Anonymous Users are Prompted for Authentication – SharePoint Public|External Sites

SharePoint now becomes a global role player for Public Sites. Bunch of cooperate companies trusts SharePoint in Terms of Security and Privacy so this is the golden age of SharePoint.

I’m assisting on a Multitenancy Environment of SharePoint for Public Sites hosting for one of my client. Suddenly one Site got a issue that anonymous users are prompted for credentials after hosting and configuring everything.

If you have a public web site you might have the ViewFormPagesLockDown feature turned on. Functionality of this is to restrict anonymous users of accessing Pages inside Libraries "Forms" Folders. You can read more about Planning security for External anonymous access environments which elaborated in details here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263468.aspx

Below steps is just to make others aware on a workaround carried out to resolve. Just try it out.

1. Open up cmd and run below line from your SharePoint APP Server

2. Paste the Path to STSADM –

SharePoint 2013 – "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\BIN"

SharePoint 2010 – "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN" and hit enter

3. Edit below line up on your environment and hit enter

stsadm -o deactivatefeature -url “<site URL>” -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml – This will Deactivate the Lock down feature

4. Now go ahead and toggle the anonymous permissions for your Site through "Site Action –> Site Settings –> Site Permission". Set it to "None" from "Entire Web Site". Hit Ok and edit it again, this time set it back to "Entire Web Site" from "None" (Vise versa)

5. We can now activate the feature. Run the below line to get it back.

stsadm -o activatefeature -url “<site URL>” -filename ViewFormPagesLockDown\feature.xml – This will Deactivate the Lock down feature

E.g. Figure

1. That’s it and try to access now anonimously.

Obtain Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012

Microsoft Announced Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012 on November 2013 and here is the full list of Fixes/Improvements included with it – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2674319/en-us

Improvements of SQL 2012 SP1 in SharePoint Perspective 

One of the major reason to Obtain SQL 2012 Service Pack 1 in SharePoint Environments is that you cannot enable SQL Server Reporting Instance without having SP1 which was the reason for me to obtain this. when you trying to enable SQL Server Reporting for SharePoint, You may get the issue in SharePoint Management Shell saying "The term ‘Install-SPRSService’ is not recognized as the name of the cmdlet".

Installing SP 1 for SQL 2012 resolved the above issue for me.

Take below steps to Obtain the SQL Service pack 1.

Note:

1. Make sure that you test this in a Staging environment before update your production SQL.
2. Also there is an mandatory KB (Non Security Update for SQL Server 2012 SP1 [KB2793634]) which needs to be Installed after SP1 Installation. This KB will fix "windows Installer Starts repeatedly" issue. Get in here to know more about known issues on SP 1 – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/psssql/archive/2013/07/31/after-applying-service-pack-1-for-sql-server-2012-you-may-encounter-a-known-issue-details-inside.aspx

1. Download SP 1 for SQL 2012 here – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35575. And run it on your Server

2. Accept the license Terms

3. Select the Features that you need to Update and hit next

4. Give it a moment

5. Hit "Update" to Install

6. It will take a while and make sure that your users are not using any services related to SQL.

7. If everything went well, you will get the below green lights on each feature.

8. Go ahead and now install the KB mentioned above

9. Restart the Server and you are done with the update !

Use Chart Webpart in SharePoint 2013

SharePoint 2013 has discontinued (not really) some of it early version’s features and Chart webpart is one of them. It seems that Microsoft has discontinued this feature to bring up Excel Services in to better place where you can leverage the product you purchased and do more with it.

However this doesn’t mean that you cannot use Chart Web Part in 2013. if you still prefer to use Chart Web Part instead of Excel Services you can simply download the webpart and use in your Site.

Using Excel Services would leverage your knowledge very much on BI but Still this Chart web part is a very good feature that you can simply customize.

Refer here if you need to dig more in what Microsoft has Discontinued with their latest SharePoint – http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/sharepoint-help/discontinued-features-and-modified-functionality-in-microsoft-sharepoint-2013-HA102892827.aspx

Well Let’s see how we can use Chart Web Part in SharePoint 2013. follow these few steps to get it done.

1. Download the Web Part in Zipped file here – http://1drv.ms/1cP2bQX
2. Unzip it and upload it to your SharePoint Site Webpart Gallery (Site Actions –> Site Settings –>WebParts)

Figure: 01 Webpart Gallery

It will take in to the Gallery. Go ahead and simply upload the MOSSChart Web Part in to it.

It will appear there as below once you uploaded

Go ahead and try to insert a webpart by editing a Page (Edit Page –> Insert –>Webpart). You should be able to see the Web Part under Default Category (if you have chosen Default Category when you upload it)

Go ahead and Add it to your Page

Here we got the little master in our page now. Play with it and enjoy your SharePoint life folks !!

