In my last post, I introduced sparklines and their applications. Today, let’s see on an example how to build simple bar graphs in a SharePoint list.

The scenario
In my example, I am tracking customer support calls over time. For each product or service, I want to monitor:
- the number of calls (too many support calls will kill my margins).
- the  trend: call numbers should decline, as I address initial issues and improve the Quality of my product/service.

While the above table contains all the data I need, it is not easy to read. By including sparklines next to the numbers, I’ll be able to visualize both the level and the trend, for each item (cf. first screenshot).
Ideally, a visual signal (for example a change in color) would alert me when I pass a certain threshold, but we’ll leave this for another day.

For a homemade solution, the easiest type to build is a bar graph. With more advanced tools, like the jQuery sparkline plugin, I could also opt for a line graph or a discrete chart, as shown in this screenshot.

The method to render the graphs is – once again – the HTML calculated column:
1/ Use a calculated column to build a HTML string that describes the bar graph
2/ Apply the “Text to HTML” script that will change the HTML string into actual HTML.

If you haven’t used the “HTML calculated column” method yet, you’ll need to learn it first (it’s really worth it if you are interested in visualization solutions). For the latest information on the HTML calculated column, start with this post.

If you are already familiar with this method, you’ll find below the formulas needed to render the bar graphs. For a first pass, feel free to skip the tedious explanations and simply copy/paste the formulas for the HTMLstring and BarGraph columns.

Single bar

Let’s start with a single bar for January. Once we get that, we’ll just replicate it for each month.

To adjust the graph size, I need to know the maximum value for my table data. For this, I am adding to my list a column, called Max (see first screenshot). In my example, I have chosen a fixed value of 2000 for Max, but I could also have entered a formula based on the content of other columns.

I can now:
- calculate the height of my bar: 20*Jan/Max pixels (the maximum height will be 20 px).
- create my HTML element, a green bar with the appropriate height:

="<b style='display:inline-block;background-color:chartreuse;margin-right:1px;width:4px;font-size:0px;height:"&(20*Jan/Max)&"px;' title='"&Jan&"'></b>"

Note: the tag name (here a “b” tag) doesn’t really matter as long as I can assign a background color.

Multiple bars

In theory, we would just need to repeat the above formula 12 times to get the chart for the whole year. Except that we hit a road block here: the complete formula will have a length of 12×150 characters, plus a wrapping tag. That’s far too much for a calculated column, which will “only” accept 1000 characters.

As all bars follow the same pattern, I’ll use the following trick: store the recurring string in a separate calculated column, that I’ll call HTMLstring:

="</b><b style='display:inline-block;background-color:chartreuse;margin-right:1px;width:4px;font-size:1px;height:"

 I can now use HTMLstring to write my complete formula for the BarGraph column:

="<span style='white-space:nowrap;'><b style='display:inline-block;height:20px;'>"&HTMLstring&(Jan*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Jan&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Feb*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Feb&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Mar*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Mar&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Apr*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Apr&"'>"&HTMLstring&(May*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&May&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Jun*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Jun&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Jul*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Jul&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Aug*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Aug&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Sep*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Sep&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Oct*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Oct&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Nov*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Nov&"'>"&HTMLstring&(Dec*20/Max)&"px;' title='"&Dec&"'></b></span>"

The solution described in this post gives a nice result, you’ll notice that I have even included a hover effect that allows to read the values directly on the sparklines. However, there are a couple limitations. First, we need to build each graph by hand. Then, with those monster formulas, we quickly reach SharePoint’s limits - 1000 characters for the formula, 2000 characters for the calculated field. For the record, my above example consumes 665 characters for the formula, and ~1700 characters for the calculated field. Note that I chose on purpose very short column names for the months, to shorten my formula. This is also the reason why I chose “b” tags.

In Wednesday’s live online workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to practice this method. We’ll also review other business scenarii, and learn other techniques allowing to build more advanced inline charts, for example using the jQuery sparklines plugin or the Google charts. To give you an idea of the result, check out these screenshots from Mark Miller.

The root cause of this error is that the Features table in the content database has an entry with the given GUID, but the Objects table in the Config database does NOT have a corresponding object with that ID. 

This gets caused by the following scenario: a solution with a feature gets deployed and activated to a site. The solution gets retracted without first deactivating the feature at the site level.  So, the site has an orphaned entry.

You can resolve this by running the stsadm -o deactivatefeature -id [guid from log] -url [each site it was activated on] -force.

As a Senior Consultant, I often serve in the role(s) of Business Analyst and Project Manager.  These roles are frequently involved in the exercise of Package Evaluation and Selection.  This process involves collecting the business requirements for the problem at hand, reviewing available solutions, and then scoring their ability to satisfy the business requirements.  A valuable resource in this activity is the opinion/recommendation of independent third parties (such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC).  Because these companies spend considerable resources on keeping up with the latest solutions available, and look at many packages from several vendors, they charge a considerable amount for their results.

Since I specialize in the use of SharePoint, I always keep my eyes open for documentation that helps support the business case for SharePoint.  Whether you are currently in the process of creating a business case for a solution, or you have already made your selection and are in the process of implementing your solution, I think you will want to review/print/download the following research, to add to your toolbox and support your decision making process.

The links below contain the Title, Date and source of information, along with a brief summary.  In addition to these summary pieces of information about the report, there are direct links, each to the actual research itself.  Of course one link allows you to purchase the information (for as much as $2,000.00), whereas the other link takes you directly to the report, FREE of any charges.  Why would these reports be offered for free?  Vendors that are listed in the report pay the fees for reprints to be available free of charge and have secured all copyright and publishing privileges with the research firms to include the reports available for all audiences.  

