SharePoint Site Admin training... the must-have task

So you have been working on delivering the perfect SharePoint implementation for your client. The architecture is good, search is working like a charm, the home page is attractive and has an intelligent, user-friendly layout. The developers have done a great job with those web parts and custom forms. The client is "blown away" by the whole thing.

SharePoint 2010 CSS Reference Chart

Heather Solomon (@speheather) posted her SP 2010 CSS Reference Chart. Do check it out!

Setup Forms Based Authentication on SharePoint 2007

I came across this great article by Dan Attis: Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) Walk-through - Part 1

It is well written and gives a good step-by-step guide on how to achieve this.

Just what I needed for my research.

Have fun... and thanks Dan!

DisableLoopbackCheck and SharePoint: What you should know

Here's a great article on the DisableLoopCheck entry as it pertains to SharePoint.

http://www.harbar.net/archive/2009/07/02/disableloopbackcheck-amp-sharepoint-what-every-admin-and-developer-should-know.aspx

"WebPage cannot be found" when uploading large file

So I had a client recently come to me with the following incident: "I am trying to upload the this file (.xls) to a sharepoint library, but then it says :'the webpage cannot be found'. I can open the document. No problem. I can upload other documents, no problem". So my first question is obviously: "How big is the document?" "44 megs", is the reply. "Send me that file...no, copy it to the shared location I will send to you. I will check it out".

Needless to say, I was thinking that this should not be a huge issue to solve. Surely it's just a setting somewhere in SharePoint Central Admin (SCA) - SPCA has already been taken - or in IIS.

But first, I need to see this for myself. I try to upload the file to a library, same error. After about 5 seconds, the "webpage cannot be found" error occurs. Cute, at least I know the user wasn't doing anything 'strange'. Now, time to check the logs... nothing of significance. Seriously. Uncool.

So I go about checking SCA Web Application General Settings. Maximum Upload Size is set to 50MB. Hmmm... Ok, let's check IIS. Seems like everything is cool here.  Check again, make sure I didn't miss anything. OK, now this has become a challenge.

Time to get onto Google... After a lot of searching, and running around in circles, I come across this article by Boris Gomiunik. Dude, hat off to you. Seriously.

Here's what you do. Open the web.config for your web application (notepad). Add the following lines to the end of the file, just before the </configuration> tag:

<system.webServer>
  <security>
    <requestFiltering>
      <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="2147483648"/>
    </requestFiltering>
   </security>
</system.webServer>

That's it. Try your upload now. It just works. You might have to do an iisreset. Hope this helps. 

  

Hide "View All Site Content" Link for non-admin users

This may be a topic that some of you would ask, why now? Well, I have been tasked with hiding the infamous "View All Site Content" (VASC) link on a SharePoint 2007 site. Now I knew about the custom solution that one can download the codeplex solution that will add a custom action to allow you to do just this. However, in order to get this to work, one has to install the wsp and activate the feature. In my case, the client did not want any installation done of custom solutions. So I had to find an alternative. I knew SharePoint designer (SPD) was going to have to come into play here.

Well, I hopped onto google and yay, I found what I was looking for. Jason Colon wrote an article on e-how that explains how to hide the link by setting the Visible property of the SPSecurityTrimmedControl to False. But this hides the link for all users...


But being me and knowing that business users are quite troublesome at time, forever changing their minds about certain rules etc, I wanted a solution that allows admin users to be able to use the VASC in order to speed up their tasks. That's when I came across a gem on the net :) 


Clayton James gives a good example of how to use the SPSecurityTrimmed control to achieve this. Boy, was I glad for this info!


I then proceeded to test my new-found knowledge...

On the masterpage,  I basically changed the PermissionsString parameter of the Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl that encapsulates the VASC link:

<Sharepoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl runat="server" PermissionsString="ManageWeb">
                <div class="ms-quicklaunchheader"><SharePoint:SPLinkButton id="idNavLinkViewAll" runat="server" NavigateUrl="~site/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx" Text="<%$Resources:wss,quiklnch_allcontent%>" AccessKey="<%$Resources:wss,quiklnch_allcontent_AK%>"/></div>
                </SharePoint:SPSecurityTrimmedControl>
 
By changing the default value of "ViewFormPages" to "ManageWeb", I now had control over who can see the VASC link!  Here is a list of values you can use.


Turns out that Admin users now can see the VASC link, while users with lesser privileges (such as contribute or read) are unable to see the link. Exactly what I wanted!

See... No VASC

Only thing that the solution does not cater for is the event where the user types in the actual URL to view all content (_layouts/viewlsts.aspx). Let's hope your normal users never finds out about this URL o_O. 
I would be glad to hear if anyone found a solution to that problem.


Go ahead... try it and let me know what you think.


Happy growing .: