Guest Author: Fabian Williams
http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com

Synopsis:  This is a two part blog, I will be focusing on the General Installation and configuration, then I will discuss how to set up User Profile Services which I know gives a few folks he willies in part 2.

In this blog  we will run through the process of installing SharePoint 2010 in a small Farm Environment.  In this topology we have two servers and a Windows 7 Guest. The roles are below:

Server 1: VMWare Windows Server 2008 Standard
Role:  Domain Controller and Mail Server
Specs: Windows 2008 Standard 2048 MB Ram, 80 GB HDD

Server 2: VMWare Windows Server 2008 Enterprise
Role: SharePoint 2010 Server
Specs: Windows 2008 Standard 3072 MB Ram, 80 GB HDD
Additional Software: Visual Studio 2010 Professional
Workstation: VMWare Windows 7 Ultimate
Role: Guest
Specs: Windows 7 Ultimate 2048 MB Ram, 60 GB HDD
Additional Software: Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, Visio 2010, Project 2010, Adobe Acrobat

The first thing that i advise clients and something that I do even for my environment is prepare whats know as a Farm Preparation Guide which details the Physical Architecture, Logical Architecture, Specs, Accounts Username and Passwords, License keys, etc. I also go as far and moving the installation bits locally on the server to reduce I/O.  Once I am satisfied, I run setup…

Above: Launching Setup

Once setup is launched, the very first thing you need to do is “Install software Prerequisites”

N.B. I thoroughly advise you to Uninstall any items that maybe on your computer that constitutes one of the prerequisites that you will be installing in this section I specifically call out “Windows Identity Foundation” which will blow up your installation if already installed. Click the link to install pre-reqs

Above: Splash screen with Options for Installation

Below are the items that will be installed as prerequsites for SharePoint 2010, if any of these fail, you MUST correct it before moving forward even though the installation may allow you to continue. I have seen instances where my “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Service ADOMD.NET” failed to install and it allowed me to continue then blew up later on.  Click Next to begin…

Above: SharePoint Pre-Reqs

Above: Accept the Terms and Proceed

Above: Status Bar as the Pre-reqs are installed

Below here is an instance where I had a failure and I installed the Pre-Req directly by downloading it of MSDN and applying it myself, w/out doing it in the tool.  That is why you see that some of the items are set to “no action taken”

Above: All Pre Reqs installed

Next you need to provide the appropriate license key.  I am often asked if the build installs anything different based on the Key.  The answer is the build installs everything but features are disabled or not available based on the key, but can be later turned on by providing the necessary key.

Above:  Enter your License key here

Above: Accept the Terms…

Personally, I will tell you that I have NEVER chosen “Standalone”; I always do Server Farm, because I want the extensibility ‘yes even in my lab environment’ to add Servers and Roles Later on. So in this Instance I choose “Server Farm” and continued. 

Above: Options for Installation

Yeah, you want to select “Complete” here if you have your own instance of SQL already and want more options for configuration later on.

Above: Determining the role of the Server you are installing

Above:  Installation Progress

Once the Installation is complete (assuming that there is only one server in the Farm) if there are more than one server then stop here and complete the installation of the other servers and then run the “Products and Configuration Wizard” on the sever that will be doing Central Administration Duties.

Above: Once the installation of the bits are complete, the Configuration of the Farm Begins once you click close and the check box is enabled.

Make sure that you have your Farm Prep guide (previously mentioned in this post) with all your information before moving forward, you will need account names, server names, etc

Above:  This begins the configuration phase of the Farm

As part of the configuration, a few services have to be stopped and restarted.

Above:  Installation about to begin.

If this is the first server then you choose “Create a new Farm” if it isn’t then you must choose the other.

