Design – checked.  SharePoint allows for 404 to be customized
13. Optimize – not enough.  We’re utilizing quite a few performance tricks we have up our sleeves, but ultimately there’s just not the level of control in SharePoint vs. say a custom ASP.NET application
14. Back Up – checked
15. Print Style Sheet – need to check again.  This was working previously but we’ve had some work done on the site in the last two releases and I’m a bit worried about our good ol’ print css.

So we scored 10/15.  Ticked off most of the easy ones.  Have quite a few really tough ones left.  Wish us luck!

SharePoint – thoughts on MSDN “Configuring and Deploying Anonymous Publishing Sites for SharePoint Server 2007”

Andrew Connell’s white paper on Configuring and Deploying Anonymous Publishing Sites for SharePoint Server 2007 just went up on MSDN.

The following are my thoughts in detail.  For the most part – I agree with the views presented in the white paper, and I believe the white paper covered at a glance many of the crucial aspects of anonymous publishing.

Some of these points I wanted to further elaborate and explain some of my own experiences and/or approaches that I’ve found to work better.

Limiting the Page Payload

Fiddler is great.  FireFox’s FireBug also serves a similar purpose.  You want to try to reduce the number of files that are sent across.  Reducing CSS, core.js, core.css will go a long way to reduce the page payload.

I’ve found HttpModule to be far better at stripping core.js, core.css and much of the unused form hidden fields from the output.  Need a lot of testing though.

In addition – check out YSlow FireFox add-in.  Which discusses issues such as E-Tags not being set properly in IIS – you might as well turn it off and let browsers determine file base on modified date / size.

Managing the Name ActiveX Control

This is related to my earlier blog SharePoint – Name ActiveX Control error.  I discussed the circumstances on why this ActiveX control is appearing, what does it do, and why does it only give you grief when running in the Internet Zone on IE.

While the Mossman Way works – I prefer using a HttpModule.

Anyway – I thought if Person Name Smart Tag and Presence Settings is switched off via Central Administration this would have gone away (mentioned later in the white paper).  UPDATE - tested this doesn't work - while the setting is off it still asks for the Active-X

Taking Advantage of Custom CAS Policies for Custom Code

Use CAS policies so you can keep to WSS_Minimal.

Many of our assemblies are deployed in the GAC which runs in full trust.  The reason we put them in the GAC is more a decision related to solution package deployment, and not from a security point of view.

Configuring a SharePoint Site Collection or Site

Blocking Users from Seeing All Pages in a SharePoint Publishing Site

ViewFormPagesLockdown is absolutely necessary.  I’m so glad it’s mentioned in this white paper.

Enabling and Configuring Caching

page output caching and object caching are mentioned – both are very useful.  Page Output caching for the anonymous profile is necessary to achieve high performance from a public site.  Remember to switch on the comment so you can catch caching issues from your staging and production servers.

blob caching is not mentioned – I’m not sure the reasons, but I’ve found it to be useful but I have seen the blob cache rendering and cropping only half of the CSS file that I have.  Is that a SharePoint bug?  Hard to say.  I found some blog articles that asked the same questions – blob caching is one of those supposedly-low-risk-high-gain performance configurations that you can do, but I ended up with only use blob caching with sufficient testing.

Configuring a SharePoint Web Application

Disabling User Presence Information

Just echoing this – I think this should stop the ActiveX presence “name.dll” appearing on IE when you stop this.

UPDATE - tested this doesn't work - while the setting is off it still asks for the Active-X

Disabling the Blog API

Disabling Incoming E-Mail

Separating Content Between Authoring and Production Environments

I noticed I stopped commenting much towards the end of the article.  It was good to see publishing content deployment being discussed at the end - great article.

SharePoint – Name ActiveX Control error.

This error pops up on SharePoint MOSS publishing websites that are in the Internet security zone for IE browsers.

This is because the core.js file wants to use ActiveX control “name.dll”, this ActiveX control is responsible for the presence information for SharePoint.

In the Internet security zone, IE pops this question to the user to ask them whether they want the ActiveX to run.

In development

For developers, if you have accidentally clicked “Yes Allow it to run”, then you won’t see this error and it can hinder your debugging of your public SharePoint site.

This is a RegEdit fix to get rid of this key to see name.dlll ActiveX warning in IE again.

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{E18FEC31-2EA1-49A2-A7A6-902DC0D1FF05}

I have been told that some server machines doesn’t seem to have this key.

UPDATE try: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Stats\{E18FEC31-2EA1-49A2-A7A6-902DC0D1FF05}

Fix

1. MS has a KB article that shows you a broken way of fixing this.  It doesn’t work.
2. We’ve found two other ways that are slightly better, one way is to override the JavaScript function that calls this – you have to be careful of the timing of which events are called first.
3. The other way is to implement a HTTP output module to strip the reference to core.js from the output stream.  This can only be done safely for anonymous users, as core.js contains required JavaScript that is necessary for content editing.

re: Dell Newsletter

After reading yet another Dell monthly newsletter, I decided to reply to it.  I figure it’s rant-worthy.

Hi Mr Dell,

When I purchased my laptop, I was after a couple of spare 9-cell battery for longer battery life, and I was told it was out of stock, which is fair enough – these things go out of stock from time to time.

I specifically left instructions that when they are in stock, I would like to be notified.

Because I _really_ want them.

It has since been 6 months, and I find it hard to believe that they are still out of stock.

I think it’s good customer relationship management to:

1. give me an update on what's going on

2. you may need to fix your CRM software, because I think these are simple instructions that should have been followed up on at least every 3 months - especially since the customer is already telling you he wants to spend the money

3. you should already know which laptop model that I bought from you, and that which I've specifically told the sales girl to put down a note that I want the better batteries for this laptop.

jliu