A SharePoint Dream

Last Tuesday morning I had to have a shower in pitch black and go to work unshaven because the managers of the hotel I was staying in did not have a monitoring system. Showering in the dark made me think about a valuable tool for all SharePoint Administrators.

As a SharePoint Administrator one thing is certain and that is that at some point your SharePoint system will break. The important point though is how quickly it is back up and running. So it is vital that you know exactly when it breaks. Ideally you will know before angry users start banging on the IT Office door. So make sure if you are in charge of SharePoint either a 2010, environment or a 2007, that you have a SharePoint Health Monitor Tool.

So back to my hotel room at half past ten on Monday night. I turned off the bathroom light and BANG!!! Suddenly the whole room was plunged into darkness with every electrical device dying. No red power light on the TV and no longer could I hear the kettle boiling. It was a total power-out. With the corridor also in darkness I decided to retire to my bed and wait until normal power was restored. Surprisingly the next morning the corridor was still powerless at this purple premier hotel (I had to wait until daylight so I could open the thick curtains to see the room was still purple). After performing my normal morning rituals in darkness and hoping I didn't have toothpaste down my chin I felt my way to Reception. I was expecting an apology and maybe an offer of a refund.  Instead, to my amazement, my comment about there being no electricity in the corridor was met with surprise by the woman at Reception.

She wasn't aware of a problem and it seemed that everybody in the rooms had assumed somebody else would have reported it. So about twenty rooms had been without power for ten hours and the hotel hadn't noticed. Incredibly the lady was also struggling now to believe the fact and even suggested that perhaps I dreamt it all. Who did she think I was, Pamela Ewing! Showing my age there with referenece to 80's soap opera. I am probably still bitter about wasting my time watching a whole series that ended up being just a dream. At least Bobby got to have a shower with the light on even if it did take over a year.

The hotel staff should really have a system so they are alerted if there are any power failures. In the same way SharePoint Administrators should have a system to monitor their SharePoint. They need to know that all the SharePoint and SQL services are running, they need to know if disk drives are getting full and they need to know CPU uses on all of the servers. It is not easy to manually keep track of all of these but tools are available. One such tool that really is a must and is free of charge is SharePoint Health Monitor Tool from Manage Engine. It really can alert you of any potential problems and unlike the hotel staff you can be alerted to panic as soon as a problem occurs not ten hours later. Even with the Health Monitor Tool it is still very important to every day check all your server logs.

Now, I just hope the Villa owner Randy Learner is monitoring carefully the form of the Villa and will act soon before it is too late. He will hopefully have noticed that the boos are getting louder and the number of Villa attempts on goal is getting less each game. Alarm bells should be ringing!

Download your free SharePoint monitor today at http://www.manageengine.com/free-sharepoint-monitor/free-sharepoint-health-monitor-index.html

How Good is Your SharePoint?

In this week’s blog I am going to include a simple rating scale to let you quickly see how good your SharePoint environment is.

However, before then I must say sorry to all my readers because it has been nearly two months since my last Posting. I might have made a good Catholic if I hadn’t been born a Methodist. So what is my excuse for lack of postings? I could blame the Christmas rush, the public strikes or the appalling football the Villa are playing, but the truth is I have just been really busy bee. 

The second half of 2011 has seen a major boom in the number of SharePoint 2010Projects across the UK. At Office Talk all the SharePoint Consultants have been in constant demand for their SharePoint skills. No, that isn’t an opportunity from any Recruitment Agencies to start ringing us! It appears that more and more organisations are now ready to trust SharePoint 2010 and with support for 2007 going soon , (well it is 5 years old) they are choosing now to migrate.

All the corridors look like this

I have spent many nights recently working away from home (well my home until I move next Thursday) and have become an almost permanent guest at a popular chain of hotels. I won’t say which chain of purple hotels or mention Lenny Henry just in case I write anything they don’t like. Now, normally I stay in one that is quite near to the centre of the town, but today as Christmas is approaching there was no room at the Inn so I have had to go to one that is about three miles north of my normal one. At first glance they look identical with even the same purple pictures above the bed and identical bathrooms (at least I only have to learn one lot of shower controls), but then you start to spot little differences. The woman on Reception is less friendly here, the pub restaurant here is far classier (they even do something clever with red cabbage), the breakfast sausages at the other hotel are crispier and the lead on the hairdryer here is longer. I mention the hairdryer because it seems the ironing board and iron are booked out all night so I am trying to de-crease my shirt by drying it with the hairdryer after wetting it in the shower. The long cord means that I can hang it in the open-plan wardrobe as I dry it. So there are pluses and minuses for each of the two hotels. I think I prefer the normal central one but I am not sure. This got me thinking about what makes a good SharePoint environment.   

So here goes with a festive ‘How Good is your SharePoint? Perhaps I should make it into a board game or make it a TV show on some remote TV station.

You start with 50 points and each question could involve you either subtracting or adding to your score. Don’t worry I will keep the maths simple.

1. Was your last successful SharePoint Backup (including SQL Server) more than 48 hours ago? [If you said ‘yes’ lose 50 points]

2. Has your landing page been changed in the last five days? [If you said ‘yes’ gain 20 points]

3. Have most your End Users had at least one hours SharePoint training? [If you said ‘no’ lose 20 points]

4. Do you have a list of all users with Site Owners permissions? [If you said ‘yes’ gain 10 points]

5. Does your Search currently work? [If you said ‘no’ lose 30 points]

6. Have you got any of the following on your SharePoint?
a) Holiday System
b) Purchase Order System
c) Expenses System
d) Staff Directory
e) Risk Assessment System
f) Incident Reporting
g) Visitors Book
h) Web Enquiries
k) IT Helpdesk

[For each one gain 5 points]

7. Have you created any Content Types? [If you said ‘Yes’ gain 20 points]

8. Have you enabled any Libraries to receive emails? [If you said ‘Yes’ gain 10 points]

9. Have you used any Active Directory Security groups in your SharePoint permissions? [If you said ‘Yes’ gain 10 points]

10. Have you created any of the following?
a) Discussion Groups
b) Surveys
c) Blogs
d) Meeting Site
e) Wikis

[For each one you have gain 5 points]

11. Do you have Super Users / Advanced Users clearly defined? [If you said ‘no’ lose 20 points]

12. Do your End Users have access to a manual for your SharePoint? [If you said ‘no’ lose 10 points]

13. If your SharePoint is over 12 months old has it been reviewed in last 12 months? [If you said ‘no’ lose 5 points]

14. Are the Event Logs on all servers in the SharePoint Farm monitored or checked daily? [If you said ‘no’ lose 30 points]

15. Have you created any Template Sites? [If you said ‘yes’ gain 10 points]

16. Do you have a Change Request system in place for your SharePoint? [If you said ‘no’ lose 15 points]

17. Do you have an area on SharePoint for all your Organisation’s policies? [If you said ‘no’ you lose 20 points]

18. Do you have a ‘Social’ area on your SharePoint? [If you said ‘yes’ gain 20 points]

19. Do you have a Disaster Recovery procedure in place for your SharePoint? [If you said ‘no’ lose 20 points]

20. Does over 70% of your organisation use your SharePoint? [If you said ‘yes’ gain 30 points]

This is just for fun but hopefully will get you thinking.

This is what the scoring means;

Over 200 – Wow you’re good do you want to be a SharePoint Consultant?

150-199 – Your SharePoint is going very well take a bow.

100-149 – Not bad, but maybe worth reviewing your SharePoint how you can improve it.

50-99 – Needs some work.

0-49 – Oh dear do you really feel think you can afford a Christmas break?

Below 0 – Please don’t let anybody know that you read Andy Dale’s blogs!

For those people who scored over 100 it is probably time for some Christmas fun. At SharePoint Village we are again running our popular ‘Secret Santa’ competition. Where if you find the six hidden Santa’s you have a chance of winning a superb Xbox 360 Kinect. Sadly I can’t enter, but please have a go at http://www.sharepointvillage.com  

As we are talking about an Xbox I have to bring you back by popular demand the Ronnie Corbett Blackberry sketch.

I am off now to fill the kettle and then wait about ten minutes for it to boil. Why are hotel kettles the slowest in the world to boil? Oh, and how are you supposed to fit them under the basin tap to fill?