SPS 2003 Alerts

My company is using SPS2003 and I have been told that alerts never really worked properly before. So I started to investigate. I found this article http://wss.collutions.com/Lists/FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=198

All the accounts had the correct permissions so I started to check the indexing schedules. I found that who ever setup SPS prior to my arrival had set the "Task interval" to 15 minutes and the "Task duration" to only 20 minutes.

The problem here is the Task duration isn't referring to the amount of time for the task to complete. But for how long during the day (in my case) the task will run.

For example if you want the incremental indexing to run every 15 minutes between the hours of 9am to 5pm then these are the settings you should have:
Schedule type: Daily
Starting time; 9:00 AM
Repeat task: yes
Task interval: 15
Task duration: 480
Schedule interval: 1

To get to the page where you can set these settings:
Portal home page > Site Settings > Search Settings and Indexed Content > Configure search and indexing > Manage search schedules
You then need to select the relevant search schedule and check the settings.

I hope this helps out someone out there.

Patrick Tisseghem's Passing

If you've got anything to do with Sharepoint development you've surely heard that Patrick passed away on 3rd Sept 2008.

Isn't it strange how we can mourn a loss of someone who we've never met? But I feel that the Sharepoint community has suffered a great loss.

Although I've never met the man I feel that he was the type of guy who would not have regrets and would have lived life to the fullest.

This is a reminder to all of us that we are only here for a limited amount of time. We should ensure the time we spend on this earth is spent well and to the benefit of the community as a whole. Which I think Patrick has achieved with his work.

Patrick you will be missed by all.

HTTP Error 401.2 after SPS 2003 deployment

I'm in the process of creating a development server to mirror my production server. After deploying SPS2003 I attempted to browse to http://localhost/default.aspx and got: " HTTP Error 401.2 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to server."

After a little Googling I found this post.

Basically you need to check that "Integrated Windows authentication" is enabled for your Web site in IIS.

Sharepoint solution file error

I tried to run the following command:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o addsolution -filename ChansFunkyFeature.wsp

And got this:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
ChansFunkyFeature.wsp: The Solution installation failed.

I found this was caused by me not having the right permissions to add this solution file to sharepoint.

To resolve:
Click "Start"
Right click on "Command Prompt".
Click "Run as..."
Enter in credentials for a user who does have access to add the solution to your sharepoint environment.

*For you console types:
runas /profile /user:putYourDomainHere\putUsernameHere CMD

Enjoy.