Introduction

• Downloading and installing SharePoint prerequisites
• Downloading and installing the SharePoint binaries
• Downloading and installing the lastest SharePoint updates
• Downloading and installing the required language packs (optional, necessary if you want the SharePoint interface to be presented in a language other than English)
• Configuring the SharePoint farm using SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard

• Downloading the SharePoint installation package, click here for more details
• Installing SharePoint and configuring the SharePoint farm

• SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2016
• SharePoint 2019 (to learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here)

• 1 SharePoint 2016 Server
• 1 Database Server

Managed Accounts and Pre-Installation Requisites

• To avoid problems executing the AutoSPInstaller script, ensure that the passwords of the above accounts do not contain any special characters (ex: $,%,&,/. etc)
• The above table contains a proposal to name the accounts for the SharePoint installation. If you choose to use different names, ensure that the account names do not exceed 20 characters since NETBIOS names have a limit of 20 characters

Download AutoSPInstaller PowerShell script

Creating the AutoSPInstaller configuration file

• SharePoint version to install
• The SharePoint product key
• The Farm Account and all Managed Accounts and their credentials
• The database instance that will support the SharePoint environment
• The web applications we want to create (ex: Intranet. My Site, etc)
• The service applications we want to enable and their configurations
• Outgoing email settings for the farm
• Database names: this is extremely useful since it allows us to have complete control over the names of all the databases that will be created during the SharePoint farm configuration and avoid having databases with unclear names containing GUIDs which is the default behavior if we configure the farm using SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard (PSConfig)

Installing SharePoint

• Managed accounts credentials will be validated. If any of the credentials is incorrect, the script will stop
• SharePoint prerequisites will be installed
• SharePoint will be installed
• SharePoint language packs will be installed
• SharePoint updates will be installed

Configuring the SharePoint Farm

• Create all managed accounts
• Configure IIS and SharePoint ULS log file paths
• Create the configured web applications (ex: Intranet, My Site)
• Configure the service applications
• Configure outgoing email settings for the farm

Multi-Server Installation

• What is your farm topology and the number of servers you want to consider (WFEs, Application Servers and Database Servers)
• Which services and service applications will be provisioned for each server
• Will you be using MinRoles or will you use a custom installation where you will be manually selecting the services and service applications that will be provisioned for each server?

• Front-end
• Application
• Distributed cache
• Search
• Custom
• Single-server farm
• Front-end with Distributed Cache (merge of Front-end and Distributed cache MinRoles). available with Feature Pack 1 update or later
• Application with Search (merge of Application and Search MinRoles). available with Feature Pack 1 update or later

• Use Remote Installation
• Install SharePoint individually in each SharePoint server

AutoSPInstaller Input File Configuration for Multi-Server Installation Notes when not using MinRoles

• <Custom Provision=” false” />
• <SingleServerFarm Provision=”localhost ” />

• <Custom Provision=”localhost” />
• <SingleServerFarm Provision=”false” />

<ServerRoles>
    <Custom Provision="localhost" />
    <WebFrontEnd Provision="false" />
    <WebFrontEndWithDistributedCache Provision="false" />
    <SingleServerFarm Provision="false" />
    <Search Provision="false" />
    <Application Provision="false" />
    <ApplicationWithSearch Provision="false" />
    <DistributedCache Provision="false" />
</ServerRoles>

Remote Installation

Install SharePoint individually in each SharePoint server

• SharePoint bits must be installed on all servers but farm configuration must only be done once all servers have the SharePoint bits installed. You may Install the SharePoint bits (all steps before the “Configuring the SharePoint Farm” in this post) in all servers at the same time but you must stop the installation process once you are asked to continue with farm configuration
• After the SharePoint bits are installed on all servers, you may proceed to the “Configuring the SharePoint Farm” section of this post BUT this must be done server by server, one at a time, sequentially. The AutoSPInstaller configuration file will determine what services and service applications are going to be provisioned on each server:
  • When you run the farm configuration in the first server, the farm will be created and the services and service applications that are configured to run on that server will be provisioned
  • When you run the farm configuration on the other servers, each server will be added to the farm and the services and service applications that are configured to run on that server will be provisioned

Related Articles

The post How to install a SharePoint 2016 farm using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller Step by Step (Part 2) appeared first on Blog IT.

To read the second part, click here.

