A year ago if anyone would have pulled me aside and asked me what I thought about content deployment I would have told them to verify first before using this feature. I ran into more than a few customers who had challenges implementing content deployment. It was definitely a struggle for those who used these features. It also became apparent that it wasn't just challenges in the deployment of it, but actually "bugs" in the code. The product team working with customers worked very hard on getting this feature nailed down to work as expected and outside of the more straightforward tests that had been performed pre beta. I think everyone learned a lot during the process. This feature was in my list of "good, bad, ugly" as an ugly and I'm excited to see real results from Microsoft helping customers. It took a very focused effort for resources around this and those that use this feature I list this rollup as more than a must. This rollup in my mind is REQUIRED for anyone deploying SharePoint using the content deployment features.
Looking at this KB and the affected files, and knowing the effort for what went into this, I see this rollup as "bigger and more impactful than SP1 was." I hope you don't treat this lightly. Be sure to fully vet this. Test test test. You can quote me on that and use my words to get more time to validate this in your environment. It will payoff. Heed my warning if you see this as a small update and an easy install.
Here are links to the KB articles for the content deployment rollup.
WSS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952698
MOSS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952704/
I'd suggest everyone actually install this fix, but it will be included in the next service pack. At this point its better for the customers experiencing these issues and wait for the broader Service Pack to install for those not experiencing any of the issues listed on the KB. I do strongly recommend that EVERY SharePoint customer read the KBs, because some of the listed issues that are fixed are even broader than content deployment. The other reason I'd caution people around this is support will be bombarded with calls. This hotfix was available earlier, but only to those who had called and worked early with the product team to validate the fixes. So don't be concerned about the May date. This is very recently broadly available. Here are a couple of examples of fixes that I see as pretty broad:
-
In SharePoint Server 2007, you run a quick deployment job to deploy one or more pages. Then, you try to run a quick deployment job on another page while the previous job is running. When you do this, the second quick deployment job fails.
-
In SharePoint Server 2007, you disable compression in the content deployment path definition. After you do this, a content deployment job fails.
You delete and then restore a publishing page from the Recycle bin on a publishing portal. When you do this, the SharePoint Server 2007 incremental deployment job fails.
-
In SharePoint Server 2007, you enable and then disable a feature that creates a content type. If you never use this content type on the site, the content type and the custom fields that the feature defines are deleted.
I expect there are going to be some questions... Here are some answers.
- Yes, you need both the WSS one and MOSS one if you have MOSS
- Yes, you only need the WSS one if you have WSS.
- Yes, you should install the WSS one first.
- Yes, you should have SP1 and the post SP1 rollup installed first and yes, you should reboot before installing this.
- As with other hotfixes, you should verify that "upgrade" succeeded by looking in the upgrade.log file in the %temp% folder before you reboot otherwise the temp files will be cleaned up. Also of course make sure you backup your entire environment.
From the mouth of Andrew Connell at TechEd, he now tells people it's a ton better with these hotfixes. He was pretty harsh before, now he is much happier about content deployment and even tells customers to use it. I still tell people, if you can get away with in place authoring and approval, the complexity is much more simple and easier to support. My caution continues around telling people to validate first. Don't make the wrong assumptions around content deployment, it works in a specific way and does very specific things and you need to know what they are before you roll out to production. The customers who have the biggest problems are those that wait to push their production deployment with content deployment on the day it is to go live. That definitely spells disaster.
Good luck with this rollup. Very exciting to see this milestone actually out there to support the many internet sites that use content deployment or those that have wanted to use it.
** Note on the KBs you can "request" for the rollups as the support team continues to track the customers using the rollup so they can offer the best level of support for the rollup. Look for this text in the top of the KB:
|
Hotfix Download Available
|
Let me know if you have additional questions and I'll track down the answers.