Alon Havivi's Blog

Access sharepoint templates from Office client application

2012-01-09T15:19:00.000+01:00

Recently I was asked to look into the Connect to Office (Add to SharePoint Sites) and Publish Links to Office Client Applications features in SharePoint 2010. There seems to be some confusion between their relationship. So, I decided to clear the confusion and to blog about it to help people understand the differences between them. Here are my findings:

First, let's connect to Office.

To Connect to Office follow these steps:

Navigate to the site containing the library for which you want to connect to Office.
Click Site Actions, click View All Site Content, and then in the Libraries section, click the name of the library.
On the Library tab, in the Connect & Export group, click the arrow next to Connect to Office.
Click Add to SharePoint sites. A “Library added” message is displayed, indicating that the current SharePoint site has been added to the shortcut bar of the Office Save As and Open dialog boxes.

SharePoint 2010 also allows farm administrators to Publish Links to Office Client Applications so that certain users can easily save Office client files in SharePoint. This means a central place where administration can add links for certain users to be able to save Office client files in SharePoint.

To Publish Links to Office Client Applications follow these steps:

On the home page of the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
Click in the Type column of the User Profile Service application to select the row.
In the Operations group of the ribbon, click Manage
On the Manage Profile Service page, in the My Site Settings section, click Publish Links to Office Client Applications.
On the Published links to Office client applications page, click New Link.
On the Add Published Link page, in the URL box, type the URL of the location where users will be able to publish links.
In the Description box, type a brief name for this location.
This is the name that will appear in the Favorite Links section of the Save As dialog box.
Select the type of the location that this link represents. For example, if the target location is a SharePoint document library, select Document Library.
In the Target Audiences box, either type the name of the user or group to add or using the address book to find a user or group to add.

The figure below shows the differences between these two features (click on a figure to enlarge).

The only common functionality between these two features is the Open and Save to SharePoint from Office clients. Here is a table showing the differences between these features:

	Publish Links to Office Client Applications	Connect to Office
Open and Save to SharePoint from Office clients	X	X
Accessing SharePoint Templates from Word 2010		X
Add link to My Links Web Part		X
Central place to manage users links	X

Connect to Office feature works with an ActiveX control and the stssync:// protocol and stores registry values in the following locations:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Content
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Content\Havivi_-_Public_Documents\WD1033\FeaturedTemplates\1\1]
"title"="Document"
"cached_source"="C:\\Users\\Alon Havivi\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\Office\\Spotlight\\14\\Havivi_-_Public_Documents\\WD1033\\FeaturedTemplates\\1\\1\\template.dotx"
"last_modified"="Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:21:00 GMT"
"source"="http://win2008moss2010/sites/Havivi/Public Documents/Forms/template.dotx"
"savelocation"="http://win2008moss2010/sites/Havivi/Public Documents"

Every time you open a Word document, Office 2010 checks whether any new or modified templates are available using these registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Spotlight\Providers\Havivi_-_Public_Documents]

"SharepointProvider"=dword:00000001
"ServiceUrl"="http://win2008moss2010:80/sites/Havivi/_layouts/GetSpotlight.ashx?ListName=Public%20Documents"
"DisplayName"="Havivi - Public Documents"
"LastUpdateTimestamp"=hex:92,e9,0a,4f,00,00,00,00

Publish Links to Office Client Applications stores registry values in the following locations:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Server Links\Published\My Site\

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Server Links\Published\My Site\Public Documents]
"LinkType"=hex(b):00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00
"IsMember"=dword:00000000
"IsPublished"=dword:00000001
"Url"="http://win2008moss2010:80/sites/Havivi/Public%20Documents/"

Caution: Incorrectly editing the registry might severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

Issues regarding these fetures can occur for one or more of the following reasons:

The user is running a 64-bit version of Internet Explorer.
The ActiveX control necessary for Connect to Office is not installed or is not running in the browser.
Microsoft Office is not installed on the client computer.
The version of Office that is installed is earlier than Office 2010 on the client computer
Security settings in Internet Explorer prevent ActiveX controls from running.
The browser does not support ActiveX.

