SharePoint Server 2013 Installation and Configuration

In this article I will show how to install & configure SharePoint 2013 Preview.

We can install SharePoint either on a Physical Server or an Virtual Box, In either of the case we have to make sure at least we have minimum Hardware & Software needs for SP 2013 as provided in the technet article.

In this article I am going to explain on how we can create a SharePoint 2013 Virtual Image for development/evaluation purpose only. We need the following software's to setup:

1. Oracle Virtual Box or VM Player
2. Windows Server 2012 Preview Download
3. SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition Download
4. SharePoint 2013 Preview Download

While I am writing this blog on how I setup my virtual server using Oracle Virtual Box, I found another blog "SharePoint 2013 Development Image" where the blogger explained in much granular level. I will suggest to refer to this on how to setup SharePoint 2013.

I should have found this blog even before I capture the images during my setup which might saved lots of time for me :)

The only difference I did during my SharePoint setup is installing Pres-Requisites manually one by one as my environment is in Isolated network with no access to Internet (for some security reasons). I might have done this though the command prompt.

Following are some of the screen shots:

1.SharePoint 2013 Central Administration Screen Shot

2. SharePoint 2013 Site Collection Screen Shot

I found one interesting spelling mistake in the setting page as shown below:

Once I evaluate certain feature, I will share it in this blog.

Windows Server 2012 - A Quick View

When I am evaluating windows 8 especially its Metro UI, I was wondering how will be the Windows Server UI looks like. Recently I get a chance to Setup Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate for evaluating SQL Server 2012 features and SharePoint 2013 features.

Here are the some of the screen shots on how Windows Server 2012 looks, A complete different experience compared to previous editions.

1. Login Screen

2. Landing Screen 

3. After installing other software's likeSQL Server 2012 & SharePoint 2013, you are going to see many more tiles for easy access as shown in the following image:

 4. Server Manager Screen - Now it helps to do most of the admin operations from here itself.

I liked the way Microsoft moving towards Metro UI for all their Apps including Windows Server!

Tracking Web Page Load and Site Speed Using Google Analytics

Recently I came across one of the interesting feature "Track Page Load Time" in Google Analytics APIs.

This feature provides the metrics on the Page Load Time within the Site Speed Report. This gives us a good opportunity to identifying slow loading pages and fix them for improving the Search Engine Ranking as load time is one of the factor in the page ranking.

Following is the code snippet for capturing the Page Load Time:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview'],['_trackPageLoadTime']);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

Note that by default Site Speed Reports are not enabled. The function call _gaq.push['_trackPageLoadTime']) enables this report.

Windows 2008 R2 as a Virtual Server in Sun Virtual Box

Recently I am trying to setup Windows 2008 R2 as a Virtual Server using Sun Virtual Box on a Sony VAIO machine running Windows-7 64 bit version.

When ever I start the Virtual Server its keep on throwing an error as shown below:

"VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration has been enabled, but is not operational. You 64-bit guest will fail to detect a 64-bit CPU and will not be able to boot.

Please ensure that you have enabled vt-x/AMD-V properly in the BIOS of your host computer."

Then I restarted my machine and went into BIOS setting. Within the BIOS setting goto Intel Virtualization Technology (2nd Tab in BIOS setting), by default it is disable. We have to enable for this setting for making Virtualization to work.

I am using Sony VAIO model number PCG-71312L.

Silverlight 4 Training

Silverlight 4 training is available for download from Microsoft download site.

This training contains lots of Videos, Hands on labs which helps us to build the business applications.

Google Analytics on SharePoint

Seeing the title we might feel that what is the big deal in using Google Analytics on SharePoint content management sites, yes we can get the page views by just embedding few lines of code provided by Google Analytics site.

In the Current implementation we went with a different approach for providing flexibility to Content Authors to manage the Custom Variables, Events and so on...

At a high level following image shows you the flow:



At a high level we used following components in SharePoint which are the inputs to Google Analytics APIs

1. Custom Site Columns

There a set of site columns created for the publishing pages. Few of them are grouped with the group name called "MetaTagGroup". All the columns which are part of this group will be converted to Metatags.

We used a delegate control in SharePoint for generating these meta tags. For more info you can refer to the article on Meta tag generator

Following image shows the set of custom Site Columns mapped to MetaTagGroup



Now the content author has a flexibility to define the values for these Site Columns or Publishing page attribute which inturn converted Meta Tags and then passed to Google Analytics variables as explained in the next step.

2. Additional javascript layer on Google Analytics APIs

An additional javascript functions are created to call respective Google Analytics APIs. And also this javascript contains an array to map Meta tag name with the GA variables, Scope and their slots as shown below:

var arrGAVariables = [
{'GAVariable':'Segment-Type', 'MetaTagName':'Segment-Type', 'Scope':3, 'Slot':3},
{'GAVariable':'Target-Audience', 'MetaTagName':'Target-Audience', 'Scope':1, 'Slot':1},
{'GAVariable':'Business-Technology', 'MetaTagName':'Business-Technology', 'Scope':3, 'Slot':4}
];

Please feel free to contact me to get more insights on this implementation.

Work around for Disable offline folder in Outlook Client

Recently when I upgraded from outlook 2003 to outlook 2007 at work place (as part of Windows 7 upgradation - I know its too late to go with Win7, we cant help it as we have to adhere to corporate standards but not yet personal laptop :)), I am not able to make the existing pst file as the default for downloading the emails to local pst.

Following are the steps to change the default data file

1. Open Outlook Client -> File Menu -> Data File Management...

Before this step I added the existing outlook 2003 pst file using File Menu -> Open -> Outlook Data File (browse to the existing pst file).

2. Select the respective file in the data files popup window and click on "Set as Default" button.

When we select this option, it promts us to create a new outlook data file or disable the offline folder before setting as default data file.

Now to disable the offline use we can with the steps provided at the msdn article @

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/disable-an-offline-folder-file-ost-HP005242264.aspx

Now in the last step you will come to know that the "Disable Offline Use" button is always disable with out allowing us to change.

Basicalling this complete issue happens when your pst file is in the "Outlook 97-2002 Personal Folders File" format. The easiest work arond for this problem is by creating a new pst file in Outlook Client 2007 and import the content from the existing pst file. It took around 10 mins for 1.5 GB pst file.

After importing you can make it as a default data file for downloading the emails to local pst file.