Will 3rd party tools like Feature Admin void Microsoft technical support?

Question

Based on my research, it seems like the Microsoft tools would be supported, and the others MAY or may not be supported depending on what exactly they do and how they are written. Does anyone know? Is there a list somewhere of approved/supported 3rd party tools?

In my test environment I have used:

Feature Admin Tool

SharePoint Manager 2010

From Microsoft:

SharePoint Administration Toolkit

WssAnalyzeFeatures

WssRemoveFeatureFromSite

Summarized from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841057:

If an unsupported database modification is discovered during a support call....

The database must be restored to an unmodified state before Microsoft SharePoint Support can provide any data migration assistance.

Exceptions to the prohibition against database modifications are made for specific usage scenarios:

• Operations that are initiated from the SharePoint administrative user interface
• SharePoint specific tools and utilities that are provided directly by Microsoft (for example, Ststadm.exe)
• Changes that are made programmatically through the SharePoint Object Model and that are in compliance with the SharePoint SDK documentation
• Activities that are in compliance with the SharePoint Protocols documentation

I downloaded the SharePoint Protocols, its about 300 PDFs mostly unrelated to my question.

Here's what I don't want to have happen:

SharePoint breaks, I call Microsoft, then they say they can't help because I used a third party tool.

Answer 1

Yes, Microsoft will support a farm, if changes and usage is following Microsoft best practices and recommendations.

E.g. making manual changes in the database is not supported. If a tool does changes in the SQL DB directly, you might lose support. If changes are made via SharePoint Object Model, or via STSADM commands it's ok.

the feature admin from http://featureadmin.codeplex.com is completely working via SharePoint Object Model and therefore following Microsoft Best Practice, so no support is lost when using it.

Kind Regards,

e-a-s-y

Answer 2

In my experience, Microsoft will support SharePoint as long as any third party utilities you have use the built-in API/web services to interact with SharePoint. Anything that opens the database directly and modifies content that way will violate support and will require you to restore to a 'known good' backup of the database before Microsoft will even talk to you.