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SHAREPOINTPRACTICAL IT STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION /// MARCH 2009

MANAGEMENT

Must-have Free SharePoint Toolsand Add-onsAre you on a tight budget? Download these handy tools and utilitiesfor free to fill in SharePoint functionality gaps. BY SHAWN SHELL

IMPLEMENTATION

Don’t Do ThatWith SharePointSteer clear of these traps to save yourself hours of unnecessarywork in your SharePoint environment. BY PAUL GALVIN

GOVERNANCE

Planning for Scalabilityin SharePoint GovernanceMake sure today’s SharePoint governance plan will covertomorrow’s performance needs as usage grows. BY BRIEN M. POSEY

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TIMES ARE TOUGH, and IT shops are busier than ever doing far more with muchless. Everyone is working harder to stretch their budgets. How about you? Ifyou need to fill in some SharePoint gaps but don’t have the money to do it,we’re here to help.

In this month’s issue, SharePoint expert Shawn Shell counts down the freetools and utilities that are a must for every SharePoint installation. Find theproducts you need at the price you can afford in “Must-have Free SharePointTools and Add-ons.”

While you’re still thinking about your budget, don’t forget about your Share-Point governance plan. Have you even considered what your performanceneeds will be once SharePoint takes off in your organization? One way to stayahead of the curve is to build in a set of criteria that defines when you shouldpurchase a new server or when you should add resources to an existing Share-Point server. Microsoft MVP Brien M. Posey offers tips on how to think proac-tively in “Planning for Scalability in SharePoint Governance.”

Are you a SharePoint all-star, or do you know just enough to be dangerous?SharePoint MVP Paul Galvin will set you straight in “Don’t Do That With Share-Point.” Ignore his advice and you could be looking at hours of work to clean upthe subsequent mess.

Want to share your SharePoint wisdom with the rest of the folks in thetrenches? Send us your ideas. We want to hear from you. �

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» EDITOR’S NOTE++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DoingMoreWith LessBY CHRISTINE CASATELLI

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Cathleen Gagne, Editorial Director, cgagne@techtarget.comChristine Casatelli, Editor, ccasatelli@techtarget.comMarthaMoore, Copy Editor, mmoore@techtarget.comLinda Koury,Art Director of Digital Content, lkoury@techtarget.comJonathan Brown, Publisher, jebrown@techtarget.comPeter Larkin, Senior Director of Sales, plarkin@techtarget.com

TechTarget, 117 Kendrick Street, Needham, MA 02494; www.techtarget.com©2009 TECHTARGET.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3 SharePoint March 2009

LET’S FACE IT: SharePoint has somefunctionality gaps. Because of that,managing SharePoint can sometimesbe a challenge. To fill those gaps,many SharePoint administrators endup purchasing third-party tools toassist them in managing their imple-mentations.

There are lots of terrific commercialtools and utilities available for Share-Point. But for organizations that eitherdon’t have the budget or can’t justifythe license costs for third-partySharePoint products, there are quitea few high-quality free tools. Pro-duced and made available by thesame commercial firms that marketfor-fee products, the free tools areoften used to encourage customersto license other products. There arealso quite a few open source or semi-open source tools from places like theMicrosoft-sponsored CodePlex site.

To help you identify devices thatmight help you, check out the list

below for 10 free or nearly free tools,utilities and add-on products forSharePoint. Inclusion on this list is notan implicit endorsement; it is simply alist of products I’ve either used per-sonally or know others who haveused them successfully. In every case,you should test the product in yourenvironment to ensure it meets yourneeds.

1Business Data Catalog (BDC)Application Definition EditorThis is a free utility provided byMicrosoft in the Microsoft OfficeSharePoint Server 2007 SoftwareDevelopment Kit (SDK). BecauseMicrosoft periodically releases up-dated versions of the SDK, be sureyou have at least the update fromlate 2008. From experience, the toolis somewhat challenging to use, butit is useful in that it helps you con-figure a BDC application definitionand it’s a good, free alternative to

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Lightning Tools Ltd.’s BDC MetaMan.