NOTE:  All reports were researched and funded by the analyst firms themselves.

As you can see by the dates of the articles, most have been published/updated within the past month and are therefore very relevant. 

So you decide, pay for all the research (make sure you have $10,819.00) or access for FREE!  I know you’ll make the right decision …

Sharepoint wird von Firmen und Organisationen meist nur für interne Benutzer im Intranet genutzt. Mitarbeiter sind dabei auch als Mitglieder im Sharepoint Portal registriert und haben Zugriff auf Inhalte und Funktionen für die sie zugelassen sind. Anfänger machen dabei meist den Fehler dass sie sehr viele Websites und Arbeitsbereiche  anlegen und die Zulassung individuell regeln. In kürzester Zeit entsteht dabei ein Verhau von Sicherheitszonen, deren Organisation den Benutzern kaum mehr vermittelt werden kann. Das führt zu Frust bei den Benutzern auch wenn Benutzer in Sharepoint die Teilnahme zu verschiedenen Websites des Sharepointportals individuell beantragen können. Grundsätzlich sollte man einige wenige Gruppen (< 10) für Benutzer bilden und die Berechtigungen immer an die Gruppen und nicht an einzelne Teilnehmer vergeben.   Es empfiehlt sich ebenfalls die Zahl der Websites möglichst zu begrenzen. Es empfiehlt sich, in einer allgemein zugänglichen Übersichts -/Organisations Websites die Organisation des Sharepoint Portals mit Workspaces, Gruppen und Berechtigungen zu dokumentieren, damit Portalmitglieder wissen wo Informationen zu finden sind und welche Zugangsberechtigung vergeben werden.In Sharepoint kann man auch Berechtigungen u.a. für Listen und Dokumentenbibliotheken indivuell vergeben. Das sollte man aber auf ein absolutes Minimum begrenzen z.B. für Basisdaten, die im gesamten Portal verwendet werden.

Leider gibt es in Sharepoint keine Funktion, die es einem Teilnehmer erlaubt zu prüfen, welchen Gruppen er angehört. Hier hilft nur experimentelle Datenverarbeitung um herauszufinden für welche Bereiche im Portal und für welche Funktion man zugelassen ist. Man kann natürlich auch den Administrator fragen – aber auch für diesen steht keine vernünftige Funktion zur Verfügung und die Begeisterung des Administrators wird sich bei vielen Anfragen wohl in Grenzen halten..

Im Sharepoint ist es sehr einfach möglich, Anonymen Benutzern (im Internet) Zugriff als Leser oder Teilnehmer (kann Daten eingeben) auf Websites zu geben und kann damit die interne Organisation auf Kunden und Partner ausdehnen – das spart wirklich viel Arbeit und Geld wenn die Benutzer wissen wie man damit umgeht. Voraussetzung ist dabei aber immer, dass der Sharepoint Server in einer professinellen Netzwerkumgebung betrieben wird, damit der Zugriff von Externen auf die Firmendaten verhindert wird. Viele kleiner Firmen sind da aber überfordert. Eine recht elegante Lösung hierfür ist es, einen Sharepoint Server bei einem externen Service Provider zu nutzen. Man muss dann zwar die für die Öffentlichkeit oder externe Partner vorgesehene Daten vom internen Sharepoint Server auf den externen Sharepoint Server verschieben, hat dann aber eine hohe Sicherheit, dass interne Daten nicht versehentlich auf dem externen Server landen. Ich empfehle ein ähnliches Vorgehen auch bei Intra/Extra Sharepoint Servern. Mitarbeiter, die für die Freigabe von Daten zuständig sind, bekommen einen zweiten User ID für die externen Workspaces. Damit wird eine versehentliche Freigabe von internen Daten verhindert. Zur Erleichterung der Freigabe kann man in Sharepoint ja einen Workflow einrichten.

Ich halte eine solche recht umständliche Organisation bei Sharepoint für notwendig, da die Sicherheitsstruktur und die Vergabe von Rechten für die Benutzer nicht einsichtig sind und deshalb sehr schnell zu Problemen beim Datenschutz führen. Regelmäßig sollte die Sicherheitsinfrastruktur des Sharepoint Servers aber auch die Berechtigungen der Admistratoren und ihre Aktionen überprüft werden. Sharepoint bietet hierfür eine Reihe von Logging. und Berichtsfunktionen.

Task

You are trying to recover a subset of lost/corrupted SharePoint data from a SQL Database backup and import it back into a Farm.

N.B. This procedure requires a second Farm to provide temporary access to the backup copy.

Tip

Ensure the second (staging) Farm matches the SharePoint version of the originating Farm. If there is a version mismatch, the addContentDB STSADM command will more than likely succeed without errors, however, browsing to any content throws 404 errors. Additionally, if you navigate to Applications Settings->Content Databases in Central Admin, the number of sites listed for your databases will be 0.

Example

A user had synced a Discussion Board from SharePoint in Outlook 2007 and mistakenly thought deleting an item in Outlook didn’t affect the corresponding item in SharePoint.
Subsequently, the user deleted all discussion posts in their Outlook client. Realizing the mistake, they attempted to restore the items from their recycle bin in SharePoint. This action usually works fine, however the restore process for discussion items has a bug, [as of MOSS 2007 Infra update], where the restored items loose any relationships they had with other posts, resulting in a flat view of all posts.

A restore of content from a backup was necessary in this case. The procedure is fairly straight forward:

1)      Get a copy of the content database and restore to a new, temporary, database.

2)      Attach the backup database to a different SharePoint farm.

