It was a great honor to speak at SQL Saturday Atlanta this past Saturday. This event is known to be a good one with large attendance, high-quality speakers, and a great organizing committee. #SQLSat392 was a huge success! This year’s theme was Back to the Future, and along with movie references in the event materials, speaker shirts, and signage, there was a DeLorean parked out front! My session, Tuning SQL Server, went well – great conversation from the attendees and the topic was received really well. I learned a few things as well, so I will apply that to my upcoming speaking opportunities. Robert Verell, who lives in the same…
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SharePoint Install – Cannot connect to database master
This morning I encountered an error I hadn't seen in a while, so I thought I would share the resolution with everyone (and keep a record for myself the next time it happens). When configuring SharePoint using PowerShell after the initial install, you may encounter the error shown below. [New-SPConfigurationDatabase: Cannot connect to database master at SQL server at ServerName. The database might not exist, or the current user does not have permission to connect to it.] The error is misleading, as it implies that either there is no Master database on the SQL server or the current user doesn’t have the correct permissions. I did check the user’s permissions in SQL:…
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Microsoft Office Professional Plus Unlicensed
I have Office Professional Plus 2010 installed and is licensed via my Office 365 subscription. I recently installed Visio Premium 2010 via separate install media and license. During the process of installing the Premium copy of Visio, I uninstalled Visio Standard. After I checked to make sure Visio Premium was working properly, I opened Word and noticed all of its features disabled – I could only open and view files. On Word's Help menu, the warning below let me know why it was in Reduced Functionality mode: Product Activation Required. This product is unlicensed. Connect to your network or contact your system administrator for further assistance. The key is to…
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Problems Creating List Workflows in SharePoint Designer 2010 for Office 365 Sites
On a SharePoint Online site, when attempting to edit a previously created list workflow using SharePoint Designer 2010, I received the following error in Designer: (SharePoint Designer cannot display the item…Most likely causes: The file has been deleted from the site. The site is encountering problems.) I had never encountered this error before, so instead of editing the workflow, I tried to create a new list workflow. After entering the name of the new workflow and clicking OK in the window shown below, the window closes and nothing happens. I thought maybe it was an issue with Designer itself, so I closed the application and went to clear out all…
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External SharePoint Online Users: Associate an email address with a Microsoft account (Windows Live ID)
Contents: – Invite External Users – SharePoint Online – Associate External Email Address with Windows Live ID – Login to SharePoint Online with a Windows Live ID Account With SharePoint Online, site administrators have the ability to share their site with internal users, users who are within the same company and have an Office 365 account, as well as up to unlimited external users per Office 365 tenant. External users are defined as partners who are not a member of your company or your company's affiliates. External users can use their existing Microsoft Online Services ID, if they themselves have an Office 365 subscription, or a Windows Live ID, which…
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Using the ULS Viewer to Troubleshoot PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer Errors
After recently standing up a SharePoint 2010 development farm, I opened PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer so I could start putting together a Business Intelligence site. I opened a new Data Source within Designer and entered my SharePoint site URL. When I tried to get a listing of lists available, I received the following error: [ This data source cannot be used because PerformancePoint Services is not configured correctly. Additional details have been logged for your administrator. ] Amazingly for a Microsoft application, this error was pretty helpful in leading me to find the answer. This error message is designed to be presented to an end-user, so when it mentions the details ‘have…
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Removal of PowerPoint Broadcast in SharePoint Online
If you use the PowerPoint Broadcast feature within SharePoint Online, you will soon receive an email letting you know that the service is being removed and your library will be deleted. As stated in the email, “This feature will be removed from SharePoint Online in 90 days (2 October 2012), and all data stored in the Broadcast site collection will be deleted.” You can use two other ways to broadcast presentations to others in your company: 1. Use Lync Online (if you subscribe to the service) 2. Office Broadcast Service If you have questions about the removal of the service, you can contact the product team by posting here: PowerPoint…
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Branding the RSS Feed Web Part for Office 365
If you have attempted to use the RSS Viewer web part in SharePoint Online (part of Office 365), you will notice that it doesn’t work! Rene Modery has done a wonderful job creating the RSS Feed Web Part for Office 365 and with his latest release (June 29, 2012), you should put this on your list of must-have sandboxed solutions for Office 365. If you have used it before and had issues with SSL (Plan 2), Rene has fixed those issues with this release. The web part can also be branded via CSS, and in this post I will show you how. The original posting for the web part shows…
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SharePoint 2010 Updates and 503 Error
Today I updated a SharePoint Server 2010 test virtual machine with service pack 1 (SP1; Foundation and Server) and the August 2011 cumulative updates for SharePoint Foundation and SharePoint Server. I ran the SharePoint configuration wizard after installing all the updates. When I rebooted the server (suggested when encountering the User Profile sync problem after applying the patches) and tried to open one of the team sites, I received a 503 Service Unavailable error (as shown in the picture below). Service Unavailable – HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable. Once I got over the “what did I do??!?” moment, I of course recognized this as an IIS error, not…
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SharePoint Online and External Users
Microsoft’s Office 365 allows you to not only host your company’s email, files, and website outside of the restrictions of your firewall in a highly available, secure way, but it also makes it easy to share information with your customers. One way you can share content with your customers is to use the free public site given to you when you sign-up for an Office 365 subscription or with an unbundled SharePoint Online plan. This is a great site for small to medium-sized businesses, especially if you are paying another provider to host your content. Consolidate and save! Modifiable templates are provided that get you started fast and to which…