More information about these features you can find here:

Office 365 / SharePoint Online Upgrade

2011-10-14T11:16:00.000+02:00

New features coming to SharePoint Online beginning October 20, 2011, and continuing through the end of November:

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) *Enterprise plans only: Enables connecting to external systems via web service based endpoints

External Sharing: Windows LiveID support: Allows Office 365 tenant administrators to invite external users to a site collection. They sign in with a Windows Live ID-based user name and password.

Windows Phone 7 "Mango" (official support and http:// connectivity): Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed “Mango,” now enables both small business and enterprise Office 365 customers to access SharePoint Online lists and document libraries from their Windows Phone.

Recycle Bin: deleted site self-recovery: Self-service ability to recover sites from a site collection’s recycle bin

Browser support: Internet Explorer 9: Adds official support for the Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser

Browser support: Chrome: Adds official support for the Chrome browser

Looking for the SharePoint spokesperson in Hollywood

2011-10-03T13:04:00.000+02:00

A funny video of the Microsoft team (Jeff Teper and Kurt DelBene ) searching for a SharePoint spokesperson in Hollywood. The video featured Luke Perry, Carmen Electra, Alan Thicke, and Florence Henderson all auditioning for the part.

External Item Picker filter

2011-06-13T17:35:00.001+02:00

In the last weeks I was working on a project that includes External Item Picker with filters. To use item picker control into a browser-enabled you need to accomplish these four steps:
* Create BDC in SharePoint 2010
* Create an External Content in SharePoint De
* Configure External Item Picker Control in an InfoPath
* Set up administrator-approved form template using Central Administration

Learn how to use the External Item Picker filter to create an InfoPath form to search data from external data source and SharePoint content in one go Read more...

Goodbye SNS REAAL, Hello e-office

2011-04-29T21:14:00.003+02:00

Yesterday was my last day at SNS REAAL after 3 years as a SharePoint Developer.
Being part of a multi-functional team that delivers SharePoint based Intranet. I must say that it was a very enriching time where I learned a lot and it helped me to deep my knowledge in SharePoint. For this I am grateful... Thanks you ID team!!!

Here below is the gift I received from my colleagues.. my personal tag-cloud :-)

Monday I will start my new job at e-office.... exciting time coming up...

Sharepoint Scrum Template

2011-03-25T14:10:00.009+01:00

I recently published a new project on CodePlex http://scrum.codeplex.com/ the idea is to create SharePoint feature based on Task list and two web parts; The task list will represent the Sprint Backlog, one web part for Scrum task board and the other for the Scrum burndown chart. This project is compatible with sharepoint 2007 and 2010 and due to be released in the near future... so make sure you follow this project on CodePlex or me on Twitter @alonhavivi

What happens when you activate/deactivate/install/uninstall the Property Bag Settings feature?

2011-03-01T21:12:00.005+01:00

Activate

Property Bag Settings feature add a custom action (link) to the Site Settings page Under the Site Administration section. see screenshot

Property Bag Settings feature add a custom action (link) to the Operations page under the Custom Settings section. see screenshot

Property Bag Settings feature create two farm properties:

pbs_secret_key: The secret key for the TripleDES algorithm

pbs_initialization_vector: The initialization vector (IV) for the symmetric algorithm

Deactivate/Install/Uninstall

Nothing

How to decrypt a Property Bag that been encrypted by using Property Bag Settings in SharePoint

2011-03-01T12:35:00.007+01:00

Add a reference. Click Browse, locate the Havivi.PropertyBagSettings.dll on your local drive, and then click OK.
In order to use this assembly in a your application, you simply have to reference it with a #using , as shown here:

#using Havivi.PropertyBagSettings;
Define the triple des provider, as shown here:
Havivi.PropertyBagSettings.cTripleDES des = new Havivi.PropertyBagSettings.cTripleDES();
Decrypt the Property Bag, as shown here:

string propertyBagKey = "hello";

string propertyBagValueEncrypt = "";

string propertyBagValueDecrypt = "";
using (SPSite oSPSite = new SPSite(site))

{

using (SPWeb oSPWeb = oSPSite.OpenWeb(web))

{

if (oSPWeb.AllProperties.ContainsKey(propertyBagKey))

{

propertyBagValueEncrypt = oSPWeb.AllProperties[propertyBagKey].ToString();

}

}
propertyBagValueDecrypt = des.Decrypt(propertyBagValueEncrypt);

You can download the full source code here:

Web Part Class: http://pbs.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/63103#1139174

Solution: http://pbs.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/changes/63103

My schedule for Tech·Ed Europe 2010 in Berlin

2010-11-05T09:47:00.003+01:00

9:00 AM

10:00 AM

Hall 7.2c Dublin

OFS227 - SharePoint 2010 IT Pro Overview

10:30 AM

11:30 AM

Hall 7.3a Berlin 1

WPH101 - Changing our Game : Windows Phone 7 and the Windows Phone 7 Application Platform

12:00 PM

1:00 PM

Hall 7.3b Europa 2

OFS320 - Microsoft IT: How to Build an Enterprise SharePoint 2010 Deployment

1:20 PM

2:05 PM

Hall 7.3b Europa 2

COS208-LNC - A Walkthrough of the next version of BPOS now called Office 365

2:30 PM

3:30 PM

Hall 7.3a Berlin 2

OFS206 - Creating Self-Service Analytic BI Applications with SharePoint 2010

4:30 PM

5:30 PM

Hall 7.2a Helsinki

OFS303 - Build Compelling Intranets and Extranets with SharePoint 2010

6:00 PM

7:00 PM

Hall 3.2 Interactive 4

OFS304-IS - Plan and Deploy MySites for SharePoint 2010

9:00 AM

10:00 AM

Hall 7.1b London 1

WPH306 - Silverlight for Windows Phone 7

10:30 AM

11:30 AM

Hall 7.1b London 1

OFS319 - Microsoft IT: How Microsoft Upgraded and Migrated to SharePoint 2010

12:00 PM

1:00 PM

Hall 7.2a Helsinki

OFS302 - Applying Web Design to a SharePoint 2010 Publishing Site

1:20 PM

2:05 PM

Hall 7.3b Europa 2

OFS202-LNC - SharePoint Online

2:30 PM

3:30 PM

Hall 3.2 Interactive 2

WPH208-IS (R) - Deploying Windows Phone 7 with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

4:00 PM

5:00 PM

Hall 7.2a Helsinki

BIN304 - Implementing PerformancePoint Services with SharePoint 2010

5:30 PM

6:30 PM

Hall 7.1b London 3

OFS314 - FAST Search for Internet SharePoint Sites Deep Dive

9:00 AM

10:00 AM

Hall 7.3b Europa 1

WPH310 - Giving your Windows Phone XNA Games Plenty of Whizz and Bang

10:30 AM

11:30 AM

Hall 7.1a New York 1

OFS311 - Developing and Extending SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Content Management

12:00 PM

1:00 PM

Hall 7.3b Europa 1

WPH311 - Microsoft Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone

1:20 PM

2:05 PM

Hall 7.1c Paris 1

OFS201-LNC - Enterprise Search

2:30 PM

3:30 PM

Hall 7.1b London 3

OFS317 - How to Customize SharePoint Online for Your Environment Using SharePoint Designer 2010

4:30 PM

5:30 PM

Hall 7.3b Europa 1

WPH214 - Understanding Marketplace and Making Money with Windows Phone 7 Applications

6:00 PM

7:00 PM

Hall 7.1b London 3

OFS329 - SharePoint Online: Developer Extensibility and Customization

9:00 AM

10:00 AM

Hall 7.1c Paris 1

OFS228 - SharePoint and Azure: How They Play Together

10:30 AM

11:30 AM

Hall 7.1b London 3

OFS213 - Enhancing the SharePoint User Experience using Silverlight

12:30 PM

1:30 PM

Hall 7.1c Paris 2

WPH318 - Developing Code for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7

New Feature - Masked Property Bag Values

2010-09-04T18:56:00.003+02:00

Recently, a colleague of mine asked me if the Property Bag Settings can mask/hide some values from the users.

