Configuring Alternate Access Mappings and IIS Host Headers in Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2010

by Matthew McBride

“Allow myself to introduce…myself.” – Austin Powers

I think of the above quote every time I run across this error supporting Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010:

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“Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”  What does that even mean?  Could there be a less intuitive error message?  Actually, don’t answer that….

Enhancing Site Collection Navigation with Color

by TL Ferrell

SharePoint provides many tools for providing navigation throughout a site collection. Typically, the Top Link Bar near the top of each content page provides links to subsites, and this can be set to persist down through the hierarchy. (This bar is referred to as Global Navigation in SharePoint Standard and Enterprise.) The Quick Launch Bar on the left (called Current Navigation in Standard and Enterprise) typically provides links to lists, libraries, and other content within the subsite.

Configuring Global Registration Fields in Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2010

by Matthew McBride

Registration is one of the core concepts in Extranet Collaboration Manager 2010.  It represents the main advantage of ExCM over other SharePoint Extranet Management tools.  There are two types of Registration -- Anonymous and Invitation.  The most common, by far, are the Invitation Registrations.  You send an e-mail to a potential new user, the click on the Registration link provided and then are taken to the custom Registration Page on your site.  Here is an example:

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Prove You're Not a Robot

By Randy Moody

Okay.  So I went to my favorite URL shortener site to trade in a long Internet address for a short one.  And they did it to me again!

Before they would surrender my short URL, they stipulated that I must first enter a string of characters to prove that I am a human being and not a robot.

First of all, is this really a problem?  Have I been missing something in the news?

Case Study: Plante Moran is saving $260,000 By Automating Creation of New Sites

Approving new SharePoint site requests and creating and provisioning these sites, while struggling to maintain the uniformity of your taxonomy, look-and-feel, and governance standards, can quickly eat up your IT department's time and resources. Site Provisioning and Governance Assistant for SharePoint 2010 (SPGA) is a tool from SharePoint Solutions which can completely automate this process from request right through to provisioning, saving your IT department countless hours of labor.  A completely automated “set it and forget it” site creation solution! In our new Case Study, read how Plante Moran, one of the nation’s largest CPA and business advisory firms, has saved more than $260,000 and in excess of 3,500 man hours –so far—using this remarkable product.

Customizing Mail Messages in Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2010 (ExCM)

by Matthew McBride

Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2010 (ExCM), a comprehensive solution to manage and streamline the use of SharePoint 2010 extranets, uses a template-based mail messaging system. We provide four messages “out of the box:”

Working with Registration Receivers in Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2010 (ExCM) – Part 2 – The “MembershipProfile” Receiver

By Matthew McBride

Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2010 (ExCM) contains a framework called Registration Receivers that can be used to inject custom programming activities into the ExCM registration pipeline. In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the “SPUser” receiver and its function.

In this part, we will discuss the “MembershipProfile” receiver which is used to update the membership profile fields with the values provided by the user at the time of registration. Similar to the “SPUser” receiver, this feature modifies the behavior of your SharePoint Extranet site so that external users’ experience is more consistent with that of your internal users.

First, let’s take a look at what happens when the receiver is not used. I have simply commented out the RegistrationReceiver section of the web.config file:

SPGA Now Provides Site Lifecycle Management for SharePoint 2010

by Tony Bierman

Today we’ve released a significant update to our Site Provisioning and Governance Assistant for SharePoint 2010 product. Prior to this release, SPGA was already a great tool for managing the process of requesting and creating new SharePoint 2010 sites. With the addition of these new site lifecycle management features, SPGA users can now manage the entire SharePoint 2010 site lifecycle from creation to expiration and decommissioning.

Working with Registration Receivers in Extranet Collaboration Manager ExCM 2010 – Part 1 – The “SPUser” Receiver

By Matthew McBride

Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2010 contains a framework called Registration Receivers that can be used to inject custom programming activities into the ExCM registration pipeline. In Part 1 of this series, I will discuss the “SPUser” receiver.

Registration Receivers are configured at the web.config level, so they are global to the Web Application on which they are configured. By default, we provide two different receiver examples:

Activating and Configuring the Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2010 Feature Using PowerShell

by Matthew McBride

Extranet Collaboration Manager (ExCM) 2010 is activated at the Site Collection level. This is easily done in the Site Settings area of the User Interface (UI) for a single site:

But what if you were running ExCM on multiple Site Collections? Since it is licensed at the Web Frond End (WFE) level, you can install ExCM on as many Site Collections as you want. It would be very time consuming to go to each site, activate the feature, and then configure it. In a scenario like this, you can save time by using PowerShell to activate ExCM on each site and also setting some options (such as registration fields) at the global level in the web.config file. In addition, by using one of our custom scripts for ExCM we can activate Invitation Registrations and set their expiration length.