I’ll be further keep posting on how to configure and customize this webpart.

What are the issues that SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1 Fixes

Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2013 and Office product range has been released recently. this is available for all three editions of SharePoint 2013.

Download the Package here – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/jj891062.aspx 

Note:

• Make sure that you test the impact of the package in a Test Server (POC) before you apply it to production environments.
• You don’t need to apply March 2013 CU for this.

And below are the list of issues that Service pack will fix

1. Metadata is lost when documents that use a custom content type with a "Description" field are opened for editing.
2. When an item is deleted, restored from recycle bin, and then deleted again, there is a primary key constraint error.
3. An error occurs when files are moved between document libraries and the web time zone is behind that of the server.
4. Metadata filtering at list level always lists all metadata terms.
5. The hyperlink popup window drops the selected word to be linked when there is a delay of more than one second in opening the window.
6. Multiple-column, SummaryLinkWebParts with a group heading style of "Separator" are rendered incorrectly.
7. A hash tag that contains a full width space does not get created successfully.
8. Search schema compression is now enabled by default to allow larger search schemas.
9. Highlighting for FQL queries is now enabled for FQL as well as KQL.
10. Opening a custom SharePoint list in datasheet view and applying multiple custom filters, where each filter has more than one condition, can result in an incomplete set of list items.
11. When the "Export to Excel" button is clicked in a SharePoint document library that has the Content Type field displayed, the Content Type field does not appear in the Excel workbook.
12. An error occurs after changing the "Manager" property in EditProfile.aspx page when the My Sites WebApp is not in the same farm as the UPA.
13. SharePoint REST API does not return a well-defined error response for a duplicate key exception.
14. Developers are unable to specify a Content Type ID when creating Content Types in the client object model.
15. On list views in SharePoint sites, the Connect to Outlook button in the ribbon may be erroneously disabled.
16. In some non-English languages of SharePoint, the text displayed in the callout UI for a document or list item, describing who last edited the item, may not be grammatically correct.
17. Copy and Paste in a datasheet does not work correctly with Internet Explorer 11.
18. Pages do not render in Safari for iPad when private browsing mode is used.
19. When editing rich text fields in SharePoint, if the editing session exceeds 30 minutes, the edits may not be saved.
20. An error that says "SCRIPT12004: An internal error occurred in the Microsoft Internet extensions" may occur intermittently when users visit their SkyDrive Pro or other pages on their personal site.
21. InfoPath may crash when a form that points to a SharePoint list, with a lookup to another SharePoint list, is opened.
22. An InfoPath form with extended characters in its name fails to open.
23. An error that says "Security Validation for the form has timed out" may occur when an InfoPath form is digitally signed and hosted in a SharePoint site collection that uses the SharePoint version 2010 user experience.
24. "Show document icon" remains unchecked and the document icon does not show in Edit Properties for a list item.
25. A "Failed tagging this page" error occurs when the "I like it" button is clicked.
26. The wrong term is removed when manually editing a multi-valued taxonomy field.
27. When tagging list items using a language that is different from the term store default language, suggestions for labels are offered in multiple languages. The suggestions appear confusing because both language suggestions are listed without any identification of the language.
28. An error that says "There was an error processing this request" may appear when editing the user profile.
29. Times are missing from Date/Time results in certain filtered list web service calls.
30. Minimal and no metadata are now enabled as supported JSON formats. 
31. Actions4 schema workflow actions can’t be deployed to SharePoint.
32. Using Client Object Model, Stream.Seek() to seek to a particular position doesn’t seek at the proper offset.
33. Refreshing a workflow status page generates the following error: "System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: The given key was not present in the dictionary."
    Setting custom, non-English outcomes in web pages on tasks in a workflow fails to set the value.
34. Configurations of SharePoint using Azure Hybrid mode and Workflow Manager together can cause workflow callbacks to fail.
    Workflow task processes on wiki pages won’t start.
35. Workflows won’t wait for changes to content approval status fields.
36. E-mails generated by workflow cannot be disabled for approvals in SharePoint workflows.
37. Workflows may fail to send an e-mail or send too many e-mails.
38. Association variables do not update correctly for auto-start workflows.
39. A KeyNotFoundException error may occur in a workflow when the associated task list uses unique permissions.
40. Incomplete tasks are deleted when workflow task activities complete.
41. Task activity is suspended when the task is completed using app-only credentials.
42. An error that says "This task could not be updated at this time" occurs when trying to complete a workflow task using the "Open this task" button in Outlook.
43. A workflow doesn’t respond properly when waiting for changes in specific types of list columns, such as Boolean, Date Time, and User.