Central Administration Categories ❘ 159 Auditing, and Retention. Clicking the policy name enables you to edit the settings for that policy, such as whether or not the policy should be decommissioned or remain active. Decommissioning a policy doesn’t remove it from any document libraries and lists that currently use it, but it will pre- vent new libraries and lists from being able to consume it. Upgrade and Migration As shown in Figure 6-12, the Upgrade and Migration category only has one subcategory, Upgrade and Patch Management. This subcategory contains only a handful of links. FIGURE 612 This is where you will find links to convert your SharePoint license type (for example, from a trial version to a licensed version), as well as select which feature set to use if you’ve recently activated an enterprise license. To activate a license, simply click Convert farm license type and type or paste your license in the field and click OK. Once you’ve done that, you can head over to the Enable Enterprise Features link to switch the set of features from the standard set to the Enterprise set. Once you turn on Enterprise features, you can’t undo it. If you’ve been running SharePoint 2010 for a while and have created several sites, and you then upgrade your license type, the newly available Enterprise features may not be activated in your existing sites. You can use the Enable Features on Existing Sites link to push down the newly activated set of fea- tures to any sites that were created before the license conversion. Any sites made after the license conversion will already have the new feature sets. The Check product and patch installation status option provides a report of all the various com- ponents and products on the server, including their current patch level. This can be useful in deter- mining what version of a particular product you’re running. This is a nice centralized place to find version information, especially if you are running a larger farm with many services running on the various servers. You can show all the products installed on the farm, or view the list filtered by indi- vidual servers. Selecting View database status provides another report of all the various databases connected to the farm, and what type of database they are (content database, metadata service database, configura- tion database, etc.). Finally, if you are upgrading from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 using the database attach method (which you learned about in Chapter 5), the Check upgrade status link will become a good friend of yours. Once you add a SharePoint 2007 database to the farm, you will see any active and previous upgrade sessions (see Figure 6-13). The page refreshes periodically during the upgrade pro- cess, keeping you informed of the status, and reports any errors encountered during the upgrade. Refer back to Chapter 5 for more information on using this page during the upgrade process. 160 ❘ CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN FIGURE 613 General Application Settings The General Application Settings category, shown in Figure 6-14, is one of the larger categories found in Central Administration. There’s a lot that you can do here to change how users will interact with SharePoint 2010. In this category, you’ll find options for controlling how client-side applications interact with SharePoint 2010, such as InfoPath and SharePoint Designer, as well as settings in SharePoint that apply to Web Applications. In addition, because Central Administration’s interface is pluggable, it is possible for additional links and sections to display here when using products that integrate with SharePoint. For instance, a Reporting Services section is added if the SQL server is running Reporting Services in SharePoint integration mode. FIGURE 614 Central Administration Categories ❘ 161 External Service Connections Starting in the External Service Connections subcategory, you’ll find a couple of links that can be used to send and convert documents in the SharePoint farm. The Configure send to connections link enables you to configure custom send to locations for the selected web application. This makes use of the Content Organizer feature available in SharePoint 2010. In a site collection, this feature can be enabled and configured to allow management of documents submitted to a drop-off folder. Using the Configure Send To Connections page in Central Administration, you can take this a step further and enable documents to be submitted across multiple site collections, a boundary that many orga- nizations found themselves up against in SharePoint 2007. Configuring send to locations requires that the Content Organizer site collection feature is enabled on the site collection that will receive the documents. Once the feature is activated, you will have addi- tional options on the Site Settings page under the Site Administration headers: Content Organizer Settings and Content Organizer Rules. You can use these pages to customize the settings for the drop-off folder and how the documents will be routed in the site collection. At the very bottom of the Content Organizer Settings page is a URL for a web service. Copy this URL; and then back in Central Administration, paste the URL in the Send to URL field on the Configure Send to Connections page. You can give the new connection a name, decide what action will be taken, and give the send to an explanation of what will happen. Once configured, your new send to destination will be available in the Send to menu in the Documents tab of the Ribbon. SharePoint 2010 also allows for document conversions using pre-installed and third-party software. Settings for managing document conversions can be found in the Configure document conversions link under the External Service Connections subcategory. In order for document conversions to be enabled, two services must be started first (by default, they are disabled). To enable them, open the System Settings category and click Manage services on server. Look for the two services Document Conversions Launcher Service and Document Conversions Load Balancer Service. Next to each, click the link to start the services. You can configure additional options by clicking the service names, such as specifying the communication scheme for the services to utilize (http or https), the port number the services will use to communicate, and which server in a multi-server farm will act as the conver- sion load balancer. Once these services have been started, you can continue the configuration of document conversions under the General Application Settings category. SharePoint 2010 comes with four converters preinstalled, and third-party applications may add additional converters. InfoPath Forms Services This subcategory contains all the links you need to start utilizing the tight integration between InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Use the Manage form templates link to keep track of all the available InfoPath forms that are enabled on the server. You can filter the list using the List View filters in the Quick Launch menu, and you can upload your own custom templates. You can fur- ther manage the templates by clicking the drop-down arrow around each template name: You can activate, deactivate, quiesce, and delete the templates (keeping in mind that templates tied to exist- ing workflows or deployed using a feature can’t be removed or modified). If you upload a custom InfoPath template, you can also deploy it to site collections using the drop-down menu. 162 ❘ CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN To quiesce a template means that no new connections will be allowed to use the template, and any existing connections will be gradually timed out in an effort to minimize data loss. The Confi gure InfoPath Forms Services link opens a page of general settings related to the InfoPath Forms Service. Most of these options are fairly self-explanatory. You can use this page to set addi- tional options that can enable additional features in InfoPath forms, such as allowing forms to use embedded SQL authentication when connecting to external data sources; to confi gure thresholds for user sessions when using InfoPath forms; and even to set the time-out settings and maximum amount of data transfer allowed for sessions. The Upload form template link opens the same page that can be accessed from the Manage Form Templates page. Simply browse for a form and verify its compatibility with the Verify button. Below that, you have the option to choose how existing forms are upgraded. You can choose to upgrade existing forms while preserving active connections to the older version of the template, or you can choose to upgrade the forms immediately and close any existing connections. When you have made your selections, click the Upload button to upload your form template into the template gallery. Similar to the template gallery is the data connection library, accessed with the Manage data connection fi les link. You can upload InfoPath data connection fi les to Central Administration to manage them cen- trally if you wish. Finally, clicking the Confi gure InfoPath Forms Service Web Service Proxy link gives you the option to enable a proxy to be used for connections between web services and the InfoPath Forms service application. You can read more about service application proxies in Chapter 7. Site Directory The Site Directory subcategory contains just a couple of options. In SharePoint 2007 you had the option to create a master site directory that would automatically list all site collections in a single location. This could be very useful if your organization has a large number of site collections through- out the farm, as having a centralized list of all the available site collections could be a time saver. This idea is carried over to SharePoint 2010. While each site collection can have its own site directory, you can also create a site that will become the master site directory. Click the link Confi gure the Site Directory in the Site Directory subcategory and simply enter the URL of the site directory site collec- tion in the fi eld. You can specify whether all sites should be added to the site directory, and whether or not they are required to be categorized. Clicking the Scan Site Directory Links option under the Site Directory subcategory enables you to specify a scan on a view of the site directory list to check for broken links. Each view in SharePoint 2010 has a unique URL, which can be copied and pasted into the fi eld for scanning. Your site direc- tory may have views that display only sites in a particular category, and you may want to only scan a particular view instead of scanning the entire site directory. Central Administration Categories ❘ 163 SharePoint Designer When Microsoft began offering SharePoint Designer 2007 as a free download, many administrators immediately began having visions of the SharePoint Apocalypse: users wreaking havoc on a finely tuned SharePoint deployment, unghosting pages left and right, and deploying custom designs. There were a few ways to address how SharePoint Designer 2007 could interact with SharePoint and keep it under control, but in many