January 17, 2014

1+2+3+4+... = -1/12 ??

I’ve been geeking out on some interesting math lately, and on my travels came across this statement “1+2+3+4+… = -1/12, which on first account I thought, what is this B.S??

Well, despite the actual proof looking like mathematical “hackery” remarkably this is actually a valid solution which is justified because it appears in practice - namely in physics.

If you’re interested in the proof you can go ahead and watch it here.

December 15, 2013

How To Add a Custom Thesaurus in SharePoint 2013

Bella Engen recently posted a useful 101 walk through on how to use a custom Thesaurus for SharePoint 2013 Search which you can find here.

Adding a thesaurus can be incredibly useful to get the most out of SharePoint Search, because not all users search for content with the same keywords or phrases. Furthermore, as your business evolves, you will typically have product, service or business unit names change over time - and having thesaurus can help unlock this… however it is important to know that you’ll often need a combination of a Thesaurus + Query rules, which Steve Mann explains in detail here.

July 5, 2013

New SharePoint 2013 Search Articles

It’s really great to see the wealth of knowledge regarding SharePoint 2013 Search being captured and shared by various bloggers amongst the community, and also I’m happy to see a lot of fresh content from Microsoft, which shows just how committed they are to ensuring the success of the product.

Here are a bunch of new Search related posts from Microsoft in the last month or so:

Add a Taxonomy Refinement Panel Web Part to a publishing site

May 10, 2013

MP4 Videos Not Playing on Mobile Devices

If you’re having an issue with MP4 videos not playing on mobile devices, and you’ve already added a mime type for MP4 in IIS, then it could be due to the “AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes” setting of your web app.

To fix it, you can update the setting in PowerShell, with script such as:

$webApplication = Get-SPWebApplication “http://intranet.contoso.com” $webApplication.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes.Add(“video/mp4”) $webApplication.Update()

April 10, 2013

SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 Feature Matrix Spreadsheet

Andrew Connell has recently posted a fantastic feature matrix spreadsheet for SP2013 and Office 365 - based on this Microsoft TechNet article.

It’s much easier to digest because you can use Excel to filter for all of the “Yes” values or all of the “No” values and see very quickly what is or isn’t included in Foundation, Standard and Enterprise versions.

[caption id=“attachment_119” align=“alignnone” width=“839”] SharePoint 2013 Feature Comparison Maxtrix Spreadsheet[/caption]

March 4, 2013

Anti-Virus Solutions for SharePoint 2013

Well it seems that due to the earlier release of SP2013 than many vendors expected, at the moment there is only one anti-virus vendor that supports SharePoint 2013 other than Microsoft - ESET. ESET’s product also is only Beta - so this isn’t really ideal for production usage just yet.

Microsoft of course have ForeFront Protection for SharePoint 2010 however the whole ForeFront product line has been discontinued, so you cannot buy it. If you have an Enterprise Agreement, and want to get it - perhaps speak with your Microsoft Account Manager and they may be able to help you out, depending on your agreement and when you speak with them. If you do already have it, you’ll be supported until 31st December 2015 and receive anti-virus definition updates until then. From that point onward, you’ll need to migrate to another product. This was flagged by Spencer Harbar here.

November 25, 2012

Runas - With an Account from Another Domain

Ever wanted to be able to access a client’s backend data source using Windows Authentication, but your machine wasn’t a member of their domain?

For example – you might be working with a client that can’t provide you with a client machine that has Excel or InfoPath, but you need to access data in SQL.

The usual problem I’ve run into is this – If I’m using my local Excel or InfoPath client, when attempting to add a new data connection, you get prompted with a screen such as that below. Selecting Windows Authentication will use your local machine credentials and won’t work. The Username and Password box as we all know are for SQL authentication.

November 11, 2012

FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 - Indexing Database Content - Guidance

If you are doing any work with FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 and need to index database content (e.g. SQL tables), as a general rule of thumb you should use BCS for this.

FS4SP does have a JDBC connector that is quite capable of indexing database content, though don’t just use this because you have FAST and think you need to.

The reason here is simple - you will have a much simpler migration experience to SharePoint 2013, as the JDBC connector is now no longer included.

November 9, 2012

Unsupported Installation Scenarios on SP2013

Understanding the scenarios in which SharePoint is not supported are extremely important when designing SharePoint farms; as if you experience any trouble with your environment and need to get Microsoft support involved, they typically won’t be able to help you, and will instead ask you to get your environment in a supported state.

On SP2013 it is important to note that these scenarios are not supported:

Installation on a machine that is not joined to a domain (i.e. a machine in a workgroup)

November 2, 2012

SharePoint 2013 vs. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

Ok so the key differences between SP2013 and Fast Search for SharePoint 2010 are officially up on TechNet.

In summary, a number of features have gone. Some people may be upset, though overall I think the majority of changes make sense because it simplifies the platform. FAST for SharePoint (FS4SP) included a number of features that were baked in from FAST ESP (the standalone, pre-Microsoft product) and became redundant when SharePoint was added to the mix.