When to use a Site Collection over a Sub-Site

When should you use site collections over sub-sites in your design?

Site collections really bring a considerable amount of flexibility and scalability to your design and I would recommend that you start from the perspective of multiple site collections and then see if you can find logical and compelling reasons to move away from them.

Here are some general guidelines that you should consider before you create a site collection or a sub site.

Consider the core purpose of the site structure you are contemplating. Consider it in relation to the other site structures your portal may house. It is generally not advisable to intermingle disparate sites in the same site collection. For instance you probably would not want your Internet presence site and your collaboration portal to all be part on the same site collection. There are simply too many moving parts that are completely unrelated to one another to make this feasible. While this is a simple example you could consider something such as separating out department sites or even project sites. I do this a lot simply because HR may need a different approach to security than Finance.

If distributed control is something that you want then multiple site collections would be the best way to go. Site collections really are the first layer where we can truly separate out security and administration. Although we can break security inheritance at the site level these still fall under a single umbrella or controlling entity, the site collection and its administrator. I see this a lot when it comes to those core department sites that any organization has. Many times Human Resources, Finance, IT, and Operations will be separated out into their own site collections to provide an additional layer of content control.

Boundaries are a consideration as well. Some of the key components that make up a SharePoint site are scoped to the site collection level. While there are ways around these boundaries they should be accounted for in your design. The following is a list details some of these components.

• Site Columns and Content Types
• Site Quotas
• SharePoint Security Groups
• Recycle Bin
• Site and List Templates and Master Pages
• Search Scope and Keywords
• Out-of-box Back up and Restore capabilities
• Separate Content Databases

If you have groups that cannot share resources they really need to be broken out into separate site collections. Governance can come into play here from the stand point that if the two groups should not have the ability to view or control one another's content then they should be separate or a single, and separate, entity should administer the site collection.

Finally one of the biggest drivers for a separate site collection is security. The ability to place an entirely separate security structure around each site collection can be critical. Site collections can also be broken out into separate content databases which can offer an additional layer of security at the database.

My general feel on this is to begin my design with multiple site collections in mind and then see if I can find a valid reason to deviate from that design. Sometimes the reason is there but more often than not I find that site collections simply bring too much to the table.

Site Settings at Top Level Site or Site Collection:

http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/IT

Site Settings at Sub Site:

http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/IT/SoftwareDevelopment
Or
http://sharepoint.domain.com/sites/IT/Testing

Note: I have copied this post from Joe Shepherd's blog. Thank you very much Joe for such a great post!

Other caveats of using MS Office 2003 with Microsoft SharePoint 2007 products

I have already discussed caveats of using MS Office 2003 with Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 products in my last post. Before I talk about the other caveats, I would strongly recommend you to go through following white paper,

White paper: Good, better, best: Office and SharePoint Products and Technologies

Issues:

1. Unable to check out document from SharePoint document library for editing it in MS Office 2003.

Error - "Edit Document' requires a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible application and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or greater."

2. Internet Explorer crashes (stops responding) when you try to open an Office document in a SharePoint document library.

Here is how you fix these issues,

There is no need to remove any Office 2007 applications from your computer.

Step 1: Repair Office 2003:

1. Go to Start => Control Panel
2. Double Click on "Add/Remove Programs"
3. After this list populates, locate and click "Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition" or any other version of Microsoft Office 2003.
4. Click on the "Change" button
5. On the window that appears, click on the button "Reinstall or Repair" and select "Next"
6. Click on the radio button "Detect and Repair errors in my Office installation" then click "Install"
7. A message will appear once the repair is complete.

Step 2: Click this link to a hotfix file from Microsoft and select "Run" to install this hotfix:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/5/1/f511cec6-d8c5-444e-bd76-5161b2a16c9f/office-kb938888-fullfile-x86-glb.exe

Information about this hotfix can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/938888

Additionally, you may refer to following KB article if above steps do not resolve your issue,

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833714

Note: Above issues may occur with MS Office 2007 applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.) too. You need not to uninstall any MS Office 2007 applications in order to resolve them.

We do not have MS Office 2007 available yet so all above issues were reported while using MS Office 2003 with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Content types in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and MS Office 2003

Let’s talk about custom content type in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and how it works with MS office 2003. To help visualizing this, I have taken screen captures for every little step.

1. Create a custom content type for your test site. I am going to use “SCTest” top level site (site collection) for the demo. Go to Site Actions => Site Settings and click on “Site Content Types” link under Galleries category.

2. Click “Create” link on the top left corner of Site Content Type Gallery.

3. Create a new site content type as shown below. I have chosen Document content type for simplicity. You can add this content type to “Custom Content Types” by selecting it for Group category but I have created a new group called “Test Group” to add this new content type. Please note that I have named new custom content type as “Project Release Documents”

4. You will see following screen on adding a new custom content type. Click “Add from existing site columns” link under “Columns” category.

5. Add appropriate columns for this new content type. I have chosen few as shown below.

6. This is how a new custom content type looks like after adding few existing site columns.

7. I am creating a new document library for “Test Site Collection” (SCTest) to use this custom content type.

8. As usual, I have used shortest possible name for my document library to keep URL for this document library as short as possible. You can always change the “Name” field later on by going to Title, description and navigation under General Settings of document library settings.

9. Go to Settings => Document Library Settings.

10. This is an additional step. I have modified the document library name from TCTL (to keep URL short) to Test Content Type Library as by going to Title, description and navigation under General Settings

11. Click “Advanced Settings” link under General Settings category.

12. Select “Yes” for “Allow management of content types?” and click “OK”.

13. Select “Add from existing site content types” link under Content Types.

14. Select a new custom content type – “Project Release Documents” which you have created in previous steps as shown below.

15. This is an additional step – I am changing order for content types and making “Project Release Documents” as default content type. Select “Change new button order and default content type” link under Content Types.

16. Change the order and select number “1” for “Project Release Document” content type to make it default content type for this document library.

17. So finally content types and columns for your document library will look something like this. Please adjust your column order by clicking on default view – “All Documents”.

18. Now, something very interesting…how content types work with MS Office 2003. Well, keep reading…

As you can see from the screen capture, “Project Release Documents” is the default content type for your document library. Click New menu and select “Project Release Documents” to add a new document (content) to your document library.

19. You will see following message on your screen, if you have MS Office 2003 installed on your machine. Click “OK”

20. It will allow you to use MS Office 2003 (Word 2003) to create a new document. As you have already noticed MS Office 2003 will not allow you add/edit metadata in Word application itself. Add some text to this document and click “Save” icon.

21. Now, you can add those metadata properties for your document however I have noticed that couple of document properties is still missing…I don’t know why. I need to check it out later but anyways it will allow you to add metadata properties for your document using MS Office 2003 and that is what is more important.

22. To add those missing metadata properties, I am going to right click on document in my document library and select “Edit Properties” link.

23. Adding those missing metadata properties, which I could not see in MS Office 2003 for some reasons.

24. Finally here is the document in document library which was created using custom content type and MS Office 2003.

Now, here is the scenario for those unlucky people who can not work with content types using MS Office 2003.

Note: This site belongs to different SharePoint test environment than the previous one.

1. I have created ProjDocs document library and it has “Test Content Type” as default content type.

2. Attempt to create a new document in ProjDocs document library. Same message will pop up, which is shown is previous screen capture before opening MS Office 2003 (Word 2003) for creating a new document.

3. Unfortunately when you try to save this document, it will give you following error message. When you (keep) clicking on either “Yes” or “No” button, it will finally add this new document to ProjDocs but all metadata properties will be missing and you can not add metadata properties even by editing properties in SharePoint.

4. Document “Test2” was added.

5. Trying to edit metadata properties by right clicking “Test2” document in ProjDocs document library and selecting “Edit Properties” link.

6. Unfortunately it does NOT allow adding those missing metadata properties.

7. Here is the work around. If you want to create a new document, simply upload a new document and it will allow you to add those metadata properties but if you want to edit metadata properties of existing document unfortunately you have to download that document to your local computer first and then upload it back to edit/update its metadata properties. Here is the screen capture for uploading a new document to ProjDocs document library.

8. Enter metadata properties for this document and you are done!

9. Here is how ProjDocs document library looks like after uploading those two documents.

Note: Error: 'length' is null or not an object is environment specific. It happened in our environment after we installed one of the hot fixes (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935958) for resolving the other issue.

Here is the hot fix for those who are unable to work with content types using MS Office 2003.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292

This hot fix also resolves issues to work with multiple content types using MS Office 2003.

Note: I have taken screen captures from two separate SharePoint environments.

Step 1-24 are from the enviornment, that does NOT have http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935958 hot fix applied and we can work with content types using MS Office 2003 without any issues.

Step 1-9 are from the environment, that has http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935958 hot fix applied and for some reasons we are unable to work with content types using MS Office 2003 after applying that hot fix. We have to apply http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;950292 hot fix to resolve errors explained in these steps but we will have MS Office 2007 available very soon so we have NOT applied it yet.

How to make "All Sites" scope available to a top level site created using "Team Site" template?

One of my friends had an issue in making “All Sites” scope available to a top level site (site collection) created using “Team Site” template. So I thought of writing this blog. This post assumes that you have Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 implemented in your environment.

First of all, why “All Sites” scope is not available, when you create a top level site or site collection using “Team Site” template? Because team site template is designed for WSS site and WSS does not have enterprise search feature available by default. In other words you can search only within that site itself and cross site search will not be available. Cross site search or Enterprise search feature is available only for Portal Site templates. If you will create top level site using templates under “Publishing” category, you will have “All Sites” scope available.

So here is how you can make “All Sites” scope available to a top level site, which is created using “Team Site” template. For simplicity, I have taken screen capture for everything right from creating a new site collection (top level site) using “Team Site” template to making “All Sites” scope available to it.

1. Create a new site collection using “Team Site” template. We have created a new site collection called “SCTest”.

2. Only “This Site: Test Site Collection” (Name of the site collection) scope is available by default and we would like to have “All Sites” scope available at this top level site.

3. After you create top level site, create a new “Search Center” site for this top level site.

Note: If you have 50 site collections and all those site collections are created using “Team Site” template then I would suggest you to create 50 “Search Center” sites – one for each and with the same name (for naming conventions), if you want “All Sites” scope available to all those top level sites.

4. Here is “Search Center” site created for SCTest site collection.

5. Now, you need to change search settings for SCTest site collection. So go to Site Actions=> Site Settings and click “Search Settings” link under Site Collection Administration.

6. Choose “Use custom scopes. Display richer results using the following Search Center:” and provide URL to “Search Center” site. In our case it is “/sites/SCTest/SearchCenter/”

7. Now, you can see “All Sites” scope is available to SCTest top level site.

8. Additionally you may need to activate “Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” by going to “Site Actions=>Site Settings” and clicking “Site Collection Features” link under Site Collection Administration category.

9. You may also need to activate “Office SharePoint Server Publishing” feature by going to “Site Actions=>Site Settings” and clicking “Site Features” link under Site Administration category.

That’s it! You are all set. You can start using “All Sites” scope for cross site search capabilities.

Unable to activate Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure from site collection features

Issue: Unable to activate "Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" from site collection features.

We had "Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" activated since beginning but for some reasons it was deactivated and when I tried to activate it, I received "Access denied" error.

Note: We have followed Microsoft Guidelines for setting up administrative and service accounts.

Solution:

1. Open IIS Admin.
2. Locate the Web Site for your MOSS web application.
3. Go to the properties and select "Home Directory" tab.
4. Make a note of Application Pool used for this web site.
5. Expand Application Pools in IIS.
6. Go to the properties of Application Pool, which you have noted in step 4 and select "Identity" tab.
7. Make a note of the account used under "Configurable".
8. Change the Application Pool identity to SharePoint Service Account - This is the same account, which you have used for installation of MOSS 2007.
9. IISRESET
10. Activate "Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" from site collection features.
11. Change the Applciation Pool identity back to the original (same account which you have noted in step 7).
12. IISRESET.

Permission issues in SharePoint 2007

Issue: Unable to access Spell Checker in Rich Text Editor of Content Editor web part.

Your sub site has custom permissions (NOT inherited from parent site) and you have "Full Control" access to your sub site but you are unable to use Spell Checker in Rich Text Editor of Content Editor web part.

Solution: Create a custom permission level and name it "Reader Plus" (or any other appropriate name) by copying "Reader" permissions and adding "Browse Directories" permission at top level site. Allow "Reader Plus" access to the account at top level site, which has this issue.

Issue: Unable to access "Information management policy settings" from Document Library settings or List settings.

You have "Read" permissions at top level site and "Full Control" permissions to your sub site but you are unable to access "Information management policy settings" from Document Library settings or List settings.

Solution: Same As Above

Note: These permission issues seem to be addressed in Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2007 however I haven't got a chance to install Service Pack 1 in our SharePoint environment yet.

Crawl doesn't work and Query server is not responding; Search works only for old (crawled) contents

We had this search issue in January' 2008 and here is the description,

We have following three servers with MOSS 2007 STD deployed in SharePoint server farm,

App01- Query Server
App02 - Index Server (We are using this server as dedicated web front end computer for crawling)
SPDBServer - SQL 2005

Search was working fine till 01/05/2008 and it stopped working after this date only for new contents meaning search is still working fine for the old contents which were added before 01/05/2008 but not for new contents added after 01/05/2008.

