Below are the major changes in Office 2013 client when integrating with SharePoint 2013 servers. More or less, each version of Office has its own compatibility with SharePoint. These compatibilities are not lost with newer versions of SharePoint, but you can't make use of the new integration.

Having said that, you can still use Office 2010 clients with reduced functionality. As with all prior versions of the product, SharePoint 2013 integration works best with the same version of Office client which is Office 2013.

With regards to SharePoint 2013 integration with Exchange 2010, the eDiscovery and Site Mailbox feature cannot be used with Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010.

Following are the major changes in Office 2013 client when working with SharePoint servers

Major people-oriented enhancements in Office 2013.

Just like in earlier versions of Office, name.dll contains NameCtrl ActiveX interfaces to:

·         Show Instant Messenger availability.

·         Launch a person card from SharePoint.

If Microsoft Lync is signed in, then this control retrieves user information directly from Lync in order to display presence information or contact details.

For Office 2013, enhancements were made especially for Internet Explorer (IE) 10 and for non-IE browsers.

Using Drag and Drop in Document Libraries in Office 2013 

In Office System 2010, the only possibilities to use drag and drop for files are:

·         Multiple Upload dialog: It is only possible to drag files from the desktop into this window in order to upload files to the SharePoint library.

·         Open the document library in Windows Explorer: This allows copy/move operations between Desktop and SharePoint Library.

While the Explorer View option is still fully valid, Office 2013 now directly integrates the Multiple Upload feature into document library views by adding a command text area on top of a document library:

This command text area combines two features from Office System 2010:

·         The new document link will open the single file upload window just as the previous Add Document link.

·         You can now directly use the command text area to drag and drop files into the document library. It is not necessary any more to first open a separate Multiple Upload Files window first.

Drag and Drop now allows the following scenarios:

·         Drag file(s) from the user desktop into the browser window to upload files to SharePoint.

·         Drag file(s) in the browser from the current folder into a sub folder to move files into that folder.

·         Drag file(s) from the browser to the user desktop to download a copy.

·         Drag file(s) from one library to another library (in the quick launch area).

Adding Documents in Office System 2013 

Drag and Drop will only work with IE with installed Office 2013 client ActiveX control or with Safari or Chrome with HTML5 code.

Users had a broad range of options how to add documents to a SharePoint library in the previous Office System. Some of these options were significantly changed with Office System 2013 to make the file upload procedure easier for users.

The following list describes the major changes compared to Office System 2010:

No Upload Multiple Documents command in the ribbon any more: The Documents ribbon for document libraries now only contains the Upload Document command for single file uploads. The Multiple Upload command in the ribbon does not exist anymore

The command to upload multiple files became obsolete as this feature is now directly integrated in the Document Library View itself as shown in the previous section.

·         New Command Text area in document libraries: As described earlier, the Add Document link has been moved from the bottom to the top of a document list. Therefore, it is not necessary to scroll down a document library any more.

This link is now also replaced by a command text area that combines two main features directly within the document library view:

·         The click to add link will open the Single File Upload window just as the previous Add Document link.

·         You can now directly use the command text area in order to drag and drop files into the Document Library. It is not necessary any more to first open a separate Multiple Upload Files window first. This command text will display different text information for different use cases:

·         Single File Upload Window: Clicking the Upload Document command in the document library ribbon or using the Click to add command text will open the single file upload dialog. Now it allows to directly upload files to a specific folder. Clicking the add link will open the following new Upload Document dialog:

·         Adding new documents via Add Document Callout: In SharePoint 2010, the New Document command required a template for the document library or content types. If you are using a Word template for a document library then the New Document command will only provide the possibility to create new Word documents.

In SharePoint 2013, the clickable text new document will now open an add document callout window. It allows a user to quickly create a new Office document or browse their computer to add an existing document:

Following are Controls being used for multiple upload in office 2013

In Office 2007 we used an unmanaged ActiveX control STSUpld.UploadCtl in stsupld.dll to provide a multiple upload window for MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010. 

For Office 2010 we have re-written this same control as managed code. This however had some issues like:

·         Performance decrease (we e.g. need to instantiate Framework first, also creating and managing a window turned out to consume ¼ of the overall runtime)

·         Errors for files > 200 MB due to .Net limitations

·         ActiveX cannot be used in 3^rd party browsers like in IE.

For Office 2013  for SharePoint 2013 we are now using two different approaches depending on the used browser on the client:

·         For all versions of Internet Explorer we are still using an ActiveX Control inside stsupld.dll. This control is now written as windowless ATL ActiveX (non-managed code again) in order to increase performance.

