MC+A

Replacing SharePoint search with Google search is a no brainer! SharePoint’s built in search is finicky and unreliable. Not having to worry about you Intranet’s search failing and having the ease of use that come with Google search will make you understand why the appliance is worth it. How do you know which appliance is right for your SharePoint and other systems? A good approach is to know how much content you are going to be indexing. The Google Mini has a document limit of 100,000 documents, the Google Search Appliance starts at 500,000 and goes up to a billion when you chain several GSAs together! So many people are curious to know if there is a way to get a page count or a means to account for all the content on a SharePoint site. I hope some of these SQL queries help you find the answers you are looking for.

Here are some SQL Queries to find out the total number of documents/files:

1. Total number of documents:

SELECT COUNT(*)

FROM     Docs INNER JOIN Webs On Docs.WebId = Webs.Id

INNER JOIN Sites ON Webs.SiteId = SItes.Id

WHERE

Docs.Type <> 1 AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%.stp')

               AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%.aspx')

               AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%.xfp')

               AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%.dwp')

               AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%template%')

               AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%.inf')

               AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%.css')

2. Total MS Word documents:

SELECT count(*)

FROM     Docs INNER JOIN Webs On Docs.WebId = Webs.Id

INNER JOIN Sites ON Webs.SiteId = SItes.Id

WHERE

Docs.Type <> 1 AND (LeafName LIKE '%.doc')

  AND (LeafName NOT LIKE '%template%')

3. Total MS Excel documents:

SELECT count(*)

FROM     Docs INNER JOIN Webs On Docs.WebId = Webs.Id

INNER JOIN Sites ON Webs.SiteId = SItes.Id

WHERE

Docs.Type <> 1 AND (LeafName LIKE '%.xls')

    AND  (LeafName NOT LIKE '%template%')

4. Total MS PowerPoint documents:

SELECT count(*)

FROM     Docs INNER JOIN Webs On Docs.WebId = Webs.Id

INNER JOIN Sites ON Webs.SiteId = SItes.Id

WHERE

Docs.Type <> 1 AND (LeafName LIKE '%.ppt')

    AND  (LeafName NOT LIKE '%template%')

5. Total TXT documents:

SELECT count(*)

FROM     Docs INNER JOIN Webs On Docs.WebId = Webs.Id

INNER JOIN Sites ON Webs.SiteId = SItes.Id

WHERE

Docs.Type <> 1 AND (LeafName LIKE '%.txt')

    AND  (LeafName NOT LIKE '%template%')

Continuing from our previous troubleshooting post.

Step 2: Check the appliance’s configuration

If the links are functioning properly in your Google Sitemap, but there is still no SharePoint content being crawled, then you should check to which URLs are being crawled.

Often time’s people make the mistake of entering the URL of their SharePoint site and not the URL of their GSS. Ensure that this is not the case by opening the administrative console of your appliance and going to Crawl and Index > Crawl URLs. You should find the URL of your GSS in the top two fields. If it is not there enter it.

Now, select Freshness Tuning from the options on the left. Enter the URL of your GSS and then select Recrawl These URL Patterns. Allow 20-25 minutes for the changes to take effect.

Then, go to Status and Reports > Crawl Diagnostics and check to see if your GSS’s URL is listed. If you see the sitemap’s URL listed proceed to the next step. Otherwise contact MC+A support.

Now, run a search for content that would be found in your SharePoint site. If the appropriate search results are not returned contact MC+A support for further assistance.

Websites are a great deal like phone numbers – they both can be tedious to monitor and memorize. If I could not store all my phone numbers in my phone, I would have to resort to the process of keeping a little black book. Why dial all the digits of a friend’s phone number when I can simply say “call Bob?”  Social Bookmarking has evolve to aid in the very similar task of trying to remember and enter all of your frequented websites.  The user is able to surf the web, find content they like, and mark it so they, or someone with a similar interest, can come back later.  They are also able to organize these sites into separate folders by how they are relevant to your life.  While working on such issues may seem somewhat trivial we need to take into consideration the larger impact that these solutions have made.  Social Bookmarking has become a part of the Social Networking game (enter Twitter, Facebook, etc) that this world has come to know and love.  Millions of people are sharing bookmarked content with various online communities.  Others are then able to comment on information that they may have (and often not) found interesting.  The added element of sharing your bookmarked content with everyone on the web has giving the concept of Social Bookmarking some staying power.

Brief History of Social Bookmarking

The concept of online bookmarking has been around since 1996 but has long since evolved.  Many organizations that were paving the way for this new concept collapsed as they had no real plan to earn any money.  “I don’t think it was that we were ‘too early’ or that we got killed when the bubble burst.  I believe it all came down to product design, and to some very slight differences in approach,” said the founder of Blink back in 2005.  As a result of these failures many newcomers to the Social Bookmarking had to reinvent the business model of their predecessors.

