Fixing Project Portal Search

I discovered recently that searching on team project portals in SharePoint does not work out of the box.  If you try it, you'll most likely get a page with the following message:

"Your search cannot be completed because this site is not assigned to an indexer. Contact your administrator for more information."

If it works in your environment, fantastic!  If not, read on...

The resolution is simple really.  The basic steps can be found in the answer in the following MSDN forum thread:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsadmin/thread/ffeaedec-7497-4c8c-8c2b-ffa185a949ee/

I verified the initial configuration in two separate test environments (TFS 2008 SP1 with WSS 3.0 SP1) and found the Windows SharePoint Services Search service disabled.  I've had reports of the same issue from environments where they upgraded from TFS 2005 with WSS 2.0.

Running through the SharePoint Products and Technologies Wizard with the default selections gets things configured so that Windows SharePoint Services Search shows up in SharePoint Central Administration | Operations | Topology and Services | Services on Server page.  From there you can start the service and configure the user accounts (I used the TFS service account making sure to include the domain).  When you go look at your content database under Applications Management | SharePoint Web Application Management | Content Databases, the dropdown next to the "Search Server" section should be enabled and contain the name of your server.  Select that and apply the changes.

Be sure to restart the Windows SharePoint Services Search service from the Services MMC snap-in after this.  I did not have to force an additional IIS reset to begin seeing search results.

Why the appropriate configuration isn't applied by the TFS install process is beyond me.  I'd be interested if someone in the know could clue me in.

jb

Notion Tools for Team System Features: Add By Date

You may or may not have heard about the recent release of Notion Tools for Team System.  If so, hopefully you've given it a whirl and seen features that are of value to you and your organization.  If not, you really should check it out; especially since it's free until the end of April.  Rather than leave it at that, I thought it would be helpful to blog about certain features of the tool that I have found valuable.

I'll start off with the "Add By Date" feature of the Notion Timesheet add-in that integrates into Visual Studio 2008.  This features allows me to load the timesheet grid with any work items against which I've recorded time for the currently selected week.  It comes in handy when I need to update my hours on a work item that isn't currently loaded in the grid.  I usually have Notion Timesheet bound to a custom work item query that returns items from a variety of team projects that are assigned to me that have not been closed.  Occasionally, before I've recorded all my time against a work item, it will be assigned to someone else or I'll close it inadvertently.  The "Add By Date" feature lets me quickly retrieve the work item and finish entering my time.  I also use it to go back and check my daily totals.

My projects move pretty fast so work items are always on the move.  The Notion Timesheet "Add By Date" has been a lifesaver on more than one occasion.  Look for more information on cool Notion Tools for Team System features soon.

jb