Above:  Choosing whether you are creating our adding to a farm

Above:  My DC is also hosting my SQL Server

New to SharePoint 2010 is the concept of a Passphrase for configuration; this passphrase is used for such things as

1. Adding additional severs to the farm
2. Acting as the Public Key in your Secure Store Configuration
3. etc

Above: Applying the passphrase

Here you will get a random port number to begin with, typically i use 9999 in my installations. and here is where you will choose NTLM or Kerberos as your authentication provider. If you are using Kerberos see this techNet article http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee806870.aspx 

Above: Configuring SharePoint

Above: Configuring SharePoint

Above: Progress bar in part of the Configuration

Above: Configuration Complete

The next steps in the Configuration are done in the Central Administration page.  The wizard is pretty good here, I would highly recommend you use it, even for as much as going back afterwards and making changes to the Service Applications or deleting and/or recreating to suit your needs, it is invaluable in teaching you how the configuration should be

Above: the initial configuration page in Central Admin

Point to note here is that the Wizard driven configuration uses the Farm Account for all the Service Applications, you will need to go to the “Services on Server” or “Service Applications” themselves to change the relationship of the Default App Pool and Service Accounts to which you want to run your specific Service Application under. Obviously, before you do that you create your Managed Accounts first.

Above: the conclusion of the Wizard Driven Configuration

Above: Just a demonstration of what the Service Application and Service Account looks like

Next, I am going to register a few Managed Accounts to run some of my Service Applications. Things I want to run separately are:

• User Consumable Web Application/ Sites
• User Profile Service
• Search/ Crawl
• Secure Store

to name a few

Above: Registering a Managed Account

Above: Consuming that Managed Account for a specific Service Application

Below I am setting up all my Managed Account so you can see which ones i separate out

Above:  All the Managed Accounts that I configured. This assumes that you have these accounts configured in Active Directory

Below is an example of me changing not only the Managed Account but also the Application Pool that a Service Application runs under. I want my Secure Store Service to run under its own App Pool and its own Managed Account

Above: by NOT clicking on the word “Secure Store Service” but clicking on the blue bar between the words, then clicking on Properties in the Ribbon..

Above: This is the properties window of the Service App

Above: I am creating a new Application Pool and associating it with my Managed Account.

Above: the progress bar for the activity i am doing

Once completed you will see the display window below

Above: A successful change to a Service Application

Above: the new Properties window for the Secure Store Service Application

Conclusion and Prelude to Part 2 of the Blog

So after you finish the initial configuration and before you get into the Managed Accounts as I did, you are prompted to create a Top Level Site, you can either elect to do it or skip, choice is your; I omitted that from this blog for brevity. Next we will go into Configuring User Profile Service.

Hope this was useful, as always, comments, critiques are welcomed.

Cheers!

Guest Author: Fabian Williams
http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com
Twitter: @FabianWilliams

Fabian Williams is a Technical Lead and SharePoint Architect for CDW Advanced Technology Services SharePoint Practice. He is based out of Herndon Virginia. Mr. Williams has a Bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems from Strayer University, Washington, D.C. and is 9 Credits and a Capstone away from Masters in CIS at Johns Hopkins University in Columbia Maryland. In addition, he is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA).

Guest Author: Fabian Williams
http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com

Synopsis:  Building on my previous post Understanding Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010: its Impact on Taxonomy, Navigation and Search we discussed how Managed Metadata may be used to build out a Sites Taxonomy and Folksonomy, aid in Navigation and compliment or extend Search. In this post we will discuss the role of the Content Organizer, Routing Rules, and how Managed Metadata may be used in Content Types to dictate where a content final resting place may be.

In order to use Content Organizer it has to be Activated as a “Site Feature”; notice below in the Quick Launch that under ‘Libraries’ there is only one Document Library before the Feature is activated, “Documents”, however once activated in the second image, there is a new Document Library called “Drop Off Library”.  The purpose of this library will be discussed further in this blog, for now lets just go step by step in creating and using it.

Above: Content Organizer is a Site Feature so you have to activate it at a site level. Remember that when you think about scope and routing

Above:  Once Activated you get the link above

In addition to the activate icon practically what you have are new items under the Site Administration menu in Site Settings. Before you activated “Content Organizer” you did not have options for (1) Content Organizer Settings or (2) Content Organizer Rules. In addition you also get a Document Library called “Drop Off Library” which is where all documents go that do not adhere to a defined rule.

