Monthly Archives: September 2014

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: Easy to Save Site As Template in SharePoint 2013

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is a web application framework and platform developed by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint integrates intranet, content management and document management, but recent versions have broader capabilities. In this post we will tell you about how to save site as template in SharePoint 2013. First of all those who have design level permission or more than that, they can save a site as a template.ahp_freehostSHP

Access External Data Within SharePoint

Here in custom web template apart from security related information other information like list, document libraries, web parts etc will be saved in the custom web template.

This will be saved as a file with .wsp extension in the solution gallery of the site collection.

Follow below steps:

  • Open the SharePoint 2013 site for which you want to save the template. Then on the Settings menu select Site Settings.
  • This will open the site settings page, In the Site Actions section, “Click on Save site as template”.
  • This will open the Save as Template page, there give a file name, Template Name, Description etc. If you want to include the content then check the check box “Include Content” as shown in the fig below:
  • Then click on OK, this will save the template.

Now if you want to create a new site by using the site template that we have created just now, then click on +new site. This will open the New SharePoint Site page. In the template section when you click on Custom then the template will come as shown in the fig below:

Advantages of SharePoint

  • As companies grow so does the amount of their files. It soon becomes difficult to keep track of the multiplying documents and their locations. SharePoint overcomes this by allowing you to store and share your files in a central site.
  • Sharing work files through email is a cumbersome process. SharePoint eliminates this by allowing files to be stored in one location, allowing easy access to all team members.
  • Business Intelligence has traditionally remained in the hands of a few key decision makers within organizations. For years, it has been the goal of BI providers to “democratize business intelligence” by making it available to all levels of workers throughout companies. With the addition of Performance Point to the SharePoint Enterprise version of SharePoint, this vision is realized, finally taking business intelligence out of the hands of the few and into the hands of many.
  • Today’s work occurs over multiple locations, whether it is in different countries, office locations, separate departments or at your home office. SharePoint enables teams and individuals to connect and collaborate together regardless of where they are located.
  • Surveys have shown that employees can spend up to 20 – 30 % of their day searching for data and information. SharePoint eliminates this drag on productivity by providing the robust search functionality needed to find the information and expertise buried in the thousands, or hundreds of thousands of files a company generates in the course of business.

Best SharePoint Hosting

ASPHostPortal.com has been Microsoft recommended hosting provider. In our SharePoint plan, we offer Support Custom WebParts, SharePoint Site Usage Reports, Support SSL, Users Administration, Intl Language Packs, Public-Facing Access. Get organized with our SharePoint Foundation 2010 Hosting, the leading Microsoft web hosting solution for secure document management, content management, and workflow features for your intranet or extranet requirements. The SharePoint plan is starting from $9.99/mo.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting – ASPHostPortal :: SharePoint 2013 Authorization and Authentication

OAuth in SharePoint 2013

In SharePoint 2010, the authentication to the site is based on Classic or Claims based or Anonymous Access but in SharePoint 2013, Microsoft come up with the new mode of Authentication called as €œOAuth€.

In case of SP sites, OAuth Process Flow is as follows

1. User Signs in SP 2013–>Security Token is generated by Identity Provider–>Token is validated & allows the user to Sign in SP sites.

OAuth is an open protocol for authorization. OAuth enables secure authorization from desktop and web applications in a simple and standard way. OAuth enables users to approve an application to act on their behalf without sharing their user name and password. For example, it enables users to share their private resources or data (contact list, documents, photos, videos and so on) that are stored on one site with another site, without users having to provide their credentials (typically user name and password).

OAuth enables users to authorize the service provider (in this case, SharePoint 2013) to provide tokens instead of credentials (for example, user name and password) to their data that is hosted by a given service provider (that is, SharePoint 2013). Each token grants access to a specific site (for example, a SharePoint document repository) for specific resources (for example, documents from a folder) and for a defined duration (for example, 30 minutes). This enables a user to grant a third-party site access to information that is stored with another service provider (in this case, SharePoint), without sharing their user name and password and without sharing all the data that they have on SharePoint.

2. When is using OAuth required?

The OAuth protocol is used to authenticate and authorize apps and services. The OAuth protocol is used:

- To authorize requests by an app for SharePoint to access SharePoint resources on behalf of a user.
- To authenticate apps in the Office Store, an app catalog, or a developer tenant.

3. Access Tokens

In SharePoint 2013, an OAuth STS is used only for issuing tokens (that is, server-to-server and context tokens). An OAuth STS is not used for issuing sign-in tokens, that is, they are not used as identity providers. So, you will not see an OAuth STS listed in the user sign-in page, the Authentication Provider section in Central Administration, or the people picker in SharePoint 2013.

But, SharePoint 2013 administrators can use Windows PowerShell commands to enable or disable an OAuth STS. SharePoint administrators are able to enable or disable OAuth for a given web application, similar to how they can enable or disable trusted login providers in SharePoint 2010.

SharePoint 2013 implements the OAuth protocol to allow apps that are running external to SharePoint to access protected SharePoint resources on behalf of a resource owner. In the SharePoint incoming implementation of the protocol, the OAuth roles are played by the following components:

External apps take on the role of the client.

SharePoint users take on the role of resource owner.

SharePoint 2013 takes on the role of the resource server.

ACS takes on the role of the authorization server.

4. Scope

An app for SharePoint requests permissions to access SharePoint resources by doing the following:

An app for SharePoint requests the permissions that it needs during installation from the user who is installing it.

The developer of an app must request, through the app manifest file, the permissions an app needs.

5. For an app to be granted the permissions it requested, the following conditions must be fulfilled:

An app must be granted permissions by the user who is installing it.

Users can grant only the permissions that they have; the user installing the app must be able to grant all permissions required by the app, or app installation fails.

6. An app is granted the permissions it asked for when:

An app is installed by a website administrator.

An app is explicitly granted permission by a tenant administrator or website administrator.

An end user gives consent.

In the app manifest file, an app requests access to specific scopes (that is, locations on SharePoint 2013). An app for SharePoint uses a permission request to specify the permissions that it needs to function correctly. The permission requests specify both the rights that an app needs and the scope at which they need the rights. In short:

An app uses permission request scopes to specify the permissions that it needs.

The requests specify both the rights and the scope that the app needs.

Scopes indicate where in the SharePoint hierarchy a permission request applies. SharePoint supports four different content scopes: site collection, website, list, and tenancy. There are also feature scopes for performing search queries, accessing taxonomy data, social features, Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS) features, and Project Server 2013 features.

7. Steps in the SharePoint 2013

The OAuth authentication and authorization flow for a SharePoint 2013 cloud-hosted app is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

1. A user types a URL in a browser to go to a SharePoint page where a particular app is installed. In this case, the app is a Contoso.com app and the user interface element on the SharePoint page comes from the Contoso.com app.

2. SharePoint processes the page and detects that there is a component from the Contoso.com app on the page. SharePoint must get a context token that it can send to the Contoso.com app. SharePoint asks ACS to create and sign a context token that contains context information (for example, the current user, what web is being rendered on SharePoint, and other context information) and an authorization code. This context token can be used later by Contoso.com to request an access token from ACS. The Contoso.com server can use the access token to talk back to SharePoint if the Contoso.com app wants to make a web service call to SharePoint later.

3. ACS returns the signed context token to SharePoint. The signed context token is signed with an client secret that only ACS and the Contoso.com app share.

4. SharePoint renders the page, including an IFRAME pointing to the app host server in this case, Contoso.com. When SharePoint renders the page, it also passes the context token to the IFRAME.

5. The IFRAME causes the browser to request a page from the Contoso.com server. The context token is included in the browser request that is sent to the Contoso.com server.

6. The Contoso.com server gets the context token. Contoso.com validates the signature on the context token. The token is signed with an client secret that only Contoso.com and ACS share. Contoso.com can validate that the token is really intended for it and that it is not a random request from some random server. It knows that it is part of a SharePoint request.

