Evolution 1.0 Documentation

Configuring Sharepoint (Single Machine)

Jenny Jarrard — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:33:07 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 1/26/2010 12:33:07 PM

In this article we will discuss how to configure Microsoft Sharepoint Server (running on a single machine) to support integration with Community Server Evolution 1.0.

Prerequisites

Community Server Evolution 1.0 SP1 installed
Community Server Evolution license installed
Note: SharePoint integration will NOT work properly without a valid license. If you need an evaluation license, please contact sales@telligent.com.
Access to an administrative account for both SharePoint and Evolution
If SharePoint and Evolution are installed on different domains, a proxy account with access to both domains
Downloaded SharePoint integration package (SP1, which you can obtain from support)
Evolution Configured for Sharepoint

Follow these steps to configure SharePoint for Evolution in a non-farm environment:

1. Customize the SharePoint integration package

a. Unzip the SharePoint integration package. If you do not have it yet, it can be found on the downloads page.

b. Open the “Installer.bat” file (found in files unzipped from integration package) in a text editor.

c. Change the directory entered next to the SPDIR variable to point to your SharePoint installation’s Web server extensions binaries directory. If you did not customize this during installation of SharePoint, the entry that comes in the batch file by default may not need editing.

d. Change the siteCollection variable to the URL of your site collection.

e. Change the targetWeb variable to the base URL of your SharePoint site.

f. Save your changes and close your text editor

2. Install the SharePoint integration package.

a. Open a Command Prompt and navigate to the directory that contains the updated Installer.bat file (modified in step 1b).

b. Enter the command: “installer.bat in” and press ENTER.

c. The SharePoint integration package will be installed. Please be patient, as this will take some time.

d. After the batch file has completed running, close the Command Prompt.

3. Activate the SharePoint integration package.

a. Navigate to your SharePoint site with a user account that has administrative rights to your site.

b. Navigate to your “Site Settings” panel. (Site ActionsSite Settings).

c. Look for the “Community Server Settings” section and select the “Global Settings” link:

d. Enter your REST API connection information:

i. The “Community Server URL” should be the URL you would type in your browser to access your Evolution installation. No trailing slashes are necessary. If you need to add a port number to access your Evolution site, be sure to include that as part of the URL.

ii. The “REST Owner Username” should be the Evolution username of the user that you created the REST API key with. As long as you did not change the Evolution setting to stop trimming the preceding domain names, you will not need to include the domain name and backslash before the user name. For example: “DOMAIN\SharePointRestUser” should just be entered as “SharePointRestUser”.

iii. The “REST APIKey Value” should be the REST API key that you generated earlier.

e. Enter a cross-domain proxy user information (OPTIONAL: only if Evolution and SharePoint are on different domains and you’ll be using NTLM to connect to Evolution from SharePoint).

i. Enter a username, password, and domain for a proxy user that has access to both domains.

f. Configure final integration settings from SharePoint.

i. If you would like synced document libraries to have link to their Evolution media gallery counterpart entries, check the “Enabled Links to Community Server” box.

ii. Check the boxes next to the lists inside of SharePoint that you would like to trigger activity messages inside of Evolution. For example, if you want activity messages to be generated for users when they modify files inside of a particular document library, check the box next to that document library’s name.

g. Save the settings.

4. Enable integrated search between Evolution and SharePoint.

a. Under the “Site Settings” main page, find the “Site Administration” group and select the link “Site features”.

b. Scan through the “Site features” list and find the “Community Server Search Replacement for WSS v3” feature. Click on the “Activate” button next to that feature if the feature is not already active.

c. You can now return to your SharePoint homepage.

Congratulations! Your SharePoint installation has now been augmented with the best features of Community Server Evolution, including blogs, forums, and groups. Evolution/Community Server Web parts will be available to add to any page on your site. By default, navigation elements have also been added to your navigation bar to allow your users to quickly navigate to blogs, forums, and groups within your Evolution community.

Configuring Evolution for Sharepoint

Jenny Jarrard — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:32:20 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 1/26/2010 12:32:20 PM

In this article we will discuss how to configure Evolution to support Microsoft Sharepoint Server integration.

Prerequisites

Community Server Evolution 1.0 SP1 installed
Community Server Evolution license installed
Note: SharePoint integration will NOT work properly without a valid license. If you need an evaluation license, please contact sales@telligent.com.
Access to an administrative account for both SharePoint and Evolution
If SharePoint and Evolution are installed on different domains, a proxy account with access to both domains
Downloaded SharePoint integration package (SP1, which you can obtain from support)

Configuring Evolution for Sharepoint

1. Enable the REST API.

2. Generate a REST API key with a service account that has administrative rights to Evolution.

You will need an Evolution user that has administrative rights to generate the REST API key. If you are using Windows Authentication, you’ll likely want to create this service user in your Active Directory, log in to Evolution to create an account for that user, and then use another administrative account to give the new user the “System Administrator” role via the “Membership Administration” control panel.

Write down the resulting API key—you will need it later.

