I'm speaking at #SP24 - The free 24h SharePoint online conference

I'm excited to be part of #SP24! My session will be: "Custom Indexing Connectors - How to integrate external content into SharePoint Search"

The conference trailer (wow!):


My 1-minute speaker video:

My actual session recording is already done. We had some cool equipment like professional lights, dedicated mic, cam and plant - and it went quite well. Stay tuned :)

My notes for Hybrid Search from the SharePoint Conference #SPC14

This is my collection of information around Hybrid Search gotten from session recordings from the SharePoint Conference 2014.

Emphasis is on volatile information snippets like quotes from session speakers you would probably never ever find again - and info that makes your head say "I should remember this".

SPC306 - "Best practices for Hybrid Search deployments"

Speakers: Brent Groom, Norm Lambert
Video

General Info

• Crawls are done on the respective system - one crawl on-prem and one crawl in Office 365

Best Practices

• Microsoft doesn't add Office 365 search results as Result Block to on-prem search results but separates on-prem and remote results
• Outbound or Inbound Hybrid Search? Look where you have the most content and decide accordingly.
• Don't pass all search requests to the remote SharePoint - use keywords or similar triggers instead
• Perform latency tests - since querying local and remote SharePoint is done synchronously the user always has to wait for both - latency can be critical here
• If latency is too high the recommendation is to write your own search results web part (at cost of OOB functionality) ...
• Use Microsoft WAP as reverse proxy
• Don't use Microsoft UAG as reverse proxy
• Fiddler can be used as reverse proxy during development

Restrictions

• Custom Display Templates are not possible for Hybrid Search Results
• Stress testing against Office 365 is not permitted

Crystal Ball

Currently remote search results are displayed like Federated Search results - improving this situation is on the roadmap (interleaving search results, "from query rules to remote index"), but there is no date yet.

SPC320 - "Hybrid Search: Configure Outbound Hybrid Search in SharePoint Online with Password Sync"

Speakers: Manas Biswas, Neil Hodgkinson
Slides
Video

General Info

• ADFS not needed for setting up hybrid search (only needed for SSO) - DirSync takes care of transferring claims from on-prem to O365
• Security Trimming is applied to search results
• There are two flavors of Hybrid: Hybrid between on-prem SharePoint and Office 365 is different from between on-premise and Dedicated SharePoint (Hosted)
• the latter doesn't need the ACS but only standard domain trust (?)
• Interesting: Configuring trust between on-premise farm and Office 365 makes use of high-trust app terminology and cmdlets (app principal, certificates, token issuer...)
• O365 is being treated like a high-trust app (?)
• Key claims used for validation users between on-prem and O365:
• User principal name (UPN)
• Name Identifier (e.g. SID)
• SMTP address
• SIP address
• Result Source Protocol for remote search results is "Remote SharePoint"
• Document Preview in Search Results on-prem and Office 365 should work "in both locations" if Office Web App components are installed in "both locations"

Best Practices

• DirSync schedule is mentioned as running every 3 hours
• Start setting up Outbound Hybrid Search - it is the easiest one and prepares you for Inbound and Two-Way Hybrid
• Use self-signed certificates for STS trust

Restrictions

• Refiners don't work for O365 search results in demoed Outbound scenario (doh!)
• Cannot use domain-issued certificates for establishing STS trust

Crystal Ball

Asked about refiners in Outbound Hybrid Search scenario Neil says: "There is no refinement yet" and "The roadmap is to improve that service" - where Manas is quick to say "Not as of now", which makes Neil giggle. Feels like this is more on the longer-term roadmap...

Conference Schedule for 2014

This year I will attend the following conferences:

• Collaboration Days Zürich, Switzerland (German) as speaker - 2-3 April
• European SharePoint Conference 2014, Barcelona, Spain - 5-8 May
• ShareCamp, Unterschleißheim, Germany - 24-25 May

My topic in Zürich is "Custom Indexing Connectors - How to integrate external system into your SharePoint Enterprise Search" (presented in German).

There are some other interesting conferences I will attend if I'm in as a speaker - I try to place a talk about integrating Yammer into SharePoint Search (surprise!).

Meet you there!

Progress and Architecture of the Yammer Search Connector for SharePoint

In the last days I took some time to improve my Yammer Search Connector for SharePoint. I do this partly as preparation for my talk at Collaboration Days in Zürich and partly out of curiosity to see if this can work.

