SharePoint - Active Directory Change Password Web Part

Our company, Efficience, setup Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Server for our internal website. We use this for our corporate communications, project and product management. We rely heavily on SharePoint. We also have employees that are in Pondicherry, India who connect to the SharePoint server. As the defacto Systems Administrator in the office, I try to leverage RDP for administering user connections to servers, etc. However, as most admins will attest, I do not want anyone having remote desktop access to Active Directory. For this reason, we created the AD Change Password web part.
I spent a few days combing through the web to find a reasonably priced web part to install that met our needs. I found them to range between $495 and $1200. Granted, some of them had more whistles and bells than was needed, but none fit our simple requirement: allow users to log in to SharePoint and change their AD password.
So, we finished up with a web part that meets are requirement.
The web part is simple:
1) a three field form

2) a label control wired to the current user to display their name and

3) a submit button
To make the connections to the LDAP provider (Active Directory), we added the tool part pane which can be changed based on the environment variable inputs. Simply, edit the web part once it's on the page, provide the:

• LDAP Address (example: servername.domain.local)
• Service Account Name : needs to have privileges to talk to the LDAP provider.
• Service Account Password : not "Secret"!

And that's it. so please go download it and enjoy. You can see our other web parts at http://products.efficience.us/ , Microsoft Office MarketPlace, cnet downloads or TuCows .

Remote Desktop Web Part for SharePoint 2010

Remote Desktop Web Part Available

While trying to figure out how to allow users into our network, without giving them the keys to the castle, I enabled Remote Desktop Access for a few members of my team. Thinking more about this, I quickly remembered a project several years ago while working for the Department of Defense. That project required us to "lock down" access to only necessary personnel and limited access to the programs on the servers. After spending some time on Microsoft's KnowledgeBase, we realized that we could create desktop "shortcuts" for those employees that made the RDP connection, logged them in and limited their access to one specific application on that server.


Recently the Efficience development team decided to build a SharePoint 2010 web part that does the same thing. Leveraging the remote desktop protocol, we created a SharePoint 2010 web part that allows a SharePoint administrator to drop the part on a web part page and configure it for use. It was not developed with the intention to allow users to "pick" their server, but that is coming in the next release.


Here's how it's used. Edit the web part page and select the RDP web part. Once the web part is on the page, choose the tool menu to edit the web part. In the Tool Part Pane, you will find the remote access settings.

Server = IP or URL of server with Remote Access enabled
Username = Account name for the server
Password = password for the Username
Domain = if necessary, provide the domain name
Program = the program name including extension, if you want the user to only have access to that program. Once they close the program, the session ends and the user is logged out and the RDP window closes.

That's it. Now you only have to go download it. The RDP web part is completely free and is available at the Efficience, LLC website @

http://www.efficience.us/products-0/apps---solutions-0/. For support, send an email to support@efficience.us and we will answer your questions.


Thanks! Until next time...

Increasing SharePoint 2010 List Maximum

I have been developing on SharePoint since 2001 and it is beginning to amaze me that "mystery errors" remain. Ok, so recently I was setting up a SharePoint 2010 custom list pulling data from Bugtracker using the data connector. When I opened the page, I got the "unable to ... blah, blah" - mystery error. Anyway, I searched in Google, Bing, Yahoo...and nothing. Then after digging around in Google Groups, I found an interesting lead.

"Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator. "

Buried in the log
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS

The maximum number of rows that can be read through Database Connector is '2000'. The limit can be changed via the 'Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig' cmdlet.

Searching this message led me to this article:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/speschka/archive/2009/11/13/large-list-throttling-for-external-lists-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx

Below is the script I needed to run in Powershell to increase the maximum limit. This allowed my 2500 bugs list from Bugtracker to be displayed. When the CEO is happy, I'm happy. Happy Coding.

Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig
$proxy = Get-SPServiceApplicationProxy where {$ -match “Business Data Connectivity Service”}
Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig –Scope database –ThrottleType items –ServiceApplicationProxy $proxy

$defaultThrottleConfig = Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig –Scope database –ThrottleType items –ServiceApplicationProxy $proxy
$defaultThrottleConfig

Set-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig –Default 10000 –Identity $defaultThrottleConfig –Maximum 20000
$customThrottleConfig = Get-SPBusinessDataCatalogThrottleConfig –Scope database –ThrottleType items –ServiceApplicationProxy $proxy
$customThrottleConfig