7. If the Contoso.com server wants to talk back to SharePoint, there is a refresh token in the context token that Contoso.com can extract, so that it can include that information in the request to ACS for an access token. Contoso.com uses the refresh token that it extracted from the context token, the context token that it got from SharePoint, and its credentials (which are its client Id value and its client secret value) to request an access token from ACS so that it can talk back to SharePoint.

8. ACS returns an access token to the Contoso.com server. Contoso.com can cache this access token. That way, the Contoso.com server doesn’t have to ask ACS for an access token every time that it talks back to SharePoint. (Or, Contoso.com can make an access token request every time and not cache the access token.) By default, access tokens are good for a few hours at a time. Each access token is specific to the user account that is specified in the original request for authorization, and grants access only to the services that are specified in that request. Your app should store the access token securely, because it is required for all access to a user’s data.

9. Contoso.com can use the access token to make a web service call or CSOM request to SharePoint, passing the OAuth access token in the HTTP Authorizationheader.

10. SharePoint returns the information that Contoso.com requested to Contoso.com. The Contoso.com app renders the IFRAME contents as a per-user request in step 1. This completes the OAuth transaction process. The user now sees the SharePoint page fully rendered.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: The Quick & Easy Way to Add Metadata to SharePoint Content

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is a dynamic and interactive site that allows users to collaborate and manage content via a browser. SharePoint can be mapped to access documents in a shared folder. You can easily access your documents and files from your desktop or any Microsoft Office application.

Hastags in SharePoint

In this article, we will give you some tips for your SharePoint. These tips use one of the most popular features on social media that’s called hashtags. Hashtags is one of the most popular features on social media. If you use sites like Twitter or Instagram, you’ve certainly seen hashtags, and perhaps even used them in your own posts to group messages and add additional context.

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Now, hashtags are finding a home in business platforms like SharePoint 2013, providing users with a quick and easy way to add metadata to content. This in turn helps to better categorize content for future searches.

hashtagMKTG_logo_twitter_BLUEThere’s no hiding the fact that metadata and tagging are critical to SharePoint success. People need the ability to easily search for and find information. Yet many users either don’t understand the importance of metadata or simply don’t want to be bothered with tagging. As a result, users often turn to file-sharing services like Dropbox, where they upload their items and move on.

Of course, consumer-grade solutions such as Dropbox don’t provide the security features generally required for business information. That’s why it’s smart to encourage users to take advantage of hashtags in SharePoint. Hashtags are a concept they’re probably familiar with from using social media. That should make using hashtags in SharePoint an easy concept to understand, and ultimately encourage them to use the platform.

How to Use Hastags in SharePoint?

  • Tags must be one word: If you want to create a tag with multiple words, you have to combine the words. Start each word with a capital letter so the tag is easier to read, such as #SharePointTips.
  • Creating hashtags: The article notes that “hashtags are a little quirky in SharePoint.” Users are only allowed to create hashtags in the newsfeed, although they may be used elsewhere.
  • How to “follow” a hashtag: Are you looking to keep tabs on a specific topic? Simply click on the hashtag in a post or add it to the “followed hashtags” section in your profile.

Encourage your users to add metadata by taking advantage of hashtags in SharePoint. The above tips provide a great starting point for helping them to get the most out of hashtags.

Recommended SharePoint Hosting

ASPHostPortal.com has been Microsoft recommended hosting provider. In our SharePoint plan, we offer Support Custom WebParts, SharePoint Site Usage Reports, Support SSL, Users Administration, Intl Language Packs, Public-Facing Access. Get organized with our SharePoint Foundation 2010 Hosting, the leading Microsoft web hosting solution for secure document management, content management, and workflow features for your intranet or extranet requirements. The SharePoint plan is start from $9.99/mo.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: Move Your SharePoint to Cloud Server

Move Your SharePoint to Cloud Server

cloudserverSharePoint is a browser based platform that can boost the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization by enhancing communication and collaboration as well as streamlining the management of and access to your data.

SharePoint can store your documents in a central, secure location, then allow users to search it for instant access to the data they need. It also enables users to share information across your intranet, whilst ensuring users see only the data that is useful and relevant to them.