2 SharePoint Solution InstallerThis utility was created by LarsFastrup to ease the task of installingSharePoint Solution files, which usethe extension WSP, in a SharePointenvironment. You would use this toolprimarily to install custom solutions,and it operates very similarly to anystandard installation process. Theonly real requirement is that you needthe Solution ID, which is a GUID toiden-tify the solution. The SolutionID should be available from the devel-oper who constructed the WSP file.Many commercial companies havebegun to use this utility because itworks so well.

3SharePointWorkAcceleration Toolkit (SWAT)This toolkit was developed by iDev-Factory of Universal SharePoint Man-ager fame. It allows you to interrogateyour SharePoint farm and do all sortsof things, such as see site definitionsthat are installed, generate test datawithin a list, execute a CAML queryagainst one or more lists, see whichsites have been provisioned, reviewsecurity settings, construct a hierar-chy model—sites within a Site Collec-tion—and a good deal more. SWATwas previously a licensable tool, butiDevFactory changed its policy on thetool and has decided to offer it for

free. You are still required to get alicense, but there’s no cost.

4 DiscoveryWizard for SharePointQuest Software Inc. has madesome tentative steps forward intothe SharePoint market. The companyhas released its free discovery toolthat tells operations folks how manySharePoint sites exist on the network.

5Remote stsadm ToolStsadm is a necessity for managingSharePoint. But you can’t always be“on the box” to execute administra-tion commands with the tool. ThisCodePlex project aims to give youaccess to run stsadm commandsremotely.

6SPDeployThis open source tool created by theconsulting company Ascentium hasprimarily developer-centric function-ality, but it is also useful for opera-tions. SPDeploy enables remotedeployment of code packages toSharePoint environments.

7SharePoint FeaturesMicrosoft MVP Scot Hillier leads aproject on CodePlex that providessome valuable add-ons for SharePointin the form of various features youcan install and activate within yourSharePoint farm. Features include aSharePoint log viewer add-in andother developer-, administrator- and

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user-oriented elements. One featureadds the required Web.Config entriesfor Ajax. Whether you download andinstall them one by one or downloadthe entire project at once, you stillhave to install them individually.Those with developer leanings caneven get feature source codes.

8SharePointAdministration ToolkitMicrosoft has released a toolkit toassist SharePoint administrators withcommon tasks that are, strangely,not included with the out-of-the-boxadministrative interfaces. The toolkitis a combination of command-line-based stsadm updates and additionsto Central Administration. It includesseveral useful functions, such as abatch site manager and a way tosynchronize your profile store inSharePoint between Shared Servicesproviders.

9Best Practices Analyzer forWindows SharePoint Services 3.0Microsoft released this tool back in2007 with an update in 2008 to helporganizations ensure that they are

adhering to security and installationbest practices. The utility producesa report that details areas whereadministrators can improve theirenvironments.

0World ClockandWeatherWeb PartBamboo Solutions released this freeWeb part that displays the date, timeand weather within your SharePointenvironment. Although it’s not exact-ly a business-critical function, it ishandy.

Because of the sheer installedbase, there are many cool commercialtools, add-ons and utilities availablefor the SharePoint platform. In all, thefreebies listed here represent a merefraction of the available componentsyou can add to your SharePointenvironment.

Take them for a test-drive, butknow that you may be on your ownif a problem arises. In these times,though, SharePoint administratorsneed all the help they can get. Thesetools certainly help fill in functionalitygaps. �

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shawn Shell is the founder of Consejo Inc., a consultancy based in Chicago that specializes inWeb-based applications, employees and partner portals, as well as enterprise content manage-ment. He has spent more than 19 years in IT, with the last 10 focused on content technologies.Shell is a co-author ofMicrosoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide, publishedby Addison-Wesley, and the lead analyst/author on the CMSWatch SharePoint Report 2009.

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WE’VE ALL HAD flashbacks to our child-hood when our mothers told us,“Don’t do that, or you’ll regret it.” Butthen we went ahead and did it any-way, right? As children, we just didn’thave the wisdom or foresight to trustthat advice. Now that we’re older andwiser, we can take those words toheart.