Corporate Social Bookmarking

Then corporate Social Bookmarking arrived on the scene, focusing their attention on commercializing an already successful concept.  Observing the short comings of those that came before, companies like Connectbeam have made Social Bookmarking a powerful business tool.  The main difference between traditional and corporate bookmarking is the end result that is sought after.  Originally, sharing with a community was just to receive feedback and share opinions. However, corporate bookmarking helped solidify a company’s scattered intellectual assets.

For example, Company X has been working on a task or project has been exceedingly difficult (for any number of reasons), but Company X utilized a Social Bookmarking system and the knowledge workers on the project were able to find the colleague with the necessary experience and expertise.  Looking at the web content that they have tagged, the knowledge workers may find the answers they were seeking.  Nonetheless, at the very least, they have located a co-worker that may be best suited to assist with the critical mission.

From my personal experience, I can say that the Connectbeam Spotlight appliance is the best product available to provide the bookmarking service for any size business.  Overall, it is not a difficult appliance to administer. Spotlight integrates seamlessly with many systems our company already had in place (Active Directory, SharePoint, Outlook, Google Search Appliance, etc.).  Today, our company is more efficient when it comes to collaborating on projects and teammates can guide one another without searching long and hard.  Adding the Connectbeam appliance to our GSA’s crawl allows us to add additional content that has already seen some quality control. For some great return results, combine SharePoint content and Connectbeam bookmarks together.  You will definitely see a serious ROI with this business solution.<

References

• itList
• http://www.mail-archive.com/scout-report@hypatia.cs.wisc.edu/msg00038.html
• http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/001456.html

I recently attended a Workshare training/demonstration at Microsoft’s Chicago campus and was impressed with the product. The Workshare product suite is great for securing your company’s intellectual property and other critical data. Workshare just recently released a network appliance that is designed to sit between your company’s intranet and the Internet acting as a gatekeeper. It can function as a MTA or just passively monitor your network traffic.

The appliance uses policies, created by the admin, to determine what characteristics to look for in emails, IMs, data transfers, and more. If it finds any of these characteristics the appliance puts a halt to the transmission. I am excited that we have decided to partner with them. MC+A will be implementing Workshare across our network. You can find a little more information on Workshare and Information Leakage here:
http://www.workshare.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_loss_prevention_products

Many of our customers find it difficult to figure out which LDAP query to run in their Google Search Appliance (GSA) or Google Mini (Mini) LDAP setup wizard.  When configuring LDAP on the GSA, a common issue that the user may run into is finding the correct information for the “Distinguished Name” (DN) field.

Our solution to this problem is a handy command that can be executed on your server providing Active Directory.

In order to quickly find the DN, open a command prompt and enter the command “adsiedit.msc”.

After you execute this command navigate to the account in which you are seeking the distinguished name (This is typically your account).

Right-click on that account and select “properties”.

Then find the “Distinguished Name” category, double-click, and you will have the answer you seek.

We have published a new version of a Google Gadget that counts up the days since the Cubs or Red Sox have won the World Series and how many days are left until opening day. It should be in the iGoogle Directory soon, but for now you can add it to your iGoogle page or your own website by using the following URL:

Add Gadget!

From a technical standpoint, the count-up and countdown functions were developed in Flash and called to the gadget using Google’s APIs. Other APIs used include tab functionality and the second tab features an RSS feed that displays news from whichever team you choose to display. We at MC+A recommend the Chicago Cubs, naturally, despite the HUGE number displayed since they won. With 500+ users already, we’d like to see more fans display this gadget on their pages.

Add it to your site today!

We’ve received numerous requests over the past couple of months on using OneBox technology to pull data from SAP systems. We’ve created a solution offering for customers that employs our SAP OneBox Framework. We can use this framework to pull a variety of SAP data out of Netweaver. We’ve developed a sample using the classic flight data scenario.

Check out our PowerPoint presentation on our offering through this link:

Get Presentation Here!

MC+A is pleased to announce its upcoming webinar series. The webinars will be hosted in conjunction with our partners. Events will occur on Tuesday and Thursday. Please goto the webinar event page at:

http://www.mcplusa.com/company/webinars.aspx

For future details you can also contact us by our online form

MC + A’s CEO, Michael Cizmar, has been interviewed by the IT website SearchITChannel.com about his opionions and for his expertise on Google and other technologies. Check out the interview here:

http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid96_gci1276994,00.html

As always, if you have any questions about Google, SharePoint or how we can help you more efficiently integrate those or other technologies for your business, contact us at sales@mcplusa.com.