My Blog in review (2014)

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 76,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Achievement Unlocked: Reach 100,000 Views :)

This week my blog reach more than 100,000 views

Thanks to everyone visit my blog and view my posts, I hope you found my posts are useful for you and help you in your work.

Writing posts to my blog has been a great experience that has opened up many doors, it helps me to increase my knowledge, experience, friendships, and opportunities.

Thanks All, and I hope to unlocked the next achievement 500K+ views , and I like to share my statistics with you:

 Statistics Chart

 

World Map

 

Top Posts and Pages

 

Configure Outgoing E-Mail Settings for SharePoint 2010 / 2013 to using Office 365 or GMail Relay

Any SharePoint Client, User, or Developer need an SMTP server to send e-mails to Internal or External SharePoint site users from a Workflow, Alerts, Request Site Access, and/or Any custom Apps that use SharePoint Outgoing e-mail setting to send e-mails.

SharePoint cannot be configured to send e-mail over encrypted port to the e-mail service. And Office 365 and Gmail required an SMTP connection that supports TLS encryption .

Fortunately, Windows Server (2008-2012) supports an SMTP relay for Office 365 and Gmail by install a local SMTP Rely Server that supports an encrypted connection (over TCP Port 587) .

The Steps are easy and forward:

1. Install SMTP Role (Windows Server 2008 and 2012)
2. Configuring SMTP Service to Relying to Office365/Gmail SMTP
3. Testing the SMTP Service Connection
4. Configuring Outgoing E-Mail settings in SharePoint Servers
5. Test Sending an E-mail from SharePoint Site

The following is the detailed steps:

 

Hiding a SharePoint 2010/2013 Disabled Ribbon Buttons By User Permissions Using CSS

Many SharePoint users asking “Can we hide Ribbon buttons for current login user (by his permissions) rather than show it as disabled button !?

The answer is YES. When user did not have contribute permissions (like Add Item, Edit Item …etc.), these buttons will be shown in the Ribbon, but not active (Disabled), so the Ribbon button will not be clickable as following:

In SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2013 / Online

So, to hide these buttons in easy and simple way, we will use an existing CSS class in SharePoint 2010, 2013, and Online version. The CSS class name is “.ms-cui-disabled”, and this CSS class is added to all disabled buttons in the Ribbon?!? So the idea is to override the behavior of this CSS class in Master Page and hide any button that use this CSS class.

 

I’m now a Microsoft Partner Technology Solutions Professional (P-TSP) in Office 365 and SharePoint

It’s official, I’ve been nominated and accepted by Microsoft as a Partner Technology Solutions Professional (P-TSP) in Office 365 and SharePoint!

The Microsoft Partner Technology Solutions Professional Program (P-TSP) is a select group chosen from the Microsoft partner community, whose focus is to augment Microsoft’s internal Technology Specialist team. Our primary role is to communicate the value of Microsoft Solutions including SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, Microsoft Azure, System Center, Virtualization, and Office 365 to customers and to provide architectural guidance for Enterprise Integration solutions and upgrades. The objective of the program is to provide our years of client experience to deliver pre-sale activities and resources to empower customers and help them meet their solution, upgrade, and integration needs

I’m extremely excited to be considered among the elite in the Microsoft Partner Community, and I look forward to learning more about the program and helping businesses find value using Microsoft Office 365.

So I will help Microsoft with Technical Expertise in Presale meetings, create Proof of Concepts and holding presentations about Office 365

So feel free to invite Microsoft and ask for an P-TSP if you would like our company as well 🙂

 

Step by Step: Install SQL server 2008 R2 for SharePoint 2010

This article contain detailed steps to install SQL server 2008 R2 with best practices and guidelines from Microsoft and other many blogs over the internet, and I try to put all these best practices and guidelines in one article with step by step installation guide.