1. You need a second farm as SharePoint won’t allow two content databases which contain duplicate Sites/GUIDS.
2. Ensure the secondary Farm matches the SharePoint version of the originating Farm. The version is display under Operations->Servers in Farm.
3. To Attach, run the STSADM command:

stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://moss -databasename MOSS_Content -databaseserver SQLServerName

3)      Export the content. In this example, a ‘save list as template’ was sufficient.

For details on the upcoming Sparklines online workshop, see the end of this article, or click here.

Edward Tufte, who coined the term “sparklines”, describes them as “data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics.”
While traditional charts aggregate information from a full list, and are set off the flow of text, a sparkline pictures an individual item, and is directly embedded in the list.
You’ll find a good introduction to sparklines on this page from BonaVista.

The most common type is a line graph (hence the name), like in this screenshot from Google Finance. But sparklines come in various other shapes, as you can see from the (jQuery) samples on this page.

For example, you’ll use:
- line and bar graphs to track data against time
- progress bar or bullet chart to assess data against thresholds or objectives
- pies for categories (e.g. region, product line)
- discrete charts for status (project phases, game results)

Sparklines apply to many situations:
- enterprise dashboards (revenue, expenses, market share, all within one list)
- healthcare (patient stats)
- education (attendance rate, success rate)
- project management (issues resolution, costs)
- products/services dashboard (sales, support calls)
- transportation (passenger traffic, delayed flights)
- sports and games (won, lost or drawn)
- website stats: pageviews, visitors (cf. Google Analytics)
- baby name trends for a given year
- etc.

Sparklines can also be placed on supports other than lists, like maps, although I find this more difficult to read. Here is an example with the New-York subway.

How about SharePoint?

I already published last year a tutorial showing how to include Google sparklines in SharePoint lists. The Google approach is very convenient, but has its downside. First, in your corporate environment, you may not have access to the Google charts website. Then, even if you can access it, you may not like the idea that your data goes public, as you send it on the Internet to get the charts in return. If so, you’ll have to find an in-house solution to build your sparklines.
In a couple days, I’ll publish a tutorial to explain how to I created simple, homemade graphs for SharePoint lists (see screenshot below).

If you are wondering how I built the pie charts, check out this picture for a clue. More details after Thanksgiving…

To apply the tutorials, you’ll need to know about the “HTML Calculated Column”. For a refresher on this method, start with the post I published last week, and follow the links.

The above bar graphs and pies are basic solutions, but their great advantage is that they don’t have any external dependency.

If you are looking for more advanced charting capabilities, check out Gareth Watts’ sparklines plugin for jQuery. Back in March, I showed an example combining this plugin with SharePoint.

Inline charts are the central theme of our upcoming live online SharePoint workshop, scheduled on December 2nd at 1 pm (EST). Mark Miller and I will guide you through the steps to implement these customizations. Like for the other workshops, you’ll receive a SharePoint sandbox, where you can directly try out the solutions.

what is SharePoint?

Portal Collaboration Software.

what is the difference between SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services?

SharePoint Portal Server is the global portal offering features like global navigation and searching. Windows SharePoint Services is more content management based with document libraries and lists. You apply information to certain areas within your portal from Windows SharePoint Services or directly to portal areas.

what is a document library?

A document library is where you upload your core documents. They consist of a row and column view with links to the documents. When the document is updated so is the link on your site. You can also track metadata on your documents. Metadata would consist of document properties.

what is a meeting workspace?

A meeting workspace is a place to store information, attendees, and tasks related to a specific meeting.

what is a document workspace?

Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents.

what is a web part?

Web parts consist of xml queries to full SharePoint lists or document libraries. You can also develop your own web parts and web part pages.

what is the difference between a document library and a form library?

Document libraries consist of your core documents. An example would be a word document, excel, powerpoint, visio, pdf, etc… Form libraries consist of XML forms.

what is a web part zone?

Web part zones are what your web parts reside in and help categorize your web parts when designing a page.

how is security managed in SharePoint?

Security can be handled at the machine, domain, or sharepoint level.

how are web parts developed?

Web parts are developed in Visual Studio .Net. VS.Net offers many web part and page templates and can also be downloaded from the Microsoft site.

what is a site definition?

It’s a methods for providing prepackaged site and list content.

what is a template?

A template is a pre-defined set of functions or settings that can be used over time. There are many templates within SharePoint, Site Templates, Document Templates, Document Library and List Templates.

how do you install web parts?

Web Parts should be distributed as a .CAB (cabinet) file using the MSI Installer.

what is CAML?

CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language and is an XML-based language that is used in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to define sites and lists, including, for example, fields, views, or forms, but CAML is also used to define tables in the Windows SharePoint Services database during site provisioning.

what is a DWP?

The file extension of a web part.

what is the GAC?

Global Assembly Cache folder on the server hosting SharePoint. You place your assemblies there for web parts and services.

what are the differences between web part page gallery, site gallery, virtual server gallery and online gallery?

Web Part Page Gallery is the default gallery that comes installed with SharePoint. Site Gallery is specific to one site. Virtual Server gallery is specific to that virtual server and online gallery are downloadable web parts from Microsoft.

what is the difference between a site and a web?

The pages in a Web site generally cover one or more topics and are interconnected through hyperlinks. Most Web sites have a home page as their starting point. While a Web is simply a blank site with SharePoint functionality built in; meaning you have to create the site from the ground up.

What is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services? How is it related to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Windows SharePoint Services is the solution that enables you to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services — a key piece of the information worker infrastructure delivered in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 — provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office system and other desktop applications, and it serves as a platform for application development.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide additional capabilities including collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.

