WSS 3.0 Extranets on SBS 2003 - Solved with External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint

I never really bothered with SharePoint until WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 came out and then got overwhelmed with the sheer size and complexity of the architecture.

Once I managed to get a handle on it, I found it to be an exceptionally powerful package with some very nifty features.

I was excited when I saw SharePoint had the concept of different zones for the same content with the ability to use different authentication providers for each zone. Thus began my quest to find an existing package or template that provided user registration and management for Extranet users for a SharePoint site.

After a few false turns I ended up settling on SharePoint Custom Forms Authentication Feature (SCFAF). The setup wasn't intuitive nor was it simple - especially when I had to quickly hack up a simple .aspx page to add the initial user management user to the ASP.NET membership database.

It worked, but there were a few rough edges, particularly in the area of Extranet user administration and self-service. But this was still acceptable for the purposes in which it was to be used.

Further development seemed to have stalled on SCFAF and I had resigned myself to wait for a release of CKS:IEE (Community Kit for SharePoint: Intranet/Extranet Edition). Then out of the blue - well at least for me - came the Extranet Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint Beta. On paper, this rocked! It provided the exact feature set I was after for this type of tool. The big downside for me was that the Beta didn't work out of the box on SBS 2003 - a real pain, as most of the WSS 3.0 sites I look after are on SBS 2003 boxes.

I ended up having to perform a manual install (detail here) and hack a DLL to modify the hard-coded LDAPS port so that I could get the ECTS components to talk to the ADAM instance on the SBS box. Side note: I find it quicker to respond to other people's blogs than write my own, hence the blog comment link!

I logged this "bug" on the Microsoft Connect site, but the bug was essentially closed, with "feature as designed" as an excuse.

I didn't give up however. I asked Susan Bradley to help make some noise about it and I managed to find this blog entry by someone in Microsoft who sounded like they were working on this project. This "someone" turned out to be Bill Canning - Project Manager for ECTS!

I e-mailed Bill to let him know how I managed to hack my way around the hard-coded LDAPS port (not as simple as it sounds, as I had to re-sign the DLL and then do some PE header stripping to get the DLL into the GAC).

Bill's response that this wasn't on his team's radar for their release goals, but would be releasing the code on CodePlex so I could rebuild the DLL that way.

Four days later I had another e-mail from Bill to tell me that the feature I'd requested (removing the hard-coded LDAPS port from a component DLL and requesting an LDAPS port for the ADAM instance) had now been implemented and to await the final release.

I pinged Bill last week regarding the release of ECTS as it had been a month since the feature went in. Bill very kindly provided me with a pre-release so I could confirm its operation on SBS 2003. It went smoothly! I've provided some feedback on the documentation and I'm currently happy with the operation of ECTS on SBS 2003. The release will happen Real Soon Now(tm).

My final comments are that if you need an Extranet solution based on Windows SharePoint Services, then you need to at least review Extranet Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint - especially for use on SBS.

The second point is don't take no for an answer. If you've got a good idea for a feature request and you believe it should be there, be persistent. Don't take no for an answer and argue your position in multiple forums. Also demonstrate that you're prepared to do the hard yards to help get the feature working. Bill can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe my persistence is what helped to get ECTS running on SBS 2003.

SPAM - Finding the culprit who sold your e-mail address

One of the (very many) things that annoys me in the IT world is spam. Even more annoying is working out which of the multitude of Web forms I've filled in has then either had its mailing list stolen or sold.

Most of the time I don't bother - I add my Gmail account as the e-mail address to the forms. However there are those Web forms that don't accept hosted e-mail accounts and want you to use your corporate or personal e-mail address.

If you can easily add e-mail aliases to your corporate or personal e-mail address then you might be interested in the following technique.

I run my own mail server, so I've recently taken the step of adding a suffix of ".spamtrack.source.<website>" to my business e-mail address to create a new alias, where <website> is the site that wants my business e-mail address.

So if my e-mail address is me@example.com, then my new alias for a Microsoft Web form becomes me.spamtrack.source.microsoft@example.com.

It's a bit longwinded and fancy looking - I wanted something that looked like an automated system handles it. It also means I can add that later if I bother scripting something to take care of it and auto-mail abuse@ to tell them that my e-mail address has either been stolen or sold. I could possibly even extend it to be something like me.spamtrack.source.microsoft-dont-sell-my-email-you-sods@example.com.

So now I'm able to see who's selling my e-mail address or who has had their mailing lists stolen. And if the spam levels climb up, then I can simply kill the alias.

SBS 2003 Media, Service Packs, Repair Install - Oh My!

This has been a long-running battle I've had with Microsoft over the years - the inability to either roll my own slipstreamed SBS media, or obtain slipstreamed SBS media at reasonable cost (like the Volume License media kits).

Why would I want to roll my own or access low-cost SBS media, you ask?

Well, if you ever have to do a Repair Install of your SBS box and you've added a Service Pack, you're hosed. The Repair Install will undo the service pack applied to the once-working box, and on reboot will give you a lovely blue screen. The only way around this is to restore from the last full backup, or re-image from your favorite imaging tool of choice (two listed below if you're not already using one).

Thanks to the wonderful advances of products like Acronis True Image and ShadowProtect, performing Repair Installs are a thing of the past, especially if you're using Repair Install to migrate a Retail SBS install to new hardware. The hardware independent restore capabilities of these products makes a full backup / minimal install / full restore / repair install redundant, as well as a lot slower.

But it's a pain if you don't have these, so make sure you have SBS media from the same channel (OEM, Retail or Volume License) with the Service Pack you're running already slipstreamed. Or simply don't install Windows Server 2003 Service Packs to SBS 2003 boxes.

The Tale of Two Browsers - Battling the Memory Bloat and Performance Loss

I'm a big fan of Gmail - especially when it comes to technical mailing lists and the contextual advertising it provides. I quite regularly use the suggested links for product research.

Up until recently, I'd been using Gmail inside Internet Explorer 7. Around the time of the new Gmail interface, Gmail started getting slower and IE7's memory profile started getting bigger. IE7 also got a lot less stable, so much so that I needed to not only install IE7Pro for session crash protection, but I had to launch a separate IE7 process just for Gmail.

I finally got sick of the instability and slowness, so I thought I'd give Firefox a crack at it. Not only is Gmail more responsive under Firefox, but Firefox is using a lot less memory than the equivalent IE7 process and it doesn't keep growing like IE7 does.

I get the distinct impression that there are quite a few memory leak and garbage collection problems in IE7, which makes it a problem in a Web 2.0 world, or for browser power users. It would be nice to see Microsoft address this problem in current and future releases of their browser.

The added advantage of Firefox is that I can use addons like Better Gmail 2 for a richer, more productive browser experience.

I'm still using IE7 for all my other browsing, so the del.icio.us addons for both browsers come in handy for centralised bookmarks.

Heroes Happen {2008} - Good News for Hobart and Darwin!

If you go up to the Heroes Happen {2008} site, you'll notice an absence of Hobart and Darwin in the list of venues.

Good news! Microsoft are going to do a Wave launch in Hobart and Darwin. It's going to be scaled down relative to the launches in the other capital cities, but this is certainly better than nothing at all.

The dates I've been provided with are:

8 April - Darwin

15 April - Hobart

Contact Microsoft Partner Services on 132058, option 4 to make sure you're added to the invite list for these events.

Details will be added to the Partner Portal in due course.