3. Configure the SharePoint.config file

a. Navigate to the directory in which you installed Evolution. If you installed via the MSI installer, this will likely be c:\Program Files\Telligent\Community Server Evolution\Web\.

b. Open the file “SharePoint.config” in a text editor.

c. Edit the following fields in the configuration file:

i. The Value field for BaseUrl should be the base URL for your SharePoint installation. For example, if your SharePoint site is at http://sharepoint on your intranet, that would be your base URL.
ii. The Value field for ServiceUrl should be the URL for where the Community Server integration Web service will be installed. Typically, you’ll just need to replace the beginning of this URL with your base URL and leave the rest. Test the URL in a browser to validate that it is active.
iii. The impersonator object should have its fields replaced with the credentials of a service account that has administrative access to your SharePoint site. This user will be used by Community Server to upload documents from Community Server to SharePoint.

d. Save your changes to the SharePoint.config file.

4. Configure the Packages.config file.

a. Open Packages.config from the same directory in a text editor.
b. Add the following entry (without the quotes):

<Package Name="SharePoint" Version="1.0" DateInstalled="11/07/2008" Id="2" />

i. Replace the DateInstalled date with the current date.
ii. Ensure that the Id field has an unique number from any other package entries that may already be installed.

Note: The packages.config file is case sensitive so please ensure you are using the exact same case as the above example.

5. Restart the Evolution site by "touching" the web.config file, through the IIS Management Console, or using the command line tool IISRESET.

Once you've configured Evolution, you need to then configure Sharpoint. If you are running Sharepoint on a single machine then please follow these steps. If you are running Sharepoint in a web farm then please follow these steps.

Configuring Sharepoint (Web Farm)

Jenny Jarrard — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:30:39 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 1/26/2010 12:30:39 PM

In this article we will discuss how to configure Microsoft Sharepoint Server (running in a web farm) to support integration with Community Server Evolution 1.0.

Prerequisites

Community Server Evolution 1.0 SP1 installed
Community Server Evolution license installed
Note: SharePoint integration will NOT work properly without a valid license. If you need an evaluation license, please contact sales@telligent.com.
Access to an administrative account for both SharePoint and Evolution
If SharePoint and Evolution are installed on different domains, a proxy account with access to both domains
Downloaded SharePoint integration package (SP1, which you can obtain from Support)
Evolution Configured for Sharepoint

Follow these steps to configure SharePoint for Evolution in a web farm environment:

Manually remove the SharePoint Packages for Farm use

1. Open Central Administration.

2. Click on the Operations tab.

3. Click the Solution management link under Global Configuration.

4. Now click on communityserverspdeploy.wsp if the package is installed.

5. Click Retract Solution.

6. Select All content web applications.

7. Click OK.

8. Once the package has been retracted click on communityserverspdeploy.wsp once more to remove it.

9. Now that the package is removed you can upload the new package.

Manually install the SharePoint Packages for Farm use

1. Open a command window and navigate to the location of the communityserverspdeploy.wsp package.

Note: make sure and have the file location of stsadm or have stsadm in your path.

2. From the location type the following command to upload the package to your solution store:

stsadm –o addsolution –filename communityserverspdeploy.wsp

3. Now that the file is in the solution store open Central Administration and navigate to the Solution Properties of communityserverspdeploy.wsp.

4. Click on Deploy Solution to deploy to all Web Front Ends (WFE).

5. On the Deploy Solution page make sure and select only the Web Applications that you want the services deployed to.

6. This will deploy the solution to all WFE and you will be ready to activate the features on the site.

Configuring a Common Links Widget

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:12:15 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 1/18/2010 3:12:15 PM

The Common Links widget displays common or custom links.

Procedure

Add the common links widget to your theme.
Click Configure to display the configuration modal window.

Specify the widget properties.

Options Tab

Control Panel – Enables or disables the Control Panel link. This link opens the Control Panel at the group management functionality.
Blogs Administration – Enables or disables the Blogs Administration link. This link opens to the Control Panel blogs administration functionality.
Create New Blog – Enables or disables the Create New Blog link. This link opens the create a new blog page.
Media Gallery Administration – Enables or disables the Media Gallery Administration link.
Upload a File – Enables or disables the Upload a File link. This link opens the File Upload page.
Aggregate Media RSS – Enables or disables the Aggregate Media RSS link. This link opens an RSS feed page for uploaded media files.
Create New Media Gallery – Enables or disables the Create a New Media Gallery link. This links opens the create new media gallery page.
View all Users – Enables or disables the View all Users link. This link opens the Browse People page, from which you can search for any registered users.
Posts you have not read – Enables or disables the Posts you have not read link. This links opens a page listing all the forum posts you have not read.
Forum Subscriptions – Enables or disables the Forum Subscriptions link. This link opens a page that displays the forums to which you subscribe.
Who is Online – Enables or disables the Who is Online link. This link displays the users who are logged in to Evolution and where in the Web site they are logged in.
Moderate Forums – Enables or disables the Moderate Forums link. This link opens the moderate forums page, which lists the forums that require moderation.
Forums Administration – Enables or disables the Forums Administration link. This link opens the forums administration functionality in the Control Panel.
Create Hub – Enables or disables the Create a New Group link. This link opens the create new group page.
All Groups – Enables or disables the All Groups link. This link opens the Your Groups page.
Groups Administration – Enables or disables the Groups Administration link. This link opens the groups administration functionality in the Control Panel.
Custom Links – Allows you to create links to any Web site.

The Style tab allows developers to specify CSS class properties.

Click Save.

Evolution applies the widget properties after you click Save to save the changes to the theme.

Tags: widgets

Configuring the Wiki Page Attachments Widget

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:31:30 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 1/18/2010 1:31:30 PM

The Wiki Page Attachments widget allows you to display the list of attachments on the page.

Procedure

Add the wiki page attachments widget to your theme.
Click Configure to display the configuration modal window.
Specify the widget properties.
Style Options
The Style tab allows developers to specify CSS class list.
Click Save.
Evolution applies the widget properties after you click Save to save the changes to the theme.

Tags: widgets

Configuring the Wiki Page Attachments Widget

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:19:09 GMT

Revision 7 posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 1/18/2010 1:19:09 PM

The Wiki Page Attachments widget allows you to display the list of attachments on the page.

Procedure

Add the wiki page attachments widget to your theme.
Click Configure to display the configuration modal window.

Specify the widget properties.

Style Options

The Style tab allows developers to specify CSS class list.

Click Save.

Evolution applies the widget properties after you click Save to save the changes to the theme.

Tags: wiki, widgets

Fixes Included in Evolution 1.0 SP 3

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:54:41 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 12:54:41 PM

Service Pack 3 addresses a number of bugs identified in Community Server Evolution. You are eligible to download and apply this service pack if you are up to date on your license

If you are using:

Nothing yet and want the latest Telligent products: Download Telligent Evolution 2.0
Nothing yet but want to stay one version behind: Download the full Community Server Evolution 1.0 Pack 3 package
Community Server Evolution 1.0: Download and apply the services pack updates for SP1, SP2, and SP3
Community Server Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 1: Download and apply Service Pack 2 update first, then the Service Pack 3 update.
Community Server Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 2: Download and apply the Service Pack 3 update.

Contact Telligent Support if you have questions about your account.

Community Server Evolution Service Pack 3 contains fixes for:

Groups
Users
Blogs
Forums
Wikis
Media galleries
REST API
General issues

Groups

Non-members no longer receive an exception error when submitting the contact form
Users no longer have to be an admin to submit a contact request
Disabled applications no longer display on group home pages
Users no longer receive errors after deleting a group forum post
Default group icon now displays for new groups

Users

Users who have created wiki pages can now be deleted with their content reassigned to another user
Users with conversation content can now be deleted with their content reassigned to another user

Blogs

Web service calls returning large amounts of blog results no longer cause errors

Forums

Fixed infrastructure calls to the database which caused errors in certain conditions
Users no longer receive an error when deleting a forum post and submitting the reason form
Reply comment boxes now clear out after the reply is posted

Wikis

Deleted wiki pages are no longer visible to regular users
Disabled wikis no longer display in the Browse Wikis page
Users with wikiadmin and wikimoderator roles can now create wikis
Deselecting option for e-mail notification no longer causes an error when creating new wiki pages

Media galleries

User now receives a Section Not Found error rather than a Resource Not Found error
Multiple file upload now works in Flash 10
Introduced exception handling for file paths that are too long
Images now showing up when moderating posts as a Group Manager or Owner

REST API

REST timeouts no longer impact Web parts features
REST timeouts no longer cause incorrect replies counts
SortBy search results using REST 1.0 no longer throws an exception

General

SharePoint Integration installation now includes versioning to help system administrators manage their systems
SharePoint Integration handles errors from Web service calls more gracefully.
Download permissions no longer have to be granted to the Everyone role for activity messages to be logged
Activity messages now return relative instead of absolute paths
Forms Authentication SSO modules now create new users properly when using a key/value pair profile cookie and encryption is turned on
Fixed case sensitivity issues which could cause problems in certain case-sensitive database configurations

Evolution 1.0 SP 3 Installation Notes

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:50:27 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 12:50:27 PM

Community Server Evolution Service Pack 3 supports upgrading from prior versions of Community Server Evolution.

Upgrade Notes

The upgrade notes contain likely upgrade scenarios and supporting upgrade instructions.

Upgrade scenarios

The following table describes how to upgrade your current version of Community Server Evolution to Community Server Evolution SP3.

Community Server Version	Instructions
Community Server Evolution (without SP1) with SQL Server 2005	Apply CS Evolution SP1. Apply CS Evolution SP2. Apply CS Evolution SP3.
Community Server Evolution SP1 with SQL Server 2005	Apply CS Evolution SP2. Apply CS Evolution SP3.
Community Server Evolution SP2 with SQL Server 2005	Apply CS Evolution SP3.

Upgrade instructions

For sites with no customizations:

Note: If desired, before applying the upgrade, you can use a tool such as BeyondCompare to examine all the differences between your current site's Web folder and the service pack's files.

Back up your Community Server database.
Back up your Web site's files.
Copy the files from the Web folder of the Community Server Evolution SP3 distribution into your site's Web folder.
Verify settings in connectionstrings.config file are correct.
Apply the SQL upgrade script in the SQLScripts folder to your site's database.
Reset your site's application pool via iisreset or by "touching" the web.config file.

For sites with customizations:

Use a tool such as BeyondCompare or WinDiff to determine changes between all the files in your site's Web folder and the Web folder of the SP3 distribution. You will need to identify all changes and apply them manually or through a diffpatch.
Back up your Community Server Evolution database.
Back up your Web site's files.
Apply the changes from step 1.
Verify settings in connectionstrings.config file are correct.
Apply the SQL upgrade script in the SQLScripts folder to your site's database.
Reset your site's application pool via iisreset or by "touching" the web.config file.

SQL Server 2000 users

At this time, the SQL patches included in SP3 are NOT compatible with SQL Server 2000. You can apply the binary updates and get the latest bug fixes; however, the performance changes in SP3's SQL scripts have not been ported back to SQL 2000.

If you have upgraded your Community Server install running on SQL Server 2000 to Community Server 2008.5 SP1, then you can apply the binary files over the top of that installation.

Full List of Bug Fixes in Evolution 1.0 SP 3

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:48:20 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 12:48:20 PM

Service Pack 3 addresses a number of bugs identified in Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 3. You are eligible to download and apply this service pack if you are up to date on your license.

If you are using:

Nothing yet and want the latest Telligent products: Download Telligent Enterprise 2.0
Evolution 1.0: Download and apply the services pack updates for SP1, SP2, and SP3
Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 1: Download and apply Service Pack 2 update first, then the Service Pack 3 update.
Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 2: Download and apply the Service Pack 3 update.

Contact Telligent Support if you have questions about your account.

Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 3 contains fixes for:

Users
Blogs
General issues
Groups
Wikis
General
SharePoint

Users

Users who have created wiki pages can now be deleted with their content reassigned to another user
Users with conversation content can now be deleted with their content reassigned to another user

Blogs

Error content no longer injected into blog posts
Personal blogs no longer appear in the forums list on the Forums Web part

General Issues

Activity messages sent out from Web services endpoints are changed by Web parts from relative to absolute paths so that links will get back to Community Server content

Groups

Groups Web parts now display appropriate information in breadcrumbs

Wikis

Deleted wiki pages are no longer visible to regular users
Users with wikiadmin and wikimoderator roles can now create wikis

General

Forms Authentication SSO modules now create new users properly when using a key/value pair profile cookie and encryption is turned on
Fixed case sensitivity issues which could cause problems in certain case-sensitive database configurations

SharePoint

Document library sync no longer blocked by permissions errors
Community Server Settings page under a synced document library now displays the breadcrumb navigation bar
Forums thread viewer sidebar parts now show titles by default
REST timeouts no longer impact Web parts features
REST timeouts no longer cause incorrect replies counts
SharePoint Integration installation now includes versioning to help system administrators manage their systems
SharePoint Integration handles errors from Web service calls more gracefully.
Download permissions no longer have to be granted to the Everyone role for activity messages to be logged
Activity messages now return relative instead of absolute paths

Fixes included in Service Pack 3 for Community Server Evolution

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:45:22 GMT

Revision 1 posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 12:45:22 PM

Service Pack 3 addresses a number of bugs identified in Community Server Evolution. You are eligible to download and apply this service pack if you are up to date on your license

If you are using:

Nothing yet and want the latest Telligent products: Download Telligent Evolution 2.0
Nothing yet but want to stay one version behind: Download the full Community Server Evolution 1.0 Pack 3 package
Community Server Evolution 1.0: Download and apply the services pack updates for SP1, SP2, and SP3
Community Server Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 1: Download and apply Service Pack 2 update first, then the Service Pack 3 update.
Community Server Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 2: Download and apply the Service Pack 3 update.

Contact Telligent Support if you have questions about your account.

Community Server Evolution Service Pack 3 contains fixes for:

Groups
Users
Blogs
Forums
Wikis
Media galleries
REST API
General issues

Groups

Non-members no longer receive an exception error when submitting the contact form
Users no longer have to be an admin to submit a contact request
Disabled applications no longer display on group home pages
Users no longer receive errors after deleting a group forum post
Default group icon now displays for new groups

Users

Users who have created wiki pages can now be deleted with their content reassigned to another user
Users with conversation content can now be deleted with their content reassigned to another user

Blogs

Web service calls returning large amounts of blog results no longer cause errors

Forums

Fixed infrastructure calls to the database which caused errors in certain conditions
Users no longer receive an error when deleting a forum post and submitting the reason form
Reply comment boxes now clear out after the reply is posted

Wikis

Deleted wiki pages are no longer visible to regular users
Disabled wikis no longer display in the Browse Wikis page
Users with wikiadmin and wikimoderator roles can now create wikis
Deselecting option for e-mail notification no longer causes an error when creating new wiki pages

Media galleries

User now receives a Section Not Found error rather than a Resource Not Found error
Multiple file upload now works in Flash 10
Introduced exception handling for file paths that are too long
Images now showing up when moderating posts as a Group Manager or Owner

REST API

REST timeouts no longer impact Web parts features
REST timeouts no longer cause incorrect replies counts
SortBy search results using REST 1.0 no longer throws an exception

General

SharePoint Integration installation now includes versioning to help system administrators manage their systems
SharePoint Integration handles errors from Web service calls more gracefully.
Download permissions no longer have to be granted to the Everyone role for activity messages to be logged
Activity messages now return relative instead of absolute paths
Forms Authentication SSO modules now create new users properly when using a key/value pair profile cookie and encryption is turned on
Fixed case sensitivity issues which could cause problems in certain case-sensitive database configurations

Full List of Bugs Fixed in SP1

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:51:35 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:51:35 AM

In this article you will find a full list of bugs fixed in Evolution 1.0 Service Pack 1. All of these bugs were also fixed in Community Server 2008.5 Service Pack 1.

Bug Fixes

Blogs

Fixed Blog control panel comment editor page so it actually works.
Fixed rating images in blog themes.
Added PrePost and BeforePost events to CreateEditWeblogPostForm.Preview() method.
Updated how CreateEditWeblogPostForm handles PostDate/UserDate. It will now recalc the User Date based upon the current user's timezone (the person editing the post), preserving the server-time PostDate value.
The Hawaii blog theme now has the weblog rating control on its post page and posts list page so posts can be rated.

Forums

Forum subscription link no longer shows for anonymous users.
Clicking suggest as answer now properly loads new styles for the suggested answer in a forum thread.
Suggest as answer button no longer cut off.
When a post is deleted, all references to it are now removed from the download log in cs_Posts_Downloads.
IE6 fixes for forum pages.
Fixed unanswered filter pulling forums that the user is not a member of.
Updated the split posts language to say split thread.
The view all users in the forum sidebar now links to browse people with users returned in the list.
Updates for ForumsHandler to support inline attachments going to its CFS store.

General

Updated ServerPopulatedPopupMenuBase to ensure that reused menus are visible before populating them via AJAX.
Updated Telligent.TinyMCEWrapper.dll to support previewing in FF2.
Updated logic saving users current locations to treat any URL with a user token (private or not) as a private location.
Disallowed name filter now considers non-alphanumeric characters surrounding banned phrase.
Admin created users with email activation now receive their password.
Removed the PageRevisionStatus control since it can be implemented using standard Chameleon controls in the theme.
When you delete an activity message, the cache version is now properly removed as well.
Updated AddMemberForm in a group to skip users who are already members.
Fixed issue with Site Activity list not showing the date header when all the activity items are from the same day.
Updated usage of ITemplate implementations to ensure that list control templates are *always* bound and single-value control templates are bound only once.
The spam module now correctly disapproves posts that are likely or definite spam and added a test case for this scenario.
Removed obsolete javascript censorship phrases from create_community sproc.
When a role is deleted, all users are first removed from the role.
Reworked google sitemap ping csmodule to be asynchronous and use the proxy config if it exists.
The aggregate home pages for application have been updated to make the first pages indexable.
There is now a message that the user wasn't found when trying to navigate to a non-existent user profile
Fixed grammar mistake on the no forums message.
Fixed Tag Cloud Content Fragment to support no tags message.
Removed "hard coded" date/time formatting on UserTime properties so the user's date format from their profile will be used.
Updated e-mail notification unsubscribe instructions for clarity and to make the individual item instructions less specific so they could apply to any theme.
Fixed issue with Windows Authentication under IIS7 in Integrated mode going to the login page at the beginning of the user's session.
Fixed multiple RE's being added onto subject lines of posts & emails when thread is over mixed sources (email and web).
Updated control panel modal master page markup to allow IE to detect the content of the page.
The records being inserted into cs_SectionMembers are now always unique.
Corrected importing/exporting issues in dynamic configuration and dynamic navigation deserialization for non-administrators.
The RateableControlYesNoRatingBase is now localized.
Users are no longer able to befriend themselves using the existing chameleon controls.
You can now set whether the subscribe to thread checkbox is checked in a theme.
Fixed blank blue box at top of comment list when logged out.
Fixed IE6 issue on conversation list not formatting the box correctly.
Fixed styling when friend request and 'Start Thread' (and other actions) both are present.
Updated pop-ups to use 'window' mode in IE6 and 'modal' mode in all other browsers.
Corrected an issue that prevented the TemporaryRssFeedContentFragment from rendering when it was cached.
Updated modal control to reduce flickering while loading modal content.
Added missing grants for sprocs. Included schema patch to update the aspnet_ sprocs.
Schema patch no longer includes forums when upgrading from 2.1, SectionMembership cleared for existing forums.
There is no longer an exception thrown when viewing a users profile who has private posts as favorites; the posts also do not show up if the accessing user doesn't have permission to view them
Corrected automatic friends feature to allow clearing the friend list.
Updated RSS feed autodiscovery to list application RSS feeds before core RSS feeds.

Groups

Whenever you delete a group, it now also deletes the sub applications in that group. This allows you to properly delete an entire group.
The group forum rss feed no longer throws an exception.
Updated the HubsContext to require View permission (and not Post) when retrieving group pages.
Updated wiki retrieval for hubs to return disabled wikis. Added a schema patch to move duplicated Wiki pages to the latest wiki for a hub, resolve duplicate page keys, and delete duplicated wikis.
Updated Hub Forum Configuration forms to build SectionQuery to bypass cache to ensure getting non-cached version of Forum

Media Gallery

The media gallery admin sort order page no longer throws an exception when there are more than 250 blogs on a site.
Removed duplication in MediaGalleryDataProvider (ParentID populated twice).
Fixed Media Gallery Browse/File Upload window to only show appropriate options for your permissions.

Wiki

Editing a wiki comment no longer loses the comments formatting.
Updated the wiki formatting module to also process PageRevision.RenderedBody (before was only doing Page.RenderedBody) to render the resultant urls on the view revision page.
Updated Wiki controls: Removed unnecessary properties, removed public control properties on forms, corrected Wiki references in edit forms, removed unnecessary overrides, corrected control XML comments.
Correction to Wiki styles to better support IE6.
Fixed wiki revsion compare link in wiki page tracking email.
Corrected encoding of wiki page titles in parent page drop-down.
Added saving of tags for a wiki page revisions so they can be viewed on the View Revision page and compared in the revision comparison page.
File viewers now work for wiki pages.
Wikis inside of groups now honor the "Memebrs can create pages" configuration option.
Changed wiki "Add a New Comment" button to "Add Comment".
When you go to a wiki that doesn't exist, you know see resource not found error message.
The wiki theme files in hubs now reference correct modal master page.
The wikis search box now searches across only wikis instead of the entire site.
Wiki Article page tweaks: changed "view more" comment link to "view all" and made it only visible when 1 or more comments exist.
Reduced the empty space around wiki comments in IE7.
You can now search wikis in a group with Enterprise Search.
The link text in the wiki insert page dialog now works correctly in IE.
Updated Wiki Permission handling to clear appropriate wikis from cache when permissions are updated.
Updated Wiki Files Widget to handle blank src attributes in HTML.
If a user only has edit permissions in a wiki they can no longer move a page.

Tags: service pack

Wiki Functionality

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:50:04 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:50:04 AM

Wiki Overview

Adding a Wiki Page - Registered User

Rating a Wiki Page

Comparing Versions of a Wiki Page - Registered User

Attaching a File to a Wiki Page

Media Gallery Functionality

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:49:00 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:49:00 AM

Media Files Overview

Uploading a Media File - Registered Users

Editing a Media File Tag

Deleting a Media File

Home Page Functionality

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:45:53 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:45:53 AM

Home Page Overview

Details Page Overview

About Tags

Adding to Your Shared Favorites List

Enabling Shared Favorites

Subscribing to an RSS Feed

Editing a Public Profile

Changing Your Password

Changing Your Avatar - Registered Users

Adding a Friend

Removing a Friend

Creating a Status Message

Changing the Content Editor toolbar

Using the Text Search Browsing Tags

Groups Functionality

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:41:23 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:41:23 AM

Groups Main Page Overview

Requesting Group Membership

Subscribing to a Group

Leaving a Group

Creating a Discussion

Accessing My Groups

Sending a Contact Request to a Group Owner

Uploading a File to a Group

Inviting a User to Join a Group

Forums Functionality

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:38:38 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:38:38 AM

Forums Overview

Adding a Forum Post - Registered Users

Viewing Users Online

Searching for Users

Sorting and Filtering Forum Posts

Marking Unopened Posts as Read

Using the Forum Reply Options

Subscribing to a Forum Thread

Subscribing to a Forum - Registered Users

Blogs Functionality

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:36:40 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:36:40 AM

Blogs Main Page Overview

Creating a Blog

Adding a Blog Post - Registered Users

Editing a Blog Post - Registered Users

Blog Dashboard

Editing a Tag - Registered Users

Deploying Evolution in a Web Farm

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:33:55 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:33:55 AM

Applies to:

Community Server 2008.5
Evolution 1.0

Summary: This whitepaper describes the core technologies needed to create a web farm environment for Community Server 2008.5. It also describes the configuration needed to adequately and efficiently run Community Server 2008.5 in a web farm environment.

Contents

Web Farm Environments
Implementation Technologies
Community Server Physical Topology
Community Server Software Configuration
Summary

The goal of this whitepaper is to:

Provide a quick overview of web farm technologies
Identify the optimal physical configuration for the various Community Server jobs and services
Provide optimal configuration settings for Community Server software on individual nodes

Web Farm Environments

A web farm environment consists of two or more physical servers that act together to host one or more sites as if they were one server. You can imagine that making two web servers act as one is not a simple endeavor. Recent technologies such as Distributed File System (DFS) and Network Load Balancing (NLB) have gone a long way to make deploying, configuring, and managing Windows based web farms much easier.

There are many physical and logical configurations that can be used to create a load balanced web farm environment. One can use everything from load balancing hardware such as F5 to file replication software such as Robocopy. In this section, we will take a quick look at the technologies that provide the quickest and easiest route to Windows based load balancing in a web farm environment.

Note: if you are already familiar with web farm environments and the necessary technologies then you can skip down to the "Synchronizing Files Across Nodes" section to read the Community Server specific portions of this whitepaper.

Server Operating System and Web Server

We recommend that customers who wish to create a web farm environment for hosting Community Server use Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2008. Windows Server 2008 provides many new tools that make deployment, operations, and scaling simpler than they were in previous versions of Windows Server. That said, Windows Server 2003 R2 is adequate for creating an environment to host Community Server 2008.5 in a web farm.

Similarly, we can create an adequate web farm environment on servers running Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS6). However, Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) provides better deployment and operations tools. In the case of the web server, IIS7 provides a clear advantage over IIS6 because the Shared Configuration technology is only available in IIS7.

Load Balancing in a Windows based Web Farm

Load balancing is the process of taking many requests and distributing them equally to any number of web servers that are all acting as one. There are a few options for load balancing Windows servers. We're only going to briefly look at Network Load Balancing (NLB) as entire books have been written on the subject. There are great resources available on NLB so we recommend that you read this article on load balancing using Windows Server 2003 and/or this article on load balancing using Windows Server 2008.

Shared Configuration: Synchronizing or Duplicating Configuration Settings Across Nodes

Managing a web farm can be difficult when it comes to ensuring that all of the servers stay in sync. The integrity of the web farm depends on the concept that all of the web servers will be virtually identical in their configuration. This unity is required because it only takes one web server to "misbehave" causing the entire web farm to malfunction and it can be very difficult to troubleshoot web farm issues when the machines vary in configuration.

If you intend to use IIS6 then you'll need to use a tool called MSDeploy and a variety of other techniques to synchronize settings amongst the web servers. Read this article for more information on how you can create a shared configuration system with IIS6.

If you intend to use IIS7 then you have a much easier road to walk as IIS7 has Shared Configuration functionality built into it. You can read an overview of this technology here or watch a demonstration of how to setup shared configuration in a web farm environment here.

Synchronizing Files Across Nodes

There are a variety of Community Server configurations that require files created by the web server to be copied or synchronized across all of the web server nodes in the web farm. Here are a few example configurations or services that require some form of synchronization across the web servers:

Telligent's Enterprise Search Service
Telligent's File System Syndication Service
Blogs: when new blogs are created the directories need to be created on each node

Ideally, if possible virtually all nodes should contain identical files (configuration files being the lone exception and we'll talk about that later in the document). Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 both provide a feature called Distribute File Storage or DFS (2003 docs | 2008 docs). We highly encourage those using Community Server 2008.5 in a web farm environment to use DFS to keep the file systems in sync.

Community Server Software and Web Server Configuration

With Community Server, one of the things that can be quite confusing when running in a web farm environment is how and where to run the community server add-ons such as Enterprise Search or the NNTP service. Below you will find a diagram (Figure 1) that depicts a common two node load balanced web farm. There are two web server nodes and a single database server.

Let's take a look at the individual pieces of this server and software configuration.

First, the database server is quite straightforward. There is only one database server (though you could run clustered SQL Servers with CS like you could any other application) and it will be running SQL Server 2000, 2005, or 2008. There will be only one instance of the Community Server database and it will "live" on the database server.

Second, lets take a look at what both machines share. Web Server 1 and Web Server 2 both run standard operating system/web server components that meet our minimum requirements outlined earlier in the whitepaper. Both server also have all of the Community Server 2008.5 web files - that's everything you'd find in the "Web" folder of the "upgrade" or "web" installation packages you can get from communityserver.com. If you install Community Server on one of the nodes using the MSI installer then you can simply copy the "web" files from that machine to the other (using DFS or manually). There will be a small difference in the contents of the configuration files on each node and we'll be discussing those differences in the next section of this whitepaper. Lastly, you'll notice that three of the Community Server add-ons need to be installed on each node: NNTP service, FTP service, and any of the security add-ons.

In conclusion, lets take a look at what is only done on one (this would only be done on one node in the web farm regardless of how many nodes there are in the web farm) of the nodes in the web farm. You can see on Web Server 1 that the Enterprise Search service and the Mail Gateway service are installed but they are not installed on Web Server 2. Enterprise Search creates an actual physical index file on the server and the process of indexing all of the content in the database can be a taxing activity. So, to reduce the load on the database server and to avoid the issues (drive space, synchronization, etc.) of having multiple physical index files on multiple nodes we isolate Enterprise Search to one node. One drawback to having the ES index file on a single machine is that all search requests will be routed to that machine. You could alleviate this issue by using DFS to "push" the ES index file to all nodes in the web farm (the service would still only run on one node). Similarly, to avoid any timing issues with email we isolate mail gateway to one node.

Community Server Software Configuration

There are a number of Community Server specific configuration issues that people commonly run into:

What do I do with the CS tasks in the communityserver.config? Should they all run on each node?
How should I store user contributed media (files added to the Media gallery or otherwise attached to posts in CS)?
How do I maintain sessions across the servers?
Do I need to do anything with the authentication, authorization, roles, or profile settings?
How do I move from a single web server to a web farm?
How is data cached in Community Server?
Do I need to install Enterprise Search on all servers in the web farm?
Do I need to install the News Gateway (NNTP) or FTP server on all servers in the web farm?

CS Tasks in a Web Farm

In Community Server 2008.5 there are 21 tasks that can be run/configured in a single Community Server instance. Many of the tasks are cleanup jobs and some of the tasks access the database to perform routine operations inside Community Server. There are tasks, like SiteStatisticsUpdates or search barrel, that hit the database there is no need for them to be executed by each node in the web farm. There are other tasks, however, like the AnonymousUsers task that are specific to each machine and need to be run by each node in the web farm.

Tasks that need to be run on only one node

EventLog

SiteStatisticsUpdates

ForumsIndexing

WeblogIndexing

MediaGalleryIndexing

HubIndexing

RecentBlogContent

UserInvitationExpiration

WeblogModeratedFeedbackNotificationJob

DeleteStaleSpamCommentsJob

Emails

RollerBlogsUpdater

PostAttachmentCleanup

ThemeConfigurationPreviewCleanup

TagCleanup

MultipleFileUploadCleanupJob

GenerateWeblogYearMonthDayListJob

TemporaryUserTokenExpiration

Tasks that need to be run on all nodes

AnonymousUsers

Referrals

Views

Note: the task configuration above assumes that all file stores (CFS, etc.) point to a single location (Amazon S3, file share, etc.). If some file stores will be on the individual nodes then you must run all *cleanup tasks on each individual node.

A job can be disabled by changing the "enabled" property value to "false" in the communityserver.config file. However, we recommend that you use a communityserver_override.config file (more information on override files here) to define changes to communityserver.config. This helps minimize the amount of changes you need to make when upgrading to future versions of Community Server. Here is an example of what an overrides entry might look like to disable the SiteStatisticsUpdates job:

Note: the value in the "xpath" element above should be on one line. Also, you can read more about how to use and create override markup/files here.