Pre-Installation Steps

Before install SQL server 2008 R2, we need to check the pre-install requisites:

Operating Systems Requirements:

• Plan to install SQL on a NTFS file system
• Do no try to install SQL Server on a compressed, encrypted or read-only drive, because setup will block the installation
• Do not install SQL Server on a Domain Controller.
• Verify Windows Management Instrumentation service (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services) is running
• Configure your firewall to allow SQL Server access. Click here for more information about protocols and port numbers
• Create dedicated service account for each service to be installed. Ensure that these accounts are not member of Local Administrator because it will give unnecessary rights to these accounts, see SQL services accounts
• The user account that is running SQL Server Setup must have administrative privileges on the computer, see SQL services accounts
• Group all SQL services accounts in one AD Organization Unit for easy management and understandable hierarchy.
• At least 6.0 GB of disk space are required by SQL Server setup

Additional software requirements and hardware requirements:

• Enable .NET Framework 3.5.
• PowerShell 2.0.

Note: run Windows Updates to get latest updates after install and check all previous requirements.

 

Error: The Products Preparation Tool in SharePoint Server 2013 may not progress past “Configuring Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role”

When you try to install Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 on some Windows Server 2012 configurations, the Products Preparation Tool may be unable to correctly configure and install the required Windows Features for SharePoint. If this occurs, the tool will continuously try to configure and install the required features and then restart.

When this problem occurs, the Products Preparation Tool does not progress past the “Configuring Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role” stage.

To work around this issue, use one of the following methods in this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2765260, in my case, i used Method 2 – offline method 

Also, please to note that: Currently, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 is not supported for installation on computers running the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. SharePoint Server 2013 with Service Pack 1 and SharePoint Foundation 2013 with Service Pack 1 will offer support for Windows Server 2012 R2.

for more information about SharePoint support for Windows Server 2012 R2, read the following articles:

SharePoint 2013 Support for Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft Support: SharePoint 2013 support for Windows Server 2012 R2

I Hope this useful for you,
Thanks.

 

Step by Step: Install, configure, and Deploy Project Server 2013 – Part 5: Deploy Project Web App with a new site collection – Project Server 2013

This is the Fifth and Final part for Step by Step: Install, configure, and Deploy Project Server 2013 Article,

Article Content’s Index:

1. Part 1: Overview and Prepare for a deployment of Project Server 2013
2. Part 2: Install and Configure Project Server 2013
3. Part 3: Configure Project Server 2013 Application Service
4. Part 4: Deploy Project Web App with a new site collection – Project Server 2013
5. Part 5: Deploy Project Web App in an existing site collection – Project Server 2013

Deploy Project Web App in an existing site collection – Project Server 2013

For this post I create a Web Application with Top-Level Site collection. In Top-Level site, there is no link for PWA Setting in Site Action Menu. We want to enable PWA for this site collection

Deploying an instance of Project Web App to an existing site collection consists of the following:

1. Enable the Project Web App site collection features
2. Create a Project Web App site in an existing site collection

These steps will be created using PowerShell Script.

 

Step by Step: Install, configure, and Deploy Project Server 2013 – Part 4: Deploy Project Web App with a new site collection – Project Server 2013

This is the Fourth part for Step by Step: Install, configure, and Deploy Project Server 2013 Article,

Article Content’s Index:

1. Part 1: Overview and Prepare for a deployment of Project Server 2013
2. Part 2: Install and Configure Project Server 2013
3. Part 3: Configure Project Server 2013 Application Service
4. Part 4: Deploy Project Web App with a new site collection – Project Server 2013
5. Part 5: Deploy Project Web App in an existing site collection – Project Server 2013

Deploy Project Web App with a new site collection

In this part, we will deploy an instance of Project Web App along with a Project Web App site in a new site collection.

Not all steps in this post are required, such as create Web Application, and/or create Top-Level site collection, but I covered these steps in post for more usability and as a general reference.

 

Step by Step: Install, configure, and Deploy Project Server 2013 – Part 3: Configure Project Server 2013 Application Service

This is the Third part for Step by Step: Install, configure, and Deploy Project Server 2013 Article,

Article Content’s Index:

1. Part 1: Overview and Prepare for a deployment of Project Server 2013
2. Part 2: Install and Configure Project Server 2013
3. Part 3: Configure Project Server 2013 Application Service
4. Part 4: Deploy Project Web App with a new site collection – Project Server 2013
5. Part 5: Deploy Project Web App in an existing site collection – Project Server 2013

Configure Project Server 2013 Application Service

After Project Server 2013 is installed, the following configuration steps are required before creating a Project Web App site and using Project Server: