Configuring Multiple Authentication Providers for SharePoint 2007

 

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) V3 contains several new features around authentication and authorization that make it easier to develop and deploy solutions in Internet facing environments, especially extranets. In the previous version of WSS, all security principals needed to resolve at some point to a Windows identity – either a user account or group. WSS V3 is built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework, which allows the use of forms-based authentication (FBA) to authenticate users into the system. By riding on top of ASP.NET 2.0's pluggable authentication provider model, you can now support users stored in Active Directory as well as SQL Server, an LDAP directory, or any other directory that has an ASP.NET 2.0 Membership provider. Although WSS V3 will not ship with any Membership providers, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 will include an LDAP V3 Membership provider, and ASP.NET 2.0 includes a SQL Server provider. But if you want to use a directory and can't find a Membership provider for it, you can write your own! This is a key technology enabler for heterogeneous environments.

 

In a typical extranet environment, content will have two points of access: one on the intranet for employee use and the other on the extranet, where trusted partners can access specific sites, lists and libraries or individual items. Listed below are the WSS V3 features that support this scenario -- some are new while others are just terminology changes:

         Web Application: A web application is what was called a virtual server in the previous version of SharePoint. A single web application only supports a single authentication provider, such as Windows, Forms, etc.

         Zones: A zone is a way to map multiple web applications to a single set of content databases. It is also can be a division of authentication providers. For example, you can create a new web application, create a content database and configure it to use Windows authentication. You can then create a second web application and map it to the first. When you do that you need to assign a zone with which the second web application is associated, such as Intranet, Internet, Custom, or Extranet. The second web application can also use a completely different authentication mechanism, such as forms.

         Policies: A policy is useful in a number of different scenarios, including configuring a web application for forms authentication. It allows you to create policies to grant full access, read only access, deny write access or deny all access to a user or group on a web application. This policy grant applies to all sites in the web application, and it overrides any permissions established within individual sites, lists or items.

         Alternate Access Mappings: In the previous version of SharePoint, it wasn't as important in an extranet scenario to create an alternate access mapping (AAM) because SharePoint would look to IIS to get some of that information. In WSS V3, it's imperative to use AAM or things just flat out won't work. AAM is a way to define the different URL namespaces that are associated with a set of content databases. It effectively manages the zones relationship described above.

         Authentication Providers: So far I've described how WSS V3 uses the ASP.NET 2.0 pluggable authentication provider model using the Membership provider interface. As well, SharePoint also supports the Role provider interface, which enables you to surface attributes, such as group membership, about your users as well.

 

At a high level, creating an extranet solution in WSS V3 requires you to do the following steps. I'll walk through them briefly and then dive into more detail below. Since MOSS 2007 is built on top of WSS V3, all of the information below applies to MOSS as well. For this scenario, assume that you want to have an intranet style site used internally by your corporate users. They are all joined to your corporate Active Directory. In addition, you have a number of trusted partners to which you wish to give access via the Internet. Note that in this scenario I will not be touching on any aspects of securing your site with firewalls, proxy servers, segmented networks, DMZ Active Directory designs, security best practices around farm configuration, etc. You can read all about that in Joel's recent blog entry here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/08/08/691540.aspx.

 

The process you would go through to build out such a site would be as follows.

1. After installing WSS V3 (or MOSS 2007) and having configured all of the services and servers in the farm, create a new web application. By default this will be configured to use Windows authentication and will be the entry point through which your intranet users will access the site. We'll refer to this site as http://intranet. Next, create a second web application. When you create the web application, select the option to Extend an existing Web Application. When you create your second web application, map it to the Extranet zone. Give it a Host Header name that you will configure in DNS for your extranet users to resolve against. We'll refer to this site as http://extranet.contoso.com.
   
   
2. If you haven't created and populated your directory of FBA users who will be accessing the site via the extranet, then you should do so at this time. For this scenario we'll assume that you are using FBA with the SQL Server Membership and Role providers that are included with ASP.NET 2.0.
   
   
3. Manually modify the web.config for the extranet site and add in the information about your Membership and Role provider (the Role provider is technically optional, but most implementations will use it). Add this same information into the web.config for the Central Administration site. Save both config files and do an IISRESET.
   
   
4. In the Central Admin site, go to the Application Management page and select the Policy for Web Application link. Add a user from your SQL Server directory to the Extranet zone for your web application. You should be able to type in the user name and resolve it, or use the People Picker dialog to search and find the user name. If everything is configured correctly then SharePoint will be able to resolve the user name you add. Give the user account Full access to the web application.
   
   
5. Navigate to the site using either entry point -- Windows or Forms-based authentication. If you use FBA, then you will need to sign in with the credentials of the user that was granted full access rights via policy. After you navigate to the site, go into Site Settings, People and Groups. From there you can add both Windows and forms users and groups to SharePoint Site Groups. Your users should now be able to access the site.
   