What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?

SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.

What is Microsoft Windows Services?

Microsoft Windows Services is the engine that allows administrators to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office System and other desktop applications, as well as serving as a plat form for application development. SharePoint sites provide communities for team

collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. The environment for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.

What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows Services?

Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services) deliver highly scalable collaboration solutions with flexible deployment and management tools. Windows SharePoint Services provides sites for team collaboration, while Share Point Portal Server connects these sites, people, and business processes—facilitating knowledge sharing and smart organizations. SharePoint Portal Server also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services by providing organizational and management tools for SharePoint sites, and by enabling teams to publish information to the entire organization.

Who is Office SharePoint Server 2007 designed for?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used by information workers, IT administrators, and application developers.

What are the main benefits of Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

* Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly integrated into familiar, everyday applications.

* Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partners across organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions.

* Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into this data can be personalized.

* Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment, management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks.

* Developers have a rich platform to build a new class of applications, called Office Business Applications, that combine powerful developer functionality with the flexibility and ease of deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Through the use of out-of-the-box application services, developers can build richer applications with less code.

What is the difference between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 have identical feature functionality. While the feature functionality is similar, the usage rights are different.

If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios.

What suites of the 2007 Microsoft Office system work with Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Office Outlook 2007 provides bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries, discussion groups, contacts, calendars, and tasks.

Microsoft Office Groove 2007, included as part of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, will enable bidirectional offline synchronization with SharePoint document libraries.

Features such as the document panel and the ability to publish to Excel Services will only be enabled when using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007or Office Enterprise 2007.

Excel Services will only work with documents saved in the new Office Excel 2007 file format (XLSX).

How do I invite users to join a Windows SharePoint Services Site? Is the site secure?

SharePoint-based Web sites can be password-protected to restrict access to registered users, who are invited to join via e-mail. In addition, the site administrator can restrict certain members’ roles by assigning different permission levels to view post and edit.

Can I post any kind of document?

You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePoint Services site.

Can I download information directly from a SharePoint site to a personal digital assistant (PDA)?

No you cannot. However, you can exchange contact information lists with Microsoft Outlook.

How long does it take to set up the initial team Web site?

It only takes a few minutes to create a complete Web site. Preformatted forms let you and your team members contribute to the site by filling out lists. Standard forms include announcements, events, contacts, tasks, surveys, discussions and links.

Can I create custom templates?

Yes you can. You can have templates for business plans, doctor’s office, lawyer’s office etc.

How can I make my site public?

By default, all sites are created private.If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in your business card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be:

http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com

Hence, please take special care to name your site.

These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace.

Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights

.

How do the sub sites work?

You can create a sub site for various categories. For example:

* Departments – finance, marketing, IT

* Products – electrical, mechanical, hydraulics

* Projects – Trey Research, Department of Transportation, FDA

* Team – Retention team, BPR team

* Clients – new clients, old clients

* Suppliers – Supplier 1, Supplier 2, Supplier 3

* Customers – Customer A, Customer B, Customer C

* Real estate – property A, property B

The URLs for each will be, for example:

*

http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/finance*

http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/marketingYou can keep track of permissions for each team separately so that access is restricted while

maintaining global access to the parent site.

How do I make my site non-restricted?

If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:

# Login as an administrator

# Click on site settings

# Click on Go to Site Administration

# Click on Manage anonymous access

# Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:

** Entire Web site

** Lists and libraries

** Nothing

Default condition is nothing; your site has restricted access. The default conditions allow you to create a secure site for your Web site.

Can I get domain name for my Web site?

Unfortunately, no. At this point, we don’t offer domain names for SharePoint sites. But very soon we will be making this available for all our SharePoint site customers. Please keep checking this page for further update on this. Meanwhile, we suggest you go ahead and set up your site and create content for it.

What are picture libraries?

Picture libraries allow you to access a photo album and view it as a slide show or thumbnails or a film strip. You can have separate folder for each event, category, etc

What are the advantages of a hosted SharePoint vs. one that is on an in-house server?

* No hardware investment, i.e. lower costs

* No software to download – ready to start from the word go

* No IT resources – Anyone who has used a Web program like Hotmail can use it

* Faster deployment

Can I ask users outside of my organization to participate in my Windows SharePoint Services site?

Yes. You can manage this process using the Administration Site Settings. Simply add users via their e-mail alias and assign permissions such as Reader or Contributor.

Are there any IT requirements or downloads required to set up my SharePoint site?

No. You do not need to download any code or plan for any IT support. Simply complete the on-line signup process and provide us your current and correct email address. Once you have successfully signed up and your site has been provisioned, we will send a confirmation to the email address you provided.

I am located outside of the United States. Are there any restrictions or requirements for accessing the Windows SharePoint Services?

No. There are no system or bandwidth limitations for international trial users. Additionally language packs have been installed which allow users to set up sub-webs in languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.

Are there any browser recommendations?

Yes. Microsoft recommends using the following browsers for viewing and editing Windows SharePoint Services sites: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.

What security levels are assigned to users?

Security levels are assigned by the administrator who is adding the user. There are four levels by default and additional levels can be composed as necessary.

* Reader – Has read-only access to the Web site.

* Contributor – Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.

* Web Designer – Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.

* Administrator – Has full control of the Web site.

How secure are Windows SharePoint Services sites hosted by Microsoft?

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technical security measures provide firewall protection, intrusion detection, and web-publishing rules. The Microsoft operation center team tests and deploys software updates in order to maintain the highest level of security and software reliability. Software hot-fixes and service packs are tested and deployed based on their priority and level of risk. Security related hot-fixes are rapidly deployed into the environment to address current threats. A comprehensive software validation activity ensures software stability through regression testing prior to deployment.