Here are five “don’t do that” tips forSharePoint that can save you hours ofunnecessary re-work down the road.Not interested in following this

advice? That’s your decision, butdon’t say I didn’t warn you.

NUMBER 1:DON’T CHANGE THE TITLE ONTHE CORE ITEM CONTENT TYPE.SharePoint has a Title column onevery custom list (FIGURE 1), and it’sused throughout the environment. Ifyou rename the Title to somethinglike “organization,” you will have theundesired consequence of changing it

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FIGURE 1

Don’t editthis titlecolumn

in more places than you had planned.The problem will show itself very

quickly—you’ll probably receivephone calls from confused end users

within the hour. It is difficult to fix andcannot be done out of the box. Share-Point recognizes the word Title, alongwith a number of other names, as be-

ing special. It will not let you create acolumn with that name, but it will letyou change the existing core column.

So you can rename the core Titlecolumn on Monday. But, when yourealize your mistake on Tuesday,SharePoint won’t let you fix the prob-lem by setting the core column’sname back to “Title” because “Title”is a reserved word. In other words,SharePoint allows you to enter acatch-22 situation and won’t easilylet you out.

The solution is to use a third-partytool, such as one you’d find on Code-Plex, or to write some C# or VB.NETcode and make the correction pro-grammatically. The easiest thing,though, is to save yourself the troubleby never changing the Title column’sname.

NUMBER 2:BEWARE OF“PUBLISHINGSITE”TEMPLATES.If you create a sitebased on a publish-ing site template,you cannot savethat site as a tem-plate (FIGURE 2).

More than oneSharePoint pro hasset out to create theperfect customtemplate. They do

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FIGURE 2

If you rename theTitle to something like‘organization,’ you willhave the undesiredconsequence of chang-ing it in more placesthan you had planned.

Don’t selectPublishing Siteas a template

everything the right way: They inter-view the users and work with themover a period of a week or two todesign the ideal custom template. Butwhen they create the site to use as atemplate, they hit a snag.

Here’s the problem: Everythinglooks perfect, but then you go to saveyour site as a template so you canreuse it, and can’t do it.

FIGURE 3A shows the look-and-feeloptions for a site based on a publish-ing template, and FIGURE 3B shows a

site based on a collaboration tem-plate.

If you’ve done this to yourself, yourbest bet is to start over with a collab-oration template. Consider using ablank template or possibly a team sitetemplate as your starting point. If youwant or need publishing features inyour custom template, enable themon your site, as shown in FIGURE 4.

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FIGURE 3A

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 3B

Saving your siteas a templatecauses a snag.

Click “Activte” toenable publishingfeatures on yoursite.

Everythinglooks justright.

.NUMBER 3:DON’T DEFINE CONTENTTYPES IN THE WRONG PLACE.Content types fit within the sitehierarchy of your sites. Consider thefollowing hierarchy:

Portal

SubSite ASubSite AA

SubSite AAA

SubSite BSubSite BB

SubSite CSubSite CC

SubSite CCC

If you define a site content type at“SubSite C,” it will be available to Sub-Site CC and SubSite CCC. But it willnot be available to SubSite A, SubSiteB or their children. There is no easyway to move a Site Content Typearound in the hierarchy. If you makethis mistake, your only alternative isto delete the Content Type and re-create it at the right position in thehierarchy.

Deleting a content type can bedrastic and—very possibly—impossi-ble as a practical matter. Once con-tent such as documents or Webpages use a Content Type, you cannotdelete it. The most important lessonto draw here is that a well-thought-

out information architecture is vitalfor a healthy SharePoint environment.

NUMBER 4:DON’T EXPECT TO REUSE SHARE-POINT DESIGNER WORKFLOWS.SharePoint Designer is a friendly wiz-ard that allows properly trained busi-ness analysts to create workflows.Companies leverage these workflowsto solve a wide variety of businessproblems. But, a SharePoint Designerworkflow has a major technical limi-tation that escapes the notice ofmany first-time SharePoint users:It is always tied to a specific list.

