Stsadm: Taking Control of SharePoint Administration

A partial list of documented properties is available at office.microsoft.com/en-us/winsharepointadmin/HA011608451033.aspx.

There are many SharePoint timer jobs that you can view using the Operations tab from SharePoint Central Administration. You can also see the frequency of each job, but Central Administration provides no way to change this frequency or the time of day that the timer job runs. As I mentioned earlier, some jobs are controlled via a configurable property, but others are controlled via their own operation. For example, there are operations for controlling when the information management expiration policy runs (setpolicyschedule) and when profile synchronization occurs (setsearchandprocessschedule). These operations take a “recurrence string” as a parameter (e.g., “every 10 minutes between 0 and 59” or “daily at 13:00”). Therefore, if you need to kick off a task immediately, you use Stsadm to tweak its schedule. To find out what the syntax for using these recurrence strings are, look at the Help for setcontentdeploymentjobschedule.

Using Stsadm to Automate Tasks
Because Stsadm is a simple command-line utility, you can further simplify its use by wrapping it in a script or command file that can take parameters. You can also use the Windows Task Scheduler to schedule common tasks you perform with Stsadm. For example, you can schedule regular backups of particular site collections by placing the appropriate backup operations in a command file and scheduling the file to run at the appropriate times.

You can also leverage the output from some Stsadm operations. A simple example here is the enumsites operation that I mentioned earlier and its companion operation enumsubwebs. These output XML files are convenient fodder for many Web Parts. Therefore, if you schedule a task that enumerates your sites and directs the output of that task to a central file, you can use that file as input to a Web Part to display your up-to-date list of sites in a Web Part page.

Leverage the Command-Line to Extend SharePoint’s Web-Based Management
Stsadm is the SharePoint administrator’s friend. Whether you want to automate standard operations or perform tasks that are not so common, you can turn to Stsadm. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to fire up that command prompt and see what Stsadm can do for you.