SharePoint 2013 + Search Crawl new Feature + Continuous Crawl + search scopes

Tip of the Day..
Continuous Crawl is a new feature of SharePoint 2013 that crawls content as it is modified or added to the sites. This can be resource intensive on large SharePoint sites. Alternatively, crawls can be scheduled for specific time

One more Tip...
SharePoint 2007 and 2010 included the option to add scopes to a drop-down list next to search boxes in the sites. This would allow site administrators to create narrowed down search results for specific uses. For instance, a scope could be created to only return items from a specific library.

With SharePoint 2013, Microsoft has removed the concept of search scopes. Instead, we will need to create a new search results page with a limited search query.

SharePoint + Configuring "anonymous access" for web application + Restrict access to application pages

Configuring anonymous access at the SharePoint web application level can also be accomplished with PowerShell or code using the server-side object model.

Configuring anonymous access for web applications using PowerShell

Follow these steps to configure anonymous access for a web application using PowerShell:

1. Get the SharePoint web application with the following Get-SPWebApplication Cmdlet:

2.  $webApp = Get-SPWebApplication http://SP:80

3. Set the AllowAnonymous property for the IIS settings of the Default zone to true:

4.  $webApp.IisSettings[[Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUrlZone]::Default].AllowAnonymous = $true

5. Update the web application using the following command:

6.  $webApp.Update()

Configuring anonymous access for web applications with code using the server-side object model

Follow these steps to configure anonymous access for a web application with code using the server-side object model:

1. Get the SharePoint web application by its URL:

var webApp = SPWebApplication.Lookup(new Uri("http://SP:80"));

2. Set the AllowAnonymous property for the IIS settings of the Default zone to true:

webApp.IisSettings[SPUrlZone.Default].AllowAnonymous = true;

3. Update the web application using the following line of code:

webApp.Update();

Limiting access to application pages
In previous versions of SharePoint, enabling anonymous access allowed users to access application pages such as the Site contents page. Preventing access to the application pages (/_layouts) previously required some manual configuration. In SharePoint 2013, access to application pages can be restricted using the new Limited-access user permission lockdown mode feature. In this recipe, we will activate this feature on our site collection.
How to do it…

Follow these steps to enable the site collection feature to limit access to application pages:

1. Navigate to the site collection in your preferred web browser.
2. Select Site settings from the Settings menu.
3. Select Site collection features from the Site Collection Administration section.
4. Activate the Limited-access user permission lockdown mode feature.

How it works…
With the Limited-access user permission lockdown mode feature enabled anonymous users will no longer be able to access pages within the /_layouts folder. This prevents these users from accessing pages such as the Site contents page and reduces the surface area for anonymous users to identify or exploit content in the site.

Using the Site contents page is one way hackers attempt to identify content on SharePoint sites in an attempt to exploit the site. Using this feature helps to eliminate that option for anonymous users.

SharePoint 2010 Approval Workflow-- use the "open this task" button is missing?

Issue: Today,  I'd run the OOTB approval workflow in SharePoint 2010 , I'd received the below task email to my outlook(2010) But when I try to click /open on the Open This Task Button, However I cannot locate that button for any user.

To complete this task: Review Test Ravi. Perform the specific activities required for this task. Use the Open this task button to mark the task as completed. (If you cannot update this task, you might not have access to it. Click here to request access.)

Reason:

The reason for this is because SharePoint 2010 assumes you have Outlook as your
mail client and the email that is sent out eludes to an Open this Task button
which in Outlook appears on the OUTLOOK toolbar

Solution:

If you have outlook 2010 client installed , you can find the "Open this Task" button on Outlook Ribbon, but not is email. Please see the below pic.

SharePoint 2013 + "Entry point not found " error while opening the workflows in Visio

Error: Entry point not found (or) The Server failed to process the request when I tried to open the SharePoint 2013 workflows tasks status in Visio.

Solution: "Visio Graphics Service" was not running(Start it from Central Admin site -->Services on Server --> Find Visio Service), which was causing this problem. Starting the service resolved it.

Seattle Vs Oslo SharePoint 2013 Master Pages

Here is the info i'd collected so far...

When we compare them visually, the only difference is that oslo doesn't have left side navigation

In general, seattle is designed for intranet team collaboration with more features such as  social, content\site navigation and management shortcuts. 

While oslo master page is designed for published site which focus on page layout and content rendering.

The Oslo masterpage handles anonymous users differently as well. For instance, the top ribbon is completely removed for anonymous users, while Seattle keeps it. Check out more at http://davidlozzi.com/2013/09/25/theres-more-than-meets-the-eye-differences-between-sharepoints-oslo-and-seattle-master-pages/

Seattle is what we’re used to with SharePoint 2010: left nav and a top nav. Oslo moves the left nav to the top, and removes the top nav all together. Oslo also provides more room for your content by widening the area by moving the left nav.

• Oslo uses a different CSS, obviously, oslo.css instead of corev15.css. Also, the CSS link has EnableCssTheming set to true, whereas Seattle doens’t state anything.
• Oslo has several accessibility and animation links wrapped with a SPSecurityTrimmedControl, configured to hide the contents from the search crawler. Seattle just has the links listed, no security trimming.
• Oslo has a AuthenticatedUserDiv tag wrapping almost all of the content on the page. This control “Renders a DIV element which has different styles based on whether the current user is authenticated or anonymous” (from MSDN article). This control is configured with an authenticated style set to a CSS class. So when an authenticated user accesses the site, it uses a CSS class, when it’s anonymous, no class is specified at all.
• Oslo has several other areas and controls wrapped with SPSecurityTrimmedControl configured to restrict to authenticated users only.
• Oslo has a couple of small areas where CSS class names differ.
• There’s the obvious changes with the navigation and header, and previously noted.
• The PlaceHolderTopNavBar content place holder is thrown at the bottom of the page, and is set to be hidden. So that’s where that went.

Seeing there are a lot of security trimming around authenticated vs anonymous, I decided to test that out to see what it looks like.

First, let’s see what Seattle looks like anonymously:

Seattle Master Page as Anonymous

Interesting, the web parts are intelligent enough to know anonymous users can’t “get started” and the newsfeed is gone. Also, some of the ribbon items change. Nothing else too significant.

Next up, Oslo:

Oslo Master Page as Anonymous

Whoa, that’s a lot more now isn’t it? We lost the ribbon completely, including the SharePoint blue bar at the top. It feels naked.

I compared the HTML output of the two sets of pages as well.

• Seattle didn’t differ much, minor items, but nothing too specific to anonymous vs authenticated.
• Oslo, huge differences, entire sections are missing. Those security trimmed sections I mentioned before, poof, gone.

It almost feels like Oslo was designed with anonymous access in mind, as in Microsoft wanted us to use Oslo for public facing sites, as it took care of so much for you already

SharePoint 2013 + The Taxonomy feature (Feature ID “73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C”) has not been activated

If you are getting this error when try to add a custom column of the Managed  Metadata type to your site collection, use the following PowerShell command to activate this feature

Enable-SPFeature -id 73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C -URL