Above:  Site Administration with Content Organizer Not Activated

Above:  Site Administration with Content Organizer Activated

In Content Organizer Settings you have a few options as presented below. There are a few options here worth mentioning. Most notably is the option for Folder Partitioning; in previous versions of SharePoint folder use was de-emphasized because of the inability to tie meta-data to folders and the manageability aspects of maintaining and making visible what is inside a folder with little effort.  Folder partitioning solves that by allowing you to create rules around how big a folder gets before you break it into two, or three, or four…

Above: Content Organizer Settings

In this example what I will do is build upon a pervious post where we discussed the use of Managed Metadata Understanding Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010: its Impact on Taxonomy, Navigation and Search and we will use the Content Organizer to effectively route documents to an appropriate destination.  In this example we will say that we have:

• A Content Type based on our Managed Metadata
• Use the Content Type to build a Content Organizer Rule
• Route documents based on Content Type to the appropriate folder

Above:  This is our Managed Metadata in our Term Store, we will focus on Exchange and SharePoint items/ work products

First we create a new Document Library called Projects and we will have Folders in there that are broken up based on Technology. 

Above: Document Library called Projects is created

Above: Folders for Exchange and SharePoint is created

Next we will create a rule for both Exchange and SharePoint as denoted below; we will also use the Managed Metadata as a means by which to route information see below…

Above:  A Content Organizer Rule that send artifacts to the Exchange Folder based on the Managed Metadata of Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 selected.

Above:  A Content Organizer Rule that send artifacts to the SharePoint Folder based on the Managed Metadata of SharePoint 2003 or SharePoint 2007 selected.

Below you see the result of our rules as they are defined and notice I also made one a higher priority over the other.

Above:  Content Organizer Rules are defined

Next I will demonstrate two examples

1. Uploading a document and applying the Managed Metadata as the document is persisted to the library
2. Create a new document and use the DIP to apply the Managed Metadata to the new document

Above: Uploading a document to the Library Root; no folder specified

Above: By clicking on the Tag Icon I can select or Multi-Select the appropriate fields

Above: Fields Selected

Next, we will create a new document from that library based on that Content Type (to which the Managed Metadata played a role), note in the DIP that we can select our options.

Above: New Document created in the Document Library and the DIP is used to apply the relevant tagging

Above: Post Selection and apply a name to the new file

Above: Name applied to the new file and persisted to the SharePoint System

Note here that based on the fact that I selected a Managed Metadata that is flagged in a rule, the Document is persisted however it is saved to an alternate location based on the rules in the Content Organizer.  Again, the WIN here is how you can create a Taxonomy and/or Folksonomy that can not only drive Structure, Navigation, Search, but can also provide intelligence in-terms of location.

Above:  The Final Destination is not where the intent of the end user is, rather, it is based on rules.

An examination of the folder [by clicking on the link or using the quick launch bar] shows that the document is routed by a rule.

Above:  Final resting place for this Status Report is in the Exchange Folder because of the hit on the Managed Metadata during content creation / uploading.

Above:  Using the Managed Metadata Navigation feature in SharePoint you can also navigate, filter, based on the now MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of rows that can be placed in a list.

Conclusion

The takeaway here is that Content Organizer is huge, and it builds upon other feature sets in SharePoint 2010 to make the overall experience very clean, simple, and results driven.  Come see my session at SPS Ozarks to learn more.

Comments and Critiques are welcomed. Spread the word.

Guest Author: Fabian Williams
http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com
Twitter: @FabianWilliams

Fabian Williams is a Technical Lead and SharePoint Architect for CDW Advanced Technology Services SharePoint Practice. He is based out of Herndon Virginia. Mr. Williams has a Bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems from Strayer University, Washington, D.C. and is 9 Credits and a Capstone away from Masters in CIS at Johns Hopkins University in Columbia Maryland. In addition, he is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA).

Guest Author: Fabian Williams
http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com

Acknowledgement:

First I would like to thank Wictor Wilén (MVP / Author / MCT / MCTS / MCP / MSc) out of Sweden who’s article Create SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata with Excel 2010 was instrumental in speeding up the process of creating my Managed Metadata Term Store for both a live project and this blog.  I would also like to thank Chris O’Brien (MVP) out of the UK, who’s article Managed Metadata in SharePoint 2010 – a key ECM enhancement really puts the value of Managed Metadata in perspective.  The articles mentioned above is the foundation by which I build out a Lab which culminates Wictor and Chris’s work into a Business Case resulting in better Management of Site Columns, Content Types, Content Organizer Routing Rules, Taxonomy/Folksonomy Navigation and enhancements in Search.

Wictor may be found on Twitter here @Wictor and Chris’s Twitter handle is @ChrisO_Brien I follow them, I recommend you do the same if you are a Dev in SharePoint.

