Equinox 3-Day Trial Membership

I know i only post about technology related content. But us techies need to stay in shape as well. I just joined an awesome gym. Its really a gym with a full SPA for the wifey. If you want to try it out, please contact Jennifer @ 305.935.9514, just mention AJ Alacan and she’ll hook you up.. more details here: http://www.equinox.com/  It doesnt matter where you live, she can get you a pass for any Read more…

Custom Actions for SharePoint designer workflows

I found a great set of custom actions called iLoveSharePoint. One of the actions is an Execute SQL action. Very handy for sending data from a list to SQL. I’ve started sending data to SQL so i can use Reporting Services to create dashboards to report item history. You can download the solution from codeplex: http://ilovesharepoint.codeplex.com/    

BI Power View in SQL 2012

Power view seems awesome eventhough  it uses Silverlight. Contoso Energy Demo: https://businessintelligencedemoportal.com/sites/contosoenergy/SitePages/pvrsample.aspx   More demos here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/GetMicrosoftBI/TryIt.aspx

Excel Data Refresh error to Analysis Services 2008

One of my developers was having an issue refreshing data using excel services in browser to Analysis Server 2008. It seems he added PowerPivot for excel that change some default connection string setting in excel. His connection string was generating “provider=MSOLAP.5;…” Which is not listed as a trusted provider in Excel Services. Once i added MSOLAP.5 as a trusted provider, data refresh worked in browser!

Excel Services Data Refresh Flowchart

I found a great flowchart for troubleshooting data refresh in excel services for SharePoint 2010. I also ended up using the Secure Store instead of kerberos. I had a few issues connecting to OLAP, but this diagram helped. View PDF: Excel Services Troubleshooting  

Change BCS throttle limit of 2000 rows

One of my developers was getting a connection timeout on using an External Content Type. The real problem was that BCS has a limit of 2000 rows returned in a query. Here’s a PowerShell script to edit that limit: $wthbcs = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy | where{$_.GetType().FullName -eq (‘Microsoft.SharePoint.BusinessData.SharedService.’ + ‘BdcServiceApplicationProxy’)}  $BCSThrottle = Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig -Scope database -ThrottleType items -ServiceApplicationProxy $wthbcs  $BCSThrottle  Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig -Identity $BCSThrottle -Maximum 1000000 -Default 20000

Download SharePoint 2010 Demo VM

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Hyper-V VHD files are now available for download. It’s spit up in 23 files for SharePoint 2010. This includes Windows Server 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2. Theres 2 more VMs for Exchange and Communicator. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27417  

Profile Import uses Forefront Identity Management services

SharePoint 2010 Profile sync services uses Forefront Identity Management services. To troubleshoot the sync process you can use Forefront Identity Synchronization Manager Client UI in: [Install drive]:Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Synchronization Service\UIShell\miisclient.exe   This tool has so many details its hard to figure out at first. Once you click around you can find the AD mappings. This can also be used to sycn with other sources other than AD. If you click on Management Agents, then Double Read more…