SharePoint Saturday Charlotte

1 SharePoint Saturday Charlotte

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SharePoint Saturday Charlotte


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How Task Aggregation and Work Management Works in SharePoint 2013

Understanding Task Aggregation

in SharePoint 2013


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About Me – Paul Wood Senior SharePoint Engineer at SunTrust Bank, Atlanta on the Infrastructure Engineering

team.

Have been a SharePoint Consultant for the past 7 years, specializing in delivering solutions

from platform infrastructure to site and solution design using SharePoint, Project Server

and Office 365.

Consider myself more of a solution architect

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP, MCTS, MCITP, MCSA)

BLOG – p w c on s u l t a n t . b l o g s p o t. c o m

Email – p w c o n s u l t a n t @ h o t m a I l . c o m

LinkedIn – L i n k e d i n . c o m / i n / p w c o n s u l t a n t

Twitter – @ p w c o n s u l t a n t – mention me using #spsclt

http://pwconsultant.blogspot.com/

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.linkedin.com/in/pwconsultant








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Awesome Update to that quote

We shape our SharePoint Farms . . .

thereafter they shape us

~ If Winston Churchill worked in today’s offices~


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Overview

What is Task Aggregation in SharePoint 2013

What are the Steps and some Tips for Configuring

How to work through some issues

Questions and Answers

(hopefully)


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Summary In SharePoint Server, the Newsfeed

MySites Tasks list aggregates and shows all the SharePoint and Project Server tasks assigned to the logged-in user.

It can also be used to create personal or public tasks

Available for SharePoint online and SharePoint Server on-premises deployments and is included in the Newsfeeds and Tasks pages.


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The “Old Way”

• Users had to go to many different places to retrieve tasks assigned to them – or at least get alerts from multiple areas

• No coordination of updates

Multiple Tasks in Multiple Programs

Outlook/Exchange

Project Server

SharePoint Task Lists

Team Site Meeting Workspace

Group Work Site

Document Workspace


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The “New Way”Task Aggregated from Multiple Programs to ONE Place

SharePoint MySite Exchange 2013

Project Server 2013

SharePoint Server 2013

• One comprehensive view of user tasks

• Central point for managing tasks


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Features All tasks can be managed from one

location (My Sites) Displayed on a dynamic time line – can

add tasks to the time line from the same screen.

Sync to Outlook (with Exchange) Categorized/grouped by project sites or

“locations”. Ability to mark tasks as important. Search your tasks.


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Work Management (WMA) Task Aggregation is possible because of a new service application in SharePoint 2013 called Work Management

The Work Management Service Application provides functionality to aggregate tasks to a central location: Users are able to view and track their to-dos and tasks Tasks can be cached to a users personal site Tasks can be aggregated from Exchange, Project Server

and SharePoint Based on 'Provider model' so that other systems can be

integrated in the future Work Management Service is exposed as part of each

users My Site / Newsfeed experience If you have Project Server, site-level tasks or

Outlook/Exchange to-do's, this feature alone can help "sell" social to new users


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WMA Prerequisites - Products

Server products Cloud services

SharePoint Server 2013 Standard or Enterprise SharePoint Online Plan P, Plan 1, or Plan 2

Project Server (for Project Server tasks)Project Online Project Portfolio Management (for Project Server tasks)

Exchange Server 2013 Exchange Online Plan E*


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Prerequisites – My TasksScenario ATo aggregate SharePoint and Project Tasks the MySite Tasks Newsfeed requires:

Work Management Service Application (WMA) User Profile Service Application SharePoint MySites Search Service Application

Scenario BTo aggregate Exchange Tasks the MySite Tasks Newsfeed requires all of Scenario A and:

Exchange 2013


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Configuration Steps1. Setup the Search Service Application2. Setup My Site Host3. Setup the User Profile Service Application4. Setup the Work Management Service

Application (WMA)5. Create the Project Server Service

Application (optional)6. Create sites in SharePoint and Project

Server 7. Assign Tasks8. Run a Search Crawl!