So far everything worked well. The display templates for displaying the SharePoint search results are always more work than expected, especially if you have to write asynchronous JavaScript in SharePoint Designer.

I chose to adapt the Microblog Display Template that is normally used for displaying Newsfeed posts.

This is the result:

Not too bad, isn't it?

You see the similarity to the Newsfeed search results, but this time all data is from Yammer: content, author, creation date, like count, reply count and whether it is a "root" post or not. If it's a root the caption says "Xy yammered..." and for a reply it says "Xy answered...".

The user image is also from Yammer. It will even be displayed if you are not logged in to Yammer.

On the left you see some other data from Yammer being used as refiners: groups, network names and like count. This could easily be extended to topics or result type.

Architecture

Now for the architecture. Here is a diagram:

As mentioned this works quite well. (The Sync-apps use the YamrSync library.)

Here is my reasoning for using a cache in between Yammer and SharePoint:

• a SharePoint full crawl would hammer the Yammer REST API - hitting API limits and possibly getting some attention because of causing excessive load
• Yammer is in the cloud, not your local data center - you are using your Internet connection for downloading data, so it can take some time to get all data, especially big documents -> a crawl would take forever and continuous crawls are not supported for non-SharePoint content

The idea is to use a small console application loading data from Yammer over time. This of course has caveats:

• we essentially duplicate what the SharePoint crawl does (although with more control over how we crawl)
• we need a cache
• the cache currently is MongoDB, which is robust and scalable but outside the Microsoft world - would this fit in?

So what do you think?

Is this a road that is worth to go further? Or is this prototype good for its initial purpose - demonstrating how you can integrate external systems into SharePoint Search - but not more? Maybe Yammer would pull the plug anyways.

What would be the minimum requirements to run this in a production environment? And is it possible to meet those requirements?

I'd love to hear your take on this in the comments!

YamrSync - Yammer REST API wrapper and data synchronization library

My first open source project - a REST API wrapper and data synchronization library for Yammer that can be used from .NET applications. Yay!

Check it out: YamrSync

I need it for my Yammer SharePoint Search Integration project (working title: "One Search to Rule Them All"). More info coming soon. Just the basic thought: with the Yammer API limits in place it is not possible to do a full crawl on a Yammer repository on a regular basis. Furthermore we must assume a slow internet connection (remember we need the documents, too). So we basically use MongoDB as a data cache SharePoint will crawl against. And we need the database for storing user permissions our security pre-trimmer will use.

Search integration for (on-premises) SharePoint and Yammer - coming soon?

Every now and then I have an idea that sticks in my head and does not go away. When this happens it is often good to talk to people about it because that can bring you back to earth fairly quick.

I am currently preparing for my session at Collaboration Days Zürich which is about "Custom Indexing Connectors - How to integrate external system into your SharePoint Enterprise Search". Thinking about a good use case to demonstrate the power of Indexing Connectors I came to the conclusion that Yammer integration would a perfect showcase. Cloud-only, separated from SharePoint, yet marketed as replacement for the Newsfeed. There is currently no search integration between SharePoint and Yammer.

So why not use the Yammer API to get my hands on its content and feed it to SharePoint? Sounds great, doesn't it? Of course there are challenges - to name two: API limitations and security mapping. But you don't know it for sure until you tried it. There even is a .NET wrapper for the Yammer REST API on Steve Peschkas blog. Great!

But wait a minute - the project on his site is called YammerCrawlSync. This unfortunately thwarted my enthusiasm a bit because it sounds like somebody else might already have something up his sleeve. And maybe something will be presented at SPC 2014 anyway regarding the Yammer-SharePoint search integration.

So what do you think? Will there be an announcement about search integration of SharePoint and Yammer at SPC? And will it include on-premises scenarios?

My bet is: integration is coming, but for now it's cloud-only (apart from a hybrid prototype from Steve Peschka).

In the meantime: Communardo Techblog

Work is keeping me quite busy lately. If it fits to business context I usually post articles in the Communardo Techblog of my employer Communardo Software.
My last adventure was dealing with multilingual content and how you can use the new Content Editor Web Part in SharePoint 2013 to display content in multiple languages:

• SharePoint - mehrsprachige Inhalte mit Inhalts-Editor Webpart
• SharePoint 2013 - mehrsprachigen Inhalts-Editor Webpart mit PowerShell konfigurieren

They are in German but you might find some useful PowerShell snippets in there. Stay tuned.

ShareCamp 2013

I was at my first ShareCamp in Unterschleißheim this weekend and it was fun. Lots of interesting sessions and people. I also gave a session on the topic Custom Indexing Connectors:

Externe Systeme in die SharePoint-Suche integrieren mit Custom Indexing Connectors

Click the link to get the slides on Slideshare (in German, sorry). I was surprised by the interest in this topic, thanks to all people who did attend!

How to Change Accounts once you are Logged In to a Site (using SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone)

We need a set up for today's post:

• You created a Windows Phone using the SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone. 
• A user logs in to Site A using his Microsoft Account*.
• He checks the box Keep me signed in. 
• Later he wants to log in to Site B using different credentials than the previous one.

He will get an error:

Error: Access Denied,  "You are not a member of this site."

The problem: Site A credentials will be used for accessing Site B. The user is offered no way to enter new credentials for Site B.

Sticky Credentials

When using MicrosoftOnline as authentication method with the SharePoint SDK the user is presented with a web-based login dialog the first time he accesses the site. The user enters his credentials and can choose to stay signed in by checking Keep me signed in.

If he chooses to be kept signed in the login dialog will not be presented again.

"Keep me signed in" (the German version)

And this can be a problem. These credentials are the definition of "sticky" as it seems to be impossible to get rid of them via code.

You might ask: Why do we want to get rid of them in the first place?

Here's why: If the user tries to access another site (Site B) which requires different credentials than Site A his Site A credentials will still be used. This of course doesn't work and he will be presented with the nice "Access denied" message above.

Discarding the Credentials: #fail

I tried quite some time to delete the sticky credentials via code.

How are credentials stored? They might be cached AES-encrypted to the local store along with cookies from the browser. These cookies will be obtained from the web browser component used for logging the user in (the browser being part of the embedded XAML-based login dialog).

But this caching of cookies needs to be enabled explicitly by setting CookieCachingEnabled to true. It's disabled by default. In my attempt to dispose the sticky login I was lead astray by these methods related to caching:

• Authenticator.ClearAllApplicationSettings
• Authenticator.ClearAllCookies
• Authenticator.ClearAllCredentials

While these might clear the internal cache, they didn't solve my problem. The user was still logged in with his Site A credentials.

I then started to believe (and still do) that the login information is simply stored as "normal" cookies somewhere. I verified that there are lots of cookies related to my SharePoint activities. I used the GetCookies extension method for WebBrowser to get a list of cookies which revealed 14 cookies for the domain login.microsoft.com: WLOpt, PPAuth, MSPPre, MSPCID, RPSTAuthTime, MSPVis, MSPSoftVis, MSPRequ, MSPBack, PPLState, RPSTAuth, MSPAuth, MSPProf, MH.

Unfortunately this cookie collection is read-only, so no chance of modifying (or clearing) it. And I still don't know how to manipulate these cookies. If you do then help me out on StackOverflow!

Offering the User to Log In with Different Credentials

In the end I chose a workaround which is rather simple. I navigated to login.microsoftonline.com in the desktop browser and used Fiddler to look at the requests that were being made when I logged out by actively clicking on Sign Out.

It navigates to https://login.microsoftonline.com/logout.srf. And that's all it takes.

In code, navigate to the above URL and the next time the user accesses any site he will see this:

The highlighted link says: "Sign in with another User ID"

(Usability note: On the right site the dialog is cut off because it is too wide for the phone screen. It's not the screenshot being cropped. Ugly.)

But finally the user can click the highlighted link to sign in with another ID.

---

* Forgive me if I sometimes refer to the credentials being entered by the wrong name. There are just so many terms to choose from (some old, some new).

• Microsoft Online Services ID
• Microsoft Account
• User ID
• MicrosoftOnline (= name of authentication method in code)

Why do Windows Phone Apps for SharePoint need access to Location Services?

I recently did some programming with the SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone. (See my last post for details on how to set up your development environment.) When running the Store Test Kit I noticed that my app needed the Location Capability (ID_CAP_LOCATION).

This was strange and I decided to investigate.

Windows Phone App Certification Requirements when using Location Services

Why do I even care? Two reasons:

1. It might push away users if they get the feeling my app wants to spy on them.
2. Apps using Location Services have to follow certain rules. If they don't they can't enter the Store.

