Vous désirez commencer à créer vos propres masters pages pour SharePoint 2010. Ceci est exactement fait pour vous! Starter Master Pages contient une version de master page pour SharePoint 2010 totalement commenté.

Voici le résultat dans SharePoint 2010:

et un extrait de code commenté:

Starter Master Pages

SharePoint 2007 includes the ability to host and manage content-oriented Publishing sites. For additional information on the publishing capabilities of SharePoint 2007, please see this Microsoft article.

If you receiving an “Access denied” error attempting to activate the feature, please review this article.

This is a quick fix for “Access denied” errors received while attempting to activate the Publishing Infrastructure feature for a SharePoint 2007 site collection. After the feature is enabled, make sure you remember to switch the App Pool back!

	Right click on ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Manage’.
	Expand ‘Sevices and Applications’, then ‘IIS Manager’.
	Expand ‘Web Sites’, then right click on your MOSS web site.
	Select ‘Properties’, then the ‘Home Directory’ tab.
	Change the ‘Application Pool’ to your ‘SharePoint Central Administration’ application pool and select ‘OK’.
	From the command-line, execute ‘IISRESET’.

Enable the ‘Publishing Infrastructure’ feature within ‘Site collection features’. For detailed instructions for this step, please see this post.

In a previous post I have talked about an approach of transferring complex data between the workflow and the InfoPath task form.

Now in this post I will give you the implementation described before and give you instructions on how to install and use it.

Download the following IPTaskFormsMadeEasy.zip and extract it on your development machine. It contains all the necessary files to follow the steps described here.

General Description:

The idea here is to bypass the ItemMetadata.xml file and send the xml that the form will de-serialize and display.

For this I have created a new Content Type derived from the Out Of the Box InfoPath Content Type. The ID for this Content Type is “0×01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F93161”. When used this content Type will open the InfoPath Task Form but instead of processing the ItemMetadata.xml will read a special key value pair ("IPFormDataXML”) from ExtendedProperties that will contain the xml for that task. Once this task form gets closed the xml data for this task gets serialized back into the special key value pair to be read by the Workflow.

By using this approach we can pass quite complex data, as repeating tables, between the workflow and the task form without passing every value separately using the ItemMetadata.xml. Another benefit would be that you can now validate the data types using the task xsd and have data type safety when transferring information between the Workflow and the task form.

Installation:

Is quite simple to install this in your farm and does not affect any existing workflows as we are using our own content type.

Inside the zip file you will find the MFDWorkflowIPTask.wsp  SharePoint solution that you will need to install and deploy into your farm using the STSADM and or Central Admin site.  This will install a site collection feature that will enable a new content type (MFD.WorkFlowIPTaskCtype ContentType)
Now enable the MFD.WorkFlowIPTaskCtype feature on the site collection where you will be using Workflows that needs this content type and your done with the installation.

After this nothing actually happen until you are using the new content type into your workflow.

Developer Instructions:

Each time when this content type is used in Workflows the _layouts/MFD/WrkTaskIP.aspx page will be used instead of the OOB one (_layouts/WrkTaskIP.aspx).

I am not going to show here how you use the ItemMetadata.xml file to pass data between the workflow and the task form but I have included a demo with source code into the zip file, ApprovalWF1 project, that shows how to use the ItemMetadata.xml and ExtendedProperties. The demo uses just a single task form but imagine that you might have a complex workflow with over 10 or 20 tasks and you can see how hard is to maintain that code as changes are needed to the Task Forms.

The ApprovalWF2 demo project shows you how to use the new approach by passing the full xml to the task form and again being a demo I am just showing you how to implement it for a single task.

This Approval workflow deal with an Expense Report that contains complex data including repeating tables. Think about the following requirement where you are asked  that your workflow tasks needs to contain all the data from the original expense report so that the approver does not need to open the original report and the approvers can’t see other approvers notes during the approving process. If you want to know why you can’t use the Expense Report form and just add fields for each approver and just let them deal with that form drop me a line.

So now for the solution on how you implement this requirement.

First the forms, Expense Report Form and the the Task Form are both InfoPath forms. There are two ways of building InfoPath forms:

1. Just start adding the fields as needed: very good for POC or if you don’t need much control over the fields namespace, schema and types.
2. Start by thinking of the InfoPath like you do for you DB starting with the schema first by manually building your xsd files and then attach them to your InfoPath forms. This will let you control everything including the sharing of data types between multiple forms. This is how I recommend of building any Enterprise level InfoPath Form.

