Understanding Kerberos

These two articles gives a very good starting point in understandaing how Kerberos works. The fundamental knowledge is useful when you are planning to enable Kerberos authentication for SharePoint portal, especially you are building some custom application on top of SharePoint, or in my case, K2.NET, which will not work without Kerberos authentication. Exploring Kerberos, the Protocol for Distributed Securityin Windows 2000-- MSJ, August 1999 http://www.microsoft.com/msj/0899/kerberos/kerberos.aspx TechNet Support WebCast Troubleshooting Kerberos authentication with secure Web applications and Microsoft SQL Server http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842861

SharePoint: Adding Custom Field in Content Query Webpart

Found this article at MSDN and ECM Team Blog which describe how to add a custom field into the presentation of content query webpart. The process involve two major work:

1. Export content query webpart into a dwp file, and add the custom fields.

2. Modify the XSLT to define the presentation for the custom field. The XSLT file is located in the folder Style Library à XSL Style Sheet àItemStyle.xsl, which you’ll need SharePoint Designer to access and modify.

Ref: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb850574.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/ecm/archive/2006/10/25/configuring-and-customizing-the-content-query-web-part.aspx http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1CC1EDB3DAA9B8AA!491.entry

Adding custom property into SharePoint Advance Search

It is not that difficult to add a property to be filterable in advance search, as long as you know how in the first place!

Ok, let’s say if you built a custom content type with custom column, and you want to make it searchable (must be index-able as well up front) in advance search, these are roughly the things you need to do:

1. Built your content type properly. Don’t simply add a field on the fly to your document library etc, as those don’t seem to be able to be indexed.

2. Make it indexed. Add the custom property into part of the index regime of the index service. This is done from SSP administration à Search Settings à Metadata Property Mapping. Take note of the property name, as it will be referenced in putting the field into the advance search property drop down list. Perform a crawl when you’re done.

3. Add into the Advance Search’s Properties. Go to the advance search page and edit the advance search web part. Under the Properties setting, add the custom property into the properties XML.

The XML should be pretty straight forward, but do refer to this blog for more information about it: http://www.sharepoint-tips.com/2006/07/found-it-how-to-add-properties-to.html

Hiding field controls in a page layout from presentation

I’ve been looking around on hiding some fields from the content page, and allowing editing only during edit mode. Finally found it on this blog, which states that there’s an EditModePanel under the SharePoint Server Controls in the Toolbox of SharePoint Designer. Everything that you drop into it will only be visible during edit mode of the page. So simple actually!

http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2006/12/23/5535.aspx

Deliberate broken link here

This is a broken link for my internal testing. It will be remove once I’m done.

http://sweechingho.blogspot.com/non-existing-page.html

Where is the Language Switcher? (MOSS Variation Label)

I’ve been following the guide in this article for a while, but I just don’t seem to get the nice little language switcher drop down list to appear on my SharePoint publishing site. After some additional research:

• This other how-to article pointed out that you will have to assign the variation(s) to your master page before the variation label drop down list appears. In short, this is done by going into the Site Settings à Master Page Gallery. Check out the master page your publishing site is using and edit its properties. Under Variations section, pick the language you want to appear on the variation label drop down list.
• Apparently the variation label drop down is disabled to improve performance. You'll need to modify the VariationsLabelMenu.ascx file in the CONTROLTEMPLATES folder to remove the commented line of code. (I wonder why we have to find this information from some blogs instead of from a proper MS documentation...)

System Center Capacity Planner with MOSS/WSS Capacity Model

Other than the HP capacity planning tool that we can use to size hardware required for MOSS, these tools from Microsoft seems to be the new alternative.

Head to official SharePoint blog for more details. Download Capacity Planner 2007 and SharePoint Capacity Models. Tutorials over here and here.

SharePoint Backup Restore, High Availability, and Disaster Recovery

Joel Oleson's Blog has this small and useful write up on MOSS backup strategy, tools, tips, method to ensure high availability and also additional resources references.

http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/03/09/sharepoint-backup-restore-high-availability-and-disaster-recovery.aspx