We recently faced a issue with our SharePoint Internet Portal. The Site was published on Internet, but when browsed on Mobile phones, especially Iphone. Whenever you browsed the portal through a mobile device, its throws the authentication window, where you need to provide user id and password.

By default, making a site in SharePoint anonymous not works for mobile users.

So to making anonymous for mobile, the easiest way to open the compat browser config file, and make the “IsMobileDevice” entry false.

Making this false, will provide the anonymous access to the mobile users, and open the standard site (same internet site).

You can find the config file at “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\App_Browsers\compat.browse”

You will see lot of entries for each mobile & other browsers

Well, yesterday was an exciting day for me i.e. Oct 8, 2011. I delivered my first project speech i.e. “Introducing Yourself”.

It was the 134 session of PTM Toastmaster Qatar Chapter. My session was the 1st one. As per the feedback received by seniors toastmaster, i did good. After my speech, Mr. Bashir delivered his project 8 speech on crises management. He also delivered it very confidently.

Then Mr. Koka Prasad delivered an education module on “Importance of Words”. He delivered a very good, informative session. He represent Qatar in International Toastmaster event, probably last 3 years. I must say, that he is an excellent speaker, i ever witnessed. I must say that i was lucky to have him in my 1st project, and to received his feedback as well.

We had some interesting table topic session as well. Mr. Azimuddin was the TM of the day.

I want to thank you all of the PTM fellows, who encourage me a lot, and with their support, i passed the Project 1.

So i am fully ready to deliver my P2 in upcoming session.

Microsoft Qatar organized a good event in Doha at The West Bay Hotel on Public Cloud. Corporate Vice President Microsoft Office Division Product Management Group Kirk Königsbauer was the keynote speaker of the session.

He shared the some really cool features of Cloud. He update the audience that the trial version will be launched very soon, and then by next year, it will be available commercially.

It seems like that Office 365 release will especially support SME organizations, by providing Microsoft best class services at very nominal cost.

He then invite Yasir Khokar, the Business Team Lead of Microsoft Gulf to demonstrate it. It was good to meet Yasir after almost 5-6 years. We worked together in Nawras Oman project.

Well there is no doubt that cloud will not only reshape the services, technology but careers too. Yes, it will give a new turn to developers, network professionals careers. Let see and hope for the best.

Do you wanna check What is cloud, check this,, small video..

Well, i am excited to share that i become an official toastmaster today. This is the 2nd time, i attended Toastmaster session today.

It was really good to meet Nisar Rana Sb, Abid Hussaini Sb, Azeem Sb, Asghar Sb, Basheer Sb, and learning from their experiences.

PTM Qatar is a good toastmaster club, and i always get a warm welcome and appretiation from the club.

Today the club has an official meeting # 132. In this session, there were 2 sessions, one was on dengue fever conducted by Dr. Jawed Sb, and other body language which was conducted by Ms. Shewta (Sorry if i misspell the name). She conducted an extra ordinary session on body language. She also run a dance society here named as “We dance” in Qatar.

On body language, she shared that 5 things are most important 1 is attire or posture, 2nd is hands movement, 3rd is whole body, 4th is facial expression and final is eye contact. So if we want to be good in expression, body language is the key, and in body language, these 5 things are the basis.

At the end, i was awarded the membership. The PTM Club president Mr. Asghar told that i am the first member of this club, who get this new re-branded pin (Badge).

I hope that in next session, i will be delivering my P1 i.e. “Self introduction”. Would like to thanks Azeem Sb who really guided me well on this, so wish me best luck for first session coming weeks.

Glad to share that I received “Community Recognition Award” by Microsoft Pakistan in the biggest technology event in Pakistan i.e. Microsoft Open Door 2011 Pakistan on 22 Sep 2011.

As i am not in Pakistan these days, the award was received by my friend Hadi Raza.

I always love to participate in Pakistan Development community, and there is no doubt that the Microsoft Innovation TEAM in Pakistan and Microsoft Pakistan are also trying their best to promote awareness, and playing an healthy role for development community.

Thanks Shijaz Abdullah for a cool post on this and as well in MS Partners Qatar FB.

Day before yesterday, we attended a session for FAST Search at Microsoft Qatar Office.

The session was conducted by Ahmed Khairy. He has a good background on FAST Search, and deploy it on number of clients.

The session give a good idea about the value that FAST search can add to SharePoint Clients.

FAST Search comes with an independent license, and it has to configured with SharePoint solution. It provides some cool searching techniques.

Microsoft bring it together with SharePoint 2010.

Yesterday, while creating a new web app in SharePoint Central Administration i faced an error

“The password supplied with the username spgulf\Administrator was not correct. Verify that it was entered correctly and try again” Error while creating web application in SharePoint 2010″

It doesnt let me create the Web Application.

Few days back the Administrator password was modified, but it has been updated all the required places. After some research, i fix the error with following Powershell command.

stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin -password.
Example : stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin spgulf\administrator -password p@ssw0rd

Basically this require to update the farm credentials as well on SharePoint. So this fix the error.

It was really good to attend Microsoft Qatar Annual Suhour Event yesterday.

As i have recently moved to Qatar, and i was quite active in Microsoft community activities in Pakistan, i was looking the same in Qatar. So had a chance to meet lot of like minded people, especially from Microsoft TEAM, Shijaz Abdulla, Ali Hashim, and Riad Afaneh.

So we will be starting soon the same activities here. If you are in Qatar, and interested, feel free to drop me an email.

If you get this problem, there is a quick fix for it.

Go to your windows services (Type Services.msc at wundows run), check the SharePoint Timer Services. You will noticed it will be stopped, start the service. If you have changed the SharePoint service password, you have to provide the password, else it will start.

Now go back to the farm solutions SharePoint Central Administration, you will notice that now it has been done.

We faced this problem, when we changed the SharePoint service password. And then the solution retracting got stuck.

Well, today is my first ever attendance to ToastMaster club. I have heard about Toast Master a lot, and in fact inspired from their objective, but never had a chance to attend their meetings, or to be part of them.
Here at Doha, while googling i found PTM Qatar chapter. I observed that the chapter is quite active from their website and other blogs/ posts.

So last week i dropped an email, asking about their activities. I got a very warm reply from Mr. Azim, Mr. Asghar Ali & Mr. Rana. They invited me on their meeting July 23, 2011 at Gulf Paradise hotel.

So today, i went their, it was a very healthy session. I learn lot of good things from here, like a good session by Mr. Azim on preparing speech, or how to organize it. A very good conclusion by Mr. Saleem Kapoorwala. In fact all members their are very helpful, and i hope that I will really enjoy my time here, and will have a wonderful learning from seniors members their. People i met their, were Mr. Iftikhar, Mr. Azim, Mr. Saleem, Mr. Asghar, Mr. Bashir Mr. Ashraf, Mr. Lawa, Mr. Asad, Dr. Qaiser who gave a very good session on “Stone diseases”.

I hope to attend the next session on August 6, 2011.

I have seen lot of SharePoint geeks in developing custom web parts for customizing news listing web part to show it as per requirement.

Sharing a great article from Microsoft ECM official blog, that how easily it can be customize using Content Query Web Part (CQWP). Check it out

Just see how it will display.

It was good to conduct a session at IQRA University. The session was arranged by Kamran Sohail MIC Pakistan organizer and Umme Rabab (Microsoft Student Ambassador at IQRA).

Almost 70+ students attended the session. We discuss, that how they can use SharePoint as application development platform. Faculty members also attended this program.

I hope the students like it. I really enjoyed the session, and hope that these session will help students.

Today i am having a session with Microsoft Student Partners, Pakistan. Session is about using SQL Server 2008 R2 for databases.

I have been speaking a lot in universities, Open door, PDC, but this is the first time i am speaking with Student Partners, and i am sure, it will be nice, as its give me a chance to engage with energetic people who are in-charge of arranging, driving Microsoft events, practices in academia.

Had a good session at IOBM (CBM) today. My topic was integrating IT into business. Majority of the audiences was from business background.

I discuss entrepreneurship, personality traits, and how IT can help them in growing their businesses.

Had a good interaction with IOBM computer science faculty as well, especially with Saghir Sb & Turab Sb.