Many times, organizations definemulti-step workflows that solve busi-ness problems common to multipleteams and divisions within a compa-ny. Wouldn’t it be great if you coulddesign and implement a workflow inone list and then just drag and dropthe workflow to another list in theenvironment? It might be, but you’reout of luck.

There are some highly technicalmethods to get around the reuseproblem. But, the time required tocreate a technical solution is justnot worth it.

NUMBER 5:WORKFLOW HISTORYIS NOT AN AUDIT TRAIL.This is an insidious issue because

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you would never notice the problemuntil it’s far too late. For example, anauditor is tapping you on the shoul-der, asking you to demonstrate whena particular financial document wasapproved and by whom. You go tothe workflow history and it’s empty.Why? By default, SharePoint purgesworkflow history after 60 days.

There are several ways to addressthis problem: You can disable the jobthat does the purging (FIGURE 5). Youcan change the purge interval usingthe stsadm command line program.Or you can write your own auditmechanism. SharePoint Designer canwrite critical auditable events to a

custom list.The best choice is to leverage built-

in auditing, possibly with a third-partytool that specializes in audit reportingin a SharePoint environment.

So there you have it. Now you knowwhat not to do.

Some of these SharePoint pitfallsare relatively easy to overcome, suchas picking a publishing template as abase for your own custom templates.Others are not.

And for those, you may have tostart over. Use these tips to avoidthese traps, and you'll have a morestable and productive experiencewith SharePoint. �

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FIGURE 5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Galvin is a Microsoft SharePoint MVP and a SharePoint solutions architect at EMC Corp.Galvin has worked in the IT industry for more than 15 years in such areas as software develop-ment, consulting and SharePoint solutions design, where he works with clients to create busi-ness solutions using the SharePoint platform. He contributes to the SharePoint community

through MSDN forums and his blog at http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com.

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13 SharePoint March 2009

PERFORMANCE AND scalability are twocritical, but often overlooked, consid-erations in a SharePoint governanceplan. Traditional file servers typicallydon’t get bogged down as the volumeof data stored on the server increas-es, but the same cannot always besaid for SharePoint. That’s why it isso important to plan for scalabilityfrom the very beginning.

When considering SharePoint gov-ernance, remember that an organiza-tion is not static. The volume of enter-prise content stored in SharePoint’slists and document libraries is almostalways going to grow exponentiallyover time.

The number of SharePoint sitescreated by individual departmentsin your organization is likely to growsteadily as well, so make sure that theSharePoint governance plan you cre-ate today will still be viable tomorrowas the scale of your organization’sSharePoint deployment increases.

.SETTING QUOTASFOR THE LONG TERMOne way to plan for SharePointscalability is to determine whetherthe quota limitations you have setin your governance plan are goingto remain practical over the longterm.

Because the volume of data that’sstored in SharePoint’s lists andlibraries increases exponentially overtime, users will eventually reach thequotas you have established. Whenthis happens, users typically end uphaving to purge old data to makeroom for new data.

How can you know for surewhether the quota limits you imposeare going to force users to deletedocuments that they need for theirjobs?

The answer is that there is no wayto be sure the quota limits that workfine today are always going to beappropriate. So design your gover-

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nance plan in a way that allows youto adjust limitations as businessneeds evolve.

There’s not a good rule of thumbfor SharePoint capacity planning thatworks in every situation. History hasshown that as new versions of theapplications used to produce variousdocuments are released, the docu-ment format also tends to evolveand become more bloated.

You can start by making a basicassumption that your volume of datais going to double every two years.The reality might be that the datamay increase much more rapidly ifyour company is growing.

Or it may increase a lot more slowlyif the company decreases in size or ifit doesn’t adopt new applications orproduce many documents.

If you are serious about planningfor SharePoint governance, then youshould be vigilant about your data-bases.

It’s easy to forget that the docu-ments stored in SharePoint lists andlibraries actually reside in back-endSQL Server databases. As the volumeof data in the lists and librariesincreases, database performancetypically decreases.

