Test On Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010

We all know Microsoft has invested significantly to improve Search in SharePoint and it has become a very critical feature for the application built on SharePoint technologies. Search has many difficult concept to understand. I have put 10 questions on various concepts on Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010 which you can use to test your knowledge on this topic. You can take this test @ Questions on Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2010
If you are able to get 7 or more questions correct you can consider having good knowledge on Enterprise Search.

Understanding Multi Tenancy in SharePoint 2010 for Dummies

Multi Tenancy in SharePoint 2010 is a difficult topic to understand so I am trying to put my thoughts which can help you to understand this fantastic concept. This article only explain what is Multi Tenancy in SharePoint 2010 and why this is needed and what concepts helps to achieve this. There are further information to implement this.

As we all know creating SharePoint infrastructure is not only costly but a tedious job. Sometime it is not possible for few organizations to create their own environments to host SharePoint application. So this is where Multi Tenancy comes into picture. Multi Tenancy helps to create hosting environment on SharePoint 2010 where multiple different companies can host their application without compromising the security on their data and using only the features & functionality they need from the plethora of functionality which SharePoint offers.

Now we all are well aware with SharePoint 2010 Service Applications. They are now in the heart of SharePoint which provides services to the associated Web Applications. Every Service Application can have their own database to store the data related to Site Collections which are hosted inside the Web Application. Now all these Site Collection hosted in these Web Application share this data which is not a correct scenario when these Site Collections are hosted for different companies. Now to solve this problem SharePoint 2010 introduce a concept called Site Subscription.


Site Subscription: Site Subscriptions are nothing but a logical grouping of Site Collections which helps to achieve multi tenancy by segregating the data for site collections in the same service application and also helps to share other settings and feature (covered below). Lets try to understand Site Subscription in further details using this diagram:

Now I will put few salient points which can be inferred using the above diagram:
1. A Site Subscription can have site collection from Single Web Application or from Multiple Web Applications. This also infers that Site Subscription can include content across multiple content databases.
2. All the Service Applications which do not store data can not be partitioned (though few service which store data can not be partitioned as well such as Web Analytics & Usage and Health Data Collection).
3. Site Subscription can not span across SharePoint Farms.
4. Sites can be added to Site Subscription at a later stage.
5. Sites from a  Site Subscription are managed using a common site which is called Tenant Administration Site.

Feature Packs: Now we all know the importance of Features in SharePoint. So now if a feature is deployed at a Web Application level essentially all the site collections in that web application can activate these feature. Now in the hosting scenario we may want that particular Site Collections can not use those features. This is achieved by using Feature Packs.

Feature Packs are collection of specific feature. We associate these Feature Packs with the Site Subscriptions. With this only the Site Collections which are part of the Site Subscription can utilize these Features.

All these Site Subscription and Feature pack can only be created using PowerShell. You can reference the article @ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax/archive/2010/04/03/sharepoint-2010-multi-tenant-hosting-part-2-configuring.aspx to get the further insight.

I have referenced this poster given by Microsoft for putting this article. You can get this @ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff652527(office.14).aspx

Disabling Request Access Link from the Access Denied Page in SharePoint

SharePoint shows the Access Denied page when somebody tries to access a site on which the user does not have access. On this page there is a link where people can request for Access as shown below.

If the user clicks this link a request for access is by default sent to Primary Site Collection Administrator. Primary Site Collection Administrator are the administrator which are created when Site Collection is provisioned. This is one of the difference which I have seen with the Secondary Site Collection Administrator which are also provided at the time of Site Collection creation and they dont get these notifications.

The  link for Request Access can be disabled through Site Settings --> Site Permissions --> Manage Access Request.

From this you can disable this functionality by un-checking the check box 'Allow request for access'.

Also if the Primary Site Collection Administrator has left the company we can change or update the email of the person and the request would be routed to the new specified email when somebody request for access.

Disabling A Content Type to be used in List or Libraries in SharePoint

We have a Content Type that was getting used for a Document Library. This content type has some special settings and it was required that no other document library can again use this Content Type. We can do it using OOB settings with the following steps:
1. Create a Content Type by using general settings. Since we were using it inside a document library we have inherited it from the Document Content Type:

2. Associate this Content Type with the document library with which you want to associate it.
3. Now go to Content Type Settings.
4. Now in this step we will use the trick. Here we will change the group of the Content Type. We will create a new group with the name '_Hidden'. Make sure to use the same with the capital and small letters:

5. Once we do this, this Content Type will not be available to be used in other document library. Also this group will also not be visible from the Content Type Gallery. So if at later stage you want to modify the setting of this Content Type you can not do it from here. To modify settings for this Content Type in future remember to copy the URL of the setting page for this Content Type and note it down!!!