Melcher.dev

Microsoft Store: Stuck in Pending #windows

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 08:49:25 +0100

This will be a quick one: I am trying to install a game from the Microsoft Store and it is stuck in “Pending” for days. I searched around and the suggested fixes did not work for me. Reset the Store Cache via wsreset.exe Run wsreset.exe as Administrator - no change. Relog into the Store App Profile picture in the top right - no change. Reset the Store App via Settings Windows-key + i Apps Installed Apps Search for Microsoft Store > System Components Search for Microsoft Store again Click on the three dots > Advanced Options Click on Reset No change.

Azure Arc - List CPU Cores #azure

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 12:52:44 +0200

This post shows how to list the CPU cores of your Azure Arc connected machines in a table.

Monitor Unattached Disks with Azure Logic Apps #azure

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 15:16:28 +0100

In this article I explain how to use Azure Logic App to monitor unattached disks in Azure. This is a very common scenario in Azure, where you have a lot of VMs and you want to make sure that you don’t have any unattached disks. This can happen if you delete a VM and forget to delete the disk, ‘I will delete this later…’. Can also be adjusted for other resources like NICs, NSGs, etc.

Three Years at Microsoft - Things I learned #Azure #MicrosoftLife

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 08:30:21 +0000

This post highlights key events & learnings as Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect in the Customer Success Unit. I want to share what I do, what I learned, community contributions, and more. Three years at Microsoft, what a ride!

Migrating to Azure Static Web Apps #azure

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 15:36:22 +0000

My blog has a bit of legacy: From Wordpress to Hugo. From Azure App Service to Azure Static Websites on Azure Blob. And in this post, I tell you about my migration to Azure Static Web Apps. Azure Static Web Apps Azure Static Web Apps are generally available since May 2021 - and I waited way to long to migrate this blog to it, they are amazing! CDN, CI/CD, Custom Domain with SSL - pretty much everything that I puzzled together in previous iterations - “AS A SERVICE” for free (or little money).

Release Annotations for Azure Applications Insights on linux #azure

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 13:11:09 +0200

I use Release Annotations to tell Azure Application Insights about notable changes. In exchange Application Insights can then tell me, that e.g. my latest deployment is slower than the previous one. I got a lot of value out of this so i wanted to have that for a current deployment. My build agent is Ubuntu-based - and the provided examples in the documentation use PowerShell scripts to annotate the deployment. I could obviously install powershell on my build agent, but it is just a single REST call so another dependency on the build agent was too much for me.

GitHub Enterprise Server with Azure AD Auth: git + MFA #azure

Tue, 18 May 2021 08:10:46 +0000

GitHub Enterprise Server with Azure Active Directory Authentication (GHEAADPROXY) With GitHub Enterprise Server Version (GHE) 3.0.6 as self-hosted VM, you can configure SAML authentication backed by Azure Active Directory. This protects the web interface, you get conditional access policies with Multi Factor Authentiction powered by Azure Active Directory. Sessions do expire after a configurable lifetime, then the user must re-authenticate. With the current out-of-the-box design, GHE does not require the same authentication on the git command line.

VSCode Remote-SSH with Azure #azure

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 23:59:47 +0200

VSCode Remote-SSH with Azure

This article shows you how you can connect VSCode on your local computer to a linux VM on Azure.

Load Balancing on Azure - An Overview #azure

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:57:26 +0200

Load Balancing on Azure - An Overview

There are multiple options to do load balancing on Azure, this article will give you an overview and list the different scenarios when to use what.

Running Containers on Azure – All Options Explained #azure

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 17:12:13 +0200

If you want to run a container, most of the customers I talk to, immediately think about Kubernetes – this is obviously a correct answer, but there are plenty of other options available on Azure. In this post I am providing a quick overview of all the options. Firstly, I start with the standalone container options followed by the container orchestration options.

Staying up to date with Azure #azure

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 22:49:52 +0200

' Staying current with the always evolving Azure platform is not an easy task. Here are some tricks and websites to make this a little bit easier:

Enterprise File Shares on Azure #azure

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 14:55:57 +0200

Enterprise File Shares on Azure Please see official documentation - this blog post might be outdated!: Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files comparison My customer has a large on-premises file share environment based on Windows Server File Shares with petabytes of data. The maintenance and operations of those servers sounds like a simple task – but having this in a large and complex infrastructure can be challenging. If the file shares are run by multiple teams, then the overall SLA could be heavily impacted, and the run cost are very high.

Azure Resource Graph: Getting node sizes and node count of all kubernetes clusters #azure

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:04:21 +0200

Today I wanted to quickly see how many Azure clusters there are in an azure environment, their node size and count.

Custom RBAC on Azure PrivateDns A-Record #azure

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 16:21:06 +0200

In this post I want to show how to delegate the management of A-records in an Azure Private DNS zone to a specific user.

Azure Metadata Service - or: I lost my VM, where is it? #azure

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 19:05:29 +0200

Ever lost track in what subscription your VM on Azure runs? Too many RDP profiles or SSH sessions and now you want to know where the VM resides or how it is configured? This short post tells you how to get this metadata from inside a VM.

Gold Club Circle of Excellence 2020 Award #azure #microsoftlife #goldclub

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 10:57:46 +0200

I am beyond grateful for receiving a Gold Club Circle of Excellence 2020 Award for my work and achievements of the past fiscal year.

Upgrading my Home Office #WfH

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 20:44:59 +0200

Given the COVID-19 situation and the flexibility I have working for Microsoft, I decided to invest a little bit in my home office and upgrade a few things here and there - I spent more than 8 hours in my home office every day, so every penny spent is a good investment, right?

My First Year at Microsoft - Things I learned #azure #MicrosoftLife

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 08:47:35 +0000

In this post, I will try to summarize the past year and very first year at Microsoft as Cloud Solution Architect in the Customer Success Unit and share some of the highlights with you.

Azure Policy - Common Sense #azure

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 12:42:32 +0200

As of writing this post (August 8th, 2019) there are 159 Azure Policies available and 111 are in preview (and 27 deprecated). In this post I try to come up with a decent set of ‘common sense’ policies that can prevent data leaks or other issues, I focus primarily on security-related policies. Some of them are so essential, that I would always recommend to enable them - some of them are very specific, so let us use the old consultant wisdom: “it depends”!

Native Hugo deployment to Azure #azure

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 10:47:56 +0200

In Hugo version 0.56 a native deployment command was introduced to deploy your blog/website to various cloud providers - one of them is Azure. In this post I show how I simplified my deployment pipeline with this command. Hugo deploy The Hugo deploy command uses Azure CLI and your config.toml / config.yaml file and checks for a [deployment] section. Additionally, you need to have two environment variables present - even tho the documentation says you have to use az login (thats incorrect, it works without).

Upload custom Debian image to Azure - waagent stuck #azure

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 10:47:56 +0200

Yesterday I spent my day trying to upload a custom Debian VM to Azure and stuck during the installation of the waagent daemon.

Azure Storage Blob Sync - Updates to AzCopy and Azure CLI #azure

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 18:22:24 +0200

There is a new sync API available in AZCopy v10 that makes me happy - and its already included in Azure CLI: sync a folder or file to Azure blob storage (or vice versa) - in this post I show you how I use this for my blog!

Azure Storage Static Website - SSL and Root Domain DNS #azure

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 14:01:36 +0200

Azure Storage Static website feature is really awesome - and great websites for less than 1$ a month can be hosted with them - but unfortunately, they can only mapped to subdomains. In this article, I explain how to get it working for both root and subdomains.

Azure DevOps: Export Wiki as PDF #azure #AzureDevOps

Mon, 27 May 2019 23:30:17 +0200

Azure DevOps has undoubtedly a great wiki. Markdown support, copy and paste of screenshots transparently managed by git - awesome. Surprisingly, a ’export as PDF’ functionality is missing so I decided to create a small tool.

Quick tip: Use Terraform to secure SSH/RDP connections to Azure VMs #azure #terraform

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 15:21:45 +0100

I don’t want to expose VMs to the entire internet - and neither should you. That is basically an invite to brute force attack the VM. Therefore, if I don’t use a VPN or Express Route connection to use private IPs, I use Network Security Groups (NSG) to control the traffic to VMs by allowing a single source IP.

In this post, I show how I do that with Terraform.

Running Hugo on Azure for 2$ a Month #azure #gohugo

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 07:14:44 +0100

Hosting a super fast, modern, yet super-simple blog on Azure for 2$ a month? In this post, I explain, step by step, how I run this blog “serverless” and how my architecture evolved and simplified over time. Never had so much fun to blog.

PowerShell Prompt Awesomeness - you need this! #powershell

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 23:53:16 +0100

Adjust the default prompt in PowerShell is possible: In this short post I show you how and share my new prompt!

Self-Hosted Azure DevOps Build/Release Agent with Terraform - Windows-Edition #azure #terraform

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 15:27:21 +0100

In February I created a Azure DevOps Build/Release agent with terraform running on Ubuntu and due to many requests, here is the terraform script to do the same, but on a Windows Server.

Start Azure Indexer from Azure DevOps #azure #AzureSearch #AzureDevOps

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:35:20 +0100

As described in my last post, I switched to Azure Search for my site search. And because I use Azure DevOps for publishing new blog posts, I wanted to trigger an index run from my build pipeline.

AzureSearch and Hugo - free and awesome! #hugo #azuresearch @azuresearch @gohugoio

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 14:27:11 +0100

Yesterday, my blog used the Google Site Search for delivering search results for this blog. In this article, I show you how I used Azure Search to add an epic, search-as-you-type search for all of my blog posts.

Create an Azure DevOps Build/Release Agent with Terraform - Ubuntu-Edition #azure #terraform

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 09:54:57 +0100

In this post I show you how to create an Azure DevOps build/release agent on Ubuntu 16.04 with Terraform.

Azure Resource Graph: How many CPU cores are used #azure

Sat, 09 Feb 2019 16:41:50 -0800

Recently I was asked how many CPU cores were used in an Azure tenant. The intent of the question was to determine how many VMs could use the Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHUB) and to have a general number how many cores are in the cloud compared to onPrem. I thought that should be an easy exercise for Azure Resource Graph - and it is!
In this post I show you how I got the total count.

Outlook Rule ProTip: Defer all sent Mails by 1 Minute #outlook

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:37:25 +0100

Have you ever sent a mail to hundreds of people because “Reply all” and send is so easy? Noticed that you forgot an attachment just right after you clicked on send? Or pressed ctrl+enter in an almost finished mail?
With one tiny change you have at least a chance to correct your mail and send it properly.

TIL: Set Docker Environment Variables in Visual Studio for easier debugging

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 12:57:11 +0100

Today I learned how to set Docker Environment Variables directly in Visual Studio to ease my debugging experience.

