Chris Geier's Blog

Kerberos the Sequel

chrisg — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:32:28 GMT

Hello all, and welcome to my next dive into the world of Kerberos. I did this previously in my how to K2 series, but wanted to update it with information i have been presenting in my SharePoint Saturday adventures. I have long been one helping out in the Kerberos troubleshooting and presenting to different audiences on the topic. So hopefully some of my experience and occasional pain can help you out.

Lets start with some background and introduction to the beast

Next lets looking at some finer points of Kerberos

Now you may be asking what do i tell people, why do we REALLY need Kerberos

So you now have a better understanding for this beast, you also should understand that yes, we do need it. So lets dig into some more and figure out some next steps for you.

Ok hopefully all that made sense. If you want some more information on that DNS stuff check out these resources

http://www.identitychaos.com/2008/03/problem-with-kerberos-delegation.html

http://share-point.blogspot.com/2008/11/moss2007wssv3-kerberos-cnames-and.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2007/10/19/orchestrating-kerberos-authentication-spn-cheat-sheet.aspx

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Categories/Category.aspx?Name=Kerberos

At this point you can now dive in and get your feet wet putting this into practice

Of course we cant forget to configure some IIS 7 stuff if thats what you have.

Lets take a look at some more updates with SQL 2008

So hopefully your environment is all configured and fully working now right? Well if not lets try to figure out what's going on and troubleshoot

Now we can dig in further using one of my favorite tools. WireShark.

Now that you have found the problem and corrected it. Lets pull this all together.

Here is a list of resources.

WireShark – http://www.wireshark.org
Troubleshooting WP’s
Troubleshooting Kerberos Errors
http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=7DFEB015-6043-47DB-8238-DC7AF89C93F1&displaylang=en
Troubleshooting Kerberos Delegation
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=99b0f94f-e28a-4726-bffe-2f64ae2f59a2&displayLang=en
Kerberos Intro
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742516.aspx
Windows Server 2003 security infrastructures" written by Jan De Clercq
Windows Support Tools
Deleg Config –
http://blogs.iis.net/brian-murphy-booth/

2 other “Kerberos Guys” you should know are Bob Fox and Spence Harbar. Very Smart Guys

www.spfoxhole.com/blog

http://www.harbar.net/

Let me know if this helps.

Auditing delegation in K2

chrisg — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:49:00 GMT

Recently got a question from a customer who is using delegation inside their processes. The question was:

Is there a way to create a report or extract data to report the Out of Office delegation assignment for audit purpose?

Well for this, none of the out-of-the-box reports will be able to provide the information that is needed in this case, however we can get at it. The below SQL query will pull this.

Select 'OOF Setup FOR: [' + [A1].ActionerName + '] TO: [' + [A2].ActionerName + ']' as SentTo, 
'[' + [A1].ActionerName + '] Status is: ' + CASE WHEN [A1].Status = 1 THEN '[OUT of Office]' ELSE '[IN Office]' END as CurrentStatus 

From [_Actioners] [A1] 
Join [_ActionerShare] [AS] On [AS].ActionerID = [A1].[ID] 
Join [_ActionerShareWorktype] [ASWT] On [ASWT].ActionerShareID = [AS].[ID] 
Join [_Worktype] [WT] On [WT].[ID] = [ASWT].WorktypeID 
Join [_WorktypeShare] [WTS] On [WTS].WorktypeID = [WT].[ID] 
Join [_Actioners] [A2] On [A2].[ID] = [WTS].ActionerID

The result set returned will provide information on who set up the out-of-office delegation and to whom the worklist item was delegated. It will also show the status of the delegating user – ‘IN Office’ or ‘OUT of Office’.

This can be an useful function for you as you need to audit your current Out of office activity. In addition I am attaching an RDL file to this as well so that you can use this as a regular SSRS report.

Hopefully this is useful.

Going from SharePoint Designer to Visual Studio 2010

chrisg — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:59:24 GMT

In previous blog posts we have followed the progression of a basic process from being modeled in Visio to being assembled in SharePoint Designer. You may already already done this some and been satisfied with the results. You may have started this and hit the functionality/complexity wall. If this is the case you need to take the next step in your workflow progression and open that process in Visual Studio 2010.

The first step is to take the process you have built in SharePoint Designer and Save it as a template

This saves the WSP to the Site Assets library on the site that the workflow is associated with.

Once you save it locally. You can then import it into Visual Studio and get to work.

Once imported and open, for those of you who are familiar with developing in a SharePoint environment this should look very familiar.

You then have access to all the different parts of the solution and can add the necessary pieces to take your process to the next level.

In raw code

or in a typical WF Designer format

Lets see how this works in action

Moving From SharePoint Designer to Visual Studio

I would love to hear more from those who are out there working with this stuff regularly. What is your experience doing this? Is it working? Let me know.

BPM and the professional athlete

chrisg — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:33:06 GMT

Football season is now over and baseball season is about to begin. For these sports and others there is a ton of dedication, preparation and drive that go into being a professional athlete, or for that matter any serious high level athlete. For those athletes and and entire sports teams who desire to take their craft to the next level and be the absolute best at their sport, it takes a lot of work, such as:

Exercise
Practice
Strategizing
etc.

A key component of improving ones own skills as well as preparing for competition is that teams and athletes do is the use of video. This is true for just about any sport. As an example I took a series of golf lessons a few years back and one of the very first things my coach did was video tape me and my swing so that i could watch, she could point out a few different aspects then we could work together and focus just on improving those pieces one at a time.

Seeing this on video and being able to often in slow motion each subtle move, each component that makes up a swing is tremendously helpful. Well at least it would be for most people. (my game is hopeless) Athletes in almost every sport sees tremendous benefit in being able to really look at your moves, studying each aspect, digging in and exploring. But you may be reading this and thinking, ok Chris tell me something i don't know. Well lets try to relate this to something that may interest all of you; Business Process Management.

One of the key concepts of BPM is the ability not only to automate your processes but then be able to report on them, dig into every detail of them and see what is happening, how they work, how they look, what happens at each step etc. This better allows you to constantly evaluate and improve on them. Very similar to how you may use video as a professional athlete. This of professional athletes trying to get that extra advantage. Every aspect analyzed trying to find the smallest edge, the smallest little improvement to be made. This concept is how they really learn about what they are doing and how they are doing it, to better advance. This is no different that BPM, you can automate and report, really dig into them and see what's happening, how it happens who is involved

What if your company took this same approach to each and every process you had. Taking each one, automating it through a workflow/BPM engine. Then being able to easily and quickly report on it. Have the ability to dig in, analyze, watch it closely. Each step of the way looking for small details about it that will help you improve it. Think of the competitive advantage this could bring you and your company. Imagine being able to visualize your process in ways just like below:

Visualize the process in a graphical model

Then be able to run reports on that like

	see how each step in the process breaks down by how long is spent on each step. (learn where your bottle necks are)

Create insightful dashboards that allow you to quickly and easily see important aspects of the process or

visualize process data.

One of the best things about a good BPM supportive technology platform is the sky is the limit. You can build reports, dashboards and visualizations to suit your needs. All the data should be there, you just need to figure out which pieces of data are important, much like the athlete chooses the types of videos and or angles to watch. With this attitude and mindset, BPM and the processes you chose to automate can indeed be that competitive advantage to you and your business.

What do you think? Can your competitive differentiator be your process or is it more than that?

Why I participate in SharePoint Saturday

chrisg — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:12:35 GMT

I had an interesting conversation this weekend at SharePoint Saturday Indy (for more on that experience see my blog here) the conversation was about me being a "vendor" and actually delivering a presentation that was not vendor focused in nature.

Having been a vendor for quite a while and also having a good understanding of the community in general i understand where the question comes from. But I think the idea may be worth taking a few minutes to explain my thought process in the hopes that maybe others could benefit.

I am out there building presentations and submitting them for approval just like everyone else because I love to get out and talk to people, I also love the idea of teaching. (I think one day i will actually do that) I have a good perspective on technology and love to try and help others see what i see. I like to help people and love to talk technology, business value and process.

