@SPJeff

This is a quick follow up to Chris’ SharePoint blog post http://blogs.visigo.com/chriscoulson/mixed-anonymous-and-secure-content-with-sharepoint-2010/ with an IIS trick learned from Foreignkid at http://blog.foreignkid.net/2011/11/iis-7-url-rewrite-http-redirect-to-root-site/

Summary

Blending anonymous and authenticated users on a single site can be challenging.  Enable anonymous read on all site content is generally not appropriate.  Anonymous users should only be granted a bare minimum set of permissions.  Enabling read on the “Site Pages” library works well to enable homepage viewing.  However, the challenge with this approach is that anonymous users then cannot “see” the root site (/) in order to be properly redirected with HTTP 302 (/SitePages/Home.aspx) to the homepage.

I recommend leveraging IIS 7 URL Rewrite to handle this direct at the IIS tier before SharePoint sees the HTTP request.   This way all root site (/) requests are correctly sent to the homepage – for both anonymous and authenticated users.

Action Steps

• Allow Anonymous on the Web Application
• Create root site collection (/)
• Enable Welcome homepage
• Enable Anonymous Access on “Lists and Libraries” under Site Settings
• Grant “View Items” permission on the Site Pages library
• Install IIS 7 URL Rewrite .MSI
• Create a new rule with Regular Expression (^$) and 302 Redirection (SitePages/Home.aspx)

Screenshots

Allow Anonymous on the Web Application

Create root site collection (/)

Enable Welcome homepage

Enable Anonymous Access for “Lists and Libraries” under Site Settings

Grant “View Items” permission on the Site Pages library

Install IIS 7 URL Rewrite .MSI

Download MSI from http://www.iis.net/download/urlrewrite and install on all web front ends (WFE)

Create a new rule with Regular Expression (^$) and 302 Redirection (SitePages/Home.aspx)

Hope that helps!

Lately I’ve been a little overwhelmed with long product names in the Microsoft BI stack.  Maybe I’m lazy … but saying “PerformancePoint Services” over and over again just feels like a lot of work.  For simpler conversations please feel free to use the below acronyms.   I created a Crossword Puzzle for the five people who actually read my blog because they have entirely too much free time. 

SPJeff_BI_Crossword_Answers.pdf

I came across this error when doing a re-install and wanted to post it in case this helps anyone else. The root cause was that I had uninstalled SharePoint Server 2010 without first uninstalling Office Web Applications.

• Downloaded Windows Installer Clean Up utility (msicuu2.exe)
• Highlight any rows beginning with “Microsoft Office Web App …” and click “Remove”
• Reboot
• Run SharePoint 2010 install again

I came across this today. If you’re reading this from Google search results, unfortunately I have bad news. You can’t go forward or backward. A few quick attempts on SETUP.EXE proved useless. I did find an article about how to uninstall MOSS 2007, which might be close enough to work. However, in my case it was just easier to delete the VM and get a fresh copy of Windows.  Lesson learned?    Never accidentally power off a VM halfway during install.

Error

• The install in progress conflicts with a previously installed Microsoft Office 2010 Server product.
• This product installation has been corrupted. Run setup again from the CD, DVD, or other original installation source.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dhirajm/archive/2010/06/20/how-to-manually-uninstall-the-microsoft-sharepoint-server-2007.aspx

Microsoft put a lot of emphasis behind Office 365 and SharePoint Online during last week’s #SPC11 conference.   The cloud is definitely here to stay and has many compelling benefits.  We all should take time to get more familiar with the products available.  Earlier this year I signed up for the trial and honestly didn’t take much time to look around before that expired.   However, today I purchased a “Professional” license so I can take my time to explore.     Below are my notes as I toured of the features.

Welcome Page

Clean easy to follow layout.  Standard stuff overall, but I like the use of icons and right hand side navigation pane.  Less is more.  Oh, and everything I did was with FireFox!  Full browser compatibility, not even a single hiccup.   The getting started documentation is concise, yet complete.   Everything I needed was only a click or two away.  Billing, licenses, and user accounts are all easy to find under the “Admin” tab.

Email is about what you’d expect.  Outlook Web Access 2010 with some 365 branding.

SharePoint Team Site to start with.   Pretty normal stuff here also.

For the full experience you’ll want to download Lync and other desktop MSI/EXE packages.

Service Health is a nice feature that shows a timeline of each cloud feature and status icon.

Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant

You have to first download http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BX00en-US/427 for everything to work locally.   Full desktop applications (Lync, Access, Word, Excel, etc.) work best when they are integrated to your SharePoint site.   Generally corporations use Active Directory and this is already done, but with Office 365 we need an extra program to handle login.   Installation was quick and easy.

Access Services

I figured this was only SharePoint Foundation, and was really happy to see the various templates for “web databases” available.   Integration with Access 2010 locally was smooth and appears fully featured.  The only hiccup was authentication. 

Lync 2010

This is pretty cool stuff and worth more than $6/month by itself.   IM, video, live meetings, and desktop sharing. 

You also have granular control over which features are visible per user.  That could be handy for small businesses with fewer IT staff.

Internet Site

This feature I found to be the most interesting and it still seems to be a work in progress.   These aren’t normal Web Part Pages … nor are they HTML … they’re a new animal.   “Gadgets” replace web parts, but yet we still have zones.  Overall page editing seems reduced to a few basic toolbar buttons.   Probably still evolving, but I would guess this was done to reduce support calls (“I broke my page”).

Invite More Users

Few sales pitches are more compelling than a referral from a happy customer.   On several menus you’ll find a convenient place to invite more users to participate on the site.   That’s great from an ease of use perspective.   However, I’m not yet clear on how this dovetails into licensing costs.   You probably have to create user accounts and pay up first … then double back to grant permissions.

SharePoint Designer

Yes, SPD is available.  As best I can tell it hasn’t been restricted with the SharePoint web application controls available in 2010.   That’s good and bad.   It allows for flexibility, but you have to be careful not to break customized ASPX pages.   Workflows, permissions, and data connections are all here.

One important thing to notice on the overall tenant architecture is how the root site collection is basically just a placeholder for:

• Internet Pages (gadgets, about company, etc)
• Site Collection Features
• Other admin menus

Most all of the real content work happens on the /TeamSite/ child web.   However, if you want to manually type the URL suffix “/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx” and see the all site content for the root you can do that.   This might be a good trick to know for creating more sibling child webs.   For example, a local Access database could be published to “/Database” for a cleaner simpler URL.

Office Web Applications

We have Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote available.   Just click any icon on the “Home” tab to start a new document.  Easy enough.  Having an Office 365 P1 license doesn’t give me any desktop applications, but still this can be a great way to build a simple document from any PC.   Just like with on-premise OWA, some of the fun features are only available in the full desktop application.  Excel, for example, could not make a chart in the web browser.   However, after making a chart with desktop Excel I was able to view it from the browser.