When an app uses the user's location you have to include or link to a privacy policy in your app explaining how you are going to use the collected data. You can find the certification requirements over here. Reading them carefully can save you some time as I had to learn the hard way.

Fair enough, but I wasn't using any actual location data. Apart from that the requirement leaves some room for interpretation (emphasis mine):

§2.7 The following requirements apply to apps that receive the location of a user's mobile device

What if I am using location-related classes but never use them? I have the feeling nobody won't care about that. So I decided to include a privacy policy (as demanded by §2.7.2) to be sure:

§2.7.2 The privacy policy of your app must inform users about how location data from the Location Service API is used and disclosed and the controls that users have over the use and sharing of location data. This can be hosted within or directly linked from the app. The privacy policy must be accessible from your app at any time.

How does Capability Detection by the Store Test Kit work?

Open the Store Test Kit via Project context menu.

Why does my app suddenly uses Location Services? How does the Store Test Kit determine that my app has to include the capability ID_CAP_LOCATION?

You can look up what APIs require which app capability in Rules.xml, a file included in the Windows Phone SDK. On my machine it can be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Tools\Marketplace.

Here is the relevant part of Rules.xml showing what needs ID_CAP_LOCATION:

<Capability ID="ID_CAP_LOCATION" Type="Security">
 <Assembly Name="System.Device, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=24eec0d8c86cda1e">
  <Namespace Name="System.Device.Location">
   <Class Name="GeoCoordinateWatcher" />
   <Class Name="GeoPosition" />
   <Class Name="GeoPositionChangedEventArgs" />
   <Class Name="GeoPositionStatusChangedEventArgs" />
  </Namespace>
 </Assembly>
 
 <Assembly Name="Microsoft.Phone, Version=7.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=24eec0d8c86cda1e">
  <Namespace Name="Microsoft.Phone.Controls">
     <Class Name="WebBrowser">
      <Method Name="set_IsGeolocationEnabled"/>
     </Class>
  </Namespace>
   </Assembly>
</Capability>

Why does the SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone use Location Services?

To determine where the SharePoint SDK uses location-related functionality I had a look into the assemblies included in the SDK - and found something in Microsoft.SharePoint.Phone.Application.

Normally I use ILSpy to look at the implementation of framework assemblies, but ILSpy unfortunately doesn't support full text search as of this writing. So I tried the free JustDecompile by Telerik and this worked nicely.

Searching for GeoCoordinateWatcher lead to the class ModifyItemViewModelBase.

It seems like location services are used in relation with the Geolocation field type which is new to SharePoint 2013. A method named OnGeolocationStatusChanged creates instances of GeolocationFieldViewModel which in turn stores geo coordinates.

I could not find where OnGeolocationStatusChanged is used in any of the SDK assemblies. It's public and virtual so maybe it's just there to use for us. Seems the documentation is a bit scarce here as well.

What does this mean for me as app developer using the SharePoint SDK?

Seems like I have to accept the fact that access to location services is baked into the SharePoint SDK libraries. And that I have to explain this to the wary folks visiting my app in the Store.

Windows Phone Apps, SharePoint 2013 Online and Getting Free Development Started Using Visual Studio Express

Over at Christian Heindel's blog I read the post about authenticating with SharePoint 2013 from a Windows Phone app and thought I'd give it a try.

If you are impatient and just want to start developing here is what you have to do to get your development system on Windows 8 up and running:

• Install Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone (as IDE)
• Get the SharePoint SDK; For me worked:
  • Install Visual C# 2010 Express
  • Install Visual C# 2010 Express SP1 via Windows Update
  • Install Windows Phone SDK 7.1, ignore compatibility warnings and XNA error
  • Install SharePoint SDK Windows Phone 7.1
• Get a sample solution and start coding!

Setting up the Development Environment

First I needed to set up my development environment. My operating system is a Windows 8 Pro and has until today been SharePoint-free. I used only Express editions of Visual Studio which you can get for free here.

Since I had already developed Windows Phone apps I had Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone installed and ready.

Next I needed to install the Microsoft SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone to get the necessary SharePoint assemblies. Seems like version 7.1 of the SDK is the only one available. Quote from the download page:

The Preview SDK installs Windows Phone CSOM libraries for Windows Phone, SharePoint Auth library for Windows Phone and Windows Phone Project Templates, which can be used to build Windows Phone 7.1 Applications against SharePoint 2013 Preview or SharePoint 2010.

