Best practices for installing, configuring SQL Server 2012 for Sharepoint 2013

Best Practices for SQL Server Database 2012 settings, check out these great articles that walk you through the installation process for SQL Server 2012 SP1, and in the companion articles,  explain the post-installation configuration changes should made to SharePoint 2013. As an added bonus, a 27-minute video walkthrough of the same SQL Server installation and configuration.

Set Up SQL Server 2012 as a SharePoint 2013 Database Server
http://sharepointpromag.com/sql-server-2012/sql-server-2012-sharepoint-2013-database-server-setup

Configure SQL Server 2012 for SharePoint 2013
http://sharepointpromag.com/sql-server-2012/configure-sql-server-2012-sharepoint-2013

Fine-Tune Your SQL Server 2012 Configuration for SharePoint 2013
http://sharepointpromag.com/sql-server-2012/fine-tune-your-sql-server-2012-configuration-sharepoint-2013

Infrastructure Design Changes in SharePoint 2013

Great presentation from Michael Noel "Infrastructure Design Changes in SharePoint 2013" 

Refresh of SharePoint Server 2013 IT Pro training now available

I would like to announce a refreshed version of the technical training materials for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. This training package is for administrators, architects, and business analysts for learning all the new capabilities and functionalities in SharePoint Server 2013. Content doesn’t only concentrate on SharePoint configuration, but also covers the different new functionalities from user experience perspective.

This training package is publicly available from the SharePoint TechCenter and contains multiple videos and downloadable presentations that are used with the videos.

What was actually released?

The released package contains many technical details across the SharePoint Server 2013. This is the refreshed version of the previously released training package, and all materials have been updated to match the RTM version of SharePoint Server 2013.
All videos include slide shows, and most videos contain at least one demo that shows the covered concepts in detail.

• 51 presentations and videos
• Over 17 hours of video
• 790 PowerPoint slides about SharePoint Server 2013

The material has been separated into to 14 modules. Each one contains one or more videos lasting anywhere from 5 minutes to more than an hour.

• Introduction
• System Requirements
• Architectural Changes
• Farms and site architecture planning
• Office Web Apps 2013 architecture and deployment
• Service application architecture
• Enterprise Search
• Social Features
• Enterprise and Web Content Management
• Customization options and management
• Authentication and authorization
• Business Continuity Management
• Upgrading to SharePoint Server 2013
• Project 2013 for IT Professionals

 

Frequently asked questions

Here are a few frequently asked questions related to the refreshed package.

• Can I use these materials in my own presentations?
• Yes. These are made downloadable so that you can use these presentations for explaining the awesomeness of SharePoint Server 2013
• Is there a download option for the videos?
• Unfortunately, no. These videos are currently only available online. We are investigating how to make them available for offline download.
• Is there some additional information related on Project 2013?
• Yes. Check the new Project 2013 training for IT pros and developers training, which was also just released.

eDiscovery in SharePoint 2013

SharePoint sites will have large amount of data in documents, Social data, web pages and  email messages. We may have some legal risks with keeping the data and searching the data. In that scenario we can search and export it into usable format. In SharePoint, eDiscovery capabilities will help to achieve the requirement. eDiscovery requires searching for documents, sites, pages, emails from all the email servers, file servers and collect the data as per the format of legal case. We can simply define the eDiscovery as “the process of finding, preserving, analyzing and producing the content in electronic format as required format of investigators.”

 

Microsoft people introduced the Hold and eDiscovery feature in SharePoint 2010. In SharePoint 2013 added few capabilities to reduce the cost and complexity of the discovery. Following are the new features introduced in SharePoint 2013,

 

• eDiscovery center: it’s SharePoint site used to manage preservation, search and export the content stored in Exchange and SharePoint in SharePoint farms and Exchange servers
• SharePoint In-Place hold: SharePoint In-Place hold will keep all SharePoint sites. It protects all the pages, documents, list items in the site and allows users to edit and delete the content.
• Exchange In-Place hold: like SharePoint In-Place hold, Exchange In-Place hold will keep exchange mail boxes. It protects all the mail box content as same UI and API uses for SharePoint In-Place hold.
• Query Based Preservation: it allows users to apply query filters to exchange mail boxes and SharePoint sites.

 

We have eDiscovery site collection in SharePoint 2013, contains identification, preservation, processing and analysis. eDiscovery center is also available in Office 365 site and can be connected to exchange. So that we can conduct the eDiscovery in SharePoint site and Exchange, Lync. In eDiscovery site collection we can create case sites that used for manage in-place holds and queries. 
 

SharePoint 2013 has reached RTM

 

Earlier today Microsoft announced that Office 2013, including SharePoint Server 2013, reached the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build.  That means that coding and testing is complete and work will now commence on getting these products packaged up and into the appropriate distribution channels for customers.  You can read the full announcement here: 

Office Reaches RTM!

 

 

SharePoint 2013 Top 10 New Features

Here are some Top Features of SharePoint 2013 that will start to sell your business on investigating the Preview. All of these features are documented in TechNet. I'll do a Top 10 for each audience as more information becomes available.

1. Support the tools designers use: Flexibility in Branding – How great will it be that your designers can use Dreamweaver or other popular design products. More information on TechNet Branding Features
   "Whether that is Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web, or some other HTML editor. To brand a SharePoint site, designers just create a site design as they typically would, by implementing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript"
2. Offline and Sync of My Site (and other libraries) – "In SharePoint Server 2013 Preview, My Sites include several improvements to saving, synchronization, sharing, and moving of content. Users have the option to synchronize their My Site document library content with a local drive to enable offline access to documents." Saving and Syncing Content (I really love the new Follow people, documents, sites, and tags to customize their feed!!)
3. Search Engine Optimization & Analytics is in Search – Search is TONS better. Much of this is due to Analytics moving into search. This will make Analytics Processing Component in SharePoint Server 2013 Preview runs different analytics jobs to analyze content in the search index and user actions that were performed on a site to identify items that users perceive as more relevant than others. TechNet Analytics Recommendations
4. Content Search WebPart – This webpart is cool, but it may take a demo to understand the power. In many ways this is the next generation of Content Query Web Part. "Content Search Web Part that displays content that was crawled and added to the search index. You can use category pages when you want to aggregate content that meets certain criteria or parameters. For example, in an intranet scenario, all company events are maintained in a list that is shared as a catalog. A query is issued from the Content Search Web Part to return all items from the search index that are specified in the query." Content Search Web Part
5. Optimized mobile browser experience – For some companies this may be the reason to upgrade alone. Mobile is definitely something I have been looking for. "For smartphone mobile devices SharePoint Server 2013 Preview provides a lightweight, contemporary view browsing experience for users to navigate and access document libraries, lists, wikis, and Web Parts. Contemporary view.  This view offers an optimized mobile browser experience to users and renders in HTML5. This view is available to Mobile Internet Explorer version 9.0 or later versions for Windows Phone 7.5, Safari version 4.0 or later versions for iPhone 4.0, and the Android browser for Android 4.0. Classic view   This view renders in HTML format, or similar markup languages (CHTML, WML, and so on), and provides backward compatibility for mobile browsers that cannot render in the new contemporary view" Mobile browser experience Device specific Master Pages – You can target your branding to the device! Targeting different devices such as smartphones, tablets. "Allow a single publishing site to be rendered in multiple ways by using different designs that target different devices." TechNet Device Specific Branding Feature
6. Rich Workflows – If workflows were a sore point, they've gotten a lot better and seem much more able to handle more complex activities including looping and working with webservices (anyone thinking orchestration?). "A new action that enables no-code web service calls from within a workflow, New actions for creating a task and starting a task process and New workflow building blocks such as Stage, Loop, and App Step" With Azure Workflows you can even do "REST and Service Bus Messaging" Workflow in SharePoint 2013 Machine Translation – Looking forward to really seeing what our business can do with this translation service. Automated translation into various languages!
7. Development gets more familiar – Developers who are not SharePoint developers will find SharePoint 2013 preview a lot easier to work with. Leverage your existing "ASP.NET, Apache, C#, Java, and PHP. The new cloud app model gives you the freedom of choice." Familiar development environments
8. New App Model – This new app model will take you into the New Online World – "The new app model embraces web standards: You can develop the user experience with HTML and JavaScript, and leverage SharePoint and other REST services right from the client using JavaScript and JSON. You can even create your own REST services and provide a web hosting platform of your choice to handle complex logic and integration of data and services. The new cloud app model also takes advantage of OAuth to allow for secure communication between SharePoint and remote hosted apps and services." Familiar tools – App Model
9. Shredded Storage – This is one of my favorite new features. I can't wait to see what it does to our farm. Shredded storage will remove file duplicates and reduce the amount of content sent across the wire. You can find more on this in the IT pro decks.
10. Social Features: Activity feeds – I really like the idea that I can get real notifications of what's happening on a site including following documents, following sites, and following people… and automatically following team members (if you want). Communities – I think Microsoft's new site template communities will be interesting with integrated microblogging. I'm definitely anxious to see how our internal communities use them. What's new in social computing

SharePoint 2013 Changes

What is SharePoint 2013
A new version of Microsoft famous Collaboration portal called SharePoint. The version adds few new exciting features such as Social Feed,SharePoint Apps and cross-site publishing.

Development Changes

• In SharePoint 2013 Microsoft Introduced a new Cloud App Model for designing Apps for SharePoint. Apps for SharePoint are self-contained pieces of functionality that extend the capabilities of a SharePoint website. You can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and protocols like the Open Data protocol (OData), and OAuth to communicate with SharePoint using Apps.
• Tools – SharePoint 2013 has Introduced new Tools for App development. Visual Studio 2012 now lets you develop apps for SharePoint and apps for Office. In addition a new web-based tools called “Napa” Office 365 Development Tools were introduced for developing apps.
• No more Sandbox solutions. SharePoint 2013 sandboxed solutions are deprecated. So all we got is the New App model and the Old SharePoint Farm solutions.
  

Social and Collaboration features 
Microsoft in SharePoint 2013 Introduced new Social capabilities for better collaboration in the company.New Features added are -

• Interactive feed.
• Community Site.
• Follow people.
• Follow Sites.

Search - SharePoint 2013 includes several enhancements, custom content processing with the Content Enrichment web service, and a new framework for presenting search result types. Some of the features added are 

• Consolidated Search Results.
• Rich Results Framework.
• keyword query language (KQL) enhancements.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
SharePoint 2013 added some of the best capabilities of an ECM software. The newly added stuff is

• Design Manager.
• Managed Navigation.
• Cross-site Publishing.
• EDiscovery.