·         For IE10 in immersive mode (which doesn't allow ActiveX), FireFox and Chrome we are using HTML5.

Sharing

One new feature in Office System 2013 is the possibility to share documents or folders for others directly from the document callout.

SharePoint 2013 allows specifying an Everyone claim in Sharing options to quickly share documents with all users.

When clicking the document callout, SharePoint provides a short summary for the selected file/folder. You can also check with whom this resource is being shared.

Sharing Options on MySites

Only MySites will provide an additional sharing column in document libraries where share options could be directly accessed. The lock symbol for the first file indicates that the file is not yet shared. The second file is already shared as indicated by the people symbol in the Sharing column:

These sharing symbols provide the following user interaction:

·         Hovering cursor over this symbol will show to whom this file is currently shared.

·         Clicking on this symbol will open a Shared With dialog showing the same information in a separate window:

·         Right-click this symbol will open the document callout (just like in normal content sites).

    
Office 2013 Plugins for Chrome and Firefox

As already noted we are still using the NameCtrl ActiveX control for presence information in Internet Explorer. For FireFox and Chrome Office2013 now contains a plugin for Firefox and Chrome browsers (npspwrap.dll in the Office binaries folder) to provide the same functionality for users as the corresponding ActiveX control for IE:

·         User can see presence

·         Hover card behavior is the same

·         Full expanded person card behavior is the same

Please note that users will not be prompted for approval or additional downloads to use this plugin Firefox or Chrome.

New Trust Behavior in Office 2013

The Office 2010 version of name.dll only works if the host site is in the intranet or trusted zone. This does not work well for non-SSL external SharePoint sites like BPOS-L. This is because the external site is not in one of these trusted zones. But Office 2013 will still check if the site is not trusted from the Intranet and Trusted Zone checks. However if this fails, then name.dll will now also check the list of approved sites for this specific ActiveX control according to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd433050(v=VS.85).aspx:

·         It allows name.dll execution if the site URL is approved for the add-on.

·         We will do this same check regardless of our host browser (IE, Firefox, or Chrome).

·         If the URL is not approved, then we will not execute as in Office 2010.

Office 2013 provides co-authoring functionality

As with Office 2010, Office 2013 provides co-authoring functionality for Word 2013, PowerPoint 2013 and OneNote 2013. Office 2013 introduces co-authoring functionality for Visio 2013. If you are using SharePoint Online or have SharePoint 2013 configured to use Office Web Apps Server, users can also co-author documents in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote Web Apps.

<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff718249(v=office.15).aspx

Cheers!
SOURAV

Start by creating a text file on your desktop or wherever you want.   

Select the entire file name including the txt file type (this means that your machine must be configured to show the extension) and change the name and file type to test.udl or connection.udl or whatever you prefer.   
Now you have a UDL file on your desktop:   

Double-click the UDL file to bring up the dialog box. By default it appears as shown above. It isn’t limited to just SQL Server connection strings. It works for all of your OLE DB data providers as you can see on the provider tab. For SharePoint connectivity, select ‘Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server’

Type in the SQL server name. Select the SharePoint database and click ‘Test Connection’. If it succeeds, we are good. Else, you may want to check the firewall settings.

Additional Links (Ports):
Service overview and network port requirements for the Windows Server system
List of TCP and UDP port numbers
Protocols, Ports, and Firewall Rules

Thinking about setting up Microsoft Office 2010 Web Applications in your environment? Curious about Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word web applications?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, you should consider attending one of the Office 2010 Web Application workshops that will be delivered in cities around the country in the coming months.

The Office 2010 Web Applications workshop is designed to provide you with information regarding best practices on installation, manage, and usage of the Office web applications of PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and OneNote 2010.

Key Focus Areas:

· Setup of Office web applications

· Server Architecture

· The Companions

· Introduction to Excel Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote web applications

IT Professionals responsible for the deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting of Office installations. Application-specific and/or help desk-type issues are not included in the scope of this offering.

Delivery Dates and Locations:
April 5-6, 2011 – Irving, TX
April 19-20, 2011 – Irvine, CA
May 3-4, 2011 – Downers Grove, IL
May 17-18, 2011 – New York, NY
June 1-2, 2011 – Tampa, FL
New dates and locations will be announced here as they become available.