 

Now let's look at some of the above steps in more detail. Creating the web applications should be fairly straightforward using Central Administration, so I won't spend any time on that. The key takeaway here is that when you create the second web application, you need to make sure that you select the option to Extend an existing Web Application and map it to the Extranet zone. Also remember to give it a Host Header name that is in your external DNS – this is the URL that external users will use to access the site via the Internet.

 

Next, you need to create the aspnetdb database used for storing membership and role information if you don't have one already set up. To create the database, do the following:

1. Open a command prompt and change to the .NET Framework directory (by default, it's C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727).
   
   
2. Run the following command: aspnet_regsql -A all –E
   
   
3. This will create the aspnetdb database on the local SQL Server. If you wish to install it on a different server, then run aspnet_regsql /? to determine the appropriate switch to use.
   

If you are creating your SQL Server provider database for the first time you will also need to create one or more users and optionally, one or more roles. These will be the security principals that you add to the Policy for the extranet web application as well as the SharePoint Site Groups. There are multiple ways to do this and a quick search on the web will highlight some of those tools and methods. That's a bit out of scope for this already lengthy blog, so I'll continue on and assume that you've already created the users and roles for your SharePoint site.

 

Now we have our web applications as well as users and roles created in SQL Server, so we need to configure the web.config for the extranet and Central Administration web applications. The first step is to look for a connectionStrings element; if it doesn't exist then you can add it below the </SharePoint> and above the <system.web> elements. The new element should look like the following:

 

<add name="AspNetSqlProvider" connectionString="server=yourSqlServerName; database=aspnetdb; Trusted_Connection=True" />

 

You'll want to take note of the name attribute above, because you will use that attribute name when configuring the Membership and Role providers. Add that information as follows:

 

1. Open the web.config file for your extranet web application in a text editor such as Notepad.
   
   
2. Add your connectionString element described above as the last item in the connectionStrings section in the web.config file.
   
   
3. Add the Membership and Role configuration information to the web.config file. It must be added below the <system.web> element and should look like the following:
   

   <membership defaultProvider="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider">
   

   <providers>
   

   <remove name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" />
   

   <add connectionStringName="AspNetSqlProvider" passwordAttemptWindow="10" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="false" passwordFormat="Hashed" description="Stores and retrieves membership data from the Microsoft SQL Server database" name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
   

   </providers>
   

   </membership>
   

    
    

   <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="AspNetSqlRoleProvider">
   

   <providers>
   

   <remove name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" />
   

   <add connectionStringName="AspNetSqlProvider" applicationName="/" description="Stores and retrieves roles data from the local Microsoft SQL Server database" name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
   

   </providers>
   

   </roleManager>
   

4. Save and close the web.config file.
   

The name attributes of the Membership and Role providers are highlighted above. You need to note what these names are because you will enter them in Central Administration when you configure FBA for the site.

 

You also need to make the same exact changes to the web.config for the Central Administration site, with one minor exception. The roleManager element for the extranet web application looks like the following:

<roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="AspNetSqlRoleProvider">

 

You need to change this line to read as follows:

<roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider">

 

This change is necessary because the Central Administration site still uses Windows authentication for the role provider -- that's why the AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider is set as the default provider.

 

Now you need to configure the Authentication provider for the extranet web application to use FBA. Open your browser and navigate to your farm's Central Administration site, click on Application Management and then on Authentication Providers. Make sure that you are working on the web application for which you wish to enable FBA. (If the correct application is not already pre-selected, click the Change button in the upper right hand corner of the page to select the application.)

 

You should see a list of two zones that are mapped for this web application; both should say Windows. Click on the link that says Windows for the web application in the Extranet zone and do the following:

1. In the Authentication Type section, click on the Forms radio button. The page will post back and expose two new edit boxes.
   
   
2. In the Membership provider name edit box, type in the name of your web application's Membership provider for the current zone. That is the value that was highlighted in the defaultProvider attribute of the Membership element above.
   
   
3. In the Role manager name edit box, type in the name of your web application's Role provider. That is the value that was highlighted in the defaultProvider attribute of the roleManager element above.
   
   
4. Click the Save button.
   

Your extranet web application is now configured to use FBA. However, until users, who will be accessing the site via FBA, are given permissions for the site, it will be inaccessible to them. To do this, you could go directly to the default zone (i.e. http://intranet) of the site, login with your Windows credentials, and add the FBA users. However, I'll describe an alternative approach because it's the one that you are most likely to use if you ever configure an application that only has one web application, which uses FBA.

 

To get started, open your browser and navigate to your farm's Central Administration site. Click on Application Management and then click on Policy for Web Application. Make sure that you are working on the extranet web application. Do the following steps:

1. Click on Add Users.
   
   
2. In the Zones drop down, select the appropriate Extranet zone. IMPORTANT: If you select the incorrect zone, you may not be able to resolve user names. Hence, the zone you select must match the zone of the web application that is configured to use FBA.
   
   
3. Click the Next button.
   
   
4. In the Users edit box, type the name of the FBA user whom you wish to have full control for the site.
   
   
5. Click the Resolve link next to the Users edit box. If the web application's FBA information has been configured correctly, the name will resolve and become underlined.
   
   
6. Check the Full Control checkbox.
   
   
7. Click the Finish button.
   

 

That's it -- that's all of the configuration needed! You can now navigate to either web application: http://intranet or http://extranet.contoso.com. Irrespective of which entry point you use, you can add, search and resolve both Windows and FBA users and groups and add them to SharePoint Site Groups. The People Picker is smart enough to know about all of the web applications that are mapped to the site and will try all of the authentication providers that those applications use.

 

Lastly, there are two other things for you to remember:

1. Resolving group names: The People Picker can only do wildcard searches for Windows group names. If you have a SQL Role provider group called "Readers" and enter "Read" in the People Picker search dialog, it will not find your group; if you enter "Readers" it will. This is not a bug -- the Role provider just doesn't provide a good way to do wildcard group searching.
   
   
2. Use Policies sparingly: The concept described above for adding a user or group via the web application Policy should only be used to provide a way for an FBA administrator to access the site. Policies are very coarsely grained compared to the fine grain permissions that can be configured and granted within individual sites, lists and items. Once you've added your site administrator via Policy, all other users and groups should be added from within the site itself.
   

 

Admittedly, there are many steps involved in configuring multiple authentication providers for SharePoint, but I hope that by having read this blog entry, you now understand the reasoning behind each of the steps involved and are in a better position to implement or troubleshoot this particular SharePoint configuration.

 

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SharePoint Site Migration Manager Supported Features

Last Updated: September 9, 2009 SSMM Build: 3.6.25

Migration Feature	Support Status	Service Install
List Migration	Supported
Metadata Migration	Supported (more...)	Yes
Document Libraries	Supported
Document Library and List Version History	Supported (more...)	Yes
Alerts	Supported (more...)	Yes
List Items with Attachments	Supported
Mapping List Names During Migration	Supported
Global Navigation	Supported (more...)	Yes
Incremental Migration	Supported
Incremental Migration by Date	Supported
Form Libraries	Supported
Issues Lists	Supported (more...)
Audiences	Supported (more...)
Surveys	Supported	Yes
List Properties	Supported
Discussion Boards	Supported	Yes
Calendars and Events	Supported
User Created Document Library Views and List Views	Supported (more...)
Personal Views	Unsupported
Link Lists (with the option to update URLs)	Supported
Image Libraries	Supported
Split Lists/Libraries or Consolidate	Supported
Migration of List/Library Items to New Target Lists/Libraries	Supported
Pages Library Versions	Comming Soon!
E-mail Enabled Document Libraries	Supported	Yes
Preserving and Updating Document Approval status	Supported	Yes
List Export to File System	Supported
Renaming Lists During Migration	Supported
Column Mapping During Migration	Supported (more...)
Remove Columns During Migration	Supported
Filtered List Migration	Supported
Custom Lists	Supported
Content Types	Supported (more...)
Custom Site Columns	Supported (more...)
Find/Replace on List/Library Column Data	Supported
Portal Listings	Supported
Folders	Supported (more...)
Subfolders	Supported
Items	Supported
Filtered List Item Migration	Supported
Look Up fields	Supported
Workflows	Unsupported
Pending Issue Item	Unsupported
User Migration	Supported (more...)
User Mapping Across Active Directory Domains	Supported (more...)
List Security	Supported
Security Groups	Supported (more...)
Library Security	Supported
Site Security	Supported
Sub-site Security	Supported
Item Security	Unsupported
Roles	Supported
Site Migration	Supported
MySites	Supported (more...)	Yes
Filtered MySites Copying	Supported (more...)	Yes
Publishing Sites	Supported (more...)
Publishing Web Pages	Supported	Yes
Wikis	Supported
Blogs	Supported
Multi-tabbed Meeting Workspaces	Supported (more...)
Recurring Meeting Workspaces	Supported (more...)
Site Collection Browsing	Supported (more...)	Yes
Site Collection Creation	Supported	Yes
Site Collection Copying	Supported	Yes
Site Promotion to Site Collection	Supported	Yes
Bucket Web Link Correction	Supported (more...)
Custom Templates	Supported (more...)
Template Mapping	Supported (more...)
Master Pages	Supported
Web Parts	Supported (more...)
Web Part View Customizations	Supported (more...)
SharePoint Server Site Viewer	Supported
Batch Copy	Supported
Migration Activity Logging	Supported
Command Line Execution	Supported

Note: The "Service" column indicates whether the features require installing the Metalogix Extensions Service (the service ships with SharePoint Site Migration Manager). Most features that use the service require that it to be installed on the target SharePoint server.

Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager will copy the default.aspx page, as well as all non-web part page files that are stored on the root of a SharePoint site.

Your input is valuable to us. If you have a feature suggestion or request, please e-mail them to support@metalogix.com.

Comments

Metadata
You can copy documents and many types of list items to a target machine that does not have the Metalogix service installed, but the four edit information fields will not be preserved. The four edit information fields are:
Created: The date and time that the list item was created.
Modified: The date and time that the list item was last modified.
Created By: The user who created the list item.
Modified By: The user who last modified the list item.
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Document Library and List Version History
Versions of custom list items are now supported when migrating from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 to MOSS 2007. Versions of documents in document libraries are also supported. The number of versions to migrate can also be set, so that the last "x" number of versions will migrate.
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Alerts
Alerts may only be copied to MOSS 2007 sites. Site users who have alerts copied over will receive email notification(s) that the copied alert(s) have been created on the target site. Weadvise that alerts not be copied to lists/libraries that have been modified/created within five minutes of the alert copy. Doing so increases the risk that users will receive unnecessary alert e-mails pertaining to the list modifications made prior to the alert-copy. This feature requires that the latest version of the extension service be running on both the source and target servers. The evaluation version of SharePoint Site Migration Manager cannot alerts.
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Global Navigation
SharePoint Site Migration Manager can copy both the Global Navigation (the top bar navigation) as well as the Quick launch navigation. We recommend copying the navigation after the content has been migrated because, in some instances, areas of the site can have their navigation copied before the rest of the site, resulting in incorrect navigation. Performing the navigation cope after the site copy eliminates this issue. This requires the latest version of the extension service running on both the source and target servers.
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Issue Lists
When copying an Issue list that has versioning, the content approval settings of each list item will be set to "Pending," and all approver comments will be retained. If versioning is not turned on for Issue lists then the "Approved" and "Pending" status of items will be preserved, however, any "Rejected" items will have their status changed to "Pending." Once Issue lists are copied user won't be able to migrate and new or modified items to the list, or append items to it. The Issue list would have to be copied again using the "Overwrite existing lists" option.
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Audiences
Audience settings of SharePoint V2 web parts can be mapped when they are being copied to MOSS 2007. MOSS 2007 audience settings are also mapped.
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User Created Document Library Views and List Views
Calendar views need to be manually configured.
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Content Types
SharePoint Site Migration Manager will associate custom content types if they have been created on the target server.
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Custom Site Columns
SharePoint Site Migration Manager does support the copy and creation of custom site columns, but only has this ability at the item level. It is possible to add a column to the Base Columns group with this ability, however, users should be very careful when doing so, as they can be extremely difficult to remove, and these added columns can impact the target server greatly. It is also possible to migrate site column contents, above the item level. However,the custom site columns must first be created on the target server or site, then SSMM can then map and migrate the content of these custom columns.
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Column Mapping
Column mapping is available during item-level copy operations -- other options are coming soon.
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Folders
Folders created under MOSS 2007 Custom Lists are now supported. Folder Metadata can also be migrated, but the four main Metadata edit information fields (Created, Created By, Modified, Modified By) will not be preserved unless the Metalogix Extension Service is installed. It is also possible to map columns during a Folder level migration.
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Users
If the SIDs do not match, SharePoint Site Migration Manager will attempt to map by string. Migrating all user information from MOSS 2007 to MOSS 2007 requires having the Metalogix service on both the source and target servers.
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Cross Domain Users
If you want to migrate users across domains without a trust, please contact Metalogix for more information.
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Security Groups
When migrating from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007, site groups will map to MOSS permissions and cross site groups will map to MOSS security groups. Permission levels can also be migrated, either seperately as a pre-migration step, or as a part of a site or site collection migration.
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MySites
MySite copying requires the Metalogix service on the target and source servers.
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Publishing Sites
Master pages are now supported.
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Multi-tabbed Meeting Workspaces
Migration of custom tabs in multi-tabbed meeting workspaces is supported. SharePoint Site Migration Manager migrates Web Parts on the default tabs.
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Recurring Meeting Workspaces
Recurring meeting workspaces based off of recurring calendar items, must be re-created manually in order to get the left-side date navigation. Content can be migrated over accurately.
back to table

