Icons and Indexing for PDF files on SharePoint

Part of our SharePoint project is making sure that users can find what they are looking for (including within PDF documents) and that there are icons next to the documents that accurately reflect the file type. There are a variety of blog posts and information out there regarding this from several years ago, but I'd like to summarize this up for those of you who might be doing what I've done - installed WSS 3.0 on Server 2008.

Out of the box, WSS 3.0 only indexes standard Windows file types, which are Office files and basic text files. It will also only show the proper icons for Office files. All other files get the default "blank paper" icon.

To allow for searching of PDF files, you'll need the proper iFilter installed on your server. We are using version 9 of the Adobe Acrobat product line, so by installing Acrobat Reader 9 on the server all the necessary files were installed. No need to download any other iFilter components separately.

Then I followed the steps as outlined in KB 927675. This article was last reviewed in May 2007, but the steps haven't change for Server 2008. However the data I found in Step 3 for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf registry setting was different than in the article. It was {4C904448-74A9-11D0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02} on my installation.

Next you'll need the icon files. You'll want the 17 x 17 pixel one from the Adobe website. If you have any other icons for specialty file types you'll wanted added to your server, you might as well gather them all up and make sure they are 17 x 17 as well. Copy them all to \Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES.

Then open the XML file that WSS uses to reference which file types display which icons. This is at \Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML\DOCICON.XML. (Saving a backup copy is always a good idea at this point.)

Add a mapping key for each of the file types at the bottom of the file, above the /ByExtension closing tag. XML is case sensitive so make sure you use same case and spacing as previous entries. The key will be Mapping Key="ext" Value="iconfile.gif" OpenControl='''/. Replace "ext" with "pdf" or whatever file extension you are adding a icon for, and adjust the "iconfile.gif" name to reflect the correct name of the image files you added.
Then save the XML file.

To ensure a full new crawl of all the PDF files for indexing, you should restart the server or stop/restart the spsearch service and force a full index using the stsadm -o spearch -action fullcrawlstart. I just restated the server, as we are using a virtual server for SharePoint and VMs restart pretty quickly.

Finally, if you'd like to check out the older blog posts I used as references, check out Configure PDF IFilter in WWS 3.0 and Searching PDFs with WSS 3.0 SP1.

Get on the Bus for Windows 7

Have you heard about the Microsoft Bus Tour? If you are on the east coast in late May/early June, don't miss out on a chance to get on the bus and learn more about Windows 7, Office 2010 and optimizing your enterprise desktops. Not only will you learn a thing or two, they are giving away free software!

The team on the bus will be giving away 50 copies of Windows 7 Ultimate for the first 50 event attendees through the door at EVERY STOP! Don’t miss your chance to win a copy of Microsoft’s newest software offering - register today at www.thebustour.com.

Legal Disclaimer from the folks at Microsoft:
*To receive your free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, be one of the first 50 people who are US residents (includes D of C) or Canada 18+ to arrive at a Microsoft Get On the Bus Tour afternoon event. 50 copies of the software title are available. Limit one gift per person. This offer is non-transferable and cannot be combined with any other offer. This offer ends on June 4, 2010 while supplies last, and is not redeemable for cash. Taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the recipient. There is no shipment of your gift – all gifts will be distributed onsite.

Techbunny at Windows Intelligence

If you were down in Burlingame, CA at the Windows Intelligence conference today, hopefully you enjoyed the event put on by Quickstart Intelligence. I did two presentations, Deploying Windows 7 and a server session on Remote Desktop Services and Terminal Services. You can download them by clicking on the links or in the find them in my "downloads" section in the sidebar. (Slides are in PDF format.)
There were also several sessions by Ed Horley and Steve Evans, as well as Chris Henley, Chris Avis and Harold Wong from the Microsoft's Technet Evangelist Team. You can find out more about where to find Chris, Chris and Harold next at www.technetevents.com.

Virtual Roundtable on Windows 7 Deployment

Just wanted to pass along some information about an upcoming online event from Microsoft. Check out this live broadcast on the 29th or stream it on-demand if you miss it. Details below!

***

On April 29th, join Microsoft Technical Fellow, Mark Russinovich, as he will be leading a discussion around the process of planning, testing, assessing and rolling out Windows 7 in an enterprise organization.

Mark will be joined by a panel of IT professionals who are currently in the piloting and deployment process, along with Microsoft subject matter experts who can speak in depth about the technologies.

The event will be broadcast live over the web at 9:00 am PDT, and will be available for on-demand viewing following the broadcast. The discussion will be open and candid, with the panel sharing insights, dispelling myths and getting down to the real story around technical adoption of Windows technologies. Specific topics will include the role of the pilot and the critical information it provides, best practices and tips & tricks for ensuring a successful effort, tools and technologies that will help automate the pilot and deployment processes, and conducting a frank post-pilot assessment. During the event, Mark will field questions coming in via the web from viewers across the globe.