Pricing:
$1000 USD per person

To register or for more information:

•    To register online, visit http://www.microsoft.com/events, click the Find Events and Webcasts link, and perform an advanced search using the following EventIDs or keywords "Office 2010 Deployment":

o    Las Colinas:  1032479205
o    Irvine, CA: :  1032479318
o    Downers Grove, IL:  1032479319
o    New York, NY:  1032479324
o    Tampa, FL:  1032479329

•    To register via email, send mail to ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com and include the following information:

o    Company Name
o    Attendee Name
o    Physical Address
o    Phone Number
o    Number of Attendees
o    Desired Event Location/Date

•    To register via phone, call 1-888-875-9071

•    Email inquiries to ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com

To get better information than the "unexpected error" you can turn on stack trace in the web.config of the corresponding web application.

You need to take the following steps:

change false to true as shown below:

<SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false">

turn off custom errors

<

customErrors mode="Off" />

Hope this helps anybody trying to debug SharePoint errors.

Cheers!!
SOURAV

• Simplified installation experience similar to MOSS installation
• Enhanced Administration interface part of Central Administration
• New Federation Capabilities
• Performance and Stability Enhancements
• No preset Document limits

Search Server 2008 is available in two versions similar to SQL Server

• Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS)
  • distributed topology
  • licensed per server
• Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSSX)
  • single server
  • FREE

Step by Step Instructions to install and configure MSS (Single Server Farm) on Windows Server 2008 Ent:

1. Install SQL Server 2008
2. Install Search Server 2008 (not express)
3. Install MOSS 2007 SP1 (upgrades Farm installed by Search Server 2008)
4. Install Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3811C371-0E83-47C8-976B-0B7F26A3B3C4&displaylang=en) You need to install this Update otherwise you will see errors when accessing Administration pages
5. Finish Search Configuration (provide domain accounts for different services and let Configuration finish)
6. Now you can access Central Administration that has Search Configured

INSTALL MSS ON SQL SERVER

MOSS 2007 SP1 installation

MOSS 2007 SP1 installation

In order to see the real error messages as well as the stack trace of where the error happened within SharePoint, you have to do two simple things - in fact, this is mainly standard ASP.NET business:

In the web.config file of your SharePoint web application, edit these two entries:

1. Switch custom errors off

<system.web>

...

<customErrors mode="On" />

...

</system.web>

Set the value "On" to "Off" in a development or staging environment, or to "RemoteOnly" if you have to troubleshoot an issue in a productive environment (of course, the error has to be reproduced locally in this case).

2. Enable CallStack

<SharePoint>

...
<SafeMode MaxControls="50" CallStack="false" />

...

</SharePoint>

To make the CallStack visible, set the value to "true".

Please note that changing the web.config will cause SharePoint to restart the whole web application immediately after saving.

This little nice-to-know works for both, MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0.

Cheers!!
SOURAV

This can be achieved in various was:

• Create a HttpHandler
• If using the Publishing Feature: Create a page derived from "Redirect Page"
• ...

All of the above have some disadvantages: Either you have to write code, create custom configurations or - in the case of the "Redirect Page", there is a delay that is visible to the user.

I found a very easy way to create a "direct" redirect that requires no code and just uses SharePoint standard functionality.

1. Go to the web you want to create the redirect.
2. If it is a publishing web, go to the "Pages" library, otherwise, you can use any other library that is of type "Document Library"
3. Go to the "List Settings"
4. Ensure that under "Advanced Settings" "Allow management of content types" is set to "yes"
5. In the "Content Types" section click on "Add from existing site content types"
   
6. Add the "Link to a Document" content type
   
7. Your content types lis should now include the "Link to a Documet" content type:
   
8. Back on the list with its items, create a new item of type "Link to Document":
   
9. Don't forget to publish your link if you have a publishing/approval process setup for your library!
10. Now go to the "Site Settings" of your web and choose in "Look'n'Feel" section "Welcome Page":
    
11. Enter your link as the welcome page of this web.

Now whenever your users will open the web without specifiying a specific page the "Welcome Page" (in german it is called more accurately (and so much german) "Homepage" ;)) comes into play, goes to your link and the link redirects directly to the page the page/document you want.

Cheers!!
SOURAV

In this, I'll only explain you the concepts, since I don't really know if I get to code this within a reasonable timeframe. Next week, I'll start at Microsoft, so I'm not sure to have plenty of time for trying things out in the next weeks...

OK, what are we talking about: SharePoint URLs get constructed today a lot better than before. However, it is still not easily possible to create so called "landing pages". These are mostly just entry points that let a visitor easily find its content. Marketing campaigns can print easy to remember URLs on their advertisements etc. Need some examples? OK, here we go:

www.mycompany.com/winthis -- leads to --> www.mycompany.com/marketing/campaigns/summer07/signup.aspx
www.mycompany.com/subscribe -- leads to --> www.mycompany.com/salesandmarketing/ebusiness/newsletters/english/signup.aspx

How should we do this? If you enter such an URL in MOSS you'll get a 404 error. Of course, because this pages do not exists. You couldn't work with Redirect Pages either because they would be located in the "Pages/" section of any site.

Here is now my concept to implement this:

• Customize the 404 landing page (I follow Jingmei's post): Create your "custom404.html" page. It must be a HTML page that redirects the requests, cannot be an ASPX page!

• Create a custom "customRedirect.aspx" in the layouts section and implement code:

  • Lookup a special list in SharePoint "Landing Pages" using the "oldUrl" provided through the QueryString. The list contains a list of Landing Urls ("/newsletter") and the real URL ("www.mycompany.com/salesandmarketing/ebusiness/newsletters/english/signup.aspx") if you find a match, redirect the request to this page (use .NET Reflector how Microsoft does this). If you find no landing page redirect, I would redirect to a hidden publishing page on the root of your site that displays a fully branded 404-message.

  • Strong name the dll, create a feature and solution for deployment etc. For testing, it is enough to put the ASPX in the _layouts folder and the DLL in GAC.

• Some thoughts

  • After reflecting a bit, I think it is only necessary to create one "Landing Pages Redirects" library at the root of your site. URLs typically should be as short and "human readable" as possible.

  • With this approach, you have a very robust 404-handling implemented. Do you need additional logic? Just implement it in the already created ASPX-logic.

If I get to it, I'll implement this scenario and create an easy to deploy SharePoint solution out of it. I think this could be interesting to add as a feature to any internet site.

Cheers!!
SOURAV

There is a way around this problem.

We do not have any option from SharePoint site to disable the feature. It is the
service which provides the information to the word document.
It is a part of office 2003/office 2007 feature and can be disabled through group
policy for the all the machines internally to show the Shared Workspaces Pane is
determined at the client level.

The option we have to disable the service which provides the information to the
office document.
The service responsible to do so is dws.asmx and can be found under /60/ISAPI
folder for WSS 2.0/SPS2003 and /12/ISAPI folder for WSS3.0/MOSS 2007.
Rename the file and then checked the issue.

Rename ‘DWS.aspx’

Try opening the Office document:

Before                                    After
 

Alternate Method:
To completely disable through group policy
GPEDIT.MSC
Accessed the location User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Microsoft
Office 2003 | Tools | Options | General | Service Options | Shared Workspace.
Set the policy "Show the shared Workspace Pane at startup when" to DISABLED
Set the policy Automatic Discovery to Enable and set to Off

Additional Information about the service.
DWS.asmx
The Document Work Space web service provides a means of working with document
workspaces. This allows remote clients to make full use of the unique capabilities
of document workspaces. There are several methods that this web service accepts.
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;838028> outlines ‘How
documents are opened from a Web site in Office 2003’

Name Description
CanCreateDwsUrl Office applications call CanCreateDwsUrl before calling CreateDws,
in order to obtain a “legal” URL for the new workspace. A “legal” URL is one that
is unique on the web site (does not conflict with existing webs/libraries/folder),
and that does not contain certain forbidden characters. This method is also called
to determine if a given website is available for the current user to create a
workspace (correct permissions, etc.).
CreateDws The Office applications call the CreateDws web method to create new
Shared Workspace from the Shared Workspace TaskPane and from Outlook. The
CreateDws method creates a Document Workspace site and optionally adds users and
documents to the new SharePoint site. This method creates a Document Workspace site
in the same language as the parent Web site but with unique permissions. The new
site does not inherit permissions from the parent site.
CreateFolder The Office applications call the CreateFolder web method to create a
new folder in a Shared Workspace in the Document tab from the Shared Workspace.
DeleteDws The Office applications call the DeleteDws web method to delete the
Shared Workspace. The DeleteDws method deletes the current Document Workspace site
and its contents without warning, unless the site contains subsites.
DeleteFolder Deleting a folder is done through the DeleteFolder web method. The
“folder_name” parameter refers to the web-relative name of the folder to be
deleted. The DeleteFolder method deletes without warning a subfolder and its
contents from a document library of the current Document Workspace site.
FindDwsDoc The Office applications call the FindDwsDoc web method to resolve the
file id to a file name. The Office application calls FindDwsDoc upon opening a
file that was received as a “shared attachment”. A “shared attachment” is an
Office document that was sent as a special email attachment using Microsoft
Outlook. When Outlook sends the email, it generates an ID (GUID) and writes it to
the attachment’s custom document properties. We refer to this property as the
document’s “temporary sharing ID”. After sending the email, Outlook creates a
Document Workspace for the attachments. Outlook includes this same ID in the
“documents” parameter of the CreateDws SOAP request. Upon receiving the CreateDws
request, the newly created web site stores the ID in association with the document
URL. When the server receives a FindDwsDoc SOAP request, it returns the URL for
the document that is associated with the given ID.
GetDwsData The Office applications call the GetDwsData web method when updates are
needed after the initial set up of the Shared Workspace pane; this happens if the
user clicks on the “Get Updates” button or if polling of the Shared Workspace
happens. The GetDwsData method returns general information about the Document
Workspace site as well as its members, documents, links, and tasks.
GetDwsMetaData The Office applications call the GetDwsMetaData web method on the
Dws web service to retrieve various settings urls, list and web user permissions,
workspace type and other Shared Workspace information. Document refers to the
document url; id refers to the GUID in the document’s “temporary sharing ID”.
RemoveDwsUser The Office applications call the RemoveDwsUser web method to remove a
user from a Shared Workspace, when the action is performed in the SharedWorkspace
TaskPane. The User_id is in the DOMAIN\user format. The RemoveDwsUser method
removes the specified user from the current Document Workspace site by specifying
the user ID. However, the methods of the Document Workspace service do not provide
access to ID values for users of the Document Workspace site. Use the GetUserInfo
method of the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Users and Groups Web service to
retrieve user ID values.
RenameDws The Office applications call the RenameDws web method to rename a Shared
Workspace, with Title referring to the new name. The RenameDws method renames the
current Document Workspace site by changing its title. This operation does not
affect the URL of the Document Workspace site.
UpdateDwsData The Office application will call the UpdateDwsData web method so that
users can add tasks and links from the Shared Workspace TaskPane.