cases administrators simply kept SharePoint Designer under wraps in hopes that their general user base wouldn’t discover it. SharePoint Designer 2010 is also available as a free down- load from Microsoft, but now it offers more options for restricting its use, which can be set on a more granular level. Individual site collections can have the use of SharePoint Designer restricted as needed. The use of SharePoint Designer can be set per Web Application, which will affect all site col- lections in that Web Application. As shown in Figure 6-15, all the options for using SharePoint Designer are checked by default in Central Administration, but not at the site collec- tion level, which provides flexibility regarding who can do what with it. For example, in Central Administration you can completely disable the use of SharePoint Designer for all site collections in a Web Application if you wish, or you can select which set of permissions administrators will be allowed. Keep in mind that deselecting an option in Central Administration for SharePoint Designer will make that option unavailable in all site collections within the selected Web Application. Search Under the Search subcategory you’ll find a link to the Farm-Wide Search Administration page and a link to the Crawler Impact Rules page. Both of these links can also be found in the Management page for the Search Service Application. Briefly, the Farm-Wide Search Administration link will open a page that gives you a general overview of the Search topology in the farm. You can see any proxy servers set up for Search, how long the timeout is set to, and whether or not Search should ignore SSL warnings. You can configure all of these options by clicking the respective values set to each property. Below that is a list of all search-related service applications. Clicking the name of the service application will open the management screen for that service application, while clicking the Modify Topology link enables you to view and modify the topology of Search in the farm. You can also add new search databases or modify the properties of existing databases. Clicking the Crawler Impact Rules link enables you to control how the crawler affects performance. For example, you can choose whether you want a specific number of simultaneous requests to be made by the crawler, or if you’d rather have only one document requested at a time with a specified pause between requests. This is all handled on a per-site basis, so different sites can have different rules. You can read all about Search and its various settings in more detail in Chapter 14. FIGURE 615 164 ❘ CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN Content Deployment We’ve nearly made it to the end of our tour of the General Application Settings category. Last up we have the subcategory of Content Deployment. Content deployment is the production of content in one site collection that will then be ported to another site collection. Often, in public-facing websites, authors will create content in an authoring or staging environment, and the content deployment schedule will port that content to the production destination. These can be as elaborate as separate farms or as simple as separate site collections in different Web Applications. This enables authors to develop in one location without worrying about accidentally publishing content that isn’t ready yet. Although the links wouldn’t indicate it by the order they’re in, creating a content deployment path and schedule begins with clicking the Configure content deployment link if you’re going to be deploy- ing content to the same server. Once you have actually configured content deployment for the server, you’ll be able to return to the Configure content deployment paths and jobs link to set up the paths that will be used for deployment. If you have a second environment that will receive the content, you can begin creating paths to the second environment right away. Clicking the Configure content deployment link opens the Content Deployment Settings screen. Before your server can accept content deployments, you’ll need to enable it. Choose the option to Accept incoming content deployment jobs, which allows you to set up Web Applications and site collections on the same server to receive deployments. Next, you choose which server will handle the deployment jobs and export of content, set whether you’d like to use SSL encryption to deploy the content, and specify where the temporary files for incoming content should be stored. By default, the location is set to C:\ProgramData\ContentDeployment, but you can set your own location. It would be advis- able to move this location off the C: drive, especially if you know you will be relying heavily on con- tent deployment in your organization. Lastly, you can configure how many records should be kept for each deployment job that runs. The default is 20. When you are finished, click OK to save your configuration. Once you’ve configured the content deployment for the server, you can start creating deployment jobs. Click the Configure content deployment paths and jobs link to see a list of the deployment jobs you have set up (obviously the list will be empty the first time you click it). Create a new deployment job by clicking the New Path link. You need to specify a name, and optionally a description, for the path you want to create for deploying content from one location to another. Next, choose the source Web Application and source site collection. Once that is specified, you provide the URL of the Central Administration site on the destination server (or, if