One of the senior consultants came down to my desk, “I’m going down to ‘highly regarded web design agency’ (HRWDA). You’re coming with me”.
“Why?” I asked
“Just need a second person to come with me — get your coat”
A half hour later, we’re trundling into offices that are far hipper than our drab cubicle farm—Freshly ground coffee, open plan offices, trendy artwork, brightly coloured furniture and the thumping sound of EDM.
HRWDA and the consultancy I was working for had been engaged in a joint bid for a decade long project, which they had won. So, from time to time, we informally helped each other out on some other projects.
We bundled into a meeting room with HRWDA’s only project manager (I think), and a designer. The situation was pretty straight forward — their only “tech guy” had left the company, so they needed some technical guidance on Sharepoint for a client project.
For whatever reason; client, tech guy or otherwise, it had been decided that Sharepoint was to be the CMS for their client’s intranet. They showed us some mocked up designs which had been signed off with their client. But they had some questions, “Could they really style X in Sharepoint?”, “How would Y work with our design?”, “Could they move Z’s position and make it look like this?”. I remember most questions we could answer there and then. Others required some checking out ourselves.
What I recall most was the designs were ambitious — they were trying to remove, repress or limit the Microsoft design aesthetic as much as possible.
Back to the cubicle farm
Through good or bad fortune at the time, I happened to sit beside the consultancy’s sysadmin. Between the backup tape machine, a pile of old laptops, and assorted ethernet cables, there was a spare blade server. I finally had an excuse to commandeer it, once I got back to the office — despite that it had half sat on my desk for the previous three months.
I loaded it up with Microsoft Windows 2003 and installed SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
I worked my way through HRWDA’s outstanding questions and let them know what was possible.
After a while, it had became an almost a weekly event — a quick email from HRWDA to me with a question about Y or how to do X. I’d have a look around, give back some advice.
During this time the senior consultant that had got me involved left the firm.
We need more header!
HRWDA had started to style some of Sharepoint through CSS, but their designs called for heavier customisation. A header banner needed to sit between some of the usually untouched core Sharepoint header and footer elements. These elements also had to be there when they created a new “sub-site” and not require any intervention by the client.
They sent me some HTML of what they wanted the header and footer to be, and I started trying to figure out how to get it to work. I eventually came across something — it was standard Sharepoint functionality that allowed me to add the HTML in the header. Once I did that, I started to click around to see if it had worked. But the Sharepoint site was completely unresponsive — in fact the server just seemed to space out. Normal OS type functions stopped working correctly.
I did a quick search in MSDN — nothing came up that seemed related. But there was an article about restoring Sharepoint sites called SPS135* ( I can’t remember what it was actually called, so that’ll do).
Running that didn’t seem to help. I tried to reinstall Sharepoint, that didn’t work either.
Uninstall/reinstall? Nope, didn’t work either.
Eventually I found the only way I could get the server operating correctly was to do a complete fresh reinstall of the OS.
It must be me…
Figuring I must have done something wrong, I reinstalled Sharepoint and went back to inserting the header customisation. The same thing happened again — Sharepoint unresponsive, server acting oddly.
Was it something in HRWDA’s HTML? It seemed OK.
Another reinstall merry-go-around with me adding some much simpler HTML — same result.
I called over some of the Microsoft developers in the office and showed them. “A freshly installed server, a shiny new Sharepoint site. Watch as I bring it crashing all down with one simple HTML trick!” — I was like a shit magician.
They kind of shrugged, “never seen Sharepoint do that before” and headed back to their desks.
A few hours later one of them emailed me “Have you seen this article on MSDN, SPS135?”.
You’re a gold partner Harry!
Eventually someone more senior thought I should talk to the local country Microsoft team — we were a gold partner after all, they should be able to help or at least suggest a fix based on their experience.
After a few initial rounds of “no, you, mcvicar, have clearly done something wrong” emails with the local Sharepoint ‘MVP’, a solution was presented — “You need to do this MSDN article, SPS135”
“I have” I replied, “a number of times”
“Try it again”
We tried it another 3 or 4 times before the MVP decided to escalate it to Microsoft Australia.
Two weeks later
I’m on a call with the local MVP, and a Sharepoint expert from Microsoft Australia regaling my tale.
“Interesting” replies the AU MVP, “Have you tried this MSDN article, SPS135?”
“I have”
“Could you try it again?”
We try it another two times, still no success. The outcome is always the same.
A month later
I find myself on a call with someone from Microsoft based in Redmond. The MVPs are trying to explain the situation.
“Ok” says Redmond, and you’ve tried “SPS135 how many times?”
“I think about nine at this stage” I butt in “It doesn’t resolve the issue”
“Sounds like a bug alright” Redmond replies
“Any idea when it would get fixed?” I ask, hoping for some good news to pass on to HRWDA and their client
“When we get to it” replies Redmond.
They quickly wrap up the call.
Whatever happened to that intranet?
While in the middle of Microsoft’s escalation process, a huge storm hit Wellington. Public transport was suspended and the motorway was partially blocked off due to debris on the motorway from the cliffs above it. I, along with half the working population of the city, couldn’t get to work.
This seemed to be the perfect day for HRWDA’s project manager to contact the consulting director with the following issues about the project;
- We (the consultancy), and more specifically I, had recommend Sharepoint, when it wasn’t up to the task for the designs they had shown us
- The issue that we had uncovered proved that, and the delays to the project had caused irreparable damage to their relationship with the client.
The director was on the phone to me telling me I needed to be in the office, or I’d be fired. As we spoke, I realised I had nothing to refute HRWDA’s project manager accusations. All that had gone through the senior consultant, and he was gone!
Out of desperation I called the senior consultant and explained the situation.
“Don’t worry” he said “I still have all my emails. I’ll forward on the ones you need to prove it wasn’t us”.
Through some fortunate timing I was able to get a ride into the office with one of the sales guys. It was a very quiet car ride into the office.
When I got to my desk, I could breathe a sigh of relief — the emails where there. Better yet, they were from HRWDA’s project manager to the senior consultant outlining what had happened with their tech guy picking the solution and then leaving, and could we help them out by answering a question or two.
An Epilogue of sorts
I’ve no idea what actually happened with the project. I think they sucked up the design elements they couldn’t change and pushed it out the door. Hoping no one would mention it again.
Thankfully, I never touched Sharepoint again, nor did I ever find out if Microsoft ever fixed that issue — I’m sure they did.
I also learnt the valuable lesson in keeping emails and confirming everything in writing!
