Service account for central Admin in SharePoint

As most of you probably know, SharePoint should be installed with two service accounts. One, lets call it spserviceaccount, should be the account that runs all SharePoint web applications, all mysites etc and the otherone, lets call it spappserviceaccount, should only run the central admin app-pool.

So why, well, imagine if you hade the same account even for central admin, what could happen? If, someone bad, was to hack the SharePoint so that it could start running bad programs, they would also be able to create new sites, delete sitecollections and more. Not very nice, hence we use a special app account central admin to make sure that we are just a bit safer.

How do we do set it?
Best way is to actually run the installation wizard as spappserviceaccount and make sure you set the right user in every step of the installation.

Already up and running and want to change it?
Well, I havn’t tried this, but it is supposed to be doable using stsadm, please check this kb-article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838

It should be something like:
stsadm –o updatefarmcredentials –userlogin DomainNameUserName -password NewPassword

But please check the article.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Callouts not triggering

It’s one of those days, lots of bloggin’ 🙂

Callouts are great, there are a few drawbacks but in general, they’re great. However, you might experience that they aren’t triggering as they should. Well, first thing to check is that callout.config is correct. Does it work on some other system? I have noticed that there are some problems with wich version is set in the top part.

However, there might still be problems with callouts not triggering properly, this might be due to a reinstallation of CRM which actually shuts off callouts, and doesn’t put them back on again. (shame on you installation developers!).

Have a look at the blog bellow for more info on how to put them back on again.

http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2007/03/is_your_microso.html

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Rumors of the Dynamics NAV – CRM integrator

I’ll make another posting while I at it…

I had a meeting with Hillevi Anderkrans at Swedens top MS CRM company, Cybernetics (www.cybernetics.se) and she told me that there were rumors that the long awaited Microsoft supported Nav-CRM Integration probably wont be released for CRM 3 at all but only for Titan.

This isn’t great news since there isn’t really a satisfactory integration engine for Nav-CRM and the Microsoft based integrator has been long awaited.

I have personally (as mentioned in previous posts) worked with Celenia/Tectura and found it to be far from satisfactory, especially out-of-the-box. It needs a lot of work to be ok. Perhaps Celenia will put in a good effort into it, to make it as good as it’s supposed to be.

I have argued previously, that the Microsoft Integrator might acctually be the Celenia Integrator that they (MS) have bought. This news however, makes this hypothesis a bit more improbable, and I would at the moment put my money on the Integrator being a soley Microsoft developed product.

If you here anything related to this, please let me know!

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

CRM Mobile Express – How To

I’ve not been so busy here lately, mostly due to the fact that I have been working with a course I have designed and am the main teacher/coach for. It is an interesting course for a specific customer where the goal is to make the attendées into Information Worker Architects.

The guys attending are all highly skilled system developers and/or system architects and I want them to feel they are getting their moneys worth.

Well, I saw an interesting blog entry on how to set up CRM to get CRM Mobile Express to work (it is in essence only simplified lists and forms). I havn’t had the opportunity to test it myself yet, and I must say I have my doubts about how to maintain a high security level for the solution, but there might be acceptable ways of handling it, so please have a look if you are interested:

http://www.sbs-rocks.com/CRM/MobileExpress.htm

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Messing up SQL RS

SQL Reporting services is great, but it is actually quite common to mess up the installation due to the steps taken in installation. Always make sure you do not install either sharepoint or CRM on the same website as CRM. (It is possible to get it to work but not recommended).

What can happen is the following:
1. Installing SQL 2005, in the process installing SQL RS on port 80 = http://localhost/reports and http://localhost/reportmanager.
2. Installing either CRM or a SharePoint site on port 80 of the same computer.

= SQL Reporting Services doesn’t work anymore…

So, what to do.

First, if you want your CRM or SharePoint site to be located on port 80, don’t install SQL RS on port 80. Create some other webapplication using host headers or TCP-ports and install SQL RS to that website instead. Then install CRM or SharePoint to port 80. No conflict = no problems.

If you happen to mess it up anyway, or is asked to fix a messed up installation, you can do magic with the tool RSConfigTool which resides in the SQL Binn-directory (usually: C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server90ToolsBinn). Start it, and reconfigure it properly.

Have fun reporting!

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se