Introduction

Before installing a SharePoint 2016 farm, it is important to be familiar with its requirements. To learn more about SharePoint 2016 hardware and software requirements, click here.

Installing a SharePoint farm can be a complex task and the installation process is composed by a series of steps:

• Downloading and installing SharePoint prerequisites
• Downloading and installing the SharePoint binaries
• Downloading and installing the lastest SharePoint updates
• Downloading and installing the required language packs (optional, necessary if you want the SharePoint interface to be presented in a language other than English)
• Configuring the SharePoint farm using SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard

All the above steps are time consuming and can be error prone if, for example, you miss to download any of the prerequisites.

Fortunately, it is possible to fully automate a SharePoint farm installation using PowerShell by using a script called AutoSPInstaller. The installation process can be divided in two major steps:

• Downloading the SharePoint installation package
• Installing SharePoint and configuring the SharePoint farm

This process can be used for the following versions of SharePoint:

• SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2016
• SharePoint 2019 (to learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here)

In this post, I will talk about the first part of the process: downloading the SharePoint installation package and I will use SharePoint 2016 as an example.

Downloading the SharePoint installation package

The download process will be managed by a script called AutoSPSourceBuilder that will download the SharePoint installation package and all its dependencies and will create a folder structure ready to be used in AutoSPInstaller. The AutoSPSourceBuilder script will download:

• All SharePoint prerequisites
• The latest SharePoint updates
• If specified. the desired language pack

To download the SharePoint 2016 installation package, follow the steps below:

1. Download SharePoint 2016.

2. Download AutoSPSourceBuilder. After download, the folder should contain the following structure.

3. Mount the .iso image of SharePoint 2016.

After mount, the mounted drive will have SharePoint installation files.

4. Run the following script in a PowerShell window (run as administrator).

.\AutoSPSourceBuilder.ps1 -GetPrerequisites $true -SharePointVersion “2016” -Languages “pt-pt”

This script will download SharePoint 2016 with all prerequisites and the Portuguese language pack. Change the “Languages” parameter to the Language Pack you want to include in your installation.

The script will start by detecting the SharePoint image that was previously downloaded. If successfully detected, it will extract the SharePoint installation files from the mounted image to the C:\SP\2016 folder.

5. Once the SharePoint installation files extraction is completed, you will be asked to select the SharePoint update that you want to include on your installation package. Select the latest available package (all SharePoint 2016 updates are cumulative and include all updates contained in the previous updates).

6. After selecting the SharePoint update, the script will resume and start downloading the SharePoint prerequisites. the selected language pack and the selected SharePoint update.

7. After completion, the PowerShell window should look like the image below.

The end result will be a structure of folders and files that will contain all the necessary files to install SharePoint with AutoSPInstaller.

Root folder:

Language Packs folder:

SharePoint bits folder (slipstreamed installation structure):

Updates folder:

To read the second part of this two part step by step tutorial, click here.

Related Articles

To learn why your business should migrate to SharePoint Online and Office 365, click here and here.

If you want to convert your tenant’s root classic site into a modern SharePoint site, click here.

AutoSPInstaller is also already available for the recently announced new version SharePoint, SharePoint 2019. To learn more about all the new features in SharePoint 2019, click here.

If you are a SharePoint administrator or a SharePoint developer who wants to learn more about how to install a SharePoint 2019 farm in an automated way using PowerShell, I invite you to click here and here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2013 farm to SharePoint 2019, click here and here.

If you want to learn all the steps and precautions necessary to successfully keep your SharePoint farm updated and be ready to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you learn how to greatly speed up your SharePoint farm update process to ensure your SharePoint farm keeps updated and you stay one step closer to start your move to the cloud, click here.

If you want to learn how to upgrade a SharePoint 2010 farm to SharePoint 2016, click here and here.

If you are new to SharePoint and Office 365 and want to learn all about it, take a look at these learning resources.

If you are work in a large organization who is using Office 365 or thinking to move to Office 365 and is considering between a single or multiple Office 365 tenants, I invite you to read this article.

If you want to know all about the latest SharePoint and Office 365 announcements from SharePoint Conference 2019, click here and here.

Happy SharePointing!

The post How to install a SharePoint 2016 farm using PowerShell and AutoSPInstaller Step by Step (Part 1) appeared first on Blog IT.