SharePoint in the cloud brings enhanced document management capabilities to ensure the integrity of documents stored on team sites: the option to require users to checkout documents before editing, the ability to view revisions to documents and restore to previous versions, and the option to set document and item-level security.

Moving your content from on-premises storage to the cloud offers many benefits. In this article, we will tell you why you should move your SharePoint to the Cloud?

Here are five tips for a successful SharePoint migration:

Clean up your content

Before beginning your SharePoint migration, determine what information to move to the cloud and what you should leave behind. Weeding out any redundant, outdated or trivial content before the migration should make the process easier, while also controlling costs and mitigating risks.

Automate cleanup processes

Deciding whether to delete, migrate or archive each piece of content is time-consuming, so look for ways to automate and streamline the process by using simple rules based on date, author and location.

Take inventory

To minimize errors and unwelcome surprises during your SharePoint migration, take inventory of the content you plan to move and acknowledge the intricacies of the source before you test or migrate to a new destination. The best way to go about this is to truly investigate your content and acknowledge the different object types involved. This inventory may be very granular, including number of versions, quantity of metadata and associated lookup columns within SharePoint or another site collection.

Test your migration before you commit

When moving from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online, it’s important to address the different object types and their migration paths. Each object type is going to have a different migration path with its own challenges. In a test migration, you collect a smaller set of files from the source and move it to the destination, and then make sure all the attributes that you want come over with the files. It also gives you a chance to address any errors and complications, and test the transfer speed. Testing by object type helps you acknowledge the types of content and objects that have to move and any complexities you may run into with each of them.

Set a generous timeframe

Cloud migrations tend to take longer than migrating between two SharePoint on-premises systems. While cloud migration tools may claim to transfer a gigabyte per hour, your actual speed depends on a number of factors and network complexities. Moving data between completely separate data centers may result in low transfer rates, around 100 MB or 250 MB per hour. When you’re dealing with terabytes of data, such a slow rate could put you behind schedule. That’s why it’s important to look for ways to speed up the process.

In the end, to get the best results from your SharePoint migration, it’s important to set appropriate expectations and timeframes. For example, content cleanup may take considerable time depending on your information, cleanup goals and strategy. But considering the potential benefits of streamlining the migration and improving system performance, there’s no sense in cutting corners.

Recommended SharePoint Cloud Server

Are you looking for a recommended hosting provider for your new cloud server? ASPHostPortal.com is the answer.

Why ASPHostPortal.com?

With Windows Dedicated Cloud Server Services from ASPHostPortal.com, you’ll find the perfect Cloud Server solution for your business. Web pages will load faster for ecommerce customers, databases will get higher IOPS and applications streaming large volumes of video and media files will experience low latency when customers run their applications. With cloud servers, you have the ability to upgrade and downgrade your servers on the fly. In some cases depending on the Operating System running on the cloud server it may still require a reboot. Migrating your cloud server to a different physical server can usually be accomplished with no downtime via hot migration.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: Search Feature Not Working, How to Fix it?

When we test search feature in SharePoint 2013, it stop working and this is the error message:

The Problem

Turns out, the issue was due to URLs being configured in the Content Sources that either didn’t exist, or did not have a proper DNS entry that pointed the server to the correct location.

How to Fix it?

  • Navigate to Central Administrator
  • Click Application Management
  • Click Manage service applications
  • Click Search Service Application
  • Under Crawling section click Content Sources
  • Click Local SharePoint Sites
  • In the Start Addresses section (see below) remove all URL’s that do not exist

  • Click OK
  • Then try again and it should work now

Why are these URL’s a problem?

Our search server was locking up whenever a crawl would run. This meant that a full crawl or even an incremental crawl never finished. Obviously the issue was due to the site not existing or not being available for the crawler to index the content.

Hope this issue really help you all.

SharePoint 2013 Hosting with ASPHostPortal.com :: 10 Top Tips for Your SharePoint 2013

What is SharePoint 2013?