Under the Forms folder you have both, the Expense Report Form and ExpenseReportApproveTaskForm2, including the schema files. To include all the fields from the Expense Report Form (ERF) into the Task Form all you need to do is add the following tags:

   <xsd:import namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/infopath/2003/expXSD"
            schemaLocation="ExpenseReport.xsd"/> this will include all the fields defined into the ExpenseReport.xsd that is used by the Expense Report Form;

Now having the xsd schema files for both of the forms we can actually generate two classes that will match that schema using:

        xsd.exe ExpenseReport.xsd ExpenseReportApproveTask.xsd /c
             /namespace:MFD.SharePoint.WorkFlow.Expenses.FormData

We will be using those two classes to serialize and de-serialize the xml data for both the Expense Form and Task Form.

Reading Expense Report Form inside workflow:

• Reading Expense Report Form inside workflow:

  [NonSerialized]
  private expenseReport _expense;
  public expenseReport Expenses
  {
    get
    {
      if (_expense == null)
      {
        //Read the Form into memory
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(expenseReport));
        using (Stream stream =  
                      this.workflowProperties.Item.File.OpenBinaryStream())
        { _expense = serializer.Deserialize(stream) as expenseReport; }
      }
    return _expense;
    }
  }

• Create the Task:

  private void CreatingApproveTask(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
    ApproveTaskId = Guid.NewGuid();
    ApproveTaskProperties.AssignedTo =
               Expenses.manager.managerEmailAddress;
    ApproveTaskProperties.SendEmailNotification = true;
    ApproveTaskProperties.Title = string.Format("Approval for: {0}",
                Expenses.employee.name);
    expenseReportApproveTask task = new expenseReportApproveTask();
    task.Decision = string.Empty;
    task.Notes = string.Empty;
    task.expenseReport = this.Expenses;
    ApproveTaskProperties.TaskType = 0;
    ApproveTaskProperties.ExtendedProperties[IPFormDataXMLTag] = 
                 Utility.Serialize(task);
  }

• Read the Task:

  private void ApproveTaskChanged(object sender, ExternalDataEventArgs e)
  {
    string IPFormDataXML = this.ApproveTaskAfterProperties.ExtendedProperties 
                 [IPFormDataXMLTag] as string;
    expenseReportApproveTask task = Utility.Deserialize(IPFormDataXML);
    string taskDecision = task.Decision;
    isFinished = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(taskDecision);
    if (isFinished)
    {
      ApproveTaskOutcome = taskDecision;
    }
  }

This should give you an idea on how easy and clean is the code now. You will not have to change this code just because somebody else decided to the rename one of the fields in the Expense Report Form or even added a new field. The code will be the same what changes are the generated classes that will need to be refreshed but that is a recompilation matter not a code change.

The other thing that you should observe here is that we do not use strings anymore to pass data but the class itself which is strong typed so there is no more need of parsing the string into another type like Boolean and hope that nobody change the type on you.

Adding new Task Form, no problem, they follow the same pattern so adding another 10 or 20 forms to the Workflow is a breeze and reduce the spaghetti code needed to wire those up as you will have a different generated class for each.

The only thing that I did not show yet is how to use the new content type and that is easy, just modify the elements.xml for the workflow to specify that the tasks should use the new content type using the:
TaskListContentTypeId="0×01080100C9C9515DE4E24001905074F980F93161"

As you are going to deploy this is production i would recommend to add the MFD.WorkFlowIPTaskCtype feature as a dependency to your workflow feature by adding the following tag inside the Feature tag.
        <ActivationDependencies>
           <ActivationDependency FeatureId="33cf18b1-e091-46c2-9f52-114516731db7"/>
        </ActivationDependencies>
By doing this the system will automatically activate the dependency feature and will fail to activate your feature if the required feature is missing.

Hope this helps to clarify this approach but if not or need more info don’t hesitate to contact me or leave a comment.

I ran across a great JQuery and SharePoint 2007 blog post yesterday, and I wanted to capture the URL here for later reference. Vedant Kulshreshtha has done a great job gathering up links to explain what jQuery is all about, why it is a good thing, what people think about it, how you might use it with SharePoint, etc.  From now on when people ask me what they should read to learn about jQuery with SharePoint, this is where I’m going to send them.

Debugging the CSS that comes with the style sheets (CSS) in SharePoint 2007 can be challeging at times.  The best tool I’ve found is a plug-in for Firefox called Firebug.  This demo shows how to use Firebug to “test out” how certain CSS changes will look and to determine which CSS file is being used – remember the ‘C’ in CSS stands for cascading.

Also, modifying the OOTB SharePoint style sheets (e.g. ‘Core.css’, etc) is NOT recommended and goes against best practices.  For more information on CSS, see this CSS Tutorial from w3schools. The best online source for information on branding SharePoint is contained in Heather Solomon’s blog.

Although there is some debate and essentially 2 camps on the use of themes within SharePoint 2007, there is no question they are much easier and safer for actual end users. I use master pages when I need to change structural elements of a site and themes for the look and feel.

Even though an AJAX version with live preview would be even better, the OOTB method is easy and does provide a quick preview of each theme’s colorscheme.

