How To Add Custom Asp.net Page Using Layouts folder approach in SharePoint2010

Adding Custom Asp.net pages into SharePoint using Layout Folder approach

Introduction

 Layout Folder approach is one of the methods of integrating files into Share Point Site .This document explains the steps for adding Custom asp.net Pages to _layout folder using Layout Folder approach.

Advantages

Following are the advantages when we add Custom Aspx Pages into Share Point Site
·         End users can perceive all those pages within SharePoint site. She/he must not go to a separate web application URL.
·         No additional Work needs to be done once the integration is done.
·         Share Point Security and access rules will take care of everything.
·         No additional Authorization and Authentication mechanism needs to be done.
·         Development Efforts are less compared to developing Web Parts.

Solutions

Following are few solutions in which we can integrate Custom Aspx Pages into Share Point Site
1. SharePoint designer approach: This approach is better when we work with few aspx pages and less functionality.
2. Web Parts approach: This can be used in combination with SharePoint designer. But once again, developing many web parts is not feasible solution and sometimes leads to performance issues.
3. _Layouts folder approach: This is best and simple method of all. This method deploys the web application pages under the _layouts folder of Share Point Site and the pages can be accessed from any Share Point Site.
 
Steps  
Following are the steps how to add Custom aspx or asp.net Pages in Share Point Site
   
Step 1: Open Visual Studio 2010 and create an Empty Share point Project named as “AspxToLayouts”
 
 

 
 
 
Step 2: Select “Deploy as Farm solution”.
 

Step 3: Right click on the Project and add navigate to “Add -> SharePoint “Layouts” Mapped Folder”.
 
 

 
 
 
Step 4: After adding, Layouts folder structure will be generated in your project. After that we will add our newly custom aspx page to the Layouts folder that got generated in our project. Sometimes we can add existing Aspx also if required.
 

Step 5: Hence to add a new aspx page, Right click on your custom folder “AspxToLayouts” and click on “Add -> New Item”. Following, In Add new item menu under “General” tab select “Text file” and rename it as “MyPage.aspx”. See the screen shot below

 
 
   
Step 6: Now your Project structure should look something like below screen shot.

 
 
 
Also, in the above screen verify the “Deployment Path” for newly created Page. To verify Traverse to “MyPage.aspx” -> Properties window.
 
Step7: Next, in solution explorer right clicks the Project and Build & Deploy.
 
 
Step 8: Once it is deployment is done successfully, traverse to your 14 hive folder and validate that new folder “AspxToLayouts” generated with our custom page “MyPage.aspx” in it.

References

 
1.    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/getting-started-with-sharepoint-server-2010-   HA010371435.aspx
2.    http://www.learningsharepoint.com/

Configuring Managed Metadata Services (MMS) In SharePoint 2010

Metadata Management is very one of the critical aspects of any organization. By managing its metadata, consistency of the information used across the various units and teams in an organization could be enhanced, thus facilitating the information to be more locatable.

Introduction
 
Metadata is additional information about other data/artifact. Metadata is used to describe that artifact. This metadata resides outside of the artifact. E.g. Author, Organization, Language, technology to which that artifact is written by or belongs to, and type of the document like white paper, training material, check list, etc. These are additional information about the artifact but reside outside of the artifact and tell more about the artifact.
 
The following points will cover in this document:
 
1) In what way the metadata can be managed?
2)Real-world techniques for metadata implementation.

Problem with the existing systems
 

1. Metadata inconsistency:
    
    If the metadata is not standardized, then there is a possibility of inconsistent way of tagging data. For example, if an application to fill in the field called Location, one person might fill as INDIA, second as ASIA, third person as BHARATH. When somebody tries to get all documents belonging to the location INDIA, he may not get the right set of documents.
    
2. Metadata hierarchy maintenance:
    
   For example, End user want to tag one document to the test1 project in banking domain of xyz organization, so user can get the document in result set with hierarchy; it is not possible in existing systems.
      
3. Free text Metadata:
    
   1) Existing system allows free text without proper governance; it will make difficulty in search and comparing data or content.
   2) In SharePoint Server 2010 Search relevance is improved as user inputs also get crawled and indexed while adding metadata tags, in current system it’s not provided.  
        
    
4. Grouping Metadata:
    
   Metadata will be grouped to sub units.
   Grouping metadata will allow managing metadata differently for different sub units,
   Example:  One organization having Sales department and it is connected with both Company Global store and Purchase department So, while searching for a particular term, all files associated with that term(both Company Global store and Purchase department) are retrieved from the multiple site collections across the web applications.
    