The script below is the result of a collection of snippets and bits of code I found in various places around the Internet that allowed me to solve this problem.

For this example, I only want to send the files which have a specific extension (.html) and that exist in a specific folder (passed as parameter to the PowerShell script). Of course, you are free to remove this extension filtering for your own purposes.

Also, note that Outlook must have a configured email account for the sending process to succeed.

# Check to see we have all the arguments
if($args.Count -lt 1)
{
Write-Host "Use: SendMail.ps1 <Path>"
Write-Host
Write-Host " <Path>: Full path for the folder which contains the files"
Write-Host
exit
}

$FullPath=$args[0]

#Get an Outlook application object

$o = New-Object -com Outlook.Application

$mail = $o.CreateItem(0)

#2 = High importance message
$mail.importance = 2

$mail.subject = "This is the subject of the mail"
$mail.body = "This is the body of the email. It has been automatically generated by a script."

#separate multiple recipients with a ";"
$mail.To = <INSERT THE RECIPIENT HERE>
#$mail.CC = <OTHER RECIPIENT 1>;<OTHER RECIPIENT 2>

# Iterate over all files and only add the ones that have an .html extension
$files = Get-ChildItem $FullPath

for ($i=0; $i -lt $files.Count; $i++) {

$outfileName = $files[$i].FullName
$outfileNameExtension = $files[$i].Extension

# if the extension is the one we want, add to attachments
if($outfileNameExtension -eq ".html")
{
$mail.Attachments.Add($outfileName);
}
}

$mail.Send()

# give time to send the email
Start-Sleep 20

# quit Outlook
$o.Quit()

#end the script
exit

You can invoke the script presented above, by using a simple command window and giving the following command:

I hope this helps!

The post Sending an email with attachments using Outlook and PowerShell appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will talk about Publishing Features!!! During this afternoon I was trying to activate Publishing Features but i wasn’t having success because Page Library not was created on activation! So there are more than two Publishing Feature that we need have in consideration, it’s not enough Activate Publishing Infrastructure Feature and Publishing Feature. If you want activate all Publishing Features you can do it pragmatically or using Powershell script:

SharePoint Server – Powershell:

 
Disable-SPFeature –identity 'publishingSite' -URL http://server/ -force
Disable-SPFeature –identity 'PublishingResources' -URL http://server/-force
Disable-SPFeature –identity 'Publishing' -URL http://server/ -force
Disable-SPFeature –identity 'PublishingLayouts' -URL http://server/ -force
Disable-SPFeature –identity 'publishingweb' -URL http://server/ -force

Enable-SPFeature –identity 'publishingSite' -URL http://server/ -force
Enable-SPFeature –identity 'PublishingResources' -URL http://server/ -force
Enable-SPFeature –identity 'Publishing' -URL http://server/ -force
Enable-SPFeature –identity 'PublishingLayouts' -URL http://server/ -force
Enable-SPFeature –identity 'publishingweb' -URL http://server/ -force

SharePoint Online – Powershell:

 
Disable-SPOFeature –Identity "F6924D36-2FA8-4f0b-B16D-06B7250180FA" -Scope Site
Disable-SPOFeature –Identity "AEBC918D-B20F-4a11-A1DB-9ED84D79C87E" -Scope Site
Disable-SPOFeature –Identity "22A9EF51-737B-4ff2-9346-694633FE4416" -Scope Web
Disable-SPOFeature –Identity "D3F51BE2-38A8-4e44-BA84-940D35BE1566" -Scope Site
Disable-SPOFeature –Identity "94C94CA6-B32F-4da9-A9E3-1F3D343D7ECB" -Scope Web

Enable-SPOFeature –Identity "F6924D36-2FA8-4f0b-B16D-06B7250180FA" -Scope Site
Enable-SPOFeature –Identity "AEBC918D-B20F-4a11-A1DB-9ED84D79C87E" -Scope Site
Enable-SPOFeature –Identity "22A9EF51-737B-4ff2-9346-694633FE4416" -Scope Web
Enable-SPOFeature –Identity "D3F51BE2-38A8-4e44-BA84-940D35BE1566" -Scope Site
Enable-SPOFeature –Identity "94C94CA6-B32F-4da9-A9E3-1F3D343D7ECB" -Scope Web

Also that you can activate Programmatically:

 

        private void ActivatePublishingFeatures(SPWeb web, SPSite site)
        {
            // Publishing Site
            string sharePointPublishingSite = "f6924d36-2fa8-4f0b-b16d-06b7250180fa";
            Guid sharePointPublishingSiteGuid = new Guid(sharePointPublishingSite);

            if (site.Features[sharePointPublishingSiteGuid] == null)
            {
                site.Features.Add(sharePointPublishingSiteGuid, true);
            }

            // Publishing Resources
            string sharePointPublishingResources = "aebc918d-b20f-4a11-a1db-9ed84d79c87e";
            Guid sharePointPublishingResourcesGuid = new Guid(sharePointPublishingResources);

            if (site.Features[sharePointPublishingResourcesGuid] == null)
            {
                site.Features.Add(sharePointPublishingResourcesGuid, true);
            }

            // Publishing
            string sharePointPublishing = "22a9ef51-737b-4ff2-9346-694633fe4416";
            Guid sharePointPublishingGuid = new Guid(sharePointPublishing);

            if (web.Features[sharePointPublishingGuid] == null)
            {
                web.Features.Add(sharePointPublishingGuid, true);
            }

            // Publishing Layouts
            string sharePointPublishingLayouts = "d3f51be2-38a8-4e44-ba84-940d35be1566";
            Guid sharePointPublishingLayoutsGuid = new Guid(sharePointPublishingLayouts);

            if (site.Features[sharePointPublishingLayoutsGuid] == null)
            {
                site.Features.Add(sharePointPublishingLayoutsGuid, true);
            }

            // Publishing Web
            string sharePointServerPublishingWeb = "94c94ca6-b32f-4da9-a9e3-1f3d343d7ecb";
            Guid sharePointServerPublishingWebGuid = new Guid(sharePointServerPublishingWeb);

            if (web.Features[sharePointServerPublishingWebGuid] == null)
            {
                web.Features.Add(sharePointServerPublishingWebGuid, true);
            }
        }

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post Activating all Publishing Feature – Programmatically & Powershell – SharePoint 2010, 2013, 2016 & Online: appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will talk about List and Library Alerts and how can you get all Active alerts for a specific list using powershell script and how can you disable all alerts.

This is very useful script, when you need move a large list of items on a maintenance routine and you don’t want send a large number of emails/ notifications for users who subscribe alerts, this script help you disable and enable them.

This first PowerShell Script get all SharePoint list alerts with state active.

 

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell –ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

#Variables
$WebURL = "http://YourWebUrl"
$ListName="YourListName"

#Function to Get All Active Alerts on a Given List
Function Get-ListAlerts($WebURL, $ListName)
{
  #Get the Web and List objects
  $Web = Get-SPWeb $WebURL
  $List = $web.Lists.TryGetList($ListName)

  #Get All Alerts created in the list - Which are Active
  $ListAlerts = $Web.Alerts | Where-Object {($_.List.Title -eq $List.Title) -and ($_.Status -eq "ON")}

  foreach($Alert in $ListAlerts)
  {
          write-host "Alert' - $($Alert.Title)' Created for User - '$($Alert.User.Name)'"
  }

 #Dispose web object
 $Web.Dispose()
}

#Call the function Appropriately to Disable or Enable Alerts 
Disable-ListAlerts $WebURL $ListName

 

If you want disable all alerts on this specific list you just need run the following script.

 

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell –ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

#Variables
$WebURL = "http://YourWebUrl"
$ListName="YourListName"

#Function to Disable All Active Alerts on a Given List
Function Disable-ListAlerts($WebURL, $ListName)
{
  #Get the Web and List objects
  $Web = Get-SPWeb $WebURL
  $List = $web.Lists.TryGetList($ListName)

  #Get All Alerts created in the list - Which are Active
  $ListAlerts = $Web.Alerts | Where-Object {($_.List.Title -eq $List.Title) -and ($_.Status -eq "ON")}

  Write-host "Total Number of Active Alerts Found in the list: $($ListAlerts.Count)" 
 
  #Iterate through each alert and turn it OFF
  foreach($Alert in $ListAlerts)
  {
     $Alert.Status="OFF"
     $Alert.Update()
     write-host "Disabled the Alert' $($Alert.Title)' Created for User '$($Alert.User.Name)'"
  }
 
 #Dispose web object
 $Web.Dispose()
}

#Call the function Appropriately to Disable or Enable Alerts 
Disable-ListAlerts $WebURL $ListName

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint – Get all alerts from a specific SP List/Library using Powershell appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will show you how can you create SharePoint 2016 Service Accounts using PowerShell script following the Best Practices.

The script not only create all the accounts but also create the respectives OU (Organizational Unit):

• SharePoint Accounts
• SQL Accounts

Service Accounts:

Script:

 

$mydom = (get-addomain).distinguishedname 
$password = "pass@word1" | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force 

$ouNameSP = "SharePoint Accounts"
$oudnSP = "OU=$ounameSP,$mydom" 

$ouNameSQL = "SQL Accounts" 
$oudnSQL = "OU=$ounameSQL,$mydom" 

#----------------------------> Organizational Unit <---------------------------- 

New-ADOrganizationalUnit -Name $OUNameSP -Path $mydom 
Write-Host "OU $OUNameSP Created" -foregroundcolor green 

New-ADOrganizationalUnit -Name $OUNameSQL -Path $mydom 
Write-Host "OU $OUNameSQL Created" -foregroundcolor green 

#-----------------------------> SharePoint 2016 <-------------------------------

$usersArraySP = @("SP_Farm","SP_Admin","SP_Pool","SP_Services","SP_Crawl","SP_Search",
                  "SP_UserProfiles","SP_PortalSuperReader","SP_CacheSuperUser","SP_VisioUser",
                  "SP_PerfPointUser","WF_Service","SP_MySitePool","SP_PortalSuperUser")

foreach ($usp in $usersArraySP) {
        New-ADUser -Name $usp -DisplayName $usp -SamAccountName $usp -AccountPassword $password 
        -ChangePasswordAtLogon $false -PassThru -PasswordNeverExpires $true -Path $oudnSP 
        Write-Host "$usp Created" -foregroundcolor green
 }

#----------------------------------> SQL <--------------------------------------
$usersArraySQL = @("SQL_Admin","SQL_Service")

foreach ($usql in $usersArraySQL) {
       New-ADUser -Name $usql -DisplayName $usql -SamAccountName $usql -AccountPassword $password 
       -ChangePasswordAtLogon $false -PassThru -PasswordNeverExpires $true -Path $oudnSQL
       Write-Host "$usql Created" -foregroundcolor green
 }

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint 2016 – Create Service Accounts using PowerShell script appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will talk about SharePoint Site Templates, and explain the main difference between each template and how it is extremely important to have in mind what each version can offer you in terms of features and capabilities to meets your business needs.

So the first thing you must know is there are 3 main categories of templates:

• Collaboration
• Enterprise
• Publishing

For each category you have different site types, when you create a new site the “site type” define the purpose of the new one and includes all the features.

Collaboration site templates:

• Team Site – This template can be  used when you what organize and share information with your team or project members, this template includes lists and libraries for: Share Documents, Announcements, Calendars, Links, Tasks, Discussion Board.

• Blog Site – This template can be  used when you what announce company announcements, post ideas, observations, expertise with your team organization. It is easy  start a new blog, including Comments and Links.

• Project Site – With this site template it is so much easy to manage your projects, it is an upgrade of Team Site but this one have more functionalities including Projects Summary, Task Lists. Calendar Sharing, Task Scheduler, Visual Timeline of the Project’s Tasks.

• Community Site – It is more than a Blog Site, this template you can create a place where you can discuss topics that you have in common with others team members, it is more easy and you have more benefits over email, with a full retention of discussion history in compliance with corporate guidelines.

Enterprise site templates:

Publishing site templates:

The follow table show all Templates available for each SharePoint version.

Also you have different types of site template variation, the following table show ALL the Template ID available, and you can you use powershell command to create them.

New-SPWeb http://createIT/blog -Template "BLOG#0"

Fonts:
Using templates to create different kinds of SharePoint sites
SharePoint templates and their IDs

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint Templates – Understand the differences appeared first on Blog IT.

Today i will post a script very helpful when you are on Migration steps and you need export all wsp solutions.