What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?

An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g.,

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on the Web, can only be accessed by people who are members of the network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator.

www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password.What is a workspace?

A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?

A user can be assigned one of the following roles

* Reader – Has read-only access to the Web site.

* Contributor – Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.

* Web Designer – Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.

* Administrator – Has full control of the Web site.

Can more than one person use the same login?

If the users sharing that login will have the same permissions and there is no fear of them sharing a password, then yes. Otherwise, this is discouraged.

How customizable is the user-to-user access?

User permissions apply to an entire Web, not to documents themselves. However, you can have additional sub webs that can optionally have their own permissions. Each user can be given any of four default roles. Additional roles can be defined by the administrator.

Can each user have access to their own calendar?

Yes there are two ways to do this,

* by creating a calendar for each user, or

* by creating a calendar with a view for each user

How many files can I upload?

There is no restriction in place except that any storage consumed beyond that provided by the base offering may have an additional monthly charge associated with them.

What types of files can I upload / post to the site?

The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq. Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.

Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?

SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source.

Can SharePoint be linked to a SQL database?

This is possible via a custom application, but it not natively supported by SharePoint or SQL Server.

Can I customize my Windows SharePoint Services site?

YES! Windows SharePoint Services makes updating sites and their content from the browser easier then ever.

SharePoint includes tools that let you create custom lists, calendars, page views, etc. You can apply a theme; add List, Survey and Document Library Web Parts to a page; create personal views; change logos; connect Web Parts and more.

To fully customize your site, you can use Microsoft FrontPage 2003. Specifically, you can use FrontPage themes and shared borders, and also use FrontPage to create photo galleries and top ten lists, utilize standard usage reports, and integrate automatic Web content.

Will Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 run on a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows?

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Office SharePoint Server 2007, Office Forms Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Search will support 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003.

How Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help us:

Manage content and streamline processes. Comprehensively manage and control unstructured content like Microsoft Office documents, Web pages, Portable Document Format file (PDF) files, and e-mail messages. Streamline business processes that are a drain on organizational productivity.

Improve business insight. Monitor your business, enable better-informed decisions, and respond proactively to business events.

Find and share information more simply. Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries.

Empower IT to make a strategic impact. Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms that have to be maintained by supporting all the intranet, extranet, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities can help improve organizational effectiveness by connecting people, processes, and information.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides these capabilities in an integrated server offering, so your organization doesn’t have to integrate fragmented technology solutions itself.

What are the features that the portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include?

The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience.

What are the advanced features of MOSS 2007?

* User Interface (UI) and navigation enhancements

* Document management enhancements

* The new Workflow engine

* Office 2007 Integration

* New Web Parts

* New Site-type templates

* Enhancements to List technology

* Web Content Management

* Business Data Catalog

* Search enhancements

* Report Center

* Records Management

* Business Intelligence and Excel Server

* Forms Server and InfoPath

* The “Features” feature

* Alternate authentication providers and Forms-based authentication

What are the features of the new Content management in Office SharePoint 2007?

The new and enhanced content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007 fall within three areas:

* Document management

* Records management

* Web content management

Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on the core document management functionality provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, including check in and check out, versioning, metadata, and role-based granular access controls. Organizations can use this functionality to deliver enhanced authoring, business document processing, Web content management and publishing, records management, policy management, and support for multilingual publishing.

Does a SharePoint Web site include search functionality?

Yes. SharePoint Team Services provides a powerful text-based search feature that helps you find documents and information fast.

Write the features of the search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007?

The search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been significantly enhanced by this release of SharePoint Products and Technologies. New features provide:

* A consistent and familiar search experience.

* Increased relevance of search results.

* New functions to search for people and expertise.

* Ability to index and search data in line-of-business applications and

* Improved manageability and extensibility.

What are the benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

* Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience.

* Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities.

* Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content.

* Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value.

* Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems.

* Connect people with information and expertise.

* Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries.

* Share business data without divulging sensitive information.

* Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location.

* Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

Will SharePoint Portal Server and Team Services ever merge?

The products will come together because they are both developed by the Office team.

What does partial trust mean the Web Part developer?

If an assembly is installed into the BIN directory, the code must be ensured that provides error handling in the event that required permissions are not available. Otherwise, unhandled security exceptions may cause the Web Part to fail and may affect page rendering on the page where the Web Part appears.

How can I raise the trust level for assemblies installed in the BIN directory?

Windows SharePoint Services can use any of the following three options from ASP.NET and the CLR to provide assemblies installed in the BIN directory with sufficient permissions. The following table outlines the implications and requirements for each option.

Option Pros Cons Increase the trust level for the entire virtual server. For more information, see “Setting the trust level for a virtual server” Easy to implement. In a development environment, increasing the trust level allows you to test an assembly with increased permissions while allowing you to recompile assemblies directly into the BIN directory without resetting IIS. This option is least secure. This option affects all assemblies used by the virtual server.

There is no guarantee the destination server has the required trust level. Therefore, Web Parts may not work once installed on the destination server.

Create a custom policy file for your assemblies. For more information, see “How do I create a custom policy file?” Recommended approach.

This option is most secure.

An assembly can operate with a unique policy that meets the minimum permission requirements for the assembly.

By creating a custom security policy, you can ensure the destination server can run your Web Parts.

Requires the most configuration of all three options.

Install your assemblies in the GAC

Easy to implement.

This grants Full trust to your assembly without affecting the trust level of assemblies installed in the BIN directory.

This option is less secure.

