MOSS 2007 and RMS: Baptism by Fire - My pain is your gain.
There comes a time in the life of a support engineer, when just when you think you finally know allot about something, you will get a weeks worth of customers calling in with questions that make you feel like you don't know anything. (A big hole in my knowledge is in the form of 'SLC revocation'...there...now you know). Well for me, it has been non-stop for the last month. Call after call of horrendous, odd and ugly problems, that have kept me up night after night screaming and yelling at my debugger. The good news is that it takes me one step closer to attaining 'guru' status, and my blog readers and future customers will benefit from it. The bad news is that it quickly leads to what we know as 'support engineer burn-out'. You start planning your next vacation, where you will reflect on things, and swear that you will never return to your job, because it just isn't worth all the aggravation. After a week or two, suddenly you find yourself sniffing around your computer terminal, and before you know it, you and your computer are friends again, merrily working together to solve the next issue. Well me and my computer are currently are at odds with each other and I'm ready to kick it out the window. So since I don't have a vacation lined up in the immediate future (although I will be in Seattle for 10 days in February speaking at Tech-Ready 4 on 'How to troubleshoot RMS problems'), I thought I would post some info about my first MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) call to add some flavor to my day.
Side note: Isn't MOSS a cool acronym for a product? It just rolls off the tounge. MOSSSS...It doesn't matter if you are pasty, and pale from being stuck in a server room for months on end...it makes you feel like an outdoorsman again, doesn't it? People should buy this on acronym value alone. It's better than WSS which to closely resembles WUSS. :)
This will be quick because it wasn't hard (once I found out everything was wrong)...hence the reason I'm writing this.
- Follow these instructions - they are actually very detailed, and good:
- If you already have RMS and MOSS installed, and just want the 'hidden treasure' in the document here it is.
Important
1. Log on to RMS-SRV as CPANDL\RMSADMIN.
2. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
3. Navigate to C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\_wmcs\Certification.
4. Right-click ServerCertification.asmx, click Properties, and then click the Security tab.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Object Types, select the Computers check box, and then click OK.
7. Type SPS-SRV, click OK.
8. Click Add.
9. Click Object Types, select the Groups check box, and then click OK.
10. Type RMS-SRV\RMS Service Group, and then click OK.
11. Click OK to close the ServerCertification.asmx Properties dialog box.
- Make sure you have RMS SP2 Server. MOSS will not run against RMS SP1.
Thats it!
That's how easy it was to set this up, using the documentation provided, and making sure that you have the right version of RMS installed (which, of course, my customer didn't). I'm impressed, and I'm sure that anyone familiar with the current RMS documentation knows why. Brian Lich is our current doc writer, and did a great job on documenting this. He also sent me a preview of our upcoming documentation for RMS, and it is awesome. It assumes the end user knows nothing, and walks them through the entire process, step-by-step, leaving nothing to the imagination. That is exactly how documentation should be written, and he pulled it off.
Great job, Brian. Someone needs to go to the RMS newsgroup where he usually hangs out, and give him a cyber hug. He's been busting his hump trying to catch up on all the doc bugs/requests we've been throwing at him. The only problem with Brian is that he's a Colts fan, and I'm a Patriots fan, and one of them has to lose this weekend, which means one of us will be hiding from the other for a few days to escape the relentless harassment that is sure to follow. If the Patriots lose (which they won't), I think I will suddenly have lots of doc bugs to file...and yes, Brian..THAT JUST HAPPENED!
IT'S ON!!
-Jason
Extra dialog: I was born and raised in Massachusetts. There are a few things that are born into your 'common sense DNA'. 1. Don't bet against the Patriots, and 2. Don't put a NY Yankees sticker on anything you don't want destroyed. Women in Massachusetts have been known to get back at their cheating boyfriends by sticking a NY Yankees sticker on their boyfriends car. The rest just works itself out. Even a Bostonian who doesn't follow baseball in Massachusetts, knows that if you see a NY Yankees sticker on a car it is just common courtesy to kick in the door or fender of said offending vehicle (Before all you Yankees fans get upset, you know the same thing happens to cars with Boston Red Sox stickers in NY...admit it.). Doctors, school children, grandmothers....the police...they all know the rules. In fact the Police will stand watch as your grandmother kicks in the door. I thought everyone knew that, until I got to North Carolina. No baseball team, and a fairly new football team. It's strange when you tell someone your football team is better than theirs, looking for a healthy heated debate, and they just agree with you. :)