Site Collection Browsing
Source-side site collection browsing is supported if the Metalogix SharePoint Extensions Service is installed and running on the source server.
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Bucket Web Link Correction
This is supported as a site copy option, and works in almost all cases. However, there are a few exceptions (e.g., bucket web links inside content editor web parts).
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Custom Templates
This includes conversion to custom site definitions.
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Template Mapping
SharePoint 2003 custom/default site templates can be mapped to SharePoint 2007 custom/default templates.
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Web Parts
Custom (third-party) Web Part binaries must be installed on the target server prior to migration.
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Web Part View Customizations
SSMM will preserve list view web part views when copying web parts. SharePoint Site Migration Manager cannot preserve view type, but this is a rare case (e.g., with calendar views that are not common).
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SharePoint Site Migration Manager/ Website Migration Manager

SharePoint Site Migration Manager Build 3.6.31 (Beta) Published

(Build, SharePoint Site Migration Manager, Upgrade) Permanent link

 
 

This new Beta version of SharePoint Site Migration Manager (SSMM) contains a few new features and fixes, as well as those from the previous Beta (version 3.6.30).

The main new features of note for this build include:

• Ability to Authenticate using PKI Certificates. (New!)
  
• Ability to correct the Preview image link when copying master page gallery. (New!)
  
• Site level - Permission Levels Copy. This can be done as a pre-migration step, or as a part of a normal site level copy.
  
• Ability to bypass the user info additions when copying metadata.
  
• Ability to copy alerts as a part on the full migration using an XML override method.
  
• Ability for group mapping to account for group names.
  
• Items migrated through the use of the "Drag and Drop" feature will now be logged.
  
• Folder level copies will now include column mapping.
  
• Ability to preserve column mapping on sub-folders.
  
• "Explicit inclusion" as well as "Wildcard inclusion" denied managed paths are now selectable in a site collection copy.
  

Of note among these Features is the new ability to include PKI certificates when connecting to a site or server. This feature will allow SSMM to use these client side certificates whenever it contacts the site or server using the credentials that are entered.

Also of note is the ability to copy Permission Levels as a part of a normal Site copy. This feature helps remove the creation or copy of Permission Levels to the target site as a pre-migration step, and allows users to copy them at the same time as the rest of the site content.

Some of the more notable bug fixes include:

• A fix for "Index out of bounds" errors when copying Document Libraries with versions and user columns. (New!)
  
• Tool bars in list view web part will now be preserved. (New!)
  
• Fixes to the content type feature.
  
• A site permission copy bug.
  
• A column mapping bug.
  
• Some MySite bugs.
  
• Wiki page migration bugs.
  
• Setting the maximum number of versions on the target site now works at the site level.
  
• Ability to preserve version numbers when versions have been deleted.
  
• A fix for versions in Pages libraries and Wiki libraries.
  

We have also started basic localization changes of SSMM, for Japanese, in this Beta.

For a full list please see the Build Notes.

Note that this build uses a newer version of the Metalogix SharePoint Extensions Service (v. 3.2.17).

Details: Download SharePoint Site Migration Manager Builds.

Download your Free trial now!

Posted by Metalogix at 11/3/2009 9:08 AM Comments (0)

Michael Gannotti Interview at SPC09

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With over 31,000 followers, SharePoint social media expert Michael Gannotti (@gannotti) is one of the most prolific tweeters/bloggers in the SharePoint community.

During Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009, Mike came by and did two interviews with us at the Metalogix booth.

In the first interview, we talk about Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager and how it makes upgrade to SharePoint 2010 a whole lot easier. Migration and upgrade to SharePoint 2010 was also the topic of the Metalogix session at SPC 2009 (presented by our CTO, Julien Sellgren and Stephen Cawood).

Posted by cawood at 10/27/2009 6:55 PM Comments (0)

Website Migration Manager Build 3.3.52 (Beta) Published

(Build, Upgrade, Website Migration Manager) Permanent link

There is a New Beta release of Website Migration Manager available for download on the Builds page.

This Beta contains a number of improvements, and bug fixes as compared to the previous Release Build. The main features and improvements of note are:

• Link correction for Word and Excel documents. The Link correction now supports the correction of the links within Word and Excel files.
  
• An Updated workflow for extracting content from HTML pages.
  
• Migrate Source URL option is now checked by default (for link correction).
  
• A re-worked and updated ability to migrate content through a command line.
  
• Ability to choose the location target to migrate in items related resources (attachments and/or images).
  
• Improved Error handling.
  
• Improved abilities for "Strip XML Node" actions.
  
• Ability to map content into Content Editor and Summary Link Web Parts.
  

There has also been some improvement through over twenty bug fixes from the previous Release version of WMM (v. 3.3.35). Some of the more notable bug fixes include:

• Populating Document Library hierarchies during a document migration with special characters.
  
• CSV import issues.
  
• Custom Page Layouts will now populate in the migration options dialog.
  
• RegEx and Text searches will now authenticate against URLs where authentication is required.
  
• Improved CSV importing and exporting issues.
  