Setting up my PC with Azure in Mind #azure #chocolatey

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 10:32:05 +0100

I had to reset my Surface and reinstall every tool. That would be a very time consuming job - but it is 2019 - and can be automated very efficiently.
In this post, I show you how and what I install on every new PC I get with Chocolatey - with Azure in mind.

AZ-203: Learning Material / Link Collection #azure #az-203

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 10:47:40 +0100

I took the AZ-200 beta exam last year and the exam did not make it out of beta. It was replaced with the AZ-203 exam. I am pretty sure that I did not meet the 70% threshold to be automatically credited with the AZ-203 certification. I had to learn for the AZ-201 certification anyways. Update (18.01.2019): I did pass AZ-200, but it was not enough to get credited for AZ-203.

Azure DevOps: Purge Azure CDN #azure

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 10:00:21 +0100

This will be a quick one: In this post I show you how to purge/empty an Azure CDN during an Azure DevOps deployment.

Inconvenient Hugo Yearly/Monthly Archives @gohugoio

Sat, 05 Jan 2019 08:32:05 +0100

Yesterday I noticed, that my blog did not have the very best urls for my posts than I could have - my last post had the url /post/2018-12-29-Recapping-2018/ and actually I thought it would (and should!) produce something like this: /2018/12/Recapping-2018-90-days-at-Microsoft/ After changing the urls to the correct schema (more in a bit) I noticed that the yearly (e.g. /2018) or monthly (e.g. /2018/12) links do not work at all.

In this post, I show you how I fixed those problems.

Recapping 2018: 90 days at Microsoft #MicrosoftLife #Paragliding #Azure

Sat, 29 Dec 2018 17:10:21 +0200

2018 was literally flying by - and was awesome. I had never ever so many changes in my life than in 2018 - and here are the notable ones!

Logic Apps: Monitor, Email and Attachments #azure

Sun, 09 Dec 2018 16:05:57 +0100

This will be a short one: In this post I show how to use Logic Apps to monitor a file for changes - if the file was changed, send it via email as attachment.

Simple Just-in-Time RDP/SSH Access to Azure VM #azure

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 16:16:56 +0100

In this post I show you how to effortless Just-In-Time connect to an Azure VM.

Azure Policy: Audit Installed Applications #azurepolicy

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 09:41:44 +0100

Azure Policies are the new silver bullet for all things governance: Last week (November 10, 2018) a new policy was introduced that can audit installed applications inside virtual machines (see intro post).

I wanted to know wether it is possible to detect software that should not be installed. Imagine you want to discover all servers where a specific version is installed that ran out of support. Or maybe a software that has not been approved yet. There are many of those scenarios.

Penny Pinching: Migrating App Service to Azure Storage Website Hosting

Sun, 11 Nov 2018 09:00:28 +0000

I am a very big fan of Azure App Service - the flexibility and power you get from this service always amazes me. But recently Static website hosting in Azure Storage was announced and because of the static nature of this blog it would be an ideal fit! So lets see how the migration goes, right? In this lengthy post I show you how I migrated from Azure App Service to Azure Storage Static Website Hosting, from Deployment to Custom Domain.

Azure Governance: Govern the Azure Marketplace with Azure Policy

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 09:30:28 +0000

The Azure Marketplace easily enables us to add new types of VMs to any Azure environment. Sometimes those VMs can have additional charges that were not approved. Sometimes those VMs come from a 3rd party source that was not approved. Unfortunately the Azure Marketplace can only be disabled or enabled for EA (Enterprise Agreement) customers according to the Marketplace FAQ, by now. This situation is far from ideal from a governance perspective.

In this post I will show you how to use the Azure Policy service to audit or even deny the creation of those VMs.

Bye Bye MVP, Bye Bye Alegri - Hello Microsoft!

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 09:30:28 +0000

For the past 7.5 years I worked as Consultant at Alegri in Munich - and I am immensely grateful for all the experience I gathered there with awesome colleagues and a very open and rewarding culture! From SharePoint to Office 365 to Azure I had very diverse and challenging projects and I learned a lot and had good fun - thanks a lot! But for some time now, I was thinking of heading in another direction.

Microsoft MVP 2018-2019

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 07:02:45 +0100

If you are on twitter and in the same filter bubble as I am you could not avoid to see many many tweets of fellow MVPs - yesterday was the global MVP reward day! And, I am happy to announce that I got re-awarded for the 2nd time!

Azure Red Shirt Dev Tour Munich 2018 - a summary

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 09:42:45 +0100

A summary of Scott Guthrie’s Azure Red Shirt Dev Tour in Munich - in short: it was SUPER AWESOME!

TIL: Send E-Mails with Powershell via an Office 365 Mail Account

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 00:11:08 +0100

TIL: Today I learned how easy it is to send emails with Powershell and an Office 365 mail account.

2017 Retrospective

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 15:08:08 +0100

2017 was a very special year. And a super busy one. And exciting - well, almost all adjectives would fit for that CRAZY year! It was full of work, community stuff - and family time…!!!!

TIL: Logging Powershell Parameters

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 14:08:08 +0100

In my current project we provision large and complex Azure environments, subscriptions VMs, networking permissions and all that. Some of the scripts have many many parameters - so in a month it would be nice to see how the script were started and with what parameters. With the cmdlet start-transcript you get all the information what happens in the script as a nice log file. But unfortunately the parameters that were used to start the script are not in there. In this post, I show you how to easily add them to the transcript!

My first interview: 'SharePoint Migration to Office 365'

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 17:00:26 +0100

Today I had my very first (recorded) interview. Thomas Maier from Office365akademie.de asked me some very interesting questions how to migrate from SharePoint 2007-2016 to SharePoint Online/Office 365. We talked almost 30 minutes about all challenges (there are more, of course!) you might encounter. Good fun!

Office 365 DEV Bootcamp: Looking back and looking forward

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 13:04:26 +0100

Roughly 2 weeks after the last bootcamp its time to sum up - and share the slides!

Red Shirt Dev Tour In Germany / Scott Guthrie Is In Town!

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 14:59:57 +0100

A must-go-to event is early next year! Scott Guthrie is coming to Germany - Berlin and Munich - and shows us a “code-first” event! He personally codes on stage - live!

Quick fix: Resizable Quicklaunch for SharePoint Online

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:28:51 +0100

As you can see in the gif above, I created a very simple customization for a specific usecase: My users created deep folder hierarchies (of course I told them not to!) with very descriptive names (metadata!) - and if they navigate deep deep inside, they have to use the tiny scrollbar on the left. And once they navigate, the scroll position is gone. Bummer! Even the enabled tree view did not help. Let’s improve that!

Bye Bye Wordpress - Hello Hugo

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 20:28:33 +0100

After over 6 years and 185 blog posts its time to leave Wordpress as a blogging platform and move on to Hugo. This move is not because I had to, but in the past I replaced many of the services I used to managed services (I am looking at you, Office 365!) - and this tiny blog is the only reason I have to maintain a, most of the time, outdated linux VM with a fully fledged nginx, a slow and certainly unsecured MySql database and what not - for a blog… that does not feel right.

3x Office 365 Developer Bootcamps: Munich, Berlin and Hamburg!

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 10:03:23 +0000

There is something cool coming up! But who could explain it better than Jeff Teper? You heard him right - a full day training, deep dive, one topic - for free! Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamps around the world: Please join Microsoft MVPs Stefano Tempesta and Max Melcher for an all-day workshop in Microsoft Teams and Azure Bot Framework development! To be successful in this workshop, you should have a general understanding of Office 365 and an ability to code in JavaScript/.

PowerShell: Upload a CSV file to a SharePoint List

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 09:30:28 +0000

Wow, it’s been a while since I last blogged - and here comes a tiny helper to upload one or more CSV file to a SharePoint Online list. I think its the best documented script I ever created…!!! The script The following script checks a folder for files - and opens them. Then each line will be uploaded to the specified SharePoint list defined by the provided mapping. The mapping is kinda straight forward.

How about building a magic mirror?!

Sat, 25 Mar 2017 13:07:15 +0000

It was winter, dark and cold outside, maybe rainy - something must have been really odd - because I started to build something physically, my very first hardware project - a magic mirror. And having two left hands I am trying to avoid as much as I can to build things outside of Visual Studio if you know what I mean… and it was July. Magic Mirror - the idea “It’s called a ‘Magic Mirror’, but a more accurate name would be a ‘Smart Mirror’,” Bradley tells us.

SharePoint App, Custom Domain and free SSL certificate

Sat, 25 Mar 2017 11:52:43 +0000

Recently I created lots of SharePoint provider hosted apps for several customers - most of them very simple apps to register a remote event receiver or send emails. But a few of them were complex business apps that used the integration options for SharePoint but stood almost separately as websites running on Azure. The first apps we created had the name .azurewebsites.net - and for some customers that looked so odd that they opened tickets and asked for confirmation if the apps are legit.

My notes: SharePoint Saturday Munich 2017 #SPSMUC

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 16:45:57 +0000

So this was my inaugural SharePoint Saturday in my hometown Munich - the last time I couldn’t attend - and now I am fully thrilled to be part of the greatest and latest SharePoint community event in Munich - and maybe even in Germany. Hosted directly in the Microsoft headquarter in Munich (awesome office!) - with more than 400 attendees this will be fun! My agenda and some brief notes are below - the full agenda and the list of awesome speakers is here.

Efficiently empty a large SharePoint Online list

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 15:47:59 +0000

Ages ago I created a PowerShell script that I used a couple of times by now: efficiently empty a large SharePoint list - but apparently that code does not work against a SharePoint Online list. So here is an updated version of the script: .TERMS No terms - use on your own risk! .SYNOPSIS This script efficiently empties are large list and is approximately 30 times faster than deleting item by item.

Recap: SharePoint Saturday Belgium 2016

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 14:00:18 +0000

300 attendees on a Saturday - all “SharePoint-crazy” - that’s what I said last year and it’s very true for this year, too! SPSBE Fun from the start at 9:00am until the official end of SPSBE (SharePoint Saturday Belgium) at around 19:30! I apparently had to optimize my session on this Saturday (50 minutes slots instead of 60!), tests my demos and pimp my slides - so I could only attend one full session (Deep Dive building solutions on the SharePoint Framework by Waldek Mastykarz @waldekm), but there was enough time for me to talk to friends, community members, BIWUG board members and other speakers - good times, good fun.

Ignite 2016 – My SharePoint takeaways!