    
5. Synonyms Terms:
    
   Synonyms are used to get terms in search results in different way of wording,
   For Example: SharePoint Services, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, SharePoint Services 4.0, Windows SharePoint Services 4.0 all these are different search keywords are used to refer to the same term.
    
6. Lack of Search Administration Reports:
    
   In SharePoint server 2010 there is a provision for an administrator to actually view a graphical representation of the searched keywords against the time taken for its retrieval.
    
   In MOSS 2007 there is a limitation of site collection boundary, In brief site columns are specific to the site collection, so if any user want to share same columns (metadata and taxonomy) across the multiple site collection the he have to create same columns in each site collection. So it is very difficult when user need to update any column (metadata and taxonomy), for this user need to update the columns in all the site collections.
     To overcome such challenges; SharePoint 2010 has been bundled with a new important feature called Enterprise Metadata Management (EMM). EMM is a key building block in Enterprise Content Management and will offer enterprise, management of metadata terms and content types for the content management systems. This will permit the sharing of the metadata taxonomies and terms in organizations across its multiple SharePoint websites and site collections.
   In MOSS 2007 there is a limitation of site collection boundary, In brief site columns are specific to the site collection, so if any user want to share same columns (metadata and taxonomy) across the multiple site collection the he have to create same columns in each site collection. So it is very difficult when user need to update any column (metadata and taxonomy), for this user need to update the columns in all the site collections.
    
   To overcome such challenges; SharePoint 2010 has been bundled with a new important feature called Enterprise Metadata Management (EMM). EMM is a key building block in Enterprise Content Management and will offer enterprise, management of metadata terms and content types for the content management systems. This will permit the sharing of the metadata taxonomies and terms in organizations across its multiple SharePoint websites and site collections.
      
      
     Metadata in SharePoint 2010 is broadly classified into two types.

 

 
 
 

1. Governance Driven (Taxonomy):
    
   In this terms are pre-defined by an administrator and are centrally governed. We can say these terms are Managed Terms. A controlled term can only be created by those with appropriate permissions. Managed terms can be structured into a hierarchy and can be selected by the users out of the new ‘Managed Metadata’ column type. When a metadata column of this type is defined, the user will be permitted to decide the metadata from the collection of pre-defined managed terms.
    
    
2. User Driven (Folksonomy):
   In this users specific to SharePoint 2010 items is going to add words or phrases we can say these terms are Managed Keywords. By default the managed keyword column is present. User-generated keywords (tags) are kept in list keyword set, this is a non-hierarchical.
    
    Case Study
    
   Below is the example of an organizational instance, where a user needs to enter in a field called “Location” and the possible keywords are already available from centrally governed keyword thus enabling classification and search easier.
     i)             Create a Group (term) and Term Sets in the Taxonomy term store
   Creating a Group (term) and Term Sets in the Taxonomy term store under the Managed Metadata Service as below:
    
   Group name:  TCS
   Term Sets:  Locations and Unit 
    
   So, we here are initiating the creation of a hierarchy level.
    
   See the below image:
    

          
            


ii)Create child terms for each term

By creating child terms, metadata across the organizational applications is consistent.
i) Click on down arrow beside above created Term (Group).                    


             

ii) Create two child items like below, Location and Units       
  

                      
iii)Create Synonyms for each term
It will help to improve search relevance as their inputs also get crawled and indexed thus achieving greater scope for end users to retrieve the documents with ease.
i)Creating a term under child:


        

 ii)Creating term India under location




 
 
iii)Creating Synonyms for term India

 
 
   
     
 
iv) Defining metadata column as a metadata column in a list
Defining metadata column as a metadata column in a list(Go to any doc library and click on create column)




v)Assigning the right node from taxonomy
Assigining the right node from taxonomy to the metadata column.
i)Select the Managed Metadata option
ii)Assign the node
iii)Click on Ok

 


vi)End user view of metadata column


i) End user view of metadata column    
       

 


 
ii) Searching through Synonym, after entering ‘hi’ it is showing India in search result, as we given ‘Hindustan’ as the Synonym in List.
 

 
 
 
 
iii)On Click on picker to select it will opens the follwing window:



iv) After selecting the term:

 
 
 

References
i)http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee424403.aspx  
ii) http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-managed-metadata-service-application-sharepoint-2010-part1/

Enterprise People Search In SharePoint 2010.

In this Artical I will explain how to set up and Configure Enterprise People Search In SharePoint 2010.