The SDK setup did not recognize my Visual Studio Express 2012 and demanded a Visual Studio 2010 to be present. I searched some time for a newer SDK but did not find any.

So I sighed and installed Visual C# Express 2010. Next I installed SP1 via Windows Update so I could install Windows Phone SDK 7.1.

On Windows 8 I got a compatibility warning for the Windows Phone SDK and an error at the end of the setup which is related to XNA Game Studio. Just ignore it.

After the phone SDK I could finally install Microsoft SharePoint SDK Preview for Windows Phone 7.1. (Update: Install the final version instead, see below for details.)

The SharePoint SDK setup put the following assemblies to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\SharePoint\v15.0\Phone\v7.1\Libraries:

• Microsoft.ProjectServer.Client.Phone.dll
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Phone.dll
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Phone.Runtime.dll
• Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Taxonomy.Phone.dll
• Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Userprofiles.Phone.dll
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Phone.Application.dll

Quick Win Using One of the Sample Apps

You can download sample solutions from the Dev Center Page Christian linked to.

I chose the sample solution SharePoint 2013: Store and retrieve SharePoint list items on a Windows Phone since it sounded like it would be easy to test.

If you don't have a SharePoint 2013 Online site to test you can sign up for free for an Office 365 Developer Site.

After downloading the solution I opened it with Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone and built it - which succeeded without any problems. This was surprising since I expected that I have to add Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Phone.Auth.UI.dll like Christian needed to do.

I didn't have to change the sample at all, it worked right out of the box. Which is good since Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Phone.Auth.UI.dll is not present anywhere on my machine. The SharePoint-related references of the sample app look like this:

Apparently Authenticator in my case is coming from Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Phone.Runtime.dll.

Now it was time to test, so I created a list, added a test item, modified TargetSiteUrl and TargetList in the sample app accordingly and that's it:

Hello SharePoint in the Cloud!

Update: SharePoint Preview SDK for Windows Phone 7.1 vs. Final Version

Seems like MSDN and the Sample Solutions need to be updated - they link to and reference the SharePoint Preview SDK while there is already the final version available!

The SharePoint SDK for Windows Phone 7.1 is available for download.

When building the sample projects you will now get errors for type Authenticator:

Error 1 The type or namespace name 'Authenticator' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

The solution indeed is to add a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Phone.Auth.UI. There are two other assemblies which are new in the final SDK, so if you are missing these make sure you don't have the preview installed:

• Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Applications.Phone.dll
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Phone.dll

Thanks Christian in the comments.

Working on it...

It took 3 minutes.

Solved: "Prefix '..' does not map to a namespace" when binding to a custom dependency property

I quickly want to share some information about a strange error I got when binding to one of my dependency properties and how to solve it.

The error is a TypeNameParserException with the following additional information: Prefix 'dp' does not map to a namespace.

TypeNameParserException

I got this when binding to one of my dependency properties with namespace, like this:

<ContextMenu x:Key="contextMenu" Tag="{Binding PlacementTarget.(dp:MyClass.MyDependencyProperty), RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}, Mode=OneWay}">

As you can see the element is a context menu (which is defined in a Resources section, don't know if this matters). And I am binding to the dependency property dp:MyClass.MyDependencyProperty of the context menu's PlacementTarget (PlacementTarget is the element the context menu is invoked for).

This binding caused the problem because as soon as I opened the context menu I got the TypeNameParserException. When I removed this binding the error went away.

So this lead to the error:
Binding PlacementTarget.(dp:MyClass.MyDependencyProperty)

(Note: there were no compiler warnings, no squiggly lines, everything seemed valid.)
After some fiddling and googling I found the solution.

This solved the error:
Binding Path=PlacementTarget.(dp:MyClass.MyDependencyProperty)

It's simple: you explicitly have to specify the Path part! See the difference? Let's highlight it a bit more:

Binding Path=PlacementTarget.(dp:MyClass.MyDependencyProperty)

Maybe this helps you when you get strange namespace-related errors.

A Better ULS Log File Viewer

While analyzing SharePoint ULS logs I felt the need for a better ULS log viewer. With more capabilities than the existing ones ^{1, 2}. I don't like them. They are either old, look ugly or don't provide the capabilities I need.

Time to create a better one. Time for Heu's ULS Viewer.

I will provide more information soon.

Update - Download Heu's ULS Viewer here.