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 14:35:15 +0000

Ignite 2016 is over and we all were updated with tons of new features, announcements and insights in Atlanta - in this post I will try to give you a summary what I learned at Ignite 2016 SharePoint Conference it Atlanta. Office 365 and SharePoint Online I took that one from the official source because it pretty sums up whats coming: The next wave of innovations to achieve the SharePoint vision (simple and powerful file sharing, mobile and intelligent intranet, open and connected platform, commitment to security, privacy and compliance) contains the following highlights:

Learn how we move fast without breaking things by managing change in SharePoint Online #BRK2297

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 17:36:02 +0000

Session with Zohar Raz (SharePoint Group Manager) and Lincoln DeMaris (Principal Program Manager) how to manage change in SharePoint Online. Learn how SharePoint is introducing change faster than ever before, while still being extra sensitive to customer readiness and customer feedback. We are heavily investing in our technology to enable organizations to control and prepare for the changes in the experience. Come learn your role in this cloud evolution and what resources we provide to make you successful.

Build business apps for Office 365 – InfoPath, PowerApps, Flow and more #BRK2051

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 20:29:14 +0000

Whats the story post Infopath and how to build business apps with PowerApps? – in this session Chris McNulty (@cmcnulty2000) and Kerem Yuceturk will tell us! No-code and low-code applications have been essential tools in Microsoft SharePoint for a long time, but we’ve added many other new tools to your palette. We review the roadmap and best practices for InfoPath, SharePoint Designer, Access Web Apps, Flow, PowerApps and more. Start with a demo!

Deploy and provision best practices with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 #BRK3035

Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:49:27 +0000

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 provides a new suite of IT capabilities to drive improvements in both scale and resiliency. Learn the best practices to deploying and provisioning SharePoint Server 2016 with these capabilities in mind. A session with Todd Klindt (@toddklindt) and Jason Himmelstein (@sharepointlhorn) – this will be super good! Here are my notes: MinRole MinRole rocks and its actually self-healing, can be installed on 1 server (plus sql).

Learn best practices for managing and administering #SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business #BRK3028

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 19:33:00 +0000

In this session, learn how to manage your Microsoft SharePoint Online (SPO) and Microsoft OneDrive for Business environments in the browser (the SharePoint Online Admin Center) and by using the SharePoint Online Management Shell (a.k.a., Microsoft PowerShell for SPO). We cover numerous scenarios and demos for both seasoned SharePoint admins and new SPO admins. By Chris Bortlik (@cbortlik) Here are my session notes: SharePoint Online Admin 101 Site Collection Provisioning, Service Level Settings, hybrid, PowerShell will be discussed in this session.

Explore what is new and coming with the SharePoint apps #BRK2037

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:35:22 +0000

Ignite 2016 session about apps, mobile experiences and intelligent portals by Andy Haon (@andyhaon) and Nate Clinton (@nate_clinton). Here are my notes: SharePoint Home I was a little late to the session, so only a screenshot from the slides: Mobile Apps Approach: look at the key workloads in regards to SharePoint and bring them to the mobile apps on all platforms. Things they learned: Sign-in issues (a lot), analysis of top requests and implementing them

Empower discovery in SharePoint 2013/2016 with Hybrid Search, Delve and the Office Graph #BRK3034

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 17:06:48 +0000

I’m reading Search, Search and Search in the description of the session by Neil Hodgkinson (@Nellymo) – so what could go wrong? 🙂 Why hybrid? Everything in one search index is a great solution for global spanning enterprises. No more spinning up VPNs to connect and search for company data is of great value. Line of Business (LOB) data can be indexed, too - and you dont have to migrate the entire application to make the data available.

Learn how to build a fast, responsive SharePoint portal in SharePoint Online

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 03:09:29 +0000

Performance is key, who does not hate slow pages? In this session by Russ More and John Fan we will learn how to speed up SharePoint Online pages to build faster portals. Here are my notes: Measure, Measure, Measure! You get what you measure! Microsoft measures a lot of metrics internally and even compare them to competitors – they monitor their own dogfood service (fast ring) to see if there are regressions.

Dive into Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Hybrid Scenarios

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 19:28:27 +0000

Session with Bill Bear and Rick Taylor about all things hybrid. Here are my notes: Hybrid Scenarios Bill started with hosting scenarios from traditional, private and public cloud options: If you are in doubt check if there is a bigger company in your area that moved to the cloud Business Needs Different view to meet business needs is to look at the time to deliver: and your application needs: dynamic scale required?

Discover what’s new and what’s coming to the SharePoint Mobile and Intelligent Intranet

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 16:06:18 +0000

Session with Mark Kashmann (@mkashman) and Adam Harnetz (@adamharnetz) about whats coming for SharePoint intranets especially in regards to mobile. Here are my session notes: Customer usecase: Delta Delta has 500 content creators; previously it was only posible to do that 80.000 employees, entire user base is 260.000 with externals. Mobile is increasing Replaced legacy technology Delta is now starting to move to O365 SharePoint Online, but starts with OneDrive

Explore OneDrive for Business key features and roadmap

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 15:41:15 +0000

My clients currently use OneDrive for Business quite a lot and there are still some rough edges – I hope in that session we get some insights what is coming soon. Here are my brief notes: Rock Solid Sync The robustness of sync has greatly increased (I share that experience). Mobile Experience The mobile experience has greatly increased, 4+ star rating in all app stores. Android and iOS app usage is high.

An Overview of the Microsoft Application Platform for Developers

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 02:17:44 +0000

Watch out, I am attending a developer session! Mainly because Scott Hanselman is the speaker and I totally love his style. Developers! This session will give us a broad overview of all the new things for devs - so we start with the current options of Visual Studio: 12.7 Mio downloads of Visual Studio 2 Mio Visual Studio Code 4 Mio users of Visual Studio Team Services Demo 1: Modernization Porting sounds boring, modernization is a cooler word for it.

Microsoft Ignite 2016 – Innovation Keynote

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 01:57:46 +0000

Satya Nadella on the stage again, this time talking about the current vision of Microsoft. Digital Transformation Satya starts to give an idea of AI in context of digital transformation. Create more personal computing, build the intelligent cloud, reinvent productivity & business processes! The four core pillars for the “AI democratisation” for Sataya are: Agents, Applications, Services and Infrastructure. Demo: Intelligent Agent - Cortana Cortana will be more integrated, LinkedIn integration, reminders based on emails, health insights, integration into the action center of windows 10, add items to wunderlist, intelligent sticky notes.

Learn how #SharePoint is reinventing content collaboration: vision and roadmap updates

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 01:36:44 +0000

The session by Jeff Teper will show us whats coming for SharePoint! Expectations are always highest. Here we go, Jeff enters the stage: SharePoint ecosystem is healthy - we saw that slide already at May, 4th event: And now a very good overview slide of SharePoint and whats it good for: Session Scope In this sessions 4 major areas will be covered: Simple and powerful file sharing Mobile and intelligent Intranet Open & Connected Platform Security, privacy and compliance Let’s start: OneDrive New sync options Access all files Mobile app improvements Better file preview Deeper Office integration OneDrive file activity The last point is Jeff’s favorite - who changed what file recently is really helpful!

Microsoft Ignite 2016 – Keynote

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 18:21:27 +0000

Microsoft Ignite 2016 - Atlanta, Georgia - Philips Arena, 09:00 AM PDC Welcome to my almost live coverage of the Ignite 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. Two years ago I attended the very last SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas and crafted 30 blog posts - and got good feedback afterwards. So well, this year I aim at 20 posts - lets see how it goes. Please excuse typos, I do fast releases!

Azure Website Debugging: The network connection to *.azurewebsites.net:4020 has been lost. Debugging will be aborted.

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 08:30:53 +0000

Recently my colleagues and I created a lot of SharePoint provider-hosted addins - in our case that is just a MVC Website hosted on Azure that talks balk to SharePoint. And I have to say it is good fun because we could actually debug a production site/business application in case something unforeseeable happens (aka. bugs). And the integration in Visual Studio via the Cloud Explorer could not be simpler. Right click on the website, attach debugger and see the problem.

Enterprise Productivity & Search – June 2016

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:35:49 +0000

On June, 6th 2016 we have met at Alegri in Munich to have our very own Enterprise Productivity & Search meetup. This time David Hollembaek talked about Usage Analytics and how to easily gain insights by using Azure Application Insights. We had ~10 attendees, great questions and lots of fun. Usage Analytics Dave told us how easily it is to setup App Insights and add it to a page to track events.

User Group Munich: SharePoint 2016 Hybrid with Samuel Zuercher

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 11:30:52 +0000

Some quick notes (more a braindump) about the last SharePoint User Group in Munich (6/14/2016) with Samuel Zuercher. Samuel was apparently a little sick, but still presented remotely! That was one of the funniest User Group in a while, I had good fun and Samuel delivered some solid info about SharePoint 2016 hybrid story. Hybrid Overview by Samuel Zuercher Start with OneDrive Shared with me does not work with mixed content.

TFS 2015 Upgrade to Update 1 failed (VS402388 / TF401147)

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 14:25:50 +0000

Recently I tried to upgrade a TFS 2015 installation for a client to Update 1. Because I did not find a solution in the internet (even with the error code TF401147), it’s time to blog about a solution. Installation of Update 1 - VS402388 / TF401147 The installation of update 1 worked perfectly: In the first place I installed it because we wanted to move TFS to a more performant server and I installed the new server with TFS 2015 Update 1.

Bootstrap and SharePoint Online – how to avoid css ricochet

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 00:31:54 +0000

In my current project I had the challenge to improve the user experience for some pages without messing too much with the MasterPage (because you shouldn’t, right?). The client explicitly requested components like accordions, responsive tables and more control of the page alignments. So what would be easier to use a mobile first, responsive made by the @twitter guys? Apparently SharePoint Online does not like bootstrap too much - one you add the css files, you will see notable changes.

Enterprise Productivity & Search in Munich

Wed, 03 Feb 2016 14:45:54 +0000

Yesterday we met at our monthly “Search Stammtisch / Meetup” in Munich in one of the most charming locations. Like every month, the scope of discussion was broad and this led also to a short discussion of Brand. As a result we are rebranding the meeting and giving it a proper and more precise name: Enterprise Productivity & Search Why the name? Because it sounds cool - and because we do not only talk about (SharePoint) search, but we also touch so many topics that boost and affect productivity within an enterprise.

Quick fix: For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 08:30:11 +0000

Another day, another quick fix - I hope it helps! Situation Working from home is very productive they said - not in my case, the wonderful script to reindex SharePoint Online UserProfiles from Mikael Svenson worked at work - but throws errors at home. The error “For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document” does not help much… Quick fix Google suggested me to change my DNS entries to 8.

2015 Recap: The king is dead – long live the king!

Sat, 02 Jan 2016 08:32:19 +0000

3 times and you have a pattern, right? This is not the first time I write a recap for the past year, (2014, 2013) - and it is always good fun to reflect the last one and plan the next one. The Past aka 2015 2015 was a super busy year for me - both work, community and private life was packed and very intense. Events I attended so many events this year, without my outlook calendar a reflection would not be possible anymore.

Cloud Hybrid Search Service – first experiences!

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 12:26:29 +0000

Currently I am preparing a session for the next SharePoint Days “Hybrid Worlds” here in Munich. My first presentation topic is “Hybrid Search - everything you need to know!” with focus on the new Cloud Hybrid Search Service Application and here are some of the ideas I will present. Hybrid Options Currently I am aware of 6 feasible hybrid options: One-way Inbound Hybrid You combine SharePoint Online with SharePoint on-premises - when a user queries in the SharePoint Online Search Center, SPO connects to SharePoint on-premises and executes the same or a similar query there to get results.

Custom People Properties are not searchable

Sat, 21 Nov 2015 12:50:57 +0000

This will be just a short one - maybe it saves somebody some time and grey hairs. Situation I created a new result source that boosts some properties of people profiles in search results. During staging I forgot to check the very important radio button that the result source is of type “People”. 1 At first I did not notice that I forgot to check it - Search worked perfectly and returned people hits.

Off Topic: Paragliding – Performance Training in Ölüdeniz, Turkey (Mount Babadag)

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 07:38:33 +0000

This post will be totally SharePoint unrelated but it was so amazing that I will briefly tell you about me last week in Ölüdeniz, Turkey - with lots of pictures! So please read on if you are not afraid of great heights.

Paragliding

1.5 years ago I started to learn how to use a Paraglider - and I enjoyed every minute in the air since then! It is an awesome, thrilling but still very relaxing sport - and not as dangerous as you might think. But it requires a lot of practicing and lots of technical gimmicks - an ideal sport for me. In order to improve my technique (I am still a beginner) I booked a paragliding tour with my flight school - a so called performance training - with my buddy Sebastian and traveled to Turkey (2.5 hours flight from Munich) - and we had a blast from 10/10/15 to 10/17/15.

SharePoint CSOM and NetScaler

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 07:30:08 +0000

I am currently preparing a test dataset for a SharePoint WebPart to see how it scales on a customer SharePoint 2010 environment. The problem I faced here was that the environment is protected by Citrix Netscaler and every CSOM call was ended with a lovely exception. Problem 1: SSL The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel. The client uses https/SSL to secure the channel (good!

AzureSearchTool: Suggestions, please!

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 13:30:12 +0000

Suggestions are a killer feature for search - same applies to Azure Search! Performance for the lookup of the possible options in combination with a large index is a key here - scale scale scale! I released 0.7.0.0 version of the AzureSearchTool today. Suggestion I added all of the possible suggestion options - it’s a different search type so it needed a while to add it to my current implementation. But as the version number indicates, I am close to catching up with the main features.

AzureSearchTool – More Options, More Fun

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 08:30:07 +0000

Today I released the next version of the AzureSearchTool (v.0.3.0.0). If you have not read about the tool at all, please see the introduction here. In the very first version the tool was quite simple and most of the search parameters were not handled. That has changed now: Index I implemented the schema overview (actually that was not that much but looks great): So now you can see what fields of what type you have - and how those fields are specified.

AzureSearchTool – the easiest option to query Azure Search!

Thu, 04 Jun 2015 07:30:46 +0000

Today I released my first Open Source tool to support the development, testing, debugging of **Azure Search **- the AzureSearchTool. AzureSearchTool - v.0.1.5.0 The tool lets you connect to different indexes and assists you crafting search queries. As a byproduct it generates a REST URL for you to use in your application or website. With this it should be easier to develop against the Azure Search REST API - and should speed up the testing time enormously.

ShareCamp 2015 – Recap

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 07:30:51 +0000

Germany’s latest and greatest SharePoint community event was last weekend (30.05.2015 & 31.05.2015 at Microsoft in Munich) - and it was awesome, once again! ShareCamp & Community What is so special about ShareCamp? Easy question, it is entirely community-driven. On both days, Saturday and Sunday, there is a session vote before the “conference” starts. So the attendees prepare presentations and do a short intro during the vote - if more than 3 people raise their hand there will be a session and there were lots of em.

Ignite 2015 Recap – with SharePoint Search in Mind!

Mon, 11 May 2015 07:30:34 +0000

So Ignite is over - and I am pretty impressed how fast the content is available! I followed the first conference (we even had a community hangout during the first keynote) of this style closely via twitter - and the feedback there was quite interesting! Most importantly for me as a SharePoint guy, was of course the announcements of SharePoint 2016. And well, you can be of different opinion of the rescheduled release - but lets focus on the positive side: It’s the first time that we publicly hear what is coming and what will be changed: over a year ahead!

Can’t make it to Microsoft Ignite? Watch the keynote with us!

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 07:30:39 +0000

Microsoft Ignite is next week (see countdown below), and apparently it is in Chicago so many of us can’t make it. So lets make the best out of it and watch the keynote together! That is 100% more fun than watching it alone, right? Guaranteed! 2 <div id="9030-dashboard" class="jedi-dashboard"> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-weeks_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> weeks </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -13 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-days_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> days </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -6 </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-hours_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> hours </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -2 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -1 </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-minutes_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> minutes </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -2 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -4 </div> </div> <div class="jedi-dash jedi-seconds_dash"> <div class="jedi-dash_title"> seconds </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -1 </div> <div class="jedi-digit"> -2 </div> </div> </div> <div id="9030-bothtml" class="jedi-bothtml"> </div> Microsoft Ignite 2015 Hangout If you want to watch us talking and discussing the keynote you can watch the stream here: https://melcher.

Recap: SharePoint Saturday 2015 in Antwerp, Belgium

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 07:30:38 +0000

300 attendees on a Saturday - all “SharePoint-crazy”. Its my first visit to Belgium and I must say: I am impressed of the community and the spirit here. In the following I recap SharePoint Saturday 2015 in Antwerp. SPSBE From the start at 9:00am until the official end of SPSBE (SharePoint Saturday Belgium) at around 17:30 I had good fun. I apparently had to prepare my session on this Saturday, tests my demos and optimize my slides - so I could only attend one full session (see my summary here), but there was enough time for me to talk to community members, board members and other speakers - good times, good fun.

Improving SharePoint Search Experience – #SPSBE07

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 11:05:46 +0000

I think its my first time that I attended a search session for business users/decision makers - interesting times here at SharePoint Saturday in Belgium. Here follows a summary for “Improve SharePoint Search Experience” in my words. Speaker was Elio Struyf (@eliostruyf) - he has some nice blog posts about search, go read them! Elio on stage Improve for everybody, don’t forget the novice users There are different types of users in every enterprise, some of them are more mature with SharePoint, some do a search query with just one keyword - well, one of Elio’s key messages was that you should optimize the experience not only for the “educated” users.

Retrieve Managed Account Passwords for SharePoint 2010 / SharePoint 2013

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:15:14 +0000

In this post I show you a simple PowerShell script to retrieve Managed Account Passwords for SharePoint 2010 / SharePoint 2013. This is actually a repost and I do not want to claim any credits for this post - see the original here by Jason Himmelstein (<= thank you!!!). Why do I repost? I never find the PowerShell when I need it, even tho I have it in my almighty OneNote!

Powershell Script to Efficiently Locate Large Files in SharePoint 2010/2013

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 08:15:32 +0000

Recently I had the request to locate all files that are bigger than 40 MB - and they were located in the entire farm across multiple Site Collections. Easy you might say? Just use search and query for size>41943040 Well, I said efficiently and thats the most efficient way - you are right! They key constraint here is that those files were excluded from search - so lets go for the PowerShell way.

Its over! (My 2014 Review)

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 15:20:59 +0000

Traditions are traditions - at least when you repeat at least once, right? So last year I started to review my year with SharePoint - lets do it again. Conferences & Social 2013 started great - after several attempts I convinced my company to send me to the very last SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas - and it was epic. Not only that I covered 30 SharePoint sessions, I met friends and new friends - I knew some of them via Twitter for a long time, but meeting in person is a totally different story, of course!

SharePoint Search: What Managed Properties do my Items have? (Or: Search Query Tool v2.2. – the missing manual)

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 23:25:25 +0000

Creating Search Driven Applications is very easy with SharePoint 2013 - sometimes. For a really simple example you need 6 steps for SharePoint content (read detailed article here) Add some columns with values to a list Full crawl Create a Managed Property with the corresponding mapping Full Crawl Drop a Search WebPart (Search Result WebPart, Content By Search or one of the other options) Create a query that fits your needs Bam!

A to Z: Create a Display Template for SharePoint 2013 Search to visualize a property of an item/document

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:03:44 +0000

This is an english translation of my article for SharePoint Advent “VON A BIS Z: ERSTELLUNG EINES DISPLAY TEMPLATES FÜR DIE SHAREPOINT SUCHE UM DIE EIGENSCHAFTEN EINES DOKUMENTS SICHTBAR ZU MACHEN”. Display Templates can be used in Web Parts to individualize search results (see also Introduction to Display Templates on MSDN). In this article I will show you how a Display Template for SharePoint 2013 Search is structured, why you need them and how to customize/extend them.

He’s dead, Jim: SharePoint 2013 Search Troubleshooting

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 09:03:32 +0000

Recently we had some strange search issues in our very own intranet and its time to blog about some SharePoint 2013 Search Troubleshooting. At first I noticed that our Search results were quite old, usually that is not the case because we enabled continuous crawling and I was surprised that it worked that well. How I noticed? I have tiny app that utilized search and supports our core business process: billing.

Create SharePoint 2010/2013 Search Content Sources – one script to rule them all

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:23:20 +0000

In this article I will show you how to create SharePoint 2010/2013 Search Content Sources with a handy powershell script and why you should care. This is my 100th blog post and therefore it has to be something with SharePoint Search - something good. I had the idea for the script on my mind for quite a while now, but there was no project and no time to create it - until now.

What happened to ‘the’ ULSViewer and how to still get it?

Wed, 04 Jun 2014 08:55:23 +0000

MSDN Archive has been retired this week - I do not know why they retired it before there is an adequate replacement for the majority of the tools, but it has a huge impact on my work. One of my favorite tool, the famous ULSViewer is was hosted there. You will be greeted with this beautiful page when you try to download the ULSViewer - no alternative download location so far!

Installing SharePoint 2013 SP1 with SQL Server 2014 on Windows Server 2012 R2 – Picture Love Story

Fri, 30 May 2014 15:38:53 +0000

I am trying something new for me: This will be a huge picture post. Today we have a bridge day in Germany and that means most of my colleagues and clients are taking the day off. Ideal time for me to replace my SharePoint installation and bring it to a new level. Why did I upgrade? Well, lets say I have a fable to try everything new out before customers asks me some questions about it – and I kinda like shiney new stuff.

ShareCamp 2014 Recap – SharePoint all weekend long!

