Van Laan on Sharepoint and all things Microsoft

Redirect user based on AD property

So, Paul Galvin wrote this post and developed this webpart to redirect users based on an AD property. I need to test and screenshot it, but here's the link for now:

http://www.sharepointsecurity.com/blog/sharepoint/sharepoint-2007-development/redirector-webpart-sp-solution-file-download/

Automating site/subsite creation using stsadm and a batch file

So, this is a follow-up to a previous post on automating site collection where I gripe alot about how there's no provision for automating site creation. Guess I whined too soon, eh? This is the earlier post:

http://vanlaan.typepad.com/van_laan_on_sharepoint/2007/11/automating-site.html

So, all that griping aside, here's how to use a simple batch file and stsadm to create as many sites/subsites as you like.

Short Version:

• Create site template, save to template gallery.
• Install site template into global template gallery with command: stsadm -o addtemplate -title "TEMPLATETITLE" -filename FilenameLocation
• Create sites/subsites with command: stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/url/subsitename -sitetemplate _global_#0 -title sitename -description "Site Description" Can use a batch file and just have row after row of this command. Execute from cmd line to watch it process properly.
• One caveat here: You can certainly try to cut and paste cmd line commands from this post or any other web site. But if it doesn't work don't give up right away. Always, always try typing in the command manually, as spaces, dashes, and other characters don't always translate from html to the cmd prompt.

Long Version:

First, I'm emulating a client need here. The need is to create around 55 sites, all based on a custom template, on a single path beneath an existing site which hangs off of a site collection. The 55 sites names (and thus URLs) are all based on 3-letter codes that indicate for which city the particular site will be created. So, ATL for Atlanta, BOS for Boston, and so forth.

The first step was to modify an existing, simple team site and then Save that Site as a template in the site gallery. One thing I learned here is that sites cannot be saved as templates if the Publishing feature is turned on. Or at least that was what I experienced in this case. Turning on the Publishing feature (thus creating the Pages library with Approval turned on) removed the option from Site Actions, Site Settings to "Save Site as Template." Very strange. There's probably some logic behind that, but I can't hazard a guess as to what it would be.

So, anyways, Pusblishing feature off, I save the site as a template in the site gallery and then go to run my command from the command line which should create a site based on that template. I named the template "Stations" based on client needs. It looks nice and unique so it's obvious the sites created come from the template:

So the command to be run from the DOS prompt is:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ATL -sitetemplate stations -title "Atlanta Station" -description "Atlanta Station"

Huh, SharePoint doesn't seem to know what the file "stations" is, even though it's saved to my template gallery:

A little research leads me to the understanding that sites can only be created in this fashion if the site template has been uploaded to the global template gallery.

This can be verified by running the following command:

stsadm -o enumtemplates

Which, in my farm, returns:

Basically, just a previous global template I uploaded in earlier testing. But no stations template.

So, I need to upload my stations template to the global site template catalog.

This can be accomplished by first finding my template file in the site collection template gallery, right-clicking, and "save file as", just like you would any file off of a normal website:

Save the file in a nice easy path to reference from the command line. I chose to save my file as c:\temp\sitetemplate\stations.stp

Then, the template needs to be added to the global site template catalog via the following command:

stsadm -o addtemplate -title "TEMPLATETITLE" -filename FilenameLocation

Or, in my case:

stsadm -o addtemplate -title "Stations" -filename c:\temp\sitetemplate\stations.stp

Operation completed successfully--aslways like to see that. It also calls for an issreset, so going to input command iisreset -noforce now.

Now, my template should be available via the stsadm -o enumtempates command:

Ok, that's good results. As you can see, two templates were returned. One from an earlier template, and one from my recent stations template. Here's the output:

C:\Documents and Settings\sjomvl>stsadm -o enumtemplates

Dracula - Language: 1033 - Site Template: _GLOBAL_#0 - Template Id: 1

Stations - Language: 1033 - Site Template: _GLOBAL_#1 - Template Id: 1

Now, here's the interesting part. See that Site Template:_GLOBAL_#1 bit? That's the actual template name which SharePoint refers to to describe my Stations template! Not Stations, which would be nice and friendly, but _GLOBAL_#1! That's nice.

So, my command now becomes:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ATL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Atlanta Station" -description "Atlanta Station"

And I got an error:

"The Web site address "/stations/ATL" is already in use."