Following on from a fresh installation of SharePoint, creating a single web application and an empty site collection, I began to notice errors appearing several times a day in the Application event log:

Event ID:      7888
Task Category: Office Server General
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      TWC155.btw.gov.uk
Description:
A runtime exception was detected. Details follow.
Message: Could not find stored procedure ‘proc_ar_BumpCacheInvalidationCounter’.

 There’s some discussion about this here, and here as well.  The general consensus the error is ”Mostly Harmless”.  I even found this script that recreates the stored procedures to stop that error message popping up, but I decided against this approach as it breaches the Golden Rule of SharePoint, Never Modify the Databases!

According to Microsoft support this is a known issue with SharePoint and is related to the fact that the BDC is not active in Standard edition – the error can be safely ignored.  So just create a view of the event log and filter out those errors.

This years PDC was great. I think the big deal this year was “Integration”. I’ve never seen so many bits working together at such an early state.

I’ll walk through what I’ve seen and provide some detailed information plus the corresponding downloads I’ve found. It is insane, how many CTPs and Betas Microsoft offers right now.

These are the topics I will cover. Click to jump to the corresponding section.

• Visual Studio 2010 + .NET Framework 4, Downloads
• Silverlight 4, Downloads
• Entity Framework 4, Downloads
• OData / WCF Data Services (neé “Astoria”), Downloads
• SQL Server Modelling (neé “Oslo”), Downloads
• Office and Sharepoint 2010, Downloads
• SQL Server 2008 R2, Downloads
• AppFabric (neé “Dublin” and “Velocity”), Downloads
• Windows Azure, Downloads
• .NET Service Bus, Downloads
• Windows Identity Foundation (neé “Geneva”), Downloads
• Windows 7, Downloads

Visual Studio 2010 + .NET Framework 4

I’ll start with Visual Studio, because it spans all of it.

In the last years especially Visual Studio was lagging behind. It didn’t even have good support for debugging LINQ in C# – what could we then expect from integration with other products from Microsoft.

But now Visual Studio comes not only with an improved debugger, but also with many, many new project templates, enhanced deployment features for web and SharePoint, an extension manager bound to an online extension gallery, and many-many more features.

Maybe the reason for the more integrated development environment is the huge improvement in Visual Studio Extensibility. Download the SDK if you plan to write your own plugins.

If you want to know more about the “.NET Framework 4.0”, Google has a good coverage on “C# 4.0”, “Windows Workflow 4.0”, “Windows Communication Foundation 4.0”, “Entity Framework 4.0” …

Downloads

• VS 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 (Web Installer)
• VS 2010 SDK Beta 2
• VS 2010 and .NET 4 Training Kit
• VS 2010 and .NET 4 Training Course
• VS 2010 Extensions 
• more…

Silverlight 4

Maybe the announcements around Silverlight 4 were the biggest. The Silverlight team has made incredible progress in the last couple years. With Silverlight 4 they seem to eliminate most of the drawbacks it had compared to WPF. I can’t see yet where this goes, but a Silverlight OS could absolutely be a nice answer to the Chrome OS. And then we are back to terminals and mainframes.

Among the new features are a better out-of-the-browser experience including full-trust mode. Also new is webcam and microphone access, a richtext/html editor and a browser control. The browser control can also embed flash. And it can be used as a brush, in other words, it lets you run YouTube videos while applying any Silverlight effects.

Downloads

• Silverlight 4 Tools
• WCF RIA Services for Silverlight 4
• Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4
• more, and even more 

Entity Framework 4

After the entity framework came out in V1, many of the industry’s thought leaders called it a joke. The team has tried to incorporate most of that Feedback in EF V2 (Called V4 to align with .NET 4).

Together with the .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 and the Futures CTP you get code-only and model-first including SQL schema generation. There are also alot improvements in the designer and the query performance. Haven’t really checked out the details so far.

Downloads

• Entity Framework Futures CTP
• more…

OData / WCF Data Services (neé “Astoria”)

The Open Data Protocol (OData) has been developed to support a convention-oriented REST-style API over data of any kind. It builds on atom/pub and adds optional metadata, querying and projections. Using the .NET OData Client (WCF Data Services) you can use LINQ against any OData source. Sharepoint 2010 will expose all data via OData. Any application that uses the Entity Framework can very simply expose it’s data over the protocol.

Also SQL Server Excel PoverPivot (neé Gemini) supports OData and lets you interact with huge amounts of data the Excel-way.

Downloads

• ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2
• Open Data Protocol Visualizer
• more…

SQL Server Modelling (neé “Oslo”)

In a couple of sessions Doug, Chris, Don and Chris showed the new features in the November CTP. The team has made some progress, although it is easy to see, that they have much homework left. Some of the new features are the better Visual Studio Integration, a ASP.NET MVC project supporting “M” for the M in MVC, debugging support in DSLs, richer right-hand grammar productions, support for views in “Quadrant”. Also the Modeling Services where officially announced to be part of SQL Server in some future release.

I’ll spend a new post on more of the changes soon.

Also, today I think, that Quadrant will not replace the DSL Tools in Visual Studio. Those have made much progress and will rather be improved and merged with “M”.

Downloads

• SQL Server Modeling CTP Nov 2009
• VS DSL Tools SDK Beta2 (4 MB)
• SQL Server Modeling Services
• more…

Office and Sharepoint 2010

No matte who I asked, nobody liked SharePoint development so far. From what I’ve seen this might change in the future. There has been much focus on the developer experience for SharePoint customization. Deployment and packaging seems to be much more fluent, and the horrible SharePoint web service interfaces will be superseded by the new generic OData implementation over lists and libraries. There is also better support for embedding Silverlight, and Microsoft finally promises a good user experience even when using Firefox or Safari.

I just like Office 2010, but I haven’t done any customization for Office since the good old VBA times. I think the web-versions of Office built into SharePoint are really cool. They allow collaborative editing like in Google Docs. I’ll check out this stuff soon!

Downloads

• Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta
• Visio 2010
• SharePoint Foundation 2010 Beta (formerly WSS)
• SharePoint Server 2010 Beta (formerly SP Portal Server)
• SharePoint Designer 2010 Beta
• SharePoint 2010 Reference Development Kit
• more: SharePoint 2010 Dev Center, Office 2010 Dev Center, Project 2010

SQL Server 2008 R2

In the last couple of weeks I had to do a lot with SQL Server. The thing is, still devs do not care much about new SQL Server versions. They do rather talk about persistence ignorance. Even the Xml/XQuery implementations well the hosting of the CLR inside the SQL Engine did not really touch the developers hearts.

But often the heart of the application is data. And the more you have to do with it with fast response times, the closer you’ll have to operate on it. Another argument is, that Microsoft emerges the brand “SQL” from a relational RDBMS engine to a data platform including Analysis Services, Reporting, Integration Services, and so on …

Some of the new features are StreamInsight, the Excel PoverPivot plugin and more…

Downloads

• SQL Server 2008 R2 NOV CTP – Express (Scroll down there, to see the download options)
• SQL Server 2008 R2 NOV CTP Feature Pack (Scroll down there to see the options. Excel PowerPivot, Reporting Services for Sharpoint, Command-line and PowerShell support, PHP Driver, …)
• SQL Server® 2008 R2 NOV CTP StreamInsight Refresh
• more…

AppFabric (neé “Dublin” and “Velocity”)

“Dublin” was Microsofts promise to deliver a more manageable Application Server for .NET, WF and WCF solutions. But since it was announced there were no public CTPs or anything that we could have played around with.

At the same time “Velocity”, a memory cache, has had more publicity.

Those two are now merged in the AppFabric, promising a reliable host for the workflow foundation runtime and hopefully in the future a good replacement for NT services.

There have been rumors, that it enters the space of EAI, that BizTalk tried to cover so far. But the promise is, that they have different intents and will play nicely together.

Downloads

• Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1
• more…

Windows Azure

I’m not into it yet. But it looks promising. Let me just provide the links to the downloads I found.

Downloads

• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (November 2009)
• Windows Azure Platform Training Kit
• more…

.NET Service Bus

The .NET Service Bus is really interesting stuff. Somebody explained it as “Skype knowledge in a box”. This means, the .NET Service Bus helps you to set up secure duplex communication channels through firewalls and routers. It just leads your calls through the NAT jungle.

What you simply do, is creating a public namespace on “the internet”, where you then register your WCF service. Clients may then access your service through the Azure Cloud. Bye, bye DMZ!!

You can also use it to negotiate the connection details and then have it set up a direct TCP/IP connection between your server and the calling client.

In both modes, you’ll also be able to send messages to your clients, through all this expensive infrastructure that is intended to avoid those scenarios

The .NET Service Bus is part of the .NET Services SDK which also contains the Access Control Service and Workflow Services in the cloud.

Downloads

• .NET Services SDK
• more…

Windows Identity Foundation (neé “Geneva”)

Federated claims-based security. Everybody is talking about it. After Microsoft tried to reach through with Card Space and Live ID, this finally seems to be their answer to OpenID.

I’ll definitely take some time digging into it. I’m also interested in how it interacts with the SQL Server Modeling Services for System.Identity.

Downloads

• Windows Identity Foundation
• Windows Identity Foundation SDK
• Identity Developer Training Kit
• CardSpace 2.0 and Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 Beta 2
• more…

Windows 7

Windows 7 is great! What I’m interested in most, is multi-touch. I think this will be the default for every monitor and notebook in just a couple of years.

If you find any nice multitouch enabled applications, please give me a hint at http://multitouch-apps.com.

Downloads

• Microsoft Windows 7 SDK
• Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework – Home
• Windows 7 Training Kit For Developers
• more…

Have fun!

Vielen wird die Meldung noch aus SharePoint 2007 bekannt sein. Jetzt einmal in neuem Look and Feel von 2010…

YEAH!!!

Ich freue mich, diese Jahr als Sprecher auf der SharePoint Konferenz sein zu dürfen, nachdem ich im letzten Jahr als Besucher dort und von der Themenvielfalt begeistert war. Ich werde eine Session zum Thema Application Lifecycle Services halt, s.u. Ich würde mich freuen, wenn viele Teilnehmer zu der Session kommen würden.

Weitere Informationen zur SharePoint Konferenz kann man hier finden:

• Sessions
• Speaker

Services in SharePoint 2010 Products

Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products

Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010

Hosting Environments in SharePoint 2010 Products

Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products

Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Design Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Business Connectivity Services Model

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Planning

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade from 2007 Approaches

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Test Your Upgrade Process

Choose tool for business intelligence in SharePoint Server 201

Wie Fabian in seinem Blog in seinem neuesten Artikel “SharePoint Magazin goes 2010” schon angekündigt hat wird das SharePoint Magazin nach dem Erfolg der Erstausgabe (in der ich zwei Artikel beigesteuert hatte) fortgesetzt.

Auch ich werde mich wieder mit zwei Artikeln zum Thema Self Service BI und Taxonomies / Findability beteiligen.

Gerade im Hinblick auf den offiziellen Release von SharePoint 2010 im Frühjahr denke ich das ein Print Magazin eine gute Möglichkeit ist, einer breiten Masse die neuen Features vorzustellen.

The following demo shows how to create a SharePoint 2007 site collection and associated team site through Central Admininistration and Site Actions.

I installed Sike Mullivan’s reminder and make some changes. Here is the xslt I am using

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset"
xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema">

<xsl:param name="listId" />
<xsl:param name="listTitle" />
<xsl:param name="listUrl" />
<xsl:param name="listImageUrl" />
<xsl:param name="listEditFormUrl" />
<xsl:param name="listDefaultViewUrl" />
<xsl:param name="siteUrl" />

<!– Main body template. Sets the Results view (Relevance or date) options –>
<xsl:template name="dvt_1.body">
<div >
<table style="font-size:9px;width:100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing ="0" border="0" >
<tr>
<th nowrap="true">Title</th>
<th nowrap="true">Expire Date</th>
<th nowrap="true">Author</th>
<th nowrap="true">Created Date</th>
</tr>
<xsl:call-template name="DisplayResults">
</xsl:call-template>
</table>
</div>
</xsl:template>

<!– This template is called for each result –>
<xsl:template name="DisplayResults" >
<xsl:for-each select="/xml/rs:data/z:row">
<tr style="vertical-align=top;">
<td align="center">
<a>
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="$listUrl" />/<xsl:value-of select="@ows_LinkFilename"/>
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="@ows_LinkFilename" />
</a>
</td>
<td align="center">
<xsl:call-template name="DateFormatter">
<xsl:with-param name="WholeDate" select="@ows_Expired_x0020_Date" />
</xsl:call-template>
</td>
<td align="center">
<xsl:call-template name="SPFormatSeparatedString">
<xsl:with-param name="Value" select="@ows_Author" />
<xsl:with-param name="ReturnIndex">
1
</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</td>
<td align="center">
<xsl:variable name="CreatedDate">
<xsl:call-template name="SPFormatSeparatedString">
<xsl:with-param name="Value" select="@ows_Created_x0020_Date" />
<xsl:with-param name="ReturnIndex">
1
</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:variable>

<xsl:call-template name="DateFormatter">
<xsl:with-param name="WholeDate" select="$CreatedDate" />
</xsl:call-template>
</td>
<td>

</td>
</tr>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>

<!– Format fields with ;# separator –>
<xsl:template name="SPFormatSeparatedString">
<xsl:param name="Value" />
<xsl:param name="ReturnIndex" />
<xsl:variable name="val1" select="substring-before($Value,’;#’)" />
<xsl:variable name="val2" select="substring-after($Value,’;#’)" />
<!– Printing the Value –>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$ReturnIndex = 0">
<xsl:value-of select="$val1"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$val2"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

<!– The size attribute for each result is prepared here –>
<xsl:template name="DisplaySize">
<xsl:param name="size" />
<xsl:if test=’string-length($size) &gt; 0′>
<xsl:if test="number($size) &gt; 0">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="round($size div 1024) &lt; 1">
<xsl:value-of select="$size" /> Bytes
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="round($size div (1024 *1024)) &lt; 1">
<xsl:value-of select="round($size div 1024)" />KB
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="round($size div (1024 * 1024))"/>MB
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

