SharePoint Express

Attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 for Free!

2009-08-24T10:06:00.000+03:00

ShareSquared, Inc. and Kodak just announced a contest where you can win a free pass to the 2009 SharePoint Conference and four nights stay at Mandalay Bay in Vegas! You can also win some free consulting or a Kodak scanner! Visit http://www.sharepointgiveaway.com/ for more information and to enter to win - good luck!

Indexing PDFs in WSS3.0

2009-08-19T15:20:00.000+03:00

My setup is simply WSS3.0 on a single server using the built-in embedded SQL edition.

1) Download and install the latest Adobe Reader 8. Since release 8, Reader has come with the necessary iFilter built-in.

2) Edit this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\{GUID}\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList

Add a new string value with Name=(next sequential number available - usually 37 or 38 I believe) and set the Data=pdf

3) Although the Adobe Reader 8 install should have made the following registry change for you, I always like to double-check it:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters

There should be a Key with Name=.pdf
Within the .pdf key, the following entries should be present:
String Value with Name=Extension and Data=pdf
Binary Value with Name=FileTypeBucket and Data=1 (0x00000001)
String Value with Name=MimeTypes and Data=application/pdf

If the entries are not present, add them.

4) The Adobe Reader 8 install should also have made the following registry change for you, but I still check it too:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension

There should be a Key with Name=.pdf
and within the .pdf Key, there should be the following:
Default with Data={AdobeReaderGUID} (in my case it was = E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603)

If the entries are not present, add them.

5) Add the Installation directory of Adobe Reader 8 to the System Path:

System Properties (Windows Key + Pause/Break key) - Advanced Tab.
Click Environment Variables button
Scroll down to Path in System Variables and click Edit
Append "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8\Reader" (or whatever your install path) to the end of the list.

6) Restart the WSS Search service:
net stop spsearch
net start spsearch

7) You are now ready to upload PDFs and they will be indexed for Searching. FYI, any PDFs already uploaded are NOT indexed. I've read you can update them (or their properties) and the Indexer will index them on the next run - but to be safe I generally DELETE and WAIT for the indexer to run again (so I'm sure it deletes any references to them) - and then I REUPLOAD them and WAIT for the indexer to run again. Then after it runs you're sure everything is indexed and searchable.

SPSource: Reverse engineering tool for SharePoint

2009-06-22T15:55:00.005+03:00

SPSource is a tool for SharePoint developers to assist in the creation of WSS Solution Packages (WSPs) allowing for the use SharePoint Designer and the SharePoint web UI to make quick changes to items, then push those items into Visual Studio for later compilation into a WSP.

Some examples of what can be done using SPSource:

Completely define a custom Publishing Feature using SPD and the SharePoint UI, creating the master pages, page layouts, content types, style sheets, and images directly in the content database. Once at a point where it's ready for deployment, run SPSource against the project and pull everything into a pre-existing WSP. If changes are needed in the markup, make them using SPD, and re-run SPSource. The files in the WSP will be updated and ready for a solution upgrade.
Implement a class on an ASPX page (code behind) in SPD, and code that class in Visual Studio, or add custom server controls to the markup in SPD. Push your assembly directly to the GAC or bin as part of the build process, and the code-to-test time is much faster, as the markup files are already in the content database. Once everything is set, run SPSource again the project, and pull everything together into the WSP.
Add a custom Content Query Web Part (CQWP) .webpart file to the web part gallery, and change the properties and settings for the new CQWP via the UI and SPD to use custom XSL files that you add to the Style Library/XSL Style Sheets folder. Create new ItemStyles, change the Headers, or add new parameters to the Main XSL. The XSL files can be updated quickly using SPD, and changes can be seen right away. When all is ready for integration into the WSP, execute SPSource against the new files and create a new Feature for the new web part in minutes.
Create a complex List instance with Content Types and related Site Columns and reverse the whole lot out to a Feature to deployed to another environment as a Solution Package (wsp) using your favourite tool: VSeWSS, WSPBuilder or STSDev.

You can download it from here.

To use it you can make the following steps:

1. Create the following folder structure to mirror the 12 Hive folder structure:

2. Then create a folder for your Feature (which will deploy the List Template, Site Column and Content Type). For example at C:\temp\SPSource Demo\12\TEMPLATES\FEATURES\SPSourceDemoFeature.

3. Create a Feature.xml file

Create a Feature file at C:\temp\SPSource Demo\12\TEMPLATES\FEATURES\SPSourceDemoFeature\feature.xml file and place the default feature XML content in the file:

<Feature

Id="863BBC74-939E-4296-A538-931369C04433"

Title="SPSource Demo Feature"

Description=""

Version="1.0.0.0"

Scope="Site"

Hidden="False"

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

</ElementManifests>

</Feature>

4. Create the .spsource file

Create a new .spsource file e.g. ‘C:\temp\SPSource Demo\12\TEMPLATES\FEATURES\SPSourceDemoFeature\lists.spsource’. The content of this file reflects the base schema for the Elements Manifest. So start with:

</Elements>

Because we want to reverse engineer the Site Column, Content Type and List you will need two elements in here. One to point to the List and one to point to the Content Type.

NOTE: Any associated Site Columns on the Content Type will automatically be reverse engineered.

</Elements>

5. Run SPSource

Now that you have set up the folder for SPSource to run, you now need to execute SPSource.

Open up a command prompt window and type:

Cd C:\temp\SPSource Demo

This will take you to the folder where you’ve created your files (if you chose a different name please adjust this).

Then simply type:

"C:\Program Files\SPSource \SPSource.exe" -designsite http://win-0xqbnqw37uf:41508/sites/DevDemo

NOTE: If you chose a different location for SPSource when you installed it you will have to modify this.

SharePoint 2007 Test Data Population Tool

2009-06-12T13:23:00.003+03:00

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Test Data Load Tool (MOSSDW.exe) is a tool that helps data population for MOSS deployments. It provides an XML based mechanism to populate multiple objects and associate XML tags to classes. It is available as a command line executable which accepts an XML file that specifies the objects to be populated.

The basic XML format for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Test Data Load Tool is as follows:

For example:

This sample would create 5 web sites named PublishingWeb1 through PublishingWeb5 under the current portal site.

You can use a lot of nice features and options for this purpose. For a complete list you have to download the help for this tool.

You can download this tool from here.

BDC Meta Man - a time saver for integration

2009-06-12T09:57:00.005+03:00

I've found a nice tool for generation of Application Definition files for BDC for SharePoint: BDC Meta Man. It is very easy to use and very efficient as you could see in the next video:

It knows to connect to SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, InforMix, Web Services, Access or any ODBC connection. It knows even to get data from SAP (with the use of Sitrion).

For a deep dive into the BDC I recommend to you this book:

SharePoint 2007 Developer's Guide to Business Data Catalog.You can find a review for this book here.

Free Virtual Expo on SharePoint – June 10

2009-06-02T12:49:00.003+03:00

Quest Software's Virtual Expo 2009 for SharePoint

Registration Information…

Wednesday June 10

"During this free online event, you can interact with our SharePoint experts and partners to learn how best to migrate to -- and manage -- this essential collaboration platform. Join us for live webcasts on topics such as governance and recovery, and visit the booths to download white papers, gather product information or chat with a technology specialist. This event is accessible via any web-connected computer."

8 a.m. to 4 p.m. EDT

7am – 3pm CDT

6am – 2pm MDT

5am – 1pm PDT

Very decent times across Europe

1PM London, England

3PM Bucharest, Romania

Live webcasts:

SharePoint Governance: 10 Steps to Successful Deployments
Leveraging SharePoint and Performance Point as a Business Intelligence Platform
Ask the Experts: Live SharePoint Q&A
A Simple Game Plan to Master SharePoint Recovery

Plus, by attending you can:

· Enter to win prizes given away throughout the day including SharePoint books, gift cards and more!

· Interactive"Networking Lounge" with SharePoint experts

View on-demand webcasts

Migration tools and best practices
Administration and auditing
Recovery from your existing backups
Developing robust applications on SharePoint with no coding
Managing SQL Server

Register Now…

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, v1.3 - Feb 2009 CTP

2009-03-20T17:23:00.005+02:00

A new version of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 arrived.