So plan ahead and budget foradditional or higher performanceSQL Servers. That way, you can keepSharePoint performing well, even asthe volume of data stored in the vari-ous document libraries increases.

SETTING CRITERIAFOR MANDATED UPGRADESAt what point should you expand?Make sure your SharePoint gover-nance plan covers that too. Comeup with a set of criteria that defineswhen it is necessary to add resourcesto an existing SharePoint server or

when to purchase a new server.Technically, this is capacity plan-

ning, not governance. But makingcapacity planning part of a gover-nance document gives SharePointadministrators the ability to performany necessary upgrades, because the“rules” in the governance documentsay that they have to.

Getting top managers to sign offon upgrades is always easier when itisn’t going to cost them anything inthe near future. So if you define theconditions that warrant an upgrade ora new server in the governance docu-ment–and can get management tosign off on that document–then it

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Come up with a setof criteria that defineswhen it is necessaryto add resources toan existing SharePointserver or when topurchase a new server.

should be easier to get new storagecapacity when you need it.

As you draft this portion of thedocument, keep it open-endedenough that it will remain relevantas technology changes. For example,you shouldn’t say “additional storageneeds to be purchased when theavailable storage falls below 50 GB.”A statement like that might be fine fortoday, but five years down the road itcould be that having 50 GB of spaceremaining would represent a criticalcondition.

Consider wording in your gover-nance document that uses percent-ages instead of defined amounts togive you more flexibility. For example,you might say that additional storageis required when the available storagespace falls below 10% of the total

capacity. Each SharePoint deploy-ment will be different, so figure outwhich numbers are appropriate foryour own organization.

So what do you do if you alreadyhave a governance document inplace, and it doesn’t make any provi-sions for planned scalability or othertypes of capacity planning? One

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Factor in Compliancein Your Scalability EquationIF YOUR COMPANY is subject to compliance regulations that mandate the long-term storage of certain documents, you need to consider the impact on yourback-end SQL Servers. Your best bet might be to create a SQL Server dedicat-ed to the long-term storage of seldom accessed documents. SharePoint hasseveral ways for figuring out how recently a document was used. By offloadingthose documents to a different database on another server, you can help keepyour primary SQL Server databases performing well.Many organizations also use a document-archiving mechanism to ensure

that even if a user does delete a document to make room for more documents,there is always a way to get that document back should the need arise.

Consider wordingin your governancedocument that usespercentages instead ofdefined amounts to giveyou more flexibility.

option is to scrap the document andstart over, but you probably won’thave to do anything that drastic.

The first thing to do is explain tomanagement that although the gover-nance document is fine for today, itdoesn’t address the issues that the ITdepartment will face in the future asthe organization grows. Once youhave received management’s blessingfor updating the document, then itmay not be a bad idea to survey thedepartment heads on how they planon using SharePoint in the future.

Although hearing from departmentheads might be valuable, it may mayalso prove to be a waste of time. Afterdoing this, I’ve found that managershave a tendency to say one thingand do another. Even so, I have hadat least two situations in which ask-ing some basic questions up frontkept me from making some majormistakes in my capacity planningefforts.

Assuming that your governancedocument is in fairly good shape, youwill probably be able to easily amendthe document by adding your newcapacity planning and scalability poli-

cies to it. At least be sure to reviewthe rest of the document to see ifyou need to make any other changes.

You don’t want to have to repeat

this process a year or two down theroad. Still, you should include a provi-sion in the document that gives yourdepartment the right to revise thecapacity planning and scalability sec-tion in the future, should the needarise. That way, you won’t have toseek permission from managementevery time you must revise your scal-ability plans. �

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Assuming that yourgovernance documentis in fairly good shape,you will probably beable to easily amendthe document by addingyour new capacityplanning and scalabilitypolicies to it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BrienM. Posey has received Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional award five times forhis work withWindows Server, IIS, file systems/storage, and Exchange Server. He has servedas CIO for a nationwide chain of hospitals and healthcare facilities and was once a networkadministrator for Fort Knox.

17 SharePoint March 2009

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