<!– A generic template to display string with non 0 string length (used for author and lastmodified time –>
<xsl:template name="DisplayString">
<xsl:param name="str" />
<xsl:if test=’string-length($str) &gt; 0′>
<xsl:value-of select="$str" />
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

<!– Date Formatter –>
<xsl:template name="DateFormatter">
<xsl:param name="WholeDate" />
<xsl:variable name="YrMonDat" select="substring-before($WholeDate,’ ‘)" />
<xsl:variable name="TimeGiven" select="substring-after($WholeDate,’ ‘)" />
<!–Extracting Date–>
<xsl:variable name="Year" select="substring-before($YrMonDat,’-')" />
<xsl:variable name="RemYear" select="substring-after($YrMonDat,’-')" />
<xsl:variable name="Month" select="substring-before($RemYear,’-')" />
<xsl:variable name="Day" select="substring-after($RemYear,’-')" />
<xsl:variable name="MonthName">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 1">Jan</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 2">Feb</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 3">Mar</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 4">Apr</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 5">May</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 6">Jun</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 7">Jul</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 8">Aug</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 9">Sep</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 10">Oct</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 11">Nov</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 12">Dec</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>0</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="MonthDisplayNum">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 1">1</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 2">2</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 3">3</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 4">4</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 5">5</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 6">6</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 7">7</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 8">8</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 9">9</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 10">10</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 11">11</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$Month = 12">12</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>0</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>

<!–Extracting Time–>
<xsl:variable name="MilHour" select="substring-before($TimeGiven,’:')" />
<xsl:variable name="RemHour" select="substring-after($TimeGiven,’:')" />
<xsl:variable name="Min" select="substring-before($RemHour,’:')" />
<xsl:variable name="Hour">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$MilHour &gt; 12">
<xsl:value-of select="$MilHour – 12"/>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="$MilHour = 0">
12
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:value-of select="$MilHour"/>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="HourExt">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="$MilHour &gt; 12">
PM
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
AM
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:variable>
<!– Printing the Value –>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="normalize-space($WholeDate) != ”">
<xsl:value-of select="$Day" />/<xsl:value-of select="$MonthDisplayNum"/>/<xsl:value-of select="$Year" /> <xsl:value-of select="$Hour" />:<xsl:value-of select="$Min" /><xsl:value-of select="$HourExt" />
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

<!– XSL transformation starts here –>
<xsl:template match="/">
<div style="width:100%;text-align:left">
Go to
<a border="0">
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="$listDefaultViewUrl"></xsl:value-of>
</xsl:attribute>
<img border="0">
<xsl:attribute name="src">
<xsl:value-of select="$listImageUrl"></xsl:value-of>
</xsl:attribute>
</img>
 
<xsl:value-of select="$listTitle"></xsl:value-of>
</a>
<br/>
<br/>
<div style="font-size:12px;text-align:left;font-weight:bold">
<span>Expired Items</span>
</div>
<xsl:call-template name="dvt_1.body">
</xsl:call-template>
<br/>
<br/>
</div>
</xsl:template>

<!– End of Stylesheet –>
</xsl:stylesheet>

I had a question on my recent article over at EndUserSharePoint.com entitled A jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (WSS 3.0 and MOSS): Real World Example – Part 1.  The question was about the SPDisplayRelatedInfo function, and while I was setting things up to see if I had a bug, I found that there were some interesting ways you could use the SPDisplayRelatedInfo function that I hadn’t considered.

I added a Single line of text column to my old standby Sales Opportunities list and called it StateID.  In my EditFormCustom.aspx, I added this call to SPDisplayRelatedInfo:

$().SPServices.SPDisplayRelatedInfo({   
    columnName: "StateID",
    relatedList: "States",
    relatedListColumn: "ID",
    relatedColumns: ["ID", "Title"],
    displayFormat: "table"
});

The States list is one of the lists I use in testing SPCascadeDropdowns, and it has these columns: State (the original Title column) and State Abbreviation. Now, when I typed digits into the StateID column, I got real-time results from the SPDisplayRelatedInfo function as the digits matched the ID of the State item. Cool!

So if I started out with the column empty, I saw:

then when I typed 1:

then when I typed 2:

This also worked if the StateID column was a Number column.  Looking through the code, there was no reason this shouldn’t work, it’s just not the use I had intended.

So then I thought, well what if I wanted to match as I type the State?  I switched the function call to this:

$().SPServices.SPDisplayRelatedInfo({   
    columnName: "StateID",
    relatedList: "States",
    relatedListColumn: "Title",
    relatedColumns: ["ID", "Title", "State_x0020_Abbreviation"],
    displayFormat: "table"
});

Then when I typed Massachusetts, I saw:

Hmm, that can’t be right.  I went and checked the States list, and sure enough, I had some junk test data in there that I had forgotten about.  Even cooler!  The SPDisplayRelatedInfo function essentially acts like an as-you-type reference lookup!

