Zach Rosenfield

[Since i used to post there here first, cross posting from the SharePoint Team Blog]

I’m pleased to announce that the fourth version of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit is available for download!  This is our last planned offering of new features and functionality for this toolkit that services both Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services v3.0.   That said, we do plan to release a separate new toolkit for SharePoint 2010.  With this release we added functionality to address various difficult administrative tasks.  These include SharePoint Diagnostics Tool improvements, the Permissions Reporting Tool, the Quota Management command, and Security Configuration Wizard Manifests.  Let’s look at these areas:

SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (SPDiag) update

The SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (SPDiag) version 2 contains several important updates and new features that increase its effectiveness as a troubleshooting tool.  All SPDiag version 1 functionality has been retained, although some existing functions and features have been improved.

· A Diagnostics tab has been added which executes predefined rules designed to discover and report against some of the most common SharePoint issues.

· Command line data collection and data import has been added so that you can collect data from all servers in a farm for a given time range without installing the complete SharePoint Administration Toolkit on the target farm.  The data can then be relocated to a remote computer and imported into a new project for offline analysis.

· Trend view zoom has been added to the performance monitor graph so that you can click and drag a specific time frame—updating all other frames to the new timeframe.  Zooming out is as simple as a right click.

You can see detailed instructions on improvements on SPDiag on Microsoft TechNet:

· SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (Office SharePoint Server)  (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd745013.aspx)

· SharePoint Diagnostics Tool (Windows SharePoint Services)  (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd745013.aspx)

Permissions Reporting Tool

In the past, customers have had a difficult time trying to detect what sites in a site collection have broken inheritance from the parent and thus why they cannot access some sites.  The Permissions Reporting tool for SharePoint makes it very easy to detect where inheritance has been broken in a site collection.  You can compare an object like a list or a site against its parent to see where inheritance was broken and run reports to get more information on such sites. You can also check effective permissions for a user or a group in a particular site, web, or list in a site collection; this feature lists the permissions that a user or group has.

Once the Permissions Reporting tool is installed in the farm, a site collection administrator can go to the top-level site or any subsite in a site collection and use the links on the Site Settings page to reap the benefits of the tool. The following image shows the new links that appear after you have installed the Permissions Reporting tool in the farm.

Note: To be able to see the links for Broken Inheritance Reports Jobs and Compare Permissions Sets, you must be a site collection administrator. However, anyone with the Enumerate Permissions permission — by default, people in the site Owners group — will be able to see the Check Effective Permissions link.

1. Click Broken Inheritance Report Jobs to run reports of broken sites in a site collection. Reports contain any information relevant to a broken inheritance. The report output is in XML, but you can save the files and then open them in Excel to see the information at a glance. For more information, see Run broken inheritance reports on Office.com.

2. Click Check Effective Permissions to check a user or group’s permissions on a site, list, or item. You can view what permissions are allowed and denied and any blocking permissions. For more information, see Check permissions for a user or group on Office.com.

3. Click Compare Permission Sets to compare an object such as a site or a list against its parent to quickly detect which object breaks inheritance in your site collection. For more information, see Compare permission sets on Office.com.

Quota Management

In the current version of SharePoint Products and Technologies, once a quota limit is applied to a site collection, the only way to change the limit is to manually update the quota limit for each site collection or write custom code. The updatequota operation the toolkit adds to stsadm does not have any parameters to globally set a quota limit change (that is, from 2 GB to 5 GB). The quota limit change is set by an administrator by using Central Administration Web site. Once the limit change is set, you then use the updatequota operation the toolkit adds to stsadm to apply the change to the specific site collections.

For example, you have a quota template named “Global” with a quota limit of 2 gigabyte (GB) that has been applied to 2,000 site collections. Currently, there is no automated way to modify existing site collections with this value. With the updatequota stsadm operation, the quota limit for all existing site collections using the Global quota template can be automatically increased or decreased as needed.

Security Configuration Wizard Manifests

Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) is an attack surface reduction tool introduced with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. SCW uses a roles-based metaphor to solicit the functionality required for a server and disables the functionality that is not required. By automating this security best practice, SCW helps to create Windows environments that are less susceptible, on the whole, to security vulnerabilities that have been exploited.

For more information about the Security Configuration Wizard in Windows Server 2003, see the Security Configuration Wizard Documentation (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=162647).

The SCW manifests for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are included in the SharePoint Administration Toolkit v4.0. The manifests add the SCW roles for Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to Windows Server 2003.

For installation instructions, see

WSS: Installing the SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Windows SharePoint Services) (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508987.aspx)

Installing the SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Office SharePoint Server) (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508849.aspx)

For more detailed information about the SharePoint Administration Toolkit, see following documentation on TechNet:

    SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Office SharePoint Server) (http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc508851.aspx) 
   SharePoint Administration Toolkit (Windows SharePoint Services) (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc508986.aspx)

The download links for the SharePoint Administration Toolkit v4.0

  x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=665e98ea-5318-486d-aba2-2bfe46254357   (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=142035)

  x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cd2d09a7-1159-4d40-be1c-8efab1345381   (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=141504)

Dan Winter
SharePoint Program Manager