Just because the SharePoint Utility Suite is Dead, doesn’t mean I am nor those needs are
In my previous post “The SharePoint Utility Suite is Dead” I think I failed to note that another reason it was dead, is that I do not own the right to use the Names of the primary tools in the suite (i.e., SPUserUtil and SPSiteManager). This certainly doesn’t mean that you won’t see something from me as far as helpful tools that provide a “Better” implementation for WSSv3/MOSS2007 that those tools provided. Those tools were designed using ONLY publicly supported SharePoint OM calls, but legally I could not take and use the name SPUserUtil nor SPSiteManager with me after leaving Microsoft.
The other key thing to remember, is that the amount of time I had to focus on those tools was very, very, very, very, very limited. Trust me, I spent a GREAT deal of time thinking about things that could be improved, how to improve them, etc…Only to get to the point where I didn’t have any time to actually implement any of it. Quite honestly, I think I was able to spend MAYBE roughly 40 hours total over the course of the last year on SPSiteManager to bring it from release 2.1 to 2.3. It was very depressing 
A couple of notes about the two biggest tools in the utility suite that I personally was responsible for.
SPSiteManager
Someone noted on a blog post somewhere that they “imagined that [someone] would pick up the ball for [WSSv3/MOSS2007]” as far as providing tools that match the SPSiteManager repartition operation. Well, who says I’m not going to do something like that .
In fact, it’s quite possible that you will see a V2 and V3 simple repartition app from me over the next month (or two , I’m a bit busy at the moment). Will it be on the scale of SPSiteManager? No, not in a free tool But who knows what the future holds
That’s one of the whole reasons I decided to take my new job, so that I could focus on generating and putting real time into things such as this See my initial post on this new blog and you’ll see why
Besides, there were tons of updates in MOSS2007 that negate some of the features that SPSiteManager has. Otherwise, I would expect some cool things to come in the next few months
Whether or not they wind up in DeliverPoint as an enterprise ready “Fully Supported” offering or not, is still up in the air, but we’ll see My goal is to do just that.
When I implemented those SPSiteManager features, I did my best to ensure that they were rock solid, but support for it was basically an email to me, and if I had “the time” I would respond.
Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of “Oh dear, this isn’t working right” emails, and when they came…I was always concerned that I would not be able to find the time to get in and fix it, let alone get an update out for it.
Most of the comments were more on the lines of “Whoa! That’s cool!!!!” So I was thankful not only for your generous comments, but also your encouragement .
Expect to see WSSv3/MOSS2007 similar features from me
SPUserUtil
For the longest time I wanted to completely re-architect SPUserUtil or just bring it’s features into SPSiteManager, but I knew that with the security changes in WSSv3/MOSS2007, a flat recompile and the existing logic would all have to change.
Over the past 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve been focusing on the new interrogation engine for DeliverPoint, and proved my theories as for taking SPUserUtil up to WSSv3/MOSS2007. In other words, if you were to take SPUserUtil as is, change only what was necessary for WSSv3/MOSS2007, SPUserUtil would do some very unexpected things Not only would it do unexpected things, it would not cover the whole gamut of things you need to look at to successfully clone a user in WSSv3/MOSS2007.
While I patiently waited to find some kind of time work on a WSSv3/MOSS2007 version of both SPUserUtil and SPSiteManager, I thought long and hard about how I might implement them. The cool thing, is that those ideas, I’m actually getting the opportunity to implement in DeliverPoint.
For DeliverPoint, there’s still some work to do, but the new engine is already twice as fast, and requires half the memory from my recent performance tests which is really exciting.
In conclusion, I guess what I’m trying to say guys, is just because the “SharePoint Utility Suite is Dead” because “I don’t own it” doesn’t mean that “I am” nor the dreams and desires I had for what it could become. I also believe that I will be able to share more than ever before, for instance, see my previous post on Traversing Sharepoint List Folder Hierarchies.
I hope this clarifies.
- Keith Richie
Hi Keith,
I’m in the US for the next 5 weeks bouncing around several states, Denver, Pheonix, Portland, Seattle / Redmon and finally San Francisco drop me a mail, it would be great to hear from you.
Regards
Mike
Keith
I understand the reasons why the suite had to be removed but, in the absence of those tools, do you have any recommendations on how an administrator can fix the problem encountered when a user is migrated from one forest to another and no longer has access to sites in the old forest? I was going to use SPUserUtil to fix up the permissions but I can’t now
–Philip
Phillip, you are correct. Here are some instructions
1) Run the STSADM -o migrateuser operation (This is a must regardless of WSS or SPS2003
2) If running SPS2003, follow up a successfull call to the STSADM operation by running the executable that would be produced by this code here: http://www.krichie.com/Shared%20Documents/SPSMigrateUser.zip
3) If SPS2003, you MUST do a full crawl of your content to ensure the index has the new ACLs so that search security trimming will work properly.
Also, in the new environment be SURE NOT TO RUN A PROFILE IMPORT UNTIL YOU MIGRATE THE USERS, otherwise item 2 will fail above.
Sorry for the delay everyone, but I hope this helps.
Keith, I need to print a list of users with access to all site collections in my project team site.
Is there an alternative to SPUserUtil that will help me accomplish that task?
thanks,
Bill
Bill, do you need a list of the site collection admins? Or are you wanting to audit every user across all site collections, and show their individual Permission Levels?
Hi,
I’m actually new with SharePoint and I’m wondering if you could help me out. I am trying to export the capacity of our sharepoint site. (that is i want to have the listings of the sites included in that sharepoint site and the correesponding size of that site). I am wondering if there’s any tool or script to extract that data. Can you enlighten me..? Thanks!
Keith, I’ve been checking the DeliverPoint product at http://www.barracudatools.com and wanting to know if the previous SPSuserutil functionality to audit every user across all site collections, and show their individual Permission Levels is available for SharePoint MOSS 2007 / WSS v.3.0?
Also does it have all the functionalities that we accustomed to with the SPSitemanager in 2003? I am looking for an overall SharePoint admin tool to be implemented in our environment. Thank you in advance for your help!
It has the Add/Clone/Delete features, and we have a “Discover Permissions” and “Unique Permissions” feature which provide a level of auditing.
As far as the features in SPSiteManager, similar features are in the works.
I’d recommend trying the trial version of DeliverPoint to see if it suits your current needs. More on future features will be announced on the deliverpoint website as we get closer to releasing our next version
Guys i somehow found a link to the rare spuserutility suite
Thank me for this
http://gregoryb.dyndns.org/public/progs/SPUtilSuite_Release2.zip
Dhyan,
Keep in mind, that
1) It should have never been re-published by someone else
2) I can’t gaurantee the validity of unchanged code in that package nor provide ANY SUPPORT for it especially with it being re-distributed by someone else.
Use at your own high risk.
SpUserUtil has been disabled from lot of places, I just found that in the below address:
http://www.sharepointupgrade.com/Shared%20Documents/SPUtilSuite_Release2.5.zip
Obrigado Jitendra, esta atraz e graças a você encontrei! Obrigado ais uma vez!!
So, in 2011, do you have any do you have any recommendations on how an administrator can fix the problem encountered when a user is migrated from one domain to another and no longer has access to their mysite?
please help! thanks.
To clarify, using MOSS 2007. Thanks.
It’s simple, use STSADM -o migrate.