Content Deployment in SharePoint

If you need to move content from one environment to another - say from development to test or from intranet to extranet, you can utilize built-in capacity of SharePoint 2007. With content deployment, you can configure deployment jobs to copy content from one farm to another farm. As content can be deployed from site collection to site collection, you can even utilize it within same farm.

You have option to deploy full site or only changed site (to save time and bandwidth). You will also have flexibility in scheduling. If you are migrating to Extranet/Internet, you will also need to enable "Require Encryption" on destination farm.

For detailed description of deployment technology with SharePoint 20007, check out Microsoft SharePoint team's blog.

Setting up deployment jobs is pretty straight forward steps (Content Deployment - step by step tutorial by Jackie Bodine ), but here are some checklists to save you time from troubleshooting. You will be able to see messages on central Admin Content Deployment Paths and Jobs page, in Windows Application Event logs and SPTrace log).

Checklist:

• Make sure destination farm is accepting incoming content deployment jobs (CA - Operations - Content Deployment Settings )
• If no SSL used, disable secure connection (CA - Operations - Content Deployment Settings - Connection security - Do not require encryption)
• Add permissions for timer job service identity on deployment folders (CA - Operations - Content Deployment Settings - Temporary Files - Path)
• Make sure that empty site collection exists on destination farm.
• Both farms must have on same hotfix levels.
• If there is any feature activated on source farm, it should also present on destination farm (Otherwise you will receive error with event ID 4958 :Publishing: Content deployment job failed. Error: 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: Could not find Feature xyz ...")
• Add any user needing quick deploy capability into "Quick Deploy Users" group - for site collection with Publishing resources feature enabled, there will be "Quick Deply" job - which can run every few minutes and can deploy contents from special list (which gets populated when site owner utilizes "Quick Deploy" from Page Editing toolbar (as long as they have quick deploy rights).

Also checkout blog by Stefan Gobner - who has very detailed description of inner workings of deployment. He has also listed requirements for deployment to work.

References:

• SharePoint Team blog on Content Deployment
• Content Deployment - step by step tutorial by Jackie Bodine