Finally, to ensure that email is only processed by one server you should set the "disableEmail" property in the "core" element to the value of "true".

Click here for more information about the Community Server tasks.

How should I store user contributed media?

Note: You should make any changes referenced in this section before you upgrade your CS site.

Community Server 2008.5 makes use of a Centralized File Storage (CFS) provider. CFS provides a great deal of flexibility to the developer/system admin as it is relatively straight forward to configure Community Server to use any number of "external" file storage systems (Amazon's S3, UNC path, etc.). Community Server 2008.5 supports the concept of an overriding configuration file so rather than changing the default install you can just create an overrides file - communityserver_override.config.

Here is an example that overrides the Centralized File Storage to use a UNC path:

Note: the value for the "xpath" element should be on one line. Also, to properly override CFS you'd need to provide an override value for all of the CFS entries (of which the example above is just one of them). Also, you can read more about how to use and create override markup/files here.

Obviously, in this configuration at least one of the nodes is accessing a resource (files) on another system (the one that hosts the UNC share). The security implications of cross machine resource requests can be complicated. You can configure security parameters for your application a number of ways and each operating system uses a different account to run the ASP.NET process. There is a great matrix that shows you the various security contexts in which your resource request will leave the server here. Because many of these options are environmentally specific, we'd also encourage you to read this article as it describes the various configurations that allow for impersonation and delegation in Community Server or any ASP.NET application. Understanding how the underlying ASP.NET security model works is critical to understanding how you must configure remote network file requests from within your application or Community Server in this case.

If you are making the switch from local file share to remote file share then you will need to move all of the files/folders to the remote file share. You will also want to review the permissions on the files once they are moved to the remote file share to ensure they are still accessible to Community Server.

Do I need to do anything with the authentication, authorization, roles, or profile settings?

There are two keys to keeping authentication, authorization, roles, and profile settings working correctly in a web farm environment:

Cookie Names - you must ensure that the cookie names set in the web.config file are the same on each node in the web farm.
Machine Keys - you must ensure that the validationKey and decryptionKey values are the same on all nodes in the web farm. You can read more about this issue here.

How do I move from a single server to a web farm?

There are a number of things you'll need to do when moving from a single server to a web farm (this may not be an exhaustive list):

First, if you're not familiar with web farm/load balancing technologies like NLB, DFS, etc. then you'll want to consult with someone who is.
If you are running any Community Server add-ons then take a look at Figure 1 earlier in the document to see which ones need to be duplicated on each node.
You'll need to decide and then appropriately configure the CSTasks on each node - see the "CS Tasks In a Webfarm" section earlier this document.
You'll need to centralize user data so you don't have random files on one server but not the other - see the "How should I store user data?" section earlier in the document. Pay special attention to the last paragraph in that section.
You'll need to be sure your cookie names match in all nodes and that you've duplicated the machine key settings in each web.confg.
You'll need to create existing blog directories and setup a process for creating new directories on each server (that could be DFS, it could be CreateDefaultDirectories process discussed in "How do I ensure that all blog directories are created on each node?" section of the document.

How is data cached in Community Server?

In order to scale Community Server to serve large communities, CS makes extensive use of caching. In a webfarm environment, caching can introduce some unexpected behavior because out of the box caching is done on a per server basis (so you'll see a different cache on each server). The caching behaviors of Community Server have been tweaked such that you will notice a large discrepancy between servers. However, there is the chance that you will notice your servers will be briefly out of sync. We do not recommend you cause unschedule application restarts on production servers but you can force the cache to flush on the nodes in your webfarm by "touching" the web.config. You will also want to make sure the cache factor settings match across all nodes.

Do I need to install Enterprise Search on all web servers in the web farm?

No. Enterprise Search runs as part of the Tasks service and can be installed on a single machine in the web farm.

Do I need to install the News Gateway (NNTP) or FTP server on all web servers in the web farm?

Yes and no. The answer to this question depends on the capabilities of your load balancing equipment. Your load balancing equipment may be able to capture all of the FTP and NNTP traffic and route it to one machine in which case you would only install these applications on a single server. If you cannot control the traffic or want to load balance this traffic as well then you would need to install NNTP and FTP servers on all web servers in the web farm.

Tags: cluster

Why are users being logged out of my Web site?

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:26:26 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:26:26 AM

Every time your Web site starts or restarts, ASP.NET generates an encryption and decryption key which is used to encrypt the user’s cookie, which in turn tells Community Server the user is logged in. This means that whenever your Web site restarts, ASP.NET can no longer read the cookie and therefore logs out the user.

To prevent ASP.NET from automatically generating the encryption keys, you must specify them yourself by adding a Machine Key to your web.config file. Go to http://www.google.com/search?q=Machine+Key+Generator to learn about online tools you can use generate a Machine Key for you.

Tags: FAQs

Forgotten Email Password Tokens

Jenny Jarrard — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:16:20 GMT

Current Revision posted to Evolution 1.0 Documentation by Jenny Jarrard on 12/21/2009 11:16:20 AM

The forgotten password email tokens are used only in the forgotten password email.

[forgottenpasswordurl] – Renders the URL of the page containing the user’s password.
[ip] – Renders the IP address of the community team that sent the user’s password.
[name] – Renders the Display name of the user who’s password is being reset.

Tags: emails