These examples aren’t exactly what you’d be doing in the real world, but think about the situation where you had a product code that could be 1-5 digits or numbers or something where you wanted to let the user type instead of dealing with a dropdown. If you come up with another interesting use, let me know about it.

It’s always nice to find out that code you’ve written is *more* useful than you thought (as opposed to the dreaded less useful situation).

I recently set up a new VM (on a Hyper-V host) with Windows Server 2008 R2 for the purpose of evaluating SharePoint Server 2010 beta. This is a single server, standalone environment – domain controller, SQL server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2010 all on one VM.

Here are the resources I read through (I obviously didn’t read one of them well enough, you’ll understand later) to get set for installing SP Server 2010 beta and Office Web Apps beta in this standalone environment. These references contain download links and product keys too should you need them.

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx 

http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/10/25/sharepoint-2010-pre-requisites-download-links.aspx

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2009/installing-sharepoint-2010-beta-windows-2008-r2-server/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee695756(office.14).aspx (Deploying Office Web Apps)

After installing all prerequisites for SharePoint 2010 (including SQL 2008 SP1, CU2 and CU3) I set out to install SharePoint 2010. Now, if you read through the TechNet resource on deploying Office Web Apps, you’ll see that there is a wee bit of Powershelly stuff you’ll need to do to activate and start the Office Web App services and to create the service apps and proxies. This needs to be done only if you run the SharePoint post-setup configuration wizard as part of your SharePoint 2010 installation. I was keen to avoid this, hence here are the steps I followed to get everything up and running:

1. Ran prerequisite installer from SharePoint 2010 setup to ensure I hadn’t missed any prereqs
2. Ran SharePoint Server 2010 OfficeServer.exe setup (using complete installation option to be able to use full blown SQL 2008)
3. REMOVED TICK from “Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard now” box. (Do not run the config wizard at this time unless you want to manually active Office Web Apps using Powershell)
4. Ran Office Web Apps WcServer.exe setup
5. Once the setup is finished, the “Run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard now” box should be ticked. Click close to start the wizard and run through
6. Ran Farm configuration wizard from Central Administration

All done! Well, kind of. I happily went and created my first site collection, uploaded a Word document and tried to open it up to test Office Web Apps. Word Web App launched and appeared to be OK, but after several minutes of SharePoint “processing” my document I got an error that read: “Word Web App cannot open this document because the server is still processing the document. Please try again later.”

OK. So tried an Excel document – that opened fine. Unsurprisingly really because Excel has it’s own web services which have been around since MOSS 2007. Then tried a Powerpoint document and I got a different error, something along the lines of “network connection interrupted” which didn’t make any sense. At first I thought it might have been a resourcing issue, so I turned off a couple of VMs and allocated some more RAM to this one, same problem though.

So after SEVERAL hours of looking through event logs, Googling, looking in every dark corner of Central Administration, testing and retesting, I decided to re-read through the deployment instructions. In Jie Li’s article (3rd link in the above list), under step 11 we have the following note:

If you are trying to use Office Web Applications on DC (Office Web Application need to be installed seperately, like a language pack or an update. Please also note that Office Web Application cannot be installed on Windows 7), then the following commands need to be run to make the services work. Please note that in different languages, Service Application names could be localized. You can find them out by Get-SPServiceApplication, and then change the names in the script as necessary.

$e = Get-SPServiceApplication | where {$_.TypeName.Equals("Word Viewing Service Application")}
$e.WordServerIsSandboxed = $false
$e.WordServerIsSandboxed

#(Please use the below script for PowerPointServiceApplication - You need to enter "Y" for the answer of each cmd)
Get-SPPowerPointServiceApplication | Set-SPPowerPointServiceApplication -EnableSandboxedViewing $false
Get-SPPowerPointServiceApplication | Set-SPPowerPointServiceApplication -EnableSandboxedEditing $false

In the server’s c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config
Add the line below in the end of the dynamicTypes.
<add mimeType=”application/zip” enabled=”false” />

IISRESET

I had initially not seen this as I was using the TechNet article as my reference for installing Office Web Apps. So, because my server is also a domain controller I ran the Powershell commands and just like magic, Office Web Apps worked. Albeit a little slowly at first (possibly because I only have 3 GB RAM allocated to this server – don’t laugh) but after installing Silverlight it is nice and quick.

Issue resolved, I can now continue to play with SP2010.

SharePoint Components

SharePoint has been build upon following basic components:

1. SharePoint Architecture: – Farm, Web Application, Site Collection, Site, Lists, Items.

2. Web Application: – Creation, Deletion, Setting

3. Site Collection:- Creation, Deletion, Setting

4. Document Library:- Creation, Deletion, Setting

5. List: – Creation, Deletion, Setting

6. Item: – Creation, Deletion, Setting

7. SharePoint Security: – Group, People. Permissions

8. SharePoint Designer: – Site, Page, List, Web Part, Check In, Check Out, Publish.

9. Out of the box Web Parts: – Type and Uses.

10. Custom Web Part Development: – Creation, Debugging, Deployment.

read more..

SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Guide

SharePoint 2010: Labs in C# and Visual Basic Develop a Visual Web Parts in Visual Studio 2010 Develop a List Definition and Events Receiver in Visual Studio 2010 Develop Advanced Web Parts for SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010 LINQ Programming Client

Chapter 1: Develop a Visual Web Parts in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 2: Develop a List Definition and Events Receiver in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 3:  Develop  Advanced Web Parts for SharePoint 2010 with Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 4:  Develop with LINQ Programming to SharePoint in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 5: Develop for SharePoint 2010 with the Client OM and REST in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 6: Develop a BCS External Content Type with Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 7: Develop a SharePoint 2010 Workflow with Initiation Form in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 8: Develop SharePoint 2010 User Interface with Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 9: Develop SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed Solutions in Visual Studio 2010

Chapter 10: Develop SharePoint 2010 User Interface Ribbon and Dialog Customizations
read more..

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.

Last night was the first SharePoint User Group UK (SUGUK) meeting that I have taken responsibility for organising since taking on the role of a regional organiser.  We had a great  turnout of over 100 members and I was very well supported by several SharePoint friends including former organiser and group co-founder Nick Swan, Paul Hunt, Simon Doy and Chris Forbes (Scotland organiser) to name but a few. 

If the standard of presenters and presentations remains as high as last night then my job is going to be a breeze!  First up we had Martin Hatch from Content and Code presenting on building an accessible SharePoint system.  Now I know Martin from a mutual client we had a few years ago so I know that technically the guy is pretty sharp.  What we saw last night is that Martin has a very confident and engaging manner with the audience because he knows his subject inside out and backwards.  What I liked most about the presentation was that although the subject matter was accessibility (I learned a lot about that I never new!) all the techniques were demonstrated to be applicable for more general application which I wasn’t expecting.  (The slides and demo files from Martin’s presentation are all downloadable from his blog post).

Our second speaker was Chris O’Brien, independent SharePoint consultant.  Chris is a very relaxed and accomplished speaker and he gave us an excellent tour of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) enhancements in SharePoint 2010 demonstrating some Visual Studio 2010 enhancements for good measure.  Special thanks should go to Chris as he is a father of 8 week old twin boys and is preparing for best man duties this coming Saturday all on top of his normal hectic schedule!

Chris was one of several SharePoint MVPs in attendance and clearly from the questions and discussions during the evening there was a lot of experience in the room.  In all a great evening and even a quick SharePint in the local pub afterwards!

I have been working on a client project recently where the main aim is to make the user experience “nice” – this typically means no postbacks. Along the way to implementing it via webparts, jQuery, and AjaxUpload, I had one thing left to solve;

how do you get SharePoint to receive the file, and put it in a library?

It turns out to be quite simple – use write an ASHX file, and put it in the _layouts directory. Here’s a sanitised version of the one I wrote earlier – the code should be easy enough to follow…

<%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="FileHandler" %>

using System;
using System.Web;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections;

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

public class FileHandler : IHttpHandler
{

    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
    {
        string result = "success";
        HttpFileCollection hfc = context.Request.Files;
        using (SPSite site = SPContext.Current.Site)
        {
            using (SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web)
            {
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                for (int i = 0 ; i < hfc.Count ; i++)
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            // prepare metadata
                            Hashtable metadata = new Hashtable();
                            metadata.Add("Foo", "Bar");

                            // stream the data into a new SharePoint list item
                            string file_name = Path.GetFileName(hfc[i].FileName);
                            SPList list = web.GetList(web.Url + "/Documents");
                            byte[] file_content = new byte[Convert.ToInt32(hfc[i].ContentLength)];
                            hfc[i].InputStream.Read(file_content, 0, Convert.ToInt32(hfc[i].InputStream.Length));
                            SPFile file = list.RootFolder.Files.Add(list.RootFolder.Url + "/" + file_name, file_content,metadata, true);

                            // update the title of the generated item
                            SPListItem item = file.Item;
                            item["Title"] = file_name;
                            item.Update();

                            // update the list
                            list.Update();
                        }
                        catch (Exception ex)
                        {
                            result += "failure " + ex.Message + " " + ex.InnerException;
                        }
                    }
                }
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
            }
        }
        context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
        context.Response.Write(result);
    }
    public bool IsReusable
    {
        get
        {
            return false;
        }
    }
}

As mentioned earlier, I used AjaxUpload to submit the file, and it does it’s job wonderfully – there’s a great example of the Javascript required to do it here.