SharePoint Himadrish

SharePoint tools and utilities software are very essential for SharePoint web farm maintenance, development and migration purpose. There are lots of tools and utilities software available around us, few of them are branded and few are tagged with Open Source. Obviously every software product has some good insight along with existing bugs.   In this post, I would like to categorize a few of them which I have used for different purposes.

Administrative/ Maintain/Migration purpose

 
SWART – Administrative tool for maintenance your web farm and this is a product of iDEVFACTORY. It is free and can be used for WSS 3.0 as well as MOSS. Url – http://www.idevfactory.com/Products/SWAT2007/Default.aspx

SUSHI – Powerful tool for implementing most common administrative task. It is free and can be used for WSS 3.0 as well as MOSS.  Url – http://sushi.codeplex.com/

USPM – Upgrade version of SWART. Mainly used in Portal and Area Management, Sites Management, User Management, Management Wizards, and Reporting purpose. However this is not free one. Url -http://www.idevfactory.com/Products/USPM2003/Default.aspx

SharePoint Inspector – To monitor your farm you can use SharePoint inspector.  Not much actions you can fire while using this tool, however you can use most common functionalities like activate / deactivate feature, add / remove event receiver on list and content type. This is free and can be used in WSS 3.0 as well as MOSS 2007. Url – http://spi.codeplex.com/

SPTraceView -  This tool can be use d for administrative and monitoring purpose and could be also useful to diagnose and troubleshoot their MOSS farm. It is free and available and codepex. Url – http://sptraceview.codeplex.com/

CopyMove for SharePoint– Simple feature which allows you to move/copy file from one site to another SharePoint site. And it even works in different site collection level. This can be use for WSS 3.0 and MOSS. However it is not tagged with free. Url – http://www.sharepointproducts.com/default.aspx

SharePoint Analyzer – This could be used by the support team using a powerful diagnostic tool when assisting customers. SharePoint Analyzer provides the IT Admin a tool which will quickly discover the configuration of a SharePoint installation. It is from bamboo solutions and it is free. Url -http://community.bamboosolutions.com/media/p/7160.aspx

SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard – This tool could be used for SharePoint content deployment purpose. Content can be published at site collections level, webs, lists, folders, and list items (including files). This is free tool. Url – http://spdeploymentwizard.codeplex.com/

BDC MetaMan – BDC Meta Man is a product from Lightingtool. This tool could be used for all SharePoint Developers and Administrators interested in line of business data integration with SharePoint. Without writing a single line of code you can be viewing and searching across your business data through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in minutes. This is not free and only can be used for SharePoint 2007. Url – http://www.lightningtools.com/bdc-meta-man/default.aspx

Prescan utility – Used for SharePoint Upgrade/migration from old version to new version. It is very useful specially when you plan to upgrade to Office SharePoint Server 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, you must run the Prescan.exe utility against your existing Web sites. This pre-upgrade scan tool scans your sites and reports issues, allowing you to fix any errors before you perform an upgrade. If you have not successfully run this tool and you attempt to upgrade your environment, when you attempt to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration wizard, the wizard will exit and prompt you to run the tool. It is highly recommend that the server administrator should run the pre-upgrade scan tool before the upgrade and resolve any problems that can be resolved before scheduling the upgrade. This is free from Microsoft. Only the limitation is it takes a lot of time to complete the entire review/analysis process.  Url – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e8a00b1f-6f45-42cd-8e56-e62c20feb2f1&displaylang=en&tm

SMTPDiag  – SMTPDiag is a troubleshooting tool, created by Microsoft, and designed to work directly on a Windows server with IIS/SMTP service enabled or with Exchange Server installed. It utilizes the same APIs as Windows and Exchange in order to diagnose configuration and connection issues involving SMTP and DNS. It is a free tool. Url- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=bc1881c7-925d-4a29-bd42-71e8563c80a9&displaylang=en

SharePoint Site Migration Manager – This is another productive product from Metalogix. Using this product you can migrate content into SharePoint from one SharePoint version to another (2003, 2007, 2010, WSSv2 or WSSv3), and also from more Enterprise Content Management systems than any other vendor (e.g., eRoom, Stellent, Livelink), and from file systems, Exchange public folders, blogs, and websites. It is not free off course and you can try the trial version. They have also many other SharePoint tools in their showcase like archiving manager which basically helps you to archive SharePoint file system document and email document to be archived. The plus point is the archive content is still searchable and the minus point is it only able to save your valuable SQL database space upto 50% after archiving. Url -http://www.metalogix.net/Home/

Tzunami Deployer – The leading SharePoint migration tool for rapid migration and consolidation of content into Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies. This can help you to migrates from a wide range of systems into the SharePoint environment. It enables organizations wishing to use or upgrade their SharePoint to save time and dramatically reduce migration costs. This is one of the best cost effective renowned tools which actually can help you to migrate data from WSS 2.0 to MOSS 2007 environment. It can really help you to migrate data from other enterprise content management system like eRoom/Documentum/DocuShare/LotusNotes into SharePoint.This is not a free tool. Url – http://www.tzunami.com/products/Pages/ProductOverview.aspx

BA-Insight Search –  BA-Insight’s Longitude extends the search capabilities of SharePoint Server and Microsoft Search Server. It improves usability and relevance, empowering users to find and reuse information 10X faster than any other product in the market place. In fact they have a lot of product for search integration in SharePoint. They have many productive tools and not free. Url – http://www.ba-insight.net/Pages/Home.aspx

Sharepoint Property Bag Settings – The Property Bag Settings can store any metadata as Key-Value pairs such as connection strings, server names, file paths, and other miscellaneous settings needed by your SharePoint application. Very usefull tool and Property Bag Settings help you to manage configuration information in SharePoint environment at all levels, including ‘Farm’, ‘Server’, ‘Web Application’, ‘Site Collection’, ‘Site’, and ‘List’. Basically used when configure your SharePoint web farm. this is free. Url – http://pbs.codeplex.com/
 

Development/Configuration

VSeWSS – This is renowned Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio Extensions. It has many flavors like VisualStudio 2005 extension, visual studio 2008 extension etc. this is from Microsoft and it is totally free. This is nothing but Visual Studio plug-in for SharePoint. Using this plug-in, developers can easily create a project for webpart development/feature receiver type.  The latest version is v1.3 forVvisualStudio 2008 extension. Url ¬- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B2C0B628-5CAB-48C1-8CAE-C34C1CCBDC0A&displaylang=en

WSPBuilder – WSPBuilder is actually an add-in for Visual Studio. This allows you to create Sharepoint solution file and using its template you can configure your feature/file name etc which will be basically integrated into SharePoint environment when it will be hosted. Have a look of detailed explanation from Tobias Zimmergren’s pen. this is free and can be download from code plex. Url – http://wspbuilder.codeplex.com/

STSDEV – STSDEV is a proof-of-concept utility application which demonstrates how to generate Visual Studio project files and solution files to facilitate the development and deployment of templates and components for the SharePoint 2007 platform including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Note that the current version of the stsdev utility only supports creating projects with the C# programming language. this is free. Url – http://stsdev.codeplex.com/.

SharePoint Solution Installer – This utility is basically a Windows application for an eased and more user friendly installation and deployment of SharePoint 2007 solution files to a SharePoint server farm. Using this tool, you can easily distribute your SharePoint solution files with this installation program instead of a raw script using STSADM.EXE to install and deploy the solution. This can be used for SharePoint 2007 and it is free. Url – http://sharepointinstaller.codeplex.com/

jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services – The jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services is a jQuery library which abstracts SharePoint’s Web Services and makes them easier to use. It also includes functions which use the various Web Service operations to provide more useful capabilities. The jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services includes not only jQuery “wrappers” for the most commonly used Web Services and their operations, but also value-added functions that let you add functionality to forms and pages with very little work. This is very useful and free. Url – http://spservices.codeplex.com/

JoinPro – It is developer’s choice. JoinPro extends SharePoint and gives developers and power users the ability to create queries with multiple level join (2 to n lists, inner, outer, left, right) with different lists data as in a SQL Editor environment. JoinPro is composed by an editor (which allows users to select lists, define relations, etc…) and a WebPart, included in the package, used to display selected data. Some of the main JoinPro features are ‘SharePoint list selection (form different sites and servers)’, ‘Relation definition between multiple lists using endless parameters (from 2 to n) using all kind of JOIN (inner, full, left, right)’, ‘Sorting and filter options’, ‘Grouping and filed selection options’ etc.  However I shouldn’t say I have used it vigorously, rather I have used it for only a few cases. This is not free. Url -http://sharepoint.wice-group.com/en/index.aspx

SharePoint Cascading Drop Down control/ SharePoint – Query Based Lookup Field Control – SharePoint Cascading Drop Down List (With Filter) Field Type basically a project which is an extension of the cascading dropdown field type created by Data Cogs information Technology. This is nothing but a FiledType control will be integrated into SharePoint. The objective of this control is to display list field value based on another list filed value. The drawback is there are cuple of errors in this project. For example, one child filed can only be related to one master filed. If you have two child fields which basically points to one master field in the same page, this control will not work. Again one child field can not be master of another child field. The advantage is for simpler case, this control easily be used. This is free. Url – http://datacogs.com/datablogs/archive/2007/08/26/641.aspx / http://customfieldcontrols.codeplex.com/ .

You can also found some more tools described at WSSDEMO site  http://www.wssdemo.com/pages/tools.aspx.  And I would like to recommend you to follow the SharePoint reviews web site http://www.sharepointreviews.com/ for SharePoint tools/utility softwares.

Please feel free to comments.