As it so happens I work for a company that makes a BPM/Workflow software based on the Microsoft platform. Primarily SharePoint, WF, and .Net As such I have been afforded a great opportunity to not only have early access to a number of Microsoft products. I also have the privilege of working with many smart people that help me understand these new products. This puts me in a great position to take that knowledge and share it with others.

In addition to this I am passionate about workflow, I believe WF, Process automation, BPM, can be a HUGE benefit, and can truly be a difference make. I want to educate people on WF, how awesome it is, what are the benefits and drawbacks for each area etc.

Many vendors out there see these types of conferences, events, seminars as a way to get in thinly veiled product demos or sessions that constantly refer you back to their offering some how. To me that is missing the whole point on many levels

1. Pushing your own agenda and message does not fit into a good community relationship.

2. People are giving up a Saturday to come learn, you are there to help them. I would imagine most are not there to hear a sales pitch.

3. Your job is to create content that will

Engage
Educate
Entertain

I believe that if you are vendor and you believe you solve some problem, and you believe that you are the best out there then educate people on the topic and have confidence they will make that conclusion for themselves. If we do a great job helping people do WF, BPM, and are the best WF/BPM vendor on the MS platform. I am not so biased that i believe K2 is the right product for anyone every time. I just believe that we do a great job at what we do, and if you have needs, environment, and or skills that match our strengths that we rock.

Microsoft does a good job in helping people in certain situations to better use and take advantage of workflow. So i want to help people understand:

Why workflow and BPM can be good for them
What is there for them
What is not
What can they be doing to better plan for and take advantage of the Microsoft platform.

If you have someone from K2 that really wants to help educate you to the point where you feel more comfortable going out and starting to build it all out yourself and don't like it, or have issues you cant overcome then we may be the one you come back and talk to and that is just plain good.

SharePoint Saturday Indy

chrisg — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:44:19 GMT

K2 just sponsored SPSINDY, and I spoke as well. Both from a sponsorship as well as a Speaker perspective SPSINDY was easily one of the best SharePoint Saturday event’s I have participated in.

It was obvious to me as well as the other sponsors that sponsors were a significant consideration in the planning. While I completely understand that these events are "for the community" the way in which SPSINDY was run, showed so well to the K2 people I brought with will help me continue to expand our participation and sponsorship of future events.

Some key points I wanted to share.

1. Timing:

The planning, and communication with sponsors/speakers. Happened well in advance. This helped me with communications internally as well as for planning of resources, shipping, travel, event promotion etc. Timing and amounts of advanced notice is a significant help to those speaking and sponsoring.

2. Communication:

Both as a speaker, and as a sponsor we were regularly kept in the loop as to logistics, task actions required, next steps etc. This helped dramatically with having confidence in our participation, helped us know what to expect and what we needed to do.

3. Sponsor participation:

Obviously I come at this from a different angle, but This is HUGE. At the very beginning of the day, during the intro/keynote. Rob Bogue called out each of the sponsors, and introduced them, gave each one 3 minutes or so to introduce themselves, invite people out to the booths etc. This alone to my team that was there made the sponsorship investment worth it, and caused them to glow with what a great deal this was.

Booth placement was PERFECT. They were placed by registration, near the primary areas where people networked, got food etc. This increased attendee traffic to at least be near the booths, and thus making it easy for them to just stop by and chat. While many attendees may not have any interest in this. The placement may have pushed that one over the edge to stop by a booth and discuss offerings. Thus possibly resulting in a good conversation. Which obviously from a selfish sponsor perspective is making the investment well worth it. From an attendee perspective they COULD avoid the sponsors – but it was made easy and comfortable for them to not do this.

4. Speaker dinner:

Best speaker dinner i have been to, event was casual, well organized and VERY generous. I genuinely felt rewarded. No expense was spared. GREAT work

5. Event meals:

Event meals were great, breakfast was the best i have seen to date. Overheard several others also mention that they were impressed with what was provided. In addition to just the food itself. The atmosphere and accommodations allowed for good networking and made for a good conversation environment. It seems as though they thought of everything in this area.

6. Sponsor investment options.

At first i did not really like the idea of just handing over sponsorship and not tying it to a specific item. But after really giving it some thought and talking to some others who have run SPS events I really think that this is the way to do it. No more sponsors fighting about who gave more thus who gets more etc. I really think that this could work very well. I understand that some sponsors may rather pay less due to budget reasons but if the other above suggestions to add value to sponsors is followed, I am positive that no one will question the value of the investment.

7. Speaker “Logistics”

Sessions were well organized, all rooms were well laid out etc. One very nice touch was they had a “time cop” in the back of the room in each session that would hold up a card at 10 minutes to go, then 5 minutes to go, in order to try to keep things on track.

Ok enough glowing and raving. There was one bad thing. This is a technical crowd, and a technical crowd going an entire day without “Mtn. Dew” is just plain dangerous.

So a call to action. I really think that writing up some best practices, what different venues are experiencing, taking some feedback and providing that to those who are looking to run SPS events will be TREMENDOUSLY helpful. So if you have run, spoken at or attended a SharePoint Saturday, tell us what worked, what did not etc.

Visio and Workflow Part 2

chrisg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:42:17 GMT

In the previous blog post we introduced you to using Visio as part of your SharePoint workflow strategy. Next we are going to show it in action.

Even today Visio can play an important role in designing and laying out your various business processes. I am sure many organizations use Visio just to draw out visually what they want their processes to look like etc. Visio even has regular templates for Basic Flow charts, Workflow Diagrams and even BMN diagrams.

Unfortunately this was the extent to which the business could go, a diagram with no reuse. In 2008 we came out with Visio integration that allowed an organization to take any diagram they had and “K2 enable” it. Thus adding a level of functionality to the Visio diagram. Other vendors have seen the need to take the tooling Visio has and put it in the hands of a business user to allow them to participate in the processes design process. Enter in SharePoint and Office 2010.

You can now take a Special Visio stencil and move it through different tooling to add additional functionality.

Lets try it

Hopefully this starts to give you some good information on using Visio and SharePoint designer together. Next we will finish off the process, then deploy and do some cool stuff with it in Visual Studio 2010

Have you used Visio for SharePoint workflow? Can you see your organization taking advantage of it? Let me know. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Visio as a workflow tool

chrisg — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:04:46 GMT

Did you know that Visio can now be a core tool in your workflow arsenal? Visio can not only deliver functionality to help your business analysts participate in workflow modeling. But can also help deliver the status of your workflow when running in a visual manner. This topic may take a few different blog posts, especially if we want to cover some of the finer points of how Visio fits into your workflow plans.

Lets get started talking Visio workflow, with one of the more visible pieces of the Visio story being workflow visualization with Visio Services.

The below screen shot shows a visual representation of a basic out of the box publishing workflow, as shown through Visio services.

This easily allows you to see not only what step the workflow is on currently, and what it has been through but also what is to come. Visio visualization of workflow is available on all workflows published from SharePoint Designer, but has to be “enabled” see below

There are many aspect of how you may use Visio as part of you workflow/SharePoint strategy, too many to cover here. So lets just cover a few items that may help you in your planning.

Training will be a very step in your path to SharePoint and workflow success. When rolling out Visio as a tool you will need to ensure that all those who will participate are fully trained.

First step Familiarity with the stencils

When utilizing Visio as a workflow modeling tool you have to ensure those involved use the template provided as all workflow must be modeled using the SharePoint Process modeler stencils

Each stencil visual represents actions and outcomes similar to those found in SharePoint designer

Once you familiarize your workflow modelers with the different components of this stencil you need to make sure they understand how they will be expected to model their processes. Your typical business analyst/user will more than likely think of a process laid out like this

Unfortunately this is not possible in Visio specifically because of the “loop back” or “re-work” step. You can model it this way but it will not allow you to export it. (You will receive an error)

Instead what you have to do is build out your processes linearly. As seen below.

