SharePoint Dragons

Nikander & Margriet on SharePoint

Tag Archives: Tools

DebugDiag

The Debug Diagnostic Tool (v1.2) is a tool that assists in troubleshooting issues such as slow performance and memory leaks. It’s created by MS and also contains a dedicated SharePoint Analysis Script. You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26798

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Keeping track of statistics

There are situations when you don’t have access to any log files or dashboard that allows you to see traffic statistics. For us, TechNet Wiki pages we’ve created are an example of this. Office 365 seems to be another example: at least we didn’t find it in the administration pages, any good tip for seeing Office 365 web traffic will be appreciated!http://statcounter.com/ allows you to add a simple HTML code snippet and then offers a dashboard for keeping record off the traffic.

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The SharePoint Flavored Weblog Reader v1.1

In a previous post, we’ve talked about a tool we’ve created, the SharePoint Flavored WebLog Reader: https://sharepointdragons.com/2012/02/17/the-sharepoint-flavored-weblog-readersfwr/. It’s a free tool that analyzes the IIS logs of SharePoint farms and generates several textual reports about them. We’ve just released an update to it (v1.1) and based on community feedback, two new features were incorporated:

  • An overview was added that displays the number of searches executed per user.
  • An overview was added of the top slowest requests for a specific user.

You can get it here: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/The-SharePoint-Flavored-5b03f323

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SharePoint/Outlook integration

Probably you recognize this situation… A customer comes up to you and says in an accusing and demanding tone: why doesn’t SharePoint have feature X, it’s absolutely ridiculous that it doesn’t have it! They then look at us as if it’s our fault and then, later, whenever you meet ‘em at the coffee machine, they bring up the subject again – and again – and again (okay, this experience pales to whatever happens when you meet a Java developer/Linux guy/Mac adept, but that’s a different story).

Note that on the flip side, we’ve also experienced that customers thank us at the bottom of their hearts for ootb SharePoint functionality for which we had to do close to nothing. We’re a bit embarrassed when that happens, but we’ll take it as change for the negative stuff.

The things we get bashed about most is this:

  • Search functionality (lots of confusion there).
  • Lacking Intra-document security.
  • SharePoint/Outlook integration.
  • Social features.

As you may have guessed from the title, we need to say something about the SharePoint/Outlook integration. Nowadays, there are lots of commercial products offer solutions in this area. Today, our eyes rested upon a new one we didn’t know before and best of all (okay, that depends on the context) is that it is free: http://harmon.ie/SharePoint/OutlookAddOn/harmon.ieLPform_en?ad_id=23678&gclid=CNW7nOnb7a8CFcSIDgodAmci1w

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Optimize with Aptimize?

1 Comment Posted by on April 25, 2012

A long time ago, we did a SharePoint 2001 project (yep, the first version) where we needed to support 40.000 people. Really hard to do since at that time SharePoint could not scale out and everything including the datatabase (the Exchange-based web storage system or WSS) had to be located on a single server. We used a 3rd party performance optimizer tool that really helped a lot.

We haven’t really kept track of such tools, but here’s one you can use for SharePoint 2010 today: Aptimizer ( http://www.riverbed.com/us/products/stingray/stingray_aptimizer.php ). It’s always nice to have a tool such as this as an option. Also check out http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/7926.sharepoint-2010-tips-for-dealing-with-performance-issues-en-us.aspx it’s becoming a popular resource for checking tips about dealing performance issues. It’ll be updated if there’s any news on the 3rd party optimizer front.

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Batch check in

6 Comments Posted by on April 19, 2012

A regular question that pops up is: how do I do a batch check in in SPS and SPF 2010? Not possible ootb, but there’s a 3rd party solution for it called Batch Metadata Edit and Check In: https://store.qipoint.com/product-p/sp14-01-batch.htm

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Tool for detecting dangerous web sites

1 Comment Posted by on April 18, 2012

A tip by Mark Miller of End Users SharePoint (thanks btw): the http://urlvoid.com web site is a free service that allows users to scan a given website address to determine whether it’s potentially dangerous. To determine this, it uses various virus scanning tools. So, if you’d go to http://urlvoid.com/scan/sharepointdragons.com/ you’ll find we’re safe:

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Moving your taxonomy to a production environment

Leave a comment Posted by on April 12, 2012

If you’re planning to move your taxonomy to a production environment in SPS 2010, consider using the Bulk TermSet Importer-Exporter: http://termsetimporter.codeplex.com/releases/view/48669#ReviewsAnchor

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WinForm SharePoint list item editing tool

Leave a comment Posted by on April 11, 2012

A free tool for doing mass upload and bulk edit in SharePoint: http://splistitemeditor.codeplex.com/releases/view/35050 We’ll have to give it a test spin, but it might be interesting to consider if you need this kind of functionality.

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SyncToy

1 Comment Posted by on April 10, 2012

It seems as though we’re into tools lately. MS SyncToy is part of the PowerToys collection and is a tool that allows you to synchronize various data sources. First thing that comes to our mind is that we’re literally carrying a (binary) toolbox with us containing huge amounts of sample code we’ve once written. Our toolboxes are stored in various places, such as our laptop, USB stick, and Office 365. The SyncToy will make this a lot easier to manage! Download it at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15155 The other PowerToys can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerToys

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