Whats there in new SharePoint

I was pretty excited to see latest version release of office suite 2013 along with new version of SharePoint.

Its catch word says SharePoint Server 15 enhances the workload experiences by enabling new compelling scenarios that engage and work with the user.

Had a quick look at Technet site and came to knew that the platform stays the same but few new things introduced....

Let me share few thing real  quick

1. There are few  platform level improvements and new capabilities

• Shredded Storage
• SQL Improvements
• Cache Service
• Request Management
• Themes
• Sharing

2. Content Management

• Site-level retention policies was a pain point when we did Records Management for one of the Pharma major in SharePoint 2010 . Now the compliance levels extended to sites
• The new  policies include - Retention policy for sites and Team Mailbox associated with site
• This feature could help us the common business functions like Project closure and site level expiration policy
• The discovery and legal hold feature were primitive in SP2010 – Microsoft claims there is exponential improvement in this area. Can’t wait to know it …

3. Looks like there are handful of changes in Service applications  

• (I’m yet to explore more details) there are New service applications available and improvements on existing ones
• Office Web Apps is no longer a service application
• Web Analytics is moved to part of search

I will detail more about customization, architecture in the upcoming posts

Workflow issue with Content Type Hub

I have configured a content type hub in SP2010. My document content types have Expiration policies assigned to them. My record center application is a subscriber of the content type hub in the portal site collection. So the content types with policies get synchronized over to the record center.


In the main portal, I have a two stage policy triggered by an event date property. this first stage sends the document to the record center for archival. where the second stage kicks in and counts down a set number of years. at the expiration of this period, it is supposed to launch a disposition WF but it does not. I can find nothing in the event logs to hint at a problem.


Note. for testing I set the archival period of the second stage to 0 days. I run the expiration timer job manually to get it to trigger the policy, but nothing happens.


I use the same "0 day" trigger to test the first stage of the policy and it works fine.


The disposition WF starts automatically in the portal on docs that have policies that do not send them to the record center.


I can start the Disposition WF manually in the record center on docs that were sent there by my policy, and the disposition task gets created as it should. it just will not trigger the WF automatically.


If a published site content type has a workflow, and the content type is consumed in a another site, the workflow will have to be recreated and the following modification done:

• Open “xoml.wfconfig.xml” of the workflow in Parent site/sitecollection
• Find tag which says ‘<Template BaseID="{GUID}" ‘
• Copy the GUID into workflow xoml in site/sitecollection that is consuming that content.

Site features causing issues - I found a resolution

I created site template by saving it from a minor customized blog site. I exported it in VS2010 and created a custom web template. Im seeing few site feature references along with some web features in its onet.xml.


After making the required changes, I

1. deployed my solution in one of my web apps of my farm
2. created a site collection from BLANK site template in that web app.
3. activated my web template related features in my site collection
4. Once I tried to create a sub site based on my Custom Web Tempplate, Im seeing the errors like "<GUID> feature not found"

The issue was due to the need of a manual activation of features referred in the Site Feature section of Web Template Onet.XML. All the features refered in Web Features section of  web template will get activated autoamtically when a site created using that template but the site features have to activated manually.


I resolved this issue by 


Removing the unwanted feature references from the Site Features section of Web Template.
Activating the required site features in a site collection feature prior to the web template based site creation.

Different behavior of OOTB Blog list while versioning

Per my understanding Post list behaves differently from other SharePoint list types when it comes to content approval and versioning. Please check the  following list(see the underlined lines). I doubt this is a bug with the product...

Post List:

if Content Approval Reqd=No AND  Versioning = No     : No version created on saving existing blog posts, Save As Draft option not available

if Content Approval Reqd=No AND  Versioning = Yes    : Versions created on saving existing blog posts, Save As Draft option not available

if Content Approval Reqd=Yes AND  Versioning = No    : No versions created on saving existing blog posts, Save As Draft option available

if Content Approval Reqd=Yes AND  Versioning = Yes  : No versions created on saving existing blog posts, Save As Draft option available

All other list types:

if Content Approval Reqd=No AND  Versioning = No     : No version created on saving existing blog posts, Approval option not available

if Content Approval Reqd=No AND  Versioning = Yes    : Versions created on saving existing blog posts, Approval option not available

if Content Approval Reqd=Yes AND  Versioning = No    : No versions created on saving existing blog posts, Approval option available

if Content Approval Reqd=Yes AND  Versioning = Yes  : versions created on saving existing blog posts, Approval option available

SharePoint Groups Context

Most of us (atleast me) forget a simple stuff around SharePoint groups often ...

SharePoint Groups are defined / exist at the Site Collection level. If we need different group members in a subsite then we need to create a new group for that subsite.

Sharepoint Groups are created in SharePoint Site Collection context.

So when the users are added into SharePoint Groups  will be reflected everywhere. so add specific subsite level groups after setting the Unique permissions.

For Eg: If you have 2 SharePoint groups (Admins, CommonUsers) at site collection level, when users added to these groups from anywhere (from top level site or sub siites) in the site collection will be reflected everywhere. You are advised to set unique permissions to subsite, then add sub site level groups  (SubSite1 Admins, SubSite1 CommonUsers) and add users to those groups.

Powershell command builder for SP2010

Helpful utility from Microsoft to create powershell commands for SP2010 here


Fantastic work :)

cannot start service SPUserCodeV4

Have you ever faced the following issue while deploying a webpart in VS2010. 
 - error occured in deployment step 'retract solution' cannot start service SPUserCodeV4 on this computer.


You can fix this real quick

1. Open Central Admin
2. Goto Services on Servers
3. Start "Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service "