SharePoint Secrets

Best practices The SharePoint Server 2010 environment might require configuration of the diagnostic loggings settings after initial deployment or upgrade and possibly throughout the system’s life cycle. The guidelines in the following list can help you form best practices for the specific environment. Change the drive that logging writes to. By default, diagnostic logging is configured to write logs to the same drive and partition that SharePoint Server 2010 was installed on. Because diagnostic logging can use lots of drive space and writing to the logs can affect drive performance, you should configure logging to write to a drive that is different from the drive on whichSharePoint Server 2010 was installed. You should also consider the connection speed to the drive that logs are written to. If verbose-level logging is configured, lots of log data is recorded. Therefore, a slow connection might result in poor log performance. Restrict log disk space usage. By default, the amount o...

Disk-based caching is one way in which you can achieve faster processing of content stored in a Web application database. If your Web application contains large files such as images and multimedia files, enabling disk-based caching improves page delivery time because the cache stores files on the front-end Web server, thus reducing database traffic. You can enable disk-based caching in the web.config file in the Web application to which you want to apply it. The changes you make to the web.config file will be applied to all site collections within the Web application. NOTE Disk-based caching is referred to as BLOB (binary large object) caching within the web.config file. In the web.config file, find the following line: BlobCache location="C:\blobCache" path="\.(gif|jpg|png|css|js)$" maxSize="10" enabled="false" In this line, change the enabled parameter, from "false" to "true" . To change the size of the cache, type a new...

When architecting your SharePoint 2010 solution need consider how you will leverage cache to make your applications more fast and scalable. Each one has different pros/cons and correctly picking one based on the business requirements is important for success. I found a detailed whitepaper called SharePoint Server Caches Overview, Advanced details on the SharePoint BLOB, Output, and Object Caches which goes over the topic. You will need to download SharePointServerCachesPerformance.docx. Really the purpose of caching for SharePoint is to reduce the amount of calls to SQL Server such that you can quickly return results to users while lowering SQL Server utilization. The negative is there can be a lag in showing the user the latest and greatest content. Once the cache is created, it is maintained locally on the SharePoint WFEs. There are three caching strategies you need to be aware of for SharePoint 2010: BLOB cache, output cache and object cache. BLOB Cache BLOB cache help impr...

We find, when building MOSS solutions, that we generally have a need for configuration information stores at four different levels: Web application level Site collection level Site level List level There are lots of options when it comes to choosing configuration information stores, but at the web application level SharePoint offers two choices that are quite natural: the section of the web application web.config file and the hierarchical object store. Of these two options, the hierarchical object store is by far the lesser known of the two. To put it shortly, the hierarchical object store offers a framework that allows third party applications to store configuration information by creating a class that inherits from the SPPersistedObject class in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration namespace. If you look at the site and list level, besides the hierarchical object store, you have another option offered by SharePoint: the property bag. At the site level, it can be accessed via the ...

SharePoint 2010 Metadata Navigation is one new feature that enables users to navigation through lists and libraries based on the configuration of the metadata. This feature improves navigation and filtering of the items or documents by means of metadata tree view hierarchies and filter controls. The figure is an example of the metadata navigation in library. Navigation Hierarchies To configure Navigation Hierarchies, enter Document Library Settings > Metadata Navigation Settings. Select values from available hierarchy fields and add to right side. Fields that are available for use as navigation hierarchies include columns that are one of the following types. Content type Single-value choice field Managed metadata field After configuration, you will see the metadata tree view on the left side of page. Select one content type, then result will be loaded in the library. To add managed metadata in metadata navigation, you need to create a Managed Metadata column in the library firstly,...

The WebProvisioned web event receiver is a new receiver type introduced in SharePoint 2010. It is one very useful addition to the already extensive suite of event receiver types in SharePoint, as it allows you to add some additional logic when a sub-site in your site collection gets created. In this sense it resembles to some extent the feature stapling functionality, but it differs from it because its scope is the site collection level. Practical Scenario: You are designing a SharePoint 2010 intranet site at your company. The Finance department has designed a SharePoint List. They need this list to be included in any new site that is created by using the Team Site site definition provided by SharePoint. A feature has been created that provisions the list in a site. We need to satisfy the request from the Finance department while reducing the risk that future SharePoint service pack updated will impact the solution. The best approach is: Create an event handler and register it with the...

Sandboxed solutions are a feature in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 that enables site collection users to upload their own custom code solutions. A common sandboxed solution is users uploading their own Web Parts. A sandboxed SharePoint application runs in a secure, monitored process that has access to a limited part of the Web farm. Microsoft SharePoint 2010 uses a combination of features, solution galleries, solution monitoring, and a validation framework to enable sandboxed solutions. Specifying Project Trust Level Visual Studio supports sandboxed solutions through a Boolean project property called Sandboxed Solution . This property can be set at any time in the project, or it can be specified when you create the project in the SharePoint Customization Wizard . Note Changing the Sandboxed Solution property of a project after it is created may cause validation errors. If the Sandboxed Solution property is set to false , or you select the Deploy as a farm solution option, then the sol...