the destination is on the same server, the URL of Central Administration you’re already working in). If you configured content deployment to utilize SSL, you need to ensure that the Central Administration URL begins with https://. If you don’t use SSL, then you will receive a warning message as you type the URL, letting you know that the traffic won’t be encrypted. Below that, enter the username and password of an account that has access to the destination Central Administration. Click the Connect button to verify that the connection works. Choose the destination Web Application and site collection from the respective drop-downs. By default, the option to deploy user names is checked, which will associate the username of the original author with the deployed Central Administration Categories ❘ 165 content. To finish creating your path, choose what security information you want to send with the deployment and click OK. You’ve successfully created a path through which you can deploy content. Once you have configured content deployment and set up a path, you can now set up a job schedule. From the Manage Content Deployment Paths and Jobs page, click the New Job link to associate a deployment job with a particular path. Give the new job a name and description. Next, choose which path you will be associating the job with from the drop-down. If your version of SQL Server supports SQL snapshots, SharePoint can utilize them to speed up the deployment process signifi- cantly. By default, SQL snapshots are not used. Next, choose whether an entire site collection or individual webs (subsites) within the site collection will be deployed with the job. To select individ- ual subsites, click the Select Sites button and from the tree that opens, you can select individual sites or entire branches of the site tree by clicking the name and selecting either the site or the branch to be deployed. Click OK to close the pop-up. Next up you can create the deployment schedule. You can run the job as a one-time only deploy- ment or you can create a repeating schedule. Deployments can run once a month, once a week, once a day, once an hour, or every so many minutes. Choose your option and set the desired time schedule for the deployment. Under the schedule, you can optionally choose to send e-mail notifica- tions to people when the deployments run. Clicking OK will create the job. Paths can have multiple jobs associated with them, which can be useful if different areas of the destination site need to be updated on different schedules, or if a one-time job needs to be run before the next scheduled job. If you create a new job for a path, you will have one extra option in the job creation screen, enabling you to deploy only new content to the destination or all content regardless of whether it is new or not. From the Manage Content Deployment Paths and Jobs link, you can manage your paths and jobs by clicking the drop-down around them. You can even test jobs to ensure that they will run and to spot any potential issues before actually running a job, and view the history of previously run jobs (see Figure 6-16). The Status column also creates hyperlinks to view more details about the current status of the job in question. FIGURE 616 Finally, the last link on the General Application Settings category is Content Deployment Object Status. This page provides a report on the content deployment jobs that have run. You can check specific content by entering a URL into the field and clicking the Check Status button. This will return a report of the source and destination object details. You can use this page to check for warnings and errors if the content doesn’t seem to have deployed properly. 166 ❘ CHAPTER 6 UsiNg the NeW ceNtral admiNistratioN Configuration Wizards The final category we’ll cover in Central Administration is the Configuration Wizards category. There isn’t a lot to explain here; this category contains a link to run the Farm Configuration Wizard (see Figure 6-17). If you skipped that step during the initial configuration of SharePoint, you can run it from here. SharePoint 2010’s wizard framework is fully pluggable as well, so it’s conceivable that this list could be expanded in the future, either by Microsoft or by third-party vendors. For example, a third-party tool might include a wizard to walk you through the setup, and a link to it could be stored here. SUMMARY Whew, we made it! We’ve covered nearly every aspect of SharePoint 2010’s Central Administration. What a ride! There is definitely a lot to take in, but the more you work with Central Administration the more you will find that it makes your life as an administrator easier. You’ll find more detailed infor- mation about many of these topics we’ve covered here later in the book. This chapter was basically a start-to-finish tutorial demonstrating where you can find the various settings in the newly designed interface. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of where to look when searching for an elusive setting. FIGURE 617 . Send to menu in the Documents tab of the Ribbon. SharePoint 2010 also allows for document conversions using pre-installed and third-party software. Settings for managing document conversions. will interact with SharePoint 2010. In this category, you’ll find options for controlling how client-side applications interact with SharePoint 2010, such as InfoPath and SharePoint Designer,. continue the configuration of document conversions under the General Application Settings category. SharePoint 2010 comes with four converters preinstalled, and third-party applications may add