SharePoint: Best Practices Analyser for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System.

The Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as MS SQL, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive ‘best practice’ rules are applied to the topology.

Supported Operating Systems:

Windows Server 2003

This download works with the following programs:

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• Microsoft Office Project 2007
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Fan of BPA Series 

I am a fan of the Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer series. Whether you are looking to give your system a health check or want the next move after a fresh installed download and run the appropriate analyzer for your OS or application.

However this is a command line tool with some limitations:

1. download and install tool to a folder
2. run the command
   sharepointbpa.exe -cmd analyze -substitutions SERVER_NAME sharepointservername
3. The report sharepointbpa.report.htm will be created.

What goes wrong:

The report sharepointbpa.report.htm contains the following

WARNING: No messages in file. Analysis may not have been run.

The reason behind this is that the tool only works with the default instance on the SQL server.

You can probably hack the scripts and provide the correct SQL server instance and port but I do not have the time so here is a starting point. Understanding the Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System Rule File.

Possible Solution:

You are a “Total Muppet” like me and have not installed SharePoint Services 3.0 yet. I am running SBS 2003 R2 with SharePoint Services 2.0.

Fixed … though its was never broken:

After installing and configuring Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as per my blog SBS 2003- Installing SharePoint Services 3.0 the Best Practices Analyzer worked.

Further Information:

Microsoft Download: Microsoft Best Practices Analyzer for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Microsoft Download: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 2

Microsoft Download: Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0 x86