IE8 Caching Login With Favorites

Situation

I recently had a strange SharePoint experience, where a certain user would always find me logged in to SharePoint when he launched it!

History

On this users I had switched users within SharePoint once, so I could show him features he didn't have permissions for. I then saved a Favorite in his browser so he could easily get to SharePoint and left his office. A week later, I'm in a meeting with the user and I notice I'm logged into SharePoint on his laptop!!!

Remedy

After a little investigation, I come to discover IE8 caches credentials with the favorite! What on earth was Microsoft thinking?

To solve this, I deleted his favorite, logged into SharePoint with his credentials and saved a new favorite. Now all is good.

SharePoint Document Property Names

Recently while working on embedding SharePoint properties within a Word 2003 document I discovered some oddities with the names. When working to embed a property named Doc No. I found at times one of the 3 following situations displayed in the Field list:

1. Doc No.
2. Doc No. and Document No.
3. Document No.

If i used Doc No. the value would be incorrect. If I used Document No. the correct value would display and would synchronize.

Upon investigation I looked at the AllLists table in the database to find the row for the Document Library I was using. Examining the ContentType column explained the behaviour. For the field Doc No. this is the value I found:

DisplayName="Doc No."
Required="TRUE" Hidden="FALSE"
ReadOnly="FALSE" PITarget="" PrimaryPITarget=""
PIAttribute="" PrimaryPIAttribute=""
Aggregation="" Node=""/>

Notice that the name is Document No. (after decoding) and the DisplayName is Doc No. After seeing this, I remembered initially naming the column Document No. and then shortening it to Doc No. SharePoint obviously retained the original name as the ID of the field and just adds the DisplayName attribute to show the changed value. This is definitely a gotcha and will lead to some confusion for users. But at least the behaviour is now explained.

Moving From September to October in BPC

Moving to October causes some trouble because we are moving from a 1 digit period (Jan = 1, Sep = 9) to a 2 digit period (Oct = 10). This causes problems during the Convert Task in SSIS. The actuals to transform text file contains all the correct data, the actuals to load text file contains only a header. The transformation fails.

To resolve this problem a change to the transformation file needs to occur. Follow these steps to make the change:

1. eData > Manage Transformation File
2. Select the file, in our case Actual CMS.xls
3. Under the *MAPPING section find TIME=*COL(4) + *STR(.) + *COL(5) or TIME=*COL(4) + *STR(.0) + *COL(5)
4. For 1 digit periods change *STR(.) to *STR(.0)
5. For 2 digit periods change *STR(.0) TO *STR(.)
6. Click on Validate and save transformation definitions in the Action Pane on the right.
7. When prompted to Save, just select the same file, so in our case Actual CMS.xls.
   
8. Click Yet to replace the existing file.
9. Close the Transformation file
   

Check In/Out in SharePoint Designer Not Displaying

Recently I could not Check In multiple files using SharePoint Designer. The Check In context menu pick wasn't available and under the Edit menu it was disabled.

Thanks to a blog commenter, I learned that Ctrl+F5 will resolve the issue. Thanks Emmanuel

SQL Maintenance Plans

For each instance I like to make a single Maintenance plan with several subplans:

Subplans:

1. System Databases Tasks
1. Reorganize Index
2. Update Statistics
3. Back Up Database
4. Check Database Integrity
5. Notify Operator of Failure
6. Notify Operator of Success
2. User Databases Tasks
   
1. Reorganize Index
2. Update Statistics
3. Back Up Database
4. Check Database Integrity
5. Notify Operator of Failure
6. Notify Operator of Success
3. Daily Transaction Logs Tasks
   
1. Back Up Database (Transaction log type)
   
2. Notify Operator of Success
3. Notify Operator of Failure
   
4. Hourly Transaction Logs Tasks
   
1. Back Up Database (Transaction log type)
2. Notify Operator of Success
3. Notify Operator of Failure
   
4. Cleanup Logs Tasks
   
1. Back Up Database (Transaction log type)
2. Notify Operator of Success
3. Notify Operator of Failure

Maintenance Cleanup
Notify Operator

Documents Not Appearing in Search Results

I recently spent quite some time trying to understand why certain documents would appear in my search results, and others wouldn't.

I looked at the 'Always index all ASPX pages on this site' setting found at Site Settings > Search Visibility. But that didn't resolve the issue.

I looked at the 'Allow items from this document library to appear in search results?' setting found at Document Library Settings > Advanced Settings. But that didn't resolve the issue.

Finally I noticed that documents that appear in the search results have a major version (1.1) and the documents that do not appear, only have a minor version (0.1). So I published one of the documents, did an incremental crawl, and the document began appearing in the search results.

One mystery solved today.

Causing the Create Site link to Create a Site Collection

If you layout your MOSS intranet with the multiple Site Collections approach, you can simplify the creation of new Site Collections.

There are a couple settings which need to be setup for this to work:

Central Administration

1. Central Administration > Application Management
2. Under the Application Security section click on Self-service site management
3. Turn, 'Enable Self-Service Site Creation' on
4. It is optional to require a secondary contact in this form
5. Click OK
   

Site Directory

1. From within the site directory of the web application, go to Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings
2. Under the "Site Collection Administration" area, click on "go to top-level site settings"
3. Under the same "Site Collection administration" area, click "Site Directory Settings"
4. Check 'Create new site collections from Site Directory'
5. Click OK

Now when you are the Site Directory, clicking the Create Site link, will create a Site Collection.

Thanks to Dave Wollerman for this tip.