When initially setting up new Recovery Services on Windows Azure for the Azure Online Backup service, you are asked to provide a certificate that will be used to manage the identity of the servers allowed to back up to the specified vault. You have the option to either purchase a certificate, or create a self-signed certificate.

We found that the default instructions provided for creating a self-signed certificate are incomplete. If you create a self-signed certificate with an expiration date over 3 years, Azure will reject your certificate, but not tell you why.

To have your self-signed certificate accepted by the Azure Online Backup service, you must specify an expiration date of less than 3 years, and include the other parameters in the example below. Replace the highlighted sections with the information specific to your certificate:

makecert.exe -r -pe -n CN=CertificateName -ss my -sr localmachine -eku 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.2 -len 2048 -e 01/01/2016 CertificateName.cer

For better instructions and details on managing certificates for the backup service, we recommend referencing the following page found on the MSDN web site:

Recovery Services: Upload Certificates to the Vault

The Microsoft Office IT Pro Blog has recently posted a list of all Office Web Apps for SharePoint 2010 updates since SP1 and the July 2011 updates. They also provide guidance on the order in which they should be applied.

You may want to review the updates for any fixes or enhancements that your SharePoint 2010 farm needs.

The March 2013 Public Update was recently released for SharePoint Server 2013. The update includes several fixes, as well as required changes to the package configuration introduced after SharePoint Server 2013 RTM to allow for future updates to be applied to a SharePoint Server 2013 installation / farm. As such, this is essentially a mandatory installation for all SharePoint 2013 installations.

The description and information can be found on the official Microsoft KB (2767999) article, or on Stefan Goßner’s blog.

Note that the guidelines also include additional steps for installing the March 2013 PU on servers where the search component is installed and where high availability search topologies are enabled. The former would include small farm installations, where all components are on one server.

Below is a screenshot walkthrough of installing the March 2013 PU on a SharePoint Server 2013 RTM installation, in a lab environment.

Update Steps

Per the guidance provided in the additional steps, the following Services were placed in a Stopped state and disabled to allow for proper installation. Note the recommended order in which the services must be stopped:

1. SharePoint Timer Service (SPTimerV4)
2. SharePoint Server Search 15 (OSearch15)
3. SharePoint Search Host Controller (SPSearchHostController)

The next step is to run the 1.7GB (whew!) update file for March 2013:

At this point, you can restart the services in the following order:

1. SharePoint Search Host Controller (SPSearchHostController)
2. SharePoint Server Search 15 (OSearch15)
3. SharePoint Timer Service (SPTimerV4)

Next, run the SharePoint 2013 Products and Configuration Wizard to complete the update:

Verification Steps

Per the instructions for verifying database upgrades, we can then access Central Administration, and view the “Upgrade Status” page, and see that it was successful:

We can also access the “Servers in the Farm” page in Central Administration, and see that the configuration database version is now 15.0.4481.1005, which is the version number corresponding with the March 2013 Public Update:

If you have multiple servers, you can also view the “Check Product and Patch Installation Status” page, and verify that each server in the farm has been updated:

Additional Updates

There are also additional updates for the following that may apply to your installation:

• Office Web Apps Server 2013 (KB2760445)
• Service Bus 1.0 CU (KB2799752)
• Workflow Manager 1.0 CU (KB2799754)

The RTM versions of the following software are now available for download on MSDN:

• SharePoint Server 2013
• Office Web Apps 2013
• Office Professional Plus 2013
• Visio Professional 2013
• Project Professional 2013

If you need help with your SharePoint Server upgrade or deployment plan, we would be happy to provide our services. The Deliveron SharePoint Adoption Strategy will align the new SharePoint 2013 functionality with your specific business needs and challenges. Contact us today!

If you have a need to add User Profile property mappings for import / export with Active Directory, or some other Synchronization Connection, you can use the PowerShell script made available from Tehnoon Raza on his MSDN blog:

Mapping User Profile Properties in SharePoint 2010 to LDAP Attributes

This can sometimes be quicker than going through the Central Administration UI.

