SharePoint

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.'