That's to allow administrators to set a Property Bag Value as masked property, to ensure other users are not able to see the property bag value. Examples of masked values are Passwords, IP address, E-mails etc.

I thought it would be nice to add this as a new feature to my property bag settings. Now, if the value is marked as masked all characters entered in the Value TextBox control act as a password textbox. For example, you get something like this:

Note: the password text entered is not encrypted in any way and you can still retrieve the value using the object model

Download: http://pbs.codeplex.com/releases/view/51832

SharePoint 2010 - How to disable New item dialog popup in SharePoint Lists

2010-06-08T21:43:00.002+02:00

For example, in a SharePoint List:

1. Click List Settings.

2. Under Settings, click Advanced Settings.

3. Select the "No" (radio button)- Launch forms in a dialog, under Dialogs, as shown in the figure below

SharePoint Property Bag Settings 2010

2010-05-30T15:41:00.009+02:00

My Property Bag Editor on CodePlex is now avalible for SharePoint 2010 :

Frequently, SharePoint applications retrieve configuration settings at run time that were set when the application was installed or configured. To do this, the applications must access the configuration information, which can be stored in several locations. For example, configuration information can be stored in the Web.config file, the SharePoint configuration database (for example, values in the SPFarm property bag are stored in this database), or in a content database (for example, in an SPList object are stored in the content database). There are many challenges associated with these techniques. For example, improper use of the SPFarm property bag can corrupt the SharePoint configuration database. Also, although you can easily change the Web.config file with a feature installer, it is much harder to make changes to the Web.config file after a feature is deployed.

The SharePoint Property Bag Settings 2010 includes a hierarchical configuration manager that can safely store and retrieve configuration settings at the following levels:

*Farm (SPFarm class)
*Web application (SPWebApplication class)
*Site collection (SPSite class)
*Site (SPWeb class)
*List (SPList class)

Sharepoint Video Integration with Libraries

2010-03-08T08:59:00.003+01:00

Finally, the new SharePoint Video Player release on CodePlex makes it possible to integrate the Video Player Web Part with SharePoint Libraries. Read more...

Analyze SharePoint Page Load Performance by Using the SharePoint URL Ping Tool

2010-03-01T19:20:00.003+01:00

The URL ping tool is a free open source project that I made available on CodePlex.
Read more...

Who is the hero of the world?

2010-03-01T11:31:00.001+01:00

Finally, a clear answer....

How to: Join lists in SharePoint using LINQ

2010-02-15T16:39:00.004+01:00

Creating a JOIN on SharePoint Lists using LINQ... Read more...

Convert SPListItem To iCalendar outlook files

2010-02-10T22:12:00.004+01:00

Here is a small web part that show all SharePoint Calendar List items and a button to save the selected event in Outlook

Read more...

Managing Unused Sites - Archive your SharePoint sites automatically

2010-01-31T16:26:00.000+01:00

In SharePoint you can easily configure automatic deletion for unused site collections. This helps you to control the number of unused sites on your server and to decrease overall growth of your database, but with this feature comes a big risk. When a site is automatically deleted all content and data are permanently removed. It is recommended by Microsoft to archive sites before they are deleted automatically… This is a good tip, but how you can archive your site easily? Well, Microsoft recommendation is to develop a tool. So... let me show you a small trick how to achieve this. Read more...