Until then here are some teaser screenshots:

Main View

Main view of Heu's ULS Viewer

Features:

1.  Support for multiple log files
• file contents will be concatenated
• Drag & Drop support
• fast log file parsing
2. Extended filtering capabilities
• decide in which of the columns you want to filter
• two different filter types; you can choose to include items matching your search term, or to exlude items matching it
3. Grid view of all log entries
• sort by clicking column header
• fast sorting even for large data sets
• select multiple rows and copy them to clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C (good for quickly pasting them to a mail or support ticket)
4. Detailed display of selected log entry
• multi-line log entries are merged to one
• proper formatting of stack traces

Visualization

Visualization of message count over time

Visualizing SharePoint ULS log messages provides a general survey you don't easily get when looking at the raw log data. For now there are two series: one for the overall log message count (in blue) and one for the log messages with level "Unexpected" (in red).

The diagrams respect your current filters.

That's all for today. I hope you are as excited as I am. Stay tuned for more!

Getting Shell Integration for TFS when using TFS Cloud Services and Visual Studio Express 2012

I recently started using Team Foundation Service 2012 in the cloud together with Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. The cloud service allows me to easily put my sources under version control and schedule automatic builds without having to set up any servers.

From TortoiseSVN I am used to access source control features from the context menu of files and folders. For instance I want to be able to add files to source control directly from the right-click menu.

This is possible. The short-named Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 1 Power Tools contains a shell extension which does exactly that. Cool!

But my first attempt to install the Power Tools failed. It thought having Visual Studio Express installed would be enough. But apparently you first have to install Team Explorer for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012.

Having done this the Power Tools installation succeeds and you get the full context menu goodness:

TFS shell integration

Remember: How to delete a Crawled Property

Deleting a crawled property from SharePoint is easy but sometimes requires a little preparation.

Summary | This post shows how to delete a crawled property and how to prepare it.

Deleting a crawled property might be necessary if

• you are developing a custom indexing connector and are still testing it; obsolete properties will accumulate over time
• your BDC changes from time to time and every change leads to new crawled properties being created with the next full crawl
• $otherReason 

The list of all crawled properties can be found at Central Administration -> Search Service Application -> Queries and Results -> Metadata Properties -> Crawled Properties.

Deleting unused crawled properties

In SharePoint 2010 deleting a single crawled property is not possible. But you can delete all unused crawled properties of a category.

Go to Metadata Properties and click Categories:

In the context menu of a category click Edit Category:

Check the option Delete all unmapped crawled properties and click OK:

All unused crawled properties should be gone after clicking OK. But if the one you want to delete is still present then the next chapter is for you to read.

Unmapping and unindexing 

You have to remove all mappings from the property and you also have to remove it from the search index.

Click Edit/Map Property in the context menu of a crawled property:

The Edit Crawled Property page opens.

Make sure you

• remove all mappings for this property
• do not include values for this property in the search index

Repeat this for all properties which should be deleted when deleting unused properties of its category.

Note: Some OOB SharePoint crawled properties cannot be deleted.

Translation of SharePoint Terms from English to German

When writing technical documentation for SharePoint I frequently need to switch between the English and German terms for SharePoint interior. The German translation tends to produce constructs which often are funny and very long - and hard to remember. So I decided to assemble some vocabulary for quick reference.

Summary | This blog post provides you with SharePoint terms in English and their German translation. The post will be extended over time.

General

English	Deutsch	Version
Site	Website	2007
Site Collection	Websitesammlung	2007
Farm	Farm	2007
Web Application	Webanwendung	2007
Page	Seite	2007
Site Actions	Websiteaktionen	2007
Site Settings	Websiteeinstellungen	2007
People and Groups	Benutzer und Gruppen	2007
Site collection administrators	Websitesammlungsadministratoren	2007
Advanced permissions	Erweiterte Berechtigungen	2007
Look and Feel	Aussehen und Verhalten	2007
Save site as template	Website als Vorlage speichern	2007
Site features	Websitefeatures	2007
Template	Vorlage	2007

Permissions

English	Deutsch	Version
Permission Levels	Berechtigungsstufen	2007
Limited Access	Beschränkter Zugriff	2007
Read	Lesen	2007
Contribute	Teilnehmen	2007
Design	Entwerfen	2007
Full Control	Vollzugriff	2007
List Permissions	Listenberechtigungen	2007
Manage Lists	Listen verwalten	2007
Override Check Out	Auschecken außer Kraft setzen	2007
Add Items	Elemente hinzufügen	2007
Edit Items	Elemente bearbeiten	2007
Delete Items	Elemente löschen	2007
View Items	Elemente anzeigen	2007
Approve Items	Elemente genehmigen	2007
Open Items	Elemente öffnen	2007
View Versions	Versionen anzeigen	2007
Delete Versions	Versionen löschen	2007
Create Alerts	Benachrichtigungen erstellen	2007
View Application Pages	Anwendungsseiten anzeigen	2007

Search

English	Deutsch	Version
Enterprise Search Center	Unternehmenssuchcenter	2010
Basic Search Center	Basissuchcenter	2010
Search Results Action Links	Links für Suchaktionen	2010
Search Action Links	Hyperlinks für Suchergebnisaktionen	2010
Search Core Results	Kernergebnisse der Suche	2010
Refinement Panel	Verfeinerungsbereich	2010
Refinement Panel Caption	Überschrift des Einschränkungsbereichs	2010
Result Query Options	Abfrageoptionen für Ergebnisse	2010
Refinement	Einschränkung	2010
Accuracy Index	Genauigkeitsindex	2010
Number of Categories to Display	Anzahl der anzuzeigenden Kategorien	2010
Number of Characters to Display	Anzahl der anzuzeigenden Zeichen	2010

Search Alerts

English	Deutsch	Version
New Alert	Neue Benachrichtigung	2010
Alert Title	Benachrichtigungstitel	2010

Central Administration

English	Deutsch	Version
Application Management	Anwendungsverwaltung	2010
Manage web applications	Webanwendungen verwalten	2010
Manage service applications	Dienstanwendungen verwalten	2010
Manage content databases	Inhaltsdatenbanken verwalten	2010

Search Service Application

English	Deutsch	Version
Queries and Results	Abfragen und Ergebnisse	2010
Authoritative Pages	Autorisierende Seiten	2010
Federated Locations	Partnerspeicherorte	2010
Metadata Properties	Metadateneigenschaften	2010
Scopes	Bereiche	2010
Search Result Removal	Suchergebnisse entfernen	2010
Search Federation	Partnersuche	2010
New location	Neuer Speicherort	2010
Federated Location	Partnerspeicherort	2010

Upgrade journey from Windows XP 32-bit to Windows 8 64-bit

Now is the time to upgrade to Windows 8! Microsoft offers it's new version of Windows for a price you can't say "No" to, but only until end of January 2013.

Summary | This blog post shows how to upgrade from 32-bit Windows XP to 64-bit Windows 8 with a purchased downloadable upgrade. This is possible without buying the physical DVD despite contrary reports.

While taking the option to download your new Windows 8 is the quickest and cheapest one it can have its pitfalls. Have a close look at the bitness of your systems! Especially if you are upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit you have to take care of not getting the wrong upgrade version.

Upgrading to Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit) from Windows XP (32-bit)

Downloading installation files - easy

I chose to upgrade an old XP (32-bit) installation of mine. I thought 30 € for a download sounds like a good deal, so I chose this option. After purchasing you have to download and start the setup file Windows8-Setup.exe. It downloads about 3 GB of data (2,05 GB for the 32-bit version, 2,62 GB for the 64-bit version):

Then it asks you how to proceed. Among the available options should be the one to create a medium to install from. This would create an ISO file you can burn to DVD. The setup screen should look like this:

But it didn't.

So the lesson here is:

If you are running Windows XP 32-bit you will not get the option to create an installation medium and you will not be able to create an ISO file.

At least the option was missing for me.

Getting an ISO on Windows XP - not so easy

I want to have an ISO file I can burn, so what do I do now? I decided to try running the setup on another PC running Windows 7. So I needed to find the files downloaded by setup to copy them.

On Windows XP the Windows8-Setup.exe downloads files to a hidden directory ESD on the system disk, e.g. C:\ESD. I copied the folder to the Windows 7 (64-bit) machine (also to C:\ESD) and started the Windows8-Setup.exe there. That looked much better. It recognized the copied ESD folder and offered me the option to create an installation medium.

So I clicked "Install by creating media" and it did as told. It created an ISO file I could use to install Windows 8. 32-bit.

Oops. I got an installation medium for 32-bit Windows 8 but needed 64-bit!

Getting an 64-bit ISO - easy again. But remember those old preview versions!

