Why you should be using AvePoint’s Governance Automation
AvePoint announced the release of their Governance Automation module. This tool sits on top of their existing DocAve suite and leverages the individual modules to provide governance automation.
Users would create a service request in the GA GUI. This list is currently limited to the following requests, but is expected to be expanded shortly:
- Site Collection Provisioning
- Site Provisioning
- Site Collection Lifecycle Management
These service requests allow SharePoint administrators to build up approval processes, reporting, and implement a governance policy depending on numerous variables. An end user can request a site from the GA GUI, and through the automated process, send the request for approval, apply governance policies, storage policies, lifecycle policies, backup policies, setup permissions etc, (This is dependant on the DocAve modules installed).
This alone will decrease the wait time for end users, as well as the work load of SharePoint administrators who can now focus on maintaining and improving your farms, and not worry about having to attend to trival tasks such as creating sites.
Further down the line, GA enables reporting as well, so administrators can quickly see what is happening with detailed reports on the SharePoint assets. One of the more interesting features for SharePoint administrators is the ability to clearly provide Chargeback reports to departments/functional units within the organisation.
For more information on how AvePoint’s DocAve suite and Governance Automation can help you, contact IMMIX at sales@immix.co.za.
Forms-base Authentication: user management
I was doing a bit of bog standard SharePoint administration on our local farm at the office this morning and ran into an annoying issue where I couldn’t add new Forms-Based users. I ran through all the steps and found that there was nothing wrong with our setup, so eventually after some googling and binging, I found a tweet that suggested creating a new IIS7 web application for managing FBA users. So I did that, took me all of 10 minutes to do and now I have a nice easy place to manage my FBA users.
So the steps you need to do are:
- Create a normal Web Application in IIS7.
- Create a connection string to your SQL DB that stores the users, this DB should be setup already. Look in the config file of the IIS web site that is setup for FBA for your connection string details.
- Create new SQL Role and SQL User providers, and then in the .Net Roles and .Net Users areas in the IIS web site we created in step one, set them as the default providers.
Now you will be able to manage your FBA users without having to touch your SPS2010 web apps in IIS7. There are custom built web parts and solutions out there that you can deploy to SharePoint which will allow you to manage FBA users, but I have to go through a whole long change control process to deploy new items to my farm, but I just need my IT services director’s okay via email to create an empty web.
It is probably not the best or best practice solution but it allows myself and the IT services director to easily manage the FBA users on our extranet without having to modify the strict security we have around who can manage these users.
Disclaimer:
Please read the disclaimer if you plan on using anything from this article.
about me
I am a C#, Silverlight, K2 workflow and Sharepoint Consultant, living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. I have a passion for teaching people anything I can in order to spread the knowledge and skills I have. You can follow me on twitter at @MrThirsty. You can view my full profile at about.me
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