You may not be able to completely grasp the idea behind this diagram, but this diagram is the Visio representation of the typical business process shown earlier, only in a linear fashion where the rework is a complete branch. When you build out a process that may require “re-work” or loops you have to flatten them out and more or less duplicate a branch. This can take some time and of course practice to figure out. Check out the below video that attempts to explain it better.

Another good Visio and workflow resource can be found here

http://blogs.msdn.com/visio/archive/2009/11/23/sharepoint-workflow-authoring-in-visio-premium-2010-part-1.aspx

Have you played with Visio 2010 and workflow? What was your experience? How do you see it fitting in?

Taking advantage of Content types, ratings and the CQWP

chrisg — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:42:57 GMT

Content types and the Content Query Web Part are not new in SharePoint 2010, and the “ratings” functionality were available as a codeplex download in 2007. (I use them) Now they are baked into SharePoint 2010 and can serve as a key part of presenting your users with quality focused content as needed.

Combining these 3 great pieces can offer a tremendously useful way to provide your users with a quick view of key content throughout your site collection.

Lets look at an example:

I have done similar setups for our internal SharePoint implementation (only in SharePoint 2007) We created different pages for each content type based on what information people are looking for. This effort has paid off very well for us in not only setting people up to easily find content but also pays off for a good information architecture.

Digging into SharePoint 2010 and Document Sets

chrisg — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:14:51 GMT

Digging more and more into SharePoint 2010, and finding more and more to like. In

this entry we are going to go into “Document Sets” I have given a presentation on this particular feature and found that I am not the only one that LOVES this idea.

So what are Document Sets?

Document Sets are a new object to manage a work product made up of many files. Think of them as the new evolution of a folder.

Document sets are a implemented as a special type of SharePoint folder that is built on the “SPFolder” class. As such it will inherit all the properties and behaviors of standard SharePoint folders.

Beyond the programmatic basis on the “SPFolder” Document Sets are based on the newly created Document Set content type. All document sets must inherit from this. As such you can create custom Content Types derived from this, which can be very powerful, especially as you dig into them and figure out what this can give you.

Each Document set has

A shared set of metadata (definable) that goes across the document set
A customized welcome page that can be edited.
Each document set can also have a defined set of default documents to be carried with it. (more on that in the video portion)
Document set and individual document/file Versioning
and last but not least associated workflows

Maybe we can make this hit home a bit with some concrete examples of how i can see this used.

A good example that seems to make the most sense to me would be the typical RFP or Sales proposal. Each one of these efforts would always contain a standard set of documents. Such as financials in an Excel Spreadsheet, A corporate overview document, and standard PPT template etc. These can be associated with a RFP content type that inherits from the Document Set Content type and move with the new instantiation of the content type.

You can also edit the look and feel of this page. Keep in mind changes made to the Welcome page of the "document set" get pushed down to the children of that content type and the locations where that content type is used. This ensures that the list, "document set" instances, and locations where the "Document Set" content type is used have the most current Welcome page in its copy of the content type.

Document sets are also very flexible in many perspectives including workflows and versioning. As you can use a workflow on the document set as a whole or on individual documents/files in the set. The same is true for versioning as it is independent of, but interoperable with, versioning capabilities that are available to the documents contained in the set.

To top it all off Document Sets also surfaces an great object model that can be used to manipulate "document set" objects, templates, metadata, and URLs you can also create custom New and Welcome pages. I am very excited about playing around with document sets and getting to use them in many different ways. What uses can you see?

Governance and SharePoint Site Creation

chrisg — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:51:00 GMT

As many of you heard for yourselves in the governance series, site creation governance is an important aspect of your overall SharePoint governance strategy. As discussed i have created a SharePoint site creation process in K2. In the video below i go through the process in the K2 designer as well as walk you through it in action.

The process, the form and the list template are attached to this blog.

I wanted to say thanks again to all those that participated in the Governance podcast series. There is more i want to do on this front, as well as additional podcast series topics i want to cover, such as Change Management and others. If you want to participate let me know.

Digging into SharePoint 2010

chrisg — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:37:23 GMT

Greetings all, it has been a LONG time since i have blogged but I want to make a renewed effort to do so more regularly. I am going to start by bringing you my experiences with the new SharePoint 2010 product from Microsoft. I want to start off by talking about one of the best areas they have brought to us and that is BCS or Business Connectivity Services

For those of you that have used the BDC in SharePoint 2007 this is essentially the evolution of that, and what an evolution it is. WOW. nice job MS But first things first lets discuss some terminology.

•Business Connectivity Services = “Everything”

•Business Data Connectivity (BDC) = “The Guts” including , runtime, connectivity services

•External System= your back end stuff

•External Content Type (ECT) = a building block, entity.

•Model = XML file

•External List = newest type of SP list

So what does the above mean?

you have a connectivity layer to your external system that you can build in SharePoint designer or Visual Studio and host inside of SharePoint. Then create external lists that can interact with that backend system.

Let me walk you through in a video how that works.

One of my key learning points in digging into BCS was the “identifier” option in SharePoint designer when building an external content type. Apparently if you have a column marked as a Key in your SQL database, this gets automatically pulled through and marked as the Identifier. But if you DON’T as i did not the first few times you have to pick one as your “Key” or “Identifier” (see screen shot below)

Another item to keep in mind is that with external lists there are no event handlers that can or will fire, and there can be no workflow attached to them. (At least for now) :)

Go play around with some of this great BCS stuff and let me know what you think. I will be digging in more and blogging more soon. (Promise)

Interviews from SharePoint Conference 2009

chrisg — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:34:30 GMT

Hello all, and thanks for visiting. I had a goal when visiting the SharePoint conference this year. That goal was to sit down and get some real honest feedback on what people were experiencing and learning as they went through and attended sessions. So all day Wednesday I sought out people and asked them some simple questions

1. What was your favorite session this year

2. What is your favorite feature of SharePoint 2010

I made sure i always asked those 2 questions, in addition i asked some more questions near and dear to my heart as you will hear.

Thank you to all those who took time to sit down and talk

Lori Gowin

Jey Srikantha

Becky Isserman

Becky Bertram

Jeff DeVerter

Jeremy Ragan

Cathy Dew

You can follow them at

@Jragan

@jeys

@Mosslover

@beckybertram

@Jdeverter

@Lorigowin

@catpaint1

As the SharePoint beta makes it way through the normal beta cycle and people play more and more with it, I would like to continue on this effort and see how people are doing. So if you are willing to chat please let me know. See below for the podcast files.

The Becky’s

http://www.k2underground.com/media/p/33948.aspx

Lori Gowin

http://www.k2underground.com/media/p/33947.aspx

Jey Srikantha

http://www.k2underground.com/media/p/33946.aspx

Jeremy Ragan

http://www.k2underground.com/media/p/33945.aspx

Jeff Deverter

http://www.k2underground.com/media/p/33943.aspx

Cathy Dew

http://www.k2underground.com/media/p/33942.aspx

Governance series pt 4

chrisg — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:50:00 GMT

Today I sat down with John Ferringer, from Apparatus. Through numerous conversations John has shown knowledgeable in the SharePoint and governance space. So i thought it would be good to invite him to participate in our governance series.

John Ferringer Works for Apparatus you can find out more about them here http://www.apparatus.net/

John is also a author of the SharePoint Disaster Recovery book which is available on Amazon here http://tinyurl.com/spdrbook

You can also follow him on twitter as i do. @ferringer but for now listen to the podcast which can be downloaded here

http://www.k2underground.com/files/folders/podcasts/entry33461.aspx

Governance Series part 3

chrisg — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:19:35 GMT

Part 3 of our Governance series is with Todd Klindt

If you want to learn more about Todd (and who doesn’t) here are some links to read up.

You can buy one of his books here

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-SharePoint-Administration-Steve-Caravajal/dp/1584506016?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222955240&sr=8-1&tag=todklisblo-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

You can read his MVP Profile

https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=cc132c0d-f14e-40b7-80c1-ee9fd0489cd9

Read and subscribe to his blog
http://toddklindt.com/blog/default.aspx

Now on to the exciting part..the podcast. down it from the link below

http://www.k2underground.com/files/folders/podcasts/entry33446.aspx