What do the England football team and SharePoint have in common? The answer is they both need support. I suppose if we hadn’t beaten Solvenia last night the answer could have been very different. Mind you it is possible that by the time you read this posting England have been knocked out of the World Cup (hopefully not after losing on penalties to the Germans) or maybe even the record breaking tennis game on court 18 might even have finished.
The support England have had in South Africa has been immense and during the vital last group game they even made more noises than the vuvuzela.
Many companies seem happy to invest money in implementing SharePoint but then gamble by not having support. SharePoint is quite an easy to maintain system, but things do go wrong so it is best to think about Support. If you use a SharePoint Consultancy like Office Talk then it is worth asking what kind of support options they offer. Alternatively make sure that somebody in IT has completed a SharePoint Administration training course so they know the kind of problems you can encounter with your SharePoint.
When troubleshooting SharePoint there are four places you should be aware of on each of the SharePoint Servers. These are;
1. Application Event Log – Are there any red errors and if so when did they start? The description of the Error will often indicate where the problem is and frequently it might indicate that SharePoint cannot connect to the database. Don’t panic it might just be that somebody is rebooting the SQL Server.
2. Services – In Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Services check that none of the automatic services have stopped especially any SharePoint or Database ones. It is also worth stopping and starting the SharePoint Timer Service. If any services are hung and say ‘Stopping’ or ‘starting’ it is best to restart the server so that they can fully stop.
3. SQL Database – If you have SQL Manager then check on the state of the database and if possible take the SharePoint database offline then bring it back online. Even if you are using the inbuilt SharePoint database it is useful to install SQL Manager to allow you to manage the database.
4. IIS Manger – Check on the IIS Manager that the website listed for SharePoint and the Application Pool it is associated with are both ‘started’. If one says ‘stopped’ then try starting it. It is also worth using the command iisreset from the Command-Line Prompt.
So as you support England, or your own country, during this World Cup think about how well supported your SharePoint system is. Also and probably even more important is, how good is your SharePoint backup? If disaster strikes how easy would it be to rebuild your SharePoint and how quickly would you may be able to access all your data again? Make sure you either have the latest SharePoint Agent with your Veritas Backup Exec or invest in a third-party SharePoint backup solution like AvePoint’s DocAve . Remember your information is only as good as your last backup.
After I correctly predicted Germany 0 Serbia 1 last week I am going to predict the four quarter-finals now which you might note does not include the boys from Brazil.
South Korea v USA
Netherlands v Spain
Argentina v England
Paraguay v Portugal
Please let me know what you think of my predictions.
Now it is time to prepare myself for the tense job of supporting England. I just hope they have been practising those penalty kicks just in case.
Come on England !!!
Friday, 25 June 2010
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
World Cup 2 - SharePoint with Flair
Is it only me and Alan Hansen who are becoming despondent by the lack of excitement in the World Cup? Every game just seems the same with countries more interested in not losing their opening game wow factor. Perhaps the games involving Brazil, Spain and Portugal might change things but at the moment the only real entertainment has been the Germans beating the aging Aussies. Mind you this hasn’t stopped me from watching two games every day. So still we wait for that moment of magic and the game to makes us go wow. Some SharePoint sites also lack flair so how can we make them more appealing?
With SharePoint the options really are endless. The use of video, audio and flash can so easily be added to add an extra dimension to any site. The very adaptable Content Editor Webpart can be used to add impact and flair. If your firewall doesn’t block YouTube then you can have access to millions of videos and almost certainly find one appropriate to you. All you need to do is copy the HTML code that you will find to the right of each video and paste it into the Source section of the inserted Content Editor Webpart. Not only can it be used for playing YouTube videos but all over the web for will find ‘Widgets’ and these also have code you can copy. Widgets are simple, fun, and useful applications that can be embedded on a webpage, blog, social networking page or for us SharePoint. Almost certainly you have already seen widgets, and used them, even if you didn’t know they were called ‘widgets’. You have probably seen a quiz or a game on a friend’s Facebook wall, well these are widgets. You may have seen countdowns to events, like the World Cup, on blogs or a YouTube playlist on your child’s MySpace page. All of these are widgets and they are great because they allow you to add customised content to your SharePoint with no coding knowledge necessary. All you need to do is insert that famous ‘Content Editor Webpart’. It works on WSS, MOSS 2007, SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010.
One of the best places to get thousands of different widgets from is Widget Box where you can take code from widgets including Calculators, Dancing Penguins, Arnold Schwarzenegger sayings, Simon Memory games, Site Translators, Cat Clocks, Weather Updates, Space Invaders, World Cup Updates and many more.
Talking World Cup, as another game reaches half-time disappointingly goal-less, if you Google ‘Fifa widgets’ you can find a range of interesting World Cup Widgets that you can be added to your SharePoint.
So don’t let your SharePoint resemble a France against Uruguay World Cup game use the Content Editor Webpart to add some video or a widget.
Time now for my second set of World Cup predictions. The ones last week were not too bad even if England didn’t quite manage that second goal. I am going to start with England to beat Algeria one-nil.
My other three predictions are;
Group D – Germany 0 Serbia 1
Group F – Italy 4 New Zealand 0
Group G – Brazil 2 Ivory Coast 1
If you haven’t got your FREE World Cup 2010 SharePoint template yet please visit http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=160
Come on England !!!
With SharePoint the options really are endless. The use of video, audio and flash can so easily be added to add an extra dimension to any site. The very adaptable Content Editor Webpart can be used to add impact and flair. If your firewall doesn’t block YouTube then you can have access to millions of videos and almost certainly find one appropriate to you. All you need to do is copy the HTML code that you will find to the right of each video and paste it into the Source section of the inserted Content Editor Webpart. Not only can it be used for playing YouTube videos but all over the web for will find ‘Widgets’ and these also have code you can copy. Widgets are simple, fun, and useful applications that can be embedded on a webpage, blog, social networking page or for us SharePoint. Almost certainly you have already seen widgets, and used them, even if you didn’t know they were called ‘widgets’. You have probably seen a quiz or a game on a friend’s Facebook wall, well these are widgets. You may have seen countdowns to events, like the World Cup, on blogs or a YouTube playlist on your child’s MySpace page. All of these are widgets and they are great because they allow you to add customised content to your SharePoint with no coding knowledge necessary. All you need to do is insert that famous ‘Content Editor Webpart’. It works on WSS, MOSS 2007, SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010.
One of the best places to get thousands of different widgets from is Widget Box where you can take code from widgets including Calculators, Dancing Penguins, Arnold Schwarzenegger sayings, Simon Memory games, Site Translators, Cat Clocks, Weather Updates, Space Invaders, World Cup Updates and many more.
Talking World Cup, as another game reaches half-time disappointingly goal-less, if you Google ‘Fifa widgets’ you can find a range of interesting World Cup Widgets that you can be added to your SharePoint.
So don’t let your SharePoint resemble a France against Uruguay World Cup game use the Content Editor Webpart to add some video or a widget.
Time now for my second set of World Cup predictions. The ones last week were not too bad even if England didn’t quite manage that second goal. I am going to start with England to beat Algeria one-nil.
My other three predictions are;
Group D – Germany 0 Serbia 1
Group F – Italy 4 New Zealand 0
Group G – Brazil 2 Ivory Coast 1
If you haven’t got your FREE World Cup 2010 SharePoint template yet please visit http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=160
Come on England !!!
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