Passphrases in SharePoint- why do we bother?

You all know about the passphrase in SharePoint (2010 and later) right? You name it during farm Creation using Powershell or the Config Wizard. It must be a complicated string of characters and it has to hold a certain length (exact requirements stated below)

Do we really need it?

Since you can replace the passphrase (Change your PassPhrase using PowerShell) without having the old one, all you need is to be a member of the farm administrators SharePoint Group. So…the use of the PassPhrase is what? You don’t need to save it since all you have to do when it is required (join farm) is to change it…and if you have the passphrase, you still have to enter the farm account (Database Access Account) username and password, so you still need the permissions…

The Passphrase in SharePoint 2013 Preview is described as:
(From the ‘Deployment guide for Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Preview’)
Although a passphrase resembles a password, it is usually longer to improve security. It is used to encrypt credentials of accounts that are registered in SharePoint 2013 Preview. For example, the SharePoint 2013 Preview system account that you provide when you run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard. Ensure that you remember the passphrase, because you must use it every time that you add a server to the farm.

Ensure that the passphrase meets the following criteria:

Contains at least eight characters
Contains at least three of the following four character groups:
- English uppercase characters (from A through Z)
- English lowercase characters (from a through z)
- Numerals (from 0 through 9)
- Nonalphabetic characters (such as !, $, #, %)

So…now that you have read all this, do we really need it? Why bother? Is it one more layer of real security or more more layer of persieved security?

-It’s easily replaced/reset (see Change your PassPhrase using PowerShell)
-You still need the farmaccount credentials to join
-It’s seldom used and thus easily lost (in real life! yes)
-For the encryption purposes, SharePoint could use a random key that you never have to see or know about…
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Please Comment!

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SharePoint 2013 Browser compatibility lists

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Browser support in the preview of SharePoint 2013 has been listed on TechNet, it’s not really any changes that stands out from 2010’s compatibility list.
For reference, see these links:
Plan browser support in SharePoint 2013 Preview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263526(v=office.15).aspx
Supported mobile device browsers in SharePoint 2013 Preview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161353(v=office.15).aspx

(Everything obviously can be subject to change come RTM, since this is the list for the Preview.)

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PC Browsers

Browser	Supported	Supported with limitations	Not supported
Internet Explorer 9	32-bit	64-bit
Internet Explorer 8	32-bit	64-bit
Internet Explorer 7			X
Internet Explorer 6			X
Google Chrome (latest public release version)	X
Mozilla Firefox (latest public release version)	X
Apple Safari (latest public release version)		X

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Mobile Browsers

Mobile device operating system

Operating system version

Browser

Smartphone device

Slate or tablet device

Windows Phone

Windows Phone 7.5 or later versions

Internet Explorer Mobile

Supported

Not applicable

Windows

Windows 7 or later versions

Internet Explorer

Not applicable

Supported

iOS

5.0 or later versions

Safari

Supported

Important:
Office Web Apps Preview is supported only on Apple iOS 5.0 or later versions on the Apple iPad (versions 1, 2, and 3).

Android

4.0 or later versions

Android Browser

Supported

Unsupported

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Enjoy!

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SharePoint 2013 – Work Management Service Application

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This is just a Quick overview of the new Service Application – Work Management Service Application in SharePoint 2013.

Overview

The Work Management Service Application provides functionality to aggregate tasks to a central location.
Users get the possibility to view and track their to-dos and tasks.
Tasks can be cached to a users personal site.
Tasks can be aggregated from Exchange, Project Server and SharePoint.
Based on ‘Provider model’ so that other systems can be integrated in the future.

Thats it, more info will become available over time, I will hopefully have time to dive deeper into it then.

Enjoy!

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Almost missed it: Download the SharePoint 2013 Preview !

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Download Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Preview (Download here)

SharePoint Server 2013 Preview is designed to bring people together to get work done. Whether you’re using it to manage your enterprise content, make it easy for business end users to share ideas and information, or help developers build innovative new applications, SharePoint Server 2013’s improvements in scale, security, and flexibility have you covered.

Get started here!

The Product Key and the requirements are listed on the Get Started Page page.

Enjoy!

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Service Applications in SharePoint 2013

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Service Applications

The newly released training material on SharePoint 2013 is a goldmine of information (see privious post).
The slide deck consists of no less than 50 presentations on different topics. One of those are Service Applications, which ones will be there and what has changed…?

I will give you the quick answers here:

General architecture identical as in SharePoint 2010
Numerous new enhancements in platform level
New service applications to provide more enhanced functionalities

Office Web Apps is no longer a service application
Seperated into own product

Web Analytics is no longer service application
Analyses and reporting process incorporated to search service application

Service Applications with their own DBs:
App Management Service (new)
Business Data Connectivity
Managed Metadata Service
Search
Secure Store Service
Machine Translation Services (new)
State Service
Usage and Health Data Collection
User Profile Service Application
Word Automation Service
Access Services App databases (new) (2010 and 2013)

Deploying Service Applications
Deploying them seems to be identical to 2010, no better, no worse. If using the wizard they will all use the same app pool and same account, databases will have an ugly GUID atached to them…powershell will give you all the options to configure Service Applications as you wish, as you allready know.

Part from the changes with the removed Service Applications and the new ones, the list will be identical, all the Service Applications that we know and love, will be there…

Service applications	Description
Application Management Service (new)	Is responsible for storing and providing information concerning SP App licenses and permissions
SharePoint Translation Services (new)	Provides built-in machine translation capabilities on the SharePoint platform
Access Services 2010	Let’s users view, edit, and interact with Access 2010 databases in a Web browser.
Access Services	Let’s users view, edit, and interact with Access 2013 databases in a Web browser.
Business Data Connectivity service	Gives access to line-of-business data systems.
Excel Services Application	Let’s users view and interact withExcel 2010 files in a Web browser.
Managed Metadata service	Manages taxonomy hierarchies, keywords and social tagging infrastructure, and publish content types across site collections.
PerformancePoint Service Application	Provides the capabilities of PerformancePoint.
Search service	Crawls content, produces index partitions, and serves search queries.
Secure Store Service	Provides single sign-on authentication to access multiple applications or services.
State service	Provides temporary storage of user session data for SharePoint Server components.
Usage and Health Data Collection service	Collects farm wide usage and health data, and provides the ability to view various usage and health reports.
User Profile service	Adds support for My Sites, profile pages, social tagging and other social computing features.
Visio Graphics Service	Lets users view and refresh published Visio 2010 diagrams in a Web browser.
Word Automation Services	Performs automated bulk document conversions.
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service	Provides multi-tenant functionality for service applications. Tracks subscription IDs and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode. Deployed through Windows PowerShell only.
(Moved into Search)Web Analytics service	Provides Web service interfaces.

Add-on/Installable Service Applications

Service application	Description
Office Web Apps services	Removed from SharePoint 2013, will be its own application.
Microsoft Project Server 2010	No information, assuming it will still be there.

Enjoy!

Regards

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