New features in version 1.3 include:

Can be installed on x64 Server OS machines running SharePoint x64. Previously only x86 Server OS could be used
Separate build commands for package, deploy and retract are added as Visual Studio menu items
WSP View improvements for consistency of deleting feature elements, merging features and adding event receivers to features
Command line build, package and retract commands are included enabling continuous integration and build servers. Previously command line build of SharePoint projects was very difficult
Refactoring support for renaming of Web Parts. Previously renaming a web part required changes in several files in the project
Solution Generator can now generate solutions from publishing sites. Previously only regular sites could be generated
Allowing partial trust BIN deployments of web parts
New project item template for SharePoint RootFiles items
Deployment will now optionally remove conflicting existing features on the development server prior to redeployment. Previously any feature name conflicts would result in an error
Ancillary assemblies such as for business logic can now be added to the SharePoint Solution WSP
Hidden features related to Site Definition projects are now shown in WSP View. They are no longer hidden
For advanced users a fast deploy is included to update only the compiled assembly on the SharePoint development installation
Deployment step logging is included
The List Definition from Content Type template now allows for the creation of a List Definition Event Receiver
The User Guide is now installed with the extensions instead of being a separate download

You can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B2C0B628-5CAB-48C1-8CAE-C34C1CCBDC0A&displaylang=en

More information you can find here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/kirke/SharePoint-for-Developers-Part-1-Introducing-VSeWSS-13/

A Remote Content Editor Web Part in your SharePoint applications

2009-02-17T09:41:00.003+02:00

A very interesting article was written by Christophe (or better known as PathToSharePoint) about a nice creative idea: How to control the home page (or any page) from your every SharePoint web on your every SharePoint SiteCollection on your every SharePoint Application. Christophe found (and implement) the idea to control those pages with the help of the Control Editor Web Part. This control will be connected to a shared file (over the entire SharePoint farm) and just execute the script from that file in your browser, so you can send mass messages to users, you can customize the page remotely (adding links, removing things from it), you can implement a custom security (or logging) mechanism with it etc.

The next step with this control is to create an administrative tool to manage the content of that file (not all users have JavaScript, HTML, CSS and SharePoint skills) and to integrate with your solutions, so your power users will have real time control over it.

Indeed, a very interesting idea.

You can find more about this, on his blog here.

Feed your CAML some IntelliSense

2009-02-16T09:37:00.003+02:00

Do you have problems in remembering all the key words and formats in CAML? Now this isn't a problem anymore! Thanks to John Holiday and his CAML.NET IntelliSense project. You can find more information about this on his blog: http://johnholliday.net/post/2009/01/18/Feed-your-CAML-some-IntelliSense-so-it-doesnt-bite-you-in-the-you-know-what!.aspx

To download the installer for the project follow this link: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/camlintellisense/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2212

Free MOSS 2007 WCM Learning Resources

2009-02-13T10:32:00.003+02:00

Microsoft post a few free learning resources for those of you wanting to pickup MOSS 2007 WCM sites.

These training modules provide architects with information about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web Content Management (WCM). The modules and accompanying videos explain the role of WCM architecture, building content management for your Web site, and server infrastructure and deployment. The modules also cover WCM design, security, and optimization.

You can download them from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b2c7980-b604-493f-b5ee-52c562458e34&displaylang=en

SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool

2009-01-30T14:01:00.002+02:00

A new must have tool has been released by Microsoft! This tool is called SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool. This tool analyzes your assemblies and helps to identify potential memory leaks.

This tool was made to help you to check your assemblies that use the SharePoint API so that you can build better code. It provides assistance in correctly disposing of certain SharePoint objects to help you follow published best practice. This tool may not show all memory leaks in your code.

Please review the MSDN article on using Deploy in SharePoint applications here.
The SPDisposeCheck tool can be downloaded here.

Roger Lamb maintains a nice blog for the SPDisposeCheck team here.

SharePoint Skinner

2009-01-26T16:44:00.002+02:00

A great tool for customizing and branding a SharePoint Web Site or portal is SharePoint Skinner.
It is a desktop application which enables you to visual edit the css for your SharePoint and save it as a SharePoint Theme. It is very easy to use and very productive. You should read more about it on its tutorial here: http://www.elumenotion.com/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=4
You will find it on CodePlex too: http://www.codeplex.com/SP2007Skinner

JQuery with SharePoint

2009-01-26T13:05:00.001+02:00

I was searching for several resources for using JQuery in SharePoint. I was impressed by how well can we use JQuery to customize SharePoint.