The Storyline

So, if you are a regular reader of my blogs, you already know that I try my very best to put some kind of Use/Business case or a story around the technology I am trying to showcase. This time my only difficulty was to take what I am actually doing in SharePoint 2010 Proof of Concept and replicate it in my Lab so it obscures the real work and the identity of the client.  Not too hard right, just a lot of duplication of effort, but you know what they say about practice…

What we have here is a company called “Fabian Williams Enterprises” and it has offices in Jamaica and the United States, as an organization that supports its employees and earn a profit, it has the following departments:

• HR
• Sales
• Marketing
• Design
• Consultants
• PMO

These departments have documents that meet the following criteria:

• May or may not be restricted to the the country of origin (HR Documents, Contracts, etc)
• Project Specific Data (Civilian, Government, Technology Specific)
• etc

As a company trying to be agile in this competitive marketplace, it strives to

1. Leverage Corporate Memory to surface meaningful information for its employees
2. Create a hierarchical structure for the organization and dissemination of information
3. Increase Search responses and improve Search Relevance
4. Allow its employees to Organically Grow the Enterprise Knowledge sharing capabilities of the company through Social and Collaborative means

What we are working with

Our Employees, SharePoint…

Above: AD OU with the Users in the company. Thanks to some of my colleagues who are always my guinea pigs here..

Above: User Profile configured and Imported

Above: The Actors

Step 1 – Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application

So you maybe wondering why I showed you the items above; yeah, I like the nice pictures and silverlight addin but the real takeaway here is that Out of Box (OOB), The Managed Metadata Service already took information from your Active Directory and build keywords that in the end would reference the individuals above; all this without asking you one thing. Pretty cool huh.. look see…

Above:  Central Administration Managed Metadata Page

Next I will begin the process of Adding myself and the Service Account I am logged in under (SPInstall) as Administrators with the requisite permission to manage this Service Application.  By going to Central Admin, Application Management, Manage Service Application, Managed Metadata Service, clicking not on the word but on the bar next to the phrase, you can click in the ribbon a few options, first, Administrator

Above: The Administrator Dialog

Above: Permissions Dialog

Once you have done that, now you can create a new Group and then Term Stores within.

Above: Clicking on Managed Metadata Service will yield a dropdown where you can create a new Group, I will do that later but for now…

Wictor Wilen created a fantastic Macro that allows you to create a Term Store File or a Term Store Sheet

Above: the Ribbon Macros

In my example I created my organization layout as you would if you were going to a client and discussing Taxonomy.  This is of course not something I would take to production but it give in one glace how you may layer Terms, Inherited Terms, etc, which will be consumed in Site Columns, aid Content Types, and so on and so on.. I made an error here below which I found out only after uploading it. It is not critical it is purely syntax but the result will do this (1) not permit me to use the SharePoint 2010 term and the other (2) is nothing inherits from Region

Above: Wictor Wilens’ Excel work on creating Managed Metadata Term Store get it here… Create SharePoint 2010 Managed Metadata with Excel 2010 once you are finished, by clicking “Create Term Store File” in the ribbon you get the text file (csv) which may be imported directly into the Managed Metadata Service Application.

Above: Resultant CSV File

Above:  Now that we have a text file for our Managed Metadata, we

1. Create a new Group “FabiansWorld”
2. Import Term Set

Above: once you click Import you will navigate to the location of your csv file and Pull it in.

As a result you see below, your hierarchy created in the CSV file is represented below at the levels you determined in the spreadsheet.

Above: the newly imported Term Store and Tags

Below is an important point, that can be the unsung hero in ensuring that a company that:

• is Multinational so its words have cultural differences
• has ever changing terms or terms that are often deprecated
• has its own lexicon which is not the same has industry or your partners

you can create Synonyms for those terms in the example below we have “SharePoint 2007” which also is “MOSS”. You simply just type in the labels and be on your way, this may not be the most efficient way to do this, so I suggest the API as you cant do it with the csv file. well not that I know of. Wictor?

Above: a synonym for the term “SharePoint” pointing to “MOSS”

Next, I wanted to show some of the configurables here, some that are particularly important are

• Submission Policy [default is Closed], but I selected “Open”, this allows for the end users to build on this Taxonomy that is defined in the company; a term called Folksonomy . I strongly advocate this approach but it has to be managed otherwise you can get duplicates, bad terms, inappropriate terms LOL, etc, you know what I mean. As a coder, I would not shy away from this but I would put it under a list and use an event receiver after an approval workflow to persist it to the Taxonomy.

Above: Taxonomy and Folksonomy hand in hand.

Next I will create a few files and and upload them to my Document Center that I created.

Above: Various Files and File Types that can also be Content Types based on your Taxonomy.

Next I will NOT use my Managed Metadata as a Column in my Document Library, I will use OOB “Enterprise Metadata and Keywords Setting” which will allow me to use Tags from that Term Set but does not give me the ability to navigate and get to my terms. This shows that you can just use your Taxonomy and Folksonomy in OOB Library Settings

Above: Document Library in my Document Center with Enterprise Keywords added

Above:  I added a document called “Code of Conduct” and I begin to type ‘Comm…” and all of a sudden I get Write Aheads with my terms pretty cool huh…

However (and I am not naming names here but he is my work colleague LMAO) had a blog where he did not see his Managed Metadata Terms when he went to the Navigations Settings for Metadata. That is by design, you MUST add a Metadata Column to your Library, and based on the level in the hierarchy that you choose you will get that top level and any child level in this pane below.  If you dont do that, you will see what is evident below.

Above: Using “Metadata Navigation Settings” without adding a “Managed Metadata Column” will yield the above.

However if you create a column of type “Managed Metadata” and pick a level within your store…

Above: Column Name “FabianWorldTax_Folks_onomy” of type “Managed Metadata” is added to the library

Above: all the settings I choose. I deliberately choose (1) Required Field (2) Allow Multivalue

After you select “Ok”, now you have a column linked to your Taxonomy/Folksonomy in your Document Library / List

Above: the newly created column.

Now you are able to consume your Taxonomy and Folksonomy (if you permitted this) in the Navigation Settings and Filter Settings.

Above:  Navigation Hierarchies and Filters may be used in this library now based on the Managed Metadata you crated.

The value here is NOT with the one or two document that I have in there now, but when you have Millions upon Millions of documents in this Library which may also be broken up in Partitioning Folders; here is away to filter or trim the noise from the data. Here is the money shot.

Above: Same process as before in the OOB example but this time I can click on the ‘Tag’ Link and get to seem my tree where I can now select meaningful information whereas I may not have known before.

Above: Click Save and you are on your way.

What you will notice below is that there are two documents and the Navigation tree is on the top level.

Above:  Two docs showing at top level of Metadata Navigation

But what happens if I select “International” from the Navigation Tree…

Above:  The result set is peered down [with NO POSTBACK mind you] to the result set I further defined.

How Search is also Impacted

The value here is that in the previous example you “hunted and pecked” to get what you wanted. Here I am going to do a search on

• a Key Term in my Metadata or maybe I know that ‘Communications’ is in the document or tag for what I want.
• I filter on a Taxonomy / Folksonomy term based on my search results to get a more granular result set.

Before I do that however, I need to do a crawl, see below…

Above: Crawling the Local SharePoint Sites

Here I am doing a search on the word ‘Communications’

Above: The result set comes back with two items.  Both were tagged as a HR Communications Document based on my Managed Metadata

Next I do a search on ‘International’, here you go again…

Above: Another search with Hit Highlighting

Finally, I click the Navigation Aid in my Search Result set for International, Imagine if you had 10 pages of results, now you can peer it down as I did.

Above: Filter applied to my Search Result Set.

Conclusion

How can you not love this. So there are two value adds here

1. Navigation is enhanced by the Managed Metadata
2. Search is Refined by the Managed Metadata

Hope this was helpful, critique & comments welcomed…

Part 2 of 2 will focus on Managed Metadata and how it can be used to enrich “Content Organization” in SharePoint 2010

Guest Author: Fabian Williams
http://fabiangwilliams.wordpress.com
Twitter: @FabianWilliams

Fabian Williams is a Technical Lead and SharePoint Architect for CDW Advanced Technology Services SharePoint Practice. He is based out of Herndon Virginia. Mr. Williams has a Bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems from Strayer University, Washington, D.C. and is 9 Credits and a Capstone away from Masters in CIS at Johns Hopkins University in Columbia Maryland. In addition, he is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA).