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Well, the title says it all doesn't it? Windows Vista/7 (but mostly 7 as no one ever really used Vista) have a problem when accessing WebDav shares on sites with a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). This becomes very apparent with MS Office and attempting to access documents stored in SharePoint document libraries.

Most people would skip over the remainder of the article after reading that this issue was resolved after the release of Vista SP1. Reading on, one would learn that even with the hotfix, a registry entry must be created which will allow client side programs such as Office pass their credentials through to the server.

The following registry entry must be created:

1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
4. Type AuthForwardServerList, and then press ENTER.
5. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type the URL of the server that hosts the Web share, and then click OK. Note You can also type a list of URLs in the Value data box.
7. Exit Registry Editor.
8. Restart the WebClient service or reboot the PC.

Reference

• KB 943280

The Acuff Group recently posted a whitepaper titled A Manager’s Guide to SharePoint [PDF] which makes for an interesting afternoon read.

One of my pain points as a SharePoint “administrator” is having to deal with deployments of solution packages to my environment without the best change management. This means that I often see packages making their way in to the environment without any thought given to keeping the package in case it needs to be reapplied at a later time (Note: I’m not the only one who controls what goes into the environment).

The solution? I whipped up a Windows application so download one, several, or all of the solution packages currently stored in the farm configuration database.

I have posted the application to CodePlex @ http://spsolutiondownloader.codeplex.com/.

The application must be run in the context of a Farm Administrator (i.e. right-click, Run As…) on a server in the farm for which you wish to download the solution package(s) from and requires the .NET Framework 3.5.

I would love some feedback from the community as to whether or not this useful. I have some other little apps in mind I could put together with the proper motivation.

Today marks the official release of SharePoint Designer as a free product offering from Microsoft.  While overall, this announcement can certainly be considered a good thing by the SharePoint community (who doesn’t like free stuff?), as a SharePoint “administrator” it makes me cringe. It is a good thing all of us have “locked down” SharePoint Designer in our respective environments.

You did remember to lock down, didn’t you?

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