We have been working to find out reasons why did that happen? We have found following event ids on Query server,

Event ID:10042 - A new query machine, 'App01', has been added to the query rotation based on changes to farm topology.

Event ID:27745 - The following information is part of the event: #50071: Unable to connect to the database SharePoint_Config on SPDBServer. Check the database connection information and make sure that the database server is running..

Event ID: 7888 - A runtime exception was detected. Details follow.
Message: A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the pre-login handshake. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 - Not enough memory is available to complete this request)

We had some database backup client issue on database server but after fixing that issue and rebooting all the three SharePoint servers, we noticed that crawl was not responding. Last incremental crawl, started on 01/05/2008 did not stop even on Monday (01/07/2008).

We have incremental crawl scheduled at every 6 hrs. everyday and full crawl scheduled on every saturday.

After coming back to work on Monday 01/07/2008, we tried search and noticed that it was working only for existing contents(added before 01/05/2008) and not for all the new contents, which were added after 01/05/2008.

When we check Search settings, it says "Query server not responding" and we are unable to stop/pause the incremental crawl, which was started on 01/05/2008. Only way to stop that crawl is to stop Office SharePoint Server Search service from services.msc on both App01 and App02 server.When we stop the crawl this way and start it again, it goes on and on and never stops. We have tried to start both full and incremental crawl this way but that didn't help.

Only resolution to this issue, I have found is to readd App01 - Query server to the farm from SharePoint Central Administration however I am still wondering, if that will fix our "Query Server not responding" error. As per our research, it seems few other people also have noticed this issue for some unknown reasons and if SharePoint doesn't have any operational errors, we can safely ignore them. Microsoft is aware of this isse and they are expecting to get this resolved in SharePoint 2007 Service Pack 1.

I was also thinking of resetting all crawled contents and rebuilding the content index. I was affraid, if resetting the crawled contents will not regenerate/rebuild the new content index. If crawl will not work after resetting the crawled contents then SharePoint search will be completely down and it will stop working even for old contents.

Has anybody tried this KB?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925609

Can we move content index(search catalogs) from shared location to some other location on Query server and then try resetting crawled contents? Can we move content index back to its original location if resetting crawled contents will not generate a new content index or it will not propagate it to Query server?

If above KB article gives us the flexibility of reusing content index in case of resetting crawled contents fails to build a new content index or propagating it to Query server, we would like to try it first before we can try readding Query server to the SharePoint server farm (Stop and then restart Office SharePoint Server Search service for Query server from SharePoint Central Admin)

Does anybody know an appropriate solution to fix this issue? Search works only for old (Crawled) contents and not for new contents, Crawl never stops (hangs) and there is "Query server not reponding" message on search settings so basically it is not propagating the content index.

Solution:

Here is how we fixed this issue in our environment. This issue might be specific to our environment and this resolution may not work for similar issue in the other environment.

- We noticed few memory leaks in SQL Server 2005. We(our Windows Server team with SQL Administrator) fixed those issues first however fixing memory leaks in SQL didn't help us to fix search issues in SharePoint and we still had "Query Server not responding" error in SharePoint and Search was not working.

- We created a new location for content index propagation on Frontend Server, which is also a Query Server.
Note: Do not move existing crawled contents from old propagation location to a new location manually. In fact, SharePoint does it automatically once you create a new location for content index propagation with the following command. It is strongly recommended that you start a "Full Crawl" after this to rebuild content index for updated contents.

- Ran following command to propagate search index to the new location,

stsadm.exe –o osearch –propagationlocation index file path

Please allow some time to move existing content index from previous location to a new location. You may see few known events in event viewer while SharePoint is moving content index to a new location however you can safely ingnore them. Please check status on Search Administration (SSP => Search Settings) page and for Query Server response. You can start a Full Crawl after few minutes once you see Query Server starts responding in Search Settings.
This has fixed our SharePoint search issue and it works fine now.

- Hope this will help others to resolve similar issue. Please make sure you do not have any SQL Server issues before you troubleshoot it in SharePoint.

References:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=925609http://blogs.msdn.com/pdesai/archive/2007/09/27/moss-2007-search-scope-error-query-index-server-event-log-error-how-to-fix-it.aspx

Technet Post on this issue:
http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/ShowPost.aspx?postid=2706585&siteid=17