June 2007 - Posts
I've promised to post some photos online from the new house. Here you go!
All my photos are hosted at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranlett/. Be sure to click through to read comments on each photo.
* posting this has been a distraction from the real work I'm supposed to be doing
OK - so I'm a bit irritated, but this is a great case of Microsoft's dev teams doing something which contradicts documentation and expected behavior. Here is the story, including the business case which this bug stomps all over.
Doug Ware (formerly of Magenic fame and now an independent SharePoint consultant) and I have been engaged by a client of Intellinet's to provide them with a custom web publishing solution. The business scenario is fairly simple. The client has indepenent authors creating valuable content which the company wants to sell to a variety of customers. The nature of the clients are such that each client needs its own private branded web site, so the custom publishing solution is responsible for taking the centrally created content and pushing it to n number of structurally identical portals. Sounds like an ideal case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 WCM, doesn't it? We certainly thought so.
So here is the problem. Create a pair of web applications. Call one Publishing and call the other Destination. On the Publishing site, create some subsites and some content in those subsites. Leave Destination alone for now (a blank template is fine). Now, in the Content Publishing Paths and Jobs section of SharePoint Central Administration, create a path to push content from the Publishing site collection to the Destination site collection. Create a job from that path which pushes the entire site collection from the Publishing site collection to the Destination site collection. At this point, it is important to do the entire site collection at one shot to guarantee that all the site features and structural elements are synchronized. This last statement was confirmed by Microsoft Support (getting to that bit next). Run the job and check that the Destination site looks EXACTLY like the Publishing site. Notice that even site images and titles are changed!
Phase two of the publishing SHOULD be to brand the client's Destination site with custom themes, site images, layouts, etc. The top level site is really just a landing page directing users to the subsites, and is not expected to be re-published. So go try that - give the Destination site collection's top level site a different theme and title. Now go back to the Central Admin's paths and jobs section. Create a new job which excludes the root site and only includes one of the subsites for publication. Notice before you click OK on the job that the default setting is only to synchronize changes in content. Click OK and run the job. At this point, you would expect nothing to change, right? After all, you didn't make any changes to the Publishing site's selected subsite so there are no deltas. Ready for a surprise? Go check the Destination site's top level site. Remember that new theme and title? They're gone! Ready for another surprise? Go back to the definition of that job you just created, the one which specified a single subsite for replication instead of the entire site collection. Notice anything different? Now the job definition has changed and includes the root site! WTF!?! Doug discovered this when doing some basic POC testing with content publishing at the beginning of the client engagement.
So Doug and I called Microsoft Premier Support Services. We spoke with a support representitive named Lokanath who took a few days to understand the actual issue we were reporting. Once the actual issue was understood, he referred the issue to the internal development teams. Here is what I got back a week and a half after opening the issue:
"In any case, the behavior customer is seeing - Content deployment will always deploy root site collection even if the content deployment job only defines subsites to be deployed and explicitly excluded the root site. This behavior is by-design and that is the expected behavior. The reason is that Content Deployment requires the site collection features to be synchronized in the source and target site collections. And instead of assuming that they are synchronized, Content Deployment will always re-synch each time it is ran. To re-synch, Content Deployment needs to re-deploy the root site every time. The final outcome of the content deployment is to get the synchronized source and the destination site collections."
Bogus answer guys! This totally contradicts your documentation and even the tool's UI! The following links take you to Microsoft documentation stating that it is not necessary to replicate the entire site collection when using Web Content Publishing:
- http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=AM101639351033&CTT=5&Origin=HA101639821033 – a Visio diagram outlining frequent content updates on a news publishing site. This document is linked to on this page: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb310619.aspx
- http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=XT102253341033&CTT=5&Origin=HA101680161033. This document is linked to from this page: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101680161033.aspx
- http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/05/02/588140.aspx, Mr. Butler says “A job is associated with a path, and it determines exactly which sites in the source site collection will be deployed and on what schedule. You can have many different jobs for a given path, each running on different schedules and deploying specific sections of your site. That’s right – a job has a schedule and can deploy content updates regularly without the need to manually kick it off every time. For example, let’s say you have a Press Releases site that needs to be updated every hour, and an Employee Bios site that only needs to be updated every month. You would create two different jobs, one that runs every hour and deploys the Press Releases site, and another that runs monthly and deploys the Employee Bios site.”
- This MSDN article, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms549024.aspx, says “A job is associated with a path, and it determines exactly which sites in the source site collection are deployed and on what schedule. You can associate many jobs with a single path, and each can run on a different schedule and deploy specific sections of your site”
- The application’s user interface under Site Options specifically says to pick “specific sites” to publish and give you an interface to pick the desired sites and exclude undesired sites.
All of these different sources point to the ability to publish a single site independently of other sites, not on an entire site collection by site collection basis.
I'm going to lobby Microsoft to consider this a bug and not a side effect of good design and bad documentation. If the only use of publishing is to create exactly identical sites, it is limited in functionality to supporting only a single staging/production environment type of scenario. News publishing and general CMS strategies immediately go out the window. I'll post a follow-up to this entry if and when I hear back from PSS. IMHO this is a pretty big bug. Doug Ware was even more colorful in his general description of the problem.
[edit] - Before I even posted this, but after I'd typed it up in draft form, I received a call from a manager in the SharePoint product team's support staff. He heard about my dissatisfaction with the proposed resolution and has offered to put one of his tech leads on the case and to call me back by 2pm Friday. If nothing else, at least they're trying to leave me with a satisfied feeling as I work through this issue.
