This is the second blog in a series about ECTS. The first blog provides information about how to apply ECTS to an existing/working environment, here I have a list of issues experienced during that installation.

I recently performed an install of Microsoft's External Collaboration Toolkit for SharePoint (ECTS) for a DoD organization, and part of that kept a pretty detailed list of issues I had while performing the install. These may be of interest to others who are looking at implementing ECTS.

1. Documentation/Installation
   1. Documentation addresses creating the internal and external sites from scratch. A much more likely situation is an existing site will be extended to leverage ECTS.
      1. Extending an existing site probably requires updating the host headers for both the internal and external web applications.
      2. Extending an existing site may result in an IIS port conflict because the existing site may already be running on port 443. Therefore the existing web application may need to be configured to stop listening on the SSL port.
   2. The installation application often results in errors when attempting to install and activate the ECTS Solutions in MOSS. It appears that this occurs because the installer script is attempting to activate features before the Solution has completed deployment or multiple features are attempting to activate at the same time. The user often has to go into Central Admin to ensure the Solutions are deployed and are activated as well as the site collection to activate the webpart features.
   3. The uninstall script seldom works, this is often due to multiple features being deactivated at once. Once the features error during deactivation the remaining uninstall task, like Solution retraction, fail. The user is then required to manually deactivate all the features and remove the solutions in Central Admin.

         

2. ECTS Bugs
   1. When a user's password is reset using the ECTS User Management webpart no e-mail is sent with the new password, admin's have to send the password in an e-mail to the user.
   2. When a user is enabled using the ECTS Account Approval or ECTS User Management webparts they still lack access to the site until someone actually adds them to one of the SharePoint groups through the Add External User option under the People/Groups New menu. If the user attempts to log into the site before being granted this access they will be denied entry and will not be able to edit their ADAM account information.
   3. When an External User Account Request is made there is no e-mail sent to anyone in the SharePoint Group that is authorize ECTS accounts. This means the admin's must, from time to time, check the ECTS Account Request webpart to see if there are any requests.
   4. When an ECTS account is approved or denied the user does not receive an e-mail notifying them of their account approval/denial and password information.

         

3. Misc.
   1. The ECTS Login page does not use the site's master page unlike the other ECTS Application Pages.
   2. The reply address and SMTP information are stored in the web.config file, however ECTS also requires them to be configured using the ECTS Management webpart.
   3. ECTS only allows internal users to request accounts for external users.
   4. Internal and External sites must run on two different URL's therefore an internal user who is mobile must know when to use the internal or external URL's.
   5. Internal users must have an Internal and External login if they have no way of accessing the Internal site from a remote location.

         

   If you are looking into installing ECTS my previous blog may be helpful.