Interesting points from the SDPS Deployment and Customisation Plan

Just been reading through the SDPS Deployment and Customisation Plan and picked up on the following stuff. Just wondered how many people are doing this already? I always make the SSP service and SSP App Pool identity separate accounts and was not aware of disabling NetBios over TCP/IP on WFE’s and Index Servers.

• SSP App Pool Identity and Service account recommended to be the same account
  
  
• NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT ) support should be disabled on all network cards on the Web Front End and Index servers.
  
• Avoid more than eight Application Pools per farm
  

Going into Page Settings from Page Editing Toolbar on a restored site collection using Collaboration Portal template gives "Unexpected Error"

I backed up a site collection which used the Collaboration Portal and then restored it over a new site collection using stsadm -o restore and the -overwrite switch. I then found that going into page settings from the Page Editing Toolbar on the portal home page gave an "unexpected error". After searching the web I found that this is caused by the Page Layout URL not being correct or somehow becoming unnattached for the page. The page will load but Page Settings will give an error.

The fix I implemented was using one of Gary Lapointes enhanced STSADM Extensions command http://stsadm.blogspot.com/2007/08/stsadm-commands_09.html:

stsadm -o fixpublishingpagespagelayouturl

"Page has been modified by another user" error when sites have been moved between site collections

If you move sites by using stsadm -o export or backup a site collection and restore it over another site collection you may find that editing the quick launch navigation within team sites will give you the following error: "The page has been modified by another author " where time is the exact time in which I have pressed Ok to submit the changes. You will also notice that the HEADINGS in the quick launch still point to the old URL but when you try to edit the heading you get the error above.

I found a fix to reset the corrupted headings but it is not ideal and goes as follows:

• Remove all the lists under the corrupted heading
• Remove corrupted heading
• Go to the list settings and add a removed list to the quick launch

This does not happen all the time and may go unnoticed unless you click on a heading of course.

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.