Note that this build also includes an update for the Metalogix SharePoint Extensions Service (V 3.2.08)

Details: Download FileShare Migration Manager Builds

Download your FREE Trial Now!

Posted by Metalogix at 10/14/2009 3:42 PM Comments (0)

FileShare Migration Manager Build 3.3.14 (Beta) Published

(Build, Upgrade, FileShare Migration Manager) Permanent link

There is a new Beta version of FileShare Migration Manager available for download on the Builds page.

This build includes some new features and improvements, such as:

• Link correction for Word and Excel documents. The Link correction now supports the correction of the links within Word and Excel files.
  
• An Updated workflow for extracting content from HTML pages.
  
• A re-worked and updated ability to migrate content through a command line.
  
• Ability to choose the location target to migrate in items related resources (attachments and/or images).
  
• Improved Error handling
  
• Improved abilities for "Strip XML Node" actions.
  

Some of the more notable Bug fixes include:

• Populating Document Library hierarchies during a document migration with special characters.
  
• CSV import issues.
  
• Custom Page Layouts will now populate in the migration options dialog.
  
• RegEx and Text searches will now authenticate against URLs where authentication is required.
  
• Improved CSV importing issues.
  

Note that this build also includes an update for the Metalogix SharePoint Extensions Service (V 3.2.08)

Details: Download FileShare Migration Manager Builds

Download a FREE Trial Now!

Posted by Metalogix at 10/14/2009 3:37 PM Comments (0)

Metalogix Selective Restore Manager Pro Gets Top Marks

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Metalogix Selective Restore Manager (SRM) Pro was recently reviewed at SharePoint Reviews, by Mike Ferrara, and received a 5 out of 5 rating!

Mike, who is the owner of Ferrara Data Consulting, a web development company in South Florida that specializes in SharePoint consulting, wrote "Selective Restore Manager (SRM) Pro enables farm admins to quite easily restore site collections, sites, libraries, lists, documents, items and any other SharePoint content you can think of without the use of a recovery farm." He even had a hard time finding anything to criticize in the product, writing "It did everything that I needed it to do, and it plugged a big hole for me when needing to restore documents quickly."

The staff at Metalogix are very pleased to get such a great review, and are working hard to maintain a high quality of excellence!

Read the full review of Metalogix Selective Restore Manager here.

Posted by Metalogix at 10/5/2009 10:03 AM Comments (0)

Search Engine Optimization for SharePoint Publishing Sites with Website Migration Manager

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When transitioning from an existing web content management system to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, most organizations focus on leveraging SharePoint's rich publishing, document management, collaboration and metadata features. One area they often overlook during migration, however, is search engine optimization (SEO).  Although Metalogix Website Migration Manager is primarily used to move HTML and document content, along with metadata, to MOSS publishing sites, it can also help customers to adopt SEO best practices for their entire site very quickly.

SEO entails configuring site structure, navigation, page content, metadata and labels to improve search engine relevance and ranking. The goal is to make it easier for customers and partners to find you through search engines such as Bing and Google.

Microsoft has created a whitepaper on SEO optimization that drills down on specific SEO tactics that can improve search engine relevance for MOSS sites.  It can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721591.aspx

The Microsoft whitepaper gives a great overview of some core SEO best practices. This post addresses how Metalogix Website Migration Manager can help implement these tactics. Here is a high-level summary of the key tactics that can help improve search relevance:

1.      Use accurate keywords in your page <TITLE> tag
2.      Use descriptive headings for pages that include relevant keywords (<H1>, <H2>, etc. tags)
3.      Use descriptive text for site labels (navigation structure) that include relevant keywords
4.      Set ALT and TITLE attributes for image tags
5.      Simplify the site structure to avoid deep site hierarchies
6.      Use valid HTML or XHTML
7.      Use proper semantic HTML tags including Heading tags, List tags.
8.      Use permanent redirects to inform search engines of navigation changes
 
Following these guidelines manually requires substantial effort and forces editors to modify content pages one at a time and rebuild site structures. With Website Migration Manager, the MOSS implementation team can tackle these activities efficiently and automate migration tasks at the same time.
 
Getting started – Create a site inventory and review titles and keywords
A good place to start is creating a site inventory using the website crawling engine built into Website Migration Manager. When the crawl is complete, you immediately identify which pages are lacking page titles and keywords by browsing the project datasheet

  

Create a Site Inventory Video
Check for Heading tags and ensure that Img tags have Alt attributes
Using Website Migration Manager's XPath toolset, you can quickly query all web pages for their heading and head tag (<HEAD>) content. You can use the following query //H1 to extract the H1 content in your project database. Repeat this process for H2, H3 etc.  You can also check to see if Alt tags are set on Image tags with this query //img[@alt=""], which is a good SEO practice.