Fri, 30 May 2014 15:12:26 +0000

ShareCamp 2014 was last weekend (05/23/2014 - 05/25/2014) hosted by Microsoft in Munich and it was the best community event I attended this year – and I repeat that now for 3 years in a row. So why is it that great? The answer is simple but unexpected: Its organized by and depends on active participation of the community: Each attendee can present their topics and questions in a session – if the other attendees wanna hear their stuff.

It’s not too late! Attend SP24 – The free 24h worldwide SharePoint conference!

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 07:07:49 +0000

This is a last minute call for SP24 - The free 24h worldwide SharePoint conference – the free 24h worldwide SharePoint conference starts today/tomorrow and I am presenting! STARTING TODAY Register for FREE now (it is not too late) and skip lunch, breakfast – or what every you are doing and be part of the great community event! 1 month ago you had to pay at least $1,500.00 to see some of the speakers – again SP24 is free!

Download all SPC14 session slides (simple solution)

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 09:51:22 +0000

Attended SPC14 in Las Vegas and want to download all slides? Here we go with a really simple solution – it only takes some times and roughly 100 clicks. Kudos to Sahil Malik for the script. 6 easy steps to download all SPC14 session slides Open SPC14 Yammer: https://www.yammer.com/sharepointconference/groups/company/uploaded_files Filter on Documents: Filter on Documents to remove unwanted files Scroll down and click on “More” until all elements are visible: Scroll down and click on more - repeat until all files are visible.

SPC14: My Summary

Sun, 09 Mar 2014 07:53:41 +0000

Here is my summary of the SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas (3/3/2014 to 3/6/2014) – if you don’t want to ready everything: It was really good! Highlights The Main Keynote was perfectly delivered – I did not notice a single glitch. Even the talk of President Bill Clinton was quite good, even though that he did not mention SharePoint with a single word. The introduction of Project OSLO – for me as a Search guy was a really pleasant surprise – in my opinion the end users will like it because of its simplicity and you will get the relevant documents, not just everything.

SPC14: Managing Search Relevance in SharePoint 2013 and O365

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 20:20:18 +0000

Improve the value of search results by managing Relevance. SharePoint 2013 and O365 provide a comprehensive set of tools to manage Search Relevance. SharePoint 2013 and O365 combine and improve upon the best tools available for Fast Search and SharePoint 2010, and introduce the notion of Query Rules that allow administrators to influence relevance for a single query or sets of queries using a straightforward user interface. In this talk, we will explain how ranking works under the hood, and give hands on demonstrations of how to use query rules, result sources, XRANK, federation to external search providers, and use the rank tuning tool to improve relevance and the value of your search solutions.

SPC14: Effective Search deployment and operations in SharePoint 2013

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 18:42:56 +0000

SharePoint 2013 introduces a new and highly flexible search topology. This gives more flexibility on how to scale a system, and allows search to tackle demanding requirements for query and indexing performance. In this session we will take you through the deployment of a multi-node search installation, provide best practices for common operational procedures, and give you tips and tricks on how to keep your search system healthy. My session notes for “Effective Search deployment and operations in SharePoint 2013” by Kristopher Loranger and Mert Sangar at SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas:

SPC14: Search architecture and sizing in SharePoint 2013

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 04:55:17 +0000

In this session we will dig into the new architecture for Search in SharePoint 2013. We will cover all architectural components, plus discuss the differences between the 2013 release versus FAST Search and search in SharePoint 2010. Microsoft has updated topology models for different sized deployments. This will be presented along with sizing and scaling data for both physical and virtual machines - actionable data you can use to assess and use during your planning phase.

SPC14: Futuristic Search applications using Kinect and Yammer!

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 23:47:37 +0000

Use your body and voice to search SharePoint and Yammer. Learn how you can utilize SharePoint 2013 Search to index your Enterprise Yammer content on-premises in addition to your regular SharePoint content, then use futuristic UI design and Natural User Interface (NUI) features of the latest Kinect SDK and Kinect Sensors for Windows to build rich NUI and voice controlled search applications. It’s possible. It’s cool and a little crazy - much to be learned.

SPC14: Best practices for Information Architecture and Enterprise Search

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 22:48:25 +0000

Information Architecture (IA) for a large organization is often as complex as a twisting labyrinth. In this session, we will explain, and demonstrate, why a good IA design is important for search and also provide best practices on how to plan, maintain and govern. We will also demonstrate how search provides the building blocks (entity extraction, metadata processing, etc..) for improving knowledge management and discovery scenarios for people and content.

SPC14: Build your own REST service with WebAPI 2

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 20:03:36 +0000

REST and OData are the foundation of data access in a cloud-based world. Office and SharePoint developers are well aware of the new RESTful endpoints available in SharePoint 2013 and may have already consumed some publically-available RESTful endpoints from the Internet. Many apps, however, will require their own RESTful service for accessing custom app data. In this session, we’ll cover the fundamentals of creating custom RESTful services with WebAPI 2 and consuming those services in Office and SharePoint apps.

SPC14: Designing and applying information architecture for SharePoint and Office 365

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 18:36:33 +0000

This session will demonstrate a proven process for defining, designing, implementing and governing your information architecture (IA). IA is more than just columns and metadata. You will learn how the different components available in SharePoint and Office 365 can be leveraged to their fullest potential and your users’ ultimate benefit to content organization and discovery. Session “Designing and applying information architecture for SharePoint and Office 365” by Agnes Molnar and Israel Vega Jr.

SPC14: Best practices for Hybrid Search deployments

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 01:33:04 +0000

SharePoint Conference 2014 Session “Best practices for Hybrid Search deployments” by Brent Groom and Norm Lambert. Are your customers interested in trying out Office365, but still keeping most of their collaboration assets and data on-premises? Are they asking you to provide a single way to find content regardless of where it lives? This session will arm you with the information necessary to help your customers plan Hybrid deployments – connecting SharePoint 2013 on-premises with Office365 – and enabling a comprehensive Search experience that spans the two.

SPC14: Developing future-focused, on-premises solutions

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 00:26:32 +0000

SharePoint Conference 2014 session “Developing future-focused, on-premises solutions” by Bob German. This session will focus on how to develop on-premises solutions based on architecture patterns that will support migration to Office 365 in the future. These solutions are based on a shift to client-side development to allow repackaging rather than rewriting to enable the new App model. The result is code that is safer and easier to deploy, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

SPC14: Search-driven publishing for Intranet Portals in SharePoint Online

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 21:51:05 +0000

Session “Search-driven publishing for Intranet Portals in SharePoint Online” by Alex Pope (Microsoft) and Helge Grenager Solheim (Microsoft). Search-driven publishing is alive in SharePoint Online! This includes the Content Search Web Part (CSWP) and Cross-Site Collection Publishing - both enhance the number and quality of search-driven solutions you can build into your sites and portals within Office 365. This session will provide an overview of these new building blocks, provide best practices and focus on how to optimize page load times with queries and take advantage of a new caching mechanism in the CSWP.

SPC14: Complex Problem Solving with the new HTML5 APIs

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 21:46:33 +0000

HTML5 and CSS3 are now a standard part of the Office and SharePoint developer’s skillset. While much of the buzz around HTML5 and CSS3 focuses on creating a responsive and satisfying end-user experience, a whole new set of JavaScript APIs was also introduced. These APIs provide powerful capabilities that either didn’t exist before, or were only available in 3rd-party libraries. In this session, we’ll focus on these new APIs and use them to solve real-world problems such as maintaining context in a SharePoint-hosted app, caching app data, and communicating between app parts.

SPC14: Real-world SharePoint architecture decisions

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 21:37:23 +0000

Being a SharePoint architect can be challenging - you need to deal with everything from hardware, resources, requirements, business continuity management, a budget and of course customers. You, the architect, have to manage all this and in the end deliver a good architecture that satisfies all the needs of your customer. Along the line you have to make decisions based on experience, facts and sometimes the gut feeling. In this session we will cover some of the architectural changes in the SharePoint 2013 architecture, some of the new guidance from Microsoft and provide insight into a number of successful real-world scenarios.

SPC14: SharePoint 2013 hybrid end-to-end

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 01:07:12 +0000

My notes about the session “SharePoint 2013 hybrid end-to-end” by Sam Hassani. A Hybrid environment combining SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Online can fuse together the very best elements of both systems and offer a seamless experience to end-users when implemented correctly - in addition to providing you with cost savings. Attend this session to understand the solutions SharePoint hybrid environments support. We’ll walk through the end-to-end configuration process covering infrastructure, identity management and SharePoint integration points.

SPC14: Introducing Codename Oslo and the Office Graph

Tue, 04 Mar 2014 00:48:41 +0000

My notes about the session “Introducing Codename Oslo and the Office Graph”. Come see how we reimagined search and discovery across Office with Codename Oslo, powered by the Office Graph. Oslo enables you to work like a network, by proactively surfacing the best and relevant information across Office, tailored just for you. Learn how Office Graph transforms Office, with suite wide insights and machine learning. Session by Cem Aykan and Ashok Kuppusamy.

SPC14: SharePoint Conference 2014 Keynote

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 20:47:49 +0000

Here are my notes about the SharePoint Conference 2014 Keynote “live” from Las Vegas. Figures Opened by Jared Spataro. 10.000 people from 80 countries are attending this years SPC. SharePoint has an incredible 500% user growth, double digit revenue growth – and growing. Office 365: $1.5 billion, 60% of Fortune 500 companies are using it. The Cloud is on fire! President Bill Clinton When I became President there were 50 sites on the internet – in total.

SPC14: What’s new for Office and SharePoint Developers

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 19:46:43 +0000

Sub-Keynote for Developers “What’s new for Office and SharePoint Developers” by Brian Jones and Rob Lefferts. This session will show what’s new in Office and SharePoint development and unveil new features and capabilities that demonstrate how the development model has evolved. Figures 3.4 Million SharePoint Developers 1 Billion Office Users They activly monitor social sites like StackOverflow and UserVoice to get feedback. They want more insight. Context Apps They said is several times now – context is the new thing.

SPC14: Refactoring Business Solutions into Apps for Office

Sun, 02 Mar 2014 22:03:24 +0000

This session will focus in deep detail on one top 10 business scenario and showcase how it can be enabled with apps for Office. We will review the business scenario, the architectural considerations to enable this scenario in Windows Azure and apps for Office, as well as delving into the code behind the solution. Expect to see a lot and have experts available to you to answer any of your questions and concerns.

SPC14: Migrating Traditional SharePoint Solutions to the App Model

Sun, 02 Mar 2014 19:05:14 +0000

There are many business scenarios and solutions that have been built on the SharePoint 2010 platform that are critical to customers. As companies, partners, and solution providers look to move to the SharePoint 2013 platform, these solutions should be reimagined to leverage the new cloud app model and apps for SharePoint. This session will deep dive into the key scenarios and techniques of migrating the most common customization patterns from SharePoint 2010 solutions to apps for SharePoint.

SharePoint 2013 Search: Navigate to first Page

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:25:35 +0000

Sometimes clients come up with crazy requests “I can not go back to first page, this pagination is not good enough” – but this one was reasonable and SharePoint 2013 search is so easy customizable, lets take it as an exercise! Everything is a Display Template As the caption says, you can change almost every design aspect in SharePoint 2013 Search by changing a html file (or a .js file if you are on Foundation) – this includes the general rendering of the search results and with it the pagination.

SharePoint 2013 CU August 2013 – “Internet Information Services not installed”

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 10:21:38 +0000

Today it was time to update my SharePoint 2013 installation from March PU 2013 to August 2013 CU - mostly because the Search Schema changed under the hood and I wanted to try something out for the awesome Search Query Tool. Download Wow, 1.8GB patch – that is huge! Compared to the RTM version of SharePoint 2013 with 2.4GB they rewrote 75% - or the patching strategy is not that optimal.

Recap: SharePoint User Group Munich – 01/21/2014

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 20:36:48 +0000

First User Group in Munich - with live streaming to google hangout - pretty cool stuff! Session 1: Migrations and their pitfalls First session by Dennis Hobmaier (@DHobmaier) about SharePoint migrations. Key take-aways: templates, custom-code, permissions, workflows are the main causes of trouble - thats new 😉 Session 2: Offerings for the SharePoint Community in Germany - or how to create a podcast Michael Greth (@mysharepoint) showed us the various offerings for the large SharePoint Community in Germany (there are around 30 User Groups):

Install SharePointLogViewer with PowerShell

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 12:45:54 +0000

Another essential SharePoint tool found its way to the chocolatey gallery – this time it’s the awesome and feature-rich SharePointLogViewer. Key Features: View multiple SharePoint log files at once Search by any field Filter the log by any field File drag & drop support Live monitoring for entire farm Export filtered log entries Bookmark log entries Get popup notification of SharePoint log events from system tray Receive email notifications on errors Redirect log entries to event log Supports SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013 Installation After installing chocolatey you can install SharePointLogViewer with one line of Powershell:

Bye bye 2013 – My Year With SharePoint

Sun, 29 Dec 2013 22:32:04 +0000

Inspired by Wictor Wilén yearly blog series I try to summarize my year – last year I wanted to write one but I did not gather enough stuff to fill a page – lets try it again: Wow, 2013 was an interesting year and the time has come for my annual blog post to sum up the year that soon has passed us and looking a bit into the crystal ball for the next one.

SharePoint Toolbox: Color Palette Tool for Sharepoint 2013

Mon, 16 Dec 2013 09:01:16 +0000

Another episode of the toolbox – who thought this would happen again? Teaser In this episode I show how to use the Color Palette Tool for SharePoint 2013 and show how easy it is to create Themes for SharePoint 2013 with it. Video: English / German Slides: slideshare.net/melchermaximilian/toolbox-color-palette-tool Download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38182 Side Note I bought a new microphone – a SAMSON Go Mic – and I am really happy with it. Do you like the sound quality?

SharePoint 2013 Search Preview for Documents hosted in SharePoint 2010

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 23:59:32 +0000

Recently I talked to some clients because of a “Search-First” SharePoint 2013 migration (more about this topic will follow). During a training this week I got aware of a serious issue with the “Search-first” approach, especially with the really nice Office Web Apps 2013 Search Previews you get for free (read only!). Problem Some clients want to start their migration with setting up a new SharePoint 2013 farm. This new farm then crawls the old SharePoint 2010 farm.

Converting a Hyper-V VHD to VHDX – and shrink it

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 09:00:36 +0000

Yesterday I thought its time to convert my SharePoint 2010 development environment Hyper-V vhd to a new vhdx. Why bother? I used my environment hosted on my lovely Lenovo W520 to develop a migration tool to convert a SP2007 environment to a SP2010 environment. Therefore I needed ~300GB free space – easy with Hyper-V. Just extend your virtual drive and you are good to go. Afterwards you can easily shrink the disk back again – at least I thought so.

After the ShareCamp is BEFORE the ShareCamp

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:00:10 +0000

A ShareCamp.at Retrospective My colleague Sebastian and I arrived at ShareCamp in Vienna (Austria) at Friday evening. And it started well – we meet a lot of people very known in the German – and now Austrian Community. To name a bunch: Toni Pohl, Martina Grom, Christian Glessner, Thorsten Hans, Hans Brender, Heike Ritter - not a complete list. We had a, lets call it pre-conference party. A great start of a ShareCamp.

ShareCamp.at: App Dev

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 03:41:32 +0000

Thorsten Hans (@ThorstenHans) and Christian Glessner (@cglessner) showed us how to develop SharePoint Apps (SharePoint hosted, Provider hosted). Live coding Thorsten recommended to use the REST calls instead the JS client object model – they are faster and “more” future-proof. Their experience was that autohosted is a little odd, the price conditions are not very clear. So there is provider hosted (Azure) or SharePoint hosted remaining. Key takeaway I really like their sessions – zero slides sessions – good content.

ShareCamp.at: Windows Azure Mobile Services

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 13:58:18 +0000

Thorsten Hans (@ThorstenHans) showed a lot of examples how to send notifications via Windows Azure Mobile Services. The story was “Build a contact form” with push notifications As a Windows 8 App As a SharePoint App Key takeaway Easy, fast – good stuff. Wondering if the push based messages are based on SignalR. The session was good fun, thanks Thorsten!

ShareCamp.at: TypeScript

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 12:34:37 +0000

Session about TypeScript and SharePoint by Martin Groblschegg Short introduction about TypeScript TypeScript is a free and open source programming language developed by Microsoft. It is a strict superset of JavaScript, and essentially adds optional static typing and class-based object oriented programming to the language. Anders Hejlsberg, lead architect of C#, has worked on development of TypeScript. TypeScript extends JavaScript syntax, so any existing JavaScript programs work with TypeScript without any changes.

ShareCamp.at: Apps or Farm Solutions?

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 11:37:35 +0000

Controversial discussion about the new App Model and very nice experience sharing. Here are my key questions and thoughts about the session by Christian Groß. Deployment? What are the limits and advantages Security – when you trust you can choose what rights the app has. Technology independent (Coose what every technology you want, e.g. .NET version) Life cycle – when you update you app you have to update the app on each subscriber web.

ShareCamp.at: Extending Visual Studio SharePoint Tools

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 11:35:31 +0000

Peter Holpar showed us how to extend the Visual Studio Tools for SharePoint. Implementation The creation of a Visual Studio Extension is basically a custom class that implements some interfaces. The biggest problem is that the documentation is not that good – Peter told us that it needs a lot of debugging to get things working. PreReqs Get the Visual Studio 2012/2013 SDK and you need, of course, an installed SharePoint because of the assemblies.

TechEd 2013: Best Practices in Virtualizing and Managing Microsoft SharePoint with Microsoft System Center and Windows Server

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 13:49:37 +0000

Session by Simon Skinner (@CymonSkinner)

SharePoint is now a company standard, but what is supported, sensible, or even practicable? How do we go about monitoring and managing SharePoint? In this session, we discuss the virtualization path and best practices using Hyper-V for high availability and why virtualization makes sense. […]

Here are my notes:

TechEd 2013: Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure in Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:12:11 +0000

Session by Paolo Pialorsi (@PaoloPia)

In this session, you learn how authentication and authorization work in SharePoint 2013, either when handling direct users’ requests, or running requests for SharePoint apps. In particular, see how to federate with an external Identity Provider like Windows Azure ACS to authenticate users and then authorize them in SharePoint, leveraging claims.

There is one Level 400 session (highest) – guess what’s it about? Right, Authentication.

Here are my session notes.

TechEd 2013: Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Administration

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:11:22 +0000

Corey Burke (@cburke007) and Todd Klindt (@toddklindt)– Entertaining SharePoint Administration

In this session, we cover what’s new in SharePoint 2013. First, we cover installing SharePoint 2013 and configuring your new farm. This session provides what to need to start planning your new SharePoint 2013 farm and dovetails nicely into Part 2, which covers changes in SharePoint 2013 the SharePoint administrator should know about. We cover changes to how you’ll plan your farm topology. We also cover the changes to the Search service application and how that impacts scale. Finally, we spend some time talking about everyone’s favorite part of SharePoint Server, the User Profile Service.

That’s quite a lot for one session – but Todd is a fast speaker. The session also includes cheap jokes about SharePoint Developers, guaranteed!

So here are my session notes:

TechEd 2013: Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for SharePoint 2013

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:09:27 +0000

If SQL Server does not perform, SharePoint can not show its full potential – to quote the session description:

More than 90% of the content accessed via SharePoint is stored in SQL Server and without the correct configuration of SQL Server it can have a detrimental impact on the performance of SharePoint. Regardless of whether you have a dedicated DBA or the SharePoint administrator is also the DBA there are critical SQL Server configurations that can be made that will optimize SharePoint […]

Here are my session about the session by Brian Alderman (@brianalderman)

TechEd 2013: Step by Step: Search Development in Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:18:16 +0000

Another search session – good times!

TechEd 2013: Windows is the Future

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 08:48:26 +0000

This keynote is, as the title indicates, all about Windows 8.1.

My takeaways and impressions after the jump.

TechEd 2013: Continuous Deployment with Team Foundation Service and Team Foundation Server 2012

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:20:18 +0000

Session by Brian Randell (@brianrandell)

It started with music – and then Brian started a great session. Here are my notes!

TechEd 2013: Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 Upgrade and Migration: Strategy and Tactics

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:02:15 +0000

Session by Dan Holme (@danholme)

This is one of my most anticipated sessions at this years TechEd. Part of my job is it to consult my clients why, when and how they can migrate to SharePoint 2013, so this is a perfect session for me. Here are my notes from Dan’s Session – with many quotes because they rock and have totally influenced my decisions in the past!

TechEd 2013: IaaS: Hosting a Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Farm on Windows Azure

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 11:05:21 +0000

Session by Michael Washam (@MWashamMS) how to provision SharePoint 2013 in Windows Azure Virtual Machines.

Session notes after the jump.

TechEd 2013: The Inside Man: Surviving the Ultimate Cyber Threat

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 10:08:39 +0000

Okay, this is a session out of my usual scope. The title of the session caught me and as it seems it was totally worth it.

Here are my session takeaways.

TechEd 2013: Search Architecture, Sizing, and Migration in Microsoft SharePoint 2013

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 08:25:30 +0000

From the session description:

Successful SharePoint deployments have one thing in common: great search!

So, true – here are my session notes from the Search Architecture, Sizing, and Migration in Microsoft SharePoint 2013 session.

TechEd 2013: Entity Framework 6

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:20:41 +0000

Session by Glenn Condron

Okay, this room is packed – there is some serious interest in this topic.

Here are my notes from the session.

Teched 2013: Microsoft SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP: Overview

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:21:31 +0000

In-Memory is the big new thing - here are my notes from the session!

TechEd 2013: Microsoft Office & SharePoint 2013 Development: Introduction to the New Cloud App Model

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:17:16 +0000

Session by Rolando Jimenez

Build a new class of apps that extend and personalize the way we create and consume information right from within Office…

TechEd 2013: Keynote: Cloud OS – It’s time

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:55:13 +0000

First keynote here with Brad Anderson (Vice President at Microsoft) and others.

Lots of impressions, he covered most of the new stuff.

TechEd 2013 – My Schedule with a touch of SharePoint

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 12:53:02 +0000

I roughly finished my Schedule for Teched 2013 (#Tee13) in Madrid – I will blog summaries about the sessions I attend.

SharePoint 2013: Term Store Management Tool and TargetFramework 4.5 plus SignalR

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:10:25 +0000

In certain situation you want to allow that your SharePoint can utilize the new .NET 4.5 functions – this includes WebSockets for instance. In order to get his running, you have to change the web.config of the corresponding Web Application. Disclaimer: Use this on your own risk and try it in a TEST or DEV environment first – the change can take down your SharePoint Farm or break core functions! Manual approach This is a step by step manual how to set the values that your SharePoint targets .

Install SharePoint Designer with PowerShell – Chocolatey SharePoint

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:20:49 +0000

Almost weekly there is a new tool that you can install with the very awesome chocolatey. In the case you have not heard about chocolatey, its a package manager for Windows similar to apt-get for linux - in other words: You can install tools/software with 1 line of Powershell.

Updated chocolatey with more tools

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 12:12:34 +0000

A good day for automation lovers! @avishnyakov (http://spdevlab.com/) contributed 5 SharePoint packages to my ChocolateySharePointPackages repository. See his blog post here. Added packages! Today I pushed them to the chocolatey gallery and you can install them with 1 line of PowerShell. cinst PowerGUIVSX Installs the PowerGui Visual Studio Extension cint SP2013PreReqs Installs all SharePoint 2013 PreRequisites cinst SPSF Installs the SharePoint Software Factory cinst SPCAF Installs the SharePoint Code Analysis Framework Want more?

SharePoint for your ears!

Sun, 26 May 2013 17:02:14 +0000

SharePoint is such a great product that there is always something I have not heard yet (or already forgot) and my day has only 24 hours. I try to read a lot on SharePoint Stack Exchange / Twitter / Technet– but that’s only possible if I am close to a PC. Because of that and because cleaning up the house or washing dishes without SharePoint is boring I listen to quite a lot podcasts.

Powershell: Enable Refiner Count for SharePoint 2013 Search Results

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:30:58 +0000

The refiner count is a very useful indicator in the Search Center whether the click on the refinement is worth it or nor – and the implementation is so intuitive that even end-users understands it. But: It is disabled by default in SharePoint 2013. This post shows you how to enable the Refiner Count for SharePoint 2013 - manually and with PowerShell. Refiner Count in SharePoint 2010 The refiner count was introduced in SharePoint 2010 and is a FAST for SharePoint feature.

Install Office Web Apps 2013 for SharePoint 2013 – with PDF Preview

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:57:58 +0000

Preview of Office Documents (this includes PDF) is a huge benefit when you are searching for information – you can quickly identify if the document is the one you are looking for or skimming/scanning a document efficiently. To get the preview up and running you have to install Office Web Apps 2013 – PDF preview was added in March Public Update 2013 – that’s great, many clients have asked me why there is no support in the 2010 stack.

Powershell: Efficiently empty large SharePoint lists

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:01:24 +0000

Previously I had a little console app to efficiently empty large SharePoint lists. Today I converted it to powershell. SharePoint Online? Read this: Efficiently empty a large Sharepoint Online List Compared to the simple item by item delete with item.Delete() its 30 times faster; on my dev machine it deletes ~30 items per second. It works for SharePoint 2010 and should for 2013 (not tested, yet). Script param($weburl,$listname) if ($weburl -eq $null -or $listname -eq $null) { write-host -foregroundcolor red "

ShareCamp 2013 – Recap and session slides

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:10:40 +0000

ShareCamp 2013 took place at Microsoft’s office here in Munich last weekend (4/12/2013-4/14/2013) and it was a BLAST. Sharecamp 2013 - before it began. Picture taken by Michael Greth Saturday, 9:00am. 200 SharePointers voting for sessions What I totally like was the open but still professional style of the barcamp – every attendee was allowed to suggest one or more presentation topic. After receiving more than 5 votes from the 200 attendees you got a session slot assigned (room and time).

FAST for SharePoint 2010 – Cumulative Update August 2012

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:13:19 +0000

The Cumulative Update August 2012 for FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 is out for a while now – seems like nobody has tried this one yet. Or quality control has happened… Updating FAST Search When you install a service pack or a cumulative update for FAST you have to run the setup and then you have to start a FAST powershell and start “psconfig –action p” – otherwise your search won’t work because SAM Worker process is dead.

#SharePoint 2013 Search – The gatherer service cannot be initialized

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:30:25 +0000

I installed SharePoint 2013 on a test system yesterday and was faced with the problem that the search, after successfully provisioning it - did not work. Boo! Symptoms There are several noticeable Symptoms The crawl log shows 1 Top Level Error and 1 Error: Crawl log with 1 Top Level Error and 1 Error The Eventlog shows some warnings and an error Eventlog with the error "The gatherer service cannot be initialized"

Chocolatey: Created two new SharePoint “Helpers” for lazy developers

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:30:39 +0000

I mentioned Chocolatey and Powershell quite often in the last time, today I created two little helpers and uploaded them to the chocolatey gallery. The two super-awesome (and simple) packages called SharePoint.HiveShortcut.Desktop and SharePoint.HiveShortCut.Explorer - and the name indicates it, they create shortcuts to the hive folder. I could just upload the two lines of powershell on this blog, but I totally like the Chocolatey approach - makes it easy for everyone.

SharePoint Toolbox #012: AutoSPSourceBuilder

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:30:00 +0000

Today a new webcast on the SharePoint Toolbox was released. It’s about the very cool AutoSPSourcebuilder powershell script. Summary The webcast shows you how to create SharePoint 2013 installer package with bundled Prerequisites (so you can install SharePoint without Internet-Connection) and includes the SharePoint 2013 Cumulative Update December 2012. Language packs or even Service packs could be added, too. Its available in English and German. Feedback, questions or tool suggestions much appreciated.

Powershell: List all IIS WebApplications (.net version, state, identity)

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:30:04 +0000

Short powershell script to list all IIS Web Applications with the .net version, the state of the Web Application and the assigned user/identity. try{ Import-Module WebAdministration Get-WebApplication $webapps = Get-WebApplication $list = @() foreach ($webapp in get-childitem IIS:\AppPools\) { $name = "IIS:\AppPools\" + $webapp.name $item = @{} $item.WebAppName = $webapp.name $item.Version = (Get-ItemProperty $name managedRuntimeVersion).Value $item.State = (Get-WebAppPoolState -Name $webapp.name).Value $item.UserIdentityType = $webapp.processModel.identityType $item.Username = $webapp.processModel.userName $item.Password = $webapp.processModel.password $obj = New-Object PSObject -Property $item $list += $obj } $list | Format-Table -a -Property "WebAppName", "Version", "State", "UserIdentityType", "Username", "Password" }catch { $ExceptionMessage = "Error in Line: " + $_.

Chocolatey Package: SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:00:04 +0000

I am a huge fan of automation and powershell - this should explain why I really love chocolatey (a package manager to install software with powershell). Today I created a new feed for SharePoint 2013 Development Tools: http://www.myget.org/feed/Packages/sharepoint2013dev and uploaded the very cool SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool to the chocolatey gallery. This tool helps creating and testing search querries - and search is everywhere in SharePoint 2013! After installing chocolatey you can get a great starter toolset with one line of powershell:

SharePoint 2013 Design Manager: Map network drive on Windows Server 2012

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:41:05 +0000

So the best way to adjust and edit MasterPages and DisplayTemplates in SharePoint 2013 is to map a network drive and edit the files directly there or copy them to this location. If your SharePoint is hosted on Windows Server 2012 this does not work without configuration – I am really surprised that the config wizard or the PreRequisite Installer does not add the required service – but lets just focus on the solution.

Cache cluster is down, restart the cache cluster and Retry

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:16:24 +0000

Had a small issue with my SharePoint 2013 MySite today, I could not update a User Profile in Central Admin – this is what I got from the ULS Log: ULSViewer: The exception is pointing us in the right direction. The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.LMTRepopulationJob (ID 104963a2-b53c-4476-bc23-fa7d6453e42f) threw an exception. More information is included below. Unexpected exception in FeedCacheService.IsRepopulationNeeded: Cache cluster is down, restart the cache cluster and Retry.

My Links in SharePoint 2013

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:30:15 +0000

the My Links “vanished” in SharePoint 2010 – they were no longer visible. The Problem: Some clients heavily utilize those server-side favorites. SharePoint 2010 The links are stored in the Database and the controls to manage the favorites and the page for that is there. Luckily the migration from SP2007 to SP2010 migrated the links, too. Just the control in the ribbon was missing – but there is a very good codeplex solution for that.

Powershell: Create the BDC Service Application for SharePoint 2013

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:40:42 +0000

Here a small script to provision the Business Data Connectivity Service Application-without ugly GUID in the database name. Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue #Settings $ServiceName = "BDC Service" $ServiceProxyName = "BDC Proxy" $AppPoolAccount = "demo\spservices" $AppPoolName = "SharePoint Services App Pool" $DatabaseServer = "sp2013" $DatabaseName = "SP2013 BDC" Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Checking if Application Pool Accounts exists" $AppPoolAccount = Get-SPManagedAccount -Identity $AppPoolAccount -EA 0 if($AppPoolAccount -eq $null) { Write-Host "Please supply the password for the Service Account.

SharePoint ToolBox: #010 SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:08:47 +0000

I created another episode of the SharePoint Toolbox: SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager. First time I reviewed the solution with a performance evaluation and the first time ever I contributed to a Codeplex project - interesting times! You can watch it in English or German. Abstract The SharePoint 2010 BlobCache Manager enables you to control the BlobCache settings from Central Admin. You don’t have to maintain these settings on each web frontend manually.

SignalR in SharePoint 2013 – the real-time web is coming!

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 23:05:31 +0000

If you never heard of SignalR – it’s a real-time web framework for bi-directional communication between a client and server – in short: your server (here SharePoint) can notify a client that something very important happened. Let’s say you want to have Task List and a Dashboard where you can see how many tasks are open (you can watch this example here by Matt Menezes)– in real-time, without hitting F5 permanently and without having an AJAX function polling the list every second.

SharePoint 2013: Federated Search Deep Dive – Twitter

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 12:46:08 +0000

SharePoint Search Federation is a really underrated feature if you ask me. You can greatly improve your company’s knowledge management and create a single point of entry to all kind of data. Federation comes into play when you can not crawl the data source (too big or too complex). With SharePoint 2013 and the very cool query templates you have literally thousand of options (to be honest you had them before but with XSLT its not that much fun) to enhance your search results.

Finally a new blog theme… with mobile support!

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:14:38 +0000

Finally I found some time for a new theme - maybe a motivation to release a couple of blog posts (I have a lot of drafts). The mobile support (fully responsive!) was really needed! Do you like it?

Get ALL your #SharePoint tools installed in 20 minutes

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:43:42 +0000

A while ago I wrote about chocolatey and how to install a lot tools automatically. Thats especially handy if you have to set up a new environment for SharePoint 2013 RTM… Now even more Today and yesterday I added two more packages - two tools that I always use and now I can add them in my scripted setup: ULSViewer and CKSDEV (Server) CKSDev The Visual Studio Extension is installed if you have a Visual Studio 2010 or 2012 installed.

SharePoint 2013: Replace the PDF icon

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 11:55:13 +0000

Icon madness I uploaded a PDF to SharePoint 2013 and noticed that the PDD icon is not the official and recognizable Adobe PDF icon. In this article I will tell you how to replace the SharePoint 2013 PDF icon. OOTB PDF icon from SharePoint 2013 Is it a document with a belt or what ? Nevermind I don’t like it and I am very certain that most of the users out there do not recognize the icon – and that is the main purpose of the icon right?

Install all the good SharePoint tools with one line of powershell – #chocolatey

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:07:54 +0000

Okay I am in love with a new tool called chocolatey – its a package manager like “apt-get” for windows systems based on the very awesome nuget – and this neat piece of software can install other software. Its very easy to add software or packages and there are even galleries (340 packages in the main gallery yet) or feeds where you get a good start. Chocolatey So installation of this package manager must be very complicated….

#SharePoint 2013 – Create a Search Service Application and Search Topology with Powershell

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:02:49 +0000

Writing SharePoint 2013 feels very new to me, but I created my first Demo environment and tried to set up search. What needs to be done? 14 steps for a simple Search Topology - 1 powershell can do them all. Create a Service Application Pool for the Search Service Application (15-22) Create a Search Service Application (22-28) Create a Search Service Application Proxy (30-36) Get the current Search Instance (38) Save the current Search Topology for later use (39) Create a new Search Topology (40) Create all the Search Components (Analytics- , Content Processing, Query Processing, Crawler-, Admin Component) (42-46) Remove the Index-Folder and recreate it (50-51) Create a new Index Component (53) Activate the new Topology (56) Call the method synchronize on the old topology - this errors but forces an update on the old topology object (59) The “forced updated” Topology object becomes inactive and can be deleted.

TechEd 2012 (#TEE12), Amsterdam — Day 4

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:47:41 +0000

Last day at TechEd – today it will be an asp.net-ish day! First Session: Microsoft ASP.NET and the Realtime Web (Brady Gaster) This gotta be SignalR – hopefully with cool demos. Actually they forgot the SignalR part in the title, the whole thing is about it. Okay, first demo is SignalR with Kinect. Kinect detects a person, takes a picture, the picture is uploaded to azure and the link to the picture is pushed to “subscribed”, open browser.

TechEd 2012 (#TEE12), Amsterdam – Day 3

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:08:55 +0000

Third day at TechEd, not getting more sleep here but coffee keeps us going! The delegate party was in the AJAX Amsterdam soccer arena – private public viewing style. First Session: Best Practices for Building Your Website for Scale with Microsoft SharePoint 2012 (Spencer Harbar, @harbars) At first I thought “Why isnt he talking about User Profiles, Sync or something – he is Mr. UserProfiles for me. Key messages: Capacity Planning, Architect Scale, Pilot & Test, Deploy, Monitor & Validate, and repeat.

TechEd 2012 (#TEE12), Amsterdam —- Day 2

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:00:18 +0000

Second day at Teched. Keynote: Windows 8 Lots of different features of the new Windows 8 are shown. Windows 2 GO demo was cool – you can boot an entire Windows from usb 3.0 stick. If you unplug the stick you have 60 seconds to replug it and everything continues to work. First Session: Introducing the New Visual Studio 2012 Unit Testing Experience (Peter Provost) Peter showed some new features of the new Visual Studio – looks great.

SQL Server 2012 R0 Evaluation expired

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:17:32 +0000

Yesterday was the 180th day without problems on my DEV/DEMO environment – until my eval expired without noticeable warning ahead. The whole thing just locked down and of course my SharePoint doesn’t like that: Great, just great. Because Alegri is a Microsoft Partner, we do have valid SQL Server 2012 codes – so I asked for one, received one and tried to upgrade my license from EVAL to ENTERPRISE. So I started the installer of R0, clicked on the “change license” link entered the code – everthing ran green.

TechEd 2012 (#Tee12), Amsterdam —- Day 1

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:02:49 +0000

I will blog a bit about the sessions and stuff I saw at TechEd in Amsterdam – all from the perspective of a SharePoint guy. Keynote (Brad Anderson) Its all about cloud and virtualization. Broad coverage of all the new stuff, quite like the new Visual Studio features (List definition builder integrated, wondering how it will work with taxonomy fields) First session: What’s new in Windows Azure (Scott Guthrie) Provisioning of Azure virtual machines with a new and lean HTML5 web interface – metro styled of course.

SignalR and SharePoint: Live Download Tracking

Sun, 13 May 2012 20:52:29 +0000

I uploaded my first video to youtube today: Apparently the captions were lost during the upload, next time I will explain a bit more 🙂 Maybe next weekend I add some code examples and further details.

ShareCamp 2012: SharePoint 2010 “Best Tools” (v2)

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:37:51 +0000

At this year’s ShareCamp I collected the best SharePoint 2010 tools for IT-Pros and Developers. This year I extended the session with “the best solutions” – we ended with about 40 tools – and had a some fun during the session. Some of them are a really “must-have” - others are “hidden-gems” and special purpose tools - go check them out! Download You can download the slides with all the tools – for your convenience I added the links to all tools:

Missing FAST Search Center Template

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:40:30 +0000

Ever wondered where the FAST Search Center Template is and why the hack its not there when you create a new site? Start this little powershell and you can create it: $site = Get-SPSite -Identity http://sp2010.demo.com/sites/demo $site.Features.Add("5EAC763D-FBF5-4d6f-A76B-EDED7DD7B0A5")

New theme

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:10:15 +0000

Starting from today melcher.it has a new look. My new template is metro-styled and its based on this codeplex template.

FAST: Open Library/Location in FAST for SharePoint search results

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:25:51 +0000

Recently I read a blog post how to customize the core result webpart - thats the webpart showing the results after you do a search with SharePoint 2010. The the output was modified so that you can click on a link to open the library/folder containing the document you searched - quite handy in my eyes. SharePoint Search The solution for SharePoint search is quite easy, just add <xsl:if test="isdocument = 'True'"> <a> <xsl:attribute name="href"> <xsl:value-of select="sitename"/> </xsl:attribute> View Folder </a> </xsl:if> and you are good to go (more details in the mentioned blog post).

Wishlist: SharePoint 2013

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:15:16 +0000

Yesterday the SharePoint 2013 SDK (Preview) was released and that made me thinking: What are my wishes for SharePoint 2013 FAST for SharePoint as Service Application That’s my top wish. Easier provisioning of FAST and easier (cheaper :)) licensing, e.g. coupled with ECALs, would help FS4SP to cover more ground. The same applies to Reporting Services with SQL 2012 (Denali) so I think my wish could come true. jQuery Integration (no silverlight anymore!

Patch: Cumulative Update December 2011

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:06:54 +0000

I installed a new SharePoint demo and developing environment on my notebook and started with the slip-streamed installation of SharePoint with SP1 included. After configuring everything I tried to upload some Pictures to the UserProfiles I created in my Active Directory (synchronization did work!!!) but I got faced with this nice error: Method not found: 'System.String Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileGlobal.GetImportPhotoFolderName(System.Globalization.CultureInfo)'. I really love the User Profile Service I did some research and found out that the SharePoint 2010 Cumulative Update December 2012 should fix some problems of the User Profile Service (still wondering why this could pass the quality control…).

Fast for SharePoint: Build & version numbers

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:26:49 +0000

Ever wondered what FAST for SharePoint (FS4SP) version is currently installed? Ever checked if every server in the search cluster has the same version? Check the version! The best approach is - open “Program and Features” and check the version there: With “View installed updates” you can even see if Cumulative Updates have been installed. Please be aware that not all files are updated after a patch so the versions in other files or tools can be different.

Tools: CKSDev – the first tool I always install

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 13:10:48 +0000

If you do SharePoint 2010 development and you haven’t used this plugin for Visual Studio you have really missed a jewel:

CKSDev - Community Kit for SharePoint: Development Tools Edition

Accessing Central Administration with Google Chrome

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:30:30 +0000

When accessing Central Administration with Google Chrome you will get the following: "This webpage is unavailable" with the description: Error 312 (net::ERR_UNSAFE_PORT): Unknown error. In order to fix that edit the Properties of the Chrome link and append the following to the “target” value: --explicitly-allowed-ports=42 where 42 is the port for your Central Administration. You can add more ports if you want, in total it should like this: C:\Users\mmelcher\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --explicitly-allowed-ports=42,84,87 Still dont like it - ports are not unsafe by default - but at least there is an option to allow it.

Basics: Make Datasheet View working with Office 2010

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 11:42:29 +0000

If you ever had problems running the datasheet view with one of the following reasons: A datasheet component that is compatible with Windows SharePoint Services is not installed. A Microsoft Office 2003 Professional edition is not installed on the computer. The Web browser does not support ActiveX controls. Support for ActiveX controls is disabled. Try installing the old Office components: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7554F536-8C28-4598-9B72-EF94E038C891&displaylang=en

ShareCamp 2011: SharePoint 2010 “Best Tools”

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:29:01 +0000

Due to the data loss I just upload the slides.

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Recycle IIS Application Pool’: Provider load failure

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:59:55 +0000

Try the following: Restart Windows Management Instrumentation service. Restart Visual Studio iisreset Hopefully it helps - usually it does for me.

Blog still in recovery

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:07:38 +0000

Due to a hoster failure (servcity.de went bankrupt) my blog is currently without content. I am working on it.