MLG Web Parts, SLK and Parent Observer Role on a 64Bit Platform

I have installed the version of SLK (includes the Observer role) that comes with the MLG Refresh Web Parts and it seems to work fine on a 64bit platform (I have tested with Solitaire and a Class Server 4.0 resource).

I have got the parent access working where parents can view their childs assignments. I followed the Microsoft Learning Gateway Refresh Deployment guide but there is one thing that is not mentioned and that is, you have to give the Parents group Observer rights to the Class Sites that the student is a member of so that Students Assignments appear in the My Childrens Assignments web part on the parent site. Assignments also appear in Teachers, Students and Parents Planners.

When adding SharePoint calendars to be viewed via the My Planner Web Part you may receive an 'Error 401 Unauthorised'

The My Planner web part which ships with the Microsoft Learning Gateway Refresh package allows you to display your Exchange calendar and also SharePoint Calendars such as a school calendar or staff calendar,

To ensure that SharePoint calendars can be viewed by the 'My Planner' web part do the following:

• Go to Central Administration, Application Management
• Under 'Application Security' go to 'Authentication Providers'
• Select the Web Application that hosts the School Site
• Under 'IIS Authentication Settings' clear the 'Integrated Windows Authentication' check box and select the 'Basic Authentication' check box

This process is not mentioned in the deployment guide.

MLG Refresh web parts give an error when using SLK v1.1

If you install the SLK release 1.1 and then the current MLG Refresh Web parts you will receive the following error on pages containing the My Planner Web Part: ERROR: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.LearningComponents.Storage, Version=1.0.799.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=abc4ed181d6d6a94' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I believe this is because the web part is looking for an older version of the SLK assembly file mentioned above. The only way I could solve this was to remove the new SLK and install version 1.0.799.

In any case if you install the version of SLK that comes as part of the MLG Refresh package you shouldn't have any problems.

"Value does not fall within the expected range" when a user attempts to create a MySite for the first time

Had a wierd issue on a customer site when I tried to create a MySite for the first time I got a an error stating

"There has been an error creating the personal site. Contact your site administrator for more information."

Yes I know, very unhelpful. Looking in Event Viewer I came across an Event which contained

"The following exception occured: Value does not fall within the expected range. "

This issue is highlighted in the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937207 and a hotfix is available.

The strange thing is that it happened to me twice and with the same conditions, which were that I did not create a separate web application for MySite but instead put it on the same web application as the SSP. Now I know this is against best practice but in the first instance I did it as part of the Microsoft Learning Gateway 2007 Refresh solution, following the deployment guide to the letter even though it was asking me to do stuff like put the MySite's portal on the same web application as the SSP. In the second instance it was a Microsoft Virtual Server sandpit which I had to build in a rush.

I still haven't found out what causes this.

Email sent to Mail Enabled Lists is bounced back by Exchange

Whilst on a customer site when mail enabling a document library called TestDocs the SMTP address for the contact created in AD was coming up as for example TestDocs@MOSS02.vsa.domain (name of my MOSS Server). Mail sent to this library was bouncing back as Exchange was trying to send it through its default SMTP connector and to a smart host which of course could not relay for MOSS02.vsa.domain

To get around this, once the list or document library is mail enabled a SMTP connector needs to be created in Exchange System Manager that allows mail to be routed to the SharePoint server. To allow this list to receive mail from external users you need to assign it a second SMTP address for the mail domain.

Viewing Site Usage Reports gives http error or you are prompted to logon again

When viewing site usage reports you are asked to logon 3 times and this fails unless you log on as the application pool account or alternatively you get a http error. There is a hotfix available for the 32bit version of MOSS outlined in the following article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913384

Alternativeley if you log on to each MOSS Front end server at least once with your application pool account for the web application where you are viewing the site usage reports it solves the issue. This is caused by a weird ASP error where the account running the process needs a user profile on the MOSS server.

When you try to create a new schedule or change an existing schedule for the content source in MOSS you get an "Access Denied" Error

This occurs when the WSS_WPG group account does not have the correct permissions to the %windir%\Tasks folder on the computer that is running the Office SharePoint Server 2007 indexing service. Follow instructions on the link below to fix this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926959

Issues with Gradual Upgrade to MOSS from the Learning Gateway

I tried to do a gradual upgrade (making a copy of the existing content DB and running an upgrade on it) to MOSS on an existing Learning Gateway 2003 and it kept failing until I eventually removed the 16 LG web parts using STSADM. Unfortunately this broke a lot of the sites even though the upgrade procedure went through. The sites based on the LG templates were giving errors in MOSS mainly due to the 'Welcome' code embedded in the page. Also I found that document libraries in LG pages came across as Data Connection Libraries. Don't know if this is a one off but haven't had time to test it further as I am on a customer site. I have now created a new MOSS farm and recreated the LG site structure. I will be migrating document libraries manually.

Update:

The conclusion I have come to is that there is no upgrade path from Learning Gateway 2003 to MOSS 2007.

Multiple documents uploaded to a document library configured with minor versions and enforced check-out are draft and checked out

When uploading a large number of documents to a document library in a migration scenario it may be a good idea to ensure that versioning and enforced check-out is disabled on the destination document library otherwise all documents will be checked-out to the account uploading the documents and files will have a minor version (draft). You can enable versioning and enforced check-out once all files are uploaded.

No Adobe PDF documents are returned in the search results when you search a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web site

This is for a WSS 3.0 implementation only. Detailed instructions can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927675


If the WSS 3.0 site already has PDF documents before you installed the Adobe iFilter on the server, you will have to modify a property of the existing PDF documents on the server so that WSS can subsequently crawl it.

SharePoint Learning Kit requires specific permissions for the SLK Database or you get an error performing E-Learning Actions

Had an issue where having successfully installed the SharePoint Learning Kit (v1) and created the SLK database my Application Pool account for the Web Application where SLK was activated did not have access to the SLK database. The error appears when you try to use the SLK E-Learning Actions option on a resource.

SLK reports "An error occurred. More information may be available in the server event log." You may also see

"Cannot open database "SharePointLearningKit" requested by the login. The login failed. Login failed for user '".

This is resolved by assigning the Application Pool Account for the Web Application in question the following rights to the SLK database in SQL Management Studio:
Db_datareader
Db_datawriter
LearningStore