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| Once you have done a DCPROMO (promoting your server to a domain controller) on your server, Windows removes the ability to manage local administrators from the server, at least via the GUI interface. As you can see here in the following two screen shots, the “Local Users and Groups” GUI option which is normally available on a non domain controller server thus:
Is removed once the server is promoted to a domain controller thus:
How do we work around this issue then?
Bring out the good old administrative command line…
- Click through your Start menu and navigate to locate the "Command Prompt".
- Right click the "Command Prompt" icon.
- On the popup menu, click "Run as administrator".
 In the admin window that opens, use the following syntax to add the target account to the local administrators group of the server: net localgroup administrators /add <domain>\<user> Where the <domain> value is the target domain and the <user> value is the target user e.g. In the example above we added the DEV\SPADM account to the server's local administrators group.
Later
C
       
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| So I just stepped off a long 5 hour flight from LAX to IND and headed to my favorite coffee shop for my morning Joe. I wait in line and since it’s early and I’m hungry, I decided to also get an cheese bagel. I was handed the bagel in a bag with cream cheese, but the bagel is uncut???!!! I ask if they have some way to cut the bagel and they point out that I have a plastic knife in the bag. A plastic knife?! That’s barely able to SPREAD the cream cheese let alone cut it. They must have have sensed my disappointment after I uttered “That’s OK. I’ll just saw through my bagel with my plastic knife.” because in their defense, they offered to cut it for me… so I let them. Seriously Starbucks? What the ??? If you’re going to sell bagels, how about spending $5 for a bagel cutter? It’s a tiny little addition that makes a huge difference on the impression of your patrons! Later
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| When in the course of our natural development, we come to a crossroads, we should strive to reach inner stillness to enable the possibility of deep inner reflection. In this world with it’s ever increasing pace, the quintessential rat race, it is so easy to lose focus on what really matters. It’s tragic that there are so many highly driven Type A personalities in this world. We all strive for success above all else. Even as a child, I could sense this internal force driving me forward. At age 11 I coined a slogan that stayed with me my entire life. “Success isn’t found around every corner, but if you quit now, you’ll never know if it was around the next corner!” – Cornelius J. van Dyk – 1982 What a difference 30 years make. Living by my motto, I chased the fleeting dream that is success, ever higher. Before my 21st birthday, I was one of 48 out of 10,000 applicants to graduate as a pilot in the Air Force. That placed me in the top 1/2% of my field. Changing careers into computers, I was awarded the Smithsonian Award before my 25th birthday. Receiving seven MVP Awards we further pinnacles to my career but… what a difference 30 years make indeed. What I didn’t understand as an 11 year old child, was context. My slogan is a great motivational phrase, but as every decent project manager can attest, one cannot be successful without defining the success criteria first. It is the most important thing for anyone to do in life. Without knowing and understanding what your definition of success is, you are like a ship on the ocean without a map. No matter how fast the ship sails, it will never reach it’s destination. I have reflected on my life many times and always my reflection resulted in the question… why am I not truly and deeply satisfied and happy with my life. After all, as one of the experts in my field, I am well respected. I make a good income. I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood with my beautiful wife and my two awesome kids. We drive a nice car. I have a nice computer and all the gadgets my heart desires. So then why is it that I’m not truly and deeply satisfied and happy? My revelation can be summarized in one single word… CONTEXT. The context of success. Because I never pondered and truly defined for myself what exactly “success” meant to me in my deepest most inner being, I didn’t have a map to guide my ship. I could never reach my success port because I had no idea where it was. As a highly driven type A personality, I always strived to scale the summit. What we don’t realized in our mad dash for success is that every pinnacle inevitably is followed by a steep down slope. There is no platto beyond the pinnacle, only a steep cliff down to the valley below. We tell ourselves, if only I can do X or if only I can achieve Y, then everything will fall into place. Sadly, the cold reality is that it seldom does, for no one has ever exclaimed on their death bed “I wish I had worked more!”. No, indeed it’s quite the opposite. Most exclamations are something to the effect of “I wish I had spent more time with my family.” They say our kids grow up so quickly and it’s true. Every day with them is a blessing and should not be squandered. It’s easy to say “I can’t make it to scouts tonight, I have to work.” Believe me, it gets easier each time you say it and before long, you aren’t even asked any more because they already know what the answer will be. I grew up in a household where my father worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. The man was a machine. He provided everything we needed, but I never got to know him as a person. I swore I would never do that to my kids and it’s very hard for me to not fall into that rut. I don’t know if there is such a thing as genetic pre-disposition to workaholism, but if there is, I probably have it. As the patriarch in our single income family, it’s so easy for me to justify everything I do as important because it’s for or related to my work, but I have to realize that every time I do that, I am choosing something else over my family. My introspective really allowed me to identify what’s most important to me in my life and I realized, there is nothing in this world that I can ever do or achieve, that if it was done at the expense of my family, would be worth it. My dear wife, bless her heart, helped me list my priorities some time ago while we were in Chicago. I believe I had 9 items on that list, but I now realize that it’s way too large a number. I have re-evaluated my list and have narrowed it down to the five things in my life, the only things in my life to which I will attach importance going forward. - My family. My wife and kids are, will be and always should be first and foremost in my life. Being the best husband and father that I can be is my ultimate goal, at the expense of all others on this list.