Download the COMPLETE Development Environment for SharePoint Server 2010 Farm

2010-01-27T13:45:00.001+01:00

Microsoft has released two Virtual Machine for demonstrating SharePoint 2010:

These virtual machines contains:

1. Windows Server 2008 SP2 Standard Edition x64, running as an Active Directory Domain Controller for the "CONTOSO.COM" domain with DNS and WINS
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2 Enterprise Edition with Analysis, Notification, and Reporting Services
3. Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2
4. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate Edition
5. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Beta 2
6. Microsoft Office Web Applications Beta 2
7. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 Beta 2
8. Microsoft Project Server 2010 Beta 2
9. Microsoft Office 2010 Beta 2
10. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 Virtual machine

11. Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Evaluation Edition x64, joined to the "CONTOSO.COM" domain
12. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Active directory has been preconfigured over 200 "demo" users with metadata in an organizational structure.

Have Fun ;)

DOWNLOAD HERE

Microsoft SharePoint Connections 2010 - whats new for developers in the OM

2010-01-24T20:02:00.000+01:00

This week I was attending the SharePoint 2010 Connections Conference in Amsterdam. It is always exciting to hear what new and what can we do with it. You probably know that SharePoint 2010 comes with lots of new features and tools for develops, like: Sandboxed Solutions, SharePoint Ribbon, SharePoint Dialogs, Silverlight Web Part, List Lookups and Relationships, Business Connectivity Services, LINQ, Client Object Model, REST, Developer Dashboard, Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools extensibility, Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint Project Types and Items SharePoint Designer 2010 and more and more and more… this stuff is great, but what is for me as a developer? Does it make me more productive? And most important, what can I build that will make my application better. Read more...

SharePoint List Usage and Statistics

2009-12-30T23:32:00.001+01:00

Many site administrators using the usage reporting to monitor and gather information about their sites. This feature allows you as site administrator to view the storage used by the site, pages hits, where does the traffic come and other necessary information for site administrators. This helps to identify the important sites and to manage their environment properly. In this article we will go one step further. With the help of the SharePoint Object Model we will gather SharePoint List usage information and statistics. This article includes the following information:

• Basic SharePoint List Information Report
• SharePoint List Alerts Information and Statistics Report
• SharePoint List Users Information and Statistics Report
• SharePoint List Usage Report
• SharePoint List Change Report
• SharePoint List Storage Report

Read more...

Create Sharepoint 2010 Ribbon functinality in Sharepoint 2007 to insert images into Sharepoint pages.

2009-12-02T21:02:00.000+01:00

An easy and quick way to insert images from your computer into SharePoint pages

read more

Application Pages (_Layouts) with Web Controls (code behind)

2009-10-21T10:41:00.001+02:00

Using Application Pages (_Layouts) step by step, how to build your custom Application Page with your own Web Controls in Sharepoint read more

Set No access (ReadLocked) Programmatically for a Site Collection (SPSite)

2009-10-16T11:20:00.001+02:00

SPUser

user = SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser;

//NOTE: The account which runs the application pool needs to be a farm administrator

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()

{

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("Your Site Utl"))

{

site.WebApplication.FormDigestSettings.Enabled = false;

site.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;

site.WriteLocked = false;

site.ReadOnly = false;

site.LockIssue = "The site was disabled by: " + user.Name + " (e-mail: " + user.Email + ")";

site.ReadLocked = true;

}

});

Set Focus - Set Default Button to Controls in Web Parts

2009-09-24T12:23:00.006+02:00

To sets the browser focus to a specified control and/or set a Default button in your web part, You can use this code:

protected override void CreateChildControls()
{
TextBox txtTextBox = new TextBox();
txtTextBox.ID = "txtMyTextBox";

//Make sure you first add the control then set fucus

this.Controls.Add(txtTextBox);

this.Page.SetFocus(txtTextBox.ClientID);

Button btnSave = new Button();

btnSave.ID = "mySaveButton";
btnSave.Text = "Save";

//Make sure you first add the control then set the default
button

this.Controls.Add(btnSave);

this.Page.Form.DefaultButton = btnSave.UniqueID;

}