Missed a previous Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable?
Gain insight, tips, and tricks from Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich, industry experts, and IT professionals from around the world from these recordings: http://technet.microsoft.com/windows/dd421882.aspx
Access the VRT live at: http://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard/

Can MED-V take on Terminal Services?

Had a great conversation with an MMS 2010 attendee while I was helping man the Windows Manageability booth at the Expo Pavilion this week. We were discussing his existing applications, moving to Windows 7 and he asked “When is it appropriate to use MED-V, since I already have a legacy application on Terminal Services?”

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is a great way to manage the deployment of applications that will not run on Windows 7, but run on Windows XP. By providing a managed, virtual, integrated copy of Windows XP running inside Windows 7, users can still access a legacy application seamlessly from their desktop.

However, MED-V is not the ultimate solution to getting legacy applications to run on Windows 7 indefinitely. Its a way to get Windows 7 onto desktops without being held back by a specific application that is not yet ready to be upgraded, replaced or phased out of use.

But what if you already have the application available through Terminal Services? You may be running Citrix on Server 2003 Terminal Services. Or maybe the application will run on Vista and can be deployed using Server 2008 TS RemoteApp. Both those options are easier to manage than deploying and managing a host of extra virtual Windows XP machines on your network, especially if you already have an appropriate Terminal Services environment available.

MED-V is a tool to consider if you are Software Assurance customer, because access to the MDOP tools cost only about $7-8 per desktop. This can be cheaper than the cost of Terminal Service or Citrix CALs, unless of course, you already own those CALs.

MED-V and Terminal Services aren’t competing solutions for the same problem. But they can help you accomplish the same goal – getting your users working on Windows 7.

The Observer Effect at the Helpdesk

In quantum physics there is the a phenomena known as the Observer effect, aka the Hawthorne effect. It refers to changes that act of observing will make on whatever is being observed. This effect is a regular occurrence when working in system administration, particularly on the help desk.

You don’t have to work in IT very long before someone will tell you that their computer starting working “just fine” when you showed up at their desk. This is the Observer effect in action.

When a support persons appears to troubleshoot an issue and asks an end user to recreated the problem, the problem will not occur. This is most often because the end user is now paying attention to what they are doing and aren’t making the same mistake they were making before.

This effect manifests itself in the opposite way as well. I’ve gotten the occasional call stating that an end user “was doing something all morning, but now it’s not working.” When asked to recreated the problem, it usually becomes apparent that the person has suddenly begun to pay too much attention to the steps they are taking -thinking too much about them and stopping too soon in the chain of mouse clicks or key strokes to finish the action. Instead of being observed by an outside party, the user has suddenly become the observer themselves and changed how they perceive what they are doing on the computer.

Either condition results in a help desk ticket, the observer effect either causes the problem or helps to solve it.

Microsoft Management Summit here I come!

Next week, the Microsoft Management Summit 2010 will be held at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The agenda is packed with break out sessions, instructor-led and self-paced hands on labs, birds-of-a-feather talks and more.

Don’t forget to visit the Microsoft Experts pavilion in the Expo hall. You’ll find me along with other Microsoft staff and MVPs ready to answer your questions about Windows deployment, manageability and virtualization.

See you there!

Are you going to be on the East Coast? Get on the Bus!

Microsoft’s “Get on the Bus” Tour is coming back to North America in late May for a 10-day tour down the east coast from Montreal, Canada ending in New Orleans just in time for TechEd.

Take a deep dive into Windows 7 and Office 2010, plus learn about the path to getting certified on those technologies. Check out some best practices for deploying Windows 7, review the features of Office 2010 and learn how to optimize your desktops for ease of management.

Visit the bus tour crew in the following cities:

• Montreal – May 21st
• Boston – May 24th
• New York – May 25th
• Philadelphia – May 26th
• Washington DC – May 27th and 28th
• Richmond – June 1st
• Raleigh – June 2nd
• Charlotte – June 3rd
• Atlanta – June 4th
• New Orleans – June 6th

Learn more and register, and don’t forget to follow the tour on Twitter @thebustour.

More from MDOP: Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset

Every IT Professional loves a toolkit - you know that special DVD or flash drive with your favorite go-to applications for solving problems. Here’s a little something to add to the mix: DaRT, the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, which comes as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack.