- TechNet: Module 2: SharePoint 2013 system requirements (PowerPoint)

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Web and Application Servers

Database Servers

Minimum Software Requirements

Microsoft officially announced the new versions of Office and SharePoint today, unveiling version 2013 of each product.

While the announcement contained highlights on tighter integration and new offerings with Office 365, the new versions of on-premise downloads were also made available:

Download the Preview Versions:

• Office Professional Plus 2013 Preview Release
• SharePoint Server 2013 Preview Release
• SharePoint Foundation 2013 Preview Release
• Office Web Apps 2013 Preview Release
• SharePoint Designer 2013 Preview Release

Microsoft has also provided a SharePoint 2013 Preview Upgrade Process.

Microsoft OneNote is a fantastic tool to take meeting notes in. With the auto-save and unstructured formatting, it can be an excellent way to capture ideas and thoughts around topics during a meeting.

A quick time-saver tip is to have OneNote automatically populate the meeting details from Outlook at the beginning of your notes for future reference.

In the Ribbon menu, click the Meeting Details button:

You will then be presented with a list of all of your scheduled meetings for that day. You can select from that list, or, if the meeting is in the future and you are planning ahead, click “Choose Meeting from Another Day…” You can then choose the day, select the meeting, and click Insert:

OneNote will grab the meeting details from Outlook, including the subject, date and location, attendees and any included agenda, and populate the page:

OneNote even adds the “Notes” header at the bottom, so you are ready to start typing. Enjoy!

Occasionally, there may be a need to show additional file icons for different file types in SharePoint as different business areas work with different types of content. In this scenario, we will add a specific icon for Adobe Photoshop files (.psd).

Out of the box, SharePoint 2010 has a generic icon to display for Photoshop files in our example farm:

To add a more specific icon, we only need to do a couple of steps…

• First, find an icon that represents the document type. The icon should be in a web-ready format (png, gif, jpg), and sized to approximately 16x16 pixels. In this example, we will use a png file:

• Then, copy the file to the following directory to one of your front-end web servers. The following steps will need to be done on each front-end server. The file should be copied to the <14Hive>\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\ directory. In our example farm, using a default install location, the directory is:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\

• Next, open the docIcon.xml file located in the 14Hive under TEMPLATE\XML. Again, in our example farm, the location is:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML\

• Find the <ByExtension> element, and add the following line inside of it:

<Mapping Key="psd" Value="psd-small.png"/>

If you already have an existing entry, just modify the value attribute to match the new icon.

• Finally, perform an IISReset to have SharePoint pick up the changes. We now see the new icon in place:

If you have a need to search through a SharePoint 2010 site collection and provide a report on all existing e-mail or SMS Alerts, you can use the following PowerShell script (watch for word wrapping on lines 9, 10, 11, and 12):

   1:  Add-PSSnapin microsoft.sharepoint.powershell

   2:   

   3:  $site = Get-SPSite "http://dlvrn2010/sites/spalerts/"

   4:  $alertResultsCollection = @()

   5:  foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs) {  

   6:      foreach ($alert in $web.Alerts){

   7:          $alertURL = $web.URL + "/" + $alert.ListUrl

   8:          $alertResult = New-Object PSObject

   9:          $alertResult | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name "List URL" 
       -value $alertURL

  10:          $alertResult | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name "Alert Title" 

       -value $alert.Title

  11:          $alertResult | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name "Alert Type"
       -value $alert.AlertType

  12:          $alertResult | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -name "Subscribed User"

       -value $alert.User

  13:          $alertResultsCollection += $alertResult

  14:      }

  15:  }

  16:  $site.Dispose()

  17:  $alertResultsCollection

  18:   

  19:  ## Export to CSV

  20:  #$alertResultsCollection | Export-CSV "Alerts.csv"

Using the defaults, it will output a table representation of the Alerts it found:

If you uncomment line 20, it will create a CSV file of the same data:

You can quickly format it to a prettier, sortable report in Excel 2010 by formatting it as a table: