Top 3 sessions to learn more about SharePoint Server 2016 at Microsoft Ignite

BRK2188 What's new for IT Professionals in SharePoint 2016

http://ignite.microsoft.com/session/sessionmoreinfo/?topicid=c9ae257c-3695-e411-b87f-00155d5066d7

FND2203 The Evolution of SharePoint: Overview and Roadmap

http://ignite.microsoft.com/session/sessionmoreinfo/?topicid=84f35ee3-6d81-e411-b87f-00155d5066d7

Implementing Next Generation SharePoint Hybrid Search with the Cloud Search Service Application

http://ignite.microsoft.com/session/sessionmoreinfo/?topicid=5ce11d0b-3595-e411-b87f-00155d5066d7

Microsoft announces some significant changes coming up in SharePoint 2016

Hardware Rreuirements
Single Server – 16-24 memory; X64 processor; 80 GB disk
Farm – 12-16 GB RAM; x64 processor; 80 GB disk

Single quad core can work in both the situation.

Prerequisite

OS - Windows Server 2012 R2, WS 2010

Services
.NET Framework 4.5.2 (for windows 10 - NET Framework 4.5.6)
Windows Server App Fabric
Provides in memory distributed caching
MS Information Protection and Control Client
WCF Data Services – enables creation and consumption of services

Database– 64 bit of SQL 2014
Deployment – unchanged from SP 2013

NOTE: Standalone installations will no longer be supported (Single Server Farm does not include SQL Server Express)

Upgrade – Attach SP 2013 DB to SP 2016. (For SP 2010 scenarios -Upgrade 14.5 mode (SP 2010 mode) site collections to 15 mode)
Migration – Migrate content to SP 2016

NOTE: The services that don’t exist in SPO will be backported to SP 2016 like PerformancePoint

Identity
SAML authentication becomes a first class citizen (default). 

Normalizes on OAuth and JWT/SAML with WSFED
(Apps will trust Azure AD) (Moving away from windows identity and moving towards cloud based)

SMTP Connection Encryption
Supports sending mail to SMTP servers using STARTTLS connection encryption
No fallback support for unencrypted connections
SMTP can use non-default ports (no more relying on port 25 for mails)

Performance and Reliability

MinRole (Roles and services)
Four discrete roles –
• User services – Any requests coming from the end user will be handled here like sync client; onenote; user profile; page rendering; excel services; sandbox. code; project; subscription settings. These are optimized for low latency
• Robot Services (Application Services) – not end user initiated like provisioning; timer jobs; search. Optimized for high throughput
• Specialized Load – reserved for services that needed to be isolated from other services like 3rd party
• Caching Services – supports for distributed cache (load balances request from end user)

New Role Screen -Specify Server Role (in config wizard) like special load role (third party solutions); web front load role; search; application; distributed cache

NOTE: For automated deployments – use -IsLocalServerRole <RoleName> from PSConfig commandlets to assign role to a server
NOTE: Chose specialty load role for assigning multiple roles to a server

Role Enforcement and Health
Health rule will scan each server in the farm daily (except special load)

Central Administration
New columns in the “servers in farm”- Role; In Compliance (yes or no) with fix button (in cases where one server is assigned multiple roles

PATCHING
Zero downtime patching – 2 MSI’s per service and 1 MSI’s per language pack. Smaller update footprint.
You can install patches middle of day online w/o stopping services.

Boundaries (HUGE HUGE)
Content DB – probably sizing into TB’s
Site Collection per Content DB – 100,000 site collections per content DB
List threshold – well beyond 5000
File Size -10 GB and removed character restrictions
Indexed items – 2x increase in search scale to 500 million items

Performance
Download – byte range HTTP Gets
Upload – BITS specific block-based upload protocol
*Moving away from file sync
Fast site creation – simply copies site collections with SPSite. Copy from already created template site collections. Mitigation of feature activation. Inside DB adding another rows based on existing template.

User profile service
Removed built in FIM service and supports external FIM service.

Durable Links (BIG)
Renaming or moving files in earlier versions broke the link. With SP 2016 links will use Resource ID based URL’s. URL remains intact with rename and move. Enables discrete Url on visibility. Moving between site collections or sites will not change the URL

Insights and Data
Real time telemetry – real user monitoring for Services, Actions, Usage, Engagement, Diagnostics

Compliance
Classification ID – complex query based on complex predicate. 51 classification ID’s OOB provided for SSN, license #, etc.
You can now use Azure RMS and eDiscovery for on-premises SharePoint.

Search Service Application
New application will provide support for Office Graph/Delve. Unifies on-premises and cloud indexes.

Extranet
Site publishing – leverages Office 365 Identity federation services

Team Sites
Hybrid scenarios – Be inclusive of both online and on-premises. e.g. when you follow documents online you should be able to see the same on-premises too.

Thank you !

Abhi

SharePoint Server 2016 update

SharePoint Server 2016 will become generally available in Q2 2016, with a public beta planned for Q4 2015. SharePoint Server 2016 will deliver enhancements and new capabilities in three major areas -

• Improved user experiences
• Cloud-inspired infrastructure
• Compliance and reporting

 

Here is official blog - http://blogs.office.com/2015/04/16/sharepoint-server-2016-update/

SharePoint designer hangs and eventually times out with an error.

SharePoint designer hangs and eventually times out with an error.

In SharePoint Designer there is an option to disable the preloading of site data…

File > Options > (General Tab) > Application Options:

By disabling the “Preload site data during the site open process” and restarting SharePoint Designer… everything now works.

Please test like everything.

Please let me know if this is helpful or you have any questions.

Thank you !

Abhi

SOAP message cannot be parsed

SharePoint list has 209 columns and there are 9 lookup columns and 19 calculated fields. With this list structure when you re-publish the InfoPath, SharePoint trying to update each item's property behind the scene and this operations times-out is logical with “SOAP message cannot be parsed” error.

To support more execution time override the executionTimeout <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" executionTimeout="3000" /> in related web.config file. I tried with 3000 seconds and the update went through successfully.

Again this can be due to many reason - large list/calculated fields/number of views/applied master page and CSS- so please check your ULS log and Fiddler to get the exact situation.

Thank you !

SharePoint - Maximum Values

SharePoint Boundaries – Maximum Values

SharePoint Thresholds – Maximum Values

SharePoint Supported Limits – Maximum Values

To find all the large lists with items count - PowerShell

I have seen many times you have the immediate requirement of getting the large list for any or all the web apps in your SharePoint farm.

Please run this PowerShell for each content database - Best practice is off production hours 

Use wss_content_relatedDBName

SELECT ItemChildCount + FolderChildCount as Items, DirName +'/' + LeafName as RelativePath FROM alldocs WITH(NOLOCK) WHERE ItemChildCount + FolderChildCount > 5000 ORDER BY Items DESC

Thank you!

SharePoint Designer Performance Issue at the client side

Sometimes i have seen SharePoint performance issue at the client side - this can be due to many reason but you can give a try for below steps at client side and see if this helps you !

1. Close SharePoint Designer.

2. Clear your Internet Explorer's temporary Internet cache and close the browser.

3. Remove content in Folder %System Drive%\Users\%user%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebSiteCache).

4. Type %temp% at a run prompt and delete all the temp files in there.

5. Type temp at a run prompt and delete all the temp files in there.

6. Delete %APPDATA%\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssemblyCache

7. Delete the contents of: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache 

8. Delete contents of %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer

you can also check @ server side - change with your URL

$app = Get-SPWebApplication http://abhi.interest.com

$app.ClientCallableSettings.ExecutionTimeout

Try to increase ClientCallableSettings.ExecutionTimeout values - 

$app.ClientCallableSettings.ExecutionTimeout = 5400000000

$app.Update()

Best of LUCK!

ProcDump v7.01

ProcDump is a command-line utility whose primary purpose is monitoring an application for CPU spikes and generating crash dumps during a spike that an administrator or developer can use to determine the cause of the spike. ProcDump also includes hung window monitoring (using the same definition of a window hang that Windows and Task Manager use), unhandled exception monitoring and can generate dumps based on the values of system performance counters. It also can serve as a general process dump utility that you can embed in other scripts.

Download URL- https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx

Tiny tool and you can run at client side - I was trying to test the this for SPD with the below syntax

1. Put the binary to c:\
2. Open DOS shell 
3. Use this command for SPD - procdump.exe -f "" -e 1 -w spdesign.exe > proc.txt
4. Open SharePoint Designer and open the site
5. Once done - Ctr+C to terminate the dump collection process
6. Open proc.txt and see the result for further analysis

Unable to parse page for field values: The 'mso:CustomDocumentProperties' start tag on line 2 does not match the end tag of

When you have upgraded from SP 2007 to SP 2010 and trying to access customized any .aspx pages you might receive the the below errors - 

1. List does not exist.  The page you selected contains a list that does not exist.  It may have been deleted by another user.

2.w3wp.exe (0x5C30) 0x62A8 SharePoint Foundation Performance btw0 Medium Unable to parse page for field values: The 'mso:CustomDocumentProperties' start tag on line 2 does not match the end tag of 'mso:PSD_x0020_Product_x0020_Mgr'. Line 354, position 7., pageContent = 

3. System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range.

Unexpected       System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range.    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.GetListItemDataWithCallback2(IListItemSqlClient pSqlClient, String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrViewName, String bstrViewXml, SAFEARRAYFLAGS fSafeArrayFlags, ISP2DSafeArrayWriter pSACallback, ISPDataCallback pPagingCallback, ISPDataCallback pPagingPrevCallback, ISPDataCallback pFilterLinkCallback, ISPDataCallback pSchemaCallback, ISPDataCallback pRowCountCallback, Boolean& pbMaximalView)     at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetListItemDataWithCallback2(IListItemSqlClient pSqlClient, String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrViewName, String bstrViewXml, SAFEARRAYFLAGS fSafeArrayFlags, ISP2DSafeArrayWriter pSACallback, ISPDataCallback ...   b38ad70a-09d7-420e-b3fc-d91ebbff39d9

You can try the below steps - 

1) Deactivate the features - publishing

2) delete the "Relationships List"

3) Activate the features using PowerShell. It creates the  "Relationships List" again

Or 

you can also try to copy the problematic .aspx page from explorer view and paste at the same location with different name and then browse it.

seems the below tag is automatically updated in copied page and it works -

<mso:_dlc_DocIdItemGuid msdt:dt="string">620c31d7-5d91-40d2-9c60-d08101fcc0d8</mso:_dlc_DocIdItemGuid>

Note - this is in my case so please first check the situation and error and then try these above options.

Thank you !