Disable alerts

In some scenarios we don’t want our users to able to use alerts on lists or libraries on a en entire site.

Reason for this could be to simplify for the users, less clutter, or simply cause you don’t want it to be possible to put alert on sites that might carry sensitive information that shouldn’t be sent over the wire.

More and more people host their email off-premises these days and not everyone is up to speed on TLS just yet so this kind of scenarios is getting more common.

To disable Alert for an entire site:

1. Central Administration > Application Management> Manage Web Applications >
2. Current Site > General Settings> Alerts > Alerts on this server are = Off
3. Verify on the site.

Changes appear immediately without any reset.

Before:

 

After:

References:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn178511.aspx

Setting permissions on calendars

A customer want two specifik users to have edit permissions on certain users in the company. It’s many users, is a situation that might have to be done again and again.

So we use powershell for the solution.

First we created a script to check the current permissions to get a baseline of what we’re working with.

foreach ($user in get-content editcalendarusers.txt)

{

write-host "Permissions for user: $user" -foregroundcolor red -backgroundcolor yellow

get-mailboxfolderpermission ${user}:\calendar

}

Where editcalendarusers.txt is a text with one username per line. This is also a good way of validating your editcalenderusers.txt list, to catch any errors or localized boxes.

Since set-mailboxfolderpermissions only can edit existing userpermissions, not add new ones, we first need to run add-mailboxfolderpermission on our userlist. If an account already exist ps throws an error, but no changes are made. Other users already added to the permssions aren’t modified.

First script

----addperm.ps1----

foreach ($user in get-content editcalendarusers.txt)

{

add-mailboxfolderpermission ${user}:\calendar -user john.doe -Accessrights Editor

write-host "john.doe added as editor for $user."

add-mailboxfolderpermission ${user}:\calendar -user charles.doe -Accessrights Editor

write-host "charles.doe added as editor for $user."

}

-----eof-----

Second script

----setperm.ps1.

foreach ($user in get-content editcalendarusers.txt)
{
set-mailboxfolderpermission ${user}:\calendar -user john.doe -Accessrights Editor
write-host "john.doe added as editor for $user."
set-mailboxfolderpermission ${user}:\calendar -user charles.doe -Accessrights Editor
write-host "charles.doe added as editor for $user."
}

---eof-----

If the permissions already are set the second script reports this and goes on to the next line.

One error we ran into was that a few users had changed the language on their mailbox. On these we exchanged the :\calender for the correct folder. In our case :\kalender .

Now obviously we could have made this less static by adding a second loop to process the editors but in this case there were only two so it wasn’t really necessary in this case.

References:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298062%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

Getting your own themes on Sharepoint 2013

In 2010 it was really easy to change the theme. All you needed to was open Powerpoint and make it look good there and then upload and apply the design to 2010.

In 2013 it’s been some changes, to make it less easy. Powerusers, it would seem, have no longer the trust of the Microsoft guys. It wasn’t obvious so here one way to it in 2013.

1. Download and install Sharepoint Color Palette Tool
2. Run Color Palette Tool, change Group By to UI Groups to make more logical.
3. Design to your hearts content, then save file to local drive (ex mydesign.spcolor)
4. Open Sharepoint Designer to the root of your site collection
5. Open All Files> _Catalogs\Theme\15\
6. Drop your mydesign.spcolor in the folder.
7. Create a new composed look to make it easy to switch to the new design
1. Site Settings> Web Designer Galleries> Composed Looks>new Item
2. Point to Theme URL to your mydesign.spcolor
3. Copy other settings from another Composed theme. Make sure you pick same Master Page as you’ve based your Color Palette theme on.
8. Now you can pick the new theme from the current site. Note that the composed theme seems to required to be created on every subsite, unless heritage can be activated in some fashion.

 

References:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38182 – Microsoft Sharepoint Color Palette Tool

http://en.share-gate.com/blog/create-sharepoint2013-theme-using-color-palette-tool – more detailed description on the procedure. Founders of this procedure.

SPD 2013 error workflow

Error received for no apparent reason when creating workflow.

Errors were found when compiling the workflow. The workflow files were save but cannot be run.

Solution:

Clear out Website caches from %username%\appdata\local\microsoft\websitecache\

Note to clear out the contents of the site folders, not the folders.

After this shut down the SPD and restarted and everything worked again.

Also deleted contents of %username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache , which might contributed.

References:

http://lyndzhang.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/unexpected-error-on-server-associating-the-workflow/

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2557533

http://geekswithblogs.net/ferdous/archive/2013/01/29/resolving-sharepoint-workflow-publish-error.aspx

Firefox text thin and weird.

Don’t know why it happened but I had 2 minutes to look at the issue now and found a ok solution.

Solution:

Activate Clear Type Text in Windows.

Search Charm>Clear Type (Settings) activate

Do some calibration and everything looks sharp again.

Cause:

Probable the hardware acceleration feature in Firefox that messed something up.

References:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/make-text-easier-to-read-using-cleartype

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/943918

Exchange connection issues

A third party application had strange issues with a new Exchange 2013 server.

Environment: Super Office 6.1, Exchange 2013, Terminal Server, Server 2003

Symtoms:

The Infobridge Synchronizer agent had issues connecting to the exchangeserver för certain users. Only strange thing we discovered was that the users that didn’t work came in the same order as the Infobridge database had structured the users. Like the first 34 worked and the the remaining 7 had ID like 34,35,36… in the dbo.

Solution:

Many conversations with Super Office, infobridge yet another consultant and the developmentdepartment,  it finally clicked

1. On the ExchangeServer add or change the following value
2. \\HKEY_LocalMachine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\ParametersSystem\
3. Create Dword(32) value named: Maximum Allowed Sessions Per User = 250
4. Restart Server or Information Store.

Now it’s important to note that the Exchangeserver had proper throttlingpolicies configured and didn’t alert to any events that indicated session issues.

I had similar issue when a procurve switch between an Exchange 2003 server and an office was being bonkers. That time it had to with the switch cutting of the sessions, forcing the client to initate new sessions without closing the old ones. But I really thought 2013 would be a leap forward in this sort of situation.

Why are these the default limitation on a Serversystem that should be able to support tens of thousands of users? And the do this sort of error on only 50….

References:

http://elderec.org/2011/07/exchange-2010-mapiexceptionsessionlimit-unable-to-open-message-store-2/

Can’t logoff user

Environment: Server 2008 Remote Desktop Services

Issue: User reports that they can’t login their account on Remote Desktop Services. They’re greated by Loading Notification Message which spins on forever.

Symptom: Disconnect removes user from session. But when logoff is tried nothing happens. Manually killing the only two processes associated with account doesn’t help (taskmgr, rdclip).

Solution:

1. Check the session ID from Terminal Services Manager for the troubleaccount.
2. Run Sysinternals Process Explorer (from http://live.sysinternals.com/procexp.exe)
3. Add the Session ID to columns
4. Kill the winlogon.exe that have the same Session ID as the troubled account.

Solved.

References:

https://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=258251&tstart=105&start=15