Friday, February 20, 2009

Content and Structure Reports: All Checked out documents

Ever wanted to see all documents that are checked out right now and deal with them all in one go? Not only the ones checked out to you? here is the CAML syntax for your Content and Structure Reports Library located at the root of your publishing enabled SiteCollection:

<Where><Geq><FieldRef Name="CheckoutUser" LookupId="TRUE"/><Value Type="int">0</Value></Geq></Where>

Simply create a new Item in that list with the above text for the CAML syntax, give it a Title and meaningful description and you're set!

Content and Structure Reports: Stale documents

Ever wanted to find out where your unused documents lie in MOSS?
This is the syntax to find all documents that have not been modified in the last year. The field to check against is the Last Modified Date. Best is to use it's ID.

<Where><Leq><FieldRef ID="{173f76c8-aebd-446a-9bc9-769a2bd2c18f}"/><Value Type="DateTime" IncludeTimeValue="TRUE"><Today OffsetDays="-365"/></Value></Leq></Where>

Remember not to have any whitespace in between the tags, especially no CRLF.

The trick here is not to use [Today] but instead also use the OffsetDays to go back and forward in time and if you want to make sure that the time is matched, include the IncludeTimeValue="TRUE" attribute. This attribute comes in handy in many cases when you want to check against "Now".

Friday, February 13, 2009

50047 Advanced IT Pro SharePoint Course

Oh man,
I'm so hyped up, it is unbearable. Just finished the last day of teaching this course and can't believe how great this course is. It covers everything you need to know and more. It is jam packed with best practices, advice and tips. Follows best practices, teaches all relevant skills and is fun, fun, fun.
Anybody who wants to know how to get the most out of their MOSS installation MUST go on this course
Anybody who is starting a career as MOSS Admin must go on this course
Anybody who is planning on creating a MOSS infrastructure, is a Enterprise Analyst, Enterprise Architect, Solutions Architect or Information Architect/Analyst must go on this course.
Any MCT who wants to teach 5060 or 5061 should have read this manual thoroughly.

It is the bible for a good SharePoint Architecture. It is the mother of all SharePoint courses!

Always asked yourself how index and query roles affect performance? Wanted to know what actually goes into the SSP Search DB? Wanted to know what Raid configuration works best for the different Application Roles? Wondered how easy or hard it is to setup Database mirroring in combination with SharePoint? It is all in there.
Which Performance counters to monitor (ok, some are missing...), Which Components to worry about, which platforms to choose when architecting your farm. All in there.
How to create your own BDC App config, How to work with scopes, crawl rules, managed properties and different content sources. All in there. Hey even how to create a new search tab.
Get Excel Services up and running, publish workbooks and install Adminisrtator approved infopath form templates. All in there. Best practices when doing capacity planning. Real world scenarios when thinking about content analysis. Good ideas on approaching taxonomy issues.

Geez. there is so much in the course that I actually ended up skipping around 25% of the content across the board and asked the students to read up at home.

I'm soooo looking forward to teaching this course again soon. Shame only two people turned up for the last one, but then I was happy, as it was my first teach and I can experiment a bit when the class is small.

There is no excuse anymore for lousy SharePoint Specialists out there. Anybody who wants to call themselves a SharePoint Specialist and is lacking the knowledge and experience must go on this course.