Assemblies installed in the GAC are available to all virtual servers and applications on a server running Windows SharePoint Services. This could represent a potential security risk as it potentially grants a higher level of permission to your assembly across a larger scope than necessary

In a development environment, you must reset IIS every time you recompile assemblies.

Licensing issues may arise due to the global availability of your assembly.

Does SharePoint work with NFS?

Yes and no. It can crawl documents on an NFS volume, but the sharepoint database or logs cannot be stored there.

How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?

Site Server has search capabilities but these are more advanced using SharePoint. SPS uses digital dashboard technology which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and showing them on dashboards (pages). SS doesn’t have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be SPS document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.

What would you like to see in the next version of SharePoint?

A few suggestions:

# SPS and STS on same machine

# Tree view of Categories and Folders

# General Discussion Web Part

# Personalization of Dashboards

# Role Customization

# Email to say WHY a document has been rejected for Approval

# More ways to customize the interface

# Backup and restore an individual Workspaces

# Filter for Visio

# Better way to track activity on SPS

Why Sharepoint is not a viable solution for enterprise wide deployments?

Document management does not scale beyond a single server, but scales great within a single server. For example, a quad Xeon machine with 4GB of RAM works great for a document management server that has about 900,000 – 1,000,000 document, but if you need to store 50,000,000 document and want to have them all in one single workspace then it does not scale at all. If you need a scenario like this, you need to plan your deployment right and it should scale for you, it just does not right out of the box.

If you are using your server as a portal and search server most for the most part it scales great. You can have many different servers crawl content sources and have separate servers searching and serving the content.

If you have < 750,000 documents per server and fewer than 4 content sources and fewer than 50,000 users, SPS should scale just fine for your needs with the proper planning.

What are the actual advantages of SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) over SharePoint Team Services (STS)?

SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint team Services (SPS) has a better search engine, and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.

How Does SharePoint work?

The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

SharePoint Skinner is a useful tool when you want to brand your SharePoint site.

http://www.elumenotion.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=94

Waiting for Microsoft to publish the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools, we have to use Visual Studio 2008 extensions, Version 1.2 to make SharePoint development easier.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7bf65b28-06e2-4e87-9bad-086e32185e68&displaylang=en

I am falling behind in my schedule, and several posts will only be published in the beginning of next year. However, I didn’t want to postpone this one as this is by far the number one request: how to split the tabs row, on my Easy Tabs solution.

This post explains how you can tweak the Easy Tabs v2 to achieve this. The option will be included in the next public release of the Easy Tabs Web Part.

To split the tabs row into two, follow these steps:

- include the Easy Tabs Web Part in your page. This is a Content Editor Web Part that contains a script.

- edit it, using the source editor of the CEWP.

- find this line of code:
activateTab(ActiveTab);

- replace it with:
var splitdiv = document.createElement(“div”);
var index = Math.floor(TabsTD.childNodes.length*0.5);
TabsTD.insertBefore(splitdiv,TabsTD.childNodes[index]);
activateTab(ActiveTab);

Basically, what we’re doing is simply add a “line break” in the middle of the tabs row (hence the 0.5 in the script).

You can of course add more than one line break, for example:
var splitdiv1 = document.createElement(“div”);
var index1 = Math.floor(TabsTD.childNodes.length*0.7);
TabsTD.insertBefore(splitdiv1,TabsTD.childNodes[index1]);
var splitdiv2 = document.createElement(“div”);
var index2 = Math.floor(TabsTD.childNodes.length*0.3);
TabsTD.insertBefore(splitdiv2,TabsTD.childNodes[index2]);
activateTab(ActiveTab);

Adjust the split values (0.3 and 0.7 in the above example) to your own needs.

Hope this helps!

Note: if you attended the Easy Tabs workshop, the split option is included in your Easy Tabs version (3.1). If you need more than two rows, here is a solution I have already posted on the Stump the Panel forum:

This is the current split function in v 3.1 (written in jQuery):
//split
if (ET001_split == “Yes”) {
var splitindex = Math.floor($(ET001_TabContainer).children().length*0.5-1);
$(ET001_TabContainer).children().eq(splitindex).after(“<div style=’font-size:0px;’></div>”);}

splitindex is the index at which the row will be split. If you have 16 tabs, then:
splitindex = 7 (indexing starts at 0 in JavaScript)

You can change this calculation to include more splits, for example:
//split
if (ET001_split == “Yes”) {
var splitindex = Math.floor($(ET001_TabContainer).children().length*0.3-1);
$(ET001_TabContainer).children().eq(splitindex*2).after(“<div style=’font-size:0px;’></div>”);
$(ET001_TabContainer).children().eq(splitindex).after(“<div style=’font-size:0px;’></div>”);}

Or you can force your own values:
//split
$(ET001_TabContainer).children().eq(5).after(“<div style=’font-size:0px;’></div>”);
$(ET001_TabContainer).children().eq(11).after(“<div style=’font-size:0px;’></div>”);

And if your users ask for too many rows…switch to a Quick Menu Web Part!

One other small update. I will be presenting at both SharePoint Saturday DC on December 5th and at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach on January 9th. Closer to the dates or when I have something worth sharing from my slides I will post it here as well.

If anyone from the Toronto area wants to come I will be driving down both times I think, and so I have open spots in my car if you want to come . Just email me harbrich <{at}> hotmail.com and we can work it out.

Take care,
Richard Harbridge

There are more than a bazillion posts now out there about SharePoint and Office 2010. Yes I counted them. So I will just reference this address and tell you to visit it and get the beta’s and have fun: http://www.microsoft.com/2010/en/.

A whole slew of things are going on that are also exciting. In Canada we have two new user groups for SharePoint.

