I recently had an issue with a SharePoint Server 2007 farm where the Search service was completely ignoring an entire document library on one of the sites. It was the only issue that we were aware of at the time and it was very odd. We engaged with Microsoft to try to solve the issue. After what seemed like a very long time, we finally solved it.

The answer: Check Response Headers in IIS for your SharePoint Web Applications and ensure that the MicrosoftSharePointTeamServices header is listed with a value that matches your farm’s build number (ie. 12.0.0.6653).

The SharePoint Search service checks Response Headers to identify whether the site is a SharePoint site or not. If this Response Header is not detected, then it will be crawled like a normal site. When a non-SharePoint site is crawled, things like permissions, visibility settings, etc are ignored and some content may not be crawled at all. This was the issue we ran into.

Before adding the Response Header, our CPU was getting maxed out more than normal and crawls were taking a very long time. Now that the Response Headers are in place, the server is much more responsive and crawls take a fraction of the time that they did before!  In addition, this issue applies to SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010, and SharePoint 2013.

eGroup’s SharePoint expert, Brad Shannon, was recently quoted in SearchContentManagement’s article covering SharePoint upgrades, “SharePoint upgrade requires sharp focus on planning, user preparation.” His advice on how to better prepare for an upgrade is pasted below.

Give the entire piece a read and then start documenting your infrastructure!

A company’s technology infrastructure also needs to be prepared for upgrading to a new version of SharePoint, and as part of that process, it’s important to document the existing features and services in a SharePoint environment as well as the new ones that will be deployed in the upgrade, said Brad Shannon, an application services engineer at eGroup, a technology consultancy in Mount Pleasant, S.C.

“If you don’t know what you have in your environment, you’re going to find out the hard way,” Shannon said, explaining that the more detailed the documentation of the current environment is, the better an organization can prepare for the SharePoint upgrade.

Companies should also start with a clean SharePoint farm, Shannon advised. “That means you don’t have anything on the farm you don’t need,” he said. Sometimes SharePoint systems will include items used for testing purposes that were never fully deployed or removed. Leaving them in place can create more work for SharePoint administrators, Shannon said.

As a SharePoint consultant who has worked with dozens of customers, the one constant I face, over and over, is that users are inherently resistant to change. It’s just a fact. And, who can blame them if they’re not properly educated and supported over the course of that process change – whatever that may be.

So, with respect to SharePoint, driving user adoption is one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult tasks that a SharePoint architect/administrator has. You could even say that it is the single most important task when designing/deploying SharePoint. Simply because it drives everything else. If the deployment doesn’t function correctly, then user adoption will suffer. If it is difficult to navigate or understand, then user adoption will suffer.

Couple all of these factors together and it will be difficult to meet your SharePoint project success metrics. Here are some key areas that I like to focus on when planning for user adoption:

1. Familiar

In order to properly design a SharePoint deployment, you must think like an end user. And not just any end user…YOUR end users. Every corporate IT environment is unique.

How do your users access shared documents?
How do they access their personal documents?
How do they access reports?
How do they share ideas?

These are all key questions that need to be asked. A survey of a portion of your users probably wouldn’t hurt either.  The closer you can make accessing documents and information to the way your users are familiar with will help tremendously with user adoption!  For example, if your users are used to the traditional network share filled with folders, then a single document library may work best.  If the folder structure is broken out by department already, then setting up separate document libraries for each department may be best.

2. Functional

One of the biggest reasons for choosing SharePoint that I hear is for ‘document sharing’. But, why use SharePoint? Why not just use a network share or maybe even a cloud based sharing solution? These are common questions and they are completely understandable. However, it shows a lack of understanding of the key enterprise features that SharePoint offers. Here are some key features that users should be well trained on prior to deployment so they fully understand how to use the tool.

Versioning
Permissions
Navigation
Workflows
Enterprise Search
Content Types and Document Templates

These are just some examples of features that most users find indispensable. So make sure you engage and educate them prior to going live with the deployment.

3. Automation

Automation is key when implementing SharePoint as well because it makes refusing to use SharePoint very difficult to justify. Automating processes such as HR On-boarding, Capital Purchasing Approval, Information Requests, IT Help Desk Ticketing, and so much more have huge ROI potential! A simple, high-level review of ‘painful’ processes that departments have to deal with could reveal perfect use-cases for automation.

Have you deployed SharePoint in your business?  If so, what is your user adoption rate?  What could make it better?  If you haven’t deployed it, but would like to, did this post help give you a good idea on how to drive adoption? Let us know how we can help!  Contact eGroup’s Application Services Team at ApplicationServices@eGroup-us.com for more information.

When you get into creating workflows for your SharePoint Server 2010 farm, you may run into some delays or errors. The one most commonly seen is…

Due to heavy load, the latest workflow operation has been queued. It will attempt to resume at a later time

This is because SharePoint has a default limit of 15 workflows that can run at the same time. If you didn’t know, there are quite a few workflows that run in the background all the time.  There are 2 main settings that you should be concerned with. The first is the WorkflowPostponeThreshold which controls how many workflows can execute at a time. The default is 15 and you can run this command in the SharePoint 2010 Management console to see what your setting is…

Get-SPFarmConfig | Select WorkflowPostponeThreshold

To change this setting, modify the number in the following statement to fit your needs and run in the same console…

Set-SPFarmConfig -WorkflowPostponeThreshold 75

The other setting is the WorkflowBatchSize which controls how many workflows can be in the ‘queue’ at a time. The queue is basically a ‘bucket’ of workflows that are waiting for the timer service to execute them. To see what your setting is, run the following command in the SharePoint 2010 Management console…

Get-SPFarmConfig | Select WorkflowBatchSize

To change this setting, modify the number in the following statement to fit your needs and run in the same console…

Set-SPFarmConfig -WorkflowBatchSize 200

This works for 3rd party workflows, like Nintex too! Be sure to monitor your servers and their performance to make sure you aren’t overwhelming your environment.

Often times, you may have custom attributes setup in Active Directory or some other source where your user profile information comes from.  Here’s how to map those custom attributes to profile properties in SharePoint 2010

• Log in to Central Administration
• Go to Manage Service Applications
• Click on your User Profile Service Application
• Click on ‘Manage User Properties’
• Scroll down the list of properties until you see the one you want to map and edit it.
• On the ‘Edit User Profile Property’ page, scroll to the bottom until you see the ‘Property Mapping for Synchronization’ section.
• If this section has the correct mapping listed then should go to Step 10.  If nothing is listed, then please proceed to the next step.
• The next section is the ‘Add New Mapping’ section.  Select the Source, Attribute, and Direction of the new mapping and click ‘Add’.  If no sources are available, ensure that you have setup the connection to your active directory instance.
• Once successfully added, click ‘OK’
• Go back to the User Profile Service Application page and start a Full Synchronization.
  • Start Profile Synchronization
  • Select ‘Start Full Synchronization’ and click ‘OK’.
  • Once the synchronization has completed, go to ‘Manage User Profiles’.
  • Find the name of the user you want to check for the imported attribute and choose ‘Edit My Profile’
  • Scroll down to the property that you imported and verify that the correct data is there.