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Special ConsiderationsProject Server

Project Server resides on top of WMA, and so in order for the WMA application pool account to be trusted by Project Server automatically, it’s best to provision the PWA sites AFTER you create the WM service application.

If PWA instances exist already, then the administrator must manually add the WM account to the Project Server databases’ PSDataAccess role.


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Issue 1 – Trouble! "We are having trouble refreshing your tasks"


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Issue 1 – Solved! Give the WMA Services Account “Full Control” permission to the User Profile Service (UPS)


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Issue 2 – Not working!

Task Aggregation is not working!

New Site, New List, New User

Tasks assigned but nothing appears in the MySites Tasks.

Even waiting for hours nothing shows up.


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Issue 2 – Solved! It’s a waiting game that isn’t documented too well – at least not yet

Additional settings control the time for refresh and additional rules apply to “new” tasks or “new” users assigned tasks

New Tasks, New Sites, New Users are not picked up till a Search Crawl is done


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Special ConsiderationsTasks Appearing for the User A user’s tasks won’t be visible until the

following are complete:1. User creates their “MySite”

2. They refresh their Tasks

3. A Search Crawl has happened


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Special Considerations - Refreshes1. User Refresh – from MySites Task

2. Provider Aggregator Refresh Triggers the WMA Refresh of MySites Task Checks the Site Collection “Hints” Listening for the new SharePoint events (hints) to be

alerted when a new task is assigned to the user3. Provider Query Refresh

Checks the Search Index for New/Updated Task Locations and New/Updated User Assignments

Tasks from legacy SharePoint task lists will not trigger hints


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Search Crawler locates tasks lists and loads them into the Search Index for “Querying” by the WMA Provider

Once a task list is found to contain at least one task assigned to the user, any new task on this task list will be found during the next WMA Aggregator (“Provider”) refresh, since the task list location is in memory already

Same for users If a user task is assigned but that user did not

already have permission to the task list, the task won’t show up until the next Search Crawl

Special Considerations – Relationship to Search


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Continuous Crawl Enabled Continuous Crawl on the Content

Source that contains SharePoint sites Manage the Continuous Crawl Interval

Time $ssa = Get-

SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication $ssa.SetProperty("ContinuousCrawlInterval",<n>)

<n> is the interval in minutes at which you want to start a continuous crawl.

The default interval is set to 15 minutes. The shortest interval you can set is 1 minute.


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Special Considerations - General

Cross farm aggregation is not supported. The My Tasks page will not report and

aggregate tasks from another farm from the same domain or from a different domain, regardless of the existing trust between the domains and farms.


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Special Considerations - WMA Admin Settings Cannot be set in Central Admin!

Must be set with PowerShell with Set-

SPWorkManagementServiceApplication


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PropertyDefault Value Description

minimumTimeBetweenProviderRefreshes

minimumTimeBetweenProviderRefreshes 0:05:00

This value specifies the minimum amount of time between refreshes for a provider for a given user. There cannot be a refresh of data if this value is not met, all refresh operations will be null before that.

MinimumTimeBetweenSearchQueries

MinimumTimeBetweenSearchQueries 3:00:00

This value specifies the minimum amount of time between calls to search for a given user. This is used to discover new providers not yet known to have tasks for this user.

WMA Properties


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Exchange Tasks Exchange Aggregation (Exchange 2013)

relies on a SharePoint Timer Job The timer job runs on SharePoint and wakes up

every minute A user might not be synced every time,

depending on the freshness of his or her tasks. Typically, sync should occur every five to 20

minutes to ping all the different providers (Project, SharePoint & Exchange) and look for changes


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Exchange Tasks It is always SharePoint that is calling Exchange

Server, which makes the configuration easier, because only one trust needs to be established

Farm Feature activated by default, regardless of the existence of Exchange 2013 in the environment

Users have to “Opt-In” by clicking the “Sync to Outlook” option for a task list (Project Server or SharePoint)


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Exchange Tasks If Exchange 2013 is not in the environment

or won’t be for a while it is recommended that the farm feature be deactivated to avoid confusion to the user

That way the “Sync to Outlook” button doesn’t appear – just the legacy “Connect to Outlook” button


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Exchange Tasks Timer Job The Exchange timer job has to run at all

times in order to keep tasks in Sync. The timer job performance can be altered

using the properties for the WMA Admin Settings.