Once you have this data, you can answer an important question: Are your pages leveraging heading tags?   Or are they using formatting tags to visually represent relevance? If heading tags are not being used, you can flag offending pages for more detailed analysis and amelioration. Website Migration Manager can assist in refactoring HTML to correspond to semantic standards that help search engines index content accurately.  More on this below.

  

Using XPath to Check Your HTML Video

Leverage Excel to update SEO relevant metadata
After you have looked at the extracted data, you can export the content to Excel and edit it there. This is particularly useful as you can circulate the spreadsheet to a larger audience so they can fill in the blanks and update inaccurate data. Although this is a straightforward task for keywords and titles, cleaning and optimizing HTML can often be easier when you use SharePoint's content editing features or Website Migration Manager's action framework. When you finish editing, you can re-import the SEO-optimized metadata into the project database and map it to SharePoint.

Define and create an optimized site structure automatically
One of the great features that Website Migration Manager offers is the ability to  easily create or customize a SharePoint site structure. The best way to quickly define a site structure in SharePoint is to start with a flat list of paths in Website Migration Manager. You can automatically extract these paths from your existing site structure at crawl time, edit them manually using Excel, or pull them out of your HTML content using XPath queries.  If a given site structure does not already exist in SharePoint at migration time, Website Migration Manager will create it automatically. You can specify a site description, site properties and what site template you want to use in the project database. It is important to remember that the value in this exercise is to use keyword-rich site labels and to adopt a structure that enables end users and search crawlers to find your content easily. It is also worth noting that you can implement the site structure as a standalone activity without loading any content, which is great for dev environments and testing.

  

Create an SEO Optimized Site Structure

Clean up HTML

Ensuring clean, semantically rich HTML is difficult to do retroactively but Website Migration Manager can help you achieve this result painlessly. Using our visual extraction tools to extracting HTML content involves an automatic "tidying" process that ensures your HTML is valid. All tags will be closed and formatted correctly. As a result, all content will render when it's loaded into a SharePoint page. This in itself can be a huge improvement over what you have today. Going a step further, WMM includes a number of content-processing tools that allow you to manipulate and modify HTML. You can run find and replace operations to remove redundant tags or replace formatting tags with heading tags and leverage CSS more effectively. There is support for Regex and XPath to search and modify content. If the HTML was generated from Word or Frontpage, you can leverage Website Migration Manager's Actions framework and programmatically define transformations on your content. We have samples of this in our SDK, which can act as a good starting point.

Create permanent redirects
Website Migration Manager tracks both the originating URL that content came from in your legacy site and the new MOSS URL. You can export this data to Excel and marry it to existing site analytic data. Once you have identified which pages had high search relevance, you can create permanent redirects and ensure that adopting a new SEO-optimized site structure doesn't affect your legacy search ranking.

Takeaway
A few of these points deserve a drill down and will be addressed in future posts. The takeaway is that, in addition to reducing the overall migration effort, Website Migration Manager enables organizations to quickly adopt SEO best practices when moving their content to a SharePoint hosted publishing framework.

Posted by cawood at 9/29/2009 3:08 PM Comments (0)

Metalogix Wins MSExchange.org Readers' Choice Award

(Archiving, News) Permanent link

Metalogix Professional Archive Manager for Exchange (formerly known as exchange@PAM) has been voted MSExchange.org Readers' Choice Winner in the Email Archiving category. This is the third consecutive year that Metalogix has been honored with this award.

"Our Reader's Choice Awards give visitors to our site the opportunity to vote for the products they view as the very best in their respective category," said Sean Buttigieg, MSExchange.org manager. "MSExchange.org users are specialists in their field who encounter various solutions for Exchange Server at the workplace. Their vote serves as a solid peer-to-peer recommendation of the winning product."

Read the Press Release here.

Posted by Application at 9/28/2009 3:00 PM Comments (0)

The 8 Best Practices for Email Archiving

(Best Practice, Archiving) Permanent link

Government organization and enterprises alike are required to preserve copies of email for future requests both internal and external. This mandate includes compliance with e-discovery laws including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP)and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). When organizations are faced with an e-discovery request, they are likely to find it expensive and time consuming to execute retrieval from backup copies. Email archiving is a simple – and cost effective – way for both public and private organizations to assure speedy and complete responses at any time.

I recommend that any organization follow these eight key best practices:

1. Archive Everything:  A complete records retention policy should assure that all email and related email items (including email content, attachments, calendar items and tasks) are retained. Even lunch appointments may be very important to a future eDiscovery request. Let the investigator determine what's significant.
   
2. Define Policies Early:  Establishing retention and deletion policies early on will keep storage from growing to an unmanageable level.  A policy that states the reasons for your criteria and how the policy is followed is acceptable in court – but only as long as you can prove that you adhere to it.  Without a policy, you'll be stuck with keeping everything forever.  
   