Introduction

For Configuring Enterprise People Search, I need to Pull Users from Active Directory by using User Profile Service Application.

So Before Creating and Configuring User Profile Service Application, Let’s Understand My SharePoint Environment.

In Active Directory I have one organizational Unit named as “SharePoint” where users are created.

As Shown in Red mark

a)  SharePoint_Admin User Is an Administrator of SharePoint Server 2010.

b)  SharePoint _Farm User Is a SharePoint Farm Administrator.

c)  SharePoint_Service Is a Service Account to handle various Service Applications in SharePoint (such as Search Service Application)

Before Creating User Profile Service Application, ensure.

1. SharePoint_Admin and SharePoint _Farm User are in local administrator group on computer NDJ(SharePoint Server 2010) 
2. Go to Administrative Tools and Select Services and under services ensure that Startup Type of “Forefront Identity Manager Service” and “Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service” is automatic (It Should not be disabled). Note: Do not start manually. It will start automatically.
3. Go to Administrative tools and select IIS Manager and under Application Pools ensures that “SharePoint Web Services Root “has started. If not, start it.

User Profile Service Application

User Profile Service Application is a shared Application of SharePoint 2010 used to manage user’s profiles of organization, synchronizing profiles with active directory and crating My Sites for users.

So let’s create User Profile Service Application.

1)  Open SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

2)  On Quick Launch, Click on Application Management and then click “Manage Service Applications” Under Service Applications Section.

3)  On Manage Service Application Page click on “New” and select User Profile Service Application.

4)  On Create New User Profile Service Application window type

   a)  Name : User Profile Service Application1

   b)  Application Pool Name : UserProfileServicePool

   c)  Configurable : POINT\Sharepoint_Farm User

After typing these values click on “Create” Button at down.

Service Application will create. After Creating Service Application, we will start necessary services for service application

5)  On Quick Launch menu of central Administration site click on “System Settings” then click on “Manage Services on Server” Under servers Section.

6)  On Services on Server window find out

   a)  User Profile Service and click on start.

   b)  User Profile Synchronization Services and click start.

As soon we click on start we will have User Profile Synchronization Service Window.

On that window ensure that

  a)  “Select the User Profile Application” Is “User Profile Service Application1”

  b)  “Service Account” Is “POINT\SharePoint_Farm” and type Password, click on ok.

  c)  Now a timer job called “ProfileSynchronizationSetupJob” is created. When that job gets completed, a service “User Profile Synchronization Services” will also get started.

7)  To see timer job, on Quick Launch of central Administration site , click on Monitoring and then click on check job status under timer jobs section.

Under Running Jobs We Must have “ProfileSynchronizationSetupJob”

NOTE: SharePoint server May take some Minute (up to 5) to start that job and get appear in Running Job List.

If Your Job does not start then Restart “SharePoint 2010 Timer” Service (Go to Administrative tools then select services) and again follow step 6.

NOTE: 5 to 15 Minute is required to complete this job. Press F5 to monitor status of this job once it disappears, means job has completed.

8)  Ensure that both the services have started.

   a)  User Profile Service.

   b)  User Profile Synchronization Services.

On Quick Launch menu of central Administration click on “System Settings” then “Manage Services on Server” Under servers Section and check it.

9)  Also ensure that Forefront Identity Manager Service and Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service Has started.

Go to Administrative Tools then click on Services and check it.

10)  Restart IIS Server.

   a)  Go to start, right click on command prompt, then click run as administrator.

   b)  Type IISRESET

11)   Now open our service application

On Quick Launch of central Administration site, click Application Management then “Manage Service Applications”, then “User Profile Service Application1” Link. We will have following page, where we can manage user profiles, synchronization with Active Directory, setup My Sites etc.

12)  Now we have created User Profile Service Application, now it’s time to pull our active directory users from AD/DNS server.

NOTE: To do User Profile Synchronization with Active Directory, User SharePoint_Farm (who is Managing User Profile Service Application1) must have Permission to do synchronization. To assign permission use following snapshot 

NOTE: We are working from SharePoint Server Machine Named as NDJ.

Assign Permission to user Sharepoint_Farm for synchronization

1)  Click on Administrative tools, Hold down shift key of keyboard and then right click on “Active Directory Users and Computers” and then click “Run as different Users”.

2)  Login as Domain Administrator

3)  Right Click on POINT.COM and then click delegate control.
+
4)  Click next on “welcome to the delegation control wizard” window and add user “POINT\SharePoint_Farm” to delegate permission and click on next.

5)  On “ task to delegate window” choose  ‘create a custom task to delegate’

6)  On Active Directory object type select “This Folder………”

7)  On Permissions window select “Replicating Directory Changes” and click on next.

8)  Click on finish button.
Here we have assign permission for synchronization with active directory.
Now Next step is to establish connection with Active Directory.

Creating connection with Active Directory

1)  On Quick Launch of central Administration Site, click Application Management then “Manage Service Applications”, then “User Profile Service Application1” Link.

Note on right corner: number of user Profiles are 0.
this Page click on “Configure Synchronization Connections”
2)  On Synchronization Connections page click on “Create New Connection”

3)  On add new synchronization connection page use following values.
   a)  Connection Name: POINT Active Directory Users.
   b)  Type : Active directory
   c)  Forest Name : POINT.COM
   d)  Account Name : POINT\SharePoint_Farm

Click on Populate Containers and choose SharePoint and Users organizational unit where users are available. And click on ok.

4)  On Quick Launch of central Administration, click Application Management then “Manage Service Applications”, then “User Profile Service Application1” Link.

And click on “Start Profile Synchronization”. Synchronization Process will start; look at right side on page we have status “Synchronizing”

It will take 10 to 15 to finish this process. Press F5 until Synchronization status is Idle

Look above result, we have number of user profiles = 21 and profile synchronization status is Idle.
Here we have finished synchronization process now it’s time to create search center web application

Creating Enterprise Search Center

1)  On Quick Launch of central Administration Site, click Application Management then click Manage web applications Under web applications section and click New on ribbon, to create new web application.
2)  On Create New Web Application window, type port = 111 and click on ok.

3)  On Application Created window click on “Create Site Collection” under our web Application.

4)  On create site collection window type

   a.  Title : My Search Center

   b.  Template: Enterprise Search Center.

   c.  Site Administrator : SharePoint_Admin 

And click on ok button.

5)  Now open our Search center web application , and from site Actions select “Site Permissions”

Click on Grant Permissions Button on Ribbon and assign read permission to all domain users and click on ok.

Now it’s time to work with Search Service Application

Configuring search service Application 

1)  On Quick Launch of central Administration, click Application Management then click “Manage Service Applications”, then click on “Search Service Application” Link.

“Default Content Access Account” for our Search Service Application is “POINT\SharePoint_Service”

2)  To this account we need to assign “Retrieve People Data for SharePoint Crawlers” Permission.

To do this, on Quick Launch of central Administration Site, click Application Management then click “Manage Service Applications”, then select “user Profile Service Application 1” Do not open that application. (Select by clicking on right side)

Select User Profile Service Application as shown here and click “Administrators” on Ribbon. 

3)  In “Administrators for users profile service Application1” page add “POINT\Sharepoint_Service” user account and assign “Retrieve People Data for SharePoint Crawlers” Permission.

4)  Now move to Search Service Application Again 

On Quick Launch of central Administration, click Application Management then click “Manage Service Applications”, then click on “Search Service Application” Link.

Under crawling section click on Content Sources.

By default we have one content Source named as “Local SharePoint Sites”.

Click on arrow beside “Local SharePoint Sites” and click on Edit.

This page contains address of our web application on which we can do indexing or crawling.

Address of My Search Center web application is “http://ndj:111” other is default web site address.

On this Page delete address “http://ndj:111” and click on OK.

5)  Now click on New Content Sources

6)  On New Content source window type following

   a)  Name : MySC

   b)  Start Address : http://ndj:111  (Address of Search center)       

                             Sps3://ndj:111

And click on ok.

7)  On Manage content Sources Page, click on arrow beside MySC and select “Start Full Crawl” And wait for few minutes, our web site and users profile contents are now indexing.

Click on Refresh Button until status of content Source is Idle

8)  On Manage content Sources Page, click on arrow beside MySC and select “View Crawl Log”

On crawl log window ensure that there are no errors for Content source “MySC”

9)  Before checking Result go to central Administration site 

   a)  On quick Launch, click on Application Management 

   b)  Click on manage web application 

   c)  Select Our Enterprise search Center web application (“http://ndj:111”)

   d)  On Ribbon, Click on User Policy and ensure that “POINT\SharePoint_Service” user is having Full read permission.

   e)  If it is not assign it.

10)  WOW ……Now Open our Enterprise Search center web Application “http://ndj:111”

      On People Tab Type any Name available in Active Directory and see result………………………

Conclusion

Hope this would be useful for readers..! Thanks and do let me know your comments or feedback.

Reference:

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518643.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee410529