Some very useful resources and demos you could find here (made by Paul Grenier):

http://www.endusersharepoint.com/?s=javascript

§ JQuery for Everyone: Replacing [Today]

§ JQuery for Everyone: Force Checkout

§ JQuery for Everyone: Degrading Dynamic Script Loader

§ JQuery for Everyone: Preview Pane for Calendar View

§ JQuery for Everyone: Preview Pane for Multiple Lists

§ JQuery for Everyone: Expand/Collapse All Groups

§ JQuery for Everyone: Fixing Configured Web Part Height

§ JQuery for Everyone: Total of Time Differences

§ JQuery for Everyone: Total Calculated Columns

§ JQuery for Everyone: Manually Resizing Web Parts

§ JQuery for Everyone: Dynamically Sizing Excel Web Parts

§ JQuery for Everyone: Fixing the Gantt View

§ JQuery for Everyone: Cleaning Windows Pt2

§ JQuery for Everyone: Cleaning Windows Pt1

§ JQuery for Everyone: Dressing-up Links Pt3

§ JQuery for Everyone: Dressing-up Links Pt2

§ JQuery for Everyone: Dressing-up Links Pt1

§ JQuery for Everyone: HTML Calculated Column

§ JQuery for Everyone: Print (Any) Web Part

§ JQuery for Everyone: Accordion Left Nav

Announcing the WSRP Toolkit for SharePoint

2008-12-16T16:37:00.003+02:00

The WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets) Toolkit for SharePoint provides sample code for producing WSRP conformant data from SharePoint lists and libraries. External portal platforms (e.g. BEA AquaLogic Portal, IBM WebSphere Portal, SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal etc.) can then render SharePoint data natively through their WSRP consumer portlets. The Toolkit is available now for download from the MSDN Code Gallery.

The Toolkit demonstrates two possible methods of exposing SharePoint data through the WSRP interface and is intended to provide a starting point for customers who are interested in surfacing SharePoint data in non Microsoft portal environments. The first method focuses on maintaining high fidelity with the SharePoint user interface and the second method focuses on providing flexibility and control over the rendered output.

Of course WSRP is just one of many options available to support portal interoperability and Microsoft continues to invest in open standards for interoperability including XML based web services, CMIS, Office Open XML, RSS and REST. Microsoft is also investing heavily in Silverlight, designed to deliver rich user experiences and applications across multiple platforms. For more details on the SharePoint interoperability story, visit the TechNet Office SharePoint Server Interoperability TechCenter.

A more in depth presentation about this tool will be shown here in my blog in the following few days.

3D Silverlight Charts in SharePoint: SmartTools.Charts

2008-12-15T12:45:00.000+02:00

An impressive library for charting was developed by Visifire(http://www.visifire.com/) a while ago. This library is using WPF and Silverlight to create very nice 3D charts (you can test a lot of charts here in this gallery: http://www.visifire.com/silverlight_charts_gallery.php). And, of course we can use them in SharePoint.
Jan Tielens made a new control in his SmartTools library, named SmartTools.Charts (you could find it here: http://www.codeplex.com/smarttools/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Charts&referringTitle=Home) to fulfill our needs to have nice looking charts in SharePoint.

To install and use the feature you should complete the following tasks:
1. First thing you have to do is to download the SmartTools.Charts from codeplex and install it on the site collection you need (it is build with the WSPBuilder so it has an installer for this task). 2. After you install it, you have to enable it at the site collection level. To do that, go in Site Collection features and enable SmartTools.Charts.
3. You are able now to add 2 new web parts:
a) List Charts - this web part connects to one list on your site and brings data from that list in the chart. You can specify here the list to connect to, the view to filter data and the columns to use in chart (as you could see in the picture below).

b) Tasks List Chart - a particular List Chart - it is linked with the Tasks List in the site to show the percentage of work for each task:

4. Enjoy it!

Remember that this tool is on Beta 1, so it might have some bugs out there.
Very good work Visifire for creating those charts and Jan for the SharePoint integration.

