Data Sync Issue for a User between Active Directory and Site Collection

Frequently we see a issue where there is mismatch for a user data available in SharePoint Site and the data available in Active Directory for a user. The Data in Active Directory is modified but that is not reflecting in SharePoint Site. So the data between this two are not in sync.

This is how I the data sync works between SSP and Site Collection. The data is imported to SharePoint SSP from active directory and from SharePoint SSP to SharePoint Site. So SharePoint SSP sits in between SharePoint site and Active Directory. The data from SSP flows based on the configured sync (full or incremental).

When someone adds a User into a Site Collection through a People Picker the profile will be created in the SharePoint site with the most current information available on SharePoint SSP at that point of time. Profiles on SharePoint siets are not updated automatically/incrementally from the SharePoint SSP. So if there are any changes made in the Active Directory they will not be reflecting into the SharePoint Site. Hence the data between Active Directory and SharePoint Site is not in sync.

As a workaround to fix this issue we can delete the profile from Site collection and re-add this into the site collection. This will force the site collection to pull new data from the SSP. It may happen that this process will not work for first time. Trying to do this process multiple time should get a profile with most recent data from the SSP into site collection.

You can also find interesting to read User Details are not showing in the SharePoint Site

Learn SharePoint Search with Videos on Enterprise Search

I got some very good videos on Enterprise Search in SharePoint. Here is the link for the videos:

Workshop Overview

Enterprise Search Overview

SharePoint Search 2007 Walkthrough

Search Architecture and Deployment Scenarios

Crawl and Query Processes

Relevance Ranking

Customizing the End-User Experience

Developing Search Solutions

Business Data Catalog Search

Extensibility and Integration for Search

Search Administration

Security for Search

Performance Scalability and Capacity Planning for Search

Search Operations

Good Videos on SharePoint On YouTube

I found some very good videos on YouTube on SharePoint. Here is the link for them:

1. http://www.youtube.com/sharepoint

2. http://www.youtube.com/sharepointguys

3. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_playlists&search_query=sharepoint

4. Visual How To's

Getting SharePoint Server version with PowerShell Scripting

Recently I have written script with PowerShell to get the version of SharePoint. Here is the script with the detailed explanation:

cls
set-location HKLM:
$var= get-itemproperty -path "\Software\Microsoft\shared tools\web server extensions\12.0" -name Version
Write-Host "MOSS 2007 Version: " $var -foregroundcolor white -backgroundcolor blue
$Input = Read-Host "Please Press any key to continue"
set-location c:\

The set-location Cmdlet sets the working location to a specified location. That location could be a directory, a sub-directory, a registry location, or another location stack. So with the set-location HKLM we are setting the location to HKey_Local_Machine which is one node in registry.

Now we are declaring a variable with $var syntax. This variable will store the version of the SharePoint.

The Get-ItemProperty cmdlet gets the properties of the specified items. -path Specifies the path to the item and -name Specifies the name of the property or properties to retrieve. So here we are going to Hive Folder and getting the version. This value will be stored in var variable.

The Write-Host cmdlet creates a customized output window. We can specify the color of text in that windows by using the ForegroundColor parameter and we can specify the background color of the window by using the Background Color parameter.So here we are appending "MOSS 2007 Version:" with the value retrived of SahrePoint version with variable var.

The Read-Host cmdlet reads a line of input from the console. We can use it to prompt a user for input. So here this command displays the string "Please Press any key to continue:" as a prompt. When a value is entered and the Enter key is pressed, the value is stored in the $Input variable. With that we are setting the location to C:\.

You can also find interesting to read: Getting All the Web Objects URL in a SharePoint farm using PowerShell Scripting

Hiding Site Collection Documents and Site Collection Images Libraries In SharePoint

Recently we got a requirment where we either need to hide/delete "Site Collection Documents", "Site Collection Images" Libraries from the viewlsts.aspx page. Users should not be able to access these libraries from this page.
While trying to delete these sites we realised that delete option for these libraries is not visible from the GUI. When we attempted to delete with the SharePoint Designe we got the error:
“Server Error: The folder selected for deletion contains one or more lists, document libraries, or galleries that your web site requires in order to function correctly. Therefore, you cannot delete the folder.” So there was no easy way for us to delete these libraries.
Then we started trying to hide these libraries. Hiding of these libraries is possible with SPList.Hidden property in the SharePoint user interface. Following is the code snippet with which the libraries were hided:

SPSite site = new SPSite(http://localhost/);
SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();
SPList list = web.Lists["Site Collection Documents"];
list.Hidden = true;
list.Update();
list = web.Lists["Site Collection Images"];
list.Hidden = true;
list.Update();