SharePoint

Book Review: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Power User Cookbook

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:15:00 EST

This book is great for the SharePoint end user. I kind of think of it like the top 70 FAQs about SharePoint found all in one place. Although this book is a little out of context for the books I usually read about SharePoint, I was looking for a book to recommend to the user's of the SharePoint 2010 environments I working. I am currently upgrading a 2007 environment to 2010, so the users are going to need a good reference for common tasks. This book fits the bill. Each topic begins with a Getting Ready section that tells you which SharePoint version the task can be done on. It then has a How to do it section that explains how to accomplish the task at hand. This section not only contains written instructions but also usually includes detailed screenshots.

SharePoint 2010 Development with Visual Studio 2010 Expert Cookbook

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT

"Expert Cookbook" are the last two words in the title for a good reason. This book is for the advanced SharePoint developer. The book is a collection of small recipes that dig into some of the more advanced SharePoint 2010 programming topics. It does not mess around with introductions to topics, it just jumps right into the details of the solution. The book includes chapters on List and Event Receivers, Workflows, Advanced Workflows, List Definitions and Content Types, Web Parts, Web Services and REST, and Working with the Client Object Model. The author has made the code available for download. It is well organized and very usable, except for to old folders of code left in the upload. I just ignored them. You do need SharePoint 2010 on your Visual Studio 2010 development box.

Book Review: Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, & Planning

Tue, 17 May 2011 08:00:00 EDT

So I had all the technical how to books, and some of them covered some governance and planning, but I was left wanting more. I hoped this book would fill in the gaps and it did. The biggest problem I have run into with SharePoint is that there is not enough planning and governance surrounding the use of it. I have been in a lot of environments that started their SharePoint initiatives with a plan that was no more that “Hey why don’t we throw SharePoint up and see what it can do”. Suddenly those curious individuals are using it to share documents. The word slowly spreads that it is available and more users start using it.

Second Upgrade to Tool for Reverse Engineering SharePoint 2007/2010

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 13:00:00 EST

New features in this version include generating DGML diagrams that allow Root Sites to be put into groups, reports now include information on Services running on the Server and the Farm, user and group account information, and application pool information. The last version gave you the option to list the users on the sites, and flag sites that have not been updated for a while to show in RED. The user's emails are listed as well as their administration status. The DGML tool that creates diagrams for Visual Studio 2010 now ties all the site collects to the web application at the top level, or gives you the option of displaying the top level sites as groups. Sites older than the day selected will be shown in RED. All the site nodes in the DGML are clickable.

Enterprise Search Web Parts Are Still Sealed

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:20:00 EST

I am pretty passionate about Enterprise Search and with MOSS 2007 I saw customers really struggle because wildcard search was not offered out of the box and most of the web parts in Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebParts are sealed. Luckily, the most important one CoreResultsWebPart was in fact not sealed and I was able to hack together a wildcard search solution by inheriting it and using some hacky reflection.

Troubleshooting Sandboxed Solutions in SharePoint 2010

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST

I have a talk coming up on Code Access Security at SharePoint Saturday Kansas City next month so I have been investigating sandboxed solutions quite a bit. After all, sandboxed solutions are just another flavor of using CAS with some additional things thrown in. However, after I got my SharePoint server installed and configured, I found that sandboxed solutions were not working. When I configured my solution to use the sandbox and tried to deploy it, I got an error stating that the Windows SharePoint Services UserCode Host v4 was disabled. I found that to be odd, so I decided to do some looking around. I ended up in the Windows Services MMC snapin and found that the service called Windows SharePoint Services UserCode Host v4 was in fact set to disabled. I changed this to automatic and started the service up. I tried to deploy again, but unfortunately thing still weren’t working. Here is the error I got this time.

Error occurred in deployment step 'Activate Features': This feature cannot be activated at this time. The contents of the feature's solution requires the Solution Sandbox service to be running.

This one took a little bit more digging, but I ended up going to Central Administration and looking at the Services on Server page. I thought what I needed would be under Service Applications, but that was not the case. I took a look at Services on Server and quickly discovered that the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation User Code Service had not been started. I started the service and then I tried to deploy again and the errors went away and my sandboxed web part worked as expected. I’m not sure why neither of these started. It could be because I don’t have enough memory allocated to the virtual machine or maybe it’s always disabled by default. Anyhow, be sure and check these two things before you try to work in the sandbox.

UPDATE: @MSwannMSFT confirmed for me that this is by design. It’s disabled for performance and security since it spins up three new processes.

Solution Dependencies in SharePoint 2010

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:45:00 EDT

With MOSS 2007, I often got asked what order do I install these solution packages in. Oftentimes, it was critical that they get installed in a particular order. With features, we have had the ability to set dependencies, but we really didn’t have anything like that for solution packages. Well, I haven’t heard people talking about this new feature yet, but we can in fact set solution dependencies in the manifest.xml file.