The timer job Decides which users to sync next Creates a batch of syncs Sends these users to the WMA


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Exchange Tasks Timer Job The Timer Job asks for the sites which have the WMA feature to get the list of all enabled tenants This happens once every 30 minutes and can

be tweaked using MinimumTimeBetweenEwsSyncSubscriptionSearches

The Timer Job has in-memory the list of all the tenants synced and the next user to process based on oldest one not processed in priority order o the last to be synced is highest on the list to get

synced The Timer Job takes the top 50 tenants (the

ones with the oldest yet to be synced user timestamp) and processes them


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Exchange Tasks Timer Job Syncing per tenant:

The code looks in the My Site host list for the oldest N users who need to be synced.o N is set to 100 users by default and can be

configured using NumberOfUsersPerEwsSyncBatch.

For each user, Exchange Sync is run, then it goes on to the next user. This goes on for 45 seconds, and then it stops.o Each time, the Sync retrieves N users or whatever

quantity could be retrieved in 45 seconds The timestamp of the next user to be

synced is used to stamp the tenant.


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WMA Properties - ExchangeProperty

Default Value Description

MinimumTimeBetweenEwsSyncSubscriptionSearches 30:00

This value specifies the minimum amount of time between calls into our routine that tries to find new tenants that want to sync EWS tasks. Each tenant needs to be found once using this routine, subsequent users from the same tenant will be picked up on the next tenant sync.

NumberOfUsersPerEwsSyncBatch 100

This value specifies the maximum number of users a service instance will try to sync on a given tenant via EWS per Timer job interval.

NumberOfUsersEwsSyncWillProcessAtOnce 10

This value specifies the maximum number of users a service instance machine will sync via EWS at one time across all tenants. This has direct influence on the machine workload. Each sync will last 45 seconds (constant).

NumberOfSubscriptionSyncsPerEwsSyncRun 50

This value specifies the maximum number of tenants the service will try to sync via EWS per Timer job interval.


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Supported Task Types Task Types

WMA aggregates tasks from SharePoint task lists (internally called TasksWithTimelineAndHierarchy-171) plus upgraded SharePoint lists from earlier versions of SharePoint (internally called Task-107 or GanttTasks-150).

Additionally, WMA aggregates all task items (whether or not in a SharePoint list) created in a library that supports the task content type. The Task content type should be marked as the Default

Content Type for your custom list in order for the tasks to be aggregated by the service.

Type Name Feature ID107Tasks (2010) 00bfea71-a83e-497e-9ba0-7a5c597d0107171Tasks (2013) f9ce21f8-f437-4f7e-8bc6-946378c850f0


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Resources Exchange Task Aggregation

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj554516(v=office.15)

White Paper (covers SharePoint/Project/Exchange) My Tasks Aggregation in SharePoint Server and

Exchange Task Integration http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/detail

s.aspx?id=38799



http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38799

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38799


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Kristophers Right after the event ends First drink is on us Bring in your ticket for validation See the SPSCLT Website for more info and

directions

Join us for SharePint


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SharePint DirectionsKristophers250 North Trade Street Matthews, NC 28105

1. Turn right onto Ann St. : 1.1 mi2. Turn right onto Old Monroe Rd. : 0.1

mi3. Road changes to E John St. : 359ft4. Turn right onto N Trade St. : 2.3 mi

1st drink on us, bring your ticket


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SharePoint Saturday Charlotte