P.S. You should have Silverlight enabled in IIS for the site collection you want to put those charts. To do that, go in IIS and add the following MIME Types to the site where the SharePoint site collection is:

.xaml
application/xaml+xml

.xap
application/x-silverlight-app

.xbap
application/x-ms-xbap

European SharePoint Best Practices Conference

2008-12-11T13:35:00.000+02:00

In 6-8 April 2009 is the first European SharePoint Best Practices Conference. This is sure to be the best SharePoint related Conference in Europe, this year. It already has an amazing speaker line up. This conference was just announced this week! Check out the killer line up of the SharePoint greats: Steve Smith MVP, Spence MVP, Mike Watson (X MSFT), Todd Bleeker MVP, Andrew Connell MVP, Penny Coventry MVP, Bob Fox MVP, Andrew Woodward MVP, Natalya Voskresenskaya MVP (Blogger think Squirrel). More information you could find at http://www.sharepointbestpractices.co.uk/.
See you there!

SharePoint Best Practices Conference

2008-12-05T16:51:00.000+02:00

In 2-4 february 2009 is the second SharePoint Best Practices Conference (the first SharePoint Best PracticesTM Conference in Washington, DC in September, 2008 was an overwhelming success). This conference will have place in San Diego (USA, CA). More information you could find at http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/. The agenda for this event is here: http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/agenda.
The first 250 people who register for the Best Practices SharePoint Conference in February will be given a free copy of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices by Microsoft Press.

Hide search on all application screens in SharePoint

2008-12-05T09:12:00.000+02:00

Application screens (a.k.a. "_layouts" screens) usually don't display the search in the header. There does appear to be a few screens out there that do, and depending on your design for application screens, this may throw a wrench in how your page looks. To stop the search from showing in any application screen, add the following CSS style to your theme or alternate CSS file:

.ms-searchform
{
display: none
}

Free MSDN Webcasts & HOLs for MOSS 2007 WCM Development

2008-11-25T12:25:00.000+02:00

Microsoft is pushing out a new series of webcasts and hands-on labs around the area of building MOSS 2007 WCM Publishing sites. The series, SharePoint Products & Technologies for Internet Site Development, starts on December 2, 2008 and runs through January 6, 2009. Everything is completely free!
In time, all the materials, as well as the sample site, will be available for download.

Here's a list of the webcasts, the topics and the dates with registration links:

Tues, Dec 2, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Getting Started
Thurs, Dec 4, 2008 : 2p-3p ->.COM Branding
Tues, Dec 9, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Custom Fields, Web Parts & Lists
Thurs, Dec 11, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Authentication
Tues, Dec 16, 2008 : 2p-3p -> Web Interoperability
Thurs, Dec 18, 2008 : 2-3p -> Search
Tues, Jan 6, 2009 : 2-3p -> Content Deployment

Unit testing Microsoft SharePoint

2008-11-25T12:10:00.000+02:00

Typemock announce the Isolator for sharepoint. It is almost the same as Typemock Isolator, but will only work on APIs that are directly connected with sharepoint’s API. That means that if you only need to test sharepoint stuff, you can get a powerful product, for a much cheaper price than the full Isolator (you can always upgrade later if you need to isolate more APIs).

How to get a free licence:
Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.
The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.

Enjoy it!

Enable AJAX On SharePoint feature

2008-11-24T16:22:00.000+02:00

I was searching for a tool to quickly enable AJAX on SharePoint site collections, but I was unable to find something like that, so I decided to create one. I named it Enable AJAX On SharePoint. This tool is just a feature on the site collection scope which make the appropriate modifications in the site collection web.config to enable AJAX.

You could find it here:

For deployment it is used WSPBuilder so you have to start the setup.exe file to install it. To use it just enable / disable the feature at the site collection level and the AJAX will be enabled / disabled for this scope.
This tool is free for any purpose.
If you have some improvements for it feel free to change it. I'll appreciate if you'll send me an email with the modifications (or request for modifications).

P.S. do not forget to rewrite (at the page level) the _spOriginalFormAction and _spSuppressFormOnSubmitWrapper in order to use AJAX in that aspx page. Just add this script on every page that uses AJAX (or in the masterpage file):

<script type="'text/javascript'">
_spOriginalFormAction = document.forms[0].action;
_spSuppressFormOnSubmitWrapper = true;
</script>

The code for this feature is here:

Enjoy it!