And thanks to Paracha, for organizing such a cool event.

The event was organized on the request of Microsoft Pakistan.

Next time, i will be delivering a session on SharePoint, a kind of demonstration…

Starting new course “SharePoint implementation in an enterprise environment” by Jan 15, 2011. Those who are in Karachi, and interested to learn SharePoint as career, this course is IDEAL for them.

oooppssssssss….

3 days after hanging here & there for issues after upgrade, one of my friend gives me a good advice.
Actually we upgraded MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010. Our MOSS 2007 portal was a rich portal in terms of content, design, and customization.

And once we upgraded it to SharePoint 2010. There was lot of design issues.

One of our web part was not working, it’s a web part showing announcement in marquee at the top. It was not showing anything. We thought that it was a some kind of web part issue, and so as other things bangs our mind.

But it got solved when we install another browser, and its showing that thing perfectly.

Actually Windows 2008 R2 default browser is IE 8, and I came to know that there are lots of issues with the browser. Probably some kind of hotfix may resolve it. But MAN, it really sucks. So if you are on upgrade, always install another browser, and if on customization something goes wrong, check it with other browser.

Well, its really sucks you, if you have customization in your MOSS 2007 portal, and you are migrating it to SharePoint 2010.

We faced some really BAD issues after having an inplace upgrade.

We have custom master pages for our portal. And after upgrade, we cant able to upload any image in any picture library, and we even cant able to browse the pictures.

It gives us error

“Troubleshoot issues with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation. Correlation ID: 543887d4-d68f-4a1f-81ce-e9bdc8cc569e Date and Time: 12/12/2010 12:56:28″

And on the same place, if we implement a default master page, it work fine, but with custom master page, its not.

After lot of hours of googling, and still not able to resolve the issue. We starting searching logs. And in log we find a very useful bit.

System.Web.HttpException: Cannot find ContentPlaceHolder ‘PlaceHolderUtilityContent’ in the master page ‘~masterurl/default.master’, verify content control’s ContentPlaceHolderID attribute in the content page. at System.Web.UI.MasterPage.CreateMaster(TemplateControl owner, HttpContext context, VirtualPath masterPageFile, IDictionary contentTemplateCollection) at System.Web.UI.Page.get_Master() at System.Web.UI.Page.ApplyMasterPage() at System.Web.UI.Page.PerformPreInit() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

We simply follow the advice, and adds ‘PlaceHolderUtilityContent’ in our custom master page and its start working.

Although it was not added on MOSS 2007 master page, but SharePoint 2010 requires it.

Most of the customer, enterprises doesn’t have the installation media for MOSS 2007 with SP2, and that’s the key requirement to install it at Windows 2008 R2.

Now what to do, the only option is to build a slipstream for MOSS 2007 with SP2. That’s not a big deal, but a thing to do.

Rather doing it, I would suggest my fellow to follow another approach. Microsoft has released it online, probably didn’t shipped it. But you can download the trial version from here, and once the installation started, GIVE your key.

This really saves a lot of time, rather researching how to develop slipstream.

Its really sucks…. if not configured properly. Especially in an enterprise environment, and in financial institution its a big deal.

And its not an SharePoint Consultant job, so your very first task while working on project is to request Security team to configure ports for SharePoint.

I came across a nice article which mentions all the ports required for MOSS 2007 as well as SharePoint 2010.

Follow the article, take the print and handover it to Security TEAM, and ask them to put this firewall policy.

Here you go

ERROR “Unknown SQL Exception 18452 occured. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below. Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication.”

This error took my whole day.

This error comes whenever we try to login SQL server from other machine, like SharePoint machine or if we define this user id during Sharepoint configuration wizard.

I am on SharePoint migration project, and this appears whenever i wanted to access SQL Server 2008 r2 instance from a domain account.

We thought that it is something related to firewall policy, we open the TCP 1433 & UDP 1434 port. But nothing get works.

You will be surprise to know that, the only thing left,, which we made correct and it started working was that SQL Server 2008 R2 server machine time setting was different. The server time was changed from other server machine like SharePoint server. We just ask the Network guy, who installed the Network time service.

After that it started working.