This is because my earlier attempt, while reserving URL and kind of creating the site, did reserve the space at /stations/ATL. If I navigate to that URL, I get a page telling me to choose my template. So, I go to Manage Content and Structure and navigate to that level and, sure enough, Atlanta Station exists. So I delete that site or site placeholder and then run my command again:

Operation completed successfully. Just what I like to see.

And the site is created and exists here:

Good times. Now to automate this process with good ol' notepad.

So, I'll take the above command and put it into notepad, then reproduce it 55 times over with different URLs, descriptions, and titles. This is what I came up with:

stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ATL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Atlanta Station" -description "Atlanta Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BMI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Bloomington-Normal Station" -description "Bloomington-Normal Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BOS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Boston Station" -description "Boston Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BUF -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Buffalo Station" -description "Buffalo Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/BWI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Baltimore-Washington International Station" -description "Baltimore-Washington International Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/CAK -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Akron-Canton Station" -description "Akron-Canton Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/CHS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Charleston Station" -description "Charleston Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/CLT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Charlotte-Douglas Station" -description "Charlotte-Douglas Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DAB -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Daytona Beach Station" -description "Daytona Beach Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DAY -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Dayton Station" -description "Dayton Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DCA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Reagan Station" -description "Reagan Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DEN -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Denver Station" -description "Denver Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DFW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Dallas-Fort Worth Station" -description "Dallas-Fort Worth Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/DTW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Detroit Station" -description "Detroit Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/EWR -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Newark Station" -description "Newark Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/FLL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Fort Lauderdale Station" -description "Fort Lauderdale Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/FNT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Flint Station" -description "Flint Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/GPT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Gulfport-Biloxi Station" -description "Gulfport-Biloxi Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/HOU -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Houston Station" -description "Houston Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/HPN -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Westchester County Station" -description" Westchester County Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/IAD -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Dulles International Station" -description "Dulles International Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ICT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Wichita Station" -description "Wichita Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/IND -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Indianapolis Station" -description "Indianapolis Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/JAX -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Jacksonville Station" -description "Jacksonville Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/LAS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "McCarran Station" -description "McCarran Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/LAX -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Las Vegas Station" -description "Las Vegas Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/LGA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "La Guardia Station" -description "La Guardia Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MCI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Kansas City Station" -description "Kansas City Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MCO -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Orlando Station" -description "Orlando Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MDW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Midway Station" -description "Midway Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MEM -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Memphis Station" -description "Memphis Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MIA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Miami Station" -description "Miami Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MKE -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Milwaukee Station" -description "Milwaukee Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MLI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Moline Station" -description "Moline Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MSP -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Minneapolis-Saint Paul Station" -description "Minneapolis-Saint Paul Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/MSY -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "New Orleans Station" -description "New Orleans Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PBI -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Palm Beach Station" -description "Palm Beach Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PHF -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Newport News Station" -description "Newport News Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PHL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Philadelphia Station" -description "Philadelphia Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PHX -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Phoenix Station" -description "Phoenix Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PIT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Pittsburgh Station" -description "Pittsburgh Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PNS -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Pensacola Station" -description "Pensacola Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/PWM -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Portland Station" -description "Portland Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/RDU -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Raleigh-Durham Station" -description "Raleigh-Durham Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/RIC -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Richmond Station" -description "Richmond Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/ROC -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Rochester Station" -description "Rochester Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/RSW -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Fort Myers Station" -description "Fort Myers Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SAN -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Diego Station" -description "San Diego Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SAT -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Antonio Station" -description "San Antonio Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SAV -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Savannah Station" -description "Savannah Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SEA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Seattle-Tacoma Station" -description "Seattle-Tacoma Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SFO -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Francisco Station" -description "San Francisco Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SJU -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "San Juan Station" -description "San Juan Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SRQ -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Sarasota-Bradenton Station" -description "Sarasota-Bradenton Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/STL -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Saint Louis Station" -description "Saint Louis Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/SWF -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Newburgh Station" -description "Newburgh Station"
stsadm -o createweb -url http://www.sandarbud.com/stations/TPA -sitetemplate _GLOBAL_#1 -title "Tampa Station" -description "Tampa Station"

Wow. Let me just say that that was not a straightforward process. It involved notepad.exe, excel and lots of data entry-type busy work. That portion definitely needs some automation, and even in winword crtl find-replace I didn't really find it.