 

$dirName = "C:\WSP"
if (!(Test-Path -path $dirName))
{
New-Item $dirName -type directory
}
Write-Host Exporting solutions to $dirName
foreach ($solution in Get-SPSolution)
{
    $id = $Solution.SolutionID
    $title = $Solution.Name
    $filename = $Solution.SolutionFile.Name
    Write-Host "Exporting ‘$title’ to …\$filename" -nonewline
    try {
        $solution.SolutionFile.SaveAs("$dirName\$filename")
        Write-Host " – done" -foreground green
    }
    catch
    {
        Write-Host " – error : $_" -foreground red
    }
}

Thanks

Fábio Carvalho
SharePoint Consultant
|create|it|

The post SharePoint – Export all solutions wsp using PowerShell script appeared first on Blog IT.

When using FS4SP in a production environment, you need a separate farm just for FAST. That is, you need a set of servers where you install FS4SP and then you connect that FAST farm to a SharePoint farm, by means of two Search Service Applications. These FAST servers don’t have SharePoint installed on them and they have their own PowerShell snap-in that allows you to perform a whole bunch of administration tasks on FS4SP.

Suppose you want to query your search index, for testing or maintenance purposes, in PowerShell. The easiest solution would be to open your SharePoint 2010 Administration PowerShell console, and use the Server Side Object Model to create a new KeywordQuery object and invoke the Execute method on it. You can find many blog posts that teach how to do this. Here’s one example. If, for some reason, you need to run that PowerShell script from one of the FAST servers it won’t work because these servers don’t have SharePoint installed and are not part of the SharePoint farm, hence you can’t use the Server Object Model.

In this case, you’ll need to use the search web service, which can be called from any server as long as it can communicate with the SharePoint farm. The script below shows how you can do this.

$WebApplicationURL = "http://myserver:9999"
$SearchServiceURL = "/_vti_bin/search.asmx"

# process the results
if ($results -ne $null -And $results.Tables["RelevantResults"] -ne $null)
{
    # check the result count (this page) and the total result count (all pages)
    $resultCount = $results.Tables["RelevantResults"].Rows.Count
    $totalCount = $results.Tables["RelevantResults"].ExtendedProperties["TotalRows"]
    Write-Host "Retrieved $resultCount (from a total of $totalCount) results."
   
    # write the title of each result in the console window
    foreach ($row in $results.Tables["RelevantResults"].Rows)
    {
        Write-Host $row["Title"]
     }
}

The post Querying SharePoint Search from PowerShell appeared first on Blog IT.

Amongst the several new features included in SharePoint 2013, there is one that I have unfairly overlooked until just recently and that is User License Enforcement. I say unfairly because it’s a feature that has been requested for a long time and I believe it deserves more attention than it has been receiving.

Up until now, any user that accessed a SharePoint farm would have access to all the features included in the installed SharePoint SKU, regardless of the CAL (Client Access License) level assigned to her. This means that, if a company had a SharePoint farm with an Enterprise license, any user would be able to access all Enterprise features, even if it was assigned a Standard CAL.

On most large companies, for cost saving purposes, it’s quite common to find scenarios where only some of the users are assigned an Enterprise CAL, while every other user is assigned a Standard CAL. One way to ensure that each user can only access the features included in his license, is to have two separate SharePoint farms, one with a Standard SKU and the other with an Enterprise SKU. However, this is hardly an acceptable solution.

SharePoint 2013 solves this with the new User License Enforcement capability, which enables the mapping of licenses with specific users or Active Directory security groups. When User License Enforcement is enabled, users can only access the SharePoint features included with their license, otherwise they are blocked. When it’s disabled, which is the default, SharePoint behaves the same as in previous versions.

User License Enforcement management is performed exclusively through PowerShell cmdlets in SharePoint 2013 Management Shell. There are eight cmdlets which are explained in detail in the following sections:

• Get-SPUserLicensing
• Enable-SPUserLicensing
• Disable-SPUserLicensing
• Get-SPUserLicense
• Get-SPUserLicenseMapping
• New-SPUserLicenseMapping
• Add-SPUserLicenseMapping
• Remove-SPUserLicenseMapping

Enabling and Disabling User License Enforcement

To check if this feature is enabled, use the Get-SPUserLicensing cmdlet in SharePoint 2013 Management Shell. It will return true if the feature is enabled, and false otherwise (see Figure 1). As stated before, User License Enforcement is disabled by default.