3. Be Consistent:  Disposition processes should be consistent and documented under the direction of legal counsel.  Remember that retaining and disposing (optional) of email in a consistent way takes the burden off IT.   Investigators will force you to explain deviations, so keep it simple.
   
4. Enforce Your Policies:  Once a written policy exists, you must enforce it with an automated solution to eliminate the "human" component of policy enforcement. 
   
5. Freeze – It's the Cops: Don't even think about deleting data arbitrarily during the legal process.  The courts will find out, assume you're up to no good, and fine your organization heavily. 
   
6. Eliminate PST Files:  PST files are created by end users to store their emails and keep them accessible but these "underground archives" are not the best primary storage location for mailbox data.  They expose the organization to legal risks and make it hard for you to locate emails when you need them – which usually happens under pressure to meet deadlines.  Make PST files read-only and dispose of them prior to the earliest disposition of your policy.  Take a copy of existing PST content into the archive to protect it for future access by the creator and the investigator.
   
7. Tape Backup is forDisaster Recovery. Tape backups should not be used as email archives. They capture information only from the point of backup, which does not include items that were deleted by users. They cannot capture activity as it happens.  Tape has no intelligence. It has not indexed the email, just copied it, thus tape is not an archive.
   
8. Stubbing:  Creating stubs, or shortcuts, is an option that provides tremendous value by reducing back-up time by up to 70% and has little user impact for most organizations. 
   

Review your archiving policies annually, communicate them to end users clearly, and execute them consistently. Email archiving is a journey, not a destination, but the trip doesn't have to be difficult.

By Frank Mitchell

Posted by Ken Savage at 9/23/2009 1:19 PM Comments (2)

SharePoint Site Migration Manager Build 3.6.30 (Beta) Published

(Build, MOSS 2007, SharePoint Site Migration Manager, Support, Upgrade) Permanent link

This new Beta version of SharePoint Site Migration Manager (SSMM) contains a few new features as well as some bug fixes. In fact, this Beta is a bug-bash with more then twenty bug fixes. Some of the new and extended features for this build include:

• Site level - Permission Levels Copy. This can be done as a pre-migration step, or as a part of a normal site level copy.
  
• Ability to bypass the user info additions when copying Metadata.
  
• Ability to copy alerts as a part on the full migration using an XML override method.
  
• Ability for group mapping to account for group names.
  
• Items migrated through the use of the Drag and Drop feature will now be logged.
  
• Folder level copies will now include column mapping.
  
• Ability to preserve column mapping on sub-folders.
  
• "Explicit inclusion" as well as "Wildcard inclusion" denied managed paths are now selectable in a site collection copy.
  

Some of the more notable bug fixes include:

• Fixes to the content type feature.
  
• A site permission copy bug.
  
• A column mapping bug.
  
• Some MySite bugs.
  
• Wiki page migration bugs.
  
• Setting the maximum number of versions on the target site now works at the site level.
  
• Ability to preserve version numbers when versions have been deleted.
  
• A fix for versions in Pages libraries and Wiki libraries.
  

For a full list please seem the Build Notes.

Note that this build uses a newer version of the Metalogix SharePoint Extensions Service (v. 3.2.16).

Details: Download SharePoint Site Migration Manager Builds.

Download your Free trial now!

Posted by Metalogix at 9/23/2009 9:49 AM Comments (0)

Selective Restore Manager Pro Build 4.0.67 (Beta) Published

(Build, MOSS 2007, Upgrade, Selective Restore Manager) Permanent link

 
 

This build of Selective Restore Manager (SRM) Pro is the newest Beta release, since the launch announcement was made.

This new Published version includes a few new useful features:

• Search feature - Ths Search feature has the ability to operate on items within the search results, in the same way that operate on items in the Items View (for example, Save to disk, Copying, or Restoring). From the search results users can also navigate back to an items location within the Explorer view.
  
• Sort items view on columns - Items in the search results screen and the items view can now be sorted.
  
• Connect directly to offline MDF and/or .BAK files - This will allow for SRM Pro to be used in conjunction with backup solutions based on Microsoft's Volumn Shadow Copy (VSS) API (which involves the creation of MDF database file snapshots). This can also include products such as Microsoft's Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Symantec's Backup Exec.
  
• Preserve content types on lists - Content types can now be preserved on lists for a restore or copy action. This includes any list-level content type customizations, and as a result items and documents content types will be preserved if their content type is not a part of the list template. In order for this feature to run correctly, the content types must be available on the target site.
  

Note that this build also requires an update of the Metalogix SharePoint Extension Web Service (v. 1.0.34).

Details: Download Selective Restore Manager Pro Builds

Posted by Metalogix at 9/8/2009 8:09 AM Comments (0)