The online documentation for the phone makes it seem like using the 3G phone as a wirelessly tethered modem is impossible. However, a quick search of the web found the following directions, which I have re-organized for easier consumption.
Here are the directions I followed to get it working: (adapted from http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1096867)
*** One time setup ***
- Hook the Blackjack to your PC using the USB cable.
- Open ActiveSync and browse the phones files.
- Make sure that in your folder options on the PC that you have it set to "show hidden folders".
- Go to My windows mobile-based device>windows...the windows folder takes a few seconds to open, scroll about halfway down until you see IntShrUI,
- right click and create a new shortcut (there is some form of security on existing shortcuts)...it should place this at the bottom of the page...find it and cut it (right click>cut)..
- also in the windows folder is a start menu folder, open that and paste your new shortcut inside the start menu.
- Rename the shortcut to Internet Connection Sharing and go find it in the start menu of your phone.
*** every time ***
- Turn on Bluetooth (FN+B), go to wireless manager to verify that you are indeed visible,
- open the internet sharing program on your Blackjack, change the "pc connection" to "Bluetooth PAN", then hit the connect softkey on your Blackjack,
- it should say "device setup finished, on the PC, connect Bluetooth PAN", now just hit connect on your PC, and it should work.
- Go to your network connections on the PC and verify that you are connected to the internet using Bluetooth.
- *note - you have to hit connect on the phone before connecting on the computer, or it will always say "connection denied".
Thanks to my membership in the Best Buy Rewards Zone (which I totally forgot about until I got some spam), I was able to purchase some pre-sale tickets to the Police concert in Atlanta this November. These tickets went on sale even before the Fan Club tickets did. I've got great seats too!
Yay! I'm excited - I love the Police.
[edit] - Looks like Dan and Glen will be joining Kim and myself at the Police concert.
Even as I sit here and type this, the TV is being hung on the wall. Tonight I'll be looking up to watch TV, which will be convenient in my reclining sofa!
I'm trying to order a new cellphone from AT&T. Since I don't currently have a contract with them, they have to run a credit check to verify that they want to allow me to enter a contract. Basically I get no cellphone reception on my TMobile Blackberry at my new house. Brendon's new AT&T Blackjack worked fine however, so I figured I'd get one too. Not only is it a neat new toy to play with, Amazon.com is currently selling them for free when you sign a 2 year contract. Amazon uses a reseller, so I have to go their website to check the status of my order. The reseller's site said they needed more information to complete the order. I called them up and they said they couldn't complete the credit check b/c there was a security freeze on my credit history at Experian. I needed to remove the freeze before they could continue the approval process. Now, it turns out that there is no freeze on my credit history and someone must have typed something wrong, but the story is about me trying to deal with Experian.
Experian clearly is not in the business of providing service to consumers. Oh, you can deal with them through the mail (snail mail that is) or you can call and talk to the automated phone system. Talking to a person on the phone is a big problem. It took me 2 days and 20 phone calls to finally get through to a person. The gist is that you call up initially and the system tells you that it won't talk to you if you don't have a credit report from them that is less than 90 days old. You go get that (luckily you can get one for free) and it gives you the option to dispute elements on your credit report. Mine was fine and I didn't want to dispute anything. However, the only thing I could do was dispute that, so I pretended like I wanted to dispute my personal information then had to confuse the voice recognition in order to be given to a person. The most frustrating part is that if you do anything unexpected, like hit 0 to talk to an agent when that's not an explicit option, the system will hang up on you.
The agent was able to clear up the confusion right away (no lock on my file and no requests for credit history from AT&T). Getting to the agent was way too frustrating. I'd have been fine sitting on hold for an hour (speakerphone!) but the constant disconnections and horrible phone system wore me down. I was on the verge of filing a Better Business Bureau complaint over what turned out to be AT&T's mistake.
What a pain! Experian sucks!
The Holiday Inn Express at 805 West Arrowood Rd in Charlotte NC 28217 has a free room for anyone who would like to use it. Thanks to their no refunds for cancellation policy, I am going to call the hotel to guarantee that the room will not be release for use by other paying guests. This room in Charlotte is going to cost Intellinet $100 and I won't be there to use it b/c my trip to Charlotte was cancelled.
Lame! I've got half a mind to dispute the charges on my credit card.
According to UPS, my wireless network adapter for my Xbox 360 has been delivered today. This means that I've now got networked games on my nice big new flat screen TV. Hi Def baby! Oh yeah!
Imagine that you're a SharePoint administrator of a company which has hundreds or possibly thousands of SharePoint sites out there? What happens when you need to deploy a new webpart which should be available to all existing and new sites? What if you need to turn on a feature for a few hundred sites? SharePoint doesn't provide you an easy way to do this at an enterprise level. This could be a painful rollout process if you did everything manually. Fortunately for all those administrators, Echo for SharePoint 2007 is coming out (currently in Beta and can be seen at TechEd at booth 253). I've not tested the tool, but it sure looks like it will relieve this kind of pain for overworked SharePoint administrators.
Actually, four copies of the Professional SharePoint 2007 Development title, of which I am one of eight contributing authors, arrived at the house yesterday. I only opened the box this morning. I am actually dragging a copy of it around with me all day today so I can show everyone my smiling mug on the cover of a book. As one of my Intellinet co-workers put it, "There you are, surrounded by a bunch of nerdy looking guys!" Yup! I couldn't happier!