Cheers!!
SOURAV

Implementing Wild card Search

FullTextSqlQuery ftQuery = new FullTextSqlQuery(ServerContext.Current);
ftQuery.QueryText = "SELECT Title, Path, Rank FROM Scope() WHERE
CONTAINS('"Sharepo*"') AND \"Scope\"='All Sites' ORDER BY Rank DESC";

Note : Wildcard search is possible only using Contains Predicate. There wil not be
relevent ranking result if we use contains Predicate. So we cannot expect Relevant
ranking in Wildcard search.

Once we build the Query then we need to Execute the Query and Fetch the results and
can display in the Datagrid. The Following Sample Explains it

ftQuery.ResultTypes = ResultType.RelevantResults;
ResultTableCollection oResultCollection = ftQuery.Execute();
ResultTable oResult = oResultCollection[ResultType.RelevantResults];
DataTable dtResults = new DataTable();
dtResults.TableName = "Result";
dtResults.Load(oResult, LoadOption.OverwriteChanges);
DataSet ds = new DataSet("All_Results");
ds.Tables.Add(dtResults);
datagrid.DataSource = ds.Tables[0];

Implementing Boolean AND and OR Search

Boolean OR and AND Search can be implemented using FREETEXT predicate. the
Following Code Explains how to build the Query for Boolean Search. Frretext
Predicate Search will give the relevant ranking result.

For OR Boolean search: Keyword1 OR Keyword2

FullTextSqlQuery ftQuery = new FullTextSqlQuery(ServerContext.Current);
ftQuery.KeywordInclusion = KeywordInclusion.AnyKeyword // will search for any (OR
operation) keyword in the Freetext Predicate
ftQuery.QueryText = "SELECT Title, Path, Rank FROM Scope() WHERE
FREETEXT(defaultproperties,'Keyword1 Keyword2') AND \"Scope\"='All Sites' ORDER BY
Rank DESC";

Note: If the keywordInclusionProperty is Anykeyword then any keyword which has been
mentioned in the FREETEXT Predicate will be searched for. This will implement the
OR Boolean logic.

For AND Boolean Search: Keyword1 AND Keyword2

FullTextSqlQuery ftQuery = new FullTextSqlQuery(ServerContext.Current);
ftQuery.KeywordInclusion = KeywordInclusion.AllKeywords // will search for All (AND
operation) keywords in the Freetext
Predicate. Default value is Allkeywords.
ftQuery.QueryText = "SELECT Title, Path, Rank FROM Scope() WHERE
FREETEXT(defaultproperties,'Keyword1 Keyword2') AND \"Scope\"='All Sites' ORDER BY
Rank DESC";

Note: If the keywordInclusionProperty is AllKeywords then the search will look for
all the keyword combination in the freetext predicate. This will implement the AND
Boolean logic.

For more Complex Boolean logic with multiple AND and OR logic Multiple Freetext
Predicate Can be used. But will not give the Relevant Ranking.