There is the Mississauga SharePoint User Group (http://www.mspug.ca) and the Calgary SharePoint User Group (http://www.calspug.com).

Let’s not forget the other great SharePoint User Groups in Canada in fact here is a list of all of them!

1. Toronto SharePoint User Group – http://www.tspug.com/
2. Mississauga SharePoint User Group – http://www.mspug.ca/
3. Calgary SharePoint User Group – http://www.calspug.com/
4. Quebec SharePoint User Group – http://www.sharepointquebec.org/
5. Ottawa SharePoint User Group – http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepoint/worldwide/ca/ottawa/
6. Vancouver SharePoint User Group – http://www.vanspug.com/
7. Victoria SharePoint User Group – http://www.vsharepoint.com/
8. Winnipeg SharePoint User Group – http://www.sharepointgroups.org/wsug/

P.S – Microsoft please update your website here: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepointcanada/Community/Pages/default.aspx

Hope this helps someone and GET INVOLVED the SharePoint community is awesome!
Richard Harbridge

Today while at work I was working to clean up our intranet’s site directory in SharePoint.

I noticed that the Navigation menu in one of our sites was only listing 50 page links, even though there were plenty more pages within that particular site.

Since I knew there were more and that this was probably the result of some inherent limit, I dug around and found this post which explains how to modify your web.config. It basically boils down to adding a property DynamicChildLimit=”XX” to the following entries in the web.config file, where XX is 0 (no limit) or whatever numeric limit you decide. By default it is 50. (The web.config file to modify is usually located in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80, with the last portion being whatever port number MOSS is running from).

Set the limit to 0 to give yourself flexibility.

I am publishing today a minor update (v 2.1.1) of the TextToHTML script:
http://www.pathtosharepoint.com/HTMLcc/default.aspx
You’ll find the updated files under the “download” tab.

Why this update?

First, I am responding to comments from readers on the EndUserSharePoint.com blog. Several months ago, Jim Bob Howard posted an example using my method. His post offers detailed step by step explanations, and is very popular. However, a few readers reported issues with the calendar week/day views, which didn’t render the colors in some configurations. The code I posted today aims at fixing this issue.

I am also taking the opportunity of this update to propose two separate scripts:
- a light version, for both SharePoint 2003 and 2007, that applies the rendering to displayed items only.
- a full version, SP 2007 only, that applies the rendering to displayed and hidden items (grouped views, preview pane, etc.). Be aware that this version encapsulates some of the SharePoint OOTB code.

Tell me again, what is this “HTML Calculated Column”?

If you are an end user, the HTML Calculated Column is a simple yet powerful method that allows you to enhance your SharePoint sites. Even if you don’t plan to use it, you should at least be aware of its capabilities. It many situations, it can replace or even do better than other SharePoint options, like the Data View Web Part, Excel Services or the KPIs available in MOSS. To give you an idea of what you can accomplish, take a look at these examples:
- indicators for lists
- color coded calendars
- KPI roll-up
- some other applications…

For more explanations, read the original article.

To be fair, the method also has its flaws. It leverages the OOTB calculated column, but also relies on a client side script to render the HTML on the page. If you don’t feel comfortable with the “hack” part (TextToHTML script), note that you can avoid it if you use the method with a Data View Web Part, a Content Query Web Part (see above link: KPI roll-up), or an XML source (RSS, URL protocol, Web Service).

Why two different file formats, .dwp and .txt?

I am releasing the code in two formats: Web Part (.dwp) and text (.txt).

The .dwp file is for your convenience, if you only use the method sporadically, or for the first time. Simply import the Web Part to your page and you’re good to go. It is just a Content Editor Web Part containing the script.

If you plan to use the method on a regular basis, you should grab the text file instead: store the code in a central location and point to it. This will greatly facilitate future updates. For more details on this “best practice”, read this article.

A couple reminders

- Remember that the Text to HTML script must be placed below the lists you need to modify.

- The HTML you create via the calculated column must follow the HTML standards. For example for calendar views you’ll need to use inline elements (“span” for example), not block elements (like “div”).

What’s next?

I am currently working on version 3 of the script, which will make the method work on column filters, and headers of grouped views. Some people have already received intermediary versions, and I am waiting for their feedback.
I am also listening to feedback on the current version (big thanks to the readers who shared their findings!). For example, the use of the method in discussion lists, blogs or wikis will require more investigations.

How can I be informed of upcoming releases?

The preferred way is to subscribe to the RSS feeds, either for this blog or for my SharePoint downloads library. If you don’t use RSS, feel free to contact me, and I’ll send you an e-mail when v3 is out.

• In the Rich Text Editor, use the buttons on the toolbar for formatting, adding tables, hyperlinks, and images.
• Images: Upload your image to your site before attempting to add an image to the Web part. Once you’ve uploaded your image to the site, you can add the image to the Web part by clicking the Image button (or CTRL+SHIFT+G) and click browse to find your image on the site. Then, you can choose how to display the image within the text. For example, under Alignment in the Edit Image Properties dialog box, choose Left to place the image to the left side of the text (as in the screenshot shown above). To add space between the image and the text, add a number under Horizontal Spacing (pixels) or Vertical Spacing (pixels). I always start with 10.
• Styles: Want to use predefined styles? Don’t click the Styles button. Instead, click the paragraph mark button and select a style such as Bulleted List, Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on.
• So what is the Styles button for? I use it when I paste content into the Rich Text Editor from another source, and it doesn’t look quite right. So I click Remove Inline Styles under Styles to remove stray formatting brought in from the other source, and then reformat the text in the Rich Text Editor.
• Title (Chrome): When you’re using the Content Editor Web Part to display a heading, you might not want the Content Editor Web Part title to show. To remove it, expand the Appearance section in the tool pane, and under Chrome Type, select None or Border Only.
• Height and Width: You can specify a height and width for the Web part by expanding the Appearance section and clicking Yes under Height or Width, and then entering the size you want. You can choose to represent the size in Pixels, Inches, Points, and more.
• Editing the HTML: If something just doesn’t look right and you can’t change it using the Rich Text Editor, you may need to edit the HTML directly. You can do this by clicking the Edit HTML Source button in the Rich Text Editor, or by closing the Rich Text Editor and clicking the Source Editor button in the tool pane. In cases where there is a lot of HTML to work with, I copy the HTML out into Notepad where I can wrap the text and use the Find tool to find what I’m looking for, make my changes, and then copy it back into the Source Editor. For especially complex HTML, I will copy the code into SharePoint Designer and work with it there.