So the second lesson was:

Starting Windows8-Setup.exe from a 32-bit system will provide you with a 32-bit version of Windows 8.

To get the 64-bit version I obviously had to start the Windows8-Setup.exe and the download on a 64-bit system. On my Windows 7 machine I deleted the ESD folder I previously copied and started the setup again. That worked. It started downloading and the amount of data now was more than before. I again chose "Install by creating media" and got an ISO bigger than before (2,05 GB x32 vs. 2.63 GB x64). This was it.

To get 64-bit Windows 8 run Windows8-Setup.exe on a 64-bit system.

I omitted one detail in the above description: I had to remove the folder C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSetup as it still contained content from a previously installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview. I think this is why the Windows 8 setup once showed the wrong registration key (I assume this was the evaluation key for the consumer preview) and tried to read from the folder C:\WindowsESD which still contained the Consumer Preview installation files. Such errors looked like this:

Removing said directory solved these issues.

Third lession:

Remove old files from Windows 8 Consumer Preview setup.

I now have an ISO for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 8. It took a bit longer than expected but finally it all worked out.

Bonus Lesson - match your licenses and ISO files

You are allowed to upgrade up to 5 old PCs of yours. As this is a nice way of getting rid of old machines I took this offer and bought two upgrades, both delivered digital. Because both upgrades were to Windows 8 64-bit I burned only one DVD. Windows 8 is Windows 8, right?

Wrong!

One license/product key is associated with one Windows8-Setup.exe which will install (or create an ISO for) a Windows 8 that can only be activated using this exact same product key.

Apparently some licensing information is already embedded in the downloaded files. I found this as I installed Windows 8 from the DVD burned after buying the first upgrade but tried to activate using the second product key. This didn't work. So I really had to create two media for two product keys. Out of curiosity I calculated CRC checksums of both ISO files and the result was indeed different.

To spare you the hassle you should burn one DVD per upgrade license.

PowerShell HowTo: Creating and deleting crawl rules

The last posts covered creating and modifying content sources, now it's time to fine tune the actual crawling. Crawl rules specify which content will be crawled and how.

Setting the rules...

Let's say you want to crawl all URLs which contain the directory pages/. An appropriate crawl rule would look like this:

It's an inclusion rule and the path is http://*pages/*. So all URLs matching this pattern will be crawled.

...in code

Here's the code to create such a crawl rule:

  $Path = "http://*pages/*"
  $SearchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
  # check if crawl rule already exists; if yes: delete
  if ((Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlRule -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Identity $Path -EA SilentlyContinue)) 
  {
    # remove crawl rule; "-confirm:$false" disables confirmation dialog which would otherwise pop up
    Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlRule -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Identity $Path1 -confirm:$false
  }

  $Rule = New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlRule -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Path $Path -Type InclusionRule -CrawlAsHttp 0 -FollowComplexUrls 0
  $Rule.CaseSensitiveURL = 1
  $Rule.Update()

This code first checks if the crawl rule already exists and deletes it if it does. (You could also display an error message instead.) Then the crawl rule is created.

Some parameters can only be specified when creating the rule with New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlRule (like Type), some can only be set afterwards on the existing rule (like CaseSensitiveUrl).

PowerShell HowTo: Setting start addresses of an existing content source

In a previous post we created a completely new content source. Now we are going to modify an existing content source.

The root of all crawling

It's a simple cmdlet, Set-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource,  taking a reference to the search application, the access protocol and the content source. The latter will be identified using its name. Here's the code:

     
  $SearchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
  $StartAddresses = "protocol1://localhost/?entity=sheep,protocol1://localhost/?entity=bird,protocol1://localhost/?entity=fish"
  Set-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -SearchApplication $SearchApp -Identity "Content Source Name" –StartAddresses $StartAddresses -CustomProtocol "protocol1"

Above code sets three start addresses for a single content source:

• protocol1://localhost/?entity=sheep
• protocol1://localhost/?entity=bird
• protocol1://localhost/?entity=fish

In code they are separated by colon. Noteworthy detail: in the configuration page for the content source these addresses will appear in reverse order.

Accessing a content source's properties

If you want to modify a content source to e.g. add start addresses instead of replacing them all you have to get the content source. Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource ist the cmdlet to use:

     
  $SearchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
  $ContentSource = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -SearchApplication $searchapp "Content Source Name"

The collection $ContentSource.StartAddresses contains all currently configured addresses. Combine them with yours and use the first script to update the configuration.