- My health, both physical and mental. I have to take care of my mind and body so that I can enjoy a long life with my family.
- My job. We all have to pay the bills somehow and that makes my job a very important part of this list, but never, never, ever at the expense of #1 or #2. To be clear, this is my job. My actual paying job. Not some activity related to work. Just work. Pure and simple.
- My friendships with my friends. The inter personal relationships. Not anything that bleeds into other areas, but being a good friend and maintaining said friendships. It’s too easy to get distracted by other things in life and lose touch with those we hold dear.
- My speaking engagements. I love to get out and speak and present about topics that I have a passion for. SharePoint is one of my main passions and I intend to continue to present at conferences in the future, but it should be clear that this is the lowest on my priority list and is trumped by all four the previous items.
So there I have it. My life definition of success. I have to make some serious decisions in my life as there are 4 other items that didn’t make the cut in this list and I fear the fall out may be far reaching, but for the first time in my life, I believe that I have a clear definition of what success means to me and I intend to keep my eyes trained on it and never lose sight of this epiphical revelation. C |
| Yes, yes, I know. I'm only about 4 months behind on this revelation, but it came and went without too much fan fare. Something that so radically changes the way we apply Cumulative Updates for SharePoint, deserves a special footnote. Consider this post as such. We bid farewell to Long drawn out explanations to clients as to why they have to install the Foundation CU before installing the Server CU when they have the Server product installed. I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain and then re-explain this to admins. The concept is confusing and I'm glad it's finally been rectified. Per the Updates for SharePoint 2010 Products site: "As a result of the new packaging, it is no longer necessary to install the SharePoint Foundation cumulative update and then install the SharePoint Server cumulative update." - SharePoint Product Team This is indeed great news. To be clear, it's only for 2010 products. Of course, Microsoft has discontinued the release of 2007 product CUs last year and that is probably what helped springboard the new approach to bundling the updates. Whatever triggered it, I just want to say THANK YOU to the SharePoint Product Team for making life just a little easier... now if we can work on that CU rollback plan. Enjoy
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| Discovered this one with one of my clients today. Error Message: This view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by the administrator. Cause: SharePoint 2010 lists limit the number of fields that can be displayed in a list view. In this case, it was a 2007 list that was upgraded to 2010. The list worked just fine in 2007, but failed to render with this error in 2010. It turned out the list view contained 100+ fields. The 2010 limit is 80. Fix: None Workaround: Split the view into two views, the first view containing the core data and the first half of the extra fields and the second view containing the core data and the rest of the extra fields.
Later
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| One of my attendees to my Human Workflow with Visio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 session in Las Vegas recently, emailed me with an interesting question. Eric was looking to recursively check if a CSR ticket was resolved and then resend the email until it was completed. After responding to Eric with my recommendation on how to address his specific needs, I started thinking about escalation workflows in SharePoint. Escalation is always interesting and usually more complex to implement that most people expect when trying it for the first time. So I modified my model I generated for Eric and grew it into an escalation workflow for a fictitious company. If you’ve ever tried doing something similar, you probably found out quickly that SharePoint won’t allow you to create a circular relationship in the workflow back to itself. This fact alone had drive many people to more advanced workflow tools like Sourcecode’s K2[blackpearl]. We do not however, have to establish a visible circular relationship in the workflow. Here is my design: 
You will note the following: - EscalationCount – This is a metadata field that we add to the form data which keeps track of how many times we’ve escalated.
- The workflow terminates after incrementing the EscalationCount value.
- Our workflow is published with settings that restarts the workflow if any values in the active item changes. THIS IS THE IMPORTANT SETTING TO REMEMBER!!!
This is how this workflow would function: - When the workflow first starts, we will have an EscalationCount value of 0. Checking this value would force it down the first row of the workflow path.
- An email is sent to the CSR
- The workflow dehydrates (goes to sleep) for 7 days.
- When it wakes up, it checks if the task is complete. It should be noted that this check can be anything you want it to be, as long as it signifies that the work has been completed. If after 7 days the work is found to have been completed, the workflow ends normally. If however the work isn’t complete, the EscalationCount is incremented at #25. Because the workflow is configured to restart itself upon change, incrementing the count will restart the workflow from the top thus creating the circular relationship we need.
- Check that EscalationCount is 1.
- Look up the CSR’s manager.
- Send an email to both parties.
- Dehydrate for 2 days.
- Check if task is completed. If not completed, increment EscalationCount again.
- Check that EscalationCount is 2.
- Look up the manager’s manager. In this case we called it the Department Manager.
- Send an email to all three.
- Dehydrate for 1 day.
- Check if task is completed. If not completed, increment EscalationCount again.
- Check that EscalationCount is 3.
- Look up the Department Manager’s manager, in our case, the CIO.
- Send and email to all four.
- Dehydrate for 1 day.
- Check if task is completed. If not completed, increment EscalationCount again.
- Check if EscalationCount is 4 or more.
- Look up the CIO’s manager, the CEO.
- Send and email to all 5. (Honestly, if the workflow ever makes it to here, this company should NOT be in business!!!)
- Dehydrate for 1 day.
- Check if task is completed. If not completed, increment EscalationCount again.
At this point, the workflow will continue to send email to all 5 people on a daily basis. That’ll continue until the task is completed, or (more likely) the workflow is removed from the list altogether. So that’s how we do recursive escalation workflow using Visio 2010 Premium. From here you simply export the workflow to SharePoint Designer 2010 and implement it on your target list. Enjoy
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| Two weeks ago, I was honored to be presenting several sessions at the SharePoint Connections Fall Conference held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. After the conference, my wife and I had the opportunity to hang out with our friends Joe and Mellissa. Joe introduced us to the Biscayne in the Tropicana casino. Assistant Food & Beverage Manager, Brian Dermody, personally saw to our needs and the service was top notch. I took the opportunity to order the T-Bone steak and I have to say it was hands down the best steak I’ve had in a long time. In a town where there’s so much frilly food around, it’s hard to find a good quality steak for us carnivore types, but I will certainly be back at Biscayne on my next trip to Vegas. If you’re in the area and are looking for some great food with great service and a nice ambiance, I would highly recommend a trip to Biscayne at Tropicana. Happy Travels
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| If you've ever migrated site collections from one farm to another, or upgraded from a 2007 farm to a 2010 farm, you may encounter this error the following error: "This view cannot be displayed because the number of lookup and workflow status columns it contains exceeds the threshold (8) enforced by the administrator." 
This is caused by Resource Throttling that was introduced in SharePoint 2010. The settings can easily be adjusted to cater to your specific environment and are set for each web application. To adjust the limits, follow these steps: - Open Central Administration
- Click "Application Management" in the left navigation menu.
- Click "Manage Web Applications" on the Application Management page.
- A list of all your web applications in the target farm will be displayed. Select the target web application by clicking the white space between the Title and the URL.
- The Ribbon should now light up. Click on "General Settings". Do NOT click the gears icon above General Settings as it will take you to the General Settings page instead of the Resource Throttling page.
- A dropdown menu will activate. On this menu, click "Resource Throttling".
- On the Resource Throttling page, scroll down to the List View Lookup Threshold section. By default, this value is set to 8.
- Change the value to the desired number.
- Scroll down and click "OK".
Now when you navigate back to the list view in question, provided the lookups is less than the number you just set, the view should render normally. 
Enjoy
C
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| ![F11_204x90_IT_BeThere_SP[1]](/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/335/F11_204x90_IT_BeThere_SP1_3_4C89A693.jpg "F11_204x90_IT_BeThere_SP[1]")
I was building a fresh SharePoint farm and issued the "New-SPConfigurationDatabase" Powershell commandlet when I was presented with the following error: PS C:\Users\blog-spadm> New-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
DatabaseName: SharePoint_Config
DatabaseServer: SPSQL.Crayveon.com
FarmCredentials
Passphrase: *********
New-SPConfigurationDatabase : The pipeline has been stopped.
At line:1 char:28
+ New-SPConfigurationDatabase <<<<
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (Microsoft.Share...urationDatabase:
SPCmdletNewSPConfigurationDatabase) [New-SPConfigurationDatabase], Pipelin
eStoppedException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletNewSPCon
figurationDatabase New-SPConfigurationDatabase : This SharePoint farm currently has pending upgrad
es. The cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase cannot be executed until the upgrad
e is completed.
At line:1 char:28
+ New-SPConfigurationDatabase <<<<
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [New-SPConfigurationDataba
se], SPException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPCmdletNewSPCon
figurationDatabase PS C:\Users\blog-spadm> New-SPConfigurationDatabase cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase at command pipeline position 1
Supply values for the following parameters:
DatabaseName: SharePoint_Config
DatabaseServer: SPSQL.Crayveon.com
FarmCredentials
Passphrase: *****************
PS C:\Users\blog-spadm>
The really silly outcome of this was not related to any upgrade or stopped pipelines or anything of that sort. Yet another case of the error message NOT having anything to do with the actual problem. As it turns out, the solution was in the farm Passphrase I was specifying. The GUI version of PSCONFIG gives you notification when the specified farm passphrase does not conform to domain password policies, but the Powershell version does not. I reran the exact same command but this time specifying a more complex passphrase that conforms to domain security policies, and the problem was solved!
Later
C
![F11_204x90_IT_BeThere_SP[1]](/blog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/335/F11_204x90_IT_BeThere_SP1_df637309-5e54-48e1-a3ce-fc35e20def5e_4C89A693.jpg "F11_204x90_IT_BeThere_SP[1]")
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