Designed to help reduce the time spent repairing damaged Windows system, it includes 14 different tools, a veritable Swiss Army knife for Windows. Use DaRT to help with tasks like:

• Recover an unbootable PC, even when it won’t boot in Safe mode
• Access deleted files
• Reset passwords
• Detect and remove malware when the PC is offline
• Wipe hard drives
• Access files from a unbootable OS
• Uninstall hotfixes

DaRT will run on top the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) and the DaRT tools and the WinRE tools run side by side so you can use them both together to recover systems. You can also create customized DaRT boot disks that only include a subset of tools for different uses. Overall, DaRT may help reduce the amount of time you need to spend repairing and reimaging systems for end users – getting people back to their regular duties sooner and improving the TCO on your desktops.

To learn more, check out this overview of DaRT on Microsoft Technet. DaRT is part of MDOP, which is available to Software Assurance and volume licensing customers.

Data Aggregation – Don’t Panic, Just Be Aware

I received a warning from a family member via text message a few days ago, as well as saw several posts on Facebook alerting others to a new website that “has all your personal data” – www.spokeo.com.

The advice was to go to their privacy section, enter my email address and request to be removed from the listing. According to what this family member told me about the removal process, you simply provided your email address, but only two listings could be removed with any single email address. My ears perked up a bit. Really? Interesting.

So I checked out the website with a little more of a critical eye. The site is a data aggregator, pulling data from various already public data sources – the white pages, home purchase records and the like, as well as your own public postings on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

The site requires payment to get the detailed results, but the teaser items include address and phone number, an estimate of your age, marital status, race, education level, possibly a few photos, lifestyle interests and median home values/income in your neighborhood.

While somewhat creepy, none of this is a big shocker. My name, address and phone number are in the white pages. The median home value and income in my neighborhood are easily searchable on www.zillow.com. As for the more personal goodies, the site indicates that it gets a good portion of its information from public profiles on Facebook and MySpace.

The hype behind all the warnings and knee-jerk reactions to “remove your listing from the site” lead me to look around for other data aggregators and compare. If you are going to remove your name from one, don’t forget several others like:

• www.switchboard.com (aka www.whitepages.com)
• www.411.com
• www.intelius.com
• www.peekyou.com
• www.zabasearch.com

All has some similar data, though they don’t all hit the social media space as hard as Spokeo does. All have an option to pay for more detailed information and many (especially when searching for people who are known to NOT be using social media) have incorrect data.

Ultimately, data is out there and aggregation sites will take advantage, however you really have to go to the source of the data to change what it available – rushing to knocking your name off one search site isn’t going to keep it from appearing on a new site next week. And personally, I’m not excited about providing my email address for “verification” so that can be collected up for some other unknown reason.

Like I’ve said before, it’s important to control and monitor what you put online. Google yourself. Check out some of the data available on these aggregation sites. Be critical of what you click and what you share. The Internet isn’t the safest place, but most places that are interesting have some level of risk.

Finally, don’t forget it’s also important to check your credit and lock your doors, because it’s not just the folks at www.pleaserobme.com who have the ability to figure out where you aren’t.

Version History in ImageRight 4.0

When our company started out with ImageRight 3.5, adding annotations to documents was one of the big features that made the system easy to adopt. However, much like writing on a document with a pen, annotations couldn't be undone individually. One had to be very sure they were putting the proper annotation in the right place, because once it was committed to the page there was no turning back.

One of the improved features that came with ImageRight 4.0 is the addition of version history with documents. This feature allows people with the appropriate permissions to view the history of changes made to a page. While regular users can see the history of individual annotations by view the properties of each, the version history allows the quick review of each set of changes and a previous versions can be promoted to be the current version in the case of errors. This has allowed me to help some users "roll back" changes, which has saved them time and made people a little more comfortable with experimenting with different uses of annotations.

For .TIF images it shows the annotation history and for non-image files (like Word docs or spreadsheets) complete copies of the changed files are stored. This is an improvement over the 3.5 version where annotation history was maintained for the sake of being able to review who added what marks, but didn't allow for any type of administrative "undo" of annotation that were made in error.

When it comes to .TIF documents, it is possible to create a "new" version of a document without making a visible change. It's important to have an idea of the scenarios where these extra versions can be created in case you are tasked with doing some type of detective work regarding the history of a document.

Here are several examples of when a new version can be created without any visible annotations.

• Adding an annotation and then deleting the annotation prior to saving or moving off a page


• Clicking on a sticky note, without moving or modifying the content


• Deleting a sticky note


• Add a text box with no text and deleting it prior to saving or moving off a page

As people get more comfortable moving within ImageRight and using annotations, these actions will happen less and the true history of each document will remain pretty clean. The addition of this feature provides valuable details that are worth the hit in disk space taken to maintain the versions.

Even More Windows Events!

It must be conference season again, because I keep running across a variety of technical events that look valuable. Here are a couple more:

Windows Summit 2010 runs May 25-27 at the Microsoft Conference Center on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, WA and is designed for people who engineer and test Windows 7 PCs, devices, and software. Three technical tracks (System, Device and Software) will to help you create the best systems, devices, and software using Windows 7 and Internet Explorer. For more information visit the website, registration is $399.