To enable content approval for a list or a document library in your Windows SharePoint Services site, follow these steps:

Connect to your Windows SharePoint Services site, and then locate the list or the document library that you want to enable content approval for.

In the Actions area, click Modify settings and columns.

In the General Settings area, click Change general settings.

On the List Settings page, in the Content Approval area, click Yes or No to enable or disable this feature.

Click OK.

(original post)

Anonymous access is configured during a web site creation  from SharePoint Administration site, which prepares the permissions in IIS.
However, access to lists and pages is restricted in many cases. So we must resort to stsadm command to leave ready access at least.
This is a behavior unwanted, but it was documented by Microsoft with the instructions of the case.
Obviously, the reason for this deficiency is that the product main target for use is under logon or authentication; which makes sense since its main consistent security of access and user management enviroment make it a too robust application to only create (or use their adapted features) with static sites with anonymous access.

(tiny)

Recently I have been focusing on creating some Silverlight charts using the ‘Silverlight Toolkit’ from Codeplex (see the link in the instructions below).

Once I had created my first chart I wondered how to get it to display in SharePoint. It seems there are a number of options for displaying a Silverlight application (xap) in a SharePoint web part.

I found lots of blog posts that described separate bits of configuring I needed to do to get Silverlight working happily in SharePoint. I’ve decided to create a getting started list of what you need to do to get Silverlight installed and how to display your xap file with the built in ‘Content Editor Web Part’. I have linked to other blog posts where necessary.

Configuration

1. Download and install the Silverlight 3 runtime from silverlight.net -

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/

2. Download and install the Silverlight 3 SDK and tools for Visual Studio from the silverlight site - 

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/

3. <Optional> Download and install the Silverlight Toolkit (If you want to use some of these cool and free Silverlight controls) -

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=30514

4. If you are running Windows Server 2008 you can skip this step as the MIME types should have been automatically added to IIS7 for you. For server 2003 users you will need to add the Silverlight MIME types to IIS6, follow the instructions here -

http://blogs.technet.com/jorke/archive/2007/09/11/silverlight-mime-types-in-iis6.aspx

5. This step involves configuring the web.config files for the SharePoint sites that you wish to run your Silverlight applications in. Follow the instructions on this blog post -

http://blogs.msdn.com/steve_fox/archive/2009/03/11/amending-the-web-config-file-to-support-silverlight-development-on-sharepoint.aspx

6. Ensure that the assembly System.Web.Silverlight is in the global assembly cache. If not then you can find it at the following location -

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v3.0\Libraries\Server

7. Configuration complete! – now read on to the deployment section

Deployment

To get your silverlight xap displaying on a SharePoint page follow the steps below. In terms of where to store your .xap file there are a number of places for you to choose. Some people recommend storing it in a folder called ‘ClientBin’ in the IIS virtual directory of the SharePoint web application but I was not able to get this working. I opted for the simplest method which was to store the file in a document library.

1. Upload your Silverlight xap file to a document library

2. Switch to edit mode for your SharePoint page and add a Content Editor Web Part

3. Insert the following HTML code - 

<!–<div width=”600px” height=”100px” id=”silverlightControlHost”>
<object data=”data:application/x-silverlight”, type=”application/x-silverlight-2″ width=”450″ height=”450″>
<param name=”source” value=”http://yoursite/sites/charting/XAPs/SimpleSilverlightChart.xap”/>
<param name=”onerror” value=”onSilverlightError” />
<param name=”background” value=”white” />
<a href=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=108182″ style=”text-decoration: none;”>
<img src=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkID=108101″ alt=”Get Microsoft Silverlight” style=”border-style: none”/>
</a>
</object>
<iframe style=’visibility:hidden;height:0;width:0;border:0px’></iframe>
</div> –>

Remember to remove the comments from the above code and replace the param value=”” with the url to your document library and xap file.

4. Click apply and save the changes to your content editor web part

5. If all went well you should be seeing your Silverlight application displaying correctly!

Note: You may need to play around with the width and height of both the <div> and <object> tags to size them correctly for your Silverlight application.

Good Luck!

To find open ports on a computer, you can use netstat command line.

1. To display all open ports, open DOS command, type netstat and press Enter.
2. To list all listening ports, use netstat -an |find /i “listening” command.
3. To see what ports your computer actually communicates with, use netstat -an |find /i “established”
4. To find specified open port, use find switch. For example, to find if the port 3389 is open or not, do netstat -an |find /i “3389″.
5. You can use PULIST from the Windows Resource Kit to find which process is using a specified port. For example, pulist |find /i “4125″ may display

Process    PID     User
mad.exe   4125   Chicagotech/blin

Or you can use tasklist to find PID.