At its most basic definition SharePoint is a web application from Microsoft that enables organizations to work more efficiently by letting users share documents, data and information. There are multiple SharePoint products for organizations to choose from, each offering a unique set of benefits.

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10 Top Tips for SharePoint

In this article, we will give you some tips for your SharePoint. There are some tips of SharePoint that you must know:

Don’t use folders in SharePoint

Certainly you should never use folders to classify content – that’s what metadata is for. You may use them to group related items sometimes, however Document Sets are better and, in any case, and folders should never be more than 1 level deep (no nesting).

Differentiate between mandated tasks and non-mandated tasks

Work out what things your staff MUST do (mandated tasks) and things you would like them to do (non-mandated tasks). Apply strong directives around the former with good governance.

Use encouragement, social gaming, appeals to better nature and other soft approaches to foster useful behavior around knowledge sharing and desirable habits that aren’t mandated.

Take away users’ ‘crutches’ for mandated activities – if your staff directory is working well in SharePoint then actively remove paper copies, email version and other applications – make staff use the definitive tool.

Differentiate between planned content and unplanned content

Pre-build content repositories (lists and libraries) for things you know you need to store, developing appropriate content types, metadata, views etc. to support these specific documents. Ensure these areas are used for known content (and is allow shared drives, email sharing, etc.)

Also create less structured libraries for general documents within teams, where you don’t know what kind of content needs to be stored. Use tags and keywords to manage the unplanned content and review it often to see if more structure is needed for emerging topics and activities.

Use OneNote for semi-structured and unstructured information

Not everything needs to be or can be planned. Use OneNote (it’s part of Microsoft Office and everyone in the NHS is licensed to use it) as a great tool for capturing notes, ideas, bits of emails and other ad hoc or temporary information. Encourage staff to remove information from emails and store it properly in OneNote. Create your OneNote notebooks in SharePoint libraries (we suggest a dedicated OneNote library for each department, project etc.), which will ensure content is synchronized across the whole team.

Continually develop views

SharePoint libraries can hold large numbers of documents, images and items. Views are an essential way of helping users see the documents etc. allowing content to be filtered, sorted and grouped; to provide just the columns of information they need without having to open each item to review its properties; or to change the way the items are displayed, for example as a list or as boxed items or a list with a preview.

Encourage staff to use the Web 2.0 features of SharePoint

Get staff to click on the star ratings options where enabled, to identify valuable content for other staff. Get those to click on the ‘I like It’ button, which will help them find documents, etc., they like and show their work-related interests to other staff.

Especially encourage staff to use the Tags and Notes button, which will allow further metadata (keywords) to be added to content, even after it has been created and without affecting the underlying document.

Use Taxonomies and Enterprise Metadata widely

Managed metadata and appropriate taxonomies allows users to select keywords from existing lists and trees of terms, improving consistency and making it easier for users to add keywords. It also helps improve search results, etc.

Use the ‘Link to a Document’ content type

Sometimes you need to add a document to a library that is somewhere else (another library or an external website for example). Instead of creating a copy (which might go out of date), add the ‘Link to a Document’ content type to the document library. Now you can add all the usual metadata, etc., for documents, without having to store them locally.

Use Metadata navigation for long lists and libraries

Use site wide metadata, etc., to provide rapid ways of filtering and navigating content in large lists. It will appear in the left navigation and lets users rapidly filter and navigate through lists when they haven’t get the predefined view they need. It also saves creating custom views for every possible view.

Replace Excel lists with SharePoint lists

Instead of creating a list in Excel and asking staff to update it there, move it into SharePoint (you can even directly import existing lists into SharePoint from Excel – it only takes 5 minutes). Once in SharePoint you can manage it much more effectively (multi-user access, version control, views, approvals, etc.,) and other applications in SharePoint can use it as a lookup list, etc. And you don’t need to open Excel every time you want to use it.

There are 10 Top Tips for Your SharePoint, we hope that will be useful for you. Do you need SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 Hosting recommendation? ASPHostPortal.com is the answer. Our support will always ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days. Let’s check our special offer to get FREE Domain and Double Space SQL Server here.