U2U CAML Query Builder Feature

2008-11-21T08:47:00.000+02:00

This feature has been developed to ease the work of a SharePoint 2007 developer. It consists of an application page where you can build a CAML query. The CAML query itself is stored in a list from where you can further work with it. You can download it from here: http://www.u2u.be/res/Tools/SharePointCamlQueryBuilder.aspx

If you want to know more about CAML, please visit the following page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms462365.aspx

This tool is one of the several tools developed by U2U to ease the work with CAML Query. I like this tool most because is integrated in SharePoint and if you'd like to create a new CAML query you just have to activate this feature for the site collection you work on an a new link in any of your Action tab of your any list instance will appear: Build a new CAML Query. To build a new query just press this new option and you're ready to start.

A very intuitive page is used for this task - is very similar with the create a new view option for every SharePoint list: you can select the columns you want to have in the query, you can put an order by statement, you can filter the results and you can set some other more specific properties for the CAML query.

The last step to build a query is to Preview the results. Here you'll have options to export the CAML query to C#, VB.NET, CAML and the tool will generate the code for that:

You have even the option to select the returning type of the method it will generate: DataSet or SPListItemCollection and to preview the results as a table.
You just have to copy paste the code this tool will generate into your project and that's it - you have a new CAML query in your SharePoint solution.

Silverlight 2 Blueprint for SharePoint

2008-11-19T16:36:00.000+02:00

You can get Silverlight 2 Blueprint for SharePoint from here:
http://www.codeplex.com/SL4SP
Now it's reach the Beta 2 version. Enjoy it!

SharePoint Guidance - November 2008

2008-11-19T16:11:00.000+02:00

A new version of SharePoint Guidance is avaiable here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C3722DBA-6EE7-4E0E-82B5-FDAF3C5EC927&displaylang=en

This guidance helps architects and developers build SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation (RI) demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development and lifecycle management challenges.This guidance discusses the following:

Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring and packaging.
Design tradeoffs for common decisions many developers encounter.
Implementation examples demonstrated in the RI and in the QuickStarts.
How to design for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration.
Set up of development, build, test, staging, and production environments.
Managing the application life cycle including upgrade.

Team-based intranet application development.

The following areas are not discussed in this version of the guidance:

Content-oriented sites that use Web content management
Internet and enterprise-scale SharePoint applications
Multilingual SharePoint applications
Scale or security testing of SharePoint applications

More information about this you can find here: http://www.codeplex.com/spg/

Lookup issue for custom content types

2008-11-19T15:19:00.000+02:00

If you have the following situation:
You have a couple of lists in your SharePoint application and you want to export their schema.xml file (to make content types based on custom lists created by you in SharePoint). Let us suppose we have some of those lists linked with lookup columns. Then we'll have a problem:
If we'll have the Department list and the Employee list and the Employee list has a column named Department witch is a lookup to the Department list and we extract the schema.xml files from both lists (with the help of SharePoint Solution Generator or OCDExportList) and we'll make a feature with those 2 content types and after that we'll deploy the feature to a different server and we'll create instances from those content types we'll see that the relation between the instances does no longer exist. The Department lookup column from the Employee list will not refer the Department list. Why is that?
If you'll look at the schema.xml file from the Employee list you'll find that your lookup column looks like that:

<field id="{92680819-4656-406f-9eb7-21377cb4eec8}" version="1" group="" rowordinal="0" colname="int2" name="Departament" staticname="Departament" sourceid="{d129f702-1314-4fef-8bdc-4826bc720cd7}" unlimitedlengthindocumentlibrary="FALSE" showfield="Title" list="{A83FD6BE-DE5A-49A6-A369-DA72AF737408}" required="TRUE" displayname="Departament" type="Lookup">

What is interesting here is the following attribute: List="{A83FD6BE-DE5A-49A6-A369-DA72AF737408}”. This attribute tell SharePoint that the lookup field will link to the list instance with the id equals with the GUID given. When you'll deploy it to a new server, the list instance with this id does not exist anymore so it doesn't know how to link the Employee list, so the relations between your lists are not longer used.
To resolve this issue you have to make the following modification:
List="Department" - if you'll provide the name of the instance here (where SharePoint expects a GUID) when you'll create instances from your content types SharePoint will search your current web for lists with the name you provided there, if it will find something it will make the replacement for this instance.
And if you want to be more abstract you should use resources files, so we'll change the attribute with something like: List="$Resources:empmon,list_Departament;" where empmon is your resource file deployed in your 12/Resources folder, and list_Department is your mapping name for your Department list. So when you want to change the lookup for a column (to refer another list) you just have to modify your resource file and when you'll create another instance of that list the new lookup column knows to refer the right list.

