How to move reusable workflows between SharePoint farms

Reusable workflows, which  are introduced in SharePoint 2010, are cool!
You can create your workflow in development / test environments and then move it to production like a solution, it is very easy.

You should create the workflow as a reusable workflow from the start if you want to use it on other farms.
When you finish your workflow:

1- you have to export the Resuable workflow via SharePoint Designer. this could be done using the ribbon. select the Workflow you want to export.

Click save as template from the ribbon (as shown in the screenshot above)
Save it on your computer.


2. Open  the site you want to import your reusable workflow.
Navigate to Site settings > Galleries > Solutions
Click upload  solution from the Solution Ribbon. Select your solution and upload it.

3. Activate the solution you have just uploaded.

4. Now go to the site settings, site features. Activate the feature as well.

and your reusable workflow is ready to go!

How to delete a Search Service Application in Moss 2010

After I installed Sharepoint 2010, I tried to figure out how certain services work without Search Services Provider. As we already know, there are no SSP's anymore in 2010 architecture.

So I configured  a FAST Search Connector. But It didnt work quite allright so I tried to delete it. No luck! There were no options in Central Administration to delete a Search Service Application after creating it.

After a quick search on the internet I find that you can remove the SSA by using

stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject  -id *GUID*


command. This command works by using object id(GUID). In order to get the object ID; the GUID of SSA, I just copied it from IE, central administration Search Service Application URL.

How to deal with faulty features

Before upgrading to SharePoint 2010, you should run preupgradechecker and Test:SpContentDatabase..

Preupgrade checker should be run on the 2007 instance and Test:spcontentdatabase should be run on Sharepoint 2010.

After you run the preupgradechecker, it creates an html file containing your farm details. In my case, there were lots of missing features!
The entries were like these:

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [5ac519ce-6bf2-842c-485c-04efe522a2dc], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [c5e293c8-a4c6-8607-5505-7a2a77a9800e], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [68f713c6-1fc8-d110-e819-ce7d59518f60], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [564a2b98-aec8-e5f5-7e94-8096d64fe16c], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

Name = [Unknown], Feature id = [a28a2e77-9525-4c9c-ad79-e0b6252395e8], Reference count = [1], Scope = [Web], Status = [Missing]

While searching on the internet, I found that tool which is very handy to remove problematic features:
http://featureadmin.codeplex.com/

Of course, test it before you try it ;)
In my case I perform a database attach upgrade so it's easier to test.

Upgrade to MOSS 2010

To upgrade my existing Moss 2007 installation, which is completely sitting on a 32 Bit Windows 2003 system, first step was to install a clean Moss 2007 on Windows 2008 Server (64-bit)

After installing  the brand-new Sharepoint 2007, I simply created a new Web Application and attached my content database to it. (You can find a detailed how-to here.)

After ensuring everything was working on the new installation, I started the SharePoint 2010 installation. Not very suprisingly, it required tones of stuff to be installed on the machine. which are:

- 2007 Office Server SP2 (Its a shame we're still on SP1)
- Windows Identity Foundation (which requires Windows Update service to be started to be installed!)
- Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v.1.0
- SQL Server Native Client -very simple to install <3
- Enable Windows Server Roles- Features (just enabling Web Server and Application roles should do it)
- MS Filter Pack 2.0 (Which is very annoying to install, because on the net you find Filter Pack 1.0 only. the trick is that the real name of this package is Microsoft Office 2010 Filterpack. you should seek this package for installing Filter Pack 2.0)
- Hotfix KB976394
- PowerShell v.2.0
- Ms Chart controls for .net 3.5

After completing this steps you are ready to run the setup.exe of SharePoint 2010.. But beware the language packs! For example we had Turkish Language Pack installed on our old 2007 system.. But the release of Turkish Lang. pack for SharePoint 2010 will approximately be in July..So the upgrade will fail if you have Turkish Language Package installed on your 2007 SharePoint..

The difference between WFE, Application Server and Database Server in a SharePoint Farm

The Web Front end Server is the server that is hosting IIS and serves the websites.
An Application Server  has services on it, for example, like Excel services, Project server, etc..
A database server simply hosts the SharePoint core db's and the other Content databases.. It just has SQL Server installation on it.

So you have to install Sharepoint to WFE's and App. Servers.. You dont need to install Sharepoint to the database servers on your farms.