Suffice it to say, the above text was saved as stations.bat, and then executed:

And off it goes. Again, I ran the stations.bat file by navigating to that directory and running stations.bat from the cmd line directly, which offered me a line by line status, as opposed to navigating to the folder and double-clicking the file. This will give me a cmd prompt window on each line as it goes. Each site is being created one by one, and when it finishes, I have this:

 

Good times.

Caveats: The global site navigation comes up turned off by default, which is a bummer. Also, there's no means to provision security in this method--it comes up inheriting parent's security by default. Otherwise, good times.

Batch file:

Download Station.bat

Automating site collection creation

Automating creation of site collections for a client who needs to have hundreds of sites created at one time

First, start with just using stsadm from the command line to create one site collection (the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN path has been added to my server’s Environmental Path variable, so I can run stsadm from anywhere)

Execute this command:

C:\Documents and Settings\SVCSharepoint>stsadm -0 createsite -url http://wccs/fl133 -ownername domainname\svcsharepoint

And get this error:

Command line error.

Maybe you caught the error right away:

That’s a ‘zero’ instead of an “O” which it should be. Nice, Sandar.

So, ran this command again with the letter o instead of the 0 at the beginning there. Still an error:

Missing required argument: owneremail.

Ok, now this:

stsadm -o createsite -url http://wccs/fl133 -ownername domainname\svcsharepoint -owneremail sharepoint@custsite.com 

And another:

An owner login is required since this web application is not in Active Directory account creation mode.

Ok, time for another parameter:  ownerlogin. I’ll use this one instead of ownername

So, now:

C:\Documents and Settings\SVCSharepoint>stsadm -o createsite -url http://wccs/fl133 -ownerlogin domain\svcsharepoint -owneremail sharepoint@custsite.com

And an error:

Another site already exists at http://wccs. Delete this site before attempting to create a new site with the same URL, choose a new URL, or create a new inclusion at the path you originally specified.

Well, this is at least a bit more promising than the previous errors, as they don’t imply syntax, but rather a problem with what I’m actually trying to do. So, this is a bit weird, as I don’t want to create site collections, which is almost what this error seems to imply. (ED NOTE: Despite the title of this post,I started out trying to create sites, but through this process discovered it's not possible from stsadm--you can only make site collections with this process.) I simply want to create a subsite that will automatically populate the site directory and add itself to the parent site navigation. Hmmmm…

So, I’ll create an explicit exclusion at http://wccs/centers

And then go execute this command:

C:\Documents and Settings\SVCSharepoint>stsadm -o createsite -url http://wccs/centers/fl133 -ownerlogin domain\svcsharepoint -owneremail sharepoint@custsite.com

And get this error:

There is no Web named "/centers".

Nice… That’s what I thought might happen. An exclusive path means content does exist directly at this level, and of course nothing exists at /centers … So that means I must have site collections? With no navigation, no link back up to the upper level site? No cross site-collection content query web parts? That’s nice. Thanks, developers.

This most likely means I can halfway accomplish my task using site collections, but that Visual Studio 2005 is the way to go to provision these out as sub-sites of a main site. Going to go ahead and verify that site collection creation works.

Since /sites already exists as a wildcard managed path, I’ll just select that path to create my site collection:

C:\Documents and Settings\SVCSharepoint>stsadm -o createsite -url http://wccs/sites/fl133 -ownerlogin domain\svcsharepoint -owneremail sharepoint@custsite.com

And, voila:

Operation completed successfully.

And, as the instructions in the Microsoft stsadm bible (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stsk01.mspx?mfr=true ) indicate, the first visit to the site by the owner prompts the selection of the site template:

I want Team Site, so I’ll click Ok, upon which time the site really provisions out (this takes some time, again not ideal for my goal of automation) and then pops up this screen:

Which would again be above the head of the average user, but possibly translatable with some good training documentation.

Clicking ok after specifying my required groups brings me finally to the page:

Which doesn’t have a very descriptive Title or description. So, I’ll do that real quick, also using the command line and using another site. Also, I’ll use some info I gleaned from this blog:

http://sphelpdesk.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D9676F3678CF7BE7!199.entry

(Great entry, by the way.)

To specify the template portion of the command using their referenced code, as listed here courtesy of the above post:

“Team Site, STS#0
Blank Site, STS#1
Document Workspace, STS#2
Basic Meeting Workspace, MPS#0
Blank Meeting Workspace, MPS#1
Decision Meeting Workspace, MPS#2
Social Meeting Workspace, MPS#3
Multipage Meeting Workspace, MPS#4
Business Activity Services Team Site, BAS#0
SharePoint Portal Server Site, SPS#0
SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space, SPSPERS#0
SharePoint Portal Server My Site, SPSMSITE#0
Contents area Template, SPSTOC#0
Topic area template, SPSTOPIC#0
News area template, SPSNEWS#0
News Home area template, SPSNHOME#0
Site Directory area template, SPSSITES#0
SharePoint Portal Server BucketWeb Template, SPSBWEB#0
Community area template, SPSCOMMU#0”

So, now, I’ll run the same command above, but specify a different final path and also specify the site template I wish to use, Team Site, STS#0.

C:\Documents and Settings\SVCSharepoint>stsadm -o createsite -url http://wccs/sites/fl166 -ownerlogin domain\svcsharepoint -owneremail sharepoint@custsite.com -sitetemplate STS#0 -title "Wound Care Center FL166" -description "Fl166 Wound Care Center"

Well, I’m now waiting for that site to provision, which is a good sign, as usually the errors come quickly if it’s not going to work. And I realized, looking more closely at the command line syntax for this command, that *of course* it’s only going to create site collections, and not sites, as one of the parameters is –quota , which is strictly available at the site collection level, and not the site level. Microsoft should be *so* much more explicit about what sites vs. site collections are and mean to the end customer. It’s absolutely amazing to me that they aren’t.

Ok, that rant aside:

Operation completed successfully.

That’s good. Let’s go hit the site to see how it looks. We’ve specified template and site title and description, but not those security groups, so I suspect I might be prompted for that info.

Interesting. I was taken directly to the site with no prompt for any information. I guess as long as I specified the correct owner and that owner either had the proper training or documentation to specify security for the site, this would work out alright:

We can see the title was specified correctly and the description was placed correctly right above the Announcements link.

NT Authority\Authenticated Users has not been granted any rights, so no one but my specified owner will be able to modify this. Good to know for the potential .bat file coming out of this exercise.

So, now to create a .bat file to provision multiple site collections at one time.

I took my command line used above and did the old copy once for two, copy again for 4, copy a third time for 8 to get this:

You can see how that would quickly get you what you need.

Now, I’ll do a find and replace on fl166, as that is what needs to be my unique parameter, and manually enter in 8 different, unique names. I’ll just go up +1 on each for this exercise.

It’s a bit of a pain with notepad and find and replace. I basically have to input the correct value into the “Replace With” field and then click Replace 3 times for each line. Here I am about halfway through:

In a real-world situation, I’d also want to go through and replace svcsharepoint with the proper AD account that would be the administrator of each site. In this scenario, I don’t have or know of 8 unique id’s that will accomplish this function, so I’m going to leave them all as svcsharepoint. I know--I’m already straying off the reality reservation. I’ve now saved the file as provision.bat and will now go to the command prompt and run it.

So, there you go. Looks like it’s provisioning out just fine. It’s taking awhile, though. About 2-3 minutes per site. Running a script like this for 200 sites would be an overnight gig. Here’s the file:

Download provision.bat

Started at 7:05

Finished at 7:22

So, 8 site collections in 17 minutes. That’s 1020 seconds for 8 site collections. That’s 127.5 seconds per site collection, or a little over 2 minutes per. So, 100 site collections would take 12750 seconds, or 212.5 minutes, or about 3.5 hours. Huh. Of course, that’s with my rig—one server with a single 1.87 GHz proc and 1GB memory running all the roles and a pretty beefy SQL server at one 2GHz proc and 8GB memory running not that much else. Maybe faster with another setup, but probably pretty standard. Site collection provisioning is never a fast thing.

Now, to test one more thing. Let’s say there is an error halfway through one of our large .bat files. I’m going to run a .bat file that specifies three site collections to create. The first is new, the second is already created, and the third is also new. The test here is to see if the .bat file gets past the second command, which will surely produce an error, and keeps on going.

Now… to find out the best way to provision these as sites and not site collections, which apparently is not an stsadm operation, but rather a Visual Studio one.

Just did a search on provision sites for sharepoint 2007 and found lots of hits, so apparently others have been down this path before me. Well, there’s no way to learn other than banging your own head against the wall for a bit, I’ve found.

Thanks to Juan from JAX.