Export/Import traps for young players

Often when you are upgrading or migrating content to a new MOSS site, you will inevitably use the 'STSADM -o export' and 'STSADM -o import' commands. One of the 'traps' when using the export command is if the site you are exporting contains subsites, if you do not have access to that subsite (i.e. the subsite has not inherited permissions from its parent), then the subsite will not be exported (and hence will not exist after the import).

The other thing to be wary of is the use of the -includeusersecurity switch. If you do not use this switch in the export, and then again in the import, all content within the imported site will list you as the author. The downside in using this switch however is that all of the old security settings that existed in the exported site (e.g. WSS v2 Site Groups), will exist in the imported site, so you will need to do a cleanup afterwards.

Two steps forward - one step back

There is no doubting that MOSS contains a bunch of new features that people find useful. But sometimes it astounds me that minor oversights have made it into the product. My biggest bug-bears include:

1. When you navigate to a document library that has folders, you will see that the navigation breadcrumb is updated, thus allowing you to move around quickly in the document library(which is good). But drop that document library onto say the landing page, then the only way to navigate around the document library is to use the browser's back button. In WSS v2/SPS 2003, the web part automatically included an up link. So many of my clients have asked 'where has the up arrow gone?'.
2. Events Calendar - hmmmm...where to start? OK, first of all there is no way to resize the control. So many team sites today include some sort of shared calendar. Dropping the web part onto the page (say in a standard two column layout), pushes the page out to the right, so people have to scroll. The only way that I have gotten around this is to purchase a third party web part like Kwizcom.
3. Events Calendar again. There is no way to get a reliable 'What's on today?' view. First of all, the Start Time is not available in the Filter section within the view administration. The only way that I have gotten around this is to create a calculated field (e.g. Begin Time) that is equal to [Start Time] + 0.1, then create the view based on that calculated field. The 0.1 addition is required to cater for all day events. Without that, the event usually appears in the day before. But then comes the real problem - recurring events do not show up. This is because the Start Time field is based on when the recurring event should be effective from, not the actual start time of the event. The only way to get these events showing up (and you will love this one) is by editing each recurring event EVERY day, so that the Start Time changes to today (and hence shows up).

Let's home that either third party web parts fill these gaps, or a Microsoft patch fixes it.

I've Been Busy

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. Since May I have been flat out working on MOSS projects, which hasn't left much time for writing. I will pick up my game again after TechEd (next week).