Turning on the Developer Dashboard in SharePoint 2010

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:00:00 EDT

The developer dashboard is a great new feature that developers can use to aid them in tuning performance on a page. This new functionality adds information to the bottom of any page in SharePoint that displays performance information and what SQL queries were executed to display the page. To my knowledge, there is currently no way in the UI to turn this on, so you can do this with a quick x64 console application. This is soon to become a quite popular code snippet I am sure.

Quick Overview of Master Pages in SharePoint 2010

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:45:00 EDT

SharePoint 2010 brings a few new master pages that you may want to know about. There are additional master pages to accommodate both the old and new versions of UI. There are also some simplified pages to take note in. The first master page we will talk about is v4.master. This is the default team site master page used with version 4 (obviously) of the UI. This will be the master page you typically use. It provides the ribbon bar and all of the other new visual UI changes such as the site actions menu on the left side.

Deploying a Data Connections Library using a Feature

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:54:00 EDT

If you’re like me at all, you like to see compete examples of how to do things. Yes, I can usually read something and apply what I already know, but sometimes, it is nice to see a fully working example of something, before you try something on your own. Today’s example is how to deploy a data connections library using a feature. I already posted how to deploy a .UDCX file to a data connection library so I thought this post would go well with it. Our example starts with a standard feature.xml file.

<Feature xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"

Id="{EF18A3A1-8D0D-40a9-8BEF-B23ADE36889D}"

Scope="Site"

Hidden="False"

Title="My Data Connection Library"

Description="This deploys a data connection library">

<ElementManifests>

<ElementManifest Location="Elements.xml" />

</ElementManifests>

</Feature>

Now we need to build our elements.xml file. There are two things we need to know to deploy a SharePoint list in this case. The list template id and the feature that the deployed the list template. The first thing we need to know is the List Template Type for the data connections library. We can figure that out by looking at the type attribute in the List element of the SDK. Looking at that, we determine the List Template Type is 130.

We now need to figure out the feature id. There is a number of ways to do this (and maybe it is even documented somewhere), but I went with a more brute force approach. I knew that the Records Center site template provisioned a data connection library, so I went to the SiteTemplates folder in the 12 hive and found the SPSREPORTCENTER folder. Looking at the onet.xml file inside, I found the line I needed.

<List Title="$Resources:spscore,ReportCenterOnet_DataConnectionsListInstanceName" FeatureId="00BFEA71-DBD7-4F72-B8CB-DA7AC0440130" Description="$Resources:spscore,ReportCenterOnet_DataConnectionsListInstanceDescription" Url="Data Connections" Type="130" />

There is the FeatureId and the Type again. Note the FeatureId of 00BFEA71-DBD7-4F72-B8CB-DA7AC0440130. For some reason, they never use brackets with the GUID on the Id here. Not sure if that is required or not. We can pretty much use this line in our elements file, but we do need to make some changes, since elements.xml needs a ListInstance element instead of a List element. Here is what our ListInstance element looks like.

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

<ListInstance FeatureId="00BFEA71-DBD7-4F72-B8CB-DA7AC0440130" Id="{7C6924D1-5704-4a6f-9C6C-04902A312252}" TemplateType="130" DocumentTemplate="130" Title="Data Connections" Url="DataConnections" OnQuickLaunch="FALSE" Description="My Data Connection Library." />

</Elements>

As you can see it’s pretty similar. Be sure and give it a unique Id. You can customize the Url to your liking. One thing I will point out is that you should not set RootWebOnly to true on this list. If you do, you will get an Object Reference not found error and the list will not deploy. Copy your feature files out to your 12 hive. Then install and activate your feature. You should have a data connections library at the URL you specify. I will point out that the library won’t show up in the Lists on your site, nor will there be any navigation to it, but it will be there. I hope this quick tip today helps you.

All Roads Lead to SharePoint

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:45:00 EDT

Corporate IT organizations have deployed numerous platforms over the years to enable users to collaborate on and share unstructured documents, files, and other data. File shares, document management systems, e-mail servers, Web servers – chances are that most of these are still in use in your company. New user requirements and technical capabilities have driven this evolution, and the result is a scattered variety of platforms that have become unwieldy and expensive to manage.

SharePoint Recovery

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:45:00 EDT

How many times have you been working on a document, making a system change or trying to code a late-breaking change only to have it all go wrong. We've all had that sinking feeling where we have kicked off a series of events only to wish we could roll back time and make it undo itself. Unfortunately for all of us these things happen and it seems that the first thought that crosses our minds is 'Time to polish off the old resume.'