Also, the Launch 2010: Technical Readiness Series kicks off in late April. The event in San Francisco is on May 20th at the Embarcadero Hyatt, but check out the full city listings for other locations. The event will cover Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and other products including Exchange 2010 and SQL Server. There are both IT Professional and Developer tracks available and this event is free, so register soon – these types of events fill up fast.

Finally, don’t forget the Pacific IT Pros regular monthly meeting tomorrow and the special TechDays Forensics session next week.

When Easy Print Doesn’t Print

Terminal Services 2008 introduced Easy Print, a feature that doesn’t require print drivers for local printers to be installed on the remote terminal server. Instead Server 2008 redirects the default printer from the local machine and utilizes the locally installed driver.

While this works well for a lot of printers, printers that need legacy or specialty drivers (like those handy multi-function printers), may result in print jobs are garbled or use incorrect fonts.

The first troubleshooting step should be to update the the print drivers on the client computer, but if this isn’t possible, the default behavior of Easy Print can be overridden with some registry keys and some GPO settings. Also, in some cases, the correct print driver still produces bad print results so you’ll need to use a different driver.

The following steps will override Easy Print, utilizing a driver installed on the server instead AND force a substitution with a different driver.

First, you’ll want to create a special INF file that lists the printers your want to specify alternate drivers for. You’ll reference this INF file in some new registry entries on the server. Follow the format used in the following example:

;NTPRINTSUBS.INF

;Printer mapping file for client-side to server-side drivers

[Printers]

"OEM Printer Driver Name" = "Windows Server 2008 Driver Name"

For example:

"HP DeskJet 720C Series v10.3" = "HP DeskJet 722C"

The left side of the equation is the exact name of the printer driver associated with the client printer that is being redirected to the server. The right side of the equation is the exact name of the server-side driver that is installed on the terminal server. You’ll have to check your printer driver properties to make sure you have the names right.

Next, you’ll need to add a few registry values to your terminal server.

1. Locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\Wds\rdpwd registry subkey.
   
2. Add the following values:

   Name: PrinterMappingINFName
   Type: String (REG_SZ)
   Value data: Name of the .inf file to which you want to redirect lookups. (Example - c:\windows\inf\ntprintsubs.inf)

   Name: PrinterMappingINFSection
   Type: String (REG_SZ)
   Value data: Name of the section in the .inf file to which you want to redirect lookups. (Example – Printers)

You must restart the Print Spooler service on the terminal server for the changes to take effect. If you need more details about this process, check out Event 1111 – Terminal Services Printer Redirection on TechNet.

Finally, you’ll need to adjust or create a group policy that will alter the behavior of Easy Print for all of your TS users. There are several additional policies that can be enabled to tweak how client machines handle Easy Print. The one you want to adjust “Use Terminal Services Easy Print Print Driver First” and you’ll want to disable it. This will force clients to look for appropriate drivers on the server first and only use Easy Print if no suitable driver is found. It doesn’t disable Easy Print entirely, just makes it the second choice.

Depending on which OS you are using as your GPO management workstation, you’ll have to look in for the policy in one of two places. The discrepancy is related to the renaming of “Terminal Services” to “Remote Desktop Services” with Windows 2008 R2. The registry settings that the policy adjusts are the same.

• For Vista or Server 2008, go to Computer Configuration –> Policies –> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components –> Terminal Services –> Terminal Server –> Printer Redirection.
• On Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2, go to Computer Configuration –> Policies –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components -> Remote Desktop Services -> Remote Desktop Session Host ->Printer Redirection.

In our case, we were unable to find the setting at all using Windows Vista and we don’t have a Windows 2008 server running GPMC to compare it too. However, we simply made the adjustment using a Windows 7 workstation instead. For other troubleshooting tips with Easy Print, check out the RDS Team Blog.

On the Tech Radar: Upcoming Events

Looking for some technology events for your calendar in the upcoming months? Here are a few that you might want to check out.

Start out April with the regular Pacific IT Professionals meeting on April 6th. Hear from Neustar about their Webmetrics and UltraDNS solutions. Also, PacITPros will also be having a special TechDays event on Computer Forensics on April 12th. Sign up soon to secure your spot!

A one day Windows Intelligence event is being held in Burlingame on April 26th, hosted by QuickStart Intelligence and Microsoft. Technical tracks include Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and Virtualization, Exchange and Office.

On June 10th, the Microsoft and Citrix will team up and come to San Francisco to talk about desktop virtualization. Other cities and dates are on the schedule from now through June as part of the 2010 Virtualization Summit.

Finally, don’t forget some of the multi-day events, which are always a lot of fun – the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas (April 19-23) and TechEd in New Orleans in June.