PowerPivot Known Issues – SharePoint 2010

Below are some known Issues while working with PowerPivot and here is master key for below two solution :)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210616.aspx 1) This workbook cannot be opened because it is not stored in an Excel Services Application trusted location. To create an Excel Services Application trusted location, contact your system administrator.

Resolution: we need to add ‘SharePoint’ into excel services trusted file location.

2) Getting ‘An unexpected error has occurred.” Error while clicking ‘Manage Data Refresh’ icon into any of the stored workbook into PowerPivot gallery.

Resolution: we need to configure the unattended PowerPivot data refresh account for above to work properly.

I will also try to update this article if I find any more known issues with PowerPivot.

Good Luck.

How to find out which site template is being used in SharePoint site

Sometime when we open any SharePoint sites we are curious to know and see which site template is being used to create SharePoint sites. without writing any custom code we can quickly see the site template name by appending /_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=GetProjSchema at the end of SharePoint site URL.

e.g. http://sharepointsiteurl.com/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=GetProjSchema

It will return XML file which we can download and check the site template name from schema file.

some more owssvr tricks : http://sharepointglobe.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/owssvr-dll-tricks/  :)

How to lock down SharePoint Designer 2010

As we all know – SharePoint Designer is free tool from Microsoft, so any users in the organization can download designer and start using tool to make the changes directly to any SharePoint sites if they have designer access, Challenges comes in governance part of the SharePoint Designer usage. In SharePoint 2010 – admin have more control over what are the SharePoint Designer functionalities lock down and on which level of the site (web application, site collection level)

Here are some good reference links which talks about how to lock down designer access from SharePoint 2010.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mcsnoiwb/archive/2010/07/01/locking-down-sharepoint-designer-2010.aspx

http://www.thesanitypoint.com/archive/2011/09/22/governing-sharepoint-designer.aspx  

Different new features into SharePoint Designer 2010: http://www.endusersharepoint.com/EUSP2010/2010/03/19/introduction-to-sharepoint-designer-2010/