Figure 1 – Usage of Get-SPUserLicensing cmdlet

To enable it, execute the Enable-SPUserLicensing cmdlet. To disable it, execute the Disable-SPUserLicensing cmdlet. Both cmdlets require no parameters and return no values (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 – Using the Enable-SPUserLicensing and Disable-SPUserLicensing cmdlets

Now that you know how to enable and disable it, I should advise you to keep it disabled until you have configured it properly. Otherwise you might involuntarily block access to Enterprise features for users that should have access to them or allow access to features that users should not be allowed to use.

Checking Available User Licenses

To check what licenses are available in your SharePoint farm, you can use the Get-SPUserLicense cmdlet (see figure 3).

Figure 3 – Using the Get-SPUserLicense cmdlet

There are five license types (although on my farm there are only four):

• Enterprise
• Standard
• Project
• OfficeWebAppsEdit
• Duet

The Enterprise and Standard licenses are the two SharePoint Server editions, which have been around for several versions already. You can check the differences between the two in TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sharepoint-online-service-description.aspx#bkmk_FeaturesOnPremise.

As for the others: the Project license is used to allow access to Project Server features, the OfficeWebAppsEdit license is used to allow users to edit documents in Office Web Apps, and the Duet license is used to allow access to Duet features (integration between SharePoint and SAP).

Mapping User Licenses

Mapping users to licenses is, in fact, mapping claims to rights. To create a new mapping you must execute the New-SPUserLicenseMapping cmdlet which can be used in a few different ways, depending on the type of claim you are mapping.

You can map an Active Directory security group to a license, executing the following command:

$mapping = New-SPUserLicenseMapping
–SecurityGroup “Enterprise Users”
–License “Enterprise”

You can also map a Forms-based Role to a license by using the –RoleProvider and –Role parameters instead of the –SecurityGroup parameter:

$mapping = New-SPUserLicenseMapping
–RoleProvider “MyRoleProvider”
–Role “Enterprise Users”
–License “Enterprise”

Finally, you can map a claim to a license by using the –ClaimType, –OriginalProvider and –Value parameters, or just the –Claim parameter with a reference to a SPClaim object.

Figure 4 – Using the New-SPUserLicenseMapping cmdlet

When creating the mapping you can also specify which Web Application the mapping applies to, allowing you to configure user licenses on a per-web application basis. If you don’t specify a web application, the mapping will be applied to the whole farm.

After creating the mapping, you must call the Add-SPUserLicenseMapping to add it to the farm:

Add-SPUserLicenseMapping –Mapping $mapping

Checking User License Mappings

To check which mappings are configured in the farm, you can use the Get-SPUserLicenseMapping cmdlet without any additional parameters. Note that any mappings defined on a web application level will not be returned when retrieving the farm level mappings.

Figure 5 – Using Get-SPUserLicenseMapping cmdlet

To list the mappings configured for a specific web application, add the –Web Application parameter with the respective URL value.

Removing User License Mappings

To remove a mapping, you can use the Remove-SPUserLicenseMapping cmdlet. The only required parameter is the identity of the mapping (a GUID) which you can easily get by executing the Get-SPUserLicenseMapping cmdlet.

Enforcement Effects

Two common questions regarding User License Enforcement are:

• Where is the user license enforced?
• What happens when a user tries to access a feature that is not available to his license type?

Regarding the first question, the user license enforcement will be used in the following situations:

• When accessing a page with web parts that require a specific license (e.g. Excel Viewer Web Part or InfoPath Form Viewer);
• Accessing the web part gallery to add a new web part to a page;
• Selecting a site template when creating a new site;
• Trying to edit a document in Office Web Apps.

As for what happens in these situations, two things can happen:

• A user without the required license won’t see the components he has no access to (web parts and site templates); or
• SharePoint will deny access to a component the user has no license for, presenting a message explaining why the user cannot access the component.

Additional Notes

There are a few additional notes I believe are important to keep in mind:

• User License Enforcement is available only for On Premise SharePoint 2013 deployments. SharePoint Online uses a per-user licensing model hence it does not require this capability to control access to specific features.
• User License Enforcement works only with Web Applications that use Claims-based Authentication.
• Once enabled, every user has to be assigned a license, even service accounts. If you forget to assign a license to a user, it will be logged as Unlicensed and will be denied access to most SharePoint features.

References

You can find additional information on the PowerShell cmdlets on TechNet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219609.aspx.

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