What products are supported for SharePoint 2007?

Only ChatPoint is supported for SharePoint 2007. Note that ChatPoint for 2007 does not support the full set of functionality and integration as it does in SharePoint 2010.

The installer wizard cannot be used to install ChatPoint for 2007 as the installer wizard was designed for SharePoint 2010. 2007 specific batch scripts are provided to install in SharePoint 2007 environments.

Does ChatPoint integrate with Office Communications Server or Lync Server?

Yes. It is possible to integrate ChatPoint with your OCS or Lync server using the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway. The gateway allows you to add users from your OCS/Lync servers to your roster in ChatPoint through federation of the XMPP servers.

Note that this still requires the installation of an XMPP server which supports BOSH communications such as Openfire to support the browser based communications with the server.

Do I need to create a sub-site for TeamPoint or TeamPoint Dashboards?

No, you do not need to create a new sub-site for TeamPoint and TeamPoint Dashboards. Both products can install into existing site collections and sub-sites.

All three products are installed as features which can be activated at the site level (the content type and configuration are activated at the site collection level).

Installing and uninstalling are “non-destructive” in that non-TeamPoint artifacts are not touched in the install or uninstall process; your existing lists, content types, and document libraries are not modified.

Does TeamPoint create sub-sites?

No. TeamPoint does not create additional sub-sites.

TeamPoint works by creating additional document libraries and custom lists within the site that the feature is activate at.

You can activate the features at any level in your site collection as your team needs. You can also activate the features at multiple levels. TeamPoint will only create lists and libraries at the level that it’s used.

Is forms-based authentication supported?

Yes, FBA and all claims-based modes are supported when using Openfire as your XMPP server. We provide a custom authentication module which is able to accept the claims token from SharePoint and authenticate the user automatically. This feature is available as of the “Gela” release and is the preferred mechanism for implementing single-sign-on.

FBA and claims-based modes are the preferred method of establishing single sign-on.

My organization requires message auditing. Is this supported?

Yes. If you are using Openfire, it is supported out-of-the-box through the Openfire configuration. All messages are logged to file in text files.

At this time, thinktastic does not offer an integrated solution for searching the log files.

TeamPoint additionally logs messages against the chat room in the server database (the chat room is configured to log messages).

Can I limit the chat contacts by site?

No. ChatPoint contact rosters are managed across your authentication provider. So users can add any user that is available in the Active Directory.

If you need to limit contact to within specific sites or working groups, consider using TeamPoint instead.

I’m getting authentication errors and cannot connect at all.

This may happen if you are using Kerberos and you users belong to a large number of groups as it causes the authentication cookie to become very large.

If you are using Openfire, we can provide a custom build that fixes this issue and allows for larger HTTP request headers to be sent to the Openfire Jetty server.

I’m being prompted for credentials.

All three products will, by default, prompt for credentials if you do not have the login assistant installed.

Because the XMPP server authentication is a separate step outside of the browser authentication step, the login assistant will automatically attempt an NTLM handshake to authenticate against the server.

In some cases, this may fail if there is an existing session or if there is a session conflict. Typically, this can be resolved by performing a full refresh (CTRL+F5) and in some cases, an administrator may need to actively close an existing session. Usually, users can connect with a full refresh after a few minutes to allow the conflicting session to idle and die.

Where on my farm should I install my XMPP server?

We recommend that for evaluation systems, install it directly on one of your SharePoint front-ends as this should be sufficient for testing purposes.

For production deployments, consider installing it:

  • on a standalone application server if available
  • on a front-end server with the least load bias in a load balanced farm

Every deployment is different and considerations for load, cost, and infrastructure must be taken into account when designing the optimal architecture.

Why can’t I move tasks between Huddles in TeamPoint Dashboards?

At this time, the semantics of this action are not well defined and we are still exploring how to best support this feature as it involves either moving or copying a task from one list to another.

This raises issues of cascading updates, permissions, versioning, and so on. We are currently considering this use case and may include it in future releases of TeamPoint Dashboards.

I uninstalled TeamPoint and now I can’t access my Huddle libraries.

TeamPoint Huddle lists and libraries are created using custom SharePoint list templates. SharePoint will throw an error if you try to access lists defined against the templates if the templates are uninstalled.

We recommend that you copy out documents from the Huddle document libraries that you want to keep before uninstalling TeamPoint. However, you can always re-install the package (but don’t configure it) which will deploy the list templates and allow you to access the lists and libraries.

Can I customize the content types?

Yes! TeamPoint only requires the base fields included in the provided content types. Feel free to add more fields as your organization or usage scenario requires.

TeamPoint will not use these fields, but because all artifacts are stored in SharePoint, you can still use these fields in the default SharePoint interfaces.