Imtech StsAdm Commands v1.0.0.0 - OCDExportList

2008-11-18T08:28:00.000+02:00

A nice to use tool is Imtech STSAdm Commands. When you'll install it you'll be able to use a custom command in stsadm: OCDExportList. This command is somehow the equivalent of SharePoint Solution Generator for exporting list definitions. I had some problems to use SharePoint Solution Generator (SSG) after I installed Visual Studio 2008, so I couldn’t use this tool any more. After a little search on the Internet a have found this tool and I've started to use it. I found that it is very easy to use and very light. With this tool I can export list definitions (after you customize them on SharePoint) and use them in my own content types (a very useful thing to do).
How to use it:
I created a bat file with the following content:

@SET STSADM="c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12\bin\stsadm"
@SET DEPLOY=D:\Projects\_Generated Code\
@SET URL="http://localhost"
@SET NAME=MyList
%STSADM% -o ocdexportlist -url %URL% -name "%NAME%" -dir "%DEPLOY%%NAME%"

This export the list definition file (schema.xml) and the appropriate list files (NewForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx, etc.) in the D:\Projects\_Generated Code\MyList folder. Then you just have to copy the entire folder in your solution in Visual Studio under your feature folder and you're ready to deploy it as a new content type.
The release for this tool is located here: http://www.codeplex.com/tmt/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=10875
Some other information about it is here: http://blog.mastykarz.nl/export-list-definition-free-stsadm-command/

WSPBuilder

2008-11-17T17:10:00.000+02:00

WSPBuilder is a must have for every SharePoint Developer. You'll find it on CodePlex(http://www.codeplex.com/wspbuilder). I mostly use it as extension for Visual Studio 2008.
First of all you can use it to add new items in your SharePoint Solution. It have templates for the most common things you'll do in SharePoint:

When you'll use a template from it, WSPBuilder will populate your solution with the necessary files and folders and will make the appropriate configuration for the features to deploy the item you'd just add to the solution. So you just have to worry about the code behind the feature, the other nasty things(creation of folders and files and synchronization of the features) are taking care by the WSPBuilder.

And after you'll finish the development and you'll want to deploy your solution, nothing can be more simple: you just have to add a Solution Installer Configuration item from the templates WSPBuilder has and to configurate it (it is very simple to do that) and after that you just have to press a button and the WSPBuilder will make you a wsp solution and an installer for it and your Sharepoint solution is ready to be deployed (nice and easy). You just have to press Create Deployment Folder as shown below and a folder named deploy is created in your bin folder. In this folder you have an installer for your Sharepoint Solution and you can use it to install your solution to any server you'll want just by using a wizard (and of course you can distribute it to non SharePoint power users to install it on their servers).

As you could see in the image you have and other useful options you can use in your SharePoint Solution. You just have to right click on your project after you have installed WSPBuilder extensions for Visual Studio.
So on my opinion this tool is a must for every SharePoint developer.

SPSkin

2008-11-17T16:53:00.000+02:00

A very good tool to create and edit SharePoint CSS is http://james.milne.com/SPSkin/. You just have to go at this page and load your existing CSS there (when you press CSS button) and after that you can modify it easily with the options you have in the left toolbar. This is very intuitive and it also have a lot of predefined skins for SharePoint (a few hundred). When you'll finish to customize the CSS there, you'll have to press the CSS button and to Copy / Paste it to your SharePoint. And that's it! You now have a brand new SharePoint skin!

Free Series of SharePoint Workflow How-to Videos

2008-09-16T21:35:00.000+03:00

A very good place to start in writing workflows in MOSS is the Robert Shelton's Blog. You have here some useful videos to help you understand better the way you should use SharePoint workflows.