You ran out of space on your Windows 8 PC, now you want to clone your boot drive (HDD, SSD, Whatever..) onto a bigger drive.

Old faithful Clonezilla failed you for the first time, like it did for me…. the drive cloned but a corrupt MBR and no amount of bcdedit.exe or bcdboot.exe commands would fix it. Really. I’m not sure what corrupted using a simple Clonezilla approach, I really did try it several times and each time with either Windows 8 Recovery, and various permutations of bcdedit & bcdboot.

The native Windows 8 system backup/restore also failed (glad I never had to use that in anger…)

The Solution

Enter a freeware solution – AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

I was sceptical at first, but using the “Migrate OS to SSD or HD” option, it worked first time around

What was encouraging (for me) was that it wouldn’t let me clone to a clean formatted disk. It needed to be unattached (Disk Management > Delete Volume). I guess it should ask you if you want to delete any existing volume instead, but anyway, it worked.

An added bonus was that I was able to resize & merge partitions after.

Highly recommended!

Gus

However, the Microsoft-hosted SharePoint Online which comes as part of Office 365 has always had a reduced feature set and is somewhat limited by comparison. This does not mean you can’t build a great Public Facing Website (PFW – I know, enough with the acronyms, that one’s made up..).

This post (and future posts on the subject) explore what is and isn’t possible on SharePoint Online, and how to get the best out of the still excellent WCMS.

If you can live with the reduced feature set, it really is a no-brainer to host your PFW on SharePoint Online.

It is assumed that the Microsoft guidance has been read; this is a more pragmatic approach, including validation of the “You can use Dreamweaver to design your site with no SharePoint knowledge” claims and a realistic view on the new SharePoint 2013 features.

On with Part 1… the limitations, some with workarounds. Hopefully you can identify any show stoppers for you and your organisation before going down the Office 365 route.

Public Facing Website Limitations

This list will be amended as new limitations are encountered or viable workarounds are found. Please feel free to contribute to this list in the comments below or correct any items; it’s early days yet and new “features” are found regularly

Limited SharePoint User Interface

For any of the following it is necessary to use SharePoint Designer 2013 or write code in a Sandboxed Solution rather than use the SharePoint User Interface (UI):

Content Types & Site Columns

It’s not possible to create Content Types via the UI. You can access Site Columns via [siteroot]/_layouts/15/mngfield.aspx but this option is hidden in Site Settings.

Subsites

It’s not possible to create Subsites via the UI, however the following templates can be used from SharePoint Designer:

• Team Site
• Basic Search Site

Many other useful sites such as an Enterprise Search Site are not possible to create via SharePoint Designer.

Unfortunately there is no Blank Site, however the Basic Search Site doesn’t contain a great deal so could easily be used as a basis for subsites.

SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions

For a robust deployment strategy, provisioning of site columns, content types and content is usually best managed using SharePoint solutions (WSPs).

The option to upload sandboxed WSPs to the Solution Gallery does exist in SharePoint Online but is hidden from the UI – you can access it via [siteroot]/_catalogs/solutions/Forms/AllItems.aspx.

Sandboxed solutions have been deprecated in SharePoint 2013, however it is still the easiest option for provisioning (you could opt for an App if you are feeling brave… client-side object model does allow for management of site columns and content types).

Device Channels

What this effectively means is that you are stuck with Microsoft’s “Any Mobile Device” channel, which is a far sight better than the SharePoint 2010 options. You can provide your own master page for this mobile channel, or follow the default channel. 

Managed Metadata

Unfortunately it is not possible to leverage custom Managed Metadata (e.g. a Managed Metadata Site Column for a Content Type) for your public-facing website with the exception of:

• Enterprise Keywords (this can be accessed via [siteroot]/Lists/TaxonomyHiddenList/)
• Wiki Categories (not particularly useful..)

Edit: This is possible! It can be achieved by adding a Managed Metadata site column from the SharePoint UI at [siteroot]/_layouts/15/mngfield.aspx.

However the following is still true; no taxonomy-based navigation:

This is particularly disappointing as it means that taxonomy-based navigation can’t currently be used.

Features

It is not possible to manage (activate/de-activate) features for the public-facing site collection or its subsites, from the UI.

This problem has been solved in part by Ashok Raja with a Feature Manager web part for activating and de-activating features. Nice work, thanks!

Product Catalog

There is no product catalog in Office 365.

Content Search Web Part

The Content Search Web Part (CSWP) is not available at all in SharePoint Online.

I’m not sure of the reasoning for this, as it is a really useful front end for the same core search engine that DOES exist in SharePoint Online.

I have heard rumours that the CSWP will be introduced in the near future, but who knows…

Search

In addition to the previously-mentioned excellent Content Search Web Part, Search options are somewhat limited – the crawl is not “continuous” so Search-driven content takes quite a while to appear.

There is an option to Force a full crawl on the next crawl but it’s anybody’s guess as to when this might be… it is meant to be crawled every 5 minutes but in my experience it can take up to an hour:

It is also possible to re-index a given List or Document Library “on next crawl”:

A warning is then displayed:

Variations

If you have multi-lingual requirements, you will be best looking at SharePoint on-premises as Variations (SharePoint’s way of managing content in different languages) are not available in Office 365.

The feature to Export your site’s contents for translations & re-import unfortunately does not appear to deal with web content.

Publishing Features

There was a healthy debate initiated by Martin Hatch about whether we are allowed to switch on Publishing Features (and remain supported!) in the previous version of SharePoint Online – in the new and improved SharePoint 2013 public-facing website publishing features ARE enabled as far as the following are concerned:

• Publishing pages
• Custom master pages & page layouts

This is good news! So not a limitation as such, but worth mentioning as it was previously not possible in SharePoint 2010 Online. I haven’t found any specific limitations of the publishing feature set yet.

Part 2 coming soon…

Hope that helps!

Gus

Opening a Word document from Office 365 using Word 2010 or 2013 results in the following:

The Cause

There cause is actually Word’s default security settings… probably a good thing!

The Solution

You can resolve this issue in at least two ways:

1. Disable Protected View (not recommended…)

You can disable protected view for files originating from the Internet.

This option isn’t recommended, as it potentially exposes you to unnecessary risks by unchecking the highlighted box below in the Trust Center (Word Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Protected View).

However it does let you access the file(s) again.

2. Add site to Trusted or Intranet Zone (Recommended)

This is the preferred option, as it means you are trusting one site rather than the whole of the internets…

From Internet Explorer settings or from your Control Panel > Internet Options, add the site to either the “Trusted” or “Local intranet” Zone:

Click on “Sites” then add the site URL – note that wildcards work here e.g. https://*.sharepoint.com if you want to trust all of SharePoint online.. the Local intranet zone is my preference as it means less risk of issues when integrating with Microsoft Dynamics CRM however to resolve this Word issue, Trusted is enough.

Hope that helps!

Aside from the quality content, another thing which sets the conference apart is the organisation and social aspects… amazing job Combined Knowledge!

The slides from my session follow – bear in mind that for the last session of the last day a bit of humour is usually welcome, so SharePoint Buzzword Bingo was just for fun… those slides may not make sense out of context!

If you have any questions or comments I’d be happy to respond either here on on twitter.

If you didn’t attend this year, make it a priority next year!

It’s a fantastic conference with great real world content from speakers who have been there and done it, but also a few additional things that are unique about Combined Knowledge conferences:

• The WiFi actually works!
• The social events are unparalleled!
• All conference content is distributed by DVD after the event

I’ll be speaking about Building Secure SharePoint Extranets with Claims-Based Authentication on Wed 17th:

This session will cover secure SharePoint extranet topology options, focussing on a number of examples created for government to service citizens, suppliers and partners. A variety of membership providers including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SQL Server were used to along with Active Directory Federated Services (AD FS 2.0) to provide internal users with seamless access to the public-facing SharePoint farm in the DMZ. Services provided to citizens on one of the platforms will be presented including booking a driving test, making a planning application, and paying tax or invoices online, each of which had their own particular back-end or 3rd party integration challenges. A look at what’s new in SharePoint 2013 in terms of "Claims First" will also be covered and how integration with trusted 3rd party identity providers such as Windows Live ID can be implemented.

Hope to see you there!

Gus

Happy to answer any questions you have about the session – just ping me on twitter or gus [-at-] techblurt.com

SharePoint Saturday in the UK is by far the biggest free to attend SharePoint event in the UK – it’s sold out and there is only a waiting list now but worthwhile signing up anyway as places may become available.

BI for the masses with SQL 2012 and SharePoint 2010

This session will cover the major Business Intelligence improvements that SQL 2012 brings and how SharePoint 2010 can be configured to provide self-service access to this traditionally specialist realm. The following will be presented, with demonstrations using real data:

· SharePoint & SQL Integrated Reporting Services

· PowerPivot

· Power View including Bubble Charts and the design tools

· The BI Semantic Model (BISM) and impact of tabular data

· SQL 2008 R2 vs SQL 2012

· Azure Data Market

Hope to see you there – it will be a demo-heavy session so I’ll be taking screenshots as a backup in case of hardware issues (one of the #SPC12 presenters did this and it really saved his bacon!)

Also you should check out Patrick Sledz’ session on Office & SharePoint integration – there may just be a surprise collaborator… or should that be conspirator?

See below my PowerShell script to disable this on all application pools.

Disclaimer: Only to be run on a development environment. Really!!!

$AppPools = Get-WmiObject -Class IISApplicationPoolSetting -Namespace 'root/microsoftiisv2' | Where-Object {$_.Name -like 'W3SVC/APPPOOLS*'}

if ($AppPools)
{
    foreach ($AppPool in $AppPools)
     {
         Write-Host("    WAM Pool: " + $AppPool.Name + ", " + $AppPool.WAMUserName + " (" + $AppPool.WAMUserPass + ")")
         $AppPool.IdleTimeout = 0
         $AppPool.PingingEnabled = 0
         $AppPool.Put()
    }
}

Of course you could do this manually via the GUI but if you’re lazy like me you might just use CKS:Dev to attach to all IIS worker processes… but then which one timed out?? Infuriating! You would have to go through them all…

Anyway hope this helps!

Balsamiq

I love Balsamiq. I use it for nearly every proposal to illustrate effectively what kind of deliverable the client is going to get; a picture tells 1,000 words. I recommend it highly when talking abut SharePoint branding, or any solution where the content is important (ie. just about everything!)

It is great value for money, and there is a great community-driven set of templates (including a SharePoint ribbon and standard controls!)

The results are purposely hand-drawn, which focuses the mind on content vs colour/style etc. and only the occasional client has commented that they would prefer it to look “a bit less childish”… (only by those that mistake the wireframe for the actual product!)

I’m not a fan of Adobe Air, but accept it for this, it’s worth it. The free online version is definitely worth a try.

PowerPoint

I have never used PowerPoint for storyboarding, but a few clients have occasionally drawn big box shapes to help us understand what they are thinking.

However, with Visual Studio 2012, you can now Storyboard a User Story or Requirement Using PowerPoint.

You can also link your storyboard with TFS 2012, which sounds productive.

If you search the Visual Studio Gallery for “storyboard”, you’ll find that the Storyboard Shapes Team has been working hard on not just Windows/Microsoft features but also the “sketchy” look and feel and iOS/iPhone shapes and icons.

SharePoint

I work a LOT with SharePoint, and found the following Balsamiq shapes courtesy of https://mockupstogo.mybalsamiq.com – they are GREAT!

The Microsoft PowerPoint option does have this, which is a good start; nod to SharePoint boilerplate chrome but not much for core content:

Summary

If I wasn’t already a heavy Balsamiq user I would probably be happy with this new VS 2012 offering; if my colleagues all adopt PowerPoint for storyboarding, I may have to switch, but until then I’ll continue using Balsamiq. It is definitely quicker for me, easier to align items, and the (SharePoint) community-built templates at https://mockupstogo.mybalsamiq.com are great.

As long as you are wireframing/storyboarding somewhere that’s the main thing, I suggest you try both above options to see what fits (non-VS 2012 users will probably find Balsamiq easier).

Happy storyboarding!

Issues encountered initially include:

1. USB Boot drive not being picked up properly
2. Stuck / hung on “Getting devices ready” during installation (94%)

After downloading Win 8 RTM from MSDN these steps worked for me:

1. Install Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool
2. Run the installed tool and browse to a Windows 8 RTM ISO (e.g. from MSDN) to create a bootable USB install
3. Set the files on the USB drive to be read-only (this may not be necessary for everybody, but it helped for me; meant that it was picked up as a boot drive and didn’t get confused at the point of browsing for drives to install to)
4. Go into the Bios – set the Display options to Integrated Graphics (not switchable, not Optimus) – this is important otherwise the install will hang at the “Getting devices ready” stage; the OOTB Win8 drivers can’t cope with the NVidia graphics card during install
5. Plug your newly created USB stick into a non-USB 3.0 port (Any one that is NOT blue.. the eSATA combo port or the yellow always on port will do)
6. Reboot, hit F12 to select the USB